Seattle City Council Select Committee on Homelessness & Housing Affordability 9202019

Sally Bagshaw, I'm one of the co-chairs of the Select Committee on Homelessness and Housing Affordability.

It's Friday, September 20th.

Thank you so much for being here and joining us.

And I'm also putting an all call out right now to some of my council colleagues and inviting them to join me.

We have an agenda we're picking up and following from where we were at our last meeting.

Thank you, President Harrell, for joining.

And I'm going to be starting public comment.

We're expecting Council Member Mosqueda before 10 o'clock.

And at that point, I will pass the chair back to her.

Come sit by me somewhere down here.

And if you don't like it, move the name tags.

So I want to start off.

We are going to jump right into public comment.

But before we get there, I want to say thank you to all of you who have been participating and giving us input.

We had a wonderful meeting as a board of health yesterday.

And I want to acknowledge that Leo Flohr from King County and Patty Hayes, who is our director of housing, Melinda Giavengo, thank you for joining us.

We are moving forward with this.

I'm very thankful, too, to my council colleagues in King County, Jeanne Cole-Wells, Rod Dembowski, Joe McDermott, and others who have been working with us.

And we will have a schedule out fairly soon.

You haven't just- I'm sorry.

That's all right.

We're not on the camera, so you- Oh, thank you.

Just I am.

Thank you so much.

I also want to recognize Jason Johnson from the good work you're doing with human services Department, and Tess, thank you for your leadership from the mayor's office.

I appreciate the fact that we are all talking and working towards a time, a schedule, and a solution.

And as many of us know, and we've been working, that our regional governance program is going to really focus on coordinating the entities that provide the services to people who are needing them most.

And, Melinda, you came up yesterday by name at our King County meeting on public health.

Kathy Lambert said we really have to focus on youth and make sure that your voice is being heard and those of others who are providing assistance to youth.

And I want to say personal thanks to you and the good work that's happening there.

So, Tracy Ratliff from Council Central Staff, Jeff Sims, you're both here.

you're doing marvelous work for us, so thank you for that.

Okay, so we have three items on our agenda today.

We're going to continue the discussion, and I think Bobby Humes from our Human Services Resource Department will be here, Department of Human Resources, and he's going to pick up where we left off.

Very good to see you.

I'm glad you're here today.

So we can talk about how that's going to work, that as we're signing the ILA, and the charter and the org chart, how this is going to impact employees who are working now, what it's going to look like as we transfer over into jurisdiction for a new public development authority if that's what we end up doing.

So if there's no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.

All right, thank you very much.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

So, at this time, I'm going to suggest that we take public comment.

There's only four people who have signed up, but if you are all ready, let's move forward.

We've got Kelly first, Lori, Rick, and Peggy.

So, Kelly, would you approach the microphone?

Thank you.

Lori, would you pick up over here, so when Kelly is done, you can be ready to go.

Please, thank you, and welcome.

Dear Mayor Durkin and City Council, Nicholsville-Northlake Tiny House Village wants to make a clean break from Lehigh and HSD.

As I stated in their letter to you on September 11, 2019, Gift of Grace Lutheran Church located just 10 blocks to the west of the village wants to assist both the city and the residents of this tiny house village built.

on efforts already made by keeping the village together and making the clean break they desire.

We hope we can sponsor the village in its current location under religious encampment ordinance.

Our intention is to rigorously explore this possibility and bring it about if possible.

We ask you for any help you can offer to pave the way for this to happen.

Sincerely, Pastor Benjamin D. Fetcher and Timothy Lindman, Congregation President.

Thank you.

And thank you for joining us at the microphone.

And I do want to also acknowledge that yesterday there was a reception at the tiny home village right at the base of Magnolia Bridge.

And I understand that we're going to be able to move forward, add more tiny homes there.

And I just want to appreciate the people who are living there and thank them for their hospitality yesterday.

It's a wonderful community, and I really appreciate the fact that all of you recognize the importance of these tiny home village communities.

Thank you.

Lori, you're up, and then Rick, then Peggy.

Yes, good morning.

Good morning.

To Adrian Lester, HSD, and Seattle Citizen Service Bureau, and whoever it may concern, this is in the response to your letter Wednesday email to us via staff.

This response is also a grievance against the Seattle Humane Services Department for the unprofessional and unwillingful actions of HSD managers, contracts specialists, and planners that have damaged us individually and as a group.

Among other things, we are asking that this grievance result in your being required to work with Nicholsville Northlake collectively as a group.

It is only way for us to communicate efficiently in the face of HSD and Lehigh stubbornness.

We are a valid and recognized self-managed association.

In the past, the City of Seattle has not been a union buster and has respected collective bargaining.

HSD supports programs to help tenants communicate as associates.

Why is it different when it comes to us?

There are many just reasons for this grievance.

HSD is aware of enormous violations of damaging actions by Lehigh against us individually and as a group.

You and your co-workers have unwillingly unwittingly avoided taking the slightest due diligence to investigate these allegations.

One shocking example is the statement of the HSD contract specialist that the grievance was filled with Lehigh about Northlake case management and been resolved.

This was done without talking to us.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lori.

Rick and then Peggy.

Did we lose Rick?

Rick had to leave or isn't here.

OK, please then, Peggy, if you'll continue.

Good morning.

My name is Peggy Hotz, and I'm a Nicholsville volunteer and founder.

After five months of working with our supporters to try and get HSD and Lehigh to mediate, last week Nicholsville filed for divorce from Lehigh.

To review, Nicholsville Northlake wants to stay on the same small piece of city property and continue to operate with a religious sponsor minus Lehigh and HSD.

And you heard from Kelly that we have a congregation now that is planning to sponsor us lined up.

Othello Village wants to use a piece of public land for two years, also with a religious sponsor, which we can find.

It isn't best practice to allow one agency, Lehigh, to hold a monopoly over all tiny house villages in Seattle, just as it wouldn't be best practice to allow one organization to provide all the city's indoor shelters.

There must be a range of shelter options to suit individual needs and strengths.

The fact that Nickelodeons have been coming to these council meetings for five months is evidence that there's a place for democratically organized villages like ours.

Please don't pretend to believe that Lehigh's villages are self-managed.

Having paid staff that can override any decision is not democratic.

In fact, it's dispiriting.

It's time for the Council to do its part to fix this problem before funding it.

Hold consideration of future tiny house funding or don't allow the money to be dispersed until the divorce has been finalized.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you, Peggy.

We've had some others walk in the door.

Anybody else want to speak during public comment?

Okay, seeing none, we're going to move forward with our conversation and agenda.

And, Council President, I'm going to ask to suspend the rules.

Normally, we're required to have four or five people before we get into the substance, but since we're not voting today, I'm going to ask to suspend the rules.

No objection.

I think that we can, I believe the rules allow us to at least convene and listen, and we're not taking any voting action, so we should be fine.

All right, very good.

Thank you so much.

So, may I ask all of you to come to the table?

chair is going on here.

Nice.

Well, welcome, everybody.

It's good to have you back.

Melinda, come on up.

Of course.

Tracy, would you like to start with introductions?

Surely.

Tracy Ratzliff, Council Central Staff.

Jeff Sims, Council Central Staff.

Excuse me.

We're doing introductions.

Mark Jones, National Innovation Service.

Thank you, Mark.

Bobby Hume, Seattle Department of Human Resources.

Jason Johnson with the Human Services Department.

the mayor's office.

Very good.

Melinda Javingo with Youth Care.

Very good.

Thanks to all of you for being here.

Who's kicking this off?

Are we just diving right back into Bobby?

Jason, you're going to?

I will.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate the opportunity to be back with you and continue a conversation about the important and regional system transformation work that's underway.

You know, last week I thought Tess did a remarkable job taking you through with substantial background and context about the work to date.

I'm not going to spend time doing that again today.

Can I excuse myself one moment?

This is supposed to be read into the record for the day.

Will you please do that?

Sorry, my mistake.

Agenda item number one, council bill 119638, an ordinance relating to homelessness services authorizing the mayor to execute an interlocal agreement for the joint establishment of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority with King County and such additional parties as are eligible pursuant to terms of the interlocal agreement.

approving the formation of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority by King County and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts for briefing and discussion.

Very good.

Thank you so much.

All right, Jason, please continue.

Thank you.

What I do want to highlight, though, and remind everyone, is just what we're trying to solve for.

We are trying to solve for fragmentation.

We are also trying to solve for inequality.

We are currently operating in a system that is fragmented, not just from a a system perspective, a funding perspective, but every day from a service delivery perspective.

It is a system that is difficult to understand and at times can be difficult to access.

We're trying to solve for that through consolidation.

We also, it's well documented that disparities exist in all of our data sets.

We've talked about this at length that people of color are experiencing homelessness at a higher rate than their white counterparts.

And I, you know, we are trying to bring equity, bring customer-centered services into this new structure at all levels, including the board structure, the decision-making level.

So, again, not going to go deeply into the work that's been done, the good work of NIS, the city, and the county in partnership.

have done to date, but did just want to highlight, again, why we're going through this process, why we're continuing in this big lift, this, you know, work is complex and impacts many people.

But we're doing it really to solve for those two things, fragmentation and inequality.

Very nice, and I know that we'll hear more from Bobby about this, but Mark Jones, I want to acknowledge you and the good work that NIH has done and your counterparts, because we can see that the system reform, something that we have been talking about, well, since Barb Poppe's study, I think, four or five years ago now, and you've been building on that.

So the goal here is to make sure that people get the services that they need, that the providers are not having to sign multiple contracts and then trying to keep separate records, but to bring our whole region together.

And I just want to acknowledge, because we've heard this time and again, why are we doing another layer of government?

That's not the intention.

The intention is to streamline, to make sure that people are getting the services that they need, and that our whole system is working better, whether it's with Harborview Hospital, as an example.

again, acknowledge and say thank you to Chief Scoggins and for our HealthONE.

Mayor's Office has done a great job with that.

We're going to end up saving system-wide money on some elements of this.

And I just hope people feel strongly that doing what we've been doing over and over again isn't solving the problem.

So we're trying something new.

We're responding to those requests.

So I'm going to pass it back to you and acknowledge the good work that you're doing.

All right, so today we're really going to have a four-part discussion.

