Tiny homes promise to solve Colorado’s big housing problems—but only if we find a way to make them fit in.

By Toni McLellan

Hunter Buffington lives off the grid in Larimer County, Colorado near Fort Collins. “I’d love to tell you where we’re based, but it’s technically illegal,” she says. The PR and event production manager lives with her husband and son in a converted bus dubbed The Rebel Ant. “She’s a rebel because she doesn’t follow the other ants in the colony,” says Buffington of her home on wheels. An advocate for the tiny house movement, Buffington is also breaking rank by living independently in an area where affordable housing and increasing population density are serious issues.

With five TV shows devoted to them so far, the tiny house trend is lighting up cable, blogs, YouTube channels and Instagram feeds dedicated to aspirational simple living. Typically described as a dwelling space of 400 square feet or less, with some mounted on travel trailers, these adorable cottages and the freedoms they represent have captured our hearts and Pinterest boards. But popularity doesn’t necessarily translate to practicality, which raises the question: Who’s living tiny in Colorado—and is it working?

An inside look at the world of Alexis Stephens and Christian Parsons of Tiny House Expedition, a popular blog about their full-time tiny-house travels.

While the tiny-house trend began in part as a way to be location-independent, Alexis Stephens of Tiny House Expedition, a popular blog, describes herself as “one of a very small subset of full-time traveling tiny house homeowners.” Stephens and her partner, Christian Parsons aka #teamtinyx, live the prototypical tiny-house-on-wheels (“THOWs” in tiny-speak) nomadic existence touted early on in the movement. The documentary filmmakers have been on the road for nearly three years, logging more than 40,000 miles. The website is their primary source of income, along with freelance photography, blogging and speaking gigs, says Stephens. “It doesn’t pay well, but so far we’ve been able to keep ourselves going, and it’s been great.”

Aside from location independence, downsizing and simplifying are big reasons many people decide to build a tiny house. Holly Cook spent childhood summers in beachside cottages on the California coast, so downsizing to a custom-designed 400-square-foot tiny house made sense to her. Cook and her husband Bruce run Riverview RV Park and Campground in Loveland, which welcomes tiny houses on wheels that hook up to water and electricity. “Bigger houses never appealed to me,” she says.

Hunter Buffington is motivated in part due to affordability. “Sometimes people assume we went tiny because we’re poor, when in fact, it’s the opposite,” she says. She and her husband both have student loans and found themselves earning too much to qualify for loan programs and not enough to qualify for a conventional mortgage. “Then we’d be spending all our time paying that mortgage and keeping up with the house.”

John and Leslie Marcantonio know all about keeping up with a large house and mortgage. “We both work full time and we don’t want to spend our weekends cleaning toilets, vacuuming and mowing,” says Leslie Marcantonio. The couple live in a tiny house while renting out their 2,500-square-foot house in Longmont, which will allow them to pay off that house and retire with more financial security. If living tiny doesn’t suit them, Leslie says, they can always return to their larger home.

When asked what types of people are attracted to tiny houses, Kenyon Waugh, self-described “Wee-EO” of WeeCasa Tiny House Resort in Lyons, says, “There isn’t a single demographic; it’s a psychographic.” In other words, the “why” defines the “who.” Rod Stambaugh, founder and owner of Sprout Tiny Homes in Pueblo says baby boomers are his number-one customer. “They’ve had the big house, the monstrosity, the kids are gone, and they’re ready to downsize instead of seeing their retirement dollars evaporate on utilities and upkeep,” he says. “They’d rather spend their money on travel.”

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