Tiny Home Community (8)

No one captured the spirit and essence of the ’60s southwest American communes better than Irwin Klein. With a Leica, black and white film, and natural lighting, he created an authentic and artistic record of this unique and short-lived period of back-to-the-land ’60s idealism.

Poet Gary Snyder, in Earth House Hold, described the ’60s communards: “Men, women and children — all of whom together hoped to follow the timeless path of love and wisdom, in affectionate company with sky, wind, clouds, trees, waters, animals, and grasses — this is the drive.”

In this newly-published book, you can see the optimism, the earnestness, and yes, the impracticalities of these young, mostly urban people who left the cities for the harsh climate of the high desert of New Mexico. Irwin was a photographer who was obviously in tune with his subjects, and they with him, so you are getting an inside look at a period now lost in time, with these spare and insightful photos.

• www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/…

https://youtube.com/watch?v=wuvrAUFYi1Q

Madison’s newest and smallest neighborhood makes its debut. Tiny House Village on East Johnson Street is a project to offer shelter to some of Madison’s homeless population. Occupy Madison created it three years ago with a goal of helping the homeless get back on their feet.

It was through AirBnB that I discovered the so-called tiny house movement after someone in Seattle listed his hand-built gyspy wagon was available for rent in his backyard for just $40 a night.

Tiny houses are usually under 200 square feet in size, but generally have all the amenities of a home — kitchens, baths, bedrooms, etc. — just less of them. An enterprising person can buy a 20-foot trailer from a local big box store and build a house on it for $30,000 or less. There’s actually nothing illegal about such buildings, or even parking them in your driveway, because they’re considered a temporary structure. They only run afoul of local zoning laws when they’re declared as your legal residence.

Still they’re proliferating across the country as people opt to not burden themselves with a mortgage and reject the trend toward building McMansions with all the attendant resource waste they represent. Tiny houses also offer a low-cost housing solution that’s allowing several Oregon communities to meet the needs of the homeless…

www.fool.com/…

Deek is the artist/author of Humble Homes, Simple Shacks, Cozy Cottages, Ramshackle Retreats, Funky Forts: And Whatever the Heck Else We Could Squeeze In Here, prolific designer, builder, video maker, media prankster, musician, and has been featured in our books Tiny Homes as well as Tiny Homes on the Move.

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