TINY HOUSES ARE A BIG DEAL
A couple who’d hoped to get city approval Thursday to live in their self-built “tiny house” decided to pull their request for a zoning change — because the issue is bigger than their lone 340-square-foot home.
Britni and Justin Portrey’s proposal before the Oklahoma City Planning Commission would have designated their 2-acre parcel as a campground, apparently because such zoning is the closest that city housing ordinances allow for considering tiny houses.
They decided to pull the request after zoning and code officials indicated the city is moving toward a more holistic approach in response to the tiny house movement, Britni Portrey said.
David Adcock, manager of Oklahoma City’s Development Center, said officials were looking at the big picture when it comes to tiny houses.
“The city expects to adopt new building codes in the next six months to year. Homes as small as 200 square feet will be a part of that,” he said. “We also plan to update our zoning codes, but that will be a longer process.”
Britni Portrey said she was relieved.
“Though we would have made some progress towards our city becoming more tiny-homes-onwheels friendly had the Planning Commission passed our application,” she posted in a blog, “the ordinance would have been unfortunately limited to our 2 acres.
“Any other family wanting to live tiny and on wheels on their property would have had to go through exactly the same strenuous process we went through. This solution is equivalent to awkwardly fitting funky and cute round pegs (tiny homes on wheels) into a triangle hole (OKC’s current zoning and code laws).”
In an earlier blog, she explained how she and her husband learned the hard way, starting late last year, that they couldn’t simply build a tiny house and move in, even on their own property.
“Well, the hubs and I have been meeting with the Zoning, Codes, Planning and Sustainability departments for a few months now. Our problem is, after our initial meeting in November, Justin and I bought a piece of property in OKC limits with what we thought was the city’s two thumbs up,” she wrote. “Only now we have found that the city doesn’t support our THOW (tiny home on wheels).
“Through trial and
error with the permit office and meeting after meeting, we are realizing it is so much harder to live legally in our newly built home on wheels than we initially thought.”
That was in early August. In early September, she wrote, hope for a resolution was high because some people at City Hall were “totally in agreement with what we are trying to do,” although some weren’t: “‘Do you intend to create a hippie compound with this property?’ Yes, that is an exact quote.”
By this week, Britni Portrey’s blog and a Facebook event, “Tiny
House Zoning Meeting with OKC City Planning Commission,” had attracted enough attention that a crowd of supporters was expected at Thursday’s meeting. More than 100 Facebook users had clicked on “Going” and 855 had clicked on “Interested.”
“The part I am most bummed about is not being able to meet all of you this Thursday and experience our mutual excitement for THOWs in our city,” she wrote in a blog post encouraging people to contact officials to update laws and ordinances to accommodate tiny houses.
“I was looking forward to getting to know my fellow OKC tiny home on wheels lovers and thank each of you for how encouraging you have been.
“Even though we are not meeting, our journey is not over! As we meet with city officials, one of the biggest concerns is that OKC is going to put an immense amount of work into a jurisdiction that would legalize THOWs only to find there is no interest in the movement. How crazy is it to think that Oklahoma isn’t completely smitten with tiny homes on wheels??”