Seattle City Council Public Assets & Homelessness Committee 6122

We are recording.

Thank you, son.

The June 1st meeting of the Seattle City Council's Public Assets and Homelessness Committee will come to order.

It is 2 p.m.

I'm Andrew Lewis, Chair of the Seattle City Council's Public Assets and Homelessness Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll.

Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Morales.

Vice Chair Mosqueda.

Council Member Juarez.

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Chair, there are three members present.

Thanks so much, Mr. Clerk.

Just as a quick side for members of the public, given that we are...

You don't hear me?

No.

No.

A little bit more, please.

Can you hear a little bit more?

Not it's not enough.

How does it?

I don't see any.

I don't know how to.

Is it this?

Like this?

Hey, there we go.

Alright.

Mics are loud and clear now.

Thank you.

There we go.

Okay.

There we go.

Alright.

Uh approval of the agenda.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Chair's report.

So first off, welcome everybody back to Seattle City Hall for these in-person hybrid meetings.

It's really good to see everybody in the gallery and it's good to be back up here on the council dais.

I do want the record to reflect that Council Member Herbold has now joined us at the dais.

Today, we are going to be hearing in the agenda that we just approved an update from the Low Income Housing Institute, who will be giving a briefing and presentation on some of their programming.

We are also going to be hearing from the Seattle Public Library's annual levy report and from Chief Librarian Tom Fay on that.

So looking forward to both of those agenda items this afternoon.

And with that overview, we will move on to the public comment.

I will moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

Oh, and sorry, the clerk is informing me that Council Member Mosqueda has joined the meeting virtually.

So public comment, I will moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

and everyone pay attention, because for the first time in two years, public comment will have changed slightly since we're now in a hybrid format.

The public comment period for this meeting is 20 minutes, and each speaker will be given one minute to speak.

There may be public comment speakers online and in person, and I can confirm that today we do have online and in person.

I will begin by calling on the first five people who signed up remotely and then the first five people who are present in the chamber.

So first five virtual speakers, then five in-person speakers.

I will continue alternating between the sets of five commenters until the public comment period has concluded.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website or on the signup sheet available here in council chambers.

If you have not yet registered to speak, but would like to, you can sign up before the end of public comment by going to the council's website at seattle.gov slash council or by signing up at the signup sheet near the public comment microphone towards the front of the chamber.

Once I call a speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of you have been unmuted will be the speaker's cue that it is their turn to speak.

And then the speaker must press star six to begin speaking.

That is for remote commenters.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item you are addressing.

As a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda or within the committee's purview.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

Once you hear the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comment.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

Once you have completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line, and if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

The public comment period is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six after you hear the prompt of you have been unmuted.

Mr. Chair, our first virtual public commenter is Harold Odom.

Harold, you may begin when you're ready.

Harold, you may need to press star six to unmute.

No, I'm just surprised I'm the first one.

I turned my head, did you hear my name?

Anyways, thank you very much.

for allowing me to speak.

My public comment is on Lehigh.

Not that Lehigh is a bad agency.

Lehigh is a big agency.

They need to do better, knowing how they treat people, but slow down how they're building.

They're expanding way too fast and not expanding staff and training.

We have people in all the villages who've suffered trauma and continue to suffer trauma.

There's no mental health or behavioral health, except at one or two county house villages.

I've said it before, they can be a Hooverville.

We do not watch them.

Five agencies use 47% of all homeless dollars spent.

Why is that?

Break these agencies down or let them go away for a little bit and let's start building the smaller agencies up.

Then you are all small, these five agencies, and then

Thank you, Harold.

Mr. Chair, we have five more virtual public commenters, but none are present, so I'm going to switch to the in-person public comment now.

Our first in-public commenter is Alex Zimmerman, to be followed by Tracy Williams.

Yes, you can begin speaking when you're ready.

Mob bandita.

Yeah, my name is Alex Zimmerman.

I'm the president of Step Up.

Mr. Zimmerman.

I want to speak about housing.

It's a very interesting situation.

You guys are best of the best what I know in America.

For the last few years, prices doubled for rent.

25,000 apartments empty.

Money that is paid for low income practically come to zero.

You're doing a very good job.

So right now, all poor.

or minority, or colored people move out from the city, because you're doing very good job.

So doing this more, you know what this means.

It's very important.

So price go up, and more people will be go out.

You know what this mean.

You're doing very good job.

Sieg Heil, my lovely Führer, my first number one.

Mr. Chair, our next public commenter is Tracy Williams.

Tracy, you may begin when you're ready.

After Tracy, Sean Smith will be up next.

Hi, I'm Tracy.

I just want to let you know that Lehigh has helped me for the past two years.

I stayed in a tiny house for six months, and now I'm in permanent housing.

And I'm also a village organizer.

I live at the George Fleming Place.

It's a very good program, because two months into me staying at the tiny house, I was able to get employment.

And I want to say Lehigh is a good program, and the program does work.

And we do have case managers and mental health counselors to help the residents.

And we do push the residents to get help.

get jobs and go to the doctors and stuff like that, because I had the opportunity to do that and Lehigh is a good program.

So as I'm standing here, I want to say me being a village organizer, I let the residents know that I get it.

I walked in their shoes, you know, and I'm no better than them.

I've been homeless.

And I just want to let everyone know that we should not judge a homeless person.

And Lehigh has helped a lot of people get back on their feet.

And I'm one of those people.

Thank you, Tracy.

Sean, you are our next public commenter to be followed by Steve Robstello.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, city council.

My name is Sean Smith.

I'm a resident in Nicholsville North Lake Village.

We're here to remind you that there is more than one solution to tiny or to the homeless epidemic that is now permeating the country.

One cookie cutter solution does not fit every person.

There is no one path to homelessness.

There is no one path out of homelessness.

We either do when allocating resources to look at grassroots organizations such as ourselves in order for funding in the future or allocation of public lands.

And we also want to remind you that there is an open invitation to each and every council member to come in and discuss our solutions to homelessness.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sean.

Steve Robstello, you're up next.

It's very appropriate that you put the libraries with Lehigh and other homeless because the downtown library has been a service center for many, many, many years for people who are experiencing homelessness.

But I'm going to ask you some other questions here very quickly.

It looks like is when you outsource, you know, you do have the Seattle Housing Authority to other folks.

Don't make it just a way for low wage jobs.

Make sure that more than just the director because there's a lot of people who are dedicated to a lot of things that don't seem to do too well economically.

And I think it's time to take a look at bringing more things into government because right now you're eliminating a lot of really decent jobs and making them into poor jobs.

And so let's take a look at, and also if you're successful, how many people leave the screen.

Thank you, Steve.

Our next public commenter is David Taylor.

Thank you.

Tell me when I'm ready.

Whenever you're ready, David.

Good afternoon, you guys.

You ready?

Yes, please begin when you're ready.

Hi, I'm David Taylor.

I'm here representing Lehigh.

Real quick, I just finished 35 years in prison, federal prison.

I was down and out.

There's no help from the prison authorities, et cetera, et cetera.

I reached out and there's a program called REACH here.

and then put me with Lehigh.

Started out with the little tiny villages.

I lived in a shed for quite a while.

Now I have a brand new apartment in Capitol Hill.

From 35 years in prison to a brand new apartment.

I thank you all.

I thank you, Sharon, George.

Thank you, David.

Mr. Chair, we have no more present public commenters.

Do we have any online public commenters?

No, we do not.

Okay, well, given that I am going to close the public comment period.

Thank you to our inaugural presenters or commenters on bringing this tradition back to council chambers.

So we will move on now to items of business.

And our first item of business is gonna be a presentation from the Low Income Housing Institute regarding their report on homelessness investments.

And if they could please join us at the table, all the presenters.

And it looks like we're being joined by Sharon Lee and John Grant.

So this is great.

You know, I think the last time my committee met, our presenters were also Lehigh.

You know, that last in-person committee meeting two years ago.

So Sharon, I'll hand it over to you to introduce your panel and then start walking through the report.

So why don't you go ahead and take it away.

Okay, I think it's on now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, and I want to introduce John Grant, who's the Chief Strategy Officer for Lehigh.

And we appreciate this opportunity to make a presentation.

