Cheryl [00:00:00]: That's one thing I absolutely have to have. So I called Kangaroo, and I said, I wanna extend the hitch and make this cello practice room. And they didn't think I was nuts at all. They were saying, okay, let's do that. And we've never done this before, but I extended the hitch 3 feet. So that was one thing that made my house really special. So I have a 2 foot extension.

Ethan Waldman [00:00:22]: Welcome to the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast, the show where you learn how to plan, build, and live the tiny lifestyle. I'm your host, Ethan Waldman. And today, I have a guest with a powerful and eye opening story about the realities of tiny living. Cheryl, a musician and single mother, joins us to share her journey of creating a custom tiny home designed to support her musical career and her daughter's needs. But Cheryl's story goes far beyond innovative design solutions. We'll dive deep into the legal challenges and zoning issues that have plagued Cheryl's tiny house journey, including a harrowing experience with eviction that exposes the vulnerabilities many tiny house dwellers face. Cheryl candidly discusses the shame and secrecy that often surround nontraditional housing choices and how these factors can leave individuals open to exploitation. Despite facing numerous setbacks, Cheryl's resilience shines through as she advocates for the legalization and broader acceptance of tiny homes.

Ethan Waldman [00:01:19]: Her story serves as both a cautionary tale and a call to action for the tiny house community. Join us as we explore Cheryl's journey to find a supportive community, navigate complex legal landscapes, and ultimately transform her living situation. This episode offers valuable insights for anyone considering the tiny lifestyle or interested in the broader implications of alternative housing solutions. I hope you stick around. But first, I want to tell you about my tiny Tuesday's newsletter, your inside track to the tiny house lifestyle. Every Tuesday, I share my latest thinking on planning, building and living tiny, exclusive insights you won't find anywhere else, and a direct line to interact with me. I personally read and respond to every email I get. Right now I'm wrapping up a 7 part series on the challenges of tiny house living complete with practical solutions.

Ethan Waldman [00:02:10]: And here's the kicker, newsletter subscribers will get this entire series as a free downloadable ebook. Are you ready to join our tiny community? Head to thetinyhouse.net/newsletter and sign up today. No spam, no selling your info, just pure tiny house goodness. And if you sign up now, drop me a line to say you came from the podcast. I'd love to meet you. Don't miss out on this tiny treasure trove. Sign up at thetinyhouse.net/newsletter

Ethan Waldman [00:02:37]: today. All right, on with the show.

Ethan Waldman [00:02:56]: Alright, I am here with Cheryl. Cheryl is primarily a musician, a cellist, at the end of her master's degree in performance anxiety and polyvagal theory, but has built and designed her own tiny house. After 3 renovictions in Toronto, she realized as

Ethan Waldman [00:03:12]: a single parent, she was likely never going to have her own home. Her tiny house was designed to support her music and her daughter Emma when she's home from university. Emma is a vocalist studying opera, and their 2 cats, Dado and Meep. Cheryl, welcome to the show.

Cheryl [00:03:27]: Hi, Ethan. Thanks for having me.

Ethan Waldman [00:03:30]: You're very welcome. So could you say more about, you know, what initially drew you to the tiny house lifestyle and, and how your vision of it has evolved over time?

Cheryl [00:03:42]: Yeah, it's a really interesting thing because I never started out in the tiny house lifestyle at all. I started out as a really frustrated renter in downtown Toronto, and, coincidentally, as a realtor. And that was really, really hard because as a single parent, I would never have the income, even as a realtor, to support myself and my daughter in order to actually have our own home. And it just became like the cobbler's children had their shoes. I would be working my tail off

Cheryl [00:04:16]: For other people and still coming home to my rental and my rent evictions over and over. The other thing is is that because I worked in Design during my undergrad and beyond my undergrad, post design, I had my own opinions about every place I lived, so I always made them better. And because I was constantly making my rental situations nicer Mhmm. And upgrading them, I would get renovicted over time. You know, the landlord would come in and say, I remember this over and over. This is way nicer than it used to be. And then I'd get a renovation notice like, oh, we wanna move in.

Cheryl [00:04:56]: And, you know, after years decades of that in Toronto, the last one just absolutely put me under the bus. We were renting a house in Leslieville.

Cheryl [00:05:09]: Which is a very well known community in Toronto. And I'd been there for like almost 12 years. And every 6 months, we were getting this notice from the landlord that they were coming back. And every 6 months, I would be totally thrown into, Oh, my God, where are we gonna live now? And as a single parent, it's I can't even rent. You know, renting is futile. You need really high credit, you need a very steady income. Yeah. They always want a second income earner.

Cheryl [00:05:37]: I just wasn't in that position even to get a rental, and I just had it. And I never thought of myself as a tiny home dweller at all. It was just like, oh my god. I just wanna build a van and drive away

Cheryl [00:05:52]: From this madness. And so I started looking at, like, what would it take for me to live in a van because I'm just so stressed And realizing, well, I have a kid, and, you know, she's not even a baby. I mean, she at the time, she was a teenager.

Cheryl [00:06:09]: And we're 2 musicians. The singer and I, Michelle, is we both need to, you know, have sonic space from each other. And, you know, we had a piano. We had cats. We had I had furniture, and I don't really love driving enough. I I anyone who falls asleep on the road.