I want to highlight budget and walk you through some of the funding and fund sources that are being considered for consolidation.

I want to talk about contracting and most importantly want to highlight the beginnings of a discussion about service agreement and what kind of relationship the city and the county are going to have with the regional authority.

We want to talk staffing.

This is an effort that impacts current employees.

And so we want to talk about how we are working with the workforce, both at the city and the county, to ensure that today's work is being done.

But we also are being informed by the expertise that they bring in how we transition to the regional authority.

And then finally, we want to have a discussion about the organizational design and some of the functions that will exist inside the regional authority.

I shared this slide last week, but I just thought it was important to highlight again that, you know, in this transition, the council will retain funding authority through its regular budget process.

The city and the county, as I just mentioned, will have contracts or service agreements with the established regional authority.

And that contract or service agreement will be how we will both express our expectations, but also how we will, it'll detail how the regional authority is going to report back and be in discussion with us about the work that they're doing.

Also just wanted to highlight that as we look at numbers, we're really using 2019 and using those numbers to represent 2020 budget.

So just, you know, not pay attention to each specific penny, that a lot of times these are going to be estimates or numbers that are based on the current budget.

I also want to just acknowledge that we have substantial time together on October 2nd, and we will be diving deeply into a discussion about budget and the budget across multiple departments aimed at addressing homelessness.

So this is meant to be a budget overview.

keep things at a pretty high level, but I want to just acknowledge out the gate that we're going to have time together to really dive into this deeply when we're together on October 2nd.

Very good, thank you.

So again, a slide that I shared last week.

As an overview, I just wanted to share again that we're looking at the budget in, the needed budget in three groupings.

One, we are always talking about the programmatic values, so these are the investments.

that the city and the county invest in community-based organizations, and you'll see that the total amount estimated to go to the regional authority at this point is $117 million in program.

The second is administrative value.

So this is the costs associated with administering contracts, planning, strategic thinking, and designing, as well as technical assistance that happen at the city and the county.

You'll see that the annualized administrative value of those dollars is totaled at $11 million.

And then there is an acknowledgment that the standup at the regional authority will have costs associated with it.

And so I'll be walking through some detail about what those startup costs are.

I'm actually going to start there.

So it is the regional authority, when we talk about it, and we talk a lot about consolidation, consolidating the efforts of HSD and King County DCHS, I think that it is often easy to assume that we are simply just merging two organizations into one.

But really we're standing up a new organization, this regional authority will be a new PDA, it will be a new agency that will take on the role that currently HSD and King County DCHS serve.

And that new organization is going to need new leadership.

And so, and in 2020, We are predicting that there will be a period of time when we have to start bringing that new leadership on board while we also have operations existing inside of HSD and DCHS.

So there is, beginning in 2020, an acknowledgment that we need to hire an executive director.

And that that executive director pretty quickly will need a team and so some of what's detailed here is our current best thinking about what that team needs to look like but really that will be informed by the executive director by the board when they are.

nominated, confirmed, and seated.

But this is an acknowledgment that we need to hold a budget beginning in 2020 so that we can start developing the new leadership team at the regional authority.

Do you have a schedule or even a preliminary idea about how you're going to go about hiring that executive director and what the attributes are of that individual?

Yeah, so moving to the next slide, you'll see that there is a one-time cost associated with an executive search firm.

So it is right now our thinking that we would sort of outsource to an executive search firm the role of finding the new executive director.

Ultimately, it is the board who will hire the executive director, and so we have to be really careful and align the executive search with the seating of that board.

You know, we don't have to wait until the board is seated to begin the search, but we will have to make sure that those schedules are aligned so that there is a board in place who can look at candidates, review resumes, talk to candidates, and ultimately hire that person.

Council Member Herbold has a question.

Yeah, thank you.

The heading of these slides is Startup Estimates, City of Seattle.

That is correct.

So I'm going to first walk through the city's costs, and then I'm going to pivot over to the county.

So, well, first of all, I would expect that the startup estimates would be a joint estimate of what the total costs are for each of these functions.

That is correct, so it's a total startup cost of $3,000,000.

There's a $1,000,000 contribution by the county and a $2,000,000 estimated contribution by the city.

So these startup estimates are the cost to the city for our portion?

That is correct.

So the first slide I started with showed at a high level what those estimated costs are by the city and the county.

The more detailed slides, I'm starting with the city's contributions.

So I'm trying to detail for you what the estimated $2 million would pay for.

And then I'm going to pivot into what the county's contribution would be.

What I'm seeing here is that it doesn't appear that the county is cost-sharing in the salary costs associated with the director, the chief of staff, the deputy director, et cetera.

That is correct.

So that, well, I should clarify, that is correct for 2020. The 2021 estimated ongoing is just an acknowledgment that we have to find and create budget to pay for these positions in an ongoing basis.

That will be a shared cost going forward.

So we will, through our 2021 budget development, both at the city and the county, need to develop and identify budget associated with these positions.

But in 2020, the city is paying the full costs of standing up those positions.

And do we have any sort of back of the envelope expectations around what our formula is moving forward.

I'm just concerned that the city paying for all the costs associated with the staffing of standing up this new organization in that first year is going to create a expectation for a more substantial contribution than maybe we would like to see in future years.

Yeah, so I'm going to pivot over to the county.

and highlight how they're contributing.

So at this point, the county is in the middle of a two-year budget cycle.

And so what they've been able to do is find a space.

They have a full floor at the Yesler building, which is at 5th and Yesler.

And they are doing all of the tenant improvements at that building.

They will also be contributing the full cost of rent at that space.

And when I say rent, it is fairly inclusive.

I mean, the tenant improvements not only include you know, flooring and paint and office furniture and those kind of materials, but also the IT infrastructure that will be needed inside of the space.

So this $1.3 million one-time cost associated with the tenant improvements of the space is what they're going to be contributing this year.

And then on an ongoing basis, they have $455,000 in rental investment that they will continue to pay.

So it really is a partnership between the city and the county where the county was able to identify and fund the space needed for co-location of teams.

It's also a space that right now it looks like can be used for several years.

So it's a space where this regional authority can not only be seated, but really grow and give the executive director, the board, and the teams time to become established and then find a future home.

Thank you.

If that space is not available.

Thank you for that.

And I have a just another question.

Council Member Herbold, are you?

Yeah, I just want to underscore that I appreciate your making the distinctions between 2020 costs, 2021 costs, as well as operating and one-time costs.

But I am concerned that the identification of ongoing costs from King County is a little under $500,000, and the identification of ongoing costs for the city is $1.2 million.

You say that there's an expectation that there's going to be future cost sharing around the costs of personnel, but I don't see that indicated anywhere, and I think that would be something that would be important to memorialize.

Great.

Thank you.

And I'd like to just bring up one more factor when you're talking about getting a consulting firm that's going to be looking, the headhunter who's going to be looking for our executive director.

I have to say that I would rather have somebody local In fact, I would frankly rather to have a team that knows the people who are already working in our city, county, and region on homelessness and the kind of work that you're doing.

I have a ton of faith in the providers and the leaders that have been with us for years.

And one thing that I would feel very sad about is that if we ended up hiring somebody from outside our region Because we know how long it takes to get stabilized, to know the people, to know the history, to know the idiosyncrasies of all of us.

So I would just like to put that forward, that to the extent that if you're doing a search firm, it's somebody that can look local, and that the executive director is someone that we can point to.

because we've got some fantastic leaders here.

So I just want to make that clear that that would be my goal and my hope that we would take that seriously.

And I'm now going to pass it off to Council Member Mosqueda, who is going to co-chair the remainder of the meeting.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and apologies for being late.

I appreciate you stepping in for the first half hour.

I had a previous obligation.

I do appreciate the conversation.

So are you wrapping up a certain section or are you in the middle of presenting?

Just catch me up on where we're at.

Just beginning.

Great.

I'll continue.

Please continue.

Thank you.

Chair, I did want to make one point.

I appreciate Council Member Baxhaw's comments.

I guess I just would put the caveat that I think there are some legal issues associated with treating an out-of-state or out-of-non-resident person in a non showing a preference to their detriment for a non-resident.

I'll just sort of put it that way.

I think I understand your preference, but I think we have to be careful when we start making preferences for someone perhaps based on their residence.

Always careful.

I respect what you're saying from a legal standpoint.

I understand you.

But from a practical standpoint, we need people that know.

What's going on in your life right now?

Yeah?

Thank you, and I'm I choose you I will follow up, but I have an airplane to catch Thank You councilmember back shot, and thank you for cheering was there any more questions as we're taking a quick pause Okay, again apologies for not being here at the exact start time at 930 and please continue All right.

Thank you So this next slide is an acknowledgment that there are one-time and ongoing costs associated with standing up a new organization.

So we talked about the executive search firm, but there are also going to be technical needs, budget and finance systems, management, HR and payroll systems.

There is equipment that people will need to be able to do their work.

There are moving costs associated with moving employees from the city and county campuses to the Yesler building.

And then there's an acknowledgement that community engagement and legal support will be ongoing needs by the executive team and the organization as a whole.

So these are sort of estimates and placeholders, but more than anything, an acknowledgement that these type of startup costs and ongoing costs are going to be needs that the regional authority will have.

I skipped over to this slide earlier, but just to restate that the county is, at this point, contributing the full cost of space at the Yesler building for the two teams, the city and county team, to co-locate, as well as ongoing rent associated with keeping that space as a space for the regional authority to get started and continue to grow.

Now I want to pivot to programs.

This is, you know, earlier I was talking about startup costs for a new organization and now want to move into the bulk of the funding, again, $117 million in contributions from the city and the county that go into community-based organizations.

This is the bulk of HSD and DCHS's work and this image is an attempt to show you what program areas, what program investments would be under the control and be administered by the regional authority and which investments would not or would continue to be under the administrative control of the city or the county.

Going into sort of some of the budget detail, and my apologies, this budget detail is on two slides.

But I wanted to just highlight each of those program areas that are going to be moving to the regional authority.

So it starts with outreach and engagement.

There is a number of outreach programs and community engagement programs that exist inside the city and that are countywide.

Those investments would be.

under the administrative purview of the regional authority, as would prevention.

And these are prevention programs for people who are at imminent risk of becoming homeless and without such an intervention would have to use the crisis response system.

