Housing and Human Services Committee 6/11/25

Good morning, everyone.

The time is 9.32, and the June 11th meeting of the Housing and Human Services Committee will now come to order.

I'm Kathy Moore, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Nelson?

Council Member Rink?

Present.

Council Member Saka?

Vice Chair Solomon?

Present.

Chair Moore.

Present.

Three present.

And for the record, council president and council member Saka are excused from committee today.

So thank you everyone for being here today for the June 11th meeting of the Housing and Human Services Committee.

Before I go over today's agenda, I was just informed this morning that unfortunately the online public comment sign up was erroneously closed until about 9 a.m.

this morning.

If you are listening now, it is not too late to sign up and you can follow the link posted to the agenda to sign up to give public comment today.

So hopefully that's not going to be a problem.

Okay, so on today's agenda we first have an informational presentation from the Human Services Department and the Seattle King County Public Health.

on an update on their roles in public health, their 2025 contract development process, and HSD's 2025 investments.

Our second item on the agenda is Council Bill 121000, a bill I'm bringing forward prohibiting algorithmic rent affixing, which is an anti-competitive tool used by large-scale landlords that has an adverse effect on affordability.

The bill is listed for possible vote on today's agenda.

If after today's discussion committee members feel comfortable voting, I would like to vote this out of committee.

I do have some sense of urgency around the issue.

I have also been told that we will have some special guests joining us today.

Principal Gerson Foyston and students from South Shore Middle School in Columbia City.

will be joining us at some point today to watch Democracy in Action.

And so I will be sure to welcome them when they join us in chambers.

So if there are no questions about today's agenda, we will move into public comment.

Seeing no questions.

We'll now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comment should relate to items on today's agenda or be within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Currently we have four in-person speakers and eight remote.

Okay, thank you.

So each speaker will have two minutes.

We will start with in-person speakers.

Yeah, sorry.

Clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

Speakers will alternate between sets of in-person and remote speakers until the public comment period has ended.

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

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

I think I'll just make a change to that.

We'll just proceed with our in-person speakers first, and then we'll go to our online speakers, and that will give people additional time to register should they desire to do so.

So the public comment period is now open.

As I said, each speaker will have two minutes.

We'll begin with the first speaker on the list.

Just one moment while I get the timer set up.

Okay.

The first public commenter is Holly Willis, followed by Andrea Suarez.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Hallie Willis.

I'm the policy manager at the Coalition on Homelessness, and I'm a renter in Maple Leaf in District 5. I want to thank council members Moore and Strauss for proposing legislation to ban programs like RealPage that allow landlords to collude with each other and illegally fix rental prices.

I urge this committee to pass that legislation.

It's a step in the right direction to address renters' exorbitant housing costs.

With massive federal cuts on the horizon, one of the most important things this council can do now is to make sure people who are housed stay housed.

This legislation is a piece of that, and so is maintaining our strong eviction protections for tenants and investing in tenant services and targeted rental assistance in the budget.

Thank you.

Up next, we have Andrea Suarez followed by Kate Rubin.

Hi, my name is Andrea Suarez, the founder and executive director of We Heart Seattle.

I'm here to essentially kind of protest the continuous rejection of my work.

I've applied for grants in the city.

I've continuously being told that I'm not passing the score test.

In particular, you're gonna hear a presentation from the group that denied me grant money to do my drug user intervention work, which includes brokering services for detox and recovery housing that we pay for.

We've been sending people throughout the state to treatment.

Intervention is harm reduction.

Intervention does save lives.

And we do carry Narcan as well, but we don't carry glass pipes and fentanyl foil.

The people that got the grant money are People's Harm Reduction Alliance, the Hepatitis Education Department, and Evergreen Treatment Service, who just raised a half a million dollars at their gala last Saturday.

Our little half million dollar organization would just like to play a role in the community as we have for five years.

I just want a little piece of the pie so that we can do drug user intervention.

Handing out fentanyl foil.

The People's Harm Reduction Alliance is handing out fentanyl foil and glass pipes, cookers and tourniquets beneath a church on Roosevelt.

Steps from the Ave, steps from our youth.

Why is fentanyl foil harm reduction?

Why are glass pipes harm reduction?

You can get the works there.

They call it a party kit.

They will strap the glass pipes, and Mr. Brad Feingood will put it on his Facebook page and his LinkedIn profile Valentines with crack pipes glued to them and say, don't use alone today, find a loved one.

This is crazy that we're normalizing drug culture today.

The city council has a profound decision to make to deny funding to people who are handing out fentanyl, foil, and glass pipes in squalid churches.

Stop the drug-friendly culture.

This is your chance to say no and both.

Give a piece of the pie to WeHeart.

We're sending people to Lakeside Milam and into treatment centers as a form of transformation and as a form of harm reduction to actually save their lives.

Please consider defunding People's Harm Reduction Alliance, Hepatitis Education Department, and this other thing.

Thank you very much.

Up next is Kate Rubin followed by Katie Wilson.

Hello, my name is Kate Rubin.

I'm the co-executive director of Be Seattle, an organization that supports and educates renters.

And I'm a renter myself living in Beacon Hill.

I'm here today to present a letter signed by more than 25 organizations in the past 48 hours demonstrating strong support for the legislation proposed by council members Moore and Strauss to prohibit algorithm pricing.

The organizations include 350 Seattle B Seattle, Catholic Community Services King County, Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence, Gawk Green, How's Our Neighbors, FMS Global Strategies LLC, King County Bar Association's Housing Justice Project, Lake City Task Force on Homelessness, Lived Experience Coalition, Nicholsville, North Helpline, Queer Power Alliance, Seattle Democratic Socialists of America, Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness, SHARE, Share the Cities, Solid Ground, Tech for Housing, Tenant Organizers and Advocates, Tenants Union of Washington State, Transit Riders Union, Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, Wheel and Youth Care.

The housing crisis has multiple causes, but algorithmic rent price setting is a significant factor.

According to one estimate by Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project, up to a quarter of rental inflation between 20 and 2024 is potentially due to this alleged conspiracy.

In Seattle, revenue management software may be used to set prices for between half and three quarters of multifamily housing.

Several cities around the country have already taken action to ban this legislation.

We are so excited that Seattle may be one of them.

So we urge the council to act without delay.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Up next is Katie Wilson, and then we'll move into remote speakers.

Hello, council members.

Katie Wilson here, speaking on behalf of the Transit Riders Union.

I'm also speaking in strong support of Council Bill 121000 to prohibit algorithmic rent setting using services like RealPage.

This practice has become incredibly widespread among large corporate landlords in Seattle and cities around the country, and it amounts to indirectly colluding to fixed prices through an intermediary.

While it's hard to measure the impact precisely, it is likely that this has contributed significantly to the rapidly rising rents that we've seen coming out of the pandemic.

Landlords and property managers following the instructions that they get from RealPage and similar services end up raising rents more than they otherwise would, forcing tenants out when they can't afford the increase.

These services also instruct their clients not to worry if some units remain vacant for longer, and this contributes to our housing shortage.

Although this is only one piece of addressing the housing crisis, it is an important one.

So thank you to council members Moore and Strauss for working on this issue and I hope that the whole council will support passing this legislation.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Moving to online.

We're now moving to online speakers.

The first speaker is Alberto Alvarez.

Please press star six when you hear the prompt of you have been unmuted.

Thank you.

Landlords are guilty of illegal business collusion lobbies from real estate and rental management groups writing checks to council members to hurry to curry favor and votes landlord corruption is entrenched and cast a shadow on city government our tax base our labor our local business activity is drained by millionaire property owners who know only profit and will nickel and dime everyone till they end up in crisis or out on the street.

One step towards helping families and working people is to ensure that using AI and sharing info is explicitly illegal for landlords to do.

Make the punishment severe and direct.

It's time to make them pay for everything they have been doing for decades.

Landlords are the enemy to stability and prosperity for all working people.

Thank you and have a good day.

Thank you, next speaker.

Up next is Carl Shoret followed by Ellen Francis.

Carl, please press star six when you hear you're allowed to speak.

Carl, please press star six.

There we go.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Carl Charette, and I'm a housing developer with Avalon Bay Communities, and I'm testifying on behalf of NAOP Washington State, a commercial real estate industry association that represents many of the multifamily real estate developers in Seattle.

My testimony is in relation to the algorithmic rent fixing legislation.

While we understand the concern with Realtage and the issues that Councilmember Moore's legislation would address, we believe the legislation, as written, prevents property managers from using current or future technology that aggregates public data to manage housing availability and pricing, something that is considered a best practice in our industry.

Removing this ability would be harmful to basic property management operations, as providing timely, consistent, and unbiased information to prospective residents, helps them make informed rental decisions, which is good for all parties involved.

Given that this legislation was just introduced Monday, we would respectfully ask that a vote not be taken today and instead wait until the next committee meeting to vote so that we have time to work with committee members to talk through these small but very impactful, friendly changes.

We recommend to the current legislation to bring it more in alignment with pure cities.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Up next, we have Alan Francis followed by Carter Nelson.

Alan, please press star six.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Alan Francis.

I'm a renter at Seattle's District 4 testifying in support of prohibiting algorithmic price fixing.

Thank you to council members Moore and Strauss for proposing this crucial ordinance.

Seattle is in a rent crisis.

Families across our cities are being pushed to the financial brink, with many spending over half their income just to stay in their homes.

