Skip to main content
EDIT

USC Marshall Alumna’s Tiny Homes Bridge Gaps in Affordable Family Housing

USC Marshall Alumna’s Tiny Homes Bridge Gaps in Affordable Family Housing

Rebecca Borough ’16 takes lessons from the MSSE program to Tiny Topanga.

by: Avni Shah
08.01.25
a tiny home

Stay Informed + Stay Connected

MARSHALL MONTHLY BRINGS YOU ESSENTIAL NEWS AND EVENTS FROM FACULTY, STUDENTS, AND ALUMNI.
SIGN UP

Tiny houses are small, sustainable homes often less than 400 feet that became popular over the last decade as an affordable, minimalist alternative for ownership. Rebecca Borough ’16, a USC Marshall School of Business Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies alumna, founded Tiny Topanga in 2021 to offer quality, custom tiny dwellings for families, a business she is hoping to scale as a strategy to help offer affordable housing and fill supply gaps in communities like Los Angeles that have been hard hit by extreme weather.

Borough, who earned her Master of Science in Social Entrepreneurship (MSSE), has been a teacher, marketer, builder, and student. But in all aspects of her life, she’s always been about creating ventures, taking risks, and bridging need gaps with goods and services she can dream up and provide to communities likely to benefit.

Tiny Topanga was created out of such a need — Borough and her husband needed a home, but before they could ever live in it, they ended up selling the construction.

“We kept designing for ourselves and selling to others,” Borough said.

The business has grown slowly over the last decade. With a shop based in Mexico, the couple based in Texas, and customers spread all over the country, Borough said they wanted to limit debt and risk, while establishing a pace that helped them understand the business better. Over the years, Borough and her husband worked out many of the intricacies specific to the construction, materials, design, and delivery of their tiny homes.

“We were able to do custom projects with clients who were often paying cash. We’ve learned the job, how to make every home better. We found better suppliers and really systemized the process so that we’re now in a position to begin scaling,” Borough said.

The degree helped me put a lot of structure behind ideas I was inclined to pursue. I always look back at the relationships and continue to call on my peers and professors.

— Rebecca Borough ’16

Founder, Tiny Topanga

The timing is important to Borough. The 2025 Los Angeles wildfires deepened an already ever-present housing shortage, particularly with regard to low to medium income families. Borough wants to be a part of the next chapter — the industry solutions that help place families back in high-quality, sustainable, cost-effective homes. To that end, she’s adjusted their model a bit, offering ready-built stock models for those who need a home right away and are unable to wait through a longer design and build period.

“We’re not in a build fast and break stuff mentality. People deserve to live in a space that is comfortable and well-built,” she said.

One way she hopes to do this is through subsidies and partnerships to help cut costs where possible, without taking funding away from areas like materials, where cutting costs could also undermine the durability of the finished product. A seasoned entrepreneur, Borough’s first formidable startup was Knit Marketing. It is a social enterprise, digital marketing agency that hires high school students from lower income backgrounds to offer skills training, initial resume building and job placement services.

Initially, Borough envisioned the business as a tutoring service. Prior to USC, Borough spent two years in the Peace Corps where she taught English in Mexico. Her love of teaching led to the initial business concept. Alongside her social entrepreneurship coursework, Borough began conducting customer discovery interviews.

“Venture Initiation (BAEP 554) was my biggest takeaway from the MSSE program,” she said. “It made me go out there and talk to people.”

In order to understand how to build the business, Borough spoke to school administrators, who worked closely with her target audience–high school students.

“It was really validating … and helpful in starting the business,” Borough said.

The field interviews also helped her realize she needed to pivot from her original concept.

“One of the bigger opportunity gaps was job creation,” Borough said.

Borough launched Knit Marketing upon graduating from the MSSE program nine years ago. Now recruiting in San Antonio, where Borough currently lives, she said it’s cool to have built something ongoing, from the ground up.

Borough emphasized the relationships she built in the MSSE program — her cohort of peers and her professors — as an element in fueling her grit, resilience, and success. This spirit is what keeps her going.

“The degree helped me put a lot of structure behind ideas I was inclined to pursue,” she said. “I always look back at the relationships and continue to call on my peers and professors.”

RELATED