Tag: King County Regional Homelessness Authority

homelessness

KCRHA Board Will Meet Today to Discuss Disastrous Forensic Audit

By Erica C. Barnett

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s governing board, made up of elected officials from around the region, will meet today for a briefing and discussion on a damning forensic evaluation into the agency’s finances. The audit found potential misuse and commingling of restricted funds, spending that could not be accounted for, casual accounting practices, and lack of oversight and internal controls to protect against waste, abuse, and fraud.

The report covered a period ending in July 2025, when the agency’s cash balance was negative by $44.7 million. A few months after the audit began, agency CEO Kelly Kinnison laid off 13 staff, including the general counsel and chief financial officer. Neither position has been filled. At the same time, Kinnison hired five new staff, including three top executives, offsetting some of the savings from axing the agency’s attorney and the executive overseeing its finances.

Elected officials issued a flurry of statements ranging from alarm to calls for the KCRHA’s dissolution on Wednesday. Four Seattle-area leaders who expressed grave concerns—King County Executive Girmay Zahilay, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, and Seattle City Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Dionne Foster—are on the governing board.

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In advance of today’s meeting, KCRHA’s Associate Director of Strategy, William Towey—who was among the new executives Kinnison hired last October—sent an email to KCRHA staff assuring them that the agency has “made meaningful progress [to] bring transparency to where we needed to improve and to help guide the work ahead.”

“Core operations are stronger, invoicing is now completed on time with significantly improved accuracy, we have implemented regular monthly financial close processes, and we have strengthened oversight of spending, including purchase cards”—spending by individual staffers that was done with little accountability or oversight, the audit found. “At the same time, the audit makes clear that more work is required, and we are already taking action to address those areas.”

Towey’s letter to staff emphasized that, “[i]mportantly, the audit did not find evidence of fraud or misuse of funds.” However, the audit explicitly says that the failure to find “large-scale fraud in the samples reviewed” does not mean a clear bill of health; “due to limitations in internal controls, the risk of fraud, waste, and abuse remains,” the audit notes.

Towey told KCRHA staff Kinnison herself requested the audit, a claim that sources inside the city as well as former KCRHA staff have disputed, saying that Kinnison’s former deputy, Simon Foster, requested it after discussions with the Seattle Human Services Department. (Foster was among the 13 laid-off staff.)

In a formal complaint last August, then-CFO James Rouse (one of the 13 staff let go last October) said Kinnison had not initiated the review and seemed unaccountably dismissive about the implications of a forensic audit, which is typically done when there’s a suspicion of wrongdoing, such as fraud.

Ordinarily, an agency under audit would have the opportunity to respond in writing to the audit and have the response released as part of the audit itself, but that didn’t happen in this case. Kinnison is expected to respond to the audit findings verbally at the KCRHA’s board meeting this afternoon.

One question that’s unlikely to come up at the meeting is what responsibility the elected officials on the board, as well as the KCRHA’s two main funders, the city and King County, had for ensuring its spending was in order and its accounting practices met basic standards. In 2024, the city and county gave the governing board more authority, but the officials on the board never took a particularly active role in questioning or overseeing the agency or its budget. Instead, the board generally rubber-stamped the budget after viewing a PowerPoint presentation, effectively ceding authority to the CEO and staff to hold themselves accountable.

homelessness

Forensic Audit Finds Homelessness Agency Lacked Basic Accounting Standards, Lost at Least $13 Million
KCRHA director Kelly Kinnison

By Erica C. Barnett

A forensic evaluation into the King County Regional Homelessness Authority’s finances found that the agency could not account for $13 million in public funding, according to a statement from Mayor Katie Wilson that also said “all options are on the table” when it comes to the embattled agency’s future. The city “will be pursuing immediate corrective action,” Wilson said. (The report is not a formal audit, but we’ll be using that term colloquially, with the recognition that it was officially an evaluation.)

In addition to the money that went missing—which includes $8 million the agency couldn’t account for, an administrative overspend of more than $4 million, and a previously reported programmatic overspend of more than $6 million—the report raises serious concerns about the KCRHA’s accounting practices and use of restricted funds, some of which may have been used for unauthorized purposes.

