Immediately after monthslong delay, Regional Homelessness Authority chooses CEO
After virtually a yearlong lookup for anyone to lead it, King County’s new Regional Homelessness Authority will vote Thursday on the choosing of Regina Cannon, a homelessness guide from Atlanta, Ga.
The authority, which is created up of leaders from Seattle, King County, suburban cities, nonprofits and people today who have skilled homelessness, was fashioned in early 2020 only to sit mostly dormant for a 12 months, mired in infighting. The CEO was at first supposed to be hired in September, but COVID-19 slowed the approach down.
The authority then moved speedily in the final handful of months to interview candidates and pick finalists for the posture, which will pay all-around $250,000 (Cannon’s correct wage has not nonetheless been finalized).
The governing board will fulfill Thursday afternoon to vote on the employ, following a independent implementation board superior Cannon’s name Thursday morning. The two boards experienced fulfilled Wednesday in a shut-doorway session to discuss which candidate they preferred of two finalists. Members of the governing board left the meeting all through the deliberations of whom to recommend for choosing, which stretched into Thursday morning.
“I imagine we will have a chief for this firm who is just outstanding, who will healthy in excellently in the location,” explained John Chelminiak, former mayor of Bellevue, and member of the implementation board. “She has just an astounding, sturdy concentration on racial fairness.”
Cannon, if she accepts the provide, will have a large job forward: Employing personnel to exchange the two Seattle and King County’s homelessness divisions, getting around all contracts with nonprofits and shelters and likely auditing them, and hoping to stand for both equally Seattle — where climbing homelessness has overwhelmed shelters for several years — and the suburbs — which have minor infrastructure to help homeless people today in their towns, but whose populace are inclined to be from creating any.
Cannon’s assortment also displays phone calls from advocates and people who’ve been homeless on the governing committee to emphasis far more on racial justice: In King County, wherever Black and Indigenous persons make up a great deal even bigger chunks of the homeless inhabitants than the common inhabitants, advocates have insisted homelessness are unable to be fastened without having fixing that disparity.
Cannon’s consulting vocation is centered on where by race and homelessness fulfill. She is main equity and effect officer at C4 Innovations, a homelessness consulting organization in Massachusetts, and is a former professor and mental well being counselor. She’s potentially greatest recognized in the homelessness coverage globe for a report she co-authored that uncovered many homelessness nonprofits nationwide have been applying assessments that prioritized white people for housing in excess of men and women of colour. Very last 12 months, she served train a 5-7 days training course, promoted by the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Enhancement to human expert services businesses throughout the nation, on how to “identify and dismantle racism in your software, agency and neighborhood.”
In 2012, she labored for the mayor of Atlanta, foremost a pilot job that acquired 222 chronically homeless people today housed in 100 times
Cannon didn’t promptly react to a request for comment.
“It’s been a bumpy street, but we are at a milestone,” stated Harold Odom, co-chair of the implementation board, which advised Cannon. Odom life in a very small dwelling village in Georgetown. “I seem ahead to the next couple of months, for the reason that they will be interesting. We have a CEO, and we can transfer forward in a way we have not prior to.”
