(The Center Square) – As taxpayers question whether they’re subsidizing individuals who first became homeless before or after moving to Spokane, regional data suggests most lived there before their most recent episode of homelessness, but local officials say they didn’t ask the respondents where they were from.
The issue centers around whether taxpayer-funded services are assisting people whose homelessness began elsewhere, who then find housing before winding up on the streets again.
While taxpayers help out by subsidizing homeless services, some have asked whether that support creates a magnet effect.
The Spokane City Council reviewed the region’s 2026 Point-in-Time Count earlier this week. The report suggests homelessness declined for the third year in a row, with 1,738 individuals recorded in January, and that 75% of them had lived in Spokane County before their most recent episode of homelessness.
“Overwhelmingly, yes, they did, 75% of them were from here,” Amanda Maritnez, a data analyst with the city’s Community, Housing and Human Services Department, told the council on Monday. “We did have 35 [individuals] that were from Idaho, and most of them were specifically from northern Idaho.”
According to the data, about 64.8% of respondents answered the question of whether they lived in the county before this episode of homelessness. Of the 1,127 people who answered, 75.6% said they lived in the county, 13.5% came from outside of Washington state, and 10.1% from other parts of the state.
Those figures do not show taxpayers where individuals first became homeless or where they grew up.
The Spokane Business Association commissioned a survey last year to answer those questions, which suggested that 50.2% of street-level respondents had become homeless before moving to the county.
The study was done by Marbut Consulting, led by Dr. Robert Marbut, who served as President Donald Trump’s “homelessness czar” from 2019 to 2021.
Marbut now serves in Trump’s second administration as a senior advisor on homelessness within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
While HUD guidance suggests that surveyors should ask where people lived before their most recent episode of homelessness, Marbut says he went further by asking where respondents were born, where they went to high school, whether they had family in Spokane and where they first became homeless.
In a Thursday email, HUD officials said that Marbut was unavailable for an interview before publishing.
Before rejoining the Trump administration, Marbut sat down with the Spokesman-Review for a podcast last year with Dawn Kinder, the city’s Housing and Human Services Director, who criticized his survey.
“That data is in direct conflict with the data that we submit to the federal government following [HUD] regulations, so it’s confusing,” Kinder said, questioning Marbut. “In the report that you published, you say you observed 403 people. I don’t see … where you indicated how many surveys were completed.”
City officials and the report’s critics have questioned the methodology that SBA and Marbut relied on.
The report describes the scope and states that Marbut surveyed street-level homelessness in Spokane County from March to April 2025 and identified 403 unique individuals during a March 23 “grid search.”
Marbut said on the podcast that roughly 60% of the 403 respondents completed the survey, and urged Kinder to ask the same questions he asked in SBA’s survey when the city conducts the next PIT Count.
However, Kinder argued at the time that Marbut’s data wasn’t representative of the entire population, given that more than 7,200 people accessed Spokane’s homelessness services in 2024. That figure fell to 6,430 in 2025, according to an annual longitudinal system analysis that local officials send to HUD.
The Center Square contacted the city to see whether the PIT Count included Marbut’s origin questions, and Spokane Communications Director Erin Hut responded via email, confirming that surveyors didn’t.
“A suggestion made on a podcast is not a formal submission … for consideration,” Hut responded. “And again to reiterate simply, we have not been able to review Marbut and the SBA’s survey methodology.”
She claims that SBA President Gavin Cooley promised to share Marbut’s methodology with the regional Continuum of Care but didn’t follow through. Hut also said the city heard through providers and media reports that SBA’s sample was “much smaller” than the PIT Count and was not conducted countywide.
When asked by The Center Square, Cooley disagreed with Hut’s “suggestion” that SBA’s methodology was “hidden or unavailable.” He pointed out the scope, questions and 403 people observed on pages in the report and said he had discussed the report with several city officials and community stakeholders.
Cooley said this isn’t a matter of one report being “right” and the other being “wrong,” noting that the difference between the city and SBA’s data is driven by the fact that the reports asked different things.
“The final Marbut report was broadly distributed, and I’m happy to send it again,” he said, referencing Hut’s claim that he didn’t fulfill a promise to the CoC to share the survey results and the methodology.
Marbut’s report recommended expanding treatment, outreach and workforce programs, creating paths for individuals with long-term ties to the region to reunite with family and enforcing public safety laws.
“When it’s done right, it’s incredibly cost-efficient,” Marbut told The Center Square back in June 2025.