This isn't the result of a normal market.

It's being driven by predatory software from companies like RealPage.

The software allows corporate landlords to conspire instead of compete.

They share data to artificially inflate prices across the board, creating what is essentially a digital cartel.

This practice is anti-competitive, it drives displacement, and it leaves apartments sitting empty while our neighbors struggle.

This isn't just about numbers.

It's about the stability of our communities by banning algorithmic price fixing.

You can take a stand against corporate collusion and provide immediate, meaningful protection for thousands of Seattle renters.

Cities like San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia have already taken this step.

It is time for SCIABA to leave on tenant protection.

Please pass this ordinance swiftly.

Thank you for your time.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Up next is Carter Nelson, followed by Sheila Boone.

Carter, please press star six.

I'm sorry, Carl.

No.

Hi there, counsel.

My name is Carl Nelson.

I'm a District 4 resident, small business owner, and 16-year renter in Seattle.

I'm also calling in to voice my strong support for Bill 121000, prohibiting algorithmic rent fixing.

Basically, I think that in the absence of a robust social housing system, which I guess we're working on, and when we are completely reliant on market-based solutions for the crisis-facing renters, We need to make sure that the market is in fact fair and well balanced, which at the current moment it is not.

I like to think of myself as a fair person and I know I've been critical of Council Member Moore's actions concerning various things in the past, but credit where credit is due, I very much appreciate this bill and I would like to thank Council Member Moore and Council Member Strauss for bringing it in front of the council.

Renting is brutal in Seattle and anything you can do to ease the burden of 55% of the population here will be appreciated.

And I think this is a good step.

Thank you so much for your efforts.

I yield the rest of my time.

Thank you.

And up next is Carter Nelson, who should have been next.

My apologies, Carter.

Please press star six.

Nope.

Good morning.

Sorry about that.

Can you press star six again?

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Moore and members of the committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment today.

I'm Carter Nelson with the Washington Multifamily Housing Association representing nearly 91,000 rental homes here in Seattle.

We respectfully urge the Council to delay a vote on Council Bill 121000. Our members manage thousands of rental units in the Seattle market, requiring daily support and information to maintain their rentals across the city.

Like other businesses that operate in high cost and complicated markets, digital tools have grown in popularity to help manage these operations spread across many locations.

We recognize this proposal as a response to concerns about the use of these tools and the impact they may have on housing access in Seattle.

But this proposal came forward quickly with no time for stakeholders to weigh in or help shape legislation that is both effective and legally sound.

And it doesn't address the key to affordability, removing barriers to build more housing.

Earlier this year, Washington State Legislature considered a similar rent pricing proposal and chose not to act.

Lawmakers recognize that concerns would be addressed in the ongoing litigation from both the U.S.

Department of Justice and the Washington Attorney General.

The city should exercise the same caution.

Seattle already has some of the strongest tenant protections in the country.

New statewide rules add even more.

But when new rules are adopted quickly or without clear guidance, it becomes harder for the people who provide housing to navigate the system, especially when rules differ from neighboring cities.

That has consequences, not just for operators, but for the city's ability to attract and sustain the housing we desperately need.

We urge the council to hit pause on this proposal.

We welcome the opportunity to work with staff and stakeholders on this bill if it does move forward, not to undermine the intent, but to ensure new rules are clear, workable, and don't have unintended consequences.

Thank you for your time and for considering a short delay to give this issue the full attention it deserves.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Up next is Sheena Boone followed by David Haynes.

Sheena, go ahead and press star six.

Good morning, committee members.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.

My name is Sheena Boone.

I am the regional property manager for the Pacific Northwest with GL Capital Partners.

And I would like to take the opportunity to share my perspective and opposition on the role of pricing software in housing.

A common misconception is that algorithmic pricing software drives up rental prices.

In reality, it ensures competitiveness by adjusting prices based on supply and demand, allowing for fair pricing that reflects market conditions.

This approach prevents sudden price hikes that can displace residents while keeping rents reasonable.

For property owners, this software minimizes vacancies and stabilizes income by setting appropriate rental rates.

It also reduces turnover costs and satisfied tenants are more likely to renew their leases.

Moreover, the adaptability of pricing software allows for continuous market monitoring, enabling timely adjustments without sacrificing affordability.

Importantly, there is no need for city council intervention as this issue is already under investigation at the federal level.

It is crucial to understand that affordable housing solutions do not stem from imposing constraints on conventional housing.

Instead, we must focus on building additional affordable units to meet the growing demand in our communities.

I encourage everyone to engage with the industry to foster empathy and understanding toward landlords.

We all share the same goal in creating strong, thriving communities.

I firmly believe that pricing software is a vital tool for the sustainability of housing.

By leveraging technology, we can develop solutions that benefit both the renters and the owners.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

We have one final remote speaker and one more in-person speaker.

The next speaker is David Haynes.

David, go ahead and press star six.

Hi, thank you, David Haynes.

We still need ethics laws requiring city hall acknowledged before each council meeting if they have a conflict of interest.

Spare us the price fixing legislation when your conflicts of interest and self-feelings as landlords are backstabbing the renters and putting restrictions on the comprehensive plan and disincentivizing developers and your racist One Seattle plan that undermines workers and younger generations denied a better choice at home.

That said, King County Public Health has failed King County considerably and some of these experts are implementing bad policies working the pay plan.

Is this what HSD investments come up with when central staff switches jobs and continues bad policies after they go on a working vacation back East, the copycat bottom of the barrel, bad policies that run interference for junkie, thieving, self-destructive repeat offenders connected to the underworld that are never questioned before they get an exemption from jail on the lead list.

I have to bring something up council and I hope you pay real close attention because you have an expert called Sarah Zeigenhorn, May, an overdose prevention and response program manager at Public Health.

Please understand, she got her start handing out needles in Iowa, started a business doing it.

And then somehow she worked the pay plan and the resume and got a job as an expert in Seattle.

And this is part of the problem.

We have the wrong people enabling the wrong interpretation of solving a problem because they're working the pay plan off of the addiction as opposed to solving it and moving forward.

And I think you all need to have an authorized enchantment.

where you have to trust, pass, question, and then provide a safe place for all the addicts to break their addiction, like an authorized encampment with the service providers on site, not handing out.

Thank you.

That was our last remote speaker, and we have one final in-person speaker, Howard Gale.

Hi, Howard Gale, D7.

So there was a caller before who claimed that the price fixing software actually helps improve lower vacancy rates.

In fact, with the ProPublica investigation found, is that it actually increases vacancy rates to actually create an artificial shortage and jack up the prices.

So that last, the two callers ago was completely incorrect and stated the exact opposite.

That is the problem with the price fixing software is it actually creates an artificial, it creates vacancies that are higher than would normally happen if it was simply market forces.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Chair, that concludes our speakers from the general public.

All right, thank you.

So there are no additional registered speakers and we'll now proceed to our items of business.

Members of the public are encouraged to either submit written public comment on the signup cards available on the podium or email the council at council at seattle.gov.

We'll now move on to the first item on our agenda.

However, before we do that, I just wanted to note Council Member Strauss did ask yesterday to be co-sponsor for the rent bill, which I obviously said yes, the more the better.

But I believe that Council Member Rink was also going to request, did you want to just do that now?

Certainly.

I request to be a co-sponsor on council bill.

Oh, gosh, I don't have it handy.

Pardon me. 12100. 21000. Yeah.

Okay.

So everybody who's here knows, and absolutely, the more the better.

So council member Rink will also be added as a co-sponsor.

Okay, thank you.

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

Agenda item one, 2025 update, substance use disorder investments for briefing and discussion.

All right, so thank you.

Today we have presenters with us from the Human Services Department and presenters from Seattle King County Public Health to share with us an update on their roles in public health, the 2025 contract development process, and HSD's 2025 investments for addressing substance use disorder.

I will now turn it over to our presenters to introduce themselves and start your presentation.

Good morning.

Excuse me.

Good morning, Chair Moore and committee members.

I'm Ann Gorman, a senior policy advisor with the Human Services Department.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Sarah Ziegenhorn.

I'm a program manager with overdose prevention and response at Public Health Seattle-King County.

Good morning.

My name is David Sapienza.

I'm an addiction medicine physician with Public Health Seattle-King County.

All right.

Good morning.

Good morning.

As you described, Chair Moore, we are here today to provide an update on HSD's public health investments, including efforts to address substance use disorder and overdose in Seattle.

And as you'll hear, these efforts are a very high priority for Mayor Harrell.

We have a full agenda today, which includes an overview of the discrete roles our two agencies play with respect to public health.

Then we're going to talk about the process that HSD followed to develop our 2025 contract with Public Health Seattle and King County.

We'll share descriptions and anticipated impacts of expanded and new 2025 investments.

And we'll share what to expect next as these investments are implemented.

After I cover the contract development process and HSD investments, you'll hear from my co-panelists.

They'll discuss the programs and services that are currently coming online in Seattle.

First, we'll give a brief overview of each agency and how we work together to serve the residents of Seattle.

And just as a note, going forward, I am going to refer to their agency by its less clunky title.

I'm just going to say public health for the sake of brevity.

The Human Services Department's mission is to connect people with resources and solutions during times of need so we can all live, learn, work, and take part in strong, healthy communities.

