Tiny Houses Built to Decrease Cost of Living and Build Community.

Tiny Houses Built to Decrease Cost of Living and Build Community.

Keith McElvee lives in a tiny house and for him, it has brought serenity to his life. It is quiet and easy to clean. It is like living in a larger home within an affordable 300 square feet.

McElvee is serving as one of the first residents in Cass Community Social Services’ tiny house community. He has given half of his shirts and shoes away but he still needs more storage for his clothing. Living in a tiny home, he needs to get used to the smaller space even when it means bumping his head while washing up in the sink every day.

Tiny homes

Having lived in tiny homes, tourists come by to check out Detroit’s first tiny house community on a regular basis. McElvee cannot count the number of times he's seen stranger's faces outside the window and now, he needs privacy.  About half a dozen houses are already completed; CCSS hopes to have 25 unique homes when the project is done.

According to him, tiny houses are like a magnet. It's an everyday thing to have someone stop by and want to talk. But aside from that, it's a comfortable place to live in. These houses blend minimalism with small comforts. It simplifies and seeks new adventures in homeownership.

They may be tiny houses but they are not easy to build

Metro Detroit is home to several tiny homes, a small community of tiny houses aiming to help people establish long-term stability, a bevy of new builders and many more dreamers who see the potential in tiny homes and what they do to improve lives and cities.

They may be tiny houses but they are not easy to build that is why Cass Community and other groups like Detroit Training Center are helping people achieve their tiny house dreams. They offer classes in, tiny house building.

Tiny house dreams

Besides Cass Community, other groups like the Detroit Training Center are helping people achieve their tiny house dreams. The Detroit Training Center offers classes in tiny home building as well as a new Airbnb tiny homes in Corktown to help raise funds for future classes and projects. There are companies such as Great Lakes Tiny Homes in Mount Pleasant, a passion project for husband-and-wife team Brandy and Aaron Kipfmiller, who started the company about two years ago. The average tiny home takes the couple about three months to construct at a cost of $45,000 to $60,000 for the largest units, including one 40-foot beauty known as the Superior.

Pros to tiny home living

Definitely, there are pros to tiny home living, Kipfmiller says. It is more affordable, cuts cost for expensive furniture, and you can travel the country if you put your tiny house on a trailer with wheels. However, there are cons such as lack of privacy and too little space for a family. But Kipfmiller says the market potential continues to draw him into making Great Lakes Tiny Homes his full-time job.

Not only Kipfmiller was able to find a job out of these tiny homes but also other hopefuls like interior designer newbie Debbie Rossman who designed a tiny home for the 2016 Junior League of Detroit’s Grosse Pointe lakefront project and enlisted in the Detroit Training Center for tiny house classes. 

McElvee says he knows how passionate these people are for the tiny homes. He even invites most people who drop by to see his house inside if they’d like. In the end, he says, he’s living proof of how one tiny building can change your life. For him, it's home sweet home

“You can accomplish by kindness what you cannot by force.”

- Publilius Syrus