Seattle City Council Committee on Finance & Housing 11922

Thank you very much for joining the Finance and Housing Committee.

My name is Teresa Mosqueda, and today is the first meeting of 2022. The Finance and Housing Committee meeting will come to order on January 19, 2022. The time is 9.31 a.m.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Commissioner Herbold?

Here.

Councilmember Peterson?

Here.

Councilmember Nelson?

Here.

Councilmember Lewis?

Present.

Chair Mosqueda?

Present.

Madam Chair, that is five present, none absent.

Well, thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

That is a full attendance for our first meeting of 2022. I want to welcome new committee members, Council Member Nelson and Council Member Peterson.

It's great to have you on board with us here today.

As folks know, we have a mix of housing-related items, finance, we transition to budget items, we include in this meeting our mid-year supplemental as well.

And every now and then we have items that relate to our city budget and workplace safety.

Lots of those workplace safety issues this year that will be handled in the Council President's Committee, which we're very grateful for her leadership on as she has governance.

Today we are going to begin with sort of a ground setting where we're at with spending the funding from the Seattle rescue.

Addition into the new mayoral administration.

We're very pleased to have with us today, senior deputy mayor Monisha Harrell with us.

We will also have the interim director for the city budgets office, Julie Dingley, along with our very own central staff team members, Esther, Esther and Allie and others will be on the line here with us today.

So thank you very much for all of your presentation as we do some ground-setting in terms of where we're at with spending that Seattle Rescue Plan funding.

Again, the proposal that was passed in partnership with the previous mayor and the previous council in 2022 in July of last year.

This is a great opportunity for us to understand what's been done, but also, more importantly, what is to be done in the near future.

We will then have a panel presentation, which we've titled equity health for immigrants, there's been a lot of conversation thanks to the incoming administration, they are held made this a central point of his inauguration speech as well talking about how we expand health care to those who are currently priced out or kept out of health coverage from both the state and federal programs and who are not able to get employer sponsored insurance.

We all want to know how we can expand health coverage to everyone in our region because when everyone is covered, everyone is healthy.

So that's our agenda for today.

These two items, we do not have the appointments to the sugary sweetened beverage community advisory board as those are still getting finalized.

We do have one appointment that will be forthcoming from the council.

And then I believe two more that will soon be coming from the mayoral administration.

So we will hold off on those appointments for today.

If there's no objection on these two items for today's agenda, Seattle Rescue Plan update and health equity for community, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Let's begin with public comment.

It's my understanding that we do not have anyone signed up for public comment still.

And before I move off of public comment, just want to confirm with our clerks and our IT crew, is that correct?

There's no one signed up for public comment?

Madam Chair, yeah, that's correct.

There's no one for public comment at the moment.

There are no public comment registrants.

Okay, thank you both very much.

At this point, we will go ahead and close public comment then.

And as always, we will keep public comment at the beginning of our meeting for at least 20 minutes.

Madam Clerk, could you please read item number one into the record?

Agenda item number one, Seattle Rescue Plan implementation update for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

Well, again, I want to thank the panel that we have in front of us.

We have Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Carroll.

Welcome.

We have Julie Dingley, Acting Director from the City Budget Office, as well as William Chen.

Good morning.

We also have with us Ali Panucci, as always, from Central Staff.

Ali is our Budget Lead from Central Staff.

I always welcome Esther Handy as well, Director of Central Staff, who may come in at various parts today, but just wanted to note Ali is here with us today.

Ali, I understand you're not going to have a formal role in the presentation, but as always, you know, Council has a number of questions and being in Central Staff, I'm sure that you might have some good answers on hand as well.

So just to get us started, I want to say how excited I am to be able to have this item first on our agenda at the top of the year.

Again, I'm very thrilled to be able to be your Budget Chair, to be your Chair of Finance and Housing.

I thank colleagues and the Council President for the opportunity to continue to serve in this role.

In Finance and Housing, we continue to try to bridge between what makes our community healthy, investing in core government services, things that make our community stronger and hopefully more resilient against this variant of COVID, but also stronger against the inequities that we see continuing to grow in Seattle.

That's what I really see as the cornerstone of what blooms our community topics together as we invest in housing, as we create a budget that invests in things like diaper care and mental health services, housing, care for those who are currently living and sheltered and making sure that our community is connected both with infrastructure in the brick and mortar sense and also in human infrastructure.

It's been a real privilege of mine to be able to work with all of you and I look forward to continuing to serve you in this role both for our community and for our council members.

Many of you will remember that 2020 and 2021 were very busy years for the Budget Committee.

We began 2020 with COVID news starting in late January and February.

And immediately upon hearing about the hardship that was going to be coming, not just in terms of the physical health of our community, but also the economic health of our community, I worked quickly with a large coalition and council members on our council at the time to pass the Jump Start Seattle proposed budget.

Excuse me, the Jump Start Seattle proposed payroll tax because it was an opportunity for us to invest in long-time needs and housing, but also to recognize there was going to be an influx of need in making sure our community had investments in equitable development and economic resilience, brand new deal investments and housing.

So we started with Jumpstart in 2022. And then we had COVID relief that came from the federal government.

We had various iterations that we wanted to get quickly out the door in 2022. There was the summer call for action, a moment that continues for a call for racial reckoning, and that we also responded to in the summer and in the fall 2020 budget.

We then continued the work to make sure that we got the dollars out the door last year and the year before by making sure that there was approximately $232 million directly allocated into community from the Seattle Rescue Plan.

Excuse me, from the American Rescue Plan, which we titled Seattle Rescue Plan.

As you know, that $232 million that was directly allocated to Seattle was divided into two tranches.

We refer to this as the Coronavirus Local Relief Fund, or CLFR.

Last summer and spring, my office alongside of Council President Gonzalez and Mayor Durkan at the time, we worked together to build a joint proposal.

to pass this first tranche of funding to make sure that $116 million of that American Rescue Plan Act could get out the door as soon as possible.

We combined this with $12 million from the Home Fund.

This is funding from the federal government as well.

So there was $128 million invested through the Seattle Rescue Plan.

And much of that funding, we are going to get an update on today.

And there's a few pieces that I know we're all very excited to call out that have been implemented.

I have to start with my thing that has been getting a lot of attention lately, and that's the funding that went to the child care providers.

about 835 million to childcare entities to then distribute to their workers.

And I know a lot of childcare providers were using it for really creative things like making sure that those who couldn't pay the tuition for childcare had additional kind of subsidy to support the childcare providers.

For my own childcare provider, I know that they use those dollars and divided it up and where they could, they provide matching dollars as well to make sure that that childcare providers received additional assistance.

These are dollars that not only help individuals, but they help our local economy.

Included in the Seattle Rescue Plan and in coordination with King County and our state's efforts, we were making sure that we were maximizing every dollar that was sent to us, and we celebrated about $50 million going into housing and homelessness in the Seattle Rescue Plan, $23 million going into small business recovery and community assistance, $41 million going into community well-being, and I know Council Member Herbold, who is our vice chair, has really reminded us that this is not just about the pandemic in terms of the virus, but there's the shadow pandemic in terms of the stress, poverty, fear, isolation, and in some cases, increased either substance abuse or physical abuse, and we want to make sure that that funding is being spent and being spent quickly.

There were 7 million that went to community assistance programs and 7.6 million that went to reopening city programs and services.

I, for example, am very excited about our city libraries that are now operating at full capacity.

So I want to highlight some of the important aspects that we have spent and some of the areas where we are really thrilled to have another administration taking the reins and working with, I think, urgency and a lot of integrity around how we can get those dollars out as fast as possible.

I thank you all for the work that you've done on the Seattle Rescue Plan and the essential staff.

And Julie, you were with us at the time.

So thanks for your hard work in negotiating that as well.

I want to thank Senior Mayor, Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell for all of the work that we've talked about already and the urgency that you've expressed about the need to get those dollars out that are still yet to be spent.

So with that, I will pause and I will ask Senior Deputy Mayor Harreld, if you would like to have any comments, and then we'll turn it over to Julie.

And we'll ask colleagues to go ahead and raise your hand function if you have questions throughout the presentation.

We can go ahead and field those as we go, but do note that some of your questions might be answered by the end of the presentation as well.

So we'll make sure to pause before we conclude this presentation for any additional questions.

Senior Deputy Mayor, it's wonderful to have you here.

Thank you for joining us at our first 2022 meeting.

And it's my honor to turn it over to you to hear more about some of the priority items for you as you look at the Seattle Rescue Plan and what's yet to be allocated.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you so much, Council Member Muscat.

It is a pleasure to be here today.

And I also want to thank our other council members for allowing me to be in your space.

First of all, the Clifford dollars, the Seattle Rescue Plan, that money is absolutely, has been absolutely critical.

We are in a time period that has lasted significantly longer, I think, than any of us could have predicted.

And it is a public health crisis that is impacting absolutely every single aspect of our lives.

I wanna, you know, it's hard to imagine where we would be right now without those funds, with homelessness, without the emergency rental assistance, without the childcare options that you mentioned, Council Member.

And we are honestly in good hands.

What I have discovered in my first two and a half weeks on the job is that we have a remarkable city staff that works very hard and doesn't get a ton of credit for all that they do to keep this city running, even during crises and points where we really need their support and their guidance.

We're gonna hear from one of them today, Interim City Budget Director, Julie Dingley, somebody who really has the health and wellbeing of our city at heart and is going to be a phenomenal director once we get her through the appointment, through the confirmation process.

So I wanna be able to hand it over to Julie, but I wanna also say this is an awesome opportunity to work.

Mayor Harrell is looking forward to working with council around the next stages of what occurs as we're trying to continue to lift our way out of this time period.

We need the money in the door and we need the money out in community as effectively as possible.

We want the same things that you all want in terms of making sure that it's the funds and the resources are being used effectively and that we're not holding them.

We're making sure that they are in community where they can do the most good and that we are aggressively pursuing other other resource avenues as they come to us, both through the state funding as well as federal funding.

So it does us no good to sit on it.

We want to get it out the door and we want to make sure that our constituents stay as whole as possible through probably some of the toughest times in the city.

So with that, I will turn it back over to you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Well, thank you.

Thanks for being here today with us.

But also, thank you for your comments and your your commitments to getting those dollars out the door so quickly.

I know we'll have some questions about where we stand on some various pieces, but I think just starting the year with hearing how urgent this need is and how how committed you all are to getting those dollars out that remain.

makes me very optimistic, so thanks for being here.

Julie, wonderful to see you again, and thank you for your continued service to our city.

As Senior Deputy Mayor noted, I will turn it over to you to give us an overview, and thanks for teeing up the presentation.

