We scheduled a meeting of the Human Services Equity Development and Venture Sites Committee.
The time is 2.03 p.m.
It's April 9, 2019, and I'm joined by Councilmember Juarez.
Thank you for being here.
Yes.
We have one item on today's agenda we will hear from Jason Johnson and Tiffany Washington who are here from the Human Services Department.
Thank you.
They will be presenting on the data they have accumulated from the homeless investments that the department has done over the last year.
We held quarterly reports throughout 2019 to discuss the data, and this will be our first opportunity to step back and see the results over time.
But before we bring the presenters to the table, we should have public comment, and Nick Jones, who's clerking this committee, will be reading the names.
Every person who signed up has two minutes to speak.
Please keep your eye on Nick to know when your time's up.
All right, first on public comment, we have David Haynes.
People are getting rich off of this report, and it's very sugar-coated in general.
According to this, we need an investigation into who is skimming contracts and doing what exactly amidst a modern third world slumlord managing the villages.
It goes from 1.5 million in 2017 helping 255, and then they only help like 328 or something, but it costs 4.24, excuse me, 4.2 million.
Committee chair must investigate the racist agenda that purposely bypasses all these innocent citizens.
While non-profits are nowhere to answer for their egregious failure skimming a societal welfare, excuse me, skimming a social welfare salary, acting expert politicking racial and an obscurely perverted data to further discriminate against innocent, sober, drug-free, houseless people, always subhuman mistreated and second class citizen.
Committee chair needs to stop using paid operatives doing bidding of corrupt subhuman shelters providing a trade of accountability and integrity of inept and unqualified self-appointed politically connected nonprofits and their reliance on six-figure salary donors working with lazy do-nothing government employees playing the race card.
It would be great if city council and the committee chair dissolved all home.com and all the government and non-government agencies.
regarding the red tape administrative that is squandering millions of hard-earned tax dollars and you could use all that money to hire a 21st century general contractor and an advanced architect and use the capital investment and other matching funds for a vocational education for carpenters union qualified workers to begin the great American housing buildout without fraudulent power mongers at housing development consortium and all of their partners in crime.
And I can go down the list.
We need to have a Bertha Landis meeting every week for the homeless hearing of what the hell's going on and have all these great people that are participating in it show up, hopefully to solve the problem that's ongoing.
After David, we have Alex Zimmerman and then Megan Murphy.
Hi.
Say hi, my dear Fuhrer.
A Nazi garbage rat from annual farm.
My name is Alex Zimmerman.
Is this your plan for homeless?
I see this BS for 10 years.
And you, someone, don't do nothing about this.
You call only re-election and represent your socialism.
Sorry, not socialism.
I call this a Nazi social democratic mafia.
This is exactly who you belong.
So, my proposition is very simple.
First, and I spoke about this a hundred times, every time I go for elections, six times.
So, we have more enough money in the system so we can fix everything without problem.
That's number one.
Number two, We need open Bertha room in City Hall so people can come and talk.
And look, nobody here.
Because everybody what is we talking is nothing.
It's your slung, our voice matter.
You see this?
I keep this.
No, it's not matter.
You, no people here.
So open Bertha room in City Hall one time per week.
And I talk about this for many years, hundred times.
You never support this.
It's very interesting socialist you are.
It's number two.
Number three.
what is absolutely important.
I go right now to every month to City Light and Director of City Light Schmidt presents so I can speak to her and there's almost Q&A.
I talked to you many times, you know what I mean, for many years and you always ignore this totally.
I told you many times, we need open conversation with every director in city.
So every director can go In hub every month, report to the people, have Q&A, or you can talk openly.
I doing this right now with City Light in Schmidt.
Why you never support this?
You sit in this dirty chamber for six year, you never support this too.
Socialist idea about open Bertha room every week for people, and about director supposed to be spoke to people every month, like all civilized business is doing.
Stand up Seattle, clean this dirty chamber from this crooks.
I heard Chateau residents are getting $5,000 each for relocating, which is not enough.
We were here for Hallison, I think it's called the trailer park.
to be, they have to start their whole regimens of life over again, like where they're gonna go to the doctor, how they're gonna get transportation, their therapy, and it's, a lot of them are elderly, and some of them have had trauma, and I don't, I think Section 8 shouldn't be so centralized.
A lot of landlords can't afford to take Section 8 or won't, Or the rent is just too high to where people with Section 8 vouchers have to be in one building.
I think everyone deserves a right to housing and to not be displaced, especially when they are older.
You know, I heard that the company that owns Chateau is probably offshore in some like other country like China.
I'm not sure where they are, but they're owned by people with so much money that don't even know the residents that live there.
And, you know, I just I think people deserve the right to permanent housing, safe housing, and like Share Wheel is going to get funded.
And I thought I think it should just be written that it's permanently funded, and a lot of the shelters, you know, sleeping on a mat on the floor is really hard on people's bodies, especially if you're elderly.
And I'm reading a book called The Inner Level that was recommended by Lakata, and, you know, inequal, And in societies where there's a lot of inequality, the standard of living is way lower.
It's like there's higher levels of stress, depression, bipolar.
And in more equal societies, the health outcomes are better for everybody.
So because then the people on the top don't have to be narcissistic in order to survive.
So I think it would be really cool if the Chateau, I'm just really happy to be of the Chateau gets a better deal of share wheel is permanently funded.
Thanks.
Thank you, Megan.
And as far as I know, Cadence developer, which owns the Chateau building is not an overseas company, but you're right.
It is owned by very rich people and they are actually being forced to know the tenants because the tenant organizing brought the principles of the corporation to, you know, force them to meet with the tenants.
And so I agree with you, $5,000 is not enough, but it's a virtually unheard of thing that the tenants have won, and transferring the Section 8 is absolutely critical, and we're going to continue working on that.
Thanks.
So if we could have the presenters come to the table, and we will start with introductions.
because I didn't introduce you earlier.
And then as you all are settling in, I just, I was hoping that, I mean, you can kick it off.
I was just hoping that when you do the introduction of the presentation, you'd also just give us an overview of when, do you need to help?
If you could give an overview on the RFP process, I mean, I'm assuming
As far as I know, the last RFP that was put out was in 2017, and so if you could talk about what the thinking was for 2018, and if there's a plan for 2019. And also, I wanted to thank both Jason and Tiffany for being here.
I really appreciate it.
So far, this is the first time we've been, this year we've been able to get Mr. Johnson here, and we really welcome that, and we hope that we can continue it in the, I think we have a lot of things to talk about in the future committee meetings.
We should start with introductions.
All right, thanks for having us.
So we were asked to come and present on the fourth quarter data, which will include a full year 2018 of our homeless investments performance data.
And this is data that we look at every quarter.
and report back to the mayor, to this governing body, to the public, so that we can, it's a way of helping us stay accountable to the investments we're making, but also how we help support organizations that we're investing in, in making sure that they're successfully exiting individuals experiencing homelessness from their programs into permanent housing.
So today we're going to walk through some of the key milestones.
We also want to just highlight some of the 2018 performance and overall system performance.
And we want to focus on some key program areas and talk about the performance of those program areas.
So I think this slide highlights a little bit of what you were asking in your question about the RFP.
We did not just land last year in a space where we had exits to permanent housing.
arrive into contracts without intention.
