(The Center Square) – Spokane leaders attributed an 11% decrease in the number of people accessing city-funded homelessness services last year to programs that their dataset didn’t measure.
According to the 2025 Longitudinal Systems Analysis, 6,430 people accessed city-funded services from October 2024 to September 2025, down from 7,221 the year before. The LSA is an annual report that cities submit to the federal government to gauge service utilization and what is working for the region.
Housing and Human Services Director Dawn Kinder says she believes the main reason the number of people accessing services fell is the expansion of homelessness and eviction-prevention investments.
However, the report specifically states that it does not include data on street outreach, coordinated entry, homeless prevention and diversion or the city’s housing navigation center. It primarily examined data for emergency shelters, transitional housing, rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing projects.
“The primary driver behind the decline in people entering the homeless system is the progress made through expanded homelessness and eviction prevention efforts,” Kinder wrote in a news release after briefing the city council on the 2025 LSA. “We’ve focused on connecting people with the right support at the right time, which has resulted in stabilizing households before a crisis leads to homelessness.”
Data Analyst Amanda Martinez ran the council through several metrics indicating successful outcomes.
She said the number of people exiting the system to permanent housing increased from 22% to 29%, representing a 32% year-over-year increase; the number of people moving from emergency shelters to permanent housing increased from 7% to 13%, representing an 85% year-over-year increase; and the number of people exiting permanent supportive housing to independent permanent housing units increased from 37% to 57%, representing a 54% year-over-year increase, according to the 2025 LSA.
“From the navigation center to our scattered sites to our eviction prevention programs,” Mayor Lisa Brown wrote in the news release, “we are investing in solutions that work and that is being demonstrated.”
Kinder may be correct that expanded homelessness and eviction-prevention investments have led to fewer people accessing services, but the LSA doesn’t link those programs to the outcomes she listed.
The city also took shelter beds offline in October 2024 when it closed the Trent Shelter, which at one point cost Spokane more than $1 million per month. According to the 2025 housing inventory count, the number of emergency beds in Spokane dropped from 1,620 in January 2024 to 1,050 in January 2025, taking 570 offline; the 2025 LSA suggests that 791 fewer people are now accessing services.
When asked whether the decline in beds offered was reflected in the LSA, Spokane Communications Director Erin Hut sent The Center Square a statement noting that the LSA is about the performance of specific interventions. She said it doesn’t focus on specific projects or the number of beds they may offer.
“I don’t think there’s any data that will show you exactly why the decrease happened,” Barry Barfield, administrator of the Spokane Homeless Coalition, told The Center Square when asked about the city attributing the overall decline to street outreach, its navigation center and eviction prevention. “I think the city is drawing … very reasonable conclusions, and I would say the things they said are part of it.”
Barfield said he believes the investments Kinder and the news release listed are part of a broader web of services driving the decline. The LSA only tracks certain projects, so he recognized issues taxpayers may face in pinpointing the reason. He said that compiling a larger dataset would cost more money.
“I don’t think there’s any city, county or state in the country that’s doing it to the level that would have to happen to really have good data,” Barfield said. “That [federal report] tracks only a specific, you know, like one road in a multi-road system that’s addressing homelessness in various ways.”
He said the city is moving the needle on addressing homelessness. Kinder told the council that if the system weren’t working, they would see more returns to homelessness, which is now down to 4% from 7% in the year before.
Council President Betsy Wilkerson asked Kinder to break down the cost.
Last June, city staff told the council that between July 2024 and March 2025, Spokane had awarded at least $25 million in homelessness funding, including to the programs that Kinder tied to the 2025 LSA.
Wilkerson wants to show taxpayers what they are getting in return for their money. Kinder said it’s not always that easy, since the city provides only a fraction of the total funding for some projects operated by outside entities. She said her team would gather information to identify the cost per person served.
“As a community or citizens, we’re investing these dollars, millions of dollars, and we really have no true costs,” Wilkerson told Kinder as she pushed for more information for taxpayers. “It doesn’t have to be specific, but overall, when we’re investing in people, this is the amount of investment on $1.”
