Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee 10/3/18 Session II

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for being here.

Earlier today, we heard from the Office of Housing and Human Services Department, and this is a special day today where we are focusing on human services and housing and the investments that we are making to help move people out of homelessness.

help us clean up our streets.

This afternoon we'll be focusing on our navigation teams and Seattle Public Utilities.

Glad to have you here.

Thank you.

I'm Sally Bagshaw.

I chair the Special Budget Committee.

Today is our third day that's focusing on departments.

Thank you Councilmember Gonzalez for joining me.

So Quick and early at 2 o'clock.

Appreciate your being here.

So the closer look we're going to be taking this afternoon is what is being done and what is working.

And it's good to see you all.

Thank you for those of you who are participating in the navigation teams.

I very much appreciate the work you're doing.

I'd also, we're going to be asking you lots of questions, presenting on especially how it is working, what your tools are, and if there are things that you need.

If there are specifically additional resources that you're focused on, we'd like to know what those are.

And I'm going to ask you and those of you on central staff, maybe to help us look at what San Francisco is doing.

Simultaneously, we know that San Francisco has a very similar model to what we're doing on the street.

In fact, we actually, a number of us went and looked at San Francisco a couple of years ago.

It's where we first got engaged with the 24-7 enhanced shelter model, looking at their buprenorphine clinic, the treatment on demand.

So, we're here today to say what can we be doing that's working to do more of that, and if there are gaps, we want to hear about that as well.

So, let me turn it back over to you, central staff, Eric, Alan, if you'd like, and Greg, if you'd like to introduce yourselves, and we'll get going.

Hi, Greg Doss, central staff, and I work on the navigation team issues.

Great.

Alan Lee, council central staff.

I work on homelessness.

Great.

Great.

Alison for being here.

Okay.

So those do we want to have people at the table that are going to presenters to please come up.

Good to see you all again.

Fred, do you want to start introductions, and we'll just continue around the table.

I'm Fred Podesta with the Human Services Department.

Jackie Samuels with the Human Services Department.

And I'm Jason Verhoff with the Seattle Police Department assigned to the Navigation Team.

Ben Noble with the Budget Office.

Julie Dingley, Budget Office.

Thank you.

OK.

So who's kicking this one off?

Anything Dr. Noble would like to start with?

No, it's all you.

All right.

So today, I think for the next part of the agenda, we're here to focus on the city's navigation team.

And just by way of background, it's an interdisciplinary team which has a partnership between the Human Services Department, outreach providers that work with the Human Services Department, and the Seattle Police Department.

In addition, we're supported by many other departments that aren't formal members of the team, but who we work with to coordinate property issues, issues of moving material from their property of the eight property owning departments in the city.

So the budget will go, we have some detail at the end.

I think this is somewhat of a, thematic conversation, but again, given the functions of the team, there's a $900,000 budget for outreach services, which are usually provided by a third party.

Currently, that's with Evergreen Reach is who's providing those services to us.

The staffing and logistics budget is recognizes the cost of Human Services Department employees and Seattle Police Department employees.

And then cleanup is evenly split between Finance Administrative Services and the Seattle Parks Department.

And I think that's its own agenda topic later in the day.

I guess I'd like to point out a couple things.

Again, I've talked that this is an interdisciplinary team.

It's also a team that's very much in transition at a variety of levels.

It's nominally, and maybe this is important, but it's the simplest.

The team is, many of the staff of the team, not the officers, but the staff that are in HSD had been split before.

Now all the staff are transferring from finance and administrative services to the human services department.

That was an action the council took last year about this time in the budget process to better integrate the goals of the navigation team with the city's overall homelessness response system and planning.

And then beyond that, which I think is kind of more fundamental to what we'd like to talk about today is, it's also, the team is transitioning from kind of an experiment that was born at the city's Emergency Operations Center, was deployed in early 2017, and somewhat of an experiment to something that is being proposed in this budget is more of a sustainable, supported program that is much better integrated with other things.

And so I think that's important.

And then also the mid-year not quite mid-year, but the team is also beginning an expansion, fairly modest expansion, but it will increase headcount of both police officers and HSD staff.

Two of those staff are on board as of last week.

And those are data specialists that will help the team be more data-driven and be able to understand the performance of the team relative to many of the city's other goals.

So I think that's important to note.

I personally am part of the transition moving and working more closely with this team and I guess I would like to say I've worked with the team kind of from a distance since its inception and working with it much more closely in the past several weeks.

I really have come to appreciate the, we talk about being people center, but every day that I'm with the team, I hear discussions about individuals by name and what the team needs to do to help them.

And it's really a sight to behold.

So I'm proud to be at the table with these folks.

And given all those transitions, I will probably ask for a little bit of patience from the council, because we have a lot of moving parts right now.

So there may be some questions you have that our answer, unfortunately, is going to be, I'm going to need to get back to you, because we are kind of in the middle of moving a lot of things around.

And I'm sure you've heard a little bit of that before, but I'll be preemptive and just say it right now.

Okay.

I just want you to know that we're a very patient group.

If you watched it this morning.

I saw that.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah.

I'm just joking.

Take your shot.

Okay.

So, yeah, there you go.

All right.

Somehow I'm driving.

Tiffany, I know you need no introduction, but anything you want to say?

What was that?

Oh, it was 2.10 for you.

It was 2 o'clock for everybody else.

Good.

And I know folks know about how the team works, but just by way of background for everybody in the audience, what the team does is provide outreach and often relocate encampments around the city, and we have an estimate on the slide here of 400. That's derived from complaints to the city and service requests from customers.

We've also done some work to map it.

We're working with the Seattle Department of Transportation right now.

on a mapping exercise which lends credence to that number, that there are hundreds of collections of people living outside that you could call an encampment.

And the focus of the navigation team since its inception, so this may be another transition we talk about at some point, has been on encampments.

You know, kind of larger established encampments for a variety of reasons.

There's kind of an efficiency, aspect to this that there are a lot of people you can gather at once, since it's a balancing act for the team to help people living outside, but also mitigate the impacts to neighborhoods in terms of public safety and public health, you know, large established encampments.

start being kind of collections of public health issues, sometimes public safety issues, you know, and problematic behavior because it's easy to hide things in a field with 40 tents.

So that's something we have to think about going forward.

I know you talked a lot this morning, the different growths in different segments of the unsheltered community.

And so we'll need to continue to think about what does the NAV team focus on?

But that is for the past 20 months, the NAV teams existed, they really have focused mostly on encampments.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

I just want to, although I support the removal of encampments that are in, that are true public safety hazards, public health hazards or obstructions that create a danger to either the inhabitants or other people.

I want to highlight the fact that this 400 number has been our working number for a very long time.

And I think that really gives credence to the statement that people have made that as it relates to the encampments, we're moving them around the city.

We may be reducing the numbers of people when we get people into permanent housing, but as it relates to the The encampments as a physical entity, we're pretty much moving them around the city.

We're not really reducing the number of encampments.

They change locations.

And I just think that that's something that's really important for us to keep in mind while we are also addressing the real public health and safety needs of the residents and people in the neighborhood.

I think that's a valid point.

I suppose you could argue.

In some cases, are we even moving encampments around?

Given those numbers and the scale of this effort, when you get to 400, there are more encampments that we're not engaging with than ones that we are.

That's just a fact.

I think one of the points that we hammered home this morning was that we clearly need more places for people to go.

And the 24-7 shelters, without a doubt, no matter who we talk to, whether it's the most recently the audit report received, we know that the benefits for people when they can get stabilized in 24-7 is way better than if we're just suggesting to people that they go into overnight shelter.

So with that as you're going forward too, I'd love to have a sense from you about how much do you think we need so that if you and the navigation teams could have some reserved numbers of places that were 24-7 that were available to you so that we could expand our shelter capacity so that you could say to somebody if they were in a tent or multiple people, a small group, how many, what do you need in order for you to be successful to be able to say to someone, we've got a place for you to go.

We're not saying you have to go there, but we're saying, You can't be here and we're going to have a decent place for you to go.

So as we're talking, I'd like to hear more about that.

And I think at the appropriate point, we're happy to, you know, engage in that conversation.

It seems that this all needs to be balanced.

We do on occasion see people that the navigation team encounters people that had been in a enhanced shelter and are back on the street.

I think you need a balance of right sizing through the whole system.

Absolutely.

You know what we're doing here is truly emergency response and you know you don't.

address a public health issue just by making the emergency room bigger.

You have to make everything bigger.

Right, absolutely.

And I think another point that I'd like to hear from our team when we dive in this is do you have access to diversion funds?

Do you have, and again I'm going to point to Portland and San Francisco that have Homeward Bound programs.

REACH has flexible spending dollars so they can engage people on diversion.

I believe the their overall system changes plan for 2019 about how diversion is enrolled and whether it's a service or a program that will be part of our contracting efforts with our outreach provider and as we continue to work on the diversion, rethinking about how diversion is structured.

I think there's a certain level of capacity clients need to have for diversion to be a viable alternative and the focus areas that the navigation team often ends up working may not always be suitable.

But it's certainly, it's already in the toolbox and it's, there's some use of it.

And so when we talk a little bit about outreach, maybe I'll ask Jackie to chime in with his opinions on how diversion might work or might not work.

Thank you.

And if I have more questions about diversion, should I hold them?

Are we going to be getting into that specifically in the intervention?

I'm sorry, I didn't hear the question.

If there are more questions about diversion, should I hold them?

Just, I think, for a slide or two.

This is a very short presentation, so we can...

Kind of move on.

Just again, for background by way of the public, for the public and others who haven't heard this before, the overall procedures that the navigation team uses are governed by a set of administrative rules.

MDAR, you've probably heard this acronym before.

It's a highly descriptive title of multi-department administrative rules.

And really, the purpose of those rules are to, you know, the conceptual purpose is to protect people's rights.

It's multi-department because there are eight agencies in the city that own property.

And these issues are really about how they manage their property and manage unauthorized camping on their property.

So it's to make sure we're all doing this the same way, that we are making offers of outreach, that we are most, very importantly, handling people's personal property.

Because in all these issues, whether it's appropriate for someone to be outside in a particular place or not, they can't lose their possessions as a result of these operations.

Last year, the executive and Council impaneled, or actually late in 2016, I believe, the Council impaneled, along with the Executive, a Community Advisory Committee, which has since been working on reviewing our procedures and giving us some recommendations.

That committee is just about done with their work, and we should, I think, They're having a meeting in November, which may be their final meeting.

They'll make a recommendation about what happens next.

It was originally chartered for two years, so, and they have a recommendation, which I know is in draft form and ready to come to the executive and the council.

The recommendations, frankly, are pretty modest about really changing the structure of the rule.

It's more, more of the recommendations have been, you ought to actually do more of this and follow these rules have been the general flavor.

They're probably the most substantive recommendation I believe they're going to make is that as we prioritize, we factor in highly dense residential and commercial neighborhoods as a reason to engage in this work, which isn't one of the parameters we use right now.

I didn't understand that.

In high-density neighborhoods, whether high-density residential neighborhoods or high-density commercial neighborhoods, that ought to be a factor for relocating an encampment.

Where it isn't now is really about the hazards associated with the encampment itself, if it's blocking access to something, if it's in a park.

But because it's in a crowded neighborhood isn't a parameter that we use now versus a less crowded neighborhood.

And so that's a recommendation the committee will make to you all and the mayor, which we can all entertain.

Yes, please.

Thank you.

The MDARs allow for removals of obstructions without prior notice and outreach.

Can you let us know how many removals received the outreach and prior notice, and how many did not?

So as of, I don't want to exactly say life to date because it's probably through July 31st.

The team has made, I believe, 409 encampment removals.

271 were full encampment removals that had posting and advanced notice and 138 were obstructions that were you know, an off-ramp, sidewalks, parks, or something that was seen as kind of an emergent situation that needed to be done more quickly.

And in those cases, is there still storage of belongings?

There's always storage and belongings.

You know, that's really, really the key point if something has to move or not, is that we have to handle people's personal property, help them with their personal property.

And one last point.

Part of the MDAR team is our outreach workers external that the city contracts with.

This is a question that I think was raised by the Office of Civil Rights in their 2017 report.

They made a recommendation that outreach workers be sort of empowered to, in those cases that additional time would result in better outcomes for the resident of the encampment, a greater likelihood that they actually would accept an alternative if they were, at that time, refusing it.

So in the case that an outreach worker thought that additional time would result in better outcomes, If an outreach worker felt that more could be done either by the city or the residents to mitigate the hazardous or public health issues within the camp, are outreach workers sort of empowered to play that role within the navigation team, to speak up and say, hey, I think more time would result in this outcome, or I think more intervention would result in less hazardous conditions?

At the top of my, the policies haven't been changed to write that in, but at the top of my introduction, I mentioned that, you know, I've kind of had the privilege of sitting down with the team on a daily basis since late August.

And those discussions do occur in the former case, that if we leave this person here, particularly if they're getting mental health counseling or we have access to other providers that really need to, keep tabs on a person's location.

The design of the operation has been adjusted around that.

And I have since answered, you know, many constituent questions about, hey, you were in this area and you moved some people and then you left some people.

Why is that?

And that's exactly why.

I don't think we haven't really gotten Any recommendations that I'm party to from our Outreach partners about is could this be a functioning encampment with some more services?

I don't I don't think they really see that as a place for them to opine But could we help this individual by giving them more time?

to be honest, I've Seen just as many conversations go the other way where particularly where some of the other providers say if we think We can get this client into permanent supportive housing if you would apply a little more pressure.

So it works in both directions.

And that's why this partnership is really important.

And it's a very different way from how we worked in the past.

And I think, and your question about is prior notice and outreach required?

The team always wants to do that.

No matter where they lie on the spectrum of this work and how to approach it, critical success factor is getting people inside.

And so a team is no more interested in continuing to move people around than anybody else.

And so, and the balance of our resources are we are not short on outreach capacity.

So there's no reason to ever avoid doing outreach unless, you know, for some reason it's an obstruction, it's something that needs to move now.

the team works hard to try to find time in the window to do outreach.

And those numbers of the split between 271 and 138, if you normalize that with people, The typically the things that are done quickly are quite small that it's the obstructions.

Yeah, the obstructions.

It's one person.

It's it's two people on an off ramp or sidewalk.

So if you and we may be able to do that, but if you applied numbers to it, I think that ratio would look even different.

You know, council members want.

Thank you.

Leaving aside the sweeps that you claim are done.

to address emergent or hazardous conditions.

I mean, I don't want to get into that because, I mean, except only to say that when we talk to, when my office talks to community members who are either impacted directly, homeless community members, or people who are working with them in either an NGO capacity or just people who are helping them as activists, Even that is under debate.

I mean, your, you know, FAS may and the NAV team may say that they were hazardous condition.

So it's something that I'm not really clear about.

But leaving that aside, you know, taking your word for it, as far as all the other sweeps are concerned, you, in response to the question about, you know, how much latitude does a particular outreach worker have to address a given situation, within the framework of the MDARs.

The example you used, it struck me that the example you used was about an outreach worker who probably should be given more latitude to put more pressure on the person to accept permanent supportive housing.

I find that a little troubling because that seems to sort of perpetuate this idea that most homeless people who get caught up in sweeps could actually be given permanent supportive housing.

It's just that for whatever irrational reason, they don't accept it.

And I will say that while I don't know because I'm not personally there every single time, I will say that overwhelmingly what we have heard from people is that they don't get offered permanent supportive housing and that is why they end up sometimes, as in the case of the Ravenna encampment, they end up in the same encampments over and over and over again.

and that having temporary shelter options while it is actually, it's true, it's good if you have shelter on a given night, it's better you have shelter than you're unsheltered, that is true.

But what they say is that having temporary options and having to end up on the street again is more disruptive to them because then that way they don't even get to build a little bit of community that they build in the encampment.

So I'm really struck by the example that you used because what is the evidence You know, are there numbers that you can give us to instill confidence in us that, as a matter of fact, most homeless people could be housed in permanent supportive housing, but they refuse it?

I would urge you not to speak flippantly.

Council Member, that was not my intent to describe this as a trend.

I was really responding to, are there circumstances where outreach workers can influence the work?

And it is really, there are cases where there have been clients that outreach is working with that have very high scores for eligibility for housing, that we've had apartments and haven't chosen to accept them on the first offer.

