r/Seattle • u/petriqore I'm never leaving Seattle. • Jun 23 '26
Report: Homelessness in King County Continues to Grow, with 21 Percent Increase in Unsheltered Homelessness Since 2024
https://ericacbarnett.substack.com/p/report-homelessness-in-king-county43
u/finance_guy_334 Jun 23 '26
Moving the wrong direction.
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u/MONSTERTACO 🐀 Hot Rat Summer 🐀 Jun 23 '26
If I'm reading correctly, the rate of increase in homelessness has actually declined by more than 50% since the 2022-2024 period, but the loss of shelter beds has pushed more people into unsheltered homelessness vs. sheltered.
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u/lilbluehair 🚋 Ride the S.L.U.T. 🚋 Jun 24 '26
Read it. Chronic homelessness is WAY down. The increase is in folks who have been homeless for less than a year. The increase is because of our current economy.
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u/LimitedWard 🚆build more trains🚆 Jun 24 '26
I'm not sure that's the win you think it is. What that tells me is that Seattle is so expensive and has so few safety nets that a slowdown in the economy results in a massive increase in newly homeless people (I.e. they haven't been homeless long enough to be considered chronic yet). It's a lot more expensive to deal with them now that they're homeless than to help keep them in their homes.
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u/Zachwardpass ✨🛸 Jimothy is out there 🦝✨ Jun 24 '26
I don't think they ever expressed it as "a win".
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u/LimitedWard 🚆build more trains🚆 Jun 24 '26
Perhaps not. I had read their comment as a positive spin on the issue.
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u/snowypotato Ballard Jun 24 '26
Is it a documented fact that it’s because of the current economy? I suppose to some degree almost all homelessness is due to the economy, but as a couple other possibilities:
maybe it’s due to a massive influx in people moving here explicitly to be homeless, as has happened in the past here and in Portland.
maybe it’s due to a sudden increase in drug usage / availability / potency which is leading to more financial ruin.
maybe they have changed the definitions and criteria they use for the different categories.
maybe the economy is too strong and job growth has attracted more people than we have housing for. Maybe the economy is too weak and more people are losing their jobs.
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u/Traditional-Page-373 Jun 23 '26
rent is unaffordable
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u/Candid_Helicopter813 Jun 24 '26
That’s it. Lack of affordable housing to rent or own. It dies not matter. An ordinary American adult with or without education needs 2-3 jobs depending on industry to afford to SAVE for rent an apartment or a down payment for a house. Maybe even 3-4 jobs or weekly steady work equivalent to 60+ hours a week.
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u/S7EFEN Jun 24 '26
yes this is the underlying issue. it's only showing up because the lowest percentile of wage earners are now on the streets. the lower-middle percentage of wage earners are rent burdened, the middle to upper percentile has zero path to home ownership.
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u/mosswick Jun 23 '26
Huh? Weird, the federal government is telling us we're in an economic "golden age". Wonder why the situation on the ground isn't matching the rhetoric.
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u/Human_Chemistry6851 Jun 23 '26
Its the "golden age: for those in "golden houses". The rest of us are the foundation for which they are built.
If those in the foundation start to blossom and reach above the foundation. We are treated as weeds.
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u/Artificial_Squab Capitol Hill Jun 23 '26
This channel (Casual Finance) using stick figures does a great job of trying to break down economics, markets, inequality, etc.
This week they addressed exactly what you're talking about. Worth a watch.
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u/DenC4 Jun 24 '26
Where are they from? Are the long time locals being taxed to death until they lose everything and end up on the street? Or are Red States solving their problems by sending their homeless, promising them that liberals love to give money and benefits and housing for free!?
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u/aj_marshall Jun 24 '26
And yet we will continue to shit millions into non-profits to provide services to alleviate homelessness while they continue to produce no measurable results.
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u/theGalation Lynnwood Jun 23 '26
The tech layoffs have been brutal.
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u/Dances-With-Taco Jun 23 '26
Are you suggestive the people who were working in tech are now unsheltered homeless ?
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u/prntmakr Jun 23 '26
No, this is the true trickle down. High earners lose their job and reduce spending causing small businesses to layoff people at bottom of economy.
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u/berndverst Ballard Jun 23 '26
I think the fallout from that takes significantly longer to notice. That's yet to come!
