This rendering shows what a pair of tiny homes, like those under construction along North Harrison Avenue in Pocatello, will look like when completed.
Elizabeth Preston of Pocatello stands by the courtyard of the Paramount Apartments, where she resides. Preston, who works as a property manager for Dakota Worrell, will be the buyer of the first two of many tiny homes being built in Pocatello by Worrell.
Dakota Worrell stands on the foundation of one of two tiny homes he’s building along North Harrison Avenue in Pocatello. Worrell plans to build many more tiny homes as a means of bolstering the local inventory of affordable housing.
This rendering shows what a pair of tiny homes, like those under construction along North Harrison Avenue in Pocatello, will look like when completed.
POCATELLO — On a sliver of land in the 600 block of North Harrison Avenue, Dakota Worrell is testing his plan to make home ownership more attainable for local residents of all income levels.
The city previously deemed the narrow, rectangular lot he’s acquired on the city’s west side, adjacent to the Union Pacific Railroad tracks, to be too small for building a single home. Thanks to a change in city code made in the past year to promote infill development, Worrell has foundations in place there for a pair of homes — introducing the global tiny house movement to Pocatello.
Dakota Worrell stands on the foundation of one of two tiny homes he’s building along North Harrison Avenue in Pocatello. Worrell plans to build many more tiny homes as a means of bolstering the local inventory of affordable housing.
Those tiny homes represent the trial run of a concept Worrell believes holds big possibilities for the local market. He’d like to build tiny homes on small infill lots throughout the city, and he’s even mulling a tiny home village with winding streets and parks.
Worrell estimates the tiny homes — which will encompass less than 400 square feet of space, not counting the two bedrooms in the upper loft — will cost him about $55,000 each to build. That price tag should open the door to renting or owning a home with a yard, a driveway and a high-end finish for locals who can budget no more than $600 per month on housing expenses, he said.
Worrell, a local property manager and developer with DW Investors, anticipates he’ll start building the frames in December and will have the homes completed by April.
“We want to see how much it costs, what mistakes we make, so we can scale this,” Worrell said. “If we can find the land we can build 100 or 200 of these things.”
Brent Richardson, president of the Greater Pocatello Association of Realtors, expects rising interest rates will begin cutting into the buying power of would-be home owners, whose wages already aren’t keeping pace with rising housing costs. He’s sure tiny homes will be instant sellers.
“There’s a big need for that price point — a very big need for first-time home buyers and even senior citizens to get into a home they can afford,” Richardson said. “I bet you there’s a dozen people in my file who could afford $80,000 or less that can’t buy right now, because there’s nothing for $80,000 or less, who could go into something like that and be very happy.”
A record for providing affordable housing
Worrell’s company specializes in buying and rehabilitating dilapidated apartments to bolster the local supply of quality affordable housing.
He said the company strives to create “community factors,” or places where tenants can gather and socialize, when they improve their properties.
When they purchased and refurbished the Crimson Court Apartments at 538 N. Main St., they added a dog park. At the Paramount Apartments, located at 723 W. Lewis St., they painted a large white square on the building’s facade where movies are regularly projected in the courtyard for residents to watch together.
His company is currently working to renovate the old Faun’s Motel, 1333 N. Main St., which has 11 units. Upon completion of the Faun’s Motel project, they’ll operate nearly 130 affordable units in the community.
Worrell explained it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep his housing inventory affordable for lower wage earners. He said property taxes on his buildings have nearly doubled since 2018, and those costs must be passed on to renters.
Affordable single-family homes are becoming especially scarce. He fears even residents who have their homes paid off may be overwhelmed by an ever-increasing tax burden as their property assessed valuations continue to skyrocket. Worrell believes low-cost tiny homes could help change that fact.
“Low-income rentals are great, but low-income rentals tend to be transient,” he said. “Our idea is to start testing now creating real affordable housing that builds ownership in the community.”
Given the current labor shortage and supply chain challenges, finding the resources to build large homes is becoming increasingly difficult.
Worrell sees an opportunity to stretch out both labor and supplies in tiny homes. While it now takes nine months to a year to build a typical single-family home, Worrell estimates it should take about a week to frame a tiny home.