It's great to see you as well, William, and we will look for any hands for folks, so let us know if you have any questions.

Thank you so much, Chair Mosqueda and Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell.

For the kind words it is a pleasure to be here.

Congratulations on the first meeting of the year.

Very excited to be working with you in this new capacity.

So today you guys had asked for an update on how we're doing on Seattle's ARPA spending overall.

So I wanted to give you a little quick overview of where we're going to go in this presentation and then obviously as Chair mentioned please ask questions as we go.

I might not have the answer to those questions today but we'll certainly take them down and get you guys responses as soon as as soon as they're available.

So first going to walk through some key takeaways.

What I hope that at the end of this conversation you walk away with rooted in that understanding.

Then we're going to talk about sort of the lay of the federal funding land.

What have we already allocated?

What's to come?

Where are we headed with this work?

We're going to see some implementation updates overall.

We're going to talk you through what happened since the last time we met last summer on this work.

And then work through the Seattle Rescue Plan summary and some some spending highlights to show you sort of programmatically in certain areas certainly not all areas that would take many many meetings how we're doing.

And we'll we'll be up front.

You'll see green indicators on where funds have been fully expended.

Orange where they are sort of in progress.

So you'll see that throughout.

All right let's just dive in.

So first on the lay of the federal funding land.

Oh I think actually Ali if you could go back one slide.

There we go.

Great.

On key takeaways.

Seattle continues to lead the nation in our commitment to these investments and supporting those most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

We've as the as the chair mentioned invested in everything from childcare to homelessness to employment and nearly every city department is engaged in this work.

And we have over the course of multiple grants we're investing about $300 million to date and we anticipate more to come.

And we're focused on helping those most harmed by the pandemic.

So we're looking to target aid to groups and geographies disproportionately impacted by COVID so that these investments and in doing so these investments are disproportionately targeting our BIPOC communities.

To the right you'll see highlighted areas of spending as the chair noted already so I won't go into those in particular.

Next slide.

So where have we been and where are we going.

So as Council Member Busqueda already mentioned the American Rescue Plan Act laid the groundwork for the most recent tranches of funding.

So by and large the biggest grant that we received was the Coronavirus Local Fiscal Recovery Fund dollars.

CLFR two tranches.

$160 million each for $232 million total.

We also had a number of other targeted grants that came through including for home for affordable housing rental assistance senior services and then some transit and transportation grants as well.

We're continuing to work with our partners in the federal government and the state on FEMA and areas where those expenditures are eligible.

So we're primarily working on vaccines and testing work.

And then there's also additional ARPA dollars that are still out there that have not yet been allocated through the state or through the county.

The feds with this huge amount of money had to create some programs from scratch and so they had to develop a number of different sets of guidance and eligibility criteria and that's what's caused a lot of the delay in working through some of those dollars.

And then additional.

Oh sorry.

Go ahead Director and then I'll call on Councilmember Lewis.

Final final note is just on additional resources to come.

We have a lot of exciting work coming through on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

through a lot of our big infrastructure departments.

So think Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle City Light, Seattle Department of Transportation.

A lot of those are, that department review is underway and we're awaiting additional guidance on how those dollars can be used.

I can pause there.

Sounds good, thank you.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Director Dingley.

It's really great to see you here in this new capacity, and thanks for joining us at the first committee meeting of the year.

I want to jump in a little bit to the FEMA reimbursement and sort of the ever-extending deadline for FEMA reimbursement on non-congregant shelter.

You know, we've routinely seen that deadline extending.

My understanding is currently it extends to April, though I might not be completely up to date.

I would presume, given the new variant and everything else, that FEMA will probably extend that deadline yet again.

And I just raise it to kind of ask, you know, as we enter into a new administration and there's some possibilities to seek some ongoing reimbursement for non-congregate shelter, and there's obviously a massive need.

Mayor Harrell campaigned aggressively on standing up 2,000 non-congregate units.

What some of our strategies might be to pursue this, I recall from discussions last spring that really what it kind of came down to was a risk decision based on our liquidity and based on our assumptions of how long the reimbursement would proceed and what a wind down might look like.

And then, of course, also that there would be some services that would not be eligible for the ultimate FEMA reimbursement where we would have to find other ways to pay for those services as a component.

But I do think that given that that deadline continues to extend, you know, I remain of the opinion that I think we should lean into that in a bigger way as a city as part of our strategy here.

And I guess I just wonder, what the current discussion is around that, what the current timeline is, if my information is out of date, and how we might work together to lean into that a little bit more as policymakers here as a mayor's office and a council as we look at all of our options to confront homelessness and lean into non-congregate solutions.

Thank you for the question, Councilmember Lewis.

It's a great one.

Your memory is Excellent.

That is that is precisely where we left off.

That is my understanding as well as the current timeline for FEMA.

I will tell you that at a high level that we are not leaving any dollars on the table.

So we are our Office of Emergency Management is routinely meeting with our departments to review COVID expenditures to ensure that we're capturing any FEMA eligible costs and submitting them for reimbursement.

This is a new administration, and so you can imagine that all sort of resources and ideas are on the table to figure out how we can tackle this moving forward.

I don't have any additional information I can provide you at this moment, but can certainly follow up once we have a chance to dig in and explore those options a bit more thoroughly.

Appreciate that.

Thank you so much.

I have a follow-up question, just to sort of break it down a little bit.

Council Member Lewis, maybe this is for you or for Julie.

When you say lean in, what does that mean?

Was I the one that used the term lean in?

I just want to make sure if that question is being put to someone, Madam Chair, that we not- Yeah, I think you did use it a few times.

Define what I meant by that, to speculate by that.

Well, okay, I guess I can explain what I meant by that, and maybe this would be a follow-up for the director.

I don't want to kind of belabor this at this point, but my understanding is what that conversation last spring really came down to was we were having a lot of disagreement in public, but it was about the semantics of sort of the same sandbox we were all playing in in terms of these facts, right?

Like, it kind of came down to, you know, How much would we be willing to kind of spend forward and then like wait for the feds to eventually give it back is kind of my memory, right?

And I was personally just given, you know, how fundamental to our recovery dealing with the homelessness crisis is what was willing to you know, kind of spend more money and wait for the FEMA reimbursement if it meant making a material visible impact on homelessness.

I guess that's what I mean by lean in, Madam Chair, would be essentially some scheme where we would do some kind of inter-fund loan and build more congregate shelter and then wait for the FEMA reimbursement, even if it might take two years or three years.

But it was contingent on how liquid are we?

Are we liquid enough where we could do something like that where it wouldn't imperil other things, balanced with the uncertainty of other borrowing schemes we're doing around Jumpstart and everything else, for example, right?

So I guess what I would be interested in looking into is, is there a way we could stretch reliance on FEMA reimbursement a little bit more, given that the eligibility for reimbursement keeps extending further and further out?

And based on what we've heard from central staff, you know, something like, I mean, I don't want to speak for central staff, but like, you know, a majority of the costs associated with congregate shelter could be recouped.

It's like just the services that couldn't, but like security can be recouped, building the, or, um, you know, the basic staffing of the shelters can be recouped.

Like a lot of the stuff that we, you know, that we are doing and, and our, our, for our current capacity applying for reimbursement for, but, You know, what we're currently doing is not meeting the scale of the problem.

So if there's a way to take advantage of that FEMA reimbursement further to respond to the crisis, and as we have demonstrated in the report that my office put forward in October, that there is a direct correlation to COVID and the reduction of the supply of shelter.

So I think we can demonstrate that but for COVID, we would not be investing in more congregate shelter, which which would be a contingent to get the reimbursement.

I guess I'm just that's what I meant by lean in more is, you know, if we if we have a, you know, a clear, articulable partnership and strategy with the Herald administration, which we'll talk about in my committee this afternoon, the beginning of like, assuming a little bit more risk, to drive a recovery and take advantage of federal partnership is something that I would like to pursue and see.

And I appreciate Budget Office coming here and kind of explaining the contours of how that would work and keeping it up for us as policymakers in terms of the risk reward of potential plans.

So that's what I meant, Madam Chair, probably a lot more than you were looking for in terms of context for me.

No, I think that's excellent.

I think it's really important to be explicit about it.

I do remember those conversations now.

Thank you for that reminder.

And I fully agree with our good chair of I think we need to be doing exactly that.

I see Ali is off mute here.

Please go ahead.

getting alignment with the prior executive on where to focus certain investment strategies.

And I think some differing policy priorities in terms of the hoteling and that sort of thing, a lot of that has gotten off the ground.

But I think there are some opportunities to both look at what was authorized in the adopted budget and whether or not there are investments that have already been authorized that we might Seek reimbursement for that would then potentially free up those resources for yet additional services and or the other piece we need to keep in mind that we talked about a lot this November is with the extension.

Extension's not the right word with the continued pandemic crisis.

I think we will be all watching carefully our revenues and look at the April forecast and whether or not the continued pandemic is impacting that.

And so there's a lot of moving pieces here.

And so I would just advise caution and sort of making new investment ideas until we have a better sense of the lay of the land on our current revenues and our already authorized investments.

And then we'll just note that I think the most, most of this presentation focuses on the sort of direct assistance to cities and the targeted aid from the federal funds.

So we'll follow up with some additional FEMA information after the committee.

Great.

Thank you.

Director Dingley.

Great.

Thank you so much.

I'm going to try to catch up on a little bit of time here.

So on our implementation update, wanted to talk to you a little bit about the process that we had to undergo from the last time we spoke until today because a lot of that impacts the rate at which we're spending some of these dollars.

So if you'll recall back to last summer when we were passing that that joint plan for Seattle Rescue Plan 1, we had just the day before received that what we called the interim final rule and that was the term of art from the feds of their initial guidance on how to use those CLFR funds that $232 million.

So as CBO is charged in being proper stewards of public money it was incumbent upon us to ensure that all of our planned spending was done in accordance with those guidelines.

So we had to create whole cloth and it's really important that I emphasize we had to create from nothing.

a review process because the feds didn't have one.

No other jurisdictions had one.

We were the first in the nation to get out in front of this.

So we created a whole process to evaluate eligibility, to set up tracking and reporting, analyze RSJ impacts, set up performance evaluation on the front end so we could really make sure that we were tracking these investments as we were going.

And that all set us up to be in a place where we could then implement the spending so that we knew that three, four, five, six, seven years from now, when the auditors from the feds come calling, that we had this all really well documented and we didn't end up having to pay this back because we didn't use it properly.

So I just want to thank you for indulging that.

Wanted to spend that moment on process.

So we'll keep going.

And I do want to compliment you and your staff.

