Laid Off From Tech, She Now Lives in a 100-Square-Foot Shed

Lauren Patton's monthly mortgage payment was roughly $4,000 when a tech layoff in early 2023 wiped out the income that justified it. Within two years, the 36-year-old data science manager had moved out of her $400,000 Central Texas bungalow and into a 100-square-foot shed in her own backyard, renting her main house on Airbnb to keep it out of foreclosure.

Patton told her story in an as-told-to essay for Business Insider. Her case shows how quickly a high salary can turn into a fragile market position when a single job loss hits a leveraged household budget.

How a $400,000 purchase unraveled

Patton bought her two-bedroom, roughly 1,000-square-foot bungalow in 2022, during Central Texas's booming market. She made a very small down payment and took a 30-year mortgage. The $4,000 monthly payment felt heavy but manageable on a tech salary.

Then came the wave of tech layoffs in early 2023. Patton learned she had lost her data science job the day after returning from a trip to South Africa. She received two months of severance.

What did she do when the money ran out?

The job search stalled. "I thought, 'Hey, I was a data science manager. I'll be able to find something.' But after interviewing at numerous places, nothing was happening," she said.

She had little savings, significant credit card debt, and eventually cashed out her 401(k). Her steps included:

• Filing for unemployment benefits
• Renting her home on Airbnb while couch-surfing and driving for Lyft
• Returning to a former accounting job in 2024 that paid much less
• Taking in a roommate at $1,200 a month

Even so, she estimated she was about 30% underwater on the home, which had depreciated, so selling held no appeal. At 35, she decided to build a structure in her backyard to live in.

The shed and the numbers behind it

Patton bought a cabin-style shed kit for about $8,500, financed with a loan. The kit included stackable wood slats, beams, and large windows, but no roof or floor; she built the foundation herself, plus an outhouse with an outdoor shower. She relied on YouTube and ChatGPT for construction guidance, though she said ChatGPT "definitely led me astray" on the roofing. She finished the build in March 2025.

Since moving in, she has rented the main house full-time on Airbnb and hosted hundreds of guests. Typical rates run about $200 on weekend nights and $125 on weekdays during the school year.

Her strongest month so far: October, boosted by the Austin City Limits festival, brought about 96% occupancy and roughly $6,516.70 in gross earnings. But Airbnb deducted $619 in service fees, and she paid about $100 each for seven cleanings. Her combined electric and utilities bill for the house and shed runs $550. Airbnb income still does not cover the full mortgage, which rose by $400 a month this year because of home insurance.

Living small, at a cost

Life in the shed is spartan. Patton has a TV, a desk, and a bed, but no running water and only a tiny refrigerator, so she stocks up on jugs of water. Early on, humidity hit 80% with a portable air conditioner; she now runs a dehumidifier around the clock. "Some days, I think, 'Man, this is harder than I thought it was going to be,'" she said.

Her retrospective lessons are concrete. She wishes she had researched the purchase more as a first-time buyer; the roughly 100-year-old house constantly needs repairs. Most of all, she regrets exceeding the standard advice that housing should stay under 30% of income.

What comes next

Patton is walking dogs and working on a data analytics project; her job income does not cover the mortgage. She has gained about 12,000 Instagram followers documenting her layoff and the shed, though she has earned no money from her reels yet. If things do not improve within a couple of years, she says she will be comfortable letting the house go, knowing she tried everything. One day, she hopes to move back into the main house and rent the shed to someone who needs an affordable place to live.