By Deb Barracato // Photography by Bradly J. Boner
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Ski town lore always includes stories of people living in backyard chicken coops or other creatively converted spaces, sometimes without electricity or running water. It’s practically a rite of passage for 20-somethings chasing the ski bum dream to cram into questionable housing with five or six roommates, making do with a bed and makeshift closet and dedicated space on one shelf in the fridge (basically, just enough room for beer).
Nowadays, however, even people of means are choosing alternative housing, whether for freedom from a mortgage, to stick within a budget, or simply because they believe less really is more. Here in the Tetons, modern settlers are living out their dreams in custom digs that could fit into one room of today’s average American house.
“I want to fulfill my life instead of fill my life [with unnecessary stuff],” says Heather Hansen, a web and graphic designer who has lived in 315 square feet for the past seven years with her now 21-year-old son. By focusing on the things that matter to her, she keeps her possessions lean and stocks up on experiences and memories instead.
Hansen lives on the Wyoming side of Teton Pass, but she grew up in Teton Valley, Idaho, and recalls spending hours with her siblings fashioning playhouses out of old chicken coops and haybales and other materials they found in the barn. “I’ve wanted to live like this since I was a little kid,” she says.
Her mom taught her how to draft building plans when she was in high school, so she designed her tiny home to fit on a gooseneck trailer. At 8.5 feet wide, 13.6 feet high, and 37 feet long, it’s essentially a road-legal RV. But the quality of construction and materials matches any well-built conventional home on a foundation, she says. Hansen’s list of must-haves was pretty small, but it did include a bathtub, an art “studio” where she could have easy access to her paints and canvases when inspiration hit, and enough storage for her snowboards and motorcycle gear and other outdoor bits and bobs.
“Everything else that I don’t have room for or isn’t important, I get rid of,” she says.
Fortunately for her son, he was (and still is!) high on her priority list. He can stand in his bedroom, which has enough space for a full-size bed and a desk. His mom, on the other hand, sleeps in a loft with a 4-foot ceiling. But she says it’s perfect for her.
Hansen works from home, with space in the living room serving as her “office.” It might sound cramped to someone used to spreading out among multiple rooms, but she says her home feels expansive because she spends so much time outdoors – a common theme among tiny home dwellers, who often choose a smaller footprint to support a lifestyle filled with recreation.
While her lifestyle does leave her with some non-negotiable chores — she has to fill up her water tank every couple of weeks and regularly deal with the contents of her composting toilet system — Hansen appreciates the flexibility she’s gained, with less pressure to earn and consume and collect.
“I really like the idea of living in a way where you don’t have to have stuff to be successful,” she says. “It’s all about perspective.”
He moved it for the second time after it spent 40 years in a Wilson backyard. Photos by Ryan Dorgan
Ryan Dorgan admits that if he and his wife, Emily Mieure, could have afforded to build bigger, they probably would have done it. “For us, it was never really an explicit goal but just kind of a necessity brought on by the environment we’re living in,” he explains.
Their 336-square-foot cabin made homeownership in the Tetons possible for them, and it was an easy choice of location over potential luxury in a different market. They spent 10 years renting in Jackson, hopping around from one small apartment to another; each time they moved, it felt like they got less space even though rent got more expensive.
“The only reason we were able to make it work here permanently was because we moved away for a year to Indiana,” Dorgan says. “We were able to buy a house, and when [a job] brought us back to Wyoming, things worked in our favor when we sold that house.”
The profit covered the down payment on land in Star Valley, then Dorgan relocated the historic cabin to the property. He had experience with the process of moving houses through his involvement with Shacks on Racks, a company that rescues and repurposes buildings throughout the region that would otherwise be slated for demolition. While few of the other homes he has helped relocate qualify as truly tiny, most were built during a time when Americans had much more modest expectations.
“With Shacks, we help people find land where the covenants will allow them to live smaller,” Dorgan, a licensed realtor, explains. “It’s tricky for people around here who are interested in living in smaller spaces. A lot of us have tighter budgets than the people building in Jackson or Teton County.”
New subdivisions often have more reasonably priced land, with lots for under $100,000, electric-to-lot lines, and private water systems, he explains. “Where they get you is you have to build a 2,400 square foot house. For a lot of people, it’s not only unreasonable, it’s not what they want.”