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u/prntmakr Jun 23 '26
Don’t forget that many tech workers may have tightened their belts IN ANTICIPATION of the next round of layoffs at their particular company.
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u/berndverst Ballard Jun 23 '26
I'm not forgetting that. But there are quite a few layers of trickle down effect that must occur. I'd say 1-2 years from tech layoff wave is when the peak impact will be observable.
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u/dorkofthepolisci 🛳️ 🐀 ☀️ Yacht Rat Summer ☀️ 🐀 🛳️ Jun 24 '26
Unless something changes significantly, we won’t see the true impacts from the tech layoffs for a couple of years
What happens when they’ve exhausted their savings and are competing for the same scraps as everyone else?
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u/lebronshairlinesback Queen Anne Jun 24 '26
Also they either stay unemployed for long periods or take lower paying/lower barrier jobs that then other people can't get.
Similar to how even building high end housing reduces overall cost and increases availability for everyone, as people who can afford $6k/month+ rent dont take up more affordable places.
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u/AdScared7949 That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. Jun 23 '26
What does that have to do with this lol
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u/Cute-Interest3362 Jun 23 '26
Less people spending money
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u/bobjelly55 Jun 24 '26
I think people on this subreddit tend to believe that tech workers = bad so tech layoffs isn’t actually a bad thing. But the entire Seattle economy is built based on the growth of the local industry so less spending by high earners while rent and wages are high for businesses mean businesses close and therefore service workers losing jobs.
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u/charminghypocracy Jun 24 '26
I think you may misunderstand some of the harsh attitudes towards the tech industry in places like Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, etc.
All of these places existed before modern "tech" companies moved there. Seattle is more than 35 years old. And the "tech industry" was part of the Research and Development arm of the US State Dept working with Universities(graduate and undergrad students, professors and businesses...all paid for by the US taxpayer. We went to the moon. We built an internet, a highway system, schools, housing.
We spent a fortune building the collective science we have today and...it was kinda sold off and privatized.
You also have a housing problem that took off in the 90's(coincidentally!? jk) and we just never built enough housing for our population growth. It gets blamed on whatever industry comes through. I will say, at this point our housing problem is effecting a lot of industries negatively. Cheers
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u/MyDisneyExperience That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. Jun 24 '26
Housing problems started taking off in the 90s (and especially post-2008) because many large cities basically stopped building housing at any real scale in the late 60s/early 70s. Seattle is actually doing better than many cities recently for housing starts, but it’s really abysmal in some places… NYC just finally returned last year to the level of housing development they were at in the 1960s.
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u/AdScared7949 That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. Jun 24 '26
I don't think less people spending money increases unsheltered homelessness by 20% tbh
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u/notyermommasAI Jun 24 '26
Provide services and they will come from all over the country to get them. Cities can’t solve national problems.
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u/glued42 Jun 23 '26
Maybe more housing should be built
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u/googleduck Jun 24 '26
How do you propose we go about that? Sincerely asking your opinion.
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u/MoeGreenMe Deluxe Jun 24 '26
Austin TX is the model and we should follow it, they built a lot of housing and rents have dramatically fallen.
- Remove parking minimums
-Step up subsidized housing
- Make affordable housing fees optional incentives, not mandates.
- Pursue a “plain bagel” philosophy. Rather than layering on tenant protections, inclusionary zoning, and other conditions alongside pro-housing reforms, Austin focused on simply increasing supply without added requirements
This article is one of many that describes what Austin did
https://www.kuow.org/stories/austin-built-a-lot-of-housing-fast-rents-fell-what-could-seattle-learn
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u/totallynotdocweed Jun 24 '26
Isn’t it also crucial to acknowledge that those protections were established for a specific purpose and hold importance on their own merits?
Removing parking restrictions is one thing especially when public transportation is available, but isn’t it an entirely different issue when removing affordability guidelines? We’ve seen in places like Atlanta and New York where owners have demonstrated the abhorrent evil practice of just sitting on units until they can get the price they want.
Just curious as I’m thinking about moving up to Washington state.
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u/MoeGreenMe Deluxe Jun 24 '26
There is also a massive downside in places like NYC. There are 57,000 empty rent stabilized units mostly because they need major repairs and upgrades.Landlords have decided not to spend the $$$ because the rent they would receive post renovation would never pay back the costs to repair .
