Councilmember Lewis hosts town hall on homelessness outreach & services

Thank you all for joining us this afternoon for this really critical discussion about outreach and services for our neighbors who are currently living unsheltered in the city of Seattle.

My name is Andrew Lewis.

I am the council member for District 7, which represents neighborhoods from Magnolia to Queen Anne to South Lake Union to Pioneer Square, downtown Seattle, and Belltown.

I am also the chair of the select committee on homelessness strategies and investments, which is more the reason that I'm hosting this town hall.

Although I can attest that myself and many of my neighbors in District 7 have massive concerns currently around the crisis that we're dealing with of homelessness in the city of Seattle and things that we can do to address it.

So we're here today to talk about homelessness outreach services, shelter and housing.

I want it to be a broad ranging conversation and I'm honored to be joined by a really great panel to talk about the great work being done in the community and ways that we can protect and expand that work to really rise to the level of what the challenge is presenting us.

And this has never been a more pressing issue.

And I remind people every day that although in this year of 2020, our city has seen four declarations of state of emergency, the original state of emergency that we had in January was our years old, long standing state of emergency in our struggle to shelter our neighbors who are experiencing homelessness.

In our recent summer budget session, the council voted, and this is what part of what had persuaded me to really move to get this town hall up so we can start this conversation now before recess.

to completely defund the city's outreach entity, homelessness outreach entity known as the navigation team.

And while I personally voted against that decision, I didn't do it because I'm committed to the navigation team model of outreach.

But I wanted to develop and formalize our relationships with the outreach provider community to a greater degree before committing to completely defunding the navigation team.

But that decision's been made, and I want to just tell the panel and everyone here, for the context of this town hall, I really want us to assume a post-navigation team world for our conversation today.

I really do want us to talk about, okay, if the navigation team is gone, what is that going to entail for the outreach efforts that are currently happening?

In what ways can we continue to have a build a cohesive strategy between city and providers without the sort of centralized role the navigation team had, and how are we going to build that together as a community, and how can we partner as a provider community in a city to do that effectively and scale it up.

And so I'm happy for this conversation to diverge too into related issues like shelter capacity and de-intensification and challenges that providers are facing around staffing.

And honestly, I know that there's some folks on here who have had some COVID era innovations and strategies that have been successful and sharing that I think is helpful for this conversation too.

And this conversation has never been more needed.

Every day, I talk to someone who is frustrated by the city's lack of progress on getting more folks inside and reducing the number of unsanctioned encampments.

And one thing that I always note is that while our positions may be different in exactly how we talk about this or exactly how we approach this, All of us want the same fundamental thing.

We want folks that are currently living on shelter, living outside, living under bridges to be able to get inside, to be able to have, as my colleague Council Member Dan Strauss says, four walls and a door that locks and just the dignity and affirmation that comes with that of being able to live like a person in our city.

And we all, all of us want that.

No one wants to have a city with the massive number of unsanctioned encampments that we currently see today.

You know, I had lunch with a group of small business owners today in Pioneer Square.

And I want to reiterate here as I did with them, no small business owner should be expected in the course of being a small business owner to have to deal with discarded needles or human waste or other public health hazards that are associated with the deficiencies in our city's response to how we help people in extreme poverty in this city.

And similarly, I've had conversations with the providers on here who are eager to provide those services and those shelters and that outreach.

If we could get more city action to fund the tiny house villages that we need, the enhanced shelters, the permanent supportive housing, the behavioral mental health and wraparound services, that if only the city, the state, and the county could provide the resources needed to rise to that occasion that have been documented in so many reports that make it clear and that make it evident.

Reports commissioned from the business community, by service providers, by the city that all indicate that there is a massive gap between the demand and the resources that are available.

So I'm hopeful that what we can do this afternoon is that we can start a conversation that will carry over into our fall budget session.

Just to take pressure off folks, we're not having this town hall for us to commit to a strategy right here and right now.

We're not here to hammer something out that we're going to start implementing tomorrow, although I certainly share the sense of urgency that I would like to do that.

But we are here just to have a conversation, to have that conversation in the public and with the public, about the multiplicity of different things that we can do and how we can do those things in this post-navigation team environment and do it in such a way where we can finally start making meaningful progress on these issues that all of us have a shared commitment for.

With that, I want to transition to introducing our awesome team, because this is the team right here that is going to do it in the long run.

The people that are here on this panel today and the organizations that they work for have been providing, are providing, are out in the field every day doing amazing work to really start moving the bar on how We can be getting people out of encampments, getting people into treatment, into other public health-related interventions.

And the folks here really are from all those worlds of public health, housing, outreach.

And I could not be more excited to introduce everybody that's on the panel today.

So I think the way that I'm gonna do this is I'll, one by one, the people that are here, and I know that Chloe Gale and Colleen Echohawk are gonna join us later, So I think we'll start with the folks that we have.

I think we should just go through real quick, do names and just the organization that folks are here representing and that they work for.

And then I think what would be helpful is if we could just go through and let everybody, sort of the way I did in making an opening statement, have everyone just kind of make an opening statement of, sort of the outreach efforts that the organization you work for currently does, what some of the hurdles that you're seeing are, how the city can be an effective partner.

And one takeaway I want everyone to emphasize here, because I hear this all the time, people in the city want to know how they can help.

people in my district that reach out all the time that are just despondent because they feel like they don't have the capacity or ability to assist and to help to make progress on this.

If anyone here has a way people can engage, people can help with your mission, feel free to mention that as well, because I know that there is just a pent-up desire on the part of people to really roll up their sleeves and help their city, especially in these challenging times of COVID.

Why don't we start, we have Yvonne Nelson here from REACH.

And Yvonne, why don't you go ahead and take it away.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, everybody on the panel.

It's good to see everybody.

Thank you.

I'm grateful to be in this town hall and I love doing outreach.

I work for REACH, which has been an outreach organization for like 20 years.

Our outreach efforts sometimes exceed our ability to reach everybody.

But we go in the nooks and crannies, in the bushes, over fences, under fences.

We do all that kind of stuff.

And we're pretty unconventional with our outreach.

We take supplies in.

So I should say that I've done outreach before COVID and before the NAV, during the NAV, and now doing it after the NAV.

And so what I can tell you about doing it with the NAV.

People, most people of color are not eager to engage with police officers, no matter how nice they are.

It's something about the uniforms and the authority that they present.

And so doing it like right now, Reach is doing community outreach.

Just today, I went to the Starbucks on 23rd and Jackson and I spoke with the manager in there to ask if I could post up one day a week, set up a table, a tent, bring some case managers to address the homelessness just in that community.

My particular community is the central area down Rainier all the way to Rainier Beach.

I have already partnered with the Rainier Community Center to set up there.

I'm there on Fridays from one to three to address that community.

I have coworkers that are in the Soto community that are down in South Park, up North.

And so we're just doing this thing and partnering with the community and building relationships with people like is the biggest thing.

During NAV, the moving of the encampments so regularly stretched our capacity to really meet the needs of the people that we were serving.

They'd be here one day, we'd set up appointments, and then the following week they would be moved and that would have to start the process all over again if we were able to reach them again.

I have followed, I just remember one, young lady I followed for a year to try to help get her services and she was not interested because of I'm trying to address her in the heat of her trying to pack up all her belongings in the rain and figure out where she was going to move.

And I want to speak about the shelter system.

I think if the city could do anything, if they could train the staff there and pay them a better wage to address what's going on, then that would help a lot.

And shelter is not for everybody.

I think one of the things that we have, we have a lot of empty buildings.

in the city.

And if we could, in communities, use one of those buildings, staff it with wraparound services, I think that would help.

A lot of people don't want to move without their community.

And that has been what I have seen during doing outreach.

I think that the garbage pickup in unsanctioned encampments is a great thing.

They, they garbage needs to be picked up.

I think that we were, we're not saying get rid of all the police.

That's not, that's not what we're saying.

Um, uh, I think that, um, the partnership has to be, uh, worked out.

I think that, um, The RV remediation should stay.

The septic tank cleaning out also needs to stay.

So we've partnered with all these.

We partner with neighbor care.

Nurses come out with us to address wound care.

We have addiction services.

So we're pretty real rounded.

