Seattle City Council Select Committee on Homelessness & Housing Affordability 4/22/19

Well, good morning.

Thank you all for being here and sorry for the late start.

It is 1053 and my name is Teresa Mosqueda.

Today, I'm the chair of the Select Committee on Homelessness and Housing Affordability.

The meeting will come to order and I'll soon be joined by hopefully our full council colleagues.

Wanted to make sure that folks know that we have three items on the agenda today.

Hello, Council Member Baxhaw.

Thank you for joining us.

Co-chair of this committee as well.

The first item on the agenda is to do a presentation on data and metrics, ideally a benchmark or a dashboard presentation.

While we don't have that full presentation today, we'll tee up a future conversation.

First, we'll have a panel from the Human Services Department, and second, we'll have a panel from a few of our community partners.

The second item on the agenda is the winter weatherization HSD storm response.

Many of us were asking in the wake of the February snowstorms, how did we do?

And we wanted to have a better sense of that.

Council Member Sawant, would you like to join here as a co-chair as well?

That'd be great.

Okay, thank you.

And thanks to our co-chairs for being here.

Council Member Sawant and Council Member Bagshaw, thank you so much.

And the last item on the agenda is the client group update.

We have had at least one time to talk about the formal structure of the joint effort to create a new governance structure with King County to better address homelessness, and I would also say housing, which will be a future conversation.

So with those three items on the agenda, any other comments from our council colleagues before we go into public comment?

Great.

We are going to take folks who've signed up for public comment.

If you haven't yet had a chance to sign up, there's still time.

We'll have about 20 minutes for this section.

Thank you so much.

I know many of you are waiting for a while to speak, so I really appreciate you being here.

We'll have 20 minutes on the agenda as per council rules.

The council shall accept public comment on items that are on today's standing committee or our work plan.

Public comment at the committee shall be limited to matters within the purview of the specific committee or an item listed on today's agenda.

As presiding officer, I will help to ensure that public comment is in accordance with rule 6C3A.

And with that, let's get started.

The first person who is on our agenda is Ms. Freeman followed by Bruce Gorville.

Hello.

And thank you, Council Member Juarez, for joining us as well.

I apologize for being late.

You are fine.

We are just getting started here.

Thank you.

And good morning.

My name is Anitra Freeman.

In the 24 years that I've been active in Seattle and King County efforts to address homelessness, the most success I have seen is when homeless people themselves have been involved as full partners.

As token committee members included to give cover of legitimacy to the decisions of funders and bureaucrats, but as fully engaged partners.

The homeless organizing efforts in Seattle have demonstrated our effectiveness.

One example is during February's storm response.

The wheel shelter stayed open and was open extra hours.

Most of Cher's shelters were open 24-7.

The one Cher shelter that was not open 24-7 was safe haven because the host, Lehi, did not invite us to.

The HSD did not include the share and wheel shelters in the resources that they were notifying people of.

These are examples, both of the good work that we are doing of how much could be done with the full cooperation of HSD and of others.

Nicholsville has accomplished great things and deserves and needs the support and cooperation to be treated as partners, not to be undercut and lied about by Lehigh and HSD.

Council members demand mediation between Lehigh and Nicholsville.

support the homeless organizing efforts that Seattle should be so rightly proud of.

Thank you.

Thank you, Anitra.

Appreciate your testimony.

Next, we'll have Bruce Gorville, followed by Sean Smith.

Sorry if I mispronounced your last name, Bruce.

Okay, great.

Good morning Chairperson Mosqueda and City Council members.

My name is Bruce Gogol and I'm the democratically headed head of security at Nicholsville Othello Tiny House Village.

I have written a copy of my testimony here that goes into much greater detail.

Some of my fellow Nickelodeons will also speak to you from the heart about this terrible problem.

We don't have money or a lobbyist.

All we have is the truth and you.

You represent us.

Please cast politics aside.

Seek the truth and act.

We need mediation with Jason Johnson, HSD, and Lehigh.

We need an investigation of HSD.

We are reaching out to you as a community in great peril and anguish, a community that many of you have supported and with your help has flourished.

But truth be told, Nicholasville Othello Village has come under attack by Lehigh, who have been anointed by HSD to do so.

In doing so, HSD has ignored the 2015 city-sanctioned encampment ordinance repeatedly and disregarded the director's rule implementing it.

HSD has not honored the reality that Nicholsville is one of only two authorized encampment operators in all of Seattle.

Only listed groups can operate in an encampment.

That is a requirement that is mandatory and outlined in the ordinance.

Instead, HSD has illegally partnered up with a Goliath Complex director, Sharon Lee, and her thug-like minions.

HSD has allowed Lehigh to overthrow our democratic self-managed village, which voted to reject this takeover.

Lehigh responded by staffing it with their own employees backed up by intimidating security.

We are now ruled by an upper management echelon of bullies and deceivers.

The lead case managers assigned to us are unfair, insensitive, and have violated their own code of ethics.

They and others in Lehigh have perjured themselves, manipulated facts, and sadly enough, are stopping at no cost to assassinate the character not only of Nicholsville, but homeless people throughout Seattle.

These are strong accusations that are justified and documented.

Please read the entire estimony.

Listen to the others who want to testify to the specifics.

Councilperson Mosqueda, please meet with us.

Thank you very much.

We will take a copy of your written comments if you'd like.

Thank you for sharing those.

Sean Smith followed by Michelle Atwood.

Welcome, Mr. Smith.

Good morning, members of the council.

My name is Sean Smith.

I am the elected external affairs coordinator of Nicholsville Othello Village.

On April 8th, Lehigh staff supported by HSD stormed through the service entrance of our camp.

All vested up with orange Lehigh security vests and adorned with GoPro prank cameras.

We are a camp of singles, families, and children.

Many awoke to a chaotic and frightening scene.

Lehigh security pushing a resident out of the way in order to destroy a fire department approved locked gate.

Lehigh security walking through the village intimidating residents.

Women, confused and frightened, held their children tightly, shell-shocked from the scene unfolding before them.

Police soon arrived and urged by Lehigh to arrest people, but judicious sense prevailed and no arrests made.

They acknowledged that this was a civil matter rather than a criminal matter.

Council members should know that SPD was professional, thoughtful, and neutral in this issue.

A self-managed community of people dignified and purposeful now lay broken and are perceived.

How could this happen in the city of Seattle, a forward-thinking city that has pioneered a way for homeless people to become productive members of society?

This cause of failure is HSD is with the HSD interim director, Jason Johnson, a man who has neglected his people and His department serves a man who has failed not only us, but the city of Seattle.

The whispers of false accusations have clouded his judgment and led him down the path of deceit.

He has dismissed what you, the council members, have written into law, ignoring rules, directives, and worst of all, the voice of homeless people.

In a recent letter dated April 11th, Jason stated that his reason for moving forward with Lehigh was lack progress with a required MOU.

Nicholsville provided an MOU well before the deadline set for March 8th.

We provided one before the end of 2018 and saw no counterproposal.

When Lehigh did finally return to the sponsor in February of 2019, Nicholsville adopted many changes into that MOU.

Mr. Smith, I'm so sorry.

If you could wrap up for us.

I'll leave the rest of my testimony here.

Okay, yes, that sounds good.

I see you have it printed.

Happy to take that and apologize for the short time frame.

Thank you, Michelle.

I'll finish up.

That sounds good.

Thanks, Ms. Atwood, for being here.

Thank you guys for taking the time.

When Lehigh did finally return a response in February of 2019, Nicholsville adopted many of the Lehigh changes to the MOU.

Not just Nicholsville, but members of two community advisory committees have stated Lehigh failed to respond in good faith and walked out of these discussions.

Could you just get a little closer to the microphone for us?

There you go, perfect.

Our negotiators and CAC members firsthand witnessed Sharon Lee's refusal to negotiate key points to the MOU, which Lehigh stated was 95% complete.

Instead, she used that opportunity to perpetuate her assassination campaign against Nicholsville.

That's why the Community Advisory Committee have written to you to ask for mediation with HSD, Nicholsville, and Lehigh with a skilled mediator.

Please listen to them and us and read Bruce's testimony.

I have a minute and 15 seconds left to ask you guys for help.

My friends and my family are scared.

I had to leave my community because of direct targeting by the Low Income Housing Institute and Sharon Lee.

I actually fled the state.

because she was so focused on me and was trying to use me to hurt my community.

They need your help.

They need you to listen to them.

They are in danger from these people.

And I know it sounds inflammatory, but it's not.

These things are real and they are happening to us.

They're happening to me.

Just because I'm a homeless woman in the city of Seattle doesn't mean that I'm less than, doesn't mean that my voice is less than.

We work very hard, we work very hard in these villages to keep the peace and to give people a hand up.

to help them reestablish themselves, not a handout.

We don't need anyone to do the work for us.

We want to do it ourselves.

We want to help ourselves.

We want to better ourselves and not be bullied for doing it and not be abused for doing it.

I know all of you have read all of the documents that we've submitted to you from Share, Wheel, and Nicholsville, all of the things that happened to us.

Read them.

Believe them.

It's true.

It's true.

Thank you very much, Ms. Atwood.

And to you and to Mr. Smith, happy to follow up with you with a meeting.

I know a lot of folks have been asking about what else we can do to follow up on this question.

The next person is Peggy Hotz followed by David Haynes.

Hi, Peggy.

Good morning, city council members and Chairperson Mosqueda.

My name is Peggy Hotz.

I'm speaking today to convey my serious concern about repeated and harmful violations of the city's authorized encampment ordinance.

I'll be leaving a packet with supporting documents.

This ordinance was passed in 2015. The ordinance specifically mandates that only authorized encampment operators will operate encampments in the city of Seattle.

Two organizations, Nicholsville and Share, were given that designation following the city's request for qualifications process.

The Human Services Department began violating the ordinance almost immediately.

Tiny house villages have been encouraged and able to stay well past the two-year limit in the ordinance.

In order to try and skirt the law, HSD gets multiple temporary use permits for the villages.

HSD has aided and encouraged the low-income housing institute to take over operations of Nicholsville, but Lehigh is not a qualified encampment operator.

HSD's response has been to cite a contract, in this case called a services agreement, with Lehigh.

But there's no allowance under the ordinance for operating an encampment using a contract.

As you've heard from Nickelodeon's themselves, the result of this direct violation of the law is that numerous homeless people are suffering trauma every day and their long-term well-being is in jeopardy.

an investigation into why HSD has been collaborating with Lehigh in violation of the city's own law is overdue.

Every day that goes by brings additional harm to members of the city's most vulnerable populations and puts the city at serious risk of expensive legal action.

While the investigation proceeds, please require mediation between HSD, Lehigh, and Nicholsville to halt the immediate damage.

Thank you.

Thank you for the material, Sue.

Welcome back, Mr. Hines.

Thanks for being here.

Good morning.

Seattle is dying of societal implosion because the 2012 police reform was sabotaged and the corrupt flaws of law enforcement assisted diversion.

Now City Council should still reject Jason Johnson as permanent director of Human Services Department.

He doesn't have the best interests of the innocent homeless.

Proof of that is the lack of accountability with the six-figure salary nonprofits getting rich subhuman mistreating the poor.

In fact, when there was a 500 person increase from 2017 to 2018, Jason Johnson simply opened up more concrete floor space in the basement of City Hall and deceptively issued a media press release to manipulate taxpayers into believing the city government was actually doing something about the increases.

