Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee 10/17/19 Session I

Good morning, everyone.

It's October 17, 2019. I'm Sally Bagshaw, and this is our Budget Committee.

It will come to order at 9.30 on the dot.

Thank you, Council President Harrell, for joining me here.

Today we're going to continue with the budget issue identification deliberations.

And for those of you that may be new to this, what has happened in the past few weeks, the mayor offered her budget, then we've taken a look at it.

Last Thursday, council members proposed their own ideas on what we would like to see included in the budget.

And so our wonderful council central staff took those, they're called form A's, and then took a look to see how many of these things can we fund, how many of us on the dais are looking at similar items.

And so today we're doing housing and homelessness and human services in the morning.

And I can tell everyone who has ears that this is the big one for us this year, is how we fund these things.

There's no doubt in everyone's mind.

that people who are homeless are struggling on our streets.

We see more even though we're getting more people off the streets.

We continue to have these issues.

And so how we fund it and how we provide person-centered services is really the issue of the day.

So I want to say thank you to everyone who's here.

Allie Panucci, thank you so much.

Tracy Ratzliff, Council Central staff.

Jeff Sims, Tom, thank you as our budget head.

You all have done tremendous work.

Brian, thank you in the audience for being here.

And so we're going to be diving in.

And also, even though we only have two of us up here, and I will say it again, at 10.17 City Hall is going to participate in what's called the Great Washington Shakeout.

It's an earthquake drill.

We do these on occasion.

It's a statewide opportunity to practice what We all learned in first grade, drop, cover, and hold on.

We will take a 10-minute recess.

So about 10, 13, would you please, Linda, make sure that you signal me.

I'll keep an eye on the clock.

But if I haven't recessed by about 10, 13, if you'll let us know.

So let's see if I have anything else here.

So I think Office of Housing.

Is that our first presentation that we'll have?

And then we'll get into homelessness, human services.

And we will recess roughly around noon.

And then we will recess until 2 o'clock.

2 o'clock we will come back to order.

Public comment will be at the end of the day today.

And again, for anybody who wants to provide comment, we're doing that at the end of the day today, end of the day tomorrow.

And our next public hearing that is available for everyone is Tuesday, this coming Tuesday the 22nd at 530. Okay, well, I've already introduced you, but why don't you do it again for the record, and then we'll set off.

And Council Member Juarez, thank you so much for being here with us.

No problem.

Tracy Ratzliff, Council Central Staff.

Allie Panucci, Council Central Staff.

Thank you.

So, Council Members, you have in front of you, both in your computer and then up on the screen here, The information that Allie and I have provided as it relates to the Office of Housing's 2020 proposed budget.

So as you can see from this very first table, the 2020 proposed budget for the Office of Housing is replete with additional funding.

$55 million, in fact, of additional funding over the 2020 proposed budget.

$23 million of that increase is in the Homeownership and Sustainability Program.

And $32 million of that increase is for the Multifamily Housing Program.

As we have already heard from the executive, Mercer property sales proceeds and the use of the new sales tax for affordable housing account for the majority of these significant ads.

Allie and I will provide more detail on these proposed uses this morning.

So moving to page one of the presentation and your memo, the first notable proposed change in the 2020 proposed budget is a $22 million of funding from the new state sales tax for affordable housing to support the capital cost to develop 175 new units of permanent supportive housing.

And this would be accomplished through the issuance of an $18 million general obligation bond and the use of $4 million of revenues from that sales tax in 2020. Funding is anticipated to be allocated through OH's 2019 Notice of Funding Availability process that will be completed this December.

In 2021 and beyond, the revenues generated from the sales tax will be used to pay the $1.8 million in debt service on that bond and $2.2 million to fund the ongoing operating and maintenance costs that are required to support the operation of these permanent supportive housing units.

And those commitments that we'll be making are for 20 years.

Moving on to the next item, the proposed budget would include $270,000 for the heating oil conversion program.

This program will help an estimated 75 low-income homeowners convert their home's heating source from oil to a sustainable heating source such as electric heat.

Assistance will be in the form of grants to the homeowner and will likely include other funds available from the city to cover the total cost of conversion, which is estimated about $10,000 to $15,000 per home.

In addition, funds can be used to assist low-income renter households enrolled in the City Lights Utility Discount Program who live in homes that are heated with oil and who might need to mitigate the higher cost of purchasing that heating oil.

So they would be eligible for about $120 a year assistance.

Great.

Tracy, thank you for this.

The big issues that we've been talking about up here, and I will confess it's my biggest issue, is how our system is working together.

And if we've got a utility discount program, that's super.

This heating oil conversion program will actually, it sounds like it's a partner, a parallel with that.

Do you know or have you heard, and this is where I was pointing at Dusty and saying, hey, how about if you participate in this conversation?

What is Human Services Department doing and with Seattle Public Utilities to make sure that the system is functioning so an individual who comes and is looking for help can go to a one-stop shop rather than having to look through the website or try to find out what might be available?

really good question I will have to get back with you on that.

I don't know how they have people accessing that information whether it's just only on the phone or on the website.

And I know we've done really good work with Metro Transit as well with their ORCA passes but we're trying to simplify this for individuals to be able to say Rather than, for an individual who's struggling with finances at any time, it's complicated, but to the extent that we can do this one-stop-shop approach, and then who's in charge, and I would really like to continue to get some information about that.

Allie, did you wanna add something?

Yeah, I was just gonna add, Council Member, we can follow up to find more details.

I know during the discussions for the education levy, this came up in terms of households who were accessing assistance for childcare and for preschool programs and other services the city provides and trying to sort of centralize the array of services that might be able to support lower income households.

So we can look into what they have done or what they're planning and follow up.

That's great.

And they may have already done it, and I just haven't seen it, but it would be, I think, to everyone's real advantage to be able to bring this into one systematized approach so that an individual can come and go, okay, check, I qualify for this.

And I also heard yesterday, and Council Member O'Brien brought this to my attention, that a number of the nonprofit organizations that do outreach that actually help identify and connect individuals with the services that are available, they didn't know some of the things that the city has to offer.

So that struck me as being a problem that could be readily solved and would benefit our community greatly if we got our arms around that one.

Thank you.

Very good.

So those two items, central staff at this point has not identified any issues with those proposed changes.

We're now going to move on to identification of issues where we have some issues to raise for you.

So moving to page 2 of your memo, there is $25 million in real estate excise tax 2 funding for affordable housing that is proposed.

for the 2019 NOFA process for OH.

So a little bit of background on this.

In 2019, the state legislature passed House Bill 1219 that gives cities and counties the authority to use real estate excise tax to revenues to support capital investments in affordable housing and homelessness projects.

The proposed 2020 budget states the executive intends to utilize this authority to appropriate $5 million of REIT annually in 2021 through 2025 to fund the development of affordable housing.

The appropriation authority will be included in the 2021 and 2022 proposed budgets submitted to council next fall.

The executive has again stated that they intend to let OH make funding commitments in this year's NOFA to reflect those future appropriations.

Now, you might ask, well, how is that possible that we might be able to make those funding commitments this year and not have the appropriations in this year?

And the rationale for that is, as we frequently know as it relates to the development of housing projects, when a project gets a financing commitment from the city, it is usually 18, 24, sometimes 36 months before they actually begin construction and actually need to start.

getting the city's funding reimbursed for their costs.

So that's how OH could make a financing commitment this year, and yet the appropriations don't actually start until 2021, 2022, and so forth.

So just wanted to be really clear about that.

Great, and we also leverage funds significantly, and my understanding is when our money is available first, we're first in, then other providers or grant agencies more inclined to support these projects.

So is there anything here that we should know that the mayor has offered?

And I'm thinking that I know my colleagues are really interested in all of this and what the options are.

Is there anything that we should be considering that's consistent with the mayor or any alert that you have found so far where people are saying I don't want to do that I want to do something

So I think one thing that council members want to consider is that this authorization to use REIT for this purpose only is in play until January 1st, 2026. So the ability to spend these funds is limited only by REIT funding, the commitments that have been made to transportation and utility projects.

And we actually use REIT for more than just those types of projects.

We use them for parks projects, for example.

Yeah, so one option that the council could consider is given this limited time for us to be able to use REIT for this housing purpose, the council may want to consider the possibility of increasing the amount of REIT.

that goes to affordable housing projects.

Now, obviously, that would have to come at the expense of other projects, likely parks projects, but there's some options there.

So I just got the stink eye from my friend on the left.

The possibility of the option to, in fact, allocate some additional REIT dollars, again, for this limited time period.

I think you're going to see one of the proposals coming up that actually proposes to do that.

So it's just one of the options.

I've got to tell the truth.

Well, that's what I'm looking for is that kind of information and trade-offs because obviously Councilmember Juarez and I have got her back here on parks and REIT funding and things in D5, all things in D5.

But as we go through the next couple of weeks, if you can identify, okay, here's where REIT money could be used, but we're taking it away from something else and what is that something else and are there backfill options?

Absolutely.

I should mention we also carry a reserve both for REIT 1 and REIT 2. There is the potential for one year.

in particular to tap into some of those reserves for a one year additional allocation of REIT.

That does not appear to us to be in violation of the financial policies as it relates to REIT one and REIT two reserves.

So that's just another one that would not require having to cut a parks project, but that would reduce the reserve.

So just one potential option there if council members wanted to pursue that, but we'll have further conversations.

Great, thank you.

Okay, so let's move on to Mercer property.

Council Member O'Brien, thanks for joining us.

We're on page three of six of the memorandum that Ali and Tracy have done for us.

Thank you for the setup, as Council Member Bagshaw said.

We are now moving on to page three of the memo, and the discussion of this item extends through page five.

The 2020 proposed budget directs almost half of the revenues from the sale of the Mercer properties to support housing projects.

This includes adding $21 million to the Office of Housing's low-income housing fund to support a $15 million one-time investment for development of permanently affordable home ownership projects and a $6 million one-time investment for a new accessory dwelling unit loan program.

For the affordable home ownership program, of that $15 million, $11 million would be dedicated to acquiring land potentially from Sound Transit for development of affordable home ownership projects.

$1 million would be used to support that land acquisition for staffing and maintenance costs, things like fencing, trash pickup.

and that sort of thing.

And then $3 million would be directed to fund an employee-supported homeownership program.

The intent is to leverage this $3 million investment with contributions by employers that would allow workers with incomes between 80% and 120% of AMI to purchase a home of their choice in Seattle.

I think it's worth noting here that this would be a departure from the eligibility requirements for other homebuyer assistance programs that OH administers that typically are focused on serving households at or below 80% of AMI.

So would you explain a little bit more about what we anticipate here?

Are there partnerships already identified?

Anybody out there that has raised their hand and said, you know, we'll do this and we will put in money if you'll put in this one or three million dollars?

We're not aware of any such partnerships having been identified to date.

I don't think that the executive has really started that process.

I think they're likely waiting to see if the council carries this proposal forward or not, but we're not aware of any employers jumping in to match these funds so far.

Okay.

Okay, Council Member Bryan has a question.

I'll follow up with this.

The home would only be purchased in Seattle?

So this could be a partnership with a company anywhere in the region, as long as the employee wanted to purchase a home in Seattle.

But it would not be the other way around for a Seattle employer who wanted to fund their employees buying a house outside Seattle?

That's our understanding, that it would be to support helping people become homeowners in the city of Seattle.

And also to be clear, I think the intent of the city's money would be to actually serve people under 80% of AMI.

It may be that the employer would provide the funding that goes to people above 80% of AMI.

That's our understanding as well, preliminary.

This is a work in progress, I think it's fair to say.

So all the details have not been ironed out in terms of the structure of this program.

Okay, so I'm really interested in what the executive has been thinking and working on on this.

working with Habitat for Humanity or Tony Tove's organization?

Or is there an entity that we're looking at to expand or what's?

So you don't have to say now if you don't know, but I'm interested in what their intentions were because I'm not quite seeing how this is going to work.

Happy to get two more details as we can.

Great.

And then you want to move on to ADUs, or did you have anything else for permanent affordable home ownership?

Nothing else on that piece.

So for the ADU loan program, the loan fund would provide low-cost loans up to $150,000 to homeowners whose incomes are at or below 120% of AMI to create accessory dwelling units, that I keep referring to as ADUs, for a 10-year period, which would be reserved for rent that the ADU for a 10-year period would be reserved for renter households with incomes at or below 80% of AMI.

And I'll say a little bit more about this program in a moment.

In addition to this $21 million proposed in OH's budget, the 2020 proposed budget directs $41.7 million from the Mercer sale to finance general to create a strategic investment fund.

That's intended to achieve multiple community benefits through the development of mixed-use and mixed-income projects that include housing, and this could also include acquiring and preserving existing affordable housing.

As identified in the memo under option A, council members could redirect some or all of these one-time resources to address other council priorities.

Some of the funding, for example, could be redirected to increase funding for affordable housing projects that applied to the 2019 notice of funding availability that the Office of Housing has issued.

And to your point, Council Member Bagshaw, in terms of some of the details for some of the other new programs have yet to be developed.

It's a policy choice for this council to determine if you want to test a new program or you could redirect some or all of that funding to support a sort of already identified strategy with projects who have applications in the door today.

Great.

Council Member Bryan.

So in last year's budget, we helped create a pilot program for folks, low-income homeowners, to modify, potentially do a backyard cottage, but more likely to modify their existing structure for creating additional living space.

Do we have any data yet on any of those investments, or has the pilot produced anything yet?

Yeah, so I'm going to say a little bit more about the ADU loan program now, but to get to the punchline, no loans have been issued under that pilot program yet.

It's taken some time.

The Office of Housing had to come back to the council to get authorization and changes to their housing policies.

to create that piece in their existing loan program.

And they've just contracted with an organization to do community outreach that's getting started this fall.

So they have not yet really issued or understand sort of the interest in that program.

So that's a point I will come back to in just a minute.

So for the Mercer funds in general, they're one-time funds, but they could be redirected in a variety of ways, including supporting other housing investments.

For the ADU loan program specifically, council members may want to consider if this proposed investment is timely.

And this is for a number of reasons.

We don't know yet if the regulatory changes that you adopted this summer to the land use code to make it easier to build accessory dwelling units and other programmatic work the city is working on, like looking at streamlining permitting and creating pre-approved plans, will ultimately be successful in reducing costs, making it easier for homeowners to access financing and what those rents would need to be to support taking on that additional debt.

In addition, as just discussed, we're still in the very early stages of implementing the smaller pilot program that was authorized through the budget last year.

And to date, no loans have been issued.

So we haven't learned anything yet from that pilot to inform a broader pilot.

And then finally, a racial equity toolkit has not yet been completed on this program to understand what the details should be.

What are the homeowner income levels we should be focusing on?

What are the renter incomes we should be focusing on?

What is the interest in this type of program for households?

Because what we don't want to do is put low-income homeowners sort of taking on more debt and putting them at risk.

I'm not saying, I think the executive's proposal, they've been thoughtful about trying to structure a program that would not do that, but we haven't, I think, completed the work yet to really know what the programmatic details need to be to serve the populations that may be a priority for them.

for the council, and then finally the proposal would provide up to, oh sorry.

Excuse me, just to interrupt really quickly, do we have a timeline for that?

Because I know we worked on this last year, and when you talk about well we have to complete the racial equity toolkit, we've got all these other things to do, do we have a date certain when that information is going to come back?

We do not the executive has committed to completing a racial equity toolkit on Whatever program comes through the is approved through the through the budget in early 2020 in terms of the The regulatory changes, that has been completed this summer.

And then the programmatic work is ongoing.

The budget also includes, as was discussed yesterday in the presentation on SDCI's budget, they're adding an ADU navigator position to help households navigate the permitting process.

The Office of Planning and Community Development, along with the Department of Construction and Inspections, is right now soliciting information from homeowners and architects about how to structure a pre-approved plan program.

So things are in the works, but it's still a little early.

Okay.

Thank you for that.

I would really like us to know more about what the timeline is.

And there are outside nonprofits right now that are doing some tremendous work about helping connect people who are homeless with a small, I'm thinking about the Block Project right now, what Rex Holbein and his team have done to get a small, affordable, and it's a self-sustaining house now.

We've worked pretty hard to be able to get rainwater to be used for non-potable uses, make sure that there are solar panels to help reduce the cost of electricity and that.

So that is moving, and I would really like to make sure that all of these things that are happening in the community are connected.

and that we're not starting from scratch.

Yeah, and I think here, again, this loan program wouldn't really be addressing the same populations that the Block Project is focusing on.

Because this, again, is loans to homeowners who are between 80% or under 120% of AMI.

And the rent restriction would be at or below 80% of AMI.

But in order for it to be financially feasible for most homeowners, it is likely that the rent would be a household at 80% AMI rather than, you know, they could rent to lower incomes.

Yeah, I understand what you're saying.

I appreciate that.

I just, once again, I want to see it connect and all of these opportunities that we have for trying to increase housing in neighborhoods.

And they are, they're focused, like, as you said, on different populations.

But I think if we have all these separate little silos, people are just confused about, well, what can I do?

What's allowed?

When can I get started?

Are there loans available to me?

The more we've got clarity around what the opportunities are here, I think it would be really helpful, not just for us, but for our community.

Okay.

In addition to the points just made, the proposal, as I've noted, would provide up to a $150,000 loan to build an ADU with a 10-year rental restriction.

I think here it's worth noting that this is a higher per unit investment than the city typically makes to support other homeownership opportunities.

So for our down payment assistant programs or for programs where we're assisting developers who are building long-term affordable homeownership opportunities, we don't, we typically are investing somewhere between 55 up to a maximum of $100,000 with different restrictions there.

