[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, I'm Robin and this
is my shipping container home on wheels. And I'm currently in the city
of West Sacramento, California. I've been living in my tiny
home for about five years now, five years this month. It's built out of a 20
foot shipping container. And it's 160 square feet. I never had too many
ideas about the tiny home. I didn't research it too much. I just knew someone
who built them out of shipping containers. And I was, like, that's
perfect, I'll take that. And, of course, as I've lived
in this for almost five years, the tiny home movement
has grown so much. I've seen so many
different ideas. I've seen so many different
shipping container builds. Which is why in the future, I do
have different ideas of how I'd want to rebuild essentially. I was originally on my sister's
property for about four years towards Elk Grove in California. And I had just seen
this beautiful parcel of a piece of raw land in
the city of West Sacramento. And I just decided to
buy it and park on it. It's just under a quarter acre. And it is zoned as a
residential property. So I'm in between a couple
of residential homes. And my neighbors are awesome. There's no utilities
to the property. I'm parked here off
grid and illegally. It is civil disobedience. It is a way to be
completely transparent with your local government,
with your local community, your neighbors. Educating them on what
you're trying to do, I think, is super important as well. I wrote letters to
all my neighbors. I've posted on apps
welcoming my neighbors to take a tour of my
home to talk to me. I've had nothing but
support and interest in what I'm trying to do. And honestly, a
lot of people that work in my local government
support what I'm trying to do. It's just trying to navigate
how to do it, where to start, having this as an example
for the whole community, for the city, and for
the Sacramento region. As far as I know, this will
be the first legal, tiny home residential property
in the region. So that's pretty cool. Once we get there eventually. It's a long process. It's a long process. I'm not willing to say, yes,
I'll do whatever you want. I am willing to have
conversations about options. It's mainly about affordability. I understand not everybody's
ready for compost toilets. Not everybody is
ready for all these off grid options, and all
these alternative materials, and things like that. Not everybody is
ready for wheels. There's superficial
discriminatory things about our zoning laws as well. So we just have to keep
pressing, and asking those questions, and educating
our community about what's been happening with
our housing policy, with our affordable
housing shortage. One of my neighbors lets
me rent water monthly, which super kind. All my neighbors
ask for updates. What's going on with the city? What's going on? Everybody has been
nothing but supportive. Yeah, so I like to sit this area
in my hammock and drink coffee or check my emails. I work remote, so I'll sit
on my computer out here. I've got this
hooked up to my rig. This is really my aerial rig. But I have my hammock there now. These are the original
shipping container doors. I really wanted to keep the
original shipping container doors, just so I could feel
like this was a bigger space, and to let more light
in, to let more air in. It really makes the space feel
a lot bigger when they're open, which is nice. So on this other
side of the shipping container is where I have
my solar unit and my gas. I have my water heater, my
air conditioner, and then my ladder that goes
up to the roof, where my solar panels are. And my aerial rig,
all that stuff. My gas line,
something's not working. And I'm actually not sure why. I've been out of town and
I haven't figured it out. It was right before I left. But I have various
solutions when things go wrong, like camping
gear and things like that. This is very
similar to glamping, so you just adapt
and figure it out. So that's pretty much
it for the outside. Now, I'll take you on inside. [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to my home, my
shipping container home. Definitely feel at
home in this space. It puts me in a better mood. It's bright, it's airy. It's my place of calm of peace. When I was designing
this, I really wanted it to be really bright
and open, as many windows as possible. The French doors and then the
original shipping container doors, when both those are
open, it's amazing, and airy, and bright. And I love it. So it's a 20-foot
shipping container and only 160 square feet. But I never feel like I'm living
in 160 square feet I don't feel like I'm
living in a tiny box because it's so bright and airy. And I can open
everything and feel like I'm outside sometimes. Open those doors
and I feel like I'm sleeping outside with my bed
right here next to the doors. So I never feel like
I'm trapped or like it's a small space ever. And on this side
of the container, by the original shipping
container doors, is my built-in bed with
storage for my clothes underneath, with big
drawers underneath. I would like to eventually