And I like when I go into an encampment And I say reach, and they can name off a few people for reach that have been in that encampment.

And so I love my area.

And so people welcome me when I come there.

So I just think that my concern is, is the NAV just gonna change names or with the same process?

Or will we actually come together with the community and the partners and get this thing rolling.

So thank you.

Thank you, Yvonne.

Can I ask a quick follow-up before, and then I want to move on to Jesse next.

So what would that process look like?

If you could define the process of how we would come together and get things rolling, as you just said, what would that collaboration look like?

We would have to collaborate across from shelter, housing, the garbage pickup community is the big thing.

Because if we could have the community partners, each community had their partners, they had nurses, they had outreach workers, they had case managers, and talk about what is good in their community and how we could address that.

Okay, I appreciate that.

We'll come back to that too when we talk as a whole panel, because I think once we all start talking about this, I think we can begin that process right here.

So, Jessie, why don't we move on to you, Jessie Benet.

Hi, everybody.

Good afternoon.

Hopefully everyone's surviving the heat.

I'm Jessie Benet.

I'm currently the Deputy Director at the Public Defender Association.

local criminal legal system reform.

We project manage the law enforcement assisted diversion program here locally.

And I've been deployed largely the last five months to standing up a hotel-based response called Co-Lead.

Prior to my time coming to my giant five-month tenure, feels like five years because of COVID, at PDA, I spent 12 and a half years at the county and the four years before that inside the King County Jail doing discharge planning.

and I spent 12 and a half years in the behavioral health and recovery division at the county working on programs targeting people with behavioral health conditions who also have criminal legal system involvement and about the last five years of that spent time working on an initiative called the familiar faces initiative learning from people cycling through our local jails and so I'll try to weave in kind of the answers to your three questions but I think one of the things I really just want to make sure that we talk about is not just people living unsheltered outside but people living unsheltered who have a chronicity around that and who are drug users and also have either mild mental health conditions or very acute mental health conditions and when you get into the population that has all of those things, living in extreme poverty, disproportionately people of color, disproportionately black folks, undiagnosed mental health conditions, high rates of drug use.

We don't have a good response and the response that has historically come for these folks has been, you know, winding up in jail and through a cycle of arrest.

Now that the jail is booking less people, there's less of an enforcement I guess flavor in in some of our neighborhoods.

We're seeing much more visible, much more visibility as you talked about earlier.

We're seeing much more encampments and we're seeing much more people living sort of in proximity in neighborhoods and I think a lot of this, a lot of what we haven't talked about and I think what is getting left out of the conversation is what does it look like not to just find a place for people to go, but actually have harm reduction-oriented, trauma-informed responses that honor people's agency and self-determination around drug use, understand and center where people are at with their mental health conditions, and have an understanding and appreciation of the cognitive impairments and the sort of level of disability that folks are struggling with.

Unfortunately, the healthcare system has also let these folks down, and we see a lot of barriers in our traditional Medicaid-funded system.

Oftentimes in our mental health services, more intensive services, we see a reluctance around people with high degrees of substance use or criminal histories.

In our substance use system, we often see a reluctance to serve people with high degrees of mental health.

impairment or criminal histories.

And so where do people wind up?

They wind up in the jail, which up until recently is always open, or they wind up visible in our neighborhoods, often living in encampments, living unhoused.

And so You know, a program that we've been working on the last five months has used a hotel-based response and has been very, very successful at that because of our staffing model and because of who our staff are and the approach that we take around harm reduction and having people that look like and have experiences that are similar to those that we're trying to serve.

and having on-demand medical provider services and on-demand services that we provide where we're readily available.

We're right now targeting populations with lower acuity mental health issues and are trying very hard to partner with folks on this panel and many others to do a targeted response in a couple of Seattle neighborhoods, Pioneer Square being one of them, Chinatown International District being another, to come after everybody that's there regardless of their level of mental health impairment, regardless of their substance use, regardless of their chronicity living unhoused, and regardless of their legal system background.

And that's gonna take a big village, and I think that's where, in one of your questions, how can the city be a good partner?

I think helping to bring providers, you know, providers are maxed out right now.

I think Allison might speak to this, but we've approached many of the different social services, behavioral health providers that do good work that are just completely taxed and don't have capacity to do this.

We have some that are willing and we're really excited to work with those that do feel like they have capacity.

PDA certainly can't do it all.

REACH will play a huge role in this around assessing who's out there and thank goodness for people like Yvonne that people that are out there trust and know and Yvonne knows these folks and can assess what folks' needs are.

So folks like Yvonne and her team can help direct people to the resource that matches their need.

But there's many providers that aren't able to join the effort.

And I think as we look at things like the NAV team going away and maybe other enforcement-based frameworks going away, we really have to think about what's the first responder system that we're building up in its place, and how do we think about housers and mental health services and substance use services as first responders and value them in that way financially, value them in that way just in terms of how the city and the county pays for services and sort of centers them and builds out that system.

I'll stop there.

I have other things to say, and I didn't answer all of your questions, but I'll try to weave that in as we continue the discussion because I know other folks need to take a turn.

I have some follow-ups but I'll save them because I think some could be will probably be addressed by Allison who I'll move on to next.

But I do want to come back and kind of talk about presumably and you were talking about the hotel and you're talking about CoLEAD and the work you're doing.

I want to come back and talk a little about that scalability and just kind of how CoLEAD's been working too for for members of the public that might not be aware because I think that there are some great great lessons from it and I'm thrilled with the progress that CoLEAD has been making.

So I will come back on that, but I do think that the concept of maxed out providers is something I definitely want to get to in this town hall and I think Allison can probably address that in addition to her other remarks.

I think we will move on to Allison now if you want to go ahead and unmute and jump on in there.

I really, really appreciate the remarks from both Yvonne and Jesse and I look forward to hearing from the other people on this panel and really welcome the concept that you've created an opportunity council member for people to ask questions as well in non-COVID times we would be more able to have more conversation and I do feel that that is an essential thing that we all are obliged to find more ways to facilitate despite the public health emergency that we are in.

I'll introduce myself briefly.

I'm the director of the Seattle-King County Coalition on Homelessness.

The Coalition on Homelessness is not a direct service provider, so in the one of these things is not like the others category, but we are a membership-based coalition All of the groups that are here participate in the coalition in some ways.

And what our job is, is to mobilize our community to challenge the systemic causes of homelessness and advocate for housing justice.

And what we're working towards is living in a region where we act on a shared sense of responsibility to ensure that everyone has a home.

Now, that's our mission and our vision, and we are also very pragmatic about how we try to move that mission forward and how we try to make that vision a reality and not just some words.

Our coalition convenes homeless service providers, people who have themselves experienced homelessness or are currently homeless, and advocates, as well as our partners from local government, housing authorities, allied organizations, multiple times every month.

We have a monthly membership meeting.

Those are open to the public.

We invite people who are interested to participate, but they really are focused towards people who are doing the work every day and every night.

of shelter and housing.

We also help people experiencing homelessness to register to vote.

We support over a thousand school-age kids experiencing homelessness each year and their families with backpacks, school supplies.

We're about to host our Back to School Know Your Rights workshop, which is going to be an extraordinary experience this year.

And we engage in education and advocacy to solve problems, to create homes, and to move beyond some of the stuck points that I think those of us who live in this world all the time find are all too familiar.

I really want to not take a huge amount of time here because there are people who are doing the work who can describe what it is that works incredibly well.

What I'd like to do is just offer a couple of points of context.

One is to remind us all that when then Mayor Ed Murray declared a state of emergency around homelessness about five years ago, That recommendation came just as the Obama administration was coming to the end of its eight years in power, when the Obama administration's budget proposal to the Congress included massive investments in housing and rent supports and other kinds of supports that everyone needed.

And we all knew that because of who controlled Congress, that that budget proposal was going to be dead on arrival on Capitol Hill.

And then Mayor Ed Murray's entire proposal was a one time additional investment of $5 million and the addition of 100 beds of shelter.

That was not adequate to meet the need five years ago.

And it is very clear, I think, that what we need to do, as you said, Council Member Lewis, to scale up, to respond to the need that we see and feel, and thousands of people experience in our community, has to be much more strategic, sustained, and significant than that.

