Yes. We've never seen evidence that anyone lives in these garden sheds longer than a photo shoot takes.

The land is the killer: controlled by politicians who now make developers responsible for roads and utilities to the land, the cost of which adds to the price of the house.

Yes, it's tough getting a house these days; it always was.

The difference these days is that spoilt brats won't start saving early enough; the won't make sacrifices - they just whine, thinking that life on Earth started the day they were born, and that makes them special.

Tough titty, kids. House ownership is not a right: it's your responsibility.

The increased cost of a lot or a house is tied to the prohibitive cost of energy and ignored by you and the pollies.

And makes apartments more costly in many cases than a three bed in the subs.

Apart from nuclear energy as MSR thorium, the other solution is rapid rail and the rezoning of large part of the adjacent rail corridor to put supply well ahead of demand, which done on a large enough scale, would pay for all the build costs.

Other than that, we need to revisit negative gearing and make apply exclusively to brand new never lived housing.
Alan B.

Good article. Thanks Ross Elliott. Kudos.

Sounds like the "Malthusian Hypothesis" rings true again- along with "The Principle Of Diminishing Returns".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns

Typically mature Australian debate:

A - Tiny houses will fix thing. B - No worries, you go first. A - Boomers should free up their beach houses. B - Are you kidding? A - I blame COVID, we all shrunk our households. B - Didn't Luci Ellis say that first? A - We need more social housing. B - A drop in the ocean. A - I know! We'll de-zone, go vertical, and build houses faster. B - We're a top home-builder in the OECD, and besides which, Albanese has thrown open the borders.

A - I always knew you were a racist. Don't you care about the homeless?

Kudos Steve S.

Most of the tiny houses you see pictured are wheeled modern versions of gypsy wagons that are disconnected from services. Perhaps the large septic tank and electrical battery were hidden from view. Even with wheeled cabins it starts to get permanent when when one or more 'blowaway' kit sheds are built perhaps on cement pads. Ditto toilet and shower block.

A former neighbour criticised me for having an indisposed vehicle (now scrapped) next to my driveway. I pointed out he had six old rust heaps carefully hidden in his bush block. Presumably the typical tiny house won't have the acreage to do that. Tiny houses are just one of a number of 'solutions' to entrenched problems that deluded urban elites think will solve everything.

You don't need a lot of room to live comfortably. I lived on my 40Ft yacht for 13 of the 19 years I owned her. A few years at a marina in Sydney, a few more while working in the great barrier reef tourist industry, & some sailing around the Pacific. Sounds luxurious, but the living space was only 20' by 8'8". The best part was just a short sail & I could totally change the view.

Infill can be a good idea. My son lives in our 30' x 20' granny flat, & couldn't want for more, & a daughter would install another if council would allow us some freedom. Plenty of room on my 20 acres, & no establishment costs. Actually cost the council nothing. The developer built the road, & there is no town water or sewerage. I can't help feeling that council bureaucrats make things difficult for every one to reinforce their feeling of importance.

45 years ago when no one was interested in Russel island, we built a sort of weekender on a nice waterfront block. We were living on the yacht & needed water, so be built a 30 x 15 deck & roof to catch some. It grew from there, with a veranda rail, one end an enclosed area with fridge, stove & water pump, sand fly proof screening all round, with roll down blinds for wet days. After we were head hunted to go run a new marine operation in the Whitsundays my TPI Father-in-law lived there for a few years until increasing health problems forced him back to the city.

You don't need much to be happy, if you have the right attitude.

Always good to hear your perspective Hasbeen. Kudos.

But I think that town planners want to stack micro-homes ten high with a one metre gap- not quite the same as a yacht.

We have too many Australians living in tiny houses now, they are called tents in parks, motor cars, park benches, doorways etc. For some the roof over their head is nothing more than the stars in the sky, so can we say; "their house is the great outdoors". Governments, state and federal, need to bite the bullet and tackle the problem of the lack of social and affordable housing. Governments have sat on their hands for years, expecting the private market would meet the demands for housing, they did for those rich enough to afford what the private developer had to offer, but for many the dream of a half decent roof over their head has become a nightly horror, as thing are now, these folk can't ever contemplate home ownership.

Onya Bonger.

?What’s happening? Even GY ‘s talking to ya. Admittedly your response was less than enthusiastic, but he had a go.

Save your breath expressing empathy for the homeless on this site; it’s all their fault.

If they worked and saved a bit harder, and did without for long enough, just like us here, they’d be sitting pretty now, raking in the bucks for no more effort than speculation ever required.

Anyway, we need to increase the pool of desperados over and above massive immigration levels to ensure we have a comfortable ride to the next world.

I’m expecting from here on in, to hear the suggestion that the poor slaves be murdered and buried along with the privileged slave owners as Government policy.

But more likely what will be happening, will be the percussion of empty pots hit with wooden spoons all over town at six o’clock every evening, which was an effective protest in Chile in ‘70’s. by the starving homeless masses under the US backed Pinochet and his equally disconnected Governance.

Maybe we could thin out the ranks of the homeless by stacking them into cargo planes and kick them out the cargo door over the Pacific at three thousand feet, another one of his nasty tricks!

We really should deal with the homeless, those annoying drug addled lay abouts that mess up the environment by crapping on footpaths all over town, I agree with you!

And as for their children; how dare they drag their children into an unsafe environment.
We have runs on the board at dealing with this unacceptable behaviour. There is an oversupply of good people only too willing to adopt them, and give the poor brats a chance in life.

Tiny houses are not for everyone. They're certainly not for me, and I doubt they'd be attractive to many of the readers here. But Ross's article unfairly dismisses them based on the ridiculous assumption of service costs being average!

We need a much bigger range of housing types available, and tiny houses should be a part of that. Probably only a small part, though, as it's townhouses the market is most likely to favour in the coming decades.

If there were less red tape and less inefficient social services homeless might be able to pull themselves out of poverty more.

In older times you could build your own house for 100 pounds- but now we can't build it for under $500,000. Sounds like our so called "modern society" has some efficiency problems. Every council has to employ a team to manage building, and we also have state bodies- you could understand some rules around building but this massive lead balloon isn't good for anyone.

But at least the councils are closer to the stakeholders than the state governments.

The real estate bodies in different states have interesting views on housing as well as immigration. If housing was cheap perhaps they wouldn't be pushing for "Big Australia".

Tiny houses are not for everyone.
Aidan,
Someone living on the streets or in a car or someone whose rent is going up by 100% would set you straight in a flash !