And typically when we're investing in rental housing, we're leveraging that with other funds and we have a 50 to 75-year affordability term.

And so it's not to say this program, the ADU program is designed to achieve multiple goals and it is a slightly different flavor, but when we're looking at how to allocate limited resources, I think it's just worth looking at the different populations that the programs are serving and consider what the priorities are.

Right, and you note here on your page four of your excellent memo that one of the goals is an anti-displacement strategy.

So, do we know yet how this is going to be prioritized?

So, let's say that there is a family who has lived forever in southeast Seattle.

And how do we prioritize keeping them in place and providing them the assistance so they can do an ADU or a DAD that they could use to help supplement their payments?

The information we've received from the executive to date doesn't have that level of detail yet prioritized.

initial proposal that would provide different terms for households that are between 80 and 120% of AMI and below 80% of AMI but there isn't currently in the information that's been provided a prioritization if we had sort of you know 500 families come in to apply and we could only issue How do we prioritize?

I think I sort of mentioned briefly in the options and Councilmember Gonzalez has spoken to this point in previous discussions that there is an opportunity here if the council decides to keep some or all of this money directed for this purpose to provide some more direction on what the expectation is in terms of the households that the program is intended to serve, as well as potentially putting a geographic focus, for example, on prioritizing or limiting the program to issuing loans to households that are located in areas identified as being at higher risk of displacement.

Thank you.

Council Member O'Brien and then Council Member Gonzalez.

We can go first.

Okay.

Council Member Gonzales and Council Member...

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

So I have a...

I submitted a Form A related to a proposed modification to the ADU loan program, as Allie has alluded to in her response to your question now.

Happy to talk about it later on, but I think some of the issues and questions that you're raising, Council Member Bagshaw, are precisely why I'm motivated to allow the City Council to take a second look at how the loan program is currently being structured as a pilot project.

I think it's important for us to stay focused on making sure that it's a right-sized pilot project and that that right-sizing is for purposes of making sure that it has the intended policy impact and effects.

which in my mind are both affordable home ownership or rentership and also anti-displacement.

So I think your questions are absolutely spot on in terms of, you know, how are we meeting these really important goals?

I think it's important to recognize that as Council Member O'Brien has been working on this issue for multiple, multiple years, we have been talking about the policy goals and outcomes being centered around being able to provide working class families an opportunity to stay in place and age in place.

And I get nervous about a pilot loan program that might be missing the mark in that regard.

So hopefully when we get to my item, which is item number five here, last but not least, that we'll be able to have a better discussion and conversation around an idea and a concept that I have that hopefully we'll be able to accomplish those goals.

Good, thank you.

And I just want to underscore what you just said and I support completely, is that if we can prioritize stay in place and age in place, that will be a success.

Super important.

Council Member Bryan.

Thank you.

And Council Member Gonzalez, I appreciate your comments and I think additional conversation is gonna be important.

I'm interested in also exploring if there are better ways to leverage this money to achieve similar objectives.

And so if everyone takes out the maximum $150,000 loan, the 5.4 million would be able to fund 36 loans.

And while it's a revolving loan fund with either 20 or 30 year terms depending on it, if you spread that out, that's one or two projects a year on average if we're going to treat it that way.

Not, you know, it's a pilot, I get it, but it's pretty modest.

And one of the things that I'm curious about, I know we've done this previously, but partnering with a conventional or even a nonprofit or a co-op lender to put some money into a loan loss reserve fund and maybe even some money to buy down rates to let them you know, they're experts at lending, and if we have someone who's mission driven a bit, and maybe can maybe do more with less.

It might not be identical to this, but we might be able to do something like that.

And so I'm curious if we have any knowledge on what those programs look like and how we might explore that going forward.

So we've had some initial conversations with the nonprofit lender, and I think there is interest and potential for a leverage fund.

There is some work that was done in Portland in trying to develop a similar strategy for a smaller city investment that could be leveraged.

So I think there is opportunity there until there is sort of money on the table and an RFP out, it's hard to know exactly what type of proposal the lender would come back with, but I do think there is opportunity there.

And, for example, like Craft3 had been working with the City of Portland.

They have since gone on their own, and they have an ADU loan product available in the Portland area now that you can see on their website.

The terms are not probably ideal or would be easy for low-income homeowners to practically participate in, and I think that is part of the conversation we'll have, or if we want to just jump ahead, could have now in terms of Council Member Gonzalez's proposal in terms of trying to test something with a smaller investment with a little bit more, I guess, opportunity to partner with other organizations as well as really make sure the program is focused on the council's priorities.

Chair if I may In conversations that we've been having with organizations that work in this space craft three primarily my understanding is that they've indicated to us that if there was a minimum of a two million dollar investment by the city in this space that they could potentially leverage that up to eight with an eight million dollar opportunities.

So I mean it's a again it's a question of how quickly do we want to go to scale given what I think is a well-intentioned policy but one that frankly we don't have a lot of details about in terms of the two policy goals I see as being a priority in this space.

One anti-displacement i.e. being able to age in place and stay in place and and two, providing affordable housing options, whether it's through ownership, ongoing continued ownership, or being able to offer additional affordable housing to neighbors that might not otherwise have access to these exclusive single-family home zones.

So I think because of that, all of those things in combination are really And so that's been really motivating my proposal that we'll discuss later today.

And we've been talking really closely with folks over at Craft3 around how much money, how much of an initial investment down payment, if you will, from the city do they need to really potentially make a significant enough impact for us to have the data we need to evaluate and to continue to scale this kind of important program up to really truly meet the policy goals.

The second thing that I would say just to add is that I do continue to be concerned about potential unintended consequences in the racial equity Context when I was first briefed by the mayor's office.

I was told that a racial equity toolkit would be done and during budget deliberations During one of the committee hearings.

I think it was last week was told that that it was not the case.

And so I'm disappointed and concerned that that to me feels like it was a misrepresentation of a pretty clear question that I asked around whether or not there was either an intent or work already being done to do a racial equity toolkit analysis on this particular policy.

Not on the overall ADU, DADU policy period, but on the financing loan piece in particular.

And I feel like I was given information that was inaccurate in the context of that conversation.

And so because of those two things, I'm motivated to make sure that we are, again, right-sizing this and working with people who are doing the ground-level work around financing and capitalizing these projects to make sure that we are going to meet the intended and stated goals.

Great, so if I can just repeat what I heard you say here is that we want the race and equity toolkit on this particular project itself, not just globally.

On this, then focus on priorities for aging in place as well as staying in place.

Are you thinking about a geographic area or as part of the pilot or?

I think that a racial equity toolkit, had it been done, would have provided us granular detail on which geographic areas throughout the city we should be prioritizing.

I sort of draw the analogy of the work that we did around the priority hire ordinance, right?

Where we focus on economically distressed zip codes to prioritize who from those zip codes are going to have maximum access to public work projects that are living wages.

It's the same theory or principle that I think we should be applying here.

Part of the reason we came up with that conclusion is because there was a focus on racial equity.

And so I think that doing the racial equity toolkit will lead us to be able to identify what geographic areas throughout the city we could and should be prioritizing in terms of access to this loan product.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for being so clear about that.

Did you have something else you wanted to add, Council Member Brun?

I'll just We have a big chunk of money coming in from the sale of the Mercer project.

We're going to walk through some other items there.

And we don't actually even have the money yet.

It should hopefully come in the next few months.

And I appreciate the effort and the commitment from the mayor to to essentially earmark a bunch of this money for innovative programs.

And I recognize that the reality of the timing is that a lot of these programs just aren't fully vetted.

And so that's a challenge we face on this program and frankly a subsequent number of them.

And so I think for me, as we work through this budget, figuring out what the appropriate how we appropriately deal with that.

I don't fault the mayor for some of these things because I think it's just happening rather rapidly and it's not something that will repeat itself in the near future.

So we have this single opportunity to do something good with this money.

But I think it's really important that the city council continues to have opportunity to weigh in on these decisions.

And so how we set some of this money aside, if it's kind of a, And a concept that's being developed, but make it clear that as it gets developed, there is still multiple opportunities for the council to be weighing in on that.

And if there's things that we can fully vet ourselves during the budget process and set up and maybe in collaboration, that's great.

And if there are things that are going to need months or years to work through, we'll have to decide what the balance is for how much we want to set aside versus making immediate investments.

And that's the framework I'm thinking of.

I think you've articulated that balance well.

Another astute observation by our friend, Council Member O'Brien.

Thank you.

I do want to say, though, I am anxious to see some things on the ground.

So if we have to take a pilot and make it smaller and see how it goes and test it, that's great.

But I don't want to put this forward so we have multiple years.

You just make me quiver.

of having more studies, and then at the end of that just saying, oh, well, we've had a study, but now it's old, and now we've got to start over.

So somewhere we want this balance where we've got our goals clear.

Let's figure out how we can do that this year.

Chair Bagshaw, if I could just sort of echo support for your sentiment.

I think, I hope that my proposal is accepted.

in the spirit that it's intended, which is not to cause undue delay or create additional burden, but to really make sure that as this financing program, anybody can build it.

I mean, folks can build ADUs and DADUs now so long as they don't pursue being subsidized by the city.

But when we're talking about a program that is going to subsidize the development and the building of an ADU, I think it's really important for us to make sure that we get that right and that we are using very limited taxpayer dollars in a way that we're going to get the greatest gain in terms of those two policy goals that I have identified.

I mean, I think it's intuitive, but we don't quite know yet because the analysis hasn't been done that the people who are going to struggle the most with being able to access this program without subsidization are going to be low-income communities and people of color in our aging community.

And so I really want us to be very intentional and deliberate about how we set up this pilot as it's been characterized to make sure that we are actually going to accomplish those goals.

I believe that this is a priority for the mayor's office and that because it's a priority for the mayor's office that we won't end up in a situation, I hope, in which there will be undue delay in terms of making this financial product available to those who need subsidization.

Thank you.

This has been a good conversation up here.

I think we're pretty clear about what we're looking for.

And a very nice transition to discussing the budget actions that have been proposed by the council members.

Why don't we, since we are talking all about the ADU program, just look at number five, which would be a proposal to modify the investment for the ADU loan program.

Council Member Gonzalez is the supporter of this proposal.

It would reduce the proposed $6 million investment for that program to a $2.5 million, by $2.5 million, I'm sorry.

to $2.5 million, reducing it by $3.5 million, and place a proviso on those funds until a RET has been completed and the programmatic details are fully developed.

I will suggest to you that as it relates to all of the proposed changes that you are going to be considering over the coming weeks, we have multiple tools to be able to, in fact, impose upon the executive our wishes as it relates to more or less policy guidance about the spending of those funds from specific policy goals and expectations to holding back funds so that we in fact get what we need to see in terms of some of these programmatic guidelines until monies get released.

So we have a number of tools that we can use to influence the executive's work on this.

Great, any further comments on this?

Just really quickly that the concept really is not to release the balance of the $3.5 million, but to redirect the $3.5 million of the total $6 million to two really important additional efforts that are also helping the city meet its goals of anti-displacement and increased affordable housing stock.

One would be to redirect dollars to the equitable development initiative, and the second would be to coordinate, to fund some coordination work between the Office of Housing and Community Land Trust for housing stabilization and community ownership as well.

So, still in the same bucket, I would say, the programmatic bucket of of supporting community's ability to access community assets by way of home ownership, but recognizing that based on our conversations with Craft3, we think that $2.5 million seems to be about the right size if we're truly doing a pilot project that can be pretty significantly leveraged by an organization like Craft3, which is a CDFI, Community Development Financial Institution.

So really, you know, CDFIs can use that $2.5 million to leverage additional dollars and get us greater results, I think, at a scale that really will help us better evaluate as policymakers whether we're hitting the mark in terms of the stated policy goals.

So here's an interesting situation.

We are about to take a break.

We are having our Washington ShakeOut earthquake drill in just a few moments.

So I'm going to propose that we take a recess right now.

The actual earthquake will happen at 10, 17 today.

Not an actual earthquake.

The actual earthquake test.

Tiana, that'd be great.

Us pretending there's an actual earthquake.

So we're going to take a 10-minute recess right now.

I'm going to suggest that we be back here in our chairs at 1025, so don't go too far.

And if that's all right with everybody, we are going to be at recess for 12 minutes.

Mm hmm.

Mm hmm.

Mm hmm.

you

so Mm hmm.

do do you you you you you

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you.

And we're going to start back up on page 506. Correct.

Good.

All right.

Well, thank you very much.

It's 1026. We've just concluded our earthquake drill.

There was no earthquake, but we all practiced drop, cover, and hold.

And so we are back.

We are out of recess.

And we will continue where we left off, which was, I think, page five of six of your memorandum.

And we'll just start with proposed budget action items.

Correct, please, thank you.

So starting at number one, this is a proposal sponsored by Council Member Mosqueda that would add $43 million of additional funding for the 2019 Rental Housing NOFA projects.

This action would redirect $28 million from the resources that we previously discussed, the Mercer Property Sales proceeds, and REIT II to fund housing projects that have submitted proposals in OHS 2019 Rental Housing NOFA.

Do we know, is this an exchange for the recommendations that the mayor has made for this money to go into NOFA projects?

There is quite a bit of additional NOFA money, I thought, that was going into 2020.

So she's adding another $46 million between the sales tax and the REIT.

This would add, if this proposal went forward, would add another $43 million.

Over and above the $46 million that the mayor is proposing?

Yes.

Yes, so you'd go from $91 million to $134 million of money for the NOFA.

But it would be reallocating some funds that were designated for another purpose as it relates to the Mercer proceeds, for example.

We didn't get into the details.

There's a lot of different ways that the money could be sliced and diced here.

But the intent would be to take some of those Mercer proceeds and reallocate them from other proposed purposes, as well as bumping up the REIT allocation by about $3 million a year for five years.

That gets you to that additional money.

Thank you.

Ali, did you have something you wanted to add there?

Okay, moving to item number two.

This also is sponsored by Council Member Mosqueda.

It would add $100,000 to implement the affirmative marketing and community preference plans.

These are plans and policies that we actually approved in the most recent housing funding policies that we adopted in the spring.

And so this funding would help with housing providers who are trying to implement those policies and plans.

Good, I would, I had some notes here from Councilmember Mesquita if you'll just bear with me for a moment on her action item number one.

Some statements that she wanted to make is that there are more projects ready for financing than funds that are available through the city's current NOFA and she would like to see that we redirect some of these funds to be used from the Mercer sale to also ADU financing pilot, home ownership, and that employer resource program, and the strategic site acquisition.

So that is from Councilmember Mosqueda.

Number three, this is proposed by Council Member Sawant.

It would also take $20 million from the Mercer property proceeds and use it to fund debt service on a $500 million bond to fund affordable housing.

This $20 million would provide a partial year's debt service payment in 2020 for that $500 million bond.

Great.

Council Member Sawant, do you want to speak to it?

Just very quickly, we know that in the mayor's budget proposal this year, there is more substantial than usual investment in affordable housing, but only because of incidental one-time funds.

And the nature of the crisis is such that we need this kind of investment every year.

So that's the principle behind it.

Okay, please go on to item four.

And then item number four is sponsored by Council Member Harrell, and it would add $220,000 for the pre-development cost for an affordable housing project in Little Saigon.

Council President Harrell.

I'm working with Council Member Juarez who's still, she's prolonging her earthquake preparation there, so she's still under the desk.

But we're working together with the Indian Service Center to look at some additional pre-development costs.

This gets at the nail of the displacement issue that the Native Americans and Alaska Natives are fixing.

I think it's a great investment.

They're on the ground already running, you may recall, in 2018. In the earlier budget, we put about $100,000, so this just continues that project and a lot of community support for it.

Thank you.

So I think that we have gone through item number, oh, Council Member Juarez.

Council President Harreld, we were on item number four about the affordable housing project in Little Saigon.

Council President just mentioned it.

Would you like to add anything extra?

I actually, perfect timing, thank you.

Actually, I had some comments teed up and thank you, Council Member Harreld and Chairwoman for recognizing that.

I just wanted to add that we had met with the Seattle Indian Service Commission earlier this year regarding their efforts to expand affordable housing opportunities in Little Saigon.

The Little Saigon neighborhood has excellent access to transit as well as proximity to supportive services.

We want to ensure that it is a neighborhood that remains vital and available to families that are low income.

I am very pleased to support this council action to include funding for pre-development work for this affordable housing project and I want to thank Council President Harrell for bringing this forward.

Great, thank you very much.

All right, we have done five, so shall we move on to the next item?

And I think this includes Jeff.

May I say one thing about the housing that I just haven't had a lot of paperwork on on the housing piece and that is I've been working with the community on a project in the central district with the It's a Mount Zion redevelopment.

I think central staffs is somewhat aware of it They when I met with the mayor during pre-development talks I actually thought it was going to be in there and I'm a little murky on the issue of They want to fund it, they believe there's a pot of money to fund it, but I haven't identified it.

We're talking about between $75,000 and $150,000 of one-time funding to support, it's called the Mount Zion Housing Development, pre-development planning, and it's specifically for low-income and senior housing projects.

So I've been assured that it will be funded, but I just don't know where it's in the budget, so I'm trying to see.

So I'm just putting everyone on notice that I was told by Mr. Noble, we're aware and we want to fund it.

But I don't know if I have to do something additional or not.

I believe you will.

My understanding is, and Tom, I think you can back me up on this, is that there is some money in reserves targeted for that project, but it needs an appropriation.

So it will need a council budget action to actually provide the appropriation.

Thank you.

So that will be forthcoming, if I may.

