CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Tim Nevits contacted dozens of lenders and local cities a few years ago, in his quest for a loan and land to build a tiny house. After scads of rejections, he found a place for his 130-square-foot dwelling at a mobile-home park in eastern Cleveland.
In August 2012, Nevits moved into the dinky domicile, which sits on a flatbed trailer in the city's North Collinwood neighborhood. In a moment memorialized in a YouTube video, he became part of a tiny-house movement that was creeping inward from the coasts but showing few signs of capturing Ohio imaginations.
Nearly three years later, though, this pint-sized phenomenon is gaining momentum in the Midwest.
One hundred people have joined the Greater Cleveland Tiny House Enthusiasts, an advocacy group launched by a local couple planning their own small-house project. In Toledo, a family with two young children expects to trade in a 3,400-square-foot mansion for a 325-square-foot house-on-wheels. In Dayton, an event billed as a tiny-house "homearama" is scheduled for late June.
And on Cleveland's West Side, Citizens Bank is donating $140,000 to build a 557-square-foot house - a pilot project that might be the first of many small homes in the city's Detroit Shoreway neighborhood. Neighborhood leaders and executives from the bank, known as Charter One until April, will announce their plans today at a news conference at West 58th Street and Pear Avenue.
Chalk it up to a yen for simplicity. Point to the pressures of low-paying jobs and crushing student debt. Or credit the fetishistic tiny-house TV shows that have cropped up during the last few years on specialty cable channels. Whatever the reason, more Ohioans are contemplating life on a smaller scale.
Small houses certainly aren't new.
A century-old home in Cleveland's Ohio City neighborhood sold for $130,000 in December. The renovated house totals 900 square feet. An 840-square-foot cottage in Detroit Shoreway also changed hands late last year, for $87,000. It was built in 1910, according to the Zillow real estate website.
But the recent tiny-house trend, which started in the late 1990s or early 2000s, depending on whom you ask, highlights properties ranging from 80 to 800 square feet. For contrast, the average size of a new American home in 2013 was just shy of 2,600 square feet - 20 times the size of the space that Nevits, a 39-year-old employee of the Penton publishing company, shares with two cats.
"We're sort of positing the question, 'Do you own the space, or does the space own you?'" said Jenny Spencer, managing director at the nonprofit Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization. "I'm a homeowner, and I know what it takes to maintain a space. It takes a lot. What does it free us up to do if we're not constantly maintaining our stuff?"
West Side project could be first of a few
The Detroit Shoreway nonprofit owns the vacant West 58th Street lot where the Citizens-funded house could start rising in the fall. The 557-square-foot dwelling will rest on a permanent foundation, connect to city utilities and feature two first-floor bedrooms in addition to a loft. Spencer hopes the lower-story sleeping space will make the house more appealing to buyers who want to stay in the city as they age.
The 0.15-acre lot could support a second, and possibly a third, tiny home, depending on buyer enthusiasm. The donation from Citizens will cover design, construction and marketing for the first house, nestled in a creative residential district known as the Cleveland EcoVillage. Additional small-home projects will pop up in the neighborhood only if private buyers and lenders sign on.
Detroit Shoreway is negotiating with a local developer to build the pilot home, which could sell for anywhere from $80,000 to $110,000. The neighborhood development group is conducting research about the potential pool of buyers for tiny homes. But before any construction starts, the neighborhood needs to get around Cleveland's zoning code, which limits the size of new single-family residences to at least 950 square feet.
Spencer expects to ask for project-specific variances. But growing interest in small houses points to a potential need for broader changes, such as an amendment to the city's zoning code or creation of a new zoning overlay that permits homes with smaller footprints.
"Whatever we need to do, we'll do it," said City Councilman Matt Zone, who represents Detroit Shoreway. "We'll find out a solution to allow these types of homes to be built.
"I absolutely know there is a market," added Zone, who lives with his wife in an 1,800-square-foot house, but says he would consider downsizing. "I can't tell you how many people I've spoken to over the last couple of years who are aware of the tiny-house movement. I've been chomping at the bit to built a product in our community, because I want to jump-start this market."
Enthusiasts point to less clutter, lower costs
Nicole Snyder and Justin Golubski are living with family while they work on plans for a 200-square-foot house in Cleveland. The couple has a trailer, a place to build the structure and a general framework - lofted areas, a living room, a kitchen and, potentially, a composting toilet. Their rough cost estimate: $25,000 to $30,000.
"We're doing ours on wheels because who knows where we'll end up," said Snyder, who is 20 and who co-founded the local enthusiasts' group with Golubski.
Tiny homes, particularly those mounted on trailers, allow for mobility. They come with less clutter. They're friendlier to the environment, since they require less land and use fewer resources. And they're cheaper - in some ways.
A small house might cost more to build or buy, on a per-square-foot basis, than a traditional home. But the total sticker price can be quite low, especially for do-it-yourself builders. Tiny houses also cost less to heat and cool.
Nevits said his electricity bill bottoms out around $4 a month during the summer. "In the winter, in the depths of the vortex, I think it cost me $90 to heat it," he said.
Planners and small-house aficionados in cities including Portland, Oregon, are experimenting with villages of tiny houses as one way to provide shelter for the homeless. And families including Jamie and Kelly Rye of Toledo, who are selling their historic mansion and building a tiny house in rural Ohio, envision a more hands-on, cooperative lifestyle - one they hope to pass down to their 5-year-old son, Jonah, and their 2-year-old daughter, Jane.
"The plan is that, right around eighth grade, my son and I are going to start building his own tiny house," said Jamie Rye, a 31-year old parish administrator who also works with immigrants and refugee families. "By the time he's in his mid-teen years, he'll have his own tiny house that he can take with him. We'll create a cluster of tiny houses. We'll do the same thing for our daughter. When it's time for them to go off to college, they'll have a home that they can take with them or sell."
Small houses still face big challenges
This idyllic vision isn't free from complications.
Tiny houses often clash with zoning codes, like Cleveland's, because of their size. Some houses on wheels qualify as recreational vehicles, which opens up opportunities to put them in trailer parks. But those wheeled homes still run into code conflicts. On the financing front, lenders are more likely to pledge money to a tiny house with a traditional foundation. But some banks won't touch a house that falls below a certain size or value.
Buyers who acquire their small houses from certified RV manufacturers might have an easier time finding loans. The same is true for insurance, which can be a headache for people building and living in tiny homes. The real estate industry, like government, is still playing catch-up when it comes to tiny homes.
Carrie Carpenter, of Citizens, says the bank views the Detroit Shoreway experiment as a community initiative, a chance to show the possibilities for vacant or too-small lots scattered across the city. Tiny houses anchored to foundations instead of trailers might qualify for some of the lender's mortgage programs, she said, but it's difficult to evaluate such unusual properties because they're so rare in Greater Cleveland.
Nevits can attest to that rarity. He's looking forward to some company on the tiny-house circuit, now that local advocates are pushing for city code changes and would-be homeowners including Snyder and Golubski are scouting for sites.
After spending a decade in New York, living in closet-sized apartments, Nevits finds his tiny house to be almost palatial. During the construction process and his early months in the space, the subject of shrinking square footage occupied his thoughts, his time, his conversations. Now, it's no big deal. It's just a house.
"I'm not trying to get away from the world," he said. "I want to live in it. I just want to live smaller."