In a nondescript warehouse space in the Squamish Business Park Tim Sveum is putting the finishing touches on a 210-square-foot tiny home.
Sveum is the owner of the newly formed company Howe Sound Tiny House Co., and the bright yellow and blue home is the first to be completed.
Sveum is a carpenter by trade who has now turned his full attention to building tiny homes. He has one part-time employee and hired a plumber, electrician and roofer to help him out along the way.
The home is 20 feet-by-seven feet inside and sleeps four people.
Sveum said he envisions a small community of tiny homes in Squamish.
“It would be nice to have a little sort of community laundry area. Most of them are too small for a washer and dryer,” he said, adding a parking area and green space would be nice as well.
In the preliminary plans for the proposed Cheekye River Development slated for Brackendale, space has been allotted for a possible tiny home park by the land’s developers, Cornerstone Developments.
A quick Google search shows tiny homes are popular in Europe, the U.K. and Australia. Tiny home communities have set up across the U.S. such as in Washington, D.C., Austin, Texas and Eugene, Ore.
Everybody seems to have their own reason for wanting a tiny home, Sveum said, but affordability ranks high for many.
“There has to be an alternative for young people,” he said.
He aims to sell the completed home, which sits on a small mobile trailer, for around $50,000.
Sveum became interested in the tiny home movement about two years ago, he said and then one year ago he took a workshop in Vancouver on building the homes. Of the 90 people at the workshop, four were from Squamish, Sveum noted.
A few people have shown interest in buying Sveum’s first tiny home, which is about two weeks from completion. As of Friday, the home hadn’t yet sold.
Sveum hopes his business takes off. The next home will be much easier and faster to build, he reasons, because of the lessons he has learned constructing the first one. He estimates it will take him two months to complete the next one.
Tiny homes are not currently legal in the District of Squamish. Issues around zoning, building codes, flood construction levels, environment protection, safety and sanitary concerns hinder municipalities, according to Kerry Hamilton, a planner with the District. There is currently no zoning for mobile tiny homes, for example.
But there is a will in the District to look further into the possibility of tiny homes as a legal option in Squamish.
District staff want to hear from residents and potential developers who have property outside of the Flood Hazard Area who are interested in exploring the idea of a mobile, tiny home community, Hamilton said.
“Definitely we are exploring the possibility of how they could be legal,” Hamilton told The Chief. “A number of municipalities are doing the same thing… but at the moment, there’s no municipality that I know of in Canada that has allowed them.”
Hamilton also said while tiny homes are a newly popular lifestyle choice, there are questions around whether they are really affordable, especially when pad fees are factored in.
Pad fees can run between $700 to $1,000 a month, according to Hamilton. “It is definitely less expensive than building your own home, or even a laneway home, but in the long term you may also consider, you are renting the land,” she said.
As a municipality too, she said, there is the question of whether setting up a tiny home community is truly the best way to tackle the housing affordability problem.
Would the land be better put to use for an apartment building, for example, Hamilton said, where perhaps many more people could be housed.
For more on this issue, go to squamish.ca/business-and-development/home-land-and-property-development/tiny-homes.
