Today, King County Executive Girmay Zahilay and Seattle Mayor Katie B. Wilson announced a plan to stabilize, right size, and reset the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA).
This is a significant moment for KCRHA and for the regional homelessness response system. It reflects real challenges that must be addressed, including the need to strengthen financial controls, improve oversight, protect public funds, and ensure KCRHA is positioned to meet its federal responsibilities. It also reflects a continued commitment to the principle that homelessness is a regional challenge requiring regional coordination, shared infrastructure, and collective accountability.
KCRHA’s role is evolving and becoming more focused, but the need for a regional homelessness response has not changed.
The immediate priority is continuity.
People experiencing homelessness, service providers, and community partners should not experience service disruption because of this transition. The services funded through the homelessness response system are essential, and KCRHA will work closely with Seattle, King County, providers, federal and state partners, labor, people with lived experience, and communities across the region to support a responsible transition that protects service continuity, provider stability, and the people who rely on these programs every day.
As part of the reset announced today, Seattle and King County will begin transitioning administration of many City- and County-funded homelessness service contracts back to the City and County beginning in 2027. This is a major operational change. It will require careful planning, clear communication, provider engagement, and disciplined follow-through.
At the same time, KCRHA will continue to hold core regional responsibilities that support the homelessness response system as a whole. These include:
- Federal Continuum of Care (CoC) leadership
- Coordinated Entry (CE)
- Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) and related data infrastructure
- Point-in-Time (PIT) Count/Housing Inventory Count (HIC)
- Severe Weather coordination
- Office of the Ombuds
- Other regional coordination functions necessary to support system stability, federal funding, and shared accountability.
KCRHA also remains committed to the broader regional backbone work the system continues to need: helping the region understand how homelessness is experienced across different communities and geographies; supporting shared data, planning, and performance infrastructure; convening providers and partners; elevating concerns from people and communities directly affected by homelessness; and helping the region identify what is working, where gaps remain, and how to improve outcomes.
One of the central lessons of the past several years is that contract administration and regional system improvement are related, but distinct, functions. Seattle and King County may administer many local contracts going forward, but the region still needs shared infrastructure to help understand, coordinate, evaluate, and improve the homelessness response system those contracts fund.
That is where KCRHA’s regional role remains important.
Through HMIS, Coordinated Entry, PIT/HIC, federal Continuum of Care responsibilities, severe weather coordination, regional planning, provider convening, and system performance work, KCRHA will continue to support the infrastructure that helps the region function as a system rather than as a collection of disconnected programs.
That work is not only technical. It is also about accountability.
KCRHA should not only help measure the system from above; it should remain accountable to the people and communities experiencing the system directly. The Office of the Ombuds remains a critical part of that accountability structure, providing a pathway for people experiencing homelessness, service providers, and community members to raise concerns, identify barriers, surface inequities, and help the system learn from lived experience.
This matters because homelessness does not stop at jurisdictional boundaries. People move across cities. Providers work across funding streams. Federal resources depend on regional coordination. Data systems must remain connected. Coordinated Entry must function across the county. Severe weather response requires shared planning. And the racial disproportionality embedded in homelessness requires more than isolated program management; it requires regional attention, accountability, and action.
The reset announced today is also connected to KCRHA’s ongoing corrective action and financial stabilization work. KCRHA has already begun work to strengthen financial controls, documentation, reporting, and accountability. Independent financial support and monitoring will help the agency move through this stabilization period with greater visibility, discipline, and confidence.
We take this work seriously. Stabilizing KCRHA is not separate from protecting the homelessness response system; it is part of protecting the system. Federal funding, provider payments, shared data, Coordinated Entry, severe weather response, regional coordination, and accountability all depend on a stable and responsible regional structure.
The next phase must be more focused, more disciplined, and more clearly defined. It must preserve what the region still needs while acknowledging where responsibilities can be better aligned.
KCRHA may no longer administer every local contract, but it will continue to help the region see, coordinate, evaluate, and improve the homelessness response system as a whole.
As we move through this transition, our commitment is to work with Seattle, King County, providers, federal and state partners, labor, people with lived experience, and communities across the region to protect continuity, maintain essential infrastructure, strengthen accountability, and build a clearer, more effective regional backbone for the future.
