Jay shafer biography
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Dare to make mistakes and learn. It wasn’t a compromise, but a deliberate choice. Build sensible housing in accordance with Constitutional laws.
2. 3. By the Summer of 1999, my new dwelling and The Small House Book were complete. By 2014, a handful of correlating laws had consequently been put on the chopping block. Just days after I’d moved in, the house and my book began receiving a lot of attention.
And, to this end, they’ve been doing a pretty good job.
Ostensible legal protections against this sort of abuse do exist. Today, people affectionately refer to me as “The Tiny House Guy,” “The Founder of the Tiny House Movement,” and even “The God Father of Tiny Houses.” This blog is where I’ll be posting images and words relating to my passion for diminutive dwellings.
TESTIMONIALS
“…guru of the small house movement.” —John Blackstone, CBS
“A true artist and inspiration!” —Linton Hale
ESSAYS
DIY Housing Crisis: A Beginner’s Guide
In seeking to keep American housing unduly expensive, housing laws make our homes less safe, leave countless thousands of us homeless (an estimated 600,000) and have nearly 40-million of us living in more house than we can afford (Joint Center for Housing Studies, 2018).
Today, it has been turned into a market where freedom is sold as an expensive product.
I believe we must return to its origins. Like any lie worth telling, this clever non-problem contains more than a little truth. In 1924, our country’s first model zoning ordinances were published by the United States Commerce Department.
I had to learn every day – fixing broken pumps, inventing storage solutions, living by the rhythms of nature.
It was far from luxurious, but it was real. It wasn’t about perfection – quite the opposite.
And soon, what had once been homes built from reclaimed wood and creativity were being sold as designer objects for the price of a suburban villa.
From salvaged materials → to luxury hardwoods.
From do-it-yourself → to high-end architecture.
From affordable independence → to six-figure price tags.
The irony was striking: a movement meant to free people from debt now produced yet another consumer trap.
My Own Path – Life on the Sailboat
I know from experience that tiny living doesn’t need to be about designer furniture or architectural drawings.
What began as simple, self-built shelters turned into glossy lifestyle products.
Architects designed tiny houses as prestige projects. Most who started had never swung a hammer before. City of Cambridge (1928) the U.S. Supreme court found that a similar ordinance would do nothing to promote public health, safety, convenience or general welfare and stood as a “serious and highly injurious” invasion of property rights.
Even in its early days, while still relatively narrow in scope, zoning was already facing some serious challenges.
In the subsequent case of Nectow v. Today’s unprecedented rates of homelessness, the crashes of 1926 and 2008 and the latter’s devastating effects on U.S. and world economies are all direct results of American housing laws run amok.
Disastrous by Design
In 1915, a private corporation known as the Building Officials and Code Administrators International, Inc.
(BOCA) was tasked with creating a set of housing laws that would serve both industry and government alike. To be Constitutional, zoning ordinances (like codes) would have to address matters of public health and safety. Place an immediate moratorium on all sections of code and zoning that exceed any legal purpose, including those that mandate inordinate fees and permitting costs for safer, low-cost, efficient development.