In fact, this was a multi-year process that really moved us in both the sophistication and the targeting of the level of data and the kind of data we want to look at and why.
So this really, in 2014, we were very much still kind of widget counting.
We were counting individuals or hours of service or sort of, you know, bags of food, meals served, those kind of things.
And those are still important items to count, but through the results-based accountability framework, it really asks us to look deeper and to look at the outcomes and results that we want to achieve and find the strategy and the performance measures that we're going to pay attention to that help us understand if we're achieving those goals.
And so, just wanted to highlight that this has been a multi-year continuum of getting some of our own thinking.
We have great experts inside of the department, some deep engagement with providers, especially through the Unsheltered Task Force and the State of Emergency Homeless Investment Analysis.
We did a lot of work with providers, but that we also had outside national consultants help us understand how we could both track and report back information about our homeless investments.
And ultimately, we launched the Pathways Home RFP in 2017, where we were very explicit about our expectations that certain programs were able to show the number of people that they were moving to permanent housing, and that's how we would be gauging success.
It's also through that RFP that we made it really clear that data was going to be a key component of our contract expectations.
So we use data in decision making in that RFP.
Likewise, we continue to look at data in our contracts.
And that's the data that we're going to report back to you today.
So I think the key messages here is we're making progress.
More households have moved from homelessness to housing in 2018 than in 2017. We are accountable to people experiencing homelessness.
We're also accountable to the public.
We're working together with our partners, human service agencies, to improve program performance and positively impact more people experiencing homelessness.
Likewise, we're changing how we'll report results in the coming year.
We've been reporting on these results each quarter throughout 2018, and those results are that we've moved a total of 7,428.
We've, sorry, we've had a total of 7,428 exits, and these are, This is an increase of 30% over the number of exits that we had in 2017. These are a combination of 5,627 household exits to permanent housing, and this also includes Sorry, I'm gonna start over.
This number of exits is a total increase of 30% over 2017, and that's that 5,627 number.
We also had a number of people that we invest in permanent supportive housing.
We also had 1,801 households maintaining that permanent supportive housing.
So we sort of consider both of those an important piece of data in understanding how successful either our emergency you know, program investments like shelters, transitional housing, rapid rehousing, diversion are performing.
But we also want to pay attention to the important investments we're making in permanent supportive housing to show how we're able to maintain housing for those chronically homeless individuals.
Councilmember Juarez and I were at a opening of a permanent supportive housing development opened by DESC just today.
And we talked, I spoke with several people who talk about the important wraparound services that exist in those housing communities.
And that's really the investments that we're making into that kind of program.
We need to have programming that helps individuals maintain that housing without that important wraparound services, without the kind of in-building services that people who have experienced homelessness for a long period of time conditions that make it impossible for them to work.
These services are critically important and so we just want to, needed to find a way to capture how well those investments are working and we capture that as showing how many people are maintaining that housing because of those services.
I want to also talk about, and this is somewhat new information.
Sure.
Just going back to Ford, this is just, I had a list of questions.
Can you explain what are the factors that enabled the increase in exit to housing on slide four for the Native American piece?
And I'm guessing that had to do with Chief Seattle Club and some of the funding that you all did.
Correct.
Can you explain that?
Yeah, so we've had a 87% increase in the number of Native American, Native Alaskan households that have exited to permanent housing.
Likewise, we had a 27% increase in the number of black African-American households that have exited housing.
And we believe that that is because of our intentional effort in investing in programs that serve that population.
Also, because of our Again, very intentional expectation that we've set for all programs to have a focus on this population.
We see the greatest disparities in the homeless population for people who are native or Alaska native or who are black African American.
And so it was through that RFP that we wanted to have a very intentional effort to both invest in culturally specific organizations who are already serving that population, but also we wanted to make it very clear that our expectation of all other organizations, even if they were white-led organizations, that we needed them to help us really move the needle in helping to better serve that population.
I'm really excited about the data from 2018 and to see this increase in not just the numbers of people that we've been able to serve, but that we've been able to move such an increased number of people through these programs and into permanent housing.
And I want to thank HSD, you as well as Catherine, because I know that Chief Seattle Club United Indians and Seattle Indian Health Board did their RFP together.
And that was the first time that all three organizations pushed forward together to combine it.
And that was something that was never done in the past.
And then some of the resistance we got, well, we've never done it that way.
And then it was, well, yeah, let's do it this way.
And it actually looks like the results prove positive when we kind of don't do business as usual.
So thank you for that.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Yeah, I think it showed very valuable.
Could you explain the different things that count as an exit to permanent housing, like the different parts of that?
Yeah, so we're going to go through each program area.
And we'll be able to talk specifically in each program area what constitutes an exit.
So we'll go through and do that one by one.
OK, that might not.
answer the thing that I was trying to get to.
So for each of these program areas, there's different places that people could go.
And some programs have a very specific place, but others.
You know, like if it was an enhanced shelter, people could go many different places, and it would count as an exit to permanent housing.
So I was wondering if you could kind of go through all the different places that people could go.
Yeah, in general, what are the...
Yeah, in general terms, an exit to permanent housing is when someone moves from something that is time limited, that is temporary, to something that is permanent, something that is non-time limited.
There's no need for them to So that could mean that they move into housing that has a lease, you know, that they have their own lease.
It could mean that they're in permanent supportive housing where they do not have to move out.
There's no time requirement.
It could mean that they move in with friends or family.
and those friends and family agree that there's no time limit to when they have to exit.
So the key term here is permanent, meaning that there is not going to become this period of time when they have to leave.
Like in transitional housing, the maximum time that someone could stay in a transitional housing program is two years, therefore it's not permanent.
We know going in that they cannot stay there forever.
In shelter, we really have a shelter stay target It's like 30 to 90 days.
So we know that that shelter is not intended to be permanent housing because the expectation is that they leave.
So when we talk exit to permanent housing, we're saying that they exit to a situation, an environment where it is non-time limited and they don't have to leave.
And then...
That's a HUD requirement.
I think maybe, I'm assuming where you get hung up is where I continue to get hung up is that exits to permanent housing, it's not an intuitive word.
It's a catch-all phrase by HUD to mean many different things.
Yeah, and some of HUD's definitions definitely need to be drawn out to understand the numbers.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but when somebody gets a rapid rehousing voucher, that counts as an exit to permanent housing.
And then when that voucher expires, then that also counts as an exit to permanent housing and that counts twice.
Am I right about that?
Yeah.
So there is some duplication in this exit number.
And so I think what you're trying to describe is that maybe someone's in shelter and they get a rapid rehousing voucher.
That shelter program is going to count that person as exiting their program to permanent housing.
So they're moving into a place where they have a lease.
And then the rapid rehousing program may be offered by a different program.
They are after the subsidy and services end, and after a period of time which that individual is still in that housing without subsidy or services, that rapid rehousing program is also going to count that as a successful exit.
And so these exit numbers, there is some duplication.
But what we know is that, you know, we have unduplicated.
And I think we can go to the next slide.
Can I, before you go on to the subsequent slides, and I recognize that there might be duplication.
But even without that, or even assuming that it's, I don't know what margin of error that presents, but outside of that, I mean, this is not the first time I'm having this question, and I've brought this up in the committee before, but I'm having a bit of a mathematical problem, and I've always had a mathematical problem.
