Tiny homes, big dreams: Downsizing the good life.
In his 1979 ‘Short History of America’, cartoonist Robert Crumb captured the transformative process of property development from pre-settlement to postmodernity in 12 comic frames. In contrast to the simple, green pastures of the introductory frame; the conclusive graphic presents a busy car-filled street, high-density housing, a car park, convenience store, power lines, streetlights and signage directing citizens to ‘stop’, ‘wait’ and ‘shop’. In 1997, Crumb added three potential futures: ecological obliteration, technological advancement or environmental sustainability made possible by simple living. Dubbed an ‘ecotopia’, Crumb visually captured the collective notion of ‘the good life’ in the final frame.
ARC Future Fellow, Fiona Allon, argues that after the Second World War ‘the good life’ was characterised by owning a home, raising a family, and benefiting from reliable employment. Jumping ahead, 2005 saw the biggest “worldwide rise in housing prices” in history. Throughout 2008’s Global Financial Crisis, Lifestyle TV continued to promote home ownership in a climate of housing unaffordability and insecure employment. Property and renovation TV programs (such as Logie-award winning ‘The Block’) proliferated screens and imparted investment advice, renovation tips and property market analysis onto engaged citizens.
Instead of rejecting home ownership as a pillar of ‘the good life’, a compromised ideology was formed through the ‘tiny house movement’. In a 2018 study, sociologists Severin Mangold and Toralf Zschau found that the majority of individuals who had invested in tiny homes had suffered significant financial hardship. American scholar Lauren Berlant writes that “cruel optimism” is when something desired is an obstacle to flourishing. In this example, participants aspired for greater financial autonomy by downsizing their assets and simplifying their lifestyles - an aspiration that, even for a tiny home, requires significant up-front costs that may be detrimental to their long term financial security.
The cruel optimism of home ownership presents several questions. If the affective dimensions of owning a home are negotiating both the idyllic and the unattainable, is it time to rewrite the script for happiness? How is the good life defined when land availability is poor (such as Singapore)? Are there parallels between the tiny home movement and colonialist ideologies? When we define the good life, who do we exclude from this narrative?
