What’s old is new: a “community of eco-friendly tiny houses” planned for East Point, a neighborhood located on the south part of Atlanta
I’ll be the first to say that although the traditional American dream often involves a “big house,” that personally, I’d rather not have so much house, that it becomes something of a burden in terms of property tax, upkeep, utilities, and simply not needing so much excessive space. Conversely, I wouldn’t be keen on not having enough house, because that’s kind of the situation I’m in now, where it doesn’t feel like I have enough space anymore.
If given the choice, I’d rather have too much home over not enough home, every single day of the week.
That being said, I don’t understand the seeming rise of small home living. I understand the want and importance for population density, and for a city like Atlanta that’s always trying to keep up with the Joneses, packing more people into its metropolitan area is always something of a concern.
But tiny homes? Entire villages of them? I can’t say that I’m even a modicum under the belief that this could really work, much less actually flourish into something beyond a modern day shantytown.
I love reading all this rhetoric about how great these tiny homes are, under 750 square feet, and how many can be packed into a single acre of land. How villages of these things, placed near MARTA, (the royal) could help in stimulating and revitalizing everything. How it’s the future of modern homeownership, getting to live in privacy without tenants above or below you, or with shared walls.
Yeah, back in the day, this model of residential living was called “mobile homes.” Alternatively known as “trailer parks.” Whose residents were often labeled as “trailer park trash,” because very particular types of people were often reduced to this type of living.
That’s pretty much what tiny home villages are. Modern-day, relabeled mobile homes.
Smarmy Atlantans and those who support tiny home trailer park living can deny all they want, but given the proposed location of the first tiny home village, East Point, there’s pretty much a 100% chance that it’s going to end up becoming a shantytown ghetto paradise of blight. East Point is currently a ghetto and hasn’t shown much indication that it will ever be anything else. It’s where violent unauthorized rap videos are filmed, and no joke just a few hours ago last night my phone got the Amber Alert message, because a child was kidnapped in East Point.
Yeah, like most ideas for Atlanta, this one is with good intentions, but without an actual thorough plan and infrastructure behind it, it’s destined for failure. Building a village of tiny homes is not enough in itself, because once all the homes are filled, the people that live in them will want to feel safe and have low crime. Additionally, they’ll want simple conveniences like grocery stores and gas stations, and local recreation.
The problem is, Atlanta is quick to execute the step ones in any plan, but there’s seldom any sort of follow-up for consideration for the reactions of the actions made. It’s like the plot of Charlie Wilson’s War, where the United States trained Middle Eastern forces to fight against Russia and immediately pulled out once the threat was suppressed; what was abandoned without any follow-through ultimately became the groundwork for Al Qaeda and ultimately other Islamic extremists.
It’s kind of like that, but maybe not on such a lethally terroristic scale. Atlanta builds fancy residences all over the place, but doesn’t provide any infrastructure behind them, so that when people move in, they’re pretty much left to the wolves of their areas without any sort of consideration of what their insertion would do to the areas.
I hope East Point is ready for a fancy trailer park, which might be a great location for Young Thug to film his next music video.
