Rochelle Ryan describes herself as homeless. Since July last year she has been living in a tiny house on a friend's property on the outskirts of Brisbane.
She connects to her friend's house for electricity and water, but has to use her friend’s toilet.
“I am planning to get an incinerator toilet installed in my tiny home,” she told The Feed.
“Most people see tiny homes as a holiday home. This is not a holiday for me. I'm homeless.”
What are Tiny Houses?
Tiny houses are caravan-like houses built on wheels or trailers so they can be towed to different locations.
They’re similar in size to a shipping container, but slightly taller.
Tiny houses were first popularised in the United States 30 years ago as part of a minimalist, eco movement that enticed people to live outside the big cities and closer to nature.
They’ve been available in Australia for the past 15 years and cost anywhere between $20,000 and $200,000. Some are advertised as holiday homes on short-term rental sites like Airbnb.
Rochelle and her two children.
For the first time in two-and-a-half years, she found herself back looking for rentals.
“Unfortunately, what I was renting for $320 a week was now costing $420 or $520, so I was literally priced out of the housing market out here,” she said.
“I couldn't move to another area because my daughter was in the middle of her HSC and it would be too disruptive to her education to change schools.”
Rochelle describes that period as “the most stressful time of my life” as she juggled working full time at a call centre with trying to find a property for both of them to live in.
After six months of trying but finding herself continually priced out of rental properties, she decided to buy a tiny house she saw advertised on Gumtree for $20,000.
“I needed to be financially independent and own the home that I'm in and I'd been keeping an eye on the tiny house movement for a good 10 years,“ she said.
“I spent another $20,000 renovating it too, but that was absolutely all my savings.”
Rochelle says she has to be very particular about where she puts everything away as her house is so small.
“She lived here full-time for six months when she finished high school,” she said.
“I’d have to get my daughter out of bed in the morning so I could use her bed to store things I had left on the kitchen bench overnight.
“We are mother and daughter effectively living in a single bedroom, so there was a lack of privacy.
“Every surface counts. There's always extra effort that you have to do to live in a tiny house because things have got to be moved in order to make things functional.”
Rochelle said her earning capacity has been limited over the years.
She is a single mum of two children. One has special needs. After her divorce, she became the primary carer of her father-in-law too.
“I always had to work mummy-friendly jobs, between 9 and 3 pm, so I could be there for school pick up,” she said.
“Shortly after my father-in-law passed away in 2018 I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and I had a couple of years there where I was on income support payments out of my super.”
Now she does call centre work from her tiny home and is preparing to live in it long term.
“I know that this rental crisis isn't going away anytime soon. I'm not going to get back into the rental market, let alone buy my own property.”
How bad is the rental crisis in Australia?
The national vacancy rate is at its lowest in 17 years, with just 1 per cent of rental properties available across the country.
Brisbane’s vacancy rate is lower than the national rate with just 0.7 per cent of rental properties available.
Only 13 per cent of Brisbane's rental properties on the market are under $400, making it less affordable than Melbourne (20 per cent), Adelaide (18.3 per cent) and (Perth 15.4 per cent).
And the Sunshine Coast is even less affordable than all of Australia’s state capital cities with only 4.6 per cent of rental properties under $400.
A map of the percentage of rental properties advertised as under $400 in each capital city as of March 2023.
She’s been living there since last August after her rental apartment was also sold.
Cheaper to build a tiny house than to rent
“It seemed more affordable for us to build our own tiny home than to continue renting,” she said.
“My previous rental was $350 a week. And I'd probably be looking at about double that on a weekly basis to get a nice space for the three of us on our own.”
Angela and her sons Seb, 11, and Maliyan, two, in their tiny house on the Sunshine Coast.
It is a large tiny home - eight metres long, four metres high and 2.5 metres wide with two loft bedrooms and its own laundry and compost toilet.
“If I wasn’t able to get the tiny home I would probably have moved into a share house with my boys, we wouldn’t be able to live on our own,” she said.
Home loans are not an option for buying a tiny home as they are considered to be caravans.
People must apply for either a personal loan or a caravan loan.
She has parked her tiny house on a landowner’s property in the Sunshine Coast hinterland and pays a fee to the owner.
Angela has found a landowner willing to let her park her tiny home on their property for a fee.
“I have decided not to get the temporary home permit, mostly because this is not a temporary home, what happens after 18 months?”
“Yes tiny homes are movable but they require a lot of effort to move, it is not something you want to be doing every month.
“On this property we have five dwellings that aren't council approved.
“We're sort of counting down the time until we are vacated from the land. It feels very uncertain, our future here.
“Tiny homes are a great solution to the housing crisis. You’ve got land owners that are willing to open up their land but there's hesitancy because they're worried about council.”
A spokesperson for Sunshine Coast Council told The Feed that the council has waived the temporary home’s $514 application fee for people who are experiencing financial hardship.
“Council has obligations to protect and manage health and safety, the environment, and reduce impacts on nearby properties and public spaces, " the spokesperson said.
Can tiny houses help solve the housing crisis?
Paul Burton is a town planning academic at Griffith University and has been researching tiny houses for six years.
He believes tiny houses can help alleviate the housing crisis and wants local councils to review laws around temporary dwellings.
Paul Burton is calling on councils to review their laws around tiny houses.
“I think councils just need to be thoughtful about how they want to regulate tiny house living.
“If they review their planning schemes, which they should be doing anyway, make sure you (councils) know why you don’t want to encourage them (tiny houses).
“It may have been a policy that you devised some years or decades ago.”
Across the country councils are the main regulators of where you can and can’t park a tiny home.
Paul said it’s up to them if they want to take a friendly or hostile stance towards tiny homes.
“If you compare council areas like my one, the Scenic Rim Regional Council covers a vast area so there is space for tiny homes,” he said.
“Sydney and Melbourne (council) are not going to do that, simply because they don’t have the land.”
Paul said the number of people who live permanently in tiny homes in Australia is growing.
While there is no accurate data, Paul estimates it's about 1000.
He also acknowledges that tiny houses are more vulnerable to natural disasters such as bushfires and floods than conventional houses.
“We can make a tiny house out of wood. If you go and live in that in Gippsland, and there's a bushfire then it's going to catch fire and go up very quickly,” he said.
Paul said there are very few, if any, people who’ve lived in tiny houses for decades so it’s hard to know how well they last as a long-term housing solution.
