Select Budget Committee Session I 10/2/20

Good morning, everyone.

Today is October 2nd, 2020. The Select Budget Committee meeting will come to order.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Select Budget Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Morales?

Here.

Peterson?

Here.

Sawant?

Here.

Strauss?

Present.

Gonzales?

Here.

Juarez?

Here.

Lewis?

Chair Mosqueda?

Present.

Eight present.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Nine present.

Thank you.

Thank you once again, council colleagues.

We have a full attendance today on our third day and final day of department presentations on the mayor's proposed 2021 budget.

I really appreciate all of your time.

I appreciate members of the executive team and of course our central staff our IT, our communications folks, the clerk's office, and all of your offices for engaging in these long days and very informative conversations.

Next week, I want to give you a preview.

We will turn to hear from members of the public, hearing from ideas from our community partners.

I know many of you have town halls.

I will be out in community doing some ride-alongs and shadowing.

of various vulnerable community services that are offered throughout Seattle, and we're really excited about bringing that lived experience from those who are on the front line providing services and those receiving services into our budget conversation.

I'm really excited about the ideas that we've already heard thus far.

I've been taking copious notes.

I know our team has as well.

Every time you indicate a possible interest in an idea or a question mark that you have, about the budget or future investments or changes.

We've been taking notes.

I want to thank you for signaling that interest and we will continue to build upon that throughout next week.

I want to remind folks that next Tuesday night at 5 30 p.m.

We will have our first of two long-form public hearings.

They begin at 5.30 p.m., and public testimony opportunity to sign up for that begins at 3.30 p.m., two hours in advance.

We're going to go as long as we need to to hear from as many people as possible.

And again, this will not be the only opportunity for you to provide public comment.

We have public comment every morning for at least a half an hour in the mornings, and we give folks a chance to either dial in then or at our public hearing forms again next Tuesday and then two weeks following on October 27th at 5.30 as well.

Next week as well is our opportunity to turn in what we call Form A's.

This is A, B, C, and this is our first form that gets turned in.

These are council members' opportunity to provide early indications of questions they have, directions they want to head in, concerns that they see with the proposed budget, and ideas that they'd like to propose.

Again, we will send you a memo on Monday morning with a summary of what to expect and how to fill out that Form A form if it's been the first time or just a reminder of what this year's process looks like.

Every Monday, we will endeavor to give you an update on what's coming up in the budget process.

And so I just wanted to give you a preview of those items coming up next week.

Over the past few days, we've had the chance to hear from members within the executive's cabinet and talk to stakeholders as well via calls and messages we've received, direct conversations.

I know some of your town halls have already started.

And we've heard from community about the urgent need.

We've heard also from stewards of public service within our departments about the way that they're working to address the immediate crises and the crises that are being presented through the COVID response, the economic crisis, the civil rights uprising, and the need to continue to invest in true community safety.

This morning, we continue those conversations.

We will hear about the crisis that has been present in our community for the last five years.

As a reminder, we've had a declared state of emergency on homelessness and affordable housing over five years now.

This afternoon, in our session two, we will pivot and we will talk to two different departments about very important priorities on other safety measures, and that relates to our infrastructure.

Safety in our infrastructure will be the focus of the Seattle Department of Transportation's work as they focus on transit, transportation, and infrastructure, and also looking at what is going on currently with the bridge and Pier 58. We also know that there is a critical need for people to be able to do outside activities and truly enjoy green spaces.

Very much looking forward to hearing more from our Parks Department.

I know Director Aguirre is with us this morning and will again be with us this afternoon as we look directly at how our Parks Departments are responding to the need to be able to provide safe places for folks, provide opportunities for folks to get clean and showered, which we really appreciate for our community.

centers, and also they too have been dealing with the need to make sure that there's safe places for people to stay sheltered and appreciate their participation this morning.

Colleagues, we really appreciate your feedback.

We've received some so far, but if you have questions, ideas for this process, as the budget process is still just beginning, please do reach out to my office.

Stage of Break Chief of Staff has been tremendous about talking to many of your offices repeatedly, and we continue to look for ways to endeavor to make this process transparent, hold ourselves accountable, and to make sure it's an inclusive process for the public and all of you.

At this time, if there's no comments on that preview of next week, we will go into public comment.

At this moment, it looks like there is nobody signed up for public comment, and I'm just looking for confirmation that no one last minute has signed up.

Okay.

Confirmed, nobody has signed up.

Thank you very much, son.

We appreciate you monitoring that.

And I want to thank you all again for continuing to make public comment a possible venue on these online forums.

Folks, if you didn't get a chance to sign up for public comment, we look forward to hearing from you next Tuesday, 5.30 p.m.

Public comment signup starts at 3.30.

At this point, public comment is closed and we will move on to our items of business on today's agenda.

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

agenda item one, citywide homelessness response for briefing and discussion.

Well, thank you all very much.

We have a full table, a virtual table here with us today.

I will read off some of the names I have and we may have more people that have joined us this morning as well.

Thank you very much, Deputy Mayor Sixkiller.

I see you on the line here.

We have Tess Colby from the mayor's office as well.

Again, Interim Director Jason Johnson, who we heard from yesterday.

Joseph Kaspersky, and Diana Salazar from the Human Services Department as well.

Mimi Hara, the Director of Seattle Public Utilities.

Jesus Aguirre, Director of Seattle Parks and Recreations.

Julie Dingley, hi Julie, I see you up there, from the City's Budget Office.

And of course, our steward of this conversation, Director Ben Noble.

Good morning, everybody.

Thank you so much for being here.

I'm going to turn it over to Councilmember Lewis, and also I will ask Councilmember Herbold after him as this relates to both areas.

Councilmember Lewis, as the chair of this committee that relates to addressing the homelessness crisis, I'd love to turn it to you for any opening remarks.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and it's good to be here this morning to begin this really critical conversation about the most pressing issue the city is facing.

And, you know, I think that's really saying something in a year like 2020. But, you know, in a year that has seen four declarations of states of civil emergency, the one that we began with in 2020 and that we will still have on the other side of 2020, is the massive crisis we're facing around homelessness in the city of Seattle.

And it is by far the issue that My office, and I'm sure I speak for a number of us, continue to hear the most constituent concern about.

It is the thing that I think really impacts and affects all of the other policy discussions we're having whenever we talk about public health.

It is a massive consideration that we have so many people living on shelter in the city of Seattle.

When we were talking about climate change and the massive influx of smoke and the hazard that that exposes people who are living on shelter to, disproportionate to everyone else, we talk about chronic homelessness.

When we talk about people having a place to isolate and secure in place during COVID-19, it puts the conversation about homelessness at the forefront.

I think it also really puts front and center, and as we will see in the presentation, the amount of additional money from the state and federal government that we have been spending on emergency response to homelessness, that failure to successfully implement a housing first strategy at scale is going to have massive long-term emergency triage cost going forward to constantly try to get people into shelter temporarily to avoid exposure to some of these hazards.

And that is an expense that governments are going to be incurring unless we can get a handle on this and have a housing first approach.

And that's something, reading between the lines of the presentation, that I think is only going to get worse with future pandemics and future climate emergency.

So some of the things that we're going to see in the presentation from reviewing the materials and talking to the executives, you know, there will be new resources for longer term shelter, rapid rehousing, hotelling, and permanent supportive housing.

There is also going to be some new proposals and new reforms and how the city can adjust its outreach strategy to respond to some of the longtime community criticisms and concerns around the navigation team and how the navigation team has that will be used as an outreach strategy.

And that will be included in the presentation as well.

So with that, I have a lot of questions, but I want to sequence them as we go through the presentation.

And I think I'll leave it at that for the opening remarks and just look forward to hearing from the executive panel and from everybody here.

Thank you very much, Council Member Lewis.

I'm looking forward to hearing your questions as well.

I want to say thank you to councilmember Lewis and councilmember Herbold as our lead on homelessness response for the council.

I really appreciated your opening comments and I think we look forward to learning more as well from your questions.

I was reminded that I remember that councilmember Herbold does have HSD in her department but those are non-homelessness related issues so we are going to turn it directly over to deputy mayor Sixkiller.

Thank you Councilmember Mosqueda.

Good morning Councilmembers.

We're here to discuss Mayor Durkan's homelessness response proposal for 2021. Thank you for inviting us to speak today.

Mayor Durkan's 2021 budget is an investment in a framework to help people move from homelessness to housing.

It maintains de-intensified shelter spaces to help slow the spread of COVID-19.

It takes a next step in the city's COVID response by creating more safe spaces, investing in both hotel rooms and enhanced shelter.

which are connected to increased rapid rehousing dollars in PSH units.

It coordinates homeless outreach and increases diversion services to help people living unsheltered connect to safer shelter and move into housing.

Today, we're going to discuss the following.

We're going to provide a brief summary of the citywide homelessness spending and then do a deeper dive on the HSD components of the 2021 homelessness budget in HSD by fund source, summary budget programs and changes to the homelessness budget in comparison to the 2020 adopted budget.

We'll talk about our ongoing COVID-19 response, which I think is important foundation for following us on what we're proposing for 2021. as well as the following up on that, providing more detail of our announcement yesterday about 2021 investments in emergency shelter and prevention investments, our outreach strategy for 2021, as well as provide an update on the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, and of course, our racial equity impacts for 2021 investments.

We've tried to streamline our presentation in order to try to get through it because I'm sure that many of you have lots of questions.

You want to make sure that we are able to respond to those this morning.

Council Member Mosqueda, I don't know if it's possible, but if we could try to get through our presentation and then take questions, I think that might be the best way.

But of course, defer to you on whether you'd like us to stop slide-by-slide and take questions.

But with that, we're delighted to be here and we're ready to get going.

Thank you very much, Deputy Mayor.

And colleagues, as we've done in the past, please do save sort of your longer comments for the end, but happy to entertain clarifying questions throughout.

I think it helps inform our understanding of the material and the data in front of us.

So thank you very much.

Please do raise your hand if you have something you want to ask.

Let's continue.

Great.

Well, we can go to the first slide.

Thank you so much.

Good morning, council members.

It's a pleasure to be with you this morning.

We wanted to start this conversation off by anchoring and where we've been and where we're going with respect to the city's overall homelessness investments.

You have seen a version of this chart over the last couple of years and most recently, I think, in June.

But as a reminder, these amounts are the citywide total spending for homelessness and include investments from 11 city departments.

For 2021, the proposed budget invests 151.7 million in homelessness response with 39.3 million in one time COVID-19 relief funds primarily from the federal government.

We'll get into specifics in that throughout the presentation.

Overall, this is an increase of nearly 42 and a half million over 2020 adopted or nearly 40% and is more than double our investments from 2017. For the purposes of today's conversation, we're going to focus on where there has been a significant incremental change in funding or a change in policy.

We're not intending to highlight all of the areas of spending.

So not all 11 city departments spending.

So if policy has remained unchanged or funding has remained unchanged, we're not intending to touch on that today, but we could certainly get back to you if you have specific questions.

So first we're going to dig into the changes in HSD's budget.

You can go to the next slide.

So this is zooming in as a portion of that overall 151.7 spending, HSD manages and invest the lion's share at 135.2 million in the proposed budget.

Of that amount, as I said, 39.3 is from one time COVID relief.

And those funding sources are broken out in this pie, the smaller pie to the right.

So this is comprised of 23.5 million from emergency services grant.

This is a federal grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The majority of this 26 million, so sorry, 3 million of this award.

Sorry, let me back up.

Overall, the award to the city was $26 million.

3 million of it is in the third quarter supplemental, so for 2020 use, and 23 million is represented here.

Julie?

Yes.

Just, sorry, please continue on that slide, but I know that Council Member Lewis does have a question, and it might relate to this slide or the previous slide.

I'm sorry, Council Member Peterson.

No, it is me.

Oh, good.

Okay.

Madam Chair, thank you.

Happy to answer any questions.

Yeah, Julie, if we could just go back to the last slide, please.

I just want to ask some clarifying questions here because I'm sure that many members of the viewing public as well as folks on the council would be interested in a few clarifications on the emergency bracket here.

What does that encompass?

Is that like 911 response services?

Is it like EMTs and police, fire, or is it something else?

And then how broad, for my second question, how broad is the housing and prevention?

Are those like permanent supportive housing investments, or does that include shelter system, tiny houses, and transitional placements?

Great question.

I'm happy to clarify.

Thank you very much for that question.

We started defining the homelessness investments outside of the human services department a couple of years ago, and are defining criteria were would this service exist, but for.

the homelessness crisis.

So is the homelessness crisis the reason why these services are here?

So using that lens, we don't include 911 calls because that service would exist with or without a homelessness crisis.

So this in particular in the emergency category, we're talking about unsheltered response, outreach and permitting, I'm sorry, outreach contracts, shelter, hygiene, and day centers, transitional housing, and villages, and other non-congregate shelter.

And then in the housing bucket in particular, we have our diversion and prevention dollars, housing resource center at OH.

We have the permanent supportive housing services dollars.

We don't count the capital investments in here, but we have the services dollars there.

And then we also have rapid rehousing.

I appreciate that clarification.

I think it is interesting just to make an observation this early that, you know, since 2017, the housing interventions appear to, or funding, has remained mostly consistent, but the emergency funding has gone way up, which is just an interesting, I think, comment on, you know, more broadly some of the interventions that we need to see in housing and prevention to maybe prevent the need for some of the emergency investments.

But I do appreciate the clarification that emergency includes transitional shelter.

I think I heard you say that.

So the tiny house villages, the 24-7 enhanced shelters, those would be emergency investments under this chart.

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you, Julie.

Please continue.

Of course.

So we just talked about the $23.5 million from the emergency services grant, the ESG dollars.

And then there's also on this pie in the darker blue that you see here is 5.85 million from the third and final allocation.

We finally got it from the federal government, from the CARES Act.

This is CDBG, Community Development Block Grant dollars.

These funds were awarded late to the city.

And so they're factored in to our So we're going to have to work with the council on a technical amendment to get those dollars in there.

But so just so you know, if you're looking to compare to the budget book versus what we're presenting here today, And then finally, there's $10 million here and this is from the joint $45 million COVID-19 relief spending plan that was agreed to between the council members and the mayor.

And just as a reminder, that's made up of $8 million for rental assistance and $2 million to support additional shelter support.

So the HSD team is going to get into all the specifics of how these dollars are going to be spent.

I do want to just reiterate a note that Director Noble made in his introductory presentation to you all on Wednesday, that the 2021 budget does not rely on FEMA reimbursement.

We have received revised guidance from FEMA that we don't feel comfortable projecting reimbursements into 2021, so we haven't done so.

We are reading their guidance, which is stating that they want us to shift funding onto other eligible federal funding sources.

So the budget's doing just that.

So we are shifting onto ESG and CDBG to support those costs that we had otherwise been supported with FEMA reimbursement in 2020.

Really do a question on that.

Do you not feel comfortable including FEMA reimbursement dollars in 2021 because you don't know if it will come in 2021 or you don't know how much it will be?

So the guidance that we've received from the feds at this point is that they have sort of removed an end date from FEMA for reimbursement for the emergency window that they will actually entertain eligible expenses.

And instead it's reliant upon the public health date, which is only extended in 90 day increments.