Yes, that would be form B.

Very good.

All right.

Well, we have new faces at the table.

If you'd like to introduce yourselves.

Jeff Sands.

Council Central Staff.

Brian Goodnight.

Council Central Staff.

Thank you.

Well, we have a memo from you.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

And Tracy, you're part of this as well.

I am.

Tracy Ratz of Council Central Staff.

Great.

So, Jeff, are you leading us through this?

I am, yes.

Please.

to turn our attention to investments for the citywide homelessness response.

As you can see on this first slide, we're going to go into human services a little bit.

This is on the first page of the memo that you've received.

We've broken that table into two slides here.

And as you can see from a table that's replete with central staff, we're going to go into detail on a few different departments.

First, looking at the human services department, The council has historically been interested in knowing how these investments break down into certain types of Homelessness response to something like permanent supportive housing or or a shelter response mostly I'll use a different approach because there is a large number of one-time investments this year in the Human Services Department and that's really what you see at the bottom of the table and what's marked as a other.

It designates a lot of things that are one-time funding, such as the Seattle Housing Authority rental assistance pilot, navigation team funding, the regional authority startup costs, things like that.

If you go to the next slide, then, which is just the bottom half of the table on the first page of your memo, You can see that overall, there is just more than $103 million being put citywide across 11 different departments into a homelessness response.

And today we'll be talking not only about the Human Services Department in detail, but also investments in Seattle Public Utilities and the Department of Parks and Recreation.

So let's go first to the Human Services Department.

As I said, I wanted to break this down into areas that are new or expanded programs.

There are other new investments that reflect things like additional federal funds or contract inflation costs and other technical changes.

But what you see in this table are the principal new or expanded investments.

The first of which, overall, that adds up to an $8.3 million investment above the 2020 endorsed budget.

$6.5 million of that is one-time funding.

The first item, looking at the Chief Seattle Club, is a one-time capital funding for a clinic in the all-all development.

These are funds that would come from the street vacation associated with the convention center.

Next you would see that the navigation team is listed here that we'd be making permanent two positions in the proposed budget.

It makes permanent two positions that were added in the middle of this year.

We'll get to that in more detail shortly.

The next three items are the on-site nurses, the nurse line, and a jail shelter are actually all investments that we're going to discuss this coming Friday, I believe it's Friday, it might be Monday, as part of the criminal justice investments.

And so we won't be going into detail here on those items.

And then the last four are actually items that we'll go into in a great deal of detail related to issue identification and going and providing some nuance to each of those investments.

So we'll move on to, just as I said, some background pieces.

As mentioned, the Chief Seattle Club is a capital investment and they're all building to put in a health clinic.

The other three items, as I've already mentioned, are going to be discussed later.

And then let's look at the navigation team.

So you have on page.

It's just page three of your memo, table two.

You can see this is a breakdown of the navigation team's funding as it is organized by department and the number of FTE that are located in various departments associated with the navigation team.

Over this last year, there was an expansion of the navigation team in the late spring where we added four additional FTE in the human services department.

The majority of that was, or two of those positions were funded with funding that had been provided to expand outreach and mental health services.

And two other of those positions were funded with just one time underspend.

So the proposed budget is providing $326,000 to expand, to make permanent those two new positions.

That's what would be.

Can you slow down just a second here?

So this was last year.

We had two positions that were expanding for outreach for mental health services or behavioral health.

And then the other two positions were doing what?

They are positions that are called field coordinators.

So they handle the assessment of an encampment, looking at the potential public health issues, if they're an obstruction or a hazard.

And those same people also will coordinate if there is a cleanup operation.

They coordinate all the logistics associated with that cleanup.

Those are the two positions that would be made permanent by the proposed budget.

So do those field coordinators also identify places for people to go?

So we've talked a lot about, you know, people are in encampments and we're having to say, you gotta go.

that we have a place for them where they can go, where they can bring their possessions and their partners and their pets?

That's not the primary purpose of the field coordinator positions.

They do provide support to, for example, community police teams and bike patrol officers if someone is encountered that has asked for storage of their belongings, things like that.

But the primary work related to outreach is either through the two system navigators that were also part of this mid-year expansion, or is work that is conducted by, in this case, a contracted agency, Evergreen Treatment Services REACH program.

And they have eight outreach workers that are working both in advance and when there is a clean that's getting 72 hours notification of removal.

That's when that team is engaged in providing services and connecting people to shelter.

So just one last question here.

So the field coordinators are contracted through REACH?

The field coordinators are actually direct HSD employees.

And there's currently this two additional that would be made permanent would bring the total to six field coordinators.

Okay, I just heard a no to my right.

So the other two positions, are those the ones in reach that are expanding the outreach?

Know that the system navigators that I mentioned are also direct HSD employees.

REACH is actually a contract, maybe I'm misunderstanding the question.

It's a contract that HSD has with Evergreen Treatment Services REACH program for eight individuals to be doing outreach services.

Did you want to?

I was just going to say that I think my read of the budget is there is no proposed expansion of outreach services connected with the navigation team.

That's correct.

So the mayor's proposed budget maintains the status quo investment of outreach services related to and directly connected to the SWEAPS work that the navigation team does.

That's correct.

Just I don't know if Jeff you already clarified but Reach is no longer joining the sweeps.

They probably do some initial pre-sweep outreach still I think but they send a very clear statement about why they were not I have a question on the sweeps themselves.

Are they participating in the sweeps themselves?

Yes, Councilmember, you are correct.

Reach is no longer or is at least not frequently present when there is a cleanup of an encampment that on that day that the cleanup occurs, Reach does not come to the site, generally speaking.

In situations where you have an encampment that is being given 72 hours notice that it'll be removed, their workers, though likely are often interacting with a lot of individuals that are in encampments, purposely would make sure that they're there 72 hours or more in advance to connect individuals that are interested with services and before the cleanup operation would take effect.

Okay, thank you.

I don't see any other questions.

I did want to, that's actually talking about those cleanups and the presence of the system navigators and reach is actually helpful.

Informing the broader conversation around the navigation team has been a lot of work by the city auditor's office, making a series of recommendations, and then also recent data released related to the navigation team, looking at the number of individuals that actually do enter into a shelter as a result of these actions.

And so particularly with the city auditor's work, there has been 46 recommendations or areas for further follow-up that have been identified.

And while some of those have been fulfilled, there are others.

And I think there'd be a difference in the way that I would characterize completed versus not completed from what the auditor would look at.

For example, if you looked at expanding the number of enhanced shelter beds that are available, there has been steps taken there.

Not being an auditor, I could perhaps say that that's been a fulfilled recommendation, whereas the auditor might have to say, well, that hasn't met the metric we're looking for.

But as many, there's a good number that are in progress.

There's around 10 or so that I think you would classify as not having been responded to.

And then a good number that are, as I said, either in progress or it's unclear the status.

And some of those in particular are the staffing plan.

And that's why that relates to this issue here.

The auditor identified the need to go to assess what is the right sizing of the navigation team.

And that's work that has not yet been completed despite being asked for it a few different times.

And my understanding is that at this time, no further work is going to be taking place related to this that the executive intends to stand with the staffing model as it currently stands and not do any more analysis.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you very much.

I, as I think folks know, I have a particular keen interest in this.

I really respect the work of the City Auditor.

They have done a number of reports.

They've worked in a way that is iterative with the executive, both issuing recommendations, receiving the executive's response to those recommendations, and then further responding on the executive's response.

So the effort has been structured in such a way that it is intended to be collaborative and one of continuous improvement.

giving the executive the opportunity to identify what improvement looks like while being bounded by the goals of the city auditor as it relates to the 46 recommendations.

So I am disappointed that there are several items that the executive has indicated that they have no intention of addressing.

And as it relates specifically to the staffing model assessment, it is definitely their prerogative to propose a staffing structure that they desire, but we have asked for some analytical work to be done so that we can play our rightful role as budget maker and policy maker as it relates to that.

So we have not asked them to change the staffing model.

We have asked them to do a staffing assessment.

And the reason for that is, as the auditor states, the staffing configuration might have an impact on the navigation team's ability to meet our shared objectives for the navigation team.

And so this is, again, this is analytical work that I think is important to exercise oversight and transparency and what I hope is our shared desire for continued improvement.

sitting here dictating what our outcome should be.

I'm seeking to work with the executive in designing what those outcomes are and then coming up with a structure for accountability for them.

So I hope council members will take a look at the auditor's recommendations and in particular, take a look at the ones that the executive hasn't followed up on.

And I think Jeff can provide that information.

Great, Council Member Herbold, you've been a stalwart on this all along, I mean in the last ten years.

that I've been here, I know even in your previous role that you were advocating for this.

So when you're talking about that auditor's report, are you talking about the February 2019 report or subsequent responses from him?

What do you want to?

There have been a series of them.

So the initial report created the framework for a theory of change and set out several 46 recommendations for items that they wanted HSD and the executive to report on.

And then there have been quarterly reports, both from the executive and from the auditor.

So again, as I describe it, it's not just one report and you're done, it's an iterative work driving the various entities working together on the navigation team towards continuous improvement to our shared objectives for that body of work.

Good.

Jeff, in your memo and the work I know that you have identified some of the auditor's recommendations as well.

Do we have all of this pulled together any place that the public could see so it would be easy to see the original navigation report and then as Councilmember Herbold's suggesting that there have been responses and there have been responses to those responses.

But can we get that all together in one point for review?

Yeah, they're not currently in a single document.

All of them are publicly accessible.

So the three different auditor reports are available on the city auditor's website.

And then the responses that HSD has submitted have all been submitted as clerk files.

So and at various points, rather than addressing all 46 at once, they have responded to a certain body of those 46 items.

It would be, I do know that the city auditor's office is going to, as is usual custom, a summary report that will look at all 46 and give like a red light, green light, yellow light, accomplished or not.

My, I could also put together a similar document.

I would say that at least around a quarter for sure have been met, about a quarter we have not yet been met or not being worked on, and then there's about half of them that would be subject to discussion or interpretation as to have these been met, is more work needed, that type of a thing.

I think that would be really helpful, because we keep pointing to the auditor's report, and then I know there's been a lot of work done this year by both the executive and human services department, and then as we're looking at the regional governance response, how all that ties together.

But if people could at least link what has been written in the responses, it would be very helpful.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Good.

So barring any other questions or comments on the navigation team, as I mentioned, there are four more investments that are presented in HSD's budget, but we're not going to go into those until issue identification.

At this point, we'll turn over to Brian to cover the investments that are in Seattle Public Utilities.

Okay, thank you.

Please.

Seattle Public Utilities, or SPU, they manage a suite of programs known as Clean City Programs that address issues such as litter, illegal dumping, graffiti, and those are all funded with general fund resources.

Four of the Clean City Programs relate specifically to homelessness.

Three of those were started as pilot programs in 2017, and the fourth program began as a pilot in 2018. So, table three, which can be found on page three of the memo and is also being displayed right now as slide number six, shows the four programs with their 2019 adopted, 2020 endorsed, and 2020 proposed budgets.

So, the first three programs that are listed in that table, the encampment trash, the litter abatement, and the sharps collection, those are the programs that began as pilots in 2017 and they became permanent programs with the adoption of the 2019 budget.

The 2020 proposed budget for those programs maintains the current service levels and the increases that you see in the table simply reflect increases in disposal costs.

The final program in the list, the Recreational Vehicle or RV Remediation Pilot Program, is the one that began in 2018 and is still in a pilot phase currently.

The executive has proposed to double the number of sites being serviced each month from an average of seven to an average of 14. The approximately $300,000 in increased costs for the program would support additional contractor costs for the additional sites and would also support a temporary Planning and Development Specialist II position.

As was discussed during the department presentations, the proposed budget also adds $100,000 in the Parks Department and $200,000 in FAS for the expansion of the program.

Can you remind me, I appreciate how much cleaner things are, but we also are looking at ways to make life a little bit better for the people that are in the RVs.

So we had talked about pump outs, the mobile pump outs.

Do you know whether that was funded in particular?

I would have to check on that.

It has not been funded yet.

Jeff knows.

Jeff says no.

Jeff knows.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Good.

Did we ever get an estimate on what that would cost to have a pump-out truck available?

We don't have that available right now.

Okay.

We can follow up on it for you.

All right.

Thanks.

If there are no other questions for SPU, then I'll hand it over to Tracy to discuss the Parks Department.

Okay, so moving on to parks.

The proposed 2020 budget includes $113,000 for shower services for individuals experiencing homelessness.

This is the same amount that was actually included in the 2020 budget, so there's no increase to that amount.

Shower services are currently provided at four community centers, Delridge Community Center, Green Lake Community Center, Miller Community Center, and Rainier Community Center.

As my memo on page four indicates, SPR states that there are challenges to providing these services at these centers, including safety concerns, damage to facilities, and additional maintenance demands that they argue existing resources do not cover.

So they have indicated that if there's a desire to expand services to additional community centers, that they would request some additional funding to deal with these unsupported costs.

Those costs include things like staff training for how to deal with de-escalation, mental health issues, how to handle blood-borne pathogens, needs for repair and major maintenance that relate to increased shower usage, and then towel service.

The ongoing annual cost for funding these activities would range from anywhere from $125,000 to $225,000.

And that cost would be in addition to any additional cost that would be associated with expanding the shower usage to other community centers.

So did I understand that in the last week somebody, and I can't remember who, told me that the intention was to open those other three sites that the executive had approved it?

It's a really good question.

There was, I think, a press statement that came out from the Parks Department signaling that intent.

Sure.

I'm a little confused on how they can both say that they need additional resources to do that but also announce that they have already done so.

So let me follow up and find out if that's true.

All the interactions I've had with the executive on this is we need more resources to do an expansion.

It's on the Parks Department website.

Yep, we'll do it.

And we had talked, and I want to say, Tracy, thank you for looking into this.

One of the issues that had come up is that the department was asking for towel service, laundry services.

And I suggested that before we did that, we actually looked into disposable small towels that are compostable, but they also are quite effective.

And so I'd love to see what that would cost and making that available because I'm not suggesting in any way that we offer towel services for everybody who comes in to these facilities, because most people who are swimming know to bring their own towel and swimsuit.

But making something available, but not at an extraordinary expense.

So I'd love to pursue that further.

And I think your proposal, proposed ad that we'll talk about later, highlights that issue.

Okay, great.

Thanks, Tracy.

So, no further questions.

Jeff will move on to issue identification issues.

Great.

Thank you.

And we are on page 8 of your memo now?

Actually, mostly on page 4 of the memo.

Slide 8, if you're looking online at the slides.

So the first new investment that we'll talk about, or in this case, an expanded investment, would be the Seattle Housing Authority Rental Assistance Pilot Program.

You'll recall that in March of 2018 is when this program was started.

It provides housing support to individuals that are on the wait list for SHA housing but have not yet received their housing voucher, so a longer-term kind of a voucher.

It's providing short-term support for them until they receive that long-term voucher.

However, although initially the estimate was that the $2 million initial investment would be sufficient to house all of those families for the full period of the pilot, in October of 2018, so a little bit more than six months following the creation of the pilot program, the Seattle Housing Authority changed some of its policies in recognition of increasing rents and challenges that that was creating and the ability to utilize vouchers in the city.

And that meant basically the vouchers more money was going into each voucher, and thus there were fewer that were available.

That extended the amount of time that these individuals have been on the waiting list, hoping for their Seattle housing voucher to come available.

In total, this program has supported 143 households, 71 of them have exited the program so far, and 74 are currently receiving rental assistance services.

The executive estimates that after December of 2020, 40 of those 74 that are currently receiving services are still going to require additional housing support.

This investment that is proposed in the 2020 budget would serve all of these families through 2020. As I said, that's 74 families now, though they would be coming off over the course of the year.

And then at the end of 2020, you'd still have 40 families that require continued assistance.

The executive estimates right now that approximately nine of those families are likely to require assistance into 2022, so a couple years later to some degree.

And overall, you're talking about at the end of the money that is even proposed at this point, you would have families that have been on this rental assistance pilot for approximately four years on this wait list.

A key item to note, though, is that when the pilot was created, families and being offered the opportunity to enroll were assured that their receipt of housing assistance while they're on the wait list would continue until they receive their voucher.

And that's the basis for the $515,000 one-time investment that we see in the budget.

So looking specifically at some of the options that council members have, obviously you could choose not to invest the $515,000 that is proposed by the mayor to continue supporting these families that are currently on the waiting list.

That, of course, would result in some housing instability or potentially homelessness for those families.

Recognizing as a second option, recognizing that many of these families are likely to require assistance beyond just 2020, you could also look at increasing this one-time funding amount to assure that these families would continue to receive funding for their rental assistance for a longer period of time.

And there's a lot of ways that that amount could be calculated.

Or the council could take no action and just accept the amount that is proposed in the mayor's budget.

I don't see any questions.

Actually, I can't remember her bolt it coming.

It's not a question.

It's more of a new issue that's been Raised as it relates to the mayor's effort to create this stopgap to support people in the section 8 waitlist we understand from the advocacy community that there's some concerns about the program on the utilization related to the utilization rate of vouchers and the There's there is an interest in trying to expand rental assistance for a specific group of people who are on the section 8 waiting list and that's people who are Stuck in our emergency services system the 2019 count us in showed a 38 percent decrease of individuals experiencing chronic homelessness.

However, the presence and visibility of unsheltered people seems to be just as high.

This suggests that there may be more folks entering homelessness from housing-instable positions, and these people may not have the same behavioral health challenges that develop from the trauma of living unsheltered.

