July 8, 2026
A Tiny Home Community in The Blue Ridge Mountains – Can We Do This in The PNW?
In 2016, John was in real estate and thinking vaguely about an RV park. His partner kept pushing a different idea — a tiny home village. They thought there was a future in it, especially with housing affordability getting worse by the year.
They found a piece of land in Mills River, North Carolina — old tomato fields and pepper fields at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Phase one opened in 2018: 22 units, eight of them vacation rentals. Today, Acony Bell has over 90 lots spread across more than 50 acres. There’s a waitlist. A creek runs through the center of the property. Otters live in it.
We’ll get to the otters.
The founders had a clear intention: create a sense of real community, not just a parking arrangement. Some of the things they did to get there are replicable. Some are delightfully specific to them. All of it is worth paying attention to if you’re thinking about starting a community of your own — or if you’re just trying to picture what a good one looks like.
The Setting
Mills River sits in the western North Carolina mountains, a short drive from Brevard and about 22 miles from downtown Asheville. The Asheville Regional Airport is 15 minutes away. Directly across the street from Acony Bell is the Turkey Pen Gap trailhead, which connects to tens of thousands of acres of Pisgah National Forest — world-class mountain biking and hiking country. There’s fly fishing. There are waterfalls. Asheville itself has one of the better food and brewery scenes in the South.
The property has two creeks. Wilson Creek runs through the center of the community and, on a warm day, residents swim in it or float down on inner tubes. The founders originally stocked it with trout, intending to add fly fishing as an amenity. Two weeks later, the otters arrived and ate the fish. They kept the otters. The creek also hosts muskrats. Deer move through the property regularly. Bears show up occasionally. In the spring, turkeys walk through the middle of the village.
This is what John means when he talks about western North Carolina wildlife. Acony Bell is not a campground with tiny homes in it — but it is a place where the line between neighborhood and wilderness is genuinely thin.
The Cost, and What It Includes
Residential lots at Acony Bell run $700–$750 per month on one-year leases, depending on the specific site. That number covers water, sewer, garbage pickup, recycling, and all common area maintenance. Residents pay electricity separately and handle their own internet and cable accounts. At 100-amp service with 30/50-amp connections, the electrical infrastructure is more than adequate for a well-built tiny home.
Here’s what that monthly number gets you beyond the hookups:
The community center is a stone building that goes back to around the 1930s. John describes it as having been in rough shape when they found it — “kind of scary to even walk in.” They stayed the course, renovated it, kept the original woodwork and fireplace. It now functions as the community living room: potluck dinners, poker nights, football games, shared meals. There’s a washer and dryer in there, a flatscreen, an outdoor deck, and a grill. When it’s cold and you’re living in 200 square feet, a room like this matters.
There’s a community garden, an edible landscape, and over 200 blueberry plants — at the end of each road, you can pick them in season. Raspberry trellises run alongside the paths. There’s a chicken coop with, by all accounts, very happy chickens. Four fire pits made from 19th-century sugar cauldrons hauled in from South Carolina — the kind made to cook down cane slurry, now kept stocked with wood and used on a regular basis by residents who build fires like it’s a normal weeknight activity, because for them it is.
Miles of hiking trails thread through the property. One resident named Diane has personally cut two to three miles of trail around the perimeter of the village. The founders gave her a machete for Christmas.
There’s a five-acre off-leash dog area. John notes that almost every resident has a dog, and that the dogs “kind of run the village.” This is not a complaint.
It’s also a Dark Sky community. Exterior lights must be off or pointed downward by 10 PM. On a clear night, you’re looking at an actual sky.
The Vacation Rental Angle
Nine of the homes at Acony Bell function as vacation rentals, bookable short-term through their website or Airbnb. The founders were candid about why they started this way: they weren’t sure, when they opened, that demand for full-time residential lots would be as high as they hoped. The vacation rental section de-risked the early phase. But it also does something more interesting.
John put it plainly: “One of the reasons we have them is to promote tiny house living. You don’t know until you buy it.” The vacation side lets people try the lifestyle before committing to a build or a move. It’s a live demo of the product, available by the weekend. Many of the full-time residents at Acony Bell visited first as vacation guests.
For tiny home owners who travel, the model has another layer: Acony Bell helps residents list their own homes as vacation rentals when they’re away. The community manages it. A home that earns $150–$200 a night in rental income during a three-week trip meaningfully changes the math on what tiny home living actually costs.
