Although we have been focussing on creating a script and a storyboard this week, we have still had some research to do in regards to finalising our solution. As mentioned in our last weeks post we have decided to focus on creating tiny offices to help create the tiny house community to be financially sustainable. From speaking further about this with Shorty our solution appears to be very promising, she mentioned that it is highly possible to be able to get zoning permission from the government to enable the set up of tiny offices. Furthermore, as we know from one of our first blogs, it costs around US$20000 to create a liveable tiny house. We believe that to create a tiny office should cost less than this, due to there not being as many appliances, but having a basic room being able to seat a certain number of people (probably maximum 8) with the use of a sink, toilet, and basic appliances of microwave and kettle, electric points and Wi-Fi accessibility. Without further in depth research into the costing, we would not be able to give an exact amount of what a tiny office would cost.
We also spoke last week about Kantoor Karavan (you can check out there really cool work here) who we sent an email to requesting more information about their company and how it works. We found out that they rent their tiny offices out for €60 – €70 per day depending on how many people are renting. Our opinion is to charge a set price for a tiny office rather than charging per person, by charging a daily, weekly and monthly rate (the rate per day working out cheaper the longer you rent). On top of this we have had previous issues with our solutions where employment through outsourcing would be necessary, which is something our NGO does not want to do. We therefore think the best way to solve this problem would be to charge a deposit to anyone who rents out the tiny offices, where the offices have to be left in the same condition they were given in order to obtain the deposit. Obviously cleaning of the offices would still be needed but by customers cleaning up their own mess, it wouldn’t be needed as often. Once a week would suffice in order to keeping the offices in good condition which could be shared between the community meaning outsourcing wouldn’t be necessary. Lastly, through contacting Kantoor Karavan we suggested the potential collaboration with the tiny house Florida community. As they are a huge fan of the tiny house movement they said they would definitely be open to collaboration.
Additionally to all this, we ourselves have been collaborating much more with Tiny Houses Found in Transition. We have come to realise that the two different solutions we have, compliment each other very well. And when presenting our solutions through a presentation we will be able to combine the ideas to create extremely strong solutions. We are still working and refining this, but we will keep you all updated!
Lastly, we have been looking into grants from the US government and forwarded our information over to our NGO. They told us that unfortunately they would not be eligible for the grants that we had researched due to them not fitting the criteria. On the up side though, they said that they would look further into it because there may be potential other forms of grants they could eligible to, which is promising.
Tiny Innovators 
Hi Tiny Innovators, good to hear you find that the two teams have idea’s which complement each other. Government grants only for the poor? What other options are there? Do you also have layout idea’s for the social media? I mean, where are you going to suggest she show links so people can find THIC’s easier?
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Hi Laura,
Thank you for your comment! Since collaborating with the other team (Found in transition) we have come to the conclusion that we would not necessarily need any funding to push our idea forward. With their idea of having a workshop, this takes away our problem of needing funding to create the tiny offices. As the workshop would inevitably create a tiny house, we could then form this into a tiny office. Which we would then take forward and rent out to others, using websites that we showed in our previous blog. Additionally to using social media, THIC said they were not ready to have a website until they have something to ‘sell’. However as we are now coming to finalising our solution we will definitely suggest that they set one of these up as it would aid them massively with our solution and with the Found in transition’s solution. To add to this the community does not yet have a Facebook, twitter or instagram page, so we also suggest that they create these in order to layout their ideas with the hope that this can be unified through a website.
Thanks for reading!
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Hello the Tiny Innovators! You had a fantastic idea initiate the potential collaboration with similar tiny house community! All in all you are pointing out great ideas, especially by spreading awareness through social media, which is the key medium for grasping information nowadays.
Nevertheless, I’m curious though how a deposit could replace the cleaning stuff. Tiny House customers do probably not think about cleaning the toilet before leaving so the next customers wouldn’t appreciate using it from it’s previous owner without having been cleaned professionally. I think you should deepen that thought! Without employees it woudn’t work!
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