No one should construe that as anything but an exception.

My point just being that the team entertains those conversations about what is in the best interest of this client and will adjust the work of the navigation team around that.

I am not meaning to convey that there is a huge population out there turning down our offers of permanent supportive housing.

And I appreciate you saying that, but just for the record, You know, if that's true, then most people who are in homeless encampments that are being swept don't actually have anywhere to go.

So if they're not, if they aren't being offered actual options for permanent housing, and this is not all on you, I'm just, you know, I'm just stating this, and they don't take other options or temporary options that are presented to them, then, and they're not being offered permanent housing then it's actually not a good use of the city's financial resources to carry out the sweeps of incomes.

I mean somewhere you have to give us some concrete data to show that this is a good use of city's taxpayer resources or not.

I think this is a good segue into the next subject.

They are in fact People engaged by the navigation team who are offered outreach do have a place to go.

Yes, it's overwhelmingly some sort of shelter or a tiny village.

And people accept those offers.

And as you heard earlier in the day, I mean, the goal is to move from those transitional arrangements into housing is kind of the overall design.

If you'll allow me, Jackie, I think I'll turn this over for you a little bit to describe kind of the outreach process.

I've projected the slide that talks about our contacts and, you know, where we've been able to make successful offers of shelter to people that are engaged by the navigation team.

Thank you.

And I think Councilwoman Sawant, we begin with the same assumption that individuals who are living in encampment who are predominantly people who are poor and people of color should have the opportunity to be connected with the resources that they so desperately need.

And this is the underlying assumption of why we do the work that we do.

But also we realize we need a system that works cohesively, that the work of the navigation team, we unfortunately would not do housing.

We connect people with the resources with the expectation that they move along the continuum to permanent housing.

That is the goal of the navigation team.

That is the focus.

If you were to perceive it as a, conceptualize it as a relay, we run the first leg of the relay and we make handoffs.

And our expectation is that, you know, subsequently individuals will be connected with housing.

We understand, as well in some cases, individuals for having experienced a system that has been brutal and unresponsive to their needs.

They are reluctant to re-engage with that system.

So we are constantly in the state of re-envisioning how we do this work.

So we take your words to heart.

But I believe we start at the same analysis of what the realities of people who live in-house is. year in 2017 through 2018, we've realized that we are engaging people and connecting people with alternative living arrangements, shelters, enhanced shelters, tiny homes, villages, at a rate that we had not seen at the city before.

So there are some things that are happening which are positive, that individuals are accepting those offers and Individuals are moving from encampments that have placed their health and safety at risk and getting connected with resources that hopefully will once again connect them to permanent housing in the near future.

Approximately 33 to 34 percent of the folks that we have been seeing have engaged in those are individual people.

We are seeing people on average six times over the course of our interactions with them.

and at some point they make the decision to engage with services.

Once again, our responsibility remains connecting people with those services towards the goal of them being in permanent housing.

Madam Chair.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you so much for your summary.

Again, I know you've presented to this committee, this council, wherever we are, a number of times.

And I want to underscore, first of all, that the number of interactions that it takes for us to get individuals into housing is not unique to Seattle, right?

We see the same numbers repeated in a number of cities that are dealing with the homelessness crisis, especially up and down the West Coast.

So I think our navigation efforts and interactions with those who are currently unsheltered is on par with what we're seeing across other cities, especially the West Coast.

And I like your analogy of you're running the first leg of this.

What is it called?

The relay.

Relay.

Unfortunately, because of the housing situation that we talked about earlier, we're handing folks off to basically a cliff.

They're running off a cliff if they don't have additional housing.

And I want to make sure that we're addressing the crisis of the lack of affordable housing.

To your point earlier, you're reevaluating the MDARs.

And I would love some more information about the timeline.

You said we're going to come back to this council soon, the timeline for when you're expecting to come back.

And also, if in the kind of revised information that you're bringing back, are you taking into account the fact that we don't yet have that housing?

Is that somehow factoring into the changes that the committee is proposing?

Um, I, I think, um, the, um, committee's recommendation are not unlike some of the things you've, um, council members have also said, that you need to add resources into the system, you know, that it's not the rules, it's kind of the overall system is what you're going to hear from them.

So, you know, we probably talk about the MDAR more than it's worth.

It's kind of a procedural document for when something happens.

It's not a policy statement about how much it should happen or how little it should happen.

It just really guides.

I don't think any of us would think that every single circumstance of someone living outside can stay.

And so when you choose to move somebody, How are you going to do that?

That's really all these rules do.

They don't, there's not really underlying policy about our homelessness response in them.

But the committee will send its recommendations to the council in November, is my understanding, if not sooner.

Their last meeting is November.

You may get a letter from them this month about what is it they're recommending.

So I think that came up earlier today when folks are saying if there's something we need to incorporate in the budget, we need that like now.

Not in December or after the budget time.

But I think what you're explaining is that the MDRs are procedures.

We have a pretty good sense of the procedures, what they are in place now.

But I would love if we could to move on and hear from Jason, if you're willing, talk to us about what you're seeing on the street.

I do want to talk a little bit more about these outcomes if we could.

Okay, well I'm hopeful that he will bring that because I want to hear for the outcomes too, but I'd love to hear outcomes as described by the people who are actually on the street.

Can we talk about these numbers?

Because I think they tell a really important story.

OK, please.

All right.

Thank you.

So we know that of the approximately 1,700 engagements with unique individuals, 1,009 of them actually received referrals to an available space.

We don't know for sure how many actually ended up in that space.

And I understand through conversations that I've had with Jackie and others that you're working on being able to have that 474 be a more knowable question or an answer.

So I really appreciate that.

But the point, I think this slide makes, and it's a point that was revealed in the auditor's report that went public yesterday, is that there's really pretty good response rate to accepting referrals to enhanced shelter.

And that's an area that we really need to do much more to and this is a budget question, right, to create more enhanced shelter to give the navigation team places for more throughput.

And in addition to expanding enhanced shelter, the city auditor also identified a couple of other really important items that I'm hoping that we could talk about more later throughout the budget process.

A bridge to housing facilities, this is something, this is a model that King County Board of Health, there's a couple Board of Health members that are circulating a petition asking elected officials to treat this like a public emergency and look at bridge to housing facilities that are tent-like structures that are used in other cities that have electricity and water and heat.

And toilets.

And toilets.

And then also looking at trying to actually reserve shelter beds for navigation team referrals.

I think that's another piece that's really important that because there is such a high demand, it would, I think, as we add more enhanced shelter, we should think about actually reserving some of those beds for referral from the navigation team.

And then lastly, I know you said that you guys have flexible funds for diversion services.

The auditor took a look at all the HSD contracts and did not find anything in the contracts related to in the diversion programs related to actually working directly with the navigation team and making those funds available.

And it sounds like what you said about the flexible funds, that that would not necessarily be reflected in those contracts.

That's correct.

So it would be good to know a little bit more on how many dollars of those flexible funds were used for diversion and whether or not you have ideas about how to expand the utility of diversion programs similar to family reunification programs that have seen very, very good results in places like San Diego.

And in the latter two cases, I mentioned a transition, and this is where the team being embedded more closely inside HSD.

We are in the, we've always had a process of reserving spaces.

It's become a lot more integrated now that new spaces are coming online and that the team is, you know, got a closer relationship with the Human Services Department and standing up.

a new shelter availability.

I don't think, my understanding of how the flexible funds dollars are available to REACH is it's in the REACH contract as flexible funds.

It wouldn't be in the diversion contract, so you wouldn't see it if you looked at it that way.

And we have looked a little bit at these bridge to housing structures and talked to a few other cities about this sprung tent idea.

You know, from a capital facility perspective, there perhaps might be some efficiencies.

I think just in casual conversations with the team and seeing kind of our past uptake and acceptance of offers of shelter, I think we'd need to go carefully to think about are people going to accept an enormous 150-person dormitory that's in one big tent.

And so, you know, we'd have to think about the design, again, because we've seen different results with different kinds of offers.

So before we get too bound up in the efficiency of a particular structure type, I think we really have to think about, you know, how our clients will react to it.

Thank you.

Just to add one more thing, the Mayor's Path to 500, those beds are primarily reserved for navigation team.

They were they were designed for the navigation team And in addition that the 500 as a focus on the integrated shelter, so the full 24-7 approach.

Again, anticipating, we come to the same conclusions that the auditor has reached, you know, as we initiated the work this year and have been moving in that direction ourselves.

So, again, open question about whether there's enough and whether that could ever be enough at some level, but that finding isn't a surprise.

It's actually consistent with where we were already headed and to a degree what is reflected in the budget itself.

Good.

Well, thank you.

Thank you for that.

And Council Member Herbold, thank you for bringing this up.

And I appreciate your focus on these numbers.

And like you, what I want to see in through this budget and into next year is a real commitment about spaces for people to go 24-7.

And I also respect how hard it is to site.

But I think if we're seriously looking at this as a public health emergency, my goodness, we're three years into this.

But what are new tools that other cities are effectively using?

And Council Member Mosqueda, you may want to jump in on this.

She was down in Los Angeles just a few weeks ago and looked at some of their bridge housing.

Maybe you could talk about what you saw.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair.

I think that the frustration that you're hearing from us is the frustration we hear from constituents on a daily basis, and that is we're tired of people thinking about it.

You mentioned the word think, I think, three times.

We know that there's examples from other cities, and LA is a great example, and I don't mean to be disparaging, Director.

But we don't have time to think about it anymore, especially when we have examples of other cities that have already looked at what's going on well.

So what we saw in LA, and I would love to make sure that the PowerPoint presentation that the mayor's office provided to me when I was down there shows that we can create large tents that have barriers between each of the beds, that can create double beds for couples, that allow for pets to come in, that allow for There are to be showers and lockers and green spaces for people to do gardening and that they have case management on site and that that can be done, but it has to be done simultaneous to building housing.

So my point is still the same as this morning, and we all know this, I know you're agreeing, but what I'm asking for is As we create these 500 shelters, shelter beds, what concerns me is that if we're already allocating those beds to potentially streamlining services for the NAV team, which they need places for people to go so that their interactions are successful, we have organizations that are out in the community that we've also funded and they're relying on us to be able to open new shelter beds if we're not opening new housing.

So I do think it's imperative for us to open these large I agree with you.

And I'm not advocating a lot of dithering or hand-wringing.

I'm saying that I think in all these cases as we come up with a new product that we're going to offer, we need to engage people with lived experience and ask our clients, are you willing to Are you willing to go from this tent in a park into another big tent that's a dormitory-style facility?

Because we've seen mixed results with things we've done already.

The tiny house villages, the autonomy that those provide, seem to be a real factor for people.

So that's my only point, is our estimates of, And certainly from an efficiency standpoint, they're great.

We have done a little bit of an options analysis of the same square footage of land between tiny houses and a big tent, and you can accommodate twice the people.

The actual construction costs are a little bit higher than a village, but you can accommodate.

twice the people, so it's more efficient.

I just think it's worth asking the questions.

If our approach is still going to be to offer people, would you go here or not?

We should ask those questions before we invest $2 million on a tent.

That's my only point, is this going to work for our clientele?

Some cities, San Diego and others, that have used this solution, I think, have coupled it with a fairly intense enforcement And so I just think we need to understand the whole picture and but you certainly will get no argument for me that the point of the nav team is to move people to safer places and so those safer places have to exist.

We entertain a new option or existing option.

Very briefly, I just want to make sure that everybody is clear, and we discussed this at the public health meeting, where the three providers who serve on the public health advisory board are the ones who drafted the recommendations, which included addressing the crisis of homelessness with the urgency that I think it deserves in a regional basis as well.

What I said at that meeting, and I'll say again, is that I am not a proponent of sweeping poverty out of sight.

I'm not a proponent of sweeping people just into these shelters.

I am a proponent of making sure that they have the robust case management services and a warm place to stay with the outcome of getting into housing.

And I definitely don't want to make it appear that I wanted a decision to be made without those who have the lived experience of being homeless.

But this includes, I think, the public health perspective, the providers themselves, the robust analysis that they did with other cities to see what they're doing now.

And these are cities that are doing this without the intense wet winters that we have and the colder weather that we have here.

So I appreciate that you want to make sure that those who have the lived experience are front and center in the discussion.

I agree.

I also think that we can learn from what other cities are doing.

Absolutely.

And that's why we've been looking into it.

I just want to add one more.

I want to answer.

Actually, before Tiffany goes, I was wondering if you would clarify a little bit more.

You said something about the programs that we were just talking about in other cities that they also have stronger enforcement.

If you could just explain that a bit.

That's one thing.

Sorry, I just also want to throw out another question, which is not directly related, but it's related to something that we were talking about a few minutes ago, and I don't want to forget about it.

You were being very assuring in terms of the storage and safety of the belongings.

And I want you to, or maybe someone else, talk about a little bit more because Anecdotally, anyway, what we have heard consistently from constituents, and we had some of them in my committee a few months ago, what we've heard is that their belongings are not stored or saved, and that's been their experience.

If you could just go into that.

And any time in the discussion, you can go into that.

It's not right now.

I just want to answer the last question, and then we can get to those, too.

Because I heard some concern around, from the community as well, about spots being reserved for the NAV team.

And I just want Jackie to list the name of outreach agencies that are part of the outreach continuum that they can call upon if they need help.

And so it is just no longer only REACH.

It's the Urban League.

And what are, can you list the names of the outreach agencies?

And not only the names of the organizations, but once again, I will ground us in the reality that people we serve, oftentimes they get missed.

And Councilwoman Mosqueda, your frustrations, they feel in comparison to the frustrations of the mothers who buried kids and the people who live unhoused.

So we ground ourselves in the reality of people who are dealing with tremendous challenges.

And so the city has prioritized doing work that is rooted in racial equity.

So the Chief Seattle Club, which works primarily with folks who are of American Indian descent and the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, two organizations who work with the most marginalized people in Seattle, are part of our continuum.

They do work very closely with us and have the capacity to make referrals to support the needs of people who are not only unhoused, but who are disproportionately affected by the epidemic that is homelessness.

In addition, we work closely with the DESC programs and some other programs throughout the city to do our work.

Youth care as well, right?

Yes, we do.

And is MID involved?

Are you, do you still connect with our Metropolitan Improvement District?

We still are.

They are much smaller in scale, but we still work closely with them.

Okay.

All right.

Anything else on this slide?

Okay.

Council Member Juarez.

I just want to go back on what you shared, Jackie.

It's really important.

I know that you on the outreach team and with you, Fred, you focused on the race and social justice and the equity lens and talking about Chief Seattle Club because they know the Native American community and the Urban League and these groups that know these this client base and what their needs are, have relationships with them, have known them, who they are, their history, and sometimes even generational, which it should be, because that's what a neighborhood is.

I'm going to just shift just a little bit, and again, I'm going to go back to some of the things that we've been experiencing in the North End, is I have a sense, and please correct me if I'm wrong, and by the way, I have worked with detective, I'm sorry, not detective, Sergeant Zer.

on the NAV team, that I somehow feel that the navigation team is maybe underusing a public asset or a gem, if you will, and that is faith-based organizations, community organizations that live in those neighborhoods and that know these people.

And a good example is the We have a couple of organizations in the North End that have been there for well over a decade that know the people that live in the streets that have gotten into housing.

And I want to thank you guys.

You acted immediately on the issue that we had this week at Grocery Outlet.

A lot of the people in that neighborhood know the individuals involved in which, by the way, we did get them housing, got them there.

It took three or four times to convince them to come inside and take the services.

But what I found striking in the last three weeks is that the navigation team may not be leveraging that asset to take advantage of those faith-based groups and community organizations, community councils that see these people on a daily basis, know them by their first name, know how long they've been in the streets, know what their backstory is.

That instead of just deploying people from a particular navigation unit, that I would like to see more of that, if you will, if I steal a term from what we're seeing on the police side, more of a community-based, talk to the people that live there, that's, you know, ground zero, who know these individuals by their first name, and who these individuals trust.

Because my understanding, it takes three or four times, even when you have places lined up, for individuals to want to take advantage of that.

And I've now seen it firsthand in the last three weeks.

So I wonder if you could speak a little bit more to that about using those kind of organizations or people that know the people that live.

