Does fewer 'unknown' living situations explain the rise?

What this dataset measures

Built for fact checks of deaths in King County's subsidized and supportive housing. This is the most complete count the county publishes: all manners of death, but only countywide and only for deaths the Medical Examiner investigates. 2021 is the earliest year the dashboard offers for this breakdown.

Geography

King County, Washington

Unit of observation

Count of deaths investigated by the Medical Examiner, by year and manner of death, countywide

Update cadence

Updated by FactHub when the Medical Examiner revises its dashboard; the dashboard itself was last updated October 29, 2026

Curator

FactHub Research Team

Saved analyses

Sources

1. King County Medical Examiner's Office, KCMEO Annual Report dashboard: Characteristics of Deaths Investigated by KCMEO (last updated October 29, 2026) 2025 deaths at housing service sites by manner of death (Decedent Characteristics tab, PresumedLivingSituation = Housing service site)

   Retrieved November 7, 2026. Public government data. Counts are public government statistics; FactHub redistributes the counts it read.

   Reliability: Government. The county Medical Examiner's own public dashboard of the deaths it investigates; its notes say the deaths are not representative of all county deaths and that it does not take all natural deaths.

2. Public Health - Seattle & King County, Methods Report: Documentation and Analysis of Fatal Overdose Data Definition of the housing service site category

   Retrieved November 7, 2026. Public government document. Linked; FactHub repeats only the definition it read.

   Reliability: Government. The county health department's description of how its death data assign a presumed living situation; it defines housing service site as permanent supportive housing, income-restricted units and recovery housing.

3. King County Medical Examiner's Office, KCMEO Annual Report dashboard: Overview and Notes tabs (last updated October 29, 2026) All deaths the Medical Examiner investigated countywide by year, and COVID-19 surveillance counts

   Retrieved November 11, 2026. Public government data. Counts are public government statistics; FactHub redistributes the counts it read.

   Reliability: Government. The Medical Examiner's own dashboard. The Overview tab gives all deaths it investigated by year; the Notes tab gives how many of those were COVID-19 surveillance cases and says it does not take all natural deaths.

4. Public Health - Seattle & King County, King County fatal overdose dashboard Overdose deaths by year, countywide and at housing service sites

   Retrieved November 6, 2026. Public government data. Counts are public government statistics; FactHub redistributes the counts it read.

   Reliability: Government. The county's dashboard of overdose deaths investigated by the Medical Examiner, by presumed living situation. The county funds much of the housing in the housing service site category.

5. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2007-2025 Housing Inventory Count by CoC Permanent supportive housing and other permanent housing beds for Seattle/King County (WA-500)

   Retrieved October 10, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Public domain.

   Reliability: Government. A one-night inventory of beds reported each year by the local homelessness system to HUD; it counts beds, not occupants, and excludes most income-restricted and recovery housing.

License: FactHub's selection, cleaning and combined tables are licensed under CC BY 4.0. Source data keeps the terms listed above (terms).

Limitations and reproducibility

Reproducible from public sources: Read by hand from the Medical Examiner's public Tableau dashboard: Decedent Characteristics tab, PresumedLivingSituation filter set to Housing service site, year selector set to each year from 2021 to 2026 (2025 read November 7, 2026; other years November 11, 2026). The dashboard shows each manner of death split by sex; we added the sexes. Each year's manners sum to the dashboard's total for that year. All-case totals by year come from the Overview tab, COVID-19 surveillance counts from the Notes tab, overdose counts from the county's fatal overdose dashboard (as read for dataset king-county-overdose-deaths-by-place, version 1), and beds from HUD's Housing Inventory Count. Dashboards can be revised; later readings may differ.

• Covers only deaths the Medical Examiner investigated, about 1 in 5 deaths in King County. It does not take all natural deaths, so deaths from illness are undercounted.
• Housing service site mixes permanent supportive housing with income-restricted apartments and recovery housing; supportive housing alone can't be separated here.
• A countywide total: the dashboard gives no count by building, provider or city.
• No count of residents is published, so no death rate can be computed.
• Presumed living situation is the Medical Examiner's classification from its investigation, not a match against housing records.
• The dashboard offers 2021 as its earliest year for this breakdown, so there is no all-cause count for 2019 or 2020.
• 2026 covers only January 1 to October 29 and includes 13 deaths whose manner was still pending; it is not comparable with full years.
• The Medical Examiner also investigated deaths for COVID-19 surveillance in 2020 to 2022 (620 in 2021, 322 in 2022), which inflates its countywide totals for those years.
• HUD beds are a one-night count of beds, not residents, and leave out most income-restricted and recovery housing, so deaths per bed is a rough comparison of growth, not a death rate.
• Housing sites' share of deaths among housed people rose from 2021 to 2025; the dashboard can't show whether some of that came from better identification of subsidized addresses rather than more deaths (see analysis private-residence-recoding-check).