Yet no accountability for the nonprofit hired to pad the books on cost of offering nothing but a dirty mat.

in a loud cement floored warehouse echo building that not designed to allow for normal living.

Now we need an investigation into who and why the city government and all home dot com hired the future company also known as National Innovation Service.

The company has only been in business since last year for like four months.

When they got their first contract with the city of Seattle they came up.

Why on earth did City Hall hire a New York startup filled with college pukes.

Excuse me.

They're clueless about how to solve the homeless crisis, yet highly motivated to incorporate their own personal racist and perverted agenda into the system they supposedly are experts at.

In fact, the National Innovation Service incorporated their business in February 2019. after they pocketed their paycheck from City Hall to create what quite frankly looks like a plagiarized compilation of recently released reports by a multitude of government and non-government agencies.

The report reads quite familiar to the City Auditor Report of 2015 and a multitude of others.

It's appalling that Seattle would bring the National Innovation Service, which is filled with people from New York hustling their way through life, copycatting other expert reports, and making it all culminate into a perverted, racist, LBGQT agenda within the system they want to claim expert at, solving a problem they know nothing about.

In fact, Mark Dones only spent four months compiling a report that's based on solving the homeless crisis.

He only interviewed 200 people who are homeless and a hundred people.

He's BS'ing his way.

We will happily take any written comments that you have as well.

I appreciate it.

The next person I have here is Alan Gritz.

Mr. Gritz, sorry if I mispronounced your last name, followed by Jerome Snell.

How?

He and the Washington.

We know you're here at work.

We ask you to listen to us.

Something that HSD and Lehigh is not doing.

Even by Muscata's own statements today, it's only about Lehigh and HSD.

There's no mention of Nicholsville or Othello Village as an equal partner in what we want for our lives, not what we're told we have to have.

That's all I have to say.

Thank you very much for sharing that.

Jerome, thank you for being here.

Mr. Snow, is that right?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Is that too close?

You're great.

I actually have something positive to say.

I feel very deeply with the folks that were just talking because I've been there myself.

But I have a more positive story in the sense that I came here to present some solutions to homelessness in Seattle.

And I don't think this is the right time to do that because it's quite elaborate, if you will.

But I did want to say that Seattle, when I first came here, I'm a little nervous.

This is the first time I'm doing this, but you're going to see me a lot more.

At any rate, when I first came here, I was homeless myself.

Somehow I came full circle, so I want to thank Seattle for giving me my life back, okay?

Seattle was a great city and it played a big part in my recovery, okay?

So, I know it can be done.

I know it can be done.

So, I have some ideas.

I'd like to present them to the council.

I don't have an format to leave them here.

But I was thinking that we were going to do an answer and like a solution kind of finding thing, finding solutions.

I guess you guys are busy with all the complaints.

So if you could get back with me or whatever, I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And we will definitely follow it back up with you.

Thank you for sharing your personal story.

And I think the goal of this council or this committee is to help make sure that we can replicate that.

I have an answer for the homeless problem.

But at any rate, another thing I want to say was, when will you get back with me?

We will have someone follow up with you today before you leave about meeting with our office.

Excellent.

Excellent.

That's great.

OK, great.

That concludes all the folks that I have signed up to testify today.

Was there anybody else who wanted to testify but didn't have a chance to sign up?

Okay, seeing none, that will close today's public comment period.

On behalf of the co-chairs, Council Member Sawant and Council Member We want to thank the full council for being here.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold, Council Member Gonzalez, Council Member O'Brien, Council President Harrell, and Council Member Juarez.

Very excited to see everybody in the room here today.

We have a packed agenda, and at this time, let's move forward with our first agenda item.

Farideh, if you could read into the record item number one, that would be great.

And while she's doing that, actually, let's have the folks from HSD join us at the table, in addition to Jeff Sims from Central Staff.

Agenda item one, Seattle Human Services Department benchmarks for briefing and discussion.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And anyone who was here for that first panel is welcome to come to the table.

I didn't mean to leave anybody out.

Thank you for being here.

And Jeff, if you want to start introductions just formally, we'll go down the line here and then we'll start with our presentation.

Are they working?

Okay.

And we might have it all muted.

Is that working now?

There we go.

We're working.

You're live.

This is Jeff Sims, Council Central staff.

Jason Johnson with the Human Services Department.

Tiffany Washington, Human Services Department.

Welcome back, and Farideh, thanks for being at the table.

Jeff, I understand you have some opening comments.

I have a few as well, if I might be able to go through mine, and then maybe you could tee up the presentation we're about to get.

So we all know that we are in the midst of a crisis, a housing crisis, which has manifested itself in a homelessness crisis.

Our friends, our neighbors, our family members, we have people who are sleeping on the streets, unsheltered, sleeping in shelters, which quite frankly still means people are homeless.

and we have not built the housing that we need to create exit strategies out of homelessness.

For about a year, we've been engaged in a conversation about needing to have a dashboard and key indicators.

I call it the dashboard of key metrics that we'd like to share with the public and for ourselves so that we can hold ourselves accountable.

I've been asking for this for a year.

I know our co-chairs and the full council has been asking for this for longer.

As council members, we want to have the data to help explain to the public what we're doing and what we'd like to do more.

Earlier this morning, Council Member Gonzalez actually used the words, we need to truth test reports.

And this is part of our desire to make sure that we're truth testing reports, to make sure that we have the number, the actual data in hand that tells the full picture of what we're doing, what we're doing well, and to hold ourselves accountable what we'd like to be doing better.

Some of the things that you have been able to report on and some of the things I think are still on our wish list.

Some of these things include the number of enhanced shelter beds open per night on average.

In November, during the budget discussions, we heard that there was only three enhanced shelter beds open per night on average.

Last month, we heard that there was only eight enhanced shelter beds open per night on average.

With these kind of statistics, it is no wonder that people continue to sleep outside and not have an exit from homelessness or from tents.

into enhanced shelters so that they don't have to get kicked out in the morning and have to line up at night.

We're interested in making sure that we understand how many people were contacted by the navigation team and what the outcome was.

Did they get into enhanced shelters or did they get into permanent housing?

And if not, why?

We're interested in the percentage of navigation team contacts who were able to successfully stay sheltered and not cycle back into living unsheltered in our street.

We're interested in the number of people who are bypassing shelters and getting straight into permanent housing.

supportive housing, and other long-term options.

We're interested in the number of hygiene services and how we are scaling up our approach to make sure that people have access to reach those services and able to keep their job because they have access to hygiene services.

More importantly, we're also interested in the number of people who avoided homelessness.

Through the diversion program, we've seen statistics time and time again.

Those numbers paint an important picture to show us who is not falling into homelessness and how we've helped to keep people in housing.

One of the things that I think has been really important in the conversations we've had across the city as we're doing district tours It's hearing from providers who are telling us, you know, we're doing this great work as we heard earlier today from some of the folks in Nicholsville, but some of the ways in which metrics are being captured, we are not seeing reported yet.

And if we had a magic wand and some of these new systems are being created, this seems like a good opportunity for us to tee up that conversation.

We want to show the constituents, we want to show members of the media, we want to show our friends who are experiencing homelessness and the people who are writing in concerned about their neighbors who are experiencing homelessness what the city is doing to answer the question how are we spending the dollars but more importantly what lives are we saving and how are we helping to stabilize folks getting into housing.

We think this information is critical to show that we're being transparent, that we as the council are taking this responsibility seriously, and that we are, as Councilmember Gonzalez said again this morning, truth-testing whether or not the reports are accurate.

Without this type of data, we do not have the ability to push back and help explain what it is that we're doing, and in many cases, what we're doing well.

Also, in cases where we're relying on people getting into housing, where we're not able to meet these metrics because we as a region, we as a city, have not scaled up the tremendous amount of housing that we need.

The most recent report that I saw was that we need 156,000 affordable housing units to be created right here for us to be able to address the crisis of now, let alone the crisis that's coming as more and more folks want to move to this great city.

So this information is critical and that's why we're asking for it with sincerity and hoping for honest answers as we implement our strategies to work in partnership with King County.

This is one key component so that we have a benchmark to understand how we are focusing our investments and where we'd like to also do a better job of improving the quality of our services.

We need to be mindful that the data alone, the numbers alone, percentages alone don't tell the full picture.

And the stories like the ones that we've heard this morning do tell that full picture.

But if we're accurately measuring what our friends on the front line, what the folks who've experienced homelessness are telling us is the most critical things, I think we can paint a fuller picture.

And as we begin to integrate a new system with King County, I want to make sure that we have the folks at the table who've had that lived experience to tell us what it means to have a data system that does not re-traumatize people every time they're asked to fill out information, a system that will give us a fuller picture how we're tracking our investments, our outcomes, and our gaps.

This is an effort for us to reclaim the responsibility to make sure that folks are not only getting into shelter but getting into housing and medical services and long-term treatment if needed.

So why don't we go ahead and tee up the conversation.

I understand from a conversation with folks at HSD but also with the mayor's office through the chief of staff that there's many entities that are trying to work together on longer term solutions.

Today I feel like as a placeholder and we'll talk a little bit more about what some of those longer term items are that you're working on with external partners because I have some questions about that as well.

For lack of having a new dashboard to share today, let's talk about what we do have.

And Jeff, happy to have you tee this up and then we'll turn it over to Interim Director Johnson and the team.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

As you noted earlier, at council briefing today and just now, the slides that we'll be looking at were presented to the Human Services Equitable Development and Renters' Rights Committee on April 9th.

And this hearing will give us a chance to hear some more detail about some of those as well as going into some other areas.

HSD has various performance pay metrics and has been doing some action around there and then also has been doing work to develop some dashboards that they'll have a chance to go into as well as some other items as well, I believe.

That's it, Jeff?

That's it.

Okay.

So again, as I mentioned this morning, Council Member Sawant had this presentation in her committee just about two weeks ago, is that correct?

Last week.

Yeah, two weeks ago.

Two weeks ago, okay.

And our intent was not to try to duplicate it.

There was a number of things that I thought were really good in the 2018 results from HSD presentation, which the full report can be found on Councilmember Sawant's website.

What we've done for today is just pulled out a select number of those slides that potentially we could walk through.

But I think the hope was to have those 2018 results from HSD, some of the great indicators that you've included in your HSD blog.

We have some good metrics that you've included there.

The quarter one navigation team report was submitted to us as well as some of the data from all home.

So, you know, Director Johnson, as you go through this, don't feel like you have to repeat everything that you have also presented, but do feel like you have the leeway to say, in this other report, we have this data.

That's a really good indicator.

We have this great report at the nav team that we've been tracking.

in your ideal world, if we had that magic wand and if we had a dashboard in front of us, what you would add to these indicators that are not yet here.

I hope that helps to tee up your presentation.

Great, thank you.

I appreciate being with you this morning.

As has been mentioned several times, Tiffany and I were at committee table just two weeks ago presenting 2018's year-end data.

That data is performance-based data.

It is data that primarily looks at exits, and it is that data that helps us understand whether or not the investments that we're making in addressing homelessness are having the desired impact.

The high level takeaways from that presentation were that in 2018, we're able to serve more people, more households in last year than we were in 2017. that more households moved from homelessness to permanent housing in 2018 versus 2017. We also saw that more households maintained their permanent housing due to permanent supportive housing efforts as well as prevention efforts when comparing 2018 and 2017. Program by program, and again we can sort of, you know, use these slides again if you have specific questions or to highlight some of this, but program by program we're seeing this reflected.