A lot has happened this past year, and we want to share with you some of the outcomes.

Next slide.

So we just wanna refresh your memory as to what we do as a nonprofit.

And we have over 3,000 units of affordable housing, including permanent supportive housing, transitional housing, and workforce housing, senior housing, family housing.

And then we have two urban rest stops.

We did have one in the U district, but that had to shut down because the church we were renting from sold their building.

And we also in terms of a relatively new line of business, we have 17 tiny house villages and the tiny house villages include one in Skyway, one in Bellingham, three in Tacoma, one in Olympia and then 11 in Seattle.

But it has become a national model.

We will quickly run through some of our achievements through the past year, including the ramp down of Executive Pacific Hotel, the Rapid Acquisition Properties, Squire Park Plaza, the expansion on Camp Second Chance, the South End Tiny House Village, and John specifically will focus on the outcomes in terms of the data and HMIS information.

Next slide.

So Executive Pacific Hotel, this was during the height of the pandemic, and this hotel, as you remember, many of you voted, were here voting on the budget.

And because, there were serious problems with congregate shelters, hotels, and tiny house villages were seen as a way of addressing COVID and protecting people.

And so the city leased two hotels, and one of them, Executive Pacific Hotel, had 155 rooms, which we operated for 10 months.

And I think what was significant was that we were able to work with the HOPE team and prior NAV team and house people who were outside on public right of ways in parks.

And we wanted to let you know that during that period of time, we also had behavioral health on site with therapeutic health services.

And then there was also a program called rapid rehousing that was separately contracted with the human services department to provide rapid rehousing with Catholic community services.

Next slide.

In terms of the overall, oh, I'm sorry, next slide was, here we go, the ramp down.

So we only had the hotel open for 10 months and we serve 222 people.

And within, we had to close down end of January, and we had a ramp down where we had to move out approximately 100 people, like quickly, because that was the contract the mayor's office and FAS made with the hotel provider.

Our staff scrambled and we were able to get some emergency housing vouchers, but we also had to free up a lot of housing that we own ourselves.

So in the ramp down, we moved 93% of the people into permanent housing.

which was pretty, I think, a high accomplishment.

73% went into permanent supportive housing and others, 20% went into other types of housing, permanent housing.

Very few people actually went into rapid rehousing or got housing through rapid rehousing.

even though that was the major strategy.

I think all of us, including the Human Service Department and others, saw that there was not a good service match between the people that were in the Executive Pacific Hotel and the Rapid Rehousing Program.

So we depended on emergency housing vouchers from the RHA, and then we also moved a lot of people from Executive Pacific Hotel into our housing, as well as other nonprofit and private market housing.

We only had one person in the ramp down who refused to engage.

We were able to have our case managers work with everybody else, and we had a very successful outcome.

There is a report that we're happy to share with you later about the ramp down, how that took place.

But it was a, I would say it was a big pilot experiment of renting a hotel and then having to move everybody out.

And I think the cost of, I would say just in terms of my editorial comment, the cost we spent renting the hotel, we could have purchased a hotel.

So next slide.

So rapid housing acquisition is something I really wanna thank the council for, because this would not have been possible if you had not implemented Jumpstart.

And this made it possible for the Office of Housing to provide matching funds so that we were able to basically purchase six brand new buildings.

There was, as you know, a recession and there were developers who wanted to sell their properties as opposed to keep them and maintain them.

So Lehigh purchased four properties and then we helped Chief Seattle and also CMR purchase additional properties.

So the buildings are located in Beacon Hill, Capitol Hill, and also Fremont Longford location.

And the Chief Seattle Club building just closed last week.

So this is very exciting.

So we ended up with 333 units of basically brand new housing that is operating as permanent supportive housing.

Sharon, can I jump in just for a second?

Can you clarify whether the doc side that we were at yesterday for the press conference is included in this, or is that in addition?

That would be in addition.

In addition.

In addition.

Okay, that's great.

That's the answer I was hoping to hear.

Yes, yes.

Sorry, continue.

We wanted to add a slide, but it was...

The slide had already, you had already put it up in terms of the agenda.

So thank you.

So let's look at the next slide here.

The next slide you will see are the six that we purchased, and then Dockside will be the next one.

And Dockside will include 70 units.

So what you see here is Harvard Law Office, the photograph.

The previous picture was the Clay Apartments.

And this is a sort of a national innovative model.

Most communities are purchasing like older hotels and trying to repurpose them.

But then it's, you know, it's expensive and hotels have their own issues.

But this we're basically buying brand new studio apartments and we're able to then Modify them like some of the rooms are now case management's offices.

Some of them are live in staff management staff so This is a great strategy that we wanna share with other people nationally.

And Council Member Lewis was there yesterday when we basically showcased the dockside apartments at Green Lake.

And that is a mixed model that will have 70 units of permanent supportive housing and 22 units of workforce housing.

and it's right facing Green Lake, and Council Member Strauss was also there.

So we invite you to come and tour Dockside.

We're very pleased about this.

So Sharon, I think Council Member Herbold has a question.

I do, thank you.

As it relates to the buildings that you mentioned that were rapid acquisition buildings purchased with funds provided by Office of Housing through Jumpstart, were they all new buildings or were some of them occupied with residents?

And if so, I'm wondering how you handled that transition.

I know a lot of times these buildings, when they're occupied, have a lot of deferred maintenance, and there's also the question of income eligibility changes with new populations of tenants.

Thanks.

So these were all brand new buildings that were in the process of getting their Certificate of Occupancy, or in some cases, you know, they had their certificate of occupancy.

So we did not have any existing residents and they all met code and they're all energy efficient, brand new buildings.

Okay, just new buildings that the folks who had purchased them decided they did not want to operate because of the downturn.

Yeah, I think what happened is that with the pandemic, the projected rents they were hoping to get, market rate rents, were sort of slipping, which meant that as investors, they would have to put in more equity.

And also, interest rates were sort of going up a little bit.

And so they would rather make a sale.

And of course, we inspected the buildings.

We did look at two buildings in West Seattle.

Thank you.

Yeah, we would actually like to do more rapid acquisition buildings in West Seattle.

Come talk to me.

Yeah.

So these are the buildings you can see, and then dockside, there's another round that the state is making available.

The applications are going to be due this summer.

And so there's another round of rapid acquisition.

So to the extent that I think we can free up additional jumpstart money, then you can leverage the state money as well.

And there's also another round of housing trust fund money available.

Next slide.

So the other thing we did that was not rapid acquisition, but Council Member Hurdle, this is exactly an example where we actually worked to purchase this existing building that's fully occupied, that was at risk of being gentrified and the residents displaced.

It's Squire Park Plaza.

It's 1700 South Jackson.

And in this case, the owner had put it on the market.

for national investors to purchase.

And so we got a bridge loan from a foundation and a nonprofit, and we preserved 60 units.

And majority of the households, families with children as well as singles, are people of color.

Majority are African-American households.

So this building, we were able to get our state legislators to award us $3 billion in the state budget.

And we're hoping that the Office of Housing will then help us.

And then we'll also get some private financing.

So this is a...

of partnership we had with Reverend Jeffrey with the New Hope Community Development Institute.

This is the story that's going to happen over and over again in the central area and southeast, where existing owners are going to put their building up for sale, and it'll end up with people being displaced.

So we would love to have more of a resource to preserve existing housing.

Chair?

Yeah, of course, Council Member Morales.

A couple of questions.

The first is, can you tell us if these acquisitions were for market rate or for below market?

That's one question.

And then if I could understand just a little bit more about this acquisition program, how it works, and are there financial criteria that, like, Whoever comes in to apply needs to be ready to purchase, you know, like what are the steps to be able to participate in that acquisition fund program?

Yeah, I think for many years, many of us are used to the standard traditional housing trust fund program.

And the housing trust fund program has like one deadline once a year.

And it includes new construction preservation.

The rapid acquisition program was set up primarily during the pandemic because the state also got significant ARPA funds or COVID relief funds.

And they combined it with their capital budget.

And the idea was that it was supposed to create new units.

like brand new units, which meant that you were buying hotels and converting them, or you're buying brand new buildings, or if it's possible to do a quick remodel.

But basically, if you had to spend more than 90 days to renovate a building, you were not eligible.

