WASHINGTON - Tiny-house owners and their supporters are growing rebellious. They don't want the government telling them how they can live, and they really don't like a proposed federal regulatory change that they say threatens to put them out on the street.
"Stop this madness!" wrote one woman, Laura Michael, to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That sentiment was shared by more 4,000 people writing to HUD by late this week.
But here's the thing. HUD isn't trying to regulate their homes, according to not only HUD but to tiny-home builders and the recreational vehicle industry, whose members include some tiny-home makers. The term "tiny house" applies to very small housing structures - 200 square feet or so, mostly on wheels, and they're all the rage thanks, to HGTV - as the gallery above shows.
The confusion stems from new regulations differentiating camping RVs from year-round manufactured homes.
Let's look at the hubbub.
The complaints to HUD:
What HUD wants to do is pretty bureaucratic, so let's go backward and start with the overwhelming public reaction.
"Small or tiny houses are a very important part of the equation for low income and fixed income singles and couples dealing with a shrinking economy," said a comment to HUD from Janet Weidman. "This is a VERY needed housing option for many people. Please do not outlaw tiny houses."
Said a comment from someone named Vivian Barton: "We do not need laws to tell us how to live in every minute detail... Please leave tiny houses and RV living alone."
And this, from Kathy Gordon: "This is crazy! What is going on in this world?"
The issue for HUD:
HUD makes federal housing policy. It also sets building standards for what used to be called mobile homes but now are called manufactured homes. Think of these as the trailers in trailer parks, as opposed to self-propelled recreational vehicles or smaller trailers towed behind pickup trucks to campgrounds.
The lingo can be confusing, so to make this simple, we'll call the latter RVs and "camping trailers," and the former "mobile-home trailers."
Mobile-home trailers, generally kept in a single place with a fixed address, must be built in compliance with HUD's safety standards for fire and wind resistance, insulation and so on. HUD wants to make sure that in a strong wind, "the house doesn't get blown over," explained James Demitrus, 74, a Streetsboro retiree who lives in a mobile home and serves on a national HUD advisory committee for construction and safety standards.
Camping trailers have safety standards, too, but they are imposed through industry groups rather than by the government. The recreational vehicle industry says its standards are high, and it is not seeking to be controlled by the government. But determining whose rules apply - the industry's or the government's -- can be confusing. So until now, the government has used a key criteria: size.
Travel trailers under 400 square feet, if built on a single chassis and self-propelled or towable by a light-duty truck, were exempt from the government's housing standards. There was a logic to that. A 400-square-foot trailer would typically be 40 feet long, which is extremely big. In reality, anything larger would typically be a home. Anything smaller would typically be used for camping.
The problem:
Problem is, vacation trailers and RVs have changed over the years. Fancy vacation trailers now let you push a button and a side wall expands, potentially making the trailer larger than 400 square feet. Some RVs are marketed for year-round living.
Should those now be considered mobile homes - and have to be built to HUD standards? Any changes could change how the RV industry operates.
The Recreation Vehicle Industry Association and others asked HUD to consider updating the definition, said Matt Wald, an executive director for the association. HUD ultimately proposed a new differentiation between the two sides - homes and recreation -- in February:
A recreational vehicle or trailer would be defined as "a factory build vehicular structure, not certified as a manufactured home, designed only for recreational use and not as a primary residence or for permanent occupancy."
It would be built under safety standards from the National Fire Protection Association, Standard for Recreational Vehicles, or the American National Standards Institute -- same as now. And HUD would require that during the sale, these vehicles or trailers display a notice identifying the industry construction standards and stating that the unit was designed only for recreational use, and not as a primary residence.
How that changes things:
"The fact of the matter is that this regulation changes nothing," Wald said. It merely affects what happens at the factory - and whose standards are used.
The proposed rule will reduce confusion, said HUD spokesman Jereon Brown, by using a more inclusive definition than square footage. And it "requires greater clarity with respect to consumer disclosure," he said. "RV manufacturers must clearly let consumers know that their vehicles are not built to the same safety standards as manufactured homes dedicated to year-around living."
Notice that these rules say nothing about tiny houses? The old rules didn't either, but people on social media have interpreted the changes -- particularly the lack of specific square footage as a criterion for HUD exemption -- to mean that owners of tiny homes are in jeopardy of becoming outlaws, if they're not first evicted from their lots.
Several industry authorities maintain that's simply not the case. It's not as if HUD is suddenly trying to regulate these houses. It exempted them from its regulations already because they were smaller than 400 feet, and they'll remain exempt.
"We build our units no more than 200 square feet, and that includes both the loft space as well as the main living floor," said Ryan Potter, a customer service representative for Tumbleweed Tiny House Company in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His company already followed the standards of the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association -- the same standards it would follow under the new rules.
A potential marketing issue:
What could change is the homes' marketing. If HUD follows through, labeling for new units would clearly say they are made for recreation, not for permanent housing. That could spook potential buyers.
Yet buyers should have known already that states and cities can already limit how long they can live in a parked residence on wheels, even if they own the lot. HUD has nothing to do with that; local zoning does.
"Use and what you can do with it is regulated at the state and local level, not by HUD," said the RV industry's Wald. HUD agreed.
Dan Louche, founder of Tiny Home Builders, a Florida company, agrees that the proposed rule should mean little to people with tiny homes. How the homes are used would still be up to the owners and to local officials. "There are thousands of people living in tiny houses, but the reality is that in the vast majority of cases in the United States, they are considered illegal," he said.
There's nothing new about that.
HUD will accept comments until April 11, then decide at an undetermined time whether to proceed.