KCRHA Is Finally Being Held Accountable. But Will Anything Change?

For years, Seattle and King County residents have been told that homelessness would improve if government spent more money, created new programs, and built larger bureaucracies to coordinate the response.

Many people wanted to believe that approach would work.

Instead, public spending has continued to climb while more people are living outside, often struggling with addiction, untreated mental illness, or both. At the same time, the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, the agency created to better coordinate the region’s response, has become the subject of repeated concerns over financial oversight, governance, and accountability.

Last week, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and King County Executive Girmay Zahilay announced plans to significantly restructure KCRHA. Under the new plan, Seattle and King County will take back management of many homelessness contracts, while KCRHA’s role will be narrowed to regional coordination, data systems, and federal funding responsibilities.

That is a meaningful step in the right direction.

But it is also important to be clear about what prompted it.

This change did not happen because local leaders finally acknowledged that the region’s homelessness strategy is failing to reduce homelessness. It came after mounting concerns about financial controls, weak oversight, and the management of public dollars became too serious to ignore.

Seattle and King County are not simply changing an agency. They are taking back the lion’s share of contract management, funding decisions, and strategic policy control over the homelessness response.

That may improve oversight. It does not necessarily mean the strategy itself is changing.

Mayor Wilson has continued to frame homelessness largely as a housing affordability and shelter capacity issue, while emphasizing investments such as tiny house villages. KCRHA’s own announcement similarly stresses continuity, coordination, housing resources, and system infrastructure.

Those may all be pieces of the puzzle. But if we simply have different people doing the same old stuff, why should residents expect dramatically different results?

And the results are the part that cannot be ignored.

King County recently reported that the number of people experiencing homelessness increased another 9 percent over the past year. Meanwhile, other cities facing many of the same challenges have moved in the opposite direction. San Diego, Miami, and Honolulu all reported declines of roughly 10 to 20 percent, while San Francisco’s homeless population fell by 22 percent.

When comparable cities are making measurable progress while Seattle and King County continue moving backward despite years of increased spending, it is reasonable to ask what they are doing differently.

San Francisco, for example, has paired housing with increased behavioral health treatment, expanded conservatorship for some individuals with severe mental illness, and more active enforcement against public camping and open-air drug use.

Miami and Honolulu have likewise focused on better coordination between outreach teams, treatment providers, and law enforcement while emphasizing measurable outcomes instead of simply measuring dollars spent.

“Seattle should cast off its trailblazing progressive pride and just copy these other cities,” wrote Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat. “Can we do it?”

That is the question local leaders should be asking now.

Change Washington has argued for some time that KCRHA needed a fundamental reset. Not because regional coordination is inherently a bad idea, but because coordination without accountability simply creates another bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is not the same thing as results.

Last month, just days after the latest Point-in-Time Count showed homelessness continuing to move in the wrong direction, KCRHA’s Associate Deputy of Strategy published a lengthy explanation of why homelessness continues to increase in King County. The post discussed housing affordability, shelter capacity, inflow, exits, permanent supportive housing, and system demand.

But it did not once use the words addiction or fentanyl.

Seattle and King County have now acknowledged that accountability matters when it comes to KCRHA’s finances and management.

The challenge is to apply that same standard to the entire homelessness response.

The next Point-in-Time Count should not become another report explaining why homelessness increased despite enormous public investment. It should be the benchmark by which Mayor Wilson and Executive Zahilay are judged.

Are fewer people living unsheltered?

Are more people entering treatment and recovery?

Are more people finding lasting stability instead of cycling through the system?

Are public spaces safer and more accessible for everyone?

Those are the results residents should expect from the leaders now taking direct responsibility for the region’s homelessness response.

Because the true measure of success is not how much government spends, how many organizations it creates, or how many times it restructures the bureaucracy.

It is whether fewer people are living on our streets next year than are today.