On Jan. 29, Pierce County quietly made a major change to how it tracks death on the streets. The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department amended a state data-sharing agreement so local death records now include a person’s housing status.
That technical tweak is expected to let public-health staff finally tally presumed homeless deaths across multiple years and look for patterns behind those deaths. TPCHD officials say a preliminary review of 2023 and 2024 records should be finished in the coming weeks.
“This is a big step forward for our team,” TPCHD spokesperson Kenny Via told The News Tribune, noting that the department’s Assessment, Evaluation and Epidemiology team is now reviewing and validating 2023 and 2024 death records. Via told the paper that TPCHD does not yet have the 2025 data and that officials expect a preliminary analysis within about three to four weeks.
Why the numbers dropped
The change comes after a puzzling collapse in Pierce County’s official counts of deaths among people experiencing homelessness that followed the rollout of a new state death-certification system. A registrar told The News Tribune the Washington Health and Life Event System, known as WHALES, made it harder to flag someone as unhoused…