Specifically, data that people who live on low fixed incomes, such as federal disability through social security, can't afford market rent, but don't need or qualify for the high level of supports of permanent supportive housing.

And those folks are also getting stuck in the shelter system.

And so there's this idea that people there might be a benefit served from targeting a specifically disabled residence who are on the wait list and that there might be a need to sort of create a second filter of those folks on the wait list to find people specifically who are disabled, because again, a lot of these people are losing their homes due to a benefit cliff, the result of high and rapidly increasing local rents and stagnant federal benefits.

And so there's a proposed Home for Good pilot project that would hopefully work with the mayor's SHA Section 8 waiting list project to basically provide a shallow and ongoing rental subsidy to Seattle residents with disabilities who are living on $1,000 a month or less through a federal disability source.

and who are either currently homeless or were homeless and are at a risk of becoming homeless again because of that benefit clip or rent gap.

And so what would that look like, Council Member Herbold?

It would look similar to, I think, the pilot that is operating now, but it's targeted to a particular demographic of people on the Section 8 waiting list.

Do you have thoughts on that, Jeff?

I am aware that the, I can provide some additional context.

The SHA prioritizes individuals that are experiencing homelessness or whose incomes are below 30% of the area median income for their vouchers.

So the overall, the program, the way it works is there is a lottery to, when they open the wait list, which throughout the country it's often years in between the opening of a wait list, there's a lottery to see if you'll be placed on it and you're randomly assigned a number.

and then SHA within that is prioritizing, as I said, the homeless or those with lower than 30% area median income.

So effectively, this would be a proposal, it sounds like, to prioritize rental assistance for any individual on that wait list to receive housing support.

In this case, with the pilot that is already in effect, there was, on the setup of the pilot, analysis done, actually a good amount of analysis and outreach done, to narrow the list down.

I don't recall exactly the number of individuals that were on the wait list to begin with.

It was more than 1,000.

they wanted, because you can be on the wait list from anywhere in the country, not just from Seattle, so you could call from Florida and put yourself on the wait list if you won the lottery to get into it.

So they narrowed down, for example, to only people residing in Seattle at this time.

So those are some factors that I think would play with what Councilmember Herbold has raised in terms of how to prioritize and identify individuals and the types of support that we'd be looking at.

Great.

Please, Council Member Gonzalez.

Yeah, I don't think we need to belabor the point right now.

I think this is probably something that's going to come through the Form B pipeline in the future.

I've had some similar conversations as Council Member Herbal has had with folks working in this space.

And I just wanted to take an opportunity to signal my support for the overall concept of a home for good.

pilot project.

I don't think it's necessarily tied with folks who have Section 8 vouchers and are on a wait list.

I think that the issue is might be slightly different in just sort of in the concept of what would a rental subsidy program to Seattle residents with disabilities who are on a fixed income look like?

What would that pilot project look like for that segment of the population?

I think this conversation really flows from, and the policy idea really flows from, the story that was written in Crosscut recently by David Croman related to Dwight Williams who found himself on a benefit cliff after having successfully entered into Affordable housing then quickly found him, after playing by the rules, quickly found himself back out living in the streets because he made more than what he needed to in order to qualify for a lower rent.

So the more you make, the higher your rent goes up, necessitating additional income for you to actually be able to make the rent to stay in that affordable housing unit.

So hopefully we can continue to have conversations as a council to address that particular issue.

Great.

Very good.

Thank you.

Looks like there's interest in this.

So we'll turn to the next issue identification piece, which is on page five of your memo.

This is related to the safe parking pilot.

This item was included in the 2019 adopted budget, or this pilot program was.

It was initially envisioned as $250,000 that would support a large parking lot for vehicles, not recreational vehicles, in which they could be located, receive case management services.

It has since morphed into exploring the use of a large number, or some number, of small parking lots, or just a few spaces of various, a number of faith-based institutions.

So far, the funds have supported a contract with the Urban League to provide outreach services and case management, and have expanded the number of spots at a church on the north side, an Art of Redeeming Lutheran Church, from two, which they had had in operation, to seven.

So essentially, it's supported an additional five parking spots so far.

There are currently four other churches that are interested in, actually I shouldn't say churches, they're faith-based institutions, I'm not sure exactly what type of institution they are, that are exploring the possibility of also adding some sites that would receive services through the Urban League contract.

That would bring the number of spaces to around 23 if all of those church institutions were to, enter into the program, but at this point, they have not done so and we're into September, so I'm not clear where the status of those negotiations are.

The goal would be to ideally have gotten to 30 spaces, is what the executives put out, using the funds that are available.

This investment overall takes, because the program didn't start until about halfway through 2019, it takes some of the underspend from that program, so about $125,000, and invest it back into the program next year.

So not only would there be the $250,000 just continuing, but the money that was not used this year would allow the expansion of the program above even where it is at currently or targeted to be at currently.

Great.

I'd just like to comment that I appreciate Human Services and the executive funding this, and I want to acknowledge Council Member O'Brien.

This was something that you started working on 10 years ago with our Road to Housing and acknowledge that it's taken us a long time.

We also now know that there are some examples in other cities that seem to be working relatively well with places where people can come in at the end of the day.

I know Councilmember Pacheco, you have a recommendation which we'll probably be getting to.

That's at University Heights, they are willing to bring cars in over the evening.

And to the extent that people can be offered something within the institution, whether it's a shower or a bathroom, just making it a You know, nobody should be living in their car, and until we've got everything funded as we would like, we're still going to have people living in their cars.

So I appreciate we're doing this.

I also want to recognize and acknowledge we need a heck of a lot more than 30 parking spaces.

So this is a good start, but it isn't going to address the problem.

Okay, so walk through some various options that are potentially available to the council.

Of course, first would be not funding this increase, moving the one-time funds into the subsequent year.

Even with that additional amount of funding, Even if the increase was not provided, the performance so far indicates we would probably have the resources for this probably be replete already to reach that goal of 23 or 30 parking spots just because we haven't been able to get to that point thus far.

Another option would be to, sorry, I'm confusing my, another option would be to reduce the amount, so not, sorry, I'm confusing my options here.

Let's go back to the paper.

So first would be to not increase funding for the pilot that essentially is allowing another year for them to operate and see what the effects are and bring online some of these additional parking spaces.

The second would be to reduce the proposal and if you, given that it only expended $125,000 so far this year and is only supporting seven or really five additional parking spots compared to what was already in place, or the council could also not take any action.

Is that $250,000 designed to pay the institution for some assistance, or is this all going into the contractor looking for spaces?

The majority of the funds support the contract with the Urban League to provide case management services, which is the goal of this pilot.

We're talking about individuals.

residing in their vehicles, and it's a population, unlike with our population of people who are residing in RVs, the ability to connect them with services, they're typically more open to that, and providing that case management services, similar to what we've done with enhanced shelters, or with our tiny home villages, to get them moved into housing more quickly.

And the faith-based institutions, each would be looking at a different arrangement in terms of how many parking spots they provide and what the conditions of utilizing that spot are.

Okay, very good.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Council Member Bryan.

Jeff, do you have clarity on how the roughly $125,000 this year was spent?

It's been primarily for the contract with the Urban League.

They, previous, and to allow the parking for five additional vehicles at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church.

And so the, are we paying Our Redeemers to do that?

Or, in the past, the funding was, allowed folks, faith institutions to do some capital projects if they needed to put doors in, or security things, or bathrooms, or whatever.

and then also the case management.

So I'm trying to...

I believe that continues to be the case.

So if a good example is if you had to put like a keypad on to make sure that the individuals utilizing the space could get access to a bathroom, but it wouldn't just be left unlocked generally.

There's capital funding that wouldn't be very expensive to install that kind of a keypad.

That continues to be available.

I do not believe that there are funds being provided to the institutions to offer the parking spaces, but I can confirm that.

So the $125,000 sounds like it's, especially with our Redeemers, since I believe they've been established with their capital needs for a while, would be largely just for the contract to do the outreach to those.

was to now seven vehicles?

That's correct.

And also, I believe this is supporting some of the work to engage other faith-based institutions.

So it's also including that kind of recruiting work and actively trying to find new homes.

Great.

Thank you.

Please continue.

Just a clarification.

The way I read what is laid out here is that the $125,000 is funding not just the additional $7,000 but an aspirational additional $23,000 by the end of this year.

And so they're proposing to transfer an underspend of $125,000.

So to me, what that says is that they're anticipating that $125,000 that they are planning to spend for 2019 is not just for that seven, but it's for the additional 30.

That's correct, yes.

If the four institutions that they're speaking with now were to bring online their additional parking spaces, we wouldn't quite get to the goal of 30, though there continue to be outreach to other institutions and more conversations with the goal of getting to 30 by the end of this year.

And those wouldn't necessarily come on today, obviously.

So if you had something come online in December, the cost would vary.

But it is $125,000 ideally to be at 30 by the end of the year.

And so if we transferred over the underspend of $125,000 for 2020, and remind me, not the mayor's proposed budget, but the council's endorsed budget, was there any funds for this purpose in 2020?

Yeah, the endorsed budget already includes $250,000.

It continues the existing program.

So no expansion would be $375,000.

The 125 from underspend from this year and the 2020 funds.

That would actually be expansion.

So the 2020 endorsed budget has 250,000.

If the outreach efforts are successful, that would support approximately 30 parking spaces for the entirety of the year.

And if you added the 125,000 in the proposed budget, that would take the projected number of parking spaces to maybe 40, maybe 45.

Okay, and so my last question is does the mayor's proposed budget propose funds over and above the council's endorsed 2020 and the underspend from 2019?

No, the expansion is really just taking the equivalent underspend from this year.

I should be clear that technically it's just a large pool of one-time funds that are all put together and then utilized in a one-time way.

So there's not an exact dollar for dollar.

I moved it, but it obviously correlates.

Thank you very much.

Good.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you for knowing so much, John.

So moving to our third item, which is on page five of your memo, this is the relocation of tiny home villages.

Council members will recall, as the executive presented a week or two ago, that the proposed budget provides $1.3 million in one-time funding to move the Georgetown and North Lake tiny home villages to new locations.

Both of these villages currently have a permit that allows them to remain where they are at through March of 2020, at which point in time their existing permit would expire.

There were a lot of questions when this was presented to the council about the amount that is contained in this.

I think I used the replete related to the safe parking pilot.

I think there was concerns that there would be more than just sufficient resources in that $1.3 million allocation.

So a breakdown is provided in your memo, but also here is three months of operating expenses for the existing location.

That's actually also in the base budget.

There was an accidental double allocation there.

So there is at least some extra amount of funding in this amount, $177,000 worth.

This $1.3 million also provides $100,000, about $50,000 for each encampment, for ramping down activities at that location.

And then it provides $516,000 as startup costs for new locations.

And the proposal as it was drafted actually presumes that these villages would be moved to enhanced shelters, not to a different tiny home village.

That was the cost basis used to estimate these numbers.

So that's a little bit more expensive.

Typically, an enhanced shelter in a tiny home village, their cost per bed is very similar.

They're not dramatically different.

In this case, though, because the estimated cost for a single bed was a little bit higher than what is currently the average across either our enhanced shelters or our tiny home villages.

So there's about $469,000 above of additional funding to maintain what would be the same number of beds.

A different way of putting that, if you looked at our baseline is how much it would cost to keep this same number of households housed in their tiny home village right now, this proposal is going to give you another $469,000 above that in order to house the same number of individuals.

I want to note that as we look through our various options, as I mentioned, that all of these, all of our options and the ability to maintain these tiny home villages would, of course, be subject to the extension or permitting action for these villages where they're currently at since they expire in March.

Before I move to some of the options, are there any questions about that breakdown that I could clarify?

I don't think there's questions particularly, but from a standpoint of what we know about these tiny home villages, how important they are to fill in the gaps, you know, nobody thinks that this is where people should be for the rest of their lives.

But at least I've heard enough conversation up here that there's so much better than living in a tent or underneath, you know, some some trestle where they where people are just barely getting by and we know that they are much less expensive than, you know, the $300,000 per unit.

And again, nobody wants to see people living there forever, but I want to see a lot more available so we can get people off the street.

And if we're going to be removing people who are in tents, we've got to offer them some 24-7 place to be.

And I still am not convinced that we have our arms around how we can do these tiny home villages faster and across the city in a way that I believe every one of us have wanted to see, you know, another place up in.

And again, managed because some have been more successful than others.

Yet, it does strike me that spending 1.3 million to move a very few number of people It doesn't strike me as money well spent, so I want to know where we're going with this.

What are the chances that we can renew on site and then at the same time expanding so we have more of these sites available for people?

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

I have several things to add, but Jeff, did you want to just finish what you were saying and then I can?

Certainly, again, there's a variety of options that are available to the council related to this proposed investment.

First would be to not provide funds to move either encampment, the entire $1.3 million investment.

As I mentioned, that would require permitting action to allow these encampments to stay there.

And then everything else from that point is kind of like a varying level.

not choose to increase the operational funds that are available to maintain these number of houses, or sorry, tiny home villages, just allowing the baseline amount, that would provide $469,000.

You could choose to provide funds to allow the relocation of one of these encampments, but not the other.

Or you could, in the very least, essentially take no action and only redirect the accidental double counting of $177,000.

Can I ask you about the, I beg your pardon.

Go ahead and finish.

I was just going to ask you about the permit requirement.

Have we entered into, and sometimes we do with neighborhoods to say one year, with a one year option to renew, people will be gone in two years from that site.

Have we done anything similar?

Do we have some flexibility with these sites?

Do you know?

So the North Lake Tiny Home Village is actually one of the locations cited under our existing ordinance for tiny homes.

So that's an interim use permit that could be renewed for one year, and it's going to be reaching the end of its total of two years that it's currently allowed.

As you're aware, there is legislation before the council that would look at making changes to the requirements around those interim use permits and the relocation of these tiny home villages.

And then the Georgetown Tiny Home Village has actually already reached the end of its cycle and has received an extension of a temporary use permit that's allowed it to extend operations for another six months to March of 2020.

So do I understand correctly, at least Georgetown has received significant support from the community to stay, to be allowed an additional year, or am I missing something?

Certainly, I can characterize what I've heard about the Community Advisory Council.

That's a body required by the existing ordinance related to these tiny home villages.

And my understanding is that the Community Advisory Council is supportive of continuing the tiny home village and its current location.

Council Member Herbold, did you want to add anything?

I have a lot to add.

Council Member Bakshi, I don't know why you're...

I apologize to you, Council Member Sawant.

I didn't want to interrupt you, but I did want to clarify what Jeff was saying.

Yes, but you do know that the bill is from, sponsored by my office.

And the last time we had the discussion on this, I think a week and a half ago, Mr. Jason Johnson was here from the Human Services Department.

And they, I mean, the mayor's office has has said that they want to carry out the relocation.

And Jeff, your explanation was very clear and helpful.

But we had a discussion about this when, I don't know, Jason Johnson was here and really there was no explanation that was provided as to why the mayor's office's intent on spending 1.3 million to relocate when there's really no compelling reason.

I mean, you talked about the permitting process.

I mean, the permitting process is a policy decision.

You know, you can issue a faith-based permit, and you can issue it, again, you can issue a six-month temporary extension to make sure that the tiny house village does not have to relocate.

And in the meanwhile, but the real change that needs to happen is what's being proposed in my legislation, which is to, first of all, allow expansion, the siting land use code change to site the tiny house villages in different zones in the city.

but also to remove this limit that an existing tiny house village can only apply for one extension, meaning they get to have the permit the first time, get to stay for a year, and then one other permit, so another year, which makes no sense at all.

I mean, the homelessness problem is escalating, and we cannot allow our human neighbors, including children and elderly, to be in tents or on the streets.

We have to provide them a real option on the way to permanent housing.

And the tiny house villages have proven over and over again how successful they are, even in the short period of time they've been in existence.

And so for a mayor's office that is continually beating the drum of evidence-based solutions, I really fail to understand.

And at that meeting, and members of the public who are watching this should look at the Seattle Channel video of that meeting where it was just going round and round and round in circles with no explanation for why you would spend over a million dollars to relocate a tiny house village that is working well when there are actual policy solutions to make sure that we extend the permits.

Right now the legislation is a little bit restricted in how quickly it can move forward because as you know, Elizabeth Campbell has appealed the SEPA analysis and it's now in front of the hearing examiner.

But we expect that this situation will be resolved in the coming months.

In the meanwhile, the council is allowed to discuss the legislation.

So this evening, actually at 5 p.m., right here in chambers, we will have a public hearing for my committee for the legislation and I expect a lot of Community members will be coming, including tiny house village residents themselves, who will once again, but have before given powerful and moving and detailed testimony as to why this actually works.

And we all know the tiny houses themselves provide safety and privacy of a locked door.

They're wooden structures.

They have electricity.

It's a sturdy construction.

They have heating in the winter.

They have place to store your belongings for women.

especially its safety from potential sexual violence on the street.

And it also is a mechanism against the crushing loneliness and alienation when you're homeless because you actually become part of a community.

That is extremely important for, you know, as a way to prevent the kind of demoralization you would feel when you're homeless.

But the most important thing that the tiny house villages provide is a community where you have consistent and daily case management, and it is the combination of all of these factors that enables the tiny house villages to have probably, as far as I know, probably one of some of the best statistics in terms of transitions to permanent housing.

So given all of this overwhelming evidence, it's absolutely not clear to me why they would do that.

And as far as your question, Chair Bagshaw, about Georgetown, the Lehigh is happy to give you details about this, or the advisory council are happy to give you the details, but they conducted a survey of the housed neighbors in that in that locality and Lehigh reports that 76% of the house neighbors are strongly supporting the tiny house village.