One of the things that I say to people when they ask me about how the response to COVID-19 has been is that it's really a tale of two responses.

On the one hand, huge effort.

work to move people out of relatively speaking unsafe conditions, i.e. crowded group shelter settings, into sometimes physically new locations, sometimes hotels, sometimes other spaces that were better set up.

And in all, some people experiencing homelessness, their shelters moved locations not just once, but twice, or even in some cases, three times.

The city and county staff, the staff at those agencies, the people experiencing homelessness themselves did an incredible, incredible amount of work.

And what we've seen without any question is that when people have gotten into individual spaces, a room for themselves or a shared double room with not just four walls and a door, but access to a bathroom, access to three meals a day, Not only do they not test positive for COVID, but their mental well-being, their overall health, their ability to grapple with whatever is going on in their lives dramatically improves.

So that in and of itself should tell us something.

Moving people, whether it's from the street or from a shelter, into a much better environment is really what we should be focused on.

Now we have some 7,000 people in Seattle and King County whose environment is that they're living outside.

So in addition to all the work that was done to de-intensify shelters that was incredibly positive and necessary and saved lives, we also have to do more for those 7,000 people.

And there, I am sorry to say the response is not something to be proud of.

We recently contributed to a shared effort that the Seattle Human Services Department the King County Department of Community and Human Services, and our coalition and our members undertook, which was to document what were the changes in shelter capacity before COVID and now.

And while the final results aren't quite ready to share, and I don't wanna presume to state something definitively, what I can say is that particularly for adult men and women we have essentially a net zero increase in capacity.

So that means that there are still thousands and thousands of people who don't have dignity, privacy when they need to relieve themselves who don't necessarily have access to food or running water because many programs that either relied on volunteers or had constraints of staffing or space or money have either closed or reduced their service hours and availability.

And in fact, things have gotten worse for those folks.

We've been relatively speaking fortunate because the weather is good, but it's now coming to the end of the summer.

And the reality is, days will get shorter, nights will get longer, the weather's going to turn, flu season is coming upon us, and we have not nearly done enough We collectively as a society, the city and the county to create additional safer spaces for people.

What Yvonne was describing was what we sometimes think of as social work.

social work sometimes gets a some people have different reactions to, to that but my disciplines are social work and public health.

And what I can say is the work that outreach folks are doing, bringing people food, water, helping them connect to treatment services, get in line for benefits, move into housing, replace their ID, have a sense that they haven't just been abandoned while everybody else stays home and orders in food.

That work is crucial.

We need to expand upon it, but it's not enough because the answer still has to be, well, where are those folks gonna go that's better?

And so I welcome the opportunity to have that conversation that brings not just outreach, but not just shelter, but housing and the services that we need, because this is in some respects only a more intense version of the challenges that we have needed to seriously address for quite some time.

So I'll pause there.

Allison, thank you so much for sharing that.

And I certainly have follow-up questions, but I think we'll go through the panel and then I'll circle back and we'll all interact together.

So I see that we have Sharon Lee on now.

So Sharon, I don't know if you were here earlier for how I cued this up, but I'm just asking folks to introduce themselves.

say the organization they're here on behalf of, and then just maybe share a little bit about sort of the kind of outreach and housing interventions that, in your case, Lehigh could provide to be part of our response and approach here to making meaningful progress on homelessness in Seattle.

You're muted there, Sharon.

Hi, I'm Sharon Lee, and I'm the executive director of Low Income Housing Institute, or LEHI.

Thank you so much for asking.

I think that's really, really important, what you're doing, which is to gather many of us and ask the question, how can we imagine?

How can we redesign?

what has gone on in terms of the navigation team and outreach.

And I'm hoping that we can have a successful discussion with council as well as the human service department and the mayor's office on next steps.

I do want to say that there is general recognition that people who are unsheltered on the streets, who are very vulnerable, having them swept from place to place is dangerous.

We're creating misery.

we're creating more people at risk of exposure, of violence, of being, you know, the trauma of being even worse often before they were swept.

So I think there are some really good answers that we can follow up.

As an example, when Mayor Durkan came into office, the first thing she did was, well, actually, literally, almost the first thing she did was she held a press conference with Reverend Lawrence Willis, who was building tiny houses.

And during her first year, she set up three tiny house villages, including two of them that were low barrier, that were low barrier villages on running on a harm reduction model.

So people with chronic mental health, chemical dependency, as well as in some cases, physical disabilities have a place to go.

And so we know that when we encounter homeless people on the streets, they would love to have a tiny house village as opposed to being referred to a shelter or referred to a dormitory or having to pitch their tent or having to, you know, stay in their car.

So we know the popularity of tiny house villages.

There are currently nine villages that are getting some sort of city support, and Lehigh has been operating them, and so far we've moved over 850 people into long-term housing.

And so the data is showing that if you live in a tiny house and you have a case manager or social worker, there's a really good likelihood that we can get you on a housing waiting list and we can move you into permanent housing or get you a section eight because everybody has to wait somewhere.

There's nothing you can just move in today, but there's lots of options that if you could stay in a tiny house village, improve your health, talk to a case manager, you're more likely to get housing and employment and income support.

So even we are basically with the number of tiny houses, we have over 500 tiny houses at this point.

We are helping close to 20% of the unsheltered homeless population in the region because homeless people are able to live in a tiny house, lock the door, there's heat, there's electricity, there's access to showers and laundry and community space and food.

So we think as an example, even when in the news a couple of days ago, the Everspring Motel was shut down, we had nine people moved into tiny houses and they were at critical risk if they could not find any other place to go.

When Ballard Commons was swept, we helped 16 people move into tiny house villages, various tiny house villages, and also lakefront community house.

And when the police were gonna sweep Capitol Hill around the CHOP area, we helped 20 people move into tiny house villages before, tiny house villages and sweeps, before the sweep, we got them into shelters and tiny house villages.

So we know that millions of dollars, actually 8.3 million is being spent on the navigation team.

We don't just want people doing outreach after outreach.

Yes, we need outreach, but the solution to outreach is more flow into motels, hotels, and tiny house villages.

And I think that's what we need.

We have a missing, we have you know, missing supply, right?

So if we had more villages and we had more access to hotels, then we would be able to transition more people instead of, I mean, can you imagine offering behavioral health to someone and offering drug treatment to someone who's literally on the street?

That makes no sense to just leave them on the street, right?

Why don't we have a crisis response where yes, you do need access to services.

Yes, you do need access to hygiene.

But why would we leave you on the street if we could reposition some of the $8.3 million into tiny house villages or hotel stays?

Now, one criticism I have of the system so far, and it's nothing new, is that when a homeless family finds themselves homeless, often it's in the middle of the night.

or the weekend, and the same with singles and couples.

Why aren't we having a 24-hour response?

And why aren't we having a late-night program where, you know, instead of all the social service agencies being open from 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, right, when you find you're homeless at 4.30 in the afternoon, There's no one going to help you, right, that evening.

So I think we need to go back to the hotel voucher program.

There used to be a hotel, very small hotel voucher program.

If you found, let's say in the middle of winter, you found a family with an infant that's turning blue because, you know, infants can't hold their heat, voucher them into a hotel.

Voucher them into a hotel over the weekend so that on Monday morning or Tuesday morning, a case manager can actually, you know, place them into a tiny house village or into another shelter option.

Why not do something so that people are not at risk from exposure?

The same thing with, you know, people have sick kids, there are frail, elderly individuals, there are people who, can you imagine being, you know, having a walker or a wheelchair and you're out on the street in the middle of winter?

We need to maximize how we offer hotel stays and how we offer tiny house villages.

And I think then you don't have people sweat from here to there to there just because there's no overnight stay for them.

So I would urge us to look at not just redesigning the outreach, but redesigning the end solution, which is more tiny house villages, more hotel stays.

We should be purchasing hotels.

We should be purchasing hotels because we can get them up and going quicker than we can build permanent supportive housing.

Now, permanent supportive housing is great.

And the mayor just announced 600 units.

But it's going to take two years before that happens.

So in the meantime, we should make use of what we have, which are tiny house villages and hotels.