And so at this point, given all that we know and what we're hearing from our experts and our team in Office of Emergency Management, we're just not comfortable forecasting that FEMA itself will be entertaining eligible costs past the end of 2020. that could change in the next month, but we will keep you posted.

We will keep advocating for that.

Yeah.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Joe Kaspersky, who's HSC's Chief Financial Officer, who's going to walk through all the specifics of changes in some budget structure and the specifics on the spending.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

Next slide, please.

Thank you, Julie, and good morning to everyone and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to introduce HSD's proposed homeless investment strategy for fiscal year 21. As a brief introduction, I am Joe Kaspersky and I've had the privilege of being selected as the chief financial officer for HSD in February.

And I am looking forward to supporting you and your staff as we open up the next chapter in our continued efforts in ensuring all the people of Seattle are housed.

The fiscal year 21 proposed budget reflects the passion and priority of the city to end homelessness.

This year's budget proposal continues the momentum and the funding sources we have gained in fiscal year 20 in responding to the COVID pandemic.

We will be seeking your support and endorsement of the $135.2 million proposed budget, which is comprised of a $75.9 million commitment from the city's general fund, and an anticipated $59.3 million from external funding sources.

This proposal also reflects navigation of the formal elimination of seven positions and the transfer of six pockets to the proposed safety community division that was introduced yesterday by Director Johnson and will be discussed in subsequent slides.

Pending no further questions, introduced, and I will turn over the presentation to Director Johnson to discuss and guide you through the details of the budget.

Thank you for this opportunity and time.

Thank you, Joe.

I do want to ask a question that I believe you already covered, but can you tell us how much of this budget then parallels to other investments we're making in the regional authority?

Is there a complimentary amount that we are reserving for regional authority investment?

Yes.

As the transition occurs during fiscal year 21 for the regional authority, if I understand your question correctly, we are committing of this $120.4 million will be managed by King County Regional Housing Authority.

The transition, of course, has been delayed due to our efforts and focus both not only by the city, but by King County on responding to all the pandemics and crisis that we've witnessed during this past year.

That transfer is anticipated to occur during the first period of fiscal year 21.

So, and Council Member Lewis, I apologize for not asking this question in advance as well from you.

I have not had the chance to get briefed on this.

I see Deputy Mayor Sixkiller as well on video.

So if you have anything to add to this, I just want to make sure that I understood.

120.4 million of the 151.7 at some point would transition to the regional authority when that authority is stood up.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

Thank you.

This is Jason Johnson with the Human Services Department.

If we could go to the next slide.

And Jason, just a very quick- This is where we're going to- for just very quickly on that.

I'm so sorry.

I get the delay.

Everything's been just thrown out of any sort of plan that we had prior to COVID.

I absolutely understand that.

Do we have a general sense of what the new estimated date for the regional authority may be in 2021?

Yeah, so as Deputy Mayor Sixkiller mentioned, we're going to cover a number of topics in this presentation.

And the King County Regional Homeless Authority is one of those topics.

And so I plan to review the standup activities that have occurred to date, the timeline for hiring a CEO, the delay of both the transition of investments and staffing to a unknown date at this point, which will, you know, but I plan on going into those details later on in the program.

That's helpful.

Thank you for pulling that up.

I know that you do have a slide on the 20.4.

It's towards the end.

So I just wanted to orient us though as to when and if that may happen.

But it sounds like you're going to cover it in detail.

So thank you for highlighting that as a framing piece.

Did you have anything else to add on this?

I know you're also a member of that committee.

I was just going to say, I think Jason's going to cover it a little later, but there has been sort of a, as a reminder to colleagues, both Council Member Lewis and I serve, representing the Seattle City Council on the King County Regional Homeless Authority Governing Committee.

It's a mouthful.

And we've had lots of conversations in public meetings about some of these delays.

I would say that it's twofold.

One is certainly because of the need to shift resources over to COVID and the regional response to that.

But there's also been some delay related to finding and standing up the search for the CEO.

And there were also some issues related to the lived experience folks not having the infrastructure in terms of staffing and resources needed in order for them to continue to meaningfully engage in some of the important issues moving forward.

All of that to being said is that there's sort of a mixture of factors that have led to a little bit of delay in terms of setting up the RHA, but I continue to have confidence that we're on the right track and on the right path to being able to do that pretty close to when the original timeline was set.

We're hoping that sometime within the first quarter, in fact, of 2021, we'll be able to have a clearer sense of who the leader will be for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, which is the next step that we need to take in order to really stand up that effort.

But if I misstated anything or overstated something, Director Johnson will be at the ready to provide us additional details.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council President.

And thank you for representing us along with Council Member Lewis on the RHA.

Thank you for that framing.

That's very helpful context.

I appreciate it.

Okay.

Director Johnson I'll turn it back over to you.

Right.

Thank you so much and good morning.

Good to be with you.

First I want to acknowledge that there is a change to how we've packaged this year but this year's budget by program area.

So you'll be seeing this sort of packaged differently than you have in 2020 or in years past.

So in 2020 and in previous years, HSD budgeted, HSD's budget for homeless investments was bucketed into three programs, shelter and housing, homeless prevention and support, and the navigation team.

In 2021, HSD's budget will be reorganized to address the transition of homeless services to the King County Regional Homeless Authority and to show the budget that will remain at the Human Services So what you'll see here, there are four program areas within HSD's Addressing Homelessness Budget Summary Level, or BSL.

Three will stay with the City of Seattle and be administered by the Human Services Department.

Those include city-managed homeless programs, such as Healthcare for the Homeless, which is funded through our contract with Public Health, housing opportunities for people living with AIDS, This is a federal grant that is is managed by the Human Services Department currently and will continue to be managed by the department.

And then also funding to support operations of the Housing Connector Program.

So you know just a small number of programs that will continue to be managed inside the department.

Wanted to call those out here.

There will be some contract oversight and administration budget, HSD administration, that's staffing and internal operations.

We will continue to hold the addressing homelessness budget and will, when the regional authority is ready, enter into a contract for a majority of our contracts and investments to address homelessness with the regional authority.

And we need a team to stay in the human services to manage those contracts, manage that relationship with the regional authority, and to be in partnership in planning the city's investments, the city's efforts to address homelessness with the regional authority.

And then also unsheltered outreach and response.

So this is a homeless outreach team that we will talk about in a slide to come.

And this is $1.3 million to support that outreach team.

And this is also the PDA's lead contract.

That contract totaling $6.2 million will continue to be managed by the Human Services.

The King County Regional Homeless Authority Program shows the budget that will be contracted to this new entity when it becomes operational in 2021. So as I mentioned, HSD will hold a contract with the regional authority for program investments and regional authority administration, staffing and operations.

The full budget, which again includes administration, contracts, and one-time COVID funds will all be sent to the regional authority when it's ready via a contract between the regional authority and the city.

Of the $120.4 million budgeted in 2021, $39.3 million is one-time COVID funds.

$81.1 million is the base funding amount.

I think it's important to call this out because the $120 million is not something that can be sustained at this point.

And just want to recognize that the roughly $80 million, $81.1 million is the base fund amount that we can expect to continue and to be contracted with the regional authority over a longer period of time.

So today we'll focus on, as Julie mentioned, some of the changes that are occurring, either from a budget or policy perspective.

And those focus areas will really center on shelter, outreach, COVID-19 response, and the King County Regional Homeless Authority.

Because these programs really have a large budget and programmatic changes that we wanna make sure that we're going through with you.

All right next slide.

Okay so this slide there is a $45.15 million increase to the homelessness budget.

As mentioned $39.3 of this is one-time emergency COVID response resources.

$10 million of that is city COVID relief.

That includes $8 million in rent assistance and $2 million for shelter provider support.

There is $23.5 million in ESG.

As Julie mentioned, $3 million of this $26 million grant is going to be allocated in 2020. And then $5.9 million of this $39.3 million is coming from the Community Development Block Grant.

This budget includes 2.75 in ongoing general fund to support shelter programs.

It also includes 1.5 million to continue one-time funded programs that were funded in 2020 with one-time funding.

We're continuing 1.5.

million dollars worth of those programs.

And those are, you know, for example, those programs such as a homeless center operations, some homeless shelter programs, as well as homeless outreach.

And then finally, this includes $1.6 million to provide the 1.9% contract inflation I mentioned this yesterday, but important to state that the inflationary adjustment will transfer to the King County Regional Homeless Authority when we transition those contracts over to the regional authority.

So important to just restate that the 1.9% contract inflation rate will be added to HSD contracts and those contract amounts will be

I think it is important to make sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that we are making sure that And I do think that this is a really important way for us to help not only create stability within those organizations, but also to address the cost of living in our area for some of these service providers that we know are on the lower end of the wage scale.

So we really appreciate it and their skills are incredibly valuable.

So thank you for highlighting that component.

Great, thank you.

I appreciate your leadership on this issue.

So we're also transferring 976,000 of budget from the navigation team to the safe and thriving communities division, along with four positions repurposed in the new division.

There were also some reductions, $1.3 million in reductions to meet city budget constraints.

There is a reduction to the continuum of care administrative funding.

This is funding that supports all home staffing, supports our homeless management information system, and coordinated entry.

There was also a reduction to the Scoff Law Parking Mitigation Program.

There was one-time funding for that program in 2020 that we are not continuing in 2021. In 2021 the part-time outreach staff case management and financial assistance for this Scoff Law Parking Mitigation Program will be merged into the Urban League general outreach contract.

Again, not the funding, but the programming that is in place through our contract with the Urban League.

This should streamline activities and reduce administrative costs and service duplication.

There have been some operational difficulties between parties, and to date, the program has not contributed to housing outcomes or referrals into safe parking programs.

The activities funded through the $100,000 contract do not directly add to those outcomes and therefore should not result in a service reduction.

I do want to also highlight that the 21 budget does abrogate seven vacant positions.

And so these seven vacant positions in the Homeless Strategy and Investment Division are part of the overall budget reduction in the homelessness BSL.

Next slide.

Okay.

So the $41.3 million in regional investments to meet public health and CDC guidelines and reduce the spread of COVID-19 with $38.3 million in one-time funding.

We have been able to really focus on reducing the spread of COVID-19 among our homeless neighbors and through the shelter network.

We were, as you recall this year, able to open 95 new shelter units this spring.

We relocated over 350 beds to de-intensify shelter spaces, congregate shelter spaces.

We were able to maintain shelter services and contract flexibility.

We did this through, I think the best example of this is the partnership that we had with King County to shelter people in hotels.

HSD changed our contracts to allow city service dollars to follow clients who were sheltered in hotel rooms often outside of Seattle.

That flexibility that we were able to make available to providers in partnership with King County really allowed that hotel effort, that regional hotel effort to be successful.

We helped providers create safer spaces and maintain changes through the pandemic and increase prevention and rental assistance.

Council has already voted on or seen all of these investments, but I just think it's really important to highlight that the efforts that are in the 2021 budget really build on the work that was conducted this year during the pandemic.

I do also want to just highlight that There are $3 million to stand up new non-congregate shelter and hotel capacity.

We mentioned that $3 million of the $26 million ESG grant was going to be used in 2020. And this is a new investment that will begin in 2020. And this should add new shelter capacity in some hotel rooms that we do expect to be online by the end of 2020. The city is currently looking at several properties and partnerships that could host shelters.

And we were able to make that announcement of the new shelter capacity just yesterday.

It's critical to continue to support agencies in sustaining these changes.

in 2021 so that our community can safely shelter people experiencing homelessness through the pandemic.

And we'll go into a little bit more detail in future slides about what that looks like.

But I think that what you're seeing from the mayor's 2021 budget and what the human services department has been working on and working on in close partnership with all of our community providers is that we have currently a shelter system that has just under 1,500 beds, to be specific, 1,479 shelter beds.

We expect to have just over 1,700 beds available by the end of 2020. These are not all online at this point, but we do expect to create additional shelter capacity.

The 2021 budget builds on these amounts and will add more hotel units, more rapid rehousing vouchers, and more diversion investments.

So I think overall, it's really important to know that what the 21 budget calls out is an intentional effort to maintain what we're doing during the COVID pandemic.

build additional shelter capacity so that we can get our unsheltered neighbors indoors safely, and build on opportunities to increase throughput out of shelter and into housing through the addition of rapid rehousing and through a very intentional connection to the permanent supportive housing units that will come on the pier.

Dr. Johnson, thank you very much.

Before we transition to the slides on 2021, I just wanted to follow up on a question that I asked Director Noble on Wednesday and I think that we thought it might be a more appropriate question for this presentation.

I did have a question come from some community partners about the $26.5 million in new CARES Act funding and a concern that they wanted to know how stakeholders or I should say frontline providers might be involved in the conversation about how to allocate those dollars to the expansion for shelter.

Could you tell us if that's reflected here and what that process looks like?

It is reflected here.

And I would say that that process has been a continued dialogue and conversation between Diana Salazar, who's on with us today, She is the Division Director for the Homeless Strategy and Investment Division.

She and her team have been in continuous dialogue with our contracted agency providers.

And, you know, starting in March, it has been a very intentional effort to be in dialogue with our community-based organization to so that we can understand what their needs are understand and support changes that they needed to make to programming in order to make spaces safe to make sure that they had the PPE that they needed to ensure that services such as food delivery and others are in place.

And so there's been a continuous engagement with community providers as we've combated the COVID-19 pandemic.

I would say specifically about looking forward and looking into 2021, that conversation really started through the RFP that took place in allocating 2021 COVID emergency COVID response dollars.

And that effort was a very intentional engagement with providers.

And it was really trying to look at program by program, shelter by shelter, what needs do you have currently?

What expenses have you already, you know, used in order to make sure that the guests at each shelter are safe?

And looking at the future, what is needed to continue or maintain and sustain those efforts?

Likewise, what additional ideas, what additional help would be needed to build on the success that we've had in 2020?

And so I'm really proud of Diana and her team.

They've done an incredible job to stay in communication with our contracted providers, to stay in communication, daily communication with the folks at King County Department of Community and Human Services.

and to stay in regular communication with public health.

So I would say the engagement is deep.

It is continuous.

It is daily, weekly.

And so I hope that answers the question, but I see the engagement that has been taking place as one that is ever present.

Thank you, Director Johnson.

I appreciate that there has been regular engagement.

I guess what I'm hearing from stakeholders is concern that it hasn't been like a coordinated body to identify what was needed early.

How do we invest in where there's holes in the system?

How are we coordinating among various entities?

And I just flagged that and perhaps it's a conversation to have offline with Ms. Salazar and I think as it relates to the budget, if there is any sort of coordination effort or investment that we need to make for those community partners so that there is a table that people are getting that regular feedback to you and having frontline providers give real-time and real-life experience about what the need is, especially as COVID I think hearing some of those concerns makes me ask the question about whether or not there's anything else we need to do in the budget to really support that coordination and engagement.

And if you have thoughts on that, that's great.

Now, I appreciate that engagement has been done, but if there's a way to make it more coordinated is is the concern that I'm hearing.

Yeah, thank you.

And I think there's always more that we can do to be better coordinated with our community partners and with with King County.

Leo Flohr, director of DCHS and I, last year really stood up a forum with executive directors of contracted agencies in the city and outside of the city.

And, you know, this, in spring, we really had to pivot from a conversation about the regional authority to continuous conversations about our response to COVID-19.

And Leo and I have sort of reconvened that group specifically around the regional authority.