Cheryl [00:06:25]: So and I thought, like, well, what's gonna happen if I have a mechanical failure? I'm gonna be paying

Cheryl [00:06:31]: mechanics and then the house through the after blocks, which is a real issue with the vsn rolling. So I thought, okay. So a van is not for me. I didn't know anything about the movement. Nothing at all. I just thought I could build my own very small house. And then I happened upon I'm not sure if I think it was probably Bryce's channel where I saw the tiny home on wheels. And I said, okay, I can do that.

Cheryl [00:06:59]: But I never stepped in one. I never saw plans. I never visited the communities. I never saw many of them. I just thought I can do that. That's in my chest space. And then from there, I was absolutely sleepless. I was just walking around my rental house going, okay.

Cheryl [00:07:22]: So this doesn't work, and that doesn't work. And I had this huge space in this kitchen, but there were never drawers to put the cutlery in. Like, the cutlery had to sit in a jug, and the kitchen was massive. And it was always really irritating. I have friends come over, and they go, wow. This kitchen's huge. And I'd be like, yeah, but I can't put the cutlery away or, like, I can't you know, that if you open the dishwasher, you can't open the fridge or, like, just dumb stuff, you know, and it you know, I was just always irritated. And then it it really hit me when I was teaching a student.

Cheryl [00:08:00]: I had this lovely student, Logan Perrigger, who turned out to be an architect intern.

Cheryl [00:08:07]: Just at the baby stages. And he was interning, and I did not know that at the time, but we were 2 cellos trying to get through the front doorway. And I was like, oh, this is so irritating. This house is big, but like, I can't actually pass you in the doorway. This makes no sense. And I said to him, I have this dream of building this space of like, where I can actually come and go with my cello on my back, and not be scared of putting things and, you know, just like, use the house properly. And I said, Do you think you could help me? And he said, I'm an architect intern. I can help you.

Cheryl [00:08:45]: Yeah, like, that's a great idea. And this thing was born. I had already ordered the trailer at that time. But, and that was another journey. But like the trailer is bad, but, I did not have any way to make the sound. So we traded lessons, total lessons for sketch, and it was just, I mean, a basic sketch. I was standing in the doorway, and I was taping out things on the floor.

Cheryl [00:09:14]: then I I have a string trio that rehearses that was rehearsing every week, and I took a piece of, painter's tape on the floor. And I taped out exactly how much space we would have. And then Nelson, who's the viola player, you know, I he's really tall. So but when Nelson raised his hand up to play pizzicato you're a violin player. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I think you play violin. So you know what I'm talking about that, Yeah.

Cheryl [00:09:40]: If he's playing pizzicato, then his arm is

Ethan Waldman [00:09:42]: Yeah.

Cheryl [00:09:43]: Gonna hit his bow is gonna hit the ceiling. Right? So I was taping out all of these things in the air. And then I said, okay, so this is this is the essentials. I need this. I need, you know, here's a bunch of here's a list of things I need. And then I just my head just was spinning, and I could not stop designing this house in my head. But I didn't have any drawings, and I've never been in a tiny house before. And I didn't go to any tiny house movements or anything like that.

Cheryl [00:10:09]: It just didn't start that way. It started out as like, okay, I'm getting down to the emergency.

Ethan Waldman [00:10:14]: Nice. I absolutely love the idea of, of trading, you know, cello lessons, you know, kind of giving your skill, giving your gift in exchange for, you know, skill and design work, for the tiny house. And it sounds like your house, your needs for your tiny house, were pretty unique, in the sense that you needed space for music to happen. I think I know. A really long time ago, I interviewed this tiny house dweller named Ella. And she actually has she's a harp player. And I think she had 2 or 3 harps in her like, 16 foot tiny house. It was amazing.

Ethan Waldman [00:10:55]: Just like, it was basically like a place for her to sleep. And then harps.

Cheryl [00:10:59]: I actually originally added our piano like, and I'm not a piano player at all. I have the pianist, the piano, like the little upright, that we had when we were kids. But my daughter grew up songwriting and expressing and taking out all her frustrations and her stories and building her vocals on that crappy little piano and I really didn't want to lose it. As it stands now, I've never put it in the house, but I originally designed this house to be cantilevered in a way that could support that little piano. And if I ever needed to, I could, but it just turned out that it it really isn't great to be in a house that moves when it's already old and coming apart. It's like, you know, the thing would have just fallen onto the floor in parts. But, so it's, it's, it's at a friend's place. But, you know, if I ever build a little gazebo or something like that, that's heated and appropriate, a little concert space.

Cheryl [00:12:00]: You know, it'll come back on the property. But it really it just started so organically, but it was really urgent. And the next thing that happened, which was really, really important, which was actually the beginning of this journey was, like, getting those eviction notices, oh, no more gain, which were no fault of ours. Like, they were just like, oh, we want the house back. And then, oh, we don't. And, oh, we're coming back in 6 months. Oh, we're not. You know, it was so stressful going out to look for houses, constantly rent with basements.

