How much of Tacoma’s homeless population comes from outside the city?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Tacoma's share of unhoused reporting previous residency in city dropped to 22%
- City lost 200 shelter beds in 2025, now provides 860 of county's total capacity
- Officials push to expand shelter services beyond Tacoma into broader county areas
The percentage of Tacoma’s homeless population that reports coming from outside the city grew from 2024 to this year, according to data from Pierce County’s annual survey of people living unhoused.
Pierce County’s annual Point-In-Time Count survey attempts to quantify the number of folks living in shelters, in vehicles or on the streets during a single night in January every year.
In 2025, 22% of the 2,037 unhoused people surveyed in Tacoma reported living in a Tacoma ZIP code prior to becoming unhoused, according to data shared by the city.
During the 2024 survey, 32% of the 1,864 people surveyed while living unhoused in Tacoma reported their last ZIP code of residence being in Tacoma.
“Something that has been a very common theme that we have talked about as a region is that the City of Tacoma has held a large amount of responsibility by hosting a lot of shelter sites and services,” Caleb Carbone, the homeless strategy, systems and services manager with the of Tacoma’s Neighborhood and Community Services Department, told City Council members during the council’s study session on Sept. 9.
Following the closure of roughly 200 shelter beds due to a funding shortfall at the end of June, Tacoma hosts about 860 shelter beds. The city had about 1,099 shelter beds at the beginning of 2025.
Tacoma’s deputy city manager Sonja Hallum previously told The News Tribune the city hosted about 80% of the county’s shelter beds previous to the closure of roughly 200 beds.
“Most of the shelters are here in the City of Tacoma, the hospitals are here in the City of Tacoma, the jails, there are just a lot of reasons why we end up having more of a disproportionate share of people experiencing homelessness like any county seat probably in the entire state of Washington,” Council member John Hines said during the Sept. 9 study session.
Carbone said the city is actively working with Pierce County to expand shelter and services into other parts of the region.
“We want to host more resources, shelter included, outside of the city so that people who are experiencing homelessness in their communities can access those services and don’t feel like they need to go to the jurisdiction that may or may not have it,” Carbone said.
The Point-In-Time Count has been recognized as a best practice for quantifying unhoused people mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, but many say the method is imperfect and likely an undercount of the actual population.
During the Sept. 9 study session, Hines said he has participated as a volunteer surveyor for the county multiple times, and often individuals being surveyed are not interested in answering the long list of questions volunteers are instructed to ask.
During the 2025 survey, 36% percent of 2,955 unhoused people surveyed in Pierce County answered the question of where they lived before they became homeless.
According to the county’s data, of the 1,074 people who answered, 544 people said they previously lived in Tacoma, 100 answered Parkland, 99 answered Lakewood, 77 said outside of Washington and 55 reportedly lived in other Washington counties.
Carbone noted that the 2025 survey included a higher proportion of “observed” unsheltered individuals, who were noted by surveyors but were not asked detailed questions.
“We saw a significant [number] of unknown ZIP codes, and that is part of the data I want to dig into a little bit more to understand if there is a reason,” Caleb said “Was there a volunteer specifically where maybe last year they felt more comfortable putting in a ZIP code, or did they feel less comfortable?”
According to last year’s Point-In-Time Count data reported by the county, 55% of people answered the question of where they lived before they became homeless. Of the 1,488 people who answered the question in 2024, 626 reported living in Tacoma, 163 reported living outside of Washington, 136 reported living in Parkland, 135 reported living in Lakewood, and 108 reported living in King County.
This story was originally published September 19, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