And they also know that when we lose people to the outdoors, we've just lost a community member that I've been watching live outdoors for seven years in Lake City.

So I'm wondering, does the navigation have a component for that, that they can respond to that, that they know who that is, instead of just maybe deploying people from the south end up to the north end and don't know that community?

I'm sorry, I gave you a lot, but.

Yeah, so I'll try to unpack it.

I think you're speaking to relationships that have already been established with folks who are living outside, and do we have the capacity to, and do we prioritize, you know, establishing those relationships and working cohesively with those folks to support the needs of people living outside.

You mentioned Sergeant Zerr by name.

I know, and Lieutenant Verhoeff can speak to this, our police officers who work with us spend a lot of time in community.

I know Sergeant Zerr receives and responds to every email that he receives from community members who advocate on behalf of people who are living outside unhoused.

So maybe I'll just allow the lieutenant to speak to that.

I'm having difficulty understanding the question it sounds to me like the point of the question is are we engaged with potential outreach partners who are not necessarily formalized organizations who we work with on a regular basis and I think that it depends on the circumstance it depends on the neighborhood it depends on whether we're in a part of the city where there is some level of engagement, like take Ballard for example.

I think we've had some folks there who are very well known to the community and that we have worked with some members of that community to try and troubleshoot the particular circumstance and get people the help that they need.

I don't know if I'm understanding the question correctly and providing the answer you're looking for.

And I would say ethically, from an ethical perspective, working with people who in many cases are living with chronic and persistent mental illness, I am a licensed mental health provider myself, right?

And there are some things that I am restricted from being able to disclose.

And from community members' perspective, at times they approach the situation based on the desire to support and help.

And there are some complexities when you deal with issues related to mental health.

There are some complexities that come into play.

So we have to be very cautious as to how much we are willing to engage and disclose to community members.

So can I go back to a question that Council Member Sawant had asked?

And I think, Fred, this comes back to you about what stronger enforcement means.

And I think one of the examples that use was Los Angeles that, can I just finish?

Just hold on just a second, because what I hear about stronger enforcement is that it has to be coupled with public health response, more places for people to go, a sense of we have to have improved treatment for mental health, that those things need to be going hand in hand, that you can't just enforce something without just chasing people around in circles.

It needs to be integrated and just that we've heard a little bit in talking, actually mostly folks in San Diego about, you know, whether there was kind of a level of being compelled to accept offers of shelter, you know, in kind of an enforcement aspect coupled with some of the bridge to housing strategies is my only point.

And I don't think that's policy choice we're going to make in Seattle.

We should, again, that's the point of the navigation team is to navigate people to better situations.

So they have to exist and we'll continue to evaluate what's the most efficient way to create those spaces and then which are the most effective for the clients when they're there.

And I think, too, that one of the points you brought up is that it's not a one-size-fits-all.

A tiny home may be good for some folks, maybe a couple or maybe somebody with pets, and others may not want to go into that kind of a community.

But having places and options that are reasonable, that provide safety and healthy conditions, then, as a city, I think that we're in a position to be able to say, we've got a space for you.

We have multiple places for you.

You can choose, but you can't stay here.

because for whatever reasons, whether it's in the middle of a sidewalk, or it's a dangerous situation, or it's in a park, for example, we've got to be able to square our shoulders and say, we're providing spaces for people, but you can't stay here.

Madam Chair, also, I would encourage your team to look at the example in Los Angeles City and the lawsuit that ensued because the ACLU won a case against the city of Los Angeles, which resulted in people not being swept, which resulted in people having large blue barrels that allow for them to keep their possessions inside.

In my view, in what I've read and what I understand from the visit there, the intense enforcement that you're talking about from another city is not accompanying these large tents that they're planning in Los Angeles.

You know, I don't think we truly have a preference other than we need it to be acceptable to the clients.

I mean, that's the first goal, regardless of what it is.

Okay, do you think we're ready to move off this slide and on to the next?

Or does somebody else have another question?

Oh, no, I just had a question from the past that actually was from a point in the past.

You had a question about possessions?

Yes.

I don't know if this will, you know, give you any comfort other than I can recite metrics.

There's an incredible amount of work done to store people's possessions.

That's the main job of the field coordinator, one of the main jobs of the field coordinator that manages any operation.

January through August of this year, we use shipping container type things to store small objects.

We've stored 245 of those.

Typically, we give people the choice to pack themselves, to select what they'd like us to keep for them.

There need to be some parameters.

If it's a soaking wet sleeping bag, we're not going to be able to store in a warehouse.

And we've stored 46 bicycles.

We store complete bicycles.

We've stored other objects that are One of my recent ride-alongs with the team, there was a woman that would only accept an offer to the navigation center if we promised to store her couch.

She had a tent with a large leather couch inside, which normally wouldn't store something that big, nor would we, you know, we're not eager to store upholstered furniture, but the team found another place to store that because that's what it was was helpful to that person.

So again, I'm not sure this would completely convince you, but what I can say unequivocally is there's an incredible effort to store and make available these items.

I can't say that in no circumstance No one ever lost something of value.

Some of these situations can be a bit chaotic, but we expend a lot of resources to do this.

We'd like to do it as well as possible because, again, just like the outreach, like every other piece of this, the point of this is to get people into a safer space.

if they feel they're going to lose their belongings, it's going to be a very difficult conversation.

So there's no incentive for us to not do this as well as possible.

I understand that.

And just one last thing I'll say on this is I appreciate all the information you gave, but just to clarify for the record, I'm not asking this question because it was a rare occasion when we heard.

I just want to be clear.

It's anecdotally speaking, as I said, we hear this very often.

That's why I brought this question.

I appreciate that.

And thank you for bringing that up.

Council Member Swan, I've heard that as well.

Could we please move to the next slide?

Then just a small note on we are, as I mentioned at the top of the presentation, engaging in a fairly modest expansion of the team right now.

We're adding on the police side, three patrol officers and a sergeant.

We're adding two more field coordinators, which are the people that really kind of are the site foreman for these operations, and then two data analysts to help us do a better job of keeping records and producing more actionable data so we can figure out how to guide the team and their operations going forward.

This is obviously a large problem, whether you count 4,500 people or 400 encampments.

And again, we need to continue to you know, grow the team as the mayor has proposed in this budget, you know, commensurate with, you know, the overall improvements to the system.

And, you know, we've just started that process.

So I want to acknowledge that it has been just a year and I really want to say thank you.

Jackie, of course, I knew your work when you were working with the MID and Jason, thank you for your leadership in here.

And I'm, I keep coming back to Are we budgeting appropriately?

And I know Ben's going to just feign on me here.

But the budget for San Francisco's home, their department is $284 million.

What I don't have a handle on, is that the city of San Francisco and the county of San Francisco, you know, should we be adding the city's budget and King County's budget to have an apples to apples?

But let's just go with that.

Even if they've got a $10 billion budget, more or less, and ours is $5 billion, more or less, should we really be thinking, again, citywide, regionally, statewide, for a navigation team that is looking at way beyond just the city of Seattle?

And my answer to that is yes, because people want to be in their in their home community.

And there is a very good example that was brought up to me again today, and that is an individual who wants to stay on Vashon Island, that would rather stay on Vashon than be in the city of Seattle.

There is no resource for that person on Vashon Island.

But for us to go back and say, this is really a regional problem that we're trying to solve, and to have our navigation team places to be able to refer people that are outside of the city of Seattle as well.

So I know that was more of a speech than a question.

But if there is thoughts that you have I'd like to hear them.

Well the mayor and the council have many many priorities to balance.

And so what I can tell you is Again, this has been an experiment.

I think we're getting better outcomes with the navigation team model than we got before.

You know, it is about a bit outgunned by the scale of the problem.

If there were more resources, we could probably accomplish more.

It needs to be balanced with you know, an overall design and needs to be balanced against the billion other things the city needs to do.

And so that's why you all are starting this hard work.

We're very focused on one particular function, so, you know, asking us is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel.

So I'll let...

So as Ben's fainted over here...

Ben answered the question about overall resources, but there is room for us to optimize these operations.

I will come at the highest level.

San Francisco is both a city and a county, so they have a budget that reflects a set of services that include that full suite of things, including, I think, for instance, the county operating a hospital system and maybe an airport in the same way.

So that, so those kind of apples, you know, that's, that's fruit versus of one versus another.

Again, as I indicated previously, I think, well, two thoughts.

One is I'm here to tell you that there are not sufficient resources.

And the challenge that the mayor had before and now that you have is to figure out how to allocate the resources that we do have.

And that's, and there are, this isn't the only, obviously the only municipal city priority.

And then I think also to, reiterate what Councilmember Gonzales said this morning.

I think we need to do a better job of painting that overall picture for you so you can see the city's funding in the context of a minimal county level funding.

Good.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I have a quick question and then a longer one.

My quick question follows up on a line of questioning that Council Member Gonzalez was following earlier.

And maybe the folks at this table might know a little bit more.

Last year at around, or I'm sorry, this year in around July, King County Executive Dow Constantine announced a $500,000 contribution to the navigation team.

I'm wondering one, what did that allow us to do?

What kind of expansion did that allow for?

And number two, do we see those dollars or maybe some more dollars in our 2019-2020 budget from the county?

The one-time funding this year funded the expansion I just spoke of, the additional officers and human services department staff, and it is carried forward in the 2019 budget.

It is carried forward by the city.

Yes.

So there is no there are no county dollars to support navigation team activities.

Correct.

Not in 2019.

That's correct.

Or 2020.

Sure.

Yes.

Great.

So can I just follow up on what you were just saying?

And this is taking a page out of Council Member Gonzalez's book this morning.

I'm looking at page two of the King County 2019 proposed budget at the bottom.

It says, the budget, the county budget also provides funding for support and collaboration with the City of Seattle for the NAV Center and Navigation Team.

I assume that that's what you're referring to.

What?

And there is funding for the Navigation Center, as we discussed this morning.

But they say, and Navigation Team.

So, is there?

As I said,

Our understanding is the one that we've given you both this morning and now this afternoon, and we will confirm with the county that it may have been a generalized comment that since the the navigation center and has some relationship to the navigation team that they, you know, that's a broad characterization.

But again, we want to be sure we understand what they are thinking when they brought those over.

Yeah, especially since they're mid, their mental illness drug dependency money is there, and then their veterans and seniors and homelessness levy passed.

They're, and I'm not suggesting that I'm raiding their coffers, I want to know how are we partnering and what can they bring to the table?

There are a number of strategies, if I might add on to Ben's response, that they are funding that they could be referencing in that.

And included in that is expanding medication-assisted treatment in both shelters and encampments.

So that could be one of those many.

They have a number of things, as you referenced, in the MID increase that they're going to be funding.

So that could be part of what they're referencing.

I'm sorry the mobile health van maybe is that could be additionally and we're gonna follow up with the county just to figure out exactly that specific talking point what specifically they were referencing but and if you would ask them also since you're gonna be yeah making these inquiries ask them about the money that they set aside a year or two ago

Because my clear understanding, talking to council members Dembowski and Colwells and McDermott, was that they set aside money for it 24-7 at Harborview.

And now I'm hearing a little bit like they're looking to us to pay for that difference.

But I know they set aside money for this.

So I would just like to know whether or not they're going to follow through with that.

I think Councilmember Herbold, I interrupted you, and then Councilmember Gonzales, you're next in the queue.

No, I appreciate following the stream of conversation to its reasonable conclusion.

So I mentioned earlier that the city auditor has recently come out with a review of the HSD report on your theory of change, and I really, first I want to Sincerely appreciate the navigation team's engagement with the city auditor.

This has been and I think hopefully will continue to be an approach of continuous improvement and better outcomes for people that we're engaging with.

There are a number of recommendations in the quarter 2 report, which we received your quarter 2 report on the reporting items for quarter 2. We received your quarter 1 report and their response to your quarter 1 report.

their response to your quarter two report.

And the thinking behind all of this is really to look at what we can do within the context of the budget process to help you accomplish the objectives in the theory of change.

And I understand that you're going to be making some changes to the theory of change soon.

But as it relates specifically to the quarter one reporting items, There are a number of really concrete things related to systems improvement that I want to talk with you guys through the budget process about what our timeline is for nailing these things down and what we as a council can expect in allocating additional funds for additional navigation team expansion.

Some of these things we've talked about already, looking at different ways to improve the outcomes around engagement, but some of these things I think are equally important as it relates to how you do your work.

There was, HSD did a trauma-enforced care training.

A significant number of the folks doing this work actually didn't participate in the training, and so the city auditor is wanting to know from HSD what is not only your plan moving forward to ensure that everybody takes this training, but how you intend to implement what you learn from your self-assessment with this training.

Another issue relates to the outreach standard of care that is a standard for outreach, and it's not clear that the navigation teamwork is is being held to that same standard, the outreach standard of care.

And then there are some other, I think, equally important items, the evaluation and navigation team trainings, and then the report on 2017 racial equity impact.

So I'm going to look forward to talking about when we can get some actionable steps on each of these recommendations throughout 2019 and sort of link the funding commitments that the budget makes to some of those actions.

We look forward to those conversations.

Thank you.

Good.

Council Member Gonzalez, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

I just wanted to, you know, just reiterate the points that I was making this morning that the King County proposed budget around additional dollars available for the navigation center and the navigation team, it's very express and explicit in their document that they're referring to both.

And so I appreciate the commitment that I just heard this afternoon that there will be some follow up with King County to determine whether that is an accurate representation within their budget proposal, and if so, what the City of Seattle can expect in terms of a monetary partnership from King County to support the work of connecting people who desperately need services and housing in safer places.

through this model.

And so I just want to make sure that we continue to, again, ask those tough questions about how that partnership is going to play out.

And to the point that It might be that they might be referring to medication-assisted treatment.

There is an entire section within their budget that does discuss that in particular that is separate and apart from the section in their proposed budget that talks about support specifically to the City of Seattle Forward Nav Team and Navigation Center.

um support and I think that you know, those are areas that we need to be tracking very carefully as a city council, even though we don't have Budget authority over there.

I think you know, the reality is is that the city of seattle does not engage in the business of providing services in the behavioral health space and in the substance abuse dependency space and so we but we know that that is one of The issues that that faces people who some people who are experiencing homelessness in the city of Seattle and it makes it difficult to find housing stability when you don't have meaningful access to Those mental health services and behavioral health services and chemical dependency services that you need to be able to stabilize And so I think it's really important for us to make sure that we continue to understand where those dollars are going to be spent throughout King County and how many dollars are going to be available for in particular to the City of Seattle, again, in the stated spirit of a supposed regional partnership and desire to pursue a regional partnership with the City of Seattle.

Nice.

And if I can just pile on one more time before we go to Councilmember Mosqueda.

Again, I'm looking at this page two of the King County budget.

It's under enhanced shelter.

where they're talking about Harborview Hall renovations.

So they're already articulating, and they have been for the last two years, this is going to be 24-7.

So why there's a waffle, I don't get it.

But then also, in addition to what Councilmember Gonzalez was talking about, mid-money, The Medicaid 1115 waiver, you know, we were all working on that for I don't know how many years.

Money is coming, flowing through the county on this, and so there was $1.5 billion that was given to the state for the Medicaid waiver, and I understand that Jeff Sukuma has been working on this, but I'd sure like to know, can we access some of that for mental health and for behavioral health and public health?

It just seems to me it's a mystery about where that money is and where it's gone.

Okay, Council Member Mosqueda, sorry to interrupt you.

No, thank you, Madam Chair.

I think that's a really important point, especially after the lunch and learn we had from folks from Sacramento who gave us a comprehensive overview of how they're using their 1115 waiver dollars, so looking forward to getting that answer.

I have three brief questions, I think.

Councilmember Herbold mentioned trauma-informed care, and one of the areas that I know we all know is an over-representation in the folks who are living unsheltered is among the LGBTQ community, especially the transgender community.

My quick read of the funding that had been potentially cut from HSD is that there is no longer a contract with folks who, for example, are working with the transgender community for economic stabilization.

Is there among the groups that you mentioned that you work with on a regular basis, is there anybody that you specifically partner with that is specifically working with the homeless population, the homeless youth who are transgendered?

So that is youth care, not only youth care, but New Horizons program, which not only works with young people who are queer and trans, but also people of color who are queer and trans too as well.

So youth care and New Horizons ministries.

