It looked like a small-scale housing development had cropped up at the Clark County Event Center at the Fairgrounds on Saturday, as the Tiny House Living Festival descended on the site for the weekend.
Long lines trailed from 17 tiny houses on wheels, eight converted school buses, a handful of converted vans and one teeny teardrop trailer small enough to be hauled behind a Subaru. After all, only a handful of people at a time fit into each home. Through today, the homes will be on display and a series of workshops will help visitors learn how to build their own homes, downsize their lives and raise children in homes averaging about 240 square feet.
“I think it’s a pretty good indication of the excitement about minimalism and small space in general,” organizer Coles Whalen said of the large crowd.
The Portland area is somewhat of a mecca for tiny house enthusiasts. Though tiny houses on wheels are not legal dwellings in Clark County, Portland has thus far tolerated the small wooden cabins, craftsman-style homes and converted school buses that some are parking in backyards as housing costs continue to rise in the region.
Peggy and Robb Moretti, Portland residents in their 50s, visited Saturday to scope out their options for building a tiny house as an accessory dwelling unit in their back yard.
“It’s just a need in the city,” Peggy Moretti said as she waited in line to see the Damselfly, a home designed by Olympia builder Abel Zyl. With its swooping roof line and natural-toned wood, the home would not look out of place in a fairy garden.
Some, like Lance Loney and Sarah Amundson, are looking to build their own small space. Loney, 26, and Amundson, 25, live in a 300-square-foot microapartment in Seattle but said that for the cost of what they’re paying now, they could build their own tiny home to live in.
“It’s so doable,” Amundson, an architect, said of living small. The pair hope to build a home that has a net-zero environmental impact — something that reuses rainwater, collects solar energy and doesn’t create waste.
“It’s not for everybody,” Amundson admitted, adding that when friends and family stop by their small apartment they feel overwhelmed. But by the time they leave, most say, “I could live this way.”
The Tiny House Living Festival is the first event of its kind in Clark County, and Whalen, who is based out of Colorado, said it was important to show a spectrum of small living. For 25-year-old Mike Fuehrer, originally from New Jersey, that meant converting a 24-foot Thomas Freightliner — a yellow school bus — into a soothing sage green home on wheels. The inside features a full kitchen, multiple couches that can be folded into beds and a folding table that can seat eight for large dinner parties.
Fuehrer and his friend, Luke Witten, have been crisscrossing across the country, visiting national parks in the United States and Canada. At one point, as many as seven people were traveling with them on their journey.
“We love being out in the wild,” Witten said. “You learn a lot about yourself and others.”
Fuehrer did the construction on the bus mostly by himself, looking to friends and family for the parts that were more complicated, like metal work. Building a sense of community around the home was key for him, he said.
“Build to what you need,” he advised.
Josh Urvant, whose home stands at a “massive 66-square-feet of fun,” brought the festival’s smallest tiny house. Urvant and his pair of dogs — Bella and Toter, who, like their home, are tiny — have driven their tiny house behind a GMC 1500 from Georgia, making their way across the country to the Pacific Northwest. The roof and walls of Urvant’s home are decorated in stickers and photos from their adventures. The trailer, which was a 1962 Apache pop-up camper in a past life, has no shower, but Urvant brings along a folding camping shower tent, allowing him to shower outside.
Urvant decided to go tiny after looking around his 2,200-square-foot home on acreage and realizing he’d spent 38 years accumulating things he didn’t want and didn’t need.
“Going tiny makes life bigger,” he said. “My eyes have never been more open to the karma of the world. It’s an eclectic lifestyle that brings a smile to my face every morning.”
