Jon Conley

Seattle and King County built a homelessness bureaucracy, gave it nearly $1.1 BILLION over five years, and got more homelessness, a $16.7 million hole, and a CEO heading for the exit. Here's the record of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority: • Homelessness: 11,643 people in 2017. 16,868 in 2024. 18,365 in 2026. 64% are now unsheltered: tents, cars, doorways. • Money: nearly $1.1 billion since 2021. In 2024 alone, $167.8 million went to 60 organizations. • April forensic review: a negative cash position of $44.7 million, $8 million in receivables nobody could reconcile, $2.96 million on temp staffing, and a $6.4 million unapproved overspend in 2025. • Mayor Wilson's own office admitted the agency couldn't account for $13 million in public funds. • October follow-up review: about $1 billion in grant commitments, only about $750 million actually used, and a $16.7 million deficit called unrecoverable. Seattle and King County taxpayers get the bill. Look at the chart. KCRHA's budget jumped from $167 million in 2022 to $228 million in 2023. It only came down to about $205 million in 2025 and 2026 because the revenue ran short: one-time pandemic federal money dried up, the agency hit a $4.7 million hole in its 2026 operating budget, cut its office from 106 positions to 84, and braced for up to $23 million in federal cuts. That wasn't reform. They ran out of other people's money. And the homeless count didn't care either way. 13,368 in 2022. 16,868 in 2024. 18,365 in 2026. It climbed when the budget went up, and it kept climbing when the budget came down. Up 37% since 2022, steady as a metronome. Spending was never the variable that mattered. Because nobody in charge will touch what's actually driving it. Drugs: in KCRHA's own 2024 count, 47% of unsheltered people reported a substance use disorder, up from 37% in 2022. King County overdose deaths went from 429 in 2019 to 1,340 in 2023, and were still about 900 last year. About 1 in 5 were homeless. You cannot house your way past fentanyl. Crime: Washington has the fewest police per capita in America, 1.38 per 1,000 vs. 2.31 nationally, 15 years running. After the Blake decision, Seattle gets about 100 drug referrals a quarter. Seattle's own City Attorney found just 118 repeat offenders drove 2,400+ police referrals in five years, while the county jail refused to book most misdemeanors. Who decided that was an acceptable cost? Borders: King County spent about $10 million housing asylum seekers who arrived at a Tukwila church, then said it had exhausted all available funding. Olympia added $32 million more. That's money that didn't go to Washingtonians already on the street. Taxes: Olympia's answer was about $9.4 billion in new taxes over four years. Seattle's JumpStart payroll tax pulled in $406 million in 2025. Meanwhile 47% of King County renters spend over 30% of their income on housing, and the state says we need 1.1 million more homes by 2044. Taxing people out of their homes is not a homelessness strategy. The latest: on Nov 6 the agency's FIFTH CEO resigned at a board meeting that had a closed-door performance review on the agenda. Her number two is now running the place until the board names an acting CEO. In January, Seattle and King County take back about $160 million in contracts, and the authority shrinks to a narrow federal role. Their fix isn't dissolution, and it isn't accountability. It's a reorg, a new org chart, and a bill mailed to you. This is what you get when government measures success by dollars spent instead of people housed. My answer stays the same: no new taxes until every dollar is tracked, audited, and tied to results. Taxpayers deserve receipts, not excuses.