Think you can solve homelessness? Give the county a call.

The Kitsap County Housing and Homelessness Division has issued a call for community input to update its five-year plan to address homelessness across the county. The goal is to make homelessness “a rare, brief and one-time occurrence” in Kitsap.

“Community input is vital to creating an effective plan that truly addresses the needs of our unhoused neighbors,” said Human Services director Doug Washburn. “We need diverse perspectives and experiences to build a long-term strategy that works for everyone.”

Last visited in November 2019, the HHD’s plan guides county homelessness action for the immediate future and helps determine the biggest challenges for people in unstable housing situations. The plan includes a breakdown of the local housing crisis, a detailed analysis of gaps in the social support system and goals for the next five years.

The county’s 2019 goals focused on keeping people in stable housing, particularly during transitions from hospitals, behavioral health clinics and jails, by encouraging the development of affordable housing and supporting at-risk tenants.

This plan reflected the data gathered from previous Point-In-Time survey counts. During the PIT Counts, unsheltered homeless people are asked to share some information about themselves and the life events or specific struggles that pushed them out of housing. Pre-pandemic, the most commonly reported cause of homelessness in the county was eviction or loss of housing at 37%, followed closely by job loss and mental health issues at 36% and 34% respectively.

Data from PIT counts post-2020 show that mental health has shot up to become the top self-reported cause of homelessness in Kitsap. In the past two years, about two-thirds of unsheltered people reported experiencing difficulty with their mental health, slowly rising from just under half in 2019. But by 2022, almost 70% of respondents cited mental health issues as the main reason they became homeless, dropping to 57% in 2024. Reports of problems with other health issues, like permanent physical disabilities and chronic health conditions, fell to about 30% from just over half of respondents.

Issues with narcotics, alcohol and other substances have grown more rapidly. For three years after the PIT count began in 2017, chronic substance use wavered around 26% in unsheltered Kitsap residents, but reports have jumped by almost 10% every year since 2020. In 2024, over half of unsheltered people struggled with substance abuse, but only 24% attributed it to the cause of their loss of housing: most pointed to mental health and other health issues as the main factor.

Volunteers will meet up to eight times before April to help develop survey questions and identify key areas of concern.