The ‘perfect, tidy and warm’ tiny homes deemed unlawful after nine years

Saturday, 10 May 2025

Two cabins perched on an old airstrip in the hills near Wellington have been home to numerous tenants in the nine years since they were built.

The cabins are on wheels and the owners say they are vehicles but Wellington City Council disagrees and says they’re buildings.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment agrees with the council and has told the owners to get them certified as buildings, or remove them.

Two tiny homes on wheels in the hills near Wellington provided “comfortable and warm” accommodation to tenants for nine years until the council found them and said they were unlawful because they were buildings, not vehicles.

Steve and Christine Watson own Long Gully Station, which straddles 830ha between Wellington city and the coast.

The farm is home to a disused sealed airstrip, and the Watsons decided it would be a suitable location to deposit a couple of tiny homes on wheels.

They got a company from Canterbury to build two tiny homes, about 120metres apart, on the airstrip.

The self-contained tiny homes are 9.8m long and 4.4m wide, and had 2m wide decks and canopies attached. Water is supplied from rainwater tanks and they were attached to a wastewater holding tank that could be emptied as required.

Power is provided by solar panels or caravan plugs connected to mains or a generator.

The Watsons were aware of rules around tiny homes and chose the cabins made by Classic Affordable Cabins Ltd., because the cabins had been the subject of a dispute in 2015 that went to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), which concluded they were vehicles, not buildings so did not need to comply with the Building Code or Building Act.

In March 2024 officers from Wellington City Council noticed the tiny homes, and a short time later the Watsons received a letter from the council informing them that they’d been built without a building consent and they had 90 days to remove them or apply for a certificate of acceptance.

The Watsons disputed this and said the tiny homes were vehicles, not buildings.

The council and the Watsons couldn’t resolve their differences, so the Watsons went to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for a determination as to who was right.

They told the Ministry the tiny homes were moveable vehicles, not buildings.

They were not connected to council services and were easy to move within half an hour, could be towed behind a ute, and they intended to move them to different locations around their farm, the Watsons said.

The council argued the tiny homes met the definition of a building under the Building Act because they were immovable and occupied on a long-term or permanent basis.

The Ministry’s lead determinations specialist Peta Hird noted that neither cabin had suspension, tail lights or brakes, or a warrant of fitness or registration plates, and neither could be towed without a special permit due to their widths.

Hird also noted the cabins were plumbed and were “immovable for the time being and would take quite a lot of time for each to get ready for towing”.

She said they weren’t vehicles; they were buildings, and the council had acted properly by issuing the notice.

Steve Watson told Stuff the cabins were exactly the same as those that were the subject of the 2015 determination by MBIE and he questioned how the Ministry could reach a different conclusion now.

“Are we being told the 2015 determination is now incorrect? If so why on earth should we have any respect for this latest decision?,” he said.

“MBIE decisions are worthless if they cannot be used by the taxpaying public for sound decision making. Ten years on, this latest decision has made a 180 degree U-turn on the 2015 decision,” Watson said.

“The bigger question is why in an age of unaffordable housing do government departments and councils including MBIE waste so much time and rate/taxpayer money working to evict people from these healthy home compliant tiny homes that are built at no cost at all to the state and serve the community as a very real cost effective stepping stone solution,” he said.

He said he would not appeal the determination “not because we are wrong either morally or socially but because we know we will lose on some legal technicality.”

He said he was uncertain what he would do with the cabins now, and it appeared he would have to end the current tenancies.

MBIE’s head of building system delivery and assurance Simon Thomas said “each determination is considered in light of the facts of that case”.

“Determinations do not set a legal precedent in the way that court judgments do; meaning a decision maker is not bound by earlier determinations,” he said.

“Determinations about whether something is a building follow the approach set out in the courts. There have been several court decisions since the 2015 Determination you referred to that have considered whether something was a vehicle or a building,” Thomas said.

A council spokesman said the MBIE determination confirmed that the council had taken valid steps and “we’re considering options in light of the decision”.