Dan Fitzpatrick 0:00

What would you add to costs and fees if I were just adding another master bedroom suite to my house? Right? That's exactly what you should be charging, you know, to put a tiny home for example, in the backyard, you know, shouldn't be shouldn't treat it as if it's a whole new house. I mean, that makes no sense.

Ethan Waldman 1:15

Welcome to the tiny house lifestyle podcast. The show where you learn how to plan, build, and And live the tiny lifestyle. I'm your host, Ethan Waldman, and this is episode 285 with Dan Fitzpatrick. As the president of THEA and the director of Government relations for the American Tiny House Association, Dan, is at the forefront of the movement to legalize tiny homes as a viable housing option in the United States. In today's episode, we'll dive into the progress being made in legalizing tiny homes, the collaboration between Tiny Home Industry Association and the International Code Council, And the challenges faced in navigating zoning constraints for placing tiny houses. We'll also discuss the importance of working with local leaders to bring about change As well as Dan's work with Vera Struck and the introduction of a bill to legalize tiny homes in Massachusetts. Whether you're a tiny house enthusiast or simply curious about the movement, This episode will provide valuable insights into the future of legal tiny homes. So sit back, relax, and let's get started with Dan Fitzpatrick.

I asked John and Finn Kernohan of United Tiny House Association what they love about their PrecisionTemp hot water heaters. And here's what they told me. Hey, Ethan. This is John and Finn Kernaghan. With the United Tiny House Association.

John Kernohan 1:37

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Ethan Waldman 3:03

All right, I am here with Dan Fitzpatrick. Dan is the Thea president and the Director of Government Relations for the American Tiny House Association. Working with these organizations during the past several years, he has made numerous presentations to state and local governments throughout North America. He wrote and process the ordinance amendments that legalized movable tiny homes as at use in Fresno, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, San Jose and Santa Clara County in California. Additionally, he worked on state law changes in Washington, Oregon, Florida, New Hampshire, California and Maine, and continues to consult with local tiny home advocates. Dan Fitzpatrick, welcome back to the show. Oh, it's been a while since I've been on. Yeah, it has been a while and and you have you've been busy. Ya know, things are very busy with the tiny home Industry Association as we work with state and municipalities around the nation to legalize tiny homes. As you well know, a lot of that is just an education. Yeah, of what tiny homes are, especially the ones on wheels. And to get acceptance of them. And I remember starting to work on this back in 2015 2016. Yeah. And you could barely get anyone's attention to even talk to you. Yeah, and now, it's sort of the flavor of the day everyone wants to talk to us about it. Yeah. And a lot, lot lot is happening. It's funny, there was this article in Wired Magazine maybe a month or two ago that the headline was like, What happened to the tiny house movement and it kind of it kind of pronounced the tiny house movement as being like, dead and done. And it was it was bad article. And when I read it, I just thought, well, actually, it's just heating up or the real work, you know, after the flash in the pan of the reality TV shows and the kind of kitschy novel Tiny House

stuff, there's actually been real progress at making tiny houses a viable legal housing option in multiple states in the country. Yeah,

Dan Fitzpatrick 5:10

I read the same article, and it was very poorly written, very badly researched. And because, yeah, you know, years ago, the big issue was how to build tiny homes. And most of our builders were working out of their garage, they were lucky if they did two a year. Now, yeah, now we're up to most of our builders, you know, many of them that started out eight years ago are building anywhere from 50 to 100. A year. Yeah, are also building to not only the, what we call the anzi standards, but are now moving into both modular and HUD code type units for their builds. So that the industry is very alive and well, and we're moving into more and more of tiny home communities springing up all over the country.

