Capitol Hill Tiny House Village Plan Draws Resident Backlash in Seattle

A temporary tiny-house village is coming to 1737 Belmont Ave. in Capitol Hill, and the reaction is already showing how quickly support for homelessness solutions can fray when the project lands next door. The Belmont Tiny House Village, planned by the Low Income Housing Institute, will place 32 tiny houses on a cleared 4,300-square-foot lot that once held the Granberg Apartments, with the site expected to stay in use for years while a larger supportive housing project and environmental cleanup move forward.

LIHI says the village will serve individuals and couples living unsheltered and will be staffed around the clock. The plan includes a security pavilion, case-management offices, a community kitchen, and hygiene and laundry facilities. Early site plans showed a gridded layout, a security shack facing Belmont Ave., and 8-foot cedar fencing left in place as the village takes shape. Reporting described the project as a $1.1 million proposal.

The backlash has centered less on the concept of tiny-house shelter than on the location, scale, and oversight. Capitol Hill is one of Seattle’s densest neighborhoods, and nearby resident Jon Garay has called for more transparency from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority or the city about how tax dollars are being spent. The site also sits near a block with its own redevelopment history, including opposition to a planned DESC supportive housing project that helped fuel former Capitol Hill business owner Rachael Savage’s unsuccessful run for City Council.

The village arrives as Seattle keeps expanding tiny-house capacity. In 2025, Mayor Bruce Harrell announced $5.9 million for two new LIHI villages totaling more than 100 tiny homes, and the city said it would keep investing in shelter and permanent housing. By early 2026, Seattle had around a dozen tiny house villages operating within city limits, and LIHI said it operated 11 of them. The nonprofit said it moved about 1,600 people off the streets and into tiny homes in 2025, a figure supporters point to as evidence that the model can move people indoors quickly.

That broader record is part of why the Capitol Hill fight matters beyond one address. The mayor’s January 2026 executive order created an interdepartmental team to speed shelter and housing development, while later proposals sought to raise the legal limit for transitional encampments to 150 residents and allow one interim-use village of up to 250 residents. The city has framed that strategy as a way to keep public spaces open and accessible while expanding shelter, but the Belmont site is now testing how that policy lands when a tiny-home village is placed on a specific street with specific neighbors watching closely.

The dispute is unfolding alongside a separate governance crisis at KCRHA, which was reported to be unable to account for about $13 million in public funds in a recent audit. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and King County Executive Girmay Zahilay have called for more oversight, while City Councilmember Maritza Rivera and King County Councilmember Rod Dembowski have introduced resolutions to begin dissolving the agency over the next year. LIHI executive director Sharon Lee has said the nonprofit would prefer to work directly with the city, and the Belmont village now sits squarely in that larger argument over whether tiny-house villages are Seattle’s most workable shelter tool, and whether they can be managed well enough to keep neighborhood trust intact.