And I think that's a really good space for these regional conversations to take place.

We did hold a meeting last month.

We talked at a pretty high level about ESG specifically.

And what I can share with you is the strategies for how we are going to be using ESG as outlined in the 2021 budget at the City of Seattle is in alignment with how the county is going to be using their ESG dollars in 2021. So really focused on non-congregate shelter but most importantly focusing on rapid rehousing and housing throughput out of shelters that have been set up.

Thank you.

Vice Chair Hurdle.

Thank you.

Director Johnson, last time you and I spoke about adding non-congregate shelter, hoteling, I recall you telling me that the most significant challenge in a city doing more to support that model was staffing in our provider community.

Can you talk a little bit about that and how we think we're going to be able to address it?

Thank you.

It is something I am always, always worried about.

I know that especially this year during the COVID-19 pandemic, our community-based organizations are stretched.

And, you know, as we looked at our response to COVID, as we looked to the short-term but important response to air quality, and climate change, we, you know, again, as we continuously engage with our community partners, we're hearing from them that they are really at capacity.

And so what we're going to do in relation to these new shelter efforts, and I'll go into a little bit more detail about exactly what those efforts will look like, but there is, we're going to ask.

So, you know, typically we run an RFP, sometimes RFPs can be a lengthy process, but we're really going to conduct a, expedited proposal gathering process to say, OK, you know, we want to add capacity to shelter.

Who has the availability and expertise to be the service providers in those spaces?

So it is something, as I discussed with you, you know, quite openly and transparently that I am worried about.

Again, the provider community is stretched and we've asked a lot of them.

They have really stepped up and continue to do amazing work.

But we need to, once again, ask for their help and see who's in a position with additional resources to step in and be the service providers of these new shelters.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Okay, Director Johnson.

Thank you.

Please continue.

Yeah, I think the next slide I'm handing things over to Director Hara to talk about the COVID-19 response as it relates to hygiene services and clean up.

Hello, council members.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak about our COVID-related hygiene response.

During a pandemic response, the city had to close or curtail hours at several facilities that offered public restrooms.

So understanding the importance of public health during the pandemic and a concurrent outbreak of hepatitis A, we placed 15 hygiene stations throughout Seattle, with each station comprised of one ADA compliant restroom, one standard restroom, and one hand washing station.

SPU works with parks on daily inspections and with vendors to serve and clean the facilities at least twice per day.

SPU prototyped two types of hand-washing stations in May.

On the heels of that work, we designed and ordered 15 hand-washing stations, and those stations have larger storage tanks that allow us to save on servicing costs, among other improvements.

Each station costs $11,000 to rent per year for an annual total of 17 I mean, 170,000 for all of the hand-washing stations.

It will cost approximately 120,000 to purchase all 15 hand-washing stations.

And we estimate the break-even point at eight months.

The last 13 stations should be delivered before the end of the year.

And we want to thank Parks and HSD for their leadership and partnership on this work.

The mayor's 2021 proposed budget includes approximately 1.5 million of new budget for this program.

Additionally, SPU manages shower trailers to supplement the city's currently open supply of showers for people experiencing homelessness.

We are currently providing services at King Street Station, Seattle Center, and Green Lake Community Center.

and looking to reestablish a site at the University District as well.

Weekly shower counts have been increasing at an average rate of 6% per week since the beginning of June.

At this point, from September 22nd through September 28th, for that model week, we averaged over 120 showers per day.

And through September 28th, we have provided more than 8,500 showers to people experiencing homelessness and estimate that we will provide more than 17,000 showers by December.

And this effort is an interdepartmental partnership that includes Department of Neighborhoods, HSD, Parks, and of course, SPU.

I also want to mention that we partnered with Kappa Alpha Psi, a global and historically African-American fraternity at the University of Washington.

The fraternity gathered new underclothes and other clean clothing and gave them to people experiencing homelessness at the Seattle Center shower site.

And we hope for further partnerships and donations in this area of great need.

Over time, we've brought the cost of rental for showers down to $50 a day per stall.

And we are currently transitioning to an ownership model that will allow for a break-even point after about five to six months of ownership.

As with the sinks, Seattle couldn't find a shower trailer model that was sufficiently durable and reliable to meet the volume and needs of guests.

So we have prototyped a shower design and they are currently in production.

The mayor's 2021 proposed budget includes approximately 4.8 million of new budget for this program.

And lastly, the 2021 proposed budget maintains $2 million in base funding for SPU's cleanup work, supporting those folks living unsheltered.

Those services include our RV remediation program, encampment purple bag program, litter abatement, and needle pickup programs.

And it also transfers $1.3 million from FAS to manage a cleanup contract.

As a transfer that funding is not included in our tally of new money.

The use of those transferred funds will include supporting cleaning on difficult terrain and hazardous waste and materials collection and disposal.

Thank you.

Thank you very much Director Hara.

I think there might be a few questions.

Two that I have very briefly.

You mentioned that you're looking to expand in the University District.

I just want to double check.

I believe I heard that that was included correct.

in the 2021 budget for a hygiene center there.

Yes, it is.

We are looking to include University Heights.

Okay, thank you.

I know there's a few folks who would like to speak.

Council Member Morales, I believe I had you listed first.

Council Member Herbold, would you like to as well?

Okay, thank you.

Oh, Council Member Morales, we cannot hear you.

Is that better?

Yes, that works.

So I have a quick question, which is just how many encampments does the purple program purple bag program serve?

And can you talk about whether there is a path forward for regular trash pickup similar to what regular residential services are?

And if so, how much would such a service cost?

Sure, I'll start off the answer and then I'll ask Idris Beauregard to jump in with any further detail that you might want.

Overall, we have served 51 unsanctioned encampments with our purple bag program.

We currently have a regular roster of 17 sites that we are serving with the program.

I believe that the cost of expanding the program would be approximately $15,000 per site per year for the collection and outreach activities.

And that would include the services from the Hepatitis Education Project.

Idrees, would you like to add any details that I may have gotten wrong or missed?

Hello, uh, good morning.

Thank you, mommy.

I think you've captured that pretty well.

And council member Morales, uh, in relation to your question about what would the path look like moving forward about providing a more, um, stabilized type of trash mitigation service, like you said, as residential homes receive, that would be something we would have to really take a deeper dive into and look at what those costs look like.

compared to our encampment purple bag trash program, which is voluntary.

We got contractors going in, outreach contractors to provide those services.

So, something down the road we can look at more in depth if that's something you'd like us to do.

That's my morale.

Yeah, thank you.

I appreciate that.

And then the last question on showers and hygiene, has the city looked at opening new permanent spaces or expanding, for example, urban rest stop services and why or why not?

Thank you.

I don't know if other department directors would like to jump into this answer about permanent hygiene facilities.

We have definitely had a lot of planning discussions around the use of existing facilities or the expansion of permanent facilities and would look forward to further engagement on that issue.

Good morning.

Hi, it's Jason and I wanted to just highlight that the Current support for hygiene services, such as those offered through the urban rest stop, as well as hygiene services that exist inside of day centers, you know, our shelters are included in the $120 million that you'll see in the King County Regional Homeless Authority dollar amount.

At this point, we have not expanded those services, but we, through the 2021 budget, were able to hold harmless any reductions or cuts to those programs.

Council Member Morales, any follow-up?

No, thank you very much.

Okay.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

As it relates to this slide.

First of all good to see you Director Hara and good to good to hear you Idris.

Really appreciate all the work that you guys have been doing in developing this really important element as part of SPU's work.

Very not non-traditional pairing but really appreciated that you stepped into this area.

It's so so important starting with the Purple Bag Program and RV remediation and now moving into these portable hygiene investments.

Just a question, we of course know that there has been a rental of mobile showers as well as hand washing stations and porta-potties.

So, just what is the plan as envisioned by the council this time last year for the purchase of mobile pit stops?

I know there was, of course, an issue with one of the providers no longer constructing them.

They are not the only provider.

And do we envision a time at which we are going to move from renting these facilities to owning these facilities?

And if so, does the 2021 budget include funding to staff and operate them?

That's my first question.

And my other question relates to permanent handwashing stations.

The slide notes that SPU is in the process of buying those.

Is the idea to supplement the current stations and expand the number or is this a replacement of ones that have been currently purchased?

And then lastly, the budget includes $2 million for STU cleanup work and $1.3 million to manage a cleanup contract.

Can you compare that level of not just funding, but the level of service to 2020 for us?

Thank you.

Sure, I might have to ask you to repeat some of the questions, but to start with the first one about moving to an ownership model.

Yes.

You used the term pit stop, and so I don't know if that is synonymous with shower trailers that also include a bathroom unit, or if you're thinking about something on a more expanded level.

Could you clarify that for me before I give you the wrong answer?

Sure, the mobile pit stop, their shower and bathroom units, I think some of them might have, from my understanding, the provider that we were exploring last year, they're very much built to order.

So they have the components that the folks buying them want them to have, but at minimum, they typically have showers and bathrooms.

Okay, thank you very much.

One clarification I want to provide is the council's proviso, though, did not spoke specifically to bathrooms and not to the shower component.

So I do think that's an an important operational distinction between the two.

Just for full disclosure.

Okay.

So we are moving to an ownership model with the shower trailers.

As I noted in my comments, we have had a great deal of difficulty finding a prototype that meets the really robust needs that are generated from the high volume of folks who are now using the showers.

And, you know, a lot of the units that are available in the market just aren't built for that kind of use.

So our planning and our project design group actually prototyped a new model and has been working with a local manufacturer to, you know, develop and test that prototype.

And we've ordered two And when we expect that once they are delivered, that the payback period, if you compare the cost of those new units to rental, they will be paid off within somewhere between five to six months.

So they should provide a very good value and also provide much better service to the folks that we are helping.

That's fantastic news.

Thank you.

The other two questions relates, one about the handwashing stations.

Are the purchase of new handwashing stations to supplement the current ones or are we needing to replace old ones?

And the third question relates to the $2 million in the budget for cleanup work and $1.3 million to manage a cleanup contract and just the level of service compared to 2020 on that.

The 15 sinks that we have designed or prototyped and have ordered will replace the existing sinks, but they're much bigger in terms of the volume that they hold.

They also have double basins, so they can have more use.

But they are not in addition to the ones that we are renting and they're much more robust as well for the additional money, the 1.3 million in addition to the base funding that money is to be spent in partnership what's actually transfer money, apologies, to be developed in partnership with parks to try to pilot additional cleanup within encampments.

As you're aware, we are, SPU manages all of the trash that is placed outside of encampments, and then we do the perimeter.

for illegal dumping and litter.

But now that encampments are there on a longer basis and are not being moved, there's a lot more trash being generated inside.

encampments and so you know and some of the sites are very steep and have hazardous materials now accumulating on them so this would be an effort to remove hazardous materials from some of those sites and to also help to clean some of the really problematic terrain you know that some of the encampments are on there would be, I think, some other outreach activities, you know, to make sure that we are, you know, well within, you know, all of the rules and respecting the property rights of the people in the encampments.

Thank you very much, Director.

Let's go ahead and move on, if that sounds good to folks.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, next slide.

All right, so the mayor's 2021 budget proposes $42.1 million in new funding to maintain existing shelters, keeping current capacity, and keeping alignment to CDC COVID guidelines in place.

It also creates new shelters, adds the temporary use of hotel beds, and increases investments in rapid rehousing and diversion.

Nearly all of these funds are one-time, $39.3 million.

And except for the $2.75 million in general fund dollars, I just want to highlight that those $2.75 million in general fund are the only ongoing operational funds available in this budget.

All other funds are one-time.

The total investment in these program areas, This is base funding versus emergency funding.

It is $94.4 million, which is nearly double the amount in the 2020 adopted budget.

Our strategy is to maintain the current system of services, create more safe spaces, and move more people from homelessness to housing.

You'll see that In these activities, when we talk about maintaining, we're talking about $13.9 million to maintain current shelter capacity and meet public health and CDC guidelines for reducing the spread of COVID-19.

This also includes rental assistance and eviction prevention investments.

New or creating, this is $18.6 million.

This will help us stand up the temporary use of 300 hotel units.

This will launch 125 units of 24-7 enhanced shelter.

And I think I mentioned this before, but just to sort of restate that the shelter and some of the hotel units we expect to have open by the end of 2020. When I talk about this movement to the housing, and often I talk about wanting to increase throughput to housing, this is really where this $9.6 million to increase investments in rapid rehousing come into play.

So we believe we can serve around 231 more households through additional funding in rapid rehousing.

This is on top of the households currently served through rapid rehousing programs.

These are dollars that would be attached to the new shelter and hotel unit and really create intentional throughput to those new safe spaces.

Often asked what rapid rehousing is.

And so rapid rehousing is a rental voucher program.

It's a successful housing program, housing voucher program, where case managers and clients work together to identify available rental housing, and clients receive up to a year of rent assistance.

It is proven to be a successful program model here locally.

In 2019, the Rapid Rehousing Program program area had an 81% rate of exits to housing.

That means that folks were able to continue staying housed past the point of their voucher ending.

We often get questions about rapid rehousing and whether it continues to be a successful model during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This program does continue to be successful during the pandemic, though it is requiring longer durations of voucher use, and at times requires the amount of rent a rapid rehousing voucher covers.

So the cost of the voucher is going up.

We would continue, you know, in 2020 and 2021, continue to monitor this and collaborate with rapid rehousing agencies.

to problem-solve with them.

This number, the 231 households, that's a very conservative count or a very conservative estimate for the number of households we believe could be served through this voucher program.

This is making an upfront assumption that each household would need more financial assistance over a longer period of time, and therefore, with these funds, we would be serving fewer households.

If that changes, if our assumptions are incorrect and people do not need the voucher for a longer duration of time, or if the amount of an individual household's rent does not need to be fully covered by the voucher, we do expect that we can serve more households than the 631 identified.

We're also going to be increasing investments in diversion.

So we believe that in the 2021 budget, we can serve 130 more households through diversion services.

These dollars will be attached to outreach.

And likewise, I'm often asked, what is diversion?

Diversion services help people bypass the emergency or crisis shelter system altogether and end their experience of homelessness.

Outreach workers, case managers, and clients work together to identify solutions that meet the client's needs.

With diversion funding, folks can have first, last, or fees related to moving into housing paid.

They can be offered one-time flexible funds to pay for a variety of items, small items such as items needed for a job.

Or it can also pay for transportation, bus or plane tickets to reunite with family or friends or a job that will offer a place for the client to stay in another area.

And then also important element of throughput to housing in 2021, not HSD related, but office of housing is standing up 600 units of permanent supportive housing to open in 2021. Though these aren't HSD investments, but it's important to just highlight that these units will benefit people who rely on the homeless service system.

These permanent supportive housing units will be directly attached to new shelter and hotel capacity, creating throughput to specialized housing for those individuals, those households staying in these temporary shelters.

Thank you very much for walking us through this.

I have a number of people signed up who would like to ask some questions on this, and I also know that there is a lot of detail in slides 9 and 10 that we want to get to.

I'll let folks know the order in which I have seen folks raise their hand.

Council Member Lewis, Council Member Juarez, Council Member Morales, and I believe Council Member Herbold, okay.

And we also have a presentation from Office of Housing today.

Again, hard stop at 1 p.m., but we will try and get folks a little bit extra time if we can.

So Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Right, well, given that we have the Office of Housing later, I think I'll ask this one first, just for clarification.

Director Johnson, the 600 units of permanent supportive housing, do you know if that is housing levy money or if the source is something else?

And if that's better for Director Alvarado later, I can leave it at that, but I'll get that one out of the way first.

Yeah, I do expect that Director Alvarado will dive into those details.

And I think that question is best asked of her.

OK, great.

On the hotel, so the 300 hotel units, 15.8 million, just to clarify, what is the anticipated sustainment of the 300 hotel units?

time are we given folks to stay hoteled, given, I mean, 15.8 million, you know, I know hoteling is expensive, but I would imagine we're going to get a fairly long stay for those 300 units, but just curious if that, what's being factored in in the per unit stay.

Jason, do you want me to take that one or do you want to answer that one?

Go ahead and I'll Diane and I are here to fill in any gaps.

So the idea here with the 300 units again is recognizing council member it's one time money.

So, what we are anticipating is trying to secure hotels for 10 month period of time.

And again, you know, the partly as Jason explained on the rapid rehousing and the diversion money.

is looking at other jurisdictions, including King County, but also in California and elsewhere, is where folks came into a hotel, there was not an exit plan for them.

And that really was problematic.

And so applying those lessons learned here.

And so as individuals come into these hotel units, it is not the anticipation that someone would be in a hotel unit for the full 10 months.

It is that we are immediately working on exit plan for them into some other type of of permanent housing.

So the idea being that it wouldn't just be the same, I guess another way to say that, the same 300 individuals over those 10 months is that we would then be creating, by pairing this with additional resources, is more throughput in that ecosystem, if you will.

So it would be 300 units sustained for 10 months with the idea that as people cycle out, more people would be cycled into the 300 units.

Correct.

And as these as these new 600 units of permanent supportive housing come online, right, that we've also got sort of a sort of a dovetail to this work.

So we start the process of trying to bring more people inside over the dark, cold winter months and begin working with them immediately to get them placed in these new these new units as they come online or other or utilize other resources, whether that's rapid rehousing, vouchers or other things.

So so the folks, the two hundred and thirty one rapid rehousing, the folks in the hotels would be eligible for those resources as well.

That is correct.

I think it's an important point to make that on day one, we need to be having a housing conversation with each of these individuals.

And that housing conversation will include, we have a temporary place for you to stay.

It's through the use of a hotel.

But ultimately, we want to use rapid rehousing or, if appropriate, permanent supportive housing as the long-term strategy for you.

And it may take many months for an individual to transition from a temporary location in one of these hotels to the rental market with a rapid rehousing voucher or into a permanent supportive housing unit as those come online.

But this is a housing conversation that we want to have with individuals, and there's really sort of a two-step process here.

One, that gets them immediately sheltered safely, and two, that gets them the resources they need to enter into housing.

Okay, thank you for that clarification.

Two, just talking about some of the logistics anticipated here, would the idea be to contract with or lease a hotel somewhere, or would the idea be to do long-term rentals of a bank of rooms?

How are we envisioning securing those 300 units, and how would that be divided up, presumably amongst multiple locations if it's 300 units?

I think one of the things we are learning from other areas is site control is really important.

It really assists with the staffing model that goes with this which Councilmember Herbold asked Director Johnson about earlier.

I think in an ideal world we would be able to lease whole hotels.

Whether we are successful in doing that, that is a whole different question.

We haven't begun to explore that that process entirely yet.

But if not that, then blocks of rooms as well.

But the idea being that we can consolidate these rooms.

The more consolidation we do, rather than having it peanut buttered across the city, is really, I think, from a staffing model in particular, really, really important.

And that's what we've heard from providers from day one.

And I think DESC, as an example, is proving in the way that it's approached its work down and run.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Juarez, please go ahead.

Thank you.

A lot of what Director Jason Johnson said and Deputy Sixkiller and Councilmember Lewis actually answered a lot of my questions.

They were going to the duration, the exit plan and the 600 units that are going to come online.

So mine is a little bit more in general.

probably directed more towards Jason.

So if we're looking at hotel units to lease for 10 months, and this is one-time funds, correct?

We're not looking at hotel units to buy.

That is correct.

So this is a short-term or a temporary lease of hotel space to be used for 2021. The ESG dollars do not allow for acquisition.

So it is, yeah, so.

Yeah, that was my next question, is that, yeah, the limitation on that money not to buy hotels, but just to lease those units.

So my next question is, isn't it fair to say just from where we're sitting right now and the way we're living, that non-congregate living is the shape of policy to come, not only in this pandemic, but after, that we can't go back to because we tried to move away from congregate living, you know, the mat on the floor, people leaving at 6, you know, checking in, leaving at 6 in the morning, then we moved to tiny houses, then permanent supportive housing.

I mean, I just feel that this is something that we've been kind of chasing our tail around, at least since I've been on council.

I know that Councilor Herbold knows a lot more than I do, so Councilor Herbold, please feel free to step in and help me out here, but it just seems to me that, yes, it's great we have this CARES money coming in, and some of it, I think you said 29 million of the 39 is one-time federal money, that maybe we should start planning to look at the new policy of how we house people to stabilize them is buying hotels.

not just leasing them for 10 months, because I don't think this pandemic's gonna, I think it's gonna be a while.

I don't know how you pick 10 months.

I'm guessing it had to do with money, but, and that may be more philosophical, and I don't wanna put you on the spot, Jason.

I'm just trying to get a sense of where we're going with homelessness, the unsheltered, and those experiencing it.

And just in my district alone, I mean, we have two parks that are just actually six parks, But I can't tell you enough what that's doing, because you all know.

So when we have these community meetings and people are saying, well, yes, we can be welcoming to a tiny house village.

And yes, we can be welcoming to permanent supportive housing.

And then we're working with some of the providers and some of our homeless providers to say, look, a better way of maybe doing this is, yes, that's great that we're going to lease these units.

And I think you mentioned or I read somewhere that You're calling it a shelter surge.

You know, I'm of the position that, you know, we need to do kind of going on a buying surge here and look at the long-term benefits and effects of getting people in units that we actually own the hotel, but we transfer those over to service providers to stabilize people so they actually have somewhere to go because they can stay there, get services, but we also are responding to the pandemic.

So again, Jason, I don't want to like just put you on the spot.

I really do want to have an honest conversation and exchange with you.

I'm not trying to do a gotcha thing.

Thank you.

And I don't feel on the spot at all.

I think, you know, I really love a lot of what you're what you're highlighting.

And, you know, I don't feel like we've been chasing tail, but chasing best practice.

The Human Services Department has been expanding enhanced shelter, 24-7 enhanced shelter, since 2017. We can no longer accept just a mat-on-floor, overnight-only shelter model and believe that when we provide 24-7 space, provide dignity in that space where people have space to store their belongings, have enough room, especially important now for folks to have enough room and space that they can sort of call their own and know that they can return to night after night.

So no longer lining up at five, six, seven o'clock at night and being kicked out in the early morning.

But most importantly is It's having services attached that people can access during daytime hours.

And what we're seeing is there is a cost related to shelter enhancements.

Absolutely.

You double the cost of operations.

You're also adding a level of service expense to that model.

But what we're seeing is five times the rate of exits to permanent housing when we provide the right space and the right level of service to individuals who are experiencing homelessness.

So a lot of what you're saying is, I think, shown in the actions of this budget, in the 2020 budget, in the 2019 budget, there's been strong alignments between the Human Services Department and Mayor Durbin on getting these shelter enhancements in place so that we can best support people while they're in shelter, but more importantly, get folks exited to permanent housing.

Thank you.

Deputy Mayor, I wanna make sure though that Council Member Juarez's point is not missed, We want to know how and how much money is possibly in here for strategic acquisition.

And I know that we're not trying to put you on the spot.

I will highlight, though, that this is something at the county level through how some of the committees that I serve on at the county level.

This is also a win win for.

owners of hotels and apartment complexes where they are having trouble paying the mortgage.

And I think it's helpful for us as a region not to have derelict buildings and to help house people.

So we're very familiar with the need for enhanced shelter.

Deputy Mayor Sixkiller, you were about to say something.

I don't want us to go on too long because I do want us to get to slides nine and 10. And there's two more people to ask questions and I believe a follow-up on this one.

But the question is, and Council Member Swan, I'll get you in the queue as well.

The question on this one is, have we not sort of learned the lesson that we need to have more individual rooms and are we putting money in for the long-term versus the short-term 10-month section for hotels?

Should we not, and does this budget not invest in strategic acquisition of apartment complexes or hotels that might go derelict?

So I guess a couple, a few responses to that, Council Member.

One is that The short answer to your question is no.

We are not proposing among this $42.1 million increase from the base to do any acquisition, in part because of the restrictions on the fund source and also because we have no money to continue the operations.

Of this $42.1 million, and a really important number for Council to zero in on, only $2.75 million is ongoing money.

So that really forces us to make some decisions here.

But again, I think the idea of being here because this is money that is one time that we've been given access to as part of our COVID relief package and in terms of trying to keep people safe is putting that to use immediately and by utilizing this resource.

But I would just say to you and to Council Member Juarez that I want to remind everyone, since 2017, we have increased through conversion of basic and adding shelter.

We've increased by 80% the number of enhanced shelter beds available in the city.

And we've done that, obviously, in close partnership with council.

And so I just think that's an important thing.

The city has invested millions of dollars in moving away from the mat on the floor when you don't know if there's a place to come back to every night.

And I think right now is from a COVID perspective.

And we also, just a few weeks ago, announced over $11 million of investments with shelter providers and operators who are making both capital investments and other changes to their programs.

to make sure that those congregate spaces can remain safe in this COVID period.

The last point is, you know, there's no additional funding source.

And so, you know, moving to a hotel-y model, to Jason's point, Frankly means without an identified new resource means we will serve less people.

And so, you know, that is something we will need to dig in happy to dig in more with with you council member and others as, as, as you review the 21 budget.

I do think that is a really important point.

Yeah, thank you.

It's related because I think it is related to the sustainment of the deintensification.

I just wanted to kind of ask a question about the relationship between sort of these enhanced shelter expansions and the hotel units and the deintensification, just because I know that You know, through our efforts over the spring and summer, you know, a lot of shelter that that is more congregate has been improved considerably, but that has also resulted in some cases in in reductions of total spaces and there was some good reporting by.

Sydney Brownstone at the beginning of last month, uh, where she specifically cited from her reporting an example at a, at a compass housing shelter.

Where, um, the creating new D intensified and improved spaces.

I'm lost approximately 13 placements, so I guess part of my concern would be.

As we continue to sustain the de-intensification efforts, the 5.9 million in that first sector of the slide here, I don't want us to be sort of reducing units in sort of the one slide and then adding units in the other with less of a net increase.

I just wonder, that we are not going to be able to do that.

And I'm wondering if those concerns would be unfounded or if there is a concern that as we continue to deintensify Deputy Mayor Sixkiller, whether we might have a lower net gain of units due to the nature of as Councilmember

Jason, you wanna take that or you want me to?

Yeah, thanks.

And just scrolling back up to my notes, I think I shared, yeah, here we go.

So we are not looking at a reduction in the number of shelter beds.

We currently have 1,479 shelter beds.

We expect to have just over 1,700 beds by the end of 2020. And the 2021 budget builds on that 1700 by adding additional hotel units and really focusing on the throughput to housing for folks that are in these temporary spaces through the use of diversion rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing.

You know, at this point, and, you know, you raise a concern that I share, that the team shares.

We did not want to reduce the number of beds.

And I think the shelter funding that we have proposed in the 2021 budget builds on the activities in 2020 to sustain bed capacity and build on it.

I'm not seeing a follow-up.

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

I have a couple questions here.

The first relates to the dollar amounts that we're committing to both the maintaining shelter and the rent assistance, eviction prevention columns here.

It would be really helpful and maybe it's on a different side somewhere.

It'd be helpful to compare this investment to the, um, the, the budgeted, uh, 2020 investment minus not including the, the COVID-19, uh, relief investments we've made this year.

And the reason I want to know, I want, I want to be able to see that we are, um, We are not just budgeting to the original 2020 levels, but that we're budgeting to the 2020 levels plus the COVID-19 additions that we've made.

And the reason why that's so important is, again, it's getting back to the jumpstart spending plan for 2021. I want to see that the investments that we plan to add with Jumpstart, add to the 2020 levels.

I want to see that those additional investments in rent assistance and eviction prevention and investing in shelter are included here.

So it'd be great to get some sort of a breakout that makes those year-to-year comparisons, plus includes the additions that we made And then also as it relates to the 125 units in enhanced shelter, it would be helpful to understand whether or not that is in multiple locations, whether or not we're thinking of a single location, what's the plan behind that, and the timing?

Do we have any idea on the timing?

And then my last question relates to the rapid rehousing and diversion funds being made available.

I really appreciate Director Johnson hearing that diversion funds will be made available and attached to outreach, that the restoration of diversion funding that outreach providers have access to is a high priority of mine.

So I appreciate that being included.

Just wondering, When you say would be attached to outreach, does that mean that it will be made available to contracted outreach providers to access?

And is that also the same for rapid rehousing?

And how do you anticipate that this would work with coordinated entry?

And my last just thought, going back to the hoteling discussion, is whether or not housing levy dollars for acquisition could be a consideration for a hotel purchase if there was such an opportunity.

And maybe we'll hear from from Emily, Director Alvarado, about that later.

Thank you.

Great, thank you.

Very good questions.

So one, on rent assistance, we can absolutely provide that information.

So we've heard you and we'll follow up.

Unless, Julie, anything you want to provide now, or do you think it's best to follow up?

Yeah, I would just written representation of those dollars.

Sure.

I would just Councilmember herbal that very 1st table or chart that we showed you that had the stacked bars at the beginning.

That really is the best visual demonstration of how we have found alternate funding sources in 2021. and including the combination of funds that the council has provided between 20 and 21 to sustain and increase the COVID response from 20 when we began and into 2021. So we can provide you with more detail to show you the specifics, but that's sort of the best visual representation.

Does that help?

I will go back and take a look at that page and let you know if I have follow-up questions on that one.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Julie.

The 125-unit shelter, we should be in a position shortly to provide more details about that single site.

And not in a position to share that now, but just know that at this point, the planning effort underway to stand up that enhanced shelter is at a single site.

Rapid rehousing and diversion.

So the, yes, we need this tied to the right access point.

And so for diversion, the right access point is outreach.

And so we need to make the diversion funds available to the a continuum of outreach providers and make sure that when they engage with an individual who has an alternative to living unsheltered, they can tap into that fund source and immediately work toward a solution with that individual.

For rapid rehousing, again, this will be tied to the new enhanced shelter as well as the hotel units that are being stood up on a temporary basis.

And so we need to ensure that those rapid rehousing dollars are immediately accessible to those shelter providers, the providers that are working in the hotels, so that they can work with those clients to get them into housing.

Coordinated entry offers a good connection point to permanent supportive housing.

And so I think what still needs to be worked out is how we can leverage that system to make direct connections for the individuals in these shelters, in these hotels, to those permanent supportive housing units.

Last question, yes.

Let's talk to Emily about levy and acquisition funds.

Thank you.

I noted that as well for the Office of Housing Presentation, which we will start just for the folks at OH at 12 noon.

So you have the last hour.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Morales, thank you for waiting.

