Seattle and King County are trying to make the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA) auditable. They should be trying to make the homelessness system effective. Clean books matter, especially after KCRHA’s financial failures, but clean books are not the same thing as fewer people in tents, fewer people cycling through crisis or more people moving back into stability.
The current response is mostly a dollars-and-cents response: forensic accounting, financial controls, better invoices, cleaner reporting and someone embedded to watch the books. Fine. Do that. But do not call it reform.
A financial audit asks whether the money can be tracked. A compliance audit asks whether rules were followed. A forensic review asks where the money went and what controls failed. A performance audit asks the question Seattle actually needs answered: What did the money accomplish?
That is the missing audit.
Seattle needs person-by-person, dollar-by-dollar, outcome-by-outcome accountability for the homelessness system.
Every publicly funded provider should be required to use HMIS or a compatible shared data system. No public money should go to providers operating outside the system. Privacy can be protected, but anonymity cannot be allowed to destroy accountability.
For every person served, the system should know where that person was last stably housed, how long they have been in Seattle or King County, what is keeping them homeless, what identification they need, what benefits or treatment they qualify for, whether family reunification is possible, what safety risks or behavioral-health issues must be addressed, what intervention was assigned, how much public money was spent and whether the person moved toward housing, recovery, work, stability, family repair or self-support.
This would settle arguments now fought with slogans. We are told most people living homeless here are “from here.” Maybe. A simple question that asks since when would be useful. The data should tell us. We are told only a small percentage are addicted, mentally ill, dangerous or incapable of self-support. Maybe. A serious triage system would show us.
Public policy should run on records, triage, cost tracking and results.
A working person sleeping in a car should not be routed through the same system as someone in psychosis. A newly evicted senior should not be treated the same as a fentanyl-addicted person in an encampment. A person who needs replacement ID, job training and a rent bridge should not be placed on the same permanent-dependency track as someone who needs long-term care. And people who are violent, criminally active or dangerously unstable should not be casually placed into ordinary permanent supportive housing as if the only missing ingredient is an apartment.
The goal should be triage first, then the right intervention. Some people need short-term help and a ladder back to self-support. Some need recovery. Some need mental-health stabilization. Some need shelter with rules. Some need family reunification. Some need job training. Some need long-term care. Some need enforcement. The system should know the difference.
The missing principle is reciprocity. A serious homelessness system should not be built on endless one-way transfers of money, services, food, housing and tolerance with nothing expected in return. That is debilitating for the recipient and unsustainable for the public.
Reciprocity does not have to be symmetrical. The public may take ten steps for someone who can only take one. But the person still has to take the one step: show up for an appointment, accept treatment, replace identification, follow shelter rules, reconnect with family, apply for benefits, enter job training, stay sober or simply agree not to harm the community helping them.
If the system asks nothing, it will often get nothing. Seattle should stop buying a vague product called “homelessness services” and start buying measurable progress: fewer people outside, fewer people cycling back, more people housed, more people stabilized and more people able to carry their own baggage.
A clean ledger is not enough. Moving the same contracts from KCRHA back to another department is not enough. Embedding a financial analyst is not enough.
The fix is simple: no public money without shared data, no shared data without triage, no triage without cost-per-person tracking, no services without the next reasonable step and no contracts without outcomes.
Audit the receipts, yes. But then audit the results.
