hey guys jenna here welcome to my channel where i feature unique and tiny home tours
and feature stories of people living alternatively i've published several tiny house village tours on
this channel and i even lived in one for over a year and i found that no matter if they're
located in the mountains or on the beach if there's four tiny homes in the village or 40
they all seem to have one thing in common all of these communities seem to have the same
challenging origin story they all struggled to get legally approved and permitted that
was the story i always heard until i came across escalante tiny house village in durango colorado
in today's video we're going to meet the owner who also happens to be a former city councilman
he's going to tell us how he's changing the local perception of what affordable housing
and tiny house villages can really be if you like these kind of videos make sure to
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make this house
i just bought this property as kind of an investment i've been doing real estate here and
i'm one of those people that wake up in the middle of the night and think too much i just started
researching tiny homes and somehow those two things connected and i thought i wanted to look
into doing tiny homes on that piece of property that i had bought about two years earlier doing
things differently it's part of me on the county commission i was affordable housing advocate and
started some programs to help affordable housing they're still in place in this community it just
resonated both with what i feel philosophically for the community as well as something fun to do
called one of the planners i knew at the city and i told her i said
you know the property that i have out there i'm thinking of doing a tiny home community
on that piece of property unlike many cities and many jurisdictions durango's
response on that phone call was boy do we want to talk to you
along with the idea of going to government officials in the community you've got to
look to see if you're capable of financing you know it was a lot of work believe me
to get it because it still was new still not understood a lot of banks won't touch
mobile homes or tiny homes and i don't get it why banks won't loan on this other than
the risk that it will disappear in the middle of the night or it might attract a certain type
of people that can't afford more i don't agree with that people didn't realize their uniqueness
their inherent beauty the creativity and what they can look like when cloistered together
the business model for the most part was that that matched same as a mobile home part you know it had
its own different idiosyncrasies but using that as a model the problem was in durango it never
had a new mobile home park that went through the planning process so not only was there not much
in the code there isn't a lot of experience that a planner can say oh well we know this works and
that doesn't work and we like this and we don't like that so we kind of grew together it was
very much a highly scrutinized project even though the city was behind this they wanted to make sure
from their aspect we did it right i bought six tiny homes from two different manufacturers and
brought them to durango before the construction started so the community could go through them and
see what that all involved and had an open house the important piece was that at the
government level durango was exceptionally open to doing this that's how this place came to be
this village where it is is incredibly good there is commercial space within walking distance here
you gotta have a coffee shop nearby and so you're right there the next big amenity right here is the
river trail we've got a mountain to look at across the way what other kind of experience
can you imagine to live in a tiny home village the beauty of it is rural type existence in a
metropolitan area i had a dream that we lived in a tiny home village talk about
like just a vine timing and a divine dream to come because i woke up and i was like there is
a tiny home village that's being developed here we looked at the website to get more
information about you know how do you get a spot that kind of stuff and inquired about it
that day they said well actually we just had a spot open a lady backed out we officially made
the decision put down an application and deposit and the spot was ours is a huge challenge in the
tiny house community to find counties and cities that have coding that's favorable towards that
everybody came in here originally pays 500 a month for their space plus utilities they sign up
with the local power company for power themselves with regards to the other utilities we have water
from the city we have sewer locally and then we have trash recycle all those things i divide
that number by 24 for 24 spaces and each of them reimburse me 1 24th of those items
i cater to two people people that have a tiny home and want a place to put it and i cater to people
that where i own a tiny home and want to rent them one i believe that this has a place for housing
for people that can't afford you know a six seven hundred thousand dollar house which is like a
normal run here now and lets people live also in a manner which they think is more sustainable type
living for people that believe that we should have a smaller footprint more and more people
are becoming aware of these and i think government entities will embrace them in the future if they
have their eyes open it's been highly successful as a community people they do things for each
other they look out after each other and that's wonderful it's the way life should be
if you liked this video make sure to check out my playlist for more affordable housing options
and tours of tiny house communities and i will see you soon with another unique or tiny home tour
you