Housing Crisis Squeezes Americans Into Dollhouses

Tiny houses reflect declining standards of living.

(Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

Homebuilder Lennar Corporation recently faced criticism for using misleading photographs to advertise new residential homes in the Fort Worth area. The dubious advertising allegedly concealed the fact that the 763-square-foot houses crammed together on postage-stamp lots were selling for $197,999. Various social media critics condemned the mini row-housing as “kind of like communist housing meets corporate housing,” “a minimum-security prison camp,” and “trailer parks [rebranded] as tiny homes.” The sad truth is that the nation’s second-largest builder is confined by the same economic forces barring millions of Americans from the iconic dream of homeownership. Tiny-house gulags are the dystopian consequence of Utopian federal spending and errant energy policies.

European Versus American Housing

Post-WWII row housing construction in the United Kingdom created hundreds of thousands of cramped private and public houses in a time of rebuilding and societal optimism. Like most European homes, these were small relative to American houses. Most UK residences remain “attached” in connected rows, versus the “detached” free-standing single homes expected in the US. In between are “semi-detached” properties: what Americans call “duplexes.”

Numerous variables contribute to the price difference between housing in England and the United States. Brick or stone construction is less costly than America’s predominantly wood-based homebuilding. More densely populated European areas push up land prices, while the US boasts vast rural areas to develop. Regulations and land use restrictions are generally more permissive stateside.

The average UK home measures 818 square feet, versus 2,164 feet for Americans. The UK average housing price is £277,000 ($US357,330 at current exchange rates) versus $513,100 in the US. The cost of living and wages of Americans and Brits are comparable: The price per square foot of residential housing in America is generally much lower. But that is changing.

Economic Slippage Widespread

Over the last few years, Americans have watched helplessly as their retirement savings crumpled, real wages and economic growth stagnated, inflation surged, mortgage rates spiked, and housing prices roared into the stratosphere. Lennar Corporation’s ant-size home offerings look not just like prison camps, communist-corporate housing, or dressed-up trailer parks, but something more terrifying: They look European.

As Americans’ real incomes and net worth shrivel under reckless monetary theory, anti-energy policies, open borders, hefty taxes, and a budget-strangling debt service, their standard of living has shrunk sharply. Medical and automobile cost increases have been merciless. Gasoline, under $2.00/gallon in April 2020, now hovers around $3.60. Nationally, heating fuel prices doubled over the same period. The average US City price for electricity in April 2020 was 13.3 cents, hitting 17.8 cents in June 2024 – a 34% increase. Grocery costs rose over 13% in 2022 alone, higher for away-from-home dining. Rents have soared, making it harder for would-be first-time homebuyers to save up for that initial foothold on the American Dream.

Consider the economic and housing environment in which Lennar’s jam-packed $200,000 tiny homes are displayed. The Federal Finance Housing Agency reports that from 2010 to 2022, home prices rose 74%, while the average wage rose only 54%. In the Fort Worth, Texas area (Tarrant County), home prices rose 130% over that period while wages rose merely 45%. In 2023, the average Texas home measured 2,170 feet at a median price per square foot of $194.87.

Rising land prices and material costs in booming Fort Worth, coupled with crumpling real wages and non-housing inflation, are why Lennar Corporation is meeting market demand by selling European-scaled mini-houses. At least they have a few sparse feet of airspace between them rather than the choo-choo train connection of attached housing, though Lennar may soon lock them together to save costs and energy using common walls.

Illegal Immigrant Contrast

What is likely drawing consumer ire over Lennar’s tight-knit micro-housing communities is not the company’s advertising but the economic deterioration that is leaving so many Americans behind – especially low-income people of color, supposedly prioritized by social justice ideologues. This was reflected in another derogatory comment toward Lennar’s residences that displaced responsibility for high-priced Texas housing onto something other than economic circumstances: “ Illegal immigrants in NYC are living in less cramped conditions than that community in Texas.”

Americans see their standard of living dropping to European levels as gargantuan subsidies for illegal immigrants rub salt ever more deeply into those growing economic wounds. Housing shortages in New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago are pushing residents into homelessness, relocation to other cities, or high-rent enslavement. These same cities also carry the lion’s share of the economic costs of supporting illegal migrants. According to the nonpartisan Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), “California’s tax burden far exceeded every other state” at $22.82 billion ($30.93 billion when including children). Second-highest is Texas, at “about $9.94 billion and $13.36 billion, respectively.”

(Previously published at Liberty Nation.)