The report found, for example, that KCRHA used a single fund as a repository for earmarked money from various sources, then spent money from that fund to temporarily pay for other things, reimbursing the fund once the money came in for the contractor that received the original loan. A hypothetical example of this would be receiving federal dollars to pay for emergency shelter, using that money to pay for a homelessness diversion program while waiting for money to come in for that contract from the city, then putting the “loaned” federal money back in the pot so it goes to its original purpose.

“We were unable to determine to what extent restricted funds, intended for specific purposes, were used to temporarily cover unrelated costs,” the auditors wrote, “because the accounting records… obscured end-to-end traceability.” In general, they wrote, “we were unable to clearly determine if funds had been commingled or used for purposes other than intended due to traceability issues and use of large, complex reallocations.”

“Without clear tracking of funds, the organization could not easily demonstrate that cash was consistently used for its intended purpose. This increased the risk of potential noncompliance with Funder and contract requirements.”

PubliCola reported on the audit, by the accounting firm Clark Nuber, last week. The investigation, for which Seattle spent more than $600,000, started last August and was extended at the end of the year for additional work.

One issue the audit looked into was KCRHA’s routine negative budget balance, which requires the agency to borrow money, at interest, to pay its contractors every year. This balance, Clark Nuber found, went up and down throughout the year, including at times when the city had just loaned the KCRHA money to pay its bills. At times, the difference between what the agency owed and its cash on hand was close to $80 million.

The problem was caused, in part, by the fact that KCRHA often spent money it didn’t have yet, reconciling its accounts after the fact. The agency’s accounting staff also frequently submitted invoices that had significant errors; correcting those errors meant the agency went longer without getting paid, and relied heavily on borrowed money to pay providers.

“We would have expected that advance funds would have supported ongoing positive cash flow,” the auditors wrote. “However, we also noted that expenditures often occurred well before receipt of advances and were retroactively applied, meaning that expenditures were made before actual advance cash was available.”

“Erroneous invoices were rejected by [the city and county] and sent back to KCRHA for correction. Depending on the issue, the correction process was lengthy and administratively burdensome,” the auditors found. Twenty-five of the 29 sample invoices Clark Nuber inspected included errors, and all failed to include a mandatory authorization form.

According to the audit, had no consistent accounting system and routinely made errors that prevented payments from going out. In a departure from best practices, the agency didn’t reconcile its accounts at the end of each month, and did not use a single accounting system to track corrections, changes, and amendments to accounts.

Instead, the $200 million agency relied on “institutional knowledge,” “manual workarounds,” and “informal processes,” such as emails and “thousands” of edits to widely accessible Excel spreadsheet, to “complete core cash-related processes, including bank reconciliations.” In many cases, the same person was able to enter, revise, and delete individual transactions with no clear oversight.

“Cash position awareness appeared to rely primarily on informal reporting, manual tracking, and point‑in‑time statements provided after the fact by the County, rather than on forward-looking, system‑driven reporting,” the audit found.

“Issues and reconciling items were frequently resolved through informal channels such as chat messages rather than through retained workpapers or system documentation,” the audit found. “Nor did there appear to be standard internal controls to ensure there was no fraud, waste, or abuse.” In one example the audit found, the same person was responsible for entering information about cash flows and certifying that the information was correct.

The audit also found potential issues with prepaid gift cards given out to participants in the agency’s biannual Point In Time count, which relies on volunteer recruitment rather than a physical count of homeless individuals, and the use of purchase (credit) cards by staff. Typically, the report notes, these cards are only used for small, “incidental” spending, but KCRHA staff charged more than $1 million over the approximately four-year audit period, including for office furniture and clothing, raising questions about whether the cards were used properly. The $1.1 million included about $360,000 in expenditures for an ill-fated hotel program run by the Lived Experience Coalition, which PubliCola covered extensively in 2023.

In a sample of 14 “high-dollar” purchases, Clark Nuber found that every purchase raised concerns, including purchases by someone other than the cardholder, missing receipts, and approvals by people who were not authorized to approve such expenses.

King County Executive Girmay Zahilay and Wilson sent a joint letter to Kinnison spelling out steps to establish “clear fiscal controls and accountability for taxpayer funds, and directing KCRHA to “act swiftly to address identified challenges” from the report.” The letter says the KCRHA needs to take specific steps such as separating accounting duties so that the same person isn’t overseeing expenditures and compliance checks; setting strict rules for employee reimbursements and gift cards; and provide a written correction plan for the issues raised in the report.

