Tiny house movement comes to Canberra as new homeowners seek to avoid big mortgages

Updated

In an effort to live a simpler life and avoid the large debt that comes from buying a home, Andrew Clapham is paring back and joining the tiny house movement.

He has begun to build a tiny house in his parents' backyard in Canberra's north, which he said would eventually look much like a log cabin.

The typical tiny house is built on a trailer... putting the maximum width at 2.5 metres. Andrew Clapham

It is part of the movement, originating from the United States, where people build very small homes to live in.

Mr Clapham, 25, said he hoped he was now helping to bring the movement to Canberra.

"I saw the movement online and the idea really appealed to me," he said.

"People end up working really hard to earn all this money, sometimes to buy a lot of things they don't need and then they need a huge house to put all those things in.

"But they hardly spend any time at home because they're out working and spend a large percentage of their life paying off their mortgage."

Mr Clapham said he had purposefully kept the construction design of his small home quite fluid.

"The typical tiny house is built on a trailer - to get around legal and planning constraints - putting the maximum width at 2.5 metres," he said.

"Usually people have a loft with a bed to maximise the available space.

"Most people have a mini kitchenette, and the contentious bit, that everybody is horrified by, is quite often a tiny house will have a composting toilet because you can't easily hook the house up to sewerage."

Mr Clapham said his solution to that problem would be a separate, very Australian, outhouse.

People who are younger have this notion that they're expected to live in a huge house and have 2.5 children and I think that's negative for society. Andrew Clapham

To fit in with his overall ethical views, he said he was trying to build the tiny house with as much re-claimed materials as possible.

"I think it's insane that for example, from the construction site of one traditional house, there is probably enough material to build a quarter of a tiny house from what's considered the leftover scraps," he said.

"That highlights the problem to me. On one hand we have this huge expense and huge house, and going about building a tiny house just with what's leftover from that is a statement I'm making physically."

Earlier this year ABC Radio National discovered more about the tiny house movement in the US.

'Other options available to young people'

Mr Clapham said that while his decision might be considered by some to be an extreme reaction to difficulties entering the housing market, young people should know that more options are available to them.

"If what you need is a bed, somewhere to wash and somewhere to eat and your real passions in life are elsewhere, why go into debt and live beyond your means for something that's not the core focus of what you want to achieve in life?" he said.

"People who are younger have this notion that they're expected to live in a huge house and have 2.5 children and I think that's negative for society.

"For people aged 25 or younger, there's no way they can financially achieve that or should be expected to, so I think it's great to have an alternative option."

He said he would love to see the tiny house movement gain a bigger following in Australia.

"I'd like to see a lot more people living within their means and being happy about it," he said.

Topics: house-and-home, urban-development-and-planning, act, canberra-2600

First posted