Sure.

So thank you.

I have one question.

Well, really two.

But I first want to thank Council Member Juarez for her questions.

I think all of us have been hearing plenty from our constituents and we know that when it comes to homelessness, people are angry in the city and whether they're angry because there are needles in the park or they're angry because their neighbors are now in the fifth year of a declared crisis, I think there's a lot of frustration in our community about what seems like you know we are chasing our tail spinning our wheels whatever metaphor you want to use.

So if we don't have a plan for this year's budget to start thinking about strategic acquisition I would suggest that maybe we get one and really start thinking about how we can move in that direction because this this pandemic isn't going away anytime soon and our homelessness crisis obviously needs a new strategy in order to really support people in moving out of homelessness.

That said, it is very exciting to see 300 hotel spaces, so I want to thank you, Dr. Johnson, Deputy Mayor, for moving in this direction.

This is something, as you know, that our office and other offices have really been advocating for.

My question about that is whether this is a continuation of service through CoLEAD, or if this will be administered through some other program.

And I just want to say that Regardless of the answer, this is an area where I do think that the council and the executive share some common ground.

So our office would be interested in working with the executive to see a continuation or an expansion of COLEAD or Just Care and any of the other hotel programs that are operating right now.

Great, thank you.

I, let's see, where to start.

So one, I think it's important to understand that, you know, while, you know, we're excited to, you know, use available hotel space to temporarily offer a shelter resource for individuals who are currently living unsheltered.

This is also not our first foray into hoteling.

The City of Seattle, through HSD's contracts, have been partnering with King County Department of Community and Human Services to get hundreds of individuals into hotels during this pandemic.

We've shown great flexibility in our service contracts so that individuals continue to be served, that operations continue to be paid for through city contracts.

when people have been relocated to hotels, sometimes even hotels outside of the city of Seattle, to be supported during the COVID pandemic.

What we're committing to here is adding to that good work and making a investment to continue that important strategy of getting individuals, especially those high-risk, vulnerable individuals, into single rooms so that they can safely shelter while we find a housing solution for them.

I think you had a second question.

Could you ask it again?

Well, I was asking about the COLEAD or other...

Oh, thank you.

That was it.

Yeah.

So we're going to be releasing a quite expedited RFP.

to ask who in the homeless service provider network would be available and able to be the service provider for the new enhanced shelter as well as the service provider in these hotels.

So a specific provider at this point has not been identified.

That process will begin shortly and we'll identify those partners through that process.

And then my second question is about the enhanced, 125 enhanced shelter spaces.

It sounds like this might be similar to the current navigation center, which I will say, you know, our unhoused neighbors have expressed an appreciation for that model and would like to talk about that as a referral option for folks.

My one caution with that is that if that is the plan to do another navigation center type facility, that we be really clear with the communities that we are considering so that we don't duplicate the crisis that we had when the navigation center was, you know, that decision was made to put it in the CID, to put it in Little Saigon area without contacting the community first.

And there's, as you know, it was a huge, huge problem for community not to be included in that conversation.

So I appreciate the model.

I think it's an important one, but I would recommend for the sake of transparency and building relationship with our community members that we make sure folks are included at the beginning in those conversations.

Of course.

And first point, Yes, one, I agree with you.

I think the Navigation Center is a strong model.

And I think, you know, anything we can do to remove barriers to people coming indoors and having a roof overhead and access to the services they need, we should always, you know, thrive to do that.

But this 125 shelter program is going to be an enhanced shelter.

So 24-7 nature, there will be services provided, storage, but it is not going to be a navigation center.

So just to, you know, there's, we could go into sort of the details of what is different about a navigation center model, but this will be an enhanced shelter like so many of the hundreds of enhanced shelter beds across the city.

to be a second navigation center.

It will not be a second navigation center.

So I was going to save this question until the end of the presentation because I thought that it may belong there.

But I think given the discussion, the way it's shaped, I think it makes sense to ask it here.

I mean, obviously, my office very strongly supports acquiring hotel space for non congregate shelter, especially during the pandemic.

I definitely agree with the many of the points that have been made by other council members.

My questions were related to tiny house villages because I don't believe you've mentioned that at all in your presentation.

I mean, it's possible I missed it because I unfortunately had some personal things to attend to and I missed a few minutes here and there.

So maybe you mentioned it and I didn't catch it, but My questions are, what plans do you have to expand tiny house villages?

Because of all the different ways that the city can, all the different approaches the city can use to reduce the harm of homelessness, tiny house villages have been by far, I mean, just by far the most successful by every measure.

I mean, obviously we're talking about what measure we can use while the people are while our neighbors are homeless, not as a competition to permanent housing, because of course we want affordable housing, we want to expand social housing, but we're talking about while people are homeless.

And in that situation, tiny house villages have been the most successful in helping people transition into permanent housing.

They have been the most successful helping Our homeless neighbors regain control over their lives.

And they've been the most successful at allowing our neighbors to live with dignity.

In tiny houses, people can socially isolate to avoid the spread of COVID.

It's very effective, especially in that respect.

People have the safety, security, privacy, peace of mind of their own space.

They have their own community.

And in some villages, a self-managed community where they can cut across the crushing isolation of living on the streets.

I also want to point out that tiny house villages have been so successful and humane that we have had hundreds of homeless people, easily hundreds by now.

over the years to come testify in public comment in support of tiny house villages to talk about how helpful they are.

I've never seen anything like that from any other homeless service investment.

I mean, we hear data-driven evidence-based, data-driven evidence-based, data-driven evidence-based all the time.

Here's the data and here's the evidence.

Hundreds of homeless people have said to us, have told us that, told us how supportive tiny house villages were and how helpful they were.

We have never seen anything like that from any other homeless service investment.

I mean, that's just a fact.

I think there's never been, to my knowledge, I mean, Maybe there are, but to my knowledge, there's never been any homeless person who has come and testified in support of enhanced shelter.

I don't, that doesn't really stick in my memory.

Shelter space is important, as I said, and absolutely any kind of shelter space we can make available to keep our neighbors safe.

in terms of health and in terms of keeping them safe from other dangers.

And the elements, absolutely, we need to do everything in our power.

And the advocacy for tiny house villages in no way is in counter to all of that.

But my point is that all of this illustrates how exceptional tiny house villages are.

And we know Lehigh has come to the Human Services Department and said that they have at least five locations identified and ready to go.

to build new tiny house villages today, which would help hundreds of people get off the streets, out of the parks, or out from underpasses.

And the People's Budget Movement has fought for and won funding for tiny house villages.

We've won funds through the Amazon tax, won further funding.

And I know you were also seeking FEMA reimbursement for tiny house villages.

So my question is, why is it the mayor's office and the HSD under your leadership, interim director, I would like to hear from the mayor.

Johnson, why on earth have you not expanded tiny house villages yet?

And also, will you do so before the end of this year?

Is it included in the funding for noncongregate shelter for next year?

And what would be necessary to make the mayor finally agree to substantially expand tiny house

Yeah, I will be very open and very frank about it.

Under my leadership at the Human Services Department, we have gone from some tiny house villages or tent encampments to now supporting eight tiny house villages.

Those tiny house villages are one example of enhanced shelter.

So when advocates are going and saying that they appreciate and have been supported through tiny house villages, what they are saying is that enhanced shelter is working.

And tiny house villages are one example of those enhancements.

So we have, you know, over 300 units of Tiny House Village Shelter, Enhanced Shelter.

And I've been extremely proud to partner with a number of neighborhoods, business organizations, importantly to call out Lehigh and the incredible work that they've been doing to stand those shelter resources up.

This budget in 2021 sustains the uh, current investments in tiny house villages.

Um, so the $120 million line item, uh, under the King County, uh, regional homeless authority, um, uh, maintains the, uh, current level of programming, uh, at these, um, uh, tiny house village programs that we have operating now.

Um, just this year in 2020, we were able to stand up, uh, uh, uh, two additional, uh, sites.

And so the work of standing up Tiny Home Villages and adding to that program continues.

And this budget sustains that effort.

This budget, however, does not offer any new funding for Tiny Home Villages to be stood up in 2021. Instead, we are creating, again, very similar model, individual unit, enhancement of services, 24-7 support through the use of hotel rooms.

And given that we have a limited one-time funding source, we felt like the use of, temporary use of hotels was a smart way to achieve some of the great results that we've seen in other enhanced shelter models, including Tiny House Villages.

Thank you, Director Johnson, Council Member Sawant.

I do want to move us along.

I will note your interest in this.

I know that we authorized more last year, so I'm assuming you would like to add more funding for tiny house villages in 2021. To wrap us up very brief, Council Member Sawant.

Yeah, well, I haven't spoken much, so, you know, I appreciate it and we have the navigation slide next.

So I know that there's going to be a lot of comments on that.

I understand that, but I'm only speaking when I think it's absolutely substantively crucial.

So I think this is very.

This is a very crucial point and.

I don't think interim director Johnson has actually answered my question.

My question was about expanding and that still remains to be resolved.

And yes, I absolutely think that for the city, I mean, in my view, this for the city council's work in the budget, it is very important to expand.

And I'm, you know, I would really, I would like to make a comment.

I would like to appeal for support from all councilmembers to do that.

On the numbers, you said eight villages but in my understanding there were nine or 10 villages last year.

In reality is eight a reduction?

I'm not clear.

going to be an attempt to close that down, which of course was pushed back successfully by the activists and the community earlier this year.

So if you could just answer that quickly.

Yeah, so the There has not been a reduction in the number of tiny house village programs.

Again, the 2021 budget sustains all current programming that is underway in 2020. The North Lake right now, the Human Services Department does not have any kind of formal relationship to the North Lake Village.

You know, it sounds like things remain as they have been throughout this entire year.

But at this point, you know, there's not a budget line item for that program, nor is there any formal relationship between that program and the Human Services Department.

Council Member Sawant, does that answer?

I mean, it's not surprising to me what interim director Johnson is saying, but I'm okay stopping here and then following up later.

I really do appreciate your line of questioning on this.

Thank you very much.

And we'll look forward to following up with you on this item.

Okay, I think that that concludes the questions for this slide.

Let's move on to slide nine, please.

Great, thank you.

So this is the 2021 outreach strategy.

So the 2021 proposed budget by the mayor invests $10.7 million in outreach for people experiencing homelessness.

The city will play a central role in coordinating the agencies that work directly with people living on shelter and provide direct outreach to people living unsheltered on public properties and in public right-of-ways.

Historically, when HSD refers to the NAV team, we are talking about the entire team, system navigators, field coordinators, communications data experts, and the specially trained officers, police officers on the team.

We realize that many don't hear it that way when their work has become synonymous with the participation of police officers.

This new outreach and response model is very much human service centered.

This team will be responsible for coordinating across agencies and city departments.

This will truly be an HSD centered team.

coordinating and coordinated and led by the department.

Under this model HSD will coordinate efforts across city departments and facilitate the community-based contract outreach effort.

This includes coordination with SPD and we will consider SPD's participation and continued partnership.

Ultimately command decisions are made by Chief Diaz case by case.

But this model leverages the expertise of the Human Services Department team members and agencies in the community that have been serving people experiencing homelessness to help connect people to the services they need and ultimately to housing.

In the 2021 budget, the new outreach and response team is an eight-person team.

This team in the Human Services Department would have a team lead or a team manager.

They would have an outreach manager or outreach coordinator.

They would continue to have two system navigators in the field to make connections important connections to services.

They would have a field coordinator or a site assessor.

The city department coordinator and would continue to have a data analyst and a communications staff.

This is a budget reduction of 5 FTE from the navigation team.

And this also transfers those 4 of those positions and $976,000 of budget from the navigation team to the Safe and Thriving Communities Division.

We are repurposing these four pockets from the nav team to the safety division.

We talked about this extensively yesterday.

And, you know, happy to answer any questions about that transition as we move forward.

But in the 2021 budget, the nav team or this new outreach team going from 16 FTE throughout the department to eight.

will require one abrogated positions, one abrogated position and four positions that would be repurposed for safety.

The Seattle, the city must play a central role in coordinating outreach services and responding to the impact of unmanaged encampments on public property.

We hold a contractual relationship with all agencies that provide outreach to people experiencing homelessness.

We are a steward of the public dollars that support both the agencies and shelter resources.

We are able to support a centralized referral process to the new shelters and hotel resources.

Other continuums of care have centralized processes for ensuring that people can access emergency shelter.

Seattle and King County do not.

This team will help the city remain in compliance with the MDARs.

This team will also play a critical role in ensuring that all available shelter and hotel resources are full.

The new division dollars are connected to this effort, helping people bypass other shelter systems and find housing stability.

So as we discussed, diversion will be a critical part that this HSD outreach team as well as our contracted outreach teams can use to make those connections to stable housing.

This effort requires collaboration between the city and city funding agencies.

So HSD staff will work with the homeless outreach contracted agencies on a weekly basis and are in a really good position to continue to build these relationship and coordinate where outreach takes place.

The unsheltered response team total budget is $1.3 million.

Also in this budget program area is the lead contract from the PDA's lead contract, which is $6.2 million.

And then the other outreach contracts totaling $3.2 million will be in the King County Regional Homeless Authority budget area.

The outreach continuum will you know be enhanced by this partnership.

This is intended to be a laser-focused outreach effort in partnership with community-based organizations but a team internally at the Human Services Department that would coordinate and facilitate all those activities.

Director Johnson, thank you for walking us through this.

The first person I have up is Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have a couple of questions here to clarify first, and then I have a few more policy questions.

So first, Director Johnson, you stated that of that $9.4 million category there, $6.2 million is the current LEED contract?

Is that correct?

OK.

So are there any other contracts there that are existing and would carry over, or do you envision 3.2 million in new contracting services.

So the contracts and the contracted providers that we currently have a relationship with are all listed here on this slide.

LEAD, or the PDA, has $6.2 million awarded in their contracts.

And the nearly $3.5 million is spread across all of these other organizations.

And that would remain in existence.

But sorry, would that be new?

Or is that is that carrying over current money that we spend on contracting for those services?

Yeah, so it's a little bit of both mostly carry over.

So this is mostly maintaining.

Great, I just just wanted to clarify that.

And then looking on the other side, and I you know, I don't actually know that we touched on this a lot yesterday in the SPD conversation, but clearly from looking at this, it doesn't look like there's any police department FTEs that are part of this team.

What would be the relationship between this team and SPD?

Because I'd imagine that would be a, a community concern that we are going to hear throughout the budget process is how that relationship is going to be operationalized under this new structure where it seems there will be separate but coordinating teams, but I want to know if this team flags that they might need police assistance for something, how do you envision that process working operationally?

Yeah.

Deputy Mayor Sixkiller is probably in the best position to discuss current conversations with Chief Diaz.

So, Casey, do you want to start off here and then I can answer any other questions?

Oh, Councilman, you're correct.

You know, this this this HSD center team does not include members of SPD.

You know, in terms of the future role between this team and SPD, that's an ongoing conversation with Chief Diaz.

I would just point out, though, that, you know, we continue to believe, and as I articulated via letter earlier this week, you know, having officers who are trained and available to support as necessary when the need arises, I think is very important.

How and when that occurs is something that is an ongoing discussion with SPD right now, but you are correct in your assessment here that they are not part of this HSD center team.

Right.

I guess part of my concern is that seems to be a very relevant policy consideration to adopting this new outreach strategy.

