$1B spent on King County homelessness organization as unhoused population grows
Jun 30, 2026, 7:41 AM
Several tents housing homeless people lined up on a sidewalk in Seattle. (Photo courtesy of KIRO 7)
(Photo courtesy of KIRO 7)
There’s slightly more than a month before Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and King County Executive Girmay Zahilay have to make a recommendation to their respective councils — to keep or to disband the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) that has been embattled with issues since its creation in 2021.
It comes as the agency’s $1 billion in spending has only resulted in more people experiencing homelessness, according to the most recent Point in Time Count.
The latest round of concerns comes from a forensic audit in April that found $4.26 million overspent, $8 million unaccounted for, and a gift card and purchasing card program that lacked controls or authorizations for spending.
The KCRHA has since issued a corrective plan, which includes controls and reportedly has found $1 million of the unaccounted-for money, but in a letter, Wilson and Zahilay said the current course was insufficient.
“We expect a certain level of detail and specificity in the plan to correct those issues and didn’t feel like that plan had that,” Zahilay said in his first TV interview about the KCRHA since the corrective plan was released. “There was a lot of good stuff there, but when we think about how quickly these problems need to be solved, we wanted to see more specificity of the when and the how.”
Seattle and King County have given $900,000 to an outside consulting firm to oversee the corrections, the finances, and provide updates. That is on top of a financial and governance committee the board created in the immediate aftermath of the review.
“I understand the feeling of another committee, but this is really going to be a place where the board members can dive into the finances, dive into compliance issues, dive into the things in the corrective action plan and make sure they’re actually being implemented,” Zahilay said.
The plan’s implementation comes as the KCRHA released the 2026 Point-in-Time Count — a snapshot conducted over one day — showing 18,365 people were counted, with 64% experiencing “unsheltered” homelessness, an increase from 58% in 2024.
“This is a situation where I think our provider networks, the non-profits, the housing organizations, the services organizations, are working frantically to bring people indoors,” Zahilay said. “But macroeconomic factors of an economy where people are making less money, an economy where there’s not enough affordable housing, a situation when we don’t have enough of behavioral health services that are needed to provide people stability.”
Over its five years in existence, KCRHA’s budget has totaled nearly $1.1 billion, and in 2026, Seattle contributed nearly 58% of its budget to King County’s 23%. In that time, housing units and shelter beds have increased from 18,514 to 20,485.
Zahilay has made a “500 beds in 500 days” goal for the middle of 2027, and while funding varies, the first 80- to 100-bed shelter has a cost estimate of up to $3 million.
“It’s unacceptable,” Zahilay said. “I think people are right to be frustrated, to see themselves spending more money and not seeing this problem be solved fully. We need to make sure that every single dollar that we collect in taxes is used to its maximum capacity. It’s being tracked as effectively as possible that people are being held accountable for any issues of misuse. And clearly from the forensic audit that we saw, there’s a lot of cleanup work that needs to happen.”