We're especially seeing this reflected when we look at the performance of permanent supportive housing.

Permanent supportive housing, as a reminder, is housing that has a breadth of services available to individuals who have experienced chronic homelessness, chronic behavioral health, and chronic medical needs.

And these are services that are provided in building so that individuals have the supports that they need to stay housed.

We're also seeing great success in diversion.

Diversion is both the act of being very creative with an individual and helping them explore what options they have available to them, plus some one-time cash assistance to help move whatever that plan is forward.

We're seeing that diversion can be very client-focused, very customer-centered, because it is that person and their own creativity, their own options that they design that are put into action.

Sometimes that requires some cash assistance, but not every time does it.

Sometimes it really is that creative thinking, that case management that's offered that can help someone avoid the emergency crisis response system.

We also saw incredible results in our enhanced shelters.

So enhanced shelters, different from basic shelters, are shelters that are typically open for a 24-hour period of time.

They have lower barriers to entry.

They have increased support, such as case management and housing navigation.

They also have things, basic things, that people need.

such as lockers, hygiene services.

It can be a space where couples can go together.

It can be a space where individuals or couples can bring their pets.

So we're seeing that by enhancing the shelter environment itself, by including services and reducing barriers, that people are much more likely, five times as likely, to exit into permanent housing than in our basic shelter space.

Can we pause real quick here on the enhanced shelter theme?

So many times when we talk to folks who are sleeping outside unsheltered, perhaps in a tent or perhaps just in a sleeping bag, one of the biggest concerns that we hear about is that they can't go with their partner into these overnight shelters, that they can't bring their dog or their pets, that they are worried about their family being split up.

And many of us, I think, have been trying to work on additional dollars for enhanced shelters so that people do truly have the shower, the locker, a place to call home, partitions between beds, a place that is truly their own, if not directly into more permanent supportive housing.

But when we only have a handful of beds open per night, I think it helps paint the story of why folks might not be getting off of the street when that type of enhanced shelter option is not available.

Do you have data on the number of enhanced shelter beds open per night on average over either the last month or the last quarter that you could share with us?

Yeah, so the, thanks.

Yeah, so our presentation two weeks ago really had a great emphasis on exits.

Exits to permanent housing is the key performance metric that we pay attention to to understand if a program and really if our system is performing the way that we want it to.

We have an expectation and we stated that expectation in 2018 contracts that more people be exited from homelessness into permanent housing.

That's the expectation that we put into contracts.

We wanted a permanent end to someone's episode of homelessness.

and we're seeing more households exit to permanent housing than ever before.

That said, it's not the only indicator that we look at.

We look at, in partnership with King County, we look at the average length that someone stays in a program.

We look at whether or not people return to homelessness after using a program.

We look at the entries from homelessness.

That means is someone quite literally living unsheltered when they use a resource?

And then we also look at utilization rates.

So it's that metric or that data around utilization that helps us understand how many beds are available.

So right now, or I should say in 2018, utilization rates were very high.

That means that people were using the services, the resources that are available in this community.

Basic shelters had a utilization rate of 94%.

Enhanced shelters had a utilization rate of 97%.

What that tells us is that with thousands of people living unsheltered in our community, there are not enough shelter and housing resources to meet the demand.

There is not a roof overhead for every person.

Utilization rates of the 2,100 basic and enhanced shelters that HSD invests in on average is at 95.5%.

That means that there are 100 beds available on any given night for the thousands of people who are living outdoors.

So to echo your opening statement, while we are proud of the results that our investments have had, we see that programs are working to make real change for the people who are fortunate enough to be able to access them, there is also a gap in between what is available and what's needed.

No, Councilmember Baxter has a question.

I just want to do a quick follow-up.

So 97% utilization rates is another way to say that you have 97% capacity filled at enhanced shelters.

So do you have a number of beds open on average a night in our enhanced shelter beds, which means showers don't have to get kicked out in the morning, don't have to line up at night, can come with your partner.

And all of the things that I think are barriers to people either accepting help or feeling distrust of the system when that creates greater instability for them if they're being asked to leave a tent.

I know that in November, I think the number, that would be helpful.

I know in November the number was three as a follow-up to a budget briefing.

We got that in writing from email.

And then last month, thank you for following up with my question about how many people were able, sorry, how many beds were vacant in enhanced shelters.

And it only sounded like eight.

So if you take eight and juxtapose that with over 4,500 people in the region being unsheltered, I think it helps people understand the severe lack of access to shelters that we currently have.

And you were doing the math.

I was filibustering for you.

Yeah, we were.

So using this utilization rate of 97% over the total number of enhanced beds that exist, which is 1411, it leaves roughly 40 beds available on any given night in the enhanced shelter bed system.

So more than eight, but still not nearly the number to match the need.

And this is part of the reason why I think a dashboard is incredibly important, because to go from three beds in November to eight beds last month and then have a number calculated in the moment that gets us to 40, it makes me a little bit nervous that we're not actually calculating vacancies on average a night.

That's very helpful math to have us have an understanding.

Even 40 compared to 4,500 people is not nearly enough, but I think having that exact number would be helpful.

So I'm gonna ask you guys if you could follow up with us on that.

Councilmember Baxter and then Councilmember O'Brien.

Thank you.

I've got Too many questions to ask here.

So I'm just gonna boil it down to one.

First of all, I want to say thank you Thanks for the work that you're doing.

I know this is tough.

I know today is a tough day in particular I want to acknowledge that What councilmember Muscatia was just talking about is that continuum and we've been talking about this for a really long time and acknowledge the fact that Being able to move people on and up into a different place in their lives is really important, providing them the support.

We're also seeing and hearing the constant drumbeat of if people don't have a place for tonight where they can be settled in, not just in and then leaving in the morning.

you know, as we've talked about all the time.

Do you have thoughts now with your department on how we can increase those numbers of places that people can go 24-7?

And I know that Council Member Mosqueda went to Los Angeles as an example.

looked at some of the options, whether it's the big tent, whether it's finding some buildings that we can get people into to expand this 24-7.

We know that if we're going to have this whole continuum that's working, we simply have to have more places to get people off the streets where they can stay and feel good about being there.

And this is working as part of the regional system.

So are there some hints, some things going on that we haven't talked about, I mean, for the last 10 years that I've been here.

I know we're making progress.

But regionally, we need to be expanding these numbers.

And once again, we're at the intersection of more permanent places to be, the criminal justice reform, and the mental health, behavioral health.

So what are the hints for us to be able to move these numbers and work with our muni court as an example so that they've got places they can refer people to?

So over, thank you, very good but very complex question.

I, you know, over the last year, in 2018, we nearly doubled the number of enhanced shelter beds that we had the previous year in 2017. So that is, you know, that comes with a cost.

Enhancements are more expensive.

Keeping a facility open for a 24-hour period of time is more expensive.

So that doubling effort costs almost $6 million.

So it, you know, enhancing the services that are available.

Enhancing the length of time that people can stay indoors, offering the ability for people to store their belongings, it does have a very real cost to it.

But with these limited resources, like I said, we've been able to double the number of enhanced beds that we have in our system.

Likewise, under Mayor Durkin's leadership, we've been able to open more new shelter beds than in any other point in history.

We had an increase in shelter beds of 25%.

Are those basic?

But they're a mix of basic and enhanced.

So an example, most of them are enhanced beds.

But some example of expansion that has occurred for basic overnight only happened right here in this building.

So there's an overnight shelter run by the Salvation Army here at City Hall, and we expanded that effort last year.

So that's an example of the basic beds, but Nearly 75% of that expansion were enhanced beds.

We also have increased programs that we know work.

So we doubled down on diversion.

We wanted to make sure that there was more client assistance available so that people could be diverted from the system and not languish in it.

We also did more diversion training, training of outreach workers, of our navigation team so that there is assurance that those people walking the streets, engaging with folks who are living unsheltered, have the skills necessary to have a diversion conversation with individuals that they're engaged with.

We've talked about enhanced shelter, but I should mention that we're also enhancing the services at the villages.

Those were stood up with some bare bone services and now have case management, and some other services in place so that they essentially operate very similar to an enhanced shelter model.

We also want to acknowledge that, you know, while we've been laser focused on exits, and that is an important metric to define success of the investments we're making, there is also debate about whether that is the right metric to pay attention to.

Future Labs, now NIS, the Doans Report, it's referred to by many names, but they have offered that, you know, focusing on returns to homelessness really helps us understand if the interventions that are in play are having a meaningful result, meaning that they are permanently putting someone's episode of homelessness I think likewise this idea of consolidation, we are seeing that as we work more closely with our partners at the county, whether we're talking about data or programming, that there is always, we're always better off.

We don't, it's very rare that we fund a full program in isolation.

Most of the time we are making an investment in a program in partnership with the county.

And so this idea of consolidation that's been discussed for many months and we'll get an update later today on we believe will also have a have an impact.

Okay great.

I'm gonna ask you to try to keep your answers a little shorter just because we have a few council members up here who also want to get in before the panel runs out.

Council Member O'Brien and then Council Member Herbold.

Hopefully my quick If you have the information now or in the future, my understanding is some of the shelters will give folks that are there a first right to return.

And I imagine on a given night, some of those folks don't show up.

And so I'm curious, in our counting of how many beds are available, if a bed is vacant that night, but it wasn't available to anyone else because they didn't come back, or maybe it became available at 10 o'clock or some late time when they open it up to someone else, how those nuances fit into the counting?

So we have shelters report in the morning the number of beds they had open the night before so that the navigation team has those beds.

Because you're talking about the discrepancy of like, it's 10 o'clock at night and someone didn't return.

It's pretty hard to then go out and try to figure out how to fill it.

And so those openings get communicated to the nav team the following morning.

I would also just add that there are efforts, such as Operation Night Watch, that has an informal sort of coordination with shelter providers, so they are aware, even as late as 10 p.m., of, you know, if someone no-showed and there's a bed available, there are, you know, great efforts to help provide transportation so that people can get from a full shelter to a shelter where there's an available bed.

And the providers, I think, do a really excellent job of coordinating with each other to make sure all beds are full.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I was just wondering if you could speak a little bit to whether or not in your observation there is something that is fundamental about the city permitted villages that contributes to the high rate of exits to permanent housing.

It looks like it's about 33% in 2018. And whereas we loved enhanced shelters, it is a higher rate of exit than enhanced shelters.

And the investment necessary to stand up permitted villages is a different level of investment than necessary to build and operate an enhanced shelter.

Yeah, I would agree that some of the upfront costs are a lot lower for standing up encampments versus a brick and mortar shelter.

Some of the ongoing service provisions, the costs are very similar.

And I credit the, you know, exit rates, and this is an impressive change in the exit rate that we saw in 2018 to the enhancements that were offered, to the services that were offered in those permitted villages.

These are services like very good professional case management that focuses first on housing.

There is a conversation with each individual staying at the villages about making a plan to exit that village and enter into housing.

This is happening across the board, but in villages, sometimes there is a smaller population size, not always, but that helps.

We are learning a lot, especially from our friends at the Catholic Community Services, about how case management to client ratio can be either a benefit or a barrier to having success with clients.

And so I would say, you know, it's very clear by the data that the enhancements that we've made in the tiny villages are why those programs are seeing success.

And I think you have to be careful at looking at the number of people served.

So the rate is really important to understand the cost per.