There was, I think, a national task force you had the chance to sit on to advise other cities about the process for tracking those dollars, if I remember correctly.

And then I think council also allocated additional staff.

I'm going to look at Allie to remind me.

Additional staff for tracking the reports and We did highlight for our congressional delegation the work that we included so that there would be strong adherence and accountability to how those dollars are used, which I know the Senator Murray, for example, who we were talking with, really appreciated that inclusion.

So thank you for the work that you've done.

And I wanted to pass along our thanks from the congressional delegation who have also echoed their appreciation for that work.

And I think when we are on the national stage, as we often are for very good reasons, this is one example of the tracking and accountability pieces that we've included that I think got us some national recognition.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

The team is absolutely incredible.

So I will pass along your thanks.

A quick note that we do have reporting requirements with the feds on both our expenditures and our performance.

So we're coming up on our first expenditure report that's due January 31st.

So we'll make sure that that has to be published.

I believe it has to be published.

William's on the line so he can jump in if that's not accurate.

But at least our performance plan does have to be published and our next performance plan due date is mid-July.

We'll have those coming as well.

In addition, Council, you are all currently receiving a monthly update on Seattle Rescue Plan spending, and we're working with Council Central staff to make sure that that information is usable and useful for you.

So the first couple, thank you for working with us and raising issues where they are, and we're working to make those a little bit more helpful.

I think that Chair Mosqueda went over this really nicely at the top but just briefly the Seattle Rescue Plan summary we split this up into three overall sort of legislative vehicles.

There was Seattle Rescue Plan 1 2 and 3 and in each of these rectangles have the dollar amounts as well as the fund sources from each of those grants.

And it's just a quick note to say you know previously We have heard a lot of consternation from the public, rightly so, because it's really hard to track how we spend our federal dollars.

In 2020, we had the CARES Act from the feds, and that issued, you know, 18 different unique grants to the city.

And it's really hard, if you're a member of the public, to track how did we spend all those dollars and for us to provide really transparent accountability.

So with Seattle Rescue Plan, we endeavored to put one umbrella over all of that spending so that if you remember nothing else, remember Seattle Rescue Plan.

And when you go online, you can see how we're doing on all that spending.

And we have a lot more to come on sort of public facing websites of how we're doing on that spending and performance.

It's not quite ready yet, but our current plans are up on both the council side.

There's a couple versions, but all there.

Julie, I'm sorry to interrupt you.

Just on that, it reminded me that at one point last year, I believe it was Deputy Mayor Washington who had said that there was a website underway to have one portal for applying for various grants.

Is that still in the works, or is that now live?

It is live.

Thank you so much.

I actually have a slide on that later in the presentation, so I'll go into those details when we get there, if that's all right.

All right, we'll go on to the next.

So this is a high-level summary of how we have invested all those dollars.

These are a lot of numbers on these slides, so I'm not going to read each one, but just to give you a general sense of how these dollars were allocated.

For the purposes of today, I'm going to give you implementation updates on Seattle Rescue Plans 1 and 2. I'm not going to endeavor to do that for Seattle Rescue Plan 3 because if you'll remember those funds were allocated with the 2022 budget which just happened at the end of November.

So with holidays and whatnot we don't have substantive updates to provide you with on those today but that'll be the subject of future meetings.

This is an overall spending update using those same categories of spending.

So I'll walk you through from left to right on on what all these columns mean.

So first we have the allocated amount.

How much did we give to this effort, whether it's homelessness and housing, community well-being recovery, how much did it get from each of those legislative or those appropriations bills last year?

How much has been spent overall from the departments?

How much has been encumbered or in process or contracted?

And those are terms of art on our end, but they show up in our financial systems and thereby the next step would be reporting to you all and to the public differently.

And so it's it's really important to see that even though the spent amount is is $42 million of $123 million we also have $16 and we have you know $30 million that's in the process.

So it's working with providers those are almost under contract or they are currently contracted but the provider hasn't yet spent the money on their end.

So that total spent and encumbered in process is really the better look at how much we have done to get these dollars out the door.

And you'll see those percentages are actually quite high.

A lot of these dollars were supposed to span multiple years as well.

And so it wouldn't be the case that, for example, I would expect to see 70 percent across the board.

I would expect that they are somewhat in line with these.

These don't worry me at this point.

And we are keeping a close eye on these.

So we'll go through some specific program updates unless anybody has any questions here.

I'm not seeing any questions right now.

Great.

Thank you.

Okay so getting into our first spending highlights.

Very exciting that our cash assistance program we are spending is near complete.

This was a $25 million dollar program overall where we had $22 million awarded to 12,690 low-income households.

Each of those awards was between $1,000 and $3,000 based on the household size overall.

And if you'll remember we had two different phases for distributing this money.

One was to recertify prior recipients of the Seattle Disaster Relief Cash Assistance Program which we ran previously under COVID.

And those were for households that that wouldn't traditionally or couldn't benefit from federal cash assistance programs in general.

The phase 2 of that program was was a broader application that was open for folks and that was distributed to 9,392 households.

We had considerable demand for that program.

So we had almost 64,000 applications that were submitted.

And importantly wanted to highlight the data on the applicants that we received.

82.7 percent of applicants had lost a job or income as a result of COVID.

44 percent at the time had contracted COVID themselves.

51% had experienced mental or substance use crisis that required medication or counseling.

92% had experienced unstable housing situations.

54% had no health insurance and 41% were survivors of harm or violence.

49% received no stimulus assistance and 31% had a family member with a disability.

So this speaks to truths that we already know, I think about our community, but it's really important to highlight where these needs are showing up and how closely they actually align with where we have chosen to provide the resource at the end of the day.

And obviously the need is greater than we'll ever be able to meet.

But.

I wanted to highlight that that's a snippet that we got from those applications.

Thank you for providing that data.

It's the first time I've heard that.

I appreciate you sharing that.

And I also want to note that this is an area in conversations with our peer cities that they have looked to Seattle as a good example for how to allocate these federal dollars.

I also want to emphasize that when we talk about cash assistance, when we passed the Seattle Rescue Plan and we negotiated this, this was our antidote to the triple down.

you know mentality that if we invest at the top it'll somehow get to workers.

We flipped that on its head and we said we're going to reject that trickle down approach and direct and directly invest especially in those who've been left out of additional assistance.

So I'm really thankful for you sharing those statistics and for the work that you've done to get these dollars out the door so quickly.

Thank you for that.

This has been absolutely outstanding work from our Office of Immigrant Refugee Affairs and our Human Services Department that have worked in partnership.

So big shout outs to those teams for their work on this.

And community partners, I should have to give them a shout out as well because they did incredible work to shape how these dollars should go out the door in the most equitable way and couldn't have done it without them.

On that last point in terms of how the dollars could get out the door in the most equitable way, can you tell me a little bit more?

Were all of the 63,000 determined to be eligible?

And then if so, what was the priority or how did you decide which households received assistance?

I don't have detail on that at my fingertips, but we can certainly get that back to you.

Thank you.

I know we'll be interested in that.

Great, so onto the next highlight for housing.

These are things that you guys have already learned of and celebrated.

So I'm going to try to pick up a little bit of time here, even though it's so incredible.

As you know, we were able to secure four buildings for a total of 198 units.

We have not yet closed on all four.

Two, I think, are still pending close.

So I will hold back names as things are working toward close.

And continuing to, we have an open NOFA, and we're continuing to work with the state on securing additional support for operations, maintenance and services dollars, particularly as the new session is opening up.

Emergency rental assistance dollars continue to be incredible.

They're getting dollars out the door so quickly.

As a reminder, we had two allocations of emergency rental assistance and the ERA one obviously came first.

So we've got 100% has been obligated.

So it's now currently sitting with our community partners and they are working to spend those as they're working with their clients.

And then on ERA 2, we have 59% obligated, and we are working on that.

We've renewed a contract with the United Way of King County to also help get those dollars out the door.

On homelessness, so as you all know, KCRHA is now fully operational and has assumed the oversight of the city's homelessness service contracts.

As you'll hear from Deputy Mayor Washington this afternoon, they are the lead in strategic planning, performance management, community engagement in our region for homelessness.

I'm sorry, Director Dingley, I just wanted to interrupt you really quickly.

Council Member Peterson, did you have a question on the previous slide?

Okay, I'm sorry that I didn't recognize you.

Do you mind, Julie, if we pause here and go back to housing real quick?

Not at all, so sorry, I missed the hand.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, and thank you, Director Dingley.

I had a question about the The 37% spent at the bottom of the slide, do we know why that percentage is lower than the others?

So in that case, I can speculate, but I don't have the firm answers.

So these dollars have been provided to the affordable housing providers, and then the providers are working to allocate those dollars further.

So the difference between how much have we obligated or committed versus how much has been spent, that's that difference that you see there.

But we can certainly get an update from the Office of Housing on more.

Because we obviously want to get that out the door as quickly as possible.

And so it just seemed like a low percentage.

And so that follow-up would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Yeah, of course.

And just a question about ERA 1 versus ERA 2. In which case, ERA 1 receives a year before ERA 2. So we work through ERA 1 first.

before getting to ERA too.

Oh, I see.

So the ERA, the emergency rental assistance dollars for the second go around is the 32%.

And you've already spent all of the first go around.

OK.

And I did have a...

I believe in this section as well, if I remember our their name real quick.

Somebody help me.

United Way of King County.

United Way of King County.

Sorry.

And then another bucket that went to community-rooted organizations who are working on housing and other social assistance.

My understanding is that the first two buckets, the funding has pretty quickly been spent.

And then the third bucket, because of the nature of engaging with community and due to COVID and some people staying home and less sort of willing to come into various social services.

And just, I guess, Some of the challenges that the community partners were having what we did in last year's budget was we tried to put some funding in so that those community organizations were actually partnering with food banks, because we had heard that there was a severe need for folks who are coming through food bank lines.

for there to be that rental assistance.

And so we try to facilitate kind of pairing community organizations so that those dollars could get out the door more quickly.

And just on, it was a good reminder for me, Council Member Peterson, I'll follow up with Office of Housing and see how that partnership is going.

But that is what we had heard anecdotally.

So we tried to address some of that in last year's budget for the community partner spending aspect.

Anything else to add on that before I turn it over to Council Member Nelson?

Okay, great.

Council Member Nelson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am following on Council Member Peterson's comments.

I am very focused on getting the money into the hands of housing providers.

and or renters to enable them to stay in their homes and retain their property.

So how do these buckets, ERA 1 and 2, relate to the county's program trying to do the same, particularly the 37% or the money that goes directly to housing providers?

So is that...

We can take the answer offline, but I'm just trying to get my mind around, how does the county program intersect with this program?

