JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Jacksonville businessman wants to help solve the affordable housing crisis by building tiny homes across the city.
Anchored Tiny Homes is one of the first small home builders in Jacksonville and offers units as low as $75,000.
Karen Henderson will soon be the owner of a brand-new tiny home and it’s only costing her $130,000.
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“I am so excited,” Henderson said. “I think there’s a lot of people that’s going to be interested in it. For the affordability, the size of the home, as you get older, you just, you know, can only do so much.”
Henderson’s tiny home will be built on property behind where her daughter lives. It will be about 500 square feet and should take just 8 to 12 weeks to build.
“Our main goal is basically to provide affordable housing,” said Marc Cousins with Anchored Tiny Homes.
Cousins is the local franchise owner of Anchored Tiny Homes, a national accessory dwelling unit (ADU) franchise with 40 years of experience building smaller alternatives to conventional housing. This will be its first tiny home on the First Coast.
“So this one is going to be a 430 square foot home. So, one bedroom, and it’s going to have everything in there. Pretty much the whole works,” he said.
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Anchored Tiny Homes will oversee the construction.
In 2022, the Jacksonville City Council passed a bill allowing backyard dwellings or ADUs to be built in an effort to combat the city’s housing crisis.
Steven Backman, Anchored Tiny Homes General Contractor, said he thinks the company will be building more units in the future.
“I think that with the affordability issues that we’re having, that more and more people are looking for alternatives. And this is one, and I think it’s something great,” Backman said.
Rising inflation and housing costs are part of the problem. Recent Census data reveals that more than half of young adult men and women aged 18 to 24 are living at home because of the cost of living.
“I don’t think there is obviously one silver bullet, but there’s gonna be multiple things that we’re going to have to do as a society to be able to bring affordable housing back into line,” Backman said.
Anchored Tiny Homes Jacksonville has models ranging from 250 square feet to 1,000 square feet.
Visit its website to learn more.