And promoting public health is one of the six impact areas that HSD supports and the one that we'll be focusing on today.

Just as a note, in Washington state, County-level local health jurisdictions have primary responsibility for their residents' health and safety, and public health is one of those local health jurisdictions.

Seattle as a city has historically provided funding to enhance these core services for the incremental benefit of Seattle residents.

And the context for today's presentation is the 2025 reallocation of that enhanced services funding, which has persisted for many years.

And the goal of this reallocation was to put the city's focus more squarely on the immediate needs that we are seeing on the streets.

Sarah.

Public Health Seattle King County's mission is to promote and improve the health and well-being of people in King County by leading with racial equity and changing systems and structures that impact health.

I'm sorry, could you just speak a little bit closer into the microphone?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Just some background here.

Last August, HSD was in this committee, co-presenting with county partners, including public health, on the topic of regional response to behavioral health challenges and substance use disorder.

And although today's presentation is thematically consistent, its focus is more narrow.

We are here today to talk about HSD's 2025 contract with public health, with this specific agency.

So if more far-ranging questions come up, we're happy to note them for response, but we may not be able to address them here in the room because this presentation follows a specific brief.

Please do feel free to ask questions at any time, and we'll do the best we can.

One topic of that August presentation was HSD's planning process for the 2025 contract, which was going to look and which did look somewhat different than it had in previous years.

And as this slide notes, and I will emphasize, Mayor Harrell directed HSD to prioritize the opioid and behavioral health crisis and allocating funding in 2025. HSD did that, and we drew on public health's expertise to scope and develop new budgets and new programming that aligned with the mayor's directive.

And today we're here to share details about that new programming.

We'll be sharing a lot of detailed information later in the presentation, but we want to foreground some key takeaways.

Overall, the new investments that we're going to talk about represent an integrated system of services for people at risk for overdose.

Sarah will talk more about that.

This is, as council members are probably aware, a period of great turmoil for public health funding both at the federal and state levels.

But these programs will, at minimum, ensure that critical overdose prevention and treatment programs can be sustained.

The new investments will also guarantee that more than 5,000 Seattle residents will be served with overdose prevention and medicine for opioid use disorder annually with more than 1,000 new patients engaged in treatment.

Public health will continuously analyze program data from these new investments, and HSD will be engaged in that work to ensure that city dollars are allocated for maximum impact.

Again, you're going to be hearing a lot of technical information later.

This is what we really want you to remember in the non-technical sense.

In responding to Mayor Harrell's directive with respect to the 2025 public health contact, we adhered to Seattle's public health theory of change.

And that theory holds that if we engage in strategies and activities in four focus areas, two things will occur.

First, that chronic and acute health care needs are met.

And second, that overdose and related deaths are reduced.

And the focus areas for achieving those changes are on the slide here.

They are access to care, harm reduction and engagement, substance use disorder treatment, and trusted relationships and social connectedness.

And just to emphasize, everything that you'll hear about today seeks to meet chronic and acute health care needs and reduce overdose and related deaths here in Seattle.

In the later part of this presentation, my colleagues will be using some key terminology, which we've included on this slide.

And I think that committee members also have as a handout.

Specifically, you'll hear several references to medication for opioid use disorder, or MUOD.

Examples of these medications are two forms of buprenorphine and methadone.

And of course, SUD, which we'll be talking a lot about, means substance use disorder.

With all that context in mind, now we're going to move into where the new SUD access, treatment, and care investments are reflected in HSD's contract with public health.

After that, I will turn things over to my colleagues to talk about the work in detail.

HSD's 2025 public health contract follows through on Mayor Harrell's investment priorities, and it increases funding for SUD access and treatment by over 200%.

It also maintains the funding for homelessness programs, and together, these two areas now represent almost half of the total contract amount.

Funding was reallocated from some program areas, and other 2024 funding was moved from one HSD work unit to another, and that's what you see here with the lower contract total from 2024 to 2025. We're just trying to give you a high-level overview here and emphasize where the dollars are going and where the changes are.

Just to emphasize the text below the table, in 2024, SUD access and treatment comprised less than 10% of the total contract amount, and in 2025, that figure is 23.3%.

That's where you get the 221% increase.

And if I can just take a quick step outside the lines of this presentation, I want to emphasize that HSD has other investments that seek to address SUD treatment and overdose outside of the public health contract.

And if we take the new 2025 investments into account outside of that contract, we're actually looking at more than a 300 percent increase from 2024 to 2025, again, in line with the mayor's priorities and his directive to HSD.

Back to the public health contract, this table shows a list of all the discrete program areas in HSD's public health contract.

We call those subprograms.

And this table is just intended to give an idea of the breadth of core public health services that the city invests in.

But what I really want to call your attention to is the four items at the bottom of this table here.

These are sub-programs that address SUD treatment and access.

And the programs highlighted in yellow here are programs that were active in 2024 for which HSD increased funding in 2025. And the programs in green are brand new funding, brand new programs for which funding is first available this year.

And I will now pass this presentation to my public health colleagues, who will talk about these investments and their anticipated impact.

Thanks, Anne.

Before we dive into talking about the programs in greater depth, I'd like to just touch briefly on how public health developed the priorities for inclusion in this contract.

On the public health side, we spent some time last fall convening our departmental leadership and our internal subject matter experts to consider the best programming to focus on with these new investments.

In doing so, we look to both priorities from the mayor's office and from council and we drew heavily on the city's public health theory of change.

We also looked to the academic and scientific research literature to identify promising solutions and evidence-based programs that reduce overdose, while we also looked to programs that draw from our public health surveillance data, our program evaluations, and show promising strategies for improving access to low barrier forms of substance use disorder treatment.

Maybe most importantly, we also selected programs that we think are most likely to engage those populations that are most significantly impacted by overdose.

Namely, those include people who are unhoused, people who reside at housing service sites, and Seattle's Black and Native or Indigenous communities.

So our programming has been developed with a specific focus on those communities and working to engage and serve them.

Overall, the programs that we selected are ones we think are likely to achieve the greatest impact You'll note in the contract that very little of the funding is allocated for administrative time, program management staff time, or evaluation staff time.

And the funding has been directed for just primarily programs and services.

Overall, the programs that we developed fall along a continuum of care or cascade of care for substance use disorder.

We know that there is no one single solution, nor are there any magic bullets to addressing the overdose crisis.

And so we've developed a suite of programs that fall along this spectrum or this cascade, and the goal being to allow people to enter into care and services at any point along this continuum.

A number of the programs included within this contract focus on providing outreach and engagement services.

These are programs and services that work to meet people where they're at in the community, provide them with life-saving resources and build supportive and therapeutic relationships that people can rely upon to improve their health and seek recovery.

We'll talk about these programs specifically in the next few slides.

We've also included a program in this year's contract called MLUD Care Navigation.

This is a program that works to provide high-touch case management support to people that have built on those relationships developed through outreach and engagement.

And these programs look to help people reduce barriers to accessing MLUD treatment and substance use disorder care.

One program that we'll not talk about directly today, but that's really embedded within our community-based overdose prevention programs is a program that's specifically focused on improving opportunities to connect with communities of color in Seattle and providing culturally meaningful outreach and engagement to connect people into care and treatment.

We've also included several programs in the contract that focus directly on the provision of treatment.

These are models of care that we think are likely to be highly effective because they move treatment outside of the clinic walls and into the community settings where people are able to access these services in the places where they live and spend their days.

We've also included one program that Dr. Sapienza will tell you more about, and this really expands the Downtown Pathways Clinic in significant ways.

This program will provide treatment services, of course, but it will also provide wraparound supportive services to help people remain in care.

We know that for people who enter into MOUD care in Seattle, that many do not remain in treatment or disengage from services within the first few months.

This program will really focus on providing a number of holistic and wraparound services to help people maintain those supportive and therapeutic relationships.

The last slide I'll show before we get into the meat and potatoes of the programs themselves is a list of the specific funding amounts that are allocated to these programs.

You'll notice that some of the names of these programs align with the contract sections in slide 10 that Ann presented, while others are sub-programs embedded within those sections.

As Ann mentioned, there are three programs in the new contract that have been preserved and were included in 2024. You'll see those on this slide in the dark blue font.

Those include funding for the buprenorphine pathways clinic, which was funded in 2024, but has been expanded significantly in 2025. There's also funding included for methadone access.

This is a historic program that has been sustained at the same level for 2025. And then, as Ann mentioned, we've expanded the third program, community-based overdose prevention programs.

And as I mentioned, added a sub-program to this that really focuses on providing services for BIPOC communities in Seattle.

The last three programs focus on provision of treatment and engaging folks into care.

And we'll talk about those more briefly.

The first program that I'm gonna describe in more detail is the program I mentioned that really emphasizes focusing on outreach and engagement.

This is one of the programs that is being implemented not directly by public health as a department, but by our community partners and the organizations that we work with.

These are organizations who have reach into Seattle's neighborhoods and cultural communities that is significant and extends beyond public health's current reach and scope.

In January, we released an RFP to the community and we received applications from seven total applicants.

Five programs were eligible for funding and had submitted the necessary required documents to receive funding, so we were pleased to award funds to all five, either in full or in part.

These specific programs will expand their outreach footprint across Seattle, focusing on adding outreach services in North Seattle and South Seattle.

In particular, one program will add doula services for pregnant people with substance use disorder, helping those folks to engage in prenatal care.