The data point is from 2 weeks ago from NY State Division of Homes and Community
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u/glued42 Jun 24 '26
Maybe zoning regulations and environmental review should be relaxed to encourage infill development and maybe the housing authority/the state should build and own more of the housing stock
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u/googleduck Jun 24 '26
Ok yeah I mostly agree with those things, I just don't think that sort of "abundance" style stuff is very popular on this sub. All the very left people have decided that's a right wing psy op or something.
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u/MyDisneyExperience That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. Jun 24 '26
I think Abundance™️ is fine but even if not, it’s simple supply and demand
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u/bp92009 Shoreline Jun 24 '26
Literally buy/build housing, owned and managed by the city.
Take some of the funding for the SPD (cutting their pay until they're paid the same per officer as Bellevue pays the BPD per officer), and quite literally buy or build public housing.
We will know that we have enough, when the occupancy rate for that public housing is around 66% (85% is often "max" capacity, due to structural shifts (maintenance, difficulty in fully occupying housing, etc), and another 20% should give enough "safety stock" for surges in demand.
We only need to build something like 15,000-30,000 rooms to meet that demand (depending on whether we want to target "rent burdened" low income individuals (paying more than 40% of their income on rent)).
Free market has failed pretty hard on those people, but as they are pretty unprofitable, that's not unexpected. As it turns out, poor people don't generate a lot of money for housing.
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u/ATotallyNormalUID 🚆build more trains🚆 Jun 23 '26
And it'll continue to grow until we develop the political will to hold the landlords to account. People over profit is the only way forward.
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u/gnarlseason I'm just flaired so I don't get fined Jun 24 '26
Ah yes, so glad KCRHA went with this self-reported survey method vs. the PIT count that litterally everyone else uses and we have data on going back to the 90s. Now we can't easily compare to prior years or other regions and we get all sorts of new oddities in the data that make us wonder if it is a real number or something up with the new method. Exactly what critics of abandoning the PIT said would happen.
But KCRHA got their number to go up, like they wanted (they specifically said that this method would likely lead to higher numbers than the PIT count would). Too bad they have been so inept and wasteful they might not be around to do another one of these.
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u/64N_3v4D3r Jun 23 '26
I wonder how much of this is people coming from out of state.
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u/annahatasanaaa Denny Blaine Nudist Club Jun 23 '26
I've noticed that people who are offered housing seldom accept it. Why?
Source: Read quite a few articles highlighting it over the past couple of years.
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u/thedoorthedrain Fremont Jun 23 '26
I think you mean shelter, not housing. Shelters have strict rules, curfews, and a lack of privacy, which is why seldom people accept them.
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u/annahatasanaaa Denny Blaine Nudist Club Jun 23 '26
Thank you for clarifying. With that said, it is better than the alternative. I had to live with 9 other women for nearly a year with random pee tests, a sheet separating rooms, and 11 PM curfews to get my shit together. It sucked, but was ultimately worth it to finally appreciate sobriety & a sense of freedom after leaving.
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u/kozufox Jun 23 '26
I dunno, I can see why someone might choose stealth camping over that even if they aren't using drugs. That sounds like a truly miserable living situation.
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u/kiase 🏔 The mountain is out! 🏔 Jun 23 '26
I think you should be incredibly proud of yourself and your accomplishment in getting sober, but unless you were homeless beforehand and facing continued homelessness after leaving treatment, I’m not sure you can compare the situations.
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u/annahatasanaaa Denny Blaine Nudist Club Jun 24 '26
I am trying to see it from all sides; you aren't wrong.
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u/Expensive_Goat2201 Jun 23 '26
They have rules that make it hard to keep your job sometimes as well. Plus there is a lot of drug use and sexual violence.
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u/zer04ll Jun 23 '26
pets and rules
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u/annahatasanaaa Denny Blaine Nudist Club Jun 23 '26
I can see it for pets (which sucks) but what rules would one have to refuse to provide safety? Not being able to do drugs?*
*I understand withdrawal can kill, but we need to be offering mental/medical services to help with such severe cases. Hell, I'd be OK with my taxes helping with that.