These numbers look so good.
what's happening out there.
I mean, if these numbers are actually within a very, I mean this is statistics, so within a very reasonable margin of error, the only thing that, the only story that tells me is that if I'm to take these numbers, as statistically reliable, then the only thing that explains just the ever-expanding homelessness problem is that new people are becoming homeless.
Are you saying that so many exist to homelessness, exist to housing happened, and And the same year, new, brand new people enter homelessness or people re-enter homelessness.
I'm just not able to square such impressive numbers with the problem that's out there.
Do you see what I'm saying?
I mean, it's just mathematically doesn't square.
I very much see what you're saying, and that's exactly what's occurring.
So as quickly, as impressive as these numbers are, as quickly as we're able to move people out through these programs and into permanent housing, I mean, our human service programs are doing a phenomenal job serving literally tens of thousands of people in the homeless service system.
Yet, there are tens of thousands of people who fall into homelessness every year.
And so there is an inflow that far exceeds the outflow.
So we are, people are experiencing homelessness and using our homeless system at a pace that far exceeds the number of people that our service system is able to exit into permanent housing.
These are impressive numbers.
We need to pay attention to these numbers.
We need to understand the rate at which our investments are being used.
But it is literally, the service providers as well as all of us in HSD, we understand that the system is literally drinking from the fire hose.
I mean, there is, there are, you know, more people experiencing homelessness every year in Seattle King County than this current system, these current investments can keep up with.
I wouldn't dispute that at all.
I mean, without looking at any numbers, I think we could all be in agreement that the problem is getting worse because of other things, not because of any...
not because of any lack of dedication on the part of service providers.
I completely agree with you that service providers are doing a phenomenal job.
In fact, they're doing more with their dollars than we would imagine, you know, given the chronic problems with funding.
That's all true.
What I'm wondering about is just the scale of what you're presenting here.
I mean, it's, I just would not expect that much of a, I wouldn't have expected that the homelessness that we currently see is, that so much of it is expected by new entrants this year.
I know that some of it would be, absolutely.
It's just that these numbers are so striking that if the funds are enough to bring about these numbers, then something is wonderfully right.
And so, you know what I'm saying?
I mean, it's a scale question.
I'm not questioning the overall point you're making.
I'm just, I just want to focus on the numbers.
Yeah, I agree.
You know, as we move through program area by program area, you're going to see that there are some program areas that are being very successful in helping people move through programs and into permanent housing.
So you're going to see that enhanced shelters are far more successful than basic overnight shelters.
You're going to see that our investments in diversion have been really successful.
You're going to see that rapid rehousing works.
We're finding that the individuals who use rapid rehousing are able to access housing and maintain that housing.
And so you're going to see that the things that we're investing in are the right things.
But I think you're absolutely right.
There's a issue of scale here.
Okay, so continuing on the number, you know, we talk a lot about exits, that is sort of our lingo, that is the terminology that is very familiar in this field as we talk about addressing homelessness.
But, you know, in the Human Services Department, we feel it's also important to acknowledge that really we're talking about people, we're talking about individual households who are moving through some sort of crisis in their life, looking for assistance, and that hopefully the assistance that they're able to offer ends that crisis and puts a roof overhead in a permanent way.
Okay, this may sound really basic because I've been always trying to.
So when this says 30%, 1,321 more exits to permanent housing, and then you say households, so you're saying 1,300 people moved.
Not this way.
Not, as opposed to when you use the word households.
That's where I get.
Yeah, so let me go through it.
Let me take you through it.
So this is, I guess, a little bit of terminology.
So we tried to define exit for you.
So that is a program exit.
So someone is exiting a program, a household is exiting a program and going to permanent housing.
That's what we count as an exit.
It's a household.
That could be an individual of one or an individual, you know, family of four.
But we count that exit as by household, by head of household.
Which is a HUD requirement, right?
Yeah.
That's how we report data to HUD.
I just say that to say, like, the confusing terminology is just us following the protocols that we receive from HUD.
That's very helpful.
Thank you.
In 2018, we served 25,420 households.
So that is 7% more households served than in 2017. represents 30,205 people.
So, you know, we're talking exits and then we're trying to break that down to be, you know, number of unique households.
And then we're trying to break that down to people served.
So you can see that 25,000 number, those are households that increases when we count individual people.
by about 5,000.
So it shows that for the vast majority of the services that we invest in, we are serving single individuals, but not every household is a single individual.
Some of the households that we're serving are families.
The circle you're about to go to, how is that different than the first circle on the previous slide?
Like the 5,627 exits to permanent housing here, how is that?
What is, that's obviously not the same number as here, but what's the difference between those two?
Yep, because one, the first one is exits, and the second one is households.
And so a household may exit from a, you know, we just discussed, a household may exit from two programs in a year.
So they may use a shelter and then get exited to a rapid rehousing program.
and then exit to permanent housing.
And in terms of exits, all those exits get counted, but it's one household?
Correct.
And this is the number of unique households who account for those earlier exits.
And how many of these break down, like this is moved from homelessness to housing or prevented from becoming homeless?
How many of those are prevented from becoming homeless and how many are moved from homelessness?
Yeah, so we had 3,559 unique households that exited to permanent housing.
And we had 704 unique households that were offered prevention assistance in order to maintain their current housing.
So we have that broken down.
This also represents, just to dive into those numbers a little bit more, that 3,559 unique households that exited to permanent housing.
equates to 5,792 people, and the 704 unique households that were prevented from experiencing homelessness equal 1,386 people.
So this is the sort of granule level of detail that we go into.
We do this to help us understand how our investments are performing.
Again, we really look at exits because we want to ensure that programs are moving people through their programs and into permanent housing.
That's how we gauge whether those programs that we invest in are working.
But we also believe that it's really critically important that we understand how many people are actually impacted by the investment and by the service being provided.
So this is just to show sort of there's sort of two ways that we will be reporting on these numbers.
Presenting the number of households and number of people, this is new.
You'll see us continue this through this year.
We have always, you know, found this level of information helpful, but it is something that we want to start reporting on.
Again, these are individual lives, and so we want to, go beyond just our accountability and stewardship role of ensuring that programs that we invest in are successful and performing.
We also want to be able to talk about our programming and share that from a very personal level and making sure that we're talking about the people that are served by these programs.
So now we're going to go by program area.
So this is a level of detail that we've walked you through in previous other quarters.
And we're going to go program by program area.
And Tiffany's going to take us through.
through each of those.
Thanks.
So I just want to before we go into program performance just again highlight the difference between talking about how well programs work to the effectiveness of our funding.
It's a tongue twister for me.
My staff Jason will tell me I'm new to this two years maybe and I am asking the same questions you guys are asking.
It's just sometimes it's difficult to understand.
And so when we analyze program performance or how well our programs work to move people to permanent housing, we look at enrollments.
So this goes to Ted, what you said, each time someone enters a program, we want to capture that.
And each time they exit a program, we want to capture that.
Because if our system is working correctly, we know that one program can't meet the needs of someone.
And so if someone is enrolled in shelter, and then they get enrolled in case management or rapid rehousing, that's showing us internally how our programs work together to help someone ultimately reach permanent housing.
And that's what we've been, the way in which we've been reporting to you guys to date.
What we heard loudly, which Jason talked about before, is the general public doesn't understand this.