And then in terms of the navigation team, I mentioned my concern if the new beds are being reserved just for the interactions with the navigation team.

I appreciate the clarification of the robust numbers of partners that the navigation team works with.

However, I'm still a little concerned about the prioritization.

Obviously, we'd love more housing, period, and more shelters, enhanced shelters across the board.

But does the navigation team focus its efforts based on location?

Does it focus its efforts based on vulnerability, based on need, based on whether or not it would be a good match for folks to get into shelter?

What I hear a lot about is community individuals calling and expressing frustration about unsanctioned encampments and that perhaps is driving where the navigation team is going.

So help me understand more about how the NAB team focuses its work and really prioritizes the most vulnerable so that we can get those folks into shelter given that they're getting priority in the new beds.

So community concerns, certainly.

create kind of the universe of options largely that lead to kind of the inspection and investigation role that both the field coordinators and the outreach staff do.

And then the circumstances inside an encampment, again, and the team tends to focus on encampments, then the hazards and risks to the inhabitants of the encampments are kind of prioritized and the availability of appropriate solutions.

And so it's, given that resources are tight, both just the team's capacity and alternative places, you know, it's kind of a bit of bidding of, you know, which can we do.

The outreach staff and the officers and others really develop relationships with people living outside.

And so this morning we had a prolonged discussion about relocating some material and it was really all, you know, It wasn't so much a neighborhood complaint.

This is an area next to an off-ramp where there's no really close-by residential areas.

It's about the client there and how close they are to I-5 traffic and what can we do to prioritize that individual's circumstances.

So I think between the two, Often the complaints from the community kind of get people in the field looking at particular circumstances and then there's always a phase where the work, you know, the sites are inspected and people are talked to.

And then that is kind of the second layer, a priority of, again, because the numbers being what they are, You know, and it's all bad.

You know, we like to do all of it.

How do you prioritize amongst a variety of circumstances?

And, you know, it's often the sites get people in the door to figure out, is this something we need to look at?

And then once the circumstances are inspected, if it's clean, if it is not people in particular risk, if they're not children, you know, depending on the circumstances there, I think that's how things end up bubbling to the top.

And since our people with more field experience are at the table, if there's anything you guys would like to add to that, that would be great.

Just to reiterate the fact that once a complaint comes in, there's an entire process associated with that.

So we have a field coordinator who goes out to follow up with that complaint, and then a determination is made subsequent to that.

And that includes perspectives from individuals who have a speciality at looking at sites, and in addition to individuals like myself who have spent a lot of our careers working with people.

So those considerations are always taken into account, too, as well.

Did that answer your question?

Yes, it did.

It did.

You look like you've got some follow-up here.

Well, I do have a follow-up on that, but I also have one third question, so maybe I'll get to that for the sake of time.

I know you have a third presentation to go to, so...

You know, by way of an anecdote, you know, recently exchanged emails with a member of the public who was sending photos of something that's technically an obstruction on a sidewalk and asked about, what do you think about this?

And was candid that, well, this is.

Yes, it is technically an obstruction.

It seems like a lower priority because it's neat.

And then came to find out later that one of our outreach partners was hoping that we wouldn't relocate this person because they had kind of a long-term relationship with them and a mental health provider and, you know, wanted to keep tabs on where this individual was.

The community concerns again, I think kind of point us in a particular direction and then things are prioritized from what are the actual circumstances on the ground.

And again, the people ultimately, that's the solution is, while there are community impacts in terms of trash and needles and human waste and all that, the solution is taking care of the people.

You know, the rest is just moving stuff around.

So, you know, once you assess kind of the situation, you know, where are we going to have the best likelihood of finding better circumstances for the people?

Because the rest will take care of itself if we can take care of the people.

Madam Chair, I think the concern that you observed on my face is that often with complaint-based systems, we're not able to get at those who need services the most.

And I think a lot about, you know, the experience that we have in labor standards and making sure labor standards are being enforced.

Those who are the most vulnerable are probably the least likely to call in a complaint-based system.

We see that at Labor and Industries.

We see it at Office of Labor Standards.

I understand that we don't have endless resources and that the explanation that you just gave me indicates that it's a complaint base, but then once you get in, then an analysis is done.

So I... And also it's worth pointing out that the majority of the team is in the field all the time.

So while they rely on complaints, they see a lot of things, they talk to our outreach partners.

they do have a lot of ways of getting information.

So complaints are a big factor.

They're certainly not the only factor.

And I would say to speak to the equity issue too as well, our encampment response manager has been very accountable to that reality that people who are disenfranchised often don't engage in making complaints.

You know, those neighborhoods predominantly are not neighborhoods where people are having that nimby attitude, right?

And not only through that process, but through a racial equity toolkit process, we're looking through that lens to better ascertain how we're doing our work and wanting to do it in ways that are more equitable.

But she has been very deliberate about prioritizing locations where complaints are not arising from, where homosexuality does exist too as well.

So it is not solely a complaint-driven process.

And we get a lot of information from our sister agencies, fire, the utilities.

Many city departments have people in the field and they keep us apprised of what they encounter as well.

to do one more.

Lastly, thank you, Madam Chair.

The bullet that we see here, additional staff are needed to engage the 4,500 individuals living unsheltered.

And we see in the auditor's report as well, one of the first lines that he said is making sure HSD has the adequate support and resources to implement its planned improvements for accurate tracking and services.

I just want to double check, you know, we have talked a lot about how we have a need to balance the budget with very limited resources.

I won't make a plug for what we could have done with the 47 million a year had we had it for five years.

But with the limited resources that we have, has the team, has your team director taken a look at what we would have been able to do in terms of enhancing the navigation services?

If we looked at more of a outreach heavy navigation team, we're adding three police officers, one sergeant to this list.

And I think that, you know, we always know we need to have security in certain situations.

We see NAB teams throughout the West Coast, again, having the presence of police.

But when we think about how we use the limited resources that we have, and I believe the starting salary of an officer is around $65,000 and the starting salary of an outreach worker is around $28,000, would we be able to expand our reach with a more outreach-heavy navigation team that then can call upon our public servants to enforce safety if needed?

Is that a model that you've explored?

I think beyond the addition this year, there's also an addition for more outreach in 2019, the equivalent of two workers.

I would not say that, you know, we've really investigated, you know, a different structure in the model.

I will say that in terms of the composition of the team now, outreach, you know, we do more outreach than anything.

And so that isn't kind of where we're short in terms of resources that we have on the ground now.

You know, we've talked about how many touches we make with each individual.

We conduct outreach whether there's a planned encampment removal or not.

There are many times where the outreach is just an area where we have complaints.

We've made it a low priority to actually remove the encampment, but we still ask REACH to go and engage with people.

So we don't see it as a constraint right now, which isn't exactly responsive to your question, but it, you know, we'll continue to look at it.

But, you know, that wouldn't be the next body we would add in terms of, oh, are we short here?

We are very well equipped with outreach workers.

And to quote Jackie, if you have outreach workers and nowhere to place people, then, you know, the outreach that you can do is limited.

And I think the number of outreach workers we have match the number of places that we've developed to refer people to.

Just a quick follow-up, I appreciate Tiffany's point there on the end because I think the city auditor's report affirms that statement that you just made that really where there needs to be some beefing up is in the area of additional safe places for the navigation team in particular to refer people to that they would then in turn be willing to accept because we are offering them a type of safe space that is appropriate for the needs of the individual who is receiving the outreach services.

I mean, I think that the line of questioning that Council Member Mosqueda is engaging in leads me to thinking about whether or not the personnel from the Seattle Police Department that are listed and effectively part of the navigation team, which is on the next slide.

This is my sneaky way of getting you to the next slide.

Well done.

If we look at the next slide, we'll see that the navigation team includes eight officers, one sergeant, and includes some overtime and costs related to vehicles.

And it is a rather large number.

And so I think what I would be interested in seeing is whether or not There are, as part of the navigation team effort, specific job descriptions for the SPD personnel who are effectively assigned to the navigation team that could help us better understand as policymakers what it is that the SPD personnel contribute to the navigation team.

I think there is sort of a natural conclusion that it must be security only or law enforcement only focus that our SPD personnel are engaging in.

Because that's literally what your job is in a day-to-day basis, right?

And so I think because this is a different model and because we are still experimenting and exploring with how to have this sort of interdepartmental effort, I think it would be helpful to get an understanding of whether or not there are any sort of documents or insight into how these particular positions are defined within the navigation team model and construct, if at all.

We'd be glad to kind of share the duties.

I think also instructive are the kind of successful referrals that come from officers directly.

That probably is kind of the chief innovation what the navigation team was, this kind of work often had officers assigned on an ad hoc basis as mostly security.

And the idea of having dedicated officers who were part of the team who also made contacts that, you know, had a stake in the work is what's different.

The original, you know, formation of the team, and I think even the numbers we're seeing here, you know, our assignments inside budget that existed for patrol.

So, you know, when we, I think when we talk about the $500,000, that's going to the other pieces and the SPD assigned more officers that were already in patrol to join the team.

So it's, and I know there are other ads going on in the police department, but, The funding we got from the county and other things are really going to the non-police pieces.

And I think what the department sees is this is a big body of work regardless, dealing with homelessness.

And so they're hoping to be, they care about the issue.

They're also hoping to be practical, that they have dedicated officers.

this much labor going towards this issue regardless, if they were dedicated and part of the team, would we get better results?

I think so far we have and hopefully, you know, continue to try to get in front of this issue, which creates, you know, more of a burden on patrol down the line.

And Jason, you should stop me before I make a promise.

Well, I don't want to stop you, but I do want to add, I think I think Councilmember Gonzalez, you hit the nail on the head, the police, that's our job, our primary function is security, but I think too that often the uniform is misleading and I've said it many times and I know that many people who are part of the broader team have said it many times, if you've been to an encampment cleanup or if you've been to the outreach that occurs prior to And the officers weren't wearing this uniform, I think you'd be hard pressed to determine who the outreach professionals are and who the police officers are.

And I think by increasing the team by a sergeant and three officers, you've just effectively added four more outreach staff who also can provide security.

I know that some of you have been to encampment cleanups, and I know that many of you have seen some of the footage that's on YouTube or the Seattle channel or wherever, it's all over the place.

You've seen sergeants are out there in the rain carrying people's belongings down to the sidewalk so that the field coordinators can sort and store it.

So I think the police provide a service that is far above and beyond the security that we do provide at the site, and I think it's a critical component.

I think too with the historic distrust that some have with the police department.

The approach that we have, the outreach first approach that we have, I think it was Jackie who said that this team engages in far more outreach than it does in encampment removals, and that's important.

Those are the moments where you're actually building relationships with the people who are living outside and who are dealing with You name it.

Everybody's experience is different.

And our role and outreach's role is to engage with these people and really try and troubleshoot what their individual problem is or problems are so that we can connect them appropriately to a service package that is tailored to their needs.

It's tough work and it requires a persistent approach and a I think a gentle approach, approach that is caring and is understanding that this is, you know, we're one city.

Cities all across the country are experiencing this.

And I think that we're all ultimately saying the same things.

I think we all ultimately want the same things.

And the best thing that we can do is put our heads together and try to figure out how to solve this problem.

We're developing best practices together right now.

And, you know, it's important that that we take a look at what other cities are doing, that we visit them, and that we have a better and broader understanding of what's working and what's not working so that we can adapt that here.

That's way too long of an answer, but I hope I touched on some of what you asked.

I'm going to say one thing.

I'm going to call on Councilmember O'Brien and then Councilmember Mosqueda.

I really appreciate the fact that the officers who are involved in this are self-selecting.

My understanding is that you are not told to participate.

You volunteer for this, or as we talked the other day, it's a contrast with voluntold.

But could you talk a little bit more about the training you receive?

I mean, just a minute's worth of

Yeah, it's a laundry list, but I'll try and touch on some of the more significant and appropriate training.

So you're absolutely right, nobody's voluntold.

People apply for this position and they're selected for this position based on what they, with the skill set and the character that they bring to the table.

to apply to these efforts.

The police department is still engaged in federal oversight and there's a lot of mandated training that comes along with that.

Prior to and after that's over, we are also required to take 32 hours of training every year in certain areas.

But above and beyond that, you know, we've had trauma-informed care training.

We've had racial bias-free policing training.

Sergeant Zerr is actually an instructor in that training.

Everybody, every officer on the team is crisis intervention certified.

Sergeant Zerr is also an instructor in that.

So, you know, we take those things very seriously, and I think that any opportunity that we have to train in a way that will improve the tools that we have to accomplish the job, we'll welcome it with open arms.

I mean, it makes us more effective.

Thank you.

Council Member O'Brien and Council Member Mosqueda.

I first have a couple of technical questions on this spreadsheet.

the navigation team FAS HSD section, the staff descriptions don't line up and then the numbers do line up.

And so I just wanna see, like for instance, there's one navigation team lead and then we're adding two field coordinators and it says there's three on the other side, but are there actually gonna be, on the left it says there's already two field coordinators I'm not sure which column I'm adding up and which is.

Are there going to be four field coordinators when this is all said and done, or are there going to be three?

Four.

Four, OK.

So it'd be great to get that just cleaned up so we can see what lines up with what.

I, someone could help me, I mean, help me understand what these various ads are doing.

It looks like we're adding five additional bodies that could be interpreted to be kind of administrative overhead as opposed to on the ground, but that could also just be me not understanding what, you know, looks like we'll have three data analysts maybe then.

It seems like we're adding a lot of data analysts and not many outreach workers.

So walk me through how that decision's made, what those people actually do, so I can better understand the vision.

Given the sensitivity of these operations, we really need to keep very good records.

And frankly, that's something the team has fallen behind on.

And we also need to use data better to prioritize our work, to see outcomes, and then finally, give the executive and counsel kind of some sort of accountability reporting.

And the team has, I mentioned when we started two days ago, that, we're in the midst of a transition and trying to make this kind of sustainable operating organization.

So where before we were kind of field heavy and people were out doing the work, there was precious little, except by burdening Jackie, burdening others with keeping track of what was going on, keeping track of site journals, keeping track of data, individual outcomes for information.

It was being done, but not in a sustained, efficient way.

And so we've added two members to the data team that serves all of HSD to really focus on process and data.

around the outcomes for individuals and for sites, and then also to make sure for all the personal property restore that we maintain a catalog, that we find a way to find people's stuff, and that we document the circumstances that we encounter when we inspect encampments.

So this is really catching up on some administrative work that, frankly, when many of the field positions We're in FAS, we're just kind of, some of it was just being eaten by FAS staff and kind of other places.

And this is kind of recognizing trying to stand up a team that's a whole team.

Can I add something just because as the NAV team moved to HSD, I had the opportunity to learn a lot more about their operations than what I had known before.

August, who's in the audience, and Jackie, I just want to acknowledge that just the auditor's report alone, just that, could be a full-time job.

So I just wrote in my book to create a smart sheet that tracks all of the recommendations, what the next steps are for the recommendations, when the next reports due, and that level of detail is just one piece of data.

And so what was happening was Jackie and August couldn't do their full jobs because they were manually counting people, adding them to a spreadsheet, checking how many times they talked to that person, where did that person go, going to reach and saying, did that person get housing?

No, they didn't.

Where did they go?

And what we needed to do was take that administrative slash data stuff off of their plate so that somebody can be busy answering the very important questions that you all ask us, the public asks us, and we ask ourselves so that August can run the day-to-day operations of the NAV team, and Jackie can focus on emergency crisis response.

And I want to just plug what that looks like.

The NAV team refers to Licton.

Licton people get reassessed.

We find out that the majority of people of Licton have very high VI-SPDAT scores.

And then those people get moved to permanent supportive housing.

That's the cycle.

And Jackie really needs to be focused on the system pieces connecting together.

And August spends all day at the EOC at a table with a laptop and very hardworking people figuring out the day-to-day.

And one last thing that I would add that I learned is how many physical emails get sent and phone calls a day from people saying, there's a tent in my backyard.

There's needles in my park.

Somebody has to take the phone call track the phone call, write it down, respond to the person, and then say that the person has been responded to.

That is an incredible job that these two people were doing for the majority of the time.

Thank you for that clarification.

I think we're all very empathetic.

I think We on, I mean, collectively probably receive a thousand emails a week with the same kind of complaints.

