Why do more people want to live in small houses?

TMany homes have been touted as a radical and creative way to address the lack of affordable housing, as well as lower the cost of living and reduce our carbon footprint.

My doctoral research focuses on the small movement of houses in the United Kingdom. I want to know who lives in them and why, and the barriers people face in living this way.

I am also building my little house at the same time. I am excited about the idea that people can build their own houses, it's a lot of fun and cut their living costs in half in the end.

However, my research also points out that for many people, living in a small house is an act of necessity. It is not that they want to live in a 5m x 5m wooden box, it is that they cannot afford to do anything else. And for others, even this is out of reach.

Small houses are houses that are generally 40 m2 or less. A popular style of construction is to build them on a trailer base. This allows them to be classified as towable road vehicles and avoids many complications of building a permanent house with foundations. Others are cabin-style or cabanas, and some are even built underground.

They are much cheaper than traditional houses (the average price for a small house tends to be around £ 35,000) and result in much cheaper living costs. This can free up time from the obligation to work to pay the rent or mortgage.

Research has suggested that people living in small homes spend more time outdoors or with friends and family, which can make them happier than their overworked counterparts.

However, building a small house still requires thousands of pounds and, more importantly, a place to build. This means that these projects seem to be carried out mainly by people who have savings, access to personal loans, and friends or families who own land. It is just that they do not have enough savings to buy a "real" house.

This means that while smaller homes are considerably more affordable than conventional homes, they are out of the reach of those who need them most.

If someone can't save the average deposit for a brick house, they probably can't claim that amount for a small house either. In addition, you cannot borrow money through conventional mortgages to build small houses because they are not tied to the land, which is the real asset that appreciates over time time.

Instead, small houses must be financed by private loans, as if you wanted to buy a car. A typical interest rate on a UK home loan is currently around 2%. Compare that to the interest you would have to pay on a personal loan to build your small house, on average 7%, and it is clear how bad the financial outlook is for this type of project.

Of course, small houses can be built for much less than the average price. A participant in my research study built a small house of 10 square meters for only £ 900. She loves this house and spends a lot of time there. However, it is built on land it already owns, another obstacle to overcome which is facilitated by material capital.

The UK has the longest average working time in Europe and a large share of income is spent on housing costs.

My participants described small houses as a way to reduce the cost of living so that they can work much less or have more satisfying jobs for lower wages. People have told me that they find it odd to work 40 hours a week to pay for a house in which they rarely find themselves.

The people I spoke to who build small houses mention a desire for simplicity and an abandonment of a life focused on spending and shopping. Some have described the attitude of society to work for spending as unsatisfactory and harmful.

It seems counterintuitive that people would prefer less space to more and that people would volunteer to live in a roller shed if there is enough affordable housing. However, I have met people who have the money to live in a house of conventional size, but who prefer to live small and who have their goals obstructed by a building permit and access to the Earth.

Another way to see the little movement of the house is to sum up the failures of adequate distribution of resources and access to opportunities. We can see that it romances poverty and ignores structural inequalities. The movement is known to be fairly white and bourgeois, which suggests that its radical potential is overestimated.

Alice Elizabeth Wilson is a doctoral researcher in sociology at York University. This article was first published in The Conversation.