(The Center Square) – As King County and the city of Seattle respond to the recent forensic audit of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority that found $13 million in mismanaged funds and a $45 million deficit, there are growing calls for accountability, transparency and a potential refocus on what many identify as the root of the problem – drug addiction and mental health issues.
As reported by The Center Square earlier this week, the King County Council unanimously ordered a 90-day review of the agency’s operations before potentially moving toward dissolution, which would then potentially return services to direct city and county control.
The county would need to transition over 200 service contracts to avoid interrupting services for vulnerable populations.
A potential transition is further complicated because the regional homelessness authority is tied to contracts and federal funding that support services including shelter and outreach to permanent housing.
Seattle City Councilmember Bob Kettle, who serves as chair of the Public Safety Committee, told The Center Square the audit findings are “damning in so many ways.”
Kettle said when he first took office in 2024, already seeing issues within the agency, he pushed for governance reform within KCRHA.
“If we didn’t make those governance changes, the city council would have ended KCRHA at that point,” said Kettle.
Unfortunately, two years later, KCRHA is in no better shape.
“The city is in fiscal distress. The county is in fiscal distress, and so is the state. And that triple combination is not good for us,” said Kettle.
“This is why we need the regional approach, but then we also have to have the oversight piece done. We have to ensure that the operations and the financial pieces are being done right,” he added.
“We’ve definitely been notified now with this audit; we need to make this right. But at the end of the day, if you get rid of it, you’re going to have to replace it, so this contingency planning process needs to ensure that we have a 2.0 or we could fix it,” Kettle said.
The councilmember expressed there is no way Seattle can dissolve its relationship with KCRHA and move on to address the crisis alone.
“That is a mistake because it’s not a Seattle problem,” he said. “It is a regional problem.”
An opportunity to pivot
At a Seattle Public Safety Committee meeting last week, there was discussion of Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s plan to dramatically increase the number of tiny house villages in the city, even as critics have exposed drug use and drug dealing going on in some taxpayer funded villages.
Andrea Suarez, founder of We Heart Seattle, told members of the Public Safety Committee that nothing will change if the city does not move away from the “housing first” model that provides housing for drug addicted individuals, without any requirement that they take advantage of treatment and other services being offered.
“I’m here to talk about the harm of possession in our community,” she told the committee.
“We’ve picked up hundreds of thousands of needles and hundreds of thousands of pieces of foil that our county hands out to drug addicts. I think that really just speaks to the drug friendly and enabling culture we have,” said Suarez.
We Heart Seattle has collected up tons of drug debris, homeless encampment trash and abandoned belongings in city parks over the last five years. Suarez has also helped many drug addicts get off the streets and into treatment.
She told committee members other liberal cities are correcting course on the drug and homelessness crisis, including San Francisco, which has a proposition that requires a drug test before receiving benefits.
“So, if you’re going to come to Seattle, you need to pass a drug test for illegal substances before you get your food stamp card and your EBT card. Little things like that are what other major cities and Democratic cities are doing,” said Suarez.
“My mantra is, here is we have very cheap drugs and free crime, and that’s what’s creating the havoc we see in our community.”
She then blasted Wilson’s approach to dramatically expanding tiny house villages.
“Last time I went into a tiny house, I saw a designated tiny house to use fentanyl,” she said.
“So, help me understand how we’re stabilizing somebody inside a tiny house village, when there’s a tiny house designated to smoke fentanyl, and wraparound services aren’t required? The whole city is a wraparound service. They don’t have to be at the village.”
She said accountability is needed.
“What I do know is when people get arrested and get a clear mind and go to treatment, they get better.”
After Suarez testified, a recovering addict named Corey Rattleff urged the council to move away from the “housing first” model.
“I am a drug addict and homeless, and I just want to speak on the fact that it took me 45 days in jail to finally get my mind right and hold myself accountable,” Rattleff said.
“Before that, I was in the streets all the way from Aurora to Tacoma. And I was being enabled from the city with free pipes, free foil, free housing, places that police can’t really come in and do anything about.”
“So now we’re encouraging and enabling a drug addict and a homeless [person] to be comfortable in that situation. What helps the situation is to hold us accountable,” Rattleff added.
The Center Square asked Councilman Kettle if he supports using the KCRHA audit findings as an opportunity to reset the course for how the city approaches the homelessness crisis by acknowledging the inextricable drug addiction problem.
“Nearly half of the people on the streets have a substance use disorder or some type of addiction problem,” said Kettle, noting that many also have mental health issues.
“That’s just a fact and so we should acknowledge that. So yes, we have a homelessness problem in our streets, but it’s compounded and affected by the substance use addiction problem.”
Since its inception at the end of 2019, KCRHA has been allocated about $534 million to address homelessness issues.
In mid-May, the agency is expected to release the latest numbers for the Point-in-Time count of homeless individuals countywide, conducted in January.
The Unsheltered Point-in-Time (PIT) Count is required every other year by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to help effectively allocate federal funds to support regional efforts to end homelessness.
In 2024, KCRHA reported 16,868 individuals living in homelessness, a 26% increase from 2022.
Kettle told The Center Square that KCRHA was asked to provide a written response to the audit by Friday, May 8, to Seattle’s Human Service Dept and King County’s Dept. of Community and Human Services, but it’s unclear when that will be made public.