remove this built-in bed and put in a couch
with a pullout bed just to have more space. This has served its purpose. But now, I would like to
change it up eventually. So there's some storage on
the other side when you open the shipping container doors. There's some little
storage areas. So all underneath
this is storage. And now, that I'm
on my own property, I can store things outside
when I originally couldn't. Over here, actually, was
a table that came up. I rarely used it. So I actually took it out. And this was my dog, Rupert. He's been my inspiration
for a lot of things. I have my dog, Ruby, now. But Rupert passed
away a few years ago. So this is kind of his
little memorial area. And then, this was my dad who
passed away a few years ago. And he thought I was crazy
for living in a tiny home. And he never got
to see the space. But I think he
would be proud now. I think. Who knows? Maybe, he'd still
think I was crazy. I don't know. So this is my mini split
heater, air conditioner. It works really well. I mean, it's more
power and more air than I could ever need
for this space, honestly. This is my kitchen over here. I have a gas stove. And I use just regular gas. And it's located on the
outside on the other part of the shipping container. And my sink, I have
plenty of storage. I have more than I need, really. This was one thing that
I wanted was to have light coming into the kitchen. I didn't want just
pure cabinets. The more I think about it, I'd
want less cabinets as well. The less stuff, the better. I think when you have more
drawers, have more cabinets, have more storage,
you tend to fill it up more than if you
kind of force yourself with less and less space
you have, you acquire less. So on this side
of the kitchen, I have a little bit more storage. I have my fridge, which is
not working at the moment. I've been off grid for a year. And I've been
working on the solar that I need, the power that
I need to power a fridge. So I haven't had a
fridge for a year. And it's actually been OK. It's not as dramatic
as I thought. My friend let me borrow this. And I've been using
that when I need to. But you just have to be
very mindful about what you buy your food. I actually waste less. So on the other
side of the fridge, this is a little
more counter space. I'm glad that I chose to
have this here because it's nice to have a separate counter
space from the kitchen, where you can set your bags,
set your mail just like a separate little space. And I have my
little thing, where I put documents and things. More pictures of Rupert. Yeah, I'm glad I chose to keep
counter space for this area. I was not at all aware of
zoning, of housing policy, of the legalities, of
how to get utilities to a property, the process,
the building process. I was unaware of all of that. I essentially started to
just call local departments, building departments. I didn't even really
know who to call. I was calling everybody. I probably talked
to every department in the city of West
Sacramento and Sacramento. I had heard of
permits, and fees, and things costing
a lot of money. But I just was like,
let me just wing it, let me see what happens. And so when I did
start to call around, I specifically was
actually asking for if I could get access
to water on my property. That was the one thing
that I need because this is an off grid house. I really just needed
access to water. And they told me, no, you
can't just get access to water. And it snowballed from there. And I just kept questioning. Well, why? Why can't I just
get access to water? Why can't I have
off grid options? Why can't this be a
more seamless process? Just things like that. And it turned into
homeless advocacy. It turned into housing policy
advocacy, tiny home advocacy. I had no idea that this was
not my intention at all. I had no idea how political
it was going to get. I had no idea how
political basic needs are, housing policy. I had no idea until I saw this
property, until I moved here, until I educated
myself, I got educated. I asked the questions. And then, I realized
how important it was. Impact fees alone in the
city of West Sacramento are upwards of $50,000. And it's cash. Who are you saying
you want to build in your city, who you
want to live in your city when that's your only option. There's no payment
plans, there's nothing. The first thing I pushed for
when they kept telling me no, I started a petition for
proportional impact fees. Because that's, essentially,
the biggest barrier are these impact fees. And I sent that petition to all
the local departments, and all of council, and
anyone I can think of. Then, they seem
pretty interested. And so we did have quite
a bit of conversation about off grid options
and things like that. They made it clear, they're not
ready for a lot of the things that I would like. But proportional
impact fees, they were willing to
move forward with. One or the other things that
I was really fighting for was an impact fee payment plan. Because impact fees go to
the overall infrastructure of your city. And I just don't-- I think it's a priority issue. I don't think that