So this is an area where, you know, we use the word prevention quite often.

But we are talking about interventions that quite literally keep people from having to access the crisis response system.

And we are not talking about the prevention, the far upstream prevention efforts moving to the regional authority.

There are efforts inside of HSD and DCHS that help support young people and families, that help people age in place, help support people who are living with disabilities, all of that important programming, we are not considering moving over to the regional authority.

We acknowledge that that's important work that keeps people from experiencing homelessness, but when I talk about prevention here, I'm really talking about those programs that are a source of support for people who are at imminent risk of experiencing homelessness.

A quick question here.

So we had a conversation a few meetings ago, might have been two meetings ago, about where the navigation team lives and the type of services that potentially would be bifurcated from the navigation team as it's currently constructed.

Where would those navigation teams be reflected in this chart?

Is that in the first line, outreach and engagement?

That is correct.

So the navigation team itself is not going to move and be under the administrative control of the regional authority.

What will go to the regional authority are our contracts that support outreach teams like REACH and like Youth Care and so many others.

So this is the programs that we contract to provide community outreach and engagement in the community by community service providers.

But the navigation team itself, the people responsible for the sort of scheduling and administrative functions, data collection, as well as the folks that are out in the fields doing coordination and the system and service navigation would not be moving to the regional authority.

They would remain functions of the city.

So remind me what the total cost is for the navigation team that will remain at the city minus the contracts that support the outreach and engagement functions of the navigation referral.

So the total, I'll have to get back with you about the exact total amount of the navigation team, but I believe it's roughly $4 million that supports that team.

And then you'll see here that it's about $3.5 million that goes into community-based outreach and engagement through city contracts.

Council Member Foy-May, I think that if you included not just HSD's costs, but other departments as well that are contributing services and resources, at least by the end of 18, we're looking at seven and a half million per year, roughly, for the navigation team, and if I'm correct, if I'm wrong, I think the outreach contract is 600, something in that range, so we'd probably be around six and a half, seven million dollars, if you counted all city resources being put into the navigation team and its responses.

So just one more follow-up on that, and then Council President.

So is the answer to the question...

I'll wait a quick sec.

Is the answer to the question, how much money does the city currently apportion to our functions that, in theory, are going to remain at the city?

Is that $4 million annually?

I believe it'd be $4 million, and as Jason said, we can work on getting a final number for you.

OK, great.

And then you were saying it'd be more like $7 or $7.5 a year if you also included some of the other city departments and not the community contracts, though, just the other city departments?

Correct, yeah.

So the $7 million would be inclusive of the $4 million that he referred to, as well as some other departments, like the Departments of Parks and Recreation, groups like that.

Okay, I'll come back to my final thought but it sounds like the seven million total for all city departments associated with the Navigation team is at this point Plan to stay at the city.

Okay, Council President Harrell.

Yeah, I really appreciate your line of questioning I don't expect us to know all of the answers to some of the questions at least I'm getting ready to ask because this is unprecedented and we're sure to drawing up the game plan now.

But I think what the chair's question sort of make me start wanting to think about is, you take the NAV team as an example.

Currently, they work within the city limits right there.

It's a city NAV team.

This issue goes beyond the city.

And with this regional governance piece, there's going to be activities outside the city.

And so do we contemplate our NAV team going way beyond the boundaries of the city to do what they do.

Or how do we coordinate the NAV team type of activities outside the city?

Now do we get the county sheriffs that are training associated with it?

We've gone through great lengths as a city to make sure when we remove, we do it humanely and we try to do the best we could.

Now if we lose our ability to make sure it's done in the way we'd like to see it done, Outsider city boundaries that could be problematic.

So again, I don't even know if we've the practical implications of having the city fund one part doing NAV team But we have we know the problem of homelessness goes beyond our boundaries of the city of how it's going to work So have we sort of thought through that or are we just flagging issues for this governing board to?

wrestle with but on the funding piece it would seem to me that I guess our NAV team now would have to go beyond our borders of the city.

Yeah, so we have thought about that.

And no, they would not.

So every jurisdiction, whether it is the city of Seattle, any other city in King County, the county, a school district, needs to be very clear in how they're going to maintain public land, public spaces, public right-of-ways, how they handle obstructions, how they handle encampments and in the city of Seattle we've been very careful to detail that out and we use the navigation team as a resource to us.

What I'm saying is that we are not going to change that practice.

We're not going to move the navigation team to the regional authority and give sort of control about how the nav team works and where the navigation team works to the regional authority.

We're going to keep that sort of in-house as a city and continue to manage that as we do currently.

I appreciate that and I like that.

I guess we will concern ourselves with with how these activities are done for an organist, for an infrastructure that we're funding, you know, 75% of.

And so we got to flag that.

They may do it in a manner completely inconsistent with what we're doing within Citi and we're funding some of these activities.

And the navigation team currently works with many different providers.

The City of Seattle has eight.

contracts for outreach services and the navigation team is always partnering with and collaborating with those outreach partners.

That practice will continue.

In fact, just as the navigation team is multi-departmental and they partner have partners in parks and Seattle Public Utilities, one of its important partners will be the regional authority.

Given that they are the authority that will have most of the crisis response investments and contracts with those providers, the navigation team will have to have a very clear relationship with the regional authority in order to access those services.

And Jason, I don't mean to belabor the point, but perhaps I do.

So I just want to make sure conceptually on this model, Our goal is to treat homelessness, treat policies of encampments, sanctioned encampments, unsanctioned encampments, policies of removal in this organization consistent throughout the region.

So we're doing it the same way in Seattle as we would be doing it outside of Seattle.

That's one of the overarching goals.

Then I guess, why else are we consolidating doing it in a region?

But I always assume that we're trying to model some consistency, but am I wrong on that one?

Tess?

Yeah, if you don't mind, I'd like to add a little bit to that.

And President Harrell, you're absolutely correct.

A big portion of moving to regional governance is to engage the sound cities and engage other regions in King County in conversation about how best to address homelessness.

And one of the things that is provided for in the charter is this concept of sub-regional planning.

And I think that that's a really important piece of this really getting at what you're asking, which is a way for the regional authority to engage in the various regions across the county.

and to be able to begin dialogue about what homelessness looks like in different parts of the region, how it's being addressed, conversations about best practices.

We know that, for example, addressing unsheltered homelessness and addressing the need for shelters is different across the county.

And so we want the authority to have a better picture of that and to have a better conversation across the county about that.

I'm going to do a quick time check.

We have about 15 minutes more for this presentation.

I just want to conclude my thoughts as well.

I appreciate the Council President weighing in on the NAB team and its structure.

In every aspect currently, we have funding that the city puts out either through our own efforts at HSD or through community partnership.

Currently, those contracts go to serve folks in Seattle.

What we are contemplating for the entire regional effort here is a greater coordinated effort for an emergency response system to homelessness.

So to me, I think that there is a different application being applied to the $7 million that the navigation team currently has versus the $72.9 million that we are currently contemplating allocating to the regional governance.

I don't believe that our SPD officials would want to go patrol outside of the border.

I don't think anyone's suggesting that.

But I do think what we are suggesting is that we can do a better job by looking at the pool of resources that we have and applying it in conjunction and coordination with the county to better serve folks because we know that homelessness has no boundaries and borders, and we're trying to address this as a regional issue.

So to me, the question still remains, why would we be holding back the $7 million that the city currently uses for the NAB team and not reconsidering how those $7 million could be more appropriately used in coordination with our King County partners.

The second thing I'll note is we just heard reports this week of police officials being diagnosed with diabetes type 2 because of extreme exposure to toxins after going in and having to remove encampments.

I think it is very important for us at this juncture as we're reconsidering how we coordinate and address homelessness to think about the ways in which we're asking these personnel to not only do cleanups, but to be exposed potentially to hazardous materials.

We don't want anybody living in a hazardous site, nor do we want them cleaning a hazardous site.

And my understanding from talking to some of the police officials is they also aren't interested in doing that.

That's not why they signed up.

If this is an opportunity for us to think about how we use all of our resources, including the seven million that's currently allocated to the NAV team, I am not yet comfortable with holding back those seven million and having a completely distinct effort or a separate effort that the navigation team continues to do outside of its more coordinated approach with the King County and Seattle regional governance body.

This is clearly not everything that we want it to be.

I'm not even talking about housing coordination, right?

I'm talking about emergency response system.

That does seem like something that the navigation team does at its core.

We need to be able to better coordinate and better refer folks.

And let's not forget the conversation we had a few weeks ago, which is the navigation team is supposed to be navigating people somewhere, not just cleaning up and not doing, as you said, just public right-of-way clearings and moving obstructions.

So in an effort to try to be true to what I think was the intent of the navigation team, I'm still interested in seeing how that $7 million can be folded in to the $72.9 million that we're considering coordinating with King County.

And I'll look forward to working with you more on that.

Council President Harrell?

I was going to say, the suggestion I'm hearing is a regional navigation team.

Well, I think what I'm suggesting is that we coordinate better and we navigate people to housing versus the existing model that we currently have, which I'm not condoning as a good way to use that $7 million.

But I do think that as we evaluate every touch point that we have, we have a better opportunity to better serve folks in a more holistic way.

And perhaps that $7 million could be used in a different way if we were including it with the $72.9 million.

criticizing or Complimenting the navigation team.

I just know the city's put a lot of time and make sure we have a best practice navigation team And if that's an assumption, we have a best practice navigation team and we continue to approve it What I'm suggesting is I think we need to look at a regional navigation team such that a best practice Policy is implemented region wide, not just within our borders, and the only way to establish that kind of consistency.

So Mark, in your model, as you draw this up, you're the artist drawing this up for us.

Maybe we could take that under advisement.

Thank you.

All right, great.

So let's continue with your slides here.

Yeah, so I'm going to move, try to move a little more quickly through these budget presentations.

As I stated in my opening remarks, we have a substantial amount of time on Friday, October 2nd to dive deeply into line by line to dive into the budget associated with this.

Really what I wanted to highlight is start to highlight and introduce the dollar amounts associated with our program investments that will go to the regional authority.

I do want to state that To the extent possible, there was a full agreement by the city and the county that in order to end fragmentation, we needed to put as much of the investment into the regional authority as possible.

