Is It Time to Admit the King County Regional Homelessness Authority Is a Bust?

[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to another episode of Seattle Nice. I'm Erica C. Barnett. He's Sandeep Kaushik. David Hyde is AWOL as far as we know, right, Sandeep? Yeah, missing in action. Yeah, where is he? The ghost of David Hyde haunts our podcast. David will be back at some point. He is in an undisclosed location, but he'll be back in a couple weeks.

[00:00:35] Until then, it's me and Sandeep. I assume we're going to get along famously like we usually do when we don't have David egging us on. We seem to be like, yes, very simpatico. It's like we're actually friends in real life or something. David is our Shama Salant. He's our polarization. He's a divider, not a uniter.

[00:01:03] Exactly. Oh, David. I know David's never going to listen to this. Yeah. We can say whatever we want about him. Let's trash him mercilessly while he's gone. So today we're going to start by talking about a story that I wrote this week on the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and some of the issues that are coming up there with their budget. They just released a budget to the governing board.

[00:01:31] The staff of KCRHA just released a budget to the governing board that includes a 2 percent cut across the board that they're doing in response to Mayor Bruce Harrell's request for them to cut 2 percent. So they are proposing some cuts to services. And then also they're saying that in order to maintain what they're doing at the administrative level,

[00:01:56] in order to maintain services, staffing, just all the stuff that goes into actually making the agency run, they need about $5 million more. And if they don't get that, they're saying they're going to cut 22 jobs, which is about a fifth, a little over a fifth of the KCRHA staff, which understandably is causing some real problems within the agency with morale, you know, and I think is in some ways a bargaining chip or a tactic,

[00:02:24] a strategy to get more money out of the city and county, which are the KCRHA's funders. But Sandeep, you and I were talking before we started recording. And, you know, you said that this kind of raises questions about what the agency even is and why it exists at this point. That's right. I mean, just for our listeners, a little quick, you know, journey down memory lane. But in 2024, I think the existence of KCRHA very much hung in the balance, right?

[00:02:52] There was a real question with the departure of the founding head, Mark Dones, whether it really made sense to even continue the existence of KCRHA, given the bureaucratic and organizational and kind of functioning flaws that the agency had demonstrated, which were quite numerous and we've talked about in the past.

[00:03:17] And so there was a decision made in conversations between the county and the city and some of the key stakeholders, foundations and other players in the homeless space to keep the agency going. But I think there's a real question here about the whole vision of KCRHA was it was going to be an independent, standalone government agency insulated from politics, you know, the normal sort of give and take of city and county politics in order to make smarter,

[00:03:44] you know, decisions about homelessness policy and to regionalize that effort. And it's not clear that any of that original vision remains in place. And on top of that, as your story points out, there's still a bunch of like, you know, seemingly internal churn and turmoil going on. So what exactly is going on here? And what are we what are we getting at a at a KCRHA?

[00:04:11] I think that what has changed is that the city of Seattle, primarily the city of Seattle, but also King County decided at some point last year that they don't want KCRHA to have the kind of independence it was supposed to have. And, you know, because of all the things that you're saying, because of the sense that they really bungled the opportunity for a couple of years, kind of trying all these different things like the Partnership for Zero, which was supposed to end unsheltered homelessness

[00:04:41] downtown and obviously didn't. And they said, you know what, we're going to take it back. They signed a new agreement that basically turned KCRHA into a pass through agency where they get money from the city and the county and then they administer these contracts that were previously at the city and previously at the county. So, I mean, yeah, like why do we need this extra layer of bureaucracy if the only function of this agency is to administer grants?

[00:05:09] It's basically something like the United Way or Building Changes or, you know, any number of other like nonprofits that do the same thing on a smaller scale. And so I'm not saying that KCRHA couldn't be something bigger and it couldn't be a regional homelessness agency like it was originally supposed to be. But right now, I mean, it is basically people that write checks. I mean, and I think that that was definitely not the vision originally.

[00:05:36] I mean, the whole idea was that it was supposed to make the homelessness, you know, the sort of service providers, everybody come together and develop a regional strategy that actually looked at, you know, what do people need out in Enumclaw? What do people need in Seattle? What do people need in, you know, to the north of Seattle? It just the idea was pretty broad and grand.

