Homeless families increase as migrants did. So why not in King County?
Federal officials connected record homelessness numbers in 2024 to the nation’s migrant crisis, pointing to a nearly 40% surge in family homelessness.
King County also saw hundreds of migrant families arriving in recent years who became homeless, but its family homelessness numbers remained flat, according to the Point-In-Time count, a one-day snapshot of homelessness conducted last January.
The discrepancy between the national findings and King County’s raise questions about whether the region’s homeless population is more undercounted than originally thought. Local organizations that work with families experiencing homelessness say the count doesn’t reflect what they’ve seen.
The homeless census is always considered to be an undercount because of the difficulties of capturing everyone who experiences homelessness in a single year.
In contrast to the majority of the country’s homeless population, who are single adults, a majority of the asylum-seekers who became homeless last year were families.
The population has grown nationwide since 2022, when the first buses of migrants arrived in New York, sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Hundreds of thousands of people seeking asylum, most from violence in their home country, such as Venezuela, Ecuador or Angola, have arrived in cities like New York, Chicago and Denver with nowhere to go, straining those cities’ homeless response systems.
King County has similarly seen an influx of hundreds of migrant families seeking shelter in the past several years, most notably to Tukwila where until recently, a single church spearheaded the region’s response to the migrant crisis.
The number of families calling King County’s intake line for shelter increased 19% from 2022 through 2024. Mary’s Place, a Seattle-based family homelessness nonprofit, said nearly half of its shelter beds last year were occupied by migrant families.
“Whether or not they were counted in the (Point-In-Time count) is a big question of ours,” said Dominique Alex, CEO at Mary’s Place.
King County’s Point-In-Time count recorded a 3% increase in family homelessness from 2022 through 2024 – going from 3,592 to 3,701.
The Regional Homelessness Authority changed the way it counts homeless people in 2022, moving to a sampling methodology that relies on survey respondents sharing the survey with people they know. Alex questioned whether the new approach worked as well in identifying homeless families.
“There’s always an undercount, and for families, they’re often hiding. Families are afraid of losing their children,” Alex said.
The Regional Homelessness Authority agreed with Alex, but said the new methodology didn’t make the issue worse.
“Families with children are one of the more difficult populations to reach for the PIT. This is true for the previous street count and our new methodology,” said Lisa Edge, spokesperson for the authority.
Despite family homelessness numbers not increasing significantly, King County recorded a 23% increase in overall homelessness since 2022, with a record 16,385 homeless people in 2024. Sixty percent are living outside, unsheltered.
While King County has added shelter beds since the beginning of the pandemic, many in the industry believe the number of beds will decrease in the next year as remaining pandemic relief funding dries up completely, costs continue to rise, and local government budgets tighten.
Existing shelters are full and clogged, with many people stuck there for months or years as they wait for affordable or subsidized housing units to open up. And the cost to build housing keeps rising, meaning funding dedicated to building permanent solutions to homelessness won’t go as far.