Another program that we're particularly excited about will focus on providing outreach in the Belltown neighborhood with a goal of improving neighborhood safety and responding to and decreasing overdoses in the neighborhood.

As I mentioned, another program will be implemented by the Urban League and focuses on providing overdose prevention services and care navigation for Seattle's Black and African American communities.

Finally, one program will also focus on providing treatment.

This program will use an innovative model to provide access to long-acting injectable forms of buprenorphine and deliver the treatment to people in housing service settings.

Overall, we know that as a result of these programs, we'll distribute a minimum of 40,000 doses of naloxone, serve a minimum of 5,000 clients, and provide at least 5,000 referrals to MOUD.

Based on the success of the previous programming included in the 2024 contract, we believe these are very conservative estimates of the impact these programs will have on the community.

The second program that I mentioned, thinking back to that care cascade, focuses on linking people into treatment.

This is a care navigation program that will also be implemented by our community partner organizations outside of the public health department.

For 2025, we'll fund two full-time positions to be embedded within both UW's buprenorphine hotline program or the TeleBup program, and within the Orca Center.

These programs will be case management positions that will provide very high touch services to people who are entering into treatment, seeking care, and will help them reduce barriers so that they're able to remain in treatment and services after that initial encounter.

Through this program, we anticipate making at least 5,000 referrals to treatment or having 5,000 patient visits for care.

The last program I'll highlight before I turn things over to Dr. Sapienza is a program that will be implemented by Evergreen Treatment Services.

This is a program that we're particularly excited about as well, and we know that Evergreen has expanded their mobile methadone services over the last few years.

While the demand for methadone in our community has been increasing significantly, there are barriers to entering into care.

mainly because DEA regulations do not allow patients to approach a mobile van and begin treatment there.

With this program, ETS will be purchasing a separate vehicle called the Clinical Intake Van.

That vehicle will be able to accompany the other mobile medication units, and people will be able to have their first visit for methadone services at that van.

This will really reduce a lot of barriers that patients and clients face to entering into treatment and having to travel to a clinic far from their home.

Through this program, ETS anticipates that they'll provide 1,500 supportive services, they'll engage 500 clients in services, and 250 brand new patients will access treatment through this vehicle.

With that, I'll hand it over to Dr. Sapienza.

Thank you.

So I'm going to provide a brief overview of two of the programs that will be funded that I'll have a significant role in helping to implement.

The first is going to be the creation of a new high-intensity street outreach team dedicated to providing rapid same-day access to long-acting injectable buprenorphine in the field for people who have barriers to making it to clinic to receive care.

We know we've done a good job in our program in making same-day access to this medication available in clinic, but we know that there are people who we are missing who aren't able to make it in for initial treatment.

The team will consist of a nurse who will administer the injections and a community health worker.

They're gonna work in close partnership with our Pathways Clinic that operates out of Belltown They'll be co-located in that building, which means they will have addiction medicine specialist physicians overseeing all the care they provide.

And they'll be co-located with the downtown public health pharmacy that stocks all formulations of buprenorphine and can make it available, can dispense it same day on short notice.

for the team.

And they're going to work in close collaboration with our existing street medicine team that's pictured here.

And we anticipate to work with shelters and supportive housing sites as well if they have clients in their organizations that they think could benefit from getting treatment on site.

This is a new pilot program, so coming up with impact measures is a little difficult.

It's gonna be a pretty high intensity, time intensive work that we're not, what I would say is DEA regulations and federal regulations allow us to do this, but they do put up some barriers that make it so we can't operate as efficiently as we would like, but we are gonna work to treat as many folks as possible.

So the minimum impact measures are 75 new patients beginning buprenorphine in the field, at least 25 getting prescriptions for oral buprenorphine delivered to them.

The reason we included this is although the team is really going to be focused on getting people on long-acting injectable buprenorphine, there are times where clinically it's going to make sense to start the oral buprenorphine first, and we didn't want to miss that work that they'll be doing.

And that will administer at least 150 injections to patients in the field with the goal of helping as many of those people as we can transition into a clinic setting where they can come in regularly for their injections.

So unclear how many people we're going to have to keep going out to do them and how many people are going to make that transition.

That's what we're going to work on and figure out.

And then the second program is really expanding the range of services that are available at our Pathways clinic.

So Pathways has provided same day access, low barrier access to buprenorphine in the downtown public health building in Belltown since 2017. And we're able to provide that care very effectively.

What we've struggled with is a lot of our patients come to us with a lot of other needs and a lot of other requests that we're unable to meet.

And this funding will provide us with some additional staff and supplies and support so that we can meet those needs.

And really what that'll help us do is our target population is people living unhoused in Seattle.

And it's gonna help us for our patients who are currently engaged in care with us, allow us to provide additional medical and wraparound services for medical services like things like STI testing and treatment, vaccinations.

wound care, things that people are commonly asking us for.

And by providing those services on site, along with buprenorphine, we know that will help retain people in care, because they'll be able to get multiple things at the same visit.

And then the other population this is gonna help us reach is people who are not currently engaged in care for buprenorphine to be able to provide those basic medical services to anyone who's struggling with substance use in the area.

And that'll serve as an initial entry point to meet those basic medical needs and to create a safe and welcoming place that when someone decides they are interested in getting treatment for their opioid use disorder, they'll already have an established relationship with us and we'll be able to start it as soon as they are ready.

So initial minimum impact measures are at least 2,500 total patient encounters, at least 800 of those for individuals experiencing homelessness.

At least 80% of our patients who are returning for care will test positive for their buprenorphine providing objective measure that they are adhering to treatment.

And at least 200 new patients will be started on long-acting injectable buprenorphine with at least 50% remaining on the medication at the six-month follow-up visit.

And I think that is all I have.

And that is the end of our presentation.

I will close this out.

I would just like to express HSD's appreciation for the very deep subject matter expertise of our colleagues in public health.

Mayor Harrell came to HSD with a real sense of urgency around substance use disorder and overdoses and guidance for executing on it.

We responded, they responded with us, and what you heard about today really represents the fruit of that collaboration, and HSD could not have done this presentation on our own.

Thank you, thank you both for being here.

All right, thank you very much.

It was a very comprehensive overview.

I appreciate that.

Colleagues, are there any questions for our presenters?

Council member Solomon?

Not seeing any.

Council Member Rank.

Thank you, Chair.

You know I always have questions.

Appreciate it.

And thank you all for being here today and giving this presentation.

And before I go into my questions, I know we just received a very technical presentation talking about the services, but I just really want to ground us in to the matter that we're talking about our neighbors and our residents who are struggling with substance use disorder.

And I want to acknowledge also the many lives that have been lost to overdose in this community and the profound impact that that has had on so many in this community.

And I imagine that, and I hope this isn't the case, but I would imagine that every single person in chambers today has known someone who has struggled with some form of substance use disorder.

And that is just a reality.

And I want to really bring in the human element of this.

And I know according to the King County Overdose Death Dashboard in 2024, we lost 1,044 of our neighbors here in King County.

And while that's a decrease in overdose deaths from 2023, that's still more than 1,000 of our neighbors who are not here.

And so I just wanted to take a moment before I go into questions to just acknowledge the human impact of this and the absolute urgency to be addressing this.

And so with that, I wanted to take us back to the beginning of the presentation and talk a little bit just about some of the interactions with federal agencies and the evolving federal front and some of the loss of resources there.

Do we have an estimate on approximately how much federal funding this region receives, whether it be through HHS or CDC as it relates to addressing the opioid epidemic or how we serve folks experiencing substance use disorder?

We're currently considering the impact of federal funding cuts on our programs, and so public health has been studying that carefully.

I'd like to bring my colleague, Brad Feingood, up to respond to your question in more detail.

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember Inc., for the question.

We recognize and we realize that such a vast number of people in our community are really served by Medicaid.

So deeply concerned about the proposed Medicaid cuts and especially work requirements because we know that so many folks are out there struggling and we know that if folks get cut off Medicaid it is really a lifeline to services.

We also are tracking closely cuts to especially our federal partners at SAMHSA and CDC, as you said, and potential block grant cuts.

Um, if the block grant gets cut to the levels that, um, that has been discussed and proposed, then that could, uh, definitely impact services in so many different areas because the block grant covers so many different areas.

Um, our colleagues in DCHS at the county administer the block grant and are probably and a better place to talk to that.

We also get CDC funding locally.

There's an overdose to action grant that we facilitate that if that goes away, that's significant cuts around linkage to care, around drug checking services so we can identify what's in the drug supply, all those different factors.

Thank you.

Thank you for speaking to that impact.

So it sounds like there's some ongoing analysis to understand just also how many programs would be impacted and approximately what that dollar figure looks like as well?

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's such a moving target right now.

So as the federal budget gets solidified and a little bit of to be determined around consolidation, of different federal departments and how that has an impact on policy and programs and funding.

A lot of it is such a moving target, such a moving facet right now that we're trying to stay up to date with it, but it really moves quickly.

Appreciate that.

And building on, so pivoting a little bit, apologies, just in terms of the contracting process.

So I appreciated getting some content here on how, kind of what shaped some of the contract development process.

And can you speak a little bit just to like the RFP process application and how much ever you can share about the criteria you evaluated, any RFPs?