So what you are seeing here really are the total amounts of emergency shelter, transitional housing, diversion, day center investment that the city and the county make.

It was, you know, did not match our theory of change.

It did not match the structure that we were trying to create of consolidating services to keep investments separate from the regional authority.

So we were, to the extent possible, really trying to be inclusive of all of our homeless investments.

There are some program investments that are currently managed out of HSI and DCHS that are considered homeless investments that at this point we are not considering.

We just talked about the navigation team.

But we're also not considering moving HOPWA, which is Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS.

That is a fund source from the federal government that helps support people living with AIDS and HIV.

There's already a collaboration that exists and a system at play that we don't want to disrupt at this point.

Also, we're not considering the LEAD program.

So right now, the PDA's LEAD program is managed by the HSI division.

And while a large number of people being diverted through LEAD are experiencing homelessness, it is not a homeless program.

It is not a program.

that is strictly and restricted for a population that's living unsheltered.

So we are not considering right now the LEAD program moving to the regional authority.

Those contracts will continue to be held by the city and the county.

So I just wanted to highlight that this really is a characterization of The vast majority of the homeless investments made by the city and the county, there are a very small number of exceptions.

But we've done, I think, some really careful work together as a region to highlight what those program areas are that we would not move to the regional authority.

I also just wanted to highlight that there is an administrative function.

I shared at a high level that there are expenses associated with administering these contracts at the city.

You'll see that administrative total is about $4.3 million.

And at the county, you'll see that administrative total is roughly $6.7 million.

Those are the administrative investments that would go to the regional authority to help pay for continued administration of those contracts.

Speaking of contracts, looking ahead at 2020, we are not proposing that the contracting process or expectations change in 2020. We believe that it is in the best to our customers, in this case service providers, that DCHS and HSD follow current contracting practices with service providers.

All of our contracts, 2020 contracts, will include some language about the shift to a regional authority in the future, but the Human Services Department and the Department of Community and Human Services at the county are beginning its 2020 contracting process now, and we do not anticipate shifting that role and responsibility of contracting with service providers to the regional authority in 2020. Just to highlight again that the homeless budget will go through the usual mayor and city county appropriation and approval process.

That's going to begin on Monday.

I spoke last week and then again in my opening comments about service agreement that we'll have with the regional authority.

So beginning in 2020, the city and the county are going to need to develop a contract with the regional authority that outlines our expectations, performance agreements, creates a and is very clear with a scope of work.

It will outline the program and administrative budgets that I just went through.

I think it's just important to know that, you know, especially given that we're going to be sending over such a substantial investment to a new organization, it is this service agreement that we have with the organization that is going to detail our expectations and will be where we state what accountability looks like between the city and the regional authority and the county and the regional authority.

So that is a body of work that is already underway.

The city of Los Angeles has a, I think, a very good service agreement in place with LASA, their regional authority that serves the city and county of Los Angeles.

And we're using that as a model.

We're using that as a structure by which or a document that outlines the same kind of things we anticipate that we'll want in our service agreement here in Seattle.

So now I'm going to pivot away from budget and have Bobbi move into a discussion about staffing.

Before you do that, I'm increasingly seeing differences between what the LASA governing body does in California versus what we're proposing here.

And I have repeatedly held up that document and shown folks what I think is a great model from Los Angeles.

I don't want to mislead folks that what is included in the LASA proposal or the joint effort between Los Angeles County and Los Angeles City is what we are doing here.

I think it was looked at as a reference, but it would be helpful, and I don't recall if we've done this already.

It would be helpful at this juncture to see the difference between the regional authority scope the appointment process and the budget of what Los Angeles has versus what we're proposing here.

As we've been talking about this, it's very clear that what we're talking about in terms of an emergency response system in our regional governance is a slice of what Los Angeles does.

And so in an effort to make sure that people don't think that after this conversation is done, we can pat ourselves on the back, walk away, and feel like we've addressed housing and homelessness, it would be helpful to see that distinction.

And as we talk a little bit more about staffing and what the governance model looks like, included in that chart would be a helpful distinction between how individuals are appointed to the regional authority in Los Angeles versus what's being proposed here.

And I say that to extrapolate some of the conversation we had at the last committee meeting where people were asking questions around representation on the board.

I also think that it's an important conversation as we talk about this five-year term that we've put into the current proposal from the mayor and executive that have the body appointing individuals to itself versus elected officials doing that.

So your chart summarizing what Los Angeles has done versus what we are proposing and the scope and the appointment process et cetera, would be helpful.

Because I don't want to mislead folks, as I've been the one who's been most talking about Los Angeles and LASA, to give anybody the impression that we're doing the exact same here would be false.

It is a great model.

I still applaud it.

But I don't want to mislead folks.

So let's clarify what we're doing versus what they've done.

So last week I began the conversation, first of all, good morning committee chair, council members, about the three phased approach to the employee impacts of consolidation.

And just wanted to say that we are committed to giving employees as much time as possible to consider their employment options pending this change.

We value the employees being part of the success of this new entity or finding employment elsewhere within the city through a competitive employment process.

So in this first co-location phase, we're considering employees doing the same work, same reporting structure, same program outcomes in a different location.

Our focus here is in strengthening the human resource that already exists around this work.

There was a site visit conducted this week.

And there was a, to visit the complete rebuild of the sixth floor of the Yesler building where the team would work together.

25 employees, a representative from POTEC 17, SDHR labor negotiator, and HSD leadership attended that walkthrough.

They noted telecommunications infrastructure onsite in place, Wi-Fi, new paint, conference room, some improved amenities to what employees see now in a larger kitchen, ample restroom environment.

There's a commitment on the behalf of the city and the county to ergonomic supports from employees as we start to inhabit the workplace.

And there's still work to do in the county who owns the design of the space has committed to engaging our employees on the aesthetics of that work space.

We're forecasting 30 employees transitioning work into the new entity from the city, and that's my update on co-location.

On the loan phase, this is based on the vision, the work is based on the vision and direction of the executive director selected by the board.

It's a similar construct to co-location with more emphasis on engaging the workforce for organizational design.

And finally, in the regional authority phase, this is the employment phase, the executive director and their leadership team will own the employee resource of the PDA.

and impacted employees are either placed in the PDA at this point or have gained employment elsewhere.

Let's go back to say that during the loan phase, that's when we will begin our project hire services to employees.

That said, the care and feeding of employees around this change is happening right now.

HSDHR and SDHR are committed to supporting employees with navigating their career path as needed.

All right.

So pivoting away from current staff and really want to spend some time envisioning what the regional authority structure might look like and highlight some of the key functions that will exist inside of the regional authority.

And for that, I'll turn it over to Mark.

I did have some questions about currency.

Can you give us a sense of the timeline on the co-location piece?

differing numbers both from our aspirational numbers over here at the city, what the county thinks is possible, what employees have had concerns about the relocation.

So it would be great to get a sense of the timing for that.

Yeah, we are, what we're hearing from King County is that the space will be ready as soon as December of this year.

And, but, you know, December is a heavy month for many of our employees.

They are in the midst of closing out one year and beginning work on and developing contracts for the next year.

So December, And really, January, both are a tricky time to move employees.

That said, the Q1 of 2020 is when co-location will occur.

We just, you know, we may have to do some of those moves in phases, so not to interrupt the business needs.

But we're going to be working in close partnership with King County to develop a true timeline about what that really looks like.

In fact, we have stood up a weekly workgroup that will work on all of the facilities and IT and moving needs and employees will be part of that weekly workgroup.

So they'll be able to participate in and help guide what this process looks like ultimately landing on a date when the co-location will occur.

That's really helpful and very different than what I had heard.

So I appreciate that clarification.

I had heard that the city was pushing towards a December date.

Staff was expressing serious concerns about a December date, and that King County had come back and said, there's no way that the space would be available in December.

So I appreciate the clarification.

We're looking at some time in first quarter.

It would be good to get, again, some more granularity around that when you know it, because I think As I see this staffing piece sequenced, knowing when the co-location occurs I think will also help give us a little bit more, flesh out for us more about when some of the other possible changes might occur as it relates to knowing more about the numbers of staff that this new regional authority will need, knowing how many staff will be given the opportunity to work for the new regional authority, how many staff may not have that opportunity, and what their future would be.

So it would be really good to get, I think, some more certainty around that.

And I think the first step is to get more certainty about the co-location.

Yeah, completely agree, and thank you.

I think that, you know, we are asking a lot of employees at this time, and I know there is a lot of anxieties, and those anxieties become higher when we don't have answers.

And at this point, we have, you know, begun to sketch out at a very high level what we believe this will look like, and I think there's a lot of opportunity inside of co-location, but again, it is gonna take a weekly effort, inclusive of staff, partnering with leaders, partnering with facilities and IT professionals to figure out exactly what the right timing for this is.

Okay, so thank you Council Member Herbold.

Anything else?

Okay.

We have gone over time here.

Mark, I know you've flown in and I feel like every time you're here you get short-changed.

Tess, you do have another presentation.

Was that a 20-minute or so presentation?

You're referring to the Q2 presentation?

Yeah.

Yeah, we think it's about 20 minutes.

Okay, great.

So Mark, why don't you go ahead and, you know, give you the...

Also, if I may,

The Q2 presentation, I mean, we can do that in 20 minutes.

We can also do that at another time or in another community.

So, this is...

Let's see where we're at then.

And we do have community partners that have been asked to come and provide some response as well to these items.

So, we want to make sure that they get a chance to chat at 11 o'clock.

So, why don't we see how long this takes and then if we need to delay the Q2 presentation, we can do so.

But I think we can try and fit it all in if it's just about a 20-minute presentation.

So we may do it at the very end, though.

Okay, Mark, welcome, and thank you for being here.

No worries.

I can also be brief.

I wouldn't want to make, I want Melinda to have the time.

So the design of the authority as it's currently performed, I'm not going to talk a great deal about teaming structure, but more about sort of function and how our team sort of worked with the community to sort of imagine what was necessary, right?

The chart that you have in front of you really shows functional divisions of labor.

And some of the initial diagnoses, as you'll recall, that we talked about in the fall was the inability for folks who were needing to do work out of the office, right, to balance that with work that was like, this is just desk work.

