Betsy Gabler wants to sell you a teensy-weensy house.

It would sell for the itsy-bitsy price of $100,000. It would have a micro-yard. Environmentally, it would have a footprint the size of a baby shoe.

Its neighborhood would be, of course, tiny. All 36 units would be tucked into a cozy 1.5-acre corner in St. Paul.

“They would not quite look like giant Legos, but maybe a little bit,” said Gabler, as she gave a tour of the LightHouse, a prototype of the proposed micro-homes.

Gabler is the business development director for Alchemy Architects, which has designed tiny houses called Weehouses around the country.

To build them in St. Paul, Alchemy is teaming up with homebuilder Robert Engstrom Co., the Metropolitan Council and the East Side Neighborhood Development Co.

They hope to win approval for the project — and zoning code changes — from the city of St. Paul. If they do, the as-yet-unnamed tiny town will be built at Payne and Maryland avenues.

Small, they say, is the new big.

Austin Young, one of Alchemy’s micro-house designers, said the homes are similar in size to those built after WWII.

Those houses, which averaged 950 square feet in 1950, were built for the wave of soldiers returning home. Since then, the average new home has ballooned to 2.5 times that size, according to the U.S. Census.

Houses have become unaffordable, Young said. In the housing crash of 2008, millions of Americans saw the value of their overbuilt homes crash, forcing them into foreclosure.

“That left people with a sour taste in their mouths,” said Jay Nord, a project manager with Engstrom. “The rosy glow of the American dream was knocked out of the housing market.”

Now, he said, Americans are suffering from “mortgage fatigue.” That will make the mini-prices of $100,000 to $150,000 appealing, he said.

FOR 1 OR 2 PEOPLE

The tiny houses are for one or two people, Nord said, a family size that accounts for 61 percent of the country’s households. The large families that dominated the post-WWII era have been replaced by people living alone — single, elderly, childless, divorced.

The homes are perfect for anyone who thinks green.

Instead of homes with three-car garages, Nord is planning for one car for every two units. His homeowners will use public transportation and services like Uber, he said, more than their own cars. Related Articles Midway Fund offers $840,000 in damage, rebuilding and relocation grants

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There are no garages planned. Some parking will be available, but not much.

“It is going to be a transformation in how transportation and real estate relate to each other,” Nord said.

The micro-homes’ production of greenhouses gases, from consuming electricity and natural gas, will be about 7 percent of that of an average American house, according to the nonprofit Recycle Nation.

What the units lack in size, they make up for in design.

“We substitute quality and sustainability for space,” said Alchemy architect Geoffrey Warner.

The micro-homes are showcases of the latest domestic technology, from appliances to lighting to online tools. For example, a dashboard website for the LightHouse shows the minute-by-minute consumption of water, electricity and natural gas.

“What you save on not constructing something twice that size, you can spend on high-tech features,” said John Vaughn, director of the East Side Neighborhood Development Co.

Finally, the neighborhood itself will be different.

The area won’t have identical boxes lined up in rows, as in a trailer park. Young said the units will emphasize unique design.

The roof lines will vary, including one barn-inspired design. He envisions one two-story unit with a loft space.

They will be arranged in unusual, even playful, ways. Some will be placed at angles, and others will be stacked up. Some might have parking underneath, and others will be cantilevered over one another.

“We are trying to invent a new model of cluster housing or pocket neighborhoods,” Nord said.

At the LightHouse in St. Paul, Alchemy’s Gabler gave a tour last week.

It didn’t take long — she walked from one end to the other in about six steps.

Gabler said the 160-square-foot LightHouse is not a perfect replica of the proposed homes for the Payne and Maryland development. The actual units will be 300 to 1,200 square feet — roughly comparable to a small two-car garage on the low end and a four-car garage on the high end.

The LightHouse was built as demonstration and resembles a hotel room in a shipping container. That means it has no kitchen.

But the six-step tour showed a sleek sitting area with table, bathroom and bed — all fitted together closely, like the interior of a luxury yacht.

Another key difference is that the LightHouse is designed to be moved. The micro-homes of Payne Avenue will be permanent.

But Alchemy is trying to raise public awareness of the micro-houses. “This,” said Gabler, “starts the discussion.”

IF YOU GO

The LightHouse micro-home is in a parking lot of the Carleton Lofts, 2285 University Ave., St. Paul. It will be on display Aug. 25-Sept. 5 at the Eco Experience building at the Minnesota State Fair.