BA Norrgard of A Bed Over My Head and one of my colleagues at the Tiny House Collaborative shared this snap of the tiny houses leaving one of the Tiny House Villages at Earth Day Texas to caravan to Garland, TX!
This past weekend I had the opportunity to teach two sessions of the Tiny House Collaborative Tiny House Community & Zoning Workshop at Earth Day Texas (EDTx) in Dallas, Texas. Lee and I co-taught since BA was the coordinator for the tiny house village at the event. BA has shown her tiny home, Sisu, at EDTx the past four years and each year more people have joined in the fun of showing off their tiny homes. This year there were about 20 tiny homes available for tour in 3 different villages!
Our Tiny House Community & Zoning Workshops went really well with people from the Dallas area as well as Arkansas, Cincinnati, and Washington DC joining us to learn about different community models, regulatory considerations, constraints, and opportunities, and suggestions for getting a successful community off the ground. It was neat to see people with similar models or similar geographies putting their heads together during our brainstorming session.
We also did a panel discussion about tiny homes and relationships, which was moderated by the major of Garland, Texas (BA, Demere, and Susan all showed their tiny homes in Garland yesterday since Mayor Doug is excited about bringing tinies to Garland!) It was fun sharing tiny house love stories as well as ideas for designing a space for two and relationship considerations for family members as well.
When BA told me that Earth Day was a big deal in Texas I was surprised, I figured that with a motto like "everything is bigger in Texas" people wouldn't be interested in micro dwellings there. What I learned over the course of the weekend, talking with dozens of people, is that many Texans have BIG imaginations and they're dreaming up awesome tiny homes and tiny house communities. (See my post recapping our Tiny House 101 in Austin, where I first started developing this theory!) I'm so excited to see what comes next. Keep us posted all y'all!