(The Center Square) – The City of Seattle and King County are jointly allocating $900,000 to stabilize the troubled finances of the King County Regional Homeless Authority for the next half year as the future of the agency hangs in the balance.
The contribution will be to hire an accounting team for the agency through the end of 2026, said Seferiana Day Hasegawa, a spokeswoman for Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson in an email to The Center Square.
Hasegawa didn’t offer specifics on how soon a team could be put in place, but the job could be short-term.
Both the Seattle mayor and King County have until Aug. 1 to decide whether to repair or dissolve the agency, which was the subject of a critical April audit that found millions of dollars missing.
Back on June 9, King County Executive Girmay Zahilay and Wilson said they wanted the team of independent financial analysts to provide more immediate oversight while they determine whether to repair or dissolve the agency.
But the cost of the team was never revealed.
A critical audit back in April found $8 million in missing funds that the authority couldn’t account for. The authority has a budget of around $200 million.
The five-year-old authority is the largest initiative in Seattle and King County to provide services for the homeless. It has seen a continuous line of CEOs and senior employee turnover and continuous charges of fiscal mismanagement.
The forensic audit of the homeless authority also found that the authority maintained a negative cash balance of up to $44.7 million and that $4.26 million was lost to administrative overspending, including interest payments that cannot be recovered.
Andrea Suarez, executive director of We Heart Seattle, a community organization that addresses homelessness, said the authority should be shut down, rather than throwing more money at a lost cause.
“Time to cut bait,” she said.
Suarez said that if the authority was dissolved and contracting was returned to Seattle and King County, both of which already maintain finance, procurement, HR and audit infrastructure, an estimated $7- $18 million could be redirected to front-line homeless providers.
“This is the equivalent of hundreds of shelter beds, dozens of case managers or expanded behavioral health capacity without raising taxes or creating new programs,” she said.
