Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee 10/23/18 Session 1

Bless you.

Good morning, everyone.

It's October 23, 2018. This is the Budget Committee.

It is 9.35 this morning, and I want to dive right in.

We're going to have, from our Council Central staff, information about the Navigation Team first, and then this afternoon, we're going to be focused on Human Services Program and the new Office of the Employee Ombud.

So today we will hear from our Council Central staff.

Of course, as always, we will have an opportunity to ask many questions and then leave Council Central staff with more questions after they have provided us the basic information.

You know now that what they are responding to is the initial form A's and the mayor's initial proposed budget, and then green sheets are due again this Thursday at 2 p.m., at which point we will really dive into what council members are interested in doing and how we would edit the mayor's original budget.

So after the conclusion this afternoon of the presentation on Ombud, we will open up an opportunity for public comment.

And once again, tonight at 5.30 is our public hearing.

That's our second public hearing.

We'll begin at 5.30 here in chambers.

We do have two matters this evening.

One is a opportunity for people to comment about the aquarium project.

And we'll have that, that we will simply open that, have anybody who is interested in talking about it make their comments.

We will close it and then we will open it up for public comment on everything else in our budget.

So with that, let's get going.

Eric, once again, if you'd like to introduce yourself and thank you all for all the work that you've done so far.

And we are halfway for those who are keeping count and looking at their calendars.

We are halfway through the budget from the point that the mayor first gave us her proposed budget.

So Eric and Greg, Alan and Allison, once again, thank you for all your hard work.

Thank you, Chair Bagshaw, members of the committee.

I'm Eric Sund of Council Central Staff.

Greg Doss, Council Central Staff.

Alan Lee, Council Central Staff.

Allison McLean, Council Member Bagshaw's office.

Great.

Thank you.

I'll go ahead and start.

Name again is Greg Dawson.

Good morning, council members.

I'm going to be talking about the mayor's navigation team proposal.

On your screen right now is the existing navigation team.

I'm going to start with that as a base and then move into the mayor's proposal to expand.

So the existing team, as you can see, is 17 city employees.

There is a contract with REACH that funds eight more outreach workers.

two cleanup crews and eight officers and one sergeant.

I should point out that the costs for the officers and the sergeant listed here is 1.6 million.

That will grow by 17% when the SPOG contract is completed and signed and passed.

At this point in time, that 1.6 million is just there for you to see how much the city spends on those officers.

I should note that those officers were already on the force.

The city did not spend an additional 1.6 million dollars when they created the navigation team.

They just took those officers and assigned them to the team.

So with that, I'm going to go ahead and move to the proposal.

Their proposal is to add three more officers and one sergeant, a navigation team ops manager, two field coordinators, two data analysts, and a bump in the contract with REACH for $171,000.

And that bump would allow two more outreach workers.

Again, if you did the math on the SPD costs there, it would be more like $770,000 after this BOG contract.

And again, those numbers are just for illustration purposes.

It's existing officers that get reassigned.

So can I ask you a quick question?

I'm sure there will be many.

And the outreach in the blue part, the lower third of this navigation team, page one, you have a blank for reach or other contract outreach services.

Is that because you don't know the number or you're waiting to hear back from them?

It's because we know the number is 171. I think it's that the executive hasn't made a determination yet whether it will be REACH or someone else.

If it's the existing provider, it'll obviously be REACH.

And also, Madam Chair, I'll just add that the FTE number denotes city positions and the REACH contracted outreach workers are not official city positions.

I beg your pardon, Alan.

I had a sidebar going with Council President Harrell.

Of course.

I was just mentioning that.

I was just mentioning that the REACH contract does not involve actual city FTE, so it involves REACH outreach workers, and I believe the number here would probably be, or excuse me, an outreach worker that may be REACH, and we're probably looking at maybe three, two to three, two.

Good, well, that makes a ton of sense.

It's not a city FTE, but one of the issues that have come up around navigation teams over and over again is do we have the balance right?

Do we have the balance right between the number of police officers, the number of outreach workers, mental health workers, and so on?

And I'm not sure that we're ever going to be able to answer it here on the dais, but as you're going through this, and as you're having conversations with the folks who are doing this work, any additional information that you can help guide us would be useful.

Yeah, thank you, Council Member.

And actually, we're gonna get to that issue at the end of this presentation.

And I should also point out that Alan, my colleague, will jump in several times and save me this morning.

I'm new to the issue, and he's an old pro, so he's been training me.

Great.

And I do want to say thank you to all my colleagues.

Everybody is here and appreciated that we've got a full house.

Chair Baxter?

Yeah.

Thank you.

I have a question about the concept of expansion of the team.

The executive has, on a couple of occasions, said they're not adding a new team, but they're expanding the existing team.

And I'm wondering what can we expect if we're only expanding an existing team and teams can only go to a location at a time, what can we expect as it relates to more engagements with more individuals at more locations if we're not actually adding a team, we're expanding an existing team?

Go ahead and take a shot at that, and I'll tell you right off that it won't be sufficient.

But the executive has said that the expansion, the folks in blue here, would be focused on trying to maintain those areas that had already been cleared in prior encampments.

And so rather than having two teams go out and focus on new encampments, they would be focused on the existing ones.

They've said that one of their challenges is when they move an encampment away within a very short time period, folks come back.

And so that's their goal for this expanded team.

I know it's not addressing all of your questions and all.

And so the idea is that those locations where people might return or have in practice returned, they wouldn't be just policing that location, but they would be having the outreach teams there as well to do sort of that ongoing engagement with people who come back, who over time become known to the outreach workers.

I think that's the goal, yeah.

I think we've got lots of questions, so go ahead.

Council Member O'Brien, then Council Member Mosqueda.

I was also going to point out that in Appendix A of the issue paper that you have before you, there's a description of the positions and their duties, so that may help with some questions.

to Councilmember Herbold's question, I also, it hasn't been clear to me the distinction between we're adding a second navigation team or expanding the existing team.

I have assumed that the team doesn't have to move They don't have to all be at the same place at one point.

And it was probably more just about management structure.

But I am curious.

Is expanding a team mean now we'll have enough bodies that the one team can be physically in two or three different places at once?

Or is it, no, we only deploy as a single place to one spot?

I think that they are planning on having two, I shouldn't say two teams, but two focuses out there.

As I said, one doing new encampments and one just checking on the older ones and providing cleanup there when necessary.

My concern, Greg, and any help you can have teasing this out is just about the right balance of back office to front office.

This is typical with every time we have budget in the city.

But what I hear from community members is we would like to see more visible presence out there, both police officers and reach workers.

And this budget is fairly heavy on the data analysts.

and ops manager, it's not always clear to me what roles they play.

I also, you know, remember hearing from the executive staff of a week or so ago that when this team was originally created, it wasn't created with the back-end structure that's needed to deliver the data and support we need.

So I want to honor that and respect that.

But we'd love just some analysis if we think we have the balance right.

Obviously, I mean, I think we're shared in alignment.

The more folks we can have out on the front end, as long as they're being well-supported, the better off we are.

some idea on what the right ratio is to that would be helpful if there's any kind of analysis you can do on that.

There is.

They're doing it right now.

They're doing a staffing analysis that is part of the auditor's checkpoint requirements that I'll get to in a few moments, but the staffing analysis will address the issue of whether there's a right balance between police services or if police services should be on the team and then also the positions whether or not They have the right mix of positions to address the capacities that they need to be looking at.

So it's coming.

I believe it's going to be released at the end of this month, so shortly.

Great.

And we also know just, and I, Council Member Mesquite, I'm going to call on you next.

We also know that it's really important to be coordinating all this information.

and having the firewall between the police and the mental health or physical health workers who are assisting the people who are on the streets.

So, as we go through, not just today, but looking at the public health and our human services department, I'm very interested in knowing how is all this working so that we're spending our money in an effective way, helping the people who are on the street to get the services and the housing, the 24-7 type housing we're talking about.

Madam Chair, if I may, just to comment that these questions around whether the ad is, what does an expansion mean?

whether those are then two teams or an expansion.

Just mentioning that operationally, the navigation team, they do not deploy as one large unit with 10 officers and their outreach workers together to engage in areas, but rather they split up and go to different areas.

Right.

I think I'm pretty clear on that.

But it might be helpful to know if we have all of these folks, what the priorities are as we're going forward.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm really pleased to hear there's some shared interest around making sure that we have the right balance on these navigation teams.

When we had the departments in here earlier for a presentation we heard again that the deployment of the teams are Complaint based and that neighbors usually call and that's what drives the teams out We also heard in response to a question that I asked and correct me if I'm wrong team and That when we asked about additional outreach, I believe the response was we're saturated in outreach And it really I think calls into question that whether or not this is the right balance when we just heard that the actual Team that we're considering adding here would be focused on maintaining prior cleaned areas really folks are coming back because we don't have the outreach and the caseworkers and the folks to help get them into the housing they need and And the places to go.

And the places to go.

We haven't built the shelters.

We haven't built the actual homes that folks need.

So I just want to put a pin in this.

I understand that you're going to come back to this and I appreciate that at the end of the conversation.

But I think that the right balance, given that people are coming back to places that have already been cleared, would be to reallocate any additional funds for a NAV team into actual outreach workers.

So part of my question that I was going to start with was, where is the number of the FTEs going into this outreach line, this reach, or other contracts for outreach services?

That line itself represents around 23% increase.

And the increase into the three police officers, one sergeant, and overtime is about a 40% increase.

I think that that might not be the right balance, and I'd like to work with you to make sure that we are putting more of an emphasis into the outreach and hand-holding that we know is needed to get people into homes and shelters so that they're not coming back.

It feels like we're spinning our wheels a little bit, and I'd love to work with you on that.

Great.

Thank you.

Council Member Johnson.

Thanks.

Could somebody walk me through the footnote?

I'm a little confused by the footnote.

We talk about the budgetary dollars for SPD being sort of a reassignment.

And then we also talk about actual appropriation needed for the 2019 and 2020 budget is 1.4 million.

My assumption there is that's 1.4 million times two, but if somebody could just walk me through and explain the footnote, that would be helpful.

Sure.

So the blue area of the chart up here shows the cost for police, HSD, and FAS, adding to a total of $2.1 million.

And because the SPD costs are already part of the budget, their existing officers, the council will only need to appropriate $1.4 million more.

So instead of appropriating $2.099 million, you would be appropriating $1.4 million and then the police department would just reassign those four officers.

So it's not a zero-sum game then if we were to reallocate some portion from the SPD line to the HSD line.

That wouldn't really be in effect possible because we're absorbing, we're counting the SPD budgetary ads here as part of a different category.

That's correct.

If you wanted to add outreach, HSD services, then yeah, that would be additional authority.

And then the second question here is, when we say actual appropriation need for the 2019-2020 budget is 1.4 million, that's 1.4 million each year.

Yes.

Great.

Okay, thanks.

Good.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Sort of along the same lines, and I'm sorry, I'm struggling with a cold, so if I suddenly stop and have to sneeze, I apologize in advance.

Greg, we talked about this a little bit yesterday in our prep meeting, but Can you, just for the sake of, for the benefit of my colleagues and for the benefit of the public, in terms of the numbers, And then there's the base budget existing team made up of eight officers and one sergeant.

And I think it would be helpful if you talked a little bit about whether those numbers that we see in the 2019-2020 proposed budget include projections with the assumption that the City Council approves the SPOG labor contracts, which the officers and sergeants are members of.

