Esperance Shire president Ron Chambers was quick to assure people they could live in a Tiny House on wheels, after Council voted to rescind its Tiny Houses on Wheels policy on Tuesday.
“The reason we had to rescind our tiny homes policy is under State Government policy tiny homes on wheels and caravans are effectively the same,” he said.
“You can’t make separate policy for tiny homes on wheels because State Goverment policy recognises them as a caravan.”
Mr Chambers said this would create a problem for the Shire if people wanted to place a tiny home on a property to rent out as short stay accommodation.
“The problem with doing that is under new legislation it marks it as a caravan,” Mr Chambers said.
“We don’t want people putting caravans on blocks of land doing that.
“[The WA Government] don’t want to create a whole heap of mini caravan parks which is what it will effectively do.”
Unfortunately the new legislation comes with new rules and requirements for landowners wanting to provide accommodation to people.
Mr Chambers explained.
“If it is longer than five days you need to put an application to local government to do that,” he said.
“The problem is you would have to do an application for them to stay for two weeks, then they would leave and someone else would come.
“You would then have to do an application again, because the legislation is for five consecutive days within 28 day periods.”
So what if people want to live in a tiny house on wheels for longer than five days?
“Anything over that has to be a separate application to local government,” Mr Chambers said.
“You can do that for 24 months, you can’t rent it out.”
Councillors all voted to support the motion, with an amendment from Cr Connor Davies asking the CEO to research and present Council with a list of options for people hoping to invest in the short term accommodation market.
Esperance Shire was the first in Australia to adopt a Tiny Houses on Wheels planning policy, in December 2022.
