Garfield's "Tiny House" Experiment a Bust... (Pittsburgh: apartment, townhome)

[eschaton]

Read all about it in City Paper.

Bottom line is Eve Picker was hoping to build the house for only $100,000. It has cost $190,000 to date.

[ProFiction]

Sucks. I was hoping that could turn into something really cool.

[Moby Hick]

I'm not very surprised about the costs. The parts of the house that cost the most money are the parts where you don't save very much by making a smaller house. If you want something cheap, you need to share the expensive parts which means multiple units in same structure.

Edit: Or assemble the housing off-site, like with a mobile home.

[Potential_Landlord]

Still worth a try and very valiant. Squire Valiant made it knight eventually, too.

[stburr91]

I just can't understand this concept. There is no way to make the numbers work. You can't build anything new, and recoup the costs if you put it in a crappy neighborhood. It also doesn't make economic sense to put a crappy little house in desirable areas. As bad as an overall concept as this is, it really doesn't make any sense in the Pittsburgh area, that is full of affordable housing.

[theta_sigma]

Living in a 800 sq ft house as I do (and having lived in a 400 sq ft home previously) I really don't get the whole tiny house thing. If you want a small, sub-100k home, Pittsburgh already has those. Like, all up and down my street (which you could hit if you spit from Garfield). There's a place a couple doors down that is even smaller than my house that was on the market a couple years ago (for something like $82k) and from what I can tell no one bought it so now it's a rental.

[UKyank]

Originally Posted by stburr91

I just can't understand this concept. There is no way to make the numbers work. You can't build anything new, and recoup the costs if you put it in a crappy neighborhood. It also doesn't make economic sense to put a crappy little house in desirable areas. As bad as an overall concept as this is, it really doesn't make any sense in the Pittsburgh area, that is full of affordable housing.

It makes it easier though, as in this case, when you're not spending your own money to do it.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by stburr91

I just can't understand this concept. There is no way to make the numbers work. You can't build anything new, and recoup the costs if you put it in a crappy neighborhood. It also doesn't make economic sense to put a crappy little house in desirable areas. As bad as an overall concept as this is, it really doesn't make any sense in the Pittsburgh area, that is full of affordable housing.

The way I have heard it explained is (provided it can be built cheap, which it can't here apparently) it's basically buying something with the equivalent space of a modern studio/micro apartment, at a similar price point, but with private outdoor space.

[I_Like_Spam]

Originally Posted by Moby Hick

Edit: Or assemble the housing off-site, like with a mobile home.

Manufactured homes aren't real big in Pittsburgh as we have plenty of older homes around for the people's needs.

But if Pittsburgh is growing, and there is a need for more housing particularly for poor Pittsburghers, setting up trailer based communities would probably be the most cost effective. We have enough urban prairies to locate this kind of "tiny house" but help would be needed from the city for zoning variances and helping to get clear titles on vacant lots that still might have liens for unpaid water bills or taxes.

[ferraris]

Originally Posted by eschaton

The way I have heard it explained is (provided it can be built cheap, which it can't here apparently) it's basically buying something with the equivalent space of a modern studio/micro apartment, at a similar price point, but with private outdoor space.

Well it sounds like a great deal of the reason they went overbudget was due to zoning variances and marketing costs. I bet costs could get much closer to the original $100K mark if the city zoned for it and if it was built as a development of tiny homes instead of a one-off. Some of the urban prairie blocks in Cal-Kirk might be a good place for a development like that. But really it's probably easier to just go with townhome style units that have private outdoor space for each unit.

I definitely agree with everyone else here that Pittsburgh seems like a poor location for this sort of thing. You can spend half as much and get four times the space in buildings that already exist.