Thank you, Councilmember.

They don't.

At the time the navigation team was proposed, the contract wasn't as far along as it is now.

It hadn't been signed by SPOG.

Those numbers, I did the math this morning.

The $656,000 would be more like $770,000.

appreciate that.

If you could just make sure that we continue to track that as part of our issue identification and if you could work with the city budget office on getting precise numbers as it relates to the base budget and the executive proposed budget for for the proposed years of 2019 and 2020 and frankly let's make sure that the 18 and prior years are also accurately reflected in our budget.

I think they are, but I want to make sure that we've got a clear sense of what those numbers actually are.

So moving along, I would say that I'm not going to go too much into the navigation team background.

Is Council Central staff clear on what Council Member Gonzalez just asked for?

I think so.

I think he is.

Okay, good.

Greg understands my language, so.

All right, it's important to all of us.

Thank you.

So I'm not going to go into too much depth around the team, but just to note that on page two, there are some metrics about how many encampments were viewed, removed under the 72-hour rule, and then also under the obstruction rule.

So I'm just going to go ahead and go into the first issue, which council members, you all have talked about a little bit already, and that is measuring performance.

would say that in November of 17 the city auditor recommended a reporting plan for the navigation team and this plan required the Executive to respond to questions about the team's operations staffing plan and performance measures the auditor had come up with a quarterly reporting system that they have called reporting checkpoints and And they were intended to inform the city council's understanding of the workings of the team.

Table two in your staff report shows those checkpoints.

There were, Council Member Herbold asked the auditor after the Q1 report was released to take a look at the executive's response and analyze the things that they were saying and come up with potential recommendations for improvement.

And the auditor did so and came back with an analysis that had three essential recommendations, all of which I'm going to talk about later, but they were in the area of performance measures and in the area of evaluation that the navigation team should look at its theory of change and potentially modify the theory of change to reflect any changing in operations, that they should look at performance measures and a rigorous evaluation as part of their growth.

And that is something that, as I said, they're doing.

They just haven't gotten to release the navigation theory of change yet.

That I expect at the end of the month, and then the performance measures and evaluation would follow at the end of the year.

Could you just describe for the listening audience what theory of change means to you?

What I'll give is the definition that the auditor gave in that it is a defining of success and an identification of short and medium term goals that will lead you to that success.

So how is that different from outcomes when we're measuring?

specific things in a contract.

How is theory of change different from using the word outcomes?

Well, I believe the theory of change encompasses a scope larger than the outcomes.

So the outcomes are elements that would measure whether you're achieving the types of changes necessary that would go toward your ultimate goal in a theory of change.

So I know councilmember her bold is big on this.

Do you want to sure I think?

something that might serve as illustrative of what we're talking about a theory of change is not just the outcomes, but it is sort of in a bigger sense, where you want to go and the change that needs to be made within your practices to get there.

And so if you look at table two in the handout from central staff, it identifies the different checkpoints.

And you can see how the department, if they were to report on the different checkpoints and and adopt the improvements related to those checkpoints, it helps us get closer to the outcomes desired in the theory of change.

And again, just as some context for this request, we requested it during the budget process last year.

And there were three sets of checkpoints, the third set was intended to come to us before budget deliberations this year so that we could make an assessment whether or not the navigation team as funded and as designed was, from our perspective, successful according to that theory of change.

I am a little bit concerned that we are moving forward with an expansion of the navigation team and we haven't completed the evaluation of the navigation team model.

We have had briefings in the creative committee both on the executives Q1 and Q2 reports.

I think one of the things that we're most interested in hearing about are things that we're going to hear in the quarter three report and that's specifically about the team composition.

But Greg will describe sort of an approach moving forward where we can both accommodate the executive's request for an expansion as well as still meet the council's interest in

having this work be um iterative and that we're learning from um from our experiences and our um willingness to make changes when we're not getting it right yeah thank you for that and i know and i'm looking at the issue identification and you have been just a real leader on this council member herbold for requesting that information pushing forward that we are accomplishing the goals.

And I think it sounds good, but if we're not on top of it to know whether or not it's working, then we end up spending money in an uncoordinated way, which is really something that I'm deeply concerned about and want to get right.

So thank you for that.

Sorry to put you on the spot, Greg.

I think it's just so important that as we're looking to expand this, that we know what it is we're trying to do and that we get the advice from the people who have the boots on the ground about do we have it right.

I think Councilmember Herbold articulated really, really well the option A that is before you in the issue paper.

The concept there is that there would be a proviso divided into four quarters and that the proviso would be released each quarter.

As the navigation team came forward, the executive to talk about their quarterly report, and as I think probably as importantly, the auditor came forward with their analysis of the report and recommendations for improvement.

This kind of structure would allow the executive to learn as they were moving along, like Council Member Herbold said, and then to make changes and follow, and for the council to follow up on those changes, on those recommendations on a quarterly basis.

Great.

Thank you.

All right, please proceed.

So a couple other issues that the auditor mentioned.

Really that there needs to be a larger or greater focus on diversion strategies.

And I'm going to get to that in just a second.

And the auditor found that low shelter bed availability, particularly in enhanced shelter, may limit the team's ability to move people off the streets.

And I'm going to go ahead and talk about diversion.

I'm not going to go into too much depth.

I think that folks are generally familiar that diversion resources are reunification with family, potential first and last month's rent for a home or for an apartment.

The auditor found that out of the 1,842 clients that the navigation team came into contact with, only about 1% were helped with diversion strategies, so that's why they're They're focusing on this as an area for improvement.

Currently, the direct access that the team has to navigation or to diversion funding is through the REACH contract.

You'll remember when I showed you the base budget for REACH, there's approximately $27,000 in that budget that the navigation team can be used for direct client services for diversion.

And any kind of other access that the team would want to get would have to come when the person is admitted to a shelter or into a system.

looking it out to see if I'm missing anything.

Oh, no, that's correct.

I'll just add that within the context of our broader homelessness investments, diversion in 2017 was budgeted at $1 million.

That increased with the release of the 2017 homelessness investment RFP to $2 million.

As a reminder, the Barb Poppe report from several years ago, it was a strong recommendation in that report that diversion is further invested as a strategy and that the city in particular makes that available at points of access to our homelessness system, i.e. emergency shelter.

And the city has undertaken that.

In the RFP, they also encourage Outreach and engagement programs to also apply for those dollars but I believe that those dollars are mostly within the emergency shelter systems and I also know and I believe it was spoken here during departmental presentations that the department is considering a new model for diversion by possibly having a centralized pool of that outreach workers or others can access those funds.

And these would also include eviction prevention dollars.

Any questions on that?

So I think the option here is the same as the first one.

And it will be throughout the issues that we addressed this morning.

And that is that the council stay involved by a proviso or a slide that requires the executive to come back, report on what they're doing, with the auditor and then to get the auditor's recommendations on improvement.

I think it's important to note that we're not provisoring money for the sake of provisoring, but are really interested to know that it's working and that the investments are, you know, the term we keep using here is that the juice is worth the squeeze.

And if we're spending millions of dollars, I want to make sure that the people who we are assisting are actually back in homes and stabilized and it's not just a Band-Aid.

So go ahead and move into the next issue, which is availability of enhanced shelter.

The auditor's report indicates that low shelter availability is a factor when the navigation team is attempting to move people off the streets.

And so I'm going to start out by showing you a table in your staff report.

When it comes to the question of available shelter beds, the executive has said that the average number of beds available daily is probably the best measure.

And if you look at this chart, what it's showing you is in the blue, the basic shelter that's available each day.

the enhanced shelter in the green and the villages in the red.

The auditor put together a similar chart for 2017 and they looked at all of the 2017 data.

What they found was that the average beds available were between 4 and 12 a day.

Looking at 2018, the first half of 2018, this chart, It's about the same.

It's about 4 to 12 each day.

So the capacity has not, through the first few months of 18, has not changed a lot.

The makeup has changed a little insofar as last year, especially towards the end of last year, there were a lot more villages coming online and tiny homes.

And they were available to the navigation team.

Now that capacity is waning some and enhanced shelter capacity is opening up.

So there's a shift within the type of enhanced shelter that's available, but still to note that the capacity so far has not changed.

What are the total numbers on this?

We've got the blue lines of basic shelter and the green lines with enhanced and the red lines for our tiny home villages.

What are the total numbers of available beds right now?

If we're talking capacity here, in 2018, from January through June, there were 668 beds available.

For enhanced shelter, that's 1,289.

Encampments, and this is limited to quarter one for encampments, 306 spaces.

And with transitional housing, that would be, oh, excuse me, transitional housing is not an intervention that the NAV team refers to.

So 668 beds, are those the mats on the floor, or are those 24-7?

Those are basic shelters.

So enhanced shelter is $1,289.

Okay.

So just to be clear, the 668 that we're talking about, that is the oftentimes just like 9 or 10 hours somebody can go in.

7 o'clock at night, they're booted out in the morning somewhere between 6 and 7 o'clock.

And we have 668 of those who are continuing to fund.

1289 are the enhanced, meaning that they've got places that they can return to and places for partners, possessions, pets.

That's correct.

And I'll just also mention that the executive is still in the midst of implementing the path to 500, so we anticipate that there will be over 200 additional enhanced shelter beds added to the enhanced shelter total by the end of the year.

And that's a good segue, Alan, for the next table that I'm going to bring up.

Can I just double-checking something, Madam Chair?

Are there more questions?

There's a lot happening up here right now.

Okay.

Great.

Sorry.

All right.

Who's speaking next?

A brief question if I might and then so when we look at chart one if you look at August Well, the takeaway here is that there are zero enhanced shelter beds on a daily basis in the last month or two I heard Around one one might be open, but I think zero to one still means there are no options.

Is that correct?

We're reading that correctly I Have to look back at the base data.

It's a Let me get back to you on that and make sure.

I believe it matches with what I did hear from the auditor's report and remember seeing that on average it was around 0 to 1 in the last few months.

I just think that's important for us to note if there is really no capacity, even though we're bringing more beds online.

The enhanced shelter beds, as you've pointed out in your memo and we've heard time and time again, is what people are actually looking for.

I think it's also important to note that while we see around 10 beds available for basic shelters, the mats on the floors, the vision that we see when we leave here at 930 at night with individuals sleeping on mats on the floor, That's the example of the type of shelter that people are saying they're hesitant to go into because they can't stay with their loved ones or with their pets and they're not kept together.

Families aren't kept together.

So I just want to make sure that we're understanding that data correctly, but I believe that your chart is accurate and wanted to underscore zero enhanced shelter beds in the last month.

And just building on that before I go to Councilmember Herbold, is what we hear, what the statistics show us year after year is that people are willing to say yes when we offer them a place to go that is 24-7, and that's what it's going to take for us to get the tents off the street and get people stabilized and feeling better.

So I know as we're talking up here, that there will become a debate, and I hope it doesn't become a debate that one is better than the other.

We need both.

Yet, if we're really going to make a move in the right direction that is stabilizing people, it's the 24-7 that we need more of.

Sorry about the dangling proposition.

Council Member Herbold?

Yeah, it's similar to the point that Councilmember Muscat was making.

I just get the feeling that over in the August column there's an enhanced shelter indicator missing because we've got two tiny villages.

