120 More Beds. What Happens Next?
Vancouver’s Path From Shelter to Permanent Housing
Vancouver is opening a shelter with up to 120 beds. But shelter is one stage of the journey. We looked downstream at what happens when people try to move from shelter into a home of their own.
Shelter capacity is growing. Permanent housing capacity is a different question.
Shelter is meant to stabilize people and open a path to permanent housing. Every bed added upstream raises the stakes for everything downstream: housing navigators, housing programs, vouchers, affordable rentals, the landlords who rent them, and supportive housing for people who need more than a lease.
Seven stages, as the system describes them. Each has its own gatekeepers, its own funding and its own data.
Vancouver’s pipeline: where it narrows
The same path, now with each stage’s public number. Read them as separate gates, not one funnel: each is its own count, of people or of households, over one night or a whole year. Where two numbers share a unit and a year, we show how many got through.
People sleeping outside, in vehicles or in other places not meant for habitation on the night of the Point-in-Time count.
Council for the Homeless (CFTH), for the Vancouver/Clark County Continuum of Care (WA-508).
659 unsheltered on January 29, 2026, of 1,260 homeless that night. Across all of 2025, 8,202 people in 3,830 households were homeless at some point; 4,501 (55%) were newly homeless.
A one-night count is a snapshot. Far more people move through homelessness over a year (8,202 in 2025) than are counted on any single night.
Street outreach, referrals and encampment assessments.
City of Vancouver's Homeless Assistance & Resources Team (HART).
Contact volume is not publicly reported. The Burnt Bridge Creek example (23 of 40 accepted shelter referrals) is the one documented figure.
Without contact counts, there is no public way to see how many people outreach reaches, or how many referrals become a shelter stay.
Emergency shelter: a bed, a stay, and the case management meant to start a path to housing.
CFTH coordinated entry; many shelter operators.
2,549 households asked for shelter in 2025; 1,292 got it. 443 year-round beds. Average stay 91 days (111 in 2024).
Bed supply. Shorter stays free beds faster only if there is somewhere to go next.
A coordinated-entry assessment of which housing programs a household may be eligible for.
CFTH coordinated entry.
3,255 households assessed in 2025, down 11% from 3,648 in 2024.
An assessment opens a door to a program queue, not to a home. Program openings set the pace.
Rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing and other programs that pair rent help or a subsidy with services.
CFTH and partner providers.
430 households entered housing programs in 2025 (568 in 2024).
Program slots and subsidy dollars. Every slot also needs a rental the household can lease.
A household with a program or voucher finds a unit, applies, passes screening and signs a lease.
Housing navigators and providers.
Not publicly reported.
Unknown in public data: how long searches take, how many applications are denied, how many searches are abandoned.
A lease, or a supportive-housing unit, that the household keeps.
Housing providers.
Outcomes, not counts: rapid rehousing 59% exit to permanent housing (24% return to homelessness); permanent supportive housing 92% stay housed or exit to permanent housing. Households housed: not publicly reported.
The rates show programs work for those who get in. They do not show how many households reach this stage.
The sharpest public narrowing: 430 of 3,255 assessed households entered a housing program in 2025. After that gate, the public record goes quiet.
These are not one cohort. A household assessed in 2025 may have entered shelter in 2024, and the 659 people counted unsheltered on one January night are not a subset of anything below them. Compare counts only within a gate.
A shelter built to move people forward
The Bridge Shelter brings beds, treatment and housing assessments under one roof. If it works as designed, more people will leave it ready for a home. That is exactly why the exit matters.
Year-round shelter beds countywide, plus the Bridge Shelter
+27%20 units each, up to 160 beds.
Spaces for cars and RVs, about 80 people on an average night.
The city’s definition of “positive” includes long-term care and recovery housing, not only permanent housing.
If the new beds stayed full and turned over at 2025’s average stay of 91 days
Illustrative. The Bridge Shelter has no published length-of-stay target; not every stay is a different household; not every guest needs a housing program.
What happens when more people are ready to move out?
What’s on the market
Rental inventory changes daily. On October 22, 2026, Range Lab’s listings counted 2,500 rentals in Clark County listed with a rent, out of 2,532 on the market. 1,467 (59%) were confirmed on their listing site in the last 3 days. 2,068 are in the city of Vancouver; the rest are in Camas, Battle Ground, Ridgefield, Washougal, unincorporated areas and smaller towns.
only 27 listings mention vouchers
only 28 listings list features
There is no “verified available” filter: Range Lab doesn’t verify availability with landlords.
Every listing with a rent, all sizes.
Voucher prices vs. what people earn
Five prices for each unit size on one scale: what a household at 30% and at half of the area’s median income can pay, the median listing, the housing authority’s payment standard, and HUD’s Fair Market Rent.
FMR and payment standards cover rent plus utilities; listings show rent. After a utility allowance, fewer listings fit within a voucher than this chart shows.
With a voucher, the market is reachable.
The median listing is below HUD's Fair Market Rent at every size. 1,542 of 2,500 listings rent at or under VHA’s payment standard for their size: 65 studios, 366 one-bedrooms, 597 two-bedrooms, 405 three-bedrooms, and 109 with four or more.