The Rules
Acony Bell operates as a licensed RV park — the same legal framework that exists in most states, including Washington. That framework is what makes permanent residential occupancy legal. But what turns an RV park into a neighborhood is the layer of standards they enforce on top of it.
All homes must carry RVIA, RVIC, ANSI, or NOAH certification, or receive explicit management approval. DIY builds are welcome — but they need certification from Bildsworth or a completed electrical inspection, plus proof they meet insurance requirements. Every home must be insured for full replacement value with a minimum $300,000 liability policy. An undercarriage cover, metal preferred, is required within 60 days of move-in, hiding the tires and hitch. Homes must be complete before placement. Management reserves the right to decline a home based on appearance.
Size limits are 400 square feet and 40 feet in length. Only tiny homes on wheels are allowed — RV park zoning requires it. Quiet hours run 10 PM to 7 AM on weekdays. Each site has parking for two vehicles; trailers, ATVs, and additional RVs stay off the property.
The founders also made a deliberate choice not to sell tiny homes themselves. They wanted to support the builders in the industry rather than compete with them. Homes on the property come from builders like Mint, Liberation Tiny Homes, and Perch — each one custom, each one chosen by its owner. The result is a community with genuine variety, where every home looks a little different, rather than a development where everything matches because the same company built all of it.
Who Lives There
John describes the mix this way: young couples who’d rather save money through a tiny home than take on a mortgage; middle-aged people looking to change their lifestyle; retirees who want the community piece without the sprawl. He mentions that the diversity across these groups is part of what makes the community work — different people at different stages of life sharing the same fire pits and blueberry rows.
What they have in common is that they chose this deliberately. Nobody at Acony Bell is there because the rent was the cheapest thing available and they had no other options. They’re there because they looked at the trade-offs — less square footage, outdoor living as a feature rather than a bonus, neighbors close enough to actually know — and decided it was the better deal.
The Case Against Apartment Living
Let’s just say it plainly. In Bellingham right now, a one-bedroom apartment runs somewhere between $1,400 and $1,800 per month. You share walls. You have no outdoor space of your own — maybe a balcony barely big enough for a chair. You’re subject to lease renewals, annual rent increases, and whatever your landlord decides to do with the building. You do not have a community garden, a stone clubhouse with a fireplace, a creek with otters in it, or chickens.
At Acony Bell, you spend $700–$750 on the lot. You own your home — or you’re paying it off, and the payments on a well-built THOW are substantially lower than a mortgage on anything habitable in western Washington. Your housing cost includes water, sewer, and trash. You have 50 acres, mountain views, and trails in your backyard. Your neighbors know your name.
The square footage is smaller. Everything else is larger. That’s the trade-off, and for a growing number of people, it’s not actually a difficult one.
What Anyone Starting a Community Can Learn Here
Acony Bell is studied by people who want to build something like it. Here’s what the model actually demonstrates:
The legal path is the RV park framework, not a new zoning category. This exists in Washington State. It’s not an easy path, but it’s a known one. John and his partner found a jurisdiction where the ordinances gave them room to work. That kind of research — identifying friendly jurisdictions before buying land — is where the work starts.
The dual-use structure. Vacation rentals de-risk the early phase, generate ongoing revenue, and function as a live demo that converts curious visitors into future residents.
Standards protect everyone. The certification requirements and aesthetic rules are what keep the community looking like a neighborhood. They create accountability, they set expectations before anyone moves in, and they protect the investment of every resident already there. A community without enforceable standards is just a lot with tiny homes in it.
The amenities build the community. The community center, the garden, the fire pits, the chickens, aren’t extras. They’re the mechanism by which neighbors become neighbors. John understood this from the start: “One of the things we really wanted to do was create a sense of community.” The physical infrastructure for gathering is what makes gathering happen.
Start with phase one. Acony Bell didn’t open with 90 lots. They opened with 22. They listened to the tiny home community about what to do and what not to do. They adjusted. Phase two followed when they knew it worked. Eighteen more units after that. The growth was staged because they were paying attention.
Where the PNW Stands
There is no Acony Bell in Washington State. There’s no full-time, purpose-built tiny home community in the Pacific Northwest with this level of infrastructure, standards, and intentional design. Sea Breeze in Port Townsend is doing important work at a smaller scale.
What’s missing is someone willing to put the pieces together the way John and his partner did in 2016 on those old tomato fields in Mills River — starting from a vision of how people should be able to live, and building toward it one phase at a time.
More communities to come in this series. If you’re thinking about a build and working through where it might eventually land, get in touch.