So if you look at city permanent villages in 2018, it served 658 people.

enhanced emergency shelter in 2018 served 6,554 so we're doing an analysis right now internally that looks at the cost per for enhanced shelter versus the cost per for tiny villages to find out to just get into some of the nuances so we don't have data that isn't solidly able to be backed up.

And back as a follow-up, so even though the city permitted villages now provide many of the same types of services that the enhanced shelters provide, you're speculating that the difference might be the They're both doing case management services.

I assume they're both similar quality case management services.

So you're speculating the difference might have to do with the caseloads?

Yeah, if you look at the number of people served, I mean, there's a bit of scale.

So, you know, we're not comparing apples to apples.

But the enhanced shelters are serving a much larger population than our tiny villages.

So there are many people who are using those enhanced shelters in exactly the way that shelter was designed.

They're coming in, they're staying for a short while, they're getting their need met while they are addressing some kind of crisis in their life, and then they move on.

And so we are seeing sort of a different Same population, but a different usage of the tiny villages than we are some of the enhanced shelters.

I would also say it's, you know, I have some curiosity just about the space as well.

Tiny villages, they have sort of, you know, you have your own individual space versus our enhanced shelters still are a congregate model for the most part.

And while we do everything in the design phase to make sure that groups of people are congregating in as few numbers as possible, there still are enhanced shelters where people, larger numbers of people are sleeping in a single room together.

So I just, I have some curiosity about that and whether or not that has an impact on the results we're seeing or not.

Thank you.

So thank you very much to both of you.

Our time is running out for this presentation.

There's a few things that sort of caught my eye.

As we talk about the wish list for metrics going forward, as we create our dashboard, I think it would be helpful to know how many folks out there have access to case managers.

How many of them are able to keep that same case manager?

As you'll remember, one of the biggest issues that I worked on in last year's budget, thanks to this council for supporting it, was to make sure that we had more dollars going into the very case managers who can help stabilize folks and get them into housing.

or into the services that they need, but due to the high turnover rates and vacancy rates, we know that a lot of those case managers are turning over.

So if there's a way to track consistency with case managers, that would be helpful.

And then I think Council Member Herbold and you just ended on a really important point too.

What is the caseload for those case managers?

There's a few things that are on the horizon.

If we could take just one more minute to talk about that.

There are the Homeless Data Model Team made up of UW Information School Capstone Program Amazon, Tableau, and HSD.

There's the Navigation App 2.0 team, which has Microsoft, HSD, Seattle IT, SPU, and the fire department.

I think we would be very interested in getting a full briefing on what those programs or research efforts are.

And again, I'll reiterate that I think there's a number of folks that are concerned about the voices missing from those teams, as you think about who is at the table to create the very metrics that we need to make sure that we're tracking what success actually looks like.

This leads into our second panel, which we'll talk about, you know, if we had a wish list of measuring what we were doing well in community and what we're maybe not getting credit for yet, as you think about this new system on the horizon, pulling in some of those voices and ideas, I think will be helpful.

Was that a hand down there at all that I saw?

No.

Okay, stretching.

Any other comments?

I have one.

And it's just that in addition to the efforts that you just mentioned, I wanted to share that there is also an effort regionally to update and really recreate, redesign the dashboards that are on All Home King County.

county's website.

So that's an effort that will be launched in early May and we'll be able to share that new dashboard with you.

I'm looking forward to this new dashboard because it's the first time that we'll really have good information that shows the inflow versus outflow.

We started today's conversation talking a little bit about inflow and outflow, but this will offer us insight into our region's effort to address a steady stream of, unfortunately, people who are experiencing homelessness and will give us a really good idea of our system's ability to keep up.

I also wanted to share that There will also be an effort inside of HSD to do a better job of visualizing the data that we collect.

We collect a lot of data.

And a lot of that data can just be sort of widgets or counting.

doing sort of head counts about how many people were serving, how many hours of case management were provided, that kind of thing.

If we're collecting that data, we need to be able to use it and help you and the general public understand it.

So we'll be working here in 2019 to better visualize and better tell the full story of the services that are provided with investments that come through the department.

And what's the timeline on that, Director?

Yeah, you know, we're at a critical development phase.

So I think that a lot of this, whether it was the items that you mentioned or the efforts that are underway that I mentioned, to be rolled out this in early summer.

So I mentioned the all home dashboard and those changes will be rolled out in early May.

Some of the efforts that we're working in partnership with the mayor's office and the IAC are due out June, June, July.

We're working in partnership with the innovation and performance team to update those dashboards related to the subcabinets, including the subcabinet on homelessness.

And that's where a lot of our data is going to show up.

And that too should be able to be rolled out with Q2 data.

So we're really looking at a lot of this new visualization of data being available to us this summer.

Excellent.

So I appreciate the visualization.

That's one of the biggest things that I've been asking for.

And I do appreciate the work you're doing.

However, instead of waiting until for the three months until July, I'm hoping that we can work with you for like an interim placeholder report that might summarize some of these key pieces that you've heard from us from today.

I would be remiss if we didn't also say, you know, visualizing the number of hygiene services that we need.

The United Nations says that there should be at least one toilet for every 20 people, and by that standard, Seattle needs 224 toilets around the city.

and we currently have six according to the auditor's report.

This is a crisis, I think, not only for those who are unfortunately unsheltered and living outside, but also for our general public.

This is a huge asset, I think, from a public health perspective and, you know, community engagement, social cohesion, wanting people to go outside and utilize our parks and services.

So this is something I'm really concerned with and I would love for us to work with this from the urgency perspective for those, especially those who are living outside.

Council Member Juarez, you had your hand up.

I will be very, very brief.

First of all, Jason, thank you for all the hard work you've done.

I really appreciate it.

We've been watching this unravel, at least for me, over three years now, and we're still working on this.

Tiffany, thank you.

You've been so accessible.

You've been great.

You've been returning our calls, giving us information.

I really appreciate your hard work.

I also want to thank Jackie St. Louis who's here.

We met with Jackie last week up in the district office and had more of an on the ground what's going on with the navigation team.

You know, we're kind of throwing, when I'm looking at the information you gave us in the nine categories in the homeless results by program.

I know we're throwing the term around dashboard, and in another life, dashboard meant something else when I used to work on Wall Street.

In any of these categories, none of these are going to be in real time.

Is that correct?

Not in real time.

As in real time, they'll just always be a three-, four-month lag.

just by the nature of collection, is that correct?

That is correct.

Yeah, the data that's in front of you there is really performance-based.

It's based on the contracts, the investments that we're making, and there will always be a delay in capturing that level of performance data.

That said, I think it was mentioned, the App 2.0, that's an attempt to have more real-time data so that outreach workers in the field have access to what's available now.

So we are both wanting to continue to have a performance conversation.

We want to understand the performance of our investments, but we're trying to use data to enhance service provision as well, and that will rely heavily on access to real-time data.

Just one last quick note.

We've had this conversation before, and I want to thank you and your department for being so flexible for those smaller community-based organizations that provide, do all of these things that you talk about, prevention, emergency shelter, particularly diversion, transitional housing, that aren't by nature in their mission statement homeless organizations.

They're smaller.

A lot of them aren't going to be able to plug into the HMIS, because they're just not going to have the staff internally.

They're not going to have that kind of human capital infrastructure.

So I'm hoping at some point we can have maybe a separate model.

Because I know just in my district, there's probably five where they can at least be reporting monthly, or at least to us in real time.

Because I know what you've captured here are the bigger organizations.

I just want to make sure that we capture the smaller ones because those are the ones that are actually know the people on the streets that takes two or three times to get them into shelter even though in their mission statement like a good example is North Helpline or God's Little Acre or Aurora Commons.

Their mission statement isn't to shelter the unsheltered but that is one of the things that they do and so I just want to make sure that we capture them.

That's all.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Ms. Washington, Mr. Johnson, for being here.

And, you know, given that we ended with District 5, I would also say, as we look at these indicators going forward, having a better sense of the geographic distribution will be very helpful.

For example, there's no shower in District 5, if I remember correctly.

Thank you very much for joining us.

We'll have the second panel.

Jeff, you're welcome to stay if you'd like as well, but thank you for being here.

The second panel is our community partners panel, and if we could please be joined at the table by Mike Cox, the Executive Director of Family Works, Shannon Ray, Solid Ground representative, and Lisa Dugard from the Public Defenders Association.

Mike, I may have said your, are you, okay, great, hello, thank you for being here.

Thank you all for joining us today, and anybody else who you have as your guests, you're welcome to bring up as well.

We will give you guys about 20 minutes, and we wanted to have a chance to talk with you as we tee up this conversation about what key indicators you think would be helpful to track the work that your organization is doing, but more importantly, to track the success or the areas where we need to reinvest or double down our investments as we move forward.

I think there's a lot of really great work that many of our organizations do, and we get focused sometimes on counting widgets, counting numbers and percentages, and you may have a better indication from your work what would be better indicators of how you're helping folks either prevent from falling into homelessness or help getting stabilized and out of homelessness.

So with that, why don't we start on this end of the table and we'll just have you introduce yourselves all together and then we'll start on this end of the table and you'll start the tea at the presentation.

Hi, I'm Jake Weber, Executive Director of Family Works.

Thank you.

Sorry about that.

And I'm sorry I missed your visit, Council Member Esqueda.

Yes.

And Mike, I'm just supporting Mike up here though.

Okay, great.

And I'm Mike Cox.

I'm the food bank manager at Family Works.

Thank you.

Sorry for the title confusion.

Very excited to have Family Works here.

No worries.

And I'm Shannon Ray representing Solid Ground.

Yes, thank you.

Lisa Dugard, I'm the director of the Public Defender Association.

Wonderful.

So thanks again for being here.

We wanted to have a chance to hear directly from you.

As you do your work on a daily basis and engage with families, with individuals, with folks who are trying to find housing, what are some of the key indicators or metrics that you think would be helpful for a city council to have in mind as we think about gauging success, but also gauging where we've got gaps in services and where we could be doing better?

And we'll start with Family Works.

I wanted to start with how to measure prevention, because as a family resource center and a food bank, we've always held a lot of importance in, of course, providing nutritious food, but also ways that we could help people become more resilient and stable.

And we do a lot of surveying of our folks, because we feel that the programs we do needs to be in response to what people need and want.

So we've gotten some of that over the time, but it's not something we, it's fairly difficult to measure prevention.

So we, we don't know exactly the outcome of how many people have been prevented, but we do, we've been gathering data on what people need and feel they want that help them in being able to stabilize their family with financial costs usually.

And then what are the barriers?

So for us, that would be really important for us to have that information.

And we appreciate the funding for the community connectors of the food banks, because they definitely help provide the access to folks in many, many aspects, as well as family advocates through the Family Resource Center.

Just to follow up on what Jake has said, Family Works, because of the fact that we share a building with Solid Ground, and we also have a branch of the Seattle Public Library there in Wallingford, We kind of become an informal day center for a lot of people who are homeless in the area.

And I would say the biggest hurdles that we are seeing for those populations that are using us, you know, eight, nine hours a day as just a place to sit are mental health issues and addiction issues, which we are dealing with and we're not really well suited to deal with them, but we are dealing with on a daily basis.

And that's why things like community connectors who can be there eight hours a day, a program that was piloted with food banks last year, and we have applied for a community connector.

In fact, we're going to be, we're asking to share one with North Helpline at their Licton Springs location.

So they'd be working Wallingford, our Greenwood Food Bank, which we opened up three years ago in response to BOA closing their Greenwood Food Bank.

and with the Licton Springs location in North Helpline.

