Pittsburgh’s first tiny house is finally ready to be someone’s home. (A tiny house is usually between 100 and 500 square feet.) City Paper has covered the project since it was just an idea in developer Eve Picker’s mind, and then through some of its financial struggles. Unlike most tiny houses that came before it (which are usually placed on small trailers to avoid zoning regulations), the 350-square-foot home in Garfield was granted a zoning exception and is fully hooked up to the city’s power and sewer grids. On Jan. 31, our photo intern Aaron Warnick visited the completed domicile as part of its open house and took photos which can be viewed in our slideshow.

CP was not alone in expressing interest. Dozens of Pittsburghers lined up for their chance to cram into the tiny space. Residents were able to see how amenities like a bathtub, oven, stove top and two mini-fridges all fit into the small space. The initial sale price for the home is about $109,000 (this large amount is explained in our news feature, here).

To see the tiny house yourself, visit the corner of North Atlantic Avenue and Broad Street in Garfield. With its boxy, modernist design and small stature, it stands out against the older homes of the neighborhood and even though it’s tiny, it’s difficult to miss.

This article appears in Jan 27 – Feb 2, 2016.

5 replies on “Residents line up to view the completed tiny house in Pittsburgh’s Garfield neighborhood”

  2. A tiny life, huh? So if we don’t all have a rotting house in Plum or Cranberry – or some beige McMansiony atrocity in [name any leapfrog suburb], we’re not living right?

    I’ll take that chance, thanks.

  3. The big increase in housing costs isn’t the houses; it’s the land. In 2005, the median house price in the city was 2.44 years of median income. Today it’s 3.56 years, largely because we lost the land value tax and real estate speculators swarmed in.

    It could be worse, though. In California, it ranges from over 5 years (Bakersfield) to nearly 13 years (San Fransisco). Before they curtailed their property taxes, their housing affordability index was only 10% higher than the national average.

  4. While I’m all for tiny homes, even this articles states how it sticks out like a sore thumb in the Garfield neighborhood. Besides the gentrification issue, the house itself is $109,000. If you read the full article (click on the link above in the article), a brand new “normal sized” home in this neighborhood is going for $143,000. To renovate your existing home would cost $90,000. So I’m not sure where the incentive is in building a tiny home in the Garfield neighborhood is other than to make a point that zoning exceptions can be done. I’d much rather preserve the history and culture of the Garfield neighborhood by renovating a blighted home rather than build new one, especially if I can have the comfortability of size for about $20,000 less.

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