Paul Kieu
At Burleigh Plantation, McCoy hopes to establish an intentional community of tiny livers, working together towards a simpler, more holistic lifestyle.
Karen McCoy had always loved her home in Bunkie. She raised her children in the spacious nineteenth century house, and the memories made there will always be held dearly. But when the children grew and left home one by one, the modest structure began to feel oversized.
“It felt like a mansion,” said McCoy, now sixty-one.
For McCoy, living alone in the large home started to make less and less sense. But she didn’t quite have plans to move until one evening when she was watching HGTV and learned about the architectural and social phenomenon of the Tiny House Movement. Almost immediately, she said, she was drawn to the idea of not only downsizing, but of having a home on wheels that she could take with her wherever she wanted to go.
Tiny houses are small dwellings, typically less than 120 square feet and situated on a trailer, making them mobile. McCoy started following groups dedicated to showcasing these small homes on social media, on YouTube videos, and she scoured the web to find cool diminutive dwelling designs. The pastime evolved into research as she started to plan her own tiny home.
Paul Kieu
What began as an exciting move to a simpler lifestyle and more mobility became—for McCoy—a more sustainable way of life, rejecting wasteful consumer capitalism in favor of minimalist intentionality.
“I had the intention to take the tiny house and put it where I wanted to live,” she said. “But if something should occur or change, I liked the idea that all I had to do was hook it up and move it. Turns out I had a minimalist spirit but just hadn’t realized it.”
About four years ago, McCoy contacted Tiny House Chattanooga, an award-winning construction company, to turn her dream into a reality. After months of collecting ideas, designer and builder Mike Bedsole helped bring her conception to life—drawing up plans and discussing how her home might look. McCoy decided she wanted only the shell on a trailer and that she would finish the interior herself.
“My aunt and godmother—who is seventy-five—she and I worked on it for two years,” she said. “We did the insulation, wiring, plumbing, put in the walls. It was a great journey.”
McCoy had the finished tiny home parked in Bunkie, but she had a desire to go somewhere else. Since she worked in Carencro, she looked toward Lafayette, but local ordinances dissuaded her. In St. Landry Parish, with fewer zoning laws, she found a better option. Slowly, she realized she didn’t want to live alone on some property somewhere; she wanted a community.
From Oversized to Tiny
The median size of a house in the United States today is around 1,600 square feet. After World War II, sprawling, new suburbs were growing and full of first-time homeowners, but those dwellings were around a modest eight hundred square feet on average. Before that, most homes were even smaller, even with larger families living in them. These days, mansions hardly house more than a handful of individuals.
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With the growth in house size came an increase in home prices. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2019 the median price of new, single-family home sold totaled $321,500 and median size was 2,322 square feet.
But in 2007, the nation was beginning to spiral into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. By 2008, the nation was in the depths of the Great Recession. People lost their jobs. Homes were foreclosed. The stock market tanked.
Paul Kieu
McCoy had her tiny home built out by Tiny House Chattanooga, and then spent the next two years finishing out the interior.
In those trying times, though, people got creative. While massive homes with astronomical price tags were vacant or simply too expensive for people to maintain, groups of innovators around the country began thinking small. Building a small home required fewer materials, which made it economical to own a home without a huge mortgage. Building the homes on trailer frames ensured they could be moved to suit a nomadic lifestyle—or be just mobile enough to park into someone’s backyard or a campground, saving on rent and bypassing buying property.
According to a report by USA Today, in 2016 it was estimated that there were 10,000 tiny homes in the country. Many of those came in the wake of the Recession and were fueled by cash-strapped millennials seeking an affordable way to own a home. But what started as a collection of frugal individuals looking for a cheaper home evolved into a cultural movement that began to encompass basic tenets of simplicity and frugality while rejecting American consumerism culture.
Simple Living
Downsizing requires choosing what items in the home are necessities. With only minimal square feet to work with, McCoy had to essentially get rid of most of the possessions that had filled her old home. Looking closely at everything, she prioritized certain items that she figured she would use frequently. Others were tossed out.
“We tend to get things, put them in a closet and forget about them,” she said. “With a tiny house, you can’t do that. If I see something I want to buy, I have to consider carefully if I have a place for it. You become a conscientious buyer.”
“What I’m hoping to find are people who are accepting of others, and actually live a life of loving one another. In order for a community to grow, you have to be compassionate and forward thinking and accepting.”—Karen McCoy
While initially drawn to the tiny house movement by the promise of mobility and a simpler lifestyle, McCoy began to see her decision as an ethical choice that rejects unfettered capitalist consumerism. She calls it living like her grandparents did—trying to exist closer to the earth rather than embracing “disposable society,” she said.
“People used to wash a dish when they finished eating. They protected what they had. Society wasn’t so concerned about throwing things away, and people didn’t waste as much. They gardened, had cows and chickens.”
And perhaps most importantly for McCoy, people seemed to help one another. “If someone went missing or needed something repaired, or if someone just had a void in their life, you came and helped,” she said.
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McCoy sees her countercultural living arrangements as a commitment to living intentionally. Part of that commitment is to share with those around her. Much like those of her grandparents’ era, she sees community as a necessity and a building block to creating a fruitful life.
Living Intentionally
Not long after honing in on St. Landry Parish for property, McCoy found a spot in Grand Coteau. It was four acres with an Antebellum-era home originally called the Burleigh Plantation. She was instantly drawn to the spot’s charm, and not long after purchased it to jumpstart her vision of a tiny home community—Burleigh Plantation: A Place for Tiny Homes.
Her plans include housing more than nine abodes. Although, she said, she doesn’t want the spot to look like an RV park. Her design includes grouping three homes in a semi-circle, spaced into four groups. Already, she’s had three concrete slabs poured that comprise the initial group. The first guest tiny home on the property belongs to Jimmy and Cherie Hebert, who in 2017 founded Tee Tiny Homes located in Arnaudville, a tiny house building venture that eventually fizzled out. McCoy also rents the renovated plantation home to a couple whom she considers part of the growing Burleigh Plantation community.
Paul Kieu
McCoy is on the hunt for more members to join the community who share a desire to live simply and connect with people around them.
“What I’m hoping to find are people who are accepting of others, and actually live a life of loving one another,” she says. “In order for a community to grow, you have to be compassionate and forward thinking and accepting.”
One day, McCoy hopes to have her property full of tiny homes. She envisions a community that contributes to holistic gardening, keeping animals like chickens. Everyone would work together and share their lives with each other, she said. It’s wildly unlike the way many Americans live, but, McCoy said, that’s exactly the point.
“In the world, some people say you have to do this—this is the norm,” she said. “When you step out from the norm, it’s different. You’re different. To me, thinking different and being different is a gift. Outside the box thinkers are the ones who drive the world.”