Yeah, so the RFP application was open for about a month, and so we held an informational webinar to introduce the funding opportunity to the programs that might be interested, and then we did an extensive walkthrough of our criteria and the application process and what materials we were looking for.

We convened a review panel of 12 members that included subject matter experts from within public health, also external experts from the University of Washington, from the Washington Recovery Alliance and from the city.

So we had a good group of people with both public health practice knowledge and expertise, as well as nurses, social workers, and other healthcare professionals.

The criteria that the committee used to evaluate and score the proposals included criteria related to the budget.

So organizations were required to propose specific services or they were required to describe exactly how they plan to use the funds.

We also looked for organizations that could tell us in detail about the clients that they already served.

So looking for organizations that could say, this is the number of clients we serve annually, these are the neighborhoods where we provide services, and these are the characteristics of our clients.

So we wanted to make sure that the organizations had capacity to engage people that are most disproportionately impacted by overdose.

And then we also ask programs to provide pretty extensive details about the range of services they plan to offer, and how those services would be implemented, what types of personnel would be involved, what information they were drawing from to inform their proposed services.

And ultimately, as I mentioned, we funded five programs.

And the review panel met then together ultimately to aggregate their scores.

And so we took scores from each reviewer and awarded funding to the top five highest scores.

Thank you.

And for the five programs that have been funded, what kind of data reporting is required of them?

Good question.

Yes, so they will report data to the county quarterly.

The impact data that I presented in the slides specifically for that community-based overdose prevention program This one, yeah.

So those impact numbers, they will each report data on those things.

One of the programs in particular will be based at Catholic Community Services and they'll be providing treatment directly to individuals in their service settings.

And so they will also report on treatment provided directly rather than just simply referrals, but each will contribute these specific metrics.

So both the number of naloxone doses they distribute, the number of people that they serve, number of referrals, and then they'll also do some quarterly narrative reporting to us about any challenges they've encountered more details on the services they've provided and if available, disaggregated data on the characteristics of the clients or patients they've served.

And so building on that, there's one thing here that I was really excited to see about is the expansion of strategies for mobile units.

And I think some people here know me from my work in homelessness response.

And I know having been out in a number of encampments engaging with folks in active addiction and hearing their stories about their challenges, getting into recovery, one of the ideas that came up naturally in those discussions was the ability to have mobile options.

And so I was really pleased to see this change in terms of program model and investing more of a mobile option.

My question is, based on the data that we're asking folks to collect and how we're moving forward, how are we evaluating the effectiveness of these programs for folks being able to start this process of getting into recovery and remaining in recovery?

That's a good question.

Through this contract, we elected to prioritize primarily service delivery.

Investing in evaluation is very, very time and resource expensive.

Public health does have other grant funding, namely the CDC funding that Brad mentioned.

that supports much of our surveillance work and epidemiology programming.

And so through those programs, we have some companion surveillance work being done to measure the number of patients and the percent of patients receiving Medicaid in King County that have opioid use disorder diagnosis and that are accessing care.

So while that isn't directly measuring the impact of these specific programs, we're able to use those surveillance data sources to measure the overall impact of all of our work on the entire community.

Can I jump in real quick?

And a little bit less about the evaluation criteria, but as you said, Council Member, getting services out to people who are the most disenfranchised, who have the hardest time accessing services, as Dr. Sapienza was talking about, is a huge priority to us because we know those folks are disproportionately impacted by substance use and they're dying at a higher rate.

It has been a tough nut to crack, if you will, as far as how to get services out to those folks, purely especially with medications for opiate use disorder, which is the gold standard, based upon DEA regulations.

These medications that we're talking about are all controlled substances and highly regulated by the DEA.

So the program that Dr. Sapienza was talking about, about this mobile buprenorphine program, is really a first in the country attempt at trying to figure out how to get services to people out locally.

We are lucky enough, or we have, mobile care already out in the community.

And so to be able to use those arms of people already out in the community to connect with them, to help empower them, to bring that medication to people is something that we're really, really excited about.

And we're really happy to come back to the city council to report upon how your investments are working because it really is an innovative proof of concept.

The investments that the council has made around mobile methadone is another example of being able to be more mobile in the community.

It's a little bit less flexible because a methadone van has to go to the same place every single day, six days a week.

But we know that it's a lot easier to do that than it is to start a fixed site new methadone clinic.

And so we're really excited to get to come back to you to report upon those successes.

And when does the mobile bubaccess team first hit the streets?

Good question.

So we are hiring now.

We're actually just finishing our nursing interviews tomorrow.

And so as soon as we can onboard that nurse, basically.

So whatever time frame.

We have the other staff.

We have the medication.

We have the pharmacy.

We have the experience.

We just need that individual who can go out and administer it.

And that's what, as quickly as the county can hire that person.

And just final two questions.

Thank you, Chair, for allowing me to ask all of these questions.

I think you alluded to this, Director Feingood, but, you know, there's so many different components that support someone in their recovery.

it's challenging to know what's going to stick and what's going to work, and so having a myriad of options is important.

I'm wondering, anecdotally, from what you're hearing from providers that you're working with, what are some key components that are supporting people's success and recovery?

Anything anecdotal you can share.

Yeah, thank you.

Another obviously great question.

What we're hearing anecdotally is access to long-acting injectable buprenorphine is really working for people.

I'll give a lot of credit to Dr. Richard Waters at DESC, who's really piloted getting long-acting injectable out to people.

And if you think about it, the pharmacology really makes sense, right?

If somebody who's struggling with their fentanyl addiction has to make that choice every single day, do I take my medication or do I take fentanyl to deal with the urges and cravings?

it's a really hard choice for somebody to make every day.

But when we can get a shot into somebody so that they don't have to make that choice every day, that medication's in them for the full week or the full month, and it also has overdose protection in them, it gives folks really an opportunity to stabilize.

And so that is taking that anecdotal information, looking at our quantitative information about uptake in long-acting injectable medication is really where we're really seeing a lot of promise for people to really have a fighting chance.

Because as you said, there's so much going on until we recognize because of people's addiction that they have to get stabilized in order to get out of some of the constant run of it and give people a fighting chance.

And my last question on this, just looking at the final slide on the Pathways Health Hub, I'm seeing this data point here around 2,500 total patient encounters.

800 patient encounters for individuals experiencing homelessness.

We know that not everyone experiencing homelessness is struggling with substance use disorder, and there is an overlap, and that's clearly presented here.

I'm wondering about your coordination with strategies with KCRHA and our homelessness service providers.

Sure.

I mean, we already get referrals from homeless service providers.

So that is a regular part of our referral sources, working with different partners.

It's not uncommon for Seattle residents who are accessing those services to go around between different service providers.

So we often know the same folks from just that sense.

So there's that informal coordination.

I think the...

One of the biggest partnerships we're trying to build is actually with the mobile team, because we know a lot of those providers have contact with a lot of people who could benefit it, but don't have the clinical experience or the pharmacy on site, able to store a controlled substance.

And I know that they, in talking to them, they definitely have people who they want to get to us, but that are unable to get them to make that step.

And so we want to make that step to them rather than having to have them.

And from my experience in working with this, a lot of those folks will eventually start coming in to clinic once we make that relationship and that initial engagement.

The fear of that initial contact is huge for a lot of people.

So I don't expect that this team will have to continuously, for everyone, keep going to them.

I think there's gonna be a transition.

At least that is our hope, is to help people make that transition.

Thank you.

That concludes my questions, and I want to thank you all for those responses and remind everyone, Seattle's not alone in struggling with this.

This is a nationwide problem and one that I hope we can rally around real solutions.

I'm excited to see, again, a van coming out, mobile bup access team coming out and coming online.

I think that's really exciting.

And so certainly would welcome chair if there's an opportunity to bring back this team in a few months just to continue talking about this work.

I would certainly appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Just for the record, Council Member Saka has joined us online.

I don't know, Council Member Saka, if you had any questions.

No, thank you, Madam Chair.

Okay, thank you.

And I'm not seeing any other questions, so I just have a few quick questions.

Again, it looks like there's, I really appreciate the mayor's priorities here in terms of addressing the need to get people onto treatment, particularly to mood.

So one of the things I was looking at that you mentioned here on, I lost my slide, slide 15, the rapid access to bufinephrine for people in permanent supportive housing.

We have a fair amount of permanent supportive housing in District 5, and I'm just wondering how, on the ground, how does that work?

Do you have a team that goes out there?

Like how is that connection made?

Yeah, so that service will be provided both through this particular program, but then also through Dr. Sepienza's program as well.

For the program listed here on slide 15, this will be a service delivered by Catholic Community Services.

So they will just provide this program within their emergency shelter sites and their permanent supportive housing sites.

They'll be providing the service all across the city.

So that's something we're excited about is they'll be mobile and able to visit all of their housing sites.

Do you want to speak about that?

Sure, yeah.

So we're happy to help them, and they're likely going to be able to take care of their own folks.

I've already met with the nurse practitioner for some technical assistance as they're starting to roll that out.

As Brad mentioned, DESC has done a phenomenal job at getting that care to their own supportive housing sites, and we're going to be happy to help them.

But my guess is that they are able to meet their needs.

So it's really going to be other sites, Pioneer, Human Services, really any other site that is interested, we are going to do outreach to them once we are up and running to gauge interest.

