Reasons given for declined shelter offers, Q2 2026

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

Curated data tables

Reasons given for declined shelter offers, Q2 2026

The city's Figure 14 citywide column for April-June 2026: one reason per declined offer, 2,612 in all.

Unit of observation: Reason category

uct-decline-reasons-q2-2026.csv text/csv · 1.5 KB (1,557 bytes)

All 23 rows 4 columns Download the file

All 23 rows

reason	city_label	declines offers	share_of_declines fraction
Wants permanent housing	Wants Permanent Housing	613	0.2347
Does not want a shared room	Does Not Want Communal Space	516	0.1975
Wants to stay with partner, family or friends	Wants Placement with Partner/Family/Friends	392	0.1501
Unknown	Unknown	279	0.1068
Would not engage with city staff	Unable/Unwilling to Engage with HSD Staff	165	0.0632
Says already has housing or shelter	Reports Having Housing/Shelter	165	0.0632
Does not want the shelter offered	Does Not Want Offered Shelter	134	0.0513
Needs mental health help	Needs Mental Health Resources	78	0.0299
Shelter wanted is not available	Desired Shelter Not available	50	0.0191
Pets not allowed	Pets Not Allowed	34	0.013
Vehicle or RV issue	Vehicle/RV Related Issue	28	0.0107
Wants time to consider	Uncertain/Wants Time to Consider/Follow Up	25	0.0096
Barred from the shelter	Barred	24	0.0092
Plans to leave the city	Reports Plans to Leave City in the Near Future	22	0.0084
Needs recovery help	Needs Recovery Resources	22	0.0084
Shelter location	Shelter Location	18	0.0069
Bad past experience with shelter	History of Negative Experience with Shelter	11	0.0042
Not eligible for desired shelter	Not eligible for desired shelter	10	0.0038
Unwilling to follow program rules	Unwilling to Engage in Program Expectations	9	0.0034
Doesn't want to be away from community	Doesn't Want to be Alone/Away from Community	7	0.0027
Storage issue	Storage Issue	3	0.0011
Shelter not wheelchair accessible	Shelter available is not ADA accessible	3	0.0011
Other	Other	4	0.0015

4 field definitions

Field	Type	Meaning	Units	Value type
reason	string	Plain-language label for the city's category.	—	derived
city_label	string	The category exactly as the city's report names it.	—	observed
declines	integer	Declined offers with this reason, citywide.	offers	observed
share_of_declines	number	Share of all 2,612 declined offers.	fraction	derived

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.