2024 was KCRHA’s third year of full operations. It was a year of accomplishments, challenges, and learning as we work towards fulfilling our mission of administering effective, performance-based homeless services to support a high-functioning homelessness crisis response system to significantly decrease the incidence of unsheltered homelessness across King County using equity and social justice principles. With Dr. Kelly Kinnison as Chief Executive Officer, we’re moving out of the startup phase and into building a stable and effective regional homelessness crisis response system.
KCRHA staff are dedicated, talented, and mission-driven people who want to work on this problem every day and be successful. We are addressing one of the most significant social issues of our time, and it will take all of us working together to create solutions.
Here’s a look back at our accomplishments and milestones in 2024.
Updated Interlocal Agreement Approved
After a series of approvals, City of Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and King County Executive Dow Constantine signed the revised and amended Interlocal Agreement (ILA), our founding legislation. The updated document reflects our next phase of work. It also created a single board, the Governing Board, which replaces the Implementation Board and the Governing Committee. The Governing Board combines elected officials and individuals with lived experience. The Governing Board is responsible for setting strategic policy direction, providing fiscal oversight, and monitoring performance metrics.
Permanent CEO Named
In August, Dr. Kelly Kinnison joined KCRHA. Dr. Kinnison is a senior leader with 15 years of federal social services policy experience. She has a Ph.D. in Community Psychology, which gave her the foundation for work in human services policy and research. Before joining KCRHA, she was the Director of Family and Community Policy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Read more in this Q&A about why she wanted to lead KCRHA, her vision, and the importance of the regional approach to addressing homelessness in King County.
Data Enhancements
The Community Impact team launched an enhanced inventory tool in HMIS that will allow us to better understand what units are available in the system. Providers now have the ability to show when a unit is available, in use, or offline — paving the way toward more real-time shelter referrals across the system. In 2025, we will evaluate the adoption of this new tool and expect to better understand how different units are being used across the system. This tool provides greater detail about who is using each unit and detailed information about those units to gain a deeper, more client-centered understanding of how people use our housing portfolio.
In early 2024, KCRHA conducted the unsheltered Point-in-Time (PIT) count for the second time in agency history. With our University of Washington partners, we grew on the novel method we introduced in 2022 called Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS). This innovative approach provided a more accurate understanding of how many people are experiencing homelessness in King County, equipping us with more information to scale our approach to meet the needs of our community.
Additionally, we published an updated version of the System Performance Dashboard in December. This dashboard offers excellent insight into key performance metrics across homeless services in King County. This dashboard is our first publicly available dashboard built on KCRHA’s new Data Hub infrastructure. As this Data Hub continues to be built out, KCRHA will be able to provide more publicly available data.
A Regional Approach
KCRHA continues to work with cities across King County towards shared responsibility for addressing homelessness. When we work together to welcome affordable housing and shelter in our communities, more people can come inside — because housing and shelter provide stability and supportive services that help people rebuild their lives.
North King County cities of Shoreline, Lake Forest Park, Kenmore, Bothell, and Woodinville are leaders in establishing an agreement with KCRHA to pool their investments for coordinated homelessness response. We look forward to working with more cities in the coming months and further unifying the regional homelessness response.
KCRHA thanks the City of Seattle and King County for their continued support and continued investment in sustaining the homelessness response across the region.
Severe Weather
KCRHA works with cities, outreach teams, and shelter providers across King County to provide people experiencing homelessness with a warm place to sleep during cold snaps and places to cool down during heatwaves. This year, we activated severe weather protocols eight times for a total of 50 days, equally split between cold and heat. We revamped the severe weather policy, including guidelines for responding to unusual weather events such as the bomb cyclone that hit the area in November. We are in the process of amending our contracts with Seattle service providers who activate during severe weather events. The shift will enable us to get them their funding ASAP, which will help them react more quickly and efficiently when we activate. King County increased its investment from $50,000 to $125,000 for severe weather response outside of Seattle. These funds will be distributed throughout South, East, and North King County, in a regional approach to respond to severe weather events. This is a significant increase for many communities that will receive funding from this investment.
Customer Service
A core function of KCRHA is managing the contracts of service providers who respond to the needs of people experiencing homelessness. Services include emergency shelter, transitional housing, and tiny home villages. This year, we administered 262 contracts worth $218 million.
Moving People Inside
Through the State Encampment Resolution Program (formerly known as the Right of Way Initiative or ROW), we served 523 who were experiencing homelessness, and 91 percent moved into housing. Along with our partners, we resolved 12 encampments this year, bringing the total to 22 resolved. These ongoing successful resolutions are thanks to state and local partnerships, with state funding for outreach, housing, and supportive services —so that people have the stability to heal, recover, reengage in jobs and community, and rebuild their lives.
COVID-19 Supply Distribution
In partnership with the WA Department of Health and Public Health – Seattle & King County, we distributed COVID-19 mitigation and detection supplies to 39 local organizations. The organizations include day centers, shared transitional housing, and congregate shelters.
We distributed:
- 11,130 N-95 masks
- 3,896 COVID-19 Tests
- 83,300 pairs of exam gloves
- 2,821 bottles of hand sanitizer.
Open House
We hosted our inaugural Open House event for external partners earlier this month. About 75 people stopped by our office in the Yesler building to meet staff and learn more about what each team at KCRHA is working on. It was great to have face-to-face conversations with people we often email and are in virtual meetings with. The event was a success, and we plan to hold more in the future.
In 2025, we’re focused on building on our previous successes, growing partnerships, and addressing unsheltered homelessness in King County.
