by Max Thaysen

You may have seen a couple of tiny homes just outside the Linnaea Farm parking lot, on Cortes Island, and wondered, what’s the story with those?

The tiny homes are a multi-faceted project of Robert Carrington, aka "Bobbie Noobie."

Robert and Karen Carrington purchased the tiny homes as mostly built, but unfinished projects. Robert is a new builder, an artist and an activist, so he wanted the tiny home project to achieve multiple goals. The first goal was to make an investment and make a financial return when the houses sell.

Robert Carrington (aka Bobbie Noobie) talks about the tiny homes outside Linnaea farm on Cortes Island. Photo submitted by Robert Carrington.

The next goal is to address the housing crisis by providing housing for people.

Another goal is learn building skills, and share the learning with community. Robert wants to gather the deep and varied wisdom of Cortes on the topic of building and tiny homes, capture that on video and share it, creating a kind of tiny-home library of best practices.

The video-education aspect of the project was inspired by the work of Manda Aufochs-Gillespie and FolkU.  Folk U has been doing classes and radio programs that empower islanders to teach one-another about things that they know.

And finally, the art piece – Robert wants to make a fun and sassy narrative that weaves his process and the input from the community into a somewhat fictional story. The story features a character played by him, named "Bobbie Noobie," a kind of punk-rock trickster who seeks to take advantage of free advice by creating an "educational show" about building and tiny homes.

The houses are on a corner of land on the Linnaea property that Robert is leasing. He lives in the neighbourhood. With the houses on display, he thought someone might drop by and want to buy one before it’s done and have the opportunity to have it finished to their specifications.

The houses were framed and finished to this point by Oliver and Trygve Ellingsen. They had plans to use one and sell the other, but plans change and Robert and Karen were first on the list to accept the offer of the buildings for sale.

You can check out the houses on Seaford Road, right outside the Linnaea farm parking lot.

And if you know something about tiny homes and you want to share it with the community, go find Bobby Noobie.