Holyrood council preparing for ‘tiny home’ trend
Town reviewing its regulations around minimum home size
The Town Council of Holyrood hopes to get ahead of a potential “tiny homes” trend by considering changes to its development regulations.
At a meeting of council on July 24, Coun. Kevin Costello said many people are looking at smaller scale homes because of impending electricity rate hikes and a desire to reduce their carbon footprints.
“One of our goals in the planning and development committee is to look at smaller scale housing,” Costello said during the meeting. “We have identified some land, but that is as far as we have gotten with that, so we are putting that on the agenda.”
Coun. Sadie King brought the issue to the council table, noting a recent news story reported that most towns in this province do not have development regulations regarding tiny homes.
“I think we should get working on that,” King said.
According to Costello, the minimum size of home permitted under Holyrood’s development regulation is 1,076 square feet.
In a follow-up email the day after the council meeting, Costello said the current thought is that 700-800 square feet should be the starting point; which is a little larger than the typical tiny homes, which are usually no more than 400 square feet.
“We have not had any application, to my knowledge, for the construction of a home under 1,076 square feet, unlike other municipalities in the province,” Costello wrote. “We are trying to take a proactive approach to an emerging trend and, hopefully, have the necessary regulations in place prior to receiving an application for a tiny home.”
With power rates going up, the expectation is that people will want to build smaller homes to reduce power consumption by having less space to heat.
Costello says Holyrood needs to offer mix development in their town. Smaller homes are less costly to build, he noted, enabling new home owners to have smaller mortgages and offering an alternative housing option for seniors who still want to live on their own but cannot continue to upkeep and maintain a larger home.
“We are still in the very early stages of these conversations and we will be speaking to other towns that are already deep into this process to find out what worked for them and what did not,” Costello said in an email the day after the council meeting.
“If we can build on the (information) of other municipalities hopefully we can make this process as efficient as possible and be ready when the first application comes in the door.”