Housing prices got you down?

This is a real house of 75 square feet built by the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company of Sebastopol, CA. It includes all the comforts necessary for a modern home, meets all building codes in most states and costs $23,000. If you want to build it yourself a full set of construction blueprints can be yours for less than $500. It is the smallest of about a dozen models produced by the company. None are larger than 500 square feet and all (including the extra small version pictured above) two-stories. You can see the other models, including floor plans and lots of photos, at the company's website. Some of them are rather charming, as a matter of fact.

Obviously this is not for everyone. You wouldn't want to try and raise a family in even the largest of these Tumbleweed homes. But housing is so expensive today in large part because there aren't enough options, especially at the lower end of the housing spectrum. It used to be that affordable housing meant apartments above shops or, and this is where tiny houses like these come in, as accessory units along allies in the backyards of larger homes. Unfortunately, such “granny flats” are now illegal in most communities around America, as are many features of traditional cities that solved problems we are now unable to deal with.

Tags: urbanism fun