Ask HN: What is now on the fringe?

Well sure. It means you might have have trouble getting post delivered to your door or getting utility hookups in a city, or trash collection.

However those kinds of things are much more easily hacked than this:

"This isn't remotely solved and the primary areas that need to be addressed have nothing at all to do with construction technique. They primarily have to do with policy reform and financing mechanisms."

I completely agree! Meanwhile we have a problem... Get back to me when it costs 5-10 years of average wages to purchase the average house. Until then Tiny Houses are at the least a good interim solution to not becoming homeless or massively indebted or ripped into by landlords.

> Furthermore, because it is "cutting edge," it isn't yet accessible to most poor people. A lot of tiny houses are insanely expensive per square foot, containing quite high quality materials.

Remember I said 'in theory', it was a hypothetical. A lot of Tiny Houses are very expensive per sq ft because of the kind of people who are building them. Mine is for example because it is stuffed full of cool features, materials and designs. I believe one can build a mass production of Tiny Houses for 5k-7k per unit which have all the basic necessities.

> They are basically aimed at eccentrics

I'll take that as a compliment. I prefer 'unique individual' ;-)

> not normal people with a limited income.

You double your costs per sq ft if you hire somebody else to do everything for example.

Tiny Houses are very accessible to the lower middle class and to the working class, because they tend to have the right skillset or because they have some amount of cash flow. Most Tiny Houses are built and finished for about 25k. That is good number when contrasted with the alternatives.

If you have close to zero cash flow, you have two options available to you, perhaps to be used in concert.

1. Reclaim waste materials. People have built Tiny Houses for as little as 500 dollars although I don't recommend this if you can get a job and save up. But if your time is effectively free then this is a wise way to spend it.

2. Construct a micro sized Tiny House to be transported by bicycle. That's about 200-300 dollars. Better than being homeless with no shelter.

I think we're coming at this subject from different premises. Mine is 'obtain shelter' and yours is 'obtain housing'. I think government related problems aren't going to be solved for a long time and that in light of that a lot of people are going to get screwed over unless they adopt something like Tiny Houses.

However there are still three problems.

0. Zoning in the UK and USA is prohibiting new construction. This is a fact that can't be got around. It is a political problem.

1. House prices. Extant legal construction builds have gone way above what millennials can afford on their stagnant wages. It is a logical consequence of monetary policy at zero % interest rates can cheap debt but many people, including myself, have no desire to be buying a building which will take several decades of work to pay for. Renting isn't a solution either.

It used to take between 5 and 10 years to pay off a mortgage. Builders I've talked to say their new builds in the US are never less than 350k per unit.

2. Work is not what it used to be. Even jobs which have decent wages have not kept up with the kind of house price inflation that exists in London and San Francisco. People go where the work is, and it is becoming ridiculous to shackle yourself to a thirty year debt when the job you went there for lasts about five-seven years on average.

Summation: Tiny Houses are a good solution to a world of stagnant opportunity and a schizophrenic economy. They are about putting a backstop against getting fucked by going bust or becoming homeless to put it plainly.