They get tripped up on the same thing that you guys are getting tripped up on.
If it's prevention, how is it an exit?
Or if it's this, how is it an exit?
So what Jason just showed you on this slide is really our attempt at looking at system effectiveness and answering the question of, how many people are better off because of our investments.
And so this will be what we use to help the general public understand how many people, this is the right one, yep, how many unique households are served.
And so we have to do both and because when we report to you, you wanna know how are our investments working and then also how many people are better off.
Does that help a little bit?
So this is just a place setter.
Also there's some envy in here because I drew this so I put it up here every time just for bragging rights.
There's nothing here that you don't already know.
The first slide is prevention and prevention is successful when people maintain housing and don't become homeless.
And I intentionally did not use the word exit here because it's confusing.
And so this program is successful when people maintain housing and don't become homeless.
So what this data shows us is that in 2018, we funded new programs that are supporting cultural specifics, that provide culturally specific services, and we consistently served people closest to experiencing homelessness with the use of our homeless prevention tool.
What you'll see also is that we saw fewer exits in 2018 than we did in 2018. And that's because we funded six new prevention programs in 2018. And those programs needed a ramp up period.
And so we expect to see the outcomes for 2019 this year, which will reflect a full program year of operations.
And give us a couple of examples of how, in terms of prevention, how do we reach the target households in identifying that they need help?
And I'm assuming you're talking about things like if there is an emergency financial stress and they want to tide over for paying their rent.
I mean, I'm assuming it's things like that.
So how do the households reach out to you or how do we find them?
So I'll take it.
I'm pretty sure I know the answer, but I want to leave it open if I miss something that Jason wants to add.
I think that we find the people because the people go to the agencies that provide wraparound services.
And so if someone walks into the Y or into Seattle Indian Health Board and they say, we need help, we're gonna be homeless if we don't get any help, we use the prevention tool here to determine their risk of becoming homelessness.
Like, are they really, really close?
And if the family or the individual or the household is imminently, they will be an imminent risk of becoming homelessness, then we use prevention dollars to keep them housed.
Did I miss anything?
No, I think that's exactly right.
I think that, you know, we have investments and agencies that have very skilled caseworkers, and it's usually, you know, families, households, they're trying to do everything they can to keep the roof overhead, to keep the lights on, to keep food in the fridge.
And so it is when they access programs and are having conversations about their financial situation, about the realities of how they're trying to juggle all of this stuff, that we can help them understand if, you know, prevention dollars can be a tool to keep them housed.
And so there are a number of agencies that do this work on our behalf.
They use a very targeted tool to sort of assess that, you know, if there isn't immediate assistance, you know, rent assistance made available to this household, would they then have to use our shelter systems?
And, you know, not everyone who experiences extreme poverty falls into homelessness.
Some people have natural support services.
They can stay with a friend.
They can stay with family.
They can ask friends or family or their job for a little bit of cash to help get them current on rent.
And so what our prevention dollars are really targeted at those individuals who, without this assistance, they would wind up in our shelters.
They would wind up using our much more expensive homeless service system.
And this, just to be clear, because we also come back to this a couple times, this is not to be confused with anti-poverty work or eviction prevention.
That's very different.
And so this pot of money only serves people who are at the highest risk of experiencing homelessness.
It's not anti-poverty work.
That's the other part of HSD's work in the Youth and Family Empowerment Division.
And I remember oftentimes we go back and forth.
This is targeted.
That's why that tool is used.
It has to be imminent risk.
Can you give me an example of what that would constitute?
Because you're right.
I mean, there are other programs that could be confused with this program, like anti-eviction, anti-poverty.
It's the example that Jason just used, that there are many people living in extreme poverty who have other resources or who find themselves living paycheck to paycheck or doing payday loans, unfortunately, they wouldn't, when the tool assesses them, they aren't at imminent risk.
They don't have an eviction notice.
That would be anti-poverty work in terms of how do we get this individual out of the cycle of poverty, living paycheck to paycheck, experiencing the extreme health issues that come with that level of stress.
That's the greater anti-poverty work.
It is not the, this person is going to fall into the homeless system imminently.
So correct me if I'm wrong, Tiffany and Jason, but it's my understanding that even somebody who receives an eviction notice may not actually qualify for prevention dollars as well.
There's the tool.
It's the science behind the tool.
It's the imminent risk, which I can get you the definition of that.
Yes.
And so for somebody who doesn't qualify for those prevention dollars, they would be turned to other resources outside of the homelessness portfolio.
And most agencies where people would go have those other resources.
They would have like, we need to connect you with this program and that program.
No one wants to send someone away because they didn't score high enough on an assessment tool.
None of the agencies want to do that.
So they have other resources.
It's not enough, but yes, we would refer them.
So next, I'm sorry, go ahead.
You go, then I've got two questions, but you go first.
Great, okay, so I just want to point out to the committee that the asterisk there notes the $2 million for the Seattle Housing Assistance Pilot Program.
So just as a reminder, that $2 million came from one-time funds from the sale of the comp shop, and that was a specific a unique prevention program designed, it's new, and it targets people on the Seattle Housing Assistance SHA wait list, targets people on that list who are at risk for homelessness.
I'd say on average, it's a slightly more expensive per client program than regular prevention programming, but we should see a first year report on how the program is doing later this year.
So I had two questions about this.
One is just sometimes staffing phones in JAMA's office.
I'll talk to somebody who's in the imminent risk of being evicted for not being able to pay the rent.
Which is the best place to send them to to access this money?
I can get you that information.
I don't have the list in front.
I think that there's 211. Would 211 have that information?
Yeah, I mean we can get the full list to your office.
That would be great.
Somewhere to send them so they can go straight to the source and get assistance.
And yeah, 2-1-1 obviously is kind of a go-to for everything, but sometimes that can...
Sometimes they've called us because they want a recommendation.
So if we can do that directly, that would be good.
Then the other question that I had just about the numbers is in terms of exits from the program and exits to permanent housing, if somebody gets a voucher and they're good for, and then six months later they wind up not being able to pay the rent and they're evicted, how does that, appear in these numbers?
What would happen in these numbers in that hypothetical case?
So I heard two questions there.
One is total program exits, and that's the number of people that exited the program.
The exits to permanent housing are the number of households that exited to permanent housing.
The total program exits are a mix of people who exited to permanent housing or somewhere else that we don't know of.
The second question I heard was what happens if someone receives prevention assistance and they're able to stay in their house and then they're not again?
They can apply again.
They can go back and say, I need to be run through the assessment tool.
I'm at imminent risk of being homeless.
And they could potentially get assistance again.
That's good.
What I was hoping to, what I was wondering about is, how would that appear in the numbers?
Like, let's say they don't apply again, and they wind up homeless.
How would that appear in the numbers?
We look at, you know, exits to permanent housing is not the only data that we look at.
So there are five performance measures that we, the city and the county jointly look at.
Returns to homelessness is one of those data sets.
So we could look at that data set to give you that information.
But it's a, we look at returns to homelessness.
And what that tells us is that someone used a program, they were able to exit the homeless system, and then they returned.
So the permanent exit was not permanent.
I understand your question.
And so we have that other data set.
We also look at length of stay.
So how long did people stay in a program?
We look at how full programs are.
So do they have capacity for new individuals to come into their programs?