So the idea was, as quickly as possible, get as many housing units, or in some cases, enhanced shelter beds.

available to the community as quickly as possible.

So the Office of Housing essentially had an open round, like a first-come, first-served open round.

Actually, the round is available.

And then they underwrite the project, and they provide matching funds.

So the city was able to leverage, Well, basically, each project had 50% city funds, 50% state funds.

So that basically saved a lot of city resources that otherwise you would have had to put in if the state wasn't a major player.

So it was very cost effective for the city to participate in this program.

And this year, Senator Frock and Therringer, Representative Therringer, the capital budget has the largest amount for rapid acquisition.

OK, great.

And then were you able to purchase them below market, or did you have to pay the market?

Both.

We purchased it below market, and they were all subject to an appraisal.

And then we had to make sure that they met inspection standards.

Yeah, OK.

Thank you.

So next slide is we've got Camp Second Chance expansion and we want to thank Councilmember Hurdle because this was in the budget and amazingly we now have sewer connection, we have a hygiene trailer and we also have expanded with 20 tiny house and so you've made this place much more livable and thank you.

So please come out and visit.

We'll have an opening expansion celebration sometime pretty soon.

Next slide.

Sorry, Sharon, Councilmember Herbold has a question.

Yes, thank you.

I understand that the new units that are going to be available at Camp Second Chance might be something that we should look at for pairing with some of the actions being put forth by the executive as it relates to a particular location where the city is going to be enforcing the 72-hour parking ordinance.

And so I just want to flag, I understand that RV residents have separate barriers and challenges to accepting opportunities like those offered at Camp Second Chance or enhanced shelter.

But I am interested in trying to do that sort of pairing.

The city has given a date where they are going to begin enforcement.

And so I just would like to work with you, the HOPE team at HSD, and the Regional Housing Authority.

to begin those conversations as soon as possible.

And one, I took a group of folks out there last Monday, and one of the things that we talked about, a lot of people, you know, there's been sort of a, REACH already did sort of a census of folks living there, and talked about the options of moving to a tiny house village.

And as you would expect, the concern about leaving their vehicle behind is one that came up, although a great number of them at this location are inoperable.

But I'm wondering if we could talk about perhaps providing an opportunity for some of the residents there to visit Camp Second Chance.

Much like if you or I were to rent a place or buy a place, we'd visit it first.

So just want to put that out there as maybe something that we could together facilitate to try to make what will be a very, very difficult transition for the folks residing in that location who've resided there for almost five years, many of them, to try to make that a little bit smoother.

Yes, we would very much like to work with you on that.

We know that many people living in RVs, actually a large majority of them said they would be interested in tiny houses.

And we are happy to show them the village, show them the facilities and the tiny houses, and work with the HOPE team.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So South End Village.

South End Village just opened and we want to thank the council and thank you Council Member Morales and Council Member Lewis.

You toured the facility and it is now open.

We have 21 people.

living there.

And our service providers include the Refugee Women's Alliance and other organizations that are referring.

And we're also working with the HOPE team.

Reverend Willis with True Vine of Holiness Baptist Church is the religious or faith sponsor.

And this is right by the Rainier Beach station.

I don't know if people have questions about this, but we also, many of the tiny houses were built by Sound Foundations Northwest, but built by volunteers, including a lot of volunteers from Amazon Web Services, AWS.

So thank you.

The Rainier Beach Action Coalition, young people participated in that, too, at some point.

Yes, we had Rainier Beach high school students and Rainier Beach Action Coalition.

They're part of the support and referral of people to the village.

Can I ask Sharon in regards to referrals to this village?

Because one of the important things, I mean Council Member Morales could speak to this too, when we were organizing to try to get this village going was that it could be a new resource for people experiencing homelessness in the south end of Seattle to have a place to go and there was some coverage that early referrals were coming primarily from north end encampment locations.

I wonder if, it sounds like there's still a lot of capacity.

You said there's 21 folks there now, so there's a lot more space.

What's the focus going to be going forward, do you know?

Well, our focus was the South End, the Reindeer Beach community, and that's essentially what we're holding to.

Initially, when we had it vacant for a while because we did not have the funding, so we want to thank you for your support.

Yeah.

And what happened was that Woodland Park, the city, the mayor's office asked us to help on Woodland Park, and so They asked us for 30 spaces in tiny houses, and we said no.

The priority is South End in terms of South End Village.

But we did open up five tiny houses, five out of the 40. And then we moved the other 25 people from Woodland Park to other tiny house villages.

But I think increasingly this is going to be a problem as we just don't have enough space for people.

And enhanced shelters are a good place for people to be until we can get them moved into permanent housing.

So we are hoping that there would be more support from the council and the mayor's office for more villages.

That might be a good segue to the next few slides.

Can I follow up on that before we move on?

Of course, Council Member Morales.

Sorry, I can't tell if this mic works or not.

I'm used to looking for raised hand emojis.

Yeah.

So regarding this issue, you know, as we were, we've been working, my office has been working with folks in the Mount Baker neighborhood for two years, over two years now.

And, you know, we know that there are folks who are living up in Chistie, in the Chistie green space.

There are a lot of folks up on North Rainier, where there is also at least a half dozen different development projects going in.

And so I do think that the hope had been that at least some of those new units that are available in the Rainier Beach area would be available to them.

And, you know, we've been working with REACH and ENDLEAD trying to get some connection there with folks.

But I wonder if you can talk a little bit about whether there is capacity to help with the outreach and maybe help some of those folks move into more stable situations.

Thank You council member so some good news on that front is that We have also been coordinating with reach and we have had a number of referrals from the GSD encampments So folks are starting to come in and be processed and get get a tiny house a lot of the other referrals have been coming from our community-based partners like Ethiopian community of Seattle and African Community and Housing Development, Muslim Housing Services.

So it's been a mix, but largely the vast majority of folks are coming from the Rainier Beach and South End area.

Okay.

Thank you.

I think we can proceed, Chair.

Okay.

Okay.

So go ahead, John.

Yeah.

Next slide.

Thank you council members.

Today I'm going to be going over the performance of our tiny house village program and talking about kind of how things have been going, what are the metrics we use to evaluate them, and all that good stuff.

Next frame.

Just a real quick overview, we have now 11 tiny house villages.

Throughout the Seattle, you can kind of see the geographic dispersion.

It is pretty equitable in terms of where the villages are located.

We now have a total of 466 tiny houses, and that includes the new south end village with 40 houses, the 20 house expansion at Camp Second Chance, as well as the expansion at Inner Bay, up to 76 units there.

Next slide.

John, can we go back to that slide for just a moment?

Yeah, sure.

So the council in our 2021 budget did the interbay village expansion up to 76, and then we've done a similar expansion this year for Camp Second Chance.

Is there any other village on this list that would be a good candidate to potentially expand capacity, or are we kind of topped out on the existing sites?

If I were to choose one, it would be Lake Union Village.

I think that with the real estate that's available there, you could actually fit perhaps five to 10 more houses there.

And there might be other locations if we were to do a deeper analysis.

But nothing on the scale of a 20 to 30 unit expansion?

There's a possibility of we can look at friendship heights.

Okay, just wanted to flag that because that seems to have been a useful compromise in the last couple of years to try to, you know, expand capacity at existing sites rather than seek additional sites.

It's a pretty good idea because the cost of expanding the village, putting the capital costs aside, the operating costs don't increase that much more because it's the same 24-7 staffing that you're paying for, right?

So you might have to add just an additional staff person for that rather than seven additional staff people for an entirely new village.

So expanding is always a good option.

All right.

Thank you.

And Chair, if I can ask, how much time do I have?

Gosh.

It's been such a long time since we've done this.

Take your time.

Don't feel rushed.

OK.

I'm going to try to keep it to- But be efficient.

I'm going to try to be seven, eight minutes at most.

All right.

Thank you.

In the interest of time, I'll just read one of the success stories.

This comes from Camp Second Chance.

We did change the name to respect confidentiality.

So Craig is a 58-year-old US Navy veteran who worked closely with Lehigh case manager Marjorie Johnson.

Marjorie went straight to work to get Craig housing and set him up with supportive services for veterans and families, where he was screened and approved for services.

Right after getting approved for VASH and a housing voucher, Craig got the job of a lifetime.

