Tuscaloosa, AL Accessory Structures: Tiny Homes (2026)

Sec. 25-31 defines a 'tiny house' as a single-family dwelling unit containing no more than four hundred (400) square feet of gross floor area, and the definition does the real regulatory work by drawing a foundation-based line. A tiny house installed on an engineered permanent foundation and built to the city building code is legally a single-family detached dwelling, the same use type permitted by right in nearly every residential district in the agricultural and residential principal use table at Sec. 25-99, from Open Space and Compact Neighborhood through all five single-family and both mixed-residential districts.

A tiny house that is not on a permanent foundation, by contrast, is legally a mobile home dwelling, and Sec. 25-99(e)(1)(viii) is unambiguous about where that use can go: a mobile home shall not be used as a dwelling except in a permitted mobile home park or mobile home subdivision, in accordance with chapter 15, mobile home parks, of the city Code. The residential use table backs that up, listing 'Dwelling, mobile home' as permitted only in the Manufactured Home Residential (MHR) district. In practice, that means a builder who wants to place a 400-square-foot tiny house anywhere else in the city, on an ordinary residential lot, in a subdivision, or as a backyard accessory dwelling, has to put it on an engineered permanent foundation and meet the same lot, setback, and building-code standards as any other single-family home; a wheeled or skid-mounted tiny house dropped onto a standard residential lot outside the MHR district or a licensed mobile home park does not comply.