Like, I need to stay at my desk and machine through these contracts.

I need to be responsive to Melinda when she's like, I need this amendment, right?

And so one of the first things that we really did was say, okay, so there needs to be a functional division between folks who are saying my job is like actual procurement and contract management versus my job is supporting providers and supporting partners out in the world every day.

That becomes frankly more important when you think about scaling to being regional.

One of the experiences that my team had, right, was like, if you're going to Auburn for the day and I-5 is bad, that's all you're doing.

Like, there is no, like, I will get back to my office and then process all this paperwork or respond to all these emails.

It's just, if you're going out, especially if you're trying to go to Carnation, go to Auburn, like wherever.

that's going to take time.

So the Emergency Services Division is crafted to be a division that provides specific support around programs, right?

So, and how, so the services that are listed under there, right, the idea is that there would be teams that would be made up of a diverse set of skills.

We can talk about that at a later date.

But folks would be specifically tasked with providing support to shelters, for example.

So if a shelter calls and says, hey, we're really struggling.

It's gotten quite wet, and we're getting an influx of folks who have significant disabilities, for example.

And we simply don't actually have the bandwidth or the resources or the capacity to manage this inflow, there's a team that actually can deploy to say, OK, we're going to work to think this through with you, which is the fundamental orientation of all of this, I might add, is that it shifts out of a hierarchical mode and towards a mode of collaboration.

It is not that providers don't know what to do.

It's that there are problems that people actually need to be able to triage and solve together.

And the idea behind these teams is that they would be able to do that triaging and that thinking in conjunction.

And then if the actual answer was like, OK, if we're going to provide support to this many people with, for example, physical disabilities, we actually need to be able to get a bunch of wheelchairs in place.

to think about our facilities differently, then that team would have the capacity then to say, like, OK, that makes a lot of sense.

We will recommend to the procure, or not recommend, but we will direct the procurement team, right, to make a modification to your contracts, to release additional funds, to buy a bunch of wheelchairs.

It creates a flow of work, right, that allows folks, again, to engage directly while folks who are managing the procurement process can ensure that that happens steadily and on time and rapidly if need be.

The way that the housing is set up is that it's essentially the same.

It's just denoting that there are needs that are separate that need to be attended to inside providing support to folks who are doing permanent supportive housing work, transitional or rapid, but it has the same orientation.

One of the things that I'll also note because it's not, you can't see it on this slide because it doesn't go into the depth of teaming, is that we also heard repeatedly from community that there needs to be a way to think about equity at all levels, and that that actually has to be dedicated.

So when you get into staffing structure, what our team has put forward is that inside each of these divisions, on each team there are dedicated equity specialists who can think about things like what is the disproportionality?

Is there a reason why we're seeing an influx of trans young people for example?

And what does that mean again in terms of how we're providing support both to providers but then ultimately how are we providing support to those trans young people who like they're coming from some place.

There's a disruption that needs to be managed.

When we think about system performance, I was chatting with a HSD person a couple weeks ago who was saying that maybe that needs to be renamed, which could be true, because the system performance division is essentially pulling aside everything that is desk work, right?

It's saying, like, This is the division for people who are going to need to like stay at a computer and manage a process.

So we think about data, HMIS, contract management, performance management, policy, technical assistance crafting, right?

So like thinking about what is the curriculum, research and planning.

And then there are new functions in there that we've identified a need for based on community conversation around certification and licensure and continuous quality improvement.

Those functions, all of those functions, emergency services, housing, and system performance, we see as flowing up into a deputy director who oversees program delivery and performance broadly.

And that person, right, would really have the responsibility for knowing what is happening outside and being responsive to it and being able to move rapidly.

I think that's one of the things that is, I hope, successful about this design is that it moves the things that need to happen quite quickly underneath what is a more traditional command control structure that you use when you need to field rapid response, right?

So again, thinking about providers who are saying, like, I have this need today, you actually do need to be able to respond to that need today, not next week, not two weeks from now.

And so that's what this design is aiming for.

And I'll pause briefly if there are any questions about that division, and then I can move to the others.

The next main division is engagement, and that holds entirely new functions of ombuds and community impact.

So these were areas that when we spoke with staff and with community were just voids, right?

It's not that they weren't happening.

I don't want to have the impression that people were just like, oh, I don't think this is important, so I'm not doing it.

What folks said repeatedly was, these are vital functions, and I do them in 2% of the time that I have on my way out the door between two things.

So in the community impact vertical, right, that's things like comms, thinking about prevention, right?

And thinking about prevention in the space of homelessness is actually liaising with other systems, right?

Like how does the regional authority interact with juvenile justice, interact with criminal justice, interact with child welfare, et cetera, right?

Like those are conversations, not necessarily responsibilities of the authority itself.

Thinking about advocacy, right, there was a lot of discussion about what does it mean to, once you've identified a gap in funding or a gap in resource, right, to be able to advocate for that.

Public-private partnerships, you know, there's a lot that could be improved, right, by having frankly, dedicated relationship management between the authority responsible for overseeing the region's response to homelessness and the business leaders of the region, right?

And that isn't necessarily that, frankly, you know, there has been some camping, I think, that's happened in terms of, like, people moving into polarizations.

I think part of that is just about relationships, right?

And about the ability to say that when I pick up the phone and I call someone, I actually am like, okay, I trust this person and I understand the answer that I'm going to get.

Economic mobility initiatives, again, tethered to prevention, that really exceeds the responsibility of the regional authority, but again, is actually about relationship management between what will be left in HSD and what will be left at DCHS.

who will take on some of those much broader, like, how do people move through our society, right?

What does it mean to be economically mobile?

What has to be present, et cetera?

Some of that stuff, right, is about, like, early education, things that, again, are just not the responsibility of a regional authority.

And then finally, sub-regional coordination and COC governance.

So, related to the questions that President Harrell was just asking, there is a significant need, as Tess pointed out, to find out what needs to happen in other large portions of the region.

We simply don't know right now.

If someone said to me, Mark, you need to devise a plan for what should happen in East King County, I don't have a good answer to that.

I am aware of some of the difficulties, but I certainly don't have an understanding at the nuanced level that I need to say, OK, this is what would make sense.

These are the strengths.

These are the weaknesses.

This is the funding that needs to go there, and this is what it needs to fund.

So this need to actually create a team that is responsible for owning.

the plan for North King County, the plan for South King County, the plan for East King County, et cetera, is really essential.

And then finally, COC governance, which is federally mandated.

It is critical, right, that it have a home someplace.

And so incorporating it into the Community Impact Division actually allows it to be really robustly staffed so that it isn't just like the way it hangs out right now, which is staffed, but like separate, right?

So our desire is to integrate it so that when the COC board convenes, right, they're actually like talking to people who are fully connected to the rest of the system and there is no question about what is or is not inside purview.

The last thing that I'll say about community impact is just that I think one of the things, speaking to LA, that was quite successful there is as they moved to acknowledge that the community needed to be engaged, they looked at some of these same functions, like sub-regional coordination or advocacy, for example, and hired actual organizers, right, who then worked with people, just like went out into the community and worked with folks.

And housed and unhoused alike, right, to say we all as a community have to recognize that the current reality is unacceptable, and we have to make commitments around how we're going to make changes.

And so our hope for this division is that it does in fact become deeply obsessed with community, right, that it is really engaging with people, that there's the capacity to say, if someone is upset in Fremont, right, like we should actually be able to go sit with them, hear those concerns, and provide actual answers, as opposed to shuttling them into something that's infinite and bureaucratic and doesn't actually give them the satisfaction of an answer they can understand.

The ombuds function is entirely new and came out of conversation with people experiencing homelessness who said repeatedly, there actually isn't anyone I can call when I'm having a problem, right?

Which is just kind of like a little bit staggering when you think about the number of people who are engaging with a system as robustly funded as this one has become, who actually have no recourse when something goes wrong.

And so what folks said, And we spent some time over the course of the spring and summer working with folks experiencing homelessness to iterate on this.

What folks said is that the ombuds office needed to be able to provide a navigation service, right?

So if I, to the point around, like, you know, where am I going?

Why would I go?

Like, if someone is like, I need access to something and I don't actually know where to go, that the ombuds office should be a place that you can call or get in touch with via text or whatever.

to say, like, where should I go tonight, right?

Also this desire to have some capacity to investigate when things are going wrong.

So if, right, there are repeated concerns about safety, for example, or repeated concerns about other forms of violence, that the ombuds office would have the ability to say, like, okay, like, we actually can go look at what's happening, and we can figure out how to support the providers in making whatever adjustments are necessary so that people can be safe.

One of the things that I think is frankly just true is that there are people who feel safer outside than they do inside right now.

And for a region with a homelessness crisis as bad as this one has become, that is not acceptable, right?

Like people actually need to be able to go inside and they need to be able to know that their safety is not gonna be compromised if they go to a shelter.

So that's the ombuds office.

Just very quickly, Council Member Warris has a question.

I'll be very brief, thank you Madam Chair.

On the investigation piece, what do we do now?

Right now, depending on, and Jason if you want to speak to this, but depending on where the complaint comes in, right, on the HSD side, it may, It depends on if it manages to make it to, right, like, an actual contract manager at HSD.

There is no actual, like, there's a line between people experiencing homelessness and contract managers.

What folks can do, right, is they can report a problem to a provider, right?

They can say, like, I'm having a problem in this agency.

Depending on the situation, though, folks are not incentivized to do that.

They can call the police.

People are also not incentivized to do that.

And there isn't a direct line between a contract manager in Jason's shop and that person.

It just doesn't actually exist.

I think I would just add that we do require that organizations that we contract with have a grievance process, a way that is very, you know, clearly articulated for people who are using their services to file a complaint or work through an issue with an organization.

And then Mark is absolutely right, there is not a process by which If that's unsuccessful, the individual then has a sort of second layer of grievance process inside the city.

We usually work directly with the provider, who we have a contract with, when grievance either reaches a certain level or can't be ironed out in-house by that provider.

This Office of the Ombuds is something we're really excited to see in this community because right now there is not that direct route for an individual to file a complaint directly with an authority, and in this case a regional authority.

And I just want to add that the idea of a complainer agreements need not necessarily end in punishment, right?

