Forget the Tiny House: ‘How I Turned a Food Cart Into an 85-Square-Foot Micro Home’

Elijah Ray worked 90-hour weeks for two years to achieve his dream of homeownership. Now, he’s gone a step further by moving into a micro home in his backyard and renting out his main house to generate income to cover his mortgage payments.

Ever since he landed his $333,000 three-bedroom house in Portland, OR, in early 2023, he’s been on the hunt for a tiny home.

Ray says he’s always wanted to retire early and have passive income from rentals. The plan was to rent out the downstairs portion of the main home while he lived in the attic—and that’s what he was doing when he spotted the micro home on Craigslist.

The average tiny home measures about 225 square feet. But this unit wasn’t even listed as a tiny house. It was a food cart.

The cost of tiny houses has soared along with interest in townhouses, RVs, manufactured homes, and mobile homes as home prices skyrocketed.

“A lot of them were about $10,000, way out of my range,” Ray tells Realtor.com®.

Why a food cart?

When Ray saw the food cart, he knew he’d found The One.

“It was so small, I can’t even imagine what they were cooking in there. There was no room for a grill or anything. But I stepped inside and thought, ‘Yeah, this feels like a home,'” he says.

With a budget of $1,500, Ray negotiated the price down to $1,000. The average cost of a tiny house is around $30,000 to $60,000, and can run as much as $180,000 depending on the size and amenities, says Rocket Mortgage.

Ray originally wanted to turn the food cart into a tiny house and rent it out, along with his main house, but the tiny-house laws in Portland were stricter for renters than owners.

“I always wanted to live in a tiny house anyway, so I thought, ‘Yeah, I might as well do this,'” he says.

It took about a year to make the micro home habitable, and the journey came with many twists and turns.

Making a food cart into a home

The first thing Ray did was have plumbers assess the food cart. Installing a sink and shower wasn’t difficult—holes were drilled in the food cart through which he runs water from his garden hose—but a planned septic tank proved too expensive and difficult.

“Every professional who tried to figure out a septic tank was like, ‘That isn’t going to work,'” he says.

So he bought a $1,060 compost toilet, which uses coconut bark to break down waste.

“It’s like camping in a way,” he says.

He runs the electric appliances—an air fryer, a hot plate, a small fridge, a space heater, a water heater, a flat-screen TV, and a phone charger—on an extension cord that plugs into an outlet outside his house. But he has plans for an electrician to set up a panel. He’s also careful to use only one or two appliances at a time.

“I don’t want any fires,” he says.

For a bed, Ray had an ingenious solution: a $125 3-by-6-foot massage table. It is thin enough to fit on one side of the home, and it can be folded up when he’s not using it.

He had planned to use a roll-up mat, but his girlfriend told him that his YouTube audience, which follows his micro-home and main house renovation adventures, wouldn’t want to see him sleeping on the floor.

“She said I’d look like a homeless person,” he says with a laugh. “A pink massage table has better aesthetics.”

Ray estimates he spent $3,500 to turn the food cart into a home.

Setbacks in owning a micro home

Once he painted the house and got most of the plumbing installed, tragedy struck: a nearby brushfire set the micro house alight.

“That was really depressing. I thought my dream was over,” he says.

Fortunately, the fire scorched only the side of the house without most of the plumbing, so the damage was minimal. With a fresh coat of blue paint, replacement plumbing and wood, and a new window, he was good to go.

Until the next problem.

A $500 8-by-12-foot greenhouse he’d set up in the yard to store belongings and art materials he couldn’t fit into his micro house lasted a few weeks before collapsing.

“It was my worst fear. I couldn’t fix it, and I’d spent so much money on it,” Ray says.

Thankfully, Ray still had luck on his side. Although the greenhouse collapsed during a rainstorm, his possessions inside were not damaged.

Then a shelf in the micro house holding his Xbox, shoes, and clothes fell down in the middle of the night.

“I hadn’t bothered to look for studs because it seemed secure,” he says.

These minor setbacks taught him one thing: “I’m going to have to trim way down, and sell or donate most of my stuff.”

The upside of micro living

“Moving into a house this tiny has taught me what I really need. I was so attached to things,” says Ray.

It has also given him DIY skills—like installing plumbing.

And, best of all, he will live rent-free while two tenants cover his mortgage. One tenant has lived in a studio within the main house since shortly after Ray bought it. The other—his sister—is moving in soon.

Despite the glitches, Ray says it has been worth it.

“I always try to remember that I might go through hard times, but there’s a reason I’m doing this. I plan to stack my money and retire early,” he says.