They say that the tiny house village residents have been good neighbors and that they see no sense in dismantling it.

So I think, and I would say the same thing about North Lake.

Yes, there have been differences in how to run the tiny house villages between Lehigh on the one side and Nicholsville and Cher wheel on the other, but I would not say that some have been run better or worse.

I don't think we have enough information to judge one way or another.

There are very strong opinions among the residents themselves about one mechanism versus the other.

All that shows to me is that there is not a one size fits all and that there are a number of agencies that are willing and able to provide these services and that residents can choose which kind of model, sort of community organizing model works for them.

And that's why the, you know, the legislation is important, not only because it resolves the permitting problem that Georgetown and Northlake are facing, but also because of the capacity we have.

I mean, Lehigh has the capacity, they're reported to operate 10 additional villages.

And then we also have Nicholsville, Share, Weal, Faith Groups, other organizations who have expressed the, you know, not just a willingness, but really a passionate urgency to be able to operate these new tiny house villages.

So making the land use code flexible so that these villages can be sited is the first step.

Obviously, funding is the next, so it is connected to the budget.

But one other thing I'll share is that faith leaders have made a very strong statement about why they support it.

43 faith leaders from Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist communities have written a letter together to the council that says that this is important for them to do.

And that actually for faith organizations that are on a shoestring budget, this is actually something that they that they think that is going to work for them in the smaller plots of land that they have that is not actually usable for any other purpose.

For example, on 18th and Yesler, the dining house village that is connected to the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, land use code wise, what Lehigh has found is that the tiny house village that's there is the most cost effective and densest use of that plot of land because it has, you know, the soil has toxicity and other issues.

So if you had to build a permanent structure which would require digging, a foundation, then actually the costs are very high and that could be done.

But the point is that at this moment, this is the most cost effective and the densest use of that land.

So I think there are many other plots of land throughout the city, publicly owned or owned by non-profit institutions that could be put to use immediately.

But certainly, I think the first step is not to do no harm approach.

If the tiny house village is working, why dismantle it and waste money on that?

Did we hit all your points?

Yeah, I think so.

So Jeff, you mentioned that it would require additional permitting work.

Would it also require additional legislation to allow it to stay beyond that time, or is it just an issue of a permit?

The permitting process is outside of the legislative action.

Both of them are, well, unless, as Council Member Swant raised, the requirements for these permits were changed and the type of renewals available, things like that.

At this time, under current law, they could be issued a temporary use permit, which allow a six-month extension, and that's been done at other locations as well.

I am not familiar, I could get back to you on how frequently that's been done and how many times at a location.

That's the option that would be available to both of these encampments.

But just to clarify, those options are available.

It's a question of taking that option.

Great, okay.

And I also want to acknowledge something that Council Member Sawant said.

With the faith institutions, I too have met with a number of the pastors and they're very willing to help expand the villages.

Some want to do smaller on their property as contrasted to larger.

But to a person, they acknowledge the work that has been done by the operators.

recognizing that having some help, like with Lehigh as an example, is very helpful within the faith institution because they don't have the staff to be able to monitor it themselves, but they also recognize the value to the community.

And I have heard over and over again That some of the best things that have ever been done by the faith institution congregations are to extend the places for people to be on their property.

So I think that there is more support for this than we may have seen in the past.

And I really hope that we can try to pull all this together strategically on what we can do.

And then also to be able to make it faster to permit and to make available.

Thank you.

If I may, I wanted to follow up on an item you raised, Council Members.

The Executive did provide some responses to some of the questions raised when we heard about this last time in regards to the rationale for wanting to relocate some of these locations.

When Jason Johnson presented, he made reference to the higher cost or some performance challenges at North Lake Village.

The actual cost per tiny home for North Lake Village is roughly in line with the other sanctioned encampments or tiny home villages that we have.

It's not grossly out of alignment.

Where you do see a difference is, as you noted and as has been discussed actually in committee previously, tiny home villages are very successful and relatively in moving people into permanent housing.

Many of them have an exit rate to permanent housing that's greater than 40%.

However, with North Lake Village, that rate is only 11%, which is less than a fourth of the rate the most other Most of the other permitted villages have moved people into permanent housing.

That's what the executive provided as a justification for looking at North Lake as compared to Georgetown.

Right.

Thank you for sharing that, Jeff.

I would say, though, that even though it has a lower returns to housing than other more successful tiny house villages, it still beats the hell out of living on the streets.

And I'm quoting one of the tiny house residents, I don't know if she used the H word, I'm sorry I used it.

But just to describe how much of a difference it makes for, and it was a woman, an older woman who was speaking and what a lifeline it had been for her and what a devastating experience it was to be in a car and having the car being stolen and then going on the street.

As you were saying, it just makes a huge difference in people's lives.

So I would say that we have to evaluate the success rate in relation to what the other alternatives, the worst alternatives are.

And also, I do think that the overall cause of the tiny house villages and the fact that they've proven as a lifeline, should not in any way be in question because there are some differences on the ground in terms of how different agencies are operating.

I don't necessarily have agreement on every single thing either.

I have my own opinions.

However, I don't want the our ability to be able to continue to run tiny house villages while we have this crisis to be in any way in question or in jeopardy while those other questions are being resolved.

And my understanding is that Nicholsville is only looking for a permit.

There are two issues.

One is whether the city will permit the tiny house village to be sited there.

And the other issue is city funds.

So I think we should look at those two things separately in the case of North Lake and see how it works out rather than just saying that, well, we just need to dismantle this.

Because what else will we do?

If we're going to sink costs in to dismantle it and then incur greater expenses to set up another tiny house village, doesn't seem to me like it's a cost-effective way of doing it.

But I won't speak for the residents there.

They themselves will be there today, I'm sure, and will be sharing.

So I really urge my colleagues to come to the public hearing.

Okay.

Council Member Pacheco.

Sure.

I want to start first by saying I think Council Member Sawant's legislation regarding tiny homes warrants further discussion and I would have appreciated the, unfortunately because of the delays with SEPA, I won't have the opportunity to engage in that discussion.

But I think this is an opportunity for us to really think about just how Council Member Sawant, you and I may have had disagreements, but we could have worked together on this really early on, and I really wish that you and I would have had an opportunity to do so.

But I also just want to highlight the figure that was in the proposed budget, which is the $1.3 million.

Depending on the estimates, the show box cost us $1.3 million.

And, you know, that was approximately 300 units of housing.

That was a missed MHA payment for $3 to $5 million.

And as we're talking about the issue of housing, I want to make sure that we highlight the missed opportunity as well.

You know, there are consequences to not working together.

I do think the highlighting the issue of tiny homes warrants further discussion, but I also think highlighting where we made mistakes also needs to be held accountable too.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Pacheco.

Shall we continue?

Sure.

Just for the record, I was almost not going to say anything.

I just want to point out that it was a total non sequitur.

The show box has nothing to do with tiny house villages.

And what would have been built on that site was not affordable housing or shelter for homeless people.

It would have been luxury priced units.

Just to clarify.

Keep going, please.

Okay, we'll move to the fourth item that was raised as a potential issue.

This is on page six of your memo, or it's still on the same slide.

This is related to the startup costs for a regional authority.

As you see, the proposed budget provides $2 million in one-time costs that are actually proceeds from the Mercer Mega Block Sale to pay for the startup of the Regional Authority on Homelessness, which has been discussed multiple times in the Select Committee on Homelessness and Housing Affairs.

affordability.

Within that $2 million, there are approximately 920,000 that would clearly be categorized as one-time true startup costs.

That would be something like hiring an executive search firm for an executive director, technology system setup, and similar types of costs.

There's also approximately $1.1 million in costs that are new, but that would be ongoing.

The way that that amount was formulated, it should be clear that some of those costs could potentially be paid for with the base human services, the HSI, Homeless Strategies and Investments.

I can't think of the I right now.

HSI.

HSI.

With that budget.

But the way that this amount was formulated is what I really wanted to point council members attention to.

It looks at not only the cost to hire an executive director, but also multiple deputy directors, a chief of staff, and a director of human resources.

Those are not to positions that are currently supported in the HSI budget as it stands currently.

And though this is a very much a conceptual approach and those positions could change, the way that that was calculated would result if that's, if that were to be the staffing model that you came up with that ultimately resulted at the regional authority, you would have a executive team that would have substantially higher number of executives per employees.

So in a typical department right now, on average, you would have about one executive series staff member for about 48 employees.

In this proposed model, if you didn't include the chief of staff, you'd have one for about every 16 employees.

For further context HSD has one executive series for every 55 office of housing has one for every 22 But the point is that the way that this method was calculated and the presumption about the number of executive series staff or a new staffing costs is higher than what we often would have a department and leads to a question about how those costs were calculated, especially because these are costs that are being paid for by Seattle, not by King County, and the potential that Seattle would be expected to contribute those level of resources in an ongoing way.

Great.

Council Member Juarez has a question.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll be brief.

Those of us that have been working on this regional response, at least for the last six months, and setting up the King County Regional Homeless Authority.

So is this $2 million inclusive of the $73 million that the city is already kicking in?

And I believe the county is going to be adding $55 million.

So if it's just a startup, this isn't inclusive of the $73?

Let me answer that in two ways.

You're correct that it's different.

The $2 million is different from the $73 million, $76 million, something like that, of programmatic costs, like actually providing rapid rehousing contracts.

So that would be separate.

This is a one-time amount.

Tracy was helpful in clarifying that there's not the the amount of that 73 million There's their staffing costs within that for HSI currently and so it's possible that some of those Existing staff costs could be used to support these positions or the same at the county side to their existing positions but this is separate from the initial the first year costs and

Madam Chair, I just have a quick follow-up.

So how much, do we know how much the county will be putting into their budget or proposing for start-up costs or all the start-up costs on the City of Seattle?

No, they actually are split.

Give me just a moment.

Thank you.

It's approximately It's about $1.7 million for King County and about $2 million for Seattle.

King County's primary amount is one-time tenant improvements.

It's about $1.3 million and about half a million dollars in ongoing rent.

And council members, just to be clear, it actually isn't clear as we move, as that regional entity, should it get, we agree to move ahead with it, that those ongoing costs for staffing won't actually be split between the county and city.

The executive has told us pretty clearly that there will be an expectation to work out.

So it's not just the city is going to cover all those new costs of all those employees.

there's going to be a cost sharing but they haven't figured that out yet so just to be clear about that.

Council Member Herbold.

That was, thank you Tracy, that was my question was that my recollection was that the briefings that we've had state pretty clearly an expectation that there would be cost sharing for those ongoing costs so given that it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to support a budget action that presumes that we're going to be fully funding those costs.

So I think our budget should reflect our goals for that cost sharing model.

We're going to have a lot more opportunity to hear more about this.

So today we have an overview.

I've been working closely with council members in King County.

I think There will be both a change in the structure, potentially, and also more engagement with Sound Cities.

And we are not there yet.

There's no question in my mind that this is not going to start January 1st.

So I appreciate everybody hanging in there as we're trying to get the additional data.

Given that this is a negotiation, though, I think we don't put ourselves in a very good negotiation position if we fund fully something that we would like to fund partially.

That's good, it's a very good point.

Okay, can you continue?

Actually, I believe that was the entirety of the points that on issue identification.

So I think we can switch to our next, oh, we already did switch, to our next slide where we'll go through budget actions that have been proposed by council members.

The first was proposed a $900,000 addition to start up and operate a new tiny home village, and this was presented by Council Member Mosqueda.

I understand that it's likely that someone might have been provided talking points related to this.

That would be me.

I think that she has pointed out that Lehigh currently has tiny homes that are ready for people who need them.

And this would help with some setup costs.

And I think as we've talked about already today, that there's a real interest in getting a bigger program available.

And I certainly would be supporting this budget item.

Thank you, and I just want to clarify that there is an error on the slide that you see online where it says $495,000.

That actually is $900,000 to start up and operate it, which would be $350,000 in one-time costs for approximately 40 tiny homes, and then $550,000 in ongoing operational costs.

And is that an annual figure?

The $900,000 would not be annual.

$350,000 would be a one-time to start it up.

And actually, Lehigh, the low-income housing institute, would be donating what I imagine are the tiny homes that were in use at Licton Springs as part of that startup as well.

So with the $550,000 operating costs, what's included in that?

That's actually pretty much in line with the size of an encampment or a sanctioned village.

sorry, sanctioned encampment or tiny home village.

So that would be your case management services and other types of support that are provided to residents in a tiny home village.

And that compares to what is currently paid for with other villages.

Does it also include the either, I don't want to just say the little port-a-johns, but many of them we've brought in showers, We've provided running water and the facilities.

Is that part of the operating costs as well?

Yes, it would be.

All the tiny home villages, to my knowledge, provide showers and other basic hygiene facilities.

And typically that is provided by Lehigh as part of a subcontract or obtain those facilities to do that.

So we just contract as a city with Lehigh, which then makes sure that those facilities are provided.

All right.

Great.

Thank you.

The next item is a report on sites for a pallet shelter or tiny home village and the associated costs of such a location.

And this would be a statement of legislative intent.

It was proposed by Council Member Mosqueda.

Good, and I've got a few comments for her.

You will remember that last year that she brought onto our little plaza down here what a pallet shelter looks like.

And it's an alternative to a wooden tiny home.

They're a little less costly to put up.

They're easier to take apart, as I understand.

And there are a number of organizations within the Northwest that have some models.

So she would like to have an operation and maintenance plan that would be developed for alternatives, including this pallet type.

The next item would be- Ask a question.

Yeah, Council Member Ms. Swann.

So as far as the dining house villages that are being operated by Lehigh and other organizations, these are non-profit organizations and The lumber is obviously bought in the market, but the construction of the tiny houses is done through volunteer effort.

Can you find out for my office who are the providers of the pallets?

My understanding is these are like companies that manufacture these products, you know, for sale.

So it's, I just wanted to point out that flag that that's different than having, you know, volunteers and, you know, school students and college students and students on apprenticeship programs building the tiny houses.

Okay, please continue.

I think our next one.

So we're on our third item, which is $10,800,000 to establish and operate 20 new tiny home villages.

This is proposed by Council Member Sawant.

I spoke about this for the most part.

I really would, again, urge you all, my colleagues, to attend the public hearing because as much information as I can give on the tiny hospital, I think just hearing from the residents and the providers themselves is extremely crucial because the stories that they have been sharing with us are just extremely compelling in order to understand that it really makes a huge difference in their lives.

And of course, just in terms of the technical details, this is the action that we're rather than spend 1.3 million in the proposed budget to relocate two of the villages, instead redirect it and then add 10.8 million dollars for a total of 12 to open 20 new tiny home villages and additionally adding a proviso to ensure that no funds are used to relocate or shut down existing tiny house villages.

And then just very quickly on the, you know, sort of doing a comparison between the tiny house villages in the way that we have set them up with Lehigh and other organizations.

To the Pallet, my understanding is at least, I think Pallet is the name of the company that, it's like Xerox, I think it's now being used as, maybe there are other companies that are doing it as well, but as far as I know, Pallet is, It's a company for profit, and also I believe it's a non-union company.

And I would urge council members also to discuss with providers like Sharon Lee who have studied the differences between the two.

And in fact, I've urged Sharon Lee to give us a chart sort of comparing the pallet structures.

the wooden structures in the tiny homes.

And as far as I know, on balance, the wooden structures come out ahead in terms of sturdiness, sound insulation, cost effectiveness, and all of that.

The next item is again proposed by Council Member Sawant.

It would be $1.2 million to fund an enhanced shelter for homeless youth.

So this is a budget amendment in progress because the issues are difficult because what the youth shelters are facing is the larger problem of lack of funds for homeless services.

And we are, my office is in discussion with PSKS board that is Peace for the Streets from Kids from the Streets.

and with the board leadership of youth care, which is sort of taking over.

But as many of you know, PSKS lost their shelter location because the property owner, its own capital property owner is demolishing the building and it's, you know, leading to further displacement.

PSKS, but here's why we feel this is extremely important to look into because PSKS operates one-sixth of the youth shelter beds in Seattle.

It's a pretty significant component of what we will lose if PSKS doesn't remain in operation.

All Pilgrims Christian Church on Broadway has agreed to rent the space to move these shelter beds, but the move itself will require some resources, and keeping PSKS open January onwards will require resources.

And in the past, PSKS has been in discussions with youth care to merge into that organization in an attempt to raise, and was in an attempt to raise an additional $1.2 million over the next two or three years to fully fund the move and the operation.

So that funding is still needed, and that's specifically what this budget amendment speaks to.

And there are also administrative needs in order to keep the shelter beds open because it's, at this moment, it's a little bit up in the air which agency will end up running them.

But despite all those challenges, I think it is essential we do everything we can to ensure that Seattle does not lose this place for homeless youth to go.

We've talked to the homeless youth themselves.

They have provided some of our most eloquent testimonials, especially for LGBTQ and trans youth, in terms of the kind of safety and security that has been provided that has no other parallel.

So my office will continue discussing with the agencies to attempt to help solve the administrative questions, and in the meantime, pursue this budget action to see if we can address the funding needs.

I'm happy to provide any information as we get it with other council offices.

Thank you.

Item number five, Council Member Juarez, do you want to dive into this one?

Yeah, I do.

Thank you.

So, let me grab.

I just had an emergency notice here.

Let me just grab here what I have.

So as you can see, the menstrual products and shelter programs.

Public restrooms are a municipal resource stocked at a minimum with toilets, toilet paper, and sinks to provide clean, stocked, and accessible space for the public, including our shelters.