Cheryl [00:12:32]: I was looking at I got down to 1 bedroom basements with a teenager and you know, a child's studio and 2 cats, and then who's gonna take you to cats, and then my credit rating wasn't good enough, and just was so stressful. But I'd had this old court case. And I mean, you can edit this out if you want, but I'm comfortable if you leave it in. I had a court case for an old sexual abuse, historical abuse case that finally was coming to court. And it was a very difficult and painful journey. But it was something that I had promised myself that I was going to be one day and that they came and at that moment in time, it was I'm not sure if it was right after the pandemic, or it was in the middle of the pandemic. It might have been right in the middle. But the laws changed.

Cheryl [00:13:23]: And the government in Ontario decided that, they were gonna close off all the victim witness funds and all of those things. And we got down to this really short tube emergency where I had to sort of cut my losses and accept a very small, very, very small sum. And so at the end of that I was left with $6,000 It was a painful thing. But there were, you know, in my mind, I was like, like, I've been on this 30 year hell journey. Mhmm. How can I make it work best for me? What can I do with that very small sum of money? And so I bought myself a microphone for my cello. It was the first thing I did. And the second thing was that I put a deposit down on this frame for this trailer with Kangaroo Trailers in Ontario, Hamilton, Ontario, and they were a great company.

Cheryl [00:14:16]: And I thought I'm just gonna work my ass off. I put a deposit on that on that trailer footing to make myself accountable to myself, to give myself something that I didn't take myself seriously for before. I just I just didn't put myself in this situation, this housing situation as a real having a solution. And I didn't know a single person in a tiny home. I never really I don't watch television. And I can say I watched maybe 10 episodes of Jenna's channel and Bryce's channel total. And I saw I can do this. I have the design head.

Cheryl [00:15:03]: But basically, I just put that deposit down. And I said, I, I have no choice, but I'm going to do this. And I didn't tell anybody. Like, nobody. I didn't even tell my daughter, because I didn't really know what to say. It's like, you know, it wasn't it wasn't. It wasn't my dream. But it became it became my goal.

Mara Hu [00:15:28]: Nice. That's, that's amazing. I mean, just taking that leap of faith and putting the deposit on the trailer. I'm curious, you know what, from there, you know, how, how did the house get built?

Cheryl [00:15:43]: Allison From there, it was me very bad sketching, like, tipping off areas in the house and saying, I want things here, I want things there. So I had sent them this plan, and I had been to to Banff to the Banff Fine Arts Center. I'm I'm sure most people recognize what that means.

Cheryl [00:16:05]: I don't

Cheryl [00:16:05]: know if you've been to the Banff Fine Arts Center, but I've been to several residences, I was really fortunate to get I think I've been to I've done 4 residences, I think at least, in Banff. And what I've always really treasured were the little practice huts that you get that are out in the mountains. And I said, like, why is it that every time I go to Banff, I get so much work done in that hut, and it's just a small hut. And in fact, the smaller the better. Like, if I got a big hut, I'd always try and change it for a smaller one and one with less windows and less view and stuff. And I just said, like, how is it that I can do that? So one of the biggest goals in my house was to make a banff hut, if you will, within my house. And yeah, so I don't know if if I'm sure, like, you've done your hours of practicing and all that stuff, and you can appreciate what it means to have that space that's really only has one purpose because you're less sidetracked. And, Yeah.

Cheryl [00:17:05]: So that's when I started really getting creative with the the trailer because it was custom. And Kingwood Trailers were just amazing. They didn't think I was nuts. I had seen an amazing interview on Bryce's channel with this great family who had a their little girl's toy or space in the hitch. And she had a little ladder climbing up.

Cheryl [00:17:32]: And

Cheryl [00:17:32]: I said, that's one thing I absolutely have to have. So I called Kangaroo, and I said, I wanna extend the hitch and make this cello practice room. And they didn't think I was nuts at all. They were saying, okay, let's do that. And we've never done this before, but I extended the hitch 3 feet. So that was one thing that made my house really special. So I have a 3 foot extension on the hitch. I still have a hitch, but it's just got a longer frontage.

Cheryl [00:18:00]: And so that originally I was gonna have a door to the outside like a hut. When I realized that keeping that warm, and coming and going to the bathroom and all those things was really going to be not a good use of energy and space. And also that meant that I, you know, I'm missing more well in a very small space. So I changed it to a sliding door in between.

Ethan Waldman [00:18:24]: Okay.

Cheryl [00:18:25]: But a lot of times people come in the house, they don't even realize it's there. Like, you wouldn't know it's there unless you saw it from the outside. But from the inside, you don't know it's there. So it's a small space, but it's, it's, it's completely just for work. It's whatever you wanna, you know, but the design really works. Like, I could design this house to fit a family. And that could be a kid's room. You could have it as a playroom.

Cheryl [00:18:48]: You could you could actually have it, with a rope leading up top, and there's lots of things you could do. But for me, this is what I chose to do with it. So this 3 foot extension makes is the number one thing that I think makes it really custom. The next thing that I did was on the other end, measured out how high Nelson's arm was going to be And realized that whereas we're an improvising trio, we're called Un Quartet. We hardly ever use music stands. But if we did, we would be sort of chairs and stands in the room would be kind of cluttered. So I bumped out the back window. And that became a seat for Nelson.

Cheryl [00:19:34]: And so yeah, Dean, I measured out his arms and Megan, the violinist measured it out if she sat there. And still we could have people in there, and we could have a stand up base because that part of the floor is sunk. So the middle section has become my basement. And I actually have enforced storage through the whole middle section. So because the other thing I did was I dropped

Ethan Waldman [00:19:59]: Wow.

