Sheffield wants to make it easy to have a "tiny house" to help ease a housing crisis

Dec 23, 2023

Reporter

A man sits outside his tiny home in South Carolina. The tiny home movement is gaining traction to both solve community housing scarcity and expense as well as provide a simpler, downsized lifestyle.

SHEFFIELD — Looking to provide affordable housing options and attract younger residents, officials are trying to make it easy to have a "tiny house" in town either alone on a slice of land or in a backyard.

Planning Board Vice Chair Robert Cooper drafted the proposed tiny house bylaw that is up for a public hearing on March 22 in person only at Town Hall.

If approved, the bylaw will head to Annual Town Meeting on May 1 for a vote by residents.

An example of a tiny home.

As long as they comply with all other zoning regulations, and a standardized set of tiny house regulations adopted by the state, the bylaw would allow people to build what are called "tiny homes" or "tiny houses" as permanent or secondary residences or on the same lot as a primary home as an "ADU" or accessory dwelling unit.

It also would not require the homes to hook into sewer or septic systems, which would allow for compostable toilets that the town health and building officials would regulate.

The proposed bylaw, which defines a tiny house as having a total floor area of no more than 400 square feet, doesn't require the home to be built on a permanent foundation. It can also be placed on an anchored trailer bed.

Iowa Cubs pitcher Trevor Clifton in 2019 outside the tiny house he built with his father.

Tiny homes are growing in popularity as an affordable way to live and as an option to solve larger community housing problems. It also is a social movement to downsize and simplify.

In the Berkshires and particularly South County, rentals are scarce and what is available is beyond the reach of most. Add a tight and expensive real estate market and cost-of-living hikes and it has morphed into a crisis.

Town officials are busy trying to come up with solutions.

Great Barrington's Affordable Housing Trust, for instance, is also in the early stages of exploring the concept to provide assistance in financing tiny homes for existing homeowners as a possible way to help create more housing and generate income for homeowners.

Sheffield's Cooper, known as "Robbie," said many towns and cities still have tiny house regulations that force them to have a septic system, for instance. A compostable toilet removes thousands from building costs.

"That saves you 30 grand," Cooper said.

Many other municipalities also don't allow tiny houses as single family homes, he found in his research. In Sheffield, tiny houses weren't on the chart for what is allowed.

The website, "The Tiny Life," has a guide to having a tiny house in Massachusetts. It lists some tiny house builders in the state — one is in North Adams. And it lists only Northampton, Auburn and Pembroke as "Tiny House Friendly Cities" in terms of regulations.

A cluster of tiny houses. Sheffield is eyeing a proposed bylaw that would make it easier to build and own tiny houses.

Cooper sees an opportunity for the town to strip away obstacles.

"We want to lure that young person who might say, ‘Oh, do I put a tiny house in Egremont, Great Barrington, Canaan, Conn., or Sheffield — oh wait — Sheffield has an actual specific tiny house bylaw so they’re actually encouraging it."

An acre of land in Sheffield can be found for about $30,000, Cooper said. Add $60,000 to $80,000 for the house and it is possible to start building equity for less than $200,000, he added.

Cooper looks back to when he was younger and could afford to buy a house in the county. It's different now.

"It's crazy that somebody who is working a full-time job, they literally have no options as far as getting something in that sort-of sub-$300,000 range."

With tiny homes he envisions a range of possibilities. A farm putting in housing for its workers, for instance; a community for seniors aging in place, as another town official suggested to him.

So far the Select Board is supportive, Cooper said.

"They want to jump on this," he said, noting that Select Board Chair Rene Wood, for example, has been "really hustling to get grants for housing."

"We want to have it out there to the public that Sheffield is really encouraging the tiny homes as single family dwellings," he said.

Heather Bellow can be reached at [email protected] or

413-329-6871.

Some think 20 homes is too much on that parcel off Route 41/North Plain Road. Others think there should have been 30.

A restaurant owner, a school principal, a farmer and others say Egremont is in trouble if the housing situation doesn't change.

Reporter

Heather Bellow, a member of the investigations team, joined The Eagle in 2017. She is based in the South Berkshire County bureau in Great Barrington. Her work has appeared in newspapers across the U.S.