Some of which we forward on to you, and others that we're responding to ourselves.

We know that this is the biggest issue that neighborhoods are seeing and complaining.

And some people are like, the most compassionate in the world.

Let's figure out what we can do to help these individuals.

Others are less compassionate.

They're just like, we don't want to see it.

We don't want the needles.

So, that's why I keep coming back to, you know, what are the solutions?

We talk about the public health model.

We talk about having more places for people to go, improve treatment for mental health and behavioral health.

I mean, we have tools in our hands.

We know what can make a difference.

It's just that we're struggling right now with how to fund all that.

Council Member Bryan.

A couple more questions.

So, there will be one navigation team operations manager, which is a new position.

Is that right?

No, that's August's position now.

I mean, I think perhaps we've realigned titles in this chart, and I think there were, again, we've been making a lot of personnel changes as the team has been absorbed by HSD, so it'd probably be worth refreshing this with kind of where everything landed would make it a little bit clearer, and we can do a position-by-position reconciliation for you.

That would be great.

I mean, I think, and some description with each of those, and to the extent you got a person there that we know, like August, that you could say that, like, OK, I got a sense what August does.

You know, as we get in deeper into the budget, we'll start meddling at all different levels.

So I think it behooves all of us to have as best and clean information there.

And another point, and I want to express my appreciation for Tiffany on this, is really thought about how This was put together thinking of the navigation team as a discrete unit that is really about the work that we've been talking about all afternoon where I think Tiffany has laid out a vision that's a little bit broader in terms of overall emergency response.

So where someone in Jackie's role would, you know, be thinking about safe alternatives and how the outreach continuum integrates with the navigation team and what our ongoing evolution of tiny house villages or other solutions are.

So this will end up being something that's a bit broader than what we have historically thought of as the navigation team.

And if I can just dive in one more thing we've been talking about, and that's the low acuity response.

We all have been talking to Allie Franklin and the work that she's doing in her crisis center that I always forget the new name, but she's the 211 responder and having a single portal.

And we're working with our firefighters first responders about what can we do to make your jobs easier so that you've got the broader resources within your grasp as well.

So I know that this crisis connections is something that they've again looked at San Diego as a model.

So I hope that this will come back.

And Tiffany, you are so well poised to help us pull all this together.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Can I ask one more before you?

Yeah, I think we got a couple more down on this end and then we'll come back.

So when I look at, I appreciate the expansion and the previous slide it said we need additional staff to engage the 4,400 individuals living under sheltered.

Based on the slide before that, it looks like we'd hit a little over 1,700 folks, unique individuals in the first half of the year.

And so we're doing about, at least the first half of the year, touching about 40% maybe, which means the other 60% aren't even getting a touch.

And I don't know that we're adding enough capacity to double the amount of touches we're getting when I look at this.

So I'd love to hear, what is the strategy or the theory we're using?

Are we Acknowledging that some folks are pretty resilient out there and they're doing okay and they're just lower priority.

Are we prioritizing folks based on their individual needs or on complaints or interactions with neighbors?

I mean, I know in the ideal world, we want to be engaging with all 4,000 people.

We want to get them back into housing.

And I'm not asking you to do that, but I would love to better understand how do we prioritize with what we have and with these modest increases, how will that look a little bit differently and where does that go?

So I think kind of two of our growth areas Since in prior years, we had focused on kind of larger encampments and green belts, and some of those are now smaller, and many people relocated to the waterfront, to downtown.

How's that going, Jackie?

That's a long ring you got there.

And so I think part of the, this is not entirely responsive to your question, but, you know, certainly areas where we seem to feel that there's a bigger gap, you know, when we've heard from communities and others are, you know, in downtown, certain commercial districts.

I know there was long discussion about vehicles this morning and, you know, that's an ongoing subject.

We're going to have our partners at SPU at the table at some point.

We've been trying to focus in the industrial areas where there are RVs and other vehicle residency, are there encampments associated with those?

So those are kind of places.

Again, the team has historically focused on large encampments.

So I think For this next tranche of resources, I think we're thinking of starting to work on things that aren't big encampments.

What does that look like?

Accessibility issues downtown and sidewalks, in business districts, and then things that are not just pure vehicles, but tents and RVs together.

which hadn't been kind of a focus area to try to learn, you know, so how do we do that?

Because the team has developed a set of practices around encampments and green belts and parks in big, you know, public property areas, not so much in the right of way and smaller things.

So I don't, I don't think that's exactly equivalent to priority.

I just think it's the trying to focus on things that we haven't focused on before to try to learn souls.

So how would we do that.

Are there ways to do that.

And then also those kind of persistent.

Like the low acuity work that the fire department does, there are some circumstances where a very small number of individuals consume a huge amount of resources.

And so what are particular, you know, how could the team try to posture itself differently around those?

So I think, again, we see this increment of resources to try to branch out into other things to see if we can be effective there.

One area that I, the intersection between, from the public perception between crime and homelessness is an area that I think I would hope to see some of these resources really dig into that.

We get thousands of emails, as do you all, Oftentimes, people will point to crime.

Sometimes it's loose allegations to property crime.

Sometimes, though, it's acts of violence or assault and things like that.

And they will correlate that with a nearby homeless encampment.

Making sure that we have the resources to actually investigate crimes, and whether that person who is committing a crime is housed or not, we should have the resources to address that, and not simply react to, we're hearing more things of crime, there's an encampment nearby, let's just get rid of that and see what that does.

And I know that that's complex and takes resources, but I hope we can treat We can both be able to try to address some of the crimes it seems like we're hearing.

It's hard to tell statistically, I mean, we have that data, but we certainly get emails a lot and calls a lot about that around community meetings to be able to address those concerns and do it in a way that really addresses if there are individuals that are committing crime, how do we do that?

And not punish everyone who's living unsheltered for the crimes of a few and force them out.

No, I mean, when criminal activity shows up as a factor in prioritizing things, it's typically known criminal activity by the police of things going on in an encampment and usually, more often than not, the victims are other people in the encampment.

You know, the perception of crime in a neighborhood is not one of the parameters that the team uses.

And I don't know if you want to add anything to that, Jason.

I agree with a lot of what you said, but I think it's really, really complex.

Generally, people become victims of crime.

They call 911, and patrol officers respond, and they fully investigate that and hope to resolve it appropriately.

I think that people who are living outside, particularly in encampments, generally when they're involved in crime, don't tend to call 911. I won't say that as an absolute, but generally I think there's more of a reluctance.

So police aren't necessarily responding to an incident that just occurred with the ability to actually investigate that in the same way they would other crimes.

And when the officers of the navigation team arrive for outreach purposes or for removal, do some people approach officers and report crimes that have occurred yes they do and you know sometimes I think that works out really well there have been times where people have been victims of sexual sexual exploitation and one we're able to connect them with the appropriate resources within the department to mitigate the impacts of that but we're also able to take that into account when we're prioritizing encampments for removal there's a lot of a lot of complexity we understand that people do associate high levels of property crime with an encampment or there are a lot of anecdotal stories about this happened there, that happened there.

But it's really tough to make those determinations through the work that we do.

And I think that we really try and do the best we can to capitalize on those opportunities when they do present themselves.

Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you going back to the Well, first of all before I say that I do want to say the list of recommendations from the city auditor as it relates to the quarter one reporting requirements did identify the fact that The city and when they say the city they mean the executive and the council Should ensure that HSD has adequate support and resources to implement its planned improvements for accurately tracking and reporting on navigation teams engagement metrics for 2018 and beyond.

So there's been a noted deficiency on that sort of tracking of metrics, and a lot of that's related to resources.

In addition, as it relates to things that The services that we could embed within the navigation team, the report also notes that the navigation team engaged, responded better, and this is, It responded better when outreach efforts offered by officers included the possibility of nursing or medical care.

It was believed by all that additional mental health professionals are needed as part of the day's day-to-day operations.

And so then the question is, how do you fund those?

And as part of the quarter two reporting, the HSD has committed to reporting on the composition of the team, particularly as it relates to issues that the city auditor has identified, related what's the right size and right mix of police outreach paramedics, behavioral health specialists, and what are the costs of various options.

They also note in their original plan, or the auditor's original report, that there has not been a an intensive or robust or complete analysis of how the presence of police on a navigation team impacts the likelihood that somebody will accept help or engagement.

And they do a lot of background work I think that's really helpful on different cities and the amount of police officers on those teams in other cities.

So I'm really hoping that, I've been focused today a lot on the quarter one report.

I'm really hoping that when I shift my direction to the quarter two report, we've got some good information there about that right balance because it does seem to me that 13 officers on the navigation team is a little high, particularly when we're looking at the real need to include mental health professionals and healthcare professionals on the team.

Chairwoman?

Sure.

Then I'm going to circle back to Councilmember Muscata, because that was the point you made earlier.

Go ahead, Councilmember Morris.

Actually, that actually loops back to what I was trying to say, Officer, 40 minutes ago, which Councilmember Herbold was much more articulate.

This is my main concern, is that we need to calibrate.

In fact, your goal is to, the navigation team, to engage and connect people to services to ultimately lead to permanent housing.

And I made the analogy, you know, using Chief Seattle Club, UrbanLink, because they know those communities, why we wouldn't use and look at more of a public asset that needs to be leveraged of outwards reakers that actually live in those neighborhoods.

Community organizations, social service organizations that are part of the navigation or outreach team that know these individuals who they are much more likely to say, which just recently happened, and I've seen a lot, I particularly see it a lot in Indian country, We don't need 19 officers.

We usually need an officer and two social workers and people that know the community and say this is Jim.

He's had a problem with, you know, substance abuse for years.

We know where his dad lives.

We know where his uncle lives.

We know where his daughter lives.

We know where he's been to treatment before.

We know it takes a couple more times to get him there.

Kind of like what Fred was saying.

Somebody wants their couch.

Just recently, Thank God for SDOT.

We had to help some individuals and one of the individuals wanted the tree and they dug up the tree and they put it on top of the car.

So my point was I'm trying to say that there is a underused asset.

There's a gem, if you will.

a centralized gem of community people that know their neighborhoods and aren't just complainers, but really do, as Councilmember Bagshaw was saying, come from a place of really caring, not just like, I'm tired of the needles, tired of the defecation, I'm tired of people just camping out, but actually that these people know them and are more likely to take help from them and trust them than deploying, and I'm nothing against officers, seven police officers from the South End on their way up to the North End who these individuals don't know who they are.

That was the point I was trying to make earlier.

I think it's a great point.

I don't think I'm the person who should be providing an answer to that.

I think that really is relevant to the broader system and the overall efforts of the navigation team.

Clearly, I represent the police component.

I would say, Council Member Herbold, and this is a rhetorical question, 13 officers, is that too many?

Or do we not have sufficient counterparts in all of those areas?

Substance use treatment, the mental health profession.

I mean, this team is responsible for meeting the needs of these thousands of people throughout the entire city of Seattle.

I don't think 13, I'm not making a judgment on whether 13 is too many or too few.

But I think that if we understand the true scale of this problem, we need as many partners as we can get to try and get boots on the ground and make a difference.

Do all 13 go out to one site at once?

No, they don't.

I think that's also important.

Depending on the day, depending on the operational priorities, officers are deployed in teams of two.

Sometimes the whole team does go out depending on the size and scale of that operation, but we very, very rarely deploy as one giant team of officers.

I'm sorry, if I could just clarify.

And I think there's a difference between an encampment, and like you said, the things that some of us have witnessed, have saw on YouTube, and you know, when you actually have to physically need that protection officer SPD.

I know there was a time where WSDOT workers would not go into the encampments unless they had SPD with them.

So I understand there's that distinction.

The other distinction, though, which I'm seeing more in the neighborhood is individuals, pocket of one or two people, or even one person.

And I'm more focused on the individuals in the outlying, like my district.

That's kind of what I'm getting at.

I was just at a recent removal last week.

I've been out there three times.

And the whole navigation team was there.

There were six officers.

If I may, and forgive me for earlier, because you did make this comment, and I did understand, and I didn't want to be neglectful and seem like I was overlooking, so I apologize for that.

Oh, no, no, you weren't.

What I hear you saying is there are relationships that have been established in community, and why aren't we leaning on those resources?

And it's an excellent recommendation.

What I would say is, and Mr. Podesta alluded to this earlier, we have been in sort of a crisis response mode.

And this is an excellent recommendation I personally commit to exploring and looking at ways in which we can partner with communities, because it does make sense, right?

What I hear you saying is, why not lean on those resources you have, individuals who are not complainers, individuals who have the best interests of these folks at heart?

Why not partner with those entities to get to those outcomes that we all want to get to?

And that makes all the sense in the world.

And I think the primary reason for us not having delved deeper into those potential relationships has been the pace at which we've been doing this work.

In my current capacity, I would love to explore that further.

And let me, Jackie, I'm sorry.

I meant it because both of you didn't understand.

It was me.

I apologize.

I didn't, I know that.

Let me just say this and it follows up kind of what Council Member Mosqueda was saying or maybe it was Gonzalez.

I can't remember.

Maybe it was you.

When we were talking about the pay difference between a social worker at what, 28 and 65. So again, now I'm looking at it from a fiscal perspective.

And again, I'm going to use God's Green Acre as an example.

Those individuals, Pastor Melanie and Jonathan, been in the neighborhood for over 12, 13 years.

They know all those individuals.

Kelly Brown, North Helpline, has been up at North Helpline with community services and food and the clinic and all that.

And I can go on and on and on.

If I were running things, I would take some of that money and I would give it to those organizations and say, you're now a navigator, outreach, whatever you want to call them.

Because those are the people that know the people that are camped out in front of the grocery outlet, Thornton Creek.

Licton Springs, Fred Meyer, the McDermott Place.

I mean, I could just list them all out.

These are the people that deal in the library, in the community center, Mark Mendez.

I could go on and on.

I just listed like eight people that I know off the top of my head that know all these individuals that they can actually go out there and they bring them food and, you know, like I said, we just lost somebody who's a person that lived on the streets.

But my point is, It just seems to me that that's, and I'm glad you're taking this up as a recommendation, that those are the kind of people, that is real community, is plugging in those people that know those people, that trust them.

And it's also fiscally responsible because if you pay these social people, the Mennonite people are doing it for free on a shoestring.

Coming back more for the budget all the time just to make sure that these people are sheltered So I guess that's the point I'm making I appreciate that we deploy people from the north end to the south end But from a community that I come from I know people will take a help a helping hand from someone That's their neighbor or lives down the street that they see every day or when they go check their mail then they will from a social worker from the south end and that's just from what I know.

And I think that's one of the benefits of the NAV team being embedded in HSD now.

As an executive of a nonprofit, I have to just plug this one caution as we have these conversations, which is liability.

So free is great, but if we ask somebody to go out and do what some of these professionals do and they get hurt, we just have to be, so as we come back, just know that I'm going to be hypersensitive that, there are the appropriate insurance like they have to be under some type of insurance or sign some kind of waiver it we we cannot send people out into some of these situations as a volunteer without just taking in consideration what would happen if they got hurt when they were doing that.

No Tiffany it would not be free.

And second, they would be qualified.

It would be cheaper, you're saying, than the herd.

No, no.

They would be compensated as well they should.

And they're qualified.

They're qualified beyond the just, I have a degree, I know how to do this, I'm clinically qualified.

But I actually live here and I know this individual.

That's the point I was making.

Thank you.

Council Member Musqueda, you had a follow-up?

Thank you.

This has been helpful.

I do, I second everything that Council Member Juarez suggested.

I also appreciate that Council Member Gonzalez asked for a more comprehensive understanding of what the officers are doing in this unique role.

given that it's a slight hybrid of the traditional jobs.

I look forward to seeing more of that information.

I also, you know, just want to reiterate, and this is probably goes without saying, given my background, $28,000 starting wage for an outreach worker is clearly not a living wage.

It's about $25,000 less than what one needs in order to live in the city with just one bedroom.

So I appreciate the mayor's proposed budget makes some beginning steps towards this effort, and I'm looking forward to working with her and this council to make sure that we address that underpayment that is happening for our outreach workers who are also, in many cases, eligible for the housing that they are qualifying folks for.

So I just want to put a pin in that.

And then I do have a question for you.

I saw you reaching for the microphone, so maybe you can answer both of those, or if you have a comment on that, and answer this question.

