GAINESVILLE – Hall County Commissioners have asked county staff members to help them get ready for the potential arrival of a “reality-TV reality” in Hall County.
“I think we need to address minimum house sizes,” Commissioner Scott Gibbs said during Thursday's commission meeting. “I think we’ve got a couple of hundred square feet in our current code and we need to, maybe, bring the code up-to-date.”
Millions of cable television viewers have become transfixed by the minimalist movement that exploded less than two years ago when A&E Networks launched the program “Tiny House Nation”.
HGTV airs a pair of similarly-themed reality series about life in diminutive domiciles entitled “Tiny House, Big Living” and “Tiny House Hunters.”
Houses of less than 500-square feet are becoming a cultural phenomenon and Hall County wants to be ready when the Lilliputian lodgings arrive.
Commissioner Kathy Cooper said after the meeting that she understands why people would choose such a lifestyle. “I’ve always felt that there…is an aged group of people that just need one level; they need a really nice living area and kitchen, cottage-type stuff, really cute.”
“You’re talking 200 square feet,” County Planning Director Srikanth Yamala interjected.
Cooper responded, “I feel like nine to eleven hundred is very reasonable.”
Yamala explained the current Hall County zoning requirement. “The minimum house size that anyone can have today is 256-square feet…16 by 16.”
“We’ve had a few inquiries about folks wanting to build as small as 150-square feet, 200 or 300-square feet, so we want to look at our other counterparts (surrounding counties) and see if we could come up with a minimum that might work well for Hall County based on the Comprehensive Plan,” Yamala added.
“You could just plop those down in the middle of a residential area and they don’t fit,” Gibbs said.
“They have a place, if that’s what people want to do, but they’re going to have to fit into a properly zoned area,” Gibbs added. “We’re not going to discourage that but we’re going to make sure they’re in an appropriate area.”
Yamala told commissioners he would do the necessary research and have a proposal ready for their consideration at the next voting meeting, scheduled for June 9th.
COMMISSIONERS ASK FOR POLICY TO BETTER REGULATE “BARNS”
“We’re still struggling with barn permits (and) venue issues,” Commissioner Gibbs said.
“We’ve had a 30,000-square feet building with 3-phase power built under the criteria of a barn,” Gibbs explained. “We’re going to have to address this; that’s a commercial building any way you cut it.”
Gibbs asked county staff to draft a plan for regulating the construction of barns that will likely be used as a wedding or other event venue rather than as a place to shelter animals and store farm equipment.
“I think we need some clarification of what’s a barn and what’s a commercial building,” Gibbs said, sharing that he had heard complaints from some in his district about the issue.
Yamala said he would also try to have ready for the June 9th meeting recommendations for addressing this matter.
