This Company Wants to Rent Out Tiny Homes in Your Backyard

Would you sign a 99 year lease to rent out your backyard? What if it meant you would receive a steady income from it? A new Bay Area co-op wants to do just that to combat the area’s housing crisis. Oby, a shortened version of “our backyard,” is searching for backyards that can host a tiny home that will be rented out for affordable prices for the next 99 years. According to Fast Company, backyard cottages are relatively common in California, but rent out at market rate. The long term agreement will allow the backyard home to remain even if the homeowner moves out.

“With our company, we’re always looking at what the alternative models are that we can utilize to help build more affordable, accessible, sustainable housing,” says Declan Keefe, cofounder of CoEverything, which focuses on how to bring better practices to architecture and development. Backyard cottages are already relatively common in California. But they usually rent at market rate—something that’s out of reach for someone working as a barista, or, say, an elementary school teacher, even as rents start to drop in cities such as San Francisco as some remote workers relocate during the coronavirus crisis.

Some other startups also work with homeowners to rent backyard space to build new rentals. Every added unit of housing can help in an area where demand far outstrips supply; one analysis estimates that to avoid the current housing crisis, the region should have built an additional 700,000 units of housing between 2000 and 2018. 

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