Late Wednesday afternoon, Kinnison sent a letter to the agency’s governing board late this afternoon, which said that Kinnison had requested the audit “to ensure transparency and establish a clear, independent understanding” of what she called “concerns related to our financial systems and reporting during the agency’s early formation.” (Multiple sources familiar with how the audit came about disputed this characterization).

The audit covers the period through July 2025.

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Shortly after this post originally ran, King County Executive Girmay Zahilay’s office released the audit along with a joint letter from Zahilay and Wilson saying the two executives “expect KCRHA to act swiftly to address identified challenges” from the report, with a response

In her letter, Kinnison said the audit’s negative findings “are concentrated in KCRHA’s early formation period and reflect structural challenges associated with startup conditions, the pandemic response, an initially fragmented governance framework, and a highly complex funding model. Since that time, we have made meaningful progress. Governance has been restructured, and core operations — including contracts, data systems, and provider coordination — are functioning more effectively. Our financial systems have also improved, though additional strengthening is still needed.”

The report noted that although many of the issues arose under earlier CEOs, including controversial founding CEO Marc Dones, many of the problems have not been corrected since current CEO Kelly Kinnison was hired in August 2024. “Weaknesses remain in the current state, including issues related to process workflows, accounting methodology and reporting transparency, invoicing and receivables management, budgeting management, reliable supporting documentation, governance and oversight, and effectiveness of internal controls,” the report found.

The auditors also noted that Kinnison “was absent from most ongoing bi-weekly project update meetings” about the audit, forcing the auditors to work with lower-level managers to answer questions and address issues.

Two Seattle City Councilmembers, Maritza Rivera and Bob Kettle, condemned the agency’s financial, and both Rivera and King County Councilmember Rod Dembowski called for the KCRHA’s dissolution.

“The results of the recent King County Regional Homelessness Authority audit are damning,” Kettle said in a statement. “It shows an epic, and consistent, failure of leadership at the top of the agency —especially at its start. It also reveals the failure of leadership of the county and city. The audit reveals troubling systemic issues that can no longer be ignored if we are to address the homelessness and public safety crisis in Seattle effectively.”

Rivera went further. “I am shocked and outraged after seeing the results of the forensic evaluation of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which I just received today,” she said in a statement. “It shows an egregious mismanagement of funds and an unacceptable lack of financial accountability.

“KCRHA has a history of dysfunction and inefficiency, and it is time to acknowledge that it has failed in its mission. I am calling for Mayor Wilson to provide a plan for the dismantling of KCRHA as soon as possible, and a commitment to work with City Council to determine how Seattle will move forward in meeting its shelter and housing needs.”

Later on Wednesday evening, City Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Dionne Foster sent a more measured joint statement, saying the audit findings are “serious, unacceptable and demand immediate action and accountability.”

Asked about the possible dissolution of the KCRHA on Wednesday night, Rinck said, “I think we can do regionalism without having a whole separate agency” overseeing homelessness contracts. The process of setting up a regional entity has shown that Seattle, King County, and other cities can coordinate and talk to each other about their differing needs without having what amounts to a separate pass-through agency handling all the region’s spending, she said.

Under the interlocal agreement that established the authority, the city and county must take at least one year to dissolve the agency if they decide to dismantle it rather than try to reform and save it. The KCRHA, city, and county would spend much of that time transferring the contracts KCRHA manages back to the city’s Human Services Department and the county’s Department of Community and Human Services.

Kinnison’s letter to the board says most of the money that is unaccounted for is made up of “unreconciled receivables”—services that were delivered but “require further reconciliation within the accounting system.” In general, Kinnison told the board, the agency did not lose or misuse funds.

The KCRHA’s governing board will take up the audit findings at its meeting on Friday.

City Council, homelessness, Mayor Wilson

As Seattle Goes It Alone on Shelter, Homelessness Authority Faces Forensic Financial Audit

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 at the County and City. The mayor is concerned about KCRHA’s stewardship of public funds and will be asking hard questions about their financial controls & effectiveness.”

A spokesperson for DCHS said the department “supports the audit to gain a more clear and accurate understanding of KCHRA’s cashflow and to confirm that the organization has strong internal controls in place to sustain long-term cash management, including invoicing processes.