So there's a, you know, we're reporting out a lot on exits to permanent housing for the city.
We determined that that was going to be the key measurement that we were going to look at.
That was going to be the performance measurement that we looked at to help us determine if our investments were successful or not.
But we do collect other data through the Homeless Management Information System that we're also able to pull at the program level as well as at the system level.
So Ted, I think your first question is, if they received assistance and they stayed housed, where would they show up?
They'd show up in the exits to permanent housing.
If they, that's where they would show up because they received assistance.
And it worked.
And it worked.
If they come back in, they would show up in the return rate.
In the exits to permanent housing also.
that first exit would show up there, yes.
And just as a reminder to the committee, the department actually supplies the full range on all of the performance measures each time they report here in committee.
We do focus exclusively on the Excess Permanent Housing, but they provide a full chart with each of their reporting periods.
But for this time around, we're slightly delayed, so we will receive the full chart, I believe, soon.
And the exit rate for prevention, it sits around 2%, so it's low.
So it works.
So the number of people who receive that first subsidy to stay, it's a 2% return rate of people who return.
So next is basic emergency shelter.
This provides a safe space for people to sleep at night and is a critical part of the crisis response system.
In 2018, you see we decreased the funding amount by about 800,000.
As a result, we decreased the number of basic shelter beds by 296. We then reinvested that funding into enhanced shelter, which has proven to be more effective at exiting people into permanent housing.
So with the funding and bed reduction, even with that, we only saw 27 fewer exits to permanent housing compared to the previous year.
So I'm gonna say that because I asked because it was profound.
So we reduced the funding by 800K and the number of beds by 296 and reinvested that in enhanced shelter.
And even with that funding and bed reduction, we only saw 27 less exits in this program area than the previous year.
Enhanced emergency shelter, this is successful when people leave a shelter program and move into permanent housing.
In 2018, we're proud of the enhanced shelter achievements.
We saw an exit rate that's five times that of basic shelter.
We saw an increase in the number of households served over the previous year.
And we saw an increase in the number of exits to permanent housing.
I think additionally, what's exciting is the rate of exit to permanent housing increased from 13% to 21%.
That indicates an increase in quality, which was a key focus of the RFP.
Next, we have city permanent villages.
Villages are successful when people move from living on the streets into a village and then from a village into permanent housing.
In 2018, we expanded investments in case management mid-year for the villages.
We also opened new villages and added capacity in Q2, 3, and 4. The three villages that were opened under the Path to 500 were the Lake Union Village, Whittier Heights, and True Hope.
We also added case management capacity at the existing villages.
with the hypothesis that if we increase services, that will lead into an increased rate of exit to permanent housing, and we saw that in quarter four.
There was an increase in the number served in villages, as well as an increase in the number of exits to permanent housing over 2017.
Tiffany, just on the previous slide, I'm assuming this is the answer, but I just wanted to confirm.
Total program exits are greater than the, is greater than the number of total household survivors.
Is that explained by what you had said earlier, which is that exits are count?
the count of exits is totally separate from the count of household serve, and is that what explains that?
That is true.
So the total exits will greatly exceed those exits to permanent housing.
Most people use shelter exactly how it's set up to and designed to serve individuals.
They come through during a crisis in their life, they stay for a short period of time, and then they move on and continue their life.
And for a lot of folks, We, you know, their exit sort of where they go to is often unknown.
But these exits, folks could exit a shelter program and go to a transitional housing program.
They could exit an enhanced program and go to a basic program.
So they could exit to a number of places that are not permanent.
And therefore, we still count the exit.
We still count it that they left that program.
But we don't count it as an exit to permanent housing.
The question she asked, so it was comparing it not to permanent housing exits, but instead to total households served.
Yeah, so a person, sorry, okay, thank you.
So the total households served, an individual could exit a program a couple years, multiple times in a year.
So they could use a program, leave, come back to a program.
Okay.
Did that answer your question?
Or use multiple programs in a year.
They could, you know, use one program and then move to another shelter or use another program.
And so we're still going to count them each time they come and go.
This is a real live example of why it's important to talk about program performance and then unique households because they answer different questions.
So just ending on the city permanent villages, I want to close with that.
While the results are promising, we are going to take a closer look at the role of permanent villages in our system, which includes looking at both the number and rate of exit to permanent housing and the cost analysis.
We have a follow up on that.
Now, you know, we have the Licton Springs Tiny House Village, which closed April 1st.
And then I used to know the numbers off the top of my head, but I know that you have here that villages are successful when people move from living on the streets into a village and ultimately move into permanent housing.
We didn't get real good numbers out of that, how many actually move to, which we had to respond to, to the community, because I think we had like 84 people and then some of them, did you have them?
Great.
And I don't expect ultimate, I mean, like I've said this before, if people expect perfection in any program as a litmus test, then we'd all fail.
I just want to know what works.
And so when we look at the, when you make, when you wrote descendants ultimately move into permanent housing, I don't know what that timeline is.
I mean, we set a particular timeline because we had to, but we had individuals that were perfectly happy living there, that didn't want to go anywhere else.
So I'm wondering how we get over that.
That's why it's important to look at the rate and the number of exits to permanent housing, because that's why we said while the numbers are promising, so someone could look and say, wow, 33% rate of exit to permanent housing, but that's 135 people.
And it's not, and it's promising households.
Thank you.
See, I still do it.
You have to look at both, and so we're going to dive down deep into how much does that cost in comparison to enhanced shelter, basic shelter, because it's not until you look at the cost per exit, the rate of exit, and the number of households that exit until you can answer the question, is this an effective program?
And pertaining to Licton Springs, what I think I heard you ask was, there were people there that stayed a really long time and were perfectly happy staying there.
And so what we found was when we had a close date and we increased the resources and we brought in Lifelong AIDS Alliance and different partners to do assessments and really work intensely with the residents, A high amount of them did exit to permanent housing or permanent supportive housing.
We had a great success in transitioning to close that village down.
And so the lesson learned is that you need not just a place, but you need intensive services combined to get an exit.
And Licton was one of the villages that unfortunately they did not have that level of intensive services.
But I think what was important, though, is that everyone came in with the expectation that it was going to open and close.
This is the timeline, everybody.
This is what we're working with, and this is your end of the deal as well, that you're not going to live here forever.
And they responded well.
Yeah, it's not going to be Nicholsville.
And then we're going to provide services, social workers, and safety.
Yes, it was low barrier.
There were some issues there.
But at some point, are we going to get from you folks on the villages, what would be a good scenario of what you would want to shoot for?
Like, what does success look like?
I still don't know what success looks like for a village.
We're working on that right now.
Okay, good.
But thank you, Tiffany, for talking about the real-life example of where actually if you provided what services the individuals need, you can actually see those results.
And that's actually really an important guideline to understand why it is that in some cases it works, in some cases it may not work.
I think what we found there too, it wasn't, yes, it was about people not being sheltered, but we were finding that there were people there that were like being discharged from hospitals and dumped off there.
Literally dropped off from the hospital, where their medical needs were not being met, and the people there were not qualified.
It actually shows the problem with the healthcare system.
Yeah, that happens at programs here downtown where, You know, it's a brick and mortar program.
And yes, it also happens at some of the encampments.
It also happens for our outreach teams.
