Michael Burnside lives in the tiniest house you ever saw, maybe the tiniest house in New Orleans. He built it himself, more or less, in a postage stamp-sized lot in Central City. It’s a pastel-peach-colored, 12-foot cube, with a floorplan smaller than most people’s kitchen. There’s a narrow bunk in a crawl space up by the ceiling, like you might see in a submarine.

It’s all Burnside needs and all he wants. He’s into living lean. It’s his guiding principle. No phone, no pool, no pets, as Roger Miller put it.

But in August, Burnside said he’d arrived at a crossroads. He’s slowing down, he said, has some medical issues and plans to sell the tiny house sometime soon. At 61 years old, he said, he can’t be climbing a tall ladder to fix the roof anymore. When he turns 62, he said, he’ll be able

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