[00:06:01] And now it is merely a check writing agency through which money flows. I think it was partly the fault of the city and the county that it turned into that. But it's also partly the fault of KCRHA, which really did kind of bumble around for a couple of years and spend a lot of money and waste a lot of time. I mean, for example, the entire homelessness system was supposed to have been rebid. So every single agency would have to justify why they're spending money the way they are.

[00:06:28] And, you know, things would have maybe shifted and certain agencies would have gotten more money and some would have gotten less based on performance. And that never happened. That was supposed to happen three years ago. And nothing that was planned has really come to fruition. So, yeah, Erica, I thought that really telling quote in your story was Seattle Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington, right? Who's the mayor's point person on homelessness policy stuff? When this budget is being presented and it includes not just this, you know, significant

[00:06:58] administrative staff cuts, maybe 20 plus people getting laid off, but also cuts to services, some potential cuts to services. You know, Tiffany weighs in. And what she says is that, quote, the mayor, the mayor has, quote, has not approved this budget, nor has he seen until this meeting any recommendations for a service cut.

[00:07:24] And she added that, quote, the mayor and council would never, ever consider programmatic cuts without deeply understanding the administrative rates and how an organization or department can be lean, unquote. Quote. And the way the tone of that and the way I read that quote is the city is really treating KCRHA not as an independent standalone government agency that they're that they're dealing with on a footing of equals. But really, it's saying you're just another city department or city office.

[00:07:54] And you're you guys are presenting me a budget. And we don't like we maybe don't like what the choices you're making here. And this is not a real budget. And nobody take this as the real budget, because until we weigh in, it's not about right. You know, we're the decider. Right. Right. Yeah. And and more than that, I mean, it's it is really interesting that the the genesis of these proposed cuts and this is just a budget exercise.

[00:08:22] But this is the budget exercise that the city put every city department through and does, you know, every year when there's a budget deficit. So the city has asked most departments for eight percent cuts, although they're holding, I think, social services and the police harmless. So basically, they're asking them to do the exact same thing as every, you know, other city department. And during this meeting, Sarah Nelson, I didn't put this in the story, but Sarah City Council

[00:08:48] member Sarah Nelson, who's a board member on KCRHA, said, you know, we're we're only asking you for two percent cuts. We're asking all of our other city departments for eight percent cuts. I don't know if she said other city departments, but we're asking city departments for eight percent cuts, sort of implying, look, we're being generous to you guys. And yeah, it really speaks to the fact that the city does treat KCRHA like it's a department. And in fact, last year, as I wrote, they clawed back a bunch of stuff that KCRHA was doing,

[00:09:17] homeless outreach and homelessness prevention, because they said KCRHA doesn't seem to be able to manage it. And maybe we'll give it back to them one day if they get the shit together. But I mean, I think this is just part of the city, you know, slowly rebuilding HSD's homeless services division and pulling back more and more in anticipation that this agency isn't going to be around in a couple of years. Well, you know, and to be fair here to KCRHA, because I totally agree with you, in the first couple of years, they bungled a whole bunch of stuff. Right.

[00:09:47] And they were not exactly, you know, there was a kind of keystone cops quality to some of it. And they weren't paying their contract, you know, obligations to the providers on time, which was putting the providers in bad shape. So that was a huge administrative stuff. But there were huge, ridiculous controversies over their governing structure. And that we've talked about that continuum of care board, which is sort of a technical, you know, governing board to monitor how they apply for HUD grants and controversies

[00:10:16] over appointing sex offenders to that board and stuff. I mean, ridiculous stuff like, like. Um, that really, I think, eroded confidence both, you know, at the county and the city, but also publicly in the in the agency itself. But to be fair to them, there was always an inherent structural problem with this. Right. Which is that it King County RHA had no independent funding source. Right.