And just to sort of underscore the issue and

It's been demonstrated that people are more likely to accept shelter when it's enhanced shelter.

I think that makes a lot of sense to us and to the public.

And nevertheless, for most of these months, the availability of enhanced shelter beds has been less than 10. I'd be interested to understand more about, of the path to 500 and the ones that are enhanced shelter, why more of them aren't planned to be dedicated to referrals from the navigation center.

I know as it relates to our existing shelter capacity, dedicating beds for referrals from outdoor encampments, puts the squeeze on people who are already accepting that shelter in those particular locations.

But when we're talking about bringing on new shelter, I really think as it relates specifically, well, to many of the new shelter models, but in particular, enhanced shelter, that we should be dedicating more of those for referrals from encampments and the navigation team.

Thank you, Councilmember, and I actually do have some of that information in this new table that I can go to in a moment.

Great.

Councilmember Herbold, could you just clarify that last sentence?

I agree with everything that you're saying.

I just want to understand, when you're asking to have beds dedicated, are you asking specifically for first responders and the navigation team?

What is it that you're seeking?

So there are, I think, about 200 beds of the path to 500 that are supposed to be, I believe are supposed to be navigation team beds.

And a fraction of them are intended to be direct referrals.

And you'll see in this chart that Greg is about to go over that there are There's a column for PATH to 500 exclusive and non-exclusive NAB team spaces.

And I'm suggesting that most of those new spaces for the PATH to 500 should be dedicated for the navigation team to make referrals.

And I think that your response from the auditor would support that too.

So it's not just something that we're making up as we go.

but that there is a basis for that.

Please, go ahead.

Thanks.

So I think you're all on to this already.

The obvious question is if you're only at 4 to 12 beds on average capacity and you've got a navigation team that's out there working and now you're going to expand it, then if shelter space was a problem, then the expansion of the navigation team is only going to make things more challenging.

So, staff asked the executive for the number of new beds that are coming online, both enhanced and basic, and the beds that would be dedicated to the navigation team with the idea of expansion as forcing more shelter space needed for clients.

So, if you look at this table, what you'll see is As Councilmember Herbold described, there's an existing number of beds that the navigation team is using.

There's a path to 500 that is exclusive to the navigation team.

and then a path to 500 that is not exclusive to the team.

And, of course, those latter two columns, they can use either of.

And there's shading on this table that's difficult to see, but what I wanted to point out is that if you look from April all the way down to July, what you'll see is, with the exception of the basic shelter that came online at City Hall, there were relatively few enhanced shelter spaces that came open.

And that may be part of the reason why the data is showing a four to 12 average per day.

So as you move into September or the latter half of the year, there are more spaces opening up.

And at the end of the year, as Council Member Herbold pointed out, there will be approximately 42 beds that came online in the last part of the year that are dedicated to navigation team, and then 370 that are going to be accessible to the team, but more general purpose enhanced shelter.

One of the things that I'll point out is one of the big numbers in there, 100 at Harborview Hall, I understand it's not yet been determined if that's going to be enhanced or basic, and so that's a bit of a wild card in terms of capacity.

But I think that, In conversations with the auditor, the auditor would be very focused on the data that would show, as the team is moving along, how the offers of acceptance are taken and whether they're utilized.

These are issues that might be handled by the additional data analysts on the team.

There's two analysts coming on board, one with the sort of mission, I'm doing this at a very high level, of tracking people, and the other with a mission sort of of tracking property, belongings, and sites.

And so the idea, hopefully, would be that the data could be coordinated in a way that they would know if they're being effective of moving folks into housing.

Yeah, Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you, Chair Baxhaw.

Greg, I have two questions, and the first one is, what is the mayor's rationale for not prioritizing the Path to 500 shelter beds for the navigation team?

You know, I'm actually not clear on that.

I was involved in, both myself and my colleague, Tracy Ratzliff, we were invited to attend the bridge housing subcommittee, which came to evolve into the Path to 500 effort.

We do know that as the executive was seeking additional capacity in the city for enhanced shelter and shelter, it involved extensive negotiations with individual providers on what further capacity could be offered.

I'm not sure whether navigation team exclusivity was a part of that conversation or whether that was a significant factor in negotiations, but we could certainly follow up with the department, excuse me, with the executive on that.

I think it would be important to do that because I do think that a policy issue facing this council in our budget process, which was highlighted by Councilmember Herbold, is whether or not we as a council want to move the dials on the number of shelter beds in the path to 500. that are exclusive versus non-exclusive to the navigation team and their ability to directly refer people to those to those beds.

And so I think it would be really helpful for us to get a little bit more clarity around why this decision was ultimately made to strike this balance and set the dials where they're at.

I mean there's an additional In the Patsa 500 exclusive nav team spaces, there's only an additional 42 beds that are being dedicated or prioritized for the nav team.

And then you look at the column of spaces available still available to the NAV team, but not prioritized for the NAV team, and that number is 370. And so that strikes me as unbalanced.

But if there is a rational policy decision as to why that was made, and if there are just realities around other throughput issues that we need to take into consideration.

I think that would be important, particularly if there are council members on the dais who are interested in shifting those numbers around so that there are, it tips more in favor of the NAB team than it does in the other direction.

So that would be helpful to understand.

Council Member Johnson.

I'm sorry.

I had a second question.

My second question was, we talked about this yesterday again, and I noticed that in this particular chart, we don't include King County Executive's recent announcement about opening the West Wing.

the former minimum security Seattle jail as a shelter, which would provide capacity for an additional 125 to 150 beds.

And I understand that it's gonna take them a little bit of time to get to that point, but it's my understanding that the county is looking to have that shelter capacity available by 2020. Do we have any additional information about that?

We do not, Council Member, but we'll be happy to follow up.

Thank you.

Councilmember Johnson, then I want to come back to that.

Go ahead.

Sure.

So two thoughts here.

One, the way that I read this chart, Greg, is that this is about the number of beds that have come online to date.

Do I read that correctly?

It's it's to date and then also the ones in the future.

You can see you've got October and November there, right?

and so what's a little confusing to me then is the relationship between this chart and plant expenditures for 2019 and the continued expansion I'll give you a for instance a When we had a presentation a couple weeks ago from the Human Service Department, there was a discussion about adding another 50 spots in tiny house villages for a net additional 50 spaces, which in theory should add to that number of 42 that are available for directly referred clients from the navigation team.

And I expressed some concern because we're closing one of the existing tiny house villages and losing 50 of those spaces and intending to add another 50 by March of next year.

So a grand total of 100 new spaces that need to come online, 50 replacing the 50 that are going away and another 50 coming in.

So, you know, for me, a crosswalk here between the proposed future investments in 2019 too would be really helpful so that we can get a better understanding to Councilor McIntosh's point.

You know, if we think that we may not be able to meet that timeline, for example, you know, we We know that there's a lot of land use code requirements for the setting of a tiny house village.

There's oftentimes capital outlays that need to be invested in in order to provide, you know, running water, electricity, power, those kinds of things.

If we think that maybe that strategy isn't a strategy that's going to allow for us to meet the objective under the timeline appropriated, then maybe we could allow for some flexibility in the Human Service Department work with other providers on other spaces that might become available as opposed to putting all of our eggs in those hundred tiny house villages.

Now, I'm cutting against my own advocacy here because I believe the tiny house villages are an important way for us to have geographic distribution throughout the city and asking all of us to take some ownership over the crisis here.

But what is missing for me again is a little bit more of a crosswalk between the investments that we are seeing in this chart and proposed future investments in 2019 that are proposed to be funded in the budget.

I'd love to see that added with a caveat that if we don't feel like we can meet those objectives that we might be able to give the human service department some flexibility about how to achieve those.

Council Member, if I could address some of the points that you just made.

So as we understand it, the new tiny house villages that are slated to be online for next year will be online by the end of this calendar year.

The department does not anticipate any kind of delay in opening those tiny homes.

And it is true this table three could be adjusted to reflect the change that Licton Springs is indeed slated to be closed in April of 2019. So in 2019, the city anticipates seven, excuse me, is it seven?

It's eight, eight permitted villages by April of 2019. So outside of the three new permitted villages that are slated to open this year during 2018 and continue operations in 19 and Licton Springs, which is slated to be closed in April of next year, there are no further changes proposed in the budget around permitted villages.

That's great.

And I think that those would be super helpful for us to see in the chart, Alan.

So as we contemplate, if those three villages are set to open by the end of this year, let's have a December 18 column in there that shows those number of spaces and whether or not they're dedicated.

I presume they are, but whether or not they're dedicated towards navigation team referrals.

Okay.

Just flagging that two of those encampments are shown, um, True Hope Village and Lake Union Village, we will revise the chart to reflect the reality.

We'll make sure that the executive fills in the expected spaces through the next six months or so, so you have a better picture.

That'd be great.

Thanks.

Good.

And I want to circle back, Alan, to something you were talking about, which is, where is the shelter available?

And we're now focusing, just in the last few minutes, about these tiny home villages.

But we also have other programs.

One of which we've talked about for years is the Landlord Liaison Project, and I know that it's going back out for bid.

I've talked with our Office of Housing Leadership, and I appreciate that.

And as we have all discussed before, it is a program that has had a rocky start here in Seattle and King County, and very slow.

But other cities, and particularly Atlanta, is a model that they were able to get 3,000 units available for people who are homeless over a four-year period.

We're talking here about 370. That's good, but it isn't anywhere near enough to get people off the streets and into something that is better with a roof over their heads.

So, I would like us to continue to talk about, yes, we need these things.

And we need every tool in the book that other cities are using that are effective.

And I know our Office of Housing and our Human Services Department have done a tremendous amount of work on this.

I don't feel like we've got our arms around every tool that's available.

And I know Council Member Mosqueda, as an example, went down to Los Angeles recently and looked at what was available there.

I think that And I've been for a very long time arguing that we needed somebody who's coordinating all of this with the mayor's energy behind it so that we can put a stake in the ground to say we need 1,000 more units or 5,000 more units across the region.

But this isn't something that we can nibble at because we're not We're not getting where we need to go fast enough.

So, I'm not yelling at you guys.

I'm just saying, I still have not yet seen how we're going to reach this.

If we know that there are a thousand people who are in tents around our city right now, round numbering, how are we going to get those folks inside?

Because nobody likes seeing them outside, you know, in a cardboard box or the tents that we're chasing around.

It doesn't solve the problem.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I just wanted to give kind of, I think, a late-breaking update on the Housing Resource Center, which is the new iteration of the Landlord Liaison Program, and they are on the verge of making an offer to an ED, and they've already selected an operator.

They're not ready to let us know who that is, but They went out for bid months ago.

They've selected a new operator already as a result of that bid, and we should hear.

And that's just, that's something, the Office of Housing works with the program, but it's really something that's being run out of King County.

And I appreciate that very much.

And once again, it's like nibbling, because we know that something's out there.

We know that something's coming, but I don't have a sense that we've got our arms around what that is and what the goals are.

And coming back to Councilmember Herbold's theory of change, how we're going to really make that happen.

Good.

All right, please proceed.

Just try to proceed.

I'll move on to the fourth issue and that is paraprofessionals.

As you all are aware, the navigation team primarily comes into contact with individuals who have been unsheltered for quite some time.

And the auditor's report has indicated that it would be helpful for the executive to consider greater integration of navigation team services with medical services or mental health or chemical dependency services.