So that is a resource that would actually be very valuable to us and to the people that come to us in need of services.

The other thing we do is just help to build that resiliency, things like finding ways to get rent assistance for people who are in their homes so they don't start to enter the homeless cycle.

ways of breaking that cycle of homelessness with people who are in a sheltered place, whether it's their own or an SHA funded housing, and to prevent them from breaking out of that.

What are the reasons people are no longer staying in housing?

Shelters, I know we deal with a lot of people who are at the fringes, who for one reason or another can't enter a shelter.

Usually it's because they have a partner that can't be in the shelter with them, or they have a pet who is incredibly important to them.

Often their only means of support and comfort, and that pet's not allowed into a shelter, so they elect men to stay on the streets.

And those are the people that we see coming to us day after day, that are sitting in our hallway, who really need that help, but for one reason or another, are being turned away or don't feel they're an appropriate candidate for the help.

And I'm going to go ahead and pass it on.

I'm glad you mentioned prevention.

That's something that we are very dedicated to at Solid Ground.

And I was looking at the data from All Home and showing the critical need for increased funds for prevention overall.

While there are other strategies like rapid rehousing and diversion that are also important, I think we are missing the boat some by not focusing more on prevention.

One example of that is the all home data shows that the progress toward functional zero is not really matching because the inflow is projected to be similar to the outflow.

And as long as that inflow keeps happening, we are not going to get anywhere.

with the strategies that we have.

One of the other things, when you mention metrics and the importance, I think measuring progress, not only permanent housing.

And I don't know exactly what that would look like, but I think that that can be important.

One example of that is our rapid rehousing program.

It only counts as a successful exit if they exit to permanent housing.

But some families decide to move in with others.

Some families decide to go to transitional housing because they think that's what's going to be best for them.

And those count as unsuccessful, despite it being successful to the family themselves.

So I think looking at a broader range of success measures is really important.

The other thing I'll say is when we look at returns to homelessness, I think it's an important metric to look at, but we also have to keep in mind that it is an inaccurate number because it only includes people that are coming back into homelessness that then go into another program.

It is not just folks that return to the street.

And if they're not accessing other services, they don't show up.

If they're de-identified, they don't show up.

A lot of our folks that we move in rapid rehousing and diversion are moving out of county.

or South King County or Snohomish.

And we don't share a database with Snohomish or Pierce County or Thurston County.

So we're not capturing all the returns to homelessness.

And I think that that's important to take a look at.

When we use diversion funds, they're wonderful for a lot of folks.

And we're getting a lot of folks that have been through diversion that are now trying to access prevention services.

So they're not really able to sustain it.

And one reason, going back to that case manager, equation, diversion does not have ongoing case management and we need some support for that.

So I really think that those are some of the critical factors with that.

I do want to also say I'm very grateful for the shifts that have happened and the open dialogue with Coordinated Entry for All to make access more accessible and to realize that not everybody fits into every single model.

I think we really need more permanent supportive housing.

And then when we look at transitional housing and the exit to permanent housing, there's a big gap in our system that we do not have funds, flexible funds available for those in transitional housing.

to move into permanent housing.

So our transitional programs may do all the work to stabilize folks, and then there are no funds to access.

They're not eligible for diversion.

They're not eligible for prevention.

They're not eligible to be a part of the coordinated entry-referral system.

And that's a big gap in our system.

If we had more folks that could move from transitional housing, we'd have more openings in transitional housing for those that do need greater case management support.

So those are my thoughts for now.

Thank you so much.

Good morning or good afternoon.

I can't quite tell.

I think I'm here representing the service providers that work particularly with people who frequently have justice system involvement.

An important population currently under a great deal of discussion in terms of local public policy.

And so in preparation for today, I also spoke with some of the other providers, key providers, who work intentionally with this population, including those that we partner with in the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program.

We appreciate this chance to comment on ways that data collection and use could be refined, modified, or expanded to better drive forward effective work with this population.

I want to start by saying that everybody I talked to flagged that accountability is important and not something that service providers, that affected providers are shying away from.

And at the same time, it would be incredibly helpful if data collection Targets and measures were crafted after involvement and discussion with those providers so that tools can be informed by some of the considerations that thoughtful providers can share.

I'll go sort of backwards and end with what I think is the most important point I wanted to raise.

Some of those that I spoke with flagged the important general point that the focus on exits to housing assumes that those exits are a function of the methodology being used and effective case management.

And that really misses how much the outcome is a product of availability and prioritization that housing stock to particular populations.

One provider noted that the program that last served the person prior to the person going into housing is the one that counts that as a success, even if the bulk of the work that was done to effectively achieve that was done by a prior provider.

So including signing somebody up, doing screening, and so on that actually culminates in the successful exit.

I think this is an important point that financial incentives in contracts to do hard and important work should be true incentives rather than penalties.

This really was one of the important national realizations in One Child Left Behind that taking money away from An institution that's struggling to do hard work is generally not the best way to improve their ability to do that work.

And that is the current, although the takeaway is less than it initially is currently contemplated to be less than.

It was initially contemplated for failure to reach successful exits to housing targets.

It's still using kind of the flip side of an incentive structure, which gets me to the most important point that I wanted to raise.

Lisa, can I?

Sure.

Excuse me for interrupting there.

Talk a little bit more about that last sentence when you said that money is being taken away and we understand that that has an impact on the organization.

But in a world where we have finite budget and are not able to just create more money without raising more revenues, how do we do that effectively?

What would be your recommendation?

great question and leading leading me to I think the core point which is that when this council or your predecessors passed the results-based accountability ordinance back in 2017 ordinance one two five four seven four The fact that outcomes, numerical outcomes, would be affected by the barriers faced by the populations that service providers were working with was called out and recognized in the recitals in that ordinance.

Unfortunately, it isn't actually embedded in the ordinance.

the portion of the ordinance that is codified in the Municipal Code, and I would really urge that you perhaps go back and take a look at that.

There are three recitals that are of particular importance.

One, acknowledging that the effects of policies, for example, No Child Left Behind and other examples of performance-based funding and public education can, without due care, create unintended consequences while achieving conformity with identified funding criteria that actually decrease the quality and effectiveness of the work performed.

So there are incentives and things are being measured, but the actual outcomes are not being improved because of failure to appropriately incentivize what you actually want.

Then a finding that the mayor and the council recognized that some of the problems that most urgently demand human services solutions involve working with populations that experience systemic and structural marginalization and require more resources per person to accomplish program goals.

And then finally, finding that programs working effectively to address systemic and structural barriers must not be burdened or discouraged.

by results-based contracting.

So that's what you said in 2017. But I think the way this has played out, with probably all good intentions by many putting this in place for the first time, is that there are actually incentives for service providers to run away from the most difficult folks out there.

They are the people who have been on COMO.

They are the people who are in the prolific offenders report.

They are the people we work with.

And if I were, this is not the work my office directly does.

We project manage lead.

And I am sitting sort of one step away from that dilemma for a provider.

If you take on some of those individuals who are incredibly hard to place, they have criminal history barriers, they have behavioral barriers, and they don't score high on the vulnerability index that's presently used through all home and coordinated entry, If they step forward and choose to work with that person, it is to their detriment, their contracting detriment and their resource detriment.

We should flip that on its head and call out that providers who will embrace and do the very best that we can and know how to do with that population, receive contracting consideration, right?

So there's a nuance in the outcomes.

If you achieve housing exits for that population, that is an incredible achievement that cannot be fully captured by the number of human beings.

The impact on community is huge.

And I will end that point just by commenting that Barb Poppe's report in 2016 specifically identified the importance of this, saying that we need to prioritize housing resources for people who face greatest barriers and have been out there the longest.

And that's not what the current, and not based on who scores highest on the vulnerability index.

And we have not taken that step.

And as a result, providers who work with those hardest to place people are being disincentivized to do the very most important work in terms of community health and what the business community is rightly calling for.

Last comment about outreach contracts different than the shelter contracts.

Currently, the outreach contract performance is solely judged in terms of shelter referrals made.

And that, two issues with that, not that that's not an important question, but shelter placements are prioritized to the navigation team.

Increasingly, there's talk in neighborhoods and with business associations about a different model of outreach that's more accountable to the neighborhood.

If the city goes in that direction, which I think everybody thinks would be very promising, but those teams don't have equal preference for shelter placements, then they are not going to score as well.

That is not a product of their methodology, but simply of how those slots are prioritized.

And then the second point is for outreach teams working with people living in vehicles, those individuals, I think we all are aware, are much less likely to go to shelter, but they can go to housing.

That is generally the most effective strategy.

And if an outreach program is only asked whether they're making a shelter referral, They're not being asked the most important question about their work with that population living in vehicles, which is really about a housing placement strategy.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you to our entire panel.

We have a few moments for questions.

Questions, Council Member Herbold.

I was just wondering if we could get the recommendations of the panel in writing.

to make it a little easier for us to follow up on them.

Thank you.

I was going to say the same thing.

Thank you.

And we say that recognizing, as I heard from tours in community recently, that you've also been asked to do additional reports year after year.

So we know that this is another layer.

You being here, following up with us, we really appreciate.

I really do think that you can help us better form a more responsive and accountable system going forward.

So just want to say thank you.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I need to leave in two minutes.

I wanted to ask two questions.

One, first of all, thank you very much.

This is extremely insightful, and I think, obviously, the bottom line is to fight to create more revenues to deal with, you know, just the escalating scale of the problem, but you all, your comments are providing really important insight, and it's not something that we hear every day, so I really wanted to echo what Council Member Herbold said, in terms of having clear information, not just in a presentation, but in writing that we can use.

I have two questions.

One is, do other cities have, like New York, for example, do they have a different way of setting up the vulnerability index in a way that catches the problem in a much more effective way?

or not.

I mean, just curious.

And then I thought your points were extremely useful.

And I just had a couple of questions, and they seem like basic questions, but often we don't have answers to these questions, which is, one is, you said that reentry to homelessness, the numbers we have are quite inadequate.

I'm paraphrasing, but I think that's what you implied, because it only looks at people who access services after re-entry into homelessness.

So I was also wondering, do we have some insight into how likely or less likely are people less likely to access services if they become homeless again?

And in general, what is the likelihood that people will seek services when they become homeless?

Because otherwise we don't really have a handle on what the homelessness problem is actually.

Yeah.

I think for your first question about the tool, Coordinated Tree for All and a subset work group are working on redesigning the assessment tool, and Alhom is given their go-ahead to proceed with that exploration.

There are the communities that use the tool itself and score differently, which we've started to do, and there are other communities that use different tools.

So there is a committee that is looking into that and working with that, especially in relation to the disparities that happen with people of color with the VI-SPDAT.

So it's a work in progress.

In the meantime, they've been scoring it a little differently, trying to capture that vulnerability better.

And I don't have any information on how that's working.

I'm not an intimate partner of that group.

In response to your second question, I think that there are a number of factors that go into that.

I don't have an idea, of course, how many people don't access services, and I don't think that I don't think there's really a way to capture those that are hesitant to or what their reasons are for not reengaging in services.

folks that enter the system to be eligible for the services, for the housing opportunities there are, do have to go through the assessment period.

And if they're not scoring as vulnerable, they may not be given a resource.

And if they're not given the resource, they're not going to show up as homeless again, is my understanding.

And so I would think that the majority of folks would try at least to get into shelter, but again, as we've heard, there's a lot of folks that don't access shelter for a lot of reasons, and so they may not show back up.