Ethan Waldman 6:06

Yeah, and that's, that's exciting, because I think that the, the model of somebody, you know, potentially buying their own land or finding somebody's backyard to rent, that is still, in my opinion, a very viable way of living tiny, but it the numbers, it's not going to scale enough to meet the demand. And so you know, when you can take a piece of land and put 20 or 50, or 100, tiny houses on it, that's going to gonna get us there a lot, a lot sooner. Yeah,

Dan Fitzpatrick 6:36

the scale is important, not only for our users, but for our builders, you know, the more number of units they are able to build, you know, each year, they can then buy in bulk, it will drive the costs of units down. Yeah. And you're seeing that happening more and more now. Across the nation.

Ethan Waldman 6:59

Do you think the prices of tiny houses are coming down now as a result of of all the builders entering entering the fray and the legalization efforts?

Dan Fitzpatrick 7:07

Let's put it this way? The answer is yes. And no to that, on one hand installation, especially after the pandemic, yeah, you know, increased units that were selling, let's say 65 to 75 are now 85 to 95. Right? Okay. But because they are now building at scale, that's been trend. I mean, it's sort of stopped there. It's not an increase, or if people were still building at the scale, they were five, six years ago, the inflation rate for units would be even higher today. So yeah, fortunately, some of the supply chain issues we've had, especially with Windows is scaling to the extent that we're able to buy in bulk and get them in a timely manner. And I think when you see various municipalities, states, and the building code regulations become very much more normalized. You'll see that scale the economy of scale, improve dramatically.

Ethan Waldman 8:11

Excellent. So I feel like there's kind of two two big topics are two big things to cover. One being the the ICC Tiny House provisions, and then the efforts to legalize, you know, kind of what's been happening state by state. So why don't we start with with the ICC, the International Code counsel, and the collaboration with Thea? Can you just you know, I think most people who follow this or don't follow this, their ears, their eyes glaze over when they start hearing about standards and, and code so can you kind of explain this in layman's terms? Like what what does this mean? What is this?

Dan Fitzpatrick 8:55

Well, let's make it real simple. All building codes for habitable dwelling units, key word habitable dwelling units, okay, are governed nationally by the International Code Council, the ICC. Okay, so anytime you go down to your local, city or municipality to get a building permit, or issuing you a building permit based on building codes promulgated by ICC, right there, they're the gold standard nationally. Okay. So the tiny home industry association made a very conscious decision and effort to be friend though, remember, back in 2016 2017, they would barely talk to you, right. You know, today we're collaborating. I mean, that's a big, big change that in 2018, we did the residential code that included tiny home provisions for appendix two. Yeah. 2021 It got updated and clarified for the appendix AQ. And now today, we are collaborating We actually put out a new handbook called the tiny house building it right, of building tiny homes and tiny homes on chasis. Okay, with ICC? I mean, can you imagine that happening six, seven years ago, and they even have a specific chapter in there on foundation things, you know, pier type systems for, you know, putting chasis, you know, on, you know, piece of property and tying it down. So major progress has worked with them and and why it's so important is, is, once we have we have this new committee being formed, that will create a national standard for the design, construction, and inspection and regulation of tiny homes on chassis. Once that's published, it's now being published by a authority by ICC that all municipalities all states trust. And that's like putting money in the bank, it will, you know, it will be immediately accepted and acceptable around the nation. So now we'll have one standard, one ability that users, builders, suppliers, etc, can now build to and scale their production. Right.

Ethan Waldman 11:22

So it sounds like that helps both builders scale up, but it also helps municipalities who want to legalize tiny homes in some way, because they have standards that are just they can pull right off the shelf. They don't have to invent them. Oh,

Dan Fitzpatrick 11:37

absolutely. I just gave a talk to the chief Building Officials from many of the municipalities in California. And they were just thrilled to hear about that there's going to be a committee and a standard for this, because they're all trying to figure out how to put round pegs and square holes. And they just want to have a simple, simple handbook, so to speak, to go to to be able to legalize to add to give building permits for units that aren't built on wheels. And they all want to I mean, trust me, I mean, it's not that they're pushing back. They're just wanting to have a clear, concise way of dealing with a unit that that they get more calls on tiny homes on almost anything else on a daily basis. Wow. Wow, they want to work with us as much as we want to work with them to get this done. Yeah. Yeah. And

Ethan Waldman 12:33

and if we were talking about there being a shortage of housing and a housing crisis, you know, six, seven years ago, then, you know, that is is like a joke compared to compared to now at least where I live in Vermont. I mean, the prices of homes have just continued to climb, and the demand is, is as is growing and the supply is not. Yeah,

and that's typical around the country. It used to be, you know, just certain metropolitan areas. It's now across the country. It's terrible.