Cheryl [00:19:59]: The axles by 4 inches, which you can do. Now, it's not great if you're traveling a lot. But knowing that I was I'm not a traveler like Jenna. I'm more of a stationary home. But you do I mean, it is it has gone over now 4 times. As I mentioned, I just moved in last week, and it was hell. Yeah. So it does give you a very low wheelbase.

Cheryl [00:20:21]: And you have to be very careful with where you're parking. You know, I'm often in rural locations with rocks and horrible, deadly things that will come and bite your house. But you know, moving it off wasn't the plan. So I dropped, I did drop the axle 4 inches. The whole middle section now has a dropped basement underneath it. So the whole so and the reason I did that was not just for storage, but because I didn't wanna see the wheel wells. I'm looking at all these houses all these years, and I'm like, why has nobody done anything about this wheel wells? They're so ugly. Like, I just can't have that.

Cheryl [00:20:59]: I can't have an ugly house. So yeah. So that was my way of getting rid of the wheel wells was I dropped the access 4 inches. And then I raised the middle section of the floor. So I actually have a basement in my house.

Ethan Waldman [00:21:13]: Wow. And how much space like, is under there?

Cheryl [00:21:17]: Well, you know, it's 10 Well, it's like, say 9 with walls by

Cheryl [00:21:25]: I'm just looking at it.

Cheryl [00:21:26]: I guess it's probably 9 by 15.

Ethan Waldman [00:21:29]: Wow. And like, how deep is it?

Cheryl [00:21:31]: It's deep enough for like those Rubbermaid bins.

Ethan Waldman [00:21:36]: Nice.

Cheryl [00:21:37]: Yeah. So now, going on to how the house was built, I unfortunately, I'm not like a carpenter myself. I know lots of of people are. I'm a great design head, but I'm not a carpenter head. So things went awry when other people came and got involved and didn't listen. Because, again, I have to say,

Cheryl [00:21:57]: and this

Cheryl [00:21:57]: is a very personal aspect of my particular situation, but as a single female, you get a lot of man explaining. So even though you say you know what you're doing, they say you don't.

Cheryl [00:22:07]: And that's been a really difficult part of this particular journey is that as a single female, yeah, just taking your money and saying you don't know what you're talking about. So one thing that was supposed to happen was, this was supposed to be a steel floor, 2 level floors that I could have a lot of drawers. And that didn't happen. And I won't go into that. But I have hatches instead. And the hatches work fine. I have to move my kitchen table to access the tools, but the pantry hatch is accessible. It just means that you know, you're reaching across.

Cheryl [00:22:44]: And the other thing is I have an extra cello case, as most instrumentalists have more than 1. Yeah, I've got a flight case. And then I've got a winter, a winterized case for emergencies in case my case needs repair. And they were supposed to be stored under the floor. And they don't fit now because there are cross queens, there are 2 by sixes, instead of metal. So that wasn't my design. It just I wasn't paying attention to and again, that's a whole different interview you could do on how people abuse tiny homes when you're building them because you fall so far under the wire for warranties, for carrying, you know, a lot of things that just don't apply. And also, and I mean, I'm, I'm segmenting a tiny bit, but the fact that you're probably going to be placed in an illegal location means anybody take advantage of you, because you're not going to call them up and tell them to get over to your place and fix it.

Cheryl [00:23:51]: Because you're either under the wire or you know that they can call you out. And this became a very difficult part of my particular journey. And I know it's not the same if you get a manufactured home and you get it built on a site and it's all pretty, and it gets delivered, and it's on Instagram, it's Yay, your house is delivered, and it's beautiful, and everything works. You know, the reality is, unless you're buying that kind of a manufactured situation, the rest of us are scratching them out and salvaging and praying that someone's not gonna have you turfed off the property before you finish it. But, you know, that's kind of how it went.

Ethan Waldman [00:24:31]: Yeah.

Cheryl [00:24:31]: But anyways, getting back to the design here, it really was designed for me. I wanted an open kitchen. And I wanted to also have a dancer do a rehearsal, because I work with a lot of dancers. It's not that I wanted to be able to, you know, have a full company in here. But I wanted to be able to move the kitchen table, as we often do move the kitchen table out to the grass, and have a dancer come in and do rehearsal, like just, you know, marking things out or, or just have a bunch of people in here and not have like a low overhead. So by building up the floor in the middle section, you don't notice the basement, You just don't notice that you still have I still have 13 feet over my head or, like, 12 feet over my head because I've dropped the axle to make that extra space. And the other thing it did was it hid the, gray tanks. It hid all my plumbing.

Cheryl [00:25:29]: And, you don't see anything. And it's also gives me access to the floor view. If I ever needed to, I can unscrew the basement instead of falling off the toilet floor. God help me if I ever need to do that, but it hasn't happened yet. I have great floor heat.

Ethan Waldman [00:25:44]: Okay.

Cheryl [00:25:45]: So anyways, yeah, it's

Cheryl [00:25:46]: a bit of more of a

Cheryl [00:25:46]: complicated house than most people would build, but it's really custom. And I think that's the most amazing thing about tiny homes is they don't have to be off the shelf.