Bigger thing for me and one I don't see a way around is the folks that are de-identified.

Usually that's for safety reasons and I don't want them to not be able to be de-identified for their safety, escaping domestic violence and things like that.

And then the others that move out of county and may re-enroll in a homeless system in another county or another state.

and those we don't have a way of capturing.

At least if we could bring the three counties together in some fashion and share that return rate to homelessness, I think that might be a help.

I'm sure it would also involve a lot of coordination and energy and work and money.

So I think that when we're looking at return rate to homelessness, we just have to, and this is acknowledged generally in this world, that we're not really capturing everybody that's returning to homelessness and to know that.

And that's one of our performance standards that we have to meet.

We have to keep it under a certain percent.

So there's a part of me, of course, that wants to not go there.

But I think if we're going to really seriously address this problem, we have to know.

But if we're going to be penalized for it, just as somebody exits to transitional housing, I think we need to look at that penalty.

I hope that answered your question.

In addition to that great point, our friends at All Home doing coordinated entry have long, when those of us who work with a justice system involved population go and say you need to flip your prioritization in the interest of public order, public safety, and kind of civic base of support for this work, because you're leaving the people out there who cause the most problems for the most people, and it causes this lack of legitimacy for this whole endeavor, right?

And their response back is always, that problem goes away.

if we have increased housing availability.

And that is true, right?

The prioritization tool is not as big of a problem if you go deeper on the list.

This problem is a blend of the fact that how we're prioritizing people and the extreme scarcity.

I'm not certain like a different conversation is how the new prioritization should happen.

I think this conversation is about data and incentives for service providers and what we are encouraging people to do and discouraging people to do through these contracting incentives.

And there are sort of if we just accept the current reality, slim supply and even current prioritization, you can still deal with that by changing the contracting approach by valuing the hardest work or the work with the greatest resistance or the greatest barriers.

Again, as Barb Poppe said in 2016. Excellent.

Well, I want to thank our esteemed panel for being here with us today.

I know you have even more ideas that I heard from you while we were visiting in community.

We will follow up with you.

The ideal, I think, would be to have some sort of roundtable discussion as we see more of the blueprint come forward so you have your chance to put your fingerprints on it.

I will also say I saw Mark Jones nodding behind in response to Councilmember Sawant's question about what New York does, and we'll look forward to pulling that information out on the last panel.

in response to Council Member Sawant's question around, I'm sorry, Council Member Sally Baggio's question around, you know, how do we design our contracts so that those who are the hardest to serve have an incentive?

We also have examples from the healthcare world in which we have tried to incentivize especially Medicaid contractors to serve those who are the hardest to reach so we can pull from that.

And your scarcity question that I think all of you have touched on is not going unnoticed.

We absolutely agree, you cannot be measured on number of cases diverted, number of people exiting homelessness, number of people going to permanent housing, and number of people staying in housing without housing.

So we will continue to address the housing crisis and the lack of affordable housing throughout the city so that you are not held to a standard that is impossible to accomplish when we haven't yet provided you with that housing.

Thank you very much for joining us.

And with that, we will go to agenda item number two.

For our council colleagues' knowledge, we started at about 11, I'm sorry, 10.50.

I will keep us within that two-hour time frame, and we'll do 15 minutes for each of the next two presentations.

And agenda item number two, please.

Thank you, Farideh.

Agenda item number two, winter weather events, storm response 2019 for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

And welcome back to the table, Interim Director Jason Johnson, Jackie St. Louis, and Jill Watson from the Human Services Department.

And anybody else that I failed to introduce, you can introduce yourself.

By way of reminder, this is a request that came forward from many of us on council in the wake of the February 2019 freeze, the Seattle freeze that we had, where we had over a week and a half of really intense snowstorms, unlike any that we've really seen in recent history.

And many of us were very interested in the response from HSD, Department of Transportation, Parks, Seattle City Light, Seattle Police Department, to make sure that we were all acting in coordination.

We saw Director Johnson, you, and a number of other directors, I think, present almost daily briefings during the time on what we were doing and how we were doing.

Given the global warming situation we find ourselves in, given the extreme weather that we find ourselves in, we know that there will be additional smoky summers and freezing winters.

And part of our response needs to be able to make sure that we're providing a safe place for people to either be indoors for clean air during smoky summers, or indoors for warm air during cold winters, and this is not a situation that we expect to go away anytime soon.

So we're hoping to learn from what you experienced this last year, focus specifically on the snowstorm, but also recognizing that we have lessons learned for the future.

How many folks were we able to get inside?

How many folks did the navigation team talk with?

What were some of the barriers, if any, that came up, who helped them, were they folks from REACH, were they folks from NAVTEAM, were they folks etc.

And looking forward to hearing how we then helped use that as a touch point to keep folks in services if they hadn't accessed us for the first time, they were coming in through our doors, how we stayed in partnership with them.

So why don't we go ahead and from Jeff on down if you could introduce yourself for the record and then we'll let you guys take it away.

Chair Mosqueda, before introductions begin, may I make a suggestion?

Yes, please.

So I just want to acknowledge that our Director of Office of Emergency Management, Barb Graff, who's sitting in chambers now, also plays a really critical, important role to the coordination efforts around the conversation that we are about to have.

And it sort of is incumbent upon her to make sure that all of these things are actually functioning and coordinated.

So if there is no objection and Director Graf is amenable to it, I'd like to invite her to join the rest of the presenters at the table this morning.

That would be most welcome.

Thank you for pointing that out.

I appreciate it.

Yes, please come to the table and join us and you're just in time for introductions.

Jeff Simmons, Council Central Staff.

Christopher Williams, HALO Parks.

Jesus Aguirre, HALO Parks and Recreation.

Jill Watson, Human Services.

Jackie Saylors, the Human Services Department.

Jason Johnson, Human Services Department.

Barb Graf, Office of Emergency Management.

Thank you for joining us.

We will kick it over to you guys to walk us through the presentation in the order that you like.

Great.

Thank you.

So I'll go ahead and get us started.

And hearing that this is now a 15-minute item, I'm going to try and maybe move us through by cutting some of the context and sort of early introductions, and instead just going right to the storm.

I do want to highlight, however, Jill Watson and her important role in the department.

The department's role is critical when any kind of emergency occurs, and we lean heavily on Jill and her expertise and her ongoing coordination.

to help us as a department do the work that's needed when there is an event.

So I'm, by cutting sort of the context, I don't want to underscore or undervalue that work.

And we'd be happy to come to another committee meeting and talk about HSD's sort of more global role in emergency management and how we help a very vulnerable population during moments of crisis in our city.

Okay, also going to slide three, I believe.

Thank you.

One back.

I want to acknowledge that while Parks, HSD, and the Office of Emergency Management are at the table today, This could not have happened without a multi-departmental effort, as well as the involvement of several service providers, volunteers, organizations like United Way, Several different partners, many are listed here, many are not on this slide.

So this was an effort during February that took all hands.

It required us working collaboratively in coordination with one another and the department's role Really to help in outreach and sheltering was one of just a few critical roles that this city really operated as one team to really address the needs of the community.

Just some really quick examples, we had a shelter that was willing and able to stay open for a 24 hour period of time.

This is normally a shelter that's only open overnight.

but they needed the sidewalks cleared, they needed a very steep hill where supplies could be delivered, cleared, and it was staff from FAS who picked up shovels and went to clear that space.

And so that's just one relatively small example, but I think an important example that illustrates the level of coordination that was happening on a daily basis to make sure that the services that we needed to be offered in the community were there for the people who need it.

The next slide shows a quick timeline.

This was a snow event like no other.

It snows every year in Seattle.

It gets cold every year in Seattle.

We activate emergency shelter.

Typically this is a one, two, three day event where we work in partnership with the Salvation Army and Seattle Center to get overnight shelters open during a relatively short period of cold, dangerous weather.

But this was an event that went for several weeks and required consistent collaboration by the department with many service providers.

During that period, I think, and immediately upon knowing that the snow was not just coming but going to be quite heavy and that was going to be one of three bands of snow that were coming into the area, it became immediately evident to us that we needed our outreach team, the navigation team, to be out on the streets and really engaging with as many people as possible, to let them know that the snow was coming.

I'm a huge Game of Thrones fan.

Winter was coming, winter was here.

And that we needed to get people indoors.

And Jackie St. Louis was a critical partner working, literally, 24-hour shifts in those early days to help coordinate with his team to make sure that resources were known to those living unsheltered and that services were provided to connect those most vulnerable during this snowstorm to those services.

And so I'll pass it over to Jackie to just talk about what that body of work looked like.

Thank you, Jason.

So from the moment that the storm, we knew that there was going to be inclement weather.

The navigation team realized the importance of supporting people who were living outside who had no other means of caring for themselves.

Given the amount of snow that people were living in tents that could potentially collapse due to the weight of the dense snow on top of them, we prioritized getting people moved from these encampments indoors.

Our police officers The navigation team officers, our field coordinators, and also staff from the parks department work with us around the clock, out in encampments during the day, in the evenings, at night, connecting with people and transporting them to enhance shelter options as well as some traditional shelter options.

So the shelter options, as we discussed at the previous presentation, are limited.

Especially during this weather, there were more shelters, even those overnight shelters, that were aiming to be open for a 24-hour period of time so that people didn't have to venture out to dangerous conditions during the day.

So it was critically important for us to not only have the shelter open at the Seattle Center and the Exhibition Hall, but that shelter quickly surpassed capacity, and it was immediately evident that we needed to open more shelter, that we needed more shelter capacity, more 24-hour shelter capacity, if we were going to continue to ask that people move indoors.

This was achieved, and my huge thanks to Parks, who you'll hear from in just a moment, for opening the doors of Garfield Community Center and Bitter Lake Community Center.

Not only opening the doors, but staffing those shelters, being there 24-7, preparing meals, doing really whatever was needed.

to make sure that people felt welcomed and that those spaces remained open during and even immediately after the storm ended.

So I don't know, I'll pass it back over to Jackie to talk a little bit more about what the shelter operation sort of looked like.

Yeah, sure.

So Parks and Recreation staff were at the Bitter Lake community center as well as the Garfield Community Center.

We were able to secure the services of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle to staff the Garfield Community Center to provide around-the-clock supportive services to the individuals there, as well as coordinating a response with our contracted city providers to provide supportive services including housing assessments, case management resources to people who are living at those shelters.

So we were just a quick nod.

Jackie, thanks to you and your team.

We know how many extra hours all of you were working.

And I also, Jason, this is a flip back to you, too, because I know that you were coordinating a lot and with Mary's Place.

And I think Vulcan stepped up and Starbucks stepped up with food and that.

So I think this coordinated effort was great.

And I think and maybe this is something we get to parks, but I think one of the things you told me is that we had a lot of people at Garfield and that was more difficult than at Bitter Lake where there were fewer people, maybe a different population, I'm not sure, but if one of you could address that about what worked well and what we could do differently next time.

Great, will do.

So we were able to open 550 emergency spaces between the three sites.

We had additional capacity, as you mentioned, through Mary's Place.

Ernestine Anderson Place, the Fry Building, and we worked with partners.

We've mentioned parks, but also the public utilities and providers such as Urban League, Salvation Army, REACH, Full Life Care to do staffing meals and other services provided at the shelters.

Likewise, we wanted to make sure that medical care and that vulnerability assessments were made while those shelters were open.

