Can tiny houses help with Vermont's housing crisis?

This election season, housing is a top issue for Vermont voters. That's not surprising:

• Vermont has one of the nation’s highest rates of homelessness, and it’s still rising.
• Last year Vermont experienced the biggest spike in home prices in the country. The rental market is also strained.
• The state needs to add at least 24,000 year-round homes over the next five years to help get the housing market to a healthy state, according to a new report.

More from Vermont Public: Start here if you care about housing in Vermont's 2024 election

The high cost of building — coupled with a workforce shortage — has some wondering if building smaller could help bring more units online faster. Tiny homes, which are generally defined as 400 square feet or smaller, often cost less than a traditional home (overall; they often cost more per square foot) and take fewer people and less time to build.

The view in Vermont

"There's no state definition of [a] tiny home," said Josh Hanford, director of intergovernmental relations at the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and the state's former housing commissioner.

Tiny homes encompass everything from cargo container homes to RVs to cottages to accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, which are smaller, secondary units built next to an existing home.

A 2020 state law allows anyone in Vermont to build an ADU on their property. That has opened the doors a little.

"The easiest path to permit a tiny home is a backyard accessory dwelling unit," said Alex Farrell, Vermont's current housing commissioner.

Still, if a tiny home owner builds or parks their home on a piece of land, they will most likely still need access to water, electricity and septic.

"And it really doesn't matter if it's a 500-square-foot home or 2,000-square-foot home, you have to have some sort of approved septic design, even on a rural piece of property, if it's going to be a permanent structure," Hanford said. "And they have to be engineered, stamped, and that's expensive."

If the tiny house sits on a foundation, it also has to follow local zoning laws and building codes. Each type of small dwelling is treated differently by building codes and development regulation.

Rep. Michele Bos-Lun, a Democrat representing Windham County, introduced legislation last year aiming to streamline the process.

"We need something consistent. It doesn't make sense that in some town up north, you can have a tiny house on wheels and there's no zoning whatsoever, and you could have a situation where a family member is living in a tiny house, sharing the shower, getting water from the big house, and it's all good, and the town doesn't mind," she said. "And yet, in another town, they say, 'Oh no, no, this needs to be zoned as a permanent dwelling, and you have to go through the whole application process.'"

If communities want to build a tiny home village consisting of multiple homes on one piece of land, Farrell, with the state, said "the more dwelling units there are on a lot or in a building, the more likely life/health/safety standards will apply."

He added that communities with cottage cluster planned unit development zoning regulations, or PUDs, are more likely to have regulations that would permit multiple small homes.

At Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Waitsfield, where students learn how to build a tiny home, Executive Director Britton Rogers said he sees a lot of value and opportunity for smaller dwellings, especially those designed to withstand Vermont's winters, to fill the state's massive housing gap.

"They are easy to build," he said. "They can be built quickly, simply."

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