[00:10:42] So it was entirely reliant from day one on money primarily from the city, but also from the county. And if you're a mayor or a council member, almost from day one, they were like, why are we funding this agency that's ignoring our priorities? But you remember, we had council members like Andrew Lewis or, you know, who were pissed because they wanted to invest more in tiny homes. And Mark Dones was a, you know, implacable opponent of tiny homes.

[00:11:11] So they're like, why are we giving all our city money to this agency that won't do what we want on policy? You know, and that's always been a structural problem. Support for Seattle Nice comes from Hearth Protection, offering commercial protective services with trauma informed, community oriented and evidence based physical security practices,

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[00:12:08] Yeah. And I mean, one of the things that is causing their budget problem right now about I think it was I think I reported about a million dollars of it. Yeah. One point two million is the fact that they have to pay interest on loans that they have to take out to pay contractors on time. So the reason they're able to pay contractors on time now is largely because they start every single year with basically zero dollars in the bank. They take out loans, they pay their subcontractors and then the city pays them and the county pays

[00:12:35] them. And so when you have this kind of reimbursement model with no independent taxing authority or money coming in, it just it just costs a lot of money to be constantly in the red. And so that is a structural problem as well. I mean, it never made sense to me to start a brand new agency that doesn't have any taxing authority that relies entirely on money from the city, because it is very hard to be independent when you have, you know, particularly the city of Seattle.

[00:13:03] I think somewhat less the county, again, trying to kind of dictate policy and decide what this, you know, supposedly regional agency should do. So, again, I mean, I do think it is the city's fault in a lot of ways for trying to, you know, to run this agency that was designed to be supposedly independent in the first place. Yeah, I just I just don't know. I just don't know how it could ever have worked without independent funding authority.

[00:13:32] It's definitely I mean, it seems to me that a major from day one was a major structural flaw here. The other thing, though, my other big takeaway from your story, though, Erica, and I thought you hinted strongly at this, is that King County RHA has a, you know, relatively new CEO, right? The replacement that was brought in to kind of stabilize the organization after after Mark had had left.

[00:13:57] But it still seems like there's a lot of internal churn and turmoil at the agency. Like maybe they're doing a better job of like, you know, making sure their contracts are working. Though, as you point out, this one point two million dollar payment, unless, you know, basically unnecessary, like basically interest payments because they've got to take out a loan to pay, you know, just a waste of one point two million dollars that if things were just set up in a different way, we wouldn't have to be spending that we could be spending this money on services rather than,

[00:14:27] you know, paying banks and stuff like that. It's kind of maddening. But overall, like maybe they're doing a better job on dealing with the contracts and stuff like that. At least the payments are going out on time, which they weren't before. But it still seems like there's staff morale issues. There's, you know, investigations now of the new head of KCRHA about some hiring decisions. It doesn't feel like the agency is kind of firing on all cylinders internally. So speak to that.

[00:14:56] Am I wrong? No, I think that's absolutely right. And, you know, and it's not just so this is the second. Kelly Kinison is the new ish CEO of the organization, and she's the second permanent CEO. But between Mark Dones and her, there were three interim CEOs, including the last one, Daryl Powell, who, you know, kind of left amid a swirl of controversy. He was a friend of Bruce Harrell's that Harrell basically handpicked to run the agency on an interim basis.

[00:15:25] And he had wanted to apply for the permanent job, kind of flamed out and left. And so there's just been turmoil. I mean, they've had five leaders in just a few years. And Kelly Kinison has, I think, come in. And while she hasn't caused the same kind of controversy and internal turmoil as Daryl Powell did, for example,

[00:15:50] I think that there have also been problems with morale and just kind of employee stability under her. As you said, there's an investigation going on right now into questions about a couple of people that she wanted to hire. An employee is alleging essentially racism and discrimination. And this is all happening a bit behind the scenes and executive sessions. But, you know, she is she is under investigation.

[00:16:18] I think that from from what I understand, I expect that the board will ultimately stand by Kelly Kinison. But, you know, morale is not great. And it is especially bad since Kinison announced internally this potential to cut 22 positions without saying what positions they would be. So essentially one in five of you are going to lose your jobs. I'm not going to say which ones. But if we don't get this extra money from the city, we're going to have to make these massive layoffs.