The voucher is the scarce part. VHA administers about 3,200 vouchers. Its Housing Choice Voucher waiting list is closed, and 3,845 households were on it at the start of 2025.
Without one, it isn’t.
listings are affordable at 30% of the median income, where a single adult can pay $674. The median studio lists for $1,340, about double. At half the median: 213, about 1 in 12 (22 studios, 58 one-bedrooms, 121 two-bedrooms, 10 three-bedrooms, 2 with four or more).
For scale: HUD-assisted households in Clark County averaged $16,924 a year in income, which affords about $423 a month.
Rental supply and affordable rental supply are not the same thing. What closes the gap is a subsidy.
Not all rentals are viable rentals
Start with every listing on the market and apply what a household leaving shelter needs. These steps share one unit and one day, so the bars compare. The steps that decide whether a household gets the keys can’t be measured yet.
“There are 2,500 apartments listed” does not mean 2,500 realistic exits.
Side note, not a funnel step: 896 listings are both within the payment standard and were seen live on their source site in the last 3 days.
Where does housing opportunity exist relative to where people are receiving services?
Tap a circle for a ZIP’s listings, or a square for a site. Use Vancouver to zoom to the city.
of listings affordable at half the median income are in 98661, central Vancouver: 87 of 213, out of 460 listings there.
listings in 98662, the Bridge Shelter’s area, are affordable at half the median. 137 are within the payment standard.
listings in 98683, east Vancouver, are affordable at half the median.
Camas, Battle Ground, Ridgefield and Washougal have small samples at half the median; ZIPs with fewer than 30 listings aren’t ranked. 18 listings without an in-county ZIP are left off the map.
The Housing Exit Pressure Index
A way to ask, for each unit size: how many households are looking for each viable rental? We can’t calculate it yet. Here is why, and what we can show in the meantime.
Households seeking a housing placement, by size and subsidy type
Viable rental opportunities, by size
The number of households actively searching for a rental, by size and subsidy type, isn’t published. Coordinated entry’s annual counts (3,255 assessed, 430 enrolled) are yearly flows; dividing them by a one-day listing count would mix a year with a day.
| Size | ≤ VHA PS | ½ median | 30% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | 65 | 22 | 0 |
| 1 bedroom | 366 | 58 | 0 |
| 2 bedrooms | 597 | 121 | 0 |
| 3 bedrooms | 405 | 10 | 0 |
| 4+ bedrooms | 109 | 2 | 0 |
listings affordable at half the median income for every 100 renter households at or below half the median.
0 for the 11,820 renter households at or below 30% of the median.
Each square: one renter household at or below half the median. Fill: listings affordable to them today.
What could change the equation?
Six possibilities, drawn from what the data shows. None of them solves homelessness on its own.
- 01Real-time vacancy sharing from providers and landlords to navigators
Navigators search listings that may already be gone. A shared feed of open units, from the people who hold them, would shorten every search.
59%of listings with a rent (1,467 of 2,500) were live on their source site in the last 3 days. None are confirmed with a landlord.
- 02More landlord participation with vouchers and housing programs
The rents are there at voucher prices. The open question is whether landlords will take the voucher.
62%of listings are within VHA’s payment standard (1,542 of 2,500). Only 27 mention vouchers.
- 03Faster housing discovery, less staff time across fragmented rental sites
One county’s rentals are spread across national sites and local property managers’ pages. Every navigator checks them separately.
≈ 25sources carry Clark County’s listings on a given day.
- 04Eligibility matching before an application starts
Match household, program and unit before anyone pays an application fee or waits on a screening decision.
Not publicly reportedApplications denied, and why.
- 05Income-restricted inventory visible alongside market rentals
Tax-credit, VHA and project-based units rarely appear where people search for rentals.
≈ 100operating income-restricted properties (more than 7,200 units) in Range Lab’s directory aren’t in market search results.
- 06System visibility: connect shelter, program and rental data without exposing client data
Aggregate, privacy-safe connections between the two worlds on this page would make the pressure index computable.
Data connection requiredSee the information gap below.
The housing system has data. The challenge is connecting it.
- Point-in-time counts
- Shelter capacity and requests
- Coordinated entry assessments and program entries
- Program exit rates
- Rental asking prices
- Active rental inventory, daily
- Fair Market Rents and payment standards
- Households actively searching for a rental
- Time from referral to lease
- Applications denied
- Landlord participation
- Which units accept a voucher
- Searches abandoned
- Real-time affordable vacancies
- Outreach contact volume
- By-name list sizes (the lists exist; counts aren’t published)
11 · MethodologySources, dates and known limitations
“847 households assessed / 757 referred”: no source found; the published 2025 figures are 3,255 and 430.
The 50% Safe Stay “stable housing” figure on the Bridge Shelter page: it conflicts with the city’s 42% “positive exit” outcome, which we use with its definition.
WA Commerce county report-card rates: not extractable from the dashboard.
HUD voucher utilization rates: definitions differ by source.
Outreach contact counts: not published.
How Range Lab counts listings, rents and affordability on every page: methodology.
More shelter creates more opportunity to stabilize people experiencing homelessness. But successful exits depend on what comes next.
The next challenge is connecting people who are ready for housing with housing that is actually available, affordable, and accessible to them.
We build these analyses with the people doing the work.