He started working at the polyclinic in January 22. And by March, he was living in a Bureau apartment building for seniors.

Craig told Marjorie, it's so hard to put into words how I feel.

I have a home and a job, and you assisted me with both.

And when he asked how his first night sleeping in his own room went, he said, wonderful, and expressed his gratitude for all of Lehigh's help.

So there are so many stories like this, and this just is one person's journey.

So this is a program that really does transform and change people's lives.

Next slide, please.

Now, 2021, we were at the height of the pandemic, and we really wanted to emphasize the importance of tiny houses as a non-congregate shelter model.

It was extraordinarily successful.

We only had 14 cases of COVID throughout any of all of our tiny houses where the 745 people served in 2021. To put that into perspective, system-wide across all emergency shelters, King County Public Health reported about 748 confirmed cases and eight deaths.

We had zero deaths from COVID in our shelter program.

So during the pandemic, this was a crucial resource to keep homeless folks healthy and safe.

Next slide, please.

And this is just a summary of how we did last year, as well as since the program began.

We've served 2,560 people who received shelter.

We, in 2021, served 745 unique people.

56% found stable homes.

Now that means 50% found permanent housing, 6% found transitional housing, which is often a pathway to permanent housing.

57% of the folks we served are chronically homeless.

And I think that really is worth emphasizing.

The folks that have the hardest barriers to housing have the most success in the Tiny House Village Program to eventually be placed in housing.

But the majority of folks that we served were black, indigenous, and people of color.

And 65% moved out within a six-month period.

And we're going to go over in greater detail about that length of stay figure.

Next slide.

This is a screen grab of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority's systems dashboard for shelters, for emergency shelter.

This, you can see the main metrics that are used to evaluate the performance of all shelter programs.

the percent that folks are permanently housed, their average length of stay in the program, how many folks returned to homeless, how many folks were homeless when they entered the program, and what is the utilization rate?

Utilization rate means how many shelters were essentially vacant, or how many were occupied, I guess.

So 76% utilization rate meant that 76% of the time there was somebody in a unit.

Can I ask some clarifying questions here, John?

Sure.

So I see that there's a, I'm just trying to reconcile this slide with the previous slide.

So there's a 9%, and maybe it's because the KCRHA in this data set isn't measuring everything, but there's a 9% return to homelessness and a 16% to permanent housing.

So the other 75% go where?

Great question for RHA.

I can tell you about tiny houses.

Go to the next slide and I'll kind of maybe...

Oh, I'm sorry.

This is for the system as a whole.

This is the system as a whole.

Oh, I apologize.

I'm going to walk you through it.

The next slide will clarify a lot of this.

This makes sense then.

Sorry.

I thought this was specifically for the tiny houses.

No, no.

No, okay.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, no.

So let's take a look.

So what I want to...

Okay, here we go.

Yes.

Great.

Go ahead.

Sorry.

You bet.

So what I wanted to do was to look at the standards that RHA uses to evaluate program performance for shelters across the system compared to tiny house villages.

So this is all, and I want to emphasize, this is all data from HMIS.

This is not our internal data.

Okay, so with that first category, folks who exit to permanent housing, the dashboard is around 16%.

Tiny houses is 47.44%.

Did we meet the minimum standard of 40%?

The answer was yes.

Across the system, no.

The next standard is length of stay using an average count of days.

We did not meet the minimum standards, but also neither did any other shelter.

And we're going to do a deeper dive on average length of stay in the next slide.

Return to homelessness, how many folks returned to homelessness after they had been housed?

This is 9%, it's below the minimum percent of 10% across the system, but tiny houses outperform, only at 3.5%.

So that means very few people are returning to homelessness from this program.

the utilization rate, how many people are actually using the shelters.

We have a shockingly high utilization rate.

Across the system it's 76%, but tiny houses is 92% and rarely dips around 90. This is really important to emphasize.

This shows that people want tiny houses, right?

There are a lot of folks that don't feel safe in a congregate shelter, a mat on the floor, They want a locking door.

They want their own space and to feel safe.

So this is why we have such a high utilization rate for the Tiny House Village Program.

Next slide, please.

So we wanted to also emphasize, you know, one of the measures that we did not meet was the average length of stay.

So we wanted to talk about what that means.

During the pandemic, you know, one of the key reasons that the village is successful is that it connects people to case management.

But during the pandemic, We really struggled to connect people to case management because if folks refused to engage with services, there was no recourse to kind of address that issue.

So folks started staying in the program much longer.

During, what we call those, not just those folks, but folks who have been in the program for two years or more, a long-term stare.

Long-term stares have a disproportionate impact when measuring the program using an average, okay?

This impact is compounded when only an annual date range is used.

What does that all mean?

I'll explain in a moment.

For these reasons- John, I think Council Member Herbold has a question.

Just some definitional things before we move on.

What is a long-term stayer?

How are you defining that?

That is kind of our internal lingo for somebody who has been enrolled into a tiny house village program and has stayed there for over two years.

What you just described and one of the bullets under length of stay suggests that your lack of ability to exit people who have not engaged with case management has increased your length of stay numbers.

It did have that impact.

But I wouldn't say that that's the only primary reason.

There's going to be other factors that result in somebody staying long in the program.

The most obvious one, a lack of affordable housing.

Thank you.

That kind of jumped out at me, and I just don't want to.

rely too much on our ability to exit people who aren't engaging in services as a way to improve our length of stay.

No, and there's actually a whole section we'll talk about what our strategies are moving forward to make sure that we address folks who are in the program for a long term.

That is a compassionate approach.

Thank you.

And also, I did have in the same line of thinking, there is a sentence that says tiny house residents are required to accept placement to permanent housing within six months.

Can you just talk a little bit about how you're able to require this?

I'm sorry, I don't see that.

That was on the slide 15 under outcomes.

Is it a slide that we have passed or?

I think 15, the outcome slide.

Might be coming up, 2021 outcomes.

We've not gotten there yet.

Haven't gotten there yet, I'm sorry.

Why don't we go to the next slide and we'll work our way through it.

And Council Member, if I don't get to answer your question, please remind me.

Okay, so this is really important and I also want to emphasize, you know, we are not looking for special treatment as an organization.

We understand the need that there needs to be a standard measurement that we use to determine how programs are working.

So please take this information as additive, right?

This is meant to inform you as policy makers to give you more nuance and understanding of how our program works that's a little bit different than some other shelter models.

So what we're looking at here is taking the way that the standard length of stay average is used over the lifetime of the program versus counting long-term stayers in a single year.

So what does that mean?

Well, in 2015 is when the program started.

So obviously, we're not going to have anybody who is a long-term stayer.

And as time goes on, you're going to see more people who enter the program and are staying a longer period of time.

But if you count in a single year, how many folks are in the program, it is going to distort the number of people that it appears to, that appear to be in the program for a longer period of time.

So the orange line that you're looking at is using an annual count and an annual average.

And using the exact same data, if you start from 2015 over the lifetime of the program, you can see that the average length of stay actually drops.

So that means you're going from 2015 to 2016, 2015 to 2017, and so on and so forth.

This will make a little more sense in the next slide, I promise.

Go to the next slide.

So using a median number over the lifetime of the program, you're getting a full picture of how successful the program is working, rather than just looking at a snapshot in a single year.

Because people are not in the program just for one year, right?

They might be in for multiple years.

And when you look at that information, you see that 65% move out within six months.

that there is a median, excuse me, 114 day median stay.

Not average, but a median.

And that if you use that calculation, that means that less than, or excuse me, only 6% of the population are in the program for more than two years.

So we're talking about 6%.

And I think the reason that we look at these figures this way is that if you look at the average length of stay a couple slides back, you'll see that it's over 300 days.

as an average length of stay for somebody.

And I think that is very kind of misleading in terms of how successful this program is at moving people through and getting them into housing.

John, Council President Juarez has a question.

Hey, John.

Hi.

It's good to see you guys, Sharon.

This may just be more of a practical, and thank you for this PowerPoint because it really, I printed it out as well with the numbers and now we have an understanding to compare.

with the King County Regional Housing Authority is doing, and then, of course, what Lehigh is doing with the tiny houses and the success.