And I would be interested in knowing how many households were benefited by the $22.7 million that was allocated, or 83% of it that was spent.

I mean, how many renters and providers were actually given relief?

to be continued.

Great questions.

Thank you and welcome Councilmember Nelson.

Excited to meet you for the first time here.

I will say that the county has been great partners in this work and a lot of this work is being done in tandem.

the awards then become sort of geographically based.

But what I will say also is that OH is currently drafting a comprehensive fourth-quarter report for submission to the U.S.

Treasury, and it will include several of these data points that you're looking for with the most recent data.

So what we can do is commit to getting you a copy of that so that you can see how we're doing across all those areas.

Okay, thank you very much.

Of course.

Thank you so much.

All right, let's move into that next slide now.

I think we're just trying to talk about homelessness.

Great.

So on a homelessness front, KCRHA and the city have recently executed their master service agreement or MSA, which you all know those terms.

It's our contractual relationship with the authority.

So a lot of these dollars are on their way.

So the plans are being drawn up.

They're working with providers to negotiate those contracts.

And I will say that the 7.5 million of the shelter and services line is being managed by King County separately from KCRHA and those dollars are already under contract.

So a lot more to come in this.

Thank you so much.

I want to note for folks a huge note of appreciation through our last budget now provided 68% of the total Regional Homelessness Authority budget.

So $115 million of the near $170 million budget that Regional Homelessness Authority has comes from Seattle.

Over two-thirds of that funding is coming from Seattle.

To really try to illuminate the importance that I think we as a council and city are placing on I'm very hopeful that these dollars that we still see zeros by them will be quickly implemented.

We did a lot of work in the previous budget, I think 2020, to try to do outreach and additional services as well to those who are living in their cars.

And just as a reminder, half of the homeless population, half of those who are experiencing homelessness, live in their vehicles.

So that's a really important point.

And with the tiny house villages, Council Member Lewis did a lot of work with our the city of Seattle, so we can create additional tiny house villages.

during extreme snowfall or extreme heat outdoors, trying to make sure that people have a safe place to go inside is really important.

And I said heat, I meant smoke, excuse me, a safe place to go inside to avoid that kind of exposure.

I do also want to note, though, that these were, you know, these are a point in time, so as we were transitioning to the Regional Homelessness Authority, moving over, there are provisos.

There are, as the Regional Homelessness Authority Implementation Committee discussed in their December meeting, quote, earmarks.

A lot of those earmarks are going directly to faith-based entities, as Michael Ramos from the Great Church of Greater Seattle noted in their presentation.

And these are really intended to be continuity of services, continuity of service assurances as the Regional Homelessness Authority stands up.

But as I expressed to the implementation board, we are all in this together.

And as bolder, bigger, more integrated ideas come from the Regional Homelessness Authority and the implementation committee and board, we know that there will be an opportunity to streamline services with King County and And I know that I am hopeful that we will see greater diversity of the revenue going into Regional Homelessness Authority.

I don't want to brag about having near 70% of the funding coming from Seattle because I do think it should be a diversified funding source going into Regional Homelessness Authority, thus the name.

But I do also want to highlight the role in which Seattle has played in standing up the RHA and how serious we take the creation and success of the RHA.

So that presentation I think was well received.

The implementation board passed the budget and my understanding from our colleagues who are on the governing board is that they also passed the budget.

So just wanted to provide that context for you.

If you are getting questions about our contribution or portion, it is 68% at this point.

And as we look at these line items from, for example, the report on page 10, I know that we will see faster spending in those areas once that contract is executed.

So thank you, Julie, for the notes that accompany the slides here so that we can really see how quickly those dollars come to fruition for those who are very much in need.

But Councilmember Lewis, I know that you will be discussing this more in your committee this afternoon.

If you have anything else to add, of course, feel free to.

I just wanted to provide that additional context.

Thank you very much, Chair Mosqueda.

Oh, sorry, Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I don't have anything else to add to your overview.

I just want to acknowledge that it's really nice seeing all these investments itemized here in the slide and really laying out what we currently have on paper and that, as you just indicated, Madam Chair, is going to be put into practice given the approval of this plan.

at the governing committee last Thursday.

So, you know, we'll definitely be discussing this more this afternoon when the RHA comes to the Public Assets and Homelessness Committee.

But this is a really good primer on this end of it.

So thank you.

I think that's all I have to say.

Thank you.

Sorry, I couldn't find the mute button when I was sharing my screen.

It went somewhere else.

Yeah, so there was, I think, in the Seattle Rescue Plan, one, there is some money allocated to both HSD and the Office of Housing to support nonprofit service providers.

So this is really to help ensure stability.

So they have a number of increased costs in COVID, both stopping services, maintenance, and that type of thing.

So that's what that allocation was or is that is listed here.

Thank you.

And I think as we hear more from the RHA about the spending strategy, that's going to be a huge area to ensure stability.

And we look forward to those dollars really being spent fast along with the direct services for safe lots, tiny houses, et cetera.

Okay, let's go ahead.

Great, thank you.

So Chair Mosqueda, this is going to be your favorite slide.

We are on childcare.

So support for childcare workers, we have distributed 3 million to over 3,500 workers.

The spending is near complete.

These were one-time payments recognizing their essential service that they provided to families including mine throughout the pandemic.

So just a bit about who got this money.

Sixty-nine percent of recipients which is included both center-based and family-based providers identify as Black Indigenous or people of color.

And fifty-nine percent of programs were located located in historically under-resourced neighborhoods in the southeast and southwest Seattle.

An area of opportunity for us is on this building or expanding child care facilities.

So we have approximately 15 centers in early to mid planning stages where they're seeking funding and we're working with them.

And there's significant need from these entities on technical assistance in order to be able to take on those big capital improvement projects.

HSD is currently working to onboard to hire an onboard new people that can help with that need for technical assistance to get these projects off the ground.

Because who we're working with and we're targeting who needs it the most that doesn't always correlate with who has that in-house technical knowledge on how to do it.

And so pairing you know holding those two values at the same time sometimes slows down the spending.

So this is one area where we're really working to try to bring up capacity on our end to try to get those dollars out the door.

A few questions on the child care facilities, and then I just want to add a few more points about the importance of the child care worker appreciation allotments.

So as some of the centers receive the funding for the child care appreciation allotments, immediately they also ask, we want to expand, we want to open this new facility.

There's a child care center here in North Delridge that just needs to do seismic upgrades.

Is there an RFP process that's still out there?

Did you select certain areas or can people still apply for these dollars for the capital assistance to create new child care facilities?

I'm going to tag William in case you have additional detail, William, on this one.

Yeah, it's still in a really nascent stage right now.

As Julie noted, the technical assistance piece just means that the facilities are having trouble even developing their plans that they would use to apply for these funds.

So it's not too late yet, but we've got work on our end to do to help them be able to succeed too.

Oh, OK, that's great.

So I'm happy to push out information just like we did for the appreciation allotment grants.

And so then in my understanding, the 15 isn't the final number.

That's currently the number that you're working with some of the technical assistance.

It's not like the $5 million is being divided over these 15 centers, is that?

That's right, yeah.

The plans are still in development, so we don't have numbers on how much is needed where.

I'm going to turn it over to you.

Allie, please go ahead.

If there are facilities, centers, et cetera, that are seeking funding, a first step is reaching out to that team.

And then they could consider whether or not that might be eligible for use of incentive zoning dollars, which come with some restrictions and requirements that are slightly potentially different than the requirements of the federal funding.

But in general, in the past, it hasn't been an RFP.

It's been sort of an open program.

And the HSD staff work with the applicants and the developers along the way.

Thank you for that reminder and the rationale for why the funding was placed under HSD versus deal.

And I think that all of us would be interested in receiving that information if you'd like to share that with us and we can try to get that to some of our constituents.

Councilmember Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I'm very interested in getting an answer to that, too, because I know when we created the Department of Education and Early Learning, all the child care stuff was going to be over at DEEL.

There was the partial FTE, I think, And it sounds like they still tightly coordinate efforts with deal.

But if we're going to be adding positions, it just does make me question why would they not be added at deal and just to break everything under that department.

So look forward to hearing more about why they would be at HSD.

Great, thank you.

I am seeing some nods.

I appreciate that reminder.

Before we get off the slide, I just want to say thank you again to our congressional partners who made the American Rescue Plan Act possible.

And I've had the chance to stand alongside of Congresswoman Jayapal, for example.

Last month, we were at a child care in-home provider and she had the chance to speak at a press conference with me and Representative Jayapal to talk about these child care allotments that they received.

And I want to thank Senator Murray, who also is meeting with a handful of child care providers in Seattle Care very soon, who have received the child care allotment.

It's, I'm sure, very rewarding as well for them to be able to see how these American Rescue Plan dollars have been passed through Seattle, through the Seattle Rescue Plan, and have made it into the hands of their constituents as well.

And just a lot of work went into that.

And it is, I think, a good example of where those federal dollars are truly making a difference, not only in the health and well-being of individuals, but of our local economy as well.

And I can't get away without saying thank you to Director Chappelle and Monica Aguirre at the Department of Education and Early Learning for the quick work that they did to pull together stakeholders.

They had a number of robust stakeholder conversations, and I think that this was really informed by those on the front line, both child care providers and workers themselves.

members of SEIU 925 and child care advocates who pulled together an efficient and collaborative process to get those dollars out the door.

Again, over 3,500 child care providers were able to receive those dollars.

So very exciting news for everyone.

And the racial justice and equity aspects that you noted, Julie, I think are true in many aspects of the Seattle Rescue Plan but really important here as we think about this the SHE session and the role that child care providers play.

Okay let's keep going.

Great thank you so much.

So on the next slide we're going to get into some community well-being items.

I want to actually turn it over to William to give you an update on the Older Americans Act grant.

Yes, and we're aware that this has been an item of interest for a while now.

It was accepted as part of SRP2 last summer, and it is rolling.

HSD has prepared a plan for spending those funds.

This is part of a larger grant that is spread over three years, and this is just the first year of it.

And they've proceeded with contracting, awarded 900,000 of the funds.

So those are on their way.

And otherwise, you've got a flavor of the investments that were involved in the presentation last year.

That largely remains the same.

We've shared that information with central staff, Amy Goran's central staff, so you have that information.

Yep.

And as noted in the slide, the services are split between other use case management, some transit subsidies, caregiver counseling, some pieces for alleviating negative effects of isolation, such as digital skills coaching.

Yeah.

We'll continue working with the rest of it on getting those dollars out as well as future allocations of that remaining two years.

