Deaths at housing service sites by manner of death, 2025

What this dataset measures

Built for a fact check of whether King County and Seattle publish deaths at each supportive housing building or provider. This is the most complete count the county publishes: all manners of death, but only countywide and only for deaths the Medical Examiner investigates.

Geography

King County, Washington

Unit of observation

Count of deaths investigated by the Medical Examiner in 2025, by manner of death, countywide

Update cadence

One-time release; the Medical Examiner updates its dashboard periodically

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.

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 on November 7, 2026: Decedent Characteristics tab, year 2025, PresumedLivingSituation filter set to Housing service site, broken down by manner of death. The counts sum to the dashboard's total of 379. share_of_total = deaths / 379, rounded to four decimals. 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.