Like The Lucky Penny, most tiny houses in Portland are tucked into backyards. According to zoning code, it appears to be legal parking spot for a non-motorized accessory recreational vehicle and thanks to the stay on tiny house evictions the city won't enforce their regulation that says it's an illegal residential occupancy, but we're not in the clear quite yet...
Well, that was a nice 48 hours of elation before the details came out about Portland's Declared Stay on Tiny House Evictions! Turns out there's a limit of one tiny house or RV per residence, which means no tiny house communities. Oh, sadness!
In a nutshell, while the city is figuring out permanent regulations regarding tiny houses, they won't enforce Title 29.50.050 (which prohibits occupation of recreational vehicles) as long as:
- There's only one tiny house or RV on the property. (Three for businesses, non-profits, and public services.)
- It's located in a legal parking area (which I interpret to mean not in a required parking spot and not between the front lot line and the building line, though this is ambiguous - see detail below.)
- The property owner provides sanitary facilities, electricity, garbage, recycling, and compost (in keeping with the guidelines)
This all sounds great, and it is a great step forward, but there are some unintended consequences, too. Commissioner Chloe Eudaly asked us to come out of the shadows and speak up about tiny houses and I do believe she meant it. But the new guidelines about the stay makes it pretty tempting to duck back under the radar. Some people who either already have a tiny house on their property or occupy a tiny house on wheels either don't understand how the parking guidelines apply or they have more than one tiny house!
I'm frustrated and disappointed that the guidelines are being created to appease NIMBY concerns without a community engagement process that involves tiny house people. However, I'm still optimistic. I do recognize the reasons behind many of the concerns and I think they can (and should) be addressed. I, too, want people to be safe and healthy! I'm still hopeful that as the regulations are worked out there can be a way to accommodate tiny houses as a housing option AND a way to create tiny house communities legally. So until I hear about an opportunity to rally Portland tiny housers to talk to the City, I'm going to speak up about the guidelines here on the blog.
Let's take a look at the new enforcement guidelines, available in a posting called City to allow RVs, tiny homes on wheels on private property with conditions, where it states: "BDS staff will use the following guidelines to continue to uphold safety and health standards aimed at protecting occupants of tiny homes and RVs as well as residents and neighbors:"
For properties with Single Family Structures or Duplexes, "property owner and tenant may grant permission for one vehicle for sleeping."
Seems simple enough, right? Well sort of. First of all, it's awesome that we could have a tiny house or RV for every residence in Portland. It's not practical or realistic, of course, but imagine for just a moment the possibility of nearly doubling the number of housing units in the city with this one sentence of the stay! According to the Census Bureau web page about Portland, there were around 265,000 households in Portland in 2010. Many of those households live in apartments of course, but it's now 7 years later and even though we haven't kept up with the demand for housing (and much of the new development has been apartments and condos which don't have land to share with tiny houses and RVs), there are more houses now than there were 7 years ago. So let's just say there are 150,000 houses in Portland. If we added a 1-2 person tiny home (or RV) to each one, we could house about 200,000 people in short order!
Unfortunately, the limitation of one tiny house per residence doesn't make sense in neighborhoods like ours where the lots are huge! Our tiny house community, Going Places, is on an average-sized lot. (This is the reason we only have two tinies: we certainly get lots of people inviting themselves to live here, but we just don't have room for more than two tinies!) But the other tiny house communities that I'm aware of in our neighborhood have gargantuan lots so it makes sense to have 3-4 tinies houses there. Despite The Many Benefits of Tiny House Community, the city still isn't on board with creating them, which is a huge bummer! As I talk with tiny house people across the country, the only thing better than tiny houses is tiny house community! It's such a natural next step that many people (myself included) believe they Invented Tiny House Community until they realize other people have been thinking about it (and doing it!) for a long time! (Meanwhile, businesses, churches, and even public entities can host up to 3 tiny homes or RVs! I only know a couple situations where that's happening currently, so it will be interesting to see what develops there!)
Second, the guidelines state that for properties with Single Family Structures or Duplexes, "Vehicles must be located in legal parking areas on the property. (meet Zoning Code requirements)."
