SAN ANTONIO - We've all heard that everything's bigger in Texas, except maybe in one neighborhood west of downtown.
Architect Francisco Tavira is from Mexico City but he has staked a claim to a very tiny piece of Texas real estate.
His lot is a slim 64-by-71 feet at the corner of South Nueces and Elvira. His new house is a tiny, 320 square feet. It's made from two recycled shipping containers, joined at a right angle. Many of the building materials going into the house have been recycled as well.
Tavira said that he chose to put down roots in one of San Antonio's poorest zip codes because it's a vibrant community where small businesses and private homes have co-existed peacefully for generations.
"There's a lot of problems but there are a lot of nice people, people who work here and know you. You talk with them and they've spent twenty years here and they work hard," Tavira said.
On Tuesday night, about 30 interested people came to see Tavira's container house project at a meetup sponsored by the San Antonio Sustainable Living group. The tour and talk offered people a chance to see tiny living in real life.
Tavira told the group that he chose this modest area because he believes big box builders are hurting rather than helping many older neighborhoods.
"We can push the city and say look this is a new movement and we need to try it different because there are people who are interested in doing this and it's helping the community," Tavira said.
Many agreed with Tavira that less is more.
Reynaldo Covarrubias said that he came to get ideas about what he might be able to do with a lot he owns near the Alamodome.
"I think it's important to recycle what we have so we won't keep trashing our world with stuff that we don't need," Covarrubias said.
Covarrubias noted that he is encouraged by infill projects near downtown and by new efforts he sees like the growth of community gardens.
"I just think that it's great that we're going back to our roots, the way we were meant to live," Covarrubias said.
Tavira added that his goal is to occupy his tiny dream home and then help others in his neighborhood do the same.
The San Antonio Housing Authority provided these statistics about living in San Antonio:
-San Antonio ranked number 1 in a recent study by the Pew Center that measured residential income segregation. (Note: Residential income segregation refers to the rise in income and residential inequality in the United States).
-“Residential segregation by income has increased during the past three decades across the United States and in 27 of the nation’s 30 largest major metropolitan areas, according to a new analysis of census tract and household income data by the Pew Research Center.”
-San Antonio has been one of the fastest-growing large metropolitan areas during the last three decades, 89% Population change between 1980 and 2010-- “fueled in part by an influx of low-skill, low-wage immigrants from south of the border and in part by an influx of high-skill, high-wage workers and well-to-do retirees”
-The San Antonio Housing Authority administers the Public Housing, Housing Choice Voucher and Moderate Rehabilitation programs. In total, SAHA serves 65,000 individuals, including 33,000 children.
-As of July, there are approximately 44,000 households on all waiting lists. It should be noted that this number reflects duplicate individuals who may be on all three lists. The waitlists are based on date and time of applications, and availability is based on current funding and vacancies in public housing. We recognize the demand for affordable housing in San Antonio is vast, which demonstrates the need for more federal funding to support our mission.
For more about the San Antonio Sustainable Living group, go to their official website here.
For more environmental events, click here: http://www.meetup.com/SAEnvironmental/
