tech layoff tiny shed — Lauren Patton, 36, never expected to be living in a 100-square-foot shed in her own backyard. But after a tech layoff left her unable to pay her mortgage, the Central Texas homeowner built a tiny cabin and moved in, renting out her main house on Airbnb to make ends meet.
From Chicago to a Central Texas Bungalow
Patton returned to Texas in 2022 after a couple of years in Chicago, hoping for a fresh start. The housing market was hot, and she quickly found a real estate agent on Instagram who helped her buy a two-bedroom, roughly 1,000-square-foot bungalow for about $400,000. She bought it alone, with just her dog for company.
With a small down payment and a 30-year mortgage, her monthly payment was around $4,000. At the time, she was climbing the data science ladder in tech and believed the field would be lucrative. The payment felt manageable given her salary.
The Layoff That Changed Everything
In early 2023, the tech industry shed jobs en masse. Patton learned she had been laid off the day after returning from a trip to South Africa. She received two months of severance.
At first, she wasn’t worried. She took time to relax and see family, then began job hunting. As a former data science manager, she thought she’d find work quickly. But interviews led nowhere, and money grew tight. With little savings and significant credit card debt, she filed for unemployment and started renting her home on Airbnb to cover the mortgage.
To make that work, she rented a room across town for about six months. When unemployment ran out, she crashed on friends’ couches and drove for Lyft. In 2024, she reached out to a former boss and got her old accounting job back. It paid much less, but it sustained her for a while.
Still, she had no savings and had cashed out her 401(k). Her mortgage felt crushing, and she feared foreclosure. Her home was already about 30% underwater and had depreciated, so selling wasn’t appealing. At 35, she decided she needed a radical solution: build a small structure in her backyard to live in.
A Shed Kit and a Lot of YouTube
Doubting her carpentry skills, Patton bought a cabin-style shed kit she found on Instagram for about $8,500, using a loan. While building it, she moved back into her main house and took on a roommate, charging about $1,200 a month for a room. She regrets buying a two-bedroom house because there aren’t enough bedrooms to rent out.
The shed is about 100 square feet. The kit included stackable wood slats, beams, and large windows, but no roof or floor. Patton built the foundation herself and added an outhouse with an outdoor shower, plus fences and other property improvements. She relied on YouTube and ChatGPT for construction guidance, though she says ChatGPT led her astray on some things, especially roofing.
She finished the build in March 2025 and has been making adjustments since. “It’s never-ending,” she said.
Life in 100 Square Feet
Downsizing was hard. Patton felt emotionally like she was regressing and physically claustrophobic. But she has adjusted mentally. The shed has a TV, desk, and bed, but only a tiny fridge and no running water or ice, so she stocks jugs of water. She runs a dehumidifier 24 hours a day after discovering that humidity inside reached 80% with just a portable air conditioner.
The hardest part, she says, is remembering to keep everything on hand. She’ll go to grill chicken and realize she’s out of salt. She constantly buys small items and sometimes wonders if the arrangement is financially worth it. “Some days, I think, ‘Man, this is harder than I thought it was going to be,'” she said.
Renting Out the Main House
Since moving into the shed, Patton has rented her main home full-time on Airbnb, hosting hundreds of guests. She lets Airbnb handle pricing. A typical weekend night brings about $200; a weekday during the school year is closer to $125. October is especially lucrative thanks to the Austin City Limits music festival. This October, her home had about 96% occupancy and gross earnings of about $6,516.70. Airbnb deducted $619 in service fees, and she paid about $100 for each of seven cleanings.
She puts some of the money toward her mortgage and shed bills. Her total electric bill, including both structures and other utilities, is $550. But Airbnb doesn’t cover her full mortgage, which rose by $400 a month this year because of home insurance.
Lessons Learned and What's Next
Patton has tried everything to keep her home. If things don’t improve in the next couple of years, she’ll be comfortable letting it go, knowing she tried her hardest. She wishes she had done more research as a first-time homebuyer. Her house is about 100 years old and often needs repairs. She also wishes she had heeded the common advice to keep her mortgage under 30% of her income. Next time, she says, she’ll stay under that threshold and be more realistic.
Recently, she started posting about her layoff and the shed on social media. She has gained around 12,000 Instagram followers and is grateful for the support, though she hasn’t earned money from her reels yet. She’s currently working on a data analytics project and still walking dogs. Her income doesn’t cover the mortgage, but she’s grateful for any work.
She feels for others who have been laid off and wants to help people in similar situations once she’s back on her feet. One day, she hopes to move back into the main house and rent the shed for a few hundred dollars to someone who needs an affordable place to live.