Toilet paper is provided as a utility, yet there are no products available for people experiencing menstruation.

So what I hope to do, as we've seen with our community centers and using showers and what we've seen with our food banks and enhanced services of menstrual products and diapers, I'm requesting funding of menstrual products for people who need this utility.

I'm requesting about $58,000 to provide women's hygiene projects for all of our shelters.

And my goal someday, hopefully, is that we can remove the tax on these products and then also at some point move towards providing diapers as well.

We were just whispering about that over here.

I heard you.

I was just saying, I'm going to try to glom on here.

I'm going to leave it at that and let my colleagues respond that want to respond.

Yeah, very, very excited about expanding the stink with diapers.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Well done.

I think that you made everybody happy up here.

So thank you for that.

Let's move on to item six.

Item 6 is adding $100,000 to support legal services for youth and children who currently experience or are at risk of experiencing homelessness.

This is proposed by Councilmember Gonzalez.

Sure, just really briefly.

This is a pretty modest investment for an organization that is doing tremendous work within our community, Legal Counsel for Youth and Children, which provides critical legal services to youth who are at risk of experiencing homelessness or who are currently experiencing homelessness.

So they work very closely with other trusted organizations in community such as youth care to meet these needs.

We did in fact receive a letter of support from youth care on October 16th signaling their support of some additional public or some public dollars to support LCYC.

In a nutshell, LCYC serves young people ages 12 to 24 years old.

They connect individuals to services through their programming.

Youth are eligible, geez.

Eligible, you got it.

Eligible, not legible, I'm sure they are.

But this program prioritizes minors, young people in immediate crisis, and young people who are exiting public systems of care, including inpatient mental health or substance use disorder.

treatment programs, criminal juvenile justice facilities, and the child welfare system.

The attorneys at LCYC provide young people with legal advice or in-court advocacy or mediate or negotiate on that young person's behalf.

They are able to assist with many different types of civil legal issues, including, but not limited to, child protective services, emancipation, gender marker and name changes, identity theft, landlord-tenant issues, public benefits, consumer and medical debt, family law warrants, immigration, and orders of protection.

So I have a lot of information about LCYC, but my staff in my office have met with folks, staff at LCYC, came away very impressed with the service model that they have in this space of providing and meeting the legal counsel needs for youth and children.

And again, enthusiastically support an effort to provide some modest amounts of investment from the city to help them continue to do this work.

We know that one of the largest, disproportionately large, we have a disproportionately large number of youth experiencing homelessness or at risk of experiencing homelessness in the city of Seattle.

And I think this is a wise investment for us.

It would be complimentary to For example, some of the novel investments we are making in our families and education preschool and promise levy as well.

We have about a $7 million investment through that levy over the next seven years that also supports students and their families who are housing unstable.

and would certainly see this as a complementary effort to meet the niche need of legal services that might exist for youth between the ages of 12 and 24.

Great.

And I'd just like to build on that slightly, and that is thank you for bringing this forward.

And my office also heard from Melinda Giavengo, who gave a thumbs up to this investment, saying it would be money well spent.

and with a lot of people that will be helped.

So thank you for that.

And I just want to commend LCYC.

They have been doing work in this space for many years without any sort of real meaningful investment from government or the public, relying largely on philanthropic dollars and private donations.

This is, I think, an attempt by them to diversify their portfolio of investments and to be able to do that in a way that allows them to bring their programs to scale and meet the very great need of the population, sadly, the great need of this population in our city and beyond.

Thank you.

All right, please continue.

I'd like to actually merge the next or address items number seven and eight at the same time because they both would provide funding to expand homeless services that focus on our American Indian and Alaskan Native population that is experiencing homelessness.

One of those proposed ads comes from Councilmember Juarez and would be for 1.2 million dollars.

The other comes from Council Member Gonzalez and would be for $374,000.

The difference there, the smaller number would support the rapid rehousing program currently operated by Chief Seattle Club and allow the expansion of that, whereas the larger figure would encompass not only rapid rehousing services, but also other interventions that are currently supported at the Chief Seattle Club, such as diversion, a day center, and a homeless prevention program as well.

great council member was do you want to speak to this first and then yes i would turn it to councilman thank you first i also want to support council member gonzalez in the legal services for youth and children um who are at risk or homeless i know erin mccain the deputy director has been a persistent advocate as well as councilman gonzalez for services to help youth find stability with appropriate legal services so thank you councilmember gonzalez um in regards to item number seven um and what we're working with on the chief seattle club American Indians, as you know, and Alaska Natives remain disproportionately and negatively affected by homelessness.

10% of the region's homeless community are American Indians and Alaska Natives throughout our community, even though our community only represents less than 1% of the overall population.

Now, let me get to the good news.

The Chief Seattle Club has demonstrated a consistent track record in serving the needs of American Indian and Alaska Native people by providing resources to Native-led excuse me, Native-led agencies.

Last year, now this is really amazing and transformational, the entire city of Seattle doubled the numbers of homelessness American Indians and American, I'm sorry, Alaska, American Indians and Alaska Natives moving into permanent housing.

So let me say that again.

The entire city of Seattle doubled the numbers of homelessness of American Indian and Alaska Natives moving into permanent housing.

Chief Seattle Club has a 86% success rate of moving homeless households into permanent housing.

And the reason why I want to emphasize this even more, particularly as a Native American person that has been working in this issue my whole life, that this is transformational.

It is really success.

It's the first time in our city's history since we began tracking and funding culturally relevant Native organizations that we have seen real success.

So I'm very proud of the Chief Seattle Club, Seattle Indian Health Board, United Indians, and Mother Nation.

Chief Seattle Club is fully staffed, and demand for affordable housing outpaces the current general fund award budget.

To reduce homelessness and housing instability for American Indians and Alaska Natives, there's a budget request of $1.2 million.

That will go towards rapid rehousing, which Councilmember Gonzalez will also speak to, $374,000.

The day center is about $724,000.

Diversion is 58,000 and homelessness prevention about 72,000.

Now, I just want to end on the note that, again, I'm very proud of my colleagues in the city in the last three budgets, particularly the last two, and thank you, Council Member Bagshaw, you have been supportive in passing these budget increases.

And I think for the first time, we can actually have success.

And we've actually had wonderful phone calls from tribal leadership thanking us and saying, how did you do this in an urban setting with the Seattle City Council or any council that you've made the deliberate, conscious decision to work with a Native population that's been displaced and not an Indian country?

So I want to thank you.

And so that is what my budget ask is.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Gonzalez, would you like to talk about your $374,000?

Just really briefly, it's incorporated in the full suite of investments proposed in Agenda Item 6 that, excuse me, in Agenda Item 7 that Council Member Juarez just spoke to.

So I think she did a spectacular job of outlining why additional investment in this area is strategically wise for the city in terms of making some meaningful impact for this population in particular in the space of addressing housing instability and homelessness.

I advanced just the rapid rehousing aspect, not because I don't support the rest of the package, I certainly do, but it's my understanding based on our conversations with Colleen Echo-Hawk that the investments related to rapid rehousing in the amount of $374,517 is their top priority as it relates to all of these different areas.

So to the extent that we have to make difficult decisions as part of our endorsed budget process, I wanted to make sure to signal that out of the four items that they are seeking to receive additional funding for, I wanted to be able to communicate that based on information that we have in our communications, that the rapid rehousing portion appears to be the top priority for Colleen and her organization.

Chief Seattle Club.

Okay, thank you for highlighting that.

I too have spoken with Chief Seattle Club.

And I'm very impressed with the work that they've done on all fronts, but you also know that starting in January, they're going to be taking down that Lazarus Day Center.

It's all permitted there and funded, and they're ready to move forward with 82 new units at their all locations.

So whatever we can do to continue to support their good work, I'll be supporting.

Now, colleagues, we got some decisions to make here.

First of all, I'm going to If you look at our schedule for this morning, we still have a large number of items to discuss on our homelessness unit.

And the human services department we were supposed to get to this morning, honestly, I don't think we're going to get to it unless we're all lips down without having lunch.

So I'm going to suggest that with your approval that we're going to ask Amy, thank you for sitting through here all morning, to put that off to the very first line item at 2 o'clock.

That means, Allison, I'm going to have to ask you to alert education and early learning, civil rights, and economic development that they will be pushed down probably starting about 3 o'clock.

I would imagine it will take about that long to get to.

But I just want to see, how does everybody feel about that?

I would recommend that we continue on this unit to get through to item number 20. So all of you at the table, if you can hang in with us for another half an hour, whatever this will take, then we can take a break, come back at 2, and pick up human services.

People okay?

Thumbs up?

All right, good.

Thank you for that.

Then we've gotten seven and eight.

We're now under unsheltered response.

So we will kick this off and I believe Council Member Juarez, you will be the first one.

Jeff, do you have anything you want to say?

I'm sure this would be adding, go ahead.

I'm sorry, go ahead.

Oh, I thought you wanted me to speak.

I do, but I just thought, just trying to get us re-centered.

Giving Jeff one minute to talk about unsheltered number nine.

So number nine is adding $273,000 to add two positions to respond to homeless encampments in North Seattle.

And as you mentioned, it's Council Member Juarez.

Great, thank you.

Madam Chair, I'll be brief.

And again, this isn't just, I know you all give me a hard time about this, it isn't just District 5, it's Districts 4, 5, and 6, everyone above the Ship Canal.

So I will be brief with my prepared notes about what, and I've been asking for this every budget that I've been here.

So, North Seattle has dozens of unsanctioned homeless encampments which include people needing food, housing, employment, medical care, mental health, and addiction treatment.

These encampments can pose public health and safety issues both to the residents and to the surrounding community as well.

North Seattle also has a number of neighborhood and nonprofits which deliver services but which do not have resources for outreach.

I want to thank Council last year for providing a lot of funds for our community-based organizations which shelter the unsheltered.

This action would add a field coordinator and a system navigator specifically assigned to the North End to assess and conduct outreach to residents of encampments with the goal of connecting people to appropriate resources, including neighborhood-based services and housing.

The two positions would work together to reach out and link residents in need with neighborhood-based services and or citywide services as needed.

As we heard this morning, I understand the primary goals and the duality of both the field coordinator and the systems navigator, and I'm hoping in the future we'll continue to see the navigation team continue to respect and work with those that work tirelessly to shelter the unsheltered.

So one time, my understanding is there's the field coordinator and the system navigator.

The 2020 budget provides, and I won't go into the whole 17 million and the whole list, but the bottom line is 59 million will be spent to provide shelter or housing.

And I don't see a significant portion dedicated to the north end.

What I'm mainly concerned about, and now I'll get district-specific, is District 5 is currently the only city council district that does not have a year-around emergency shelter that is available without a referral.

So that is my main concern.

It's the concern that I've brought every year for the last three years, or four years, however long I've been here.

And that is what I'm asking for council support today.

Thank you.

All right, thank you very much for that.

I have a quick question.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'm a little confused by this proposed addition of two new positions which would be yet another expansion of the navigation team in the context of the issues that I know we're going to discuss here a little bit more and in the issues that we were discussing earlier today that Councilmember Herbold was flagging with regard to the city auditors systemic recommendations to strive for continuous improvement.

And so I guess I'm wondering why we need to be further expanding navigation team in that context as opposed to, for example, requiring that the existing navigation team as it is constituted prioritize resources as suggested by Council Member Juarez.

So in other words, we have bodies on the NAV team now, if they're not doing enough work on the north end and they're not doing it in an equitable way, what prevents the city council, if anything, from directing resources accordingly within the existing footprint that the NAV team currently has?

So are you asking whether we...

Why do we need an expansion?

Why can't we just direct the NAB team to address the needs of North End as articulated by Councilmember Juarez?

Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez.

Can I take a crack at this before you do?

I think it's the perennial issue that we have continually, the times that we have worked with the NAB team in services has been positive.

But again, I think we're dealing with two things.

A perennial issue where we continue to ask for the resources and they're not being met.

Second of all, I don't think it's a good use of a council member's time, meaning me, to be out at encampments sanctioned and unsanctioned.

I don't think I should be at, you know, QFC helping remove an RV or Thornton Creek or any of these other places that we have physically had to go out, including on Aurora.

And what I continually hear from the navigation team when we had the other leadership, he's gone now, which were phenomenally responsive.

And I would call them on their personal cell, and they would call me.

There are a lot more unsanctioned, well, there are more and has been an increase of sanctioned or unsanctioned camps in the North End.

where they're just being ignored.

And this is what we're hearing not just from constituents who are concerned, but from our service providers on the east, on the west side of Aurora, on the east side of Aurora, on Lake City Way, at Northgate.

little brook I think what we're seeing is an expansion of people moving north and a lack of resources and I think more telling and what concerns me particularly with our district or Anna Shana Deitch is going out to an encampment with 27 tents off I-5 and working with the NAV team, again, just underscores to me from a personal and an elected position that we just don't have the resources in the North End.

Now, I don't know if it's one position or two, But I do have to highlight from personal experience that there is a need.

And I'm open for discussion about what the cost is of that, going back and looking at the auditor's report again.

But as an elected from the North End in District 5, I feel it's my responsibility to say what I'm seeing on the ground and experiencing, particularly when I talk to God's Little Acre, Aurora Commons, North Helpline.

Um, and I could go on and on and so that's kind of the state of where we're at in the north end So, thank you councilman.

Gonzalez.

Thank you.

Um, I um Appreciate where councilmember, uh, juarez is coming from on this.

There's some really useful information in a late breaking uh memo that um, senior deputy mayor, uh, mike fong sent to us.

It's a joint memo from several department heads and the last couple attachments associated with this memo has sort of a heat map that shows where the navigation team is going and geographically speaking across the city and where there are many, there's a lot of frequency of visits.

I have been an advocate for the use of the navigation team not to be complaint-driven.

The areas that, you know, get the most complaints, have the loudest voices are the ones where there is a response, but that that work be driven by an analysis of the public safety and public health issues at that location.

So I am a little concerned that geographic focus might run counter to the equitable way and Our goal is to really focus on harm reduction.

We don't have unlimited resources to do navigation team work, and that's why that work has really been grounded in focusing limited resources on areas that have the greatest negative impacts to both the folks living in those encampments and the areas surrounding those encampments.

I want to work with Council Member Juarez on accomplishing her objectives, but I am concerned that if we look at a geographic focus, it is going to really turn this whole body of work into one that is driven by what locations are getting the most complaints rather than what locations are creating the largest actual objective problems.

I think that's well stated.

Council Member Gonzalez, do you want to add something?

Yeah, I mean, I think I share that sentiment and I think there's an opportunity to sort of find a balance here and You know, I don't take issue with Council Member Juarez's description of sort of the general lack of services in a service desert that exists in North Seattle as a citywide representative.

I'm also familiar with that concept and with the realities that that is true.

And I think the point is, sort of what are, I have two things that I really wanna get clarification around.

One is, as a matter of policy in this budget process, does it make sense for us in the context of the overarching conversation we're having about the navigation team to once again go down the path of expanding it by adding two full-time That's one overarching question, right?

I think we as a city council in our oversight role continue to ask difficult questions around what is the theory of change?

Is it really just fundamentally about cleaning up encampments and dealing with the public safety and public health issues that they cause, devoid of any meaningful access to outreach and connection to services?

or is it really more about the services portion about it?

I have my own opinions about what the answer to that question is, but setting that aside, I think that the question still is, the point is we're still trying to figure that out in a data-driven, evidence-based manner, and so I have concerns about going down the path of expanding the navigation team yet again without having clear answers to those questions.

That's one point.

That leads to the second point, which I think is being raised by Councilmember Herbold, which is if we answer no to the first question, but we think that maybe there is some value to geographic focus, What criteria are we using to make a determination as to what justifies a geographic focus as opposed to just the objective criteria around the severity of public safety, public health issues and the need to do.

outreach and offer services in a particular location.

So I think we need some more information and more conversation around this one before I would be willing to signal.

support here.

So I know what's coming up next from Councilmember Sawant and I want to identify this letter that came from the mayor's office but also acknowledge that virtually every department head has signed on to this.

So I hope that we can continue this conversation about the results and I, Councilmember Herbold, you have talked so eloquently about the theory of change, what is it we're trying to accomplish.

And then Councilmember Gonzalez, what you are saying about the data-driven piece of this, we want this too, but this is year three.

And I believe that from what I am seeing from the departments, that the departments have come together in a more unified way than I have seen them in the past on almost anything.

saying this is how we want to work together to solve the problems.

So I hope that as we're going forward that we too can be talking to each other in a way of how can we use these resources best to solve the problems that we see around public health and caring for the individuals.

I don't disagree that there's consensus amongst the executive, but I don't think that's the point that I'm trying to make.

I mean, we're the legislative department and the legislative branch of this local government.

And my point is that I'm not sure that we are all on the same page as it relates to what it means when you say the problem.

I believe that the navigation team is fundamentally designed to clean up encampments.

And I think that's reflected by, and just that, as opposed to meaningfully moving unsheltered people living in unsanctioned encampments that are a that pose a public safety, public health problem into a better situation.

And I think that the reason I'm coming to that conclusion is because we continue to see an expansion on the cleaning side of this house.

But when I asked Jeff the questions around, was there a commensurate increase in this proposed budget on outreach services directly connected to the NAV team, the answer was no.

So I think, you know, I'm receiving signals and information from this proposed budget that leads me to believe that the problem that we are fixing or that the mayor is proposing be fixed through the NAB team is cleanups.

And if that's what it is, then let's just be transparent about it and say that that's what it is.

And I have just, you know, ongoing concerns about pretending that the NAB team is actually connecting people to services and shelter when the numbers in terms of the performance that we have from the NAB team is dismal.

