Andrea Suarez dismantles a tent as garbage lies piled at a homeless encampment on March 13, 2022 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
Homelessness is still on the rise in Washington, but data collected by the state Department of Commerce shows that the growth rate across much of the state slowed last year.
This comes as the state has been spending billions of dollars in recent years to expand affordable housing and help transition people out of homelessness. The Department of Commerce data is from the 2025 Point In Time Count, an annual count of people experiencing homelessness on one night in January.
Notably, the report did not include figures for unsheltered homelessness in King County, where Seattle is located. King County completes its full Point In Time Count in even-numbered years, which is why its unsheltered data was left out.
Historically, King County accounts for roughly 50% of the total state unsheltered results, according to the Department of Commerce. Unsheltered homelessness refers to people living on the streets or in other public places.
On Jan. 30, the state count recorded 22,173 people who were homeless in Washington.
Of the total, 33% were experiencing unsheltered homelessness and 67% were experiencing sheltered homelessness in locations such as emergency shelters or transitional housing, according to the Department of Commerce.
The total number of people counted as homeless is a 4.4% increase from 2024 and a 25% increase overall since 2022. The year-over-year increase is roughly in line with the 4.07% rise from 2023 to 2024, but well below the 14.8% jump between 2022 and 2023.
While the Point In Time Count is a valuable tool for comparing states on a single night every year, it is not the most reliable assessment of homelessness, according to the Department of Commerce. Results are influenced by weather, shelter bed availability, number of volunteers, different methodologies used by counties, and other factors.
For more reliable data to complement the count, the Department of Commerce assembles an annual Snapshot of Homelessness report, which combines client information from three state agency data systems to provide a comprehensive estimate of the homeless and unstably housed population in the state.
That report also found a continued but slowed increase in homelessness in Washington over the last year. The report counted 158,791 people in emergency shelters or unhoused in January 2025, a 2.2% increase from 155,356 in January 2024 and an 8.9% increase from 145,736 in January 2022. The data includes the King County figures.
Snapshot report data shows that homelessness in Washington actually decreased slightly between 2023 and 2024, dropping from 159,525 people counted in 2023 to 155,356 in 2024, but rebounded this year.
Department of Commerce Director Joe Nguyễn said the latest numbers are still too high and more action is needed to reverse the trends.
“Too many people in our communities don’t know where they’re going to sleep at night, or if they’ll be safe when they try to rest,” Nguyễn said this week in a statement.
The Legislature invested about $1.8 billion over the 2025-27 biennium into housing and homelessness, including Commerce programs such as the Housing Trust Fund, Connecting Housing to Infrastructure, and adult, family, and youth homelessness programs.