In this new system with the enhanced number of individuals that are coming on both outreach workers and our officers.

Are we still assuming that individuals are going to receive the 72-hour notice before removal if removals occur?

So to the first one, I don't have anything to disagree.

I agree, I was an outreach worker in the Central District who lived in Kent from 19 to 21. So it's 28,000 is more than I was making, but it's still the same principle, so agreed.

I'll look to Fred, but unless the MDARs change, it's not something that we get to decide the rules say 72-hour notice.

No, we would still comply with MDAR.

So good friends of mine, it is now six minutes after four.

We still have a wonderful section that will be parks and Seattle Public Utilities.

I'd like to ask if you have one wrap-up question to this panel, then we can move on.

I'd just like to respond to the rhetorical question.

I don't know what the right number is.

And that is why that we developed the theory of change with reporting requirements.

And the theory of change as it relates to the composition Is the composition the right size and mixed skills?

Might there be an alternative composition that the city should consider, including paramedics and behavioral health specialists?

Might unsheltered individuals be reluctant to engage with a police-led team?

What steps can the city take to ensure that interactions with police do not unintentionally re-trigger trauma in unsheltered individuals?

These were questions that were developed when we had a navigation team with nine officers on it.

They were developed to inform us as policy makers and budget makers.

Now we have proposed a navigation team with 13 officers.

We need this information.

We need this analysis in order to know whether or not we should increase the size of the team to include additional police officers.

I don't know what the number is though.

Thank you.

Okay, anything else for my colleagues on this?

Again, thank you all for coming, taking our questions so seriously, recognizing the system.

And once again, I just want to reiterate, man, we are all in this with you.

This is shoulder-to-shoulder work and trying to reframe on how we get the outcomes we're all looking for.

What do we need to do to really make that happen?

All of you, thank you for your hard work.

Those of you in the field, many thanks.

So our next panel is with Parks and Seattle Public Utilities to talk about, again, program performance, about the cleanup activities.

And I'm not sure who all is staying and going, but I suspect we have some new folks.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, yeah.

Oh yeah, whoever just turned those lights up, can you please turn them down some?

You're blinding some of my friends.

It doesn't have to be all the way, but thank you.

Is that like in theaters when they turn the house lights out trying to get you guys out of here?

Yeah, right.

Do we need to stand up for just like two seconds?

Great.

Those of you who need to take a stretch break, please do.

With the folks that have just come to the table, Linnea, great to see you again.

Let's just start down at this end and then.

Can you get the correct?

And then if you, Linnea, I'm going to, once you get settled in, I'm going to ask you to start introductions, and we'll just whip around this end of the table.

I think everybody's clean on who's up.

Can you go to this one, perhaps?

We do have a presentation here.

My name is Rodney Maxey and I am the Interim Deputy Director of Maintenance Operations for SDOT.

Ben Whitley, Solid Waste Division Director for Operations for SPU.

Idris Beauregard, Seattle Public Utilities.

I'm sorry, I didn't catch your first name.

Idris Beauregard.

Andres?

Idris.

Idris, okay, thank you.

I'm Michelle Finnegan with Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Christopher apologizes for not being here today.

He's in Detroit.

And Robert Stowers, who's our main operations manager that works with Rodney and others, is now on his way to Chicago.

He was here until about half an hour ago.

Saw him earlier.

OK, well, who's going to kick off this part of the presentation?

I will.

I will just harken back to the beginning of the previous presentation, if you can remember.

We said that the navigation team was in the middle of transition and that it had been a partnership between HSD and the Seattle Police Department and that we have many other departments.

as partners that manage property and help us with operations, particularly around trying to make Seattle a clean city.

And so joined by those partners now, who each can talk a little bit about their participation, are kind of core partner in cleanup activity is the parks department that accompanies the navigation team on most relocations of people or debris as kind of field personnel and then gets augmented by SDOT and other staff on bigger operations.

And then we have some other programs that are managed by Seattle Public Utilities as well.

So I will shut up and just drive slides now.

And start and turn it over to Michelle to talk about parks.

Thank you.

So as Fred mentioned earlier last year with the emergency response, we were one of the main parties on the cleanup side with SDOT.

And in the 2018 budget, we did receive an increment of $1.3 million of continuing appropriation and another $700,000 of one-time funding for equipment purchases.

The funding is a mix of commercial property tax revenue and general fund.

The commercial property tax revenue recognizes that we are doing quite a bit of work on the right of ways and washed out properties.

This increment supports a couple of our crews that added additional capacity to those crews and expertise to work up to five days a week on encampments as directed by the navigation team.

So we go to sites that they prioritize.

As I said, the 2019 budget is reflective of the same level of funding except for that one-time equipment purchase money that has been removed in the baseline.

It's broken down across the department, primarily in our Parks and Environment Division, which is Robert Stowers' team.

It's both non-labor expenses, so quite a bit of safety supplies and construction supplies, recently building roads, you need to buy a lot of gravel and that sort of thing.

And then tipping fees, where we're taking debris to the transfer station, there's quite a bit of cost with that.

And then the rest of it is primarily labor.

It's labor that's on those crews, a manager, a health and safety specialist, our worker safety is a big We have a lot of focus for this work, and the team is supplemented by specialty staff within parks or other departments, so heavy equipment operators, tree crew is regularly with the team at various sites depending on the need, that sort of thing.

Madam Chair?

Sure.

Forgive me for my ignorance, Michelle, can you tell me what a tipping fee is?

Sorry, that's the expense that we pay for the transfer station

For some reason I just had in my mind that at the end of the bill you just had an automatic 20% gratuity, but that's helpful to understand.

A few years ago I learned it's tipping.

Yeah, it originally came from tipping the dump truck I think is where it came from.

Can I ask you one quick question Michelle on this slide?

1.3 million down at the bottom, is that your total cleanup costs for Seattle Parks or was that an addition in 2018?

What's this slide telling me?

That's the increment that was added in 2018. What's the total?

It's not exactly budgeted that way because the rest of it is within the tree crew or the specialty crew so our new accounting structure we don't actually have it specific to encampment so we've done some estimates and I can get those for you but it's not.

Okay be helpful just to have the range.

Okay I can get that for you.

And one of our partners, SPU, provides great data for us.

So they helped us update our data on where we've been doing the cleans.

And I'm sure the NAV team helped with this, too.

But through September, we participated on 179 cleanups, about 26% on our own property, 42% on WSDOT property, and 90% on SDOT property.

And I can go into some examples if you want.

In general, those range from the obstructions you all were talking about earlier to the Myers-Way type activity that happened last week where it's very heavy equipment, multi-departmental and multi-functions within our department.

It's also with the contractors that come in ahead of us to do bioclean and all of that.

And ultimately, through September, brought, with our tipping fee funding, brought 873 tons of garbage to the transfer stations.

Do we still work with SPU?

Maybe this is something that as we're getting more deeply engaged in what SPU is doing too.

Do we still take bags to the encampments so people can use the bags as any of us would that have home garbage cans that then they set out to SPU?

The purple bags.

Yes, I think there's a slide coming up that talks about those programs.

A quick question here on slide 5. Does the Washington State Department of Transportation reimburse us for any cleanup that's occurring on their property?

They participate but they don't reimburse.

How do you define participate?

They usually have teams there as well.

I think probably Rodney can help me a little bit more on the ground look of how that is, but they have teams there as well and they help with traffic control and those sorts of activities.

Yeah, they help us with, on the on-ramps and off-ramps, they help us shut down the on-ramps and off-ramps along with the SDOT personnel that are familiar with traffic safety to ensure that as we egress with the debris and as officers and outreach folks have access that we can do it safely and cross roads and things of that nature.

They also help us with the staging of our heavy equipment and our trucks.

Are they also then helping us at all with any of the cleanups that are occurring on SDOT properties?

Well, there's some properties that are adjacent, there's some adjacencies, so I guess the answer would be yes.

Can I ask a question?

Sure.

I'm just going to be a little bit more blunter than Council Member Mosqueda.

So we are there assisting as we clean up their property, and we're not being reimbursed for that.

And you, okay, and you can't decipher between SDOT and WSDOT property how much we're cleaning up theirs or they're cleaning up ours.

It's a collective effort, but.

Well, I think we could decipher that.

We could get back to you with that data.

I think the data is available.

But the short of it is we're helping.

clean up theirs and they're not helping clean up ours.

Yeah, just explain that to me.

No, I don't think that's the question.

That's what I'm getting to.

There have been big multi department efforts where WSDOT employees are cleaning up helping us clean on city property, either owned by SDOT or FAS or others.

You know, it is probably true we are putting in more than we're getting out, but this has kind of been a collaborative effort.

It was a big...

to even among city departments to get field workers to work shoulder to shoulder regardless of whose property it was.

It's an avenue we can explore.

We've had these discussions before on the financial front, and they haven't been particularly fruitful, but the point is well taken.

But they do, it isn't that they only participate when it's washed out property, they participate on city projects as well.

So I think what we're looking at is, is there a quid pro quo somewhere?

Is there some fairness between it or is there a deficit?

It's also fair to say there's an imbalance.

You know, we're frankly, we're feeling the pain more than they are.

Can I ask another quick question?

Who, who, we put up the fences and those are our fences and we paid for them or did they?

They put up fences around their property at their expense.

Councilmember Johnson just briefly because I know we're about to move over to SPU I wonder on the 26% of park properties one of the complaints that we hear a lot from folks like the Green Seattle partnership is that we spend a lot of time and energy and volunteer resources on Replantation reforestation removal of invasive species and then sometimes encampments unauthorized encampments come in and that there is trash and litter associated with those unauthorized encampments.

And then the cleanup crews come through with a little more vigor than what our volunteer crews would like them to do in terms of then scraping off a lot of the important work that they've tried to do around reforestation.

Can you just talk a little bit about the approach that we might take in areas that are of, you know, sensitive environmental nature on parks property?

Yes, many of those places, we also have our tree crew and our urban forestry crews there.

So they are helping us be mindful of that and the other maintenance crews.

I will say that we prioritize worker safety.

And so we do do as much mechanically as we can.

And sometimes that will have some damage that we wouldn't like to do, but we are doing it somewhat mindfully, knowing that we want to keep our workers as safe as possible.

And there's biohazards and other things there that we don't want to be handpicking through.

So it's a balance, and it's frustrating for our staff as well as the volunteers, I know.

And we go back in and start to try to reforest.

Actually, the Green Seattle Partnership has been one of our really strong partners in reactivating these sites and trying to keep them from falling back into encampments by having our volunteers and our staff and contractors there to get back in there and reforest.

Thank you.

I know it's a really difficult one.

Councilmember Muscata, did you have a follow-up?

Well, I guess, how are we making sure that the cleanup is both happening during the time of removal and afterwards?

Is this analysis that you've provided us both during, let's say, a cleanup and the subsequent trash that's left over afterward, are we able to get a sense of whether this is all of the money you need to do the after removal cleanup?

Because we hear a lot from neighbors who are concerned that encampment has been moved but there's still trash around?

So it should include that if it's at the actual encampment site that we're working with the navigation team.

It should be the full cost of that.

If an encampment moves back in and reestablishes, then it would have to to be another cleanup through the navigation team process.

So I do believe some of these sites were visits multiple times this year that we may have been in a spot in Ravenna Woods a couple of times.

So that would be two of the parks property counts up there.

I wouldn't say this is happening in every circumstance.

We hear from the community of encampments that have moved of their own volition and have abandoned a lot of material.

I think it would be rare that the team is involved in relocating an encampment and leave anything behind, but it could appear that way to the public.

I have a question if I may.

So as I understand it, in 2018, there's a portion of funds held in FAS in a contract for cleanup.

Is that a part of these numbers as well?

Yes.

And is that moving forward in 2019?

Yeah.

Michelle alluded to we have circumstances where we have contractors provide cleanup for us.

We have contractors to handle biohazards.

We have contractors who have special skills around fall protection and work on steep grades.

And then just for flexibility and scheduling some time, you know, to get either peak load or, you know, schedule interdependencies if we need a small amount of work done in front of construction.

So I believe there's a

Something on the order 1.3 million in FAS as budget to handle these Contract provided resources Just to clarify so when we look at these numbers though you have somehow Extrapolated that this is just cleanup related to just those who are homeless Because I'm I don't want to give the impression that we're calculating in what parks would already do for normal cleanup for issues related to illegal dumping or for other residents who might be housed who are also consuming drugs intravenously?

So are we just looking at the dollars that are just related to cleanups that we're assuming are from those who are unsheltered?

And then I assume you have another budget set that's looking at just cleanup related to illegal dumping and other types of biohazard cleanup.

So this is the funding and data related to the navigation team led work.

We work with them to do these cleanups.

Our district staff are regularly cleaning up debris that's left behind, whether it's a cardboard box or picnic supplies or whatever it is.

So that is all part of the regular district budgets.

That's helpful clarification.

Can we move forward?

I actually have a follow-up question.

Okay.

Thank you.

So we are reporting here 179 cleanups by Seattle Parks and Recs through September.

That doesn't seem, and it may be because it's a different reporting period, but earlier we found out that there were 279 encampment removals.

So either it's a different reporting period or there isn't a cleanup necessary for every removal.

It's both.

It's a different reporting period.

And again, I alluded that we use contractors in particular cases, steep slopes, bio clean and other spot clean.

So parks doesn't participate in every cleanup.

So but these 179, we can assume are we're all occupied by people living at those locations?

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Fred, do you happen to know how much we're paying contractors per hour when we're doing outside contracting?

You know, it varies with the other kind of specialties involved.

Again, if it involves fall protection and steep slopes, if it's biohazards, there's different rates.

We can get those for you.

In my reflection, I was involved in one not not at Myers Way, but across the street from Myers Way.

And there were some absolutely marvelously cleaned areas where people had their tents.

In fact, when one of our colleagues called it the Taj Mahal of outdoor tent living, and he had created, seriously, a pond and a fountain.

And it was an amazing amount of work that had gone into this.

But there were also just piles and piles and piles of garbage and needles that were nearby.

And I was told that we were paying $80 an hour per worker to help move that out, which struck me as a pretty high price.

I don't know that I've heard that rate.

Some rates, particularly for the bioclean worker, can be expensive, you know, on an hourly basis.

Again, we can provide that information to the council.

You know, we have a lot of departments and several bargaining units involved, and so we can continue to look at, you know, are we staffing this correctly?

Do we have the flexibility we need as, you know, the loaded cost of city field workers is not trivial either.

And there is heavy equipment and other things involved that the contractors bring to the table.

Thank you.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you.

Just a quick, what I think is a quick question.

So some of these cleanup activities that are being reported on this slide and in this presentation, I understand now that they are tied, they are tied to navigation team activities.

And of course, we know that navigation team activities go through the MDAR process, and they're prioritized, and there are certain ones that get attention before others.

And my question really is, is how does this relate to the scheduling of cleanups in general that may not be associated with the cleanup, but that are still related to encampments.

So knowing that not all encampments, unauthorized encampments are getting attention and knowing that SPU does have the purple bag program, if you will, I'm just trying to get a sense of whether in terms of how that is coordinated in terms of the cleanup schedules related to cleanups that may not be tied with the navigation team in particular.

We'll talk a little bit about an RV pilot, and I think Idris can talk about the purple bag pilot.

Typically, you know, there are exceptions, but by and large, if it involves people, the navigation team is the lead.

Anything else that doesn't involve people is illegal dumping and is, you know, is handled in other ways.

But if it involves people living outside, our, you know, Parks and Utility Department utility departments don't engage people, they may do cleanups otherwise, but that's kind of the point of the navigation team, is if homelessness is involved and there is debris that needs to be cleared involving people, then the navigation team comes first and our partners around the table help afterwards.

But there are certainly litter pilots and some other things that don't involve relocating people.

There may be people, obviously all trash starts with people somehow.

But those are kind of different programs and if we're ready to move on from parks, maybe Idris and Ben could talk a little bit about

SPUs involvement in this and kind of differentiate between the two if that works any other questions for parks up here I'm just I'm gonna wait for them to okay great Thank you, then let's move on to parks and

I mean, as Fred discussed.

I mean, from parks to Seattle.

As Fred discussed, the one exception, so we're here to talk about mostly about the clean city pilots that are efforts that are not really related to the navigation team and those efforts.