Like, so we also did, we had some conversations with providers about like, okay, so like, how should this office function?

And what folks said was, well, if you fine us, right, for like not doing something right, then we actually lose capacity to help people.

So that doesn't work, right?

And so the way that we have preliminarily constructed this is that things that are not going right don't end in punishment.

Again, they end in collaboration, right?

So that the entire orientation is not towards like how can we be adversarial, but how can we problem-solve together?

Acknowledging that like no one is doing this work if they're not actually trying to help people.

And then finally, oh, so sorry, we see that as sitting underneath the Deputy Director of Engagement.

Again, thinking about streamlining function and making sure that there is not a, you know, overburdening, frankly, of an executive director with like, I have 17,000 reports.

One of the things that I will call out though that I think may shift is that the ombuds may actually report directly to the executive director.

That was feedback that we got from folks experiencing homelessness who said, we don't want that office buried and we don't want the capacity for folks to edit, right?

So like, if the ombuds is submitting a report, People don't want that to be edited by a set of eyes before the ED or before the board.

So that may be a structural shift.

Finally, operations.

It's very important, it turns out.

You need all of those things.

I think that this is where, to Jason's budget conversation, some of the startup cost really arises is because those core functions that you need in order to run an agency of this scope and scale are not going to be transferred.

They're going to have to be native to the new authority.

But the need for human resources, finance operations, learning and development, IT legal facilities, et cetera, L&D, or learning and development rather, I just want to highlight briefly because one of the things in the fall, which feels like a million years ago now, that we heard consistently from staff is that sometimes it's unclear, right?

Like, what do you need to know to advance?

And like, what does it mean to be a strat?

What does it mean to be a contracts manager?

how do you move between things, was something that folks were like, oh, that could use some clarity.

So having a clear orientation towards learning and development, so that as people are in their workplace, when it's like, I would like to advance, someone can sit down with them and say, this is how you would do that.

And there's a very clear expectation about what skills, what kinds of performance you'd need to be, yada, yada, yada.

So just making sure that's clear, at the senior level, I only want to highlight the equity team and innovation team.

These are things that likely will not come into full being, you know, in Q whatever of when the regional authority actually stands up.

But the need for that executive director to have access to senior level folks who are responsible for overseeing equity, right, is necessary for an organization that is supposed to be ensuring equity in the delivery of its policy and performance.

And then innovation, I think, is just, innovation here does not mean like, oh, we thought of something new.

It's a particular set of methodologies that the I-team that the city actually currently has under Tina Walla use all the time.

about when someone surfaces a problem to you, you actually run a set of iterative project-based research methodologies to figure out, like, okay, so what actually is the way to respond to this?

and what can we implement quite quickly.

And so the idea that an emergency services team or a housing team could say, hey, we have run into the same problem at six different shelters.

It's not anybody's fault.

There's just a problem here that we can't solve for.

And being able to surface that to an I-team that could actually then do something with that and generate something new that could go in to fix that problem is important.

And that's the authority as it's been planned to date.

Great, thank you.

Questions, colleagues?

No questions, okay.

So we do have an opportunity to get some feedback on the entire structure.

Maybe let's go back to the organizational chart that you provided so that that can be used as context.

And then if there are specific slides that our community partners would like to reference in comments or questions, concerns that they raised, we can also toggle between there.

I will also note we did hear from some of the folks who work at Protech 17. They appreciated the walkthrough of this space.

I know that's not really germane to the organizational structure as a whole as it goes forward and or the roles and responsibilities of a governing body.

I think that they appreciated that there was an openness from King County and our team here at the city to be responsive to the structural needs that they would need to be functioning in the new physical location.

So I wanted to note that for folks who have heard the same concerns that Councilmember Herbold and I had heard, that it does sound like there's been some initial positive feedback from that initial walkthrough.

Absolutely.

It's core to us that our partnership with labor is respected as we move through this transition process.

Great.

Appreciate you saying that on the record and reiterating that repeatedly.

Thank you.

We'll be constantly asking for how they're feeling about this process.

So speaking of labor and the folks who do the work on the ground and directly involved with folks experiencing homelessness, people who are delivering the services now, and the individuals who I believe will be directly impacted by a regional governance body.

We have asked a few of our friends from the community to provide some feedback.

We have at the table with us today Youth Care and SEIU 1199. We've also asked for feedback from the Public Defenders Association and the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness.

Those two have provided us feedback of written feedback that the council members have here And I believe it's being passed out at the table again that comes from Allison Isinger at the Seattle King County coalition on homelessness that has a four-point memo and Lisa Dugard from the public Defenders Association that has a two-page memo So appreciate you taking a look at those as we also hear from our partners at the table Melinda welcome.

Thank you for being here on behalf of you here Why don't we start with you, and then we'll turn to Lindsay from seiu 1199

Well, thank you for having me.

I'm Melinda Juvengo, the CEO of Youth Care, and I want to just put some parameters around my comments.

The King County Youth Service Collaboration for Homelessness meets regularly every month, and we have been reviewing the documents and the process moving forward.

So while these comments have not been formally endorsed, we will be submitting formal recommendations and endorsements from the collaboration.

probably next week to the committee.

So in our preliminary discussions, we have found that there are some questions that we would like to just see brought to the table.

Youth Care and our youth provider colleagues recently reviewed the Regional Authority's proposed charter in interlocal, and we believe it is a very positive first step in improving our system response and grounding it in equity.

I'd like to share several issues we identified and offer some suggestions.

First, we notice that the proposed governing board does not include a representative with expertise in working with youth and young adults experiencing homelessness.

We know, and neuroscience confirms, that young people have unique developmental needs.

Additionally, they are often interacting with different systems than adults, such as public schools, child welfare, and juvenile justice.

We would like to propose that the governing board include a representative who holds the expertise in working specifically with youth and young adults experiencing homelessness and to ensure our system is responsive to the special developmental needs of this population.

Linda, before you move on, I just want to note that that recommendation is well taken.

We have also expressed that desire from the City Council body, and yesterday, King County Council members were also expressing a similar desire when they heard about it at the Board of Health presentation, especially from the public health perspective.

We know how important it is for that early intervention and to get youth and young adults, but specifically youth, the ability to have a voice on this board is really well taken, so thank you for underscoring that and bringing it back up.

Great.

Second, the proposed board includes only one provider representative in general and precludes anyone from holding a current contract.

Now, we really appreciate the conflict of interest concerns, but we also believe that professionals in the field offer critical insight on what is and isn't working on the ground and working well.

In order for the board to be well-informed by on-the-ground experience, we propose it include contracted providers who can and will recuse themselves from votes where there may be a conflict of interest.

Do you mind if I pause after each recommendation?

Is that the end of your intro into item number two?

On the provider representation on the board, we have constantly brought that issue up.

I think the feedback that we've received was number one, that voice will be included in the advisory council which is sort of a subcomponent to the actual board.

Love to have your feedback on that and then number two, If not a current contracted provider who will recuse themselves, the suggestion has been that a coalition type person could represent.

I think there's a distinction between someone who is currently doing the work on the ground and getting that immediate feedback and someone who's you know, maybe representative of a larger body.

So I'd love to hear your feedback on both where that person should sit and whether or not that advisory council is the right place, and number two, whether or not a representative of providers is appropriate, or are you, you know, really underscoring the importance of the immediate on-the-ground feedback that a current provider would have?

I would say that it would be really important for the provider coalition to have a say in who is that representative, whether it is a contracted person representing the the collaboration, which we do all the time, take off our agency hats and represent the field, or someone who has been deeply immersed in the work previously and has the understanding of what is happening and how these contracts and how the programs are affecting the population.

So I think that it would be helpful to have either a nomination or a suggestion from the collaboration on who that person would be.

And yes, I think that my colleagues would believe that on the governing board we need someone with youth and young adult expertise.

Third, we recognize that being a member of the governing board is a major undertaking and requires lots of time and energy and a position also accountable to our most vulnerable community members and to large amounts of public funds.

While the charter instructs the board to meet at least six times a year, the initial phase will require much more engagement.

We're concerned about the issues of capacity, retention, accountability, and equity if the positions are volunteers outside of someone's daily jobs.

To the extent possible, we really would like the meetings to be scheduled in advance.

made accessible to the public and that the positions be stipend to ensure participation and increased accessibility.

Especially if you're not having people who are all being reimbursed to as part of their day jobs to sit on this governing board, it's going to be hard to keep engagement over the long term without these folks being compensated in some way.

And finally, however, because our system only considered MSI-IV, our current response is largely driven by HUD.

And I don't think that the providers see any difference in this structure in terms of incorporating the multiplicity of services and systems that are involved in youth and young adults in the current model.

And the HUD model is not a holistic or reflective of best practices for youth and young adults.

For example, we know that most 18 to 24-year-olds in this country are living in transitional housing, be it a college dorm, their parents' house, the military, or a service corps.

So it is not something specific to youth experiencing homelessness.

It is fairly normative for most young people at this stage of their lives.

However, because our system only considers exits to permanent housing as a positive outcome, this type of forward developmental appropriate progress is not considered successful.

And we need to have a more appropriate design and exit strategy for the population that would include safe and stable housing.

Similarly, youth and young adults are on the cusp of adulthood.

They lack the rental, employment, and credit history that adults build over the course of their lives.

Thus, it takes young people longer to build the living skills and successful transition into independence.

I might add that my son, who is very successful, had 23 moves in 10 years.

23!

I know because I hauled that crap up and down the stairs.

So, we need flexibility in our length of stays for young people to ensure we adequately prepare them for success, rather than prematurely throwing them into something like rapid rehousing and saddling them with a record of eviction when they are not ready to live on their own, not to mention the lack of affordable housing that will allow these young people to be successful and move into those units and be self-sustaining.

In other words, we think about our homeless response system for youth and young adults as we think about our homeless response system.

We need not think just about safe and stable housing, but also about building up the social, emotional skills, the education and employment competencies, and the community connections that would allow them to live healthy and independent lives.

So, in conclusion, our final suggestion from the provider group is to mirror the creation of an Office of Homeless Youth or a Department of Homeless Youth within the new authority, and mirroring what's done at the statewide level is the Office of Homeless Youth, which positioned our state as a leader in the nation on this issue.