And it seems like addressing these in silos that we have been hearing about the role the police play in the outreach strategy.

I guess as we go through the budget process I would encourage all of us to join those two conversations instead of trying to have them separately.

And then having situations next year where the overlap between those So that would that would just be the first thing I'd, I'd want to address.

I think the, you know, the other thing that I want to raise in looking at sort of the universe of.

community service providers, is the extent to which there has been kind of collaboration and consultation in the development of this new outreach strategy?

Has this been, this proposal been discussed with 3H and DESC?

Are they, is it something they would endorse?

Are they in a position to provide the level of service necessary to operationalize something like this?

And just kind of curious in developing this, how much work has been done with the provider community to this point?

Well, I would say first, a reminder that REACH and DESC and the PDA are contractors to the city.

And so, you know, I would say, you know, we have had some informal conversation with some of those organizations.

I think, you know, what you're seeing before you, Councilmember, is, you know, our, I think, good faith effort to continue to refine the way in which we are conducting outreach and coordination of the city's resources.

I think it's necessary, you know, by shrinking what used to be a six-person team to eight and really focusing in on, I think, requires us to start to have more direct conversation with those who we work with and contract with to both understand what their needs are, you know, what their capabilities are.

concerns are, their ideas of how to potentially continue to improve and refine what we're doing here.

But this is a change from the status quo.

And I realize that some of the titles may look very similar, but I think it necessarily will require us to be even more coordinated with our contracted outreach providers.

Right.

And I recognize that this does represent a change in approach and that and that these are organizations that we have had contracts with in the past.

I guess, you know, just even though we've had contracts with them, they have not been reluctant to publicly criticize some of the concerns they've had with the status quo outreach approach.

And so I guess I'm just wondering if these changes to the status quo are responsive to some of their concerns or if that's an ongoing conversation.

And that's sort of related to my comments about the divorcing of the conversation between the potential policing component.

and the outreach strategy, because I think that unless those conversations are combined, I just wonder if some of those concerns are still going to exist as we have this discussion in the fall.

So I'm just asking about the extent of the conversation so far, just to know the foundation we're working from.

I guess the simple response, Councilmember, is certainly since the beginning of February, the primary focus of the then navigation team was outreach and coordination with our contract providers, both to get people inside into shelter, which they did very, very well when new units became available in March and April.

And I think importantly, to provide outreach and engagement around COVID-19 I'm safety safety kits and a bunch of other things.

And so, you know, I would say that, you know, we are anticipating, you know, as we've discussed throughout the morning here, you know, that we will be in a continued state of, you know, global pandemic response here at the city.

And this is exactly what we are anticipating this team to be focused on is how we are getting people inside how we are.

We, you know, if we're going to bring on 425 new units of housing in a very short order, we have to do that in a coordinated fashion, not just as the city, but with our contracted providers.

So, yeah, I mean, I think this is a really unique moment for the city and an opportunity for us to do some, you know, very intentional outreach, you know, for individuals experiencing homelessness on the streets in Seattle.

I'm sorry to interrupt, Councilmember Lewis.

I do want to note, though, you mentioned the effectiveness of the team, and that's just not borne out by the data that we've received and not all of the data that we've asked for has even been presented.

I know that there's a number of council members on this meeting right now who've repeatedly asked for that type of data.

And it's important for us to note that when we made decisions about how to best effectively do outreach and engagement, it is because of the data that we looked at.

Councilmember Lewis, I didn't want to interrupt you.

Please continue.

No, that's quite all right.

Councilmember Mosqueda, I do just have just a little bit more here and then I'll turn it over to the other members of the committee who I'm sure will have similar questions.

But in looking at this, this, um, second box of the outreach.

The city did, and I think this is related because this will presumably, if approved by the council, go into effect in January of 2021. I guess I would ask in terms of our bridge period here throughout the rest of 2020, the council has appropriated I checked with Ali Panucci on our central staff earlier this week just to see $2.9 million, including $1.4 million, I believe, of new investment to maintain and expand homelessness outreach and engagement services, including flexible financial assistance, case management, housing navigation services, sort of similar I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the services indicated in the slide.

And I wonder what the plan is to take advantage of those resources for homelessness outreach for the rest of 2020 by contracting with these providers.

And since I have the principals here, director Johnson and deputy mayor

Well, I think the simple answer is we're still trying to figure that out.

The 2.9 number is a number from several months ago.

It's not the right number today.

It's less.

I would just remind council that that is entirely coming from salaries of employees who are still on the city's payroll.

So we are still in the process of working through that process with those impacted employees and then we'll be determining what we will be able to do in terms of, as Council has put it, savings that would come from the loss of those positions for the remainder of the year.

I would just offer a little bit more detail.

Council's recent actions formally take place 30 days after the vote, so October 22nd.

I think there is a lot for the current NAV team to be considering as this program ramps down and changes.

So issues like determining what to do with the warehouse of personal belongings, how to manage shelter referrals, coordination of encampment outreach.

We have been, this team specifically has been steeped in and relied on for their COVID-19 response.

They are lead for coordination of other departments, public land management, specifically helping SPU, Parks, FAS, SDOT, WSDOT, and others.

We rely on this team when there are climate emergencies like snow and smoke.

They are the ones who get people inside.

They are the ones who have been instrumental in standing up resource fairs and resource connections for folks during those climate crisis.

Working through these issues and figuring out how to transfer this effort or identifying what risks exist if we cannot will take time.

Likewise, as director of the Human Services Department, I want to provide as much formal notice as possible for the navigation team if in fact they are facing layoff.

There are nine city employees who would face layoff.

And I owe it to them to provide at least very minimum 30 days notice once this council's action takes place.

So that puts us into November.

And as Deputy Mayor Sixkiller has already flagged, I think the number that you just used was from some time ago, and there's, I think, some work to do to really figure out how much is actually available in 2020 to add to community-based outreach contracts.

Likewise, I just, you know, also just want to highlight that HSD will need to determine an equitable distribution of any available funding that is made available for outreach providers.

Currently, our largest outreach contract holders are white-led, and we would be interested in developing strategies to get any additional funding for outreach programs that are BIPOC-led, such as Urban League and Indian Health Board.

So that is also a body of work that's ahead of us.

Councilmember Lewis, I do note that we have Ali Panucci, our lead budget person from central staff.

If I might just ask if Ali has any clarifying pieces to add for us.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, Council Members.

Good afternoon, or good morning.

Alec Huesch, the Council Central staff.

I just wanted to clarify a couple of things.

Of the $2.9 million that was subject to the proviso, about just under 1.5 million was based on assumed available staffing costs, and Director Johnson and Deputy Mayor Sixkiller are accurate in describing that that was calculated based on an earlier assumed effective date.

So we can look at those numbers again $740,000 was based on a cut from FAS and unexpended funds.

And I'll also just note that the assumed salaries savings from those positions was based on six positions, not nine positions, based on the work that central staff did.

So I just wanted to clarify some of those numbers.

Thank you.

I think that's important.

It's not that the numbers weren't accurate, it's that we're delayed because of the veto.

And here we are, and we will to make sure that those numbers are reflected.

Councilmember Lewis, additional follow-up from you?

I think I'm fine for now, Madam Chair.

I may have some additional questions after hearing from my colleagues.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Lewis, for your leadership on those questions.

Councilmember Morales, I have you up next.

Thank you.

Well, I will say I have a lot of questions.

I will try to synthesize.

But I do want to start with what was going to be my last question, which is on page 190 of the budget book.

And earlier in this presentation, it says that the unsheltered outreach and response program would be funded at about seven and a half million.

But here it shows one point three for the team and nine point six for the contracted service providers.

So Apologies if you've already explained this, but could you just clear up that discrepancy, please?

Sure.

And this slide was an attempt to put everything in one place.

And what you're calling out is that the lead contract, $6.2 million, and the unsheltered outreach response team, $1.3 million, are in one budget area, and the remaining funds, which are roughly three, three and a half million dollars for contracted outreach, those will be in the King County Regional Authority BSL.

And so they're in, you know, this total 2.7 million is in two different places in the budget book.

Here, we were attempting to just have one conversation about outreach, and so we put everything in one spot.

Okay, so what I'm what I'm trying to understand, candidly, is the difference between the navigation team and this new team.

So can you tell us if this program will coordinate encampment removals?

It sounds like there was as part of the plan, but I'm also interested to know if the city will continue prioritizing obstruction removals And if we don't have enough shelter space for folks who are impacted by that, what happens?

And if we don't have enough shelter space for that, how does that respond or jive with the decision from Martin V. Boise?

So that's one clump of questions, and then I have one more.

series of questions, please.

On the legal question you just asked, I think that would be best answered by, as I suggested in my letter earlier this week, an executive session with CAO and outside counsel, since that has both been the subject of federal litigation and ongoing litigation at the state level.

So I would not want to pontificate about that.

So just say that.

I don't know, Jason, if you want to take the other pieces there.

I guess I have a follow-up question on that, I'm sorry.

You mentioned at the beginning that, sorry, in response to my comment that the navigation team was directed to do outreach and engagement since February.

I mean, I think that this is a fair question to ask because in response to our concerns that we raised about the navigation team this spring in the midst of COVID and the concern that we did not have enough shelter space to move people into, the use of the navigation team as it was originally intended was in direct conflict with what the CDC's public health guidance was, that if we didn't have the appropriate non-congregate shelter to move people into, we should not be moving people around the city and scattering people to different streets.

And so I guess I'm not sure why that question that Council Member Morales just asked cannot be addressed right now.

I'm only responding to her question of how any of what we're proposing is consistent with the federal decision in the Boise case.

I wasn't responding to the other components of her question.

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear on that.

So perhaps I understood the question slightly different.

If there is not a place to put people into for appropriate shelter, if our congregate shelters are at capacity and we have not yet opened the non-congregate shelter, which I think we're all very excited about, but also recognize it's not enough space.

What will this team be doing?

Council Member Morales, is that a fair question to ask?

What we're proposing, the team will continue to make shelter referrals.

And so the navigation team, just in the second quarter of 2020, made over 400 referrals to shelter.

This is an 81% increase quarter over quarter.

And the navigation team, you know, identified 149 unduplicated enrollments into shelter also in the second quarter of this year.

So that's during this COVID response.

The NAV team has been out in the field connecting people to safe spaces to be.

And that is the work that would continue.

Likewise, during the pandemic, it is this navigation team who has been out in the field making sure that individuals have the equipment, hygiene services, food access, and other service access that they need to stay safe from COVID.

And so it is very much an outreach model centered in human service connection.

for individuals who are experiencing unsheltered homelessness.

And it will really build on the work that we've been doing this year.

You know, I think in total this year, we've only had seven, wouldn't quote me on that exact number, but less than 10, you know, removals.

This is a team who, building on the success of this year, where we've been deeply engaged with individuals through an outreach strategy, that is the work that would go forward.

And I think that's the real difference between sort of the, you know, NAB team of 2019 and the NAB team of 2021.

Thank you, Director Johnson.

Council President, I believe you have a follow-up, and then Council Member Morales, if you do as well.

This is this is a I appreciate the opportunity to interject here really quickly.

I'm a little frustrated with the tone of the exchange, frankly.

And I think we are here in earnest to ask questions, to understand policy motivations for the proposals before us.

I believe that Council Member Morales asked an appropriate question about how some of the federal litigation is impacting these policy choices that are now being considered here.

And I don't appreciate punting this to an executive session, Deputy Mayor.

In the three-page letter that you, that the Durkin administration sent to us on September 30th at 1.40 p.m., out of the three pages, one and a half pages was dedicated to talking about the administration's perspective on the very laws and legal principles that Councilmember Morales is asking you about now in open session.

So I think the public and we as Councilmembers deserve a response to that particular question.

And it's my expectation that that be answered to the extent that you are now claiming attorney-client privilege, I don't think that that's appropriate, given that the administration, again, spent two out of, a page and a half out of three-page letter relying on citations to Kitcheon versus City of Seattle, to Hooper versus City of Seattle, to the intersection with the MDARs, And, and it appears that the reliance on your interpretation of that, uh, those legal principles is influencing the proposal that we are seeing before us.

So I just really take issue with the, the deflection here of not wanting to answer that question, uh, pointedly and, um, and I want to support council member Morales's question in that regard.

And I want to, I would like to make a motion to request that Deputy Mayor answer the question accordingly.

Thank you, Council President.

Deputy Mayor.

What I would say again is, number one, the priority of the Venn Navigation Team in 2020 has been to connect individuals to shelter and connect them to COVID-19 resources.

That's borne out by the data that from April to I think September, seven, you know, obstruction removals versus 451 over the same time period a year ago.

What we are proposing, and we think is important for a couple of reasons, is to continue to have a centralized manner by which HSD and the city, by extension, can coordinate outreach to individuals engaging or experiencing homelessness, coordinate through and with, in partnership, our contracted outreach providers in getting people inside.

So that is the primary function.

And part two of that, I guess, would be to answer maybe your question.

Maybe I misunderstood your question, Councilman Morales, and I apologize if I misinterpreted it.

We do believe, as was said in the letter, that both the decision, the judge's dismissal of the Hooper case was predicated on the existence of the MDARs and having a centralized function at the city.

And I would say that we believe that that continues to be an important function.

But as I would say, as I'm trying to state over and over again here, is the primary function of this team has been this year, and we are proposing to continue to have it be the primary function of this team is to do that outreach and connection to shelter.

And Council Member Mosqueda, to your point, we're not proposing, you know, we are all, We've, you know, this budget is predicated an idea that we're going to be continuing to be in the middle of a pandemic through 2021. And, you know, therefore, you know, the ability for us to, you know, our primary function is to keep people safe and get them inside.

And that coupled with the investments we're proposing for the use of hotel rooms, as an example, which I know has been a priority for the council.

for several months now, I think is part and parcel of that entire effort.

But we're doubling the amount of money we're spending on this from 40 some odd million to 80 some odd million as a steward of federal funds and the contracting agent to our contracted outreach providers.

We think it's important from an oversight perspective to also have that centralized coordination role here at the city.

Again, if you go back to 2017, that did not exist.

It was a silo.

Maybe if I could just get an answer to the three questions I posed.

Will we continue the practice of prioritizing obstruction removals?

Will we fund enough shelter space to relocate people who are impacted by that?

If we can't do that, how are we consistent with Martin versus Busey?

Those are my three questions.

I don't understand that.

I'm not trying to be defensive.

I don't understand the first question.

So the referrals that we've made, it is still not clear how many folks actually went into shelter.

People were, 96%, I believe, of our removals were done because they were declared obstruction.

So to me, in my mind, that means we are prioritizing that category as reasons to move people.

And so will we continue to do that?

Will this team, whatever it is, navigation team or an outreach team, is that still going to be a priority in how they make those decisions?

I would say that the public health and safety of individuals living in encampments and those living in the surrounding areas will continue to be a priority.

That doesn't answer my question.

I thought I did answer your question by stating that this year in 2020, We have only made seven removals while during the COVID pandemic.

That is an example of the continued work that this team would do in 2021, where they would not be conducting forcible removals.

They would be trying to build connections to needed services.

And so the priority will remain the public health and public safety of individuals and encampments and the public.

But it will be through a different strategy of service connection and service support that we will try and find solutions.

