$120k for a tiny home is an absolute ripoff, and no one should be paying even half of that.
I love the idea of tiny homes, and I want one on my property one day probably for my kid/s to live in when they’re a bit older and want some independence, but there are a few problems.
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Councils. Bloody councils. Regulations are through the roof and confusing as all hell. Application fees are stupidly expensive - in my area they increased the fees by like $5k since covid while pushing the idea of people building them! Last I checked the application fee and everything that goes with it was $28k here, and if you get denied you don’t get any of that back. Greedy pieces of shit they are. Depending on different things to do with the dwelling might mean it needs to be built as a “secondary dwelling” or a stand-alone new home, and as such the regulations and costs vary wildly. Having them on wheels/a trailer is a workaround, but even then you can only legally live in one in the same space for 6 months I believe it was, before having to move to a different place.
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Land to put it on. You can’t just build a tiny home on a trailer and just pull up somewhere and live there. Your home build is actually only a minority cost in buying a home and land package - you can build a regular full house for like $150k, but you need the land to put it on. Even a 400msq2 block these days can be $500k easily or more depending on location.
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Other things like sewerage/power/water. You either need to have your own septic system that you empty etc, or you need to be plumbed in somewhere - and that can be a huge issue with tiny homes. Same with power and water - unless you’re completely off grid, in which case you’ll have to have tens of thousands of $ worth of batteries etc, and a water collection and filtration system etc, the locations and cost of where you can put your tiny home are extremely limited.
Thanks for the information. It confirms my impression that my dream is impossible.
I wanted to build my own house myself, which is a massive challenge. But the idea that it will be made twice as difficult because of other people, not the challenge itself, made me give it up. I wouldn’t have the emotional stability to tolerate that.
I’m not a fucking corporation wanting to profit from other people’s work. I just want a place to live! I fully support all possible regulations and fees scaling with the intended profit and people hired, but how come someone wanting to get a place to live have to put up with the same as someone wanting profit? Or worse, usually even more, since parasites have many ways of avoiding tax and other things…
And the price of land is a consequence of the same issue: that the market is made for “investors”, vampires, undead and other horrors.
The rest, septic tanks, solar system, etc, they are just natural parts of the challenge. Nothing to complain on that, quite the opposite; how easy it is now to generate your own energy with solar is a great show of progress. There will be costs with that, or with linking to the structure someone else paid and provided.
The system is set up to knock people down, for sure.
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I wish these kinds of services could target specific at risk groups, not a gender.
I would be happy if it was focused on homeless parents with young children, or homeless victims of family violence. With those things they might still end up getting only women, but at least they’d be selected based on their situation instead of bigotry.
I really wish that these services were for people to build huge houses instead of tiny houses, and that the houses had big chicken legs and could run around like baba yaga
It’s not bigotry. They limited the scope to focus on the group they most wanted to help:
“We know there’s a housing crisis in Australia,” says Susan. “But the hidden sector are women. Women with children, women who’ve experienced family violence, women who’ve taken long periods out of the workforce, perhaps have had a marital separation.”
It was organised by two ordinary people who used their family inheritance to fund it. It should be obvious to anyone with a brain that such a small scale operation isn’t going be able to help everyone in Australia. If you’re so offended, maybe you can start something yourself instead of moaning about “muh men’s rights” on social media.
Maybe bigotry is the wrong word in this case, but maybe not. Either way it’s still discriminating based on an unchangeable characteristic of those people. I’d be equally annoyed if they targeted men or a specific race or an eye colour. I just think that when you try to help people, you should try to discriminate on circumstance, not things like race or gender. And we should be calling it out so people can do better in the future.
I do know there is a lot of correlation between gender and circumstance, but I think it’s either lazy to use gender as a proxy or they really are bigoted.
On the other hand I would still like to give them props for helping people in a significant way.
I do know there is a lot of correlation between gender and circumstance, but I think it’s either lazy to use gender as a proxy or they really are bigoted.
What even is this opinion? You admit there is sense in what they’re doing, then double down and call them lazy/bigoted anyway. There are so, so many examples out there of charities and organisations taking a small target approach to solving the world’s problems. None of this is lazy or bigoted, it is about giving your time to an area you are passionate about and have the resources to address.
Parents of a child who passed away due to a rare illness are not lazy or bigoted for starting a charity that only seeks to target that specific illness. Women who start an initiative to help other women in financial difficulty secure safe housing are not lazy or bigoted for not helping men too. All of these people are using their limited time on this planet to try to make a positive difference in whatever way they can, often at their own personal expense. What have you done?
They have “discriminated on circumstance”. Due to structural factors like losing superannuation and workplace advancement due to biology, women are disadvantaged as a group to start with. When it comes to housing, especially after a relationship breaks down, women are the ones who generally have much less resources to start over. This is a structural and societal problem, so if you want “equality” learn about the backpack of privilege and start acknowledging structural biases that discriminate against women.
