Seattle Nice: Is It Time to Admit the King County Regional Homelessness Authority Is a Bust?

By Erica C. Barnett

In a Seattle Nice episode that's already earning raves like "Depressing!" and "God damn it!," we discussed the past, present, and future of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, an agency established with the lofty goal of rebuilding the region's homelessness system from the ground up.

The KCRHA, which came out of discussions in the late 2010s about the need for a (say it with me) "regional approach to homelessness," was supposed to bring King County and its 39 cities together and reach a consensus on the most effective approach to homelessness, then rebid the entire homelessness system to fund only the most effective programs, using money that would come not just from the city and county but other King County cities where homelessness is rampant, including the ones that have historically opposed homeless services inside their borders.

Things didn't pan out that way. Early missteps, resistance from suburban leaders, and the failure of a heavily hyped public-private partnership that focused the agency's attention on downtown Seattle (about as far from "regional" as you can get) set the KCRHA back in its early years, and the promised "total system rebid" never materialized.

Now, the agency is essentially an administrative body responsible for administering existing contracts and taking on political blame (and legal risks) when something goes wrong. And its staff, including the CEO, answer directly to politicians pursuing their own parochial interests, leaving the agency vulnerable to unilateral decisions by elected officials—like when Mayor Bruce Harrell began clawing back control over homeless services, starting with outreach and homelessness prevention.

With the news last week that the KCRHA is threatening to cut one-fifth of its staff if they don't get $4.7 million this year to increase their administrative budget, the agency's future feels more tenuous than at any point in its brief history. (It doesn't help that the threatened cuts are tanking morale that was already low, or that the infighting between the agency's top leaders has become an open secret).

So will the KCRHA end up being a short-lived experiment, like the Seattle Monorail Project? Or is it, as some have argued, too big to fail? Sandeep and I discuss all that and more on this week's show.