In my dream, I’m building something out of stones. They are uneven and craggy, the kind I’d admire at the wall of a very old building. Other women are simultaneously working. We aren’t quite doing it together, but we are building something, these friends and I, alongside one another, and we are each working towards the same sort of object.
It is a chimney out of stones. And as we build more, lifting, hefting and scraping these stones into place, the thing becomes more obvious: we are each building a hearth. It is the centre of the house. The heart of the home.
We are each building a hearth and a chimney.
I am about to sign a contract and set up a dwelling that is 6 metres long and 2.5 metres wide: a “tiny house” to some folks. To others, a shack, a shed, a cabin. The contract and set-up of this tiny dwelling will cost me every penny I have from a divorce which saw a house divided. Yet I feel more powerful and sovereign than ever. My daughter is thriving. I’m clawing my way out of a dark night of the soul, but I’m also empathetically aware of the precarity and vulnerability of the larger portion of the population. I am now part of that, too: people trying to creatively, inexpensively create homes for themselves and their children.
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Women and children disproportionately bear the burden of the housing crisis in Tasmania (where I live) and in Australia. Women are experiencing homelessness at rapidly increasing rates, and according to the census from June 2024, there are 1.2 million one-parent families in Australia, 78% of which are single-mother families. While I do hold particular empathy for mothers of young children who are trying to make themselves a home, I advocate for solutions to all types of housing crises. Rent is one of the main reasons I am choosing to move and “live tiny”; to minimise my overheads and be more available for my daughter.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the concept of security is a fantasy we sell ourselves. Adaptability is a much wiser approach. I thought I had a family home for me, my husband and my child, and that got blown out of the water with head-spinning rapidity. The concept of living in a dwelling which I own, which sits lightly on the land and can be moved if necessary: land that is owned by a woman, with whom I have good communication, and with whom I have a contract, is my next experiment.
There is a network of tiny house dwellers in this part of the world, all of whom are figuring out ways to live with creativity, sovereignty and affordability. It is a cultural underground; a resistance, a community-led solution to the housing crisis. These folks are interested in living lightly on the earth, gardening, serving their community and generally making the world a better place. They are also able to think of these things because they aren’t drowning in debt. Some of them are creatively working to build their own tiny homes, so that they can have a safe sanctuary in which to rest, sleep, cook and live, sometimes with children, sometimes with partners and sometimes solo.
If I hadn’t seen women in my community creating these homes, I don’t know if I would have taken the leap. When you’ve become a single mum the way I have, with the small amount of money I have; when you know you won’t be leaving anytime soon, due to the complexities of co-parenting, you decide that tiny house dwelling is not wrong by any means. In fact, it is perhaps the most moral of choices.
It is the system, which can frequently and confusedly treat these abodes as “against council regulations”, that desperately needs to change. In news that surprises no one, those who already have wealth and resources benefit, while those without will not. And it’s clear to anyone willing to look outside of individualist systems of capitalism, which funnel money towards the top: the banks are talking about loans and mortgages in order to continue making money for the banks. They aren’t interested in helping people havehomes. This system wants people in debt, which is directly antagonistic to autonomy and wellbeing. A “lack of housing supply” is a lie, because “housing” can come in many forms, if only it would be allowed to do so.
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Tiny houses are a huge movement in the US and New Zealand; they fly under the radar in Australia because, legally, they must. And if tiny houses are somehow seen as a threat to wealth-holding landlords, that too, is ridiculous: people like me aren’t going to buy a house anyway. Living in a tiny house isn’t stopping me from getting a mortgage and becoming a wage-slave for the rest of my life. Living in a tiny house is preventing me and my toddler from becoming homeless, while some portions of the population hoard holiday rentals and penthouse apartments (and should be taxed accordingly).
Australia needs to modernise and humanise its thinking around the concept of property. Yes, Australia has a good system of social welfare, but riddle me this – would you prefer that Centrelink help cover my unaffordable rent? Or would you prefer I not claim anything, because I have efficiently solved the housing crisis for myself?
If the government upholds unaffordable houses, unaffordable rents, and then wonders at tax dollars going to Centrelink, it’s a system in which no one wins. Yet surely my toddler and I benefit if I can provide her with a safe, warm, clean, beautiful tiny home: a home that is ours.
Kelley Swain works in the field of medical and health humanities. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania, working on a project about poetry and motherhood