So my question is, can you tell me a little bit more about the people, the 6%?

Who are those people, more than two years, who don't want to leave tiny housing, and what are we doing about that?

Next slide.

Good.

Well, you're just on fire today.

Actually, go to the slide after this one, and we'll come back to it.

OK.

In 2021 and 2022, we deployed what we called our long-term stayer housing strategy.

And to answer your question, Council Member Juarez, you can see in the chart it's been successful.

From 2018 to 2021, you're seeing more and more people who are, quote, unquote, long-term stayers getting moved out and housed.

How did we do this?

We did it a couple of ways.

One of them is the most obvious example is that we got more housing into the system, and we used our rapid acquisition strategy that we discussed previously where we bought six properties and, you know, almost overnight converted them to permanent supportive housing, we prioritized people who were in tiny houses who were long-term stayers.

And as of today, 41 or 33% of the folks who had been long-term stayers got housed in a very short period of time doing that.

Additionally, last year the council made a $600,000 investment to expand behavioral health services.

Not all the villages had behavioral health services.

And so we have partnered with therapeutic health services to provide substance abuse counseling, mental health counseling, and to expand that to our other villages that is currently in process.

And let's see here.

And then I think getting to your question, Council Member Herbold, about, you know, how are people staying in the program for, and how are goals set?

We do have a six-month stay goal.

And I want to be really clear about this.

That doesn't mean that if you're in the program for six months, you're out or exit immediately.

That's not at all how it works.

This is just setting a goal and saying we want folks to try to set a housing plan for themselves that can get them out of the village and into housing within six months.

If we can't find housing for you, we're not going to ask you to leave.

So it's about really about managing expectations.

If you tell somebody who's coming off the street that the tiny house is your forever home, Well, one, I hope that's not the case.

And two, we want to make sure that folks are, that we're setting expectations with folks that we want them to work with case managers, address whatever barriers they're facing, and get them into permanent housing as a long-term goal.

I just want to say that if you look at the first bullet, we had 121 long-term stayers.

And we now have 41, which is a significant decrease.

So 41 long-term stayers, and we're serving, what, 700 some people a year.

So as you know, many of the existing shelters also have long-term stayers.

So we don't want to be the only ones pointed out like we have some excessive number of long-term stayers.

We don't.

We only have 41 right now.

So I think our program is working really well.

If you look at the last bullet, we moved people into, these are the rapid acquisition buildings.

Many of them are the ones that you funded through Jumpstart.

And that has made a huge difference in terms of throughput, moving people out of tiny houses into permanent housing.

And Council Member Juarez, you asked the question, you know, who are these folks that are staying a long time?

And the answer is varied.

But I would say that you could probably put them into two groups, right?

One group is folks who are high acuity, folks that have severe substance abuse issues or perhaps mental health issues.

And that is why it was so important that the council make that investment to expand behavioral health services on site at the villages.

Those folks at some point might get approved for a permanent supportive housing unit, which there are very few of, but there are more coming online as time goes on.

The second group of people are folks who don't qualify for permanent supportive housing.

but perhaps are working or maybe have a disability, but not so severe that they could get qualified for permanent supportive housing, which is a deeper service level, right?

And it's, honestly, it's the working poor.

It's folks that might have a day job, but they can't afford housing in Seattle.

And they don't qualify for those deeper subsidized units through permanent supportive housing.

So they're kind of in this in-between zone.

And the answer there, of course, is we need more affordable housing.

OK.

So my question wasn't to point out that tiny houses don't work.

That wasn't the point of my question.

My question is, when we target in on those individuals, and maybe it's anecdotal, at least what I've been seeing for the last six years is, are these our chronic homeless with mental health addiction issues?

And are we getting those services?

And if we're not, how do we continue to do that?

I'm not asking the question to point out that you're not moving enough people out of tiny house villages.

I'm just more concerned about the really limited vulnerable population.

And if that's just a small amount of what you have, I can imagine what we still have with people living unhoused right now on the street.

So that's why I was getting at that.

I want to know who are those people and how do we get to them?

So thank you.

Thank you.

I just want to make a sort of short addition to that, is that as Councilmember Herbold remembers on Camp Second Chance, the people who initially occupied Camp Second Chance and some of the other villages, they were self-managed.

And at that point, in the very beginning, people felt that once they were in a village, they could stay forever.

And so it was not seen as a enhanced shelter program.

It was seen as we're homeless, we're protesting, we're going to take the land, we're going to occupy it, we're going to stay as long as we want.

And so there was a sense that people would like to stay and transition on their own time frame, which we think is a low barrier approach.

And so what we try to do at this point is incentivize people and make sure that the case management staff have lots of housing resources to offer people.

I'm almost done.

Yeah, should we go to the previous slide?

Yes, please.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So just back one, please.

Oh, no, I'm sorry, that's, can you go in the reverse direction twice now?

Yeah, IT or whoever's doing the slides, we took one out of order.

There we go, yes.

Okay, thank you.

You might have heard recently, there were some numbers put out there about the cost of the program, and we wanted to kind of clarify some things.

So, tiny house villages are very affordable to develop in terms of the capital costs, and they're also very affordable to operate.

The Regional Homelessness Authority published recently during their budget presentations, they came up with a new term called cost per exit.

which is not a metric that we've ever been evaluated by before.

And the figure that they determined was $64,000, $64,893 per person using that metric.

We don't know how they arrived at that number.

We're welcome to engage into a.

discussion with them about that.

But when we take the $6.3 million that we used to operate our villages last year and apply it to the 745 unique individuals that we served, it comes out closer to about $9,000 per person.

And, you know, reasonable minds can disagree, and certainly we're welcome to any kind of dialogue or discussion on that.

The bottom line is that this is a very cost-effective program for folks who are on the streets.

If you were to try to build a transitional housing or permanent housing building, that would be closer to $350,000 per unit, just for the construction costs.

But the development costs, for example, at South End Village, was closer to $20,000 per unit.

So it's just...

Very clear to us looking at the numbers that it's a very cost effective program.

Also, it's relatively quick to deploy.

It takes us about eight to ten weeks, once we've identified a site, to build a tiny house village.

Whereas a permanent housing property, if you're lucky, takes between three to four years.

So our position is that we're in a homelessness crisis now.

Tiny houses are humane, short term, and a rapid response for immediate need.

So, we're just going to go two more slides forward.

So, John, I think we have a question from Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Thank you.

So, as I understand the metric that you are proposing should be used, it's a cost per person per year.

It does not factor in the length of stay, which apparently is what the RHA number factors in.

Is that correct?

Yeah, we are comparing apples to oranges for sure.

So I want to be really clear about that.

We're using a different metric than them.

And so is that a metric that RHA is using across the system, or is it one that they're only using?

The first time we heard of it was during the last budget presentation at the governing committee meeting.

No, my question, do you know if they're using that same metric for other ventures?

They are.

They use that metric for transitional housing as well.

and perhaps others.

Thank you.

Can we go?

Yes, thank you.

So just rounding it out here, we wanted to give you our year-to-date numbers because what we were looking at before were numbers from 2021. So year-to-date, we've already been serving 659 people.

Our exit to permanent housing has skyrocketed.

It's as high as 60%.

Now, if you might recall, it was around 50% previously.

Our utilization rate is around 90%.

Our return to homelessness has increased, unfortunately, 8%.

But again, that's a relative figure.

That's only three people.

And our average median length of stay is still 114 days.

So the long and short of it is that the Tiny House Village Program is cost effective and very successful at getting people housed and keeping people safe while they're sheltered.

John, thank you for this presentation, and you know, as you know, I, I mean, there's another slide for future projects, right?

There's one more slide that's kind of, if Sheridan wants to, if we have time, yeah.

But to ask about this too, you know, I don't necessarily object to the way KCRHA calculates the cost.

In some respect, I think it's explained by the context of low return to homelessness.

I mean, obviously under the metrics they're setting projects, you're going to have a cheaper cost per person if more people are dropping out.

So the combination of the low return to homelessness and the high utilization I think is, you know, is going to produce a higher number.

But I think that the return to homelessness and the exit are the statistics that, you know, I continue to think are the most relevant to what we're doing right now.

I do appreciate that we have that very clearly in front of us in this presentation.