Although both Teton County, Idaho, and Teton County, Wyoming, building regulations theoretically permit smaller homes, the codes, covenants, and restrictions (CCRs) of most subdivisions require what can be prohibitive square footage minimums. With construction costs topping $1,000 a square foot in many cases, the price tag on a new 1,200 square foot home could easily surpass $1 million, putting it out of reach for most teachers, police officers, and service industry workers
Mike Lien intended to address the discrepancy between the cost of homeownership and average salaries when he decided to develop “workforce housing” in Teton Valley, Idaho, in collaboration with local builder Troy Olson. As director of stream restoration and fisheries research for Friends of the Teton River (FTR), Lien was frustrated because the organization kept losing good staff who just couldn’t afford to live here. His proactive approach led to a block of small homes on Little Avenue between 4th and 5th streets in Driggs.
At 612 and 780 square feet, his two models (2 bed/1 bath and 2 bed/2 bath) don’t fit the standard definition of tiny, which generally gets capped at 400 square feet. But they provide people who might otherwise end up in a condo with an opportunity to own ground — a place where their pets and kids can play, they can garden, and there’s room for a shed to store recreational gear.
He and his wife, Sarah, who also works for FTR, have been living in one with their two daughters since 2016. The original plan was to build another home on the front of the lot. But they realized they didn’t need or want anything bigger.
“We’re happy with our small estate,” Lien says, chuckling.
He describes his target market as teachers and nonprofit workers. “Nothing is really ‘affordable’ anymore, but these are the most competitively priced custom stick-built homes in Teton Valley. They’re a good starter home.”
Or a “small estate” meant to be a forever home.
There’s a misperception that a tiny home won’t be nice, Lien says. But their design includes full-size appliances, a mud room, and an oversized crawl space that doesn’t freeze, almost like a mini basement. And the shed-roof style makes a future addition possible, provided the lot can accommodate the added square footage.
“For us, it’s a lot less cleaning, it’s efficient, and it meets our budget as nonprofit workers,” Lien says. “It allows us to embrace the outdoor lifestyle that we have here. We don’t spend a lot of time at home; we’re out in the mountains playing. That’s the reason we moved here.”
McKenzie Heras, FTR’s development coordinator, rents one of the smaller homes from Lien, and she says she was surprised by the generous amount of storage. She and her boyfriend, Torin Bjorklund, and their dog, Woz, love their place. “It’s 100 percent better than living in an apartment,” she says.
“This house is the reason we can stay in Teton Valley.”
From Lien’s perspective: mission accomplished.
Teton housing vision keeps the dream alive for mountain families
Mike Lien wants to influence a system he thinks favors either condos and apartments or multi-million-dollar homes. He plans to build more small single-family homes on individual lots in Driggs, which makes him somewhat of an anomaly among developers. He thinks his approach could be a catalyst for more projects of this kind throughout the valley, giving locals another attainable option for homeownership or rentals. “Hopefully we’re changing things,” he says.
A philanthropic buyer donated one of his Little Avenue houses to the Teton County Idaho Joint Housing Authority last year. Jerod Pfeffer, executive director of Teton Valley Housing, hopes this becomes a trend too. “This remarkable act of kindness not only provides shelter for a local resident but also reflects a deep understanding of how essential housing [that’s] affordable to our local workforce is to a thriving community,” he says.
While Pfeffer acknowledges the interesting niche of smaller homes, he’s clear that there’s no single magic solution to the workforce housing shortage in Teton Valley. This complicated challenge requires a multi-faceted approach. It’s one he and his counterparts at the Jackson Hole Community Housing Trust and Jackson/Teton County Housing Authority are addressing through comprehensive needs assessments, public/private partnerships, development regulations, and support for nonprofit housing initiatives, among other tactics.
To learn more about the issue and efforts to address workforce housing in the broader Teton community, visit these websites:
- tetonvalleyhousing.org
- tetoncommunitywellbeingdashboard.com/housing
- tetoncountywy.gov/2495/Housing-Authority-Board
- housingtrustjh.org
- tetoncountywy.gov/2372/Affordable-Housing