So our outreach teams are there so that they can help, you know, search and find the most vulnerable and bring them into a place that's much more safe.
And actually it's happening in other cities as well.
Actually the UN rapporteur, I'm sure you guys have seen this, he visited Skid Row and LA where it's very common for people who have just had surgery and are too weak to move and actually need continued care to just be literally, like physically dumped on the sidewalk.
And it was quite a damning indictment of the healthcare system as a whole.
And all of this is feeding into the homelessness problem as well.
So it's not just about what the programs are able to do, but what else is happening.
It's discharging people to the streets.
A quick question, do the investment amounts there also include capital costs for villages?
I'm not sure.
I can find out.
That would be great, thank you.
Because we opened new ones, so it's really finding out if that's in there or not.
And when we do that, can we also include that the city didn't want to pay for some things, and I remember Sharon Lee had to get a private donor to pay for the showers and the sinks, which seemed really unfair.
I believe that we do, through reimbursement, we've paid for several of the Lehigh hygiene trailers for the villages.
Oh, we did?
Okay, good.
Okay, transitional housing.
So this program area is successful when people leave within two years and move to permanent housing.
In 2018, we saw an increased rate of exits to permanent housing, but served fewer people.
So while there was a change in the quantity of people served, we did see an increase in the quality.
So that goes back again to the rate and the number.
And so we exited 359, in 2018 opposed to 433 in 2017, but the rate in 2018 is higher, which means that that speaks to quality.
Consistent with what has been reported previously, HSD decreased the total number of transitional units funded and increased the number of units that were serving youth and young adults as a more appropriate intervention for this population.
Move to the next one, diversion.
Diversion is an area where we're seeing a lot of success.
This is a one-time funding or services to help people move directly to housing either after a very short stay in shelter or by bypassing the shelter system completely.
In 2018, diversion served more households and increased the rate of exits to permanent housing.
And so one of the council staff asked about, give me an example of diversion.
That's the person that says, I could move in with my aunt, but I need $500 to help pay for rent.
That would be an example of diversion.
In this area, an exit to permanent housing means that someone has left homelessness to a stable place, either a permanent housing destination or temporary living with friends and families.
I think something that's exciting is that HSD partnered with King County All Home and Building Changes as part of the Diversion Project, which is training more than 300 providers across King County to use diversion.
Building Changes has dedicated $250,000 and Pearl Jam Home Shows invested 750 in this project to be used for flexible funds.
The flexible fund pool is managed by Africatown and can be accessed by any of the front door programs like shelter, day centers, outreach, and villages.
So we should see an uptick in this given this increased dollars.
And so I'm excited to see if pouring this much money in this investment will result in more successes.
I just want to highlight, often we think about diversion as the cash assistance that someone receives to move them from a front door of a shelter to a permanent or more stable environment.
But diversion is really a strategy.
It's a way of having a conversation with someone, way of helping an individual be really creative about what options they have available to them.
So it is both the engagement, the one-on-one engagement where I can explore with you, you know, are you able to, where did you stay last night?
Oh, you were on your brother's couch.
Why can't you stay on your brother's couch tonight?
You know, he got mad because I ate his ramen noodles.
How about we buy some groceries, help him pay an electric bill, and maybe help him pay some rent?
If that were the case, could you stay there longer?
Yes.
Great.
So, make a call to the brother, sort of, you know, help that person explore options.
I think when people are faced especially when people are faced with homelessness, they are absolutely paralyzed and sometimes unable to do that creative thinking on their own.
And so these really important prompts that case managers can offer an individual with the cash assistance to help out can be a really powerful tool.
And we're seeing great success in our diversion strategy.
So, so diversion wouldn't be like eviction prevention because that eviction prevention is more emergent.
Yeah, it's correct.
Eviction prevention, you're not technically homeless yet.
Okay.
Yeah, it's welcome to the world of terminology.
I mean, this is how systems clash and collide with each other to perpetuate poverty and homelessness.
So just to answer that, so as a case manager, for me, when I case managed young people coming out of the juvenile detention center, what was amazing for me is to be able to say to a young person, because I was working in a system that required birth certificate, social security card, they don't know how to get that.
When I could say, I can pay for all of that, I can pay for your GED test, I can pay for your first and last month's rent, though that's the spirit of diversion, it's like quickly getting those barriers out of the way and not making them like go through a whole bunch of system enrollment steps just to get $50 to get a bus ticket home.
Just giving someone an address.
Correct.
That's the problem we had with working with rural commons is It was a catch-22.
You can't have an ID because you don't have an address.
But I have an address because I'm homeless, so I can't have an ID, so then I can't get services.
It was just like around and around.
And as Jason said, diversion can be used throughout the whole process.
There's not like, you can only use it when you're in or in shelter, or you can only, it can be used at any time someone says, hey, I can get out of this system if I just had this.
Well, I am happy to say that I fought the postmaster and won.
What's that?
I said I fought the postmaster and won.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They wouldn't let a particular group use their address for anything.
And I said, no.
This is why I miss being a lawyer, because I couldn't sue them.
I'm a lawyer in my heart.
So rapid rehousing is the next program area, and this is successful when people live in their own housing without ongoing subsidy.
And so in 2018, rapid rehousing improved the rate of exits to permanent housing to 78%, up from 72, increased the number of households served, and had 618 exits to permanent housing, which is up from 476 in 2017. This is one of those areas where you all were asking about what works, this works.
Right.
I thank you for that.
I don't know if Ted wants to, Ted was informing me that we had a constituent call who had a rapid rehousing voucher with a private landlord, and then faced eviction for not responding, or for not paying in time, or for not responding in time.
I'm sorry, maybe you should clarify, and if that's relevant here or not, and if it's useful to bring it up.
So, yeah, one thing that we, I mean, it's all anecdotal, it's not statistical like this, but, I frequently wind up talking to people who have rapid rehousing vouchers that don't work for them because when the voucher expires they can't pay the rent or any number of problems that have to do with having a private landlord rather than the permanent supportive housing and that sort of thing.
So this specific case is somebody who was evicted by their landlord, and it sounded like very strange grounds for them to be evicted on.
And because our eviction system is messed up, and they didn't have money for a lawyer, they wound up not responding to the eviction in time.
And then when they finally got a pro bono lawyer who agreed that they should not have been evicted, then it was too late, and the judge, rather than ruling on the merits of it, said, sorry, you missed your deadline.
And that's how it goes.
And then, so then they were facing eviction.
So then I contacted HSD to say, you know, this was a voucher that came from the city through DESC.
And so basically the question was, OK, here's a person who's about to become homeless because they're getting kicked out of this home.
They were provided a voucher.
What can we do?
And did not exact and that question still exists.
What can we do?
for that person.
I think that you're speaking about the quality of case management.
And so that is a tricky scenario, which is it's the job of the case manager to ensure that where they're putting, where the household or the individual is moving to is something that they can afford in the long run.
And so as a case manager, people will often say, I want to live here.
But the question really from case management perspective is, can you afford that when this subsidy runs out?
Also, it's the job of case management to help that individual get job training or something that allows them to earn a livable wage.
And so I say all that to say that is just one story of many.
And if you unpack them at the end, it's a series of multiple issues that case management is designed to help kind of weed through so that individual does not end up back on the streets.
Yeah, I'm sorry to hear that happen to that individual.
