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
Shelter offers, acceptances and confirmed stays by period
Citywide counts from the city's reports to the City Council, one row per quarter or year, with derived shares of offers.
Unit of observation: Quarter, year or half-year, citywide
14 field definitions
| Field | Type | Meaning | Units | Value type |
|---|
period |
string |
The period covered, such as Q1 2025, 2025 or 2026 (Jan-Jun). |
— |
observed |
period_type |
string |
quarter, year or half-year. Quarter and year rows overlap; don't add them together. |
— |
derived |
start_date |
date |
First day of the period. |
— |
derived |
end_date |
date |
Last day of the period. |
— |
derived |
offers |
integer |
Offers of shelter: in the city's words, specific offers of available shelter extended to unsheltered individuals. Counted per offer, not per person. |
offers |
observed |
accepted |
integer |
Offers accepted, each resulting in a referral to shelter. |
offers |
observed |
confirmed_enrollments |
integer |
Confirmed shelter enrollments resulting from an offer, matched in the regional homeless data system. Empty for 2024, for which the city published no count. |
enrollments |
observed |
declined |
integer |
Offers not accepted. |
offers |
derived |
share_declined |
number |
Share of offers not accepted. |
fraction |
derived |
share_accepted |
number |
Share of offers accepted. |
fraction |
derived |
share_confirmed_stay |
number |
Share of offers that led to a confirmed shelter enrollment. Empty when enrollments were not published. |
fraction |
derived |
share_accepted_no_confirmed_stay |
number |
Share of offers accepted with no confirmed enrollment (includes enrollments the data match missed). |
fraction |
derived |
confirmed_share_of_accepted |
number |
Share of accepted offers that led to a confirmed enrollment. |
fraction |
derived |
source_id |
string |
The entry in sources the row's counts come from. |
— |
observed |
Sources
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Publications using this dataset
Version details
The exact citing versions, and the version of this dataset each cites.
-
Article
seattle-homeless-shelter-offers-turned-down —
version 5
(published) cites version 2
-
Chart
seattle-shelter-offers-turned-down —
version 3
(published) cites version 2
-
Chart
seattle-shelter-offer-flow —
version 2
(published) cites version 2
-
Chart
seattle-shelter-offer-decline-reasons —
version 2
(published) cites version 2
Node: dataset:seattle-uct-shelter-offers:2:table:shelter-offers
uct-shelter-offers.csv
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