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By and large, the number of homeless people surveyed recently in Seattle were either living in the city or King County when they became homeless. Of the 1,050 people who were surveyed, however, more are from out of state than those from Pierce, Snohomish, and Thurston counties combined.

A city-funded survey found that 12.8 percent of people in the survey are from out of state. A total of 11.2 percent come from the aforementioned counties.

A vague category of "another county in WA" made up 3.8 percent of the people surveyed.

And 2.1 percent of the 1,050 people are from outside of the country.

Those numbers aren't necessarily surprising when you factor in the fact that Washington homeless numbers rose by 7.3 percent in 2016 over 2015.

A report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found there were about 1,400 more people sleeping outside and in shelters last year.

The increase is the second-largest in the country, falling only behind California, the Associated Press reports. In all, there were 20,827 homeless people counted in Washington.

While Washington's homeless numbers rose, the number of homeless people declined in 37 states between 2015 and 2016, according to the report.

Homelessness has grown in the Seattle-King County area while it has dropped in Everett-Snohomish County, Tacoma-Pierce County, Spokane, Yakima, Vancouver-Clark County and the rest of Washington.

The results of the study were released Friday morning.
Q&A: Emergency Operations Center activated for Seattle's homelessness
The city paid surveyors to speak to people living in sanctioned and unsanctioned encampments, RVs and cars, and to hold focus groups targeting specific demographics, The Seattle Times reports.

The city paid a firm $100,000 for the study, which will help direct future funding for homeless programs.

People who responded to the survey were offered $5 gift cards to McDonald's, which were found to be a "great incentive."

The study also found about 35 percent say they moved here because of friends or family. And about the same amount came for a job. Ten percent say they moved here because of legal pot.

Just over 40 percent of the homeless people surveyed had some sort of job.

The city found 20 percent of people said that housing affordability as the reason they were on the streets.

During his annual State of the City address in February, Murray said he wants to increase property taxes in 2017 to generate $55 million to help address the city's homeless crisis. A funding package was expected within a few weeks of the announcement.

"For 3,000 people living unsheltered, our streets have become a default, inadequate and dangerous place to live," Murray said.

Though the city budgeted $108 million for homelessness services combined over the last two years, Murray said it has not been enough.

"Not enough for those who have been victims of crimes, like the young teenage girls who have been trapped in encampments and trafficked for sex. Not enough for the three toddlers found without parents under the Spokane Street Viaduct. We must do more to address the dangers faced by those living in unauthorized encampments."

In addition to his proposed property tax, Murray activated the Emergency Operations Center to respond to the homeless crisis.

Living arrangements

Forty-five percent of those surveyed reported spending the prior night outdoors. Of those, 30 percent being in an authorized encampment, 22 percent in a park, 9 percent in a vehicle, and 8 percent in a camper, RV, or van. Another 34 percent said they spend the night on a sidewalk or public right of way.

Duration

Forty-four percent of the 1,050 surveyed were experiencing homelessness for the first time. Half said they had been homeless for a year or more.

On the low end, 2.4 percent said they had been homeless for seven days or less.

Leading cause of homelessness

Just over 25 percent say the reason they are homeless is because of job loss. Another 12.9 percent blame alcohol or drug use. Just over 11 percent blame rent increase.

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Nearly 13 percent of homeless surveyed in Seattle are from outside state

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By and large, the number of homeless people surveyed recently in Seattle were either living in the city or King County when they became homeless. Of the 1,050 people who were surveyed, however, more are from out of state than those from Pierce, Snohomish, and Thurston counties combined.

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The Neediest Cases Fund

Driving down a tight mountain road in Jarabacoa, a town in the middle of the Dominican Republic, Oscar Pedro Duran Abreu saw the oncoming Jeep weaving in the other lane before it hit him.

He remembers trying to swerve. He remembers the Jeep slamming into his side door, pushing his car into the safety blocks on the side of the road, saving him from a steep fall down the mountainside.

"And I don't remember anything else," he said of that day in September 2010.

Mr. Duran learned later that the other driver had been drunk and that his Jeep had flipped. The four passengers in the Jeep were injured, but the driver, unharmed, pushed his way out of the vehicle and fled. "Leaving me for dead," Mr. Duran said.

Unconscious, Mr. Duran was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was in a coma for 29 days.

Six years later, seated at a table with his children, Jose and Karina Duran, and speaking through an interpreter, Mr. Duran leaned back in a chair at his son's school and recalled emerging from the coma with his jaw wired shut. He looked around and thought, "What happened?"

The accident left him with injuries to his neck, spinal cord and knee, as well as a broken jaw, extensive memory loss and nerve damage causing numbness in his face. The crash also knocked out eight teeth, which he has not been able to afford to replace. He spent the next 92 days on bed rest.

Doctors placed metal plates in his neck and left knee, but he is still unable to bend the knee or kneel and has trouble walking. "Since the accident, my closest friend has been pain," he said.

The sixth of 11 children, Mr. Duran grew up on a farm in Jarabacoa, where his family grew yucca and sweet potatoes, among other crops, until he was 18. With only a sixth-grade education, he left for Santo Domingo, the capital, working as a shoe shiner and a waiter, and held various jobs in a supermarket, a casino and a hospital. He later began a 22-year career in the national police force, working as a homicide investigator in Jarabacoa until his accident.

But his extensive injuries kept him from returning to the national police. Then, in 2012, the 10-year relationship with the mother of his children fell apart. She took the children to live with her, but Mr. Duran eventually had them come live with him.

To get them out of the Dominican Republic, his mother, a permanent resident of the United States who often stayed with her children in New York, referred him for a residential visa. He joined the family in New York in July 2013, fulfilling his mother's wish to have all of her children together in the United States. She returned to the Dominican Republic after settling him in America, and died six months later.

