Ivona Rose, supported by LINA (lina.org.au), Coast Community News

Interest in tiny homes is increasing on the Central Coast and across Australia, driven by soaring house prices, lack of housing availability, shifts toward sustainable living, downsizing, dwindling available land, and the growth of short-stay rentals like Airbnb.

Social media is full of slick, high-end tiny home ads.

Can tiny homes play a meaningful role in affordable housing, and where can people locate them?

Back in 2021, Griffith University took a closer look at the trend in its research article “Tiny houses: movement or moment?”

Co-Author Dr Heather Shearer said tiny houses were by no means the solution to the housing crisis, but they could help with easing affordability pressures for certain demographics, such as singles, women over 55, and young couples.

But she said adoption was slowed by complicated, inconsistent council rules across the country.

Just what are tiny homes?

Complexities begin with the definition of tiny homes and extend to considerations of how and where to place these fixed or mobile structures in the housing mix.

“Tiny homes are not defined in NSW legislation but are considered as either buildings, manufactured homes or caravans, which have clear approval pathways,” a spokesperson for the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure said.

He said councils could approve tiny homes through the relevant approval pathway.

But a spokesperson for Central Coast Council said it was very difficult to give any specific advice on planning pathways because the planning legislation had not separately contemplated ‘tiny homes’ as a specific form of development.

He said Council had no particular restrictions above the standard NSW legislation.

The spokesperson said so-called “tiny homes” could fall under several different planning definitions, depending on how they were built and used.

They may be classed as a secondary dwelling on an existing residential lot, limited to 50sqm, a dual occupancy if scale and size allow, or a dwelling on a trailer, which may be registered under the Road Transport Act and assessed differently for planning and services.

Some may fit manufactured home or manufactured home estate rules, while others could be assessed as multi-unit housing, boarding houses, or group homes.

NSW planning law defines affordable housing separately.

Advocacy agency The Australian Tiny House Association recognises Tiny Houses on Wheels (THOW) and Tiny Houses on Skids (THOS) as moveable dwellings and says legislation varies from state to state.

Their Tiny House Construction Guide outlines minimum requirements for the design and construction of movable tiny houses.

Based on their current advice, NSW allows up to two moveable dwellings, such as caravans or tents, on a property for short stays of up to 48 hours at a time, for a maximum of 60 days a year, without council approval.

Only one caravan (or tiny home, which is generally classified as a caravan) may be used for long-term living if there is already an approved dwelling on the property and if the caravan is kept in a “safe and healthy condition”.

Local THOW provider Ben Robinson of Ben’s Got Wood is calling for consistency in planning.

“The biggest challenge I see isn’t the build itself, but the lack of clear, consistent planning frameworks, which creates uncertainty for both owners and councils,” he said.

Regulations are clearer for secondary dwellings, commonly known as granny flats.

“A small second home built on the same block as an existing house is permitted in many residential zones,” the Council spokesperson said.

“It must meet setback requirements, be no larger than 60sqm, and can be approved as complying development on lots of at least 450sqm.”

At Narara Ecovillage, Tiny Houses on Wheels have solved multiple problems.

Spokesperson Jo Hunt said residents used them as temporary homes while building, as extra accommodation for visiting family, or as contingency housing during events like COVID isolation. One tiny home has even been bought and sold within the community.

“The specs range from pretty niche and recycled to decked out with Smeg kitchen appliances,” she said.

From her experience, sewerage connection is one of the biggest hurdles for tiny homes.

“If a tiny home and its parking space are included upfront in a development application, with sewer connections shown on approved plans, plumbers will connect it,” she said.

But problems arise when a tiny home is added later.

She said councils do not then have an appropriate pathway to inspect an open trench for a sewer connection, even if the house’s pipes already exist.

“Alternative approvals, like Section 68, have failed to date because councils consider Section 68 applications applicable only to modular buildings, not tiny homes, which are technically caravans, leaving them stuck in a grey area with no clear approval pathway.”