I will note one of the issues is that because we package these things together into the Seattle Rescue Plan branding, the The department was still working, waiting to get approval from the state on our plans, but also to get more detailed guidance on how we were allowed to spend these funds at the time that this grant was accepted.

So that accounts for some of the delay in terms of getting things moving with the contracts.

OK, thanks.

Are there any questions on this slide?

I'm so sorry.

I saw Councilmember Herbold pop in and then it disappeared on my screen.

I knew I could count on you, Councilmember Herbold.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

I am interested to hear a little bit more about the delay you mentioned.

That was my, I've been sort of monitoring these reports.

They come out monthly.

We know that ADS is a pretty robust division of HSD and typically is on the ready to allocate funds when funds are available and just would like to hear a little bit more about the basis for this delay and what we've learned as a result.

Sure.

And in fairness, this grant probably could have waited for the Q3 or Q4 for acceptance instead of going in the summer along with the rest of Seattle Rescue Plan.

But we wanted to keep things together so that it was more visible and transparent where these dollars were coming in, as opposed to hiding a large package of many other items in the Q3.

So that is to say that a lot of that planning would have sort of been behind the scenes and we would have come more ready to talk about the exact plan for how these dollars were going to be spent but really wanted to try to daylight that these dollars were coming to us but that they were still midstream in that planning process.

So the process itself played out as it always has.

It just it was a a delay in from when we first told you to when we were able to present a plan relative to prior years because typically we would have waited longer and brought that forward to you later in the year if that makes sense.

My recollection, though, is that the funding in this area was not a result of a council amendment, but was part of an already developed plan.

Am I not reflecting that correctly.

So I guess it seems like that plan was already mostly in place.

And William mentioned needing to get some clarity on spending.

So that's what I'm hoping to understand a little bit more about.

I'm not sure I'm tracking quite, but no, right, this wasn't part of a council amendment.

We passed a, rather I should say you passed, we sent down a package of grants, Seattle Rescue Plan 2, in the late summer, that included the Old Americans Act grant, along with the Chartered Venues Operators grants and transportation grants.

And so that accepted the grant, but the actual rules and approvals from the state were still in progress at that time, whereas for the other grants, for example, those were further along or they kind of ran along the same tracks as previously and didn't need the same kind of approval from the granting agencies.

So those were able to move faster.

That helps.

Thank you.

Thank you, William.

Thank you.

Let's keep going.

Great.

And so just updates on supporting survivors of gender-based violence and also mental health services.

Those are partially underway so that's why they're indicated here in orange that there's more work to do there.

But we have spent or encumbered a significant chunk of the supporting survivors of gender-based violence which is at $500,000 of the $600,000 total.

And then we've executed a contract for mental health investments for closing in on half of the amount awarded or provided.

Councilmember Herbold, anything else to add on this item?

Okay.

And I know it could be jarring for folks to look at the previous report in December and see a zero by that.

And if you look at the notes, as Councilmember Herbold noted for me, they were in development in the pipeline to be encumbered.

So it's nice to see some progress.

on the January 2022 report that we've just received and as part of the materials for today, you see that spending that Director Dingley just mentioned.

Anything else?

Okay, let's keep going.

Great, thank you.

So economic recovery, there is a lot on here.

I don't think I can go through all of these things, but I just want to highlight at a high level that we had $900,000 for downtown activation, have over 700,000 spent there and another 83,000 encumbered.

And then 20 million for recovery grants and technical assistance to small businesses, micro businesses, and neighborhood business organizations.

Oops, sorry about that visual typo there.

And those took the form of various neighborhood economic recovery grants, stabilization fund, and downtown recovery grants, trying to meet organizations in the neighborhoods where they were to try to put the dollars in their hands to solve the problems as they were defining them.

We've also gotten significant money out the door for arts and cultural organizations.

So $3 million for that direct financial assistance for COVID related relief and facility support which took the form of that cultural organization grants reopening grants as well as cultural districts recovery grants and then technical assistance in Hope Corps.

And then finally Investments in job training.

So we have a partnership with the Port of Seattle for youth internships and that RFP is under development currently.

And then $450,000 for wraparound services and retention for Seattle's Priority Hire Program.

And the report that you have has more details on the specific contracts under each of those.

So let me know if you have specific questions on any of those.

Happy to go into those details or provide them separately.

Vice Chair Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

And I recognize I should have asked this question when we were on the page around direct assistance, but my memory is jogged with the heading arts and cultural organizations.

One of the priority populations under direct assistance, in addition to folks who have language barriers or risk of deportation, which we had earlier last year had some experience in a direct assistance program for that population, but we then added the communities have been disproportionately impacted by the crisis, including artists and other people who work in the creative sector.

And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how we can determine how well we served that new community of workers.

You know, Council Member Herbold, I apologize.

I even had in my notes to mention that we targeted the creative economy with those dollars and I failed to do so.

So I apologize.

I knew that was gonna be an area of interest.

I would love to get back to you on that and work with OIRA a little bit further on what they might have available.

I don't wanna overpromise here on what we can show in terms of results or how that worked.

So I'll work with them and we can get back to you on an answer.

Thank you.

Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

So when we talk about getting money out the door as equitably as possible, to me, that means jobs and preventing or reducing the displacement of minority-owned businesses.

So I'm focused on economic recovery as chair of the committee.

And on page 6, previously, I noticed that 24% out of the 24 allocated has been spent on recovery or small business support.

And so that is concerning.

And I do know that OED is down about 60% of their workforce, and so they're staffing up.

So just wondering if that's part of the issue here.

And also, just going through some of the line items on the report.

I'm just wanting to make sure I understand.

So for example, on page, let's see, I'm referring to the report, not the presentation on page 14. For example, small business financial assistance, 7.5 million were appropriated in 2021, but none has been spent.

And small business technical assistance, 2 million was appropriated, but none has been spent.

So, and then the total for, all spending and encumbrances I believe is about 5.1 million.

So how can, and I might be conflating line items, but, and again, more information offline if necessary.

Council Member Nelson, so those lines in that table are headers for the lines below them.

So you can see that there is progress on some of those lines.

But to your point on the first one, it is the case that dollars literally into other people's pockets is relatively limited.

And the progress that we're showing on that is in covering contracts with organizations who do the actual work of lining up applicants with those funds.

Got it.

Yeah, and on this page of the 20 million, it looks like a lot of that is out the door already.

So more information on that.

Thank you for flagging that.

I too read the chart on page 14 that way and thank you, William, for noting that that's almost a subheader.

It might be helpful to have a subtotal that aligns with those bolded headers so that we can see, for example, the 7.5, how much has been spent.

or of the 2 million, how much has been spent.

And then just a note that since it's missing the dollar amounts, it might not have looked like it was a subtotal in that final column there, but I think that the point's really well taken still.

We definitely wanna make sure that those dollars are getting out the door as we hear of small businesses closing, especially small women and minority-owned businesses.

So I'm looking forward to hearing more about the rest of the dollars to be spent in that category.

And I think that, you know, the additional information that you are going to provide for Council Member Nelson, if you can provide that to the whole committee, that'd be great.

And I want to note that I am new to reviewing these documents.

And so a lot of this is bringing me up to speed.

I'm not making accusations here.

So thank you very much for whatever clarification can be provided.

I read it the same way, okay?

No problem.

Thanks for that feedback, certainly.

And I also want to note, Council Member Nelson, as you mentioned, capacity is down in OED, and that is definitely a big factor here.

Yeah, and I actually do want to thank you again, Council Member Nelson, for that feedback.

As I mentioned at the top, we're looking to refine these reports.

These are for you.

They are generated, you know, for awareness and what will be useful for you.

So that's really helpful overall.

I do want to expand on Just briefly, if I may, that the capacity concern is being felt across departments.

It's not just in OED.

You know, the effects of the great resignation have also impacted the city.

And so a lot of departments are struggling to retain or recruit staff.

And so it's an area where we're making, obviously, that's a huge priority for all the department directors across the city to make sure that they are able to retain or staff up where needed.

That is, it is a pain that is being felt sort of universally across the city.

And I acknowledge that what you said at the top of this presentation is that you had to create from nothing systems to get this money out the door as well.

So I understand.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

All right, we'll head on to the next one.

A lot of green on this slide, outdoor recreation.

So we have gotten the money out the door and completed spending on parks maintenance, open wading pools, rec in the streets, working to get the parks activation dollars out.

They're developing a program plan to be able to fully implement next summer.

And then the stay healthy streets at 2.5, SDOT is working on what are the eligible components of that program to apply those costs to.

And then we'll go to the next.

So Chair Mosqueda this is what you had raised at the top.

We have a unified application portal in the form of something we call CIVI form.

So this is arguably from the very deep nerdy perspective that I hold the most exciting thing that we have here.

A big thing that we hear about in the city is that if you are a resident, you have to go to six different departments to get the support that you might need or be eligible for for all the city's different affordability programs.

So what CIVIFORM is designed to do is to create one unified application portal to streamline the experience for the residents in applying for city programs.

So they apply once, The system remembers that information securely and can apply it and suggest that they're eligible for other programs.

And then that one system sends information out to the affected departments so that that individual doesn't have to go or that community-based organization working with a resident doesn't have to go to neighborhoods website, to HSD, to City Light, to all these different areas in order to apply.

So we've had incredible partnerships from Google.org volunteers developed this pilot program.

We currently have four of the city programs online and working through this portal.

That's ORCA Youth Opportunity Utility Discount Program Seattle Preschool Program and the Child Care Scholarship Program.

Those are currently enrolled.

We are working to incorporate all the other city affordability programs and we will be letting you know as those new programs are enrolling but we have just fantastic data already for streamlined user experience.

So residents that previously would have taken 15, 20, 30 minutes to complete an application are now doing it in an average I think of three to four minutes which is just an incredible amount of time to save for that individual and also for that community-based organization that's trying to help multiple residents get enrolled in those programs.

Thank you, Director Dingley.

Can you tell us about the timeline for when you expect those other programs and departments to be integrated?

We're sort of enrolling now.

William, I see you just came off mute.

You might have some latest information.

Yeah, so Innovation and Performance is working on opening this up more broadly and onboarding more programs.

And currently, they're looking at doing one per month because this partially involves a lot of testing and making sure everything's working when it goes live on the program so we don't have any snafus like what happened with HealthCare.gov once upon a time.

OK, great.

Yeah, keep us updated, and we're happy to.

Don't use the word glitches.

We don't want to hear it.

We're not going to jinx it.

All right.

Keep us updated and we'll send out the information through our Seattle City Council channels as well.

And one quick note here is that the city has been awarded a grant from Google dot org.

It's it's add credits to be used to amplify this program.

And we're not quite ready to launch that yet.

