Hotel Cabin Versus Tiny House

23 feet by 18 feet. I'm an ex-engineer, which is why, when standing in my rented vacation cabin,  I measured it. This wasn't planned, but the cabin is a rectangle, by random chance I had my 24-foot tape measure in my luggage, so, of course, I measured the square footage. 23 x 18 = 414 square feet. Hmm. My tiny house is 391 square feet. Comparisons must be made!

My tiny: just south of the airport outside Port Townsend, 39 feet by 10 feet, long and skinny, my current home, a place I've lived in for more than 18 months, price = $76,500

My rented vacation cabin: waterfront (with a bluff that's receding enough that they've already knocked down several and are going to knock down a few more, Kalaloch Lodge by Kalaloch Creek by Kalaloch Beach and part of Olympic National Park, rectangular, two queen beds, a two burner stove, a tinier bathroom than mine, a woodstove with a daily refill on the wood, and a cranky heater that acts like it is from the 50s, quaint, ~$235 / night in January

Kalaloch Beach from Kalaloch Lodge - Not the cabin I’m in. This one is being removed, by people unless Nature does it first.

Gotta do the simple math. $76,500/$235 = ~325.5 days if I was to rent my house for the rental rate of the cabin. OK. My house price per day / 18 months = ~$141.67. My house is cheaper. But then there's the lot rental for my house ~$20/day, utilities ~$20/day, and various other costs, so the two get closer. Let's call it ~$184 / night.

For the extra 50-ish dollars, I get a great view, though it may be temporary, an hour's drive (with construction) to any major store, spotty wi-fi (unless I hotpost it or work from the lodge, as I am doing now), an extra bed and a Lot less storage.

But the view is worth it all, at least for a while. The solitude has benefits, too. Oh yeah, and Nature, hard to put a price on that.

Pardon the randomness of this internal query, but I'm on a mini-vacation, and this is what my mind does, sometimes.

Whether $235, $184, or $141, I've spent less per night in many hotels They didn't have the view. But they also didn't have the responsibilities. I'm not surprised that some people must live in motels purely based on cost.

Once upon a time, someone was talking about making housing more affordable. I resist calling any housing affordable because to someone any house is affordable. I'll skip the niceties and simply call it cheaper. Someone who is homeless won't care about the nuances. Among the various ways of bringing down the cost of housing is bringing down the square footage of the house. The trend isn't linear, but a tiny house is cheaper than a conventional house, and can house people as well as if they are on vacation.

But most houses cost much more than $76,500 (2024). That math multiplies, for a simplistic analysis. 

The median house size in the US is roughly 2,000 square feet. Let's make it easy and call it 5 times the size of my house and this cabin.

The median house price in the US (and realizing there's great disparity there) is ~$400,000. 

That's ~$200 per square foot. 

Eep. Hey. No surprise. Housing is expensive, especially for people who try to live median/average lifestyles. 

I'm not going to get into oligarch numbers because they're too obscene, especially when you consider that they may have multiple mansions. Their yachts have more living space than any house I've owned. 

I'm glad for what I have. One reason I can afford to stay in this seaside lodge is because I live in a tiny house. For a few nights, I'll be spending double for my housing: this cabin and my currently empty house. If I had moved into one of the 1,500 square foot houses I almost bought, I might visit this place for a day, maybe a night, and probably not most of a week, as I am doing.

Living in a tiny house is an unconventional life, though it is becoming more common. Visiting the Pacific Northwest (the Pacific Ocean's north east) is nothing new, but there are probably fewer than a few hundred people within miles of this lodge. I don't expect a crowded restaurant for tonight's dinner in January. 

Living unconventionally makes it easier for me to make such comparisons. It makes me aware that our housing solutions are physical and are limited by limits we decide to limit ourselves with. It makes me wonder at the excesses we encourage and allow. And it makes me glad that, despite some of my life's tough spots, I'm glad I'm getting to live this unconventional life.