The City’s One Seattle Homelessness Action Plan and public-facing dashboard posted its second quarter data updates, with new information on tent and RV encampments, shelter and housing projects, and public safety incidents with connections to homelessness. Read the plan here.
Launched in May by Mayor Bruce Harrell, the website for the One Seattle Homelessness Action Plan provides a transparent and interactive framework detailing his administration’s approach to the issue of homelessness and offering new data that had not previously been collected or released until earlier this year.
In the first six months of 2022, more than 700 referrals to shelter were made in a coordinated outreach effort that includes the City’s HOPE Team, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), and numerous non-profit partners. The City continues to prioritize offers of shelter for those experiencing unsheltered homelessness, and, in partnership with the KCRHA, has worked to increase outreach to sites in advance of scheduled encampment removals.
In mid-2021, more than 80 of the parks and natural areas managed by Seattle Parks and Recreation were closed or impacted by unauthorized encampments. Today, more than 450 of the 489+ spaces (93%) are fully open and accessible to the public for their intended use.
Highlights from Q2 Data updates
New Snapshot Data:
The number of verified tents increased from 763 when the website launched in May, to 814 counted in June.
The number of verified RV encampments was 225 in May, a count that included only sites with five or more vehicles. In June, the number of RV encampment sites with any number of vehicles is 426, with roughly half of those sites having fewer than five vehicles.
These figures reflect a more accurate baseline assessment of the number of sites throughout the City and are not an indication of an increase in people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. The changes for these data points are due to a combination of data collection changes, increased awareness of sites that were not previously identified, reductions due to sites closures and referrals to shelter, and new sites that have been identified as our data collection processes are refined and duplications are eliminated from the City’s database.
This data gives the City’s Unified Care Team an assessment of the scope of unsheltered homelessness throughout the City, and a comprehensive geographic map of known site locations.
New Shelter & Supportive Housing Data and Revised Metrics:
In April, the City had identified 1,300 units of shelter and supportive housing units that were either in the initial planning phase, under construction, or will be open for use sometime in 2022. In this update, we have identified an additional 545 units, bringing the total to 1,845 units that will open in 2022, 2023, and beyond. This puts the City within 155 units of the goal of 2,000 units of shelter and supportive housing identified by the end of the year.
New Public Safety Data:
Through June 30, there were 5,715 emergencies medical response calls to individuals experiencing homelessness, an increase from 3,707 in the first four months of 2022. This represents an increase from an average of 31 calls per day to 32 calls per day.
There were 855 fires at tent/RV encampments through June 30, an increase from 608 fires in the first four months of 2022. This remains an average of five per day.
Through June 30, there were 71 shots fired or shooting incidents that were near a known encampment site, or where the victim or offender is experiencing homelessness. As of April 30, there were 53 incidents of shots fired or shootings. This represents a slight decrease to an average of 3 per week from 3.5 per week.
Encampments continue to be disproportionately represented in public safety emergencies in the city. Safety and health emergencies at encampments continue to put additional strain on an already stretched-thin public safety system.
Driven by data, the One Seattle Homelessness Action Plan will continue to showcase the City’s priorities and actions to make progress on our objectives to get people indoors, create places for people to live, and develop innovative and regional solutions to ensure sustainable progress.
Find more information at seattle.gov/homelessness.