• Lille's first shared habitat will have 5 tiny houses and will be inaugurated in the spring of 2023.

  • These mini-houses, once reimbursed, are installed on shared land to accommodate socially mixed people in precarious situations.

  • Lille's first shared habitat will have 5 tiny houses and will be inaugurated in the spring of 2023.

There's nothing wrong with doing good.

Yes, Lille is an increasingly popular tourist destination.

And if there are plenty of more or less starred hotels, hundreds of AirBnbs, there is also, for a limited time, a much more atypical short-term accommodation opportunity: the tiny house.

It is the Ch'tite maison solidaire association which offers, in the heart of Old Lille, a stay in one of its tiny houses to tourists wishing to discover the city and test their degree of acceptance of sobriety.

Tiny houses are mini-houses on wheels that are as popular as converted vans.

A fashion effect which has the effect of driving prices up, some being able to sell "up to 120,000 euros", assures Christophe Thomas, co-founder of the Ch'tite solidarity house.

Except that he doesn't sell his houses, he doesn't even make a business out of them.

"The idea is to rent tiny houses for tourists until they are paid," he explains.

Then they are used to make shared housing”.

In seven years, the rental, in particular via AirBnb, makes it possible to repay the investment of 60,000 euros per house.

The reimbursed tiny house is then offered as a dwelling house at a monthly rent of around 350 euros.

Finding a solution for slum dwellers

The trigger came to him when his friend and partner, Tony, was threatened with eviction from the squat he occupied with his wife and children.

Unrecognized stateless, unable to work normally, Tony worked hard, but voluntarily, for the association of the late Father Arthur.

“Welcoming him to my home would have been a bad solution for everyone.

So I had the idea of ​​renting out my unoccupied rooms to tourists and using the money to pay Tony's rent,” Christophe recalls.

The concepts of "#hostForGood" then of the "Ch'tite solidarity house" were born.


Christophe and Tony's desire is to find a solution for slum dwellers that is long-term and not urgent.

“There are integration villages for the Roma, but that doesn't help with integration since they keep to themselves.

Not to mention that it can be complicated with the neighborhood,” continues Christophe.

Hence the shared habitat.

The tiny houses, paid for by tourists or financed by donations, are installed on shared land and then rented on the principle of diversity.

For the one in Lille, which will open in the spring, there will be 5 tiny houses.

Three occupied by precarious people and two by people from Lille who have simply decided to change their way of life.


The objective is to replicate this model up to 10 tiny houses produced per year.

"The tiny house is a solution to reduce the urban squat, but it is also an ecological solution for the planet by the sober side of life that this implies", insists Christophe Thomas.

A sober side, but not medieval, each little shack being fully equipped: bedroom, living room, kitchen, dry toilets and even a shower.

And to test your degree of acceptance on the sobriety scale, you can therefore rent the tiny house in Vieux-Lille or that of Ambleteuse, on the Opal Coast.

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  • Lille

  • Hauts-de-France

  • Lodging

  • Tourism

  • Solidarity

  • Precariousness

  • Company