Ethan Waldman [00:25:57]: Well, it sounds it sounds amazing. And I love it reminds me of of the tiny houses of yesterday or the tiny houses that we were first starting to see at the beginning of the movement that were really custom to the person who was living there. And, you know, I don't, you know, I have nothing against, you know, the tiny houses that are being built now that are more standardized and more manufactured, because I think that it expands their availability and the ability to regulate them. But it is really refreshing to hear about your house and how it was custom built. And hopefully, I'll be able to share some photos of your house on the show notes for the episode because I know that people

Ethan Waldman [00:26:41]: will be really curious to see it.

Cheryl [00:26:43]: I'll just make one comment on the on that, on the fact that I haven't done a lot of that. And, and I'm gonna put this out there. And, you know, again, you can edit out what you want. I'm fine with that. But there is a level of shame. There is shame based housing. And I think I, first of all, I feel like my whole sense of privacy was sort of how I started my house because I came from that peace that I'd had running for, you know, so many years that I never talked about that it meant that I never really talked about my house either. And as a single female and as a single mom, I think there's a level of shame that surrounds your abilities to house yourself safely and when you don't have a good credit.

Cheryl [00:27:35]: And you know, even though I was always working, it just, it was just life, you know, life fit me in a different way. And I think that I never put myself out there. I didn't start the channel. I didn't post the photos. I was very, very minimal about my exposure, because of shame. And shame also means that tiny houses are underground. And it's in your system. And it's a very unhealthy place to be.

Cheryl [00:28:09]: And so this is one of the reasons that I reached out to you because I really feel that the sense of shame around housing and being sort of, quote, illegal, which is what a lot of tiny homes are as well, means that we're very vulnerable. And I want to change that now. I'm making this pledge to myself, and to the movement, and to women also, who don't have the backing of just, you know, when you're being bullied, which happens a lot. You know, that that that window's gotta, that's gotta open now. I'm making that pledge right here

Cheryl [00:28:49]: On your podcast that I'm I'm going to open this up and start posting and and will not feel this level of shame around what has happened to me around this house and the last move and the bullying and really the shaming around housing. It's it's it's gotta stop. And, you know, basically, yeah, I mean, that's all I wanted to say.

Ethan Waldman [00:29:19]: Yeah,

Cheryl [00:29:20]: like, this is a painful process for most people.

Ethan Waldman [00:29:22]: I so agree.

Cheryl [00:29:23]: And it's not just an Instagram post that, hey, we're building a tiny house, like, you know, I was completely underground. I didn't tell anybody about this abuse. I didn't even tell my daughter. She didn't know anything. I didn't tell my family. This was like a very painful,

Cheryl [00:29:39]: you know, journey. But but what I did do is I put it and I figured that that settlement was so small that it probably paid for an axle on my house, but it was at least a forward step. Right?

Ethan Waldman [00:29:56]: Yeah. Yeah, it was a forward step. Well, you have been alluding to the situation. And, you know, it's, it's truly heartbreaking, but I, I, you know, I want to ask you about it. You know, and especially just in the context of the story that you've shared so far, just having been evicted several times and kind of looked to the tiny house movement as a way to finally take some agency to own your own home, you know, to have that security. Can you tell me about kind of what happened in in Yeah, I'm I'm not sure how many different places you've lived in the tiny house. But it sounds like there was one that that that did not go well.

Cheryl [00:30:44]: Yeah,

Cheryl [00:30:44]: the building process didn't go well. There was a the initial framer who wanted to take the house was horrible. And I'm not the first person to say that under other Ontario, tiny home dwellers. And then, you know, the next situation was friends helping me get to the next stage. Then I had a wonderful situation in Coburg, on a lovely couple's property. And I overstayed my welcome by many years because they gave me time to finish it. And that time just went on and on. But we we had a lovely relationship.

Cheryl [00:31:21]: So I never really had a bad relationship. But from there, I was invited by a local city councilor in Port Hope, Ontario, who said, We'd love to have you, they reached out to me, we'd love to have you.

Cheryl [00:31:41]: And

Cheryl [00:31:41]: we're looking at tiny homes as a viable housing alternative. And we have 200 acres. And you'll be safe here. And we just want this, this exchange when we go on holiday. And even though I asked many times for a written agreement, and I'm putting this story out there so that people really understand what they're getting into. But even though I asked for a written agreement several times, and he's a lawyer, it never came. And there I was moving the house. I was told if I put in my own infrastructure, my own water, hydro, water pump, I even had a meter installed.

Cheryl [00:32:19]: So I was thinking my own hydro, that I would be safe there, indefinitely and forever, they said. And all I had to do is look after their farm, their 3 horses, their dogs and cats, while they were gone on holiday. They were going on a cruise. And I said, Absolutely. And I'm a gardener. And so I will do all your landscaping for your new house, because they were building a new home. And I'll do all your landscaping, and I'll grow all of your vegetables. And my dream was always to grow vegetables for the food bank, the local food banks, because they don't get enough fresh vegetables.

Cheryl [00:32:55]: And

Cheryl [00:32:55]: that's

Cheryl [00:32:56]: just something I'm really good at. They said, Great. Well, that's a deal. And, yeah, they helped me move, I spent $10,000 moving to this property. And, yeah, a few weeks before that move, my absolute beloved brother, Steve, passed away very suddenly.