So Sharon, I want to ask just a couple of quick follow-up questions before we move on to Kiana next at the Urban League.

Because while I don't know that tiny house villages are the solution to the whole problem, they're certainly a big part of it.

And there's been a lot of great success.

And I want to ask you a few follow-up questions.

just to kind of get them out there for the audience.

And the first one would be, so you said like nine villages, about how many placements is that total in the system for Seattle?

And what is your retention rate?

Like once someone gets into a village, do they stay there?

Do people stay there for a while and then leave?

If you just have those statistics handy, I think that would just be good to get at.

Yes.

So year-to-date from January to July, we have helped 532 men, women, and children staying in tiny house villages.

Some households stay a very short time.

We try to get the families or kids out as soon as we can.

And we also provide first and last month's rent security deposit.

We help them move.

We help them get furniture.

And so we actually have our on-site case managers help them relocate to long-term housing.

And then some people stay longer.

There are some people who need more time.

And so they are working with the case manager to fill out multiple housing applications.

And I just want you to know that Lehigh, we own and operate 2,500 units of affordable housing.

So we just built a new building, and we moved in Every time we build a new building, we move in people from tiny houses into our permanent housing.

And we also place them at other nonprofit-owned housing, as well as Section 8 programs.

So there are some people who are reluctant to move.

We do have some people, instead of staying two or three months, they're staying for a year.

because right now the tiny house villages are not time limited.

It's not a situation like an emergency shelter where you have to get out after 30 days.

But we feel that for the people who are staying longer, they're accessing services, they're getting their life together, some of them are working, and then they will eventually move.

So recently we've had people who have lived in a tiny house village over a year move into permanent housing, and they're much more prepared to move into permanent housing and keep their housing because they've been able to save up money, they've been able to get a job, or income support.

I wanna ask one more question on the tiny houses.

At what point, because, you know, not every placement is the appropriate placement for everybody.

It's, you know, why it's important to have like a variety of places folks can go.

But kind of given the current intake, at what point is somebody sort of too high barrier to be successful in a tiny house village, or is that even a correct question?

But this is a question I get a lot from folks in the community.

I think this is a good forum for you to be able to address it.

Yes, thanks for asking that.

Our villages are actually handicapped accessible.

So all the common facilities, the showers, we have showers and laundry and restrooms.

We have a common kitchen, community meeting space, case manager's office are all handicapped wheelchair accessible.

And the tiny houses themselves, many of them are wheelchair and handicap accessible.

And so It basically provides for, I'll give you an example.

One village is for women, women and women only.

One village is focused on the under-representation of African Americans and Native Americans in the shelter system.

So it is sponsored by a church and it's focused on Alaska Natives, Native Americans, and African Americans.

Another village is sponsored by two churches in the central area, and it takes referrals from the Urban League, from the Indian Center, and from the job training program, Seattle Vocational Institute.

So we are also serving homeless students who are trying to get through their, you know, pre-apprenticeship or job training program.

So a village can serve multiple needs.

We have veterans, we have seniors, and a big category, people with pets.

We serve a lot of people who will not separate not just service animals, but emotional support and pets.

And I think that's very important that the tiny house is perfect for keeping your pets separated from others so that you're not living in a dorm with multiple people with multiple pets.

So it's been a good experience.

So our villages are low barrier.

There are some that are clean and sober.

Let's say someone is in recovery and they would rather be in a place that that is clean and sober, we also have villages that will support someone in terms of sobriety.

Now, I would say the part that the village doesn't handle very well, and that's missing in our whole entire shelter system, is if someone needs nursing care.

If someone who is homeless needs nursing care, or they are incontinent, or let's say they're not able to use a walker, then that's a missing link.

But it's not because of the failure of tiny house villages.

It's because right now, the system does not have a place for people with acute medical needs or people with who are so frail that if they were not homeless and middle class, they would be in a nursing home or they would be in assisted living.

Does that make sense?

So in terms of the housing service continuum, Council Member Lewis, I would ask you to look at that.

We have people with open heart surgery.

They get discharged from the hospital and they're supposed to recover in a tiny house.

Well, they really need to be recovering in a more appropriate setting.

We have some people who get their limbs amputated because of diabetes or from chronic health conditions who have been homeless for a very long time.

Having to recover in a tiny house or recover on the street should not be a condition that we find acceptable.

So basically the whole service continuum is missing that portion for people with serious acute health care needs.

Does that help?

I really appreciate that response.

I think that was – that totally answered the question, so thank you so much.

So moving on, we actually have Chloe Gale and Colleen Echo-Hack have joined.

So thank you so much.

The next person on the panel is Kiana Tayeski from the Urban League.

And Sharon just did a perfect queue up, I think, for Kiana, because some of those tiny house referrals for Lehigh come from the Urban League.

So this is perfect.

And Kiana, take it away.

Hi, I'm Kiana from the Urban League.

I am the now moving into being the housing director.

So basically we've been a direct service provider.

We've been on the streets.

We've been able to, we have different programs.

We have a safe parking program.

We also have the hotel ESFP or We're homeless people.

We provide case management while they're in there.

So basically how it works is we start out with seven days for each client, and we're able to get them into case management.

Because we have job developers that are a part of the Urban League.

So it's a CBA program.

It's called Career Bridge Advantage.

So they are able to get them into employment.

So basically we're focusing on stability in the house.

So once they're, like she said, if we send them to a tiny home, we're able to get them job development because we can focus on them.

So they're not spread out.

We can't find them.

And that is a part of, that is a lot of the part of the problem.

Also, I found that, um, Mental health issues are a real big part of the problem.

They may have places to go, but they don't want to go because of the mental health issues.

And a lot of the resources are not for us.

If they are, we just don't know where they are.

We also have a 24-hour shelter for young adults that we've opened.

We've collaborated with the church, New Hope.

And yeah, like she said, tiny homes have been like a stepping stone to get people into permanent housing.

And that's basically what our focus is trying to empower people for stability.

And that's basically what I have.

Well, I really appreciate you being here, Kiana, and the work that the Urban League is doing is just so critical to everything we're talking about today.

So I appreciate you being here as a resource to answer questions as we open this up a little more after we get Chloe and Colleen in here.

So why don't we move on to Colleen?

I just saw you turn your video on there.

So Colleen, take it away.

Well, thank you so much Councilmember Lewis.

It's really great to have this opportunity and we were in the chat the panelists and I just think this is a this is a really great group and I appreciate the conversation.

I am honored to be the executive director at the Chief Seattle Club.

The Chief Seattle Club is truly a response to the crisis of native homelessness.

We know that Alaska Native and American Indians are the most likely to be homeless.

In fact, in our system here in Seattle, we make up 15% of the homeless population, yet we make up less than 1% of the total population in our region.

So that is a huge disparity, and it's something that I'm incredibly passionate about.

I believe that our homeless community is brilliant, that they have so much to offer us.

We have to think about what it means when we have so many people of color who are experiencing homelessness.

What are we missing in the society?

What kind of answers do they have for some of the biggest problems that are facing our city today?

And so it is my honor and pleasure to get to serve my relatives who are experiencing homelessness.

We do that through a variety of different means.

We have a day center that's open seven days a week.

We offer all of the services that you might need, anything from rapid rehousing to showers and food and laundry.

And then we also operate a couple, one is up and running, Eagle Village, which is a transitional housing facility.

group.

It's a modular housing out in Soto.

We're building 80 units of housing right next door to us in Pioneer Square for folks who've been experiencing homelessness.

And then we just picked up a new project that Mayor Durkin and the Office of Housing just funded 600 units of permanent supportive housing.

And we are one of those projects.

So we're opening up Sacred Medicine House Actually, very soon, it'll be about a year and two or three months.

We are working very hard with some new technology to ensure that we are building permanent housing, housing that will last for years and years and years.

Our community deserves this kind of housing.

Our community deserves dignified housing with bathrooms and with facilities that ensure that they're able to succeed in a way that lifts them up.

And when we lift them up, we lift up our entire community.

I recently had the experience of going down to Pioneer Square, where Chief Seattle Club is situated, right in your district, Council Member Lewis.

And I was at a stop sign, actually right next to the fire station there.

It was a stoplight.

And I heard this wailing.