I mean, 8% success rate, if the NAB team was a service provider, their contract would have been canceled at this point with an 8% performance.

success rate.

And so again, I think we need to be really transparent and honest in our conversations about what the problem is that we are seeing consensus from the executive on.

And I think that we might have different definitions of what the problem is and what a potential solution might be.

OK, great.

Thank you.

Chad, can I just?

OK, sure.

This is just very quickly.

I want to thank Councilmember Gonzalez and Herboldt for their insight and their experience, particularly Councilmember Herboldt, because I know she's been doing this a long time.

I just want to clarify two things.

What I've seen in my interactions and working with the NAV team, it hasn't all been complaint-based.

And what I've seen in working, now this is just me, Debra Juarez in District 5 and working with our folks.

We have seen wonderful connections of not just cleaning but getting people into services and a lot is because this council funded local community organizations like North Helpline and all that like you've heard me rattle off all these community-based organizations.

Because two years ago, this council put $150,000 into the budget to study social service organizations in the North End, so we were not siloed and duplicating resources.

And what came back from that study, besides working with the homelessness, is that the navigation team had worked well with us.

Now, I can't speak for other districts.

I certainly have some different opinions about citywide, and Council Member Gonzalez is correct.

It's a broader policy question.

But I think anecdotal information is important.

I don't think it carries the day.

But I don't want this conversation to end with that what I've shared is that everything that we have heard in the North End, particularly District 5, was just complaint-based, and the only thing the navigation team did was clean up.

I can categorically say that that is not the case.

Thank you.

So I think we've got some more conversations along these lines.

I just want to address Councilmember Gonzalez in particular.

When I'm talking about the problem, I'm looking at multiple phases of this.

But first and foremost is to make sure that the individuals who are outside are provided the services they need to be sheltered.

in a way that is respectful but also helps.

But at the same time, we know that people who are in positions on the sidewalks or in the parks or are providing I would say contributing to a sense of less than safety in a neighborhood is that we've got to put our arms around the people in the neighborhood as well.

And that's not in any way to say or to be interpreted that I think sweeping them is right because we're just chasing people around not making things better.

But we do have to acknowledge that there are many people who need our assistance.

That's why the money that we're looking at putting forward both in terms of good, healthy housing or some solution that is based on each individual's needs is going to make it better.

I want to acknowledge that being with some members of the NAV team, has been wonderful to go see how they reach out and touch people and what they know and what the training is.

If we think that we're not doing the right things, then I would like to really consider up here how we want that team to evolve.

But it took us a long time to get where we are, and I don't want to throw it out right now.

And I do have some ideas about how we can, again, within the matrix of continuous improvement, ideas that HSD has identified.

So when we get to the other proposals.

I'd like to talk more about that.

Great.

Council President Harrell.

Just a question.

Maybe it's a good dovetail in the Council Member Herbold's proposal of the sort of the quarterly check-ins.

It seems to me that we are struggling with really our different opinions on the effectiveness of the NAV team.

And throughout the years, I've listened to several presentations of as many team members as possible, not just the eight or ten staff, but all of the other departmental representatives.

And I was favorably impressed with their commitment, the individuals involved, the leadership involved.

And that prompted a very aggressive investment strategy into this approach.

I never perceived it as just a cleanup effort, and particularly when we required them to always offer shelter first before they took action.

So I guess my question is, as we look at these different proposals, this is a biggie.

We are somewhat ill-equipped, I think, to really know the effectiveness, and I don't think we can pull together a NAV team presentation, I'm looking at the memo that Deputy Mayor Fong presented now, but we're going to be somewhat ill-equipped to make these tough decisions from simply Council Member Juarez's suggestion we add two to have more geographic parity to a proviso looking at the proviso approach.

So we really can't get the NAF team here in short order, I'm assuming, given our budget schedule, correct?

Yeah, they were here last week.

But if you've got questions, I think we need to be able to have more time.

You had, how many people were here for that?

It was pretty full.

Okay.

But your point's well taken, is that?

Well, apparently it didn't work, because we still have different, apparently the tough questions were not asked, or we walked around with this incredible ambiguity.

So we wouldn't have these different approaches here.

So I'll just move on.

I'll reserve opinion on these different proposals.

But we're hearing, this is kind of a funny thing, everyone apparently saw the same thing, but walked with a different impression, I guess.

Council President, I'm happy to work with your office and provide any data that we do have available to help inform some of that discussion.

We can move on.

I'd like to move on, actually.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Oh, I'm sorry that you want to move on, Council President Harrell, but I want to have this conversation with you.

But I mean, I don't think that there's a I think that the navigation team work is in some ways very simple and in some ways can be very complex and nuanced.

And I think that's where our streams are being crossed to call upon a Ghostbuster movie reference.

I'm signaling my age at this point.

But I think, you know, as it relates to the offer of services, I think that that used to be true, that the NAB team categorically always had to offer, or most often, first offers services before doing a cleanup.

However, the policy around navigation teams really did create an exception for anything deemed to be an obstruction.

And we have seen over the last year or so that there has been an uptick in the number of encampments that are categorized as obstruction, which then do not require an offer of services before cleaning under the 72-hour rule.

And so I think that is the area where I'm expressing some concern around whether or not the NAB team is truly fulfilling the broader theory of change around offer services first and then do the cleanup.

So it's a little, That's sort of where I'm drawing a little bit of a nuance is in those, that specific bucket of work that the NAB team is doing around encampments that have been deemed to be obstructions, which do not require an offer of services first before the cleanup.

And because we have been seeing that the NAB team resources have been, skewing towards that type of work, i.e. obstruction work, that's where I get concerned about whether we are effectively utilizing these limited resources in a way to meaningfully connect people to shelter.

as opposed to moving people around the city.

And I think that my concern is a genuine one that comes from a place of if we are having an uptick in those encampments declared to be obstructions and therefore just doing cleanups without the offer of services first, then how much of this money are we effectively using to just move people around the city as opposed to connecting them to meaningful services and offering services before we disrupt their existing living situation.

And that's not to say that the people doing the work are bad people.

I think they're doing the best that they can with the resources they have under the direction that they have.

And I think that they are, at the end of the day, they are in some way meeting the public health, public safety issues created as a result of unsanctioned encampments that are deemed to be obstructions.

But I don't think that I could go to the next level and say, and as a result, we are also meeting their human needs to be in a safer place, because it doesn't seem like those dots are being connected in the category of unsanctioned encampments that are deemed to be obstructions.

I just wanted to clarify where I'm coming from as it relates to the proposal by Councilmember Juarez and some of the other proposals that we'll be discussing in this bucket of work.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Sawant, do you want to talk about cutting $8 million?

Yes.

I appreciate the discussion that we've had and appreciate Council Members Gonzalez and Herbold clarifying what the navigation team is actually ending up doing, regardless of what its stated purpose might be.

And I just want to acknowledge, I mean, based on the data that we have seen, I don't think it's a situation of ambiguity.

I don't agree with Council President Harrell that this is some deep mystery that none of us can resolve.

No, it's very obvious it's not working.

And there's no, I mean, you can't have a pretense of evidence-based approach when you're just completely ignoring the stark evidence we're seeing, which is that it's not working.

I had done this before in a previous, probably, in one of our select committees on homelessness.

I will do this again.

The letter that we got from REACH on January 16th of this year makes it very clear some of the problems, the fundamental problems with setting up the principle behind the navigation team, which really illustrates that the phrase navigation team is really just a euphemism.

It's a team that carries out sweeps of homeless people, of human beings.

According to the Reach letter, one of the issues they had significant concerns on, which is why they distanced themselves from the navigation team's work, was that there is a focus on shelter rather than housing.

I appreciate council members saying that it's a problem if the NAV team is increasingly focused simply on moving people because there are obstructions or there's Somebody has said that they're obstructions as opposed to offering them services, that that's bad.

I completely, 100% agree that services need to be offered because these are human beings.

However, Reach's letter is pointing towards a deeper issue which there hasn't been a real acknowledgement of, which is that it's not good enough to offer shelter, as in here's a shelter but for a few days go there and don't be visible to the business owners in this area.

That doesn't work.

And in my committee on human services, we've had residents of the Ravenna encampment as just for an illustration to show why even this, even the better and more mitigated of service or approach that the NAV team might use where they provide shelter does not work.

The residents of the Revena encampment, there were three people who have been repeatedly swept from the same location over and over again.

And they will tell you that one of the first few times they accepted shelter, but it didn't work for them because couples are separated from each other.

It's traumatizing.

I cannot imagine what trauma that causes.

And I don't think it's acceptable that if we're not willing to subject ourselves to those circumstances, we cannot accept that homeless people should accept those circumstances.

So that's one problem.

The other problem is, As the residents showed, and this is on Seattle Channel, you can watch this, said this individual, he makes his living through trading of some sort of cards.

I'm not an expert on it, so I don't know what kind of cards they were.

But he said that the last time he moved into a shelter, he had to lock his belongings up in a place where everybody else in the shelter puts their belongings.

And all of his belongings were stolen.

He lost his livelihood.

So no, he doesn't want to go to a shelter.

Does that mean he is a problem individual?

No, it just means he is poor and he's not able to pay his rent, but he's actually making a living, just not enough to deal with the skyrocketing rents, and offering shelter is not working.

So I think we have, Reach made the point that the navigation team's teamwork, I'm quoting here, is focused on shelter referrals many of which are not an appropriate fit for residents in the encampments.

Our staff have been told to provide shelter offers even though they are rarely accepted rather than developing longer-term alternative housing plans.

This is what it comes down to.

And so...

I don't think that the tiny home villages are a panacea for everything.

They are certainly not a substitute for actual housing and permanent supportive housing.

But the point is that their transitions to permanent housing are so strong and successful that really what we should be doing is rather than putting resources in the navigation team, we should be, or to, you know, the so-called shelter service offerings, we should have our City of Seattle staff and other service providers Go to the people who are homeless and offer them real options like here is, you know, you can have this tiny home and then you will have case management and other services that will help you transition to housing.

Do I have a guarantee that every single last one of the homeless individuals will accept it?

No, of course not.

But I have no doubt in my mind, based on the data and what we've heard from providers, that it will make a significant dent in the problem that is being faced, which will not be solved through a navigation team approach.

The second problem REACH highlight is increased enforcement.

And this was one of the most compelling reasons REACH left.

They said our staff have experienced increased mistrust from clients as they see the REACH team associated with rapid encampment removal.

and more law enforcement.

So I think that in combination with the fact that they are not offering them actual alternatives that work for the individuals and the enforcement-based approach, I don't think it's working.

Yes, there are services that could be provided and those should not be underfunded or defunded, but the primary existence of the NAV team is for sweeping homeless human beings, and that is why it's a problem.

But it's not just a problem in terms that it's inhumane, it's also completely ineffective.

Council Member Gonzalez talked about the abysmal numbers, and I wholeheartedly agree with her.

If this was a non-profit-based program, this program would have been defunded a long time ago.

So what is the justification for continuing this city program, which is funded through taxpayer resources, which, by the way, is regressive revenue sources?

So I think it's important that we take this step.

I mean, year after year, the city council engages in this discussion, and there is no lack of clarity.

It's very clear.

There's no ambiguity.

It's a question of whether there is a political will to do this or not.

I'd like to move on to the next point, which is item number 11, a proviso on funds for the NAV team.

Council Member Herbold.

Sure.

So this proposal would replicate a proviso in structure that we had imposed last year, building off of the work that has been done this year.

So, Green Sheet 1495A4 established a proviso of quarterly reporting and that the funding for the navigation team would be lifted each quarter commensurate with the quarterly reporting.

As mentioned earlier, several recommend, although the quarterly reporting was done, it wasn't done in a way that was full and complete.

specific to the auditor's recommendations.

And so there are several areas that have been not met satisfactorily.

Specifically, we mentioned earlier, the requirement to do a staffing assessment, a staffing structure assessment.

And the other idea that I think has we have been able to develop through the work that the executive has done is that the navigation team does have a theory of change, and that theory of change is not only about cleaning It's not only about cleaning and maintaining city property.

The theory of change is to connect unsheltered individuals at sites to be cleaned with existing services and shelter, bring more people inside, and create faster resolutions to hazardous situations.

Theory of Change is really focused on the navigation team's work as it relates to non-obstruction encampment removals.

The executive has not developed a Theory of Change for the obstruction removals, the ones that they are authorized to do immediately because it's either on a sidewalk, a public right-of-way, or within a park.

And so the navigation team is authorized to immediately remove those encampments.

And for non-obstruction removals, they are thinking of the theory of change as the centering objective, both cleaning locations and helping people.

And they have developed through developing this theory of change, strategies, specific activities, and performance measures.

Performance measures that they are agreeing to report on.

And initially, and we've been, starting to get some of those.

So that's initially we're talking referrals to services, by service category, number of times diversion utilized, number of contacts made, number of people contacted.

That's what they're providing now.

They're working on doing more, as we've heard in recent, in just the recent week, they're working now on reporting percentages of successful referrals.

and the number of referrals to shelter.

So I propose requiring them to continue reporting on these outcomes and I want to I kind of want to push back a little bit on this idea that when Contractors don't meet the outcomes that are developed through results-based accountability that we defund those organizations.

That is not the RBA approach.

And I want to take this opportunity to say that.

The RBA approach is about creating, again, a program of continuous improvement and giving the contractors the opportunity by the city working with them to make improvements.

And so, it is true that outreach contractors have an outcome for the percentage of referrals from contacts of 60 percent.

There is information in the department memo that we received that shows that there, that There is some parity between what the navigation team is doing as relates to referrals to shelter, specifically referrals, not people showing up, as compared between the navigation team and the non-navigation team outreach workers.

So I think, to me, that shows that the executive is committed to holding itself to the same, holding itself internally to the same standard that we're holding outside contractors to.

And I want to, again, continue to do this work, but I do share the concern that I've heard about the fact that this process of continuous improvement, to include outcomes for people is not extended to the obstruction encampment removals.

And I think that's something that we need to struggle with in this budget cycle.

I understand that there are times that the executive actually needs to mobilize departments to move encampments from sidewalks or dangerous on ramps.

I, you know, we get these reports every week that show which locations are being tagged as obstructions.

I don't have the capacity in my office to go out and check to make sure that they're being properly identified as obstructions.

But I think that's maybe the area that we want to move into is focusing on getting reporting for the non-obstruction navigation teamwork as identified by the executive itself as being willing to report on those particular measures and outcomes, and then looking for some mechanism to confirm that locations that are being tagged as obstructions not meriting 24, not meriting three days notice and offers of outreach really should be getting that definition and that leeway to act immediately without consideration for the impacts to people.

Do you see that our actual rules, internal rules, are ineffective or inconsistent?

Because I know you were part of this, I think it's now been three years where We had many, many meetings with Lisa Dugard, public defenders, and we came up with an agreement on how these were going to be handled, but acknowledging the fact that we needed to deal with dangerous situations or the obstructions on the public sidewalks.

So what do you see we're missing, Council Member Herbold, that needs to happen?

So the definition of obstruction means people, tents, personal property, garbage, debris, or other objects related to an encampment that are in a city park or on a public sidewalk, interfere with the pedestrian or transportation purposes of public rights-of-way, or interfere with areas that are necessary for or essential to the intended use of a public property or facility.

And I think it's a a valid exercise for us to ask ourselves whether or not that definition is too broad or appropriate for an exemption to proper notice and outreach to encampments.

But it's not just the definitional, I think, requirement.

It's some mechanism of oversight to ensure that once we have a definition that we agree to that is being applied properly.

At one point, the Office of Civil Rights was acting in sort of an auditing fashion and monitoring some of the navigation team work to make sure that it was being done in a way that was consistent with the MDARs.

They have not been doing that.

maybe that's something else we should take a look at.

Council President Harrell.

Just had a question about the proposal.

My staff reminded me I actually was here for the NAF team presentation.

Too much information, too much information overload, October 2nd.

But I did have to step out for an hour.

It seems, I think I understand where you're trying to go.

I mean, you really want us to measure and invest and have some serious oversight on the effectiveness of the NAVTEAM program.

My concern with the approach is it seems a little harsh that if we stopped funding because we don't get the results, lives can be lost.

I mean, it just seems like the people out there can suffer, not the departments not doing what we want them to do.

And I'm wondering if another approach, if there's another approach that requires that we still get the service that we want out there and the results we do, but the council is just in a better position to be more directive.

It just seems harsh.

I don't think we would actually hold up the funds because again, lives can be lost as we do that.

Let's put it this way.

This is what we did last year in the budget process.

We provisoed the funds and required quarterly reporting before we released the funds.

They didn't actually completely fulfill the requirements of our proviso and no funds were withheld.

Can I do that?

I don't have the concern that you do based on what has happened in the last year.

We did not require a council action to release the funds.

Simply all they had to do was submit the report.

You're taking it a step further though, right?

I'm not taking it.

I have not proposed to take it a step further.

I have not proposed that the council pass legislation every quarter to release the funds.

So what do you think the impact would be?

I mean, if things were perfect here and your proviso were passed, how does that relate to some of the other issues here that we're going to see coming up?

Was I misreading that?

It says to address unsatisfactory responses, council action would be necessary to release the funding quarterly.

That's what I was...

That is an approach we could take.

I am not proposing that we have to take an affirmative action to have the money be released each quarter.

I am proposing though that they do quarterly reporting before the funds are released.

So is that sentence that I actually don't have it in front of me?

I suspected that that was actually my language drafting in summary of form A's and so I think that there was a misunderstanding on my part in terms of what was expected.

