In the Netherlands, tiny houses were not just for young people in the past, but for working-class families in general. They were made of brick rather than wood, though. When they're still standing, they're used as single-person housing. We don't live in huge villas/barns like Americans do, but the trend is the same.

My grandfather once came home to find his neighbors sitting at the dinner table. Grandma had decided to move next door, and that took only an afternoon.

When I was a kid, our neighbors liked to remind my parents that they lived in a former chicken shed. It was turned into a house in the 1950s, and the whole family helped to add an extension when I was born in 1971. The yard was covered with random slabs of stone from demolished buildings, we had a big vegetable garden, a flower garden, a chicken shed, a boathouse and a garage turned into a tool shed. We had everything we could wish for. Some of my friends who lived in bigger houses were jealous of me because they had to share their bedroom with a brother and I didn't.

Once I had breakfast in someone's living room that was the size of a ballroom. I felt lost there. It was mostly empty, useless unless you wanted to have a big cocktail party. And I knew that he was rich, but struggling to pay his mortgage after buying at the top of the market just before the 2008 crisis.