Tiny Houses

Small is the future. But not yet?

Amotion, and then an immediate amendment by Councillor Lenny Epstein was put before the Committee of the Whole on November 30 as to how small a “small house” can be in the County. Epstein would like to eliminate the local zoning bylaws and have the County refer directly to the Ontario Building Code, which defines the minimum parameters of a small house to be slightly over 400 square feet. The original motion put forth to council was to have a public consultation regarding minimum home size below a gross floor area of 807 square feet. It would basically mean a house could be built at half the size of the current minimum.

The motion amendment was met with confusion by members of council, who debated on the need for a reduction in the size of a house when the current minimum is small enough. Concerns were raised about where these small houses would be situated. Maybe there should be a small house area? A village within a village? It was also brought up that placing small houses on properties next to half-million- dollar houses may look strange and bring down the property values if too many of them are being built.

“Are we going to drop these small houses in amongst houses worth 400-500K? We need a public consultation otherwise in 10 years down the road someone will be saying ‘Who in the hell allowed this to happen?’, these houses are everywhere,” said Councillor Jamie Forrester.

The amendment seemed to get lost in a roundabout discussion about how small is too small and was eventually defeated. The original motion of a public consultation was approved, but with another amendment put forth by Epstein that a date be chosen for the return of this information back to council. The date chosen was the council’s planning meeting in April.

Epstein was also passionate in stating that this issue had been brought up by his constituents as being important. It’s also one that is not new to council. Amendments were presented in 2015, and since then the housing crisis has done nothing but increase in scale. Epstein referred to the housing situation as a travesty and said that delaying this process goes against the corporate strategic priorities of the County.

“The barrier is ourselves. We are the barrier,” said Epstein.

What was missed in the discussions was the main issue being presented by Epstein. If the County is in a housing crisis, why are there unnecessary restrictions on getting houses built? If someone buys a piece of property along the lake, they may only be able to put a small house on that property due to its geography. In towns like Picton and Bloomfield, existing infrastructure of the town could make it impossible to build a house at a certain size. But an odd-size lot or smaller piece of land could now be used for housing. In this age of overproduction and overconsumption, giving people a hard time for making a smaller imprint on the world doesn’t make sense. Houses in the County, no matter what their size, should be encouraged right now. Celebrated even.