[00:16:48] And that is that is I mean, just imagine having that hanging over your head on an indefinite timeline. And you can see why people are leaving the agency or looking for other jobs. And, you know, from everything I hear internally from people at the agency, morale is just, you know, as bad as it's ever been. And understandably so. Right. You know, we should acknowledge obviously they have made some significant changes right in the in under the new regime.

[00:17:15] The governance structure, which I think was a mess before with multiple boards and, you know, and not no clear lines of or blurred lines of authority between them. That stuff has been reformed. I mean, there have definitely been some reforms to the agency that that have happened. I don't know. Kelly Kinison, I've never met her. I've heard some good things about her from some outside folks when she first came in, but I never had a conversation with her. So I don't have an opinion or thought about her leadership.

[00:17:44] But but it does look like there's there's the question that I had last, which I was articulating in public last year is like, why are we going to keep going with KCRHA? And maybe isn't it maybe better if we just write this off as a failed experiment? Those questions linger in my mind. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you mentioned reforms.

[00:18:06] I kind of I disagree that changing the structure and we've talked about this before, but just changing the governing structure, I think, is pretty meaningless and in some ways is is actually a bad thing. You know, as far as the actual way that they changed it, which was to get rid of the implementation board, which was a board of, you know, subject matter experts, people with lived experience of homelessness and non elected officials like, OK, fine.

[00:18:31] You want to get rid of that, get rid of it. I mean, I think it's taking one of the fundamental tenets of the agency, which was to, you know, center the voices of people with lived experience who actually know what they need in making decisions about homelessness. But obviously, the agency and its funders decided to go a different route.

[00:18:52] But now the governing board is made up of all elected officials and they all have their own independent political strategies, as we saw with Sarah Nelson, for example, you know, saying like, you guys are getting off easy because we're only asking you to cut two percent. And so there's just a real there's a lack of a united front.

[00:19:17] And there's just it just it just feels very scattered and political now in a way that it didn't used to be. And, you know, and some of the politicians on the governing board have expressed frustration, too, with the staff because it didn't you know, changing the structure didn't solve the fact that a lot of these decisions about funding get made by the city of Seattle, by the county.

[00:19:40] And when they get to, you know, and then the the agency staff come up with a budget basically in secret and they present it to the governing board, which has never seen it before. And as Claudia Balducci was pointing out, who's King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci, who's on the board. You know, there's there's something missing here. We didn't have any public process. We're presenting this budget. We're considering it. We're going to vote on it.

[00:20:06] And there's no public process, which is different than any other government agency that you're going to see. Sound Transit, you know, King County Council, the city council. It's just there's something really, you know, fundamentally broken, I think, about, you know, adopting a budget and spending a ton of tax dollars, you know, 200 million dollars without really having any public process at all. No hearings, just, you know, a little public comment period at the beginning of every meeting.

[00:20:36] And and they don't meet very often either. So this stuff just gets done kind of in secret. And I think that's another flaw that you don't fix by just changing the governing structure. Right. This is, after all, the entire sort of regional approach and funding for homelessness policy in the, you know, in King County, you know, ostensibly is is is is happening through this process. And I totally agree with you.

[00:21:00] Like the lack of of real public conversation and discussion about it seems, you know, like a major flaw, like a problem. Right. That said, I wanted to ask you about this because this is something we were talking about before we started taping. And I do think it's kind of interesting because this is sort of this, you know, quasi it's government. It's a governmental agency.

[00:21:24] But but but what quasi insulated from the public and and and at least structurally or or at least in in in terms of its, you know, in terms of, yeah, structure, if not reality. Kind of at arm's length from the city and the county.

[00:21:46] Erica, you were saying that some people internally have been telling you, you know, that that that does provide a kind of protection for the city and the county on some stuff. And so so explain what you're you're explaining to me, because I think it's super interesting. Yeah. So this goes back to this is something that was mentioned to me, an insight that, you know, hadn't really occurred to me when I was covering the sort of tent city debacle last month and earlier this month.