Around the area of mental illness, there is a part-time navigation staffer who has some training in mental illness, but I think as Councilmember O'Brien would say, that person is now more back office.

And so the opportunity to have direct engagement on mental illness issues is not there.

The executive does indicate that that's a program gap for the team.

Around the area of chemical dependency, it's the same thing.

I think the executive says that it would be helpful to have staff and trained with those skill sets and competency and it would better allow the team to engage in a way that would promote increased housing and specifically maybe with inpatient behavioral health resources.

And then finally around the nurse or medical services, there is a part-time nurse that is engaged with the navigation team through the REACH contract, but this person is not deployed with the team on any kind of regular basis.

The executive says they're as needed.

And so one potential area for change would be to have these kinds of skill sets on the navigation team.

Council Member Bagshaw, you indicated last night that that's a potential proposal you would see proceeding.

And I think it's not in a vacuum.

I want to make sure that, as we're sending teams out, that it's the right team for the right person.

And whether it is a nurse or a mental health professional, and whether that we need them with case managers or with police, that's not something we can judge up here.

But on a case by case basis, I want to make sure that we're sending the right people to be as responsive as possible.

And of course, we'll come back later on when we're talking about the fire department and our proposal around having first responders to have the low acuity team.

And this is going to start connecting and we want to make sure that it is connected as we're doing our investments.

Kate, it doesn't look like we've got a question.

My final issue today is one that you've already talked a bit about.

The auditor recommended that the executive do a staffing analysis that would look to see if the composition of the team should be more back office, front office, whether or not police should be involved.

They did have some concerns that other places have found that having police involved would make it less likely for clients to accept services.

That's something that they would have to dig into with the staffing analysis and hopefully we get that in the next couple weeks.

So, um, Council Member Herbold, Council Member Gonzalez, this is an area, of course, that both of you have been deeply involved in.

Do you have any other recommendations on this at this point?

I don't think so and that's actually the end of the navigation team report and I should have mentioned as with the prior recommendations Council over holds Proviso would would allow the council to ensure that the navigation team and the auditor are following up on the executives and recommendations on a quarterly basis.

So that's something that would apply to all of these issues.

So I just also want to just put a final footnote on that and coming back to the auditor's report under the Appendix C, and we've already discussed this quite a bit here, but the auditor recognizes just as Barb Poppe did, just as we have for the last couple of years, that the need to respond in an urgent way that coordinates our investments within the city and with King County, And a point I haven't heard us really talk about too much, but the geographically dispersed and geographically focused teams, I think are really important.

Council Member O'Brien may want to talk about what's going on in Ballard.

We've heard that to be successful.

So I'd like us, as we're considering these, to make sure that we are also looking at that.

The urgency, nobody doubts.

I mean, we announced this emergency in, what was it, November 2nd of 2015. Here it is three years later.

We're still arguing about the same points.

Chair Baxter, I do have one other point, if I could.

Okay, great.

So, I will stop there with my sense of the increased coordination is really what I want to focus on here, and Councilmember Herbold's going to put a fine point on that.

Well, not so much a fine point.

It's just one thing I forgot to mention that I think is an important consideration for this council moving forward, as well as just a public mention that I'm in consideration of this issue.

We're waiting to hear back from HSD.

But last year's budget, a green sheet that this council passed actually provisoed the money associated with unauthorized encampment removals, and we required that all the encampment removals conform with the MDARs and the prioritization criteria for those removals.

That green sheet and proviso also required the executive to provide the council with a weekly report that includes an electronic database containing the address, the prioritization criteria, and outreach information and an explanation of what made the site rise to the top of the removal list.

And we receive those every week, usually on a Friday.

They come to myself and council members, so on.

I think they're really useful.

We share them also with central staff as a way for us to kind of keep an eye on on how the departments are doing and sort of as a check on the whole prioritizing according to the prioritization criteria in the MDARs.

I have reached out to HSD and the executive to ask if they are intending to continue doing these weekly reports because last year's requirement only required it for that year, the following year.

I understand that Council Member Bagshaw has a desire to limit the number of budget actions and whether or not this would be a sly or an addition to the proviso.

If the executive agreed to voluntarily keep providing them throughout the year...

This isn't one that I would want to limit.

This is really important that we continue to have this coordinated response.

So, this is not about a coordinated response.

This is about them reporting to us sort of so we can sort of, for lack of a better word, monitor or watchdog that they are doing encampment removals in a way that's consistent with the MDAR requirements.

I appreciate that.

I'm suggesting that it's coordinated between the mayor and us, that we know what's going on.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah.

So, I suppose we should probably include that as one of the options then.

Good.

Council President Harrell.

Just a question on sort of logistics as we sort of particularly the makeup of the navigation team issue sort of flagged it so So help me just understand our timing.

I guess i'll look to the chair a little bit about this.

So we're looking at Possibly expanding the nav team to include three more officers and a sergeant, but we're also looking at the auditor's recommendation as to whether the using the police as such a sort of a leading with the police, if you will, on some of the removals makes sense and whether we need to repopulate or have a different makeup of the NAV team.

And this new theory of change is coming at some time this month.

Today's the 23rd, so within a week or so.

So I guess, Chair, how do we We have some important decisions to make, so, but I, are we coming back to this during the budget process or are we, how does the process work when we have more critical information coming up in about a week or so?

Thank you, that's a really good question.

If the information comes at the end of this month, it's certainly something that I will share with you all.

The executive has had some challenges getting information to the council, reacting to the auditor's recommendations.

They've, I think you've all heard them talk about the amount of hours that it takes to get some of these things moving.

And so, if the information comes, it's certainly something that I will provide to you.

Some of the information like the performance measures or the evaluation won't come until the end of the year.

And so your question is very pertinent.

How would the council take action?

As part of this budget process, if the staffing analysis came later with these other measures, The council wouldn't be taking action in this budget process.

Rather, the council would be looking at these in quarterly increments next year and maybe making adjustments to the budget in a supplemental budget if that was the way the council wanted to go.

So use of provisos and sort of monitoring on a quarterly basis.

Yes, and so the way it would work is the performance measures, the evaluation, the theory of change, the staffing analysis all come at the end of this year.

The auditor would take a look at those things and would put together a recommendation on how those might be implemented in a better way, what recommendations they might have for other things, and that package would come to the council in a quarterly report.

And the reason I ask during this particular segment on the makeup of the NAV team are when we have the existing eight officers and one sergeant, I assume that's their full-time job.

They're not having other patrol responsibilities.

They're dedicated to the NAV team and so would the additional officers, the three officers and the one sergeant.

From a practical standpoint, are we going through, does that sort of revolve and people are trading off on that or are pretty much the same people throughout the year or two?

doing that job, because when we look at the additional maybe paraprofessionals and other health experts involved, I'm just wondering, is this the kind of thing that people have developed expertise in, and some do it better than others?

Or whether it's just someone's name came up and they have to do it, and they go do it sort of begrudgingly, so to speak.

What we've heard from the executive is that it's on a volunteer basis with SPD, and they are dedicated.

And because they're dedicated, over time they develop competencies.

I think what the police said during the budget presentation is they're effectively helping with outreach, the ones who have been doing it for a while.

I think more will be fleshed out with the staffing analysis if that goes into the roles and responsibilities of the various positions.

But I would suggest that they're dedicated and that they are probably helping to some extent with the outreach.

And they do receive special training.

And I want to underscore what you just said and appreciate very much the officers that are involved.

Many of us up here on the dais have done either walkabouts with them or have met with them, and indeed they are.

people that have great interest in solving the problem.

And they are volunteers, and I understand that there are more volunteers than they can take with the number of positions available.

So, it's good news.

It's a good news story.

And yet, there's still a sense of police officers in a full dress uniform.

Is that most effective as they're part of the NAV team?

We don't know that.

I think that, Chair, one other thing that I might point out is that while the staffing analysis will certainly talk about the makeup of the police versus outreach, I'd also point out that when it comes to paraprofessionals, the executive has said that there are program gaps around mental health, around chemical dependency, so I don't think that If the council wanted to add those skill sets to the navigation team, I don't think that they would have to do that based on an analysis that is coming later.

I think the exec has already said that those would be skill sets that they would like to see on the team.

Just briefly on what you shared, and I believe I shared this when we were talking about the navigation team and the composition and the paraprofessionals.

I, again, can't emphasize more that that has been kind of our philosophy or our approach to this year's budget, sheltering the unsheltered, and funding the services to keep them sheltered.

So, again, I'm going to go back to, and I'll say it again when we start coming up on some of the other issues, that we do have to build on the trust in the CBOs that are already on the ground in those communities.

So, what I'm getting at again is you will have a higher acceptance, offer of acceptance by people who know the community-based organizations in those neighborhoods than you will of a navigation person deployed there who is not a part of that community.

And that's what I have been trying to push, that we have that, if you will, human capital on the ground.

And it increases the number of acceptance of offers and then decreases the number of times a navigation person, police officer, or some specialty person, that they have to come and engage with that individual again.

Because we know it's at least four to six times that we have to continually meet with that person or that individual or that family to get them into services.

So, that is kind of, you'll hear some more from me about that in the budget request that I have proposed.

So, and again, the reason why I bring that up is that when we went through this whole navigation issue in the comments that you had just made, It still goes back to just basic Using the resources and funding the people that are already in those neighborhoods and districts that are already providing the the Complex behavioral health and medical issues are already addressing those specially trained workers paraprofessionals and chemical dependency professionals, mental health professionals, people that are already there that these organizations either have the skills or they have access to those people, those paraprofessionals that have those skills.

So I just wanted to share that and keep that in mind with my colleagues as we move forward in the budget process.

Okay.

Good.

Want to continue?

I'm done.

Thank you.

Any other questions here on this?

Alan, do you have anything else you want to add?

Nothing to add, Madam Chair.

Okay.

So I guess we're ready to go to homelessness if there's no other questions up here.

Seems like that's what we've been talking about, but we'll move on to the next section.

And Alan and I think Brian Goodnight's joining us.

Great.

Thank you, Alan.

Alan's introduced.

Eric's introduced.

Brian.

Brian, good night.

Council Central staff.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Okay.

Are you kicking this off, Alan?

Yeah, I'll be kicking things off.

So homelessness, table one of the central staff memo shows our citywide homelessness budget from 2017 to 2019, divided by program area.

As a reminder, the city, as seen in the inaugural Select Committee on Homelessness and Affordable Housing, as well as the departmental presentations on homelessness several weeks ago.

The city has started to display our homelessness investments by program category as opposed to by department.

And so you see that in Table 1 with these different activities and investments across emergency services, prevention, housing, access to services, and cleanup administration.

And the Mayor's 2019 proposed budget shows, this table actually shows 89.3, but I'm going to flag an error here that that should be 1 million more.

So that should read 90.3.

The error is in the prevention line item, the green line.

The 2019 proposed budget should actually be 5.4 million, not 4.4 million.

That reflects an item that we discussed yesterday in context of the short-term revenue tax that the mayor's Seattle Housing Authority pilot, the $2 million pilot, $1 million is expected to carry forward in general funds, which would be swapped with the short-term rental tax revenue for a million dollars.

So I'm not going to go over in detail the changes between 18 and 19, all the changes listed, but I will note that the three major changes to the budget include the continued investments in 2018 one-time ads, new programming and staffing for the Clean City Program, and increases for the navigation team, which we just discussed.

