Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell stated during a mayoral debate Thursday that approximately 70% of the city’s homeless population did not become unhoused within Seattle, citing data from the King County Regional Homeless Authority.
“We have to also remember that homelessness in this country has gone up 18%. We have nearly a million people in this country. Homelessness in the state has gone up. Homelessness in the county has gone up,” Harrell said. “70% of the people that we are treating in Seattle who are homeless did not become unhoused within the city of Seattle.”
Harrell debated challenger Katie Wilson one month before the general election. Wilson earned nearly 51% of the vote in the August primary compared to Harrell’s 43%.
Despite Seattle not being where a majority of its homeless population originates, Harrell claimed the city provides more than 60% of the region’s shelter beds and 85% of the region’s tiny homes.
Harrell’s 70% figure comes from KCRHA’s point-in-time count methodology. The PIT count estimates people experiencing sheltered and unsheltered homelessness on a single night in King County. The main unsheltered count is conducted by approximately 600 volunteers across the county between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m., assisted by paid “guides” with past homelessness experience whose knowledge helps locate people in less visible locations.
A separate count covers homeless individuals in emergency shelters, sanctioned encampments, tiny home villages, transitional housing, and other temporary shelter forms.
The data is widely understood to be an undercount. “Because of the methodology, the PIT is widely understood to be an undercount, which can be harmful in skewing the narrative and limiting the budget and resources dedicated to solutions,” KCRHA stated in 2022 when it paused the PIT count. “… Because it relies on what volunteers see during a few hours in the early morning, in a neighborhood that may be unfamiliar to them, recorded on a paper tally sheet, at a time when there could be heavy rain or cold, there are many ways for data to be missed.”
According to Publicola, KCRHA interviewed only 240 unhoused people within Seattle out of 800 total King County interviews for its 2024 PIT count. Slightly more than 26% of surveyed individuals said the Seattle metro area was their last stable housing location.
Seattle has more than 250 programs supporting people experiencing homelessness.
The 70% claim raises questions about data accuracy and methodology limitations in understanding homelessness origins, with the PIT count’s inherent undercounting potentially skewing conclusions about where homeless individuals originated.
