I own a village of tiny homes in the Arizona desert that were built to feel like treehouses — see inside

• Urban planner Darin Dinsmore created a camp in Sedona, Arizona, with four tiny homes.
• The small cabins are located on the side of a cliff and were designed to feel like tree houses.
• Dinsmore lists the tiny cabins on Airbnb starting at $200 a night.

This is an as-told-to essay based on a conversation with Darin Dinsmore, an urban planner and the founder of TinyCamp, a collection of tiny house short-term rentals in Sedona and Cottonwood, Arizona. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My background in urban planning was one of the things that led me to start the TinyCamp project in Sedona and Cottonwood, Arizona.

I moved to Sedona three years ago to work on these projects, but I'm also the founder and CEO of a software startup based in the California Bay Area called Crowdbrite. Launching that company involved ten years of traveling all over the world, and when I came to Sedona I thought, "This is not a bad place to chill out at."

Five years ago, Coconino County, where Sedona and Cottonwood are located, was using a tool I created and they reached out to me and said, "We want to do a housing demonstration project and we're ready to rewrite the rules. Are you interested?" I thought it sounded great, so we got started and I started on the TinyCamp in Sedona.

I drew inspiration from my time living on a houseboat in Sausalito, California 

In Sausalito, we had such a community and you didn't need a lot of stuff. It was the kind of place where you'd meet your neighbors because you'd have to walk down the dock to get to your home.

With the Sedona properties, we worked with local builders to get the homes built on the side of a cliff. They're all permanent tiny houses with foundations and fire sprinklers, and they each have their own hot tubs and fireplaces. They feel like treehouses. 

We wanted to incorporate the indoor-outdoor experience, so having the deck and patio, hot tub, and fire pit was important to us. Our houses are unique and they're not all the same, so it's not like staying in a hotel. They all have names like Grow, Flow and Breathe.

We have a lot of visitors, but a lot of them don't find us through Airbnb

People Google "tiny houses in Arizona" and we pop up. They want a unique experience. We've had proposals happen here, we've had honeymoon celebrations — people want to create memories.

We offer amenities to make those memories extra special. Also, people might want to have a health and wellness-focused stay so we can coordinate having a yoga practitioner there or set up a sound healing session. People are coming to renew themselves and breathe — just like the names of our units. 

I saw this a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic. People were living in big cities like Los Angeles and felt stuck in their apartments and wanted to get out and get connected to nature while they were able to work remotely. 

It shocks people, but tiny houses are expensive

The land and tiny houses cost around $250,000 to $275,000 each. The prices of tiny homes have gone up a lot — I went to a tiny house festival recently and they were being sold for between $100,000 and $135,000. The cost of materials has risen, and the demand has gone through the roof.

Our regular nightly stays start at $200, and it's $250 for our stays with private hot tubs. The Achilles heel of the tiny house movement is that it's $10,000 for a sewer hookup. It's also $10,000 for a 5,000 square foot house — that blows people away. I was shocked when I found out those hookup fees are the same.

With the movement growing, there are also a lot of people buying plots of land for their tiny homes but they don't have the right permits, so it's something prospective tiny home owners need to be aware of. 

The hospitality side of things is new to me, but at this point in my life it's fun

I get to hang out with cool people who are coming to Northern Arizona for yoga retreats or hiking and who want to reconnect with nature.

With TinyCamp Sedona, we wanted to also help the community, so we partnered with a local charter school that was in need of housing for a teacher. We built one right on the charter school campus for them.

In Cottonwood, which opened this summer, the units were built to feel more like a community. The wine scene there is growing, so people love to come up and walk to the tasting rooms. You're also seeing younger people visit.

Our larger vision is to create local housing and adventure lodging 

Imagine if every hotel in Sedona had one affordable housing unit for every four rooms. If that was the case we wouldn't have a housing problem. 

We want to be a part of the sustainable tourism solution as well as the housing solution. We're even working on a project in Clarkdale, Arizona.

Clarkdale was actually the first master planned community in Arizona when it was a mining town, so we're kind of following in those footsteps. Our Clarkdale project will be 50% affordable local housing with a dog park and community garden.