Mayor Katie Wilson introduced three pieces of legislation on Wednesday that she says will reduce barriers to tiny house villages—groups of small, freestanding shelters—by reducing bureaucratic obstacles, freeing up money, and removing a cap on the size of tiny house villages that Wilson called out of step with nationwide best practices.
Framed by tiny houses-in-progress at Sound Foundations’ 15,000-square-foot tiny house production facility in SoDo, Wilson said the legislation is just the beginning of a plan to dramatically reduce visible homelessness and get people into shelter as a step toward permanent housing.
“We have twice as many homeless people in Seattle as we have shelter beds, leaving thousands of people with nowhere to go,” Wilson said. “We also have a responsibility to make sure that everyone can access and enjoy our parks, trails, sidewalks and other public spaces. But we can’t just keep moving people from place to place, and calling that progress. The single most important thing we can do to address our city’s homelessness crisis is to rapidly expand emergency housing.”…