My husband and I think we’ve found a way to pay off our mortgage early, without taking on an extra job or working nights. We’ve decided to construct a rental unit — a “mother-in-law suite” — within our home. If it pans out as we hope, the rental income will let us pay off our loan 10 years early. And who knows: It could give us a chance to live closer to family as we, or they, get on in years.

Jason and I are not alone; lots of folks across the country are experimenting with adding a second (or third) dwelling to an existing single-family home. And in perhaps the most interesting development, more and more people are choosing to buck the “bigger is better” trend in North American housing. They’re taking small spaces — backyards, side lots, or freestanding garages — and using them to build tiny houses.

Ranging from 800 square feet to less than 100 square feet — a far cry from the 1,000 square feet per person that has become the North American norm — these “doll houses” take many shapes and sizes. And the people who live in them are as diverse as the homes themselves. Some hope to save money on housing; others hope to “live green” by choosing a smaller space; some are trading living space for a neighborhood they love; and others want to live closer to family or friends.

Here are some of their stories.

Jay Shafer, a founding father of the tiny home movement and a co-owner of the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, told the BBC: “People are thinking more about what really is a luxury now. Is it a 30-year mortgage, or is it just living simply and having the time to do more of what you want? And I think a lot of people are starting to really change their idea of the American Dream.”

Dee Williams decided to rethink her American Dream after building a school in Guatemala and having a close friend get cancer made her reevaluate her priorities. “He was getting sicker and sicker, and I didn’t have the time or the money to really throw myself into helping him. I was spending a lot of time and money on my house. So the house was the easiest thing to try to get rid of,” Williams told Yes! magazine. So she sold her 1,500-square-foot Portland home and built an 84-square-foot tiny home for $10,000. Now she lives without a mortgage, giving her the time and money to invest in her friends and community.

Akua Schatz and Brendon Purdy’s dream was to live near relatives, but they couldn’t afford a home in Vancouver, B.C.’s Dunbar neighborhood. Instead of moving to the suburbs, they decided to build a 500-square-foot laneway home in Purdy’s parents’ backyard. In a city where the average home price is $725,086, Schatz and Purdy spent $280,000 to build their home.

There’s another plus to their backyard home: Schatz and Purdy have babysitters just feet away from their front door. “It’s really a North American concept to have success tied to moving away or distancing yourself, so maybe we’re reinventing what it means to be successful, and that means keeping family close,” Schatz suggests in this video from CTV news.

But unlike Schatz and Purdy, who plan to eventually switch places with Purdy’s parents and live in the larger home as their family grows, Jon and Ryah Dietzen moved from their 1,500-square-foot home to a 400-square-foot cottage with two toddlers. They made the move for its financial freedom, but the benefits didn’t stop there. “We realized after a few months how much time, freedom, and peace we were gaining by not collecting and spending our time taking care of more ‘stuff,’” Jon Dietzen told me. By choosing a smaller house, they found a better balance between work and home life.

The Dietzens prove that tiny homes can work even for a family of four, and that they’re not just for couples, seniors, or singles.

Small homes combat neighborhood decline brought on by shrinking household sizes. Adding people can revitalize a neighborhood, allowing schools to stay open, giving neighborhood businesses more customers, making transit service cost-effective, and saving on infrastructure costs. Infilling neighborhoods with backyard cottages helps add more people to a neighborhood, without altering its character.

As homeowners build small dwellings, they provide lower-cost housing within the existing fabric of their neighborhood, with no government support necessary. Vancouver’s planning director, Brent Toderian, sees this as the essential value of the trend towards small homes: “[It’s] about ordinary people. Thousands of individual homeowners can do it, one by one by one. It’s publicly propelled, not corporate-propelled, densification. It’s gradual. It’s discreet. It’s green.”

Now that many cities have figured out backyard cottage rules, they face a new challenge: dealing with homes even tinier than the typical accessory dwelling. Some cities’ regulations set minimum size requirements for dwellings. Others say a recreational vehicle can’t count as an accessory dwelling unit, which means “you can camp in your little house, but not live in it,” writes Dee Williams. Tiny houser Lina Menard suggests that “people should have the right to a tiny house as long as it accommodates their needs and desires.” But for people to exercise that right, cities will have to rethink the zoning rules that stand in the way of tiny homes.

After a year in a 120-square-foot tiny home, Menard has a good idea of how to live well in a small space. “I think one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that I’m much happier when I live with just the things I like best. My relationship to stuff has shifted dramatically over the past year and a half. I’m much less materialistic than I used to be. But I really appreciate the little touches, too. It’s not about deprivation, but about intention,” Menard told me.

