BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Tiny homes have become more common and are popping up in nearby parishes. Some folks in south Louisiana have businesses dedicated to customizing them to fit people’s needs.
As more people look to downsize and save money, they’re turning to tiny home Facebook groups and other online websites to buy, build, sell, or rent. Airbnb reports it has more than 150 tiny-house listings in Louisiana as of December 2023.
In East Baton Rouge, a tiny home is defined as a dwelling with a maximum of 400 square feet excluding lofts. A spokesman with the City of Baton Rouge said tiny homes are allowed within the city-parish, but they must be built and constructed safely and meet development codes. You also can’t have more than one dwelling on a lot.
Remember that outside of the city’s requirements, there could be guidelines in your neighborhood. The city is not aware of any tiny home communities coming to East Baton Rouge, but the cost is drawing more people in.
“You may sooner or later see something like that pop up in an existing neighborhood and as long as they meet our unified development codes, our building standards, and safety standards, as long as they also meet the criteria of any homeowners associations, you might see more of them,” said Mark Armstrong with the City of Baton Rouge.
There are also talks of using tiny homes in EBR to address the homelessness issue. If you’re interested in building a home or a rental property, you can reach out to their permit department.
It’s a different story in Ascension Parish where there are currently no laws or regulations regarding tiny homes. However, officials are trying to be proactive and are bracing for an industrial boom. They are looking at creating an ordinance to allow tiny homes in the parish as it could also benefit construction workers.
“A lot of them want to bring their own mobile home or RV unit and put it in a park,” said Ricky Compton, the Interim Infrastructure Division Director with Ascension Parish. “We don’t have a surplus of vacant lots in mobile homes or RV parks today. Yes, that is an opportunity for those people that are going to be here for more than a year or two years or three years to have a place that they can call home.”
Compton said the new ordinance would define a tiny home as anything less than 400 square feet. They plan on introducing the ordinance at the beginning of 2024. At the second meeting after that would be a public hearing to adopt that ordinance, saying that they are going to follow the ICC, the code council guides and regulations for how to permit tiny homes.
“If people are interested in tiny homes, they should let us know so that we can ensure that the law that we adopt meets their need,” said Compton. “We would hate to adopt something that makes tiny homes not possible or not what they’re wanting.”
The Livingston Parish Council currently does not have any ordinances in place for tiny homes.
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