(The Center Square) – The leader of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority resigned Friday after an audit found $16.7 million in unrecoverable funding due to “chronic financial mismanagement.”
KCHRA CEO Kelly Kinnison submitted her letter of resignation Friday morning, which the governing board accepted soon after, effective Nov. 16. She is the fifth person to lead the authority since its founding in 2019, after serving in various positions under three different federal administrations for over a decade.
“I was asked to assess and rebuild a young organization that had significant challenges,” Kinnison wrote in a press release. “I’m proud of what I’ve achieved, including surfacing structural issues in our finance department and contributing to the path forward for a more accountable homelessness response system.”
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and King County executive Girmay Zahilay announced in July that they will resume managing locally controlled contracts next year, as local officials called for dismantling KCRHA.
Last month, an independent review found nearly $17 million in unrecoverable funding and cited “chronic financial mismanagement” and overspending. Wilson and Zahilay called it “unacceptable” and said the two would work together to address repayment, though that and the future of KCRHA remain unclear.
According to Friday’s announcement, Wilson and Zahilay, who co-chair the governing board, “will make an Executive leadership recommendation.” The press release did not say when they would recommend someone to the board or whether the pick would serve in an interim capacity during a larger search.
The Center Square contacted the mayor’s office for answers, but Wilson’s press secretary, Ansel Herz, responded via text that they had no further comment beyond her statement in KCRHA’s press release.
“I have a responsibility to the people of Seattle to ensure that financial challenges at KCRHA are addressed and stabilized,” Wilson wrote on Friday. “I join Executive Zahilay in thanking Dr. Kinnison for her leadership and partnership, and we will make a recommendation soon on interim leadership.”
The same KCRHA announcement said that during Kinnison’s tenure, she “helped stabilize the agency following significant leadership turnover and strengthened its core operations.” Now she is resigning as the organization’s two largest contributors take back their local contracts and leave, gutting KCRHA.
Seattle City Councilmember Maritza Rivera and King County Councilmember Rob Dembowski renewed calls to dismantle KCRHA in October, but they aren’t the only officials fed up with the lack of oversight.
“The experiment that was the KCRHA has officially failed,” King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn wrote in a written statement to The Center Square Friday. “We must now urgently bring homeless services back under elected officials who can be held responsible for the success or failure of the programs.”
According to The Seattle Times, a public records officer recently quit KCRHA after some executive staff omitted Kinnison’s emails from searches to fulfill requests and shuttered access to records for months.
Zahilay wrote in a statement that it’s a hard job; Kinnison was coordinating a response to the region’s “most pressing issue amid a shifting federal landscape and structural issues within the authority.” The head of King County said he and the city would “ensure a smooth transition into KCRHA’s next phase.”