But that's going to come to you all for approval in, I believe, February.

So look for more on this moving forward.

Okay thanks.

And we're getting close to the end of our time here.

We're just about five minutes over so Julie I'll turn it to you to maybe wrap up the last few slides and we'll see if there's any additional questions.

Thank you.

That timing is perfect.

This is the last slide.

And just to put a punctuation mark on all of this work that we have a link here.

It's so it'll be in the agenda that's posted online to Seattle's to our Seattle Rescue Plan site overall so you can access slides information the eligibility all of those kinds of things.

There's a link to CIVIFORM there.

And then also just highlighting two areas where we've gotten kudos nationally.

And just to continue to raise that point that we are a national leader in this work.

We are a national mentor in this work as well.

And I can't say enough about the work that the team is doing within the City Budget Office but across the city.

You know we sent a I sent a thank you note to the group and it included over 120 individuals across the city to work on 90 programs and in 18 or 19 departments.

So the work that we're doing here is enormous and it's touching every element of the city family and it's being recognized.

And so just a huge shout out to the team of how incredible they are.

And so that's it.

That's all we have prepared for you.

So happy to take any additional questions that you might have on anything in the presentation.

Okay, wonderful.

Well, thanks again for the information.

I think that this has been very helpful.

I know that when I saw some of the earlier reports, for example, last year, I too was concerned about a number of those line items that appeared to have a zero next to them.

I know that we all still feel a sense of urgency, even seeing the background information and knowing how quickly things are.

I'm still in process and getting out the door, but I feel like the context here today has been very helpful to know where we're going in terms of how fast those dollars could be spent.

Senior Deputy Mayor Harrell, did you have anything else you'd like to add before we open it up for our last questions?

And I see some of our panelists are on the line here for the next presentation as well.

Go ahead.

No, I just I want to thank Director Dingley for all of her work.

She leads a fantastic team and And I know how much they care, not just about the numbers, but about the people behind the numbers.

So thank you so much for the presentation, really informative.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Vice Chair Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I had a question that I'd wanted to ask back on page eight, but I I could not get on camera, but the question relates to the housing and homelessness spending line, where it shows that 73% of funds have been appropriated for, that were appropriated for housing and homelessness have been spent or encumbered I'm wondering about the remaining funds.

Are those funds that will be sent to RHA, and what do we know about the restriction on those funds, if there are any?

The funds that will go to the RHA are all included in the group agreement that's been signed.

What the difference is that remains is a affordable housing capital grant that is in progress.

It is one of those four buildings that we have lined up for rapid acquisition.

There are details around that process that can't be really clearly discussed right now because of restrictions of federal agencies processes and requirements.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Thank you Williams.

I struggled to get off mute.

Good question and appreciate there's some caveats there but Council Member Herbold did you have any other follow-up?

Okay.

OK, well, I will also just say thank you to all of you and your teams.

Please pass on our appreciation to the city family for the work you're doing.

And I think, you know, there's a shared sense of urgency to get these the remaining dollars out the door.

So thank you for noting that maybe there's some follow up to be done as you finalize the allocation of the remaining portion that remains in the city.

we will continue to work with Councilmember Lewis and his committee and their connection to the Regional Homelessness Authority via Councilmember Lewis and Councilmember Herbold, who also sit on the governing board.

That area of the HSD budget, I think, was one of the areas that continues to draw my attention to want to make sure that we see quick deployment of those dollars.

So very happy to hear that the agreement is being finalized and those dollars are being transitioned over and that there's with the right word, confirmation that we are going to see those dollars go over and spent soon.

So we'll look forward to hearing more about that, those line items via the Regional Homelessness Authority as well.

And Deputy Mayor Harold, again, thank you for being here today and the CBO.

team for your commitment to quickly deploying the rest of these and we are very hopeful that our congressional delegation is able to pass the Build Back Better Act and additional assistance may be coming.

We're very excited about the infrastructure bill and while some of those dollars don't come directly to Seattle, via the state and our partners in the state legislature and their upcoming legislative session, we are we will continue to see additional assistance for both the immediate impacts of COVID and the shadow pandemic as we discussed in the Budget Committee and Councilmember Herbold's Committee as well.

Thank you all.

And we're going to transition to the next item that continues our theme around healthy communities and healthy economies.

So we will let our CBO friends go, and we're going to, I believe, have Deputy Mayor Harreld stay with us for a few more moments.

Madam Clerk, could you please read item number two into the record?

Agenda item number two, health equity for immigrants, closing the gap for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

So I'm really excited about this topic.

As folks might know, coming from a background in public health, when I first got elected in 2017, for 2018 and 2019, I did have health in my committee.

I no longer have health in my committee.

That is now in Vice Chair Herbold's committee.

And so with her gracious willingness, we are sort of sharing this item just for today to provide a brief update on how we are doing where we've been in terms of trying to provide health coverage to those who currently do not have health insurance, either as employer-sponsored health coverage or are not eligible for the various government-sponsored health programs.

And we have an incredible panel here with us today, and I'll let folks introduce themselves, and then I have some opening remarks.

So if the folks who are here with us today could just provide your name and your organization, I'll make some comments, I'll turn it over to Deputy Mayor, and then we'll turn it back over to Janet Varenhoy who's gonna kick us off.

Janet, do you want to start with your name and organization?

Yes, thank you, Chair Mosqueda, Deputy Mayor Harrell, and council members.

I'm Janet Barron.

I'm the Executive Director of Northwest Health Law Advocates, NOLA, a nonprofit organization that works to achieve a health care system in which all Washington residents receive quality, affordable health care.

Wonderful.

Michael, please go ahead.

Hi, Chair and members of Council.

My name is Michael Byun.

I go by he, him pronouns.

I'm the Executive Director for Asian Counseling and Referral Services.

Nice to be here.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Please go ahead, Lakisha.

Hello.

Good morning.

My name is Lakshmi Dipayaram, and I currently serve as the Chief Medical Officer for International Community Health Services.

And I'm really glad to be part of the panel and bring my patient voices to you all.

Excellent.

And Brenda?

Good morning, everyone.

I'm Brenda Rodriguez-Lopez.

She, ella pronouns.

And I am the Executive Director of the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, which is the largest immigrants and refugee network in our state, organizing to protect and advance the power of immigrant communities.

Excellent.

And Dr. Bodell?

Hi.

I'm Dr. Mabel Bodel.

I'm a nephrologist, a kidney doctor at Confluence Health, and I'm the co-chair of the Healthy Council, Health Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Council.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

Anybody else here with us today?

Okay, well, again, I want to thank you all for being here and thank Councilmember Herbold for the opportunity to have this item in our committee today and share this topic.

As folks might know, with our in providing health coverage.

This is not something that's new, right?

In the past, we've done the work to try to expand health coverage for all kiddos with Apple Health and have continued to work to try to expand health coverage to those who don't have employer sponsored insurance.

I think we have a lot to be proud of out here in the Pacific Northwest with the basic health plan that a number of people on this line, specifically Janet Barron, helped to launch.

years ago, and we've been a national leader in providing health coverage to those who've been unable to get health coverage through their employer.

And in the previous work that I did at the Washington State Labor Council, I really tried to make the case and prove the point that your health care should not be tied to your employer.

and there has never been more of a pressing moment to really call out the importance of providing health insurance to everyone so that no matter what your job is and whether or not you're able to keep your job or sustain keeping your employment during these times of a pandemic, we've seen so many people lose their health insurance and been able to go over to the public programs to pick up health coverage.

In fact, we saw from the Pew Research Center.

They reported last month that nearly 9.6 million workers in the United States lost their jobs.

And also along with that, their employer sponsored health insurance.

But the gap in terms of health insurance was mostly filled by public health coverage.

And I think that that really sets up an important conversation about how we can continue to make sure that health coverage is available for folks regardless of their employment status or their employer.

We also know that disproportionately, those who lost their jobs were people of color and notably women of color.

And disproportionately, those who had to keep their jobs and go in in person as essential workers, many of them didn't have health insurance.

And those who continue to go into work and risk exposure to themselves and to their family as essential workers were also more likely to be people of color and women.

We also know that this is specifically true for those who are going in as healthcare providers, either in long-term care, in behavioral health, or in the healthcare setting.

So it's been a long time coming to have a conversation about how we can continue to expand health coverage to those who've been either priced out of health insurance, don't have employer-sponsored health insurance, or kept out of public insurance because of federal requirements around publicly subsidized health insurance.

And in 2017, then-council President Harrell approved the consultant budget that I and others brought forward requesting about $34 million to find a community-based organization that could do a report for us on how to secure community-based health coverage for adult immigrants, and that contract went to the Northwest Health Law immigrants.

Excuse me, NOLA, Northwest Health Law.

has been advocating for health coverage for everyone.

And in 2018, they received the ability to help us understand what the, excuse me, in January 2018, Northwest Health Advocates came to present in our committee at the time about how they had identified ways in which health coverage could be expanded.

The Board of Health at the time passed a resolution to support full access to health care, particularly for reproductive health care for undocumented immigrants.

And we work closely to learn from Healthy San Francisco and My Health L.A.

about their successful programs.

And in July 2018, we had a presentation at the Board of Health about the other jurisdictions who are providing health coverage to folks in their region.

Council Member Dombowski from King County included in their 2018 budget ways for the county to partner with public health to do an analysis of a regional health plan that would be able to provide health coverage to low-income residents in the county, which is really important as we think about folks who don't live in the city but may work in the city and care for folks here.

This has been a really exciting opportunity for us in this moment of COVID to talk about the ways in which we can maintain, strengthen, and expand health coverage for all.

And I know there's conversations happening at the state level.

We are very thrilled to have with us Senior Deputy Mayor Monisha Harrell with us.

Mayor Harold made it a cornerstone of his inaugural speech to talk about the importance of health coverage for everyone in our region.

So I wanted to kick it over to you first and talk about the way in which you see this item folding into the next administration, the current administration's priorities, and then we'll turn it over to Janet for leading us off with the panel.

Thank you again, Senior Deputy Mayor.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda.

As you mentioned, it is probably one of the things that you and Mayor Harold speak so eagerly about, and that is healthcare and healthcare access.

Healthcare access is near and dear to Mayor Harrell's heart, particularly for those who don't have access to existing coverage.

As Council Member Mosqueda mentioned, employer-sponsored insurance is really difficult when that only covers a portion of our communities, particularly as we're looking at growing growing participants in the gig economy and the additional burdens on small and micro businesses as they are looking to get off the feet, get off the ground and grow.

It is really important that when you change employment status, that you don't lose access to healthcare and that everybody has access to healthcare regardless of their immigration status.

