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Kelly Kinnison is poised to become the new CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.
The authority’s governing committee voted nearly unanimously Monday to offer the Washington, D.C.-based candidate the position. She wrote in a statement Monday that she verbally accepted the role.
“There are challenges ahead but I am confident that given the resources and goodwill in the King County region we can make significant progress together,” Kinnison wrote.
Kinnison has worked for a decade in the federal government on social policy and programs for low-income, homeless and other marginalized people. She currently serves as the director of Family and Community Policy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
An authority spokesperson said the implementation board will negotiate a salary and starting date with Kinnison before she can sign an offer letter to make the move official. The hiring process for the CEO position fell apart at this stage when hiring the first CEO of the authority in 2021.
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Then, the authority ended up choosing its second-choice candidate, Marc Dones, who was willing to agree to the offered $247,200 salary. The position’s posted pay is between $250,000 and $300,000.
The governing committee’s decision to hire a permanent CEO indicates elected officials are serious about continuing to support the Regional Homelessness Authority, which did not appear certain in the past year.
Mayor Bruce Harrell said in the Monday meeting he wanted to push forward with the hiring because he thinks having a CEO will stabilize the agency more than restructuring it without permanent leadership.
“I am very confident we have someone who can take the helm and do what needs to be done,” Harrell said.
The CEO search process, which initially took eight months to get a job posting online, has moved speedily in recent weeks despite controversies that have threatened to derail it.
In the last few weeks, two out of three final candidates for the CEO position withdrew from the process. Current interim CEO Darrell Powell cited competing feedback and priorities from funders, advisers and contractors among other issues in a letter withdrawing his candidacy.
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Several members of the CEO search committee called to halt the hiring process until the organization was restructured.
Seattle City Councilmember Cathy Moore, who sits on the governing board and helped with the CEO search, abstained from voting, saying it wasn’t because she didn’t think Kinnison was qualified, but because she disagrees with Harrell saying the organization should be restructured before a CEO is hired.
“I am reluctant to bring on a fourth CEO until we have a consensus on structure, vision and responsibility,” Moore said, explaining her vote.
The authority’s responsibilities have shifted in the past year. Seattle, the agency’s biggest funder, recently told the authority to cut its budget, which could result in closed emergency shelter beds. Seattle also took back control of outreach services, a core function of the homeless response system, which involves sending staff out on the street to make connections with people living outside and get them into shelter, housing or involved with social service agencies.
Kinnison’s hire would come roughly a year after the agency’s founding CEO Dones resigned in May 2023 after failing to deliver timely results on their signature effort to end homelessness downtown and souring their relationship with the region’s nonprofits that the agency contracts to provide homelessness services.
Deputy CEO Helen Howell took over for the next nine months, focusing on improving the organization’s basic administrative functions. She consolidated the authority’s scope by shutting down the downtown project and laying off dozens of staff while making sure the authority paid service providers on time.
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Powell, a local nonprofit executive, took the reins from Howell in February. He appeared to be a front-runner for the permanent job, but declined, echoing concerns from Dones, and saying that Seattle and King County need to figure out whether they want the authority to be more responsive to local politics or focus solely on best practices to end homelessness.
Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus, a governing board member, said she thinks Kinnison will be able to navigate not just the strategy of running one of the country’s largest homelessness systems, but also the politics of it.
“And not necessarily have to, as I like to say, lead by press conference,” Backus said.
Greg Kim: 206-464-2532 or grkim@seattletimes.com; Greg Kim is a reporter covering homelessness for The Seattle Times.