So the continued investments in 2018 one-time ads, the major sources for this would include the Bridge Housing Investment Strategy or the Path to 500, and then also other additional 2018 one-time ads that were backed primarily by sale of the communication shop as well as an Interfund loan based on the sale of the 800 Mercer Street property.

So first, the Path to 500, if you'll see Table 2 on page, excuse me, Table 2 on page 2, that displays all of the emergency service investments that were made or that will be made in 2019 for the Path to 500. Most of these are currently up already and it is expected that all of these will be operational by the end of the calendar year.

So the council approved the sale of the communication shop or the comm shop last February and in approving that they also set aside funding to support a bridge housing strategy, and the executive was tasked to come back to the council with a bridge housing strategy plan, which it did later on in the spring.

And the total cost of the bridge housing strategy was $6.32 million, plus an additional $1 million, which was added to the comms shop and sale price.

Great.

And Alan, when we're talking bridge housing, once again, as we discussed in our previous conversation, we're talking basic shelter, enhanced shelter, and the encampment units.

That is correct.

Bridge housing, the emphasis is on bridge rather than the housing.

We're not talking about actual housing.

We're talking about emergency investments that will lead, the plan is that they will lead to housing.

Thank you.

OK.

So Table 2, as I said, shows the annualized costs of those units.

About 85% of these new units meet the definition of enhanced services.

The approval of the bridge housing investments also included several positions in HSD.

And the proposed budget would extend funding and position authority for these positions, being a Human Services Program Supervisor, a Planning and Development Specialist II, a Strategic Advisor I, and a Senior Grants and Contract Specialist.

These positions would provide administrative support in the Homeless Strategies and Investment Division at HSD.

The other one-time ads in 2018 that are added to the base budget include the permanent support of housing at $2.75 million.

This is the same $2.75 million that was discussed yesterday during the discussion for the short-term rental tax revenue.

So those funds would be swapped out.

This $2.75 million in 2018, it was backed by a one-time funding source, an inter-fund loan for the sale of the 800 Mercer Street property.

The day center and hygiene services at $640,000.

So these were hygiene services and a day center that was backfilled by the council when the comp shop sale occurred.

These services were slated to end in 2018 between three and six months.

They were given bridge funding.

These programs largely did not successfully compete in the 2017 Homeless Investments RFP.

Basic shelter at $455,000.

So this includes, the proposed budget includes $77,000 in ongoing support for the City Hall basement.

And then also for programs supporting 217 basic shelter beds at $378,000, the support for those basic shelter beds is for six months of the year only.

These are the programs under ShareWheel.

I'll just acknowledge here that there is a budgetary add by Council Member Sawant.

to fully fund those for the year and provide ongoing funding and starting in 2020. Good.

And I just want to underscore, I don't think Council Member Swanson is the only one who's asked for that.

There are a number of us up here who have signaled that that's going to be a high priority so we don't throw the 217 people out on the street.

So let's make sure we've got that.

Hey, can I just on a quick note here while you're on page three, At the top paragraph, the city will devote 146 units exclusively to NAV team referrals.

We were going over that number in the previous section, but it appears to me that those numbers may be reversed in your chart on page seven of the previous section, it says.

Yeah, I think that there was a problem in the formatting with the NAV team table where some of the numbers got shifted.

So we'll provide a corrected table.

Great.

Thank you.

So those basic shelter beds for Sharewheel were, again, backfilled by the council through the comm shop sale.

Similarly, referral services for $335,000.

The Catholic Community Services organization operates the Women's Referral Center.

This was an organization that the department indicated competed well in the RFP.

They wanted to fund this program in the RFP, but ultimately prioritized other investments.

This, again, was backfilled by the council through the comp shop sale, and this is included in the mayor's proposed budget for ongoing funding.

Okay, any questions?

Council Member Herbold?

Just, I think I heard you say it, but when you say the women's referral service was included in the proposed budget, that is for both 2019 and 2020?

Yes, that is my understanding.

Please continue.

Okay, so the next section deals with Seattle Public Utilities or SPU.

SPU manages a suite of programs that are known as clean city programs and that address things like litter, illegal dumping, graffiti, and these are all general funded activities through SPU.

Four of the programs relate specifically to homelessness, three of which started in 2017 as pilot programs and the final one which began in earnest in 2018. Table 3 on page 4 of the memo shows the four programs and their 2018 adopted budgets and the proposed amounts for 2019 and 2020. The three 2017 programs, the encampment bag, the litter abatement, and the sharps collection program, those are all proposed by the executive to continue as permanent programs in 2019 and 2020. You can see that the encampment bag and litter programs have increases in their appropriations, and that's due to expanding the number of locations that are being served by the programs, and also the 2018 budget underestimated the amount of hazardous waste that would be needed to be dealt with.

So the proposed increases are primarily to just right-size the contracts and consider the cost for hauling supplies, equipment, those sorts of things.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

The narrative here says that both the encampment bag and litter abatement programs have significantly expanded the number of locations being served from their initial scopes.

As it relates to the bag pilot, I don't believe that's True.

I think they originally were, the pilot was nine locations, and I think they pretty much hover between nine and ten locations.

They rotate them out, but I don't think it's ever more than ten locations.

I think that phrase was relating to the program started with about two locations for each of the two programs.

They did quickly expand up to about nine or ten.

Right now they're serving nine locations with the encampment bag.

And as it relates to the RV remediation program, I know that the, there wasn't specific funding in last year's budget for this year's spending.

And the, it was funded through SPU's illegal dumping program authority.

It would be helpful to understand how much was spent in 2018 to date because I, I'm concerned that, I'm learning that SPU and SPD under the remediation program really only has the resources to address six sites per month, and I've become pretty intimately informed on sort of what their prioritization approach is and how they score different locations that they go out and assess.

I've become aware of it because of something that's happened last week in in West Seattle related to a person who lives in their vehicle and was fleeing the scene of a crime and going back to where they parked their vehicle and they ran into the athletic club and literally went right through it.

So I've got lots of constituents asking me more about how the city prioritizes locations that they do their remediation program for, and have found, like I said, that they're really only able to address six sites per month.

And I believe that's a resource question, but don't know enough to conclude that definitively.

So just to answer the first part of your question, SPU expects to spend about $132,000 in 2018. The city really ramped up citywide and only in May of this year.

So that's just partial or costs.

As you can see in the table, they're a little bit over $200,000 for both of the proposed years of the budgets.

And you're right that the current plan is to continue serving approximately six sites per month.

And I believe we have some questions in asking what it would cost to be able to look at remediating more locations.

That's correct.

Yep.

We have a question posted to our system and we haven't heard back yet.

All right.

Thank you.

So the last two notes I was going to say was that in terms of staffing, the executive is proposing to convert two temporary positions into permanent positions in 2019, both of which serve the four homelessness programs that you see listed.

And in addition, the proposed budgets include one new leadership program for the entire clean city suite of programs, which is proposed at an executive two level.

May I?

Please.

Brian, I know we've gone over this before, but I just would love a reminder about the Clean City moniker being funded through general fund appropriations.

Yeah, it's that the, I probably don't have the best explanation, but it's that they are not specific services that are provided to the rate payers.

So SPU, as you know, has three different funds where they provide water, solid waste, and then drainage and wastewater funds.

And expenditures, the revenues that are generated by those activities need to be spent to kind of further the specific purposes of those funds.

And these are kind of general city services.

And so that's why they don't fall within the specific categories of even solid waste.

So for, if you'll permit me a brief follow-up, Madam Chair, so for an issue like our Find It Fix It program where we have citizens that are posting about illegal litter or illegal dumping in locations and then we're using existing city contracts with some of our service providers to go out there and pick up those illegal dumping or illegal trash, that is being supported out of general fund resources, not out of ratepayer driven resources?

That's correct.

So even though we may have residents of the city of Seattle who are paying their rate illegally dumping couches in places, we are not asking those same citizens to foot the tab for us when we go out and collect that couch that they've dumped illegally somewhere.

I mean, right, it would be funded through the general fund, not through the specific solid waste.

I mean, I know I'm not the first council member to walk up this mountain, but I think it's worth us considering having a further conversation about it.

I mean, if we know that the SPU rate payers are going to be paying for you as a garbage man to pick up a couch that an individual has put on the side of the road and gone through all the appropriate processes in order to ask SPU to have the folks from waste management come and pick up that couch and that's a Something that you pay an additional amount to SPU to take away Then why can't we also contemplate having rate payers?

also talk about things like illegal dumping.

So, Brian, you were going to jump in and correct me for a misstatement.

And maybe my couch example was the wrong example.

But I do know that as somebody who has occasionally asked for e-waste recycling to be picked up at the curb or one of the other various opportunities that SPU gives us, I pay an additional surcharge in order for that to occur.

It seems like there might be an opportunity there for us to think about additional surcharges for picking up illegal dumping or other Abandoned vehicles or other issues that we know are are just part of keeping the city a clean place I Don't think we're prepared to answer that today, but obviously it's something that's on people's minds.

Thank you

So moving on to issue identification.

Number one, the Metropolitan Improvement District Outreach Program, Mid-Outreach Program.

The proposed budget includes $200,000 in ongoing funding for the Downtown Seattle Association's Mid-Outreach Program.

Mid-Outreach provides two main services currently for the downtown area, and those being direct street outreach.

and the provision and coordination of social services at their office in Piner Square.

Mid-outreach has been funded by the city in the past and is currently in 2018, excuse me, for the first quarter was funded.

table you'll see in table for a budget history.

I'll also note that in addition to this budget here from 2014 or 2013 through 2016 mid outreach and the lead programs sort of shared an additional pot of funding that was held in reserve in Finance General, and that small pot of funding was held in reserve for the purpose of potential expansion of the programs to other geographic areas.

Both MID Outreach and LEED did access funding from that Finance General pot.

For MID Outreach, that occurred in 2000...

when it expanded its operations to Capitol Hill.

Mid-outreach competed in the 2017 Homeless Investments RFP.

They were not successful.

You'll see here in my memo that it notes that the rating committee indicated that the program's outreach model was not well-defined, did not adequately show racial equity actions and commitment.

and that the program's answers to questions about data and outcomes did not demonstrate analysis.

So they were awarded a small amount of bridge funding for this year.

The city has indicated that there is a need for additional outreach for single adults.

And that is one of the reasons why this 200,000 ad is in the proposed budget.

If I could just chime in on this one.

So I'm interested to know why the MID proposal failed to meet the requirements of the Human Services Department because they're an organization that ought to know how to put a proposal together.

So I am interested in that.

But secondly, they're doing tremendous work downtown.

And as somebody who lives downtown and sees it on a regular basis, that I would very much like to see it continue.

If any lessening of their work and cleanup would really put us back, I think, years, then we don't wanna see that happen.

That said, and I'm channeling Council Member Gonzalez right now, is that she asked yesterday, You know, I'm supporting this because as a downtown resident, I see what Boots on the Grounds do.

But her argument, Council Member Gonzales, I'm channeling you right now, that it may not be fair geographically to put $200,000 into downtown where other areas, and particularly we might talk about D5 as an example.

It needs additional resources as well.

So I want to be fair to say I think we need it, but I also recognize that two of my colleagues have argued that they need it as well.

And just to have an understanding about why they failed, but recognizing that work is there.

