Full-year overdose deaths, 2025 vs 2019, by living situation

What this dataset measures

Built to test whether a growing share of King County's overdose deaths happen among people living in subsidized and supportive housing, using the county's own counts for the same January 1 to November 5 window each year so that 2026 can be compared with earlier years.

Geography

King County, Washington, Seattle, Washington, Washington, United States

Unit of observation

Count of overdose deaths for a year (or January 1-November 5 of a year), living situation or region

Update cadence

One-time release; the Medical Examiner dashboard updates daily

Curator

FactHub Research Team

Supporting files

Source snapshots, manifests, quality reports, documentation, and other materials used to produce or review this release.

• build_housing_od.js Transformation manifest · text/javascript · 10 KB (10,272 bytes)

  Node.js script that assembles the tables from the dashboard pulls and computes every saved analysis.

Saved analyses

Sources

1. Public Health - Seattle & King County / King County Medical Examiner's Office Overdose death counts by year, presumed living situation and region (place of death)

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

   Reliability: Government. The county Medical Examiner investigates every suspected overdose death in King County; investigators record each person's presumed living situation. The county runs and funds much of the housing in the 'housing service site' category.

2. Public Health - Seattle & King County, Methods Report: Documentation and Analysis of Fatal Overdose Data Definitions of the living-situation categories and their limits

   Retrieved November 6, 2026. Public government document. Linked, not redistributed.

   Reliability: Government. The county health department's own description of how the dashboard's categories are assigned, including its warning that some categories may be inconsistently applied.

3. 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.

4. CDC National Center for Health Statistics, Provisional Drug Overdose Death Counts (VSRR) 12-month-ending overdose death counts for the United States and Washington (December of each year)

   Retrieved November 6, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Public domain.

   Reliability: Government. Counts from death certificates by state of residence; recent months are provisional and adjusted for reporting delays.

5. CDC National Center for Health Statistics, Provisional County-Level Drug Overdose Death Counts 12-month-ending overdose deaths of King County residents

   Retrieved November 6, 2026. Public domain (U.S. government work). Public domain.

   Reliability: Government. Provisional death-certificate counts by county of residence; used here only as a cross-check of the Medical Examiner's place-of-death counts.

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: Counts were read from the King County Medical Examiner's public overdose dashboard on November 6, 2026 (filters: year, presumed living situation, region, date of death January 1-November 5). The build script that assembles the tables and computes every saved analysis is included as an artifact. Dashboard counts for recent months change as toxicology results arrive, so a later pull will differ slightly.

• The Medical Examiner's 'housing service site' category combines permanent supportive housing, income-restricted (subsidized) apartments and recovery housing; it cannot be split with public data.
• The living-situation category describes where the person lived, as investigators presumed it, not necessarily where they died.
• 2026 counts run through November 5 and include probable overdoses still awaiting toxicology; late-reported deaths will raise them somewhat.
• The share of deaths with an unknown living situation fell from about 9% in 2019 to under 1% in 2024-2025, then rose to 4.6% of 2026 deaths so far; shares are computed among deaths with a known living situation, and a sensitivity analysis shows the range.
• There is no public count of people living in subsidized and supportive housing, so these are counts and shares, not death rates; HUD bed counts cover only part of the housing in the category.
• Medical Examiner counts are by place of death; CDC counts are by place of residence, so King County figures from the two sources differ slightly.