(The Center Square) – Future support for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority from the county executive’s office will depend on who is elected in the 2025 general election.
The King County Regional Homelessness Authority, or KCRHA, has served as the organization responsible for coordinating funding and services for unhoused people across all of King County since 2019.
However, the homelessness crisis has not improved. In fact, statistics show it has worsened.
King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci and King County Assessor are two candidates for the county executive position, who spoke with The Center Square on their approach to helping people get out of homelessness.
Balducci, a member of the KCRHA Governing Committee, believes a regional approach enforced by the agency is the best way to handle the homelessness crisis.
In Balducci’s view, KCRHA is founded on a “very correct and still relevant principle” that homelessness is a regional problem that requires regional solutions. The city of Seattle is the major contributor to the agency’s funded operations, followed by King County.
Other King County cities are represented by three members of the Sound Cities Association.
“Now the question is: is this organization going to be able to stand up in enough capacity and be effective at driving solutions that make it worthwhile for all of the jurisdictions to continue contributing to it?” Balducci asked during a phone interview with The Center Square. “That is our challenge in front of us right now.”
She added that she believes it is the right approach, but KCRHA needs to prove it works to gain trust from its contributing agencies.
Wilson, on the other hand, said he would have to see significantly positive changes that could be made quickly to KCRHA to get people to believe that the agency can continue operations.
“What I hear repeatedly from the service providers is that it set up a needless competition for dollars between them,” Wilson said. “To date I haven’t seen that [KCRHA] has been particularly effective.”
The agency’s funding for nonprofit organizations increased from approximately $134.7 million in 2022 to $169 million in 2023, a 25% hike. The agency’s funding for 60 organizations in the 2024 budget is $167.8 million, according to documents obtained by The Center Square.
Despite the funding, 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 point-in-time count conducted by the county in 2022, which found 13,368 homeless people in King County.
Both candidates said county leaders need to be honest with themselves and admit that if the approach to ending homelessness does not work, then it should be scrapped and replaced with a new strategy.
Homelessness correlates with crime as well. Wilson believes the increase in homeless people committing acts of low-level crimes is driven by mental health issues and substance addiction. In order to reduce the crime rate, these offenders need treatment services.
He points to the Muckleshoot Tribe, which has a clean and sober campus on the reservation. Services are available on site at this center to help attendees.
“If you provide that kind of wraparound service and get people engaged in that, you can help a lot of them turn a corner,” Wilson said.
However, Wilson said the county has failed to provide sufficient levels of services over the last 10-15 years because funding has instead been sent elsewhere.
Balducci said no strategy to reducing homelessness is off the table and the county should go after whatever has the most success rate in seeing people get out of homelessness.
“I’m for whatever works; if it works, that’s what we should do,” Balducci said. “We need to be data-based in what we are doing.”
Balducci noted the success KCRHA has seen from its partnership with the Washington state Department of Transportation’s Right of Way Safety Initiative. The initiative identifies the location of an encampment along state right-of-ways and sends outreach workers and social workers. These workers develop relationships with the people living in the encampments.
Instead of removing homeless people from the encampment after a few hours, the Right of Way Safety Initiative offers services after a few weeks in order to build trust.
The initiative saw a success rate of 89% for acceptance of housing and shelter of homeless people living on state right of ways in 2023.
The Center Square has scheduled an interview with King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay about his campaign for the executive position.