I heard someone just crying and screaming.

And I looked over to my right and I saw a person that was obviously experiencing homelessness.

And she was in tremendous distress.

There was tears running down her face.

She looked like her life, like everything had just ended.

And she was having such an extreme reaction to something.

And my heart went out to her.

And my immediate reaction was to want to stop my car and go help her.

But that is not best practice.

You need to be with people.

And you need to bring the right people around.

And I realized there was nothing that I could do.

There was nothing I could do.

There was no one to call.

There was no one to take action.

We're right in the middle of COVID response where a lot of our services in Pioneer Square are not operating in the way they normally would.

And I had to drive away from this person.

And just think about her a lot and send her a lot of good thoughts and energy because that's all I could do.

And I think many of us in Seattle, we have that same feeling like what do we do?

Like there is a community of people, our relatives.

These are wonderful human beings who are suffering at incredibly high rates.

And what can we do?

We don't know.

And so that's why I'm so grateful to be here at this conversation, because when I think about reimagining our funding systems at the city of Seattle, I think about what, in my perfect world, in that situation where I just described where this person is just crying and hurting in such a terrible way, suffering.

We're talking about human suffering in one of the most richest cities in the world.

that we have this kind of suffering going on.

It would have been amazing to pick up the phone and call, you know, like a people force of some kind, and send down you know five or six, you know, people who are trained, who know how to take care, who know how to deescalate, who know how to do excellent case management.

And it's not just a one shot deal of case management.

We're talking about building a long relationship with someone who's been suffering for such a long time.

And you all know on this call and folks out there that our mental health system in the state of Washington is in dismal condition.

And we have to do better.

We can do better because we're talking about real life human beings.

We're talking about folks who deserve all that we can give them.

And so when we think about what can happen with new funding, with dollars that are being directed in a new way, we're talking about real life solutions that will ensure that the suffering that has been happening on our streets is eliminated.

And so I feel very excited about the possibilities.

I'm ready to participate in any way that I can.

And ultimately, I want to also say, and I started off with this, but we have to build more housing.

I want to give huge kudos to the Office of Housing, who are pushing forward tremendous new ideas that I think are going to be change people's lives.

And we have to think about new technologies and different ways of building.

And I'm really excited to be a part of it.

And I could talk a long time about this because I care about it tremendously.

But I'll pass it back to you, Council Member Lewis, because I know you care about it tremendously, too.

Thank you.

And Colleen, as long as I have you here for a second, I want to ask a follow-up.

Well, I have two follow-up questions.

I think I'm going to do this one first because I love that you talked about all the permanent supportive housing projects that Chief Seattle Club is doing, which are awesome and are also just going to be a cool addition to the built environment in Pioneer Square.

It's a new building that you're putting in.

I also just wanted to say, you do also, you are also operating a transitional shelter in Soto, I think, right?

Like a modular shelter?

Yeah, it's actually not a shelter as it is more of transitional housing.

Now in the field, everyone's like transitional housing is not like best practice, right?

I think that something that's really important, and I think that Sharon spoke to this really eloquently as well, is that Part of what we are experiencing now is that we are seeing that people of color and communities of color have different needs and different understandings of housing.

And we have to practice that and we have to understand that.

And so we have a transitional housing project in Soto.

called Eagle Village.

We have had such tremendous outcomes there already with people from immediately moving in, some folks choosing to choose a harm reduction lifestyle and began to immediately like limit their drinking, limit other kind of uses.

And we have amazing wellness groups that are happening there.

Our new mental health worker was down there the other day, and there's 35 people that live in that village.

And they had 17 people come out to their mental health group.

That's just a huge, amazing rate.

And the exciting thing about Eagle Village is that it's based in community.

It's based around the community needs.

It's based around you know, eating together pre-COVID and being community for each other.

So it's a really exciting project.

And if you Google it, you can see a lot of media that has been done about Eagle Village.

And Colleen, thank you so much for for that great overview.

And I think it's just as a quick follow up on that, because I think it's related and something that I have a lot of questions that have been coming in during this town hall about are, you know, like, what do we do?

You know, there's there's sort of a there's sort of a trope that is out there in the world where You know, like, what do you do when people refuse, you know, treatment or refuse help?

And I think a lot of the things you just alluded to about the, like, the real community building that you're doing at Eagle Village really breaks down those kinds of barriers.

But I wonder if you might also just respond a little bit to, you know, when we, you know, I mean, and certainly it is true there's folks who, in initial contacts with providers will decline assistance or decline help.

What are ways to overcome those barriers and what are some strategies that are useful?

Well, my Shiro and mentor in this work, Chloe Gale, has said, and I quote it all the time, that when you offer someone something better, they will take it.

And I think that part of what we have to understand in our work that we've done here is we haven't offered enough resources, we haven't offered enough You can look at the numbers, right, and the data and see that people of color are so overrepresented.

That's because we don't offer people of color a culturally appropriate response to the crisis that they're in.

We don't address the historical and ongoing trauma that they're in.

And I think also, you know, we have the PDA here who have modeled this beautifully too.

We haven't understand harm reduction.

in a more excellent way.

Even at my own agency, even though we believe in harm reduction, but because we've had so many people who've been coming to the Chief Seattle Club for 30 and 40 years, they still can't quite understand harm reduction when we're saying, I mean, I have actively said to people, You're going to live longer if you drink two less beers a day.

And you're going to feel better.

And there's all these things.

And I am not a harm reduction professional.

However, I understand it.

And I see how it works.

I see that when people are in a place where they feel safe, where they feel secure, where they don't have to constantly be battling the anxiety of where they're going to sleep at night or where they're going to have to go to the bathroom, Then they're much less they're going to they're going to calm down They're going to feel good and they're going to um do make really excellent choices for themselves if you offer them something better They're going to take it and I see that happen in our practice at the chief seattle club all the time some of our most beloved Beloved people out there are making great choices for themselves and it takes um a lot of time and it also takes um you know, a lot of different answers, right?

So to answer your question succinctly, Council Member Lewis, because I rambled on in several different ways, we have to remember it's going to take time.

You know, when we're talking about someone who has been chronically homeless for 20 and 30 years, to think that in, you know, two weeks, they're going to be all of a sudden better, it's just not realistic.

And number two, and it has to do with relationship.

The number two is like, we have to realize that there's gonna be a lot of different opportunities.

Here on this panel, you've heard a lot of different places that people can go, that people can get their services from, and that is truly the key to, you know, some things are gonna work for some people and not gonna work for others.

And we have to be flexible and being, you know, willing to hear what they might need and offer them something better.

Sorry if I took your line, Chloe.

Yeah, well, I mean, that's a perfect transition.

Let's transition now to Chloe Gale.

Chloe, take it away.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis, for including me.

And thanks, Colleen.

That was lovely.

I actually am here to back up Yvonne, who's the real expert here and actually out in the street every single day.

She's our team leader on our outreach team.

She will answer all these questions better than I will directly.

But I will say, just to give a little more of the reach background, we've been around for 25 years, which I started as an average worker.

That's how old I am.

Yes, 25 years ago.

And we've been doing it here in the city for over a decade of contracts with the city.

And I think that our process has changed dramatically.

We're really excited about the neighborhood approach and the community-based approach that we have designed over the last two years.

Yvonne's had a lot of leadership in that.

I want to call out the BIAs, the business communities, actually, who really helped us design this.

Ballard Business Alliance, also U District, Soto, Capitol Hill, Chinatown, International District, and Friends of the Waterfront have all been instrumental in actually funding outreach workers and asking that we design outreach that's really effective for their communities, that resolves some of the problems that they're finding in their communities for whom they're unsheltered, and then also identify what the needs are.

And Yvonne can really speak eloquently to that because as we've been able to expand, as we've had a little more capacity, we're finally able to do more outreach down in Southeast Seattle, which has been extremely neglected.

And that's a community that Yvonne has really taken a lead in in the last year.

So I would love to see more capacity.

All of the folks on this call, we are partners with.

We work with them every day.

We have been in alliance for a long time.

And we know how to collaborate.

We know how to make it work on the street.

Finally, what we need are the resources.

Outreach is only as good as the resources that we can move people into.

As Colleen said, if you give them something better, they take something better.

