Veronika Wild

A Tiny House on Wheels - Fixed or mobile, most are prefabricated and transportable, saving time and money in construction - This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY Still thinking about housing. This time I'm looking at Tiny Homes, not the least because youngest can’t get a place to live, nor even to rent, because there’s simply nothing affordable in his price range. In Queensland, at least one place is renting out shipping containers for $200 per week. By using standardised components, fewer materials, prefabrication and economies of scale, tiny homes   can indeed be much cheaper to build than conventional ones, but given that even wealthy people such as Elon Musk are choosing to live in a tiny home, there must be other good reasons for considering them.   Here are some of the main ones. Speed of Construction, Transportability and Flexibilty Tiny Homes come in a wide range of configurations and can usually be adapted to your specific needs. Standardised an...

Empty but not free At first glance it seems ridiculous that we have empty houses and dying towns here, when there are refugees both here and abroad who could desperately use them. Indeed, one mayor, notably the Mayor of Brighton, recently proposed just that to the Federal Government, since an influx of people would help to boost the town’s businesses. However, this has been rejected on the grounds that Tasmania is already regarded as   the ‘beggar ‘   state, having to rely on taxes generated   on the mainland to survive. The provision of additional services such as education and health required by the new population, would simply be another cash drain on an already impoverished public purse. There are many reasons why these houses are empty and have been allowed to fall into disrepair and they are most certainly not free for the taking. Many of them would date from the great farm amalgamations which took place in the 1950’s when mechanised farming became n...