King County Council asks Zahilay to assess troubled homelessness authority

The future of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority may well be decided this summer, as local leaders seek more information on why the troubled agency has faltered and what it is doing to turn the ship around.

The Metropolitan King County Council voted unanimously Tuesday to request a report by Aug. 1 from County Executive Girmay Zahilay, identifying steps the Authority has taken in response to a recent damning audit, options to address funding shortfalls and a decision framework" on whether to continue, amend or end the county's involvement in the agency.

The report would essentially be a blueprint for the authority's future, as legislators grapple with whether to forge onward, reform or scrap the multimillion-dollar agency, which was intended to coordinate homelessness responses among the region's dozens of local governments.

It also represents a pause, perhaps only briefly, from a push to immediately dissolve the agency in the wake of the recent audit.

A vote by either the County Council or the Seattle City Council to withdraw from the Regional Homelessness Authority would essentially end the 6-year-old agency.

Zahilay has not said what he would like to see happen to the agency, and the request for a report offers him an official channel to weigh in on the agency's future.

Callie Craighead, a Zahilay spokesperson did not give clarity Tuesday on what the executive would like to see happen. She said his top priorities were protecting taxpayer dollars and ensuring no homelessness services are disrupted.

"KCRHA manages critical administrative functions of our region's homelessness response system," Craighead said. "These functions cannot be replaced or moved overnight."

At least three of the County Council's nine members – Claudia Balducci, Rod Dembowski and Reagan Dunn – already have said they want to shut down the agency, which has coordinated the region's homelessness response since its inception in 2019.

The agency never got significant buy-in – or significant funding – from the vast majority of the 38 smaller cities surrounding Seattle. And the recent audit found more than $4 million in questionable administrative costs, $6 million in overspending on its budget in 2025 and another $8 million that was seemingly unaccounted for.

The agency has gone through five CEOs in its brief history, with several other candidates turning down the job.

Councilmember Jorge Barón, who sponsored Tuesday's legislation, said he has not yet made up his mind on the agency, but wants to make sure legislators have a "good process and good information."

It would take a year to wind down the agency, which is the region's leader in seeking and coordinating federal funding for homelessness. Clark Nuber, the consultant who led the audit, has said it could also take a year to get the agency back on sound financial footing.

"We don't want to do something that's going to lead to our losing capacity and ending up with even more people unsheltered out on the streets," Barón said. "Part of the goal of this is to do no harm."

Local homelessness providers and advocates, during Tuesday's meeting, warned against moving too quickly to shut it down, without a replacement in place.

"This community has made it clear that we need a countywide regional approach to homelessness," said Hali Willis, community policy manager for the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness. "It's not acceptable to simply go back to the way things were, with each jurisdiction going it alone with their separate processes."

"Don't eliminate any agency or part of an agency unless you have something better to replace it with," said Barb Oliver, a consultant to the authority who has long worked on tiny house shelters.

Dembowski, who co-sponsored Tuesday's legislation, said his concerns with the Regional Homelessness Authority go beyond what's in the audit. The audit, he noted, only looked at the agency through June 2025.

"There's 11 additional months at the Regional Homelessness Authority that we don't know anything about," he said. "I believe we have a five-alarm fire here, I am extremely concerned about the position that this agency has put county taxpayers in by continuing to borrow money to run their operations.

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