They want better.

What they really want is housing, as Sharon and many people here have spoken to.

So I'm really grateful for the housing that's being built as fast as possible.

Absolutely, I want to echo what Allison said.

I'm just going to do the sweet here.

I'm going to echo what Allison said about a lock on the door and your own bathroom.

This is fundamental human dignity, is that you have privacy, you have safety, you can live in community with your chosen family, whether your partner or your friends, and that you have access to hygiene and sanitation during this pandemic.

So it's a – it's pretty simple, and that's where we need to go, and our outreach team will get people there.

I finally just want to echo one, the words that have been coming to mind for me are from David Delgado, our U District community outreach provider, who is just, he's really on fire and he talks about it as every single day he's creating win-win solutions.

to resolve the situation.

So he's got business owners calling him.

He's got law enforcement calling him.

He's got the U District Security Force calling him every week saying, hey, David, what do I do about Cindy over here on the corner?

And David said, 50% of the time, my solution is a cup of coffee.

I come in.

I get to know the person.

I figure out what the situation is.

And I can figure out what is a resolution that helps solve this problem.

And then in the end, it will actually rely on us having the resources.

Chloe, thank you.

And I think that those were great comments to round out sort of the panel introductions because you also did a lot of callbacks to what other people had said, which was great.

So I really appreciate that and I appreciate you being here.

I want to go through and I want to do a couple of follow-up questions and open it up a little bit more.

And, you know, Chloe, I think one of your observations that was really good just now is that even though ostensibly this is a Town Hall about outreach.

What we're really talking about is the fact that you know, there's quite a bit of outreach that is happening.

It's the back-end investments to sort of navigate people into, you know, from the outreach that has been really deficient.

And I think that that's something that a lot of folks touched on in our earlier discussion.

So I actually want to go back to Jesse for a minute and ask some follow-up questions about kind of the co-lead work as like one of those strategies.

And I sort of have two questions, because I know that Coalit is scaling up, or trying to scale up a big project in the downtown core.

And Jesse, I wonder if you could just kind of give us sort of a synopsis of how it's going to look both in sort of scope and scale.

you know, like how many folks you're going to be getting into hotel referrals, but, and also like the scope, like, you know, like how, like when you're doing outreach to high barrier individuals, you know, what's, what's your guys' strategy for being able to do that?

And, and how's that coming together?

Because I think that work would be really good for people to, people in the public to hear.

Sure.

And I can talk a little bit about what COLEAD is.

I didn't go too much into that.

And part of the, strategy involves partnering with some of the folks on this this you know in the Hollywood squares here with us so um it's not it's not just a single agency effort but um some of the things that um Sharon said I think it was about the case management world and the kind of the social services world being a Monday through Friday world really has struck me for a long time and so when we set up We really borrowed from more of a residential kind of setting and to do what we want to do and to be in competition as enforcement and institutional and detainment responses ramped down, we, like I said earlier, we are in a situation where we are in a situation where The jail is always open or at least it was always open and we need to have something that can Be in competition with that obviously in a in a completely different approach So we are a shift based program.

It is not monday through friday.

It is seven days a week There's a day in a swing shift and then we have staff on call overnight.

There's always a supervisor available And right now we're in five hotels, we have about 65 participants, largely partnering where our classic lead program lives and we partner closely with the reach lead, the vein of reach that is lead.

for our current cohort of folks.

As to speak to your question, we do have a focus now in Pioneer Square and Chinatown International District.

And as Chloe says, to have a no wrong door response to the individuals that are living unhoused in those two neighborhoods, that is gonna require a huge effort, which with lots of providers at the table, Obviously, I spoke to this earlier, REACH will be part of that, both on their outreach side and on their lead side, helping to sort of assess and understand who's there, understand people's social services needs, their clinical needs, their housing needs.

culturally responsive needs.

We'll also be partnering with Chief Seattle Club and with Asian Counseling and Referral Services, hopefully Cowlitz Behavioral Health, and several other providers that we're currently in conversation with and thinking through what a sort of no wrong door response will look like.

We think about a total of about 200 individuals are in those two neighborhoods that we need to come for.

We know that some will be, we're expanding the COLEAD program to provide a hotel-based response.

What COLEAD's sweet spot is, is people with high levels of chronic living unhoused, high levels of substance use across the board.

We've been supporting people with polysubstance use and everything under the sun and we have strategized and been creative with how we support people in their use.

And it takes a different response for different types of use.

Folks, unique meth users need a different type of response and different type of support than maybe people that are using heroin or alcohol.

Right now, we are not hoteling people with a high level of mental health need.

I do think as we have more partners, we will have a partner that can do that in a hotel option.

But I do think there will be a subset of the folks out there that have high levels of mental health need, often tied with high levels of cognitive impairment.

that won't be well-served or well-supported in a hotel-based response, in a room, by themselves, for long periods of time.

Folks may need a different type of response, and we're going to work hand-in-hand with many of the folks on this call to think through what that response looks like and to really try to advocate and push on your traditional Medicaid funded system that I talked about earlier where people can maybe get access to a mental health level of residential care or a state home and community services type of service and really try to advocate and identify where the gaps in the system are.

So we think the hoteling will be the largest response but like I said that won't be adequate for everybody and so the folks that that's not adequate for reach will be doing a very intensive case management and sort of wraparound support to try to get to know folks and what their needs are and try to advocate for them to get access to the resources that are most responsive to their need.

That is kind of the summary of that.

Chloe and I can probably take questions looks like you had a follow up.

Yeah, just so as part of that then, like the the hotel placement would sort of be the the transitional space that you'd be getting people into as part of that effort.

Right, as soon as we screen folks we understand what their social services context is what their criminal legal system context is many of these folks are known to law enforcement and even though law enforcement won't be a gatekeeper they're going to be around.

And, you know, our folks have a history of system involvement, and we also want to prevent future system involvement, which means we have to have creative ideas, even once folks are in the hotel, we have to have creative ways of supporting them to not engage in law violations once they're there, and we need We are trying to build out ways that we ourselves are responding after hours.

And we're in great conversations right now with community passageways about having a way to support if things get activated overnight or if stuff starts to happen, how do we have a response that is more of a crisis response and supports people to stay in their hotel option and to avoid folks being arrested and sent to jail.

That's gonna be a lift and that's gonna be a creative approach that we're gonna have to learn and try things and relearn, but we've already had some success with that in the current co-lead program and we've had staff go out in the middle of the night and respond to situations and be able to deescalate those situations and prevent a lot of negative consequences for folks.

I just want to add, on the ground, on the street, the service response for people who are out there, first of all, we have to have a trusting relationship.

And I'm looking at you, Yvonne, who's really exemplified this for many, many years.

And we have to have resources to bring to people.

But really, it's also critical that our staff have the skills to be able to assess what people's needs are and match them to the resources.

And Yvonne actually has been that person on behalf of the NAV team for many years that when they would make shelter referrals, she helped them figure out what is this person's needs and will they be adequately matched?

As you know, it's not gonna work to put somebody into a high barrier shelter who's not gonna really be able to stay there.

Do you wanna say anything about that?

I do, I do.

I've worked, we, down across from UGM, where the first pilot started for putting people in hotels through COLEAD.

And going down and talking to people, like, thank goodness that I had known some of those people before they were vetted to go in.

And so knowing that this person has a boyfriend that is a high user of meth and has domestic violence issues.

Now, do you put both of them in a closed room together?

probably not, or do you, because if she goes by herself, what's that going to look like for her?

And so just knowing like what, what their drug use is, what their mental health is.

And just, I love building the relationships and collaborating with people about, um, letting them tell me what's best for them, not assuming that I know what's best.

They've been on that block for the better part of the year.

So they, they pretty much know what they need and what they want.

And then I can weed out the people that are just giving me BS also.

I also just want to add, I mean, that is so valuable and been so helpful to us, both through the lead channel and the outreach channel.

And it's just huge props to you, Yvonne, Yvonne and your team and the other reach folks that have collaborated with us.

It really is kind of a bridge that we all kind of have a different part of and we have to work together.

And I just want to flag and make sure the work in the Pioneer Square and the CID has not started yet.

It's worse there than it has been.

