Spokane reports more homeless people are getting into housing

Spokane is reporting a marked improvement in outcomes for homeless people engaged with city-funded services and fewer people in the system overall, a trend officials believe will continue to bend in the right direction in the coming year.

Over 7,200 people were receiving city-funded homeless services in 2024, dropping 11% to around 6,400 in 2025, though further analysis is needed to determine how much that drop is due to fewer people becoming homeless versus people disengaging with the system, cautioned Dawn Kinder, who oversees the city’s homeless services.

“Our assumption is that we have made some pretty substantial changes to how we do homeless prevention, including eviction prevention, preventing more people from entering the homeless system,” Kinder said, noting that her team will present further analysis on the data in early March.

What is more clearly positive is the trend of outcomes for those who are receiving services, data points that Mayor Lisa Brown’s administration has prioritized over the total number of emergency shelter beds. Among the people in emergency shelters – typically the first stop for those trying to get off the street – 13% were placed into permanent housing in 2025, nearly double the rate of 2024.

The path out of homelessness typically includes several in-between steps, however, and the rate of people entering permanent housing is significantly higher for those who didn’t start the year in an emergency shelter. Among those receiving any type of homeless services in 2025, 29% exited into permanent housing by the end of the year, compared to 22% in 2024.

Fewer people are re-entering the homeless services system once they’ve left, as well. The rate of re-entry within 130 days of exiting dropped from 7% in 2024 to 4% in 2025.

Kinder believes several aspects of the city’s work have led to improved outcomes, including the Brown administration’s pivot from large warehouse shelters to smaller shelters scattered across the city, as well as a refocus of the nonprofits the city funds to provide services on preparing people to take the next step out of homelessness.

“The small community groups and meaningful relationships are certainly a part of it, but we’re also working across the system to push on the need for emergency shelters and transitional housing to be focused on permanent outcomes, rather than pushing people from temporary to temporary to temporary location,” Kinder said.

Many of the steps taken early in the Brown administration’s term only last year started to lead to better outcomes, she added.

“The first year we were in office was a lot of strategic expectation setting for our partners, getting our feet under us and understanding what was truly happening,” Kinder said in an interview. “I think a lot of the data and partnerships were not well tended to before that.”

“And then we made some major shifts to the system … and I think we’re seeing that really pay off,” she continued. “Each little tweak is part of that success.”

Whether some of the improved outcomes have been frontloaded or will continue to trend positively at the same rate remains to be seen, Kinder acknowledged. More recent reforms, including changes to the navigation center meant to direct people to the appropriate services, and the funding of street outreach teams to reach people living outside, should add to Spokane’s forward momentum, she argued.

There could also be future roadblocks, Kinder noted, such as changes to federal homelessness funding that would prioritize law enforcement and treatment over permanent housing “that would become destructive for the work we’re doing,” though she anticipated those impacts likely wouldn’t be seen until 2027. The state has also become better coordinated in its response to homelessness in local communities, she argued, and seems to be preparing to support cities like Spokane if federal funding is interrupted.

She was encouraged by renewed interest at the federal level in funding transitional housing projects, however, which provide a midway step for people after emergency shelters and before permanent housing.

The release of this data from the city’s Longitudinal Systems Analysis – a broad look at local homeless services and the populations receiving them – is happening just as it launches the point-in-time count, an annual census of the homeless population living on the streets and in shelters. Data from the annual PIT Count, which is conducted every January, typically isn’t released until the summer.