Kyle Teal
Kyle Teal thought he had found the key to debt-free living in his dream home, parked on land near Verona.
One day in early March, Kyle Teal woke up feeling euphoric.
A dream that had been four years in the making had finally come true. Teal had just spent his first night in a home he’d built himself.
Although it was only 160 square feet, Teal’s tiny home represented a milestone in his quest to live debt free. “It was the best feeling ever, to finally live in my own space,” says Teal, a freelance video and web producer. “It was probably the best feeling I’d had in a long time. It was a beautiful morning.”
But his bliss was short lived. As Teal was painting the house later that morning, workers from the Dane County’s planning and development office stopped by. Teal’s home was illegally parked.
Teal had the permission of the property’s owner — a 74-year-old woman who owns 14 acres of land near Verona. “I told her I’d give her some money and help her take care of the land for letting me park it there,” Teal says.
Nor was his home’s tiny size an issue — the county doesn’t have a minimum size requirement for homes. Instead, county workers told him that accessory dwelling units like his aren’t allowed under Dane County’s zoning ordinances.
Tiny houses aren’t mentioned in the county’s current zoning law. But the county has long restricted the number of dwelling units allowed on parcels of land to one per every 35 acres in most rural areas.
“Most of the towns in Dane County have had a long-standing commitment to farmland preservation, so they’ve had a commitment to reduce sprawl,” says Brian Standing, senior planner with Dane County. “You get one home for every 35 acres you own. That’s been in effect for so long that most people think of it as fair.”
But as the county rewrites its zoning code for the first time in more than half a century, it is creating space for accessory dwelling units and tiny homes in some areas. However, they will continue to be prohibited in rural areas like the one where Teal parked his dream house.
Kyle Teal
Teal spent four years designing his tiny house and four months builidng it.
Dane County created its first zoning regulations in the 1930s and the rules underwent a major revision in the 1950s. Although there have been numerous tweaks and amendments to the zoning, there hasn’t been a major revision of the rules since then.
“We’ve revised it piecemeal over the years and made a lot of edits to it,” Standing says. “We’ve never wiped the slate clean and started fresh.”
One reason it might not have been overhauled, he speculates, is that doing so would have allowed towns to opt out of the county’s zoning regulations.
But a new state law allowed towns to opt out last year without a major revision. Six towns — Berry, Blue Mounds, Bristol, Springfield, Sun Prairie and Westport — voted to opt out last year and began overseeing their own zoning on Jan. 1.
“Now that the Legislature changed the law so that in Dane County towns can opt out anyway, there’s really no reason not to do it,” says Standing.
County planning staff have also been eager to see the code rewritten, Standing says. He notes that the old code created problems in the way it lumped inappropriate uses together. For instance, the A-2 agricultural and residential zone also allowed for things like junk yards and recycling centers.
It also didn’t anticipate new ways that people are using their property. “Tiny houses is a good example,” Standing says. “Airbnb is another, and wedding barns — these are all things that people have started doing with their property that really wasn’t anticipated when the ordinance was put together.”
The new code is now being fine-tuned. It is scheduled to be introduced to the county board in June. After the board approves it, towns will have until the summer of 2019 to approve it.
Numerous tweaks are being proposed for the code, including separating industrial uses like junk yards from agricultural zones. Attached accessory dwelling units will be allowed in several districts, while detached accessory dwelling units — including tiny houses — will be allowed in two-family, multi-family and commercial districts (with a conditional use permit).
Roger Lane, the county’s zoning administrator, says he hasn’t seen a big demand for tiny homes. “We have some inquiries, probably two or three a year.”
He notes that property owners have an incentive to adhere to the housing limits on rural land — tax credits from the state designed to preserve farmland. Although he didn’t know the precise amount, he says it amounts to millions in Dane County alone.
Lane says he sees potential for planned unit developments in some parts of the county, where tiny houses could be clumped together.
Unfortunately for Teal, his tiny house still won’t be allowed on the property he found near Verona. He’s moved his dream house to another piece of property. “I can’t live in it there, but I can at least store it.”
He spent years researching tiny homes and designed his based on several other models he looked at. Construction took about four months.
He’s currently searching for land where he can live in it. “I’m hoping I can find somewhere on the outskirts of Dane County, still within driving distance,” he says. “Somewhere where it’s legal.”
