By Erica C. Barnett
Darrell Powell, the interim director of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, abruptly fired the KCRHA’s interim Chief Financial Officer James Rouse last week, according to sources familiar with the decision. Rouse had the job for just six months; he replaced another interim CFO, Bill Reichert, who was also at the agency for less than six months. KCRHA confirmed that Rouse is no longer working for the agency but would not provide additional details, and PubliCola was unable to reach Rouse on Friday.
Sources familiar with the situation said Rouse and Powell had recently clashed over whether to pay the Low-Income Housing Institute $1 million from the tiny house village provider’s 2023 contract.
The money was still unpaid at the beginning of 2024 because of a contract stipulation that prevents KCRHA contractors from moving more than 10 percent of their budget for any project from one expense type to another—for example, from staff salaries to utilities. Because the details of large contracts tend to change over the course of a year (a site gets more expensive, or monthly utility costs go up), providers may end up paying for unanticipated expenses out of pocket and seeking reimbursement at the end of the year through an annual reconciliation process.
Because the KCRHA moved to a new system for filing reconciliation forms last year, LIHI asked KCRHA staff for assistance starting late last year, but reportedly never heard back; by the time LIHI asked the city of Seattle to intervene, the KCRHA had already sent the money back to the city, which provided the funding in the first place. Eventually, a high-level city staffer intervened and LIHI got paid in late April. It’s unclear whether Powell or Rouse decided not to just reimburse LIHI the $1 million in the first place, but Rouse was the one who paid for the decision.
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The city of Seattle has made no secret about its lack of confidence in the KCRHA, and often treats the homelessness authority as department of the city. In February, the city took back responsibility for homelessness outreach and prevention, which had been the KCRHA’s purview, saying the agency “did not have capacity to fulfill the outreach, coordination, and referral roles” that it took on in 2021.
The city also ordered the KCRHA to cut its budget for next year, and—unlike in the past—the agency quickly fell into line. In an April memo, the city “instructed” the agency to reduce its budget to reflect a 1 percent cut in city funding, and to “not propose any other funding increase unless it is offset by reductions or is revenue-backed.”
The resulting 2025 homelessness budget will cut as many as 300 shelter beds and eliminate rapid rehousing funds that are currently keeping 265 families from becoming homeless. The budget will likely require the closure of Benu Community Home, a low-barrier shelter serving Black men in the Central District that has been funded with federal COVID emergency dollars, as well as cuts to tiny house villages.
The new budget, at $230 million, is $39 million lighter than the “stabilization plan” KCRHA staff proposed in March, which would have preserved existing services and provided an across-the-board inflationary wage adjustment for homeless service providers.
In a letter to the implementation board, the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness urged the board to, at a minimum, adopt the March version of the budget. “The KCRHA, as the organization charged with leading a regional homelessness response, should not simply maintain an insufficient system during an emergency,” the letter, which was also signed by representatives from the King County Alliance for Human Services and the Seattle Human Services Coalition, said.
Advocacy groups were conspicuously absent from the KCRHA implementation board meeting last week, where the board adopted a resolution endorsing the shelter-slashing budget, because the authority moved the meeting back one hour without sending out a public notice. Advocates expressed dismay at missing their last chance to comment before the board approved a resolution supporting the budget, which includes language asking the KCRHA’s funders (primarily the city and county) to “explore all potential scenarios to reconsider” the cuts.
The KCRHA does not send out email notices to let the public know when meetings are happening or when they’re rescheduled, which means that even people who attend the agency’s regularly scheduled meetings have no way of knowing about changes unless they check in regularly on the meeting agenda on the KCRHA’s website, which is buried in a fifth-level sub-page with no information on any previous page to indicate whether anything has changed.
PubliCola put the meeting on our calendar for the regular time of 2pm. By the time we logged on, the board had gone into executive session to interview candidates for the job of permanent KCRHA CEO, which has been filled by interim directors since the last permanent CEO, Marc Dones, left almost exactly one year ago.
One of those candidates, interim director Powell, reportedly made off-color comments about the LGBTQ+ community during a recent job interview for the permanent position.
Powell, a longtime friend of Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and the mayor’s pick for the interim role, was responding to a question about equity when he reportedly volunteered that he didn’t like the KCRHA’s gender-neutral restrooms and, in general, didn’t get the “LGBTQ stuff.” Former director Dones, who is nonbinary, emphasized gender inclusiveness at the authority, directing staff to introduce themselves with their pronouns and implementing the switch to gender-neutral restrooms.
KCRHA would not confirm Powell’s comments. When PubliCola approached Powell directly at an event on Monday, he declined to speak with us.