So, these efforts are community-wide, city-wide, as was discussed earlier, unsheltered individuals aren't the only individuals that are creating things that we need to deal with.

So, but the one real exception to that, like that Fred was talking about, is that encampment bag pilot.

So, that's the purple bag program that we talked about.

So we do work with people that are unsheltered.

That program does enter camps and provide one method that we found to try to eliminate some of the trash that occurs in those camps.

So if you say we found...

28 unsanctioned encampments so far.

We've distributed almost 23,000 bags.

5,600 bags returned.

We've collected about 350 tons of garbage.

So this is just basically, you would think of it as a scheduled garbage service for unsheltered people in various locations around the city.

The program manager partners with HEP right now, which is a hepatitis prevention group to enter the camps so that it gives us a good way to go into the camps and get good response from the people in the camps and give us better reception.

It's worked very successfully in some areas, in some areas it doesn't, but it has been extremely helpful like in the Myers Way area.

We've had twice a week service up in that area and collected over a ton and a half worth of garbage a week.

in that location alone.

So it's doing a lot of great work on getting that material off the streets.

Can you talk about the needle collection?

Do you put in the needle repository bins?

How are we dealing with that?

In relation to the encampment trash pilot, we did do a pilot where we put a small bin at the Myers Way to see if the behavior of the campers would be motivated to dispose of the needles in that bin.

But with the limited amount of time with the cleanup just happening, we didn't get good anecdotal evidence as far as the sharps collection pilot.

We continue to expand that pilot.

Initially, when it was launched, we put together a hotline for customers to call and report needles if they come across it in the public right away.

In addition, they can utilize their Find It, Fix It app, take a picture.

We receive that.

We provide seven-day-a-week response within 24 hours or less.

Customers get updated along the ways and we have large boxes throughout the city where customers can dispose of their needles if they come across them.

We put together how-to videos, do-it-yourself, where a customer now goes online and figures and can see the steps to safely dispose of that.

Considering we're a community-centered utility, what we like to do is work with each community and figure out what some of the issues, the challenges are that they're facing.

In addition, annually we send out a survey where these sharps boxes are located and get community feedback.

That way we can course correct as we move forward.

So what are you finding?

I mean, just anecdotally at this point, I know with parks that we had asked for needle depository, the sharps, to be put into restrooms, places where people might conceivably be using the sharps and rather than throwing them into a garbage can or throwing them on the ground.

Once we found that we had a place where we could put them with regular pickup so that the sharp containers were replaced, that they were actually used.

What's your experience been?

Yeah, from the evidence and data that we collected shows that they're effective.

Initially, when we were doing the analysis, it was based on number of complaints that we received throughout the city.

So, we strategically placed the boxes.

equitably throughout the whole city.

Based on the numbers that we're receiving, we see that the number of complaints around the boxes diminished prior to the boxes being there, in addition to the number of needles that are collected weekly are continuous.

As you can tell from the number, I believe 109,000 syringes have been disposed of since we placed the boxes.

Currently, we're exploring a few other areas to expand the boxes based on their initial success.

Thank you.

Yeah, Council President Harrell.

Can I just step back on the bag, the bag pilot?

Did you form any conclusions as to why it seems to work in certain areas and not others, or you just have more conscientious people using the bag?

I'm going back not to the sharps, but to the bags.

Why does it seem to work in some areas and not in others?

As some of the outreach workers noted that some encampments are self-regulating where they have a culture among themselves and some of them keep up their encampments quite pristine.

There's others that just don't commit to being consistent with it.

That being said, we also found that it would be effective to have someone like to have an outreach worker who's familiar with the people in the encampments who has the trust, go in there and start building these behavioral changes in addition to offer them other resources.

So the short of the answer is we're still trying to figure that out why some are more successful than others, but it's scratching our heads.

And I ask, that's very helpful.

You know, it's been my impression that as we, as a city, as we all experience in our training to address homelessness, that I have more outrage on the garbage than the people.

And I'm wondering to encourage the use of the bags, whether we should invest in that, whatever it takes to allow people to use the bags.

So I don't know.

I mean, I turn to you all for smart ways to figure that out.

And you turn to us to give you the resources for it.

I think we may want to, during this budget process, figure out a way, if we could come up with some ideas as to why the garbage, the actual bags work, what that'll take, that'll be helpful for me.

very good point council president harrell i and i confirmed to based upon number of complaints coming into our office that there's a lot more compassion about the people helping the people get into places where they need to go but a real disgust about just the stuff that's left around and you know i mean all of us who have homes and have garbage collection um you know we're fortunate to have that if you didn't have that what do you do you end up tossing it but that's where The answer has got to be, what do we do to help make it easier for people?

As long as we're going to be dealing with people, we're going to be dealing with garbage.

And I think cleaning it up is going to be to everybody's benefit.

Madam Chair, if I may.

Curiosity got the better of me during the course of our conversation.

So I just wanted to see what the percentage of the population living unsheltered versus the garbage that we've collected in our cleanups, how that correlated to the percentage of population and the trash generated by a population that is living sheltered.

What I found was the percentage of those folks who are living outside at about 0.6% generates about 0.4% of our garbage.

So to your point, those of us who have the ability to throw away garbage in a place that is more structured actually throw away more garbage than the folks who are living unsheltered.

However, because you're living on shelter, your garbage is exposed and therefore it sits around and it takes a little while and it accumulates in a way that we may not have our garbage accumulate.

So to the council president's point, finding ways for us to resource up SPU parks, SDOT and other departments to be able to share more garbage resources, I think will help and may not be necessarily as large as the kind of resources we're required to put into So it was an interesting little intellectual exercise that I thought might benefit the rest of you.

Thank you.

Real quick, Councilmember, I just wanted to touch upon the litter abatement pilot also.

It was important that we expanded our initial pilot.

Former Mayor Harrell talked about an executive order to expand it.

10 additional communities within and around the city.

We did that.

We found it to be extremely helpful with minimizing the amount of sprawl that potentially a homeless encampment might happen.

We reach out to nine separate communities to date.

We've operated in We reached out to the communities.

They gave us our input.

We've created route maps where now a contractor would go out proactively once to twice a week and collect garbage and debris that they see within their communities.

Again, we sent out 20,000 plus surveys last year, getting feedback from the community.

Overwhelmingly, they were positive about the type of improvements that they've been seeing.

So that's another approach that we're balancing out, the encampment trash pilot.

Thank you.

Council Member Harreld.

I want to really thank, in particular, SPU and Idris.

I know Parks is doing a lot of stuff, but I'm a little bit more familiar with the work being done by SPU.

I really appreciate the efforts that they've made, both around remediation around RVs, as well as the bag pilot.

One of the things I'd really like to see, and I know We've tried a little bit of it, but I'd really like to see if there's a way to expand the bag pilot beyond the nine locations and figure out how we can integrate the work that the navigation team is doing.

perhaps to the locations that they aren't scheduled to do an encampment removal on, and encourage the folks who are at those locations to participate in the bag pilot with the understanding that The likelihood that as long as they're not in a dangerous place, the likelihood that their encampment will be removed is reduced if they maintain their location in a way that is not a problem.

public health risk.

So, to the extent that we could look at expanding the pilot to integrate that work, and, you know, I've been out, I was out a couple times on the, at the encampment out at Myers Way, and I've seen the purple bags at those encampments.

So, I know you're doing a little bit of it, but it would be really, and it wasn't successful at Myers Way.

and led to last week's removal of that encampment because the conditions had gotten so bad and some of the worst, as I understand it, that the navigation team has seen.

But we know that different people, as you've said, Idris, manage the camps differently.

And I think if we really make an intentional effort to find the folks, who want to partner with the city in exchange for being left in place, I think we could look at accomplishing more with mitigating the garbage, and I would like to know how we could do that.

No, we'd be welcome to that opportunity, and I do think it is a standard part of the the outreach and their engagement with people.

They make a point of if there are things you do in the encampment, it makes it less of a burden on the community and have done some marketing for the Purple Bag program.

Again, it's limited in scope, but that's certainly something we advise people about.

The pilot's been nine sites for, I think, this is the second year that it's been nine sites.

Yeah, we've done nine sites actively, continuously, but this year alone, we already serviced 21 separate sites.

And that's in addition to on-call demand.

So sometimes outreach workers will be working at a smaller site where they'll call us and say they worked with the encampment residents and placed out a pile, and they'll dispatch a crew out there to go collect that.

So 21 sites been serviced this year alone, but actively, continuously, we operate nine to 10.

Yeah, Council Member Gonzalez.

Just along the same lines, in terms of this, again, the scheduling of the pickups, I have some concern and interest in understanding more about how SPU is resourced in terms of their ability to pick up trash, pick up the purple bags on a more realistic schedule.

I have personally witnessed instances where there are purple bags available and they are all completely full and they are just piled on corners of streets and in other places.

And so I just, you know, I wanna get a sense of whether or not there are resources that currently exist to allow us to do more frequent pickup in those areas that are clearly producing more trash than what had been anticipated when the outreach was originally done and a participation in the program was originally offered.

And if so, sort of how do we drill down into those geographic areas to be able to better understand how to prioritize resources even within this particular identified priority to address garbage and litter abatement.

And I just want to make it really clear that this isn't just about mitigating the impact to neighborhood where encampments exist.

It is a public health issue.

We as house people don't want to live amongst our refuse and I don't think it's fair to expect unsheltered individuals to live amongst their refuse.

And the reason we don't support that is because there are real public health issues related to not managing refuse produced by humans.

And so I think that's why I have a strong interest in really identifying how to best resource this particular issue that I think is becoming worse throughout our city.

And clearly when we only have 28 responses, or 28 sites that we've responded to, that's still a drop in the bucket.

All right, good question.

Weekly, we go out and we communicate, meaning our outreach staff and one of our workers communicate with encampment residents.

That's when they disperse the bags.

Typically, that would be on a Thursday.

The next following day on that Friday is when we go provide collection for the bag so that way we can avoid the bag staying out for too long.

Unfortunately, the bags also attract opportunistic illegal dumping.

Others in the community who aren't part of the encampment actually utilize the site to go drop off their own home materials or avoid transfer station dumping fees.

Yeah, we've heard stories about that as well.

I've also heard that some people are selling the purple bags.

Initially, there was a big challenge, and they weren't the purple bags.

There was another bag that we offered that was, it was used as commodity.

But considering now with the purple bags, we want to be mindful where there's some encampments that have utilized it as a bartering tool.

And to avoid that, that's why we go the day before with the outreach staff, and we pick up the next day to avoid that type of communal bartering with the bags.

And is that proving to be an effective, whatever it is you're doing, is it proving to be an effective intervention to prevent those bags from being commoditized?

We haven't heard of it lately.

Maybe some people, someone from the navigation team has, but initially when we first launched, there was a big issue when we was handing out black disposable bags.

I mean, I think that sort of emphasizes the point that we're all making up here is that people really value, I mean, obviously there is value to the point that it's being monetized to having the garbage issue addressed and our resources and our response initially is clearly not to scale.

So I just want to continue to get a little bit more information about the frequency of servicing and how that matches up with the resources that are currently allocated.

and just how we can do better, not just in terms of providing people the bags, but in then actually picking them up before it gets out of control.

One comment I think is important to make about the resources.

It is SPU that does this work, and obviously they're here to describe it.

It is, however, general fund resources that must fund this work rather than utility rate resources.

The utility rates can be used when there is a customer who's paying for a bill for the service, and that is a state constitutional issue that the city has encountered specifically related to streetlights and fire hydrants, and this is actually the same space.

So again, one of the challenges here is that this is, in fact, a general government responsibility per court ruling.

And so, SPU has a very large budget and significant resources, largely from rate payers.

This piece of their operation is funded by the general fund.

That's not to say that there couldn't be ways.

to reprioritize other general fund investments, which is to be clear about, if you will, the colors of money that can be applied here.

That's good.

Thank you for that reminder.

I also just want to bring up something, and it's all part of this balance that we've been talking about, caring for the people and making sure that our city is clean and safe and healthy for everybody.

There was an interesting NPR show Sunday night.

And the author, and I'm going to slaughter his name, but it's Anand Girardas.

And he can't get much leftier or more progressive than this man out of New York City.

And he came here, and he said on KUOW, he said, it's a disaster.

Seattle's a disaster.

And 8 million people in New York City, he said, it doesn't look like that when he's talking about tents and garbage.

And I just want to acknowledge, we hear that all the time from our downtown, you know, visit Seattle and the convention bureau and that.

I'm really interested as we're going forward, and again, I'm putting my arms around you, this is not a a condemnation of the work you're doing.

It's what do we need to do that would get us to the point where people would say, aha, now you've got it.

Now it's clean.

Now people have a place to go.

What do those of you who are involved in this program say we need to do?

Well, a little bit more outreach and education.

I think that's important.

The outreach workers that they talked about is important to educate those that are unsheltered, living on the streets, giving them an idea of what resources we do have to offer and more data management, data collection.

That way we can be proactive and try to avoid the accumulation of trash and garbage and identify hotspots in areas where we can prevent it.

In addition, I think it's important to note, like I mentioned earlier, that not all of the trash in the illegal dumping is the source of homelessness.

I feel that there's a large issue with illegal dumping in general in our city, and maybe if we commit more resources to the prosecution of illegal dumping, that might be a beginning.

Thank you.

I think and this is something that I've talked with some individual officers at SPD as well as SPU when being out with a navigation team out at Myers Way.

I think it'd be really helpful if we did some some short-term emphasis patrols around, assuming that SPD agreed to use their resources this way, but around locations where there is illegal dumping.

Many instances of illegal dumping are actually being done by construction companies, not just a person who wants to get rid of a television, but people who are you know, saving money from their business, doing this illegal practice.

And so I just feel like some, some emphasis on enforcement around this area could reap really Change behavior, too.

Yes, change behavior and results that are sort of, you know, results that outweigh the resources needed to do the emphasis.

I think a little bit of work could have a really good outcome.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

Please.

Just a color of money question.

So in the example that Councilmember Herbold is just articulated for us.

I just want to clarify that when we're dealing with straight up illegal dumping that is being effectively hidden amongst some of the unsanctioned encampment refuse that we see, is illegal dumping ordinarily dealt with or services related to that funded through rate payer dollars as opposed to general fund dollars or is illegal dumping also

general fund dollars.

It is also general fund dollars for a period of time that in the Genesis.

It's all goes to general funds, it sort of maybe false to point this way, but there was a tax on the tipping fees.

And that had been the source for all of the dumping, all of the material that's taken to the transfer stations that there is a tax.

And for a long time, that tax was the sole source of funding for the clean cities programs, which include the illegal dumping program and others.

We are now investing more than that tax is generating.

We just have that flowing to the general fund overall, but that has always been, that has traditionally been the source in terms of a specific stream, but the more broad point is it was always a general fund resource.

If we don't have- General idea of the legal dumping issue.

Dating back to 2014, we had about 5,000 to 6,000 complaints.

Last year alone, we had 17,500 complaints.

That's a 193% increase.

Based on our response times and the measures that we took to improve performance and additional bodies of work that we got, we now respond on average four days or less and 10 days or less 100% of the time.

Yeah, I mean, I think this illegal dumping issue, obviously, is something that is emerging.

And I think we need to figure out how we can evaluate some of the, like who is actually contributing to the illegal dumping to be able to craft some sort of a potential policy response that would enforcement implementation operationalizing response that will really discourage that type of behavior.

Question, Council Member Musqueda, and then I would love to move on to the RV remediation pilot that is our last

for the day.

Do you have a question?

Just very briefly, I want to circle back to a question that I asked earlier, and I'm not sure, Director Noble, if you were able to be here, so the last question might relate to something you can comment on.

I think that your comment on the New York Observer who noted the number of individuals living outside, the amount of trash that we have, being significantly higher than what's perceived in other cities is, quite frankly, because we do have one of the highest per capita rates for homeless folks for our population.

Well, you know, Los Angeles has 50,000 homeless.

Our per capita rate for homelessness is much higher here in Seattle.

And I think that it's important that we continue to look at how do we make sure that people are safe, that they have clean spaces to live, and again, that folks are getting inside.

I think your question continues to emphasize that the best way for us to make sure that people are able to live in a safe and clean place is by building the housing that they need.

And I really just want to underscore what Councilmember Johnson said because I don't want it to get swept under the rug.

