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Issaquah, Washington, USA

Data Helps Issaquah Close Gaps in Homeless Services

Project Type:
Community Engagement, Equity, Housing

At a Glance

Staff from the City’s Homeless Outreach program had 1,555 interactions with unhoused community members between September 2021 and January 2024. On average, it takes four to five interactions with a person before they consider accepting services.

Created and launched Data Quah, a data training program for staff. All new hires participate in Data Quah 101 to learn about the City’s data collection and tracking systems. Over 50% of staff engaged with Data Quah in its first year.

Monitored crime trends and partnered with local businesses to gather and share data. In 2023, burglaries fell by 37% and thefts by 26%.

Using data to show how investment in the arts promotes tourism and economic development. The City tracks requests for arts grants, providing insight into community-wide needs and allowing for more strategic funding decisions. (Jakob is a city art highlight.)

Staff from the City of Issaquah’s Human Services team first met John in September 2021. At the time he was camping under bridges and had been homeless for four years. It took repeated meetings to build enough trust with John to begin the process of finding him a permanent home. With the help of the City, federal rental assistance and family, John moved into an apartment in March 2022. 

John is one of 37 people the City has helped move into permanent housing since it began its Homeless Outreach Program in June 2021. It has also provided unhoused community members with over 1,000 connections to services, such as temporary shelter, transportation and medical treatment. 

The Homeless Outreach Program started with a goal of filling information gaps about homelessness in Issaquah. Data collected by the Human Services team showed that homelessness was more prevalent than originally thought, and that shelter, treatment and affordable housing were needed in Issaquah. These findings were incorporated into the first-ever Human Services Strategic Plan, which includes goals and action steps for effectively responding to homelessness. In 2022, the City began using an online dashboard to track data from the Homeless Outreach Program and share timely updates with the community. 

“We’ve got some good data over time. But are we really able to tell that we got the outcome that we were trying to? Not just that we tried, but that we moved the needle.”

Mayor Mary Lou Pauly

Trends emerged from the data. Because Issaquah didn’t have an emergency shelter, people had to leave town for a bed, something many did not want to do. Even when they were willing to accept shelter, 43% of the time no beds were available in the regional shelters. To fill the need, the Homeless Outreach Program began collaborating with a local hotel franchise to provide emergency shelter during extreme winter weather.  

The initiative was modeled on a successful hotel-based emergency shelter program King County ran during the pandemic to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Human Services staff found that people were more likely to accept shelter in a motel room in Issaquah during extreme weather than other shelter options. The stability of the motel also allowed staff to engage more consistently with individuals, build trust faster and make quicker progress on service goals.

Seeing the positive outcomes, the City proposed expanding the collaboration with the motel beyond short-term shelter and into emergency housing. Data gathered from the homeless outreach encounters led to the City Council’s approval of a pilot program. The pilot program dedicated 12 rooms in the motel to supporting community members as they move from homelessness to permanent housing. The Human Services team, in partnership with the City’s Performance Program Analyst, will continue to collect and analyze data, look for trends, and evaluate whether their approach is alleviating homelessness in Issaquah.

1,073 connections to services, including temporary shelter, basic needs and transportation

From left WWC’s Emily Ferris, Issaquah’s Assistant to the City Administrator Dale Markey-Crimp, and WWC’s Jake Hemphill in front of Issaquah’s troll, Jakob Two Trees. Jakob is one of six trolls that form a large-scale public art installation.

“I was approved for a voucher to find housing. They did that for me!! The City of Issaquah rescued me but that’s only part of it. The man, Amir, who helped me went above and beyond the call of duty. He drove me places to apply, he paid deposits and holding fees. He started out as a case manager, but I consider him my friend.” 

John, Issaquah resident who experienced homelessness

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Seattle, Washington, USA

Seattle: Transforming a City in Fast-Moving Transition.