The office has youth-specific services, strategies, metrics, and outcomes that look at young people holistically, rather than through the narrow prism of housing and HUD.

As you move forward in this restructure, we ask you to consider mirroring our state system that has an entity dedicated to serving young people so that the services and strategies can be tailored to the unique developmental needs of all the people served, including young adults.

I would say that one of the biggest concerns we have is This authority is really based on an adult model or the strategies.

Having a separate entity living within it would allow us to bring the funding together.

When I look at my fund source, HUD is maybe 10% of my $16 million budget.

I get money from the school districts, juvenile justice, the state, the county, working on the various systems that impact these young people's ability to be successful.

Those systems have to be, and those dollars have to be taken into consideration when we are designing a system that is going to be successful in helping transition our young people from homelessness.

And I won't even go into the fact that we haven't talked about under-18 minors.

who are living on the streets and have zero, zero opportunities for long-term housing in our community, exiting shelters, except for eight beds at our program.

So, thank you.

Thank you very much.

Let's go to Lindsey Brad from SEIU 1199 Northwest, Healthcare Northwest.

And then we'll take questions for both Lindsey and Melinda.

Thank you.

I will just say as an opening comment, if any of my remarks are blunt or pointed, they're certainly not at anyone on the dais.

They're about an inherited system that has been built up over time.

So just as a matter of opening, we were interested in this concept when it first was brought up and we continue to be supportive of it.

I think that the proposal that Mark walked through reflects a lot of effort and a lot of listening and it holds a great deal of promise for moving our region forward.

And we're excited to be able to actually see this into fruition with some of the appropriate changes that have been recommended.

This alone is not going to solve homelessness.

helping to reduce fragmentation, that's going to be a very helpful tool for governments, for providers, and for the public.

And this effort has, I think, been unique in comparison to past sort of similar sounding efforts in that it's really centered lived experience.

It's, you know, tried to promote more race and equity in the conversation.

And continuing that, I think, has the ability to actually live up to that.

But one thing that I have been hearing a lot, not just from our members who really exist in the two most bottom left columns, but from providers, from advocates, is that There's one essential thing that we need to be talking about in every conversation here, which is that we prioritize and correct for a structural inequality around workforce.

We really support our sisters and brothers at Protech and all of the unionized workforce that's going to be working for this regional system and surrounding it on the public sector side, but as folks who are contracted out and providing the services directly, we live under an inherently unequal system, a system that's sort of built upon the fact that people are gonna be paid truly low wages and low benefits, and while providing the very hardest, most challenging set of job skills, which is actually effectively high-level integration of case management, healthcare, treatment, outreach, in a lot of ways integrating with criminal justice system and emergency response system, several different layers of governmental interventions around housing and around In some cases, a behavioral health system.

And these are people who have a tremendous degree of expertise and excellence and commitment, and in no way do their wages reflect that.

And unfortunately, what we all know and what you council members have worked on diligently was when the wages don't reflect that, it creates a a tremendous recruitment and retention problem, which means that these skills that we invest in evaporate and aren't there for clients who need them.

I also want to note that when we work on growing a workforce and on centering race and equity, It is somewhat, I'll use an aggressive term, it's predatory to say we want more people of color to do these jobs when we know that they're bad jobs today in a lot of ways.

So it's important that we really pair this focus on workforce in everything that this new regional authority does.

We have heard a lot about needing to sort of hold providers accountable, which I don't personally subscribe to that line of rhetoric, but what really is frustrating is that both providers and governments should be accountable for making sure that the workforce standards are there and that the funds are there, because that's what's actually going to drive outcomes.

And that needs to be understood by everybody who plays a role in this system.

And it needs to be central to the action plan that's being developed.

You know, the one last thing I would want to say is that we cannot keep looking to expand the system without actually making the current system what it should be.

It's a central tenet of labor that we don't add more work and more programs without making sure that the ones that exist today are at the standards that they should be.

Our members, I'll speak particularly about DESC, our members have a very good relationship with their employer and both our members and, you know, not to speak for the employer, both our members and DESC as an organization have said yes to a lot of times that the city or the county has said add on a new program, we need a new shelter, and that's because they care and they're proud of the work they do and they want this system to be successful, but continuing to expand while we know people are out there making an unliving wage is not an acceptable thing.

People truly cannot come anywhere close to living in the city of Seattle with the jobs that this system is creating today.

So I want to make sure that that never gets lost in this conversation.

And I think that if we hold it we will be able to build a system that is more responsive.

We've had sort of a partnership in the behavioral health, which has a lot of similar problems to homelessness on this front.

And this is actually a chance for us to have a full partner in homelessness.

So with that, I would happily answer any questions you have and hope that we can see the promise and bring this to fruition, but make sure that we are truly addressing the contracted out workforce under it.

Thank you both.

Thanks to Youth Care and SEIU 1199. Are there comments or questions from the council members?

I do have a few and then I'd love to hear any feedback that you all have.

I think it's important to note the themes that have been repeated in the documents that you've received from the Public Defender Association.

and the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness.

For example, as Melinda said from youth care, she believes it's important to have providers at the board, which is the first point of recommendation from the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness.

In the Public Defender Association letter, you will see a strong emphasis that underscores what SEIU 1199 has said, which is if we don't also fold in the individuals who have Direct impact on those experiencing injustices from the criminal justice system and have behavioral health needs and appropriately staff those organizations and fund those organizations then the criminal justice element and the behavioral health system that is being currently served by our community contractors will not be affected and I believe what Lisa Dugard has said is That there will be that the current proposal will fare poorly and have little impact absent the coordination with the criminal justice and behavioral health system which many of our providers on the ground level have a direct experience in engaging in as the trusted community partners that we contract out with.

So there's a lot of similarities between what has been shared at the table from our community partners and what you see in the letters and I think is reflective of feedback that we've heard along the way and Mark I'm sure you've heard much of this in your community outreach and engagement conversations leading to your 10-point plan.

So thank you both for sharing that perspective, and we'd love to hear any feedback from folks as you think about how these recommendations potentially align or could be considered as we move forward.

Thank you Madam Chair.

So I also appreciate the feedback and hearing the concerns but also the hope and anticipation for this new structure.

We absolutely agree that there needs to be very careful and very targeted attention paid to specific populations and absolutely agree that youth and young adults have particular needs that are very different from adults.

And so that is a consideration in the structure, not only the structure of the authority itself and the org chart that you've seen above, but also in making sure that the, as you described, the advisory committee has appropriate representation across populations and those folks who have lived experience and are disproportionately impacted.

In terms of the governing board itself, we see that board as being critical for the overall success of the authority, and so definitely want to make sure that it has expertise across the board in a variety of sectors.

There have been comments about making sure that we're connecting to behavioral health, to healthcare in general, criminal justice.

We absolutely will be doing that.

There is a role on the governing board for workforce development and for labor.

And Melinda mentioned the need for somebody who previously had been immersed in services and in service delivery and understanding the needs of folks who are experiencing homelessness, and we couldn't agree more with that.

I appreciate the idea of how to bring that person forward or multiple recommendations forward through the coalitions, and I think that's something we definitely can consider.

We know that as people are recommended for the governing board, they are going to come from the community, and so we expect those folks being recommended to the governing board to have sort of a seal of approval from the community as well.

So I think that that's maybe the totality of my comments, but again, really appreciate hearing directly from you, in particular with regards to the structure and the overall governance of it.

So one of the things that's not reflected here because of the level of detail is that we did try to account for the needs of young people at the teaming level.

So in the teams, there are actually specific positions, right?

For example, in outreach and in shelter, there are specific youth positions, so that in each one of those teams, as they were trying to support providers and support the community, there was a recognition in our staffing model, which you haven't seen, I'm not so, like, but there was a recognition in our staffing model that there did need to be specific consideration about young adults and young people broadly needing different stuff, and that being a totally different set of skills.

I think that the thought around, and this is, I mean we should just have this conversation at some point, because I'm very curious about how to maintain, and this is just a tension that I will lay out for people to like, you know, you all will need to solve for this.

there's always a tension between maintaining the separateness of what young people need and that then not being integrated into the rest of the money resources, basically, right?

That, like, young people wind up not getting as much resource allocation as they need because the system around youth homelessness developed later than the adult system, and then has existed historically inside very siloed spaces that operate under completely different rule sets than the rule sets that govern the adult space.

And so I think what we were attempting to do was not replicate that siloing by integrating at the team level, but very open to continuing that conversation, just broadly and theoretically, because I don't know that that's the best answer.

Well, Mark, just a point of clarification.

I think that what we are concerned about as providers, and I would say young people experience, is this kind of incongruence between the needs of adults and families, which I think are separate needs as well, and how we design a system that is responsive to young people.

And I think that while I appreciate having people embedded in the different departments, I think that we actually need to have a thought process that designs a youth system that is responsive and effective and meets and is the needs of the young people and the normative processes for gaining independence and living towards self-sufficiency.

I mean, I hate to use my own son, but he had five roommates, and he had three, then he had two.

I think now he has a lease, and he owns his own house.

But I mean, those are skills, and we don't account for that in the metrics, nor in the processes of referral or coordinated entry.

Even how we define vulnerability is different in the youth world than we would define it for a chronic adult.

Thank you.

I do not disagree with any of that.

I genuinely think that is a conversation, right, that the nation is having and doesn't have a good answer to, and you all have the opportunity to do some cool stuff around it by actually having that conversation.

Thanks, Mark.

The last thing that I would just say is, and we highlighted this in our fall report, is agree.

Like we can't run a system that is predatory while we say we are helping people.

And so we have to prioritize ensuring that the predominantly black and brown women who are serving people experiencing homelessness are paid appropriately.

It just has to be a priority.

And so thank you for continuing to raise that.

Yeah, I want to thank you, Lindsay, as well for bringing that up.

It's really critical if we're going to do a good job over the long term because the only thing that changes people is relationships.

We can't maintain relationships by paying people minimum wage to be on the streets.

Additional comments at the table on initial feedback?

And central staff, feel free to chime in, too.

Yes, Council Member Herbold.

May I?

Yes, please.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

So it would be helpful to understand if just yes or no, or we haven't looked at it, do other regional governance structures include service providers, contracted providers?

Do we have examples of those?

Absolutely.

We do.

Yeah, so there are.

