Tiny home, big headache
When is a home not a home? Councils and government can’t agree, and owners are paying the price.
Tiny-home owners and councils are calling for simplified resource consent rules as owners trying to do the right thing get caught up in red tape.
Tasman-based couple Mohammad and Leela Aboubakr found themselves in trouble, despite consulting their district council, when they built what they believed to be a vehicle not subject to the Building Act, nor requiring resource consent.
Mohammad Aboubakr now says they are being punished for trying to do the right thing, as conflicting advice from the council, and confusion over what rules should apply, have left them with potentially thousands of dollars of unplanned expenses.
‘‘Going to the council has put us worse off than if we had just gone and built this up in the bush somewhere, illegally.’’
Building and Construction Minister Jenny Salesa acknowledges ‘‘some inconsistency’’ about how councils have been interpreting section 8 of the Building Act, which specifically includes immobile vehicles intended for permanent habitation.
‘‘I have asked for advice from MBIE [Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment] on how central Government can support consistency of the application of the parts of the Building Act that affect tiny home owners by councils,’’ she said.
‘‘Right now, there is nothing in the Building Act 2004 that prevents someone from going and getting a tiny home consented and built. Our Government is pro-tiny homes, we just expect them to be safe, warm and durable tiny homes.’’
She says changes to the Building Act will make off-site consenting for prefabricated structures, including tiny homes, ‘‘quicker, cheaper and easier’’.
‘‘However, it will still be up to councils and consenting authorities to discharge their duties and responsibilities under the Resource Management Act [RMA] to ensure a structure affixed to land satisfies any RMA requirements.’’
A spokesman for Environment Minister David Parker says a ‘‘comprehensive review of the RMA’’ is under way, with a view to streamlining consent processes. The review panel is due to report at the end of May.
However, the spokesman said a recent court decision ruling that a tiny home was a vehicle ‘‘does not change anything from an RMA perspective’’.
‘‘Some council district plans define what is a ‘building’ using the Building Act definition. Those councils may find this decision helpful to consider when managing the effects of tiny homes . . . Construction standards for tiny homes are not consistent, so this decision is unlikely to be applicable to all tiny homes in New Zealand.’’
The Aboubakrs’ tiny home, built on a trailer and situated, by consent, on land they do not own, was constructed in 2018 after they consulted Tasman District Council, Mohammad Aboubakr says.
‘‘We went to the council, we said we have a piece of land that doesn’t belong to us, we want to build a tiny house, what are our obligations?’’
The council first advised them they didn’t need a resource consent, then months later issued a notice to fix because they needed a certificate of acceptance, he says. The council then took the decision to MBIE. There the tiny home was deemed a building, and now the council requires the Aboubakrs to have a resource consent.
The couple say they are looking at potentially tens of thousands of dollars in fees that they had not expected or budgeted for, based on advice they received from the council before they started construction.
‘‘The person [at the council] who was really genuine to me said, ‘If you were my son, I would tell you to move and not deal with the council . . . we don’t go looking [for illegal tiny homes]’.’’
Tasman Mayor Tim King repeated that in a meeting recently, saying the council doesn’t ‘‘go looking for this stuff’’.
‘‘There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these living arrangements, be it in caravans, buses, converted
farms and sheds all over the district, and we don’t go out looking or searching or making it a thing to try and turf people out.’’
Aboubakr says he wouldn’t take the advice to move and not inform the council, because ‘‘that’s not who I am’’. But he does want the council to take responsibility for its advice, and clearer laws around tiny homes.
‘‘If this tiny home is a building, all of them are.
‘‘Someone from the council came to the site to take pictures . . . [and] said, ‘This is the closest I have ever seen to a vehicle. It has brakes, indicators: 99 per cent of this will come back as a vehicle’.’’ Instead, MBIE ruled that, despite sharing characteristics of a vehicle, it was ‘‘a moveable structure intended for occupation, and is therefore a building for the purposes of the act’’.
Aboubakr says it seems the council has been doing all it can to show that the tiny home is immobile, first saying that it was parked too close to the fence
to move easily, then that some temporary digging work around it would prevent it from being moved.
‘‘I sent them a video of us parking it close to the fence . . . I offered to show them it could be moved again, but said they would have to pay [to hire a towing vehicle]. I didn’t hear back.’’
The couple’s main frustration has been that they did their best to avoid all this by going to the council in the first place.
They decided to build their tiny home after less than a year living in New Zealand, so they consulted the council to make sure they complied with unfamiliar laws.
At their first meeting in May 2018, before they started to build, Aboubakr says Tasman District Council staff told them that if they were building on a trailer as a vehicle, and didn’t use any council services, they would not need a building consent.
In August 2018 they began construction, using a certified specialist to build the trailer, and certified builders, plumbers and electricians for the house on top.
‘‘We were building it out in the open, because we didn’t think we were doing anything wrong . . . we saw the council car driving past [several times] with
no problem. When we moved in [in 2019], the council came and said, ‘What is this? This is illegal’.’’
Now, after the MBIE’s decision, Aboubakr says there are more and more fees and regulations being sprung on them, and they are fed up.
‘‘I don’t care if they call it a building, a vehicle or a spaceship, that’s their concern.
‘‘Every time we go back, we see a new person with a new list of things to do and more to pay. I asked for a ball-park figure, they said it would be anywhere from $3000 to $30,000.
‘‘The first time I spoke with them it was a certificate of acceptance. Now it’s this resource consent, maybe a resource consent every time we move . . .’’
Tasman district councillors recently decided to ask the Government for better alignment of the resource management and building acts.
King says shared terminology in the acts would help reduce some of the ‘‘pretty much weekly’’ challenges councils face with interpreting and applying regulations to tiny homes.
‘‘If national legislation was at least aligned, it would make all councils’ jobs easier and provide more certainty for people.’’