I'll also add that the proposed $200,000 would enable MidOutreach to expand their operations back to Capitol Hill and Little Saigon and other areas.

chair chair backshaw yeah council member gonzales um i'm sure you already said everything that um i hope to say but um i i really do think that there is a geographic parity issue on this one and i would like to get uh some additional information from central staff around how we are funding outreach programs throughout the city.

And my sense is from talking to service providers and from just moving about the city that that these three neighborhoods, although incredibly important and certainly have a need, and I don't want to minimize the fact that they have real needs in this space.

My sense is that there are a lot of resources already going to these neighborhoods relative to other neighborhoods throughout the city.

And so I think of pockets like in the U district, you know, Aurora Avenue, Lake City, Ravenna, other spaces where there are clearly needs as it relates to outreach for our community members who are experiencing homelessness.

And again, my sense is that those neighborhoods are not receiving an equitable investment to address the needs as it relates to outreach in those areas.

And so I had some time to, for example, spend time with the folks over at the Ballard Alliance who have a great model of of having an outreach worker.

They contract a case worker on their own dime who effectively does this work, but they don't receive any city funding to do that type of work.

And so, you know, I just really want us to be conscientious of the fact that we need to make sure that we recognize that these are needs that exist throughout the city.

I don't think it's fair to restore funding to an entity that has claimed to want to be make sure that the city is accountable for every single last dime, and yet they submitted an RFP that did not meet those accountability expectations of the city and now want funding.

So I'm interested in making sure that we stay true to our stated principles around making sure that we have performance-based decisions in this space.

And then I also wanna make sure that we address the realities of a geographic equity and parity throughout the city.

I feel like there's a real need in other parts of the city who are just not getting appropriate resources to be able to do this outreach to their neighbors who are experiencing homelessness.

Do you know when the next contract bid's going to be for this?

I believe the next RFP process will begin in 2020 for contracts in 2021. Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I believe you and Council Member Gonzalez spoke exactly to what I was concerned with here.

Just a few questions so that I'm clear.

DSA overall did submit requests to receive additional funding and received it for their downtown MID efforts, correct?

I'm not sure what the origin is of the $200,000 that's in the proposed budget, so I don't know.

if that originated from a direct ask of DSA.

Okay.

And the MID dollars, you said that LEAD used to also tap into a pool of resources that provided similar outreach and LEAD and MID did outreach?

Well, actually, so the origin of that is that Flashing back to 2014 or 2013, this is slightly before my time, so I might be a little hazy on these details, but back then, the LEAD program and Mid-Outreach were both seen as potential programs with room for growth that were addressing issues surrounding low-level crime as well as homelessness in the downtown area.

Both programs were operating in Belltown and other areas of downtown.

And the council wanted to consider whether the city should invest in those programs.

And as the council delved deeper into those programs, we found that there are significant differences in how they operate.

So LEAD being not a homelessness outreach program, but a criminal justice diversion program, and with mid-outreach being a homelessness outreach program.

I do think that it might be worth exploring the ways in which LEAD has changed.

And I know others on this council have worked on that program for a very long time.

But there's now five new indicators that they're looking at in terms of the criteria to allow for new clients to come into their LEAD program.

And one of those, I think, includes trespassing.

Some of the others, I don't know if you have those off the top of your head, Alan.

I don't.

I don't, but LEAD will be discussed later this afternoon with the HST paper.

Just a quick heads up, Madam Chair, that as we now know, LEAD has identified five additional indicators.

Many of those indicators allow for them to do the type of outreach that we know many who are living unsheltered need.

Individuals who've been living on sidewalks or in parks often get cited with trespassing and other low-level incidences that really they're only coming into contact with law enforcement because they're unsheltered.

And so now with this new criteria that LEAD has, I think it would be very interesting to look at how we achieve our objective of of having geographic parity across the city and perhaps look back at the way LEAD used to interact with this type of funding to do a more equitable outreach model across the city and to really make sure that we're reaching out to those who need the services in a bilingual, bicultural way.

I would also say, especially for folks who are up on Capitol Hill and the areas that have been left out, reaching out to youth, our foster youth and the LGBTQ community, And I think that LEAD might be a good way for us to think about how we achieve those parity issues that Councilmember Gonzalez spoke to.

We'd love to get the criteria when we speak to that too.

Absolutely, and just as a point of clarity here, so the LEED is a diversion program, and there are outreach elements to it, including most recently this year, the implementation of the inclusion of people living in their vehicles to the program model, where the LEED program does targeted outreach to RVs and other people living in their vehicles to find out if they qualify for the program.

But the mechanism by which people join the LEAP program is through a referral system rather than what we might think of as direct street outreach.

So I just want to highlight the programmatic difference there and we can delve further into that this afternoon.

Great, thank you.

And one last thing I just want to point out as we're talking about geographic equity, and that is in downtown, the number of service providers that are dealing with people who are homeless, the big numbers are downtown.

So I don't want to underestimate the needs in our other districts, but I also want us to recognize that a significant problem continues to happen here and in this area.

So I want us to figure out a fair way to distribute these funds, but I don't think it ought to necessarily be divided by seven.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you.

I am not suggesting that it should be divided equally by seven.

What I am suggesting and what I am asking central staff to assist me in evaluating is what is the baseline now?

How are we funding outreach programs throughout the city?

I feel like that's an obligation I take very seriously to evaluate as a citywide representative in this city.

And my perception, and I would like actual facts from essential staff is to be able to evaluate how we are funding outreach services throughout the city so that this city council can make a determination as to whether or not those funds are being distributed equitably.

And I suppose that some of the facts that will be used is where is the need versus what are we funding?

And there's no question that there are significant needs in downtown Chinatown International District.

little Saigon and Capitol Hill.

I'm not suggesting that there aren't significant needs in those neighborhoods.

What I am suggesting is that there are also significant needs in other parts of the city and we have to begin the process of addressing those concerns that exist in other neighborhoods outside of the downtown core in a way that is equitable and fair and responsive to the myriad of constituent correspondence we receive outside of District 7, 2, and 3 about this particular issue.

Absolutely, I will get that information.

So a brief description of how our, what is known as our outreach continuum works is prior to the RFP, there was this outreach continuum and our outreach dollars went to different organizations based on a specialization in outreach.

So for example, DESC runs the host program and their specialization around outreaches are for those who have mental illness.

Similarly, the youth care outreach program that specialized with youth and young adults.

So I know that with the RFP that we reconfigured that continuum a little bit to also include organizations that, for example, specialize in outreach for communities of color, but I will be happy to provide the council with that level of detail.

Thank you, please councilmember O'Brien one last one Do we know?

Do you have details on how this?

200,000 is going to be allocated across my understanding was that some of the like the Chinatown International District for still in Capitol Hill were part of this, or exclusively it, or?

Yeah, so I actually, outside, I think outside of the detail that you've just provided, I don't know what that would translate to you specifically, except for the inclusion of these additional neighborhoods.

So Capitol Hill, Little Saigon, and the International District Chinatown.

Okay, so it's not clear that it's exclusive for that, or just includes them, but we don't know.

It's not clear to me, but I'm happy to follow up.

Okay, I appreciate that, thank you.

Great, thank you.

All right, we can move on.

So issue number two on page six, vehicular response.

So in addition to the RV remediation pilot program that Brian described, the 19 proposed budget includes 250,000 for vehicular response.

The 2018 one night count estimated over 3,300 individuals in King County.

who are living in their vehicle, that's either in a car, van, or RV, and that's estimated to be about 2,300 individuals in Seattle.

So I'm gonna provide a brief budget and program history of the city's response to people living in their vehicles.

So from 2012 to 2017, the city funded the Roads to Housing Program through Compass Housing Alliance.

This program consisted of working with faith-based organizations.

They would provide safe parking spaces for people in their vehicles.

This largely did not include RVs.

Faith-based organizations usually donated around 10 or fewer spaces for vehicles a year.

The contract, when it concluded in 2017, was about 319,000.

Road to Housing also provided case management.

The target of their work were largely people who were living in their cars.

In 2016, with the declaration of a civil emergency, the city spent about $370,000 on safe zones and safe lots.

These programs were discussed in, at the time, Council Member Bragshaw's committee and the Public Health and Human Services Committee several times.

We know that the safe zone and safe lot programs resulted in limited exits to permanent housing.

We know that the safe lot, which was a designated area in Ballard, offering 24-7 parking for RVs in addition to some services, was approximately $35,000 per month.

The safe lot program was discontinued after about five months.

In 2017, Council Member Bryan convened the Vehicular Living Work Group.

The work group was comprised of a variety of stakeholders, many of whom were involved in the issue of people living in their vehicles.

They offered a series of recommendations that were heard in committee.

This included opening a multi-lot safe parking program.

This would include cars and RVs.

funding vehicular fee mitigation services, building a data system able to track vehicles used as residences, and many other recommendations.

The 2018 proposed budget included 800,000 to develop a vehicular living program.

50,000 of that 800,000 would have gone to a survey to assess the needs of people living in their vehicles.

The council imposed a proviso of 750,000 requiring that the funding should be added to LEED on the condition that LEED incorporate outreach to people living in their vehicles and to their program, which they have done this spring.

And as I understand it, they have commenced on providing that outreach to RVs.

I believe that together with this 2018 funding that was provided, there was also a statement of legislative intent that was included, directed at LEAD and their provision of services to this new population.

I'm wondering, I don't recall seeing a response to it.

Yes, I think that'll be discussed this afternoon I don't think that the official response has been submitted to the council yet.

Okay.

Thank you My colleague Greg will correct me if I'm wrong So the budget proposal On that last bullet point about the needs assessment I think we talked about this a couple weeks ago that that hadn't been done and You just want to, is it like almost done or is it like, no, they're not doing it.

So what was discussed at table, I believe during the presentations on homelessness, the executive has indicated that that 50,000 is being currently used to develop the program that the proposed 250,000 will pay for.

So there's current engagement with with people with lived experiences and other stakeholders in developing this program.

That's a good segue.

So the 250,000, the program has not been finalized yet, but the executive has signaled that they will probably implement a safe parking program similar to the models that are being implemented in Santa Barbara and San Diego.

So those have similar costs.

They also have some similar programmatic features such as case management and services focused on exits to permanent housing, use of flexible funding for short-term needs such as vehicle repair, vehicles must have current registration and insurance, RVs or RVs beyond a certain size are excluded from the program, and no daytime parking.

So, Ellen, I just want to underscore that last sentence you said, that based upon the Santa Barbara, San Diego models, we're dealing with cars only, not the RVs.

So, that's, I mean, it's a good step in the right direction, but RVs are part of the problem that are driving neighbors nuts.

I don't think we've come up with anything yet that is addressing and caring for people.

And we know that the RV is oftentimes, and a car too, is the last resource that somebody has.

But I think we need to really have a focus on what can we do and where can we provide space for people.

that have the pump outs and the hand washing and all of that available.

So I think it's good and it's great and I applaud the executive for having these places for people who are living in their car but it isn't anywhere near enough.

So we've got a lot more to do there.

Absolutely and I think that What you say also speaks to the very different challenges in providing services to those two groups, if I can generalize.

So people living in their cars, it may be programmatically easier to provide such services to them as opposed to people living in RVs, and I think as they complete their survey and design their program.

Maybe we'll speak more to that, but at this juncture, it seems that the executive will not include RVs in this program.

So, you know, as many of us have gone either talking or going to cities to see what other cities are doing, we know that every large city is facing this.