And a spokesperson for King County Executive Girmay Zahilay said, “Strong financial stewardship, transparency and accountability, and achieving tangible progress in addressing the homelessness crisis that impacts every part of our region are top priorities for Executive Zahilay. Once the full audit report is received, the County will work with the City and other partners to determine next steps.”

City Council, homelessness, King County, Mayor Harrell

New Agreement Redefines Power and Purpose of Regional Homelessness Authority

By Erica C. Barnett

The Seattle City Council quietly approved a new interlocal agreement with the King County Regional Homelessness authority on Tuesday that, among other changes, dismantles the agency’s implementation board and hands its powers over to a governing board made up almost entirely of elected officials. The King County Council approved a substantively identical new agreement on Tuesday, and it will go before the Regional Policy Committee, which includes representatives from Seattle and other cities, on Monday.

PubliCola broke the news about the proposed changes to the ILA in August.

Under the original agreement, the implementation board—made up of businesses, affordable housing providers, people with direct experience of homelessness, and advocates—had the authority to make policy, approve budgets, and oversee the functions of the regional homelessness agency. This was by design; when King County and the city of Seattle approved the original agreement, they reluctantly agreed to reduce the power of elected officials in an effort to ensure the authority’s decisions were based on best practices, not political considerations. After a bumpy five years, the city and county changed their minds.

But the changes to the interlocal agreement go far beyond giving politicians more direct power over the agency.

The new agreement redefines the KCRHA, changing it from an authority with the power to shape, consolidate, and establish policies and priorities for the region’s homelessness response into a single regional approach—the entire reason for establishing the new agency in the first place—into a pass-through agency whose main job is “administering” homelessness contracts funded by the city and county.

The changes begin right in the “purpose, mission, and scope” section, which defines what the KCRHA is authorized and expected to do. Instead of “providing consolidated, aligned services for individuals and families who are experiencing homelessness or who are at imminent risk of experiencing homelessness in the jurisdictional boundaries of King County,” the new agreement says the KCRHA’s first job is “administering funding” for those services, turning the KCRHA from a policy agency to an administrator that funnels money according to priorities set by other jurisdictions.

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The mission statement for the authority, similarly, has been edited; now, the KCRHA’s main job is “administering an effective, performance-based Homeless Services to support a high-functioning homelessness crisis response system” that decreases homelessness. In this spirit, the agency’s scope of work now consists of 17 bullet points that are largely administrative functions, such as running the county’s Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), collecting data, administering federal contracts, and conducting the annual Point In Time homeless count.

Gone, too, are references to reducing racial and other disproportionalities in the homeless population by addressing root causes, a commitment to “evidence-based, housing first approaches”; instead, the new agreement says the authority should be ” guided by housing first and other approaches,” including traditional “substance use disorder treatment,” a change Seattle City Councilmember Sara Nelson praised during a committee meeting on the ILA earlier this month.

Most references to including people with lived experience of homelessness in decision-making processes are also gone.

The new governing board will still include people “representing” people who are or have been homeless, but they’ll now be hand-picked by elected officials and will have to meet strict new credentials-based criteria to qualify. The minimum requirements for the “lived experience” board members will include things like past experience running business operations in a large public or private agency; experience with direct fiscal oversight of a large agency similar to the KCRHA; and experience conducting academic research on homelessness or performance evaluation.

It’s unlikely that most street-level direct service providers would meet these criteria, much less people who are currently or recently homeless, whose perspectives will now be excluded in favor of people with conventional credentials for high-level management jobs. Effectively, they exclude anyone whose expertise is primarily their lived experience, rather than academic and professional achievements, from representing people with experience actually being homeless. Additinoally, lived experience members’ terms will now last just two years, while elected officials will serve as long as they’re in office, or until they’re removed by their fellow board members.

Finally, the new rules give the county and city explicit authority to unilaterally take money and responsibilities away from the authority and bring them back under city or county control undermining the “regional” nature of the authority. Under the agreement, the city and county must each provide at least as much funding for the authority, not accounting for inflation, as they did in 2019, unless the city or county decides to take programs over themselves; in that case, the money goes back to the city or county along with the programs.

