Up until this point The Tiny House The Spectrum Blog has been almost like a social page for me, like Facebook or Twitter. I’m realizing that we have drawn some attention so I’m feeling like I need to tighten up my rambling a bit.
I want to really break this down, I am writing this blog for 3 major reasons.
1. Autism awareness (Not sugar coated)
2. Poverty education (Not sugar coated
3. Tiny House living (Also not sugar coated)
For us these things go seamlessly hand and hand together. When Noah was 3 his father left us, he was our source of income and I was Noah’s only care taker, he was still in the process of being diagnosed so we had no support services. We went from poor to extreme poverty over night. Noah and I ended up in a shelter, as matter of fact it was a shelter I had volunteered and staffed for several years before Noah was born. Being on the other side and being a consumer in the same shelter was very difficult, but within that I was gifted in really understanding the truth about poverty. Accessing resources was HARD, I found that many had so many rules and regulations and took so long to qualify for that it made my situation feel even more hopeless. On top of that after working as a respected professional for a good part of my adult life suddenly I was perceived as less intelligent, I felt I had been stripped of my integrity and the only thing that had changed about me as a person is now I was impoverished.
After leaving the shelter I was able to get a subsidized apartment a diagnosis and support services for Noah, it seemed that things were looking up. My next step was to get back to work, but here was the problem…going back to work would cause us to loose our subsidy and possible the healthcare that paid for Noah’s services. We would be right back to where we started. I knew I had to figure it out because there was no way on earth I was going to stay on welfare my whole life even if I would be justified in doing so, I did not want those limits on our lives. I was terrified but I did it anyway. That is where the Tiny house came in. I started researching how to build a tiny house, I thought “if I could just do it myself I could build Noah and I house we could afford even if we didn’t have the subsidy AND Noah would always have a place to live even after I’m gone”. My Pinterest was stacked full off tiny house plans, I was obsessed ! I got a job and started squirreling away every dime I could, the following month I lost my subsidy and now had to pay the full price for the apartment we lived in at almost 1,000 dollars a month, it seemed I had gambled and lost after childcare and car repairs, we almost lost the apartment. I began to search for a small one bedroom apartment for Noah and I. In the search for the apartment I saw my Tiny house. I told the owner our story(Jay) and he agreed to finance it for us( God must have whispered in his ear). It made so much more sense to have a house I could pay off and own in 2 short years than to dump money into an apartment that would never be ours or to take out a mortgage on a home that would never be paid off at my age,leaving Noah with nothing. So here we are in our tiny house ! My dream is to help other people in challenging situations achieve the freedom of home ownership as well. I continue to research and take steps into the future in making a tiny house community possible.
Living in a tiny home with a kiddo with autism is not only doable for me but more comfortable for him. He prefers to be tucked in as opposed to flaying around into the universe of a bigger space, he feels safe here. Financial and emotionally this was really the best choice I could have made.
Advocating for my son, for autism, for those living in poverty, for the tiny house movement not only make sense to me but is socially, economically a responsible thing to do. We have smaller footprint for so many reasons even outside the obvious. Advocating for these things is really advocating for ourselves and others in the same boat. So there it is “The Tiny House On The Spectrum Story ” Thank you all for visiting us ! Rebecca and Noah.
tinyhouseonthespectrum.wordpress.com 