Shelter offers, acceptances and confirmed stays by year

What this dataset measures

Built to test the claim that most homeless people in Seattle turn down offers of shelter, using the city's own published counts of offers, acceptances and confirmed shelter enrollments for every period the city has published, and its own table of reasons for declining.

Geography

Seattle, Washington

Unit of observation

Count of shelter offers, accepted offers (referrals) and confirmed shelter enrollments for a quarter or year, citywide

Update cadence

One-time release; the city reports to the City Council quarterly

Curator

FactHub Research Team

Saved analyses

Sources

1. City of Seattle Human Services Department, Unified Care Team report to City Council, Q1 2023 (Statement of Legislative Intent HSD-301-A-001) Q1 2023 offers, accepted referrals and confirmed enrollments (Table 2)

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

   Reliability: Government. The city's quarterly report to the City Council on its encampment response, prepared by the department that runs the outreach team; counts come from the team's own records.

2. City of Seattle Human Services Department, Unified Care Team report to City Council, Q2 2023 Q2 2023 offers, accepted referrals and confirmed enrollments (Table 2)

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

   Reliability: Government. Same series as the Q1 2023 report, prepared by the department that runs the outreach team.

3. City of Seattle Human Services Department, Unified Care Team report to City Council, Q3 2023 Q3 2023 offers, accepted referrals and confirmed enrollments (Table 2)

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

   Reliability: Government. Same series as the Q1 2023 report, prepared by the department that runs the outreach team.

4. City of Seattle Human Services Department, 2023 Annual Report Full-year 2023 offers, accepted offers and confirmed enrollments

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

   Reliability: Government. The department's annual report, which presents its own results; the counts match its quarterly reports to the City Council.

5. City of Seattle Human Services Department, 2024 Annual Report, Addressing Homelessness section Full-year 2024 offers and accepted offers

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

   Reliability: Government. The department's annual report; it gives 2024 offers and acceptances but no count of confirmed enrollments.

6. City of Seattle, 2024 Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report (CAPER) to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 2024 offers and referrals, and the statement that roughly half of 2024 referrals led to a confirmed enrollment

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

   Reliability: Government. The city's required annual report to the federal housing department on its use of federal funds.

7. City of Seattle Human Services Department, UCT Quarterly Reporting (response to Statement of Legislative Intent MO-004S-A), 2025 end-of-year report, March 24, 2026 2025 offers, accepted offers and confirmed enrollments by quarter (Figures 11-13), definitions, and Q4 2025 reasons for declining (Figure 14)

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

   Reliability: Government. The city's quarterly report to the City Council, prepared by the department that runs the outreach team; it reports its own results and says confirmed enrollments are undercounted.

8. City of Seattle Human Services Department, UCT Quarterly Reporting (response to Statement of Legislative Intent MO-004S-A), Q2 2026, August 14, 2026 Q1 and Q2 2026 offers, accepted offers and confirmed enrollments (Figures 11-13) and Q2 2026 reasons for declining (Figure 14)

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

   Reliability: Government. The newest quarterly report found; it revises Q1 2026 counts upward slightly and gives reasons for every declined offer.

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: Every count was typed from the city's published reports listed in sources (Figures 11-14 of the 2025-2026 quarterly reports, Table 2 of the 2023 quarterly reports, and the 2023 and 2024 annual reports) and checked against the PDF text on November 7, 2026. Shares are simple divisions: declined = offers - accepted; share_declined = declined / offers; share_confirmed_stay = confirmed_enrollments / offers; confirmed_share_of_accepted = confirmed_enrollments / accepted, rounded to four decimals.

• The city counts offers, not people. The same person can be offered shelter, and decline, more than once, and the city publishes no count of unique people offered or accepting shelter.
• An offer is made only when a shelter bed is available. People at encampment removals with no available bed get no offer and are not in these counts; in 2025 offers were made at 41% to 60% of hazard and obstruction removals, depending on the quarter.
• Accepted means the person agreed and was referred to a shelter. A confirmed enrollment is a match between city records and the regional homeless data system (HMIS) within about 48 hours; the city says about 21% to 25% of enrollments lack identifying information, so confirmed stays are undercounted.
• Enrollments for past quarters are revised upward in later reports. Q1 2026 uses the revised figures from the Q2 2026 report (2,788 offers and 337 enrollments, first reported as 2,785 and 335).
• The city did not publish a 2024 count of confirmed enrollments in the reports found; its 2024 report to the federal housing department says only that roughly half of referrals led to a confirmed enrollment.
• Quarterly reports for Q4 2023 through Q4 2024 were not found on the City Clerk's site, so quarterly rows have a gap.
• Reasons for declining are recorded by outreach staff from what the person says, one reason per declined offer; 11% of Q2 2026 reasons are Unknown.