The city of Seattle has already begun doing this: Earlier this year, Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office announced that the Human Services Department would claw back funding for homelessness prevention and outreach into a revived Homelessness Strategy and Investments division, which oversaw homeless services before the KCRHA was created in 2019.

Harrell’s budget expands the city’s encampment removal team while keeping funding for the KCRHA essentially flat; in his speech, Harrell said he was confident that the “reforms” in the new agreement, along with new CEO Kelly Kinnison, would “take this organization to its next phase, from startup to upstart.”

During a committee hearing on the renewal, Councilmember Cathy Moore said the KCRHA’s “current format is highly, highly problematic, and in fact, if it doesn’t renew, I can just stay on the record here, then I’m not sure I would continue funding.” Both Moore and Councilmember Maritza Rivera said it was very important to them that the city can terminate the contract unilaterally, without the county’s approval.

Addiction, City Council, Drugs, homelessness, legislature

KCRHA Plans More Focused Homelessness Count, Council President Supports Bills That Would Make It Easier To Take Away Drug Users’ Kids

1. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority will significantly alter how it conducts the interviews with unsheltered people that form the basis of the countywide “Point In Time” count, which now occurs every two years and consists of one-on-one daytime surveys at fixed locations over multiple weeks, rather than a traditional one-night count of tents, people sleeping out in the open, and vehicles used as shelter.

Although the count will still be based on respondent-driven sampling—a form of statistical sampling in which participants recruit additional respondents from their personal networks—the questions the KCRHA interviewers will ask have been transformed. Instead of open-ended questions like “What have been your experiences with the police and justice system?” and “What has it [being homeless] been like for you?,” the survey consists of basic demographic and short-form questions along the lines of the old Count Us In survey conducted by the KCRHA’s predecessor, All Home.

The interviewers—about 130 volunteers—will receive more extensive training this year than the Lived Experience Coalition members who conducted the survey last year received, KCRHA community impact officer Owen Kajfasz said last week, and their jobs will be simpler. “By removing the qualitative [open-ended interview] component from this, we remove a lot of the complexity that would require additional training” beyond the three hours volunteers received this time around, Kajfasz said.

Last year, training for the interviews was conducted in person or online by then-KCRHA CEO Marc Dones; interviewers who couldn’t make it to a training session were asked to simply review the training documents.  Interview transcripts obtained by PubliCola showed that the conversations were often rambling, discursive, and (according to experts we consulted) out of step with best practices for qualitative research; for example, interviewers frequently cut people off, talked at length about themselves, offered unsolicited advice, and improperly suggested they could connect people to services.

As we reported last year, the KCRHA used 180 of these interview transcripts as the basis for its Five-Year Plan, turning answers to questions like “what things or people have been helpful to you?” into a precise, detailed budget that favored parking lots for people living in vehicles over tiny house villages, for example.

This year’s count will also include more “hubs” throughout the county than last year’s count—17 in all—which Kajfasz said should give the KCRHA a more representative sample of the region’s homeless population. Last year, the KCRHA didn’t do any surveys in Federal Way or Kent, for example, which may have exacerbated other issues with data collection in South King County, the first region where the agency did surveys and the one with the largest number of data issues.

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2. During a briefing about the ongoing state legislative session by city lobbyists Monday afternoon, Council President Sara Nelson expressed support for four addiction and overdose-related bills that aren’t on the city’s official legislative agenda: House Bills 1956 and 2222, and Senate Bills 6109 and 6134.

HB 1956, sponsored by Rep. Mari Leavitt (D-28, University Place), would require the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to update school drug education materials to include “information about the potential lethality and other risks associated with the use of fentanyl and other opioids.”

HB 2222, sponsored by Rep. David Hackney (D-11, Tukwila), would allow prosecutors to charge parents with endangering their children, a Class B felony, if they allow them to be “exposed to” or have “contact with” non-prescription fentanyl or other synthetic opiates, potentially removing children from their homes if a parent is struggling with addiction.

SB 6109, sponsored by Sen. Claire Wilson (D) would make it easier for the state to take children away from their parents and place them in foster care if police, medical personnel, or child welfare workers find non-prescription opiates in their home. The bill would legally place opiate use by parents on the same level as “sexual abuse, sexual exploitation, [and] a pattern of severe neglect.”