Speaker 1 13:07

Yeah, yeah. But I

Dan Fitzpatrick 13:09

think we're making tremendous progress. And and quite frankly, once we get through this building code standards process, hopefully, it'll happen within the next two years. The building code issues are getting resolved very, very quickly. Okay. The biggest issue by far now overseeing all of this are zoning issues. Zoning constraints. Yes.

Ethan Waldman 13:35

And does this, you know, does this work do anything to address zoning constraints?

Dan Fitzpatrick 13:40

Well, let's put it this way it when I go talk to municipalities, planners, I talked to point to the building code guys saying they won't do it. They won't let us do it. Right. And the building code guys, yeah, quite frankly, are getting upset about that. Because I know a lot of the issues are on the zoning side. So it takes away that sure crutch and that we can now talk to the elected officials saying, hey, get on your planners to get rid of some of the silly things that are in the code, like minimum square footage for dwelling units on residential property. I mean, that's ridiculous. Especially with 70% of our households now nationally, are two or less people. Yeah, you know, my God, we need studio studio apartments and units we need one bedroom units and tiny homes and small homes are absolutely perfect for that.

Speaker 1 14:33

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I would say that, you know, I know

Ethan Waldman 14:39

another big barrier that that people seem to face when trying to you know, do this type of infill work like putting a tiny home and as an accessory dwelling is, is dealing with water and sewage and things because that can also often be really expensive to tie into a city's sewer system.

Dan Fitzpatrick 14:57

Yeah, and we face that in a no rubber places and one of the Yeah, one of the key terms that I'm trying to educate our, our educate the tiny world to use when they're dealing with local government officials is the word proportionate? Yeah. You know, why are you charging us the same fees and the same process for hooking up a McMansion? That's all, there is for our little tiny home. That doesn't make any sense. Right. And that was

Ethan Waldman 15:30

one shower. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Fitzpatrick 15:32

And and the way I like to phrase it is, you know, what would you add to costs and fees if I were just adding another master bedroom suite to my house? Yeah, right. That's exactly what you should be charging, you know, to put a tiny home, for example, in the backyard, you know, shouldn't be it shouldn't treat it as if it's a whole new house. I mean, that makes no sense. Yeah.

Ethan Waldman 15:58

Yeah. And so there's anybody who follows, you know, the tiny home industry in the news, you know, has probably also heard about an ASTM committee and, and another standards effort. How do you how do you view the two standards efforts?

Dan Fitzpatrick 16:16

Well, I mean, we, as an organization, as the tiny home Industry Association, or continue are going to continue to work with ICC. Because that's where the action is. That's who is going to say yea, or nay to building codes? Yeah, nationally over the next, you know, 20-50 plus years, they've been doing it since I've been involved in their local governments, not since 1973. Okay. So, yes, maybe ASTM will come up with some ideas that can be incorporated, but it will be incorporated into the ICC code. And so, got it. We're going to continue to work with the group that let's back up a second. It's there is a two step process to doing building code. Okay, step one is doing the standard. You know, nationally, you come up with, in essence, a publication on here's the standard, that quite frankly, that's the easy part. Okay. The most difficult part is now getting 50 states and 30,000 municipalities to adopt it. Right? Yeah. And we know as an organization, the best group to be able to get it adopted is ICC. It's that simple. Because ICC is made up of the chief Building Officials from all 50 states and the 30,000 municipalities are in essence writing codes for themselves. Of course, they're going to adopt that which they were part of. So even though at times it was a slow process, we now have a very, very good collaborative working effort, or program with ICC to the extent that we were invited guests at the recent ICC Expo and conference in St. Louis. And when I say invited guests, they invited us to bring one of our tiny homes to be part of the expo. Nice. And when river out of Chattanooga, Tennessee were kind enough to bring one of their units. Okay. And we had Building Officials from all across the country crawling through that thing, over three days, trying to find something wrong with it. And it was very, very well received. Nice, no one could find anything wrong with it. The only time I've been to a Expo with a tiny house, that we literally had people crawling under the chassis. He's looking at it opening up the electrical panels. Yeah. Getting down under the sink to make sure the plumbing was right. Yeah. And we made a lot of converts at the ICC convention. Nice.