What I love about rapid rehousing is it's completely client-centered, meaning that it's not a voucher, like, here's your voucher for six months.
It is, again, like diversion, it's based on that conversation that a caseworker has with an individual.
That voucher may be in place for a year.
It may be in place for three months.
It really is individualized to the person who need some sort of short time or temporary rent assistance while they get back on their feet and are able to pay rent on their own.
It also, rapid rehousing, again, we talk a lot about the money, but rapid rehousing is also services that come with that voucher.
So it is the engagement, the case management engagement.
that Tiffany was just describing is something that goes along with a rapid rehousing voucher.
So, you know, the way the model is designed to work is that that individual, if they fall into trouble, there is someone for them to call.
And there is some level of service that that person can lean on to ensure stability of their housing.
It, you know, it isn't successful for everyone, but it is successful for most.
I don't remember the return rate, but it was single digit last time I looked.
And so this is an, rapid rehousing is a program.
that has proven itself to be very effective for some households.
It is not for everyone.
It is not for an individual who has zero income.
It is not for individuals who are likely to be, you know, permanently disabled and therefore on a very, very reduced, you know, limited and set income.
This is really for individuals and families who have a, you know, one-time crisis that occurs, whether that's a crisis that impacts their health or their job or their housing, and this helps them get back on their feet.
So again, not for everyone, but for those that have been qualified for and deemed a good fit for rapid rehousing, this has been a really good response.
How long has this program been around?
It's been around for, well, I should say HSD has funded it for years.
We funded it initially as sort of a pilot.
We heard a lot about rapid rehousing participating in other communities.
And, you know, we had been doing it, maybe not calling it rapid rehousing, but doing this sort of model where there's, you know, temporary rental assistance packaged with some case management services in the community.
Actual rapid rehousing, like five years, eight years, six, 12, 14?
Yeah, I don't know.
Ballpark, an idea?
Nope.
I could find out.
It's okay.
Ballpark, I would say less than a, yeah, less than a decade.
Okay.
Oh, and thanks.
It looks like the return rate was 3% in 2018. Preliminary.
I have to say preliminary or the data people will get me.
So just on this individual, and I get that's an individual, but I just want to be able to respond to him successfully.
So the court ordered his eviction.
The sheriff has not kicked him out yet, so he's housed at this moment, but impending homelessness.
What can we do?
I would encourage to find a person's case manager.
Yeah, you said it was CSE.
And, you know, it's, I think, critically important that we connect with that person's case manager if that hasn't happened already.
which is what Meg suggested when I contacted, but so who in DESC can I call?
So I think the tricky part is that we're now dealing with like confidentiality.
And so unless you can say John X, that then I can call DESC, it really, because that person called you, you can call DESC and say, this is Ted.
I'm from council member Sawant's office.
I would like to talk to somebody there as an individual that is, that your program we have provided services for.
Yep.
And then if you don't get an adequate response from DESC, let me know and then that's a contracting issue.
But because you have that person's name, I'm assuming they felt safe giving you their name.
You can tell that to DESC.
Thank you.
Appreciate that.
So next is permanent supportive housing.
This is successful, as Jason talked about in the beginning, when people remain housed in a permanent supportive housing unit or move to other permanent housing.
What I would just say about this slide is that we continue to see that this is an effective program to help chronically homeless people find and maintain housing.
Did you have a question, Council Member Ruiz?
No.
Thank you.
I have a question.
So before we get into the next slide, so I noticed that, you know, if we go back to the beginning, to the great graphic on page seven.
I'd love to go back to that.
Great.
So, yeah, that's right.
So, I just wanted to, shoot a question about some of the interventions that are not in the presentation, so specifically day centers, hygiene, and then also, which is not in the graphic, oh no, excuse me, it's at the top there, but our outreach programs as well, and wondering, frankly, what performance was like, if you could speak generally to those intervention types.
So exit to permanent housing for outreach engagement is not a, we don't have a contract goal that holds outreach workers to exit people to permanent housing.
So that's why it's not included in the presentation.
Outreach programs provide referrals to shelters or permanent villages.
And I will get back to you on performance in 2018. I don't think I have it unless you do.
And then, Day and hygiene centers, again, those are an important part of our system.
And so if you really look at, I feel like the middle part is all about the support.
So day and hygiene centers, outreach, and so we don't put them in there because they don't have exits to permanent housing in their performance pay, but they're a critical part of the system.
So I do have day and hygiene center numbers for 2018, just in terms of we have 15 shelter day centers that receive city funding.
And in 2018, these day centers served over 12,300 unique households.
Just one plug here.
It wasn't until this year that D5 finally got one through the Mennonites.
And I'm going to push again for that.
a day hygiene center.
Got it.
And we have Mary's Place for mothers and children, but the Mennonite, God's Little Acre is a day hygiene center focused for the men, and that's all we have.
So I will be back at budget bugging you guys, just so you know now.
Little heads up.
Great.
Thank you.
Thanks.
So I think this is the last slide, but not the least important.
This is about our 2018 racial equity goals.
What's important here is, as Jason said earlier, we saw an increase in both the number and rate of which Native American, Alaska Native, and Black or African American households entered housing.
The American Indian, Alaska Native households exits increased by 87% between 2017 and 2018. Black African-American household exits increased by 27% from 2017 to 2018 and this increase is largely due to the new funded agencies that provide culturally relevant services to support goals.
Thank you.
Great.
So thanks again for your time.
Again, this is a full year and the first full year that we've had this level of data by program area focused on exits to permanent housing.
We've been sharing this quarter by quarter, but I think we've all been really looking forward to getting to the point where we have a full 12-month, full year of this data.
Again, we are really pleased.
We're seeing, again, that our investments have made significant improvements, 30% more people exiting to permanent housing when compared to the year prior.
We've seen a 7% increase in the number of people that we've been able to serve in this system.
And that really points to a level of both new opportunities to come inside, so we've opened some new shelter capacity, but also it signals that we're doing a better job of creating some throughput.
so that there are openings at programs that existed before.
And then most, I think, impactfully and most important to the Human Services Department is being able to move the dial on some of the racial inequities that exist, you know, and so we're really pleased to see the numbers of Native Indian and Native Alaskan, as well as black and African American numbers of people who have exited permanent housing go up so much.
I really appreciate you both coming here and sharing all this.
This is very important.
One, we'll be in touch with you if something doesn't work out for the individual.
And also, I would like to be in ongoing touch with you in terms of just like thinking more about these numbers and if there are questions on what they actually indicate.
As you said, there's a lot of terminology to make sure we are sort of correctly understanding.
And then, but before you go, I believe Ted had one question, and then you don't have to go into in-depth.
It's fine if you want to answer offline.
But I just wanted to make sure we go ahead and ask that.
So one of the largest areas of homeless spending is the navigation team, which is,
It's not in the presentation.
What is the navigation team's exits to permanent housing?
So the navigation team, their primary goal is not exits to permanent housing.
And I think it's important to define when we say navigation team what that looks like because the components of the navigation team are SPD, so specially trained officers, it's REACH, which is the outreach, and then it is field coordinators, which are HSD staff, and then Jackie St. Louis and August, who manage the administrative side of it.
And so when you think about exits to permanent housing, the NAV teams, Through outreach, primary function is to make sure that areas that are getting ready to be cleaned, that outreach goes and has a place for those individuals to go to.