people should have to pay for these impact
fees before they have access to basic needs. Because you essentially have to
pay for that, do the permits, pay for all this other
things before you can have access to water,
or sewer, or whatever else they want you to hook up to. Now, for a brief message
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description below. And on the other side of the
container is my bathroom. I actually had a sliding door
before that I got rid of. And I got this door, this
corrugated door instead, which I actually really like better. I have a compost toilet
since I live off grid. I don't have a sewer line
to this property yet. It's one thing we're
working on, but we'll see. I have this cool kind of cabinet
here that I had installed. It gives you extra
space to work with. And then, on the other side of
the bathroom, I have my shower. And my neighbor lets me
rent water from him for now. Before I lived in a
tiny home, I lived in what I call my big house. And it was just a regular
12 foot or 1,200 square foot house. And my shower in that house
was smaller than this one. So it's kind of funny. So the last part
I want to show you is how I access my outdoor
storage through the shipping container doors. You've got to have a little bit
of muscle, just a little bit. They open up with
this lever here. And then, they have
a lever on each side. And then, you just
kind of pull them open. I just keep kind of off season
things, miscellaneous things, documents and things down here
that I might not need often. And there was nothing
covering the space when I opened these doors. So I chose a dog pattern
because I love dogs. And I thought it was cute. My home would cost about
$30,00, it was a beta project. So I think it was a bit
cheaper than normal. I bought this property at
the height of the pandemic, actually. So it was not a bad price. I got it for about $62,000. And I think it's
only been two years. And again, with how crazy
the housing market's been, I think it's gone up 30%, 40%
which is just crazy to me. It's easier said than done. Everything's really expensive. Again, I started this
journey six years ago. And I was able to
afford it when I had bought my regular home,
my 1,200 square foot home. When I sold that, I
was able to buy this. And then, I mean, I'm
all about hard work. I work quite a bit to be
able to afford this vision. And it continues
to be a struggle. That's essentially what
I'm asking my government. For me to be able
to do is to please let me live within my means. We kind of aren't allowed
to live within our means. We kind of have to
take out these loans, and these mortgages, and
live in these bigger homes. That's just how the
system has been. It's not that I don't
believe in the current system or feel that it has
housed a lot of people very comfortably
for a long time. But now, we need more options. We need more
alternative materials. We need more alternative
zoning, and codes, and those types of
things so that we can live within our means. I've shared a lot
on social media. And I'm a fairly private person. So sharing this part of my life,
the details of the struggle, and what's going
on was hard to do. It still can be hard to do. I'm like, OK, I want
people to see the journey and to see how hard it is. But the progress, the
response I've gotten has been overwhelming. And just how people want to
share their stories with me has been really the best part. I don't want to cry. If I start, I won't stop. I've had people share how their
family members are homeless. They've been homeless. Financial struggles,
freedom struggles, that's what has kept me going. I could easily
sell this property, go live somewhere else
where it would be easier. And, actually, my community
development director of the city actually
suggested that I do that. I was essentially told
that I should leave. It's just sad. It is sad when you
have people that work in your local
government that actually say those things to you. It becomes very clear
what's happening. That they either aren't that
interested or it's too much work. A lot of times, especially
in a lot of this policy, it's taken them years to
develop this current system. It takes them-- to adapt it
takes a lot of time and energy as well. I'm aware of that. But that's why I'm patient. I'm here, I'm patient, I'm
willing to be the example. I will adapt to your
zoning, to your codes. I'll remove my wheels. I'll do all of that. Just make it affordable. And that's what I
always come down to. Just make it affordable, please. Yes, for me, but we've got
to come up with a path. I'm more than willing
to be the example. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thank you for watching our video
and for stopping by Tiny House Expedition. I'm Alexis. And I'm Christian. Don't forget to like,
comment, and subscribe. And for more tiny home
tours and stories, click the videos below. And join us on Instagram
for bonus content. Including face to face
conversations with us. We hope to see you there. All right. Thanks, guys. Have a good one.