Ethan Waldman 19:08

Nice. Yeah, that's actually one of my favorite things to do at tiny home, like fairs and shows is to crawl under the tiny houses and just and make the judgment whether this house would work in the Northeast or not. If there's Is there any plumbing underneath?

Dan Fitzpatrick 19:22

Right, right. Yeah, no, it's, it was it's been very, very heartening to work with very professional people at ICC, and working through a lot of the you know, issues that are unique to our you know, product. Yeah. Yeah. And have at this expo, we were able to run into the national experts in all the various fields to sit down and discuss with them different ways of handling these issues. And I'm nice come December the first week in December, ICC will announce the 18 member because that will be on the committee to write the building standards for units built on chassis. Nice. That's fantastic. And as soon as that comes out that way, we'll publish all of the names of who's and be involved. It's a very open and transparent process. Anyone that wants to be involved, just need to call in on the Zoom call, and be involved. And I'm sure there will be a number of tiny home builders, users, suppliers on that committee, a good cross section of folks from New England to California from Florida to Washington on that committee. Excellent. Excellent.

Ethan Waldman 20:48

Well, it wasn't my most recent episode, but it was the episode before that number 283. I had, I had Vera struck on the show for actually the third time. But this time, Vera became kind of a reluctant lobbyist and helped to really get things going in Massachusetts. And she you know, she really lauded your work, and he has work it in helping to make it happen. Can you talk about what that was like?

Dan Fitzpatrick 21:18

Yes. Now, Vera and I talked with each other. Oh, my God, this goes back maybe three or four years ago about needing to do something in our backyard there in Massachusetts. Yep. And we've been successful, as you well know, in some other municipalities and states. Certainly, up in Maine, we, you know, got a bill passed, what was it three or four years ago now working with Corinne Watson and her team at? Yep, tiny home in Maine. Anyway, yep. Vera and I began talking, and here's the process that works well, whether it's with local government or state government. I try to work with things on a national basis. But to get laws chain, you have to have a very local organization to take the lead. I mean, why do people in Massachusetts once want to listen to this old guy from California? They don't they need to talk to folks that are voters. Yeah. And having Vera set up her Taskforce. And when we're actually having sit down meetings, you know, legislate tours, and she tries to bring in a constituent of theirs in on the phone call. Boy does I get their attention real quick, is that they start asking their constituent a question that they're having, or problems they may be having was citing their tiny homes, or the availability of affordable housing. So Vera and her team has done an outstanding job of working with us on a national level, to help write the bill, get it introduced. And now I think we're up to 2030 plus sponsors of the bill. And it's making great progress. And that's due to the the efforts and day in and day out work of Vera on the phone with legislators to getting the meetings and, and lobbying for so it's a us seniors are doing an outstanding job, certainly there in Massachusetts.

Ethan Waldman 23:29

Yeah, well, it sounds like it's a very time consuming process. So I feel like you need to make it your full time job almost. If you're going to try to do this in your state.

