By Erica C. Barnett
One group that was notably missing from a public discussion of Mayor Katie Wilson’s shelter expansion plan was the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which is supposed to manage every publicly funded homeless shelter contract in the region. Instead, the city is going it alone in Wilson’s top campaign priority—building 1,000 new units of shelter, such as tiny house villages, in 2026, and a total of 4,000 by the end of her term.
Wilson’s team has said they can move faster if the city does the work. But they’re also waiting on the outcome of a major forensic audit that could shed unfavorable light on the KCRHA’s finance and budgeting practices. That audit, which the city is paying an outside consultant more than $600,000 to conduct, has been going on since August and is supposed to wrap up this month. (King County is also helping to pay for the audit.)
So far, Wilson’s team has not suggested that they’re concerned about KCRHA’s ability to administer homelessness contracts; instead, they’ve said it’s just easier and more logical for the city to do it.
Near the end of a city council committee meeting on Wednesday, for instance, Council President Joy Hollingsworth asked whether the KCRHA would “have a role” in the city’s big shelter expansion plans. Or, Hollingsworth asked, “are we transitioning that a little bit now to what we’re doing at the city, because those outcomes have not been—I’ll just be frank—what the public has anticipated for the money that we have been spending or giving to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority?”
Jon Grant, Wilson’s homelessness advisor, hemmed and hawed. “You know, we have, I think, a very important partnership and relationship with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. …. And I think that collaboration will continue.” But, Grant said, it just makes more sense for the city itself to oversee the new shelters and administer contracts through the city’s Human Services Department—”in parallel to the work that we are also still doing with KCRHA and the work that they’re doing to operate the existing base of shelters,” of course.
Former mayor Bruce Harrell also worked to bring some of the work KCRHA was overseeing back in direct city control—focusing specifically on outreach and homelessness prevention, two areas the Harrell Administration said KCRHA “did not have the capacity” to oversee, given that they busy trying to implement Partnership for Zero—a plan, later abandoned, to end unsheltered homelessness in downtown Seattle.
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The forensic audit is taking a close look at the KCRHA’s finances—including the agency’s ongoing negative budget balance, which I wrote about last year. (KCRHA essentially starts every year with a fund balance of zero and borrows money, with interest to pay contractors throughout the year, paying back the loans when they receive money from funders.)
According to the city’s contract with consultant Clark Nuber, issued last July, the audit will “assess and document King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s (“KCRHA”) use and allocation of contributed funds; analyze the underlying drivers of its recurring negative cash position; assess the adequacy of the accounting infrastructure, information flow, and reporting; evaluate and reconcile cash advance activity to understand and identify issues related to reporting and reimbursement; and provide best practice recommendations to improve systems and processes.”
The audit was supposed to wrap up in December but the city extended the contract until the end of April late last year.
The homelessness agency has been audited before, by the state auditor and the King County Department of Human and Community Services, which raised serious concerns about the KCRHA’s accounting and monitoring practices—finding, for instance, that the agency had spent grant funding on ineligible projects, failed to executive projects on time, and had accounting errors that led to a negative balance at the end of the year.
The audit covers the period between 2021, when KCRHA started operations and July 2025. According to the contract, “If issues or suspected malfeasance are identified, the Consultant will propose additional targeted procedures to further investigate, which may include considerations such as expansion of the time range under scope, performing data analytics, staff and management interviews, and other related procedures.”
It’s unclear whether this audit, like the earlier ones, will find concerning issues with KCRHA’s internal accounting and budget practices, although early reports from people familiar with the process say it’s unlikely to be flattering. What is clear is that the city and county, which provide nearly 80 percent of the KCRHA’s budget, are following the outcome closely.
A spokesperson for Wilson told PubliCola the mayor’s office is “certainly aware of the audit, which was jointly commissioned by the previous administrations








