By Erica C. Barnett
An initial round of layoffs is imminent at the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. Management reportedly informed the agency’s executive leadership team last week which staffers will lose their jobs in late August or early September. Agency CEO Kelly Kinnison told city and county leaders basic details about the layoffs in a weekly meeting last week.
The job cuts are part of a transition plan that will move most of the homeless service contracts KCRHA currently oversees back to the city of Seattle and King County, which managed them before KCRHA took them over in 2021.
In April, a forensic audit found that the KCRHA lacked basic financial controls and used casual accounting practices to keep track of and balance its budget, lost track of at least $8 million in spending, and had an ongoing, steadily growing negative cash balance that required it to take out ever-larger loans from the county, resulting in interest payments that the agency couldn’t afford.
Since then, agency leaders have downplayed the problems and blamed them on early mistakes by previous KCRHA management, including founding CEO Mark Dones. As Kinnison and her recently hired deputy, William Towey, insisted the problems identified in the audit were fixable, the city and county worked out a plan to largely dismantle the agency. King County and Seattle are now in the process of taking back control of homeless contracts the two governments previously controlled and staffing up with the expectation that KCRHA will dramatically reduce its workforce.
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A KCRHA spokesperson would not provide details about the layoffs last week. However, KCRHA staffers have expressed concern that some of the initial job losses will be in areas the agency still needs to do the work it will retain for now, like the “point-in-time count” of the region’s homeless population and the region’s annual application for federal homelessness dollars, rather than the areass where KCRHA staff will soon be redundant, such as the program and finance divisions.
Last week, staff represented by the PROTEC17 union sent a letter to the agency’s governing board urging the board to lay off Kinnison and Towey, whose combined compensation tops $600,000—”the direct financial cost of five to six full-time operational staff,” the letter says. “In a crisis, preserving positions that directly manage vendor contracts, coordinate shelter logistics, and administer Coordinated Entry produces a far higher operational yield than maintaining executive overhead.”
The union members also cited controversies that, they argued, could put the KCRHA’s reputation at continued risk, including bias complaints and allegations of retaliation as well as evidence that Kinnison sought to withhold records from public disclosure, in potential violation of the state Public Records Act.
“In a crisis, preserving positions that directly manage vendor contracts, coordinate shelter logistics, and administer Coordinated Entry produces a far higher operational yield than maintaining executive overhead.”
The finance committee of the agency’s governing board is reportedly scheduled to discuss the layoffs in their meeting on Thursday. However, unlike governing board meetings and a June finance committee meeting, this meeting will not be open to the public. According to the agency spokesperson, a resolution adopted in June making the committee an advisory, rather than decision-making, body meant its meetings no longer have to be public.
KCRHA currently has 73 staff, a number that includes one of the seven new positions the governing board approved, at Kinnison’s request, back in June. (None of the other positions were filled.) The agency has overspent its administrative budget by as much as $1 million so far this year.
“We anticipate there will be further staff reductions in 2026 and 2027 as contracts fully transition back to the City and County,” the KCRHA spokesperson said. “During the transition there will be functional overlap, with KCRHA managing 2026 contracts into early 2027 for closeout—while the City and County hire staff in 2026 and prepare to onboard the 2027 contracts.”
Kinnison will be out of the office later this week and will not be at the finance committee meeting; Towey will (not for the first time) attend in her stead.