(The Center Square) – A new interlocal agreement between the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and Seattle and King County has been ratified after final approval from the King County Council.
The five-year agreement addresses a main concern from officials at the Seattle and King County level: a confusing governmental structure.
The new agreement creates a single governing board within the King County Regional Homelessness Authority that is responsible for providing fiscal oversight, setting strategic policy direction, monitoring performance, and ensuring the agency is making progress to fulfill its mission.
Since KCRHA was first developed in 2019, the agency operated with three separate boards: the governing committee, the implementation board, and the Seattle King County Continuum of Care Board.
The new agreement doubles down on Seattle and King County’s support for KCRHA’s work addressing the homeless epidemic facing the region. Despite increased funding to the agency, the homelessness crisis in King County has worsened.
According to the latest Point-in-Time count, there have been 16,385 people experiencing homelessness in King County in 2024. That is a 22.6% increase from the last PIT conducted by the county in 2022, which found 13,368 homeless people in King County.
In order for the contract to be ratified, it needed approval from the Seattle City Council, King County Council, and the Sound Cities Association. With the King County Council’s unanimous approval on Tuesday, all three entities have approved the agreement.
The new KCRHA Governing Board will be comprised of 12 total members in 2025, including: King County Executive Dow Constantine, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, two members of the King County Council, two members of the Seattle City Council, three elected officials from the Sound Cities Association, and three members who have lived experience who would have to be appointed by the city, county and association.
During the public comment period, some speakers spoke in support of the board structure to include five members with lived experience rather than three.
King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci acknowledged those concerns raised by public commenters and said the KCRHA board members are committed to understanding the lived experience of people who were homeless in order to help the demographic.
However, Balducci noted that any last-minute changes to the structure of the board would result in continued negotiations of the agreement, prolonging necessary changes to the agency.
“This is a negotiated agreement that has already been approved [by Seattle and the Sound Cities Association] and if we were to change it here, we would have to go back to the drawing board and renegotiate the agreement,” Balducci said during Tuesday’s King County Council meeting.
The agreement is set, but fellow King County Councilmember Jorge Barón emphasized that this is not the ultimate step needed to solve the homeless crisis.
“The structure is important, but at the end of the day, in order to address our homelessness crisis, we need more resources for the scope of the problem in our region,” he said.