In our initial audit, which I'm happy to walk, I can't do it now, but I'm happy to walk back through if it's helpful, we looked at a number of, so regional governance models, there aren't that many.

So we looked at both the existing regions that do governance, which is essentially Portland and LA, right?

And then we also looked at just like what in other jurisdictions is essentially just CFC governance.

So as a follow-up to that, so we know it's possible.

There may be pros and cons of doing that, but we know it's possible.

The challenge I see is that with the able advocacy of the Director of Youth Care here, as well as hearing from folks at the Public Defender, what I'm getting is that there's need for a place at the table for a lot of different organizations that represent different demographics of folks with very unique needs.

And so the concern I hear is that we're going to be designing a system that is sort of has like a homogeneous approach towards these interventions, but many of our subpopulations have unique needs and have a need for a unique approach towards an intervention to address those needs.

So Melinda talked about the unique needs of youth.

One of the points in the letter that we received from the public defender is that there's no place to have a conversation in the governance piece in the design of a system piece to address folks who are criminal justice system involved.

And these are folks who score low, very often, on the vulnerability.

And as a result, in coordinated entry, prioritized very low for access to housing.

But yet we have a significant concern in this community about addressing the needs of this community, recognizing that the revolving door system of the criminal justice system isn't serving nobody and is very expensive and is not producing the kind of outcomes that we want.

There doesn't appear to be any place for that conversation to have in the design part of this.

And then finally, I just want to remind everybody that the Barb Poppe report identified the folks who have the highest barriers and may also not have the least access to housing under our current system.

to be a priority that we should be paying attention in all of this redesign that we're talking about doing.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

So I want to address a couple of the comments that you made in terms of the engagement with criminal justice system.

Again, I want to remind that criminal justice is a position, a seat that's specifically called out, and we called it out on the governing board for exactly the reasons that you're talking about.

We recognize that there are a number of factors, predominantly the insufficient supply of affordable housing that contribute to people experiencing homelessness, but there is a significant intersection between homelessness, criminal justice, behavioral health.

And so, we want to make sure that both of those not only are present on the governing board, but also, as Mark described, the continuum of care boards or board committee that will actually have on it those folks that have direct service that are in the field.

that are engaged in crisis response, making sure that those folks are present.

We see those voices as critical to actually being able to design, to build out and design the authority using the functions and the organizational chart that NIS has provided for us as a good template, as a good starting point, but really fully understanding from the perspective of folks who are engaged in that work what we need within that.

On the second question of folks who are contracted providers, I'll point out that the two types of regional governance that we did look at, which is Los Angeles as well as Portland Multnomah, do not in fact have folks who are contracted providers.

It's just an answer to your question.

Those folks typically sit on what is the continuum of care board.

I'm sorry, may I make a comment?

I sit on the COC board currently and we are in the process of designing the new COC board and as it's currently structured there are 16 seats on that and we're voting to expand that.

I would say that 16 seats on a COC board that's going to act as an advisory council to the governing board is woefully inadequate.

When we used to have, I'll just use an example, domestic violence we used to be at the table with us and we learned about diversion that was very easy to do from a model that was done in DV here in our community.

So I'm very concerned that the advisory committee be robust enough to be able to provide multiple perspectives from multiple systems and providers and populations in order to really adequately advise the governing board, regardless of how we end up on the contractors sitting there.

Council Member Herbold, and then we should think about wrapping up soon.

Yeah, absolutely.

Just to follow up, my understanding was in the governing board structure, the criminal justice position was somebody representing the criminal justice system.

And so what I'm concerned about is that we need somebody somewhere in this designing of the system, somebody who's focused on serving that population of folks.

as it relates specifically to accessing housing and other needs that, again, disrupt the criminal justice sort of revolving door.

So, clarify if I'm wrong.

At this point, there hasn't been actually, within either the charter or the ILA, there hasn't been actually any specific definition beyond the large categories.

And so we expect that to be something that gets sussed out during the nomination process and the work that the steering committee does to actually appoint the board.

And then one other, just flagging this, there has been expressed some concern about the concept of decoupling the service dollars from permanent supportive housing from the capital dollars on permanent supportive housing.

Chair Mosqueda has expressed frustration about this.

The lack of coordination with the building of permanent supportive housing generally, the specific concern that I think has been flagged most recently relates to the fact that in coming up with proposals for funding, It has been really necessary to be successful in getting those proposals funded.

The assurances that providers have been able to give funders that the services piece and the housing piece are coordinated.

And there's a concern that if we don't continue to coordinate both the services and the capital side of things, that our applications for funding will become less attractive.

Absolutely, couldn't agree with you more.

And part of the thinking behind bringing the service component of permanent supportive housing over into the regional authority is in fact to understand the importance of that in the overall context, in the overall system, and quite frankly to protect it.

So one of the things that we know is that those folks who operate projects have usually a very asset management perspective, totally appropriate.

We want the projects to absolutely be able to continue.

In the hierarchy, if you will, of what might get cut or eliminated in order to preserve the units, services typically come up.

Services are typically on the chopping block for, and that's not acceptable.

And so we don't, we want to make sure from an authority perspective that the services are protected, that they are acknowledged to be the important key to folks being able to maintain their housing.

That's what sustainable housing is built on.

So, I believe that services will continue to be a key priority and particularly as we move through the continuum of care funding rounds where a significant amount of our service dollars come from, making sure that those applications are appropriately reviewed and considered.

Before I offer some closing comments, Lindsey, Melinda, do you have any other final thoughts before we wrap up here?

Please, go ahead.

No, I think that we're very excited about the possibility of this regional authority making life simpler for everyone.

I just want to make sure that we have all the right pieces in place to be successful.

Thank you.

I think you see that same sentiment in the letters we've also received and also as we think about crafting the policies specific to Councilmember Herbold's question and underscoring of what we saw in the Public Defender Association letter, we need to also make sure that there's not disconnects between what the city will continue to do and what the Regional Governance Authority is committed to doing in terms of looking at unstable housing and homelessness as a symptom of other broken systems, including not enough funding in our behavioral health system, not enough coordination and a holistic approach in our criminal justice system.

And one of the things that the Public Defender Association called out is the disconnect between what we're promising to do in terms of sort of treating the whole person and coordinating efforts in a regional governance structure and the strategies that have been outlined at the city through this prolific offender policy that has been recently rolled out without coordinating between what the city will continue to do in the right hand and then in the left hand trying to work more holistically with the folks who are more likely to become homeless is an overarching concern that I think we should come back to.

Number two, I want to remind our friends and colleagues that the proposal is just that, a proposal, and we still have the opportunity to add individuals to the governing board to think more about the coordination between specific populations that we know are more likely to end up in homelessness, whether that's individuals who are in the youth category, young adult category, or if it's individuals that are from our provider community, we still have an opportunity to think about where that representation should best be seated.

And then number three, Mark, I wish you were here last year when we were having the conversation around including a more equitable contracting strategy at our human service provider organizations.

We were successful this year in getting at least a 2% inflationary adjustment across the board.

And even with that, as Lindsay has underscored, the historic legacy of underfunding and defunding and disparity in how we fund specifically the organizations that have many women and people of color acting as direct service providers, as case managers, for example, We have a lot of work to do.

So I think the bigger question for us continues to be, how do we make sure that we stabilize this workforce, as Lindsay has outlined?

And that must be done whether or not we are contracting individuals directly from the city of Seattle or through this new governance structure.

And we have the opportunity to get it right.

Lastly, we didn't get a chance to get to the metrics presentation.

I know we have quarter two data that has been shared this week.

We will look forward to including that in the next agenda.

And I think it does speak to something that, for example, I've talked to provider organizations about including folks at at DESC and at Youth Care who have talked about how do we have performance metrics that more accurately reflect the experiences of individuals who are experiencing homelessness and the ways in which our organizations are helping to prevent people from cycling back out.

Again, specifically calling out the need to make sure that youth and youth services are not getting lumped into HUD-related metrics and HUD strategies to track success, being very different from the adult population It would be helpful, I think, and I'll just sort of look at our folks from central staff here, it would be helpful for us to have a better sense of how the reporting metrics will be different under the regional governance.

This is something I've asked for for the last year and a half, to have a dashboard to show us how well we're doing.

I've been told that a dashboard in 2019 isn't possible because of the consolidation between King County and the city.

And if we are going to create new reporting metrics that are more accurately reflecting the experiences of individuals and tracking things like, was somebody able to stay with their case manager from month to month?

Were kiddos able to stay in the same school?

Were people able to stay on their medication?

And maybe not just tracking individuals getting into transitional housing, for example, but actually to stable environments.

Those are some of the things that I think would make a more reflective and accurate picture of whether or not we're doing well with this new governance structure.

So I'm still interested in the metrics concept and don't want to wait until 2021 to see dashboard of metrics presented so we'll follow up with you on that as well as What are we doing as a region if we're consolidating funding to prioritize funding for the direct service providers?

If we have the universe of funds as you've outlined before that is moving over to King County 72.9 million just of city dollars and what was it 40 and 49 of King County dollars.

How are we using some of that funding if we're putting it all in one bucket to really prioritize the direct service providers, recognizing that's an efficiency on the front end.

We'll see fewer people cycling back out into homelessness and people will be more stable and our organizations will be more stable if we front load that funding into the workers themselves.

So we didn't have a chance to get into that question with the slides that you presented, but maybe we can think about that in light of the presentation that's been provided today.

about how we would reconfigure some of those current dollars and the current line items to put funding more into the direct service provider bucket so that we can stabilize the workforce.

So we'll look forward to working with you on the budget allocation question and the metrics questions at the next go around.

And we won't forget the conversation and recommendation about where these folks with lived experiences and specific population needs sit on the governing board and structure.

Overall, appreciate your comments and for being honest and, you know, you both started with reflections about this being an inclusive process and being optimistic.

So, we look forward to moving forward on that good first step comment and making sure that it's really a step in the right direction.

And with that, today's meeting is coming to a close.

Do I need to announce the next meeting for today?

Okay, we don't have the next meeting scheduled yet for the Select Committee on Housing, Health, and Homelessness, and we already have taken public comment, but I'll stick around if you want to share some comments, sir.

With that, today's meeting is adjourned.

Thank you all.