I drive through it every, you know, three days a week as I'm coming and going from the office and we've done some work there and it's very hard to even see that we've done any work because the second we've been able to get folks out of there.

More folks have popped up, so we do have to have a really high kind of dosage and high collective effort there to be able to make an impact.

And we can't wait to get started.

It's probably going to be mid-September-ish, I think, by the time we get started.

Great.

So I want to pivot to some of the audience questions, too, although I've been I've been sort of inserting some as we've gone through.

But before moving to that, I guess that, well, this actually is one of them to sort of combine what a lot of people have been writing about.

And this is something that was a big part of the council's deliberations on the navigation team.

was that some of the civilian outreach members of the team felt unsafe doing some of this outreach to some encampments in the city.

We have questions from community members that are emailing in about what it might look like in a post-navigation team world if there are some encampments that present as being particularly dangerous or having a reputation for being dangerous.

and what kind of barrier that might provide for outreach.

You know, I wanted to throw that question out here to folks.

Certainly one we get a lot of emails about from the city council and just see what some of the responses are operationally to how that's going to, how you folks see that sort of working in the future potentially.

Can I speak to that?

Okay.

I just want to maybe before we get to the sort of dangerous situation in terms of outreach, I wanted to give an example which I thought was very, very strange.

I don't think we want a system, a new system where people are just tripping over each other and we have like three different groups doing the same outreach in the same location.

As an example, what happened at the Everspring Motel in terms of the owner closing the building, Aurora Commons was there.

Aurora Commons was, you know, checking in on their clients that were staying at the motel.

And there were all these women who were going to be homeless.

And so the city asked us, does Lehigh have any tiny houses or openings?

Because they're going to be homeless.

If the owner shuts down the motel, they have no place to go.

And then so Aurora Commons is there.

And then we find out that Reach is there, right?

It's like, and then I said, wait.

I'm sorry, Sharon, but that is an exceptional situation.

No, I know.

Let me finish.

And then what happened is I said, well, we would really like to house people into our tiny house village.

we just need the, you know, we need to know the, you know, like the, the person's, you know, if there's any, you know, if they have any, you know, we need some general information, like, should it be in a harm reduction model?

Or, you know, should it be based on gender or something?

You know, if the if the women want to be, you know, in a women only village, right?

And then the answer I got was, well, we don't have any information until the nav team gets there, right?

So basically, so Lehigh had to wait, right?

Because should we call Aurora Commons?

Should we call Reach?

Should we call the nav team?

I just think that in a future model, we should be efficient in how we dispense and utilize outreach, whether it's geographic, whether it's, you know, some type of rational, more rational way, right?

Because we think that would make some sense.

So I think we need to get the outreach you know, people who are doing outreach together to design something that makes sense either based on geography or based on, you know, let's say if it's an emergency, then something else happens.

If it's a, you know, a large, so-called large encampment, maybe it's a different situation.

So I just think that we've got to look at how we approach the entire city as opposed to everybody showing up everywhere.

Let's let Allison respond first.

I just think Sharon, there's a lot of that happening but your agency, which does many things doesn't do outreach so maybe the people who are here on the panel who do outreach.

There's a lot of coordination.

There is a lot of strategy.

Is there a need for more?

Yes.

But the example that you introduced isn't actually an example of outreach.

I actually think the city needs to step up to assist and respond and invest resources for the people who are at the Everspring Inn.

The city has an obligation to do more than it has there, but that isn't an outreach example.

pass it off to Chloe or Yvonne or Kiana who do outreach.

No, I want to thank Yvonne who actually coordinated the referrals on behalf of the NAF team for several years from 12 different agencies.

So I know that you're very capable of speaking to that.

And I do actually, I do want to make sure you get a chance to speak about community safety.

I think both of those issues are very relevant.

I can give a example of community safety.

There was a large encampment on Dearborn down the street from Goodwill.

And there had been a lot of things going on in there.

And by no means do we think we can go in dangerous spots.

So what we did is we collaborated with Urban League.

We had neighbor care for nurses come up there and we set up a table in the encampment with resources, socks, all those kinds of things.

And I think the biggest thing is building relationships.

And when it is dangerous, people in the encampments will say, this is not a good day, things have been going on.

Now, I think if there is drug trafficking and rapes and things like that going on in encampments, there needs to be a police response.

There cannot be not a police response for those things.

We've got to be sensible about that kind of stuff.

But I think that in most of the dangerous encampments that I have been in, we have been able to go in with support of the community and other organizations.

I appreciate those responses.

I think that just, you know, what a lot of folks, as I go out and kind of talk to people in the city are, you know, really want to see some visioning around and a conversation around is, you know, if a public safety, you know, problem is being presented by an encampment, they want to be in a position where they know something can respond to that problem and address those public safety issues.

Now, I mean, you know, we could talk all day about whether the NAV team was doing that effectively or successfully.

But, you know, that I think that that's just the, that's one of the concerns I keep hearing and something that certainly you know, we need to address in developing sort of success or outreach models.

And, um, so it was good to hear those initial thoughts on this and the experience that especially reach brings and being able to, um, uh, to have creative outreach strategies that mitigate those issues.

So I appreciate you sharing those.

So we were supposed to only go till five.

We have more questions.

I tried to like loop a lot of questions from the audience throughout, but Camila on my staff has aggregated a few more.

So I think maybe we'll go 10 minutes over and see if we can get through a few of these questions from the audience in addition to some of the ones I weaved in there.

So Camila, if you're ready, why don't you ask the first audience question?

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

The first question is from Angela and it's about the NAV team.

If the NAV team was defunded and has already ceased operations, when, I'm sorry, I'm misstating the question.

She's asking if the NAV team has been defunded and has already ceased operations, when and can that decision be reversed?

Well, so, so the NAV team has been, um, you know, quote unquote, defunded via proviso.

Uh, but that has not actually taken effect yet.

Um, and that bill actually has not been, um, sort of signed, uh, passed into law without being signed or vetoed.

So it's not, um, clear that we, we actually have, um, a final resolution on that, on the budget that we passed anyway.

So, you know, I'm sure a lot of these things are going to be looked at again in our fall budget session.

I would just say that I think that my colleagues are pretty firm in wanting to move on to a different system.

And I think if we can take advantage of the next couple months to really look at, you know, following up on the conversation like the one that we're having here, Some ways we might be able to do this outreach better and hook it up with resources that can make it more efficacious You know, I think that That's a project that is worth undertaking.

So I would say that if that budget goes into effect, my understanding is the nav team operations would cease in November.

So in a couple more months.

Until then, there is going to still be a nav team.

And that's kind of where that stands in terms of procedurally how that's all set up.

OK, we have another question from Eva.

What do you intend to do about trash accumulating in parks?

And how do you intend to make parks accessible?

That's a good question.

Anyone want to take that on?

Because actually, that I don't know if that's one of the the outreach functions, for example, that any of the providers represented here do.

So I think we should have a conversation about, you know, in terms of the division of labor of things, the NAV team did do.

Council Member, I think the thing is, as Yvonne said at the very beginning, trash needs to be collected.

What we need is for people not to be treated like trash.

and for trash to be treated like trash?

And I heard that question probably as a question for you and your colleagues.

I think the concern that I have is that some of the people who may be thinking that the NAV team being ended as a program means that things that were useful won't continue is that that's actually not what we wanna see happen.

The things that were associated with that $8.4 million program included things like trash pickup, the purple bag program, ensuring that there were, people who were responding if there was someone blocking, actually blocking access to a space that needs to be publicly accessible.

But in fact, there were really only two, and then at the very end, three staff on the entire 38-person NAV team whose responsibility was to provide assistance to people experiencing homelessness.

Now, I think that in terms of providing city services, including functioning bathrooms, functioning water fountains, and garbage pickup, that is something that should not be coming out of the homeless crisis response budget.

That is something that we need other aspects of our city budget to be allocated to.

And that's where I think separating and not confusing, responding to people who have literally been left outside during a pandemic.

not confusing that with responding to basic core other functions that need to continue.

That the city does not need something called the NAV team that consists of a great many police officers, bureaucrats and people doing other kinds of functions to the tune of $8.4 million in order to pick up garbage.

