Seattle and King County are taking back control of millions of dollars’ worth of homeless service contracts and responsibility for strategies to get people into housing.
This will leave the region’s homelessness agency, started in 2019, with only federal funds to manage. It is the most dramatic extension of a slow retaking of homelessness services that started just a few years after the authority’s creation.
King County Executive Girmay Zahilay and Mayor Katie Wilson said in an interview they want their respective governments to again bear the political weight of solving homelessness. The city and county provide nearly all of the authority’s funding and sit on its governing board.
“Part of this, for me, is really about taking political responsibility,” Wilson said.
Take political responsibility for watering my garden and powering my car and AC, water heater and furnace!
😂 Lol…Look! Money! Give it to me! I can make better political responsibility with it!
Sir! I see you here living under a bridge, now that all the homelessness money was given back to the government, how does that feel? Did it help you? Yes! I feel politically alive! Thanks to all that political responsibility the government is making with the money that would otherwise feed and house me. Thank God the government is making enough political responsibility for everyone!