Within the context of rising rents and growing unhoused population, public authorities are compelled to adapt their own practices, to create low-cost social policies and sometimes to draw inspiration from informal housing practices. Through the analysis of the institutional adoption of the ‘tiny home’ village model in Portland as a means of sheltering the homeless, this article examines the extent to which these informal practices spread into public policies and reconfigure the governance of homelessness. It points out that, although political struggle and advocacy have been crucial in the regularization of the first homeless villages by public authorities, the way the village model is currently being institutionalized tends both to depoliticize the way they are operated and to reproduce some of the constraints associated with congregate shelters.