Okay, Council Member Chair Mosqueda, if it's okay, I'm just gonna move on to my last couple of questions.

So one is about staffing.

Why does this team need a dedicated communications manager and why do we need two systems navigators when we have contracted with organizations that do outreach with our in-house community and bring a lot of experience in doing this?

So that's kind of one question.

And then let me just finish up and then I'll be done.

One criticism of the NAV team was that we heard from service providers that the team, there was a bottleneck at the referral point.

So I don't understand why we can't just train providers on the city's referral process and the NAV app and whatever other tools we have and allow them to do direct shelter referral so we can clear up that bottleneck.

And I will mute myself and wait for your answers.

Great, so the communications person is critically important to this team.

I have to assume that each of your offices get the same number of inquiries about unsheltered individuals and the impacts of encampments as do we.

So there is a lot of constituent communication that needs to be managed.

Likewise, this council asks for a lot of information about our outreach efforts and about our efforts to address unsheltered homelessness.

We need to have a level of staffing that can make sure that information is flowing back and forth.

We also have a public and a media who is always asking questions about efforts and asking questions about certain encampments that are peppered throughout the city.

We need to have a single point of contact for the public to be able to get information, to one, sort of hear from them, but two, to get information back out.

So that communications role paired with the data analysts are critically important for us to be able to continue to respond.

to all of the inquiries that come from a variety of different populations.

I think, you know, just this year we've received well over 500 inquiries.

That is not including the number of inquiries that come in reporting the impact of homelessness through the Customer Service Bureau.

And so there's a flood of inquiry that we need data analysts and the communications manager The second part of your question was about the system navigators.

The system navigators are two critically important roles.

They are typically the ones that are out doing the outreach and making service connections for individuals.

They work often in close partnership with our provided outreach partners.

But these are very well-trained individuals who have a career out in the field doing outreach to homeless individuals.

And so we consider them an incredibly important and valued members of this team going forward.

Thank you for that.

Colleagues, I want to see if there's any last questions on this.

I understand that we've basically covered our next slide.

Thank you for jumping to the conclusion on the Regional Housing Authority in my earlier questions.

And then I believe that the racial equity slide, which we appreciate all of the PowerPoints have included, is really a way for us to lift up that information and make sure it doesn't get lost.

Council President, please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

I want to go back to one of the questions that Councilmember Morales asked that I still think is not being answered.

And so I'm going to ask it a different way and hope that there will actually be an answer to the question.

And I'm also going to ask that you don't interrupt me as I'm asking the question.

There have been several occasions where both Director Johnson, you and Deputy Mayor Sixkiller have interrupted, particularly the women council members here.

And so I want you to take a pause and please listen to the question.

So the question that I think we haven't gotten an answer to is in terms of the 2021 outreach strategy proposed on slide number nine, I would like to get an understanding of whether or not any dollars will be used for purposes of clearing obstructions or any other type of unsanctioned encampment as defined in the MDARs.

If I can ask the question back to you.

You're asking if any of these dollars could be used toward an encampment or obstruction removal in its simple form.

The answer is yes.

Consistent with the MDARs.

So I suppose I wasn't asking if they could be.

I'm asking if they will be.

So if the council approves the $10.7 million as proposed on slide 9 and makes no changes.

Will these dollars be utilized for purposes of clearing unsanctioned encampments consistent with the MDARs?

If you're asking me to make a commitment that we will not conduct any type of encampment or obstruction removal using these dollars, the answer is no.

I'm not asking you to make a commitment.

I am asking whether or not the 2021 outreach strategy as proposed on slide nine, will any of those dollars be utilized for purposes of clearing unsanctioned encampments consistent with the MDAR?

Yes.

How many of the $10.7 million will be utilized for purposes of clearing unsanctioned encampments consistent with the NDARS?

I have no way of answering that question, Council President.

And why do you, why are you unable to answer that question?

I think the question presumes that we have in our head a back of the napkin number of encampments that would need to be removed or obstructions that would need to be removed.

And I just don't, I don't have that.

I would say Also, you know, part of what we are proposing to do here is really start to rethink and engage in a new way with our contracted outreach providers.

And I think, you know, again, our posture, our operating posture because of COVID, and we are learning from this, right, is how we can try to lead with engagement potentially in a different way.

And I think what we've proposed here And I think in partnership with the PDA and others is an opportunity for us to really rethink how and where we do that and how we utilize these resources.

And that may be too of a not defined answer, but I really am committed to having that discussion and seeing how we can really work to move to both, not just engage people, but get people inside.

And that is not just done by obstruction removal because, you know, because we need to offer shelter to people.

It is really looking at and engaging in, you know, some of our, you know, Council Member Juarez mentioned some of our more challenging areas around the city.

But I think we have, we are proposing in 21 to utilize resources and do and work in coordination with, you know, whether it is our city team or is it perhaps a best led by a partner organization to do that kind of engagement.

And that is, I am fully admitting that that is a different approach than we have taken historically.

But I think, you know, in responding to both what I think Council has clearly articulated, not just recently, but certainly over the past year plus, what we are hearing from our own contracted agencies and what we've been seeing firsthand these last several months in this COVID environment is the opportunity and the need for us to rethink.

I don't know if that answers your question, but I really mean that in full transparency and honesty that we are you know, trying to embrace change.

And again, a team that is less than it was before, that doesn't have, is not acknowledging that, you know, SPD is a full-time member of it, this is requiring us to take a different approach.

And that's what we're proposing, is to try to attempt that beginning in 2021. Obviously, a lot of conversation that needs to occur this fall, so if council, to your point, does accept this proposal, that we're ready to execute that at the beginning of the year.

Council President, I appreciate your line of questioning.

Do you have any follow-up?

Not at this time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I want to thank Councilmember Lewis and Council President Gonzalez for their leadership on the Regional Homelessness Authority.

Looking forward to, you know, as that is stood up and staffed and we see the resources and investments going there, using best practices, evidence-based strategies to deal with homelessness regionally.

I want to thank Deputy Mayor Sixkiller and General Manager O'Hara and Director Johnson.

Overall, this whole strategy of the surge in assistance to those experiencing homelessness I think is I'm still digging into the details were obviously a lot of questions coming up here but it to me personally, it seems strategic and sensible.

You know, I do get a lot of constituents calling her concerned with what what they see as an increased in unauthorized encampments and.

So I just want to I want to thank the hard working dedicated team of city government employees who have been engaged in trying to offer shelter and services and I'm heartened by the improved results that we've seen and heard about.

And in looking at this slide, this streamlined outreach and response team, I'm glad to see that that for the nine point four million, we do have a team of city government employees who will be the ideas to coordinate and and and oversee these operations and to analyze the data to respond to communication requests.

And so I just, I appreciate the questions also from my colleagues.

In addition to obstructions, I know that I've heard a lot about fire hazards.

I think it is important for us to have a leadership role in the city as well.

I strongly support having city government employees in a leadership role here with the city tax dollars going out to highly skilled outreach nonprofits.

I want to thank you all for this presentation.

I am not seeing an additional hand.

I do have a few concluding comments here.

I want to reiterate the importance of the language that we did pass in this summer and early fall action.

I confirmed with central staff and our legal team that there is nothing that prohibits the city from continuing to protect public safety, address We have a lot of work to do.

We want to make sure we put that issue to rest.

There is still the ability for our city personnel to address crimes and those types of hazards.

I want to reiterate my appreciation for the walkthrough of today's presentation.

There will be follow-up questions.

You heard a number of questions today.

to follow up with you on those questions.

And yes, thank you, Director Johnson.

If we could see that next slide, that would be good for the viewing public.

We did have a chance to talk about it this morning.

And as we transition, I just want to let our folks from the Office of Housing know, we still have about 35 minutes for your presentation.

And if we need to carry over into the afternoon, happy to do that with you as well.

Director Johnson, was there anything else on this slide?

I know you wanted to put it up for the viewing public.

Is there anything else on this slide specifically?

No, I think we covered much of it.

In earlier questioning, I just want to reiterate that we are preparing to transition both the contracts over to the regional authority when the regional authority is ready.

As Council President Lorena Gonzalez mentioned, the CEO hiring is expected to result in a new leader in January.

That leader has 60 days to submit a staffing plan.

That staffing plan will guide when we will conduct the transition.

So I think much of that was discussed earlier.

Appreciate you bringing that up earlier so that we can have that in our mind as we think about the 2021 budget.

And I will also say that a number of the questions that were raised today about this Um, newly proposed navigation or outreach team for me, it's also going to be.

Important to know how and if.

This is separate or dovetails with that new entity, so we'll follow up on that.

I will note as well, I would like to follow up with you specifically about whether or not there's budgetary items that we need to think about in this year's budget, sorry, in 2021's budget to address the coordination among service providers given the changing nature of COVID.

And I think the possibility of an increased need given Many people are still unemployed.

Rent is going to at some point become due, even for those who have been able to.

have the protections from the eviction prevention strategies.

We know that many people are racking up bills and they do not have the possibility of employment.

I'm very concerned about the possibility of a surge in homelessness and increasing housing instability.

So we do need to have, I think, greater coordination among service providers.

I look forward to learning more from you.

And again, this is not about you or any one individual amongst your team, but if there's a strategy that we need to fund or ensure that there is funding to support, I'd be very interested, just by way of reference, some of the comments that I've received about the lack of coordination among service providers includes this quote, absolutely nobody has reached out.

It has been difficult to impossible to connect.

I'm not aware of robust sustained communication.

with service providers.

It's important to know that engagement is happening one-on-one, but right now what we need is effective communication across systems, a true systems response.

Folks are frustrated about lack of meaningful communication engagement that requires us to work together and implement strategies not in silos or one individual organization.

to address barriers and difficulties of COVID that layer on top of already challenging work.

So that is just, you know, the beginning of COVID and as the flu season is layered on top of that and additional housing instability, I'll be looking forward to working with you on greater coordination.

With that, I want to double check.

Any additional comments?

Okay, Council President, please take us home.

Thank you so much.

On this particular slide, slide 10, I do think it's worth spending more time on this.

Unfortunately, we're out of time today, but this is obviously a sizable amount of money.

And there are a lot of intersections here between Council's budget appropriation authority in the context of the interlocal agreement and the bylaws that are Hopefully going to get finally approved in our next governing committee meeting of the regional homelessness authority.

So, I just want to, I just want to flag for you chair mosquito in for director Johnson that I do think that that this is 1 of those.

areas that might merit a little bit more attention in terms of digging into the details.

And unfortunately, I recognize we just don't have the time to do that today, but don't want to lose the thread of the need to have a deeper conversation about this, particularly as it relates to some of the issues that some members of the previous council have expressed related to how budget decisions are processed and made in the Regional Homelessness Authority and Budget Appropriation Authority.

is really the only power we have at the City of Seattle and at the Seattle City Council level in terms of influencing adoption, region-wide adoption of evidence-based, data-driven harm reduction approaches throughout the regional system that we are seeking to create.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council President.

Duly noted, and we'll follow up with you and Council Member Lewis We are going to transition over to the office of housing.

We will follow up with you on the Council President's request for more details behind that slide.

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

Agenda item two, Office of Housing for briefing and discussion.

Well, good afternoon, Emily Alvarado.

I saw you late last night on the interview that folks were having in the community about the ongoing civil rights uprising and really appreciate your comments on Converge Media.

So I know you were working late into the evening and then I thought about you this morning coming back online with your team.

Why don't we have folks introduce themselves and then we'll jump right into this.

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you, and council members, thanks for having us today.

I'm Emily Alvarado, the Director of the Office of Housing.

With me is Becky Guerra, Finance Manager, Office of Housing, and we're pleased to present to you all the Office of Housing Proposed Budget for 2021. Just to let you know, what you're about to see is pretty limited.

in that the Office of Housing essentially has functionally zero general fund dollars included in our 2021 budget.

And because of that, we're gonna talk a lot about how much of our budget action are technical changes, and Becky's gonna walk you all through those.

And then I'll take a slightly higher level description, talking more about what our core revenue are, and what our core expenditures are on an annual basis, cover RSGI and our commitment to racial equity.

And I know that you've already asked some questions in the last presentation related to acquisition, and I'd be happy to answer those and any other questions you have then.

That sounds great.

Thank you.

And I saw in our original calendar that we had you slated for 15 minute presentation.

I thought we need a full hour, but we're going to try to do 15 minutes and then 15 minutes of questions.

So appreciate your flexibility with us.

Absolutely.

And I'm sorry to do this, but am I supposed to share the presentation?

Chair Mosqueda, I am trying to find the name of the person who was supposed to share, but yes, it was on the executive side.

I can share it if you want, but it will take me a second to pull up the presentation.

That would be awesome, Allie.

Thank you very much.

I didn't recognize that part.

I didn't have that information.

Sorry about the confusion.

The message from CBO was that Becky was going to be running the presentation.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I didn't realize that.

I can share, please.

This is life in the time of COVID, so it is absolutely fine.

And Patty, thank you for identifying the folks to do that.

Becky, will you do that, or is Allie going to manage it?

I can do my best here.

Allie, if you have it handy, let's see.

I will do my best.

I can't get it open.

IT, can you make sure that both Becky and I have the ability to share so that whichever one of us could do it quickly?

I think Becky's been given permission.

OK.

I'll stand on.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks, Becky.

And Director Alvarado, if you want to initiate your comments as that's getting pulled up, that would be great.

Sure.

Absolutely.

Becky was going to do the first slide.

I'm sorry about this.

Which really demonstrates that our primary issues that are coming before you in 2021 are technical in nature.

Let's see, Becky, do you want me to take over?

I'd be happy to talk through them, but I am having trouble pulling it up to share my screen.

Allie is saying.

OK, guys, I will pull it up.

I got this.

You can go ahead, Becky, and we will we will get this pulled up.

Apologies about that.

So our our primary The primary action that you'll see of our technical adjustments is the removal of one-time 2020 ads.

And as you know, in 2020, we had significant ads for Mercer Mega Block and for the local option sales tax, the capital investment side of that.

And so those, along with some other things together, when you remove those out from our 21 baseline, that's a reduction of about $49 million.

Should I wait?

Keep going.

The second technical adjustment is simply citywide adjustments for standard cost changes.

It's $233,000.

That's something that impacts all departments, inflation and central cost changes.

The third one is something that will not show as a discrete budget change because it is a net zero, but that is the swap of all of our general fund for OH administrative resources.

So what we have done is we have taken all general fund out of our baseline operational budget.

And we are instead using balances from MHA primarily, and also a little bit of levy, the admin portion of those revenues.

Then the fourth thing is the adjustment of our authority for operations and maintenance subsidies.

We have, okay.

We have a commitment to our homeless housing that we have invested in to provide O&M subsidies.

And what we have in the technical adjustments is simply a tweak of that dollar amount, representing new projects that have come online in 2020 and 2021. And if we can go to the next slide, so what I've just talked about is summarized here, you'll see I talked about how all general fund has been removed from our base.

What you see here is the jumpstart for the COVID related mortgage assistance.

So the base general fund is still zero and we have this 350 of jumpstart.

The next lines, the other appropriation, this is really our budget.

And here is where you see the change from the 21 proposed From the 2020 adopted to the 21 proposed, this is where you see the one-time ads coming out.

That's where the change is.

You see the change from the 2020 revised is even larger.

