Pierce County homeless population rises 11% to nearly 3,000 in 2025
Aug 20, 2025, 11:51 AM | Updated: 11:52 am
A photo of a homeless person sleeping on a park bench. (Photo: Dean Purcell, Getty Images)
(Photo: Dean Purcell, Getty Images)
The number of homeless individuals in Pierce County continued to rise this year, according to a new report released by Pierce County.
In 2025, 1,433 homeless people were unsheltered and living on the streets. Additionally, a total of 1,522 of the county’s homeless population lived inside a shelter.
The 2,955 homeless individuals in Pierce County this year represent an 11% rise in its homeless numbers, whereas in 2024, the county recorded 2,661 homeless people.
The count was done through a Point-In-Time (PIT) study and began on January 30.
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Pierce County correlates housing crisis with rise in homeless
In the report, Pierce County pointed to a housing crisis as the cause for the rising homeless rates.
“For the past 10 years, the median home price and fair market rent values have more than doubled, increasing at the same rate of people becoming homeless,” the report stated.
Property values in Pierce County have increased by approximately 86% since April 2017, according to Zillow.
Rob Huff, a spokesperson for the Tacoma Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness, claimed the number of shelter units available has decreased since the report gathered its data.
“Funding has decreased,” Huff said, according to KIRO 7. “The City of Tacoma has had to shut down roughly 200 shelter spaces that are no longer available to people in Tacoma or across the county.”
Pierce County Executive Ryan Mello claimed that the federal COVID-19 funding aimed at supporting housing assistance and homeless prevention has started to dwindle.
“This has been a long, long-term problem, and then we got the shot in the arm of American Rescue Plan Act dollars,” Mello said, according to KIRO 7. “We’ve spent those down.”
In 2023, the Maureen Howard Affordable Housing Act was passed in Pierce County. The act was created to help support the development of affordable housing units, and generated more than $25 million in sales tax revenue. As a result, the County is close to having 1,000 affordable units built.
King County releases a similar report every other year. In 2024, the number of homeless individuals was 26% higher than it was in 2022.
In Snohomish County, there was a slight decrease in the number of people in shelters, transitional housing, and living on the streets this year. Snohomish County’s number of homeless was down 1.8% from 2024.
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