Kinnison
The King County Regional Homelessness Authority still faces an uncertain future but finally has a new CEO to help it steer through financial challenges as it takes on the region’s ongoing crisis.
The authority announced US Department of Health and Human Services policy director Kelly Kinnison has accepted the role. The authority has been without a permanent leader since founding CEO Marc Dones stepped down a year ago amid criticism of his $11 billion plan for establishing the organization.
Kinnison currently serves as the director of family and community policy at the Department of Health and Human Services.
She will be faced with daunting numbers. CHS reported here on the authority’s latest count which estimated nearly 10,000 people are living without shelter in King County with another 6,600 counted in shelter systems.
The authority has said a lack of affordable housing is driving numbers higher even as it works to reduce the totals, citing a state report it says shows “the lack of affordable housing options has reached critical levels.” Officials say nearly half of the new homes required in the coming decades “must be affordable to households earning less than 50% of area median family income” to meet predicted demand.
Funding is also uncertain. The authority currently requires a more than $250 million budget with funding from the City of Seattle, King County, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the State of Washington Department of Commerce, and private foundations.
Earlier this year, Seattle announced it was pulling back a portion of its funding. The city remains the largest backer of the authority.
The transition to Kinnison is coming with yet another rough patch for the authority.
Publicola reports interim CEO Darryl Powell won’t be sticking around for the transition. Powell had been a finalist for the permanent job
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The root cause of the homelessness crisis in Seattle is untreated drug addiction and mental health disorders. The second root cause is the unsustainable inflow of people with drug addiction and other issues into King County and Seattle from other parts of the state and country because of the all carrots and no sticks policies that have made Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles a drug addict mecca for the last 15 years. There is no amount of “housing first” units and “harm reduction” organizations that will dig us out of the self-created hole. In fact the more resources we spend on the current failed approach, the worse the crisis becomes. Unless the new CEO understands this, has the courage to speak the truth and the political skills to prioritize and work with the feds and state on building mandatory treatment facilities and enforcing drug laws, the KCRH authority should be dissolved.
Wrong!!! And super out of touch with the ‘Reality’ of how these problems manifest in the first place. It’s systemic to the core, and watching you constantly yell on here about individuals and their drug issues lets me know you haven’t done any of the research I told you to do since we last discussed this same exact shit a couple of weeks ago. I do drugs–explain how I caused a lack of housing and sky high rents and property values in Seattle.
Housing first is the only way to fix homelessness. Everyone needs to recognize that landlords, and to a greater extent large property development firms, are causing this by opposing housing first initiatives. They are scared of facing the consequences of potentially having made a bad investment (though if they were smarter they’d realize that fear is unfounded). How do you reckon landlord and private equity profits outweigh the housing needs (and safety) of our city??
Reality would also have you believe drug addiction is a new issue we’re just now dealing with in the last 15 years! To live so ignorant and care free must be somewhat liberating…sad though.
I disagree. Mandatory treatment with counseling, and possibly committal, is the way. There is no way that a heavily addicted, mentally challenged individual is going to get better in a low-barrier kennel.
If the “root cause” of Seattle homelessness is drugs and mental illness, then why is it so difficult for a sober, sound-minded, full-time service industry worker to find an affordable apartment?
You are conflating the affordability crisis for lower income industry workers in Seattle and street homelessness (which is a result of meth/fentanyl addiction). While the circles overlap in the Venn diagram, they are separate and distinct issues that require unique responses. In response to your question, if we weren’t spending billions on building apartments for fentanyl addicts from other parts of the country in the core of Seattle where they are enabled to kill themselves while they destroy the quality of life in Seattle under the guise of “affordable housing” and “compassion”, we could focus those resources on building and retaining workforce housing and keeping low income Seattle residents from being pushed out of neighborhoods like Capitol Hill and the Central District. The “we have a housing and homelessness crisis” framing of the issue is a lie.
Because Seattle is a globally in-demand city and is no longer a small town, safe, affordable, and fiercely independent, fishing village and logging town.
You really should know the facts before you post, given your username. Of the top 10 states with the most homeless people, five are Republican, including Florida, which has more, and Texas, which is pretty on par with Washington. That kind of pokes a big hole in your crazy liberal policies theory:
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with-the-most-homeless-people
According to the research, lack of affordable housing is the #1 cause of homelessness in the U.S. The article mentions the initiatives the Bush, Obama, and Biden Administrations took to reduce homelessness. I noticed they left out Trump’s Administration, so I looked up what his Administration did. It of course came as no surprise that his government reversed Obama’s housing first policy, despite the evidence that it had worked to decrease homelessness:
https://apnews.com/general-news-cb42464c68d45ec7e1123f0ab19f8024
Depends on what you mean by “crisis”. About 50-60% of the homeless are *only* homeless – they’re sane, sober, and sometimes even employed. They’re just having a string of bad luck, and need a helping hand for a while. Shelters work for them in the short term, and building affordable housing in affordable areas (unlike Cap Hill) works in the long term. But they’re not the ones causing the visible problems that make headlines.
It’s that other 40-50%, who have a combination of untreated mental illness, drug addiction, and anti-social behavior, who are making the city unlivable for other people. (As opposed to the first group, where we’re arguably the ones who’ve collectively made it unlivable for them.) Shelters and housing don’t work. Most of the experimental programs select for the first group, and fail to work when applied to this second group. The old solution used to be asylums and jail, but we stopped doing those for various reasons. Now we just let them slowly die on the streets, and harden our hearts every time we see them.
And the first group can transition into the second, if they stay homeless long enough.
So we need both approaches.
Involuntary commitment -> bring this back today; and get anyone who is having drug addiction or mental health crisis the help they need, involuntarily if that’s what it takes, and the problem will be solved almost overnight.
Rest of the world doesn’t have this problem, it’s a uniquely American city problem, and we can solve it too, like the rest of the world.
What happens when those people get out of involuntary commitment and still can’t afford a house or rent though?? You think their new found ‘mental wellbeing’ will last many more nights of being back to no shelter???
Housing first is the only solution. We dug a hole too deep, and for too long, to not see blowback in the form of mental health crises galore…that should be a given and treated as gently and humanely as possible. Unfortunately, it will not be solved “almost overnight” no matter what neighborhood you’re a “resitdent” of.
Follow the Dutch or Portuguese model. Hard drugs aren’t decriminalized. Those arrested can choose jail and criminal trial or treatment. Even if it doesn’t work 100% of the time it seems to work better than our attempts here.
The Finnish too – housing first advocates like to hold them up as an example… drug use is still criminalized there. You get busted you go to jail, but it’s a jail that puts you into rehab. They also have a functioning mental health system that allows for involuntary commitment.
One billion dollar later and more people on the street.
I wonder where the money went… Hmm… Not in the pockets of the homeless people for sure.