That is the changes we just talked about from the adopted, as well as the one-time things that were added in the second quarter supplemental, like the $25 million of REIT authority, which we have invested in 2020, and the $4 million of the CRF.

for rental assistance.

And then our FTEs remain the same, no change there.

So with that, I can turn that over to Emily to talk about the more interesting things.

And again, I'm sorry about the technical glitches.

So, as Becky explained, I think the primary story as it relates to revenues for the office of housing are more related to our non general fund resources.

And I wanted to overview those briefly on an annualized basis and then explain on the next slide how we expend them.

So obviously, the backbone of our budget is the housing levy passed in 2016 and will expire in 2023. Of that, we have about $41.4 million to invest annually, which is primarily an investment in capital for multifamily rental production and preservation.

There is some for our operations and maintenance subsidies for units that have already been invested in on the capital side and are already open and operating.

$1.6 million goes to the Human Services Department for homelessness prevention, our homeownership capital funds, administration, all coming from the housing levy.

Our other significant revenues include mandatory housing affordability program payments.

We budget this annually at about $28 million.

However, I do want to express that there are significant fluctuations in this source as, as you know, this is based on the development cycle.

All indications currently have us continuing to secure MHA.

However, it's possible that it does not come in at the amount that is budgeted.

We also received weatherization grants.

The bulk of that, approximately 50% for our critical weatherization work is from Seattle City Light.

The remainder is passed through from the Department of Commerce at the state that includes federal resources.

Our federal grants that we get directly include HOME and CDBG.

The majority of those resources get invested in multifamily capital.

And then other revenues are smaller, including interest earnings and fees running at about $6.25 million.

On the next slide, you'll see how annually we invest that.

And I think the primary takeaway on this slide that you'll see is that we do not sit on resource.

For the annual resources that come in, they are expended.

In this year, for example, we've put out two NOFAs, a spring NOFA and a fall NOFA, utilizing our MHA resources.

And we were able to do that because MHA came in higher than expected.

We also invested, I should say, you might say, where is the outcome of that spring NOFA?

And we'll be making all of our annual investment announcements at the end of the year.

We also had a permanent support of housing NOFA, as I know many of you know, that was 60 million.

And in order to achieve that higher than annual amount of levy funds for that investment, we took two years of levy, essentially forward committing a levy year so that we could make investment now to be responsive to COVID.

We will note that that means that a future levy year will not be available to invest in that year so that we were able to make this significant investment in permanent supportive housing.

We've been making more investments in homeownership than we have previously.

We did a spring and have open a full NOFA for capital investments in homeownership as we scale up our work on creating permanently affordable homeownership.

I do want to note some work by our weatherization and home repair grant team.

It is our focus and belief that we must keep our workers and low-income homeowners and renters safe during a time of COVID.

I will say that the team has been able to adapt safety measures, including virtual home audits, in order to provide continued service during COVID.

So we're expending on par with what we expected that we would have in this space.

Especially now, it's really important that as people are home, they are living in comfort and safety.

And so I'm proud of the work the team's been able to do to continue that service.

We are continuing investment in operation and maintenance subsidies.

Obviously, we have a significant pipeline and more units opening that are providing supportive housing, and so that O&M subsidy continues to get expended.

And you'll see the last line in our core annual expenses are staffing and administration, just being clear that those are full department-wide costs for all that we do outside of direct capital investments.

So I mentioned a few things on the last slide that we've done in 2020 that we will continue to do in 2021 that demonstrate that we intend to put racial equity at the focus and center of all that we do.

First of all, in this year, our PSH pilot is really in part intended to respond to the fact that there is significant disproportionate rates of homelessness experienced by BIPOC households.

And we want to make sure that our strategies are tailored to support communities of color.

Second of all, we have an increasing emphasis on homeownership and our homeownership expenditure.

That's primarily through our levy resources, which is about $10 million from our $295 million levy.

that we additionally were awarded 10 million from the Mercer MegaBlock sale that we're investing in permanently affordable home ownership.

A real focus to work to close the racial wealth gap that exists between black and white home buyers and also to create community stability.

Our weatherization work will continue obviously sustainability of homeownership, a real critical piece of our racial equity work, making sure that we don't lose ground on those households that do and are able to own their home at this time.

Finally, COVID response.

This is summarizing a bit of the longer presentation that I provided, I think, last week to Council.

I hope I was able to answer questions then, but happy to do more here.

The primary COVID response that we're involved in is as it relates to rental assistance.

and supports for low-income homeowners.

And on rental assistance, although we did present a more complete package that is a larger sum of rental assistance dollars that are deployed over three strategies, what you see here is the direct assistance that gets routed through the Office of Housing which was a combined $1.4 million initially from CDBG and a subsequent $4 million of CRF funds.

That is the amount that we are administering directly to tenants who reside in Office of Housing funded apartments, rent and income restricted apartments, and that's the program.

The other funds do route through the Human Services Department to provide contracts to our homelessness prevention providers and the United Way, so that's not reflected in our budget.

What is reflected in our budget, and as Becky talked about earlier in the slide about that $700,000 or the $300,000 that you saw, That is the homeowner stabilization programs in which we're doing two things.

One, we're doing more support for the Washington Homeownership Resource Center to provide counseling and advice, and then to more foreclosure prevention supports and loans, direct cash assistance through HomeCite.

And I think that is the conclusion of our presentation.

Again, light on specific budget details, but I'm happy to answer any broader questions.

I can jump in to talk about acquisition, unless you'd like to ask the question any particular way, Council Chair.

I'll go over to the summary sheet just to keep up there for reference.

I just want to say thank you for walking through that.

Becky, no worries about the PowerPoint presentation.

That was very helpful to have you walk through that.

And hello, little one.

She's here for the hard questions.

Yes, good, good.

Q&A time.

So yes, please, there was a number of questions, Director Alvarado, if you would like to address those.

Is there funding from the office of housing, specifically the levy, so that we could purchase hotels or other strategic acquisition funds that could be used for vacant hotels, motels, apartments?

The second question I heard was I'll just throw this one in.

Rapid rehousing in that previous presentation from Director Johnson, there was a slide on the rapid rehousing investments.

One of the questions that we had is who's managing that and how does that, those dollars get out and how fast can that happen in terms of the RFP process?

I think it's the two questions I heard so far.

So I can start on the first one, if you'd like.

So we do not have a discrete pot of money for acquisition, but what we do have is we have the authority to use funds that are not needed in the short term for short-term purposes like acquisition.

So we have the authority to use $30 million of our O&M trust funds, our operation and maintenance subsidy funds, which are needed in future years but not needed in the short term.

And of that authority, we are currently We currently have some outstanding loans, and so we have $16.5 million available.

But we are finalizing two loans right now that we'll use up another $9.5.

So our available balance will be about $7 million right now from that $30 million pot.

The important thing there, though, is that when these loans are repaid, I'm going to do air quotes, they're not really repaid.

They're typically converted into permanent longer term financing.

And Emily, I don't know if you want to speak more to that about.

Sure.

So I think you all have heard about our program.

Sometimes they carry the name.

We have a bridge loan product, and then we also have an acquisition and preservation program.

And both of these, as Becky mentioned, are short term lending of our money that's needed in the future.

And so what we look at are a few things.

One, we look at having the available cash on hand to be able to make those investments.

And as Becky said, we do have available cash to make those investments.

But what we also look at is to the extent that the things that our partners acquire, we will be the predicted takeout financing.

We want to make sure that we're making loans where the long-term financing is knowable.

And because we are nearing towards the latter half of the housing levy, there will be some point at which we have more of an assessment of risk to make those loans of which we believe that we are the permanent financing.

All of that said, the clear answer to your question is yes, our funding can be used to acquire hotels, so long as the long-term use of that property is for permanent housing.

And I know in some cases hotels would either need rehab or other kinds of modifications to make it a permanent housing type.

Our loans, our acquisition loans, depending on if it's a bridge loan or an A&P loan, comes with a 20 or a 50-year regulatory agreement.

that requires that the converted ultimate use be permanent housing.

So as long as that's the setup, then there is, we do a rolling basis for acquisition loans, and we accept those loans so long as we have the available cash, the available authority, and have some level of confidence about what the permanent funding is.

I know that that will be welcome news to many of our council members.

And I believe Council Member Juarez that that's a that helps directly answer that question that she asked earlier.

Your second.

Oh, so sorry.

Did you want to answer the second question and then I'll turn to Council Member Peterson.

Sure.

The second question about rapid rehousing, while I can't speak specifically to how that rapid rehousing will be invested, what I can say is that in terms of available units and available partners, we know that the city has made an investment for several years now in Housing Connector.

And Housing Connector has helped develop systems to support the utilization of rapid rehousing in an effective way.

And we know that that utilization requires several things.

It requires available units, willing landlords, and the appropriate amount of subsidy to be sure that we could support the tenants.

And Housing Connector has made agreements with a range of housing providers, some of whom are in the Office of Housing Portfolio, including Community Roots Housing, Mercy Housing Northwest, for example, where they can provide access to units for clients who are using a rapid rehousing resource.

Housing Connectors also made connections to private market landlords who can help to avail those units.

and we continue to explore ways to use any potential vacancies in MFTE to support Housing Connector as well and have those conversations going.

Okay, thanks.

I think the impetus of the question was wanting to know if we already had an existing organization that will be working on the rapid rehousing investments that we saw on that slide and thus how fast those dollars could get out.

You know, was it going to involve a lengthy RFP process?

When could we anticipate those dollars getting out?

So if you I'm sorry I don't have exactly that information and I will follow up with you in full counsel with that information.

I was interested in the $28 million estimate for the MHA funds.

Is that based on historical data?

I guess what I'm interested in, is it based on the old council policy of the 50-50, 50% building on site, and then 50% paying in lieu?

Or is it based on a different number, like a historical number, which might show in lieu more than 50 percent of the projects or units?

It is based on actuals received in recent years which admittedly has fluctuated wildly so it is an imperfect estimate but it is purely based on historical numbers.

If I may follow up so is that I mean and that's something we could work through central staff to maybe do a deeper dive on I'm just curious like if you know, there's sort of a trade-off between the policy of wanting to integrate affordable housing projects in all neighborhoods and, but some real estate developers choosing to pay in lieu, which has a different sort of benefit in terms of getting nonprofits to build the affordable housing.

I just want to see if we do encourage more on-site, does that mean that we then, that 28 million would go down or would it, which, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if we're getting a different policy goal of building on site.

But I think we'll just submit that.

I'll submit that question for later.

Thank you, Council Member for that question.

That's obviously something that we continue to track.

I actually do believe that we owe a report to Council either at the end of the year or early next year, which begins to summarize questions of what the existing balance is looking like as it relates to payment and performance.

One of the things I could say more anecdotally that we're seeing is an increased overall number of projects, obviously, as we move towards a mandatory and have implemented now a mandatory program, and given the economics.

In the market right now we are seeing an increasing number of projects choosing or indicating that they intend to use performance.

Right now we have not seen that have any significant impact on you know, this estimated amount that we've used for the purposes of budgeting, especially because it can be one large project, for example, with a larger payment that can make a real difference on how much we're able to invest as part of our NOFA.

So, great question.

We will track that and include that information in our next report to you.

Thank you, Director.

And Allie, you can actually lead the central staff on budget.

Did you have something to add to that?

Yeah, thank you.

I just wanted to add, well, Director Alvarado said what I was going to say about there, there is a regular report and we're expecting to see that.

I will just know on the numbers and looking at the historic numbers.

Because of the way MHA was implemented in different parts of the cities at different times, it is somewhat difficult yet still to see the 50-50 balance or whether or not we are getting there.

Because the goal was about a 50-50 split outside of downtown and South Lake Union and other high-rise zones.

And because MHA was implemented in those areas first, we saw money coming in the door from those areas first.

So I think we are still learning whether or not we are achieving that goal.

And I can follow up more with you offline Council Member Peterson.

Any follow up Council Member Peterson?

Okay, I think it's a great question.

Look forward to working with you on that too.

Appreciate you raising that in earlier meetings as well.

Two quick questions for you, Director Alvarado.

How much NOFA funds do you anticipate releasing in 2021?

Our best guess at this point is the $28 million that we budget for MHA and IZ.

And then the big decision is likely we will also invest another year of housing levy, which is $29 million, but recognizing that by virtue of taking two years of housing levy for this year's PSH pilot, when we continue to accelerate by one year each year of those expenditures, we will run out one year early on the housing levy.

That's as a function of resource, not as a matter of meeting our goals.

I do want to say for everyone for a level of confidence that on an annualized basis, we are exceeding our overall levy goals.

So taken together, $29 million plus $28 million is the best projected NOFA for 2021.

that.

Thank you.

Councilmember Strauss, did you have a question?

Thank you for popping in.

Good to see you.

I wanted to make sure I didn't miss you.

My last question is, I did not see the jumpstart funding reflected on the slides.

We know the jumpstart funding comes into play in 2022. The overall revenues anticipated is $214 million.

That means $133 million just for affordable housing efforts.

Can you talk about how that could potentially play into the pipeline for funding, freeing up dollars that maybe you had held for 2022 and beyond, and pulling those forward so that we can see more projects in the pipeline, both for units created and operation and maintenance?

Are you able to factor in jumpstart calculation for 2022 to free up dollars for 2021?

Thanks for that question, Councilmember.

Obviously, I'll take the lead from Mayor Durkin on the approach to future years of expending the 2022 jumpstart, which is, as you mentioned, the year with which the significant focus is on housing.

I'll say that from a pre-2022 planning perspective, one of the places that I've already discussed actually where known future resources comes most into play is around acquisition.

And it's because when we make acquisition loans now, we will have a reason to throttle those loans when there is less knowable future takeout financing.

And so it's particularly in that lending piece where I can imagine that planning for additional 2022 resources comes into play the most.

But beyond that, typically our approach to a NOFA is releasing an annual NOFA.

So we would be prepared at any point.

to either turn up or down that dial as we do in typical years.

And we will always work with our incredible partners in the community to provide capacity and pre-development support so that projects are ready when permanent financing is.

Okay, so we will potentially stay flexible as the situation evolves throughout the next year plus.

Appreciate that.

And not just for units right also for operation and maintenance, which we know is critical and probably even with this proposal in front of us under invested with this just 6 million.

Okay, I don't see additional hands.

Remarkable.

We are finishing right on time, and you all are very generous to speed through that presentation, but it was very informative.

I got all of my questions answered.

If we have additional questions, we'll make sure to share those with you through the appropriate channels.

I just want to say thank you for everything you're doing.

Without housing, people cannot be healthy, and this entire recovery is predicated on people having a safe place to stay housed.

Thank you for all your work that you're doing to bring more housing online and to provide the necessary support so that fewer people do fall into homelessness.

We really appreciate all of your work.

If you could pass that on to your team.

Thank you very much, Council Member.

I really do have an incredible team of mission-driven folks who are producing high-quality work and a lot of it right now.

And we thank very much for Council's support in ensuring that people have an opportunity to a safe, affordable home.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you, Becky, for walking us through.

We will hope to see you again very soon and look forward to building on what you've proposed here.

This concludes session one of the last day of our budget walkthrough for the mayor's proposed 2021 budget.

If there's no objection, the committee will recess until 2 p.m.

Seeing no objection.

Thank you.

The committee is in recess.

We'll see you in an hour.

Thanks, everybody.