Dan Fitzpatrick 23:42

It takes a lot of effort. There's a lot of legislators, certainly there in New England, for example, New Hampshire, is there anyone that is not a legislator? I mean, you know, there's tons of Yeah. And so you'd have to go out and find out who are the leaders and then work with them on getting an understanding of the law and bills. And the way we've written the proposed legislation, Massachusetts that basically says is that the, you know, in essence, a unit as to licenses on the chassis down. It's something that moves to road, you know, on the road on the public highway that needs to be licensed and overseen by, you know, in general, your Department of Motor Vehicles, or Department of Transportation, on the chassis up, and needs to be built in accordance with in general, in this case, the state of Massachusetts building code. And having that generic terminology as we're changing over the next few years, ICC rules, and the state adopts them. We don't have to go back in and re adopt or update the statute because whatever the right Massachusetts building code is we're already taken care of

Ethan Waldman 24:59

Right. And that's I think that's a really smart and innovative way to do it. And to make the make it so that this law doesn't have to keep getting updated

Dan Fitzpatrick 25:11

all the time, we're doing a very similar bill. In Florida. We just did one that got approved and all the regulations approved. And Colorado, it'll be interesting to see how that works its way through, they're sort of the guinea pigs, so to speak, of, you know, working the system through. And so as they run into various issues, on each build over the years, it's information that we can then give to the other states. On here's how Colorado dealt with, for example, electrical hookups, you know, you know, when you have something movable, you don't want everything hardwire. You know, there there's other ways of handling the wiring. That's just one, one example, and how to deal with different municipalities, everything from wildfire, you know, problems to snow loads, throughout here in California, earthquakes, and hurricanes. Yeah, Florida. So yeah, we're dealing with all of these issues state by state.

Ethan Waldman 26:17

So it sounds like this is a really great kind of partnership between grassroots participants, you know, people like Vera and BIA, and then the local legislators, for anybody listening, who thinks that they might, you know, want to embark on this kind of thing. I know, you've said in the past, you know, get in touch. Are there any kind of training materials or things that you you'd like people to kind of go through before they just start calling you?

Dan Fitzpatrick 26:48

Well, what what what's important is is and for $25, you can be a member of the tiny home Industry Association. And on there, there are webinars that I produced one of them, which is about an hour on how to work with your local officials to make change. Okay, that talks about some of the basics in terms of how do you approach your elected officials? Yeah, preparing your elevator speech, you know, going to the beer and hotdog fundraiser for your local council member, and how to button hold them and, and their, you know, staff. Because the key to success, every place where I've been successful, and getting laws changed, like City of Los Angeles, or city of San Diego, is because we had a very active local chapter there, that knocked on doors, and went to committee meetings, and, you know, found out who was tiny, friendly, and then they brought me in, you know, I can now go in and show them, okay, here's how you write it. Right. And here's how other cities have written it. And once they also know about my background in city management and county administration, have a much more comfortable feeling that they're talking to a peer that understands their language to help them work through dealing with the issues now from their constituents. versus me cold calling, you know, someone in, you know, Iowa isn't going to get it done.

Ethan Waldman 28:31

Speaking of which I'm kind of looking at the list of states, Washington, Oregon, Florida, New Hampshire, California, Maine, it seems like we're working around the edges. Is what what states are next up? Well,

Dan Fitzpatrick 28:42

we you know, Colorado, certainly, Massachusetts, Florida, are very much in the mix of things. And I think having a national standard promulgated by ICC is going to help tremendously. Yeah, getting that done now. Now I can sit down with the building Commission's of each 50 states and show on my site. Hey, look, here's a standard. Here's all you know, this is a published standard that this is not some Yes, crazy thing that I came up with in my basement. You know, this was put together by your peers nationally. You know, all you need to do is adopt it. Yeah. And I think we will get a very good response to that. Because as I said earlier, our local building officials, they get calls every week. Hon. What about tiny homes? They so desperately want to have answers to that and ways of dealing with it? Yeah. It'll be very interesting to see how quickly this will take off once we have the standard.

