For Seth Reidy, it all started with a pile of scraps in his yard.
The Nelson construction worker had built his own house and worked on a number of projects around town when, in 2012, he came up with the idea of constructing an in-law suite with his wife — in other words, a tiny house.
“They would come to visit and spend $100 a night on accommodations, so we built this tiny house and it felt good to use up all that waste material to create something,” the 40-year-old owner of Nelson Tiny Houses told the Star.
“It was just so satisfying. I had been working on this renovation that had been going on for like two years, just kept going and going, but with the tiny house it was like I could start something and quite quickly complete it.”
He was hooked. From that point on he threw all of his energy into this new endeavour, posting tours of his tiny houses on YouTube and building an online following. That culminated recently in a successful Kickstarter campaign to make 15 episodes of a show called “How to Build Your Own Tiny House”, with each one being approximately 45 minutes long.
Filming has already started, with Rob Meaney behind the camera. And now that Reidy’s built approximately 20 tiny houses, selling them all over B.C., Alberta and now in Montana, he would like to see the local community think more seriously about using them to address the current affordable housing crisis.
“Obviously a tiny house is extreme. But also, a 4,000 square foot house is extreme in my opinion. Ours are between 200 to 500 feet, so you could fit 20 of them inside that. If that extreme is available to people, then the other extreme should be available.”
This week he met with Nelson city councillor Michael Dailly about ways tiny housing could be incorporated into the city — addressing issues about where they could be located, how they would be zoned and how the council could help make the process easier.
“The city council is trying. Michael’s definitely one who’s really pushing for tiny houses, he thinks they’re the way we should be going — at least compact living. He thinks there’s possibilities, but whether or not it will happen I don’t know.”
The dream is to introduce tiny house villages into the city limits, potentially offering them to low-income families or others in need, but that would require large-scale buy-in from the community.
“The biggest roadblock is where legally to put them, and being able to insure them is another one. Financing isn’t easy, either.”
Regardless, he believes in the movement.
“There’s the physical perks of living in a small space, where you’re wasting less energy and living more green, and people say part of the problem is we just consume too much, buy too much junk.”
He feels it’s better “to have less stuff and pay more attention to what you have. It forces you to be more connected to outside, to people. If you live in a big mansion you never really have to leave, and I feel like that’s the opposite of what feels good.”