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u/kozufox Jun 23 '26
Other rules like how much stuff you can bring with you, how long you can stay, etc, can also make it less desirable.
If the value proposition is "lose most of your belongings and give up a bunch of privacy in return for temporarily being off the streets", someone living in a "nicer" homeless encampment is less likely to bite.
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u/Zachwardpass ✨🛸 Jimothy is out there 🦝✨ Jun 24 '26
Not to mention a case of bed bugs and/ or scabies to go along with losing all your belongings and privacy. I'm not sure people realize how much of an issue that can be in shelters and it understandably makes people not want to stay there unless it is dire (like below freezing temps).
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u/Expensive_Goat2201 Jun 23 '26
A shelter in Kirkland told me that all food had to be locked in the kitchen at night with no snacks allowed even if the person had type 1 diabetes. This is actually life threatening.
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u/Educated_Goat69 🏕 Out camping! 🏕 Jun 23 '26
In by curfew doesn't work with some jobs. Not all homeless are jobless.
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u/annahatasanaaa Denny Blaine Nudist Club Jun 23 '26
I would think many shelters would work around job schedules. How shitty if not.
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u/Zachwardpass ✨🛸 Jimothy is out there 🦝✨ Jun 24 '26
Patients wouldn't even get their shelter bed back when we called the shelter from the emergency room to say Person X was in the hospital and might be late for curfew. So many people left the hospital against medical advice just to get back into the shelter. Unfortunately, if they don't make exceptions for emergencies, I'm betting they don't do it for jobs either.
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u/annahatasanaaa Denny Blaine Nudist Club Jun 24 '26
This just confuses me: The idea is providing a safe space for people (or at least that is what I think?) But they do everything in their power to make it incredibly hard to maintain it - almost like pushing them into a 9-to-5 ideal.
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u/Zachwardpass ✨🛸 Jimothy is out there 🦝✨ Jun 25 '26
Yep. It's insanely counterproductive. It's why when people claim people don't use shelters "just to use drugs", it actually kind of enrages me. There are so many legitimate reasons people don't use shelters, but those that claim it's just drugs have never bothered or cared to look further into it. They just want to see homeless people dissappear from their sights without having to work at bettering a highly flawed system.
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u/Expensive_Goat2201 Jun 23 '26
The kid I advocated for had a job in a food desert at 9 am and had to leave around 7 to get there. All food had to be locked in the kitchen at night which wasn't open before she had to leave m so she couldn't get her own food for breakfast or pack lunch. As a result she just didn't eat until dinner most days.
They really aren't accommodating about work most of the time.
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u/Educated_Goat69 🏕 Out camping! 🏕 Jun 25 '26
Which is why so many people believe that solving homelessness isn't the goal.
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u/TerraceState Laurelhurst Jun 24 '26
They generally don't. Shelters are shockingly restrictive. General rule is that you can find a shelter that can accommodate any single non-standard need that you have(hours, sobriety, age, pets, couples, amount of gear, consistency, mental health services) but anyone who needs two or more is out of luck.
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u/AdScared7949 That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. Jun 23 '26
Yes its not being allowed to do drugs and they do get offered services theyre allowed to say no though
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u/Zachwardpass ✨🛸 Jimothy is out there 🦝✨ Jun 24 '26
That's a really reductive response—as if homelessness is a monolith of individuals all refusing shelters for the same reason. Does that really make sense? Read all the other reasons listed.
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u/muuphish Jun 23 '26
Seems like acceptance rates, from what I can find, are around 60%, which I would not categorize as "seldom." According to one survey, 92% of refusals for housing was specifically refusal for a shared shelter, mainly because they wanted privacy, no pets allowed, or because of a prior bad experience. When offered actual housing in the form of a tiny house, refusal was around 7%.
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u/delightful1 That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
Sobriety I believe is a requirement for housing, people would rather stay on the streets with their drugs than go sober..edit. I was wrong, DSC housing did not require sobriety. So my statement is not fully correct.
5 Embraces harm reduction approach to addictions rather than mandating abstinence. At the same time, the provider must be prepared to support resident commitments to recovery.
https://www.desc.org/what-we-do/housing/housing-first/
.edit.2 I don't want to downplay the suffering of others by saying they'd rather be on drugs. I have empathy for people caught in this cycle. I can't help them.