SB 6134, sponsored by Republicans Chris Gildon (R-25, Puyallup) and Lynda Wilson (R-17, Spokane), would give $7 million to the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs to create “multijurisdictional drug task forces that would track overdose trends and make opiate-related policy recommendations to the state.

Three of the four bills have begun moving through the committee process (which is no guarantee they’ll go any further in the short legislative session); HB 2222 has not been scheduled for a hearing.

City Council, Crime, Density, Drugs, homelessness, housing, Mayor Harrell, Renters, State of Washington, zoning

Nine PubliCola Predictions for 2024

PubliCola columnist Josh Feit and PubliCola’s hoary original publisher (and Seattle Nice contrarian) Sandeep Kaushik are joining Erica here to kick off the year with some soothsaying.  Specifically tailored for PubliCola’s policy obsessed readership, these aren’t prognostications about 2024’s headlining concerns (like the threat of Trump II), but rather, as you’ve come to expect from the most in-depth local news site in Seattle, this is deep political wayfinding for the year in local politics ahead —The Editors

Sandeep Kaushik:

1. The Real Change, House Our Neighbors crowd announced just before Christmas they will put a measure on the Seattle ballot in 2024 to establish a permanent funding source for I-135, the social housing measure they passed in February. I will take the bait and predict that funding measure will fail.

I say this because I have yet to see any evidence House Our Neighbors has an actual, serious, and detailed proposal (you know, one that includes actual, vetted numbers) to build such mixed-income public housing in a way that is going to be operationally viable and fiscally self-sustaining (which was part of the original promise)—much less one that’s better than the well-established existing model for building affordable housing.

It’s one thing to ask voters to support a gauzily intersectional dream of a new, supposedly self-sustaining form of socialistic self-governing housing when there’s no price tag attached (57 percent of Seattle voters supported I-135), quite another when they’re asking for an endless stream of money before any proof of concept. It also doesn’t help that in developing I-135, its backers spent infinitely more time and thought on calibrating the mix of marginalized identities that are represented on the governing board than on an actual plan showing how this sort of housing would pencil.

Maybe House Our Neighbors will prove me wrong, and come forward in January with a viable proposal rather than just a leap-of-faith money ask. It’s quite possible that famously generous, progressively-inclined Seattle voters will pass the funding even if they don’t. And if that happens, maybe they’ll actually deliver on their dreams and promises. If so, fantastic! I would love to be proven wrong, and would be thrilled to see a new, viable, fiscally defensible model of public housing take root in Seattle. But I’m not holding my breath, and I going to predict that if they don’t have a real plan, Seattle voters won’t hand them a blank check.

2. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) will die a whimpering death in 2024. It pains me to make this prediction. In theory, a regional approach to homelessness policy makes enormous sense. In practice, though, the promise of regionalizing our homelessness response has—at least so far–face planted.

When KCRHA’s CEO, the charismatic and energetic Mark Dones, came on board in April 2021, and when KCRHA’s signature Partnership for Zero initiative to end visible homeless downtown was announced in February 2022, I was one of the cheerleaders for this promising new model.

But it was all downhill from there.

It soon became apparent that KCRHA had deep problems that seriously curtailed its effectiveness. To begin with, suburban buy-in to the idea of handing off and consolidating homelessness efforts in the KCRHA was nominal at best. Moreover, KCRHA had no independent funding source, and instead relied on pass-through funding from the city and King County, and that funding model quickly became fraught when some of the policies Dones advocated (no sweeps, opposition to tiny homes) ran counter to what some of their funders wanted.

The region’s key agency for dealing with its most serious problem will remain largely rudderless for more than a year, as staff and talent continue to decamp for greener pastures.

The governing structure of KCRHA, with multiple boards and committees, turned out to be an unwieldy mess, and the powers that be made things much worse by ingraining some of the most chuckleheaded aspects of cultural progressivism—for example, the fixation on centering “lived experience” as opposed to, say, prioritizing actual experience running large organizations implementing complex policies—into that governance, leading to several high profile, avoidable scandals. Internal, back office operations were chaotic, and staff turnover high, leading to further credibility-sapping problems.

