Earlier this month King County released its annual “Point in Time” count of homeless persons in the county, as required by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as a condition of receiving grant funding. Last year, SCC Insight reported on the significant methodology issues with the count that rendered its year-over-year trend data unusable. This year those same issues exist, plus some new ones. However, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn from the new report; we just need to dig harder.
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Point in Time count says homelessness decreased last year. Or does it?
Last Friday, All Home King County released the results of the annual “Point in Time” count of homeless people. Its press release headlined the first decrease in homelessness in the county since 2012. The local media hopped on that headline, as did Mayor Durkan in her weekly “Durkan Digest” email newsletter to constituents. After spending three days going through the report, I have come to the conclusion that not only is there little reason to believe the claim that homelessness decreased in King County, but there are good reasons to view much of the data in the report with great …
Continue readingUnderstanding the One Night Count report on homelessness
Last week, the results of the annual One Night Count (renamed “Count Us In” this year) were released, giving us updated data on the extent and nature of the homeless crisis in King County and Seattle. The full report is 116 pages of tables. It’s heavy on data and light on interpretation. After spending several days poring over the report, here are my thoughts on what it means.
Continue readingOne Night Count results released today
This afternoon King County released the results of its annual One Night Count (renamed this year to “Count Us In”). It’s a long, detailed report, and the methodology changed this year so making comparisons with previous years is very difficult. I’m going to take a few days to thoroughly read and analyze it before doing a detailed post, but here are pointers to the key reading, and a few top-line points.
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