A piece of good news from Dusty Olson, who was in Baccamea, isn't anymore, who shared that a gentleman who had really been living outside for a long time, had not been accessing services, but because of the cold and the heavy snow, came into one of the community centers, and while he was there, was able to be assessed.

That assessment showed that his, we were just hearing about vulnerability need and the vulnerability tool, his score was so high that he was immediately placed at the very top of that list for permanent supportive housing and just got his keys to a unit just last week.

So because, you know, there were opportunities.

you know, because of the dangerous environment, that once people came indoors, they were able to access services that maybe they wouldn't otherwise be accessing.

And we saw that time and time again.

And so while we had these 550 new, you know, individuals who were indoors, we wanted to make sure that they had access to resources.

And so a resource fair was coordinated.

And I'll have Jackie talk a little bit about that resource fair.

Yeah, sure.

So really quickly, this was born out of the idea that we had opened up additional spaces and seen some people go inside who maybe otherwise may not have done so, many of whom may not have had a frequent or consistent interaction with the resources that the Human Services Department worked so hard to provide.

So we reached out to our colleagues, our partners, and we attempted to coordinate a resource fair.

We realized that, one, we had over 160 individuals already residing at Seattle Center, so we decided to host it there.

And we also had at Bitter Lake Community Center and Garfield Community Center folks who were stable, stationary, who we could transport.

So with our partners, we coordinated to provide resources and support for individuals, including housing navigation, including employment resources.

We've had folks, as a result of this, become employed.

We've had folks move into shelters, some folks who have been housed.

We've had some diversion, some successful, excuse me, diversion.

strategies employed, individuals reconnecting with their families, going back home.

Also, we've had folks engaged in case management as a result.

So our partners included Aging and Disability Services, included the Metropolitan Improvement District, who have a Second Chance Employment Program, which was really well leveraged.

And we believe that it invited us to think about the prospect of how do we support individuals who may be underemployed or unemployed, too, as well.

Thank you.

So Council Member Baxter, you asked about lessons learned.

And we identified a handful, I think as we pass it over to Parks, they'll help to elevate some more.

But we realized that in opening these shelters, we need more of our city family and our community broadly trained in shelter operations.

We also know that this resource fair, it touched so many individuals and gave them access to critical services that they needed.

So we need to duplicate that effort.

Likewise, the navigation team was really effective in rapidly deploying life-saving assistance and transportation to individuals who are living unsheltered.

And we also know that we have work to do to leverage the process of donations and community donors, community volunteerism, as they are critical partners but require a deep level of coordination in order for them to be involved.

Great.

Just if I can dive in on that.

Really what I see here and I appreciate so much is that we came together around an emergency because it was an emergency and we were able to move things in a direction that I'm not sure I've ever seen before.

We were talking about 500 new units and getting people in and getting the services and the food, with the community support, too.

Is there, again, coming back to lessons learned, but can we use that?

We talked about in November of, what was it, 2016, that we declared an emergency, and, you know, now we're seeing an emergency being treated like an emergency.

What can we do?

Before you answer that question, I want to just if I could underscore Councilmember Bagshaw's point specifically as it results to a recommendation coming out of the City Auditor that we do just that.

The City Auditor encourages the City to consider reinstating the strategic coordination components from the Federal Emergency Management Agency's incident command system when the navigation team was Initially put together in 2017, its first 37 weeks of operations were actually conducted as a formal activation at the city's Emergency Operations Center.

We used FEMA's standardized strategic coordination approach called Incident Command System.

Over time, we discontinued the use of those elements for ongoing coordination.

Those elements They're considered the standard for emergency management across the country.

It includes unified command, incident action planning, information intelligence management, dispatch employment.

And two jurisdictions, San Francisco and Snohomish County, are currently using this framework for ongoing field operations.

And this is really something I think is made evident, the usefulness of this kind of approach is really made evident by the work that HSD and other departments did together during the storm.

And feel free also, for our friends from Parks, feel free to jump in and help and answer some of those questions because I think that we're really interested in how we're learning from these other jurisdictions and then also the quick learning that you did on the ground to respond to the need for this greater coordination.

Is that okay, council members?

We have about three questions in queue here.

Good luck.

I think it's one question.

I mean, I see this as one question.

Are we going to go back to using an incident command system as recommended by the city auditor to treat this crisis as an emergency moving forward.

Right, good question.

So these are, in my mind, sort of lessons learned from our time at the EOC.

And we got to, Barb hosted us for many months as many departments, including the Human Services Department, met at the EOC every day to deploy services.

This practice of interdepartmental coordination and activation continues today.

While we may not be at the EOC, we are very much working in coordination with one another on a daily basis.

The NAV team has, you know, daily meetings first thing in the morning.

We are, you know, I shared in the previous presentation, that just last year we increased the shelter capacity by another 25%.

So there is a very real sort of activation that continues even though we are not sort of co-located in the EOC presently.

But- I'm going to try to get you to wrap up so we can hear from Parks as well, if that's okay.

That would be great for sure.

I mean, we can kind of go through our presentation briefly, but also, you know, we'll talk about some of the lessons learned, and then maybe we'll save some of our time to have Director Graup also talk a little bit about sort of how all this is coordinated, especially the conversation afterwards.

And I think, you know, we've had lots of conversations about what we can do to improve.

I have no idea how to switch this, but...

I'm sorry, do you have a separate presentation?

We did.

We had a separate presentation, but I can sort of...

Okay, I'm sorry, I don't believe that we received that, so I really apologize, and we will definitely have you back since we didn't have your presentation.

But we want to give you time, you're at the table.

Yeah, no, and I can talk through a little bit, and then Christopher, who was here, I was a private resident at the time, but Christopher, who was here at the time, leading our efforts.

I think, you know, it's great.

We appreciate having the opportunity to sort of share our involvement both in helping HSD's efforts to support our neediest residents, also the city's broader response.

But to echo what Director Johnson said at the beginning, you know, this was an effort by many, many organizations, many, many both agencies within government as well as partner organizations.

And of course, Director Graf, who was the one that sort of brings us all together to make sure that we're having the conversations in an organized, efficient, and effective way.

But part of the reason I think that Parks and Recreation is at the table is because we literally are in every community, and we already provide lots of human service type support for our residents, both in our programs and our facilities, whether it's child care, preschool, before and after care, as well as job skills development.

We just do a lot.

And so when things like this, emergencies happen, both communities look to us to help with that response, but our staff also is very much committed to being there and being responsive to the needs of our residents.

And so part of our work during this last winter storm was both operating the two shelters that I'm going to have Christopher talk a little more detail about, but also just supporting the city's broader efforts to just get the city back up and running.

So we supported the work of SDOT and other agencies, including the school district and the libraries, and just snow clearing and de-icing and just making these facilities accessible to get us back up and running.

We also supported, for example, our friends over at Seattle Public Utilities in the garbage collection side when the snow kept piling up.

And then, of course, like we do in every emergency, we had folks out there dealing with downed trees.

And literally, we cleared hundreds of fallen tree branches and things like that that impact not just people's accessibility across the city, but also power lines, et cetera, and tried to bring the city back in that regard.

And so I'm gonna have Christopher kind of talk through a little bit about some of our operations in those two shelters, as well as some of the lessons learned.

But I did want to take just a quick moment to just express my deep gratitude to all of the staff at Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Like I said, we're in every community, and we have a kind of staff that literally just rolls up their sleeves and does whatever needs to be done.

And even in situations like this that are unprecedented, we learned a lot, but at the end of the day, our staff was really just committed to doing what they did.

And my friend and colleague here to my right, Christopher Williams, who very ably led our agency and our response to that, he did a fantastic job making sure that we were a part of the solution.

So I'm going to turn it over to him.

Great.

So real quickly, what you need to know is that since 2005, we have been training Seattle Park and Recreation employees under the guidance of the American Red Cross to operate emergency shelters anticipating an event like this.

You also need to know that we use the incident command structure that you spoke about earlier and have practiced that over the years in the Seattle Park and Recreation Department.

We operated these emergency shelters under the aegis of the mayor's executive snow response, or rather, executive order, and that allowed us to do things like buy food for the shelter, extend overtime to staff, and to engage in partnership opportunities with outside organizations that we would not normally do if it were not an emergency.

We operate at the Garfield Community Center Shelter from roughly February 8th through February 22nd.

That's 14 consecutive days of operations.

We serve 4,380 meals just at Garfield alone, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

We had a cadre of staff that worked 24-7 shifts, 12-hour shifts, 8 in the morning till 8 at night, and from 8 at night till 8 in the morning.

We also partnered with other city departments, but most of the staffing was done by Seattle Park and Recreation.

We operated a shelter at Bitter Lake Community Center, and one extraordinary story was one of the shelter clients at Bitter Lake had lost, well, I'm sorry, they were diabetic, and they lost their insulin.

They left it underneath the I-5 where they were staying, and we were able to work with the NAV team to go back and find that specific shelter get their kit of insulin and bring it back to the community center in like four or five hours after we learned about it.

Moving on here.

Snow clearance.

So the park department was sort of a utility hitter.

We engaged in work that included clearing roads.

We cleared library parking lots.

We shoveled bike lanes.

We shoveled sidewalks.

We did ADA path clearing and removal.

We shoveled entryways to city facilities and walkways.

We cleared storm drains.

And we even assigned our staff to clear a three-block radius around 11 elementary schools around the city.

That was handwork.

That was not done with machinery.

And that was to aid the school district.

creating safe walking routes for elementary age school kids so they could return to school.

As Jesus mentioned, we were involved with Seattle Public Utilities in four drop sites across the city.

We staffed them so local neighbors could drop off garbage when the garbage haulers weren't able to pick up garbage around the city.

We had down tree responses across the city.

Some of our challenges and lessons learned come down to, we know we're going to have to do this again.

We think we need a taxonomy of shelters that describe shelter types that we are suitable to operate.

General population shelters, warming and cooling shelters, and then low barrier shelters, and maybe even with the climate change, air quality shelters.

We need to focus on safety and security.

for staffing and shelter clients.

We need a staffing plan.

In fact, we identified the need for a job staffing these shelters, someone who just schedules the staff to staff the shelters.

That was a real job need.

We need a plan to cope with pets.

A lot of people come to shelters and don't want to be separated from their pets.

Drug and alcohol use was pervasive in some of the shelters and we need a plan to deal with that.

We especially need medical and mental health support We were successful in working with our partners at Human Services to get that support when needed But we could tighten that up and then demobilizing shelters or deactivating shelters Was also an area we want to pay attention to so our next steps following it following a debrief with Seattle Park and Recreation staff and Human Services and and Barb Graf from HSD is we're developing winter weather protocols to better prepare us for the next snow event.

This will include a set of protocols that underscore some of the policy areas that were uncovered in this recent snow emergency that we need to deal with.

We want to create some agreements ahead of time so we're not kind of chasing our tail looking to create agreements while we're in the middle of an emergency.

And we continue to partner with Human Services and the Office of Emergency Management to create those protocols.

I'll wrap up right there.

Excellent.

So we do have one more.

I think we're going to limit it to a five-minute presentation from our friend Mark Jones after this.

But we definitely did not give this enough time, didn't give this enough justice on our agenda today.

So maybe this will be the beginning and we apologize to Parks for not having your materials so we'll send it out to our council colleagues but we'll also have a chance to bring you back.

I love the idea of a Memorandum of Agreement so that there's ahead of time understanding uh the taxonomy of shelters is a great idea you have a great chair in parks with Council Member Juarez I'm sure that this is something she's tracking closely as well and then to the issue that we always are concerned about making sure that there's a ton of access to low barrier shelters.

