Welcome to The Newsfeed.

I'm Venice Buhain in for Paris Jackson.

In our series this week about the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, we've been talking about why, after seven years, the agency is being downsized and reset.

Today, in our final story in the series, we spoke to local leaders about what a new regional response to homelessness could mean.

ZAHILAY: I didn't want it to be just because we inherited these issues and just because change is hard, that we wouldn't do change.

BUHAIN: King County Executive Girmay Zahilay and Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson announced on July 1st that they would downsize the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and take back control of $160 million in annual contracts to service providers, the bulk of the agency's funding.

The decision followed a forensic evaluation that showed millions in overspent or unaccounted dollars and flagged poor bookkeeping and reconciliation practices.

Zahilay said the process of creating a new regional partnership is in its early stages.

ZAHILAY: This is an intermediary step to stabilize the entity.

But in the long run, our goal is to have a completely new approach that has the buy-in of all of the different important individuals around the region who have a role in our homelessness response system.

BUHAIN: The homelessness authority will retain some regional duties, including federal grants, a regional database for individuals and providers, and an ombuds office, to name a few.

ZAHILAY: For us, now we are in the driver's seat.

Now we have to show people where their tax dollars are going, and we have to make every change possible to make sure that the people living outside have a roof over their heads.

That's really what's at stake here.

BUHAIN: Alison Eisinger, executive director of local advocacy group Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, worries that with one agency's troubles making all the headlines, the effectiveness of the solutions is being lost in the debate.

EISINGER: Yet another agency is on the front page of the newspapers.

Those are real concerns that undermine the public will and the political will.

But in fact, they're not about the quality of care that's being provided.

They're not about the fact that we are helping 10,000 or more people leave homelessness every year.

In some cases, there were poor decisions made about who was going to be the leadership.

In some cases, the appropriate protections weren't in place.

Those are all things that can and should be addressed and corrected.

But what we need to commit to is we need to commit that we have a shared responsibility to not let the next generation of people who live in this city and county think that it's normal, that 12 to 15,000 people every day and night are struggling to survive outside.

BUHAIN: Karen Lee, CEO of Plymouth Housing, agrees and says the reset is an opportunity to do better.

LEE: For the providers, there's always room to improve operations.

And I think it's really key for us on the on the provider side, the risks are more, I would say existential.

Any cuts to the safety net infrastructure, it would be extremely damaging.

Just looking at what happened with SNAP benefits, which is the supplemental nutrition assistance program.

That was devastating for many of our residents.

BUHAIN: Independent journalist Guy Oron said local leaders have many questions to address as they form the next regional response to homelessness.

ORON: You know, you're going to have the same issues that you had before KCRHA was formed, where you have different agencies working on the same problem.

And how do you make sure you're not doing duplicative work and creating inefficiencies?

And I think at the end of the day, no matter how the bureaucracy is structured, our main problem is we don't have enough resources for enough people.

Thanks for watching.

To see the rest of our stories from this series on the King County Regional Homelessness Authority visit CascadePBS.org/thenewsfeed.