geographically unkempt
So, Dmitry Orlov has this iron triangle made up of house-car-job that he says if you can get yourself out of all of it, you'll be in a much better position to survive impending societal collapse. Getting rid of the car and the job is easy, but where do you live if you don't have a house? How do you live if you don't have a job to bring in money to pay for things like food and shelter?
I haven't read his book yet, but an idea I have had is to buy a house but rearrange the insides of it. Below are the steps with some explanations.
1. Find and buy a house that is mostly of a regular box shape.
2. With the help of a structural engineer, tear down all interior walls possible.
3. Create within the house four, five or six (depending on the size of the house) very small apartments.
4. in each apartment have a small RV style wet-bathroom, a very small functional kitchen and a murphy-bed.
5. have a small laundry room somewhere in the house, not necessarily the basement.
6. place one or two additional apartments in the basement, if possible, but have a separate storage room that has lockers equal in number to the number of apartments.
7. rent all but one of the apartments for a price per apartment that, when added up, will pay for all of the expenses of the home, including mortgage, insurance, taxes, utilities and so on.
8. live in the remaining apartment.
Obviously this wouldn't really work out for me since I have a family and a wife who would never agree to living in such conditions, however, if it was possible for me to do such a thing for each of my children, I would be setting them up with a way to survive the coming fall of society, so long as they could continue to have paying tenants.
An advantage to this is that if one of the apartments is empty for any period of time, there are still all of the others that will still generate revenue. If the location of the house is a good one, there shouldn't be any trouble finding tenants because obviously, with apartments this small, the rent would not be too high. Low rent in a good location is often a very desirable thing.
Ultimately standards of living are going to go down with the coming years, so why not do something proactive that would allow for a planned descent? By drastically lowering the amount of square feet being used for a person to live, this will obviously decrease their standard of living, however, if it is done in such a way that it is planned and that it is a personal choice being made, it should be easier to take.
I took the idea a little bit further and thought that once some revenue starts to come in, I could buy the plans for and build one or more Tiny Houses that would remain in the back yard and also rent out those.
Anyhow, this is one thing I have been thinking about lately.
6 comments:
My aunt lived in something similar, it's called a housing commission apartment.
Maybe people could live in all the caravans (trailers) that no one will be able to afford use, due to a lack of petrol.
Do Canadians call caravans trailers?
Go to http://ghctrailers.rtrk.com.au/?scid=73460&kw=776283:13964&pub_cr_id=6450659489 to see what we refer to as a trailer.
Shipping container houses.
zhoen, Check out the link below to see what I've written about using shipping containers:
http://wallpaperdepot.com/ideas/lowcosthousing.html
That idea is significantly larger than the one I propose here.
Deb: A caravan is a group of travelers travelling together. A travel trailer is the proper term for what you are referring to, but typically here we call them trailers or recreational vehicles (RVs).
Most of the trailers aren't built particularly well for dealing with winter in Canada.
the family and i are already making arangements and plans.
ghost, I'm curious to know what your plans are.
That is really fascinating.
I live in a 405 square foot bachelor apartment. I find that it feels empty with me all alone here. I have a locker as part of my rent, and it's almost empty, except for the boxes I used to move in here. I don't own many things. I move into my new condo next year, and it's 620 square feet.
To people in my family, they may think I paid too much for the square footage of my new condo, but I live close to work, don't require a car, and have all the amenities I need very close by. I guess I will rent out the locker, and probably the parking space.
I think the future world lives vertically instead of horizontally, and in green, sustainable cities instead of shipping in food from farms hundreds (or more often thousands) of kilometers away. Cities with community gardens, or condos with green roofs that have fruit-bearing plants. Laws that allow a few personal livestock per person (in Toronto, we're allowed three chickens, I think.) That would be my sort of utopia.
My grandparents had a large lot in the city, and they had a half dozen chickens and rabbits at any given time. They grew tomatoes, potatoes, spinach, salad, other root vegetables, even kiwis at one point. They had a greenhouse with a fig tree and other herbs and plants in the winter. They had many fruit trees. We always had fresh tomato sauce which we jarred before winter time, and jams and preserves all year round, and a surplus of fruits and vegetables that we'd share with the whole family (that, really, they'd be doing us a favour by taking off our hands).
I regret that I didn't learn more from them before they died... but that mentality lives on in me and my siblings.
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