San Jose, as an example, has literally a mile of parked RVs outside of some of what people consider one of the richest areas in the world.

So I'm hopeful that we can learn lessons from these other cities about what is working and see what we can do to find places for people where they can be safe.

Yes, and I'll mention that based on the research that I did over the last year, it seems that there isn't really a sort of a best practice national model from other jurisdictions that specifically relate to RVs.

I think that other jurisdictions are in the midst of trying to resolve this as well.

So even Santa Barbara with their safe parking, several years after they implemented that, the city actually enacted stricter requirements on RVs parking in the city.

I just wanted to thank you madam chair if I might just put a pin in that because I'll come back to it later This is precisely why I think it's important that we have an enhanced approach to Communicable disease response.

I love that.

We have taken some initial steps on hygiene services here.

I think it also needs to be done in conjunction with a more coordinated approach with Public Health Seattle King County, our King County partners, and our city to ensure that we're reaching out to folks who don't have access to those hygiene services.

So both the prevention side and doing a better job with responding to potential outbreaks and communicable diseases is something I would love to touch base on as we get into those issues later.

But I think it requires both the prevention strategy for hygiene services and an immediate response due to the lack of those services right now.

Thank you.

Council President Harrell.

Just a question for clarification.

I know we're not going over the LEED program now in this budget presentation, but I guess I'm sort of curious if anyone knows, will our funding of LEED for next year and the year after, will that include any work in the RV or vehicle issues?

Yes, President Harrell, so henceforth the lead operational model now includes outreach to RVs.

So that's now baked into the operational model for the program.

So the 1.75...

Sorry to interrupt.

So I mistakenly thought that the proviso of 750 was like a one-time sort of evaluation.

But what you're saying to me is that the 750 that we provisoed in 2018, that even going into 19 and 20, there's gonna be ongoing work on the vehicular response stuff.

Yeah, so a point of clarity is that the 750 is not exclusively devoted to the work of the outreach to people living in their vehicles.

That 750 is to the LEED program in general and supported its expansion into North Seattle.

So the condition around that 750 was that they include outreach to RVs as part of their operational model.

I see, okay, thank you.

Please continue Alan.

Great, so number three, regional governance.

So in May 2018, King County Executive Dow Constantine and the mayor signed an MOU stating that they would explore governance structures, joint governance structures for programs affecting people experiencing homelessness countrywide.

So the partnership entails studying current models governing public health, homeless services, and housing investments in other cities, as well as our own examples here, including public health, Seattle King County, for example, to consider successful elements for implementation.

As a reminder, earlier this year, the city, in partnership with King County, the city of Auburn, and other King County jurisdictions, undertook the One Table efforts, and One Table was tasked with identifying root causes of homelessness.

as well as proposing potential solutions.

The one table did produce a variety of recommendations about affordable housing, child welfare, behavioral health, criminal justice, and employment with a set timeline, well, two timelines, a one to three-year timeline as well as a three to seven-year timeline on implementation of specific recommendations.

The current discussions around governance, we heard during the homelessness departmental presentation overview that those discussions are occurring now.

Those involve the Human Services Department, the Office of Housing, and other departments.

executive level positions.

They're meeting, I believe, weekly.

So this is unfolding in real time.

But currently we see a three-track effort.

So one being an assessment, a current assessment of how our homelessness investments are doing after the implementation of Pathways Home.

Or in other words, after our shift in strategy around our homelessness investments and after the release of the RFP.

So involved in that effort include Barb Poppy, who made those recommendations several years ago to the city, and others.

Another track is a development of a regional action plan.

So this would sort of be a business plan that would be all-inclusive of all the efforts that are informing homelessness in the region.

So this would entail tracking philanthropy and all other sources of funding or funding or any kind of effort towards homelessness and unifying that in a singular plan, that is due to be completed in February.

And finally, the third track would be the conversation around governance itself.

So there are multiple ways that a governance model could emerge.

We don't have early indications as to what that might be yet, but some examples might be public health, Seattle-King County, a joint governmental agency.

Another example might be what they're doing in Los Angeles where where homelessness policy and budget is concentrated in an authority, so a private-public partnership.

So as I understand it, the executive, they are doing this in real time, and the contractor that they've hired to oversee some of this is a person from an organization in New York who is an expert and change theory and with a focus on race and social justice.

He is available to meet with the council and I'll be working with the executive to try and arrange personal meetings with interested council members.

I know Madam Chair that you have already met with this, or excuse me, you haven't met with this person yet, but you will shortly.

So I'll be working with the executive to arrange those meetings.

Great.

Please, Council Member Gonzalez.

I think, you know, we obviously spent a lot of time talking about regionality and in this space and why it's important.

And I do think that it would be important to have some kind of formal council involvement in the development of the plan related to regional governance and sort of whatever the ongoing model would be in terms of coordination at all levels of government to really grapple with these issues and make real-time decisions about what the needs are, what priorities should be, and how to respond to those particular needs.

So I appreciate the option that is presented in this budget issue paper to consider advancing a statement of legislative intent that would create an interdisciplinary team that would include representation from the City Council.

I just think that it's really important for us to be in the loop on these issues, particularly as sort of the chief policy makers for the City of Seattle and sort of the final budget.

authority entities, so I appreciate the opportunity to be able to work with the chair on a potential slide that will meet those needs.

Great.

And thank you for bringing that up.

And I also want to signal my huge support for this work.

And I think a model that we pointed out recently is the joint work we did around the arena between the executive team and council.

We can do so much more if we're working together on something like this.

And I would also, in addition to what Councilmember Gonzalez was just saying, if we have an interdepartmental team, I always want to see the executive identify somebody who has her authority and the ability to direct decisions and to direct action steps.

My experience with IDTs, as wonderful as they are, is that if somebody's not in charge, nobody's in charge.

And so, with this, it's such a critical point, and moving forward in 2019, I'm excited about the possibility.

So, I like your option.

I would like to add what Councilmember Gonzalez said, particularly around criminal justice, too.

That is a big piece that we're all talking about.

and how we're working with the city attorney and the prosecuting attorney to keep people out of jail and get them into better options.

Councilmember Morris, did you have something you wanted to add?

Okay.

Madam Chair.

Okay.

Councilmember Johnson.

Just a brief friendly amendment to that.

As I mentioned in council briefing and I've continued to try to lift back up for my colleagues, I serve as a member of the regional affordable housing task force.

We are on a similar timeline to one table set to make a set of recommendations by the end of the year.

We are having a meeting on Wednesday to look through the 14 page draft action plan that we have.

Though we know that the strategies around homelessness and housing are related, they are not necessarily the same.

So as we contemplate a set of strategies around one table, I think it'd be helpful for us to include the Affordable Housing Task Force recommendations there, too, because one of the issues that we'll discuss that that group is also regional governance and so commingling of all these opportunities into one uber opportunity seems like a good option for us to consider.

Great, thank you Council Member Johnson again for your work with that committee.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I also want to underscore the importance of this regional governance approach.

I'm a little concerned, though, that we don't delay the process of making this happen now.

Of the three things that you just mentioned, and maybe, Alan, we can follow up later, what I'm most interested in making sure that we actually initiate the coordination now.

I mean, we have this report that came from the One Table meeting, and if I remember correctly, it was less than 10 pages, the final recommendations that came from that multi-city county effort that we came to the table for almost eight months, and it is less than 10 pages.

Here we have, again, the example from Los Angeles.

This is just the city's version alone of what came from a cross-disciplinary approach to make sure that the municipalities were working together at the county and the city level.

And they have recommendations in here related to governance.

They have six policy recommendations.

And I think it would be very important to see how we can actually just potentially use this pot of funding to move forward with recommending the strategies that they've included here, such as a Homelessness Strategy Committee, a Regional Intergovernmental Coordination Committee, an effort that would pull together an advisory committee.

So there was a joint county implementation group.

These are things that I think we know will work if we put the funding and resources towards them.

And then we can begin working on some of those recommendations that came from the one table group, but also more importantly, identifying roles and responsibilities.

I'm really interested in this concept here.

I applaud the inclusion of it in the budget.

I also want to see if there's ways that we can do less of an analysis and more of a directive of what we'd like to see.

I appreciate that Councilmember Herbold mentioned that she and Councilmember Sawant receive weekly briefs.

I think this is an example of the type of information that we should all be receiving.

But also, more importantly, we just heard about this, as I think Alan mentioned.

We heard about it during the departmental overviews.

I want to make sure that we're more involved in what the process is, so when a body gets pulled together like that.

were at the table.

I would love to know if the recommendation that I provided for Public Health Seattle King County to sit at that table was included and whether or not there's additional outcomes that we can expect.

And I think it's critical that we're at the table to help not only know what's happening but inform those decisions.

I appreciate that very much and concur.

And part of my urgency around this is that we can plan forever And there's always one more plan that we can invest in, but we have so much information.

And I would really urge us to put some time frames around this to say at the end of quarter one, we want to have a stake in the ground and know where we're going.

So I would say as we're talking about provisos that we also talk about some deadlines.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So I would add to Council Member Mosqueda's comments that the weekly reports are available to the Council.

They're located in a location on the shared drive, and I'll follow up again with that link.

Thank you.

Thank you, Alan.

I'm sorry.

Thank you for that.

I didn't know it was there.

I think the point still is we don't have a coordinating body that is working hand in glove either with the mayor or with the county or with public health to really identify what our strategies are.

And I'm looking forward to hearing more about the mayor and her team's visit to L.A.

because I had the chance to sit in, physically sit in that room where all of those bodies are coming together.

The agencies are coming together to do an analysis.

in real time to figure out how we're deploying resources and helping to get folks inside.

So that's great.

I will start taking a look for that.

But I'm underscoring I think what the chair is saying and trying to move forward.

So it's not just checking the boxes on where items or data is sent to, but that there's real change on the ground level.

So I also just want to appreciate you for spending your time in LA and recognizing that there, Proposition Triple H and Proposition H brought in well over a billion dollars to address and build housing and provide the necessary services.

And what they did, which I really appreciate, is they brought everybody to the table that had an interest, whether it was people who have been homeless themselves, the providers, businesses, philanthropy, labor, And they created something starting in 2014 that was voted on overwhelmingly.

And I think this is something regionally we need to do, and not just for the city of Seattle, but for the county, potentially tri-county, and possibly even four counties if we want to add Kitsap.

I know it's a big bite, but I see this as being the way forward.

Please, go ahead.

Just a quick question, if I may.

As we're having this conversation around the regional governance component here, you know, I think it's largely been led by our own mayor, other mayors, and the county executive.

And I realize that we are asking to be part of an interdisciplinary team that would involve the City Council presumably that would just be an IDT made up of the City of Seattle or is it the vision that it would be sort of a multi or is it a cross-jurisdictional interdepartmental team and if it is a multi-jurisdictional I would be interested in hearing from you, Alan, if you have any understanding of whether King County Council intends to play a role or is interested in playing a role.

That is the ideal that I had in mind in crafting this option.

Okay.

And so we would just need to check in with our colleagues over at the King County Council as a legislative branch of King County to make sure that they would be at the table as well, which seems only like the fair thing to do.

Yes, and in addition to King Council, I'd also add probably all home as well.

Great, thank you.

Okay, please continue.

So now we're moving on to the final part of this presentation, budget actions proposed by council members as of October 10th, 2018. So the first section involves emergency services.