And so reach is evaluated on the number of contacts made.
And they're also evaluated on the number of people who go to shelter, who they refer to as shelter and who go to a shelter.
That is the extent of the navigation team.
You won't find, once that person is handed off to the shelter, the program responsible for moving that person into permanent housing is the shelter.
So outreach is like, it's a baton.
It's like, this person is unsheltered.
I'm going to ensure that this person gets inside and connected to a resource so they can move to permanent housing.
Our navigation team is one of eight outreach contracts that we have, and as Tiffany stated earlier, it is not an expectation of those outreach contracts that they exit people to permanent housing.
We track some of that data, but it is not a contract expectation that they show us or have or meet a target of a rate of exit to permanent housing.
They're a critically important element of the service system.
It is those outreach teams who are engaged with people who are living unsheltered and trying to connect them to services that provide a roof overhead, trying to provide them a connection to meals, to showers, to those life-saving services that they need.
But Exits Department Housing is not one of those requirements that the Human Services Department makes of any of our outreach contracts.
When we talk to homeless rights advocates who describe the work of the navigation team as sweeps and say that in reality, it's just moving people from one street corner to another and it's not getting them into housing.
If I understand correctly, you're saying that you are, I mean, when it's report, when there's kind of, when the navigation team's being, being promoted.
It's promoted as something to get people into housing.
But what I'm hearing from you is that that is, that in reality, those homeless advocates are correct.
It's just moving people from one place to another, but it's not getting them into housing.
No, it is, I would just say, I would change the word housing to shelter.
So the navigation team, they leave every morning with a list of available shelter beds.
So they understand that maybe St. Martin de Porres has, you know, this many beds, that a tiny house village maybe has this many beds, that the navigation center has this many beds available.
And so they're aimed at getting people from an environment where they're sleeping under a bridge, in a park, on a sidewalk, on a park bench, into a program where there's a roof overhead.
And so those are shelter programs.
We require that our shelter programs get folks into housing.
So outreach is definitely part of the continuum, but it is not, it is an unrealistic expectation for us to consider that I could be out on the street, meet Alan, have a short interaction with Alan, and be able to get him into housing.
But getting him into a shelter resource is something that we do expect of the navigation team and our other outreach providers.
What percent of people who are swept get into shelter?
Who are what?
Who are swept by the navigation team get into shelter.
So I think to, just to back up a minute, there are two different kinds.
So there is general outreach.
which is we funded a lot of different agencies including the Seattle Indian Health Board and other agencies for the first time in 2018 to do general outreach.
The job of general outreach workers is to be where unsheltered people are all the time.
and developing relationships.
Reach does that as well.
The job of reach as it pertains to navigation teams, so I just wanna change, think of it as a good thing.
It is our promise to people that if you're living somewhere that's going to be cleaned, we will not clean that area until we make every effort to ensure that you have a place to go inside.
And so it's not, Those are two different, one is just about making sure that the navigation cleanup side doesn't clean up until people have shelter.
The larger outreach and engagement is about going to the same place all the time, every day, knowing the person.
I agree, thank you for clarifying the role of REACH because I know a lot of the coordinators with REACH do a lot of important work and they do develop those relationships and we also want to make a distinction between I mean, there may be different points of view about whether the sweep should continue or not, but we also, while we are opposed to the sweep, my office also wants to make a distinction between that and the social service providers who, and the PREACH program is part of that, which actually has, we believe has value.
We just believe that it should be coupled with maybe different kinds of ways in which people can actually be able to access shelter because what we've heard from many homeless people who have been caught up in sweeps again and again is that what's provided to them is not what works for them and that's why they just keep coming back, you know, not because They are adamant in any way they would like permanent housing, and maybe they need support services, but it's not working out for them.
just some temporary services are not working out for them for whatever reason.
So I just wanted to make sure that, yeah, we make a distinction between the two things.
I'll get you those numbers.
We don't have them here, but I think I'll end on this with the NAV team just went through diversion training.
So that one-time money that they can offer folks, they now have access to say to someone, this area is going to be cleaned.
How can I help?
What do you need?
And can provide immediate assistance in the same way that others throughout the system can do.
I wanted to share that we met with Jackie St. Clair for two hours last week and we've been having particular issues and I think the other side of the story needs to be shared is that in one area where we had 27 tents And we actually walked the area, went out there, our district director.
And unfortunately, of the 27 tents and the individuals all in those tents, not one person wanted our services and wanted shelter.
Not one person.
So that's the other side of it, is that they didn't want it.
They literally went out there eight times.
We were out there twice.
And sometimes, like you say, we have to build relationships.
We know that we have other areas, particularly in my district, where we physically have gone out there, up on Lake City Way, Thornton Creek.
I could name eight of them off the top of my head.
where the real key to success is the individuals or organizations that are already in district working with those groups.
Like we have Kelly Brown North Helpline, we have the Mennonites at Godzilla Acre, we have our folks at Aurora Commons, the people at the Lake City Community Center, and the Mennonites.
literally use these on-the-ground people to work with the NAV team, because you're right, it takes two, three, four times to build that trust and then to get them in.
But does that make a story on any particular channel?
No.
So, but it is disheartening when you work really hard and we are out there a lot and we counted, I counted up to 27 tens.
I'd go up there on Saturdays and not one person wanted any of our services.
Because they end up going other places.
And then we see them again and again.
And so I guess my frustration is, and I like how you teed up and responded, that it's not the navigation's job to find permanent housing.
It's the continuum.
of the navigation team, finding those human beings, and finding what their needs are, building that relationship, and then moving on to shelter, and then moving on, hopefully, to permanent housing, and then getting them sheltered, and then addressing mental health issues, or addiction issues, or any of those kind of issues.
So I want to thank you for the hard work that you've done.
Meeting with Jackie for a couple hours was very eye-opening, again.
He's just a wonderful person, and I really appreciate his enthusiasm and his humanity.
So thank you.
As do we.
Thank you for being here and I look forward to more discussions.
I do want to say we have to, precisely because the success stories don't make it on TV and then you see very right-wing points of view, I think it is important that At least I feel that we shouldn't play into this narrative that homeless community members are just refusing services.
Clearly society is failing them.
It is a social problem and I think we have to continue to have that lens.
And if this is not working, then something else has to be done.
And the main reason, and I've said this before, but just to reiterate, because this came up today, the main reason we, my office is against the sweeps and, you know, we're not alone.
As Ted was saying, there are a whole range, there's a whole range of homeless and affordable housing organizations that are advocating affordable housing and homeless services don't accept the sweep because it's a question of millions of dollars that are being spent on something that is clearly not working.
Now that doesn't mean that there are components of it, like the REACH component, which actually need to be part of a comprehensive approach to homeless services, but clearly the sweeps are not working.
I mean because we're, I mean it's just, You know, we're doing this year after year.
Millions of dollars are being spent, and it's not working.
And I also wanted to say that with an acknowledgment that ultimately it's political officials and elected officials that decide policy.
It's not that it's all on HSD's shoulders.
So we also appreciate the constructive work that is being done by the staff at HSD.
So thank you very much.
Thank you.
Any other comments?
Okay, thank you, Alan, also, and thank you, Council Member Morales.
Meeting adjourned.