So I appreciate this and looking forward to continuing to work with Lehigh on these projects.

Did colleagues have additional questions before we move to that last slide?

No.

Okay, let's go to the next slide.

All right, I'll turn it over to Sharon.

Well, we are concerned about the number of RVs on the streets.

And so we did apply to RHA to stand up a RV safe lot.

And we will be informed, I think, pretty soon whether we were selected to do that.

But there is a question of how many months that contract will be if we get that contract.

And of course, it's hard to, unless we have a city-owned piece of property or county-owned piece of property, it's hard to go rent a place, like a private lot, and not be able to rent it for a year or multi-year or something like that.

But if the council or the executive have ideas for publicly owned property, that would be ideal.

Otherwise, we will have to just hunt around with private owners.

And then we would be interested in doing new tiny house villages.

And we have sound foundations northwest.

We have lots of volunteers.

We have school students, technical colleges, businesses, church groups building tiny houses for us.

And so the cost of a tiny house in terms of material is still $4,200.

And then we have volunteers.

And the additional costs you've seen is like bringing in the water, sewer, electricity and setting up the common kitchen and hygiene services.

So we would be interested in working in partnership with the city to do more tiny house villages.

And then the rapid acquisition, again, you've seen the success of that.

And this year is another opportunity.

So I think your budget actions in the supplemental budget, your budget actions for next year will have a big impact on to what extent we can get more people housed and safe and warm.

So I think Seattle's a national leader in terms of innovation and we want to thank you and hope you will come and visit some of our new buildings.

Come and visit Dockside and come and visit some tiny house villages.

Thank you, Sharon.

I think we have a couple more questions here.

Council Member Mosqueda is first in the queue.

Remind everyone this is a hybrid meeting and Council Member Mosqueda is present here on the Zoom.

So, Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Please do hear me if the technology needs to catch up.

I wanted to say thank you to Sharon and the team at Lehigh I'm really excited that you're here to celebrate all that you've accomplished.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to be there yesterday with you in Green Lake to celebrate the new building, but that's a wonderful example of the hard work the tenacity of Lehigh to identify locations and really move forward with braiding funding and underscoring the urgency of purchasing.

buildings and or moving forward on opportunities when they exist.

So congratulations to you.

A few notes, Mr. Chair, if I might, just because of the last slide and leading up to next steps.

I want to thank you, Lehigh, for applying for the RV safe lot.

I know Council Member Herbold and I and the whole council that supported the RV safe lot investments in 2020 and 2021. is excited to finally see the RV safe lots moving forward.

Obviously, $1.5 million should have been out the door earlier, but we're thankful that you and RHA and others may be moving forward very quickly on that.

I know with half of the population experiencing homelessness currently living in vehicles, this is going to be an area of interest for me as well.

Please keep us updated on how fast and how quickly you may get information back about the RV safe lots.

And the storage as Councilmember Herbold will remind folks that we put funding in for storage as well for people who ultimately can leave their RVs and go into housing, we want them to be able to have their RVs stored safely as well.

I also wanted to just follow up on the question that was asked earlier I believe by Councilmember Morales and just underscore a few more points about the rapid acquisition funding and I know this was on the last slide as well.

Just to remind folks about how cutting edge Seattle is on rapid acquisition on another a number of other areas in the American rescue plan act.

otherwise known as the Seattle Rescue Plan, we put about $28 million of the city's American Rescue Plan Act dollars towards the first tranche of rapid acquisition.

And folks may have heard me talk about this before, but thanks to the really great stewardship of those dollars at the Office of Housing, we have now seen 5,400 units.

be able to be in the pipeline through rapid acquisition.

That's about seven buildings that have come off of the private market and into public and nonprofit hands to open up new affordable units.

4,000 of those units will come online this year.

And I'm so thankful that part of those funds go to Lehigh and the community that you serve.

This is a really important opportunity for us to identify federal dollars and some state dollars that have been freed up thanks in large part to the leadership of Representative Macri.

who in the budget negotiations made sure to remind folks that even though we were celebrating how much money we had appropriated from ARPA through rapid acquisition, there was just not enough.

So with state dollars, with federal ARPA dollars, we've been able to take apartment buildings off of the market that are turnkey ready and turn them into affordable units now.

And make sure that we are creating a pipeline affordable units permanent supportive housing and if they're able to be used as a short term shelter option that's something that we're interested as well.

And then lastly on jumpstart progressive payroll tax thanks to Sharon's call out and support of.

the jumpstart payroll tax.

We are currently looking into a question that Sharon has teed up and something that we did last year where we allow the Office of Housing to forward commit the next year's funding, next year available funding towards existing units that are on the market right now so we don't miss any opportunities to take multi-family structures off of the private market and then again turn them into affordable housing in partnership with our Office of Housing and non-profit housing developers, especially those led by communities that are most at risk of displacement, like communities of color who are trying to find affordable housing options.

We did that for forward committing 2022 dollars, and we're looking currently at the opportunity to help forward commit additional 2023 dollars so that we don't miss a beat in the wake of COVID, or I should say in the midst of COVID, folks.

to purchase properties and get them off the market.

So more to come on that, but Mr. Chair, I just wanted to add that to the continuum that you're displaying here in your committee today on where additional funding for those affordable housing units may continue to come from.

And thanks again for the great work at Lehigh.

Thank you for that context, Council Member Muscata.

This did bleed a little bit over into the housing today.

That's true.

Council President Juarez.

Did you have a question?

I'm sorry.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

Council Member Morales and Herbold did though.

Yes, sorry.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

So I'm looking at the different slides trying to sort of compare tiny house village operations and permanent supportive housing.

Just for my own edification.

So construction, you say is about 20,000 per unit operations about 9,000 per person.

Can you, if you have an assessment of, especially as you're talking, John, about high acuity needs, behavioral service needs, substance abuse needs, so can you talk a little bit about, at least for tiny house villages, what the cost is of providing those services through your case management and other services that you're providing to folks there?

Yeah, if I understand your question, Council Member, to kind of give you an example, we have a partnership with Therapeutic Health Services to provide behavioral health directly on site at a number of the tiny house villages.

It costs about...

$100,000 for all the costs for one FTE for behavioral health specialists.

So if you're going to have, so for example, the council allocated $600,000, so that could potentially get six FTEs for behavioral health, for staffing.

So that's the approximate cost.

I mean, there might be other costs that, you know, you could tack onto that.

For example, that does not include like financial assistance, like if we had to pay for the client's deposit to move them in.

So there might be other expenses kind of adjacent to behavioral health.

But just in terms of staffing for a licensed professional, it's about $100,000 per staff member.

And then is that, presumably that's, there's not, is there one at each county house village or?

That is, I mean, that is our goal is to get one at each.

We currently do not.

But one of the things that the council did last year was to dramatically expand it by making that $600,000 investment.

So now there's going to be, I believe, I don't have it in front of me, but I can get that information to you.

But the majority of the villages now will have behavioral health.

Thank you.

Council Member Kerbal.

Thank you.

Just going back to the RV safe lot RFP, appreciate that you guys have bid on it and appreciate that the need for property is a necessary component to move forward and realize that what I'm about to let you know about may not fit, but in the spirit of Responding to constituents who contact me, I have been contacted by a constituent who says that in Tukwila, there is a KOA commercial campground that is for sale, and it is wired and plumbed for electricity, water, and sewer, as well as a common meeting place where services could be offered.

The constituent who, not, to give any identifying.

characteristics, but this is a person who has spent part of his and his wife's lives living full-time in RVs.

And I only mention that to say that he has some knowledge of what might be appropriate, and he believes that the park could house 50 to 100 RVs.

Given that it's a KOA campground, it may not be at a place that is close to services that folks need, but I want to just throw that out there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, we would like that information.

Thank you.

Okay, it doesn't look like there's any more questions for the panel.

Thank you so much for being our inaugural presenters, coming back to council chambers and a lot of information to follow up on and appreciate the work and partnership of the Low Income Housing Institute.

Thank you so much.

Okay, we will now move to our second agenda item.

Will the clerk please read agenda item two into the record?

Agenda item two, Seattle Public Library's annual levy report.

Okay, and I believe this one will be a virtual presentation.

And we have Chief Librarian Tom Fay joining us with a panel.