And then once we partner We're gonna figure it out whether, my guess is the way it'll work is we will start, they will contact us when they have someone interested in starting medication and we will come out as soon as possible, hopefully that day to do that initial start and then have a regular day each month or a few times a month where we go to that site and bring the medication for everyone there who's on that medication.

So I think it'll be a mixture of scheduled visits to the sites and then as needed visits for those initial starts.

I think we will, over the first few months, gain a lot of experience and be able to report back a lot on exactly how it's working and what we've learned.

OK, good to know.

And then I was also looking at slide 10, and I just Curious if you can talk a little bit about, so you've got community access to mood and harm reduction services at $1,182,200.

But then you have the mobile team and then the community access to the mobile methadone services.

Are those included within the community access or just can you break that down a little bit more for me?

Yeah, this part is a little confusing.

So if we look at this slide, the community access to mobile methadone service, that's the programming that Evergreen Treatment Services will implement.

So that's their new vehicle and then some additional outreach services that they'll provide around that clinical intake van.

The mobile buprenorphine team, that funding is the dollars for the program that Dr. Sapienza was just describing that will do that outreach to provide people with treatment The Drug User Health Services program is, that's the funding for the Pathways Health Hub expansion.

And then you see that there's also a separate section up above for Downtown Pathways.

So that funding is combined to provide all of the services at that clinic.

The program that is the community access to MOUD and harm reduction services, that includes, That includes this program, and then it also includes this program, and then those costs include the program management, staff costs, and additional costs for supplies.

We have about $170,000 in the contract to purchase naloxone that will be distributed all across the city and provided to both the Pathways Clinic to all of the programs who are receiving contracts with public health for both this program, this program, and this program.

So we'll be able to use that supply funding for really widespread distribution of naloxone.

But together, all in all, that section that you referred to Apologies for having to click all the way through.

That line item community access to MOUD and harm reduction encompasses a number of different programs and sources of funding.

And Chair Moore, if you'd like some follow-up that does this crosswalk in written format, HSD would be happy to provide that for you.

This table really reflects an administrative structure which doesn't necessarily reflect what is being provided in the field and what it is doing.

If you have any questions about this, we would be happy to help clear them up working with our partners.

Thank you.

Please, no outbursts from the audience.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And so, I mean, one of the questions I think has been, so it looks like a lot of the focus, which I think is an appropriate focus, is on providing medication treatment and making sure that we're making that available across the board and making it easy.

for people to, easier anyway, for people to access.

I do have a question, though, about as part of that, is there an attempt to work with people to get them into, should they decide that they would like to move off of medication and attempt to be in full recovery?

Is there any working with people along those lines and getting them into more sort of inpatient, outpatient treatment programs?

Yeah, I mean, we work with people on that already.

We have a full-time social worker at Pathways who does one-on-one counseling, and then we regularly refer people to inpatient withdrawal management, inpatient treatment.

Like, that is a regular part of our care.

So we don't, you know, we're limited.

We have that social worker.

We do hope to have another counselor on site.

later on, but a lot of that is through referrals to community partners like Valley Cities or American Behavioral Health Services, any place that takes Medicaid because that's most of our patient population.

In responsive to that interest, I'd also like to highlight a current program that Mayor Harrell established with 2.55 million in funding that funds Detox services, withdrawal management, and intensive inpatient treatment at Valley Cities.

That program is ongoing, and HSD holds the budget for that contract as well.

That is not Seattle-King County public health funding, so we didn't talk about it today, but would be happy to follow up and provide some information about that program.

Okay, and was that the funding that Council President was able to get in last year's budget?

No, that is a different program.

Separately from that program, which was initiated by the Mayor's Office, Council President Nelson allocated $300,000 in the budget process for intensive detox and intensive inpatient treatment at Lakeside Myelom Recovery Centers in Kirkland.

HSD is coordinating that program as well.

There was a really lovely article in the CMS about it some weeks back.

So just, yes, people who are interested in going into treatment have a pathway to do that through several means, as you've heard.

Great, all right.

All right, thank you.

Are there any, I don't see any further questions.

Well, I wanted to say thank you very much for the presentation and for the work that you're doing.

There's a lot of information to digest here, and certainly it seems like a new direction, so I think whoever takes the mantle here, I think it's certainly worth bringing it back.

Oh, I'm sorry, did Council Member Solomon have a question?

Oh.

Okay, never mind.

Yes, just real quick.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I think you may have missed it.

Under the community health partnerships, that's a conglomeration or that's a wide bucket that includes a number of different partners.

Is that correct?

Yeah, that's correct.

That's a part of the contract.

that is facilitated through other parts of public health, but that is correct.

That is a contract that's facilitated with a number of wide community health partnerships, yes.

Okay, the number of wide community partners, and would this be like a competitive process, or have we already identified which partners we're going to go with, or is it open?

Yeah, it would be wonderful if we can come back to you, Council Member Salomon, with that information.

The folks who facilitate that part of our contract are not here on the panel today, so we'd love a chance to be able to get you the accurate information that you're looking for.

Council Member Salomon, please feel free to follow up with HSD.

We'll facilitate the questions with our partners and make sure you get the information you need.

All right.

Thank you very much.

No further questions.

Sorry about that, Council Member Zellman.

Thank you.

All right.

So as I was saying, I think certainly we should have you come back to give us an update on how these new initiatives are going.

Also always very interested in how this overlies with the crisis care levy as well.

So again, thank you for the presentation and the work here today.

It was a very good presentation.

Thank you.

Okay.

Well, before we move on to our next item, I would just like to do a shout-out to the students from South Shore Middle School.

Hello, everybody.

Hello.

Welcome to Seattle City Council.

Welcome to the...

Human Services Committee meeting.

We just had a presentation about public health and providing treatment for people who are struggling with opioid addiction.

Now we're going to be moving into talking about legislation to try to keep rent more affordable for everybody in the city.

So I'm so glad that you're here.

All right, let's move on then.

Clerk, could you please read the second agenda item into the record?

Agenda item two, an ordinance relating to prohibiting algorithmic rent fixing and adding a new chapter 7.34 to the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

All right, thank you very much.

So agenda item two is my legislation which has now been co-sponsored with Council Member Strauss and Rink to prohibit algorithmic rent price fixing in order to combat anti-competitive rent hikes and help prevent displacement.

We have with us at the table Tommaso Johnson from central staff here to walk us through the legislation and we also are Very honored and pleased to have the original sponsor of the state version of this legislation, Senator Solomon, who was able to join us on last minute notice.

So thank you very much for that.

So I did want to say before turning it over, I just wanted to walk us through the flow of today's discussion.

First I will procedurally move the bill to be before us, then as a sponsor I will provide my introductory remarks and then I will turn it over to Council Central staff to walk us through the legislation and then provide an opportunity to Senator Solomon for his remarks, basically the reasons that he brought this similar legislation to the state legislature and his thoughts on the need for legislation.

I will then open the floor for discussion and questions of the underlying bill.

So after discussion of the underlying bill, I will then procedurally move Amendment 1 to be before us for discussion and again have central staff walk us through that, check in with colleagues about your comfort with voting.

Today, if colleagues are comfortable voting on this, we will first vote on the amendment and then on the underlying bill.

Are there any questions about the procedural posture for, no, okay, not seeing anything from Council Member Solomon.

All right, so at this point then, I will now move committee I will now move the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 121000. Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the Council Bill.

As to opening remarks, this, as I have said a few times now, does prevent algorithmic rent fixing in order to combat anti-competitive rent hikes and prevent displacement, which is happening when people are really no longer able to afford the rent.

And also when we are having the market artificially inflated, creating vacancies, which also then make add to not only displacement, but the inability of people to actually find a place to live.

And we know that rent is very expensive.

And we also know that in the general approach to addressing homelessness, it is much better and long-term, both from a social perspective and also an economic perspective, to keep people housed rather than trying to rehouse them once they have lost housing.

I would say in the last few years, there's evidence that an increasing number of corporate landlords have utilized new software in order to set higher rents.

This is not just about bringing together publicly available information.

It is about, as we will learn from Tommaso and the Senate sponsor, Senator Solomon, also using non-publicly available private data to really create a floor for rent.

So it does, I think, effectively enable anti-competitive collusion and price setting, again artificially inflating the price of housing here in Seattle.

So this legislation would be one tool to attempting to address this particular practice.

And I would note that cities like Berkeley, San Diego, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Portland, and Jersey City have already passed similar prohibitions on these services.

And as I mentioned before, we are in the midst of a housing crisis.

So it's an affordability crisis as well as an availability crisis.

And certainly we need to do everything we can to try to prevent this from happening.

So with that said, I will then Turn this over.

Oh, let me just say a little bit additional.

Again, also, there was an article from Publicola, which I think sort of brought this idea to the attention of many in January 2024, entitled Senators Seek to Bar Landlords from Using Algorithms to Artificially Inflate Rents.

The article laid out their 2022 investigation into price-setting software and the findings from the subsequent US Department of Justice investigation, which does back a tenant's claims that the use of this software is a violation of antitrust law.

The idea for this bill is a copy that originated at the State Senate from Senator Solomon and was supported by the House, Senate, and State AG's office, but I understand it was paused for technical reasons, at which point my staff was contacted to request we introduce a local version of the bill, and so here we are today.

So with that said, I will now turn it over to Tommaso with Central Staff to walk us through the underlying bill.

Yeah, good morning, Chair, members of the committee, Tommaso Johnson, Council Central Staff.