Unable to work because of his injuries, Mr. Duran struggled to find his way in a new country. He lived with siblings in Brooklyn for a year but was unable to contribute to the family's income. So in spring 2014, he found himself homeless with his children in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

"It was cold," Jose, now 12, recalled of the two nights they spent sleeping on a park bench.

Mr. Duran added: "Life has kicked me down. But I have to go forward - for them." He smiled at his children, who sat quietly on each side of him.

Mr. Duran found them a studio at a city shelter on East 178th Street in the Bronx. His request for two rooms - one for his daughter, 10, for privacy - was later granted. The family does not pay rent, but with Mr. Duran unable to work, it struggles to make ends meet. In March 2016, Mr. Duran briefly worked as a cabdriver. However, the car payments and maintenance, coupled with the pain from his knee injury, soon became too much, and he quit the service. Now the family receives $205 a month in food stamps.

Jose, a seventh grader at C.S. 211, a bilingual magnet school in the Bronx, is working to become fluent in English. His sister is already fluent. The after-school program is run by the Children's Aid Society, one of the eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.

In April, after-school program staff members noticed that Jose was wearing the same ill-fitting clothes every day. The Children's Aid Society provided the family with $375 in gift cards to Payless, Old Navy and Modell's Sporting Goods to buy new school clothes and shoes for the children.

Despite the family's struggles, Mr. Duran said he did not let poverty bother him. He spoke reverently of his father, Pedro Lucia Duran, a forest ranger and village confidant, whom he called "a simple man, an honorable man."

He added: "There's no man like my father. He raised 11 children to be serious and honest, and he did it as a poor man." For that reason, he also does not seek out riches.

"My father always said, 'In America, the president eats lobster,'" he recalled with a laugh. "'But in the Dominican Republic, the poor eat lobster.'"

Mr. Duran said he wanted only to raise his own children in the same manner as his father.

While in the United States, he hopes his children can work toward their own dreams. Karina, a fifth grader, enjoys painting and drawing and would like to become a pop star, she said with a shy smile. Jose - who "really can draw," according to his sister - is fascinated by space, but has no interest in becoming an astronaut. He wants to build the spaceships instead.

"And my American dream?" Mr. Duran said. "My dream is that if I die today, my children will be able to do what they want and to remain humble and polite."

As for Mr. Duran, 52, he worries that he is a burden on a social assistance system that, after a career in the Dominican Republic, he is unable to contribute to here. He would like to return to his country one day, he said, adding that he was happy there. But he fears that politics, drugs and guns have broken an otherwise beautiful nation.

"America is the best there is," he said. "I'm thankful to this country for taking me and my children in. But despite all these problems in my country, if I could, I'd still go back."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: After an Accident, Pain Has Been His 'Closest Friend'. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Comatose, Then Homeless: 'My Closest Friend Has Been Pain'

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The Neediest Cases Fund Driving down a tight mountain road in Jarabacoa, a town in the middle of the Dominican Republic, Oscar Pedro Duran Abreu saw the oncoming Jeep weaving in the other lane before it hit him. He remembers trying to swerve.

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A homeless veteran begs for change on a New York street. Passers-by ignore him, giving their money to a teen begging nearby. One man dumps his takeout on the unfortunate veteran, showing what he thinks of his service. You won't believe what happened next...

The veteran asks the teen to "watch his stuff" as he cleans up at a nearby shop. A few minutes later he returns, bringing a slice of pizza for the boy. Little did he know that the "homeless teen" was actually part of a social experiment, set up by two brothers from Brooklyn.

Mohammed "Moe" and Etayyim "ET" Etayyim became YouTube celebrities for filming a series of prank videos starting in early 2014. They have also made seven "social experiment" videos highlighting child abuse, bigotry and the treatment of the homeless.

In this video, posted September 23, Moe and ET dress up their younger brother Omar as a homeless teen and sit him right next to a genuine homeless veteran, trying to scrounge up money for food. A six-minute video shows people persistently ignoring the older man, and giving money to Omar instead.

At one point, a man in a striped polo shirt and a fedora rebuffs the veteran, sneering at his plea that he "served his country."

"You served your country?" the man says, before dumping the contents of his takeout box onto the unfortunate veteran. "Here's something that served your country. How is that about serving your country?"

Asking Omar to watch his possessions as he cleans up, the veteran returns shortly with a slice of pizza for the boy - at which point Moe and ET reveal themselves. Hugging the veteran, they hand him the contents of Omar's cup and another $200 to get a hotel room.

"People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel," the video's parting message reads.

Residents of Brooklyn's Bay Ridge neighborhood and sons of a Palestinian immigrant, the Etayyim brothers previously attracted attention of local media in June 2014, after being criticized by community activists for filming their prank videos in African-American neighborhoods of Brownsville and East New York.

One activist said the brothers were "putting their lives in jeopardy," according to the New York Daily News. In one video, for example, the brothers went up to random people and asked if they "had a problem."
READ MORE: Hundreds of NYC workers homeless, as mayor to offer permanent housing
Homelessness is a serious problem in New York City, with an estimated 60,000 people - 25,000 of them children - sleeping in a shelter each night, according to a March 2015 report from the Coalition for the Homeless.

Some 300 city workers have been forced into shelters or on the streets, unable to afford the skyrocketing rents, according to a recent report by the New York Post. Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged to provide them with permanent housing.

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Shocking video shows NY man throwing food on homeless vet

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A homeless veteran begs for change on a New York street. Passers-by ignore him, giving their money to a teen begging nearby. One man dumps his takeout on the unfortunate veteran, showing what he thinks of his service. You won't believe what happened next...