So Tom, I think I'll hand it over to you to introduce the panel and start the presentation.

Thank you, Commissioner Lewis.

I have with me today Carmen Bindixson, who is a president of the Library Board of Trustees, and Jan Osherwoods, who is our levy administrator.

And I will actually kick it over to Carmen to start us off.

Good afternoon council members.

I'm just going to have a few words to say before Tom and Jan give the full levy presentation.

I just wanted to thank you for inviting us to present today.

And as you, I think are all aware, the 2019 library levy provides funding that's critical for the delivery of needed library services.

And the library board of trustees remains committed to the effective oversight of the levy's taxpayer resources and meeting its obligations.

And as you may remember, the levy ordinance requires the Seattle Public Library to prepare a report on the levy for the mayor, the council, and the public by April 15th of each year.

And so the 2021 report was submitted to the mayor and city council in April, and it's been posted on the library's website at spl.org.

And so just to give you a little preview today's presentation actually focuses on your two of our seven year library levy and our second year operating in a pandemic environment, which as you know, has been profoundly affected the lives of our patrons, and how we deliver library services.

And though the pandemic has impacted our timeline for safely meeting those levy deliverables that we've promised the public, we're working towards full implementation to best serve the public.

So I want to thank Council Member Lewis and the entire City Council for providing the budget to support sustainable library services for the people of Seattle by adding COVID relief funds in 2021, and then also restoring the general fund resources in the 2022 budget.

And I do want to stress, however, that we can't meet the library levy obligations that we've committed to going forward without sustained general fund support from the city.

So any potential general fund reductions will impact our ability to deliver against those levy promises.

We do appreciate the partnership between the Seattle Public Library, the mayor and the city council that serves the public through this levy.

We know everyone loves the library.

We do look forward to future discussions about the levy and its impact.

And I know Tom and Jan have a lot of really good details on how 2021 went.

So I will turn it back over to you, Tom.

Thank you.

Thank you, Carmen.

And Jan will be running the slides for me today.

And I'd like to thank her because a lot of the work that you see here is hers, as she's our library admin, excuse me, our levy administrator, deals with the day-to-day aspects of the levy expenditures, but also is a strategic thought partner in how we work through all of the challenges that we face.

As you're well aware, the 2021 was a persistent pandemic challenge, but it was also a year that we were able to open every single library back to the public again.

In this particular year, we started with a $5.8 million general fund reduction.

We still had curbside services in 2021. But we ended 2021 with near pandemic service, pre-pandemic service levels.

And that was actually accomplished in part with federal funding approved by the mayor and the council.

During the past two years, we've pivoted some of our levy spending to support expanded hours, curbside services, virtual services, and making healthy and safety adjustments to support fully our reopening of libraries.

The 2019 levy was preceded by the 2012 levy.

This levy was precipitated by a really prolonged recession from 2008 to 2012, and that really resulted in most of the 27 libraries being closed two days a week, reduced book budget or materials budget.

very aging technology infrastructure, and the entire library system was closed every year for an entire week due to those reduced budgets.

So in 2019, voters approved a new levy to replace the expiring 2012 levy.

These funds maintained current service levels provided by the 2012 levy, but the 2019 levy added programs and services based on changing expectations of our patrons.

Next please, Jim.

When we surveyed the public in 2018, they told us they wanted a few things.

10,000, they wanted more hours, excuse me.

They wanted more access, especially in neighborhoods that had less access to resources.

The levy promises 10,000 additional hours each year system-wide.

Additional hours, however, are predicated on 2019 general fund resources.

They wanted more access to materials online.

And the levy promises more digital materials and continuation of our Peak Pick, I never can say this, Peak Picks program, which is where the material is not holdable.

And when you walk into a branch, you may find the bestseller sitting there on the shelves.

People love it.

Also, our very popular Hotspot Loan Program, which was initially funded in 2015 through the foundation.

And then cable franchise fees was then moved over to the levy.

The levy also supports replacing public computers, upgrading infrastructure, and replacing our integrated library system, the system that checks out all your material and helps provide the public catalog that you see.

As part of its levy review, council added additional funding to support children's programming focused on ages zero to five, specifically early learning programs such as play and learn.

The levy also pays for enhanced levels of routine and preventative maintenance.

It also funds library's major maintenance program, including seismic upgrades to three branches.

The Green Lake branch will be starting the work and remodel, and that will start later this year.

The levy accounted for 27% of the library's total spending in 2021 and funds 35% of the library's 2022 budget.

Next, please.

January 1st, 2020, we had a very exciting piece.

Our first action of the levy was to stop, excuse me, start, I can't talk today, stop charging fines for late materials.

And with this, we were able to clear all the old late fees and this restored borrowing privileges to 51,000 Seattle residents.

Also at the beginning of 2020, we had started fulfilling our promise of 10,000 additional hours by opening all the branches one hour earlier on Sunday.

The plan was to expand further in June of 2020, but as you all know, March 2020 saw us closing every library.

In 2021, we spent 5.5 million on digital materials and 3.4 million on print and other materials.

And in 2012, excuse me, 2012, digital materials only accounted for 10% of our total circulation.

In April of 2022, it was more than 50%.

And nearly twice as many people are now checking out digital materials on a monthly basis than physical materials.

However, we expect a continued rebound in physical circulation as more people come back to our physical locations.

But we do know that the pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital materials.

Our Peak Picks program remains very popular among our patrons, and more than one in four patrons check out a Peak Pick in 2021. Next slide, please.

We began reintroducing services in late March 2020. with online registration for library cards, a new system that made that almost an instant process.

We reopened restroom access at seven locations in April of 2020. We provided digital access to all SPS students in May of 2020, and we expanded hotspot lending, expanded hotspot lending in June.

We also moved our programming to virtual delivery.

Next slide.

In 2020, we once again started accepting book returns in July, put mobile services back on the road again, and started curbside services in August.

Staff and patrons alike were delighted to return to their libraries.

Next slide, please.

Patrons cheered, cried tears of joy, renewed library cards, and checked out many materials.

Staff welcomed patrons back with creative welcome back displays and big smiles behind the masks.

The kindness, helpfulness, and enthusiasm of staff was visible everywhere, from security officers and our ambassadors greeting patrons as they entered the buildings for the first time in over 18 months.

In late June, just as we were reopening a number of our branches for in-building services, our region experienced an unprecedented heat advantage.

with temperatures soaring to triple digits over three days.

The library played a critical role in providing cooling centers for our community.

By redeploying staff across the system, we were able to open additional air-conditioned locations on the hottest days, providing needed respite from the heat to thousands of Seattle residents.

Next slide, please.

During quarter three of 2021, we reopened nine additional locations for in-building services.

Five branches reopened in July, one branch reopened in August, and three branches reopened in September.

And New Holly, our final branch, reopened in October.

Since last fall, all library locations are currently open and serving the public once again.

Next slide.

Of course, there's been a few things we've been able to add through this that has been a very popular piece for our patrons and the online registration.

Folks have enjoyed that.

It really makes the process simple.

And then, of course, the one that we brought on in 2021 as well, and the latter part of 2021 is our auto renew feature.

We have no fines, so there's no stress.

If the book's not on hold for somebody, it automatically renews so that you're not worried about it.

Next, please.

As mentioned earlier, we surveyed the public in 2018 to help shape our 2019 levy.

In 2021, we conducted another survey to better inform us of the public's interest after the pandemic.

Although this survey was focused on our preferences, we also asked the same questions about how people felt about the library.

As we knew from the comments we had received prior to the survey, many patrons were grateful for the services the library was able to provide, while our buildings were closed.

When asked how they felt about the importance of libraries, survey respondents responded as favorably or more favorably than they did in 2018. While there was strong support for things like Monday closures, weekend hours, willingness to trade open hours for 24-hour access to physical materials, such as our pickup lockers, there were important differences by branch, which largely reflected how different communities use their libraries.

For example, in the southeast part of the city, people were far less likely to support fewer hours for 24-hour access.

In other words, they wanted their libraries open.

Patrons who frequent branches in the Southeast tend to prioritize internet access and welcoming spaces relatively more than patrons who frequent branches in other parts of the city.

Next, please.

As I said earlier, both 2020 and 2021 saw incredible increases in the use of digital material.

