Seattle has told the King County Regional Homelessness Authority it’s taking back part of its funding.
After a tumultuous year for the authority and a new City Council more critical of current homelessness strategies, this move could raise questions about the authority’s future.
In an email sent to the authority’s leaders last Friday, Tanya Kim, the city’s director of the Human Services Department, wrote that the city would take back oversight of outreach and homelessness prevention contracts, about 10% of the $109 million in annual funding the city provides to the authority.
Most of the authority’s budget goes toward places to stay indoors, such as homeless shelters, permanent supportive housing and medium-term rental vouchers. Outreach services, which are one of the most visible functions of homeless services, are closely tied to the city’s ability to remove encampments.
“Beginning immediately, (Seattle’s Human Services Department) and (King County Regional Homelessness Authority) will start development of a transition plan and timeline to ensure an orderly transition and minimize any disruptions,” Kim wrote. The actual transfer of contracts will begin later this year and extend into 2025.
Kim wrote that the transfer of outreach contracts was “in an effort to carefully examine how outreach investments align to the evolving needs of the city and ensure effective use of City funding in meeting desired outcomes.”
Kim also wrote that taking back homelessness prevention, which generally consists of short-term rental assistance, aligns with the city’s role in leading efforts that address upstream causes of homelessness while the Regional Homelessness Authority leads emergency response. She added that King County never transferred homelessness prevention funding to the authority.
The King County Regional Homelessness Authority said it was aware of the city’s decision and working to understand the likely impacts on nonprofit organizations contracted to provide social services, homeless people and the region’s approach to addressing homelessness.
Outreach staff work with people living outside to connect them with shelter, housing and other services. They usually canvas tents, vehicles and other outdoor places, talking to people about what they need to get housing or medical and behavioral health treatment to work toward exiting homelessness. People who do this work often say it takes time to develop relationships and determine what people’s needs are.
They are also a critical part of encampment removals. A 2018 federal court decision has been interpreted to require cities to offer people shelter before clearing tents. The city’s outreach funding is currently split between organizations that work with the city’s encampment removal team and efforts that target specific segments of the homeless population like Native people, youth or people with high behavioral health needs.
Mayor Bruce Harrell, who pledged during his campaign to keep streets, parks and public spaces “open and clear of encampments,” has clashed with previous authority leadership who denounced the approach as “displacement.”
Jamie Housen, a spokesperson for Harrell, said that the Regional Homelessness Authority informed Seattle in April 2023 that it did not have the capacity to coordinate outreach with the Unified Care Team, the city’s encampment removal and cleanup team.
Housen denied that taking back funding was to increase the pace of encampment removals and said it is in the interest of ensuring effective services and optimizing funding in the face of budget deficits.
“The purpose of neighborhood outreach is to build relationships and consistency in addressing each area’s unique needs and is unrelated to the pace of encampment removals,” Housen wrote.
Homelessness nonprofit REACH receives about a third of the city’s current outreach funding. Over the past year, REACH has worked with the city’s Unified Care Team and feels good about its relationship with the city.
“I hope we continue our partnership with the city and we continue to build on what we have,” said Chloe Gale, Vice President of Policy and Advocate at Evergreen Treatment Services, which REACH is a part of.
The King County Regional Homelessness Authority was already on shaky political footing. The agency is in the middle of transitioning to its third CEO in the past nine months. L. Darrell Powell, who has ties to Harrell dating back to high school, is taking the reins on an interim basis after interim CEO Helen Howell announced last month she was stepping down. Howell had taken over after the authority’s first CEO Marc Dones resigned in May.
In the months before Dones’ resignation, the authority had lost the trust of homeless service providers and was caught up in the messy collapse of a hotel shelter program.
The authority’s signature project, Partnership for Zero, an effort to end homelessness in downtown Seattle was shut down in September, and in the following months, one of the project’s main funders — a private-sector-led organization designed to partner with the authority — fell apart.
In his State of the City speech Tuesday, Harrell emphasized a regional approach to homelessness but stressed needed improvements for the authority.
“The King County Regional Homelessness Authority has taken steps forward, but there have also been bumps along the road,” Harrell said in the speech. “This year, we will drive needed changes to improve oversight and accountability and foster stronger regional collaboration and solutions.”
Alison Eisinger, executive director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, said the city’s move to pull funding from the authority was “counter to regionalism” and that outreach workers should not be separated from the services they offer. The coalition is made up of several organizations that provide homeless services, including outreach.
“The decision to reclaim the function of outreach to the city suggests to me a continued misunderstanding of what skilled outreach is, how it works with the rest of our system and what it means to focus on the needs of people experiencing homelessness, as opposed to political whim,” Eisinger said.
King County, which partnered with Seattle to create the Regional Homelessness Authority, expects the city to remain a part of that effort.
“Just yesterday the Mayor reaffirmed his support and commitment toward a regional approach, and we would take him at his word today,” county spokesperson Chase Gallagher wrote in a statement. “Solutions are only possible with resolve from the cities themselves to address this crisis. King County is actively engaging with the city and other partners to ensure [King County Regional Homelessness Authority] is as effective as possible.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Chloe Gale’s title.