Danga Zone! Part One

One of the most stressful and confusing aspects of this whole process for me has been tackling zoning laws. The most I can understand on my own is there are federal guidelines for all building codes; individual states, counties, and townships can either defer to these general codes or have their own specific ones. (This could be completely wrong, but again, not my field). The course of action least likely to give me a headache seemed to contact township officials directly. I emailed six townships/boroughs in the area I'd like to live. Here is a copy of the letter sent to them:

I am writing with questions about your township's zoning and residency laws. Specifically, those relevant to 'tiny homes'.
I'm working on building a tiny house on a 26ft trailer. You may have seen one of the many shows about people downsizing to similar small homes. Regardless of the recent popularity of tiny homes, they can be extremely practical solutions for people looking for affordable home ownership, those wanting to live a more green lifestyle, or someone wanting to spend time enjoying life instead of maintaining a larger residence.

Being an unconventional structure, the residence laws regarding a tiny house can be fuzzy or restrictive. In your township, would a home residing on a trailer bed and approximately 210 square feet be legal? Would you be able to provide me with the official regulations relevant to this? If such a home is not allowed in your township, what steps would I need to take for reassessment of the restrictions?

If you have questions for me, please feel free to ask. If you are interested in my personal experience of building my tiny home, I am keeping a journal called Little House in the Steel City.
Thank you very much for your time and I look forward to your reply!

I sent that letter to six different municipalities on September 22nd. Within two days I had one reply just asking me to call the office. Given the chaos that is my day job, I haven't had the chance to do that and something tells me a local township official doesn't answer his work number during the late hours when I actually have free time. Another reply from a different township said I was the first person to ask such a question and they would look into the answer.

The other four townships have not given any answers. But that won't stop me...

This is the exact album cover I remember seeing in my dad's collection as a kid.
At the time I prefered the Spice Girls.

And for my unrelated note that I like to throw into these posts, I have become enthralled with Gustav Holst's mesmerizing suite called "The Planets". The suite is made up of 7 parts that each represent a different planet (Earth isn't included and Pluto wasn't discovered at the time). My favorite and probably the most popular is Jupiter. Honestly the whole thing is fantastic though. It is on YouTube as well as numerous other musical outlets. Go listen and tell my your favorite planet!

Two completely different styles of album art for the same piece of music, I can't pick a favorite.