I'm going to walk through a brief background on this issue and also summarize the bill as well.

As you mentioned, for a number of years, publicly available rental price information as well as less specific market survey data has been used by landlords to aid in the process of determining rental prices.

The thing that's different about the type of service or software that we're talking about here, the algorithmic rent-fixing software, is it's the combination of both public and non-public competitive information with analysis through an algorithmic tool to suggest prices, not just prices, occupancy levels, but also lease terms and conditions and the broad adoption of use of this type of software or service by primarily large landlords across many markets in the U.S., including Seattle.

As you mentioned, critics of these services argue that they enable anti-competitive collusion and price setting in the residential rental market.

A number of other jurisdictions have proposed or enacted legislation in response to this issue, including the ones that you mentioned.

In addition, the Washington State Attorney General is currently involved in state court litigation and had been a past state-level plaintiff in the federal Department of Justice suit against one of the providers of this software service.

The AG's office estimates that since 2017, I should say, 800,000 leases in the state have been priced using this type of software.

The Washington State Legislature, as you mentioned, introduced earlier this year a bill, Substitute Senate Bill 5469, which passed the State Senate and failed to advance through the State House prior to the end of session this past April.

Council Bill 121000 largely mirrors that state bill but adopts the provisions to make sense within Seattle Municipal Code.

and it accomplishes the goal of prohibition of algorithmic price setting tools in the residential rental market by defining, primarily defining prohibited conduct.

The bill uses the term coordination, and it defines coordination as the application of automated algorithmic analysis to public and or private data in a manner that generates suggested lease terms, pricing, and occupancy levels.

The bill prohibits landlords from utilizing such services and it also prohibits entities from offering such coordination services to two or more landlords within the city.

The enforcement mechanisms of this bill are twofold.

First is it enables the city attorney's office to enforce a civil penalty of up to $7,500 per violation and pursue reasonable costs and attorney's fees within those actions.

The bill also creates a new private right of action, so private individuals harmed by prohibited contact under this legislation could also sue here as well for damages up to $7,500 per violation.

The only other thing that I would mention is we don't have a firm estimate on the fiscal impact, the cost of implementing this bill.

It's largely because that will depend on the number of cases brought and whether or not the city attorney's office is able to enforce the legislation within their existing budget.

The city attorney's office has noted that the enforcement costs could be mitigated and the efficacy of the bill could be improved potentially by adding a provision that would allow private parties to recover reasonable costs and attorney's fees if they prevailed in the private right of action that this legislation would establish.

Thank you, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you.

I think what I'll do is turn it over to Senator Solomon, and then we can ask both of you questions at that point.

So thank you, Senator Solomon.

If you could just share with us your inspiration for the original state bill, the need that you see for a legislative solution, and your thoughts on perhaps the legislation here before us today.

Absolutely.

Thank you for having me and thank you for bringing this forward.

I haven't been to these council chambers in quite a while.

I was half expecting Shama Sawant and her revolutionaries to be here, but it's nice and calm.

So I wanted to talk about the vacancy rate issue that's created by some of this algorithmic price fixing, right?

When we're seeing vacancy rates go down, we should see go up, we should see price go down.

But one of the implications of this software is there's a indication to members who are using this software of how much to hold off on their apartment rentals, which likely results in lower vacancy rates and higher costs artificially.

So there is really a concern about antitrust type market collusion here.

I don't really see why we need to have that kind of practice.

I mean, the information age brings us a lot of opportunities, but also a lot of perils and pitfalls.

And so part of our job is to protect against that.

And that's what this legislation does.

This bill passed through both fiscal committees of the legislature, and so that's a big deal for a year like this.

The floor time, this is how I understand the sort of demise of the bill this year, the non-passage of it, floor time is precious and limited, and so you have to analyze what each bill is worth.

And because the Attorney General filed their lawsuit, right before we put this to a vote on the House floor, it was decided just to hold back.

That's not to say that there still isn't value in passing this, because A, the lawsuit's not finished, so let's get ahead of it.

B, we don't know the results of the lawsuit.

So I think you guys are in a different situation.

We only had four days to pass opposite House bills or something like that.

And my understanding is there are other pretty powerful actors looking to get into this.

So if we don't pass it, the situation could get worse, and then the political influence of those actors might make it harder to pass.

So this is a good time to do it, and I urge you to.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Any questions?

Okay, Councilmember Salka.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And thank you, Mr. Johnson.

Thank you, Senator Solomon, for your leadership at the state level and bringing this forward.

And thank you, Madam Chair, for bringing this forward locally here at the city level.

I had the pleasure of working for a summer in the US Department of Justice in the Antitrust Division.

and the criminal division in particular, and I happen to know that under the federal Sherman Act, Antitrust Act, colluding, or price fixing is already illegal.

It's a criminal penalty at the federal level.

There are plenty valid reasons to have overlapping forms of protection, including at the state and local level, such as the case here.

So I think this proposed ordinance strikes me as a common sense measure to help protect renters and avoid some of the the pitfalls of technology, if you will.

And my question, I guess, this is for Mr. Johnson.

You indicated that the state AG's assessment is roughly 800,000 instances of this occurring per year, if my understanding of what you said is correct.

Is there any indication or just preliminary assessment of how many of those might be tied specifically to the city of Seattle?

Yeah, thank you for the question, Councilmember Saka.

I should say the state AG estimates that since 2017, 800,000 leases total since between 2017 and when their suit was filed have been priced that way in the state of Washington.

I don't have the number in front of me for City of Seattle, though I think that there has been some reporting on the City of Seattle specific numbers, but I'm happy to try to find that and follow up with you.

Got it, thank you.

Yeah, just better understanding the scope and scale of the challenge as applied locally here would be helpful.

I could say on that, if I would, is I know that when the bill was substituted, Senate Bill 5469 was being considered in the state legislature as part of some of the analysis work that was done on that bill, it was determined that the The vast majority, if not almost all, of the enforcement actions under that state bill would have passed were predicted to be in King County.

So when we're talking about statewide impact, that should maybe help give you a sense of scale about the localized nature of the issue.

Thank you.

And just for clarity, there currently is no state preemption issue to the best of your knowledge.

Not that I'm aware of, no.

OK.

Thank you.

And thank you, Madam Chair.

Also, this is sort of an unrelated topic, but Senator Solomon, I appreciate you and your leadership on any number of things that you've helped champion in the legislature.

But I especially want to extend my sincere gratitude to you on behalf of my constituents, specifically the family of Mubarak Udam, for your efforts to try and bring about a common sense, reasonable change, very technical and specific in nature to the juvenile youth right to counsel statute.

And I look forward to working with you next session on that effort to revive that effort and to hopefully bring to life the state effort for this and any number of other things as well.

Just wanna say thank you for your leadership and hat tip and shout out to the student, point of personal privilege now, a hat tip and shout out to the students at South Shore School here.

Welcome, we're really excited to have you.

and also Principal Foyston as well, an old KM alum.

Here we are, we out here.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

All right, thank you, Council Member Saka.

Council Member Rink, any questions?

Actually, yes, Chair, just one quick one, and thank you again, Chair, for allowing me to be a co-sponsor on this.

Senator Solomon, thank you for your leadership on this, truly, and thank you for being with us here today.

I just have one minor technical question on this matter, and I'm really pleased to see that this bill would bring forward a new right to private action.

and the ability to sue for damages up to $7,500.

I'm just wondering where the $7,500 figure came from and if it's directly reflective of what's in substitute Senate Bill 5469 or something reflected within Seattle Municipal Code.

So Tommaso or Senator Solomon, if either one of you want to chime in to just clarify that.

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember.

The fee amount was drawn from the state legislation.

Yeah, you know, I'd like to tell you that there's some scientific way that, maybe some algorithmic way that we got to the 7500, but, you know, we're trying to create a balance between a disincentive to use the practice, but we don't want landlords to have such legal exposure, they go out of business kind of thing, so.

And I worked very closely with the Attorney General's office on all of the language and, um, right of action stuff.

So hand in glove, I guess is what we say.

Fantastic.

Just was curious about what informed that exact figure and pleased to hear that there was engagement with the attorney general's office on shaping that.

Thank you.

Thank you, chair.

Thank you.

Council member Solomon.

Did you have any questions?

I know you're not feeling well, so I don't require you to speak, but okay.

Thank you, madam chair.

Uh, actually I don't have any questions at this time.

I will note that they have received a lot of, we have received a lot of correspondence about this, regarding this bill, and rightly so, and I do appreciate all the public commentary that has come forward.

I also want to acknowledge Senator Solomon, different spelling.

of the name and the work that you've done on the state level.

And also a shout out to the students from South Shore.

Sorry I'm not able to be there in person today to meet with you.

But I do want to acknowledge you because you are in my district.

And welcome to City Hall.

So nothing further, Madam Chair.

Thanks.

Thank you so much.

So, well, actually, to both of you.

So my understanding, Tommaso, is that the bill that we have here very much mirrors the bill that was introduced by Senator Solomon.

Is that correct?

Yes, Chair, that is correct.

And I should acknowledge Senator Solomon and the Senate staff for being generous with their time as central staff was developing this bill.

in partnership with our law department as well to ensure that we were making it the best version of it that we could in a way that's appropriate for Seattle.

But yes, to your question, it is modeled on the Senate legislation.

