Citing audit as 'last straw,' officials seek to dissolve King County Regional Homelessness Authority

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority has had a rocky tenure, and now there are questions about its future in the wake of a new audit released Wednesday.

Seattle and King County launched the agency five years ago to better coordinate efforts on homelessness. But money management issues have dogged the agency, and now some elected officials say it’s time to end it.

The agency is the product of an agreement between Seattle and King County, with Seattle contributing the lion’s share of the funding. The idea was to coordinate efforts to address homelessness among the 39 cities in King County and avoid fragmentation and duplication. The agency coordinates and awards grants to a network of service providers and gathers data including the Point in Time Count.

But Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson has bypassed the agency in her most recent efforts to add 1,000 units of shelter and emergency housing. Now this new audit is adding to the criticism about a lack of accountability and progress at the KCRHA.

The audit, by the Bellevue-based firm Clark Nuber, said the King County Regional Homelessness Authority was in the red by $48 million when the study concluded last summer. It found $8 million could not be accounted for at all.

“From inception through July 31, 2025, KCRHA received a total of $533.9 million in funding from all sources,” the audit concluded.

The audit did not find evidence of fraud, but also said the accounting is so weak that it can’t be ruled out. It said the agency’s controls are weak overall. And previous audits had similar conclusions.

Elected Seattle and King County officials called the audit findings unacceptable. But they appear divided on whether to scrap the agency and start over.

The agency has a governing board that includes Mayor Wilson, County Executive Girmay Zahilay, and Seattle City Councilmembers Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Dionne Foster. Wilson said in her statement that "all options are on the table." The others said reform is needed but regional coordination is still essential.

Two elected officials said Thursday it’s time to try something completely different. Seattle City Councilmember Maritza Rivera and King County Councilmember Rod Dembowski announced they will introduce motions to dissolve the KCRHA.

“It’s time to head in a new direction and acknowledge that this process has not worked,” Dembowski said in a press conference at Seattle City Hall. “It’s added an unnecessary, ineffective layer of government that has not been accountable to our region’s most pressing challenge and it’s time to end it.”

Rivera called the new audit “the last straw.”

“It is time to find a different way to make this very important work happen,” she said.

Both Rivera and Dembowski said passage of their resolutions would activate a one-year process to dissolve the regional agency, and that they still want Seattle and King County to collaborate under a new model.

Los Angeles County last year backed out of a similar regional homelessness effort, choosing to create a new department at the county level instead.

The KCRHA’s current CEO, Kelly Kinnison, said in a letter to her board that she requested this audit and has already been working to address the conditions it flagged. She was hired in 2024.

Kinnison said “concerns related to our financial systems” were evident from the agency’s formation, but she was hired to strengthen those systems and that’s what she’s been doing. She emphasized that the audit did not find fraud or misuse of funds.

After the audit was released, Zahily and Wilson co-signed a letter indicating that they will seek much tighter oversight of the homelessness authority, with some corrective actions required in the coming weeks. The agenda includes a briefing on the audit when the board meets Friday afternoon.

One local expert on homelessness who spoke on condition of anonymity said these conversations are delicate because stakeholders want financial accountability but don’t want to jeopardize the region’s much-needed federal funding.

The 2024 budget of $224 million is the most recent one posted to the KCRHA website. It indicates that Seattle contributed just over half the funding (50.5%). King County contributed 15.8% and the remainder came from federal sources.