Another local-use case is The Tiny Homes Project on Racecourse Rd, Gosford.

Completed in 2018, it includes five manufactured homes managed through a partnership between Central Coast Council, Pacific Link Housing and Coast Shelter.

The property is a youth-specific refuge providing short-term crisis accommodation for people aged 16-25.

Coast Shelter CEO Alicia Pigot said it created a pathway for long-term housing stability.

“We utilise the tiny homes under a subsidised housing lease arrangement for 12 months, developing these young people’s independent living skills and their rental history,” she said.

She said expanding the program, which would be particularly helpful for single women who represented a growing segment of the homeless community, was unlikely due to constraints on land availability and development approvals.

“We are lucky to access the property for a period of time through Council, but a lot of pieces had to fall into place,” she said.

It requires partnerships with state and federal governments, as well as organisations like The Tiny Homes Foundation, which built the homes.”

Dr Sarah Breen Lovett, Senior Lecturer at The University of Newcastle, School of Architecture and Built Environment, highlighted the limitations.

“Living in smaller spaces is something that we all need to be thinking about doing, but at the moment in Australia, there is a trend towards tiny houses or McMansions,” she said.

“A tiny house is a glorified caravan, sometimes architecturally designed, over-specified in terms of structure and materials, with the idea in mind that you don’t have to get a DA, but there is no way of getting around approvals.”

Instead, she thinks the solutions lie in subdivision laws.

“People would often prefer to sell off their land and then let someone else build on it, but access can only be given once the property is built,” she said.

“If there were a relaxation of rules so that you could subdivide with a DA-approved design, allowing the buyer to do the build, this would release a lot of land and burden, particularly with older members of the community who have larger yards than they need.”

Local investment property authority Tony Myers said many homeowners and investors turned to apartments simply because there were few other small-dwelling options available on the Central Coast, largely due to limited land supply.

“They don’t have a problem with the size of the living space,” he said.

“What they’re really looking for is a small parcel of land and more privacy than apartment living allows.”

Dr Hugo Moline, Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Built Environment at the University of Newcastle, says tiny homes have a role to play, but they are probably only suited to specific phases of life, and current backyard granny flat designs often limit the original and secondary dwellings.

“The Driveway House Project looked at creative design on driveways to circumvent this,” he said.

He said the approach of gentle density identified lot-by-lot opportunities to insert new homes in creative ways, such as building above garages or elevating existing houses to create a secondary dwelling underneath.

“(Owners of) larger residential lots, such as corner blocks, could also be encouraged and incentivised to host permanent small homes or mobile tiny houses,” he said.

He said many caravan parks that traditionally offered opportunities for these types of movable and semi-permanent dwellings had been bought by larger holiday park franchises, which tended to move people on in favour of holidaymakers.

As mobile dwellings, tiny homes could be placed on temporarily unused land, including sites that are land-banked or held while larger developments await approval, as well as on suitable council-or state-owned land.

This approach could enable housing co-operatives and allow people to self-develop affordable housing solutions on shared land.

At the national level, the CEO of the Australian Tiny House Association, Danielle Lester, says that struggles to obtain development approvals stem from tiny homes not fitting neatly within National Construction Code pathways, which prevents them from being recognised as permanent dwellings.

“Defining transportable small-dwelling parking spaces is the missing link between affordable construction and accessible home ownership,” she said.

Dr Shearer of Griffith University offers a final solution.

“Permitting owners of Tiny Houses On Wheels, Tiny Houses On Skids and caravans to let space on private property for at least two years, subject to overlays, will allow many to live in areas close to education, medical facilities and transport,” she said.

A spokesperson for the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure said the NSW Government was working to unlock more diverse homes in well-located areas to suit different lifestyles across the whole community.

But no further details were provided on how tiny homes would be addressed in that work.

Federal government representatives, from both the government and the opposition, did not respond to requests for comment.

This article appeared in Coast Community News, 12 February 2026.