Parking

Finding parking was a huge piece of the 'tiny-house puzzle' for us. Naturally, we were terrified that we'd get our house built and end up with nowhere to put it. We imagined showing up in Portland with nowhere to land, and having to park in a Walmart parking lot until we figured it out (a viable, but not very appealing "Plan B"). The reality, however, turned out to be quite different.

Several months ahead of time we began putting out the word that we needed parking for our future home. We hit social media sites like facebook asking people to keep an ear out, we asked friends back in Portland to post flyers, and we crossed our fingers... crickets...

So we started digging a little deeper. We discovered a small, but wonderful website specifically catered to tiny-housers like us: TinyHouseListings.com. We posted a "parking wanted" ad and waited. We also posted to the Portland group on Couchsurfing.org- a website that we use often and which has a generally open-minded community of members.

Our Couchsurfing post got a surprising number of responses, and within a few days we had several people lined up to meet with when we visited Portland! We were shocked by people's enthusiasm and openness to the idea, and were relieved that it was looking like we wouldn't have to resort to the dreaded Plan B.

It took time, but we also eventually got a couple of offers from TinyHouseListings as well. The wonderful thing about this site is that people can also choose to post ads for tiny house parking that they have available, which allows those searching to be a little bit more pro-active in finding a spot.

In the end, we had twice as many parking spots to choose from as we had tiny-houses. We ended up landing in an incredible 1/2 backyard in NE Portland, where we lived successfully in our home for a little less than a year. The owners of the space were hoping to start a small tiny-house community, but never managed to get it off the ground. When they decided to sell we had to find a new spot to park our home and ended up purchasing a small house with a big back yard in South Portland and parking our tiny house there.

Upon moving our Vagabode to it's current space, we came up against a not-so-happy neighbor and subsequently some zoning issues with the city which, sadly, prevented us from continuing to live in our tiny house (for now). Although being here isn't exactly what we had in mind, we've created a wonderful community of like-minded people and have continued to learn and grow in new and exciting ways! Though things have shifted considerably for us--our vision for our life is ever-evolving--we continue to live small, and dream BIG! We are still seeking a larger community, and are currently focusing our energies on developing a small homesteading community outside of Portland (and it's nosey neighbors and zoning issues) where we plan to return to living in the Vagabode. If you're interested in learning more about the intentional community we are working to create, please feel free to message us!

5 comments:

  1. I've enjoyed your blog so far and I *definitely* want to hear more about your tiny house community!
    I plan to build this summer and have a parking place worked out, but it may not be a forever place.
    If you are forming a mailing list for this, please put me on it!

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  2. Hello,
    My husband I are researching building a tiny home, and our biggest hold back is finding somewhere to plant ourselves. I've read about Jay Schafer's tiny house village projected to open in 2015, but we're thinking about building this summer and moving to Portland. I would be very interested in talking about your intentional community.
    : ) Allison

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  3. Hi, my name is Laura and I am interested in joining your community. I don't have a tiny house yet but am planning on building this summer and am looking for both a build site and a live site. They could be the same site or different ones. I'm not sure what type of situation you are open to and where in town you are located so it would be great if you could provide more info. Thanks!

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  4. My husband and I are in the very beginnings of thinking about building a tiny house. His major fear is what you mentioned-building this thing and then having nowhere to put it. We'd like to go to Boulder, but I only have one friend there.

    I'll show him this post to help alleviate some of his worries hopefully...

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  5. Hello! I am new'ish' to the tiny house movement. I am planning on building my tiny house on a trailer and the 'parking' is frightening to me! I currently reside with a mortgage in western Massachusetts but would love to hear how your community is coming. Some ideas I've been throwing around with my tiny house friend (also fairly newbiesque) have been to form a community in Maine. Would love to hear how it's going for you and maybe one day drag my tiny home to your community! You can write to me at spreadablelove [at] ymail [dot] com. In the meantime I'll continue perusing your blog! ~Emily

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