I'm the one that phrased it in that way and clearly I didn't follow it with the intent.

I don't see how I could read it any other way.

Council action would be necessary to release the funding quarterly and that was the basis of my point that Why would the council withhold funding?

I think she's saying that's not her intention, so we can look at that again.

Council Member O'Brien, Council Member Swent.

Council Member Herbold, I think you've done a great job this year, and I think we should continue it.

I think that this is an appropriate way.

We're getting reports that we previously didn't on a timely fashion.

You know, we can talk about the language of what it says, but my understanding is, as long as they provide the quarterly report, then the funding continues.

So if they fail to do that in a timely manner, that would trigger something.

And if there's something we see in the report, we could take action then to proviso it if we didn't appreciate what they were doing.

And I think that this has served us really well, not just the council, but the public, to get the data we need.

And I think I will certainly support continuing it in that fashion.

Great, thank you.

Council Member Swann.

Yeah, just a few things, not necessarily directly related to the proviso, although I agree with Council Member O'Brien that Council Member Herbold gave a very good explanation of the whole issue.

But just going into the whole question, I mean, this item and the previous item, I mean, they're all about the NAV team.

and whether or not to continue the NAV team.

And also, I think the media has engaged in obfuscation when the council, when council members object to aspects of the navigation team that are clearly inhumane and ineffective, that gets presented as, oh, you're against homeless services.

Unfortunately, Mike Fong's letter also is very, very heavily in that direction, sort of, you know, suggesting that somehow opposing the navigation team or AKA sweeps, opposing homeless sweeps is opposing homeless people.

I think Council President Harrell also said lives would be lost.

I think this is obfuscation of what's actually happening, which is that It's not working for homeless people.

And for all the points that elected officials are raising about how supposedly how good the navigation team is, I've not heard from a single homeless person who said the navigation team process helped me.

No, all I've heard is how traumatic it was because they kept being moved from place to place.

And I think the question of referrals needs to be addressed.

I mean, a referral, yes, they make referrals, but a referral is only as good as its acceptance rate, right?

And the REACH letter tells us, and also testimonials from homeless people who've been swept themselves, tells us that the reason they're not accepting, the acceptance rate is low, is not because they are irrational or they want to be on the streets, but because the services that are on offer are not working for them.

That's why I think we have to tie this to, as you said, Chair Baksha, you know, because tiny house villages are working so well, we need to tie it to this.

So imagine a scenario if we have a team, whatever you want to call it, I don't want to use NAV team because right now in my mind it's a euphemism for something that's not working, But imagine you had City of Seattle team that went to homeless individuals and provided them referrals to things that actually were acceptable, then it would work.

And actually exist.

Yes, and actually exist.

Yes, not in the abstract, but something that they could actually use.

Then we would all be in agreement.

And that's why I think we had to push back on the mayor's office sort of confusing this issue.

by saying that somehow this is against being, having an objection to something that's not working and is inhumane is against homeless people.

No, that's like, that's completely turning it on its head.

It's because we care about homeless individuals that we are pointing out that the referrals are not being accepted because it's not working for them.

And then the other thing also that we should clarify is that all homeless services, as far as I understand, but Council Member Herbold, you should correct me if I'm wrong, Homeless services are generally held to the standard of transitions to permanent housing.

By that measure, the navigation team has a success rate of zero, because we've asked them repeatedly, they have no transitions to show to permanent housing.

Now, that's not to say that that can be accomplished.

I think that's an unrealistic goal, even for other homeless services.

What we have to see is, are they performing, whatever service there is, is it performing a useful role in the process of transitioning people to permanent housing?

I think that's the way it would be more meaningful, and by that measure, services like tiny house villages are working out.

And the last but not least point, just to echo what Council Member Herbold was saying earlier, is the navigation team's efforts are primarily directed by complaint-based mechanisms, and Mike Fong's letter acknowledges that.

It says navigation team is the city's frontline crisis response to thousands of customer requests to assist people experiencing homelessness.

I'm sorry, this is very, very heavily euphemistic language.

Thousands of customer requests to assist people experiencing homelessness.

No, it's mostly people who are complaining that there are homeless people out there.

Complaining is not going to, you can complain all you want, but there is homelessness, and we have to use rational solutions to address homelessness, which is invest in things that are working, stop investing in things that are not working.

I just want to respond to that.

The navigation, the executive takes complaints, but the number of complaints that they take far outweighs the numbers of encampment removals that they do.

They take thousands of complaints a year and they do between three and 10 removals a week.

So it's not complaint, a complaint approach is the portal for receiving information about locations.

It is not the method by which they prioritize where they go.

I didn't mean to suggest that.

At any given time there are probably 400 distinct locations in the complaint database.

They are not deciding where to go, to my understanding, based on where they're getting the most complaints, but based on an assessment of those locations for which they've received complaints of those locations, which ones rise highest in priority because of an objective assessment around public health and public safety considerations.

That's my understanding of the approach.

Okay, Council Member.

Yeah, I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to suggest that, I completely agree that what you're saying is accurate.

What I am saying though, is that it's not, the approach is not, let's provide them services that are actually going to work for them.

It is purely, this is what's available, are you taking it or not?

So, and simply saying that these many referrals have been made, but that's not useful.

if people are still on the streets.

I'm going to ask us to please move on.

I think there's support on the proviso and on item 12, which is the Mobile Needle Exchange Program, Councilmember Pacheco is left, but I think he's left you, Councilmember, with his notes.

Caught me a little off guard there.

And I have some handouts, too, for the clerk and for my colleagues.

Oh, sorry.

What number are we on?

Item number 12 is page 8 of 9. I'm ready to read my script for Councilmember Pacheco.

So this is provide funds to start up mobile needle exchange program.

As some of you may know, the University Temple United Methodist Church in my district not D5, is preparing to redevelop, which will displace the service providers who rent space in the church.

My office has been working to ensure that we find new locations for some of those services, including Roots Young Adult Shelter.

Another organization being displaced is the People's Harm Reduction Alliance Needle Exchange.

My hope is that a mobile needle exchange program could serve as a viable alternative to finding a new fixed site And finally, we are still trying to determine exact costs, but I wanted to highlight this issue as a priority for me, and that is from Councilmember Pacheco, representing District 4.

Very good.

Thank you.

Any comments?

If I may, Chair Bagshaw, would this program be run through our Seattle King County Public Health Agency, Councilmember Juarez?

I do not know.

I read the script.

And thank you, Council Member Gonzalez, for that question.

I do not know.

Come on back.

More information to come.

I know that the Seattle King County Public Health has some needle-related programming.

And so I was just wondering if it was going to be run through that agency or if this would ostensibly be a new line of business for HSD.

Council Central staff can follow up on those two points of information.

Sure, I can provide more.

You are correct that currently the needle exchange is handled by public health rather than HSD directly.

I don't believe that this was formulated with that level of detail at this stage.

Thank you.

All right, very good.

Item number 13, please.

Pilot providing mental health outreach workers in the U District.

Is this Council Member Juarez?

Are you speaking to this on behalf of Council Member Pacheco?

Is this number 13?

13. Nope.

I have 15 though.

Okay, who's got 13?

I can speak to 13. Thank you.

This would essentially continue a program.

I believe the current funding we provided in last year's budget carries through a contract with the BIAs in both University District and Ballard.

This is modeled after a program that actually the Ballard BIA started a few years ago when they independently contracted with a REACH worker to assist the business community in doing outreach.

And it was a highly successful model.

I think from my perspective, it served the needs well.

It was a really good model.

The chamber and their members were very satisfied with the work that was done.

A lot of other of the neighborhood chambers wanted to implement something similar.

The contract that we funded in last year's budget, I believe, continues through June of next year, but this would provide a couple years funding to extend that contract for an additional two years to June of 2022. Very good.

Thank you for that.

I've heard good things from Ballard as well.

Any comments?

All right, moving on to Encampment Trash Program Expansion.

Council Member Herbold.

I've been in conversations with Seattle Public Utilities and REACH about expanding the purple bag program.

and doing so by utilizing REACH's existing resources.

They feel that they have the capacity to distribute additional bags.

Seattle Public Utilities is interested in expanding the locations that they collect the bags from.

And as you may know, REACH is now operating on a geographic model with workers in all areas of the city to offer services to homeless individuals.

And so part of the regular outreach, they would work with SPU to assess potential sites for feasibility, hand out bags, and explain their program.

and then monitor sites for continued success, as well as, of course, ongoing communication with SPU staff about collaboration and evaluation of sites.

SPU would supply the purple bags and have contractors collect the solid waste at the designated pickup locations.

And SPU has estimated the cost per location for pickup costs.

But we're working on trying to find a more accurate estimate of the funding amount that they've identified so far based on what it is they're currently doing.

Great.

Thank you very much for taking the lead on that.

Any other comments?

We'll move on to item 15. I don't have speaking points, but he's spoken to me about it.

Yes, I do.

Thank you.

Again, I will be speaking on Councilmember Pacheco, and I also have a handout for my colleagues as well.

Councilmember Sawant, I'm going to hand this to you.

Thank you.

So number 15 is the 381,000 start up and operate to operate overnight only safe parking lots.

The incredible folks at the University Heights Center in my district reached out to me earlier in this year with the interest in starting a safe lot pilot on their property.

U Heights has been working closely with the Low Income Housing Institute, that would be Lehigh, to put together a proposal and I have here a detailed cost estimates and more information about the proposal.

Their hope would be to start with about five vehicles and ramp up to 20 to 30 within the first 6 to 12 months.

University Heights is doing a very robust outreach process to their tenant organizations, community groups, the BIA, and neighboring residents and has received positive responses.

In addition to the safe lot, U Heights and Lehigh would be providing on-site staffing, a case manager, and is working with the local YMCA to provide showers and bathroom facilities.

Thank you.

Any comments?

I think this is great that University Heights has been working with us, so I'll say thank you in advance for that.

All right.

I think item number 16, Mike, do you ask Council Member O'Brien, sorry, do you want to jump in?

That's great.

This is what add $200,000 to fund the Scoff Law Mitigation Project.

Just to remind folks, this has been an all-volunteer project that's been happening for probably close to a decade now.

The scofflaw mitigation team works with vehicular residents.

They get referrals from police and parking enforcement officers.

And then they use whatever resources they've been able to raise privately to help folks in situations.

That could be sometimes it's help with paying tickets.

Sometimes it's help with providing vehicle repairs so that they can move them.

All with an effort to originally focused on ensuring that the vehicles continue to move so that they don't get impounded.

and folks lose their homes.

But over the years, that program has continued to expand to provide other services.

It's a great program, and for a number of years, they've been looking to figure out how they could get some city funding to help make it more robust and be more intentional.

So you should all have the pink handout that walks through.

their request of breakdown of types of things they're trying to do, but would love to figure out how we can include them.

I know that they get, you know, they get multiple requests every single day, referrals, they say three to eight a day, and obviously we have a big challenge around folks living in vehicles, and I think this is part of the solution.

Thank you.

Any comments?

Thanks to Council Member O'Brien for bringing this forward.

Great.

And I really appreciate the work that Reverend Bill Kerlin Hackett and Jean Darcy have been doing.

I wonder, how does this work?

Because they are a non-profit, do we need to have some sort of an RFP before identifying them as being the recipients of $200,000?

Yeah, I think I'm happy to work with them and find out some of that information.

I mean, this should be an RFP, and we should see who's willing to provide the services.

And it'd be great if there are multiple organizations out there that are interested in competing to provide this work.

And it's important to make sure that if the scofflaw mitigation team is intending to set this up, that they're appropriately designed.

I mean, they're clearly accepting funds today, so I imagine if they're not their own,

501 c3 they have fiscal sponsors, but we're happy to work with them and answer some those questions about how that would work Thank You councilmember Brian let's see we're next into mobile bathroom facilities and Councilmember Herbold all right.

Thank you So this proposal appropriates a little bit more than $2 million from the general sub fund to develop and staff mobile bathrooms, a.k.a. mobile pit stops.

$1.3 million would be needed for one-time startup costs to purchase and retrofit five mobile pit stops.

And about $725,000 would be necessary for ongoing operational costs to staff and manage these pit stops.

This creates greater access to restrooms and hygiene services.

It is, again, my efforts to implement the recommendations of the city auditor and the city auditor's work around the navigation team with the idea that if we can better manage the public health impacts of the homelessness crisis, will mitigate the need for the work of the navigation team.

The audit found just six 24-7 city-operated public toilets, and as we know, access to a bathroom benefits everyone.

San Francisco has been very successful in using the mobile pit stop model, and it also helps access, helps people who need these services, also link to needed case management, so it can be sort of an entryway into other services.

Mobile pit stop stations can be stationed at gathering areas across the city, provide a cost-effective addition to our current efforts to increase access to bathroom and hygiene centers that are currently staffed for safety and cleanliness.

The mobile pit stops, again, are estimated to have each about $145,000 of ongoing cost to staff, keep stock of supplies, and maintain for every mobile unit with two toilets.

Compare that to the Ballard Commons, Portland Loo, that has a proposed operating cost of $99,000 for a single toilet, no sink or mirror, and dim lighting.

Great, thank you very much for bringing this forward.

I was in San Francisco about three years ago, saw the pit stops.

Those, of course, are solid in place.

But what I really appreciated about them was that San Francisco's equivalent of our SPU identified the places and locations where they needed them most because of the amount of time they were using to clean up.

whatever they were cleaning up.

But then they also added these mobile stations, and just as you're saying, taking them to the places where they need to be.

And I'm hearing nothing but good things from San Francisco, even though it's costly.

We've got to do this.

We have been pushing, I mean, for the entire decade that I've been on this council to have more hygiene facilities around the city.

So thank you for bringing it up.

Absolutely.

And I just want to, again, underscore that this was a recommendation of the city auditor, specifically as it related to the navigation teamwork.

A lot of the navigation teamwork is, again, driven by the public health conditions of outdoor unsanctioned encampments.

If we can increase access to hygiene facilities at these locations, it will hopefully reduce those public safety conditions that lead to encampment identification as priorities for removal.

I like this.

I like it.

It's a win-win, I think, for the city, for those that need facilities and for those that are sometimes offended by waste and human waste and things like that.

So I like the idea.

I guess I'm concerned about this city process, not what you're proposing, because I support it and I like it.

Why is this generated from the council, it seems to me?

It seems to me that we should have the departments that have the expertise to go out there and look at the different RFPs, look at the different technologies, look at the different solutions, and that this should have been embedded in the budget.

And so I'm just always concerned when ideas like this that, and we've had some missteps in the last 10 or 15 years on bathrooms, of course, when they are generated from the council, that why, during the course of the year, we didn't, I know the auditor had come back with some recommendations, but to me, the larger issue is that we are, as a council, as policy wonks, looking at specific solutions when we have departments that should be telling us, this is exactly how you address the hygiene matter in the city.

And I'm assuming that a lot of this is not only coming from the auditor, but we are getting feedback from the departments, great route to go and this will improve the conditions, I'm assuming, or are they saying, I mean, you know, the client is not here, so to speak, the client being the department, so.

Jeff, perhaps it would be useful to share with council members the executive's response to the auditor's recommendations as it relates to increased access to hygiene facilities.

Sure, I don't have those with me currently, but I can try them out.

Thank you.

What's the net of it?

Not in this budget?

Well, there are not increases in services except what has been identified.

I'm not aware of increases that would relate to our hygiene needs as recommended by the auditor.

My rough recollection is that they felt that that recommendation, so the direction of the city auditor was to focus on the work of the navigation team.

And the response from HSD is that, my recollection was that recommendations around hygiene was out of the scope of the review of the navigation team activities.

So there was, I think, a disagreement or lack of alignment between the city auditor and the departments of whether or not there is a link of provision of hygiene services to successful outcomes for the navigation team.

Thank you.

All right.

Council members, do you want to just briefly talk about 18 and how is yours different from what Council Member Herbold's proposing?

Right.

So as far as the motivation is concerned, I think Council Member Herbold laid the whole thing out and I won't repeat those points, but just say that I agree with those points.

As far as I understand, technically both items are correct.

except that Council Member Herbold's proposal includes a second year of funding for operational costs.

I think that's what's different.

But of course, I mean, needless to say, I'm happy to support item 17. Great.

Thank you.

Number 19 is something that Council Member Herbold and I both shared.

Do you want to speak to it?

Why don't you go?

All right.

Thank you.

So we have been very appreciative of parks of opening up their facilities where there are swimming pools.

And we have asked to increase those numbers to other others where they are not currently being offered.

Miller, Meadowbrook and it's just Meadowbrook actually.

Just Meadowbrook?

I thought we had three that we were doing.

No, we have four existing.

Yeah.

Delridge, Rainier Beach, Green Lake, and Miller.

Okay, but we had asked to expand that.

Parks has said that they're willing to.

We'll see where it goes.

I spoke earlier about the laundry service.

I think that that's overkill at this point, that we have some available, disposable, compostable towels that people can use.

And I think this is a great thing for us to be able to open up more facilities that we are already paying for to people who need them.

Okay.

All right.

We're just having one left, and then we're going to have a really lovely lunch, 44 minutes.

Funding to expand cleaning of restrooms in city parks, it seems like a no-brainer, Councilmember Herbold.

Anything that we need?

I don't need to add anything.

Okay, good.

All right, 44 minutes for lunch.

I hope everybody enjoys themselves.

We'll be back starting at 2 o'clock with human services.

Hey, team at the table, thank you.

You've been stunning.

And all of my council colleagues, thank you for bringing forward all of your ideas at this point in such a thoughtful way.

All right, we are at recess.