Ethan Waldman [00:33:20]: Oh, my.

Cheryl [00:33:22]: And it was so unexpected that he was actually marking out my hydro cable at a property that I didn't end up moving to. But the very last day that we were there, a couple of things he said to me was make sure you get a contract next time you move, and don't ever let anyone bully you ever again. He was talking about my life in general.

Ethan Waldman [00:33:48]: Yeah.

Cheryl [00:33:48]: But my journey with Holmes thus far, he, you know, he talked me with the electrical. And he was a marathon runner. He literally dropped dead a few hours after that conversation. And the last thing he said to me was don't ever anyone believe ever again. Yeah. I, I can't tell you how

Cheryl [00:34:08]: Oh, gosh.

Cheryl [00:34:09]: Broken I was that it was the last conversation we've had. He said, I can't wait to see what you do with your academics. You've got to go for that PhD and get a contract. And don't ever let anyone tell you ever again, you do not have to do this. You've got your brother, I will always be there for you. He left the property and he died just a few hours later. Wow. Anyways, and so this was really on my shoulders.

Cheryl [00:34:38]: So I moved to this property. They knew it. And I said, you know, my brother said, I have to have a written contract. He's in his grave right now. And he's screaming, give me that paper. And they kept saying, Oh, it's coming. It's coming. And it never came.

Cheryl [00:34:54]: Meanwhile, he'd been in city council and he said, You're completely safe with us here. You do not have to worry. I am city council. And yeah, he'd sort of had a history of looking supportive towards tiny homes. But it came back from their holiday. And I started getting these very strange mixed messages that were not nice. And they evolved very quickly into your house is in non compliance, and you should move. I was in shock, because of course, my house was in non compliance.

Cheryl [00:35:29]: They knew that when I moved there, they knew I built it. And they said, you'll have plenty of time.

Cheryl [00:35:34]: And

Cheryl [00:35:34]: the municipality will give you plenty of time to get it up to code or whatever you need to do. But don't worry, because you've got our backs. And I all of a sudden got this very strange, passive aggressive garbage dumped at my door, my power going out, you know, asking for them to fix the driveway, because it was impassible meant that they actually blocked it off the boulders. So I couldn't. And I was left, like, I would say, half a kilometer away, dragging my cello, my amp, my gear, my cats, groceries. And then I wasn't allowed friends. And little by little, they just cut me off until I was dying. Even calling the police meant nothing.

Cheryl [00:36:23]: People need to know, if you're parked on a private property, you have no rights. Zero.. Even if I had a written agreement, it might it would have helped. But you are not protected by any landlord tenant association on a farm. Number 1, you're not protected under any landlord situation in a tiny home without an actual legal lease agreement. And even then, very careful, because if your house is in non compliance, as most of them are, you have no rights, none. And they knew that, but I did not. And even though I'm, you know, I'm a realtor, not working at it much these days, but I am an active realtor who knows the landlord tech laws inside out.

Cheryl [00:37:12]: It's my job to know them. And I protect tenants a lot. I'm also a tenant.

Cheryl [00:37:17]: So you know, not one of those realtors you see on a bench at. I'm someone who's actually trying to get housing for students. It's not a that's not the high paying parts, you know. So I know the laws. And I did not know this. I was totally caught unawares when the OPP came and said, You don't have any rights. So they cut me off from my own house. The answer is yes.

Cheryl [00:37:41]: You don't know these things. And there are also two parts to compliance. There's the Ontario building code, and I'm sure, you know, every state and province in the US and Canada has their own building codes. But we have the Ontario building code here, which specifically is starting now to gear towards tiny homes. Thank God, they're making some changes very slowly, but they're out there. Yeah. But then the compliance also has to go to the property. And they're very different.

Cheryl [00:38:10]: So you could have a compliant house and think that you could just roll it up. Well, I bought it from so and so great company. And they said it's it's legal for zoning. And it's not, you can't just roll that up to where you want, you now have to apply to the township. And they have to have a big meeting. And they have to make all those decisions and how you treat your water. All of those things, as you know, coming and going. For instance,

Cheryl [00:38:37]: I don't think people realize this, you cannot use your interior water tanks,

Ethan Waldman [00:38:42]: right,

Cheryl [00:38:43]: to be using code. So you can build what you want. It doesn't mean you get to use it. I would not have known that but it makes sense. They're not gonna give you compliance if you're using your inside water tanks, because that's a holding tank that you cannot use. And right,

Cheryl [00:39:03]: it's

Cheryl [00:39:03]: done all the time. I'm just giving you the facts, the facts are better disconnect them. If you're going to be, you know, by code. Yeah. And so those are those are things that are different.

Ethan Waldman [00:39:19]: Wow.

Cheryl [00:39:20]: That I wouldn't have known. And

Ethan Waldman [00:39:24]: yeah,

Cheryl [00:39:26]: when I go to tiny home shows, it just makes me furious. Some of them are so beautiful, that they have no storage. Or they're really, really pretty, but you can't actually park them anywhere. I've gone to so many of them and said, Well, you've got the staircase. And this is not these are not legal stairs. They're like, Yeah, we know. But that's up to the homeowner to fix when they get wherever they're going. I'm like, oh, my god.