[00:22:14] The city of Seattle decided at the last minute to not allow tent city for which is a managed encampment to move to the Lake City Community Center, which is a, you know, former community center site owned by the city. And what I learned during covering that and they eventually did resolve that. And and you can read about that on Publicola.

[00:22:36] But what I learned during that whole process was that the city is sort of slowly moving over responsibility for all these leases that, you know, involve city property, including this tent city for lease to KCRHA. So now the lease is between for this particular thing is between KCRHA and tent city. And what that does is remove the city of Seattle essentially from any liability or responsibility for that lease because they're not on the lease anymore.

[00:23:06] And that is a big change. And what's interesting about that is, you know, as we've been talking about, KCRHA doesn't really have any assets or, you know, or money of its own. It leases a building owned by King County and it has staff that it pays. But if something happens with that lease or it's challenged, you know, KCRHA is basically a shell company. And the city of Seattle doesn't isn't I mean, you know, theoretically couldn't be held liable in the same way. The county couldn't be held liable in the same way.

[00:23:36] And KCRHA, I mean, if you sue them, I don't really know what you're going to get out of them because they don't have money on their own. So it's almost like a strategy. And I don't know exactly how conscious that is on the part of the city, because this is just a theory that I've heard. But but I think it's a good theory, you know, a strategy to to take that liability away from the funders, which are the city and the county.

[00:24:01] So not only is it providing the, you know, creating this sort of agency not only provides some political, you know, insulation. Right. And then some insulation from public comment or public scrutiny.

[00:24:15] But it also provides some legal insulation and and, you know, and and protection right from, you know, if the city got sued and, you know, there's some big, you know, monetary judgment against it, they would have to pay it off. It's not clear what would happen if, you know, that happened to KCRHA. That's kind of interesting. And maybe that's a justification for keeping doing it that way.

[00:24:41] But it does sort of beg the question of like, you know, is this an end run around our, you know, responsive, publicly accountable governance? Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, it hasn't been tested yet. Yeah. Yeah. It hasn't been tested. But, you know, maybe it will be. Maybe it won't. But yeah, I mean, Sandeep, what do you think, you know, prediction wise, what do you think is going to happen with KCRHA? Are we going to still be talking about them in a year or do you think that, you know, or two years?

[00:25:08] Or do you think that it seems likely to be dismantled? You mentioned, you know, a failed experiment. Do you think that's what the, you know, kind of final judgment on KCRHA is going to be? I probably not, but only because, well, for two reasons.

[00:25:24] I, my guess is one is actually pulling up the stakes on KCRHA would be a massive public admission of failure and would, you know, kind of be a, you know, kind of spectacular public acknowledgement that this whole experiment didn't work. And that's a hard thing for politicians to do, right, for one thing.

[00:25:44] And so it's better to kind of, you know, jury rig or, you know, use some, you know, paperclips and chewing gum to kind of fix up the, you know, patch up the thing and keep it going. And then it is to kind of do some big, big public mea culpa, you know, painful mea culpa about it. But so that's one thing.

[00:26:02] I also think, you know, they have already resolved some of the things that were the biggest irritants for the, particularly the city, but maybe to some extent the county as well, which is what we were just talking about before. When Mark was running KCRHA, you know, the reason the city grabbed back the outreach piece wasn't just that they thought they weren't doing it competently,

[00:26:27] but there was a real ideological difference of opinion about how you do outreach before encampment resolutions and cleanups. And Mark was resistant to sweeps and the agency was, you know, was much more, you know, kind of taking a position. Well, it's a homelessness authority. I'm not surprised they were. Well, but the city's like, we want you to, you know, we want to do these encampment resolutions. We need you guys.

[00:26:53] If you guys have the outreach piece, the outreach just happened before when the agency was bulking at doing the outreach. The city was getting pissed. I mean, there was a clear battle, right? Well, I mean, to be clear, just to get a little deeper into that, I mean, what the city has done is they are reviving the navigation team or not even reviving it. It never really went away. But this team of people, you know, including cops. The cop piece went away. The cop piece went away. The cop piece came back, though.

