Welcome to The Newsfeed.

I'm Venice Buhain, in for Paris Jackson.

As we continue our series explaining what happened with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, today we're talking about what it was supposed to accomplish and what got in the way.

Karen Lee, the CEO of Plymouth Housing, says the region had been missing a system to prevent people from falling through the cracks.

-Potential residents, when they were looking for housing, would have to go provider to provider to provider.

So that was really inefficient and really difficult for residents.

They were being screened out for reasons that would be seen as arbitrary and capricious today.

-The agreement was signed in December 2019, and just months later, the Covid-19 pandemic slowed down progress.

After more than a year, the Homelessness Authority finally got its first CEO in 2021.

In the five years since, it's had five CEOs, three of which were interim leaders.

Throughout KCRHA's history, it's been criticized for how it has handled its money.

Most recently, a forensic audit that found about $13 million not accounted for and $45 million in overspending.

-Really, there were a lot of basic things that were kind of missing in terms of cost controls, in terms of reconciliation and making sure, you know, tracking down different payments.

In the past, I had heard many times that KCRHA was quite late to pay providers, sometimes months, you know, to fulfill invoices.

-Despite the criticisms, it was successful in several key areas, including managing the biennial point in time count, providing an ombuds office for people having issues with their services, and maintaining a regional system to help match services to people's individual needs.

Next time, we'll continue our series explaining how KCRHA got to this point.

I'm Venice Buhain.

Thanks for watching The Newsfeed.