Cheryl [00:39:54]: Yeah. But, you know, this is not reality. The reality is not that you can go ahead and buy this really expensive home with quartz countertops and spend $2,300,000 and then expect to live in it without a lot of crap unless you move to the US. And I know that you guys have a lot more viable alternatives there. But in Ontario, we're all under the wire. And it's, it's, it's very hard, because it's also means it's very hard to sell them. I've got 2 friends right now that have their tiny homes up for sale only because Yeah, living in them is always precarious. And they can't even sell them.

Cheryl [00:40:36]: Because people need to ship them somewhere safe, and blah, blah, blah. So their investment doesn't turn and

Cheryl [00:40:44]: You know, we become unfortunately not investors in real estate, but we become underground and vulnerable. And so the situation I was in was very, very, very vulnerable, and these people knew it. And they had me evicted. Yeah. Even with lawyers and the police. They had those rights. I did not. So I only left there last week.

Cheryl [00:41:10]: The infrastructure is still there, I will be suing them. And I'm sure they know that. So I'm saying that publicly, there will be a lawsuit. I have lots of support, but they basically told me to move there, told me to spend all this money and took my work while they were on holiday. And there's no recourse for that. And don't forget, migrant workers who are living on farms also have no rights. So no matter how you sit yourself on a farm, whether you're working in exchange, you're also very, very vulnerable. Because if they fire you, you now have an immediate eviction.

Cheryl [00:41:50]: Whether you have a contract or not, it just doesn't matter. You're not protected. Or you also have problems with insurance. Because they won't insure your house on an

Cheryl [00:42:00]: active

Cheryl [00:42:00]: farm either. And that's something I didn't know.

Ethan Waldman [00:42:03]: Wow.

Cheryl [00:42:04]: Very, very hard to get insurance.

Ethan Waldman [00:42:07]: So I'm curious, you know, looking back, in addition to, you know, the lesson that's jumping out at me the most is just to make sure that you get a contract, get a lease that clearly spells out the process for eviction and zoning violations and really spells it all out. Like what's going to happen if this happens? What's going to happen if that happens? You know, what, what other advice would you give to someone who's considering, you know, building a tiny home living in a tiny home, especially regarding these legal and zoning considerations?

Cheryl [00:42:43]: I think my number one piece of advice, and it's what I've just learned this week, by finding this incredible community that I've moved to, you've got to pay attention to your red flags. And I had red flags, but because my brother had just passed away, I didn't have the time. And I was grieving so deeply.

Cheryl [00:43:04]: that I misread those red flags, as my own anxieties around grief, and my own personal anxieties around shame. And I misread those signals of grief and shame into, okay, just just shove those down. What is the most important piece of advice I will give is, if you're looking to put your house somewhere, look for people who literally live the way you do, not say, but look at the way they live. The way these people lived at the last place was the antithesis to everything I believe in. As far as land stewardship goes. I'll give you a quick example very quickly. One thing they had on this piece of property, beautiful property, was a tiny wetlands that was in front of my house. And I adored that little wetland, and I said, this is actually a pond.

Cheryl [00:44:05]: We've got all this runoff coming from the barn, everything's swamping the driveway. It really needs to be a proper pond, and it will solve all these problems. Plus, it's really good for the land. And what they did was they filled it in with manure. And I knew right away, these are not my people. They're building a 9000 square foot home. And they didn't have land stewardship. They're landowners.

Cheryl [00:44:29]: There's a difference between landowners and land stewards. And I knew it in my gut that these are not the people who will be my people. But as far as the shame, and the vulnerability around what I had going in my life, I didn't have the opportunity to do anything about that. And it was too late. It was just too late. So when I had to look for property this time, there were lots of people that were going to house me. But the way they treated their land told me don't do it. It was absolute hell.

Cheryl [00:45:10]: But what ended up happening was I reached out to the community of people that I really liked, the artists, the organic people, the people who care about land stewardship, not ownership. And that is what made all the difference for me, I ended up in a community. I just came and I knocked on her kitchen window. And she'd already heard the story. She already knew I was looking. And in 24 hours, I had a written agreement. I'd never got that in 8 months of where I was last time. It was all controlling, and you'll have to do it our way, and we don't want you anymore.

Cheryl [00:45:51]: And I basically actually filled a purpose for them, and land stewardship was not in their interest at all. It was ownership. And that's got to be something that each person decides. Do you want to live in a community where, you know, you have a sidewalk, and you you pay a certain amount? And, I also will say that I never designed my house to be out on a farm. I thought I was gonna be in a laneway downtown Toronto. And as a as a realtor and as a as a renter downtown, I really was pushing for tiny homes to be in laneway housing. But it has become another huge winmaker. It's become a developer's dream.

Cheryl [00:46:31]: Yeah. It's pushed the real estate market to even more excesses. Whereas if you get a stamp that a laneway, you know, you get a laneway stamp approved for laneway housing, you can add 200,000 to the price of that house, it's doing nothing for housing. The laneway houses that are going in are absolutely unaffordable rentals, we're talking $5,000 $8,000 a month, That's not doing anything for housing. And I used to go to those meetings and say, How is this going to help someone like me, who's got a tiny home, and so many people who want to park them, I can pay them rent, I can help them with snow, It could be elderly people who want to stay in their homes and I could live there. And there was no opening there. And and again, you have to go where your community is. I couldn't find it in in the downtown Toronto community.

