Steven Harrell, the owner of Mountain Haven Tiny House Village located in Willis in Floyd County, is giving me a tour of a brand-new tiny house, “Your bedroom can go in here which can fit a queen-size bed. Your living area here, you can hang your TV on the wall over there…”
The tour is appropriately and understandably brief, “…this is where your washer and dryer goes, over here. Full-size stand-up shower – basically, everything you need in a home.”
Mountain Haven is the first such community in the region. Harrell is also the founder of Tiny House Listings. He says the concept of the modest dwelling is growing fast, “Ten years ago, when you call and say I want to live in a tiny house, they would say what is that? Now they’re like, okay, I’m getting this call a dozen times per day.”
While the median price of a home in Virginia sits at $420,000, tiny home prices are considerably less.
Harrell provides some stats, “The average house sold so far this year is $61,500. So, if you do the math, the tiny house represents about 14% of what a traditional home sells for.”
There are tradeoffs that go with the low prices, most notably in size. They’re called “tiny homes” for a reason!
Harrell continues, “These 28-footers are 226 square foot and we’re actually starting to build 10-by-32s, which is 320 square feet. Which that’s kinda starting to get close to like a small apartment size.”
Not all communities presently allow tiny homes as primary dwellings. But changing attitudes and demand could lead to change.
“We do get a lot of calls about it. A lot of emails”, says Becky James, a zoning administrator in Roanoke County.
She says the numerous inquiries could have an influence going forward, “We are about to kick off our zoning ordinance amendment process, and tiny home affordable housing has come up a lot. It is something that we do want to incorporate into our new ordinance, but that will probably be a two to three year process.”
There are some established tiny homes in Virginia. I traveled to Buckingham County to meet Melanie Copeland. She and her husband have been living tiny for seven years in their 144 square foot tiny home on wheels they built themselves.
Copeland explains the efficient concept of a tiny house, “People don’t use ninety percent of the footage that they have. The rest of the room is not really being used all that much. It’s there, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t do that same path through a tiny house and accomplish all of those things in that space as well, if you build it effectively and make it work for you.”
Now settled, the journey to find a place for their home was a years-long struggle.
“When we first built our tiny, we lived illegally. We hid", says Copeland.
She goes on to make the argument for herself and for others to be able to live the tiny lifestyle – legally. "If you have a home and it is safe, and it has a roof and a floor and running water and you can hook up to systems and be safe and proper, why can you not live the way you want to live.”
Copeland has chronicled her experiences into a book called “Trailblazing Tiny: A Guide to Breaking Free”. And, she’s now the national spokesperson for Tiny House Alliance USA.
She says the future for tiny homes is looking brighter, “I am very encouraged by what I’ve seen. I see more and more people coming in and getting little tiny houses on foundations and all different types of lifestyles that should be encouraged in our country. Because we have an amazing country and we should have the option to live any way we want in a free country.”
As tiny houses continue to gain acceptance with community planning and zoning departments, and if you’re open to reimagining the concept of what constitutes a home, the door could open for more Americans to realize home ownership.
