KCRHA approves 5-year plan to address homelessness

The embattled King County Regional Homeless Authority (KCRHA) unanimously voted Thursday to approve their new 5-year plan.

KIRO 7 reported the plan includes around $250 million of spending in 2024. In January, the agency said it need $11.8 billion over five years to effectively deal with homelessness. It’s not clear what the new overall budget for the five years is, but details are supposed to be released later today.

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This new plan came after Marc Dones, the CEO of KCRHA, decided to step down May 16 after leading the department for two years.

King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn wrote in an Op-Ed in The Seattle Times that the authority should be dissolved because it has been ineffective.

“As we approach the time when King County government could withdraw from this partnership with Seattle and five other cities under the agreement, elected leaders should be evaluating whether the value of the KCRHA is worth the many hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that would be invested over the next decade,” Dunn wrote.

The KCRHA estimated that more than 53,000 people experienced homelessness in 2022, and are projecting that that number will be closer to 62,000 people by 2028.

Most of the money will be spent on temporary housing, additional permanent shelter space, and outreach. They plan on building 18,200 units of temporary housing.

“The full plan provides a roadmap and a set of action steps to achieve progress on each of these three levels, unifying and coordinating the homeless response system so that it is more transparent, accountable, and effective at reducing unsheltered homelessness,” the KCRHA said in a written release.

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In an update on the 5-year plan from the beginning of May, KCRHA outlined the three-part approach that it was focusing on to address the crisis, including improving resources for those providing services to the homeless population, creating a more coordinated network of these service providers, and to connect healthcare, public safety, education system and more in order to prevent homelessness.

“We are making progress. But we have a long way to go,” KCRHA said in its update. “We can only be successful if our whole community — government, businesses, philanthropy, service providers, nonprofits, and people like you — comes together around one shared vision and plan to dramatically reduce unsheltered homelessness.”