Centrally in the Netherlands, in a beautiful wooded location in the city, a new Tiny House residential project was opened on September 30th: Mayordomio, after the Spanish word for steward. The six Tiny Houses that are inhabited there are all different, but still form a beautifully harmonious whole. The residents have been allowed to live there for fifteen years and the neighborhood is happy. It sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? Yet it has become a reality in Amersfoort.
Fifteen groups, one winner
The municipality of Amersfoort announced in March 2021 that it wanted to make the location on Curaçaolaan available for fifteen years to a CPO (Collective Private Commissioning) with Tiny Houses. Registration opened in April for groups, who had to submit a plan that had to meet a strict set of requirements from the municipality. No fewer than fifteen groups took part and there could only be one winner: the Mayordomio collective.
Residents Jonneke, Nieske and Rianne explain what this process was like for them:
“We only had four months to make a plan and there were quite a lot of requirements we had to meet. The project is located in a water extraction area, so we were required to be connected to the sewer. There are also many trees, most of which had to be preserved, which was a challenge for the design and placement of the Tiny Houses. But we succeeded, and we are very happy that we were drawn in and now live here. It only took two years from the draw to housing, which is actually very fast.’
A tight framework
The first Tiny House project in a municipality is always a matter of finding out how it works within the regulations and what suits the location. Partly due to the input of the group on the municipal framework, a plan has been created that is a jewel for the environment. For example, the imagination created by the city architect, in which the houses on the location are sketched, has been adjusted to take more account of the necessary balance between privacy and community building.
The rules for dimensions, which were partly drawn up to protect the existing trees, turned out to be unfeasible in practice due to the transport of the Tiny Houses. Early in the process, Mayordomio enlisted the help of Tiny House construction company Liberté Tiny Houses, now called Liberté Woodscapes. They supported the project and built the Tiny Houses.
Rianne: ‘I had known Gijsbert from Liberté for a while and knew that he is not only an experienced Tiny House builder, but also has a lot of experience with organizing a Tiny House residential project and contact with the municipality. It has helped us enormously to have an independent project supporter with a lot of practical experience and construction knowledge.’
An improvement for the neighborhood
The location was previously infamous for housing a ‘sex hut’, so according to some local residents ‘it could only get better’. In any case, there were zero objections to the issuance of the environmental permit for the project and many neighbors were present at the opening. The group had to start the participation project itself and actively involved the neighborhood from the start. For example, they organized meetings to get acquainted and to explain what the intention was.
In the near future, Mayordomio wants to organize more activities for the neighborhood. There are plans for a mini library and a picnic table where people can eat together, and they want to organize creative workshops such as building birdhouses. Jonneke: ‘It also depends on what the neighborhood wants, what matters to them.’
In the forest and in the city
The location of the Tiny House project is a stone’s throw from the Little Switzerland park. You imagine yourself in the middle of the forest, a place that will appeal to many Tiny House dreamers. In the middle of greenery and yet also in the city, close to all amenities. The group changed the original plan for the positioning of the houses so that the Tiny Houses are in a circle, facing each other and around a common area. The space between the houses is managed jointly and a start has already been made on creating a vegetable garden. A shared storage room is also being built.
The project houses three women living alone, a married couple, a cohabiting couple and a family with two children. The ages range from two and a half to late fifties. The Tiny Houses were custom designed and built so that everyone’s individual wishes could be incorporated. Because they were all built by one construction company and have the same facade cladding, they form a harmonious whole that blends in very nicely with the wooded location. The largest has a living area of 56 m2, the smallest 21 m2. The houses and the project are nature inclusive by, among other things, adding bat boxes and having a lot of attention for biodiversity.
Advice for those who also want to live like this
Mayordomio has gained a lot of experience that they would like to share with others who would also love to live this way. Following are some of their tips:
- Building rights: make sure you know everything about it! The municipality’s requirement to establish building rights through a notary resulted in high costs for the residents. While it was initially expected to be €600 per Tiny House, it later turned out to vary between €2200 and €3500 per house. It is highly questionable whether a building right is really necessary for a project on municipal land.
- Tiny living with children: don’t let your social circle cause you to have doubts, people around you who think it is impossible to live in a Tiny House with children. Jonneke: ‘People initially thought we were crazy, but when they come by now they are very positive.’
- Enlist the support of a practical and experienced project supervisor.
- Don’t underestimate the group process and do lots of fun things together, such as a weekend away in a Nivon house.
- Please note that utility connections are often late. But you can survive camping in your new house for a while.
- And finally: hold on to your dreams and keep believing in them. Nieske: ‘In 2017 I decided that I wanted to live tiny. The first plan didn’t work, the second didn’t work either, but the third time it worked and now I love the way I live. You never know where the golden tip will come from, so keep spreading the word on what your dream is.’
Thank you Mayordomio for giving us a glimpse into your beautiful project via TinyFindy. It is fantastic that the municipality of Amersfoort has taken this initiative and it is rightly a project to be proud of. We wish you a lot of fun living in your woodsy community and hope that after fifteen years the municipality will decide that the tiny neighborhood is too beautiful and valuable to give up!
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