Subject: Re: tiny house

From: [email-masked]
Date: 2 Aug 1995 11:34:59 -0500

In my opinion, if the goal is efficiency, we should not be encouraging single
person households.  Single person households are inherently inefficient and
anti-social.

In my opinion the minimal 'efficient' household is four persons.

There are many parts of a 'house' which can be easily shared by multiple
people, ie kitchen, bath, 'social space', workshop space, which are
spaces/functions which cost a lot of money to fully outfit for their functions.

Undoubtedly, individuals need 'private' space which is their's and the can
customize it to suit themselves, and invite and exclude others when and who
they wish.  But, I submit that this private space need not be all the
acutrements necessary for a household.

There is also the question of whether individual homes would fullfill the
social needs of humans.  Personally I find the very name of *apart*ments pretty
gloomy.  I much prefer the 'tiny house' + common space as designed in
co-housing arrangments.

Jim Baranski

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From: [email-masked] (George A. Gleason)
Date: 3 Aug 1995 09:05:14 GMT

I'll resist the urge to flame about social engineering (The
Government/Corporate Council of Economic Gods has decreed that all people
living in single-person households will be taken to a WalMart store for
appropriate re-education!  There, I've said it (duck!)) :)

Personally I prefer living either a) with someone or a group of people I'm
very close to or b) alone.  Living with people I don't have a lot in common
with is the worst kind of torture.  If that makes me an incorrigible fiend,
so be it.  My ecological impact in most ways is actually quite low (if I use
an automobile four days a *month* that's a lot, etc.).

In the near future I'm going to be joining a housing collective of folks
>from  my sustainable community group (Dancing Rabbit).  I'm not planning to
live in the main group house, but in a 2-br flat that's part of the
organisation.  I work largely from home, keep weird hours, and have a couple
of personal vices (pipe tobacco and meat) which I would rather not inflict
on my potential housemates.  I'm an incredibly light sleeper (white noise
*plus* earplugs every night; way sensitive ears, associated with my work in
telecoms which is very auditorally-oriented).  I value my solitude as much
as I value my time with close friends, and need a decent amount of solitude
every day in order to keep my head together from an otherwise too-intense
life.

People vary in their needs for privacy.  Some can conduct a conversation
whilst sitting on the toilet (#2) with the bathroom door wide open.  Some
gladly prance around in the morning in front of their housemates naked with
their hair a mess.  Some don't.  Some would die first.  What is appropriate
to one would be a horror for another.  Some folks like houses with lots of
open spaces and few enclosed spaces.  Some like it the other way, kind of
like a nest with lots of little burrows and places to store acorns for the
winter.  One size doesn't fit all.

Efficiency is a false god.  Ecological sustainability on the other hand is a
vital necessity, but can be met in a number of ways that don't call for
social engineering or at least allow individual variation.  For example,
auto racing isn't a sin compared to commuting by car without thinking about
it.  The auto racer at least is making a deliberate choice based on a clear
set of personal and subcultural values, and the number of people who enjoy
racing is small enough that the world can probably afford to keep them in
petroleum for a long time (as with artists who use chemical paints etc.).
The person who commutes by car because s/he has a real need for the car
during the day i.e. field sales or on-site work, can probably be
accommodated.  The person who commutes by car out of a need to have some
personal space for relaxation can probably be persuaded to switch to another
method (train etc.) if there's another outlet for personal solitude and
relaxation (i.e. perhaps even more private space & a way of getting others
to respect it for some period every day; "Daddy's going in to meditate now,
don't bug him...").  The person who commutes by car out of sheer laziness or
some equivalent, is by far the majority, and these are the ones who are
running the planet downhill.  Since they're basically not making a
deliberate choice, they'd be easy enough to get into public transit if it
went where they needed to go.

So it goes with housing and all the rest.

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From: [email-masked]
Date: 6 Aug 1995 22:02:20 GMT

Amen, brudder...