Mythbusting: Is there Enough Housing in Seattle for The Homeless?

It's Not Even A Little Bit Close

The Myth

A few days ago, in a discussion online, someone asked me the following question:

“My understanding is public housing has been made available to all who need it. Is that accurate?”

We were discussing a recent article in the Seattle Times. Greg Kim, the reporter, detailed Seattle’s efforts to address crime, drugs and disorder downtown. But just as the experts had warned, moving people around doesn’t actually solve the problem! I noted on Bluesky that:

This prompted the question above about whether we have enough affordable housing.

(TL;DR: the available shelter + available housing equal between 0% and 7.5% of the nightly homeless population in King County. For actual housing, which was her question, the number looks quite close to zero.)

Misinformation

First, I would like to note that it was delightful that this person shared their understanding and realized they didn’t necessarily have all the facts, and caveated it. This was refreshing, particularly in an online environment.

But it is also discouraging that so many good faith people believe this!

I encountered this myth constantly on the campaign trial. Whether because it is explicitly whispered by the right wing disorder-industrial complex, or merely implied by the bizarre overrepresentation in the media of people “refusing services,” it is pervasive. It doesn’t help when our Mayor brazenly misleads the public with statements like “we do not sweep.” This seems to imply housing is readily available for all. It usually is not.

FACT 1: People Want To Be Housed

So let’s level-set on some basic facts.

First, most people on the street are desperate for housing, and do not refuse it when it is available.

When actual housing is made available for folks living on the street, the uptake rate is nearly ninety percent. The constant refrain regarding “refusal of services” is almost always regarding things that aren’t housing.

Most often, “refusal of services” is a reference to some kind of services, and to congregate shelter. Congregate shelter is what it sounds like–shelter without private space. It is most certainly not housing. It can be quite hostile, particularly for folks who have been traumatized in those shelters before. They are often gender segregated, which means separating from spouses and partners, or even opposite sex teenage children. They might not allow pets. Often many of a person’s belongings must be discarded. They sometimes require sobriety–which would mean instantly kicking an addition, which is impossible for most addictions. The shelters might have limited hours that make coming and going, or holding down a job, impossible. So their uptake rate and ability to keep people from cycling back into homelessness is not stellar.

(As I will show below, even if congregate shelter counted as housing, we still wouldn’t have anything close to enough to address demand).

To illustrate this, when King County steps in and clears an encampment, they pair the clearance with an offer for housing and some extra services to make the transition smooth. King County has 90% success rates. But when the City of Seattle comes in, only 20% make it to one of their congregate shelters. The county is 4.5x better at this than Seattle!

The county is much more disciplined--ensuring there is actual housing availability before clearing. The city does not do that. Given the tremendous shortage of housing, and Bruce Harrell and the conservative council’s unwillingness to fund enough housing to make up the gap, the Harrell administration just ends up just sweeping people from neighborhood to neighborhood, encampment to encampment.

FACT 2: We Are Way Short on Affordable Housing

How Much Affordable Housing Do We Have?

Now to the innocent question that prompted me to write this post. We absolutely do not have enough available units to touch anything close to the number of people living without a home. If you talk to people who provide services for the homeless, almost any of them will tell you this, because almost all their clients are desperate for homes and cannot get them.

The data make this quite clear.

In terms of questions about the capacity of affordable housing, King County publishes information about the housing shortages by income level. Although this is not specifically about open housing units, it is informative. For every 100 “extremely low income households,” which is people earning 30% of the area median income or less, there are only 23 homes that exist, occupied or not. There are over 90,000 of these families and only 21,500 units available to that population. Another 8,000 are in use by people earning over the 30% area median threshold. We are about 70,000 homes short for this group!

However, that is not the same as the ratio of “available units” to “people living without housing” but it gives you an indication of what we are starting with. Most people who do not have a home are likely to fall into this income level, though as I understand it, some will have earnings in the next tier (“very low income”) as well.

FACT 3: The Homeless Population Dwarfs the Available Shelter and Housing Capacity

And we can figure out the ratio of units to homeless folks pretty easily by looking at county data. This year's point in time count included over 16,000 homeless people, with about 10,000 of those people sleeping without any shelter. Also keep in mind this understates how many people experience homelessness in a given year. This is just on an individual night.

How does that compare to the available units and beds in our system? Well, the most overzealous reading of the data points to 1800 theoretically open spots per night, a small fraction of the number of people living without housing. But 1800 also overstates it. The number is somewhere between zero and 1800. I did my own estimate below and arrived at about 1200. If you care about the deets and data regarding this back-of-the-envelope range, see my appendix!

So, on a given night, we might have enough beds to house between 0% of the homeless population and, best case, 7.5% of the homeless population. And that is if you count congregate shelter. This nice person asked me about housing, which is half the total available shelter and has a much higher utilization rate than shelters. In other word, the actually available housing is enough to cover close to zero percent of our neighbors that are trying to survive without homes.

Hey friends! If you value what you see here, please share my work with two or three friends in Seattle or Washington State. I’d really appreciate it.

Boring Appendix Of Number Stuff

Calculations of capacity from King County Data. The gross capacity (12,951) times net usage (86%) suggests there are up to 1800 beds available on average per night. But this significantly overstates it. Once you account for turnover rates, forced exits, clean ups, closure hours, temporary shelter closures, remodels, placing the next person, etc., a utilization rate of 100% isn’t functionally possible, especially in a shelter. If the target (90% for youth shelters, 85% for other stuff) counts as “full,” there are literally no beds!

I am not an expert in this space, so I don’t know what the proper definition of “full” is. But we can speculate. The total number of “units” in our system (beds in shelters, plus housing for the homeless) is 12,981. Let’s assume a perfectly run shelter and system for connecting people to services when something opens up can average (not peak) 90%. Since turnover in housing units is much lower, let’s assume they can get to 99%. If we assume 95% is the maximum average for the 5400 shelter beds (4860), and 99% is the maximum for the housing, (7505 out of 7581 possible units) that puts total nightly capacity at 12,365. Since 11,164 beds are full per night, that means that there are 1204 beds available.