After A Week Long Send Off, My Round the World Trip kicked off with eight days in Maui visiting my sister Sarah who has split her time between Hawaii and Alaska for many years. What an epic way to start this adventure! There was mist falling when my sister greeted me at the Kahului airport on Maui a week ago, so she teased me about bringing the rain from the mainland. We headed straight for Paia where she presented me with a young coconut and a lei, accompanied by the chant for the gifting-of-a-lei.
A number of circumstances collided recently to compel me to move the Lucky Penny to my property in Walla Walla where I have a ground bound small house called Valencia Cottage. So on Tuesday trusted tiny house movers Linh and Stephanie Pham helped me move the Lucky Penny safely from Portland to my place in Walla Walla.
As I packed up recently in preparation to travel cross country in my Honda Fit, I did some downsizing… It was harder than it had been during my last couple of moves because this time I had more stuff. I’d been living in a bigger space…My apartment was a studio, but it was still about 6 times bigger than the Lucky Penny! I talked with several people about the experience and a handful of them said “oh my goodness, I need to do more of that!” So I’ve decided to offer a 6-week Downsizing Tune Up…
This past weekend I taught another round of the ADU Design Workshop through Portland Community College. Nine students from Portland and the surrounding Metro area participated in the workshop this weekend, bringing projects ranging from garage and basement conversions to backyard cottages, additions, and renovation of a pole barn. Some of them had relevant professional backgrounds (appraising, real estate, amateur drafting) and some of them were brand new to design, development, and building.
I had a great time getting inspired by people in the Pro Session I facilitated on Friday and the Design Tips & Tricks session I presented twice on Saturday. On Sunday I really enjoyed picking the brains of people living in vans and skoolies and attending sessions like the Diversity Panel at the Village Stage and Courtney Carver's Project 333 presentation. I spent most of Sunday morning exploring tiny houses in DIY Village with new pals Kim and Stephanie, whom I'd met in my sessions.
This paper was originally written by Lina Menard of Niche Consulting LLC in June of 2012 as a term paper for a course she took as part of her Masters of Urban and Regional Planning Masters program at Portland State University. The course, USP 510: Planning & The Housing Market, taught by Dr. Lisa Bates, focused on the intersection between planning, regulation, and affordable housing. This version of the paper was updated in January 2015.
Well, that was a nice 48 hours of elation before the details came out about Portland's Declared Stay on Tiny House Evictions! Turns out there's a limit of one tiny house or RV per residence, which means no tiny house communities. Oh, sadness! In a nutshell, while the city is figuring out permanent regulations regarding tiny houses, they won't enforce Title 29.50.050 (which prohibits occupation of recreational vehicles) as long as:
Yesterday Portland City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly declared a stay on evicting people from tiny houses, RVs, and tents on private property! It has been illegal for people to occupy tiny homes in Portland, OR according to 29.50.050 Illegal Residential Occupancy, a snippet of code in the Portland Maintenance Code. Portland declared a state of emergency for housing two years ago and there was a recognition that it was backwards to be kicking people out of the affordable housing options they'd created for themselves. So yesterday Commissioner Eudaly agreed to Leaven Community's request that we be supported as we step out of the shadows. She announced they'll work with us to figure out a long-term regulatory solution and meanwhile they're going to stop enforcing Title 29.
This summer was such a lovely season in my good little life, beginning with my annual business retreat at Breitenbush Hot Springs with my college roommate and wrapping up with our wedding!
One of the things I learned when I went to one of Dee Williams' workshops (and which I've emphasized in every workshop I've taught, too, because as usual Dee was right!) is the importance of being a good neighbor if you're a tiny house dweller. So we invited everyone on our end of the block to c'mon over for snacks, drinks, and house tours last night and... ALL the neighbors showed up! We had a splendid time visiting with our neighbors, hearing about their homes and projects and lives, learning more about our neighborhood history (even on a geological timeline!), and watching the dogs romp with PieHead.
Here at Going Places we have been slowly crafting our Community Living Agreements together. When we kicked off the community in February, we hadn't refined our community decision making process so the first month or so it was sometimes tricky to figure out how to move forward on something. Figuring out a decision making process was one of the first decisions we made together as a community. What we landed on is a system that allows us to gauge interest really quickly by offering literal thumbs ups for proposals we're excited about.
Here at our tiny cohousing community, Going Places, we all share the main floor of the common house, which has a kitchen, dining room, living room, bathroom, and a flexible space called the Req Room (you Harry Potter fans out there know what we're talking about!) In addition to all this shared space, we also have two tiny houses on the property, The Lucky Penny and Tiny for Two (T42), which act as detached bedrooms.
