Annual Snapshot Estimate of Spokane County's Homeless Population Shows Overall Decrease for Second Year in a Row

Erin Hut, Communications Director, ehut@spokanecity.org

Monday, July 14, 2025 at 12:53 p.m.

For the second consecutive year, Spokane County’s annual snapshot count shows a decline in the overall number of people experiencing homelessness.

The Point-in-Time (PIT) Count is a federally required count of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January. This year’s count was executed on January 22 and surveyed 1,806 individuals, representing 1,553 households across Spokane County, Spokane, Spokane Valley, Airway Heights, and other parts of the county.

Organizers of the PIT Count used an improved methodology this year to enhance accuracy of the data collected. Unlike previous years, the 2025 count deployed volunteers with outreach teams to known areas where unsheltered individuals were located, rather than simply sending volunteers to search on their own. This change helped reduce the likelihood of people being overlooked and allowed those known to be outdoors an opportunity to be surveyed, ensuring data collection was more reflective of the population outreach teams are regularly engaging.

The number of people experiencing sheltered homelessness (in emergency shelter or transitional housing) decreased from 1,578 people to 1,189 people. Part of this decrease can be attributed to improved coordination of people from emergency shelter into permanent stability through the new navigation center-specialized site model. Initial data from this model shows a 40 percent placement of people to friends and family or permanent supportive housing.

There was a 16 percent vacancy rate (165 emergency shelter and inclement weather beds) across the system on the night of the 2025 count, though many of the vacant beds account for youth and young adult shelter space. The data shows a slight increase in the number of unsheltered individuals (from 443 to 617), which can be attributed, in part, to the new survey methodology focused on deploying volunteers and outreach teams to encampments.

The total number of people experiencing homelessness in Spokane County continues to decline. Building on this progress, the City of Spokane continues its focus on expanding shelter capacity based on actual utilization of facilities to ensure that individuals who choose to come indoors have access to a safe place to stay.

This strategy reinforces the City’s continued investments in the Encampment Resolution Program and navigation center-specialized site model. Since the 2025 PIT Count was conducted, the City of Spokane has closed four encampments through the program, with an 80 percent success rate of referrals to housing, and has added two specialized shelter sites.

Other PIT Count data points include:

  • 106 total veterans, a decrease from 121 last year;
  • 81 percent of those counted this year were over the age of 25;
  • 43 percent of adults surveyed reported suffering from serious mental illness;
  • 52 percent of adults surveyed reported suffering from a substance use disorder;
  • 9 percent of adults surveyed reported being survivors of domestic violence;
  • 70 percent of people surveyed lived in Spokane County before becoming homeless; 14 percent were from Washington state; 14 percent were from outside Washington state

“It’s encouraging to see that overall homelessness has declined for a second year in a row. The numbers reinforce what my Administration has said from start – that consistent engagement and a focus on navigating people to treatment, case management, and transitional housing is the right approach,” Mayor Lisa Brown said.

“Volunteers of America fully supports our community’s efforts to support our homeless individuals on their journey to stability. The first step is identifying those in our community needing support through our annual PIT Count and tailoring the interventions to quickly help them meet their goals,” said Fawn Schott, President and CEO of Volunteers of America Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho.

“The median home sale price in Spokane has stabilized at around $420,000 in the last two years, and the residential vacancy rate has increased from a low of 1% in 2021 to over 4-5% today. Much of this reflects the increased capacity gained from the production of additional housing units over the past year. This is evidence that the ‘all of the above’ approach the Brown Administration has taken to the housing and homelessness challenges facing Spokane is working,” said Matthew Anderson, co-chair of the Spokane Regional Continuum of Care Board. “It should not be surprising that this is the second year in a row that Spokane has observed a decline in the total number of unhoused people counted during the PIT.”