By Erica C. Barnett
Darrell Powell, the interim CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, informed the authority’s implementation board that he is withdrawing his name from consideration as permanent CEO on Thursday. Powell was Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell’s choice to take over the beleaguered agency as interim, and was one of three finalists for the permanent position. The last permanent agency director, Marc Dones, resigned exactly one year ago today.
In his letter to the board, Powell said he had become convinced that the agency needs to fundamentally reform its governance structure, which includes “over three dozen members serving in some form of a governance position across multiple boards,” leading to “too many cooks in the kitchen.”
“I am aware that the City of Seattle and King County are working to address this issue but based on my personal experience in this role and through the interview process, the current environment will make it extremely difficult for any CEO to excel,” Powell wrote. “Managing that dynamic is a distraction in the immediate and an impediment in the long-term.”
It has been clear for months that the KCRHA, under pressure not just from the city and county but former Gov. Christine Gregoire and the Seattle Metro Chamber of Commerce, is likely to fold its existing governing and implementation boards (made up of elected officials and people who are supposed to have some form of subject-matter expertise, respectively) into one board made up mostly of elected officials.
However, the third “board”—the Continuum of Care Advisory Committee—is not a board in the same sense; it’s federally mandated, does not make governance decisions about the KCRHA, and can’t just be disbanded, however often elected officials express astonishment at the KCRHA’s supposed three-board governing structure.
PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you.
CLICK BELOW to become a one-time or monthly contributor.
Powell also expressed frustration at the fact that, as CEO, he has felt pressure to do the agency funders’ bidding. An example of this—one Powell didn’t mention explicitly in his letter—is the fact that the city of Seattle ordered the KCRHA to cut its budget and not propose any new programs, and the agency’s boards immediately complied.
“Based on feedback I have received, it is unclear whether the CEO of this organization should be that of a strategic disruptor or in contrast, more conciliatory and deferential,” Powell wrote. “I have received mixed messages from the many stakeholders in this process and my belief is the next CEO will experience the same.”
In addition to the governance challenges, Powell said, there was a second reason he decided to withdraw from the process: “I have found the interview process to be unnecessarily politicized and, in fact, compromised, at least based on my personal experience.” Specifically, Powell pointed to the fact that PubliCola reported on comments he made during his interview to the effect that he didn’t “get” the “LGBTQ stuff,” and that he didn’t like the agency’s gender-neutral restrooms.
Powell claimed in his letter to the board that “a reporter” (me) “sent a message to the KCRHA Communication Director that they planned to write an article about alleged comments or interpretation thereof that I shared during the ‘confidential interview.'” In fact, I described what I had learned in detail and asked the KCRHA for comment; I also directly approached Powell when I saw him at an event at City Hall and asked him to speak to me, but he responded, “No.”
“To date, I have never been afforded an explanation and this reflects an obvious violation that occurred in the process to my detriment and with complete impunity for whoever shared these comments in bad faith,” Powell continued.
Unlike other government agencies—including the Office of Police Accountability, Seattle Public Schools, and the Seattle Public Library—the KCRHA has chosen to conduct the business of hiring a director to oversee the region’s response to homelessness in complete secrecy. Unsurprisingly, details about the search for such a high-profile position—a job that will pay as much as $300,000, according to the posting—tend not to remain an ironclad secret.
Powell’s decision to withdraw his name comes immediately after the agency released its second “point-in-time count” of the region’s homeless population in two years. The number, derived from an interview-based method called respondent-driven sampling rather than a physical count, increased from 13,368 in 2022 to 16,385 this year, with a slight increase in the percentage of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, shows that the slight increases in spending on homelessness over the last two years have not decreased the rate of homelessness in King County. They also show the need for a concerted effort to address the issue rather than arguing over who is in charge of what.
I think the 23% increase in the homeless population here doesn’t tell us much about the success or failure of KCRHA over the last 2 years. It mainly reflects the fact that there is a significant shortage of housing, especially low-income housing. Also, consider that 60% of the homeless here had their last stable housing in western Washington outside of Seattle. Very few are coming from out of state, or even from eastern Washington. So, homelessness is increasing due to low housing supply and high population growth in the whole western Washington region. If KCRHA were more effective, maybe we would be making a slightly bigger dent in the problem, and it’s true they are underfunded compared to the magnitude of displacement of folks from housing.
If we wanted to be serious about addressing homelessness in the region, we would go out and find all 10-15 thousand homeless folks, figure out their needs and create a good model of the services necessary to address the whole population. We would find that some percentage just need a stable roof over their heads for several months and drug treatment, while others need more serious mental health care. We are only addressing a small part of the problem, because we can’t allocate enough funding. So, we waste a lot of resources displacing homeless folks out of one location and pushing them into another location. (When the city does a “removal”, very few of the people get into shelter, most simply move down the road.) We need to understand much more about the dynamics: how many are exiting homelessness successfully, and how many are becoming newly homeless? How many are coming into Seattle from the region? We aren’t doing this because it would require more resources than we are willing to raise from taxes. This problem will not be resolved anytime soon until we get more serious about our approach. My Humble Opinion.
(My 60% number comes from a survey of 50 homeless folks I did at the Bitter Lake encampment in the summer of 2021. 35% were from Seattle and <5% from farther away.)
I don’t disagree with you. Any solution for fixing the homeless mess has to start with basic math. Let’s say there’s 15,000 homeless people we’d like to find stable housing for. I’d guess, on average, each of these poor souls would need a $500,000 investment for this to happen. That’s what housing with wrap around services would cost. That works out to $7,500,000,000 right? Where on earth would Seattle find that kind of money?
Mayor Bruce is a really smart dude. He knows the City doesn’t have a spare 7 billion for low income housing. Even if the Mayor had an extra 7 billion, he wouldn’t spend it homeless lowlifes at a time the public schools are broke and our sidewalks and streets are in general disrepair.
What we have is a major education failure in the general public and it’s more acute in Liberal Arts grads. There’s no money for low income housing, guaranteed income schemes, universal healthcare. Shit, Seattle Schools are broke right now. Would it be asking too much if we included some basic math and statistics as a requirement to graduate high school? and college?
No surprise here…