Seattle nonprofit has fewer tiny homes in storage

Hi all, we are Sound Foundations NW the Seattle nonprofit that builds the large majority of the tiny homes for the homeless here in Seattle. Back in October, 2024, Danny Westneat wrote a column in the Seattle Times highlighting the absurdity of ~250 tiny homes sitting in storage, while the homeless population in Seattle ballooned. That story really touched a nerve with people, as it should have, and it still comes up frequently because, as we know, things live forever on the internet. But the situation has changed since then and we wanted to provide an update.

​In 2023-24, there was a roughly 18-month bottleneck deploying our tiny homes, during which time only one new village opened. We continued building then, for many reasons not least of which was we knew tiny homes were in demand by the folks who needed shelter and we believed, rightly, that the dam would break at some point.

We’re happy to report that after just one village opening in that period, there were FOUR more villages built in 2025: Eagle Village 2 (opened March, 2025), Rosie’s Village 2 (July, 2025), Kingfisher Village in Tacoma (also July), and Olympic Hills Village (completed in December, opening this week). Some tiny homes were re-used for Rosie’s 2, but the others took new tiny homes from storage.

Also, there are currently three more new villages under construction, and at least two more new ones announced for 2026. Under construction now are: Church-by-the-Side-of-the-Road Village in Tukwila (47 tiny homes), Brighton Village in S. Seattle (14 homes), and an as-yet-unnamed village in Spanaway (55 homes). Also announced for this year are Glassyard RV+Tiny Home Village (~70 RV parking spots + 20 tiny homes) and another village in Tacoma (~40 homes).

As we predicted back in 2024, village openings do not happen with the regularity we’d like, but they are moving forward. Because we need to be ready to provide homes when villages do open, we will always have roughly 80-100 homes in storage (approx. 2 villages’ worth). By the end of this year, we expect our inventory in storage to be back down to that range.

We are grateful that new administrations in place at both the city and county level are pro-tiny home administrations, at least based on campaign statements. Likewise, the King Co. Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) seems to have adopted a more welcoming policy with regard to including tiny homes and villages as part of its ecosystem of transitional housing solutions. We look forward to working with them to help move our neighbors who are homeless off the streets via our affordable, scalable, and dignified homelessness solution.

If anyone has questions or comments, we’re happy to answer them here. Thanks for reading this far!

UPDATE: wow, great questions everyone, thank you. We’ll do our best to answer below. Meanwhile, we also have a pretty extensive FAQ section on our website where you can learn more at your leisure: https://soundfoundationsnw.org/faqs-2/