But once libraries reopened to fuller services, physical material use increased considerably.

And these trends in physical material continue to this day.

It now has come back to where it's 50% or more of our circulation from month to month.

Next, please.

And as indicated by this meeting today, the library looks to offer more hybrid services, virtual and in-person, but internet access and digital access and digital literacy remain an important piece of the library's work in the community.

Next, please.

And in children's programming, as part of the levy, there was the promise to add up to six in-person programs per week in our Play and Learn program.

We've yet to be able to offer this as our Children at those ages have not been approved for vaccines, and we are still trying to safely determine ways to deliver these programs in the future with our librarians, but also our partners in the community.

Next, please.

During an exceptionally busy year, the facility maintenance team at the library worked tirelessly to get Central Library and the 26 branches open.

The janitorial and custodial teams spent countless hours deep cleaning the central library and the 26 branches, scrubbing from end to end in many cases, and doing many emergency deep cleans when necessary if there were COVID cases.

As you can see here on this slide, this shows some of the work that we are doing at our Green Lake branch.

It's having an earthquake retrofit.

And we're excited that this is being going out to bid and we hope to start construction on this later this fall.

There'll be a lot of interior improvements as well.

The capital maintenance, pardon me, the capital maintenance program in 2019, excuse me, in 2021 at $6.8 million from the 2019 levy and $3.6 million in carry forward authority for maintenance.

However, 2021, once again being a challenging year, had supply chain issues, labor shortages, and a number of other pandemic-related construction delays.

So only about 2.1 million of those funds were spent.

However, with the progress on Green Lake, those funds will be starting to be spent down as we move through 2022 and 2023, and as other projects are now able to advance.

Next, please.

In this slide, you'll note that most of the library's levy under spend was in maintenance and technology capital improvement.

In both those areas, there are large multi-year projects with budget authority being front-loaded to allow the library to enter contracts when needed as it moves through construction planning or as it moves through technology roadmaps.

As described earlier, the labor shortages, supply chain issues, and other related construction delays may also result in some underspend as we move forward and has most certainly in the past.

The savings on the operation side does go into the levy fund balance.

Levy fund balance is used to address inflation that exceeds 4%, which was our levy planning assumption.

And of course, as everyone here knows, we are experiencing higher than 4% inflation at this time.

The levy fund balance also covers unexpected costs and other levy investment areas, for example, the need for increased security at branches during the pandemic and since, and also any unexpected damage or equipment failure that may occur.

Next, please.

And so here I've ended our presentation with a lot of quotes from patrons.

We are very fortunate to have patrons who reach out to us, as you know, for some things that they think might not be working well, but they're also very encouraging and enthusiastic in their support for us and send us very many, many kind messages that we do share with our staff when we receive them.

I'll take any questions you might have.

Tom, thank you so much for that presentation.

Council colleagues, does anyone have a question?

Council President Juarez.

Thank you.

I don't so much as a question, Mr. Chair, but I just want to thank Tom for stepping in after Marcellus left.

these last couple years for upping the hotspots, which was phenomenal.

I know we had the federal money as well that made a really big difference.

Eliminating the fines, updating the Wi-Fi and the technology.

the technology aspect of libraries.

And I'm really glad that you pointed out that library use is different in the south end than it is in the north end.

We've certainly seen that.

I think in my district, we have three libraries.

So, and also for the social worker that we have in the downtown branch.

So, you, like Parks, really saved the day in the last two years during the pandemic.

You guys came through Your staff did things that normally they would not do when they went to go work for a library and you guys did it and we worked well with your union to get it done.

So I just want to thank you for that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

Any other questions from council members?

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

I'm not sure where to look right now.

Thank you, Tom.

I do want to say thank you for the I'm not sure where I'm looking.

For the hot spots were really important, particularly in the South End.

You know, we have really terrible internet connection in the South End.

I'm not sure why.

And so it was important, especially for our students who eventually were able to get back into school.

to have access to that.

I think we all heard lots of stories about students sitting in grocery store parking lots so that they could do their homework.

And so those hotspots were really important.

I do want to ask you, we all know that libraries do so much more for our communities than just provide books.

People use them for school, for applying for jobs, you know, for community gathering, even as Council President Juarez alluded to, even as gathering spaces for during inclement weather.

So I wonder if you can talk about what lessons you may have learned about, you know, God forbid another worse variant comes through where there's some other disaster, but what is the library doing to prepare so that the next time we have some big exogenous shock like this, it is easier to continue service, to continue to provide access to all the resources that the library offers to our community?

Yes, I think the one major thing we learned, I think everyone learned, was that we weren't prepared for that work from home in a massive way, but then also supporting remote, not only remote workers, but our remote patrons or users.

And so one of the things that we've continued to build upon is hopefully build that capacity of having the ability to return to that moment if we have to.

As we developed our reopening plan at that point, that was my job before I took on this role, was getting everything reopened.

And one of the ways we structured it was working obviously with our staff, our managers, and our union or labor partners And creating a reopening process that was modular.

So, as we went forward.

We took steps and kind of a modular block forward so that if we had to move back, we could move back.

So we were really thoughtful in the way that we approached reopening so that if we had to move back into any phase, we could do that.

Realizing that we would have to move technology back or we'd have to move furniture, all of those things.

But we already knew what was going to be happening.

And we also knew that we could do it in bite-sized chunks that we could actually sustain and support if we had to move back in that process of moving forward.

So we've learned a lot.

I think the one thing that we're still both learning and developing is going to be how we develop the hybrid model further so that we can support patrons in the way that's most comfortable, most efficient or effective for them, but yet also still have those in-person sessions for those things that are really important to have that one-on-one time that sometimes can't be experienced in these formats.

So Tom, I'll jump in for a question real quick.

And I really appreciate this summary of the survey in particular.

I guess I'm going to look at the cameras as the place to orient myself here.

I wanted to go and ask, because one of the bullets that's pretty prominent in the survey results, although it's not indicated, I don't think in a chart reference in the presentation, is the preference on picking a day for closure, the exercise in the survey of picking a potential day for closure of Monday.

I guess I just want to ask, what is the library gonna use that information to inform?

Is that just sort of to gauge the volume of patron activity or is the library considering an exercise in truncating hours in certain times to expand access at other times?

So I think one of the things that we were doing is we were looking at either a Friday or a Monday type of situation.

And one of the reasons we were looking at that as we were crafting this, at about the times that the Clifford funds were being talked about, the federal funds for libraries to give us that boost to rehire those 60, almost 70 positions that we were reduced.

And we were looking at, okay, what happens if we have to go backwards in this and we can't actually sustain hours moving forward if these reductions stay in place.

And even as we move forward, knowing that budget reductions are always a potential reality, even as they might be this year.

We wanted to make sure that we had options so that if we can't move forward as far as we want to in either pre-pandemic services or even in expanded hours, that we're letting our public provide some input into that process of where we would make that selection.

And I think that's where we were going with it, just trying to have a good idea.

Most of it was really around the hours that would be more effective for patrons.

And most of them at one point, when we did the survey in 2018, there was more interest at night.

And now that has swung and there's more interest in morning hours.

We're taking that information and working with our scheduling folks at the library to figure out what our schedules might look like in a number of different scenarios.

And I appreciate that clarification.

Sorry, was there another from the council?

Sorry.

Sorry.

Did I interrupt a panelist on the computer?

I'm just trying to keep track of everyone that's presenting here.

I think.

Oh, Jan, go ahead.

Go ahead.

Sorry.

Our pre-pandemic schedule had nine branches closed on Fridays, so the question was in part about whether patrons preferred Friday closures to other days of the week.

So that was part of the question.

In addition to Tom's statements.

Thank you, Jan.

Great.

Okay.

Well, I don't have any questions myself.

Do council members have any additional questions?

Looks like not.

Thank you so much, Tom, for coming here and making your team available.

It was good to get this update and we will continue to have you guys in front of our committee as the library wants to come and join us.

It's always good to have you here presenting.

And with that item, colleagues, we don't have any additional business.

Are there any remarks for the good of the order?

Seeing none, I'm gonna go ahead and adjourn this meeting.

It is 3.44 p.m.

And it's good to be back.

Hey, good job.