LIHI, the sole operator of tiny houses villages in Seattle, is asking supporters to testify before City Council on Tuesday, October 12th, in favor of funding three additional villages and increasing funding for the existing tiny house villages to ensure “equitable standards are maintained” across the sites.

However, the Lived Experience Coalition (LEC), an organization whose membership is made up people who have experienced homelessness, has become increasingly vocal in its opposition to expanding the tiny house model, arguing the tiny houses are “in fact sheds rather than tiny homes.”

The village will be built on a former construction site, leased at no cost to the city, and is expected to house up to 65 people in up to 36 furnished residential units with shared kitchens, bathrooms, offices, and community spaces.

The lease has a term of one year, but could be renewed for up to three years. The property would be converted to permanent transit-oriented development “that will respond to long-term community needs identified through community engagement efforts to be completed this summer.”

“This partnership is an example of how Sound Transit is working with cities to address the urgent challenges facing people experiencing homelessness,” said Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff. “This innovative use of property first used for construction staging when building our new U District station is helping us tackle the most critical need burdening our region. We are grateful to the elected leaders of Seattle in partnering with us on this effort and look forward to the groundbreaking later this fall.”

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Tiny Experiments

Last year, reporting for The Outline, I wrote about a tiny house experiment that took place here in Boston—where I and thousands of other residents are barely able to afford rent, and where the homeless have endured shelter closures and abuse from the Boston Police Department. The city, no doubt seeking better PR, joined forces with an architectural fellow at Harvard who had created a product known as the Plugin House: a simple build-it-yourself tiny house. What Boston wanted to do was persuade wealthy homeowners to build these houses in their backyards—ideally so that they could be used to accommodate either a homeless person or a low-income renter facing displacement. The city actually set up a prototype plugin house in Government Center plaza (a very busy stretch of Downtown Boston) so that passersby could experience them.

The idea didn’t germinate into policy. It was part of a pilot program in which Boston studied the efficacy of accessory dwelling units as a partial solution to its affordable housing shortage. But Los Angeles is taking this idea even further. The city has been trying to loosen zoning laws so that homeowners who want to make some money can build and rent their own ADUs—including backyard tiny houses. It also launched a pilot program in which homeowners are given a 10-year forgivable loan of up to $75,000 to build the ADU themselves and house a homeless person or a tenant who participates in the city’s housing choice voucher program (meaning they would pay 30 percent of whatever income they might have, and the landlord would receive the difference between that and fair market rent from the housing authority). If the ADU owner continues doing this for 10 years, the loan is forgiven. Meanwhile, in the Bay Area, for-profit startups like Rent The Backyard will supply eligible homeowners with a free tiny house in exchange for a portion of whatever monthly rent the homeowner collects from a tenant.

Milwaukee, Denver, Sacramento, and San Jose are preparing to set up their own tiny house villages for the homeless—planned communities, funded and monitored by cities.

here’s no time limit for how long somebody can live in one of Seattle’s tiny house villages. But according to LIHI executive director Sharon Lee, the average person’s village stay lasts about four to five months—during which time many are paired with a caseworker who tries to help them lock down permanent housing. The case workers actually work from within the village: the case management office is, itself, a tiny house. This, according to Lee, is one of the most integral pillars of Seattle’s villages. “[The case workers] work tirelessly,” Lee said. “They are so effective at getting people on housing waiting lists, Section 8 waiting lists, getting people IDs, employment, etc.” In 2018, 34 percent of Seattle’s tiny house dwellers were able to transition to permanent housing.

“Homeless people have to wait somewhere [for long-term housing] until their name comes up,” Lee says. “We [LIHI] own and manage 2,200 units of affordable housing, so we prioritize people who are living in the tiny houses into our own portfolio.”

Not all of Seattle’s tiny house villages were kickstarted by the city. One of them, Nickelsville, was actually created by homeless Seattleites themselves. Funding from LIHI helped residents of Nickelsville transform what began as a large tent encampment into a tiny-house village that was governed autonomously by the residents themselves—until recently. Earlier this year, a dispute arose between LIHI and Nickelsville. At the heart of this dispute was LIHI’s case worker provision. LIHI wanted Nickelsville residents to take more meetings with city case workers, to hasten their transition to permanent housing. This didn’t set well with many Nickelsville leaders, who felt that LIHI was trying to push them out of a community that they created for themselves. The talks fell apart. City workers were barred from entering Nickelsville. Shortly after, LIHI cut its subcontractor funding to Nickelsville.

The Nickelsville dispute brings to light many troubling questions about the efficacy of tiny houses as a solution for homelessness. But one of the most pressing is, why were Nickelsville leaders in opposition to the LIHI’s push for more meetings with case workers? According to a report from the Seattle Times, Nickelsville leadership felt that an uptick of case worker meetings would be futile because ”there isn’t enough affordable housing to make those meetings meaningful anyway.”

Let’s jump back to the stats for a minute. Last year, roughly one third of the people living in Seattle tiny house villages were able to find permanent housing. That leaves two thirds who weren’t. The city is investing in affordable housing development, but as we’ve seen in many cities across the nation, these projects are generally overshadowed by luxury development.

According to a report from KING5, the city will be using a Seattle-based nonprofit in the Low-Income Housing Institute (LIHI). LIHI operates tiny home villages in both Seattle and Olympia, and within a month, will have the same established in Tacoma.

The city will be directing $380,000 in funding toward LIHI for the operation of a community consisting of 22 tiny houses, and providing shelter for 35 people. On-site services will include portable toilets, garbage collection, handwashing stations, and drinking water.

“Once you’re in that house, you can lock that door and you can go to sleep and you can go to work you can go to school,” LIHI’s Sharon Lee told KING5.