Seattle mayor falls short on homeless housing pledge
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Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell in July. Photo: David Ryder/Getty Images
During his 2021 campaign, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell pledged to build 2,000 units of emergency shelter or permanent supportive housing within a year. More than three years into his term, an Axios analysis finds the number of net new units falls short of that goal.
Why it matters: Housing and homelessness are major flashpoints in this year's mayoral campaign, with challenger Katie Wilson criticizing Harrell as more focused on clearing encampments than expanding shelter.
State of play: An online dashboard created by Harrell's office to track progress on homelessness initially cited 2,016 new supportive housing or shelter units that opened between January 2022 and spring 2025.
- But Axios found the dashboard didn't accurately reflect the number of units added citywide during Harrell's term, and that it counted replacements, relocations, and projects already in progress as new openings.
Harrell's campaign team now argues that his 2021 pledge was merely to "identify" 2,000 units in a year — although media outlets including The Seattle Times, PubliCola and KUOW reported it at the time as a plan to add or create new units.
- The "identify" target was reached by the end of 2022, the mayor's office tells Axios, citing hundreds of units that were planned or under construction at that time.
The latest: After Axios questioned the city's data this month, the mayor's office revised its count of units opened under Harrell, lowering the number on its dashboard from 2,016 to 1,991.
- Yet that amended figure still doesn't reflect how much new capacity was created during more than three years of Harrell's leadership.
When adjusted to remove units that were replaced rather than added, the total opened through spring 2025 was under 1,800, Axios found.
- And, if you remove projects that were in progress before Harrell took office, the number of units added under Harrell's watch is fewer than 1,300.
Catch up quick: The 2,000-unit goal was part of Harrell's plan to implement key aspects of Compassion Seattle, a 2021 charter amendment that was struck down by the courts before it could go to voters. The measure would have required the city to "provide" 2,000 new units in a year "in addition to those already funded."
- "We can do that," Harrell said during a KIRO Radio interview in 2021, shortly after the charter amendment was blocked from the ballot.
- In at least two other instances that year, Harrell also talked about how he would "build" — not identify — 2,000 units in 12 months.
- "When we say we're going to build 1,000 units the first six months and 2,000 in the first year … we try to make sure that our city realizes we are headed in the right direction," Harrell told KNKX in 2021.
Zoom in: The mayor's office is counting at least 194 shelter units that were replaced or relocated as units that have newly opened since Harrell took office, Axios found.
- For instance, the mayor's dashboard includes 40 units of tiny housing that opened at Maple Leaf Village in 2023. But when asked by Axios, the mayor's office said that project added no new shelter capacity — it mainly relocated residents from a South Lake Union village that closed.
- The city dashboard also cites 85 units that opened at the STAR Center in April, but doesn't note that those units helped replace 75 that closed when the Navigation Center shut down in March.
The big picture: More broadly, the mayor's tally includes hundreds of units that were underway before he took office — a dynamic previously noted in reporting by PubliCola.
- Axios found seven projects with a total of 556 units included in the dashboard that were either under construction, acquired or publicly announced before Harrell became mayor.
The dashboard also credits 29 new units at a Salvation Army shelter in Sodo, but the nonprofit told Axios its capacity has remained unchanged since 2020.
What they're saying: Harrell's office denies inflating any figures.
- "We respectfully ask that you consider the overall impact of City investments and strategy on the people and communities we serve rather than focus on an overly narrow and subjective definition of progress," Kate Jacobs, a mayor's office spokesperson, wrote in an email to Axios.
Between the lines: Jacobs said the city's tally of newly opened units includes some temporary shelter funded with COVID-19 relief dollars that the city worked to make permanent.
- Other shelter units that were relocated also would have closed without major investment and coordination from Harrell's administration, including efforts to secure new sites, she said.
- In addition, she said, some permanent supportive housing projects that were already in motion before Harrell took office relied on money from his administration to open and operate.
- Jacobs added that all of the city's shelter units — including those relocated from other sites — now operate under a 24/7 enhanced model with wraparound services, making them "fundamentally different" from what existed before the pandemic.
What's next: Harrell's office says about 1,000 more units are planned or under construction citywide, with several projects slated to open by year's end.