Cheryl [00:47:22]: And it will happen. I'll still keep working on that, but it isn't gonna be my parking space. My parking space now is in an artistic, creative, organic community, and I'm so grateful that I'm here now. And it was a 24 hour turnaround.

Ethan Waldman [00:47:39]: Yeah,

Cheryl [00:47:39]: they made a contract. It's a loving contract. The people on the land are land stewards. They're not land owners. It's not all about Wow. Yeah, mine, mine. I own this and I own the road in front and you can't park here, you can't, whatever. And I guess that that's my advice is you really have to look for the people that you wanna live next to.

Cheryl [00:48:01]: Not not just the view and the space and the commute and all of those things. It's really let's get back to people. It's really about people and who's your neighbor and just because you can move your house doesn't mean you want to

Ethan Waldman [00:48:16]: Yeah,

Cheryl [00:48:17]: It's a real mess to have to move a big, tiny home.

Ethan Waldman [00:48:22]: Well, Cheryl, I appreciate you sharing this so much. And I just I hope people are both inspired by it and learn something from it. I'm curious, just kind of as a last question, like, what is your hope as a result of putting this out there and kind of, you know, going public, however, however public doing an interview on my show is, you know, what is your hope that for someone listening to this or for change? Or just how are you hoping that this will impact the tiny house movement?

Cheryl [00:48:55]: I think there's there's really two parts to this. And one is people who wanna make tiny homes legal, and people who don't. And there is this underground community of people who think that, you know, living in tiny home means you don't need to pay taxes, you don't have to pay the government and you could live in an unorganized township. And that's absolutely fine. You could live in an unorganized township and have that lifestyle. But there are other people who choose to have a library who choose to have a fire department and who choose to have a road that gets plowed. And, and that also has value. I think that both are really relevant and should count.

Cheryl [00:49:38]: And I think tiny homes just need to be legal. And if you really want to give people safe housing, legalize all forms. That means, you know, if you're living in a yurt, you should not be hiding underground. If you're living in your bus, I think we should have a license and just leave it alone. Legalize them. If you wanna charge taxes on each individual on each individual structure, then give us support, give us rights, give us a basic level of respect. And, and protection. We need protection.

Cheryl [00:50:21]: Single parents like me there, there's 1000 of women out there living in precarious housing raising children, families raising children who are not doing bad things. They're taking care of the environment much better than developers ever will.

Cheryl [00:50:38]: we need to legalize all forms of housing and integrate them into the city. There's no reason why my tiny home should not have been viable in a laneway. For people who wanted to house me and needed the income. There are elderly people with homes that they can't maintain that would love a young family in their backyard, that those things should be viable. And I also will say that we should have this legal so that our homes are also sellable. Yeah. And rentable, so that people who don't have property ownership actually have investments, instead of just tiny homes, which you have on Airbnb, or hide or whatever. It's not fair to have no investment.

Cheryl [00:51:24]: In a tiny home, it should be an investment like every other home, even though it's a movable structure.

Cheryl [00:51:32]: I really wanna see legal tiny homes and communities, like even on on college campuses, university campuses, why should graduates and postgraduates, postdocs be stuck in basements when they're raising their kids because they have to be on campus and they're getting very little pay as academics. Right? I mean, this could be amazing for college

Cheryl [00:51:54]: campuses all over the place. If we had tiny homes

Cheryl [00:51:54]: that were legal, we each could each could drive up to our campuses parked for the 3 or 4 years that were on there,

Cheryl [00:51:58]: and not be looking for

Cheryl [00:51:58]: crappy rental, damp basements with kids. And, you know, that's my dream. My dream is that, you know, that's my dream. My dream is that,

Cheryl [00:52:14]: we actually house people and not just developments.

Ethan Waldman [00:52:18]: Yeah. Nice. Well, Cheryl, thank you so much for being on the show today. It was really wonderful to meet you. And I and I really truly wish you the best. I sounds like your your new, you know, community is is the right place. And I hope it continues to be that.

Cheryl [00:52:36]: I wish I could make a shout out to this farm. But again, I'm nervous to do that. But they're just the loveliest loveliest community of people. And I also will say that you can check me out on Instagram on tiny landing pad.

Cheryl [00:52:51]: Yeah,

Cheryl [00:52:51]: I've been very, very cagey about what I posted, but I'm going to start opening that up now. So you can check out tiny landing pad. You know, people on Facebook follow me, but I'm a bit more cautious about Facebook. But yeah, tiny landing pad, and I'm going to start reposting everything there so that it will open up. But yeah, thanks so much, Ethan, for allowing this conversation and many elements to housing for sure.

Ethan Waldman [00:53:18]: Thank you. Thank you

Ethan Waldman [00:53:20]: so much to Cheryl for being a guest on the show today and sharing your story. You can find the show notes for this episode, including a complete transcript at thetinyhouse.net/305. Again, that's thetinyhouse.net/305. If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow and share the show with anyone you think might benefit from Cheryl's insights and experiences. Your support helps us bring more valuable content to the Tiny House community. I'm your host, Ethan Waldman, and I'll be back in 2 weeks with another episode of the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast.