Two tiny house villages coming to Seattle

In a tight budget year, Seattle is adding two new tiny house villages, but it will likely take months before anything is ready.

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority announced earlier this month that the Low Income Housing Institute was awarded a contract to stand up two shelters, where guests have their own rooms and a door that closes.

The contract is worth nearly $6 million and spread out over 2025 and 2026, but it’s likely that only one new village will be ready to open by the end of the year, said Sharon Lee, executive director of the Institute. The housing and shelter provider is still looking to secure land to house the second village.

“We’re working as fast as we can,” Lee said.

Adding new shelter units in Seattle is less common than moving around existing ones as leases expire or sites are redeveloped. Securing land for standing up RV safe lots and tiny house villages has become a recurring hurdle in Seattle’s expensive housing market.

For the first village, Lee said they found an amenable private land owner to lease from at an affordable rate in Seattle’s northern Olympic Hills neighborhood, near Lake City. The site will be fenced in, able to hold 44 tiny houses and available to adults including couples, people with pets and people experiencing substance-use disorder.

Being able to have your own space and have some quiet time to stabilize and to focus on your next steps are important,” said Lisa Edge, spokesperson for the Regional Homelessness Authority. “Overall, we see this as a win.”

This addition of tiny houses by the homelessness authority illustrates how the agency’s view of the shelter model has changed since its former CEO called for less future investment in the model, creating friction between the authority and other elected leaders about how shelter dollars were spent.

The Seattle City Council approved this investment last November when elected officials chose to close a $250-million-plus expected deficit using the city’s JumpStart payroll tax, which was originally intended to pay for affordable housing and help address homelessness.

“Addressing homelessness is a top priority for Seattle,” said Mayor Bruce Harrell of the project, “and we’ll continue to invest in proven solutions to help our unhoused neighbors heal and get on a path to permanent housing and long-term stability.

The city claimed in a press release Wednesday that approximately 60 more tiny houses will come online in this second village, but the Low Income Housing Institute has yet to ink that deal. If it goes through, Lee said they are looking at a larger lot located close to Seattle’s downtown, where 50 to 60 tiny houses could likely fit.

The Low Income Housing Institute is the largest tiny home provider across the region. It operates 15 villages with 10 in Seattle, two in Tacoma and three spread across Skyway and Tukwila. The newest village opened last week in Tacoma, adding 60 tiny houses.

There are more than 400 people currently living in the Low Income Housing Institute’s tiny house villages. Last year, the Institute’s sites sheltered more than 1,200 people, according to data provided by the nonprofit.

There’s a great demand for all forms of shelter in Seattle as most of the city’s stock remains at or near capacity. And tiny houses are particularly popular when Seattle’s Unified Care Team offers shelter during encampment clearings.

The city said its encampment removal team will have full authority to make referrals to these two new villages, but Lee said there’s still some details that need to be worked out. The new village that has yet to find land is going to partner with nonprofit Purpose Dignity Action’s CoLead team. CoLead provides intense case management to help people living outside who are having frequent run-ins with law enforcement.

Lisa Daugaard and Tara Moss, co-executive directors of the nonprofit, said in a statement Wednesday they wanted to bring the program to a tiny home environment for years.

Nearly 17,000 people were counted as experiencing homelessness in King County last year, which many experts agree is an undercount. And the majority of people, nearly 10,000, were living outside, not in shelter or tiny houses.

The two new villages will be equipped with restrooms, a kitchen, common space and case management to help people get access to resources and in line for permanent housing.

And each site will have their own community advisory committee, serving as a liaison between the village and the surrounding community.