Friends of Flagstaff’s Future update for Feb. 27

Matt Hickman, writes “… It shows that tiny house building isn’t the proverbial walk in the park that it’s often made out to be. It’s hard.

And it’s in discussing these hardships that Small is Beautiful – a rare and incredibly poignant documentary about small living that manages to choke you up – really

The HUB moved into a neighborhood where it clearly didn’t belong for one simple reason: when our Zoning Code was implemented in the 1970s, it was based NOT on the existing neighborhoods, but a capitalistic ideal of what those neighborhoods should be in the future. 
One very relevant example is my neighbor Mr. Johnson. He lives in the house his grandfather built. It’s a lovely single family home. It’s zoned light industrial. The land has never been used for any industrial purpose.

Similarly, streets like Fontaine Street allow for high occupancy stacked triplexes, not because the neighborhood grew up as a student housing neighborhood, but because the underlying zoning created in the 70s allows for it in that neighborhood. That’s the reason the street width is too narrow to support high occupancy stacked triples. It was only ever meant to see traffic to and from single family units.

Developers aren’t building high occupancy housing on a 22′ wide street because it’s a great location.  They build it there because they can. 

Read the full piece HERE.