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news <br />Housing <br />Duluth looks to'tiny homes' to help ease housing crunch <br />Dan Kraker Duluth December 6, 2022 4:00 AM <br />A tiny home under construction in Duluth's East Hillside neighborhood is seen on Thursday. <br />Duluth has recently changed its rules to encourage the construction of tiny homes. Ben <br />Hovland I MPR News <br />On a busy street in Duluth's Central Hillside neighborhood back in <br />October, developer Sean Dixon stood in front of the pilot "tiny home" <br />he's building and described its interior. It didn't take long. <br />"So, we have 175 square feet, with a sleeping loft, single bathroom and <br />then a kitchen and living room area," he said. <br />The home is built on piers, a few feet off the ground on a very narrow, <br />sloped lot in between two older homes. Dixon hopes to rent it to <br />traveling nurses who come to work at one of the city's two hospitals <br />located a few blocks down the hill. <br />He knows it's not for everyone. But he believes there's a market for his <br />bare -bones, eco-friendly vision. <br />Show Your Support by Making A Gift Now <br />Public media is independent, community -supported media for the public <br />good. <br />Donate Today <br />Mely a minimalist. Someone who's only going to be here for a <br />short amount of time, who just needs good living quarters that are safe <br />and functional. Or somebody who really enjoys the outdoors and <br />doesn't want to spend a lot of time indoors." <br />city offered assistance to developers who agreed to pilot innovative <br />housing projects on hard -to -build -on lots, like this one. <br />"Duluth really relaxed its standards and codes, and the new policies <br />that the city set up allows for an easier route for adoption for tiny <br />homes," Dixon said. <br />Sean Dixon, owner of Denver -based Simply Tiny Development, stands outside of the <br />175-square foot "tiny home" he's building in Duluth's Central Hillside neighborhood. <br />He hopes to rent it to travel nurses who work at nearby hospitals. Dan Kraker I MPR <br />News <br />This home is one of a few new projects in Duluth — ranging from a <br />development of 18 workforce housing units to a pair of small units <br />geared toward veterans experiencing homelessness — featuring very <br />small, compact homes. <br />They're not all, technically, "tiny homes," which are less than 400 <br />square feet in size. <br />But they're part of a broader trend of building more affordable, more <br />ii£ent, and much smaller homes to help ease the housing supply <br />crunch that's hitting communities like Duluth and beyond. <br />That trend is much more advanced in states like California, said Jamie <br />Stolpestad, who co -owns a company called YardHomes MN, which built <br />the two small homes to house veterans in Duluth. But Minnesota is now <br />beginning to follow in their footsteps. <br />"I would say at the moment, the aspiration for this sort of smaller, more <br />fifent home is greater than the actual implementation," Stolpestad. <br />"But the implementation is catching up." <br />Dixon runs a company called Simply Tiny Development. He's from <br />Denver. But he was lured to Duluth more than three years ago when the <br />