Ethan Waldman 29:50

Yeah. Now, is this a similar effort that will have to take place as to like basically after Appendix Q passed into one 2018 basically like getting the states to adopt the latest version of the ICC code. Yeah,

Dan Fitzpatrick 30:06

it's an ongoing process on each state, each municipality is different. We basically have three types of states. Okay. And there are states like California or New York or Virginia, that they pass a statewide code that everyone follows. Virginia and California, for example, have made mandatory appendix to an appendix AQ. Right, then you have states where, you know, it's basically everything is up to local government to do okay, you know, that's more like Texas. Right. And then you have states like Colorado, that's half and half, some abide by a statewide rule. Okay. And then there's other municipalities that go their own way. Right. So having one standard, written by ICC, which they all use, no matter their system that they all use, you know, now you can go down to city hall with an actual, you know, booklet, and say, here's, here's what needs to be adopted.

Ethan Waldman 31:12

Got it? Well, that's I mean, that's fantastic. You know, I'm curious, is there anything else that I that I haven't asked you about that you kind of wanted to wanted to tell the audience? It's been? You know, it's been a few years since you've been on the show, and I hope to have you back sooner than that. But yeah, any any other updates to share?

Dan Fitzpatrick 31:29

Well, the tiny home industry association itself has grown and matured, we have 12 outstanding board members now from all over the United States and a mix of folks that are builders and users and advocates, folks that are from the certification and inspection world that inspect and certify our units. And, and some folks now, we just put two members on, that come from the world of creating tiny community. Nice. For example, will Johnson from microlife, down in Atlanta area just joined, he's one of our new board members, as well as Abby shank out of Pennsylvania who does tiny home communities in different places around the country. So we're expanding into, you know, this new growth area for tiny homes, is not just building them and zoning but working with communities on creating opportunities for infill cluster development, as well as tiny home communities done in suburban or rural areas. Awesome. So our big focus for the next coming years besides finishing up the building code stuff, yeah, is really working hard on making the zoning codes more tiny, friendly. And to that end, and bringing folks on like, Abby, and will is we're collecting ordinances. And if any of your listeners are familiar with something in their community, where they pass an ordinance to allow infill, tiny home development or other types of things, send me those ordinances. The more examples I have, the more I'm able to go and show a municipality. Here's how Port Townsend did. And Washington, or here's how the city of Raleigh did infill cluster development. Or here's how Clayton Georgia did the micro life in a project. Yeah, yeah. Because planners are very busy people, you know, elected officials are very busy. If you can give them examples, and actual written language on how others have done it and show them a pretty picture of here's what was built under this. It's worth its weight in gold, it helps us excellent.

Ethan Waldman 33:57

Well, for anyone listening, who knows of such ordinances, You heard Dan, send him in.

Dan Fitzpatrick 34:03

Yeah. And in the meantime, go knock on doors of your local elected officials or anyone else, you know, at City Hall and talk to them about barriers to tiny home living and find out if there's folks that are willing to talk with us about changing their various laws, whether it's the building side or the zoning side. Excellent.

Ethan Waldman 34:28

Yeah. It's a two pronged two pronged approach.

Dan Fitzpatrick 34:31

What I, what we what we need is 100 More various trucks out there. Yeah, help us, you know, knock on legislator or council member or county commissioner or county supervisors doors, and talk about the tiny talk.

Ethan Waldman 34:49

Yeah, well, I think we can both agree that Vera struck is one of a kind, but we need people who are inspired by Vera

who want to do the same work. Well, Dan Fitzpatrick, thank

you so much for being back on the show. I can't wait to share this one and hope to have you back in a few months to talk about whatever comes next

Dan Fitzpatrick 35:07

I'd be happy to.

Ethan Waldman 35:10

Thank you so much to Dan Fitzpatrick for being a guest on the show. Once again, you can find the show notes including a complete transcript, links to the resources Dan talked about and much more at thetinyhouse.net/285. Well, that's all for this week. I'm your host, Ethan Waldman and I will be back in two weeks with another episode of the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast.