Prefigurative Community Building (Part 14)
Building Homes Together: How to Start a Tiny House or Ecovillage Project as a Power With Solution to the Housing Crisis
The global housing crisis has made it brutally clear: the current system isn't working. Rents are soaring, homeownership is increasingly out of reach, and homelessness is rising. Yet amid this despair, a quiet revolution is taking root, one built on cooperation, mutual aid, and a refusal to leave anyone behind. Tiny house villages and ecovillages offer not just shelter, but a new way to live together. They show that housing doesn’t need to be driven by profit or power over others, it can be rooted in care, autonomy, and interdependence.
This guide offers a step-by-step approach to starting a tiny house village or ecovillage as a Power With coordination pattern. This means your project should be built not around authority and control, but shared responsibility, open participation, and mutual flourishing. Whether you’re housed, unhoused, renting, squatting, or just searching for a better way, this is a path you can walk with others.
Step 1: Gather and Listen
Start with relationships. Invite people in your area who are also concerned about housing—especially those with lived experience of housing insecurity—to an open conversation. This is not a recruitment meeting. It’s a space for collective dreaming. Ask: What does safe housing mean to us? What would it take to share land with dignity and autonomy?
Avoiding Power Over: Don’t pitch a plan and expect buy-in. Instead, co-create a vision. Let ideas emerge from the group, and center the voices of those most affected by housing injustice.
Step 2: Choose a Structure Together
Decide as a group what kind of housing you want to create. Do you want to build a cluster of tiny homes on wheels? Renovate a vacant lot into micro-units? Create an off-grid ecovillage with shared spaces? Research zoning laws and legal pathways (many tiny home projects use religious land-use exemptions, rural land, or mobile-home designations).
You may also want to explore forming a:
Housing Cooperative for democratic control of housing decisions
501(c)(3) nonprofit or mutual aid group for access to grants
Resources:
Step 3: Secure Land or a Space to Begin
Look for land or underused spaces that could be converted. This could include:
Vacant lots (public or private)
Church-owned property
Backyard plots offered by homeowners
Rural acreage with low cost
Some cities allow legal encampments or transitional housing villages with a permit. Start where you can, even if it’s temporary.
Avoiding Power Over: If someone is offering land, ensure it’s under collective stewardship, not a benevolent landlord arrangement. Ownership or long-term lease agreements must reflect shared governance.
Step 4: Co-Design and Build Together
Design your homes and common spaces as a group. Think small, sustainable, and replicable. You might start with tiny houses, yurts, geodesic domes, or earthships, whatever fits your collective’s values and skills.
Include:
Shared kitchens and bathrooms (lowers cost and increases community)
Gathering spaces for meals and decision-making
Gardens, water collection, and renewable energy where possible
Power With in Practice: Everyone who lives there should be part of decisions, design, and construction where possible. Offer skill shares. Pay people for labor when you can. Share meals and make it joyful.
Step 5: Create a Governance System Based on Consent and Care
A healthy community needs a clear structure for shared decision-making. Consider models like:
Sociocracy or consensus-based governance
Restorative circles for conflict resolution
Rotating facilitation roles
Governance should be transparent, non-hierarchical, and adaptable. Build in ways for new members to join and participate fully.
Resources:
Step 6: Connect with Local Mutual Aid Networks
Housing doesn’t exist in isolation. Partner with food co-ops, free stores, herbalists, mental health collectives, and harm reduction groups. Offer your space as a hub for mutual aid, care, and organizing.
Power With Beyond Walls: Your project should strengthen the social fabric, not just house people. Practice generosity. Leave the door open for others.
Two Examples to Learn From
1. Opportunity Village (Eugene, Oregon, USA)
https://squareonevillages.org
A self-managed village of tiny homes created to house people transitioning out of homelessness. Residents participate in decision-making and pay a small monthly fee to support shared infrastructure. It started as a temporary solution and proved so successful it became permanent.
2. East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EB PREC, California, USA)
https://ebprec.org
Though not a tiny village, EB PREC is a model of collective housing stewardship. They buy land and buildings to take them off the speculative market and put them into community control, working with Black and Indigenous residents to shape governance and ownership.
The Power That Emerges from Interdependence
When we make things together; homes, gardens, shared meals, we rediscover the deep strength of collective life. Not as a program or policy, but as a lived experience of Power With. Interdependence isn’t weakness. It is the site where new capacities, insights, and solidarities are born. As we build shelter, we also build trust. As we cultivate land, we cultivate resilience. And as we share responsibility, we reshape what power means.
Final Thoughts
There is no single path to housing justice. But tiny house villages and ecovillages offer one powerful response to a broken system. They’re not just places to live, they’re blueprints for another world. A world where everyone belongs, where land is not a commodity, and where power is shared, not hoarded.
Start small. Start together. And start now.