Project Type:
Communications, Equity, Finance, Health & Wellness, High-Performing Government, Infrastructure

At a Glance

Initiated a data-driven approach to homelessness intervention that reoriented providers’ thinking — and their service delivery models — around the goal of ensuring any experience of homelessness in Seattle is rare, brief, and one-time.

Used a results-based contracting approach to monitor contract progress and encouraged contract managers and providers to meet regularly to review performance data.

Developed a dashboard focused on homelessness-related data from twelve departments to have better situational awareness of the homelessness crisis, in addition to how human services programs are performing.

Seattle is More than a Cup of Coffee

Fast-paced economic development is bringing plenty of high-tech jobs to Seattle and leading to spikes in household incomes, but progress isn’t being felt by everyone. It’s also contributing to a severe shortage of affordable housing and a homelessness crisis that led the City to declare a state of emergency in November 2015. This wasn’t for a lack of funding directed toward the city’s most vulnerable residents; Seattle’s budget for homeless services grew from $29 million in 2005 to $50 million in 2016 while homelessness continued to rise. Struggling to keep up, the City had to take a hard look at how it was tackling the crisis.

In response, the City launched its Pathways Home plan to shift its focus away from emergency, short-term interventions toward longer-term solutions, using data-driven decision-making to guide the way. As the City says, “Every dollar spent on emergency beds is a dollar not spent on strategies that allow people to exit homelessness.” A critical aspect of the plan was to rethink relationships with outside providers that contract with the City’s Human Services Department (HSD) to provide homelessness services, beginning with a pilot of $8.5 million worth of contracts. The pilot was carried out as part of Seattle’s engagement with What Works Cities partner the Government Performance Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School.

George, Maria, and their young son are among families that nonprofits contracted with the City have helped to move into permanent housing.

Through the pilot, providers were no longer tracking indicators like how many beds were filled or meals were distributed, but rather metrics such as how many people moved into permanent housing or became homeless again after being served, and how long they experienced homelessness. The approach reoriented providers’ thinking — and their service delivery models — around the goal of ensuring any experience of homelessness in Seattle is rare, brief, and one time. By using a results-based contracting approach, that’s what the City began holding providers accountable for too; contract managers and providers began meeting regularly to review performance data, enabling the City to troubleshoot problems in real time and spread the most effective practices.

“It’s not just about more money, although more resources is important. It’s also about thinking and how we do our work differently. How do we use data in a way that is not just compliance-driven, but helps us figure out what is working for people we’re trying to support out of crisis?”

Human Services Department Director Catherine Lester

Seattle has just expanded the pilot to $34 million in contracts awarded to bidders following the issuance of the City’s first competitive RFP for homelessness services in ten years. By keeping providers on target with performance benchmarks, the City aimed to double the number of people being moved into permanent housing by the end of 2018. Seattle is also expanding the performance-based model even further — across the entirety of HSD, which invests $105 million in contracts annually. Simultaneously, the City is developing a dashboard that will bring together homelessness-related data from twelve departments to have better situational awareness of the homelessness crisis, in addition to how human services programs are performing. Soon, real-time data will be available to staff, enabling a more coordinated, citywide approach to tackling the problem, tracking vendor performance, and more.

These efforts are part of a larger culture of data use throughout City Hall. Seattle was one of the first cities in the country to pursue open data and has a robust approach to engaging residents that goes beyond simply publishing data sets on its open data portal. The City is also advancing skills it developed with What Works Cities partner the Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University by rolling out performance management citywide. To help facilitate that process, the City’s Office of Performance is conducting twelve-week engagements with departments on a rolling basis to train staff. “Getting people the right resources — that’s what’s critical to getting the job done,” says former Organizational Performance Director Tyler Running Deer, who also worked extensively to help departments link their performance and budgeting goals. Seattle is also sharing progress toward citywide goals via its performance portal, one of several public-facing ways residents are kept informed.

After data showed that use of a former bikeshare program wasn’t offsetting its cost or meeting users’ needs, the City piloted a dockless model.

