So, for the past few years I've been really interested in the whole Tiny House movement that sprung up. After further research, I've come to realize that the whole damned thing is a scam, or at the very least, a cleverly framed lie that obscures the hidden costs, difficulties, and contradictory reality of how these things actually work.
The pitch goes something like this: For a modest sum, far cheaper than a normal house, you can build or buy a cozy dwelling that you can just tow wherever you want and comfortably live off the grid in a pleasant, low-cost, simplistic lifestyle without bills or any of the stressful clutter of modern living. All you have to do is get a trailer and slap a house on top of it and rig up some solar panels and no one can stop you, because it's not technically against the law!
Here's the reality though..
Tiny houses are fucking heavy, meaning you can't just use any truck and trailer. Chances are you'll need to buy both of those, and without some miraculous craigslist luck, that's already going to cost more than the advertised 20-30k pricetag. When it comes to utilities, you either need to get set up like a camper, meaning dedicated electricity and water lines, or get used to reading books by candlelight and nothing else, because a tiny house is just an overgrown treefort unless you spend a lot more to make the thing habitable year-round. Hope you like shitting in a bucket and keeping it in the same small breathing space as the rest of your life!
Not to mention that most people don't actually live in their tiny houses all year round. They don't tell you that shit. That's because most of them just park in the backyard of property they already own or mooch off some forgiving friend or relative. So unless you're already a wealthy yuppie or you have someone who has the space for the damned thing, you're fucked. Because you might think you can just buy a small parcel of land and park it there, but that's wrong too! Composting toilets, collecting rainwater, and even just parking a trailer on land not zoned for trailers is all illegal in many parts of the country. More likely than not, you're looking at thousands of dollars in zoning fines, provided they don't just send the police in to evict your ass.
I could go on, but the point I'm trying to make is that the Tiny House idea is fundamentally flawed in some ridiculous ways. Even if you find a city that won't bankrupt you for living in one of these things, the actual quality of life is severely hampered and really only suited to anorexic hipsters who subsist on rice, books, and checks from mommy and daddy.
tl;dr - Is there any fucking hope for this idea and if not, then what's a better alternative?