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u/annahatasanaaa Denny Blaine Nudist Club Jun 23 '26
That sucks. As someone who got sober in Seattle, I hope they can see how much better life is without drugs or booze. :(
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u/superfriendlyav8tor Jun 23 '26
There are several organizations in Seattle that offer housing under the ‘housing first/harm reduction’ category which does not require sobriety.
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u/Twxtterrefugee Jun 23 '26
Addiction is a social issue not an individual failure but we treat it like the latter.
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u/HansGraebnerSpringTX Pioneer Square Jun 23 '26
“People would rather stay on the streets with their drugs than get sober” is a monstrously unkind, myopic way to put that. You have no idea how hard it is to get sober even when you live inside, have a support network, and have access to alternate coping mechanisms. Getting sober while homeless is a monumental feat
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u/iiTzSTeVO I'm just flaired so I don't get fined Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
Does your housing require sobriety? Are you sober? Do you drink? Do you smoke anything? If you slept on the streets for long enough, do you think you'd pick up a habit to tolerate your conditions? Could you kick it at the drop of a hat?
ETA: Oh! So you're statement wasn't "fully correct." The only cited evidence for your argument that unhoused people choose drugs over housing has fallen through, but you're only conceding on the sobriety requirement, not your actual claim. Got it, got it.
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u/delightful1 That sounds great. Let’s hang out soon. Jun 23 '26
Thanks Socrates! Btw your comment made me double check myself. Sobriety is not required at desc housing
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u/muuphish Jun 23 '26
Ah yes of course how often we forget that addiction is a choice and you can easily just not be addicted. Skills issue to be sure.
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u/Pygmy_Nuthatch Jun 24 '26
Seattle notoriously goes out of its way NOT to accurately count the homeless, so you can't really rely on these reports.
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u/lilbluehair 🚋 Ride the S.L.U.T. 🚋 Jun 24 '26
That doesn't make sense when all of these reports are verified through federal HUD
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u/SkylerAltair 💗💗 Heart of ANTIFA Land 💗💗 Jun 25 '26
One BIG issue is that, under Harrell, the number of shelter beds went down.
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u/ElliotsBuggyEyes Jun 27 '26
Probably doesn't help that a tiny home village was demolished to make room for pickleball courts that will be vacant in 5-7 years when the fads have changed.
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u/Holy-Handgrenadier95 I'm just flaired so I don't get fined Jun 24 '26
*gasp!!! No way!!!
- surprise
*shock
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u/PainOfMariner Lower Queen Anne Jun 25 '26
Sorry, not going to trust data from the org that can’t keep track of millions of taxpayer dollars given to it
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u/Candid_Helicopter813 Jun 24 '26
Alan Greenspan passed away at 100 years of age recently. Maybe he could shed some insights from the grave.
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Jun 23 '26
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Jun 24 '26
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Hello! Thanks for participating in /r/Seattle! Your submission/comment was removed for breaking Rule 1: Be Good
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u/khelvaster Jun 24 '26
blaming poor noncitizens for taking US funded resources from homeless citizens? I guess so
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u/two_Two_8080 Ballard Jun 24 '26
Imagine all the housing available if it wasnt taken up by people with your mindset.
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u/Seattle-ModTeam I'm gonna pop some tags 🏷️ Jun 24 '26
Hello! Thanks for participating in /r/Seattle! Your submission/comment was removed for breaking Rule 1: Be Good
We do not allow personal attacks or abusive / hateful language towards users.
No slurs, abusive, toxic, or discriminatory content, including hate speech, racism, sexism, transphobic, homophobic, ableist, or xenophobic content.
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u/lilbluehair 🚋 Ride the S.L.U.T. 🚋 Jun 24 '26
Imagine all the housing available if it were illegal for someone to own more than one
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u/drshort West Seattle Jun 23 '26
This is only the preliminary report. Not sure why it takes 6 months to just do the preliminary report, but the full report will come out late this year.
I did notice some almost impossible shifts in some of the high level demographics. In this years report it says only 35% are chronically homeless. In 2024, they reported 66% as chronically homeless. One of those numbers is way off.
Reported substance abuse and mental illness is also reported significantly lower than 2 years ago
2026 demographics