On the campaign trail and in his slickly produced Seattle Channel budget video, Mayor Bruce Harrell has been touting a new statistic: “Most of the most of the people that are homeless in Seattle did not become unhoused in Seattle,” he said at a recent debate. He’s made a similar claim at other campaign forums and events.
“About 70% of people experiencing homelessness on Seattle streets became homeless outside of our city, and even with Seattle providing over six providing over 60% of the region’s shelter beds and 85% of the region’s tiny homes, we cannot do this alone,” Harrell claimed in his budget video, adding that it’s time for the rest of the region to step up and take care of their homeless residents. He also called on the King County Regional Homelessness Authority to identify land in areas with “fewer land constraints than we have here” where new shelters could open away from the city.
Leaving aside the fact that unhoused people congregate in cities, rather than far-flung suburbs, for obvious reasons—not only are there services here, there’s also community, opportunity, and access to transit—Harrell’s “they’re not from here” stat is extremely misleading, because it’s based entirely on responses to about 240 surveys with people who showed up at KCRHA’s survey tents over several days in January and February 2024…