[00:27:19] So the cops are still there, but they're not, you know, bursting into people's tents, you know, violently the way they used to. But still, I mean, this is absolutely a return to the old policy of sweeps first. And the city will say, oh, you know, we don't do sweeps. We do encampment resolutions. You know, your term, Sandeep. And we give them at least 72 hours. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's bullshit. They do sweeps.

[00:27:47] They do sweeps whenever they determine something is an obstruction. You can go downtown and watch them doing it today, any morning. So that is an ideological difference of opinion. And, you know, I think that if the city of Seattle really thought that they were forming a homelessness authority and charging it with doing sweeps all the time, then I think that is that was pretty delusional.

[00:28:11] But I think what happened was for a second there, you know, maybe during the pandemic, there was the idea that we would stop violently sweeping people and throwing away all their possessions. And that is that is once again the policy. And so I don't think they could have ever expected KCRHA to go along with that. Well, well, but they're going along with it now. Right. I mean, or I don't know what they took. Well, they don't have any choice. They took the outreach. But that's my point to your larger question about whether it will continue.

[00:28:41] I think the city and county, as we were just saying, have made this now just kind of a in all but. But, you know, top line reality, it is a department of the city, basically, like KCRHA is operating that way. And so if you're the mayor of Seattle or, you know, the city council of Seattle, you're not feeling like there's you're going to get pushback right on your priorities from from KCRHA anymore.

[00:29:08] So even if it's not perfect or whatever, it's not that constant irritant where you're like, this thing has got to fucking go because I want to impose my will on the homelessness policy. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So that's why I think it's a rule. Well, I mean, that's that's an interesting point. I mean, I think that part of the origin of KCRHA. I mean, I remember making fun of this at the time. Former mayor Jenny Durkin formed this this thing called One Table, which is just ridiculous.

[00:29:36] It was this idea that, you know, one table was actually the county. It was Dow. One table came. Oh, OK. Yeah. Yeah. OK. OK. I stand corrected. It was ridiculous. But it was it was it was it was it was it was it was 80 people at the 80 members of this committee. Right. The one table committee. There was like 80 members. Right. Who never showed up at the meetings. I mean, I remember going to these meetings and, you know, it was like the I guess the reason I'm thinking it was Durkin or was incorrectly thinking Durkin started it because Durkin would be there.

[00:30:06] Nancy Backus, the mayor of Auburn, would be there and not a lot of other people. I mean, there's a lot of attrition from these meetings. And the idea was to come up with a regional homelessness strategy. And then eventually that became KCRHA. But I think at the root of that whole idea was from the city of Seattle, at least was let's get this shit off our plates because we're getting endless amounts of crap for our homelessness policies from the public. And it's very hard to solve homelessness.

[00:30:33] We're constantly blamed for not, you know, meaningfully addressing it because it's expensive. It's hard. It takes a long time. So let's create this other agency that we can then, you know, put all the responsibility on blame when they don't get it right. You know, maybe credit them when they do get stuff done. And so the idea was to get it out of HSD, the Human Services Department. And now I think that HSD has clawed a lot of that back. The mayor's office is taking over control of a lot of these policy decisions.

[00:31:02] But I think you might be right, Sandeep. I'm not sure that they want to take it all back and take total responsibility for the region's failure or at least Seattle's failure to address homelessness. I think it's convenient for them to have somebody, you know, this whole other government agency to blame for not addressing things and for not fixing things. I think it's just it's better to have an outside entity that you can point to and say, well, you know, we're not the ones that are failing to solve homelessness.

[00:31:31] It's those guys. And I'm not saying they're saying that explicitly, but I think that is very much implicit in the very existence of the agency. So it's a useful, both a useful shell, not company, but shell agency and a useful punching bag. Basically, that's the fact. Yeah, exactly. So there you go. Regional homelessness is solved. We have a punching bag or it's not solved, but we have an explanation for why it's not solved now.

[00:32:00] So yeah, that's convenient for everybody. All right. That's that's our that's our conspiracy theory for this week. That is it for another episode of Seattle Nice. I'm Erica Barnett. He's Sandy Kaushik. Our editor is Quinn Waller. And we will see you back here next week. Ta-ta.