She recognizes that tiny-home living isn’t for everyone, but thinks there’s a way to broaden its appeal: the “cohousing” model, where tiny homes would be coupled with shared kitchens, laundry facilities, guest rooms, and even amenities like barbeques, workshops, and gardens. “Tiny cohousing would just push the envelope,” Menard writes in her blog. “People who lived in a tiny house community would have access to all these things, but they wouldn’t have to own all these things themselves,” Menard explains.

Eli Spevak, owner of Orange Splot, LLC, has developed several innovative housing projects in Portland. “My goal is to keep modeling new ways of providing affordable, community-oriented houses,” Spevak told The Oregonian.

The Sabin Green cohousing community brings Spevak’s goals to fruition. Sabin Green includes four homes, built on a 75-by-100-foot lot. The lot had a single-family home and detached garage. The single-family home remains, but the detached garage was converted into a 600-square-foot cottage. A second home and a 600-square-foot accessory dwelling were built as well. The four homes face onto a central courtyard, but they also have access to shared gardens, a community room with space for visitors, and a bike storage shed. The sharing doesn’t stop with physical improvements: Residents also use just one internet service, share a newspaper subscription, and meet for weekly dinners.

The project is home to a diverse group, including a young couple, retirees, a single woman, and a small family. Residents Laura Ford and Josh Devine paid just under $150,000 for their 530-square-foot home. They downsized from a 700-square-foot apartment, but see the loss of square footage as worth the cost. “If you live by yourself, you might not be able to afford the brick plaza, the teahouse, the gardens,” Devine told The Oregonian.

Ruth’s Garden Cottages — covered by Sightline here — takes tiny-home communities to another level. On a 50-by-100-foot lot in Northeast Portland that housed one small dwelling, Orange Splot added two tiny cottages, each less than 200 square feet in size. The miniature structures have room for a sleeping loft, a bathroom, and a well-proportioned front porch. The cottages make use of the kitchen in the main home. A shared garden takes up the front 50 feet of the lot.

The recession and housing crisis, combined with changing demographics, have led many of us to reevaluate what we want in a home. More and more folks are looking for homes within walking distance of jobs, stores, and transit — and have proven willing to trade square footage for a vibrant neighborhood. At the same time, millennials increasingly look for alternatives to the car; baby boomers have reached the age where they don’t need a big home in the ‘burbs; and more and more families are choosing to live in multi-generational households.

Tiny houses are a great solution for all these needs. So whether you are a recent graduate wanting to be free from high rent, or a family looking to live without a mortgage, or you want to turn your detached garage into a mother-in-law suite, a small home might be for you. As Marcus Barksdale, who built his own small home in Asheville, N.C., said in this interview: “It would be really neat if more people sought to have smaller spaces, because it would free them up for a larger life.”

Cross-posted from Sightline Daily.

I recall vividly how embarrassed I felt the first time I climbed on the bus with my baby boy. We’d waited expectantly — he bundled up in his stroller and me imagining the bus driver welcoming us aboard, lowering the wheelchair lift so we could roll on in style. In the stores and sidewalks of my neighborhood, people made way for us, slowing so we could pass on a congested sidewalk or holding doors open while we rolled into a shop.

But when the bus arrived, instead of lowering the lift, the driver told me to fold Orion’s stroller. My cheeks burned red as I hastily unpacked — diaper bag, toys, blanket, and groceries — while holding onto my squirming bundle of joy. Then, with one hand, I attempted to fold the stroller and carry the load aboard, knowing that everyone was watching me, passengers cursing under their breaths and the driver reviewing his timetable.

For most parents, an experience like that would have eliminated any thoughts of ever again taking their wheels on the bus. But I had no real choice. My husband and I had committed to staying in our apartment overlooking the main street running through Seattle’s University District. Some parents trade up to a minivan or SUV, but we had sold our two-door Civic. We gained a child and shed a car.

And, in most ways, I loved our car-free life. We explored our neighborhood together. People stopped to greet Orion on the sidewalk. I could point out interesting buildings or window displays. Outside our grocery store, the man selling the Real Change newspaper would always belt out, “Have a great day, little dude!” We soaked in the diversity of the city: new smells, sounds, and people.