And in order to conform it so that it would modify municipal code in a way to effectuate the intent of the bill, there are some changes.

If you held up the copy of each bill one to one, there are references, for example, in the Senate bill to RCW sections, which wouldn't have made sense practically to include in our bill, so we just pulled that text over directly.

For example, the $7,500 penalty, I believe, is a reference in the state bill to an established penalty in RCW.

Okay, thank you.

That's good to know.

And then, so that leads to my next question for you, Senator.

So my understanding was that there was some concern from Zillow and some other operators about the state bill interfering with sort of their legitimate business practices.

And I was just wondering if you, because we did hear some public comment today that concern that this would make it difficult.

to do the work.

And so I know you spent a lot of time trying to navigate that.

And if you could just elaborate a bit.

Absolutely.

I mean, that's a great question.

And that was a issue that we were working on.

And part of the reason we brought in the attorney general's office to get the language real specific.

And my understanding is that they met with Zillow to work that out.

I'm not saying they came to an agreement, but the goal was to not affect their current practice.

Again, it might affect a future planned practice, but not current.

So for example, you can make data publicly available, but a subscription service where there's a coordination for pricing is not what we would allow.

You obviously will hear different perspectives on every different issue.

But I would say that I worked very closely with my Senate staff as well to get the language precise to avoid the unintended consequence, and we think that's where it's at in terms of at least the substitute bill, if not the original bill that was introduced.

Okay, so, and I'm assuming that that, Tommaso, was the bill you were looking at?

That's correct.

Okay, so because one of the things, this is a little bit technical, but I know in the section on page three, you take effort to define, coordinate, and coordinating do not include publishing rental price estimates that, and you talk about are solely based on public available information, are equally available to all members of the public and do not require a contract agreement or license to obtain.

So can you just explain why you you made that I mean obviously that was in the Senate bill but also why we kept that in this bill.

Yeah that's that's an effort to that the definition including those specific exemptions is an effort to make it as narrowly tailored as possible to this type of coordination service, which, as I described, is novel from established practices around market survey or information about rental pricing.

And the thing that I would just emphasize once again is that The definition of the prohibited conduct here is twofold.

The one factor is historical, anticipated, contemporary prices, price changes, supply levels, et cetera.

So the combination of public and or private data.

But the second element, I think, is the key one, the application to that data of an algorithm or a system that would provide recommendations on price and other terms and occupancy levels.

So I think that's really the key here, is not just, we're not prohibiting, this bill would not prohibit the availability of data or the exchange of data.

It's really the data in combination with an algorithmic tool that would set suggested prices.

And so the definition, I think, is clear about that.

But the exception also makes that explicit that This bill is not intended to regulate or prohibit sharing of information.

It's really sharing information that has a tool, another layer of software to it that has specific suggestions on prices and rental terms.

Okay, thank you.

And that's kind of where the subscription license agreement would come in?

That's correct.

I mean, to be clear, these are services or pieces of software that are sold for profit to landlords by companies that offer them.

Okay, thank you.

And then I just wanted, and I'm assuming, well, for the record, you did run all of this bill through the legal review with our city attorney's office?

Yes, as with all pieces of legislation that we work to develop or even that are sent by the executive, they undergo a review by the law department, and in specific, we did work closely with our colleagues there to ensure that this bill was adapted, the state legislation, in a way that made sense for this legislative body in the city of Seattle.

In my understanding from those conversations, those conversations resulted in the suggestion of Amendment 1, which is allowing for the awarding of attorney's fees and the private right of action.

That's correct, and I'm happy to speak a little bit more about that when we get there.

Okay, thank you.

I appreciate that.

Okay.

So are there any other questions?

No, not seeing any.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right, so I think that actually tees us up for the next procedural piece, which is there is an amendment on the agenda, Amendment 1, and again, as mentioned, working with the city attorney's office, this was a recommendation they made.

So I'm now going to move to amend Council Bill 121-000 as presented on Amendment 1. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you very much.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend adoption of the amendment.

Tommaso, if you could just walk us through that.

Yes, Chair.

This amendment, as you mentioned, is fairly straightforward.

It would amend the private right of action section of this bill to allow attorney's fees and other costs to be recovered by a private party who has a successful claim under the private right of action.

As you mentioned, this was suggested by our city attorney's office as a way to make the, provide more incentive for private parties to utilize this private right of action as well as potentially address, minimize the fiscal impact by allowing more enforcement actions to be pursued by injured private parties in addition to the city attorney's office being an enforcement party for this legislation.

And I should say that there are other areas of private rights of action that exist in Seattle Municipal Code that allow for recovery of fees in this manner.

Okay, thank you.

And I think some of those other private right of action exist within the rental context in our SMC, do they not?

I believe that's correct.

Okay, thank you.

Colleagues, any questions about this amendment?

All right, I'm not seeing any.

So I note that there are four of the five committee members here today.

Obviously, I'm comfortable proceeding voting, but I wanted to make sure that each of my colleagues would be comfortable voting on this today.

It is expedited, I recognize that, partly because I believe it's relatively straightforward, partly because it's been fully vetted in the state legislature, and we're basically mirroring what they have done.

I know we heard a few comments about requesting extra time for tweaks.

I don't view that there's anything we need to tweak here.

I think we've done that work.

But those are my thoughts.

I just want to, and again, certainly happy to extend it to the next committee meeting if that's the preference of the committee.

So are there, Council Member Saka, are you comfortable proceeding to vote today?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am comfortable.

I would defer to you as chair, but I do want to say thank you for checking in, checking the pulse, engaging our collective comfort level.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Solomon, I see your hand.

Yes, also, thank you Madam Chair.

I am also comfortable voting on this today.

Thank you.

Council Member Rink.

Absolutely.

Okay, all right.

Well, thank you, colleagues.

So at that point then, let's vote on amendment one.

Clerk, if you could call the roll on the adoption of amendment one.

Council member Rank?

Yes.

Council member Saka?

Aye.

Vice chair Solomon?

Aye.

Chair Moore?

Aye.

Four in favor, none opposed.

All right, thank you.

Are there any final comments or questions on the underlying bill, 121-000, as amended?

Yes, Council Member Rink?

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for bringing this council bill forward and for allowing myself and Councilmember Strauss to co-sponsor it.

And thank you again for your leadership, Senator Solomon.

I was disappointed to see this legislation fail to pass at the state level, so I'm very grateful that we're bringing this forward on the local level to ensure Seattle continues to protect our renters from the harmful practices of corporate landlords and their use of maximizing profits at the expense of working people.

Rent fixing is criminal, but in the age of AI and new technologies, it's essential that our law keeps up with the times.

And as a city that is majority renters, and as the only renter on this body, I know how harmful these practices are.

And I've lived in five different apartments in eight years, and that is not a unique experience by far.

So for an algorithm to decide whether or not someone is able to afford to keep their home or potentially be priced out of the city just in service of maximum profit is unconscionable.

And Seattle has had a long history of standing up for our renters, and I'm happy that we are leading the way once again with this legislation.

And I'm excited to vote yes today.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Rink.

Any other comments?

All right, seeing none.

Yeah, I too wanted to say thank you very much, Senator Solomon, for your leadership on this and making this, basically making it possible.

I wish it had passed in Olympia, and maybe it will come back and be successful, and I am optimistic that that will happen.

But in the meantime, I'm pleased that you've laid the groundwork for us to be able to pursue this in the city of Seattle, which does have such a significant number of renters.

and always has.

And as somebody who rented for 36 plus years of my life, raised my entire family in rental housing and understands the need to have affordable housing, I'm pleased to be bringing forth a sort of carrying on the torch that you started here.

So thank you so much for that.

With that said, could the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Rink?

Yes.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Vice Chair Solomon?

It looks like we may have lost him from the Zoom.

Chair Moore?

Yes.

Three in favor, none opposed.

Okay, let me try to get him back.

Okay, just one technical issue here.

Oh, there he is.

Have you rejoined?

There we go, Council Member Solomon.

I'm gonna run through the roll again.

Let's do the vote again, thank you.

Council Member Rink?

Oh, sorry.

This is for Council Bill 121-000 as amended.

Council Member Rink?

Yes.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Vice Chair Solomon?

Aye.

Chair Moore.

Aye.

Four in favor, none opposed.

All right, thank you very much.

The motion passes, and the committee recommendation to pass the bill as amended will be sent to the June 17th City Council meeting.

All right, thank you very much.

Tommaso, thank you for your work, and thank you very much, Senator Solomon, for being here today.

Your comments and background were very helpful to the discussion.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sacco for coming down to Olympia and helping out, as well as Councilmember Rank.

Council Member Salomon, you have the best name in the world.

All right, so thank you to my colleagues for your quick work on this.

I think it's an important step.

It won't solve all the problems, but every tool that we have, we need to be utilizing in this time of crisis.

So thank you so much.

So this does conclude the June 11th meeting of the Housing and Human Services Committee.

The next meeting is scheduled for June 25th, 2025. The time is 11.32, and we are adjourned.

And thank you very much, Council Member Solomon, for dialing in when you are not feeling well.

I will be eternally grateful for your willingness to do so.

Thank you.

And feel better.

All right.

And thank you to all the people who came to visit us today.

You got to see a bill be discussed and moved and voted on.

So that's how it works here.

So thank you.

Have a great day.

We are adjourned.