We have a municipal garbage system.

So I think those are the things that we want to disentangle as we have this conversation.

And I guess I would hope that the folks who are engaged in this, because we can't have a back and forth, it's really quite challenging.

But I would really be interested to know for people in the community who feel that they were getting benefit.

community benefit from the NAV team, what would be really important would be to know what were the things that were useful and how could those services be provided in a way that is more efficient, a better use of public dollars, more effective and less traumatizing.

I appreciate that comprehensive answer of trying to figure out as we sort of disentangle the multiple functions of what the NAB team did, how we can kind of continue some of them as essential city services in partnership with some of the organizations here.

So I think that that's a really good point and Allison, I'm glad that you made it so emphatically.

So Camila, why don't we do another question?

Yes, we have a question.

Some encampments are too dangerous for social workers to go into without police protection.

How will outreach be provided in those situations?

I already kind of touched on that question earlier.

I don't know if anyone else who didn't get in on that earlier wants to jump in and maybe add a little bit to it.

I can already say, Allison, I think one of the responses would be, you know, from Seattle Public Utilities or some other entity that would do garbage collection is that You know, and I mean, I'm just saying what I would expect that they might say is that, you know, without the presence of police or some kind of security, you know, they wouldn't feel safe performing that service.

And I think that's what kind of the premise of this question is sort of related to.

So, you know, I think this is something we're going to need to discuss over the next couple of months over exactly how it's going to work.

But if anyone wants to jump in on this one more time, I know we kind of discussed it earlier.

I'm happy to give someone an opportunity?

Yeah, I have a couple thoughts.

One is that our staff are predominantly people who reflect the population who live outside.

Some have had life experiences related to the people who live outside.

I think Colleen Echohawk would be the first one to say that if you want to serve a Native community, you need to work with Native people.

That's who your staff are.

I'll say first of all, it is very different for someone who has had an experience or relates to people who live outside.

Our relatives, as Colleen would say, go into that space and have relationships with them.

That's not the, it doesn't have the same, people can come in and your sense of safety is very different.

People are kind of entering into the community that they know and love.

So that is not a concern in the same way.

And right now our outreach teams are spread out incredibly thin.

I mean, I'm just looking at Yana.

Urban League has a couple of people at most.

Reach has barely had, we have a handful of people to serve the entire city.

We have one provider in all of Georgetown and West Seattle.

So right now she is going by herself often to try to get out there.

And I would feel much more secure if she had backup, if she had other staff members, As Yvonne mentioned, if we had a nurse going out, I think that our staff are very street smart.

They know where they feel safe and where they don't feel safe, and they often do that.

Your issue, as Council Member Lewis, as you raised, which I think is important, is that some people don't feel safe out in the community, and they may ask for police to be there.

First of all, I don't think we treat people who live outside as criminals.

If we start with police first, we're acting as though the fact that they're surviving outside we're treating them like a criminal and they are not criminal.

However, law enforcement is there to enforce laws, that's their job.

And so they have a use and a value for that purpose, that is their purpose.

But that's a conversation we can keep having as a community.

I don't think outreach should look like one.

I feel like the collaboration between outreach organizations is what the NAP team, to me, like when all of us came together and knew the dates and places that we were going, it was better for us because we weren't alone and all of the resources are all there together and we all know what day and what time we're gonna be somewhere.

So it's not, so we're, basically it's organized that way.

That's the plus about it to me.

We all know what other organizations are doing.

We all know when to go to certain areas.

But that was what the NOW team brought to the table for me.

Yeah.

Well, I think that certainly this is going to be one of those things that, I think it's going to be a big conversation.

You know, I think, I mean, for me, I mean, I guess just responding a little from my end of this question, I think that it's a super worthy criticism of the navigation team that it did overemphasize the role of police.

And I think Chloe's point is extremely important, which is, you know, if, if you begin from, from sort of a posture where, uh, we were going to primarily treat this outreach operation as a policing operation, um, that that has a problematic effect on shaping, you know, our, our overall response and approach.

So, um, you know, finding kind of the right balance of, you know, when, uh, you know, some, some level of, um, police involvement might be warranted, um, or not, I think is going to be an important thing to go back and forth on over the next couple of months.

But, uh, I think this was a good initial conversation on that.

And, and, uh, uh, you know, I think we can't lose sight of the fact that this is inherently a human services and housing and public health problem, uh, not a, uh, not inherently a policing one.

So,

Or maybe they should just have a response team ready.

Like that knows that outreaching is happening, and there's a certain number that we can call that is just for response, just in case anything happens.

Instead of just being in the presence every time we go out, maybe they could just be a response team in case things happen.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think that there's also, that was one of the things actually that I talked about during the budget process is like, well, could the number of police be slimmed down and could they not be, you know, as baked into it, but like a, you know, an asset that the team could use as they see fit to use it or, but, you know, ultimately we, that didn't really get pursued as a potential angle, but that would be more along the lines of that kind of like as like a task force kind of resource, but.

I think the problem is that the NAV team was created to move people, not to help people.

Whereas you have shared today some, not even all, of the quality community-based skilled organizations that are doing a range of outreach services across not only Seattle, actually, but in many cases, the county.

And they are more effective.

The NAV team was not an outreach team.

So I think it's really important to be very transparent about that.

The NAV team took a reactive response approach to complaints.

And in general, those complaints were not along the lines of needing to secure assistance for people.

Those complaints were about people existing in a place where people didn't want them to exist.

And I think the theme that would be helpful to sort of bear in mind as we move forward with this conversation, from my perspective at any rate, is that this crisis is on all of us to respond to with solutions.

And the complaint-based approach is really only useful to the extent that there are complaints about people who are truly in harm's way or creating some situation that is dangerous to themselves or to others.

And unless we are able to respond to people's needs by helping to address their needs, we will be stuck in the same place forever.

And none of us wants that.

So I say to all of the elected officials, really, the approach isn't about slimming down police officers.

It really is about saying what is working, what is effective.

And I don't think you heard anybody on this panel say that police officers have no role to play in genuine Um, public safety, but if police officers are the 1st and foremost response, we will not.

Have safety for all members of the public, including people who have no homes and who are out there 24 7 and by definition.

their conditions are distressing, distressing to those of us who witness it, but most extremely distressing to themselves.

And we need to relieve that.

As Colleen Echo-Hawk said, people are suffering and we can't expect people who are suffering to be at their best.

So let's help people, you know, have a better place to go.

And let's do that by us having those better tools at our disposal.

And it does require that the public dollars are invested in the solutions, and not in just moving people.

Well, Allison, those are those might be some great closing remarks, actually, for the for the town hall, because we are 16 minutes over.

That was very well said.

So I think, you know, I want to thank the indulgence of our team, Joseph and everyone who's on the on the other side of this, making this town hall technically work for their indulgence and going 16 minutes over.

I'm sorry we went a little over, but the conversation was great and the panel was great.

You know, I think that there's a lot of really great stuff that we discussed today and learned of a lot of good things that are happening out in the community that could shape the ongoing response.

I mean, the thing that you know, really sticks, um, you know, in it for me, uh, is just the, the overwhelming, um, uh, dearth of, um, transitional and permanent housing placements, um, that has really limited, uh, you know, our ability to make those credible offers as people have been saying earlier of giving, giving people a better place to go and a better place to be.

And, um, you know, I think that one thing that the, um, the city could maybe benefit from is just a really transparent, you know, public, you know, sort of metric sharing of, you know, of aggregating all of the shelters places, transitional housing placements together and saying, you know, we really don't have the supply to meet the massive demand that is out in the community.

And just really let, you know, laying that bare for people that that's something we need to really build a coalition around.

So I appreciate everyone here, you know, that's doing this great work and making that really important argument every day.

And I'll certainly stay in touch as we as a council and a city start looking more into how we can keep moving on this.

Because I think all of us can agree that the status quo in the city on what we're doing now is just absolutely not working.

And the more that we all focus on our shared common interest in doing something to resolve that, the faster I think we're all gonna coalesce and be able to move forward together.

So thanks for coming here.

And I'll certainly be in touch and just really appreciate the service of everybody here and all the great work that you're doing.

So thank you.

Thank you.

We really appreciate you convening us.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.