WebStamp November 01, 2017

Designing Tiny House Land Use

In our last issue I discussed how current land use bylaws need to be adjusted so we can place tiny homes easily on reasonably and affordably priced property, regardless whether it's on wheels or a foundation. Minimum size property requirements with our current bylaws we found are actually more than 3 times the size required for a large tiny house or mobile home. Also, the regulations requiring a permanent residence on a foundation should be scrapped allowing for mobile tiny homes to be placed. This could allow for the creation of additional affordable living accommodations on a property where building a structure on a foundation isn’t feasible.

Tiny-House-Land-Use-with-4-tiny-houses.jpg This issue we are going to look deeper into what are the actual minimal dimensions required for the placement of a tiny house and how we could divide a Calgary city lot so we can place 3 to 6 tiny homes on it. With today’s stringent fire-resistant building codes, the distances between structures could actually be reduced to only 2 ½’ from the current minimum of 8’, enough room to allow access between them. This could save us up to 11’ on both sides of the property. With a trailerable tiny house (TTH), that has the entrance at the front and/or rear, at 8’ wide, and allowing only 2.5’ on either side, suggests we could place it on a property that is only 13’ wide. If we divided a minimum width (30’) city lot in half we could place 2 tiny homes side by side.

The minimum length of a Calgary city lot, determined by min. area (2600 ⏍ft.) divided by min lot width (30’), is 87’. A TTH average maximum length is 32’, we could place 2 of these units end to end with over 23’ remaining for clearances between buildings and the property line.

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Having 2 units side by side and 2 units end to end we can place four 256 ⏍ft. trailerable tiny houses on a minimum Calgary city residential lot.

Allowing for 2.5’ between end to end units we would have over 11’ of property frontage for each unit for outdoor recreational space at 15’ wide. Taking in parking considerations we may have to reduce the length of the street properties by 5’ so we can create parking spaces for the TTHs in the back lane. The street side homes have enough room (15’) to park their vehicle in front on the street. This is another bylaw that needs to change, requiring at least one parking space for each dwelling, for tiny homes to exist in a city environment.   

Putting this all into perspective, for a max. length TTH at 32’ and the width of 8’ we could feasibly place a tiny home on a minimum lot size of 18’ x 38’ or only 684 ⏍ft. we can see that the current city bylaws of a min. area of 2600⏍ft. is actually 4 times the required size needed for the placement of a tiny house. Looking at the example in our last tiny house article with the larger 50’x 120’ Ogden property of 6000⏍ft. we could technically actually divide the lot into 8 tiny house properties. Dividing the $250,000 cost of the property by 8, each plot could be purchased for just under $32,000.  

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In order to make this affordable housing concept feasible for property owners current city land-use bylaws need to be altered to accommodate the current social structure. Today many are not willing to spend most of their income on housing and would rather spend more on living in comfort. Now that we have elected a new city council, or should I say almost the same one, we need to be heard and voice our opinion to the Mayor and Councillors on embracing the future with new ways towards developing affordable housing in a city environment. Make your M.A.D. Move informing those you elected to represent you how to shape the future development of our great city, Calgary.     

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Marinus (René) Verschuren
Marinus (René) Verschuren
Founder of WebStamp
René has been involved in the publishing and printing industry since the 1970s. He has published and distributed a successful 24-page weekly news advertiser with a circulation of 4400 copies. Also for the last 20 years, he has been a printer, plotter, scanner and 3D printer technician and installer. Since High School, he also has worked as a janitor, cabinet maker, building construction, landscaper/designer, computer operator producing microfiche, graphic artist, and webmaster, among many other professions, qualifying him as a Jack-of-All-Trades.
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Minimum size property requirements with our current bylaws we found are actually more than 3 times the size required for a large tiny house or mobile home. Also, the regulations requiring a permanent residence on a foundation should be scrapped allowing for mobile tiny homes to be placed. This could allow for the creation of additional affordable living accommodations on property where building a structure on a foundation isn’t feasible.