PORTLAND BABY BOOMER YEARNS FOR TINY HOUSE

Portland’s tiny house hotel.

Besides riding the leading wave of beer, coffee, and strip clubs, Portland is also awash in the Tiny House movement.

More than that, Portland celebrates the tiny house.

One future looks like this: a Portland visitor leaves a tiny house hotel, gets into a tiny zipcar, grabs a bite at a tiny food cart, and walks Portland’s tiny city blocks.

It all fits.

On one hand you find big houses full of families. On the other it’s single people living in small apartments with no street parking. Tiny houses fit somewhere in between.

Let’s face it, neighbors on all sides are fun at first, then you wonder why they’re so noisy. And they don’t all look like the cast from ‘Friends.’

If you follow the boomer cycle of Portland housing, tiny houses make sense.

1. Move to a new city and find the cheapest apartment/threat to life balance.

2. Find a place with more room and lower cost even with the bug killer service added.

3. Get married and move to an apartment like the one you’re in because you want to start a new life in a place new to both of you. Without relationship ghosts hanging around, romance blossoms.

4. Get pregnant and find an apartment with an extra bedroom in a neighborhood with pitbulls roaming the sidewalks and iron bar window treatments.

5. Get pregnant again and move to the suburban three bedroom ranch.

6. Combine families sandwich generation style and move to a house big enough for extended family and friends.

7. Get too old to keep up the big house and move to a tiny house the size of your first apartment, but in a nicer neighborhood.

8. Last move to the tiniest house, a simple pine box.

Let’s skip the last move for now and take a good look at building a tiny house to live in or rent.

Is the building site close to neighborhood shopping? Close to mass transit? Best of all, is it close to downtown?

If you believe Portlanders make Portland better, visitors want to know why. So you show them.

Your tiny house is a gem of local material imbued with tradition and custom. It echoes Oregon from the Blue Mountains to Sunset Beach.

To see if a tiny house is in your future, take a look at listings on Airbnb and spend a few nights in local houses.

Start thinking small, then smaller, and you’ll be on the right track.