I know several of you wanted to attend our March meetup but weren't able to for one reason or another. I promised that I'd write up a summary of the important points we discussed, but to be perfectly honest, we spent a lot of time just chatting and I didn't actually take notes, so this summary may not be what you were hoping for. My bad. I will do a better job of documenting our next meeting.
But basically, here's what you missed:
On March 9, we met at the Millcreek Community Center. We began with a few introductions. Most of our group are interested in tiny houses and would love to move into one someday but haven't yet because of financial, legal, or other issues. There were a few attendees already living tiny or currently building. And there were one or two folks who were just dipping their toes in the tiny house waters. I hope we didn't scare them off.
Since I introduced myself there, at this point, I should probably introduce myself here on the blog. My name is Heidi and I recently took over as one of the admins on the Utah Tiny Homes Community Facebook page. I learned about tiny houses about five years ago and have been following the movement ever since, waiting for the day when I could go tiny. Recently I put in a deposit on a tiny house shell that will be ready in August, and I'm super excited about finishing it off and living in it. If you're interested, feel free to check out my tiny house blog or my personal blog. I look forward to meeting as many of you as I can and helping you learn more about tiny housing.
Anyway, back to the meeting. We spent a few minutes talking as a whole group about general issues facing the tiny house movement in Utah, including parking options and restrictions in Salt Lake and the surrounding area. Though there's still some confusion about specific areas, there are a few things we know:
1. Accessory dwelling units are acceptable, but only near trax stations.
2. Summit County is the only nearby area in which you can camp out in your tiny house year round.
3. There are several RV parks in the area (some are nicer than others), and quite a few of them will welcome tiny housers
4. It sounds like Pleasant Grove is accepting tiny houses as additional units on single-family zoned properties.
5. There's a prominent tiny houser in the area (whose name I've forgotten--comment below if you know it) who owns property in Draper that is already zoned for a mobile home park, but he is attempting to convince the city to accept tiny houses there instead.
6. There's an RV park in between Park City and Salt Lake City that is selling its lots, and the park is open to tiny houses
Around this point we found out that several members of our group had wound up in a room adjacent to our meeting space. When they realized that we were actually in a different location and joined us, our numbers swelled to around thirty people. It was exciting to see how many people actually made the time to attend.
Shortly after that we broke into smaller groups to chat more informally about our tiny house plans and specific issues that we're passionate about. A couple of groups concentrated on legal actions and how to push those efforts. Other groups talked about design, minimalism, flexibility, financing, and other reasons we like tiny houses.
We also passed around a signup sheet to join a Yahoo group. If you're interested in joining that and receiving updates via email, please message us on Facebook or comment below and we will get you in touch with the person handling that.
In general, I felt like it was a great meeting. We all know that there will be challenges in our way as we try to legalize tiny living in Utah and educate others about its benefits. But we also recognized that we have strength in numbers and that together we can accomplish a lot more than we'd be able to do alone.
Thanks to those who attended. And for those who couldn't make it, we hope you'll join us at our next meeting, which is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, April 9. The location for that meeting is still to be decided, but I'm thinking it will probably be somewhere in the South Jordan/Draper area. Stay tuned for more info to come soon or subscribe to our Facebook events so you'll never miss another invite.
No comments:
Post a Comment