Comments anything before going to Mark?

Okay very briefly guys.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Okay, thank you, and big thanks, all of you.

And I want to acknowledge what you just last said, Christopher, about having those protocols in place.

I know we did this between Metro and Estat starting about probably 12 years ago, because it was a 2008 snowstorm where things didn't go well.

We did some new protocols, things worked.

So I just want to acknowledge that if we're taking care of people who are out in the streets in tents, and having some difficulties just on any day, but then let alone when you've got multiple inches of snow.

I appreciate that.

If there's anything we can do, count us in.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you and I would just like to clarify although I appreciate knowing that during the storm event the approach used was the incident command system.

That was not my question.

My question is when are we going to apply these principles to responding to our homelessness crisis in a day-by-day over the course of the year.

These are important recommendations of the city auditor and I think we need to take them seriously.

Thank you.

I'll underscore that as we transition.

Oh, yes, go ahead.

I'm so sorry to not even have you here.

Thank you very much, Ms. Graff, for being here.

Thanks for the invitation.

One of the things that SNHU does that I wish it did on a daily basis to highlight the needs of the homeless is it affects everyone and therefore it's an everyone in kind of game.

But there were several conditions that exist when we have snow days like that that made it possible for parks to use their community centers.

Schools were closed for five days.

They had an early release for another.

They had a delayed opening, another.

And so to some extent we need to remember that many times the at-risk youth programs and other programs at the community centers, we would displace those populations in order to create this surge of housing.

So it's just good to keep in mind certain things happen when everybody gets affected at the same time.

Nonetheless, we'll keep that in mind as we continue to apply those same kind of principles.

Thank you all so much.

And thank you for joining us.

And as we transition, I do want to underscore Councilmember Herbold's point.

And perhaps we can also look at our national expert, Mark, to see if he has any other comments on this as we look for him to for other ideas from other cities.

The National Incident Command Center you mentioned is being used in Snohomish County in San Francisco.

I saw it actually live in person when I went to Los Angeles.

They invited me into the room.

when they did their morning briefing that was incident command like.

And so I think we have some other great examples that we should pull from for the crisis of today at 365 days a year.

And it's not about whether or not people are physically meeting in a particular place like the EOC.

It's about the principles that are used on a daily basis.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

Mr. Dones, sorry, Mark Dones.

Thank you so much for waiting.

I so appreciate you waiting and apologies for shorting your time.

Would you like to introduce yourself for the record and then we'll read it into the council itself?

Sure.

My name is Mark Dones.

I'm the executive director of the National Innovation Service.

Agenda item three, an update from the client group on regional governance for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, really quickly.

Can I give a context for the council members?

Is that okay, Madam Chair?

Yes, please.

So just as a reminder of where we're at with this process, last May, the executive signed a memorandum of understanding with the county to pursue developing a joint entity of some type to govern our homelessness activities.

That was affirmed and given some further guidance when the council passed screen sheet 1518B1 with the budget.

We have had a number of meetings in the last couple of weeks outlining how we wanted to be involved in those discussions.

And last time we had our select homelessness committee meeting, we were given a structure and various work groups and a steering committee that were all outlined by Mark.

And this is an update on the status of those various groups, The broader structuring and workflow among them was given at the last committee meeting.

As we go forward, we're going to start getting questions and having to take votes on approving a legal entity, on approving an ILA, on approving what will be part of the actual policy goals of this group.

So there are major decisions that will be coming, but today it's going to be just focused on the membership of those work groups.

Thank you.

I will say that moving to a regional response actually does allow you to use a command control function.

That's one of the things that our report highlighted.

All right, moving really quickly.

So just as a reminder, this is the structure, the decision-making structure for implementation.

We have four work groups, organizational stand-up, community engagement, policy and planning, external affairs.

Then there's a steering committee responsible for process management, coordination, and strategy.

And then, of course, the legislative process that will run between the two executive offices and the two councils.

At the request of a council from last time, the purpose of this update is really just to give you all and to transmit to the record who is actually going to be on these things.

So this is the steering committee group with names.

I will note that, yes, this is final.

The only thing that I want to call out is that service providers and equity advocates from the community, including folks who have experienced homelessness, we want the community to determine those things, right?

So we have reached out.

To the provider community, we have weekly meetings with the Undoing Institutional Racism Collaborative, which is made up of providers and folks who have experienced homelessness, and also with the Live Experience Coalition, which is the newly formed group of folks who have experienced homelessness or are currently experiencing homelessness.

We are trying to determine what the best process is for them to be engaged, and I want to be really clear about that.

I know I've communicated this to a number of you, but we are very clear that it is not appropriate or possible simply to say to folks who are perhaps currently experiencing a crisis, like, show up to this meeting, right?

And so being really, really thoughtful about what the best way to engage is and not just sort of saying, send, you know, a person and that'll check our box, but really being clear that this is contemplative and deliberative engagement.

that requires their sign-off as well.

The rest of these names I believe should be of no surprise to anyone.

I'll pause if there are any questions on this slide.

Okay.

Up next, so this is organizational stand-up.

The purpose of this working group will be to clarify the structure of the new entity, and when I say structure, I mean, like, to really dig into things like org charts and, like, you know, how will staffing arrangements be done?

This represents an opportunity to really fundamentally rethink teaming, which we think is both exciting for providers and for staff, right?

That, like, you know, what is the best team to deploy to support staff in the field?

Like, how do you think about retooling job descriptions so that, You're thinking more about sort of program officer job descriptions instead of sort of more of a contract management, et cetera, et cetera.

So a lot of that conversation will happen in this group.

Again, I believe that none of these names should be surprising.

And again, on the equity and homelessness fronts, we are working with community members to determine what the best pathway is for engagement.

Any questions on this?

Okay.

Community engagement.

I want to clarify just briefly the difference between what we're thinking of in terms of community engagement and external affairs.

So external affairs is really about like when you need to communicate to an organization or a interest group, right?

So when we talk about communicating with the business community, that's an external affairs question.

When we talk about engaging with neighborhoods, with advocates, with providers, et cetera, That's more of a community engagement question.

Again, I don't believe that there should be any surprises about this.

And again, caveating on the equity advocates and service providers.

And what I'm seeing is that the labor representation has not apparently been provided yet.

But that invitation went out.

Apologies.

There it is.

Any questions on this?

Policy and planning, this group will be responsible for helping to, we call it affectionately, the sausage making.

So we're essentially like sort of in a marathon, right, where We're trying to hand off a whole bunch of stuff to an entity that doesn't exist yet.

And in the process we need to sort of make the sausage or the baton, that's a better metaphor, the baton that we would pass off, right, if this was a relay race.

And so synthesizing the policies and regulatory authorities and like, current positions of everybody who's doing something right now and making some pre-recommendations around what is, like, which way do we want to go, what aligns with, you know, the directions laid out by our report, by other reports, by councils, et cetera.

That's going to really be the work of this group.

Additionally, this group will provide support around the Regional Action Plan, which I know a number of you have heard about, but that effort being led by the Corporation for Supportive Housing, We'll be leveraging this group explicitly as one of the tools that they use to pull in data for that plan.

So could I just talk to you about your timeline?

Mark, I really appreciate this.

We've seen graphs and charts before, and we all know how long it takes things to move.

But can you talk about that?

Is it working?

Are people dedicating 100% of their time to solving this problem?

What's your...

So we have just, I'm like watching my calendar fill up with these meetings as of right now.

Some of the first ones are scheduled for later this week.

You know, I will say that as you just noted, pulling together this many people was quite a complicated endeavor.

And the number of competing interests around who was around the table.

I would also say that, you know, Part of this, my colleague or our colleague here at all home says this all the time, right, that there is a need to in some ways manage through the dysfunction in order to get to the solution.

And so in our report, we talk quite a bit about the inability for staff to disaggregate between their crisis response functions.

and their planning functions, this is one of those moments where that is happening.

And so it is not possible in the current structure or system for people to dedicate 100% of their time, although Jason, Tiffany, and Leo, and Mark over at the county, have been really wonderful, actually, about helping staff to find time to move responsibilities so that folks are able to focus.

I think that each one of these groups is staffed by at least two members of our team, and so that should help keep the ball rolling.

And I have heard from folks on the front lines of this that there is some concern about will we have a job at the end of the day?

I know this isnít your point to raise, but everything that Iíve heard is that weíre going to approach this like we did the aquarium eight or nine years ago.

where people were assured, yes, you're going to have a job with the same or similar benefits.

We don't know what it's going to look like now, but have faith that you will have a job at the end of the day.

Do you know what conversations are going on within the city about that in HSD?

I do not.

I am aware that they are happening.

I believe there is a conversation on my calendar with labor for maybe tomorrow even.

So I know that that is moving forward.

I will say that our team's position has been from the very beginning that there is entirely too much work to do to lose staff.

So provided people want the jobs that exist in the new agency, they'll be there.

Great.

Council Member Bagshaw, there are some fundamental steps we have to conclude with like the legal approach to doing this that will help to answer some of those questions as well.

Thanks Jeff.

All right, and the last one, external affairs.

As I mentioned, the focus of this group is sort of interest groups, business, et cetera.

Again, no surprises here.

I will note that there may be an additional communications firm that is added to this, my understanding.

is that the funders collaborative which is forming is looking to retain permanently someone who is able to coordinate across all of the different communication needs.

I don't know when or how that will happen, but I just want to flag that there may be a shift.

Okay.

Very briefly, just want to remind folks, this is the timeline that we're on.

We are short on time, but on time so far.

So I believe that in our next sets of conversations, we will be able to provide an update.

around, to Jeff's point, legal entity structure, and hear some clarity from city and county around what they are recommending, and be able to begin to machine forward a lot of the details that I think folks are looking forward to.

Additionally, the working groups will have begun to meet, and so we will be able to read out on the activities that are taking place in those as well.

And that should be it.

Mark, first, thank you so much for both waiting and for your quick presentation and for being here so frequently to help walk us through these important changes.

I'm sort of looking at Jeff to help us to make sure that on this last slide we get those firm dates included since the select committee does have a full calendar coming forward so that way we can populate that.

Questions from our colleagues?

To the last question around retention of staff and our concerns always with making sure that workers are protected and that we have strong labor relations being support coming from this council.

I appreciate that you've also included our folks from Protech 17, SEIU 1199, and others at the table for those tough discussions.

I think that that will be very helpful in envisioning the new structure.

We will hopefully have you back, and we'll put you first on the agenda next time, if I can talk with our council colleagues about that, on the May 24th meeting, if you're back in town, you are, okay.

And we promise you, Mark, that we'll give you your due diligence in terms of time and attention there, but know that you'll be around for the next few days, so we look forward to working with you over those next few meetings.

And we see him Thursday, right?

Yeah.

I will not be here Thursday.

I'll be in Massachusetts, but my colleague Marshall will be.

I don't know how you do it all.

Our next meeting will be on May 24th with chair by Councilmember Sawant at 930 a.m.

And we will talk to her about that agenda and making sure you're up at the top of the list.

On behalf of all of our colleagues that are here and those that had to leave, thank you for your ongoing work with the city as we go through this tough process.

And as you heard today, time is of the essence and people are really excited about having their voices incorporated.

So thank you for helping to make sure that that's possible.

This meeting is adjourned.

We'll see you all on May 24th.

Thank you for sticking around.