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What’s going on with the Regional Homelessness Authority?

The Seattle Times’ Project Homeless is funded by BECU, Campion Foundation, Raikes Foundation, Seattle Foundation and the University of Washington. The Seattle Times maintains editorial control over Project Homeless content.

There’s a lot going on right now with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority — and there has been for a while. 

Last week, the authority adopted its first long-term vision for the 2-year-old agency.

Last month, its CEO, Marc Dones, announced a June resignation after leaders in homelessness services put the authority on blast for not paying them on time. 

That follows terse public exchanges over the amount of funding the authority has requested to end homelessness, as well as squabbles over strategy and politicking.

Overall, the agency has been in the news a lot more in the past year, although many King County residents might still not know it even exists. 

But why has it been in the news? If you haven’t been paying close attention to the Regional Homelessness Authority, don’t worry. We have. 

Here’s a recap of what’s been going on.

What does the Regional Homelessness Authority do?

The Regional Homelessness Authority’s most basic function is to manage services for homeless people. That includes emergency shelters, outreach and case management. 

It contracts with dozens of nonprofits to operate and staff those services, spending more than $200 million a year. The money comes primarily from Seattle, the federal government, King County and the state, in that order. Seattle and King County managed those contracts before the authority was created.

The authority does more than just sign checks, though. It gets to decide which organizations get that money and what services they should provide. 

The authority also made the somewhat controversial decision to get involved in providing homelessness services itself instead of just paying nonprofits to do that work. It hired dozens of outreach workers and case managers who are focused on the authority’s signature Partnership for Zero initiative, which is seeking to end unsheltered homelessness in downtown and the Chinatown International District.

Behind the scenes, the authority develops homelessness strategy for all of King County and works with other cities and different levels of government to get political and financial buy-in. It also coordinates the region’s severe weather response and manages the system that determines who gets to move from shelters or off the streets into permanent housing. 

Where did it come from? Why?

The Regional Homeless Authority was created with the goal of putting all the money and decision-making of King County’s homelessness response into one agency. It was created in 2019 by a partnership between then-Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s administration and King County. The goal was to reduce administrative overhead and create consistency in homelessness strategy across cities and between different elected officials’ tenures.

Who controls the Regional Homelessness Authority?

The authority is an independent agency that receives funding from local governments but is not a department within any of them. It makes decisions based on its own staff and the input of two boards.

Those boards approve major decisions like its annual budget, its five-year plan and the appointment of its CEO. The first is called the implementation board, which is composed of residents with backgrounds in health care, affordable housing, finance, social services and a variety of other fields. The second board is called the governing committee, which has elected officials from Seattle, King County and other regional cities, in addition to people who have been or currently are homeless. 

Why is there so much drama with what sounds like should be a boring bureaucratic government agency?

The authority under CEO Dones has been trying to shift the region’s homelessness system, saying the status quo is not acceptable. 

When Dones entered their position, they saw a system that was dramatically underfunded, did not adequately address the fact that Black and Indigenous people disproportionately become homeless, and did not include people with the lived experience of homelessness in the decision-making to shape the system serving them. They also said homelessness decisions sometimes served the nonprofit organizations that received homelessness funding more than homeless people, were not based on data and best practices, and catered too much to the whims of elected officials who swung the direction of homelessness policy and response with every administration that cycled through. 

Dones, who was hired and not elected, sought to change all that.

The authority under Dones has tried to get the region to move away from focusing as much on temporary solutions and more toward long-term investments. That includes creating fewer new tiny homes, saying the region should invest that space, energy and money into higher-quality shelter and housing. That angered elected officials and service providers who say the tiny homes are one way to get people off the street quickly and that they get broad support from the public.

The agency has been part of — but not the sole reason for — a new way to remove homeless encampments that finds shelter or housing for the vast majority of people. But that method has been at conflict with the pace at which some elected officials, including the mayor, want to remove encampments

The authority has also repeatedly called for much larger investments into homelessness than elected officials are currently prepared to fund. It has also tried to get elected officials to acknowledge a greater number of people than previously thought to be experiencing homelessness. 

Homelessness is the No. 1 issue for most voters, so elected officials feel strong pressure to make progress on the issue and have different ideas for what approach to take. To a certain extent, rocking the boat is going to ruffle feathers. At the same time, Dones and the authority have been criticized for poor execution and communication of details and for making decisions before establishing consensus.

Are late contract payment the only reason why service providers don’t like the authority?

No, some providers don’t like that the authority created its own outreach team in downtown for Partnership for Zero, saying it competes with other service providers for funding and staff. Some don’t like that the authority pays its own employees much higher wages than industry average, while they can only pay their front-line workers on average $40,000 to $45,000 under their contracts with the authority. 

Many also complain of poor communication, saying emails to the authority often take weeks to get a response, and the authority often makes decisions unilaterally without consulting its contracted providers.

Is there anything about the authority that people are happy with?

The Regional Homelessness Authority had zero employees at the start of 2021. Now, it has more than 100. Elected officials give the authority credit for creating an agency from scratch. 

It also oversaw one of the speediest efforts in the nation among large cities to utilize Emergency Housing Vouchers, a pandemic-era federal program created to quickly move people from the streets into housing.

The authority also persuaded five North King County cities to start funding it. Although the amount totaled 0.1% of the agency’s revenue, the move was a show of confidence in the authority’s progress and a step toward the goal of bringing all 39 cities in King County onboard. Currently, Seattle and the five North King County cities are the only municipalities that fund the authority.

Service providers appreciated that Dones and the authority spoke plainly about the real scope and cost of the region’s homelessness crisis. For example, the authority spurned the federally mandated Point-in-Time count, a single-day count of homeless people, saying it was an undercount, and it opted instead to use a higher number based on state methodology that showed 53,532 people experienced homelessness in 2022. Elected officials also acknowledged that the billions of dollars the authority said it would require to end homelessness was likely an accurate figure.

How much does the Regional Homelessness Authority cost to run?

Although the authority’s annual budget is north of $200 million, the majority of that is passed through to nonprofits in the same contracts and amounts that were being spent when Seattle and King County administered those contracts. 

The authority spends about $19 million on staffing and overhead of the agency. But not all of that should be considered new spending by the region. Seattle and King County downsized their human services departments as work was transferred over to the authority. 

Why did Marc Dones resign?

Dones cited burnout as the reason for their resignation. Several elected officials on the authority’s governing committee expressed surprise about the timing of Dones’ departure when it was announced in the midst of the authority finalizing its five-year road map. 

However, tension between Dones and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell had been building since last summer. And just a few weeks before Dones’ resignation, a number of homelessness service providers delivered the strongest rebuke of the authority since its creation.

What’s going to happen after Dones leaves?

The authority has said Dones’ departure won’t affect its scheduled tasks like completing its five-year plan and subregional plans and issuing new contracts with service providers.

Deputy CEO Helen Howell will take over as interim CEO. Howell has decades of experience working in the housing and homelessness sectors in Seattle and King County, and she has the respect of many service providers and elected officials. 

Elected officials said the process to find a permanent replacement CEO would likely take a minimum of six months.

The initial agreement between Seattle and King County allows either entity to walk away from the Regional Homelessness Authority after an initial five-year term, which expires December 2024. Elected officials in Seattle and King County have not indicated they are ready to walk away from the endeavor altogether.

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