The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gwinnett follows DeKalb’s lead with tiny home project
MicroLife Institute hopes to build second community.
When Rich Pasenow moved into a tiny home in 2021, he looked for the smallest available option — 250 square feet.
“I was by myself, I owned literally nothing,” said Pasenow, who had been living with friends before moving into the tiny home. “I wanted, really, the affordability factor.
“I wanted the most affordable one. But I wanted my own house,” he said.
In 2019, Georgia’s first tiny home community, The Cottages on Vaughan, was approved by the city of Clarkston in DeKalb County, and people were moving in to the eight-home community by 2021.
Today, each original owner still lives there.
The MicroLife Institute, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that built The Cottages on Vaughan, is now partnering with the Gwinnett Housing Corp. on a new tiny home community in Gwinnett County.
Officials say tiny home communities are a way of addressing affordable housing shortages, an acute problem in Gwinnett.
The Gwinnett tiny homes will be slightly larger at 750 square feet.
They will be similar to cottage-style homes, and priced for families earning
up to 80% of the area median income — about $65,000 for a family of two.
The location for the Gwinnett project has not been selected yet, but Lejla Prljaca, the Gwinnett Housing Corp. CEO, hopes to have a spot decided in about three months.
The number of homes in the neighborhood will depend of the size of the lot.
“While this is definitely an exciting and trendy project, we still have a long way to go to address the needs of everybody across the entire spectrum of the housing needs,” Prljaca said.
“Not everybody’s needs are going to be served by tiny homes.”
In the Clarkston neighborhood, most of the homes are about 500 square feet.
The demographics are varied, said Will Johnston, founder and executive director of the MicroLife Institute.
“We’ve got quite a diverse group of neighbors ranging
from 26 to 63” years of age, Johnston said.
None of the homes have driveways. Instead, there’s a community parking lot at the front of the neighborhood.
Each house faces another and has a big porch. Vegetable gardens travel along the gravel sidewalk throughout the neighborhood.
Pasenow said living in the community, in a $112,000 home, has helped him save money.
His electric bill is low, about $15 per month, thanks to solar panels on the roof.
Johnston, who lives in one of the homes, hopes that the neighborhood can be replicated in Gwinnett, with slightly larger homes.
“We are going to be one of the first projects like this in Gwinnett,” Johnston said.
“What I’m asking is people see the benefit of community, and designing and building in a way and living in a way that actually connects us as humans.”