Because if we don't take care of our communities proactively, they will end up in our emergency rooms and actually cost us tremendously more in terms of financial resources and in terms of impacts on the lives of our community members.

So this is really important work.

I wanna thank all of our community members, our community health organizations for being here and sharing a part of your work.

As part of Mayor Harrell's agenda, we are looking to support how we can find ways to grow your footprint within your communities to ensure that we have more healthcare access and coverage for all Seattleites.

So you're doing amazing, amazing work and we're thrilled to hear from you today.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much and I'll turn it over to Janet.

Janet, I think I was a year off in my analysis.

You got the contract in 2018 and then we were able to work with King County in 2019. So just before the pandemic came, so excellent work that you've done and thank you for the.

important work to feature how this could be done in King County.

I think you looked at Yakima as well, but more importantly at the state level, right?

As we think about ways to cover everyone, there's some really great conversations happening.

And again, now's the time as Senior Deputy Mayor Harold noted, this is something that the mayor's and mayor's office is very excited about.

So I am excited to see how we can continue these conversations and deploy coverage.

Let us know how we can help and where we currently sit.

Thank you.

I hope everyone can see this screen.

We cannot see your screen right now.

Let's see.

This should be it.

Is that?

Yeah, we're good now.

Great.

Okay.

Thank you so much for both both of you for your commitment and your great explanation.

I think I can go through these slides fairly quickly because you've made a lot of the points that we are thinking about.

So I'll discuss the research and developments that we have done in 2018 and 19 related to health equity for immigrants.

And then my fellow panel members will talk about community needs, patient experiences, the current efforts to achieve equity at the state level.

Oops.

Whoops.

OK.

I'm going to have to do this again.

Sorry about this.

I am not sure quite what happened.

OK.

OK.

Got it now?

We do.

Great.

All right.

OK, so what you see here is a chart of options for immigrants in Washington.

And the basic point here is that there are these very limited, small public programs for, and of course, the clinics, which provide great primary care, but are not full health coverage.

The only folks who get full health coverage are in this gray column over here, programs that are restricted based on citizenship and immigration status.

And the two key ones in our state are Apple Health for adults, well, kids, of course, but we're talking about adults in this presentation, Apple Health for adults and health plans with financial.

which are these qualified health plans through the Health Benefit Exchange.

The gaps in coverage are really centered around the fact that immigrants do not qualify for those two essential programs.

They're excluded by federal law.

We don't have a state plan to fill in the gap.

We don't have county or city coverage to fill in the gap.

People who are undocumented and others who do not have what they call qualifying immigration status are excluded from the program.

And without them, health insurance is just unaffordable for most people.

It's clear that we need to address the issue of the remaining uninsured folks.

And note, here's some statistics.

I'm not going to go through every one, but note that Latinx, the uninsurance rate is more than double the rate for King County as a whole.

Over 30,000 King County residents are living without coverage.

Again, there are some limited immigration categories that qualify for coverage through the Health Benefit Exchange, but those still require premium payments and cost sharing, which can be barriers to enrollment for very long.

In the past four years, the Board of Health, the city and the county have recognized the need to address this program.

And as Council Member Mosqueda mentioned, there has been a resolution by the Board of Health to expand coverage and lower barriers for immigrants.

We studied the issue of how to move forward with this.

And now with the pandemic, there's an increasing focus on access to health care.

We're pleased that Mayor Harrell recognized the urgency of the moment in his inaugural address and shared his vision that in one Seattle, we all have health care.

So I'm excited to share the work we did in 2018 to explore county-based coverage options, thanks to city council funding.

We looked at programs that already exist in other counties, and we evaluated the design of these programs to make recommendations for King County and also for Yakima County.

The programs vary in terms of benefits offered and income eligibility.

One of the most robust, Healthy San Francisco, is available for residents with income under 500% of poverty who do not qualify for public insurance programs.

The benefits include outpatient care, lab, pharmacy, and more.

For our recommendations, for King and Yakima counties.

We learned about the experience in the existing county-based programs, and we also interviewed many local safety net providers.

They all confirmed that even minimal out-of-pocket costs can be a barrier to care.

We also identified resources and gaps, finding that people need access to specialty care, radiology, lab services, therapies, dental, transportation, areas especially, and prescription drugs.

People we interviewed here and in other states also recognize the importance of having a primary care home that can coordinate a patient's care through a network of providers under contract.

They emphasize that application processes should be convenient, should be easy to use, and should not be intimidating.

We'll hear a little more about that from one of our providers.

We recommended that Public Health Seattle and King County run the program.

The King County Council expressed interest, as Council Member Mosqueda mentioned, they funded a report the Health Department did to look at options.

And that report came up with options and cost estimates for partial coverage, scaled coverage.

But ultimately, they recommended to instead encourage a statewide solution, as well as to enhance county capacity to connect people to services that they are currently eligible for.

And statewide coverage is the direction we've been going with our advocacy.

We've been pursuing comprehensive coverage on a statewide basis throughout the Health Equity for Immigrants campaign.

This legislative session, there's recognition of the importance and there's momentum to consider that approach with interest from a number of legislators.

So here to discuss more about the campaign, we have Brenda Rodriguez-Lopez from the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, followed by Dr. Lakshmi Dipayaram, Dr. Mabel Bodell, and Michael Byun at the Asian Counseling and Referral Service.

We're all campaign partners, all our organizations.

So let's see.

I'm trying to figure out what's going on here.

I'm going to turn it over to Brenda.

But first, I just wanted to mention that if you are interested in any more in-depth information, there's a slide at the end of the PowerPoint with some resources and links to additional info.

So thank you very much.

And I'll turn it over to Brenda.

Thank you very much, Janet.

And actually, I have the slides, the first few slides for Brenda.

if you will see my screen until I stop sharing after she's done talking about the slides.

And I think you'll probably see me instead of Brenda, which is too bad because she's the presenter.

You know, it will toggle to the screen will toggle to whoever's speaking.

So your your box will not be on the screen.

Okay.

Yeah.

But thank you for sharing your screen because we can all still see it even no matter who's talking.

Okay.

Thank you, Janet.

And I can actually share my screen and I think it's up.

I'll just keep my camera off so that I don't freeze halfway through my presentation.

Good morning, everybody.

Brenda Rodriguez-Lopez.

And thank you so much, Janet, for providing us that context and for all the amazing work over the years.

for WISEN and all of our partners in the Health Equity for Immigrants campaign.

It's very important for our work to be guided and directed by those directly impacted by the inequities in health care and which is why this campaign really focused a lot of its efforts in 2020 in launching a healthcare survey that will really help us assess the healthcare barriers for adult immigrants in Washington, especially within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We launched this campaign in 2020, a few months after WISEN had pivoted its deportation defense hotline to connect people to resources like food banks and grant funds and any mutual aid efforts because we were receiving an average of 10,000 calls a day.

from people across the state, including King County, in crisis, who had just lost employment, who had been exposed to the virus and didn't have enough space in their apartment to quarantine, from people that had their loved ones in a hospital and they had no idea how they were going to be able to afford the medical bill.

the medication and still provide for basic necessities.

So this was very much the reality of our communities across the state.

And for some, our parents were laid off, so that cut their income and left them with no access to safety net.

to provide for basic necessities and for others our parents were deemed essential workers.

My parents are undocumented immigrants so they were having access to income but the workplace was not enforcing COVID-19 safety guidelines so they were being exposed to this deadly virus and putting their livelihood at risk every single day.

So we organized a coalition so that our community wouldn't have to choose between their livelihood and their health.

So we launched the Health Equity for Immigrants campaign along with the report in September of 2020 in partnership with so many of you here, NOLA, ACLU, ACRS, Casa Latina, El Centro de la Raza, and we had a multi-pronged approach to this survey.

We wanted to make sure that we minimize the barrier of accessing an online survey so we worked with 46 community organizations while they were already on the ground doing application assistance for the statewide relief fund.

Casa Latina hosted listening sessions.

We also, you know, we're helping people complete the survey through the WISEN hotline.

And we wanted to be intentional to have both ethnic and geographic representation.

So we also worked together with immigrant-led community organization, public health policy experts, And we received over 6,000 responses from adult immigrants living in our state.

It was anonymous, so folks like my parents felt comfortable completing it.

And it was available in 10 different languages.

And again, the goal was to assess the health care access barriers for our communities in our state.

And the report highlighted, well, many of us already knew, and what Chair Mosqueda mentioned in her introduction, 87% of respondents lacked health insurance, primarily due to immigration status and the high cost.

And this were the two barriers that we have known in the community and the growing up were very much the reason why my parents didn't take us to the doctor or didn't go to the doctor themselves.

And this report was very instrumental in designing a campaign structure that was driven by community needs and why we have been so fiercely organizing for the last two years to create a long-term permanent solution.

So the vision for our campaign is for all people living in Washington state to have access to health care, regardless of immigration status.

And specifically, we are organizing and advocating for three major goals.

One is parity for access to financial help for health care coverage.

We don't just want to design a program that will continue to replicate the barriers that our community told us through the surveys and we have known over the years.

So we want to make sure that those that cannot afford health care coverage don't pay into this program and people with higher income still have financial support to access the exchange qualified health plans.

So we are very intentional of addressing the two main barriers that came out of our report at every point in this campaign.

And for me, the personal is political, and I am very invested in this work and committed to this campaign.

As my mother is one of the thousands of undocumented immigrants living in our state, without health care coverage, even as she is battling chronic analysis and cancer.

And she has been working to feed this country for over 20 years, but sometimes not even having enough food to feed herself.

Mucho menos, right?

Let alone go to the doctor or afford her treatments.

So, in King County and Seattle specific, it's the third city where immigrants call the Wyson hotline seeking help with medical bills or needing funds to pay medication.

They also call us asking for support in navigating the healthcare system because they are afraid it will lead to being detained by immigration officers.

So again, this is very much in alignment with what the healthcare report highlighted.

And the COVID-19 pandemic has shown how interconnected each of our health is to one another.

So meeting the basic needs of all Washingtonians, regardless of immigration status, is the correct approach to improve public health for all of us and our communities.

So thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you very much for walking us through those presentations, that presentation.

And I will turn it over to the rest of the crew here.

So I guess that is a cue for me to start speaking.

So good morning, everyone, again.

I am a primary care doctor, and I currently serve as chief medical officer, as I said during my introduction, for ICHS.

And our goal is to provide quality health care to everyone in the community.

And luckily we are, and fortunately we are, part of the Washington State Health Equity for Immigrants Alliance as well.

And today, I'm going to bring to you the story of a patient of ours, Ziyang.

