Opinion | The Commodification of Tiny House Living is Destroying the Purpose of a Cheaper Lifestyle

Written By: Everest Kole 

The romanticization of tiny house living on Vacation-booking sites like Airbnb, have caused prices to sky rocket, which is is counter productive to the tiny house movement. 

I was perusing Airbnb in Puerto Rico, looking for a place to stay for a month when I found this listing:

“Guesthouse” for $3,562/month. 

Too bad it wasn’t a guest house, but a camper! 

Then down the line of listing I found this one: 

“Cabin” for $2,449/month. This was a plain cabin, no running water, an outhouse, and no fans or ac. 

I’m not complaining about either of those living conditions, I’ve lived in worse! Those price tags are what got me. 

Cabin living is meant to be an experience for sure, but commodifying that experience to make an extra buck is just down right evil in my opinion. 

To build a very simple tiny houses/cabin/camper vans, it can take as little as $20,000 to create. Which if you’re trying to pay it off by renting, charging $2,000/month would have that paid off in 10 months. 

I’m just against renting and landlords in general, but even with Airbnbs that are specifically for short term vacation rentals, the return value that some of these landlords/Hosts are getting is just exploitive at this point. 

Conclusion:

Stop charging people for an experience. People who actually want to get into the tiny home/off grid lifestyle would scoff at the idea of renting their cabin for that price. It would be cheaper for the vacationers to just build a cabin themselves at this point! The whole point of that style of living is to create a homestead that is reasonably cheaper than other houses on the market. Airbnb hosts that are selling their cabins and campers to make more money than what they need are completely defeating the purpose. 

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A little bit of a short blog post today, but I had a clear and concise vision for this opinion piece this week. Hope you enjoyed! Make sure to check out my Instagram, I would love your support! You can leave a comment for me on any of those posts, or contact me via the email button below. See ya!