Jake Tracy, of Tracy Homes in Pocatello, supports Worrell’s commitment to adding more affordable housing inventory in the community and has agreed to build the first two tiny homes.
“I’m excited to see where it leads because the way the market is, affordable housing is something that may be a thing of the past,” Tracy said. “We’re officially breaching that line in the sand, if you will, where my kids are in college and going to be looking for homes and a new buyer is going to be (in the market for) twin homes, town homes or potentially tiny homes.”
Though the project is only in the proof-of-concept phase, Worrell hopes to partner with Tracy on many more tiny homes to come.
Worrell believes his company’s property manager, Elizabeth Preston, will be the perfect buyer for the first two tiny homes.
Preston, 44, is a tenant at the Paramount. She met Worrell in 2018 when he’d first acquired her apartment building, formerly the Casa del Rio, and she admits she was fearful when she learned he was planning an overhaul.
Elizabeth Preston of Pocatello stands by the courtyard of the Paramount Apartments, where she resides. Preston, who works as a property manager for Dakota Worrell, will be the buyer of the first two of many tiny homes being built in Pocatello by Worrell.
She was living on disability for mental illness at the time and anticipated the improvements would drive up the rent and price her out of the unit. Preston, who moved to Pocatello from Idaho Falls in 2017 to be near her daughter, explained she had poor credit. Saving up for a security deposit on a new apartment also posed a barrier.
Fortunately, things played out much differently than she expected. Rent increased a little, but not much, and Worrell appreciated her efforts to keep the lawn at the complex watered and to voluntarily help in upkeep.
“That’s what you do when you live somewhere,” Preston explained. “You take care of it.”
Worrell soon made Preston an onsite manager at the Paramount in exchange for a monthly credit toward rent. He eventually gave her an office job as a property manager. She’s shouldered a wide variety of duties, from sorting out tenant issues to preparing legal notices.
Holding a job was no easy task for Preston, given her history with anxiety. But Worrell proved to be a sympathetic and patient boss.
“I had actually told him, ‘I quit,’ multiple times, and he would just say, ‘OK, you can quit today. I’ll see you at work tomorrow,’” Preston recalled. “Dakota saw in me what I wasn’t able to see in myself. He’s continuing to push me further and further past my comfort zone and has me on my way to being self-sufficient and off of disability.”
Worrell now considers Preston to be a model employee. His plan is for Preston to live in one of the tiny homes. He’s encouraging her to rent out the other one to supplement her income. Preston, who once doubted that she’d be able to retain an apartment, now finds herself on the verge of owning not one but two homes.
“I never thought that would ever be in the cards for me. I’m jumping in head first,” Preston said. “I’m so excited.”
Preston said she doesn’t need a lot of living space and she’s long been a believer in the practicality and efficiency of tiny homes.
“Easy to maintain — that’s the good life for me,” she said.
Worrell’s optimism about tiny homes is due in large part to the support he’s received from Pocatello city officials and staff.
“Building and planning and zoning (officials) could have required a lot of things that would have driven costs up,” Worrell said. “They liked the idea and instead of throwing up roadblocks they’re helping me solve problems.”
Most notably, Worrell said the city has granted him variances on required zoning setbacks, allowing him to build on a lot that couldn’t otherwise be developed.
Tracy added, “No one has done this and (the city) kind of had to see the vision. They’ve been pretty helpful and resourceful in getting the thing off the ground.”
Jim Anglesey, the city’s long-range senior planner, explained city code has long included special setbacks to accommodate smaller construction, typical of older housing stock, within the original Pocatello town site.
The City Council also relaxed its standards for minimum lot sizes citywide during the summer when it revised its infill development standards. Under the revision, builders of lots that qualify as infill can opt for a reduction to their minimum lot size of up to 60 percent, Anglesey explained.
“We’re starting to see that more. People are utilizing existing lots that may not have accommodated larger homes,” Anglesey said. “I think it’s the wave of the future, especially with the newer generation, and the older generation too. They may want to downsize and not deal with a large yard. Millennials are more apt to find something they don’t have to put a lot of work into.”
Anglesey said other local builders have additional infill projects in the works.
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