I think Councilmember Johnson, you said that the unsheltered population is 0.6% of the total population and yet contributes to 0.4% of the trash.

Thumbs up over there, which means that to Councilmember Gonzalez and others up here, we do have a problem and we want to make sure that the misperception that homeless folks are contributing to the trash outside is completely alleviated and that we direct budget dollars to cleaning up our city as a whole.

and in order to get the tents off the street that we get folks into housing.

I just want to say I understand that while we express frustration up here, the previous panelist, I believe it was Jackie, said that my frustration pales in comparison to the frustration that people who are homeless experience every day.

There is no doubt.

There is no doubt up here from any one of us that our frustration pales.

But we're the ones responsible.

for creating shelters, for cleaning up the streets, for making sure that people get housed.

The frustration that we have is that we are not currently equipped with the tools to get people inside.

So my frustration is the frustration that's expressed by those who are homeless and the rest of our residents who we've talked about who see this on a daily basis and don't see resolution.

One of the issues that I asked about earlier today was related to communicable diseases.

And while trash doesn't equal communicable diseases, we do know that when we have clean spaces to live and the ability to wash your hands and take a shower, the ability for communicable diseases to spread decreases.

I want to read from some of the materials I've received from Public health, which says that encampment site management is often done by encampment residents, but we know that there's a growing number of preventable communicable disease outbreaks in the homeless populations.

Funds are needed to support site disease investigation, response, and coordination and could help reduce communicable diseases.

I mentioned earlier HEPA.

and HIV disease outbreaks.

I'll just ask again, in addition to making sure that you have the resources that are needed to clean up the entire city, not just for those who are homeless, but in addition to that, are you also, and maybe Director Noble, if you could comment on this, are we also seeing if there is a need for additional funds so that we can coordinate a rapid response to any outbreaks, disease prevention, and emerging issues?

My understanding is there's not a coordinated team that can do that, and perhaps it could work in conjunction with your cleanup team that's out there.

I'm not familiar with the specifics on that front.

At a broad funding level, public health is primarily a function of King County and the primary funder.

of the public health department.

The city does, in addition to the base level of services that's provided by public health across the county, the city essentially purchases additional services to the tune of about $12 million focused on Seattle-only residents.

That is purchasing a suite of services.

HIV prevention, as I happen to recall, is among them, just as an example.

And we've, I believe, provided additional funding for some of the health clinics that operate here in the city.

But with respect to a specific response on communicable diseases in the encampments, I don't know the answer, but we'll do some research and get you some more information.

So I think Council Member Musqueda has brought up a point that we've heard many times from Patty Hayes and also just as our Board of Public Health, and that is if we can make running water with soap available to people, that does more to reduce the chances of hep A than about anything else we can do.

We can study it to death, but we know that that already, that helps, that does more than help.

And I just would like to make sure that as we're providing services and collecting garbage, that we also make sure we've got water and soap and water for people in these encampments if we're going to be authorizing them.

And then in areas where they're not authorized, those are the ones that we need to be focusing on to get them inside, not because we're trying to be mean, but because we're trying to keep people healthy, whether they're outside or those people who are housed.

Okay, can we please go on to the next slide?

So the last pilot we'll talk about is the RV remediation pilot.

We just began this a short while ago.

In 2019 and 20, we're hoping to continue the pilot.

We partner with the Seattle Police Department, Parking Enforcement, and CPT to basically fulfill a service we have been for a long time, which is kind of an illegal dumping function.

But we ran into problems with clusters of RVs and the impacts and the safety concerns we were having in those areas.

As Ben mentioned, this is really a public health, public safety concern that we have.

What we see is a large accumulation of garbage that also attracts rodents and other health risks that are involved.

We as SPU are the lead department, which we work with SPD, SDOT, and other agencies to go ahead and use a coordinated multi-departmental effort.

Basically, what we'll do is we'll get reports, we'll put together a site journal for located sites that potentially meet our criteria.

Based on the criteria, we'll do some outreach with parking enforcement, SPD, which will notify the campers, hey, you know, the RV, Residents that this is going to be moved this site's gonna have to move based on the health risks that are you putting the public at risk for?

Upon that they'll do notification outreach to do give 72-hour notice They'll go again do a 24-hour notice upon that outreach.

They'll also provide RV residents with resources if they need resources come the day of the actual clean if the RVs aren't movable that RV will get towed and but then a coordinated effort would come where we'll clean up the location of trash, debris, and so forth.

move forward from there.

To date, we've done roughly about 30 cleans to date.

Our objective is to do it citywide, but unfortunately, based on the requirements that we have as far as the ranking sheets, which is the number of occupants, the immediate health risk, and another factor is the safety hazards, that's not always the case.

So we have some ongoing sites.

For instance, 6th and Snoqualmie, we just did a third removal since the pilot launched.

Thank you.

I'm not going to be having a team to share in the southwest precinct with the south precinct, so we're going to have to deal with that.

We have RVs in both precincts and requiring those two precincts to share a team I think has some serious equity issues concerning it.

Yeah, we're only limited to the amount that we've been condensed to.

So unfortunately, we don't have the capacity just to put some of the smaller locations.

There are ones and twosies that are one off.

And more recently, we've seen a lot of compliance now that the behavior is actually changing since we launched the pilot back in May, that 100% compliance for the last three planes will show up and all the RVs will already be moved on to another location.

I could point out a number of different places in the southwest precinct where there are upwards of 10 RVs, so.

And I think we can do that in every district, unfortunately.

So earlier today when we were talking about RVs, the mayor has identified $250,000 for like an RV parking lot, RVs and cars, parking.

This is one that I know that is just bedeviling us because if over half the people who are counted as homeless are in vehicles, we've gotta find places for them.

And that, we're gonna continue to struggle with that until we find lots of places around the county.

It can't just be in the city that is helping us address that.

Council Member O'Brien.

When you said to date there have been 30 cleanups, is that 30 instances at a site or 30 RVs or?

That comes to 30 instances locations.

So the number of RVs, there's multiple RVs within the location.

So 30 cleanups in 10 different neighborhoods.

And so is the, and when you talk about a location, is a location that RVs show up at?

You come in and do your protocol, they move on, and then you go back to that location because they reappear, or does the location move around?

Yeah, unfortunately, based on how it works right now, we do no parking.

Then once we leave, they actually reestablish the parking there.

So they do reappear, and that brings them up as the higher priority oftentimes based on some of the smaller locations.

Sure.

And I can see why they reappear like everything else we talked about.

So do these cleanups come with the type of outreach and services and offers of housing?

And what does that look like with people living in RVs?

People living in RVs, what we do is we provide, well, SPD provides some type of outreach or resource book for them.

And if there is tents associated, we'll call in the navigation team, HSD navigation team to work with them directly.

I think this is an area where, I mean, one of the challenges around RVs, I mean, some of the challenges are consistent with the whole enchilted population, but some are unique to RVs.

And, you know, as folks talked about earlier, we have success in our outreach when we offer someone something better to do.

a better place to be.

And so, you know, when someone's living in an RV, they have, you know, doors that lock and, you know, maybe some warmth and security.

And so, you know, if we offer them a shelter bed, I would imagine folks would decline that.

If we offer them some sort of better housing alternative that's transitional they may accept that but We probably need a place to store their RV in case it doesn't work out We can't just say we move in here and then we're gonna confiscate everything and impound it.

And so I think we really need to Otherwise, it sounds like this program meets the test of an upset neighborhood condition, which I get, because I hear that all the time, too.

And it's like, hey, this is untenable where they are right now.

But if all we do is move them to a different location, so now that's untenable, then they move back and reestablish.

I worry that we're spending $219,000 chasing them.

And so I'd rather spend some of those resources on finding some alternatives, and so I hope I'd love to see the combination of investments we have in this budget for RVs.

You mentioned the potentially for a lot.

We have this work, which again is addressing one aspect of the challenge, but figure out what is the comprehensive set of solutions.

knowing that if half the population is living in RVs, we probably don't have the resources to do something comprehensive for all of them, but can we do a comprehensive solution on a subset of them?

And maybe, you know, Fred, you said earlier, it seems like there's a handful of people that often get the majority of our resources, and so some kind of approach to identify the types of vehicles and locations where that is.

That's, I guess, something that I want to look through in the coming weeks.

I think there's a wide

variability in people living in RVs, whether they're working and licensed and mobile, or whether they're just a structure in the right of way.

And so I think we've had different levels of success, all very small, you know, with regard to outreach to those populations.

And then the NAV team works with this pilot because there are many kind of blended situations where it's an encampment and RVs together.

We've had a little bit more success there, but it's, someone who has an operating mobile RV, you know, we've had discussions with people that really don't see it as a problem to solve from their perspective.

So we will have to do a lot of, continue to do a lot of work on that.

And you know frankly of the problems are trying to solve if they're not putting trash out and they're Managing their human waste and other things fine, and they're able to move.

That's probably a problem We don't need to address a ton no no and if they keep me moving around might be okay industrial areas And they move every 72 hours that isn't by definition.

That's not a problem person Seattle municipal code I

Council Member Mosqueda, you had a question, and then Council Member Gonzalez.

As much as the pilot has been focused on remediation, it's minimizing the impact so that there isn't the trash around and creating either the health hazard or the perceived nuisance, recognizing, as you noted, that it's hard to offer a better alternative.

But if there's impacts in the right-of-way that aren't working for everybody else, that's still problematic.

Madam Chair, if I may also, referring back to the $250,000 that's in the mayor's proposed budget.

So just underlining that the details of a program for vehicular residents has not been outlined, has not been described, but that could include a model that does not involve RVs.

So it could be a model such as the one in Santa Barbara where they focus exclusively on cars.

Very good.

Council Member Gonzales.

Council Member Esqueda passed.

Oh, okay.

I just I think I wanted to clarify that this is the funding that we're seeing here on this slide is just related to dealing with the impacts related to RVs in particular, in terms of trash.

But I think that the question for me still remains about how this particular programming at SPU connects with and talks to the HSD system.

that is designed to connect people to services when they need it.

So again, it's an opportunity for the city to more deeply and meaningfully and holistically engage people who are experiencing homelessness, whether it's in an RV or a tent or otherwise, we're out there, you folks are out there.

offering something that people really want to have, i.e., their trash picked up and dealt with, and I think it's a good opportunity for us to figure out how to more clearly and cogently connect that interaction, that moment of positive interaction with that individual to be able to meaningfully connect them with services.

And to Alan's point, I'm still unclear how the two speak to each other.

And I'm a little nervous that right now they're just functioning in silos and dealing with whatever the emergent need is, as opposed to really, again, capitalizing that opportunity to connect the individuals that we are offering trash services to, to also connect to some human and housing services?

I think at the staff level, the programs are pretty well connected and the outreach that is done by the community police teams, parking enforcement, and SPU, if they feel they can benefit, if the clients involved can benefit from outreach from our providers.

We're in close contact.

So, you know, given that it's still a fairly small program, it's certainly manageable just to keep tabs.

The staff involved, we join each, are joining each other's dispatch meetings.

So there's, I mean, they're really, you know, and no credit to you know, executive bureaucrats.

This is really everybody at the staff level does a really good job of talking and coordinating on this front.

So I think this is one thing we're a little bit ahead of the curve as far as these two programs, you know, connecting, whether it's by design or not, because the staff people work together very well.

Good.

Well, if we have no other questions on this slide, I'm going to say thank you all for coming.

Roger, Ben, Andres, and Michelle, it's nice to have you here with us.

And of course, everybody from Budget Office, thank you.

Linnea, did you have anything you wanted to add from SDOT?

You know, I just wanted to say that SDOT provides support in service of all of these organizations.

We're pleased to be a partner with them.

We are funded nominally to support them, but we are very much a partner.

And that's our role in this.

OK.

An excellent partner, I might add.

Thank you.

Fred, thank you for being here.

Linnea, Alan, and Allison, and Eric, Julie, and Ben.

It's been darn close to seven hours of questioning and public conversation today.

Tomorrow night at 5.30 we're going to have a public hearing and we invite the public, of course, to be here.

We're going to get started right on time, 5.30, and we will go as long as we have people interested in talking to us.

So, thank you all very much.

We've got three people signed up for public comment now.

Allison, thank you for being here.

Then Alex and Marguerite.

I'll try this one.

Is the little light on?

Jodi's looking.

Try it again.

All right, Council Member Bagshaw, thank you very much for the record.

Allison Isinger with the Seattle-King County Coalition on Homelessness.

I want to thank all of you.

I sincerely mean when I say that it is really a testament to your collective and individual commitment as public servants that you, like me, were here for all seven hours.

And it is important.

But what I want to draw your attention to is the fact that actually all seven hours of conversation today, whether it was about $250,000 or millions of dollars, will not be about investments that bear fruit if you do not take the step of adding funds for more new homeless housing in this biennial budget.

Mayor Durkan's budget proposal has a huge gap in it, and I, on behalf of the Coalition on Homelessness, am going to be bringing to you a proposal to fill that gap with the only thing that will make a difference in terms of successful outcomes of all these tens of millions of dollars of investment, and that is housing.

Everyone here, I think, has the level of sophistication and experience to know we need more permanent supportive housing, we need capital operating and services, and we need more rent subsidies for people who do not need that level of intensity of services.

It's quite simple, and quite simply, I will be bringing you a proposal for a significant add into the budget.

This is a year in which we cannot wait.

And I hope that you will find the same level of attention and commitment to consider the full $5.9 billion budget with that in mind.

Thank you.

Thank you, Alison.

Alex and then Marguerite.

Thank you.

My name is Alex Zimmerman.

From Tacoma to Everett, I speak approximately 2,000 times in concert chamber.

I like you guys.

You my favorite clown.

You're very good.

You're talking and talking and masturbate and masturbate, talking and talking and masturbate and masturbate, like lunatic, like pure cretina.

Everything very simple.

12,000 homeless cost us approximately $400 million.

We spend this money now, but you freaking idiot, a cretina, you don't understand.

So find this $400 million.

Fix this problem.

But you cannot understand this because you natural born degenerate idiot and nobody from you have experience with business.

It's a problem.

It's very simple.

We spend now and nothing change.

12,200 dying every year.

So fine.

$400 million.

Same money.

What is we spend now for nothing.

But you cannot do this because you are a cretina.

This is exactly who you are.

This is exactly what you've been doing for the last many years, and will be doing for another year.

You can fool this 700,000 idiots for talking for seven hours for nothing, you know what I mean, but you cannot fool me, Alex Zimmerman, a business consultant who went to class action, biggest class action in American history.

This is exactly what has happened now.

So right now, I speak to everybody who listen to me, you freaking 700,000 emerald degenerate idiot who live in this city.

When we don't clean this dirty chamber from this lunatic, from this crook, from this brown Nazi rats, nothing will be changed.

It is very simple, very simple.

Clean this chamber, bring real people like Alex Zimmerman, so we can clean this dirty city.

Well, there's one taller than me, but I'll take the short length.

And I have this, it says report unusual behavior.

And I feel like it's unusual behavior to have people sitting, I think you said seven hours?

And I was thinking like, You know, Queen of Sheba, did she do stuff like that?

Maybe, I don't think Queen Elizabeth did stuff like that because I think her level of intelligence is far more higher than what I'm seeing in this Chamber of Horrors.

You know, Halloween is this month.

They probably, the witches and ghosts and goblins is all up in here.

Woo!

I mean, this is sadistic.

Hmm?

I mean, I might have to put in a health report because Ms. Bagshaw had me confined.

Well, you say, oh, you could have got up and left.

You didn't have to stay here.

But it's our right to address government.

It's our right to have our two minutes, and it's our right to have it at the forefront, not some Johnny-come-lately waiting all up in here, like we gotta just wait on you.

Huh?

What are you thinking about?

This is the 21st century, huh?

And I don't appreciate it, and I'm gonna keep on saying it.

And they said, welcome to Seattle.

Yeah, welcome, huh?

Tent city, homelessness, garbage, delusional folk, folk that need help, not getting help, talking about housing, folk get up in there and the people get really corrupt and racist towards people that are less fortunate.

And all you perpetrators up, that line yourself up, is involved in it.

Can you imagine that?

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Jody.

Allison, thank you for a good meeting today, well-coordinated.

This meeting is adjourned.