Hey guys, Jenny here and welcome back to my channel.
I have one more video for you this year and I'm really excited about it because
it's a tiny house village.
A lot of the time tiny house villages are built under the radar,
but in today's video you're going to meet a brother and sister duo who have
created Southern California's first legal tiny house
village. Let's go check it out.
John Block and I'm Melissa Block and we've taken a rundown RV park and
transformed it into Southern California's first tiny house village.
I started getting involved with tiny houses on my own personal property at home.
I started with one,
there was one first day on Craigslist and the response when I put it up for rent
was overwhelming.
This is something that people really enjoyed and there was a high demand for it.
So after the first tiny house was so popular,
I decided to get another one and then from there I created a small village of
five tiny houses and we knew we had to expand into something bigger.
And at that point we decided that let's make it official and legal.
And at that time the only legal way to have tiny houses was at an RV park.
So we found a rundown RV park that was in disarray.
We purchased it and slowly began transforming it into something California's
first tiny house village. I was really excited to jump on board with her.
When Melissa had acquired this property, there were 17 RVs,
The park was really run down when we got it.
The previous owner put pretty much his little maintenance as possible to keep it
operating. Most of the RVs that were here were really bad shape.
We got a lot of positive feedback from the local residents saying that we really
cleaned up this place.
There are three ways that people can engage with us.
So one is doing a short term rental. Which starts at a one night minimum.
The other is the extended stay,
which was 30 days or longer and the third is renting space from us to park their
own tiny house.
I'm really excited that direction the village has had and we've received so much
positive feedback,
people thanking us for providing a legal space for people to park.
Before. Up until just recently,
the only legal area to park a tiny house was in an RV park.
People want to be among other tiny houses,
people who share similar beliefs and values about the environment and community.
So we have 17 tiny houses on the property and each one has its own individual
theme and personality.
One of my favorites is the 420 house, which is marijuana themed.
Each of the themes, and we talk about it though,
Melissa is the one who takes the lead on
the decor is really about elevating consciousness. So even the 420 house,
not just about getting stoned and acting stupid,
it's really about raising consciousness.
How will could you have more creative ideas than you would otherwise?
One thing I'm very proud of here is that people do use this as a creative
retreat for themselves.
Just unplugging from their traditional grind and being inspired here.
One thing that we are really drawn to about this project was that it is on the
Pacific crest trail where you really are feeling nature when you're out here.
By having a place where people can go tiny, it's an opportunity for them,
connect a lot more authentically and really make friends for life.
We like to encourage people to hang out with the other guests.
We host community dinners, we also do bonfires every Saturday, you know,
enjoy someone else's company and be more about connecting other people and in
nature.
So welcome to the 420 house. This one is marijuana themed.
One of the many themes that we have here and the inspiration was my college days
at UC Santa Cruz.
So this is the living room here where we have the couch with the fireplace so it
gets cold here during the winter.
This is our kitchen area. We have a microwave,
we have a fridge and toaster oven. Fridge has a retro look to it.
And so I saw these at Home Depot and I just thought they were so cute and
they're the perfect size for the tiny houses.
So I had a lot of fun decorating each of the houses.
I got a lot of the fines at thrift stores. It was just cool just seeing,
Oh look, this will fit here or this matches this theme.
And then as I saw different things,
future themes would kind of come into my head. 420 definitely
one of my favorite ones is one of the first ones that I decorated and we had a
lot of fun shopping around for the different marijuana themed items here I got a
marijuana print rug and then I also have potholders.
People are always pleasantly surprised that we have a themed house of marijuana
and then we also go so far as provide pieces for them to use while they're here.
So we had this tiny house built by our contractor and it measures eight and a
half by 24 feet and it's the shed style roof which allows more head room.
So here we're going to go into the bathroom and we purposely made it really
large and extra spacious because people really like room when they get ready.
And also this is the closet area and storage for anyone that was more of a
longterm tenant. And we do have a marijuana theme, shower curtain.
We decided to do a bathtub cause a lot of people do like bathtubs and also for
longterm if people do have kids, it's a nice feature to have.
Now we're going up into the master loft,
so we're in the master loft here of the 420 house.
Wanted to have mood lighting here so we have the lava lamp and also the party
sign as a courtesy to our guests.
We did provide utensils for them to partake while in the 420 house we also
provided books and puzzles.
Here we have the second sleeping loft and this one's accessed by a ladder and we
have a twin size bed, so this tiny house sleeps three total.
What I hope people take away from this experience is the fun place to get away
and just be in nature and also enjoy the novelty of being in a tiny house.
I think when you consider the alternatives,
it might be renting a cabin out in the word or pitching a tent somewhere,
and my view a tiny house is the coolest.
Okay.
Thanks as always, for watching next year,
I'm going to try to put out a video every Friday,
so make sure to subscribe and hit that bell so that you get a notification every
time I post a new video.