THE NEXT ECONOMY | SOLUTIONS BANK
A Tiny House Grows in Washington, D.C.
Is building a house that's no more than 200 square feet the
answer to the crisis of affordable housing? A band of D.C. residents thinks so.
By Nancy Cook
December 2, 2013
image from the National Journal
If you drive to the end of a residential street in the Northeast quadrant of Washington, D.C., you'll see a small white sign, affixed to a fence, that points down an alleyway to Lot No. 21. It is a fairly mundane address for what its occupants envision as nothing less than a little patch of housing Utopia—with the emphasis squarely on little.
Lot 21 encloses four tiny houses, each measuring no more than 200 square feet. To the homeowners, these small structures represent one possible solution to the crisis of affordable housing in major cities.
One of the homeowners, 24-year-old Jay Austin, explains the concept as he kicks back on the postage-stamp front porch of his modern, 140-square-foot dwelling he calls Matchbox. "I wanted to do this project to examine how much space people really need rather than what they can afford," he says.
[Click on the link above to read the entire National Journal article.]
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