Atlanta law expressly prohibits the construction of homes smaller than 750 square feet — but that's not stopping local tiny house advocates from dreaming big. Last summer, Will Johnston started Tiny Homes Atlanta, an organization he's using to spread the gospel of clutter-free living in minuscule quarters (we're talking less than 500 square feet). It's a fever he caught after quitting his corporate job and working at vineyards in New Zealand for three months — and one he hopes will continue to catch on in the city he loves. "You can't build anything smaller than 750 square feet on a foundation within the city limits of Atlanta," Johnston said. (We're guessing the 650-square-foot Home Park micro featured earlier today was grandfathered in). "The more and more awesome Atlanta becomes," Johnston continued, "the more and more expensive. And we're going to be pushing out people that should be living intown."
Johnston's "Meetup" group currently consists of 180 "tiny housers." They get together once a month to talk about where and how to build, how to educate others and how to advocate with government and community stakeholders.
Johnston plans to team up soon with Lifecycle Building Center to construct a sort of model tiny home. He said the movement is "growing and growing fast," specifically referencing the much-touted SCADpads and OTP efforts by Tiny House of the South in Marietta and Tiny Home Builders in Cumming. "I think the stigma of living small, people associate it with being poor," Johnston said. "But this allows the freedom to go travel, to experience the world and not feel like you're trying to buy the love of life. My whole thing is live small, experience big."
Johnston, by the way, currently lives with friends, but he's in the process of buying a downtown Atlanta condo — one that, appropriately enough, is about 500 square feet.
— By Curbed Atlanta contributor Tyler Estep
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