One group that was notably missing from a public discussion of Mayor Katie Wilson’s shelter expansion plan was the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which is supposed to manage every publicly funded homeless shelter contract in the region. Instead, the city is going it alone in Wilson’s top campaign priority—building 1,000 new units of shelter, such as tiny house villages, in 2026, and a total of 4,000 by the end of her term.
Wilson’s team has said they can move faster if the city does the work. But they’re also waiting on the outcome of a major forensic audit that could shed unfavorable light on the KCRHA’s finance and budgeting practices. That audit, which the city is paying an outside consultant more than $600,000 to conduct, has been going on since August and is supposed to wrap up this month. (King County is also helping to pay for the audit.)
So far, Wilson’s team has not suggested that they’re concerned about KCRHA’s ability to administer homelessness contracts; instead, they’ve said it’s just easier and more logical for the city to do it…