By tracking data and seeing what works, Seattle is learning important lessons about when and how to allocate funding, manage programs, or sometimes, when to shut them down. In one recent example, the City rolled out a bike share program, but data showed use wasn’t offsetting the cost and the service wasn’t meeting users’ needs. Bike docks were taking up valuable parking space, much to the dismay of local business owners. A highly-used station was located on a hilltop, so users weren’t returning the bikes, leaving the task to a truck that drove large numbers of bikes back to the dock at the end of each day. Now the City is piloting a dockless model with three different companies that are funding the program through their own revenue, and had to provide a data-collection plan before receiving permitting. Users can take the new bikes on the routes they truly travel and park them in more convenient locations. Without the temptation to concentrate docks in the highest-income areas, the hope is that bike access will also become more equitable. So far, the results seem promising, but for this city, there’s more than time that will tell — there’s also data.

Read more about Seattle’s data journey here.

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Bellevue, Washington, USA

Bellevue Reaches for Big, Bold Goals.

Project Type:
Environment, High-Performing Government, Public Safety, Technology, Transportation

2021 Silver Certification Feature:

At a Glance

Used video analytics and crash data to assess road damages and address them with the proper safety measures.

Open data portal and maps show key trends in the City’s neighborhoods and improve data transparency.

An online dashboard tracks progress in each of Bellevue’s five Environmental Stewardship focus areas and solicits community input.

A Data-Driven City in a Park

With more than 2,700 acres of parks, trails and open land, Bellevue, WA, has long been regarded as a “city in a park.” But the city across Lake Washington from Seattle is also an urban center with upscale shopping, museums, a convention center and numerous mixed-use high rises. Major companies including T-Mobile, Amazon and Microsoft employ thousands in Bellevue, imbuing the city with a tech ethos.

That ethos is manifested in how the City of Bellevue embraces data-driven strategies to set and pursue ambitious goals. For instance, as part of its Vision Zero commitment to achieving zero traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries by 2030, the City analyzes video from a network of 360-degree traffic cameras for near-misses. This allows staff to consider street design improvements that could prevent actual collisions from happening. And, on the sustainability front, a centralized data-tracking system ensures the City has a full and accurate picture of the sources of its greenhouse gasses as it works to rely solely on renewable energy by 2050.

Setting big goals comes with Bellevue’s commitment to high-performance government, which involves a corresponding commitment to data governance, as well as performance and analytics. It also means engaging with the public and embracing innovation, transparency and accountability, so that when the City misses a performance goal, officials must acknowledge it.

“Fear of failure and transparency is hard, but you have to embrace the red with performance metrics. That’s how we’re able to make a real difference for the people who live and work here.”

Micah Phillips, Performance & Outreach Coordinator

A Comprehensive Emissions Picture

Performance metrics are at the core of Bellevue’s aggressive push to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. The City needs to reduce emissions by 2 percent each year to meet its 2050 target, but it is currently on track for just 1 percent. Measuring and benchmarking that performance publicly has helped demonstrate that its progress is consistent with the region and state, while also highlighting the need to take further action.

“We break down the long-term goal and then create a strategy on how to get there,” says Jennifer Ewing, program manager of the Environmental Stewardship Initiative, a long-time effort to develop, track and advance sustainability goals. “When it comes to climate change, we don’t want to wait for new tech advancements, like electric vehicles, to solve our problems in 10 or 20 years. We need to take action now.”

Getting to a place where Bellevue’s emissions metrics are centralized and easily comparable took time. The City conducted its first emissions inventory in 2006, using a desktop tool, and has since incrementally improved its approach.

Now, an online dashboard makes it easy to track progress in each of the five Environmental Stewardship focus areas along several metrics and solicit community input and feedback. As a result of the data centralization, the City is able to track valuable information related to its sustainability goals, such as how much water is consumed by municipal facilities or the tonnage of waste collected throughout its jurisdiction. Between 2011 and 2019, emissions declined 6 percent, even as more people moved to Bellevue. (Ewing attributes this to growing public transit options in the City.) The centralized data system also makes it easy to pull data such as electricity use and daily vehicle miles traveled together from varying sources, including other departments.