This is an interesting one because with my Masters in Urban Planning and a focus on Land Use, I've spent a lot of time curled up with the zoning code and I still find this confusing! Last night I got out the code book again to suss out the new guidelines. (All of this is familiar, by the way, because I found it while I was doing research for a paper in grad school, Skeletons in the Code Closet. I just realized I never did post that, so I'll try to get to that soon.)
So let's take a look at what makes a legal parking spot. From what I can tell from 33.266.110 Minimum Required Parking Spaces, section B1a1 and Table 266-2, if a single family home is less than 1500 feet from a transit stop (or 500 feet from a frequent service transit stop) there's no off-street parking requirement. Since our place is a little further from a bus stop we are required to have one off-street parking spot for residents. Of course, many households do have an off-street parking spot in a driveway or garage, even if they're not required to. Fortunately, we do have an off-street parking spot.
According to 33.266.120 Development Standards for Houses and Duplexes, D1: "A parking space must be at least 9 feet by 18 feet" and E1 Paving: "Generally. All driveways and parking areas must be paved.," (which is a bummer because permeable surfaces are more environmentally-friendly!)
However, 33.266.120 Development Standards for Houses and Duplexes, E2b also notes there are exceptions, one of which is that "Utility trailers and non-motorized accessory recreational vehicles may be stored on unpaved surfaces. A gravel surface is not required." Tiny houses on wheels are non-motorized, so according to this current parking regulation in the zoning code they don't need to be on a paved surface.
Furthermore, according to, 33.266.150 Vehicles in Residential Zones, E: "Utility trailers and accessory recreational vehicles may not be parked or stored in required parking spaces. Utility trailers and accessory recreational vehicles may be parked in other allowed parking areas, except they may not be parked or stored between the front lot line and the building line." So, based on this one, if a property is required to have an off-street parking spot, the tiny house or RV can't occupy it and a tiny house or RV can't be stored between the front lot line (often the edge of the street) and the building line (often 10'-15'), so not right at the front of the property.
Therefore, if I'm interpreting it correctly, according to current Portland Zoning Code, a legal parking area for a non-motorized accessory recreational vehicle (like a Tiny House on Wheels) would be just about anywhere on the property. That's a great relief since most tiny houses are tucked into backyards. But I'm not entirely sure that's what they meant by it! When we parked tiny houses in both the tiny house communities I've lived in we followed the setback requirements for ADUs to make sure we weren't encroaching on neighbors. We've added vegetation, screening, and window films, too, to create privacy both ways. And, of course, we keep the music reasonable, respect quiet hours, and make a point to get to know our neighbors. We want to be good neighbors any which way. We live here and we love it here!
Meanwhile, let's turn to the general requirements for all overnight sleeping arrangements from the guidelines:
Sanitation
Property owner shall make available sanitary facilities.
Options include using sanitary facilities within the structure, pumping holding tanks off-site or having vendor pump out holding tank, or permitting and installing a legal sanitary dump station on site.
Portable toilets (with ongoing service and maintenance) are only allowed at non-residential properties.
No surprises there, of course! It makes perfect sense that the city would require that sanitary facilities be provided. In many cases tiny house dwellers use the facilities in the host building, though there are some who have blackwater holding tanks and have them pumped. (And this is super common for RVs since they're got blackwater holding tanks and RV style flush toilets built in usually!) I don't yet know anyone who has installed a legal sanitary dump station on-site though people have been talking about this option for years.
Electrical
Property owner shall make available electrical connections.
Options include extension cords from an approved outlet in the home or permitting and installing a pedestal for plug in.
No hard connections are allowed.
Use of generators is not allowed.
Property owner shall subscribe to and pay for garbage, recycling, and composting service.
Again, it's good to see that the city has thought though the importance of making electricity available in safe ways and it's nice that generators aren't allowed within the city. And, of course, access to garbage, recycling, and Portland's awesome curbside compost program is important. And it makes sense that they'd also remind us that the City "may enforce Title 29.50.050 if it determines that the camping activity on the property constitutes a nuisance or other threat to the public welfare."
So that's how I see it. I'll keep posting updates here as I learn them. Stay tuned!