But King County Metro was the sore spot of my car-free life. Agency rules required me to fold Orion’s stroller. Holding all of the stroller’s contents and Orion, I then had to find a seat before the bus lurched forward. Then I had to squish into a seat with all of our stuff and attempt to keep Orion from grabbing the stroller’s dirty wheels for the duration of the ride. Once we arrived at our stop, I had to reverse the whole ordeal.

My bus-riding fiascos led to an obsession with strollers: I was known to buy and sell them on Craigslist several times a month. My goal was to find that perfect stroller that I could really fold with one hand. I had a closet full of strollers, some undergoing testing and others, having failed, pending Craigslist pickup. It took seven strollers, but I found one that worked—the Britax Preview.

Strollers are welcome on Copenhagen trains. (Photo by Harald Walker.)

It wasn’t until my young family spent six months in Copenhagen, however, that I thought much about King County Metro’s stroller-folding rules. Copenhageners cart babies in enormous strollers, rolling cribs that dwarf our umbrella stroller and do not fold at all. And guess what? They are welcome aboard Copenhagen’s public transit, unfolded and unemptied. Caregivers with strollers use priority seating at the front of the bus. While buses only fit two strollers at once, busy routes’ service is so frequent that the wait is never long. Copenhagen’s trains also have open areas that hold caregivers with strollers, riders in wheelchairs, and bicyclists. Car-free parenting in Copenhagen was a breeze.

Back stateside, I decided to see how other transit systems compared. Portland’s TriMet buses are not much further along than Seattle’s. Open strollers can be brought on board but then must be immediately folded. The only advantage to this policy is that it’s hard to forget the diaper bag at the bus stop. Light rail in both Portland and Seattle allow open strollers aboard low-floor cars, however. And like Copenhagen, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) welcomes strollers aboard public transit. The CTA broadcasts its stroller-friendly policies with notice boards on buses and a YouTube video.

How can transit systems make life easier for moms, dads, and others who care for young children? An open-stroller policy is a crucial first step. After that, opportunities abound. Once strollers are legalized aboard transit, agencies can announce the improvement, like the CTA has done, with notices and videos. As buses and trains need replacement, agencies have the chance to purchase low-floor vehicles, and elevators and raised bus and train stops can make it easier for caregivers with strollers even for high-floor vehicles.

Another family-friendly tip from abroad: Copenhagen’s bus stops had electronic transit-trackers that were linked to GPS on buses. You didn’t have to own a smart phone to know when the next bus would arrive, and instead of peppering you with the frequent, “When is the bus coming?” your child can watch the bus stop tracker count down the minutes.

Allowing strollers on buses may seem trivial. But all families need affordable alternatives to driving, our economy needs weaning from fossil fuels, and our whole society needs to move beyond carbon, quick. With more strollers on the bus, fewer cars would clog the roads. Transit ridership would grow as caregivers transport tots to the doctor, play dates, and the grocery store. And perhaps most importantly, welcoming stroller wheels onto buses and trains has a long-lasting benefit: Kids will grow up seeing public transit as a normal part of the daily routine. The alternative is that we’ll raise another generation that sees driving as the norm.

Sunnyside Piazza.Photo: Daniel Etra

What if all it took to build better neighborhoods was a little paint?

Walking in southeast Portland, I once stumbled on a horizontal rendition of a sunflower, painted curb to curb on the intersection of Southeast 33rd and Yamhill. Sunnyside Piazza, it is called, which may seem a bit much for a splash of color on asphalt, but in person, it seemed fitting. This whimsical design, interrupting the functional but monotonous gray of Portland’s street grid, felt like a somewhere. It seemed like a place deserving a name. It even felt like a “piazza.”

That was in 2002. I later learned that the Sunnyside Piazza was the second painted public square in Portland, facilitated by the nonprofit City Repair Project. Now, dozens of painted plazas, dubbed Intersection Repairs, pepper the map not just of Portland but also of Los Angeles, New York, St. Paul, and Seattle.

Share-It-Square.Photo: donkeycart It all started in the mid-1990s with Share-It-Square, in Portland’s Sellwood neighborhood, where architect and City Repair co-founder Mark Lakeman lives. After visiting villages in Central America where residents gather around common spaces, Lakeman decided to bring similar spaces to Portland. “Putting the public space back where it’s supposed to be may not sound like a huge change,” Lakeman says, “but it has a profound effect on the social culture … We know that Americans are more lonely and isolated than ever before, but we don’t realize that the absence of cohesion in American communities is totally related to the absence of places where people can actually build that.”

