A tiny house on the south side of Fulton has at least one City Council member concerned.
For several meetings now, Councilwoman Beverly Gray has said she dislikes the home's location on the main road leading into town.
"I like them - I think they're cute," she said Wednesday. "I just don't want them on the (U.S.) Business (54) route. My whole objection is it's just sticking out like a sore thumb."
While some people have always called small houses home, a recent "tiny house movement" is advocating for these homes. A tiny house is informally tagged as a residence of less than 500 square feet, according to the blog "Tiny House Town."
An ordinance referring to the small structures was discussed at Tuesday night's council meeting, but tabled after discussion about lot size comparative to house size.
"The entire council is not opposed (to tiny houses)," Councilman Jeff Stone said. "I'd like to see this ordinance tabled until the next council meeting."
On Wednesday morning, City Administrator Bill Johnson said he and other city employees discussed the proposed ordinance which would set minimum size regulations on newly constructed homes.
"The City Council has been talking about it for about two months now, and asked us to draft an ordinance that was brought to the council last night," he said. "(Tiny houses are) a great concept for some areas, but there are concerns about tiny houses going into some developed neighborhoods."
The Tanglewood Estates neighborhood was mentioned at the council meeting, but broker David McDaniel of Century 21 said Wednesday the development has a vetting process for new home construction plans.
"First, the homeowners' association reviews it, then it goes to an architect control community," he said, adding the subdivision has elevation requirements vs. size restrictions. "We have $750,000 homes (at Tanglewood)."
He would support development of a tiny house community, perhaps on the site of the old city garage on Westminster Boulevard, which is about 7 acres and has dilapidated buildings on it.
"If they developed their own (tiny house) neighborhood, I think that would be a positive for everybody," McDaniel added.
The proposed ordinance provided for a minimum residential square footage of 700 square feet on a "standard" lot of at least 7,000 square feet. But according to Johnson, many vacant lots in Fulton where houses have been torn down are smaller than that.
"We have several lots in town that are less than 7,000 square feet and are unusable for some construction," Johnson said.
The draft ordinance introduced Tuesday night stated "the habitable space must be at least 10 percent of the square footage of a substandard lot, with a minimum of 500 square feet of habitable space."
"We've come up with a couple of changes that we're going to include (in a new proposed ordinance)," Johnson said Wednesday, adding he doesn't expect a unanimous council decision.
He said tiny houses are a trend that needs to be addressed in Fulton city limits, as the county has no such restrictions.
"Tiny houses are popping up all over, and other towns are dealing with them in some ways," he said.