Our tiny homes currently cost about $4500 ea. worth of materials to build (Fall, 2025). We keep costs so low because we use a nearly 100% volunteer building crew. About 90% of our expenses go directly to buying building materials and supplies. The largest operator of tiny home villages, LIHI, reports average Year 1 infrastructure costs to install and run a 42-home village, of roughly $850,000. That means total construction, infrastructure, and operations costs of $24,738 per tiny home.
By comparison, King County purchases underused hotels and refurbishes them as transitional shelter through its Health Through Housing Initiative. Their 2024 Annual Report cites a one-year rate for acquisition, maintenance, and operations of $320,933 per unit. Other factory-built shelter providers of pre-fab tiny home structures charge 4x-10x more than our homes cost to build.
We don’t disagree that ALL new shelter is good shelter, regardless of its origin. However, faced with a growing homeless population that’s not being matched by growing resources, we strongly believe in our tiny homes as the most affordable and therefore most scalable solution.
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