So every day as he clocks out of his work as a dishwasher for a restaurant in Chinatown International District and heads over to his small two-room apartment, which he shares with his wife and two kids, health and money weigh heavily on Ziyang's mind, especially now that he hears that a new variant Omicron is on the rampage and his owner might have to close the restaurant again.

Since the pandemic started, work has carried an unimaginable burden for Ziang.

With being the only source of income for his family, he must continue to work in the small confines of work where he is vulnerable to exposure to COVID-19.

But it's not just the pandemic that scares him.

As an unimmigrant undocumented immigrant, it is the uncertainty of his health as this pandemic unfolds.

Jiang often wonders if he needed emergency care, what would he do?

And due to his uninsured status, he has avoided seeking the recommended speciality health care for a long time.

The unfamiliar health care system with all of its complexity and most importantly, the cost has always scared him.

He's able to utilize the sliding fee scale based services at an FQHC close by, but he still needs to pay for the speciality care.

And according to a 2019 Pew Research Center report on overall health care access, immigrants are less likely to access, use, and spend on health care than the U.S. native-born population.

While this can partially be explained by the socio-economic and geographical differences, low health insurance utilization amongst immigrants is also related to their legal status and subsequently its effect on their ability to obtain health care coverage.

Several of our undocumented immigrant patients lack health insurance in large parts because they are barred from coverage through the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and many Medicaid programs across the nation.

And Janet pointed out to some of those issues that kind of happen in our own state.

A Kaiser Family Foundation report that also came out in 2019 noted that more than four in 10 undocumented non-elderly immigrants, that is about 47% lack insurance.

And as Brenda and Janet pointed out just recently, that that number is even higher here where we live.

And even those without active fears on our immigration enforcement are sometimes reluctant to access health care due to the policies like the now-defunct public charge rule.

So aside from all these concerns, lawfully present immigrants must also have a qualified immigration status to be eligible for Medicaid or CHIP.

and many, including most lawful permanent residents or green card holders, must wait five years after obtaining qualified status before they can enroll.

coming back to him, states that he's extremely lucky to be able to avail of culturally and linguistically appropriate primary care and enabling services at the FQHC near his home.

A number of the staff members there spoke Taishanese and were able to acknowledge his beliefs in an appropriate manner.

But visits to some of the speciality providers at larger institutions is still very nerve-wracking for him.

He would definitely appreciate help with healthcare coverage, which can cover the cost of such care, and provide him help with appointment scheduling, interpretation, and maneuvering the maze that some of these institutions are.

Jiang understands the helpfulness of linguistically and culturally appropriate messaging and outreach from his safety net institution, but acknowledged his concerns around accessing care in an environment of safety and trust.

Previous policies such as the public charge rule has created confusion and distress and has dissuaded him and his friends from seeking health care and social services.

He hopes that the feeling of the safety and trust can be extended to any new policy that we bring around.

Ziyang has his hopes up on us to make all this a reality and ensure their fundamental right to health.

So I hope words of Ziyang's rings true and his hopes for having a more universally accessible health care, it kind of come true.

And I really thank and appreciate the opportunity to bring his story to you all.

Thank you for being here and thank you for sharing that.

Dr. Bodell?

Hi.

I'm Dr. Mabel Bodell.

I'm a nephrologist, a kidney doctor at Confluence Health, serving North Central Washington.

I'm testifying today as a concerned physician, a physician who is concerned about her community.

I am a Latina and one of the 30% of Latinx who live in the Chilal and Douglas counties.

Our beautiful valley is known as the apple capital of the world, but these apples need the hands of the agricultural workers to get to your table.

The hands of these migrants and immigrants who are essential during our harvest season.

High blood pressure, hypertension, and diabetes, high blood sugar, are the most common causes of kidney failure.

Dialysis, a machine to replace the kidneys, is a life-saving procedure that is needed when the kidneys fail.

It is heartbreaking to see over and over members of my Latinx community landing on my doorsteps in kidney failure because they did not have the appropriate medical care.

Years of untreated hypertension and untreated diabetes, which are more prevalent in my community, lead to this.

Why?

Because members of my community are uninsured or underinsured.

Having access to medical care and treatment for these two diseases have a huge impact on outcomes.

We can delay and even avoid dialysis.

Universal access to health care without discrimination is a human right.

The time is now.

We must provide health care to immigrants.

The cost of life lost and the economic impact that lack of coverage has on our region is huge.

We can decrease death.

We can decrease hospitalization, unnecessary ER visits, and keep our community healthy.

This is way much cheaper than providing expensive treatments.

So inaction is not an option anymore.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for your presentation and all the work you do.

Michael?

Hi there.

Thank you again, Chair Mosqueda and members of Council.

Thank you for having me.

I'm here specifically to talk about and reference what Dr. Deepa Yaram had mentioned as it relates to the undocumented community and healthcare access and healthcare coverage within the Asian and Pacific Islander community.

I know that Brenda and Dr. Boudel had talked about the Latinx community are also impacted.

Here in the greater Seattle metropolitan area, we have about 39,000 people who identify as Asians.

The top three populations of immigrants or foreign-born within the Seattle area include Chinese, Filipino, and Vietnamese as the top three.

In addition, we have Over 50% of the top 10 identified populations, ethnic communities that represent the Asian and Pacific Islander communities here in Seattle.

So the issue is very relevant and of impact to our communities.

The situation right now is that the Health Equity for Immigrant Coalition, the campaign has worked really hard over the previous legislative session at the state level to advocate as it relates to health care access and health care coverage.

We know that there's still a lot more work to do during this short legislative session at the state level, and we're focusing on a very specific strategic budget strategy as we continue to move forward on the campaign The governor has certainly come out and publicly have stated that in his budget he will include resources to administer any funds that the state will be distributing out for health care coverage.

But I think it's really critical as we move forward to think through at the state level in 2024 to ensure that there's seed funding to support this important program.

So as it relates to specifically at the city level, I think that the state efforts are important, but the City of Seattle has been I think it's an important opportunity for council to lead here as well on this important issue to jumpstart basically a broader conversation that will impact the rest of the community.

So I am looking to you and your leadership to strongly consider efforts at the city level to augment and support or to accelerate what's going on at the state level as it relates to healthcare and healthcare coverage for our undocumented community.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Well, thank you all so very much for the presentation and for all of the work that you do in your day job and for setting aside time for this work session here today.

I want to ask how we can be helpful.

As you heard Deputy Mayor Harrell note of the importance of this issue for the mayor's administration.

That gives me a lot of excitement.

I think as you saw from Janet's slide earlier in the presentation, we know that there's about a 50, $53 million price tag for our county.

And I really appreciate the work that you're doing at the state level related to the budget and want to applaud Governor Inslee for including a down payment on this in his proposed budget as well.

But we know that this still needs to be worked through the state presentation.

So can can you tell us a little bit more about how we can help?

And you have both the executive and the legislative branch here for the Seattle government on the line here today.

Is there a way that we can plug into the state level efforts and are there other things that we should be doing at the city level in the meantime?

I can try it that one while we.

We have a Health Equity for Immigrants campaign, and we would, of course, appreciate any support that the city can bring to that, as well as communication with other local and county folks.

There's a long list of organizations that have come out in support of the campaign, and it would be fantastic to have public public folks, policy makers, and public officials to also support this campaign and articulate how it would help at the local level.

And particularly, I think, with this experience of the county having tried and pursued research and pursued reporting and looking at funding options and just not quite being able to get there yet.

articulating the value of that would be really incredible.

And of course, we don't know what's going to happen at the state level.

We don't know when and we don't know how much.

And so it really would pay and would be significant for this administration to jumpstart efforts to think about how to create a local level solution like the one in San Francisco or Contra Costa County or Maryland, the County of Maryland.

So we are certainly willing and open to support any investigation, any exploration of what could happen at the local level as well.

But immediately in the next couple of months, as a short session, It continues.

We'd love to see any support that you can provide for the campaign.

Well, if you send us the link to the campaign, we'll be sure to share it on my social media with members who are in the viewing public and we'll take a look to see if there's something that we can do from the city side as well.

You noted that there's a legislative strategy tied to the budget.

Originally, I was thinking that this was a piece of legislation already drafted or pre-filed, but it is part of the budget strategy.

And so the ask is really to include this in the final budget.

Is that what I'm hearing?

Yes, that is the current strategy.

Although there was a bill last year that was kind of a starting point, which is still, because of the biennial system, that bill is still present.

Somebody help me with the number.

I think it might be 1191. But we'll know more in the next few weeks about how legislation enters into the picture.

And I see Brenda has put in the link to the campaign, so you'll have that information in the chat.

It's also at the end of the PowerPoint.

Okay, great.

If it's at the PowerPoint, then folks in the viewing public will be able to have a chance to see it because the chat doesn't really appear for folks in the public, but we'll put it on our social media as well.

Senior Deputy Mayor, anything else from you before we wrap up here?

No, just thrilled to have you join us today.

Absolutely believe this is a huge statewide priority.

It's a priority for Seattle.

And we know that our borders don't just end at 145th Street up North and otherwise.

So thank you so much for your work.

We look forward to supporting this work.

We really do.

And we look forward to everybody having equitable access to health care.

Excellent.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing any additional comments.

Please go ahead, Janet.

I just want to say thank you to all of you for the opportunity to present and for your excitement and enthusiasm as this moves forward.

Wonderful.

Council members, any additional comments or questions?

Okay.

Not seeing anyone come off mute.

So thank you again.

Thanks for the work you do.

Thanks for your generous time this morning and for Our community members, we will be posting the link.

It's wyson.org, W-A-I-S-N.org, slash health, hyphen equity, hyphen for, hyphen immigrants.

health equity for immigrants, and we will keep in touch with all of you as session progresses.

Thanks to our legislative champions who are working on this, in addition to Governor Inslee for including the down payment in their proposed budget.

And thank you, Deputy Mayor Harrell, for being with us all morning this morning.

That's very generous of you and your time.

really excited about these joint priorities that we're all sharing today and the future work that we will do together with you.

Take care everyone and thank you for taking care of our community health providers.

We really appreciate you and community partners.

Thank you everyone.

Our next meeting, excuse me, I'm sorry, our next meeting, I have to officially end our meeting.

I was about to log off here.

But for everyone else, you are welcome to log off.

I appreciate your time.

We are going to meet on February 2nd at 9.30 a.m.

We are still finalizing our agenda.

If there's any agenda items from our council members who are part of this committee, please let us know.

We don't have anything else for the code of the order that I can tell?

Okay.

Today's meeting is adjourned.

Thanks for your generous time, everyone.

Have a wonderful rest of your day, and we'll see you in the next committee meeting at 2 p.m.

Recording stopped.