By Margaret Maccoll
With the draft Noosa Plan out for public consultation it was timely to further the conversation on tiny houses and where they can be sited at the Tiny Houses and Eco Villages event held at The J Theatre last weekend. Just six months after a tiny house event was held at Doonan which attracted about 600 people, Polkadot Community Inc. Association organised the expanded event at The J Theatre with two days of seminars, talks and displays.
Co-organiser Jimmy Hirst said people were loving the tiny house concept and becoming more serious about trying them.
He said there was growing interest from people wanting to determine their options of tiny house living.
You Tube star of Living Big in a Tiny House Bryce Langston spoke to a packed audience of his experience living in tiny houses in New Zealand, Australia and the US and meeting other people doing the same thing.
Five years ago he was an unemployed actor with no chance of ever owning a place in his hometown of Auckland where the average house costs $900,000, when he discovered tiny houses and started a You Tube channel.
“There are so many people struggling with housing ownership. People like me in their mid-30s are a generation who rent,” he said.
Bryce said living in a simple dwelling enabled him to live bigger in the world without the pressure of rent, mortgage and consumerism.
He said while government argued the legislation on the siting of tiny houses on land with so many people living on the streets civil disobedience was at the core of the movement.
Since building a tiny home on wheels he has met people from all walks of life and all ages living tiny.
And there were many reasons for it, he said. Economic affordability, lessening your footprint on the environment and a better lifestyle.
“It means extra money, more holidays, you can build to your own needs,” he said.
Unexpected outcomes he has discovered are the benefits to seasonal workers who travel for their work and the resilience of tiny houses to natural disasters such as earthquakes and, being mobile, to bushfire.
For more on tiny houses Jimmy Hirst will be guest speaker at Noosa Parks Assocation’s Friday Forum on 8 March from 10.30am at Wallace Drive, Noosaville.