Looking at his own neighborhood, Lakeman decided to transform the intersection of Sherret and 9th from a car-dominant space to a public place (documented in this video). He thought this change fitting, as cultures throughout history have come together at crossroads. Of course, there was still the question of how to take an intersection — an endlessly repeated but utterly non-convivial fixture of the city’s street grid — and turn it into a place. Lakeman and his neighbors’ brilliance was in the simplicity of their brainstorm: paint a picture.

The Portland Department of Transportation (PDOT) was taken aback by the idea, however. One city official told Lakeman, “That’s public space. Nobody can use it.” The residents went guerrilla: They painted without permission.

PDOT was furious. Officials threatened to sandblast the design off the roadway. But the neighborhood gained political support from Councilmember Charlie Hales and Mayor Vera Katz. When the city surveyed the neighbors living near Share-It-Square, they found residents had positive perceptions of less crime, slower traffic, and increased neighborhood involvement. Seeing that the painted intersection hadn’t cost the government a dime, the politicians quickly moved to pass a city ordinance that allowed painted intersections throughout Portland.

The Wallingford ladybug.Photo: bmarymanIntersection repairs are popping up in other cities, too. In Seattle, a City Repair chapter formed and facilitated several intersection painting projects, including a ladybug in the Wallingford neighborhood. Residents meet annually to repaint the mural and hold a block party. “Our goal is to cut down traffic and bring the community together and create a sense of neighborhood,” Eric Higbee, who led the ladybug painting, told the Seattle Times.

“It’s not about the paint,” says professor Jan Semenza, a professor of public health at Portland State University who lives near the Sunnyside Piazza and has researched intersection repairs. “It’s about neighbors creating something bigger than themselves.” As an everyday intersection becomes someplace special, residents begin to experience the value of community. Neighbors paint themselves out of a corner — of the intersection, of their individual homes — and into the middle of the street. By turning an intersection from a dividing line between neighbors into a gathering place, residents begin to solve the problems that plague neighborhoods and cities. Where isolation existed, they find community. Where cars dominated, they create a people place. With a little paint, neighbors are solving big problems.

The Fremont Turtle.Photo: justsmartdesignWhile her parents initially thought of painting the street at 41st and Interlake Avenue North in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, 8-year-old Ella Sauer hatched the idea of making a turtle. The family then approached neighbor Bill Lindberg with the plan, and Lindberg helped bring residents together and work through the permitting process. The turtle cost a little more than $1,000, including Seattle Department of Transportation permits; the residents received a Neighborhood Matching Fund grant for half of the cost. Painting their street brought neighbors together in a way not typically possible during the daily routine.

“This is the only way I’m able to meet my neighbors on a personal level,” said Kate Gengo, a four-year resident of the neighborhood.

The process of creating a public square empowers the residents and builds relationships, but it also leaves evidence on the ground that something is different in the neighborhood. “It sounds whimsical, but then you go walk around [the Intersection Repair] on a Saturday afternoon and you get it,” says supporter and former Portland city councilor Charlie Hales. Neighbors are talking, cars drive slower, and you can tell you are in a place. When people drive or walk through an Intersection Repair project, they are inspired to reshape their own neighborhoods. City Repair now has facilitated hundreds of community-building projects throughout Portland.

Sunnyside Piazza.Photo: donkeycartSemeza decided to turn his neighborhood into a laboratory. He had students canvass the Sunnyside neighborhood and also survey a similar neighborhood without an Intersection Repair. While there are not enough data to pinpoint the exact reasons, it appears that the Sunnyside Piazza neighbors considered themselves healthier (86 percent in excellent/very good general health compared to 70 percent), happier (57 percent felt “hardly ever depressed” versus 40 percent), and content with their neighborhood (65 percent said their neighborhood was “an excellent place to live” versus 35 percent). Also, police calls from the Sunnyside Piazza neighborhood decreased after the painting project.

Near Share-It-Square, Mark Lakeman sees residents staying rooted in the community. “Americans move every four to seven years,” Lakeman says, “and that period of time is visibly lengthening right around that intersection because people want to live there. Families are clustering around it, having kids or bringing their kids, so there are more children and more shared childcare, and more adults interacting with kids on that street.”

Flying over cities, whether in an airplane or through Google Maps, streets and homes extend for miles, with little to distinguish them. But then you see some color: a painted intersection in a sea of roofs and concrete. These are villages within the city — where locals have come together and said this is a place. A painted intersection might seem trivial. It doesn’t cost much or last very long. But the important work is done behind the scenes. Residents join together. They fashion gathering spaces. And it all starts with some paint.