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Overdoses in Bellevue
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Fewer people are reporting homelessness to Bellevue this year. Police mental-health calls are heading for a record.
- −40%
- homelessness reports to the city, Jan–Sep 2026 against 2025
- +35%
- police behavioural-health calls over the same months
- 35%
- of reports since 2021 from Downtown and BelRed
- 574
- people on the city outreach team's list in 2025, from 167 in 2022
Where Bellevue residents report homelessness: Downtown and BelRed, then Factoria
0–2%2–5%5–8%8–12%12%+
Bellevue publishes its own homelessness records every month: what residents report through the city's MyBellevue app, what its outreach team does, and when police are called. This page follows those records and changes when they do. It answers what Bellevue is seeing now. How many people are homeless across the Eastside, and who they are, is a different question, answered by the county's count every two years, and that count has its own page.
This year two of those records have gone opposite ways. From January to September 2026, residents filed 266 homelessness reports through the city's MyBellevue app, 40% fewer than in the same months of 2025. Over the same months, police took 1,578 calls coded as behavioural-health crises, 35% more. By 31 October the year's calls stood at 1,755, 98 short of 2023, the busiest year in the city's file. At this year's pace, about 175 a month, 2026 passes it in November.
Since late 2025, reports of homelessness have fallen while police mental-health calls have risen
Neither record counts homeless people. A report is anyone in Bellevue asking the city for help with homelessness, often about someone they saw; a behavioural-health call can be about anyone, housed or not. What they show is the part of homelessness the city hears about, and that part is moving.
Reports come mostly from Downtown and BelRed
Since October 2021, where the city's MyBellevue file now begins, residents have filed 2,266 homelessness reports. More than a third came from Downtown and BelRed. Factoria and Wilburton come next. The police calls cluster in much the same places, with Crossroads also near the top. The map at the top of the page shades each neighbourhood by its share of the reports.
We show neighbourhoods, not points. The city's file places each report where it was filed, which is where a person was seen, and a map of those points would be a map of people.
The city's outreach team is seeing more people
Bellevue runs its own Homeless Outreach Program: staff who go out to people living outside, often after a report through MyBellevue, and help with shelter, housing, identity documents and work. A client is someone who accepted that help during the year. Its client list grew from 167 people in 2022 to 574 in 2025. 123 of the 1,582 client records since 2022 are for people under 18. In a 2021 Bellevue TV segment, the team's coordinator talks with Clarke, who got off the streets.
The city's outreach team worked with more than three times as many people in 2025 as in 2022
More of them are getting somewhere to stay. By the program's own table, 44 people obtained shelter or housing through it in 2023 and 109 in 2024. The team doubled from two staff to four in summer 2024, and the city ties the rise to that. The monthly contact count jumped the same summer, from about 80 a month to about 350. More staff, not a sudden change in need, is the city's own explanation.
Drug calls have not moved
Police calls coded as drug-law cases (VUCSA, the state's controlled-substances act) have run between 32 and 68 a quarter since 2021, with no trend. The rise in behavioural-health calls is not showing up as more drug calls.
What we don't know yet
Why reports fell. It could be fewer people outside, residents reporting less, or reports going through another channel, such as a call to the police non-emergency line or a business's own security. The city's data cannot tell these apart, and the city has not said.
Whether the behavioural-health calls are about the same people. The two records share no identifier, and nothing here links a call to homelessness.
How much enforcement there is. Bellevue bans camping on city property between sunset and sunrise, and says it removes camps only after outreach and notice. It does not publish how often either happens.
What happens next
We collect these records from the city on the second of each month, and this page will change with them. If reports keep falling while calls keep rising, that gap is the question to put to the city.
How this was checked
Checks against this finding
A report is not a person. One resident can file many reports about one person, and a neighbourhood with more foot traffic produces more reports for the same number of people. Reports measure what residents see and choose to report.
The 2021 numbers are partial, and shrinking. The city's October copy of the MyBellevue file held 25 homelessness reports from 2021; its November copy holds 11, from October on, while later years are unchanged. The file appears to drop its oldest records, so the report chart starts in 2022 and the all-time total counts only what the file still holds.
Behavioural health is a category in the city's police file, not a finding about the person. The city has not published which calls go into it or who assigns it, and suicide calls are counted separately. The city can redefine its categories: another category in the same file, death reports, goes from two or fewer a year to 117 in 2024. Behavioural-health calls show no such step, but a quiet recoding would look like a trend.
The outreach table has an error the city has not explained. Its 2025 row gives 108 people housed out of 338 who accepted services, and calls that 13.0%; 108 of 338 is 32%. That row is left out here. The 2024 row lists 554 people accepting services, exactly the number of clients that year, so "accepted services" may count every client. The city's budget gives 26% of 2023 clients as moved indoors; the table's 44 of 284 is 15%. The city has not defined "obtained shelter or housing", which could mean a shelter bed, a safe parking spot or a home.
Outreach clients are counted per year. A person seen in 2024 and 2025 is in both years.
Neighbourhoods are the city's own areas. Reports and calls are placed by their coordinates, which the city rounds. Every homelessness report has coordinates; a third have no ZIP code, so nothing here is grouped by ZIP.
2026 runs to 1 November for reports and 31 October for police calls; the charts stop at the last full quarter.
Outreach requests are the same events as reports. The program's own request list matches the MyBellevue count exactly in 2024 (634) and 2025 (530). Adding them would count each report twice.
Sources (1)
Sources
First published 2026-11. City of Bellevue open data (ArcGIS): MyBellevue 311 requests, police incidents (calls for service), the Homeless Outreach Program's requests, clients, outcomes and contacts layers, and the neighbourhood areas layer, read 2 November 2026; Bellevue City Code 10.06.110. The program's staffing, who can file a report and what a client is come from the city's Homeless Outreach StoryMap (updated 4 February 2026) and its 2025–2026 budget proposals, read 5 November 2026.
Updates and corrections. None so far.
