The Rise of Tiny Homes on Vancouver Island

While all Canadians are affected by rising housing costs, British Columbia leads the country as the province with the highest rate of unaffordable homes, followed closely by Ontario. Although the number of people paying high rent to live in downtown Vancouver is a significant factor, Vancouver Island is another part of the province that has seen soaring housing costs. Many people, whether paying rent or a mortgage, are spending 50 percent of their income or more on housing. The home-ownership decline has been steep from 2011 to 2021, from 70 per cent to 66.8 per cent, and BC is leading Canada in the number of renter households. When people do buy a home for the first time, it is often a condo. However, high housing costs have given rise to a new housing type: tiny homes.

Tiny Homes Helping the Housing Crisis

It used to be that tiny homes were only sought out by people interested in minimalism, preserving the environment, or the ability to move their homes easily. However, the rising cost of housing on Vancouver Island has contributed to an increased interest in tiny home living and tiny home villages.

At the beginning of 2022, a 34-unit tiny home village opened in an unused Duncan housing lot. It included washrooms and storage facilities, 24/7 staffing, and peer outreach programs to allow community members to participate in maintenance and form connections with residents. It was so successful that it has caught the attention of other Vancouver Island communities.

With the right plot of land, tiny homes have provided an affordable option for BC residents to achieve their dream of owning a home. Most people that have made the leap into tiny home living have not regretted it. Although small, tiny homes still provide everything needed to survive and often have lower utility costs than their full-size home counterparts. They also offer a unique opportunity to live with a very low impact on the environment, an ever-growing concern in today’s climate crisis.

The Challenges of Tiny Home Living

One of the main challenges with tiny home living is that getting a mortgage for one can be difficult. If you cannot pay for a tiny home upfront, then working around bank loans is your only option. Since banks do not give mortgages for tiny homes, this doesn’t leave many options for people to finance their dream of having a tiny home.

Although some cities have allowances for tiny homes in their community planning, it can be difficult to implement them because the province has yet to make a classification for tiny homes, and the city is still required to uphold provincial standards. As a result, a person could rent out a small substandard housing unit claiming it as a tiny home.

In the future, making tiny homes an option for financing and setting clear guidelines for where they are permissible would allow more people to move forward into tiny home living if they desire.

Tiny Homes on Vancouver Island

Although some locations on Vancouver Island are still anti-tiny home, there has been a shift toward an acceptance of this housing type. More cities such as Nanaimo and Victoria are creating legal circumstances for people to live in tiny homes. Nanaimo’s affordable housing strategy proposes that the city should encourage the construction of more laneway houses by revising zoning and regulations to allow for more variation, while Victoria’s plan allows moveable tiny houses in all backyards that currently allow garden suites at rents of no more than $500 per month.

The most comprehensive action is outlined in BC Housing’s 2021 report on tiny homes. They found that tiny homes could both increase rental options in the province and help address the “missing middle” in delivering affordable homeownership. They recommend that tiny homes be legalized and included in the provincial building code and official community plans and that they be explored as an option for homelessness and acute housing situations like natural disasters.

With mortgage interest rates remaining high across the country, the acceptance of tiny homes on Vancouver Island has been a great thing for people looking for an affordable housing option. The trend will likely continue into the coming years as tiny homes become more readily accessible on Vancouver Island.