It all came to a head when Dones announced their resignation in May, and then when KCRHA admitted failure and threw in the towel on Partnership for Zero in September. A huge amount now rests on the search for a new CEO for the organization, and word on the street is there isn’t likely to be a hire for that critical position until the second half of 2024, if it even turns out that anyone with the requisite experience and skill sets wants the job. That means the region’s key agency for dealing with its most serious problem will remain largely rudderless for more than a year, as staff and talent continue to decamp for greener pastures.

Under that sort of slow death spiral circumstances, writing off KCRHA as a misfire—perhaps triggered by the CEO search producing underwhelming candidates—might be best option. Of course, pulling the plug would be a spectacular embarrassment, so maybe the powers that be will allow to KCRHA to limp along in some sort of awful twilight state for at least another year. But I’m going to go out on a limb and bet the end is in sight.

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3. The 2024 governor’s race will be the closest since Jay Inslee won his first term in 2012 by narrowly besting Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna, 51-48. First, Washington State voters are in a pretty sour mood, and Inslee, now exiting after his third term, has middling-to-underwhelming approval ratings. There was even a recent poll showing (relatively) moderate Republican Dave Reichert nipping presumed Democratic frontrunner Bob Ferguson in a head-to-head matchup.

To be clear, I don’t think it’s likely Reichert will actually win, given that he’s strongly anti-choice, but if he gets through the August primary —not at all a sure thing, since he faces a semi-serious challenger on the MAGA right in Semi Bird, and moderate Democrat Mark Mullet is also making a play to consolidate a cross-party middle coalition to leapfrog Reichert in the primary—he could (at least conceivably) make a race of it, particularly if Ferguson veers too far left. Anyway, if it is Reichert in the general, this is a race Democrats can’t take for granted the way they have the last couple of gubernatorial races, even if (as is also likely) Trump is the Republican presidential nominee this November.

Josh Feit:

1. Last year at this time, I predicted that after booting single-family-zone preservationist Rep. Gerry Pollet (D-46, North Seattle) from his powerful position as chair of the local government committee earlier that month, the new wave of young Democrats in the state legislature would finally be able to pass some Yes-in-My-Backyard legislation.

Here’s me on December 22, 2022 writing about Rep. Jessica Bateman’s (D-22, Olympia) plan to authorize fourplexes in residential areas anywhere detached single-family homes were allowed: “With much better odds of passing their bills intact out of [new chair] Rep. Strom Peterson’s (D-21, Everett) committee than under Pollet’s provincialism, pro-housing legislators could bring some necessary state governance to Seattle’s failed local policies.”

Bam, they passed it. I was actually a little surprised. Bateman’s legislation made it legal in places like density-phobic Seattle to build four units per lot in residential zones, six units per lot within a quarter-mile walking distance of a major transit stop; and six units per lot in residential zones if at least two units are affordable housing.

Unfortunately, that’s way too progressive for Seattle. So, here’s my prediction for 2024 as the city updates the document that governs local zoning policy, its Comprehensive Plan: The newly elected slow-growth city council (I’m thinking of Joy Hollingsworth, Bob Kettle, and Rob Saka joining incumbent anti-growther Sara Nelson, along with Mayor Harrell himself) will use the Comp Plan update as an opportunity for undermining urbanism. First, they will come up with rules to minimize lot coverage, require setbacks, and establish height limits, along with levying hefty affordable housing fees that will keep housing developers from building any apartments in Seattle’s touchy neighborhood residential zones.

There’s also a provision that anxious city lobbyists statewide forced into Bateman’s bill that allowed local governments to limit the upzones to 75 percent of single-family areas.  I can see Seattle’s anti-housing faction using that “neighborhood character” card to stall density in hand-picked neighborhoods as well.

2. Speaking of pro-housing bills going awry: Watch for an attempt by state legislators to re-do last year’s stalled Transit-Oriented Development bill—legislation that would upzone land around light rail stations and bus lines—to disappoint pro-housing urbanists this year.

With the original senate TOD champion, Sen. Marko Liias (D-21, Everett), deciding not to sponsor the bill this year—I’m guessing he was frustrated by the overemphasis on inclusionary zoning (mandatory affordable housing quotas) that House Democrats tried to work into the bill last year—anti-developer lefties like Rep. Julia Reed (D-36, Seattle) are now in control of the legislation. Count on minimal upzones near transit (say five stories as opposed to eight) and steep affordability requirements that will chill development.

