The Solution: Legalize trailers and tiny homes to incentivize millions of inexpensive rentals.

The Reason: Allow people to live simply so they can simply afford to live.

How it Works: A new federal property rights bill could grant owners of more than one acre of land in any rural or suburban area to bypass local zoning and permitting regulations to own and rent out up to five safely constructed trailers or tiny homes costing less than $100,000.

Only properties of more than one quarter of an acre would be eligible. Properties with more than a quarter acre but less than 1 acre of land would be limited to two simple homes.

Like RV’s in campgrounds, the new simple rental units enabled by this federal law would be required to pass basic safety inspections, and either be connected to septic systems or have a hold and haul program for waste. They might also need to be fenced from public view. No Airbnb or short term rentals would be permitted.  Only property owners who lived on the land would be eligible to use his federal law to bypass existing local laws that currently forbid tiny homes and trailers from getting permits.

The law would incentivize millions of trailers and tiny homes, some of which could be commuting distance from major cities, which could be profitably rented out for just $500 to $1,000 a month. This would “build from the bottom” to incentivize the most affordable housing in the country, for rent-strapped lower income Americans. Tight rental markets in nearby cities might face competitive pressure, causing a lowering of rents at the bottom end, and greater housing affordability.

The existing system of the government using tax dollars to subsidize modern new housing in cities and towns that takes years to construct and costs $500,000 to $1 million each unit is as ineffective a way to address the affordable housing crisis as it is unsustainable. A boom in truly affordable simple housing would cost the government nothing, and democratize the housing market by bringing billions of dollars of new income to middle class property owners, most of whom are currently restricted by local and state laws to rent simple housing even to friends and relatives.

A successful campaign to change the law to end evictions from Sonoma County’s most affordable housing, and end a shameful practice of the liberal county government’s code enforcement evicting hundreds of its poorest residents, including senior citizens, from the lowest cost housing in the region, is described here. Similar code enforcement eviction policies for tiny homes and trailers, even those rented out to needy family members, exist in almost every county in the country

The video below shows the simple, affordable place that a tiny home grandma was evicted from, on her close friend’s property, and her struggle to change the law.