Bellevue’s Environmental Performance Dashboard. Image courtesy of the City of Bellevue.

“Bellevue is small enough that we know the people we need to reach out to in other departments,” Ewing says. “There’s kind of a push and pull of what we need to do to achieve our goals collaboratively.”

At the Corner of Data and Progress

One example of how Bellevue’s bold goals complement each other involves the Environmental Stewardship target of reducing the number of miles Bellevue residents drive by 50 percent over the next three decades. Success requires creating a safe environment for pedestrians and cyclists—and the City’s Vision Zero efforts to eliminate traffic-related fatalities and serious injuries will be instrumental. The success of both the Environmental Stewardship and Vision Zero initiatives is built on Bellevue’s culture of performance management and data-sharing.

“Vision Zero road safety, environmental stewardship, and economic development are inextricably tied. When we provide people with safe travel options, we end up creating an environment that not only improves their well-being, but also improves our environment and attracts businesses.”

Franz Loewenherz, Principal Transportation Planner

Although Bellevue has a lower incidence of traffic-related fatalities than the state average, the City committed to Vision Zero as it expands public transit and encourages alternatives to driving. In some cases, the changes needed to prevent crashes, such as changing a signal pattern, are relatively low-cost. But that doesn’t mean they were easy to identify. Transportation officials would rely on police and EMS/fire department data about crashes to determine whether a particular intersection was dangerous—and that data would take years to accumulate before a problem was identified.

“That reactive structure is fundamentally at odds with the goal of Vision Zero, which aims to envision a future where you don’t have to wait for people to become statistics before you invest in resources and make streets safer,” Loewenherz says.

Bellevue’s solution? Its transportation department, which oversees the Vision Zero initiative, began leveraging other existing data streams to enable much faster change. The City had already installed high-tech cameras at many intersections to monitor and guide traffic, so the department decided to begin using the video from them to improve safety too, at no extra cost. With help from high-tech partners, including the University of Washington and Microsoft, staff was able to use artificial intelligence (AI) to track when cyclists and vehicles get too close for safety. The AI program can flag such instances and report areas where frequent conflicts arise. The City has been able to automate and scale a street assessment process that previously would have required a person with a clipboard monitoring one intersection at a time.

A recent network-wide assessment focused on 40 intersections and studied over eight million road users in a matter of weeks. While the City is in the early stages of implementing solutions to make streets safer for all, it is already seeing promising results. For example, it identified an intersection where there were a high number of left-turn collisions with opposing traffic. Within a few months, the City was able to implement a $10,000 solution, installing a new signal head and adjusting the signal phasing to a protected left turn. That change yielded a 60 percent reduction in collisions, which Loewenherz says was an excellent return on investment. “Usually it takes three to five years for data collection, and it then takes several years after to invest in a safety countermeasure,” he notes.

The proof of concept has resulted in the City committing $2.5 million over seven years to build a data collection program that will inform future Vision Zero work. It allocated an additional $1.5 million to expand the downtown bicycle lane network, since many of the conflicts observed by the team were related to cyclists and pedestrians.

A bike lane in downtown Bellevue. Image courtesy of the City of Bellevue.

This Vision Zero work demonstrates how data-driven approaches help Bellevue move toward its goals, while addressing complex problems. Griffin Lerner, a data analyst with the City, says momentum for data-driven solutions is growing in part thanks to the What Works Cities certification process.

“The process adds a layer of credibility to what we’re preaching. We are hoping to inspire other departments. Once you can give people a bevy of examples, then hopefully staff across the City will embrace using data to reach for big goals.”

Bellevue Data Analyst Griffin Lerner

Read more about Bellevue’s data journey here.

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