TL;DR: The very thing the lefties say they want, lots of housing, won’t get built.

3. I’m going to be vague about this one, but here’s what I will say: Even though Mayor Bruce Harrell got the conservative council he wanted, look for new D-3 council member Joy Hollingsworth—who appears to share Harrell’s brand of homily populist politics (even more so than the others)—to begin clashing with him behind the scenes. By year’s end, her frustrations with Harrell will be evident at City Hall.

Erica C. Barnett: 

1. The pundit class (looking at you, Sandeep) may have convinced voters that a local law governing minor drug offenses, like using drugs in public, was the most critical issue in the 2023 election, when moderate candidates denounced lefties who opposed it. But 2024 will prove that the impact of the drug law will be minimal.

As we’ve reported, the city’s new law does not actually criminalize low-level drug offenses; the state legislature did that already, when it passed the so-called “Blake fix” earlier this year. Instead, it empowers City Attorney Ann Davison to prosecute people for using or possessing drugs in public; without the new law, only the King County Prosecutor’s Office could do so, and they have historically shown little interest in spending scarce county resources on these relatively minor offenses.

While Davison has reportedly been eager to prosecute drug users, the jail isn’t booking people on misdemeanor drug charges alone, making it hard for Seattle’s Republican city attorney to pursue this law-and-order approach to addiction. Meanwhile, as we predicted, putting drug offenders on the “diversion” track—which was supposed to appease progressives— has just meant that other people who would have received help through the city’s main diversion program, LEAD, are being displaced by people who get arrested first.

Seattle always rolls out supposedly transformative (but, in this case, totally unfunded) new initiatives with a big burst of energy, only to let them fizzle—remember “Operation New Day”?

It’s notable, too, that the city has done exactly one big, flashy event to show off its new authority to arrest people for using drugs in public, then send them immediately to LEAD, with no public follow-ups since October. The mainstream press dutifully reported on the event, noting that it resulted in ten people going to jail on outstanding felony warrants (my question: Given that SPD could have located, interrogated, and arrested this group for their serious offenses at any point, why didn’t they?) and 13 entering diversion.

The biggest reason you haven’t seen a spate of similar headlines about drug arrests leading to diversion since that initial push is that the city didn’t provide any additional funding for diversion; as we’ve reported, LEAD—which is no longer accepting community referrals, just referrals from arrests—will run out of money to accept new clients by May. A secondary reason is that Seattle always rolls out supposedly transformative (but, in this case, totally unfunded) new initiatives with a big burst of energy, only to let them fizzle—remember “Operation New Day”? We don’t either.

2. One area where the new council may throw its weight around is by reversing outgoing council members’ renter protection laws, including the $10 maximum late fee, 180-day notice for rent increases, bans on winter and school-year evictions, and the “first-in-time” law that requires landlords to rent to the first qualified applicant. As I reported this week, small landlords complained about the first-in-time law more than any other renter protection. The law, sponsored by outgoing Councilmember Lisa Herbold, was intended to help reduce the potential for landlords to discriminate against prospective tenants based on factors like race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Although most of the city’s renter protections passed before his term, Harrell opposed the $10 maximum late fee, allowing it to pass into law without his signature earlier this year.

3. We may be entering a newly cozy era of mayor-council relations (with Harrell’s picks triumphing in nearly every 2023 council race), but camaraderie alone won’t solve the structural problems facing the city: Fentanyl addiction, a city budget deficit of nearly $220 million, the city’s inability to hire police despite generous financial incentives and a homelessness crisis for which Seattle is on the hook, at least financially.

The candidates who won this year talked a lot about resetting the culture at City Hall, finding fat in the budget and cutting it, letting police know they’re valued and trusted, and using a carrot (diversion) and stick (arrest and jail) approach to the addiction crisis. But the problems these platitudes purport to address are structural, and don’t respond readily to legislation: Every dollar of “waste” in the budget has a constituency (want to cut back on permitting times? Good luck doing that and instituting a hiring freeze) and many of the issues councilmembers brought up during their campaigns are structural and even nationwide, like police hiring. It’s one thing to denounce people for supporting proposals to reduce police funding three years ago, and quite another to solve a nationwide lack of interest among young people in becoming cops.