How the King County Regional Homelessness Authority got to this point

Each week on The Newsfeed, host Paris Jackson and a team of veteran journalists dive deep into one topic and provide impactful reporting, interviews and community insights from sources you can trust. Each day this week, this post will be updated with a new story from the team.

King County Regional Homelessness Authority ‘Resets’ After 7 Years 

Story published 07/27/2026

Homelessness response in King County could look a little different next year after the King County Regional Homelessness Authority undergoes what city and county officials call a “reset.”   

But what is the KCRHA, and what does it do exactly? In a series of stories this week, the Newsfeed is looking at the organization’s history and explaining the next steps in the county’s homelessness response.  

The regional homelessness authority was established in 2019, amid concerns that homelessness response was fragmented, and the numbers of people unhoused in King County was rising. That was four years after the county and the city of Seattle had declared homelessness a public health emergency in 2015.  

King County and Seattle tasked the organization with managing the contracts for providers of services for the unhoused, like shelters and housing.  Then-Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and then-King County Executive Dow Constantine called it an innovative approach.  

“Over the past two years, we have totally restructured how we deliver our services with the city and the county, but we are always encumbered by some fractured-ness of the system and today we take a step to change that,” Mayor Jenny Durkan said at a media event to sign the interlocal agreement in 2019.  

“We begin a new era of accountability, of bringing data driven solutions to the crisis and making sure that we have the right people at the table,” Constantine said in 2019. 

Despite the calls for regional buy-in, the bulk of the Authority’s $200 million annual budget was funded by King County and Seattle’s contracts to service providers.  

And seven years after that press conference, new administrations in Seattle and King County announced a change.  

Later this week, we’ll hear some key voices about what’s next for the KCRHA and what the future might look like for a regional response to homelessness.