Number one, add $3 million in 2019 for a bridge shelter, Council Member Mosqueda.

This would provide for one-time expenses of a mass shelter tent similar to those in operation in Los Angeles under its a bridge home program.

A bridge home involves large tent structures for the homeless that include enhanced shelter features such as showers, storage lockers, restrooms, laundry, open green spaces, pet areas, case management, and mental health counseling.

So I will try to promise that this is the last time I will talk about LA today.

But I do want to appreciate the time and interest that many of the council members have spent, including the mayor's office.

with looking at the models that we can glean from some of our regional partners, including up and down the West Coast.

As we know that homelessness and the housing crisis is an issue that we face up and down the West Coast, we also want to learn from our regional partners who've come and learned from us in the past.

As the chair mentioned at the beginning of this discussion, it's been three years since a state of emergency was declared as it relates to homelessness in the city and the county.

And as we heard this morning, our shelters are basically at capacity.

Our affordable housing has no vacancy.

There's almost twice as many people now living in their cars as we just discussed in RVs.

And we do not have a place for people to go to.

And we know what the answer is.

I want to be really clear.

The answer is not additional tents or housing or RV services.

The answer is housing.

We want to make sure people get into a home, a safe place that is permanent shelter, not just overnight shelter or 24-hour shelter.

And we also know that we don't have the revenue to do that.

And I think that's why we don't see those dollars invested in this budget, because we don't have a new revenue stream this year.

So we're trying to make some choices about where we invest those dollars to make sure that there is both services on the ground and also, as we discussed yesterday, some possible bonding ideas, as Councilmember Herbold spoke to.

the potential to bond against any revenue source that we can frankly find so that we can build the capital, build the housing that we need, that's my priority.

And as we look at creating those longer-term solutions, as we find the revenue that we need to build the housing, I think that we all here on council are invested in trying to make sure that people have safe, dry places to stay inside.

As we create that long-term housing, we also know that we need more short-term options, which was really illuminated by the conversation that you all just had this morning about the lack of shelter capacity and the lack of vacancies in our enhanced shelter.

When I was first approached by some of our public health colleagues and others about the concept of having a large tent model to house folks, I was opposed.

I'm not interested in sweeping poverty out of sight.

I'm not interested in warehousing people.

But we do not have enough place to ask folks to stay inside in a respectful way that helps get them off of the street and out of the rain.

Not enough places that are enhanced so that people can be with their loved ones, bring their pets, have a locker, have storage on site, take a shower.

When I went to Los Angeles, I saw a model that allows for us to quickly erect a possible tent and allow for up to 75 to 100 people to stay inside.

with partitions between the beds, with case managers on site, with the ability to do this in a relatively quick manner on vacant properties, on properties that are currently being used as parking lots, or maybe being used to store materials as we wait to build.

So I think that In light of the fact that we do not have enough shelter capacity, in light of the fact that there's more people currently living outside and in their RVs, in light of the fact, as the chair said, we know more people would go inside if they had the opportunity to go into enhanced shelters to be with their loved ones and have services 24-7.

When I saw this model that was presented to me in Los Angeles by the mayor's office down there and with the support of many of their council members, It really brought to light that we can do more of an enhanced shelter model.

You see setbacks from the street that include opportunities for tree canopies.

You see art on the outside.

You see open spaces for either pets or loved ones to gather, a place where you can have dining, and laundry, and food storage, and your lockers, and your showers, running waters, toilets.

This is an opportunity for us to provide both hygiene services, case management, 24-hour shelter, and I believe to do it in a way that's relatively quick.

I want to just wrap up, Madam Chair, by saying this is not the solution.

We know that more housing is necessary, but in conversations with the coalition for folks who work with those who are homeless, in conversations with the coalition for folks who are advocating for more housing, everyone recognizes that what we need is a continuum of housing.

As we build that housing on the horizon, we need more opportunities for folks to be able to have respectful places to stay inside.

So I offer this as one opportunity for us to explore a potential way to allow folks to come indoors, but we have to do it in a way that's a true enhanced shelter model and not tents within a large tent, not mats on the floor, not bunk beds, but actually an enhanced shelter that could be set up relatively quickly.

That's the model that I saw from there and wanted to bring it back here and just offer it as one more alternative.

not an alternative, one more component, because I also don't want this to be seen as replacing any other model.

Thank you.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Thank you, Chair Bagshaw.

Just a few questions for central staff.

So my understanding is that the requested ad by Council Member Mosqueda comes in at $3 million for 2019, is that correct?

Yes, that is correct.

And that is just for capital costs?

Yes, that is correct.

It is only for the one-time costs of establishing the tent shelter.

And do we anticipate that there would be any additional capital costs for 2020 should the council advance this particular addition to the budget?

I don't know the definitive answer to that, but I can find out.

That'd be great.

And then with all of these things, it's important for us to make sure that we have operations funding.

So based on your answer, I'm assuming that the $3 million is not inclusive of operations and management.

Yes, that's correct, Council Member.

How much would operations and management be for this particular ad?

Well, the model that we've investigated in Los Angeles has operating expenses at $2 million.

Per year or for two years?

Per year.

Alan, if I might add to that.

So we actually did send a comprehensive list of questions down to Los Angeles.

The initial response back was that it was just under $3 million for capital costs.

And we did do some quick analysis on our end to add up the pieces, both for case management services and on-site maintenance.

And also, we asked additional questions about what additional cleanup is needed, sanitation, making sure that there was security.

As we've compiled that list, we asked whether or not that that was around the $2 million.

Obviously, that would be a large ask.

But our question here is, is this worth exploring?

Does it allow for us to stand up something relatively quicker than brick and mortar?

And again, we have not received the answers to those questions yet, but we are very much in line with Councilmember Gonzalez's questions and concerns about the operating costs and the capital costs.

As soon as we see those, though, we'll get back to you.

But I think that there is still a delineation that needs to be defined for us among what it is for the operating costs around.

around year-round if I may finish my line of questioning and then can you tell me how many people we or how many By how many beds or spaces would this particular bridge shelter model a proposal?

How many how many shelter spaces would be provided?

It would be 75 to 100 spaces.

And how many people would we expect that to be able to serve?

So that's part of the line of questioning that we put to Los Angeles.

So when we receive a response to that, we can offer that.

OK.

I mean, I think, obviously, we want to be able to be innovative and creative in pursuing additional models of enhanced shelter.

And certainly, the L.A.

model is another type of enhanced shelter that has not been tested in the city of Seattle.

And just because it hasn't been tested doesn't mean we shouldn't test it.

But I also want to, you know, I just want to put out a flag of concern on my behalf that this is proposed to be a $5 million project, at least for the first year.

It's a little unclear based on your answer, Ellen, whether there's going to be additional capital costs for 2020. We're not taking into account that we need to take into account.

And so I just have I have some concerns about the amount of money that we would need to expend on this type of model based on the information that I have available to me in terms of the number of people who would actually be served and the number of shelter capacity that this would provide us in addition to what we currently have.

So when I think about if we spent $5 million on our current model of enhanced shelter, how many beds that would buy us.

I suspect that it would be more than 75 to 100 beds per year, but would appreciate getting an understanding of those nuances and those details so that we can better evaluate and understand Council Member Mosqueda's proposal in this space.

And maybe if it's a matter of exploring what the model should be, then perhaps we should be looking at a slide that sort of creates a pathway towards making sure that we are making, that we're making decisions that are rooted in sort of clearer sense of what the scope of the project would be and what the related costs are going to be.

both in terms of capital and in operations and management.

It sounds like a lot of that work is happening now.

I'm just a little nervous that we're not gonna have long enough of a runway to have a sense of certainty by the time we vote on the budget in four weeks.

Understood, Council Member.

Any other comments down there on this?

So I want to just underscore, Council Member Muscata, I am very pleased that you're bringing back something new that we can look at and explore.

And I think we've also suggested that as we're exploring this, that we explore other options, including are there rental buildings that might be available that we haven't really delved too deeply in.

So I'm open to putting this right back to our Human Services Department and our Office of Housing and to this new interdepartmental team.

But whatever it is, the goal here is to find decent places for people and knowing, as Councilmember Mosqueda said, this isn't the final answer.

This is a step in the journey.

And I appreciate you bringing this back.

Thank you.

Please continue.

Item number two, at $378,000 in 2019 and $756,000 in 2020 in ongoing funding for basic shelter service.

This is Council Member Sawant.

Provide funding for basic shelter services for programs such as ShareWheel.

ShareWheel's 217 basic shelter beds are proposed to be funded for six months of operations in 2019. Council Member Sawant.

I don't have a whole lot to say about this.

Everybody's familiar with this, because share and reals, shelter beds keep getting nickel and dimed.

And as Alan and the memo said, the funding is proposed in the mayor's proposed budget only for six months of 2019. And our people's budget movement, we are completely convinced that this needs to be funded in lieu of any other solutions for homeless people.

I mean, there's a lot of endless conversation from everybody in City Hall about how we need housing, and then you repeal the Amazon tax, and you're nickel and dime, on top of that, homeless people, for whatever little lifeline they have, they're being nickel and dimed.

And so we absolutely need to, in the absence of any political will to provide actual solutions.

At the very least, the council should continue funding the basic lifelines that homeless community members have at their disposal.

Please continue.

Number three, add 300,000 in 2019 for an emergency housing pilot program.

This is Council Member O'Brien.

This would establish a pilot program where in community-based organizations can leverage community resources to build new emergency housing.

Thank you.

The concept here is still evolving, but I want to just lift up some of the solutions we've seen coming from community members on trying to address both the housing and homeless crisis.

One example is the block project, which I think a lot of folks know about where folks are building.

these small permanent housing options in backyards.

I recently had a chance to visit a site where folks had built a kit that could build a similarly small but permanent housing option on wheels.

The distinction between these units and like tiny house we see in villages is, I think for the most part, these are fully permitted and meet all of our building code requirements.

They have plumbing, they have electricity, They have, the one I saw, a washer and dryer, has cooking options.

But they're small, you know, they're a couple hundred square feet.

And the other thing that they have in common is that they often can be built with some mix of volunteer labor.

And so it's an opportunity where community members want to come together and help find a solution.

Not at the scale of thousands of units, but say, what can we do in our neighborhood?

What can we do with our organization, our church, to find a solution for a couple folks?

The idea here would be to have a pool of money that can pilot some of these projects to match with community members who want to come together.

One of the questions I hear so often when I'm out in community, there's a lot of frustration, obviously, about what's happening throughout our communities.

But there's often people that stand up and say, Mike, I want to help.

What can I do to help?

And finding, I think, opportunities for folks to say, hey, you know, sometimes it's raise some money, sometimes it's do some outreach work, sometimes it's put on a tool belt or pick up a hammer and put something together.

And I think our ability to find some additional options for folks to engage in the solutions and interact with some of the people.

that are in these crises can be better for the greater movement.

Because I agree when I hear others say, you know, the city alone is not going to be able to solve this crisis.

And that means we're going to need all levels of government.

But we also need our entire community to find ways to step forward.

And this may be an opportunity to help folks in our community feel like there's a productive way for them to engage.

So I like where you're going.

What is your vision for who would implement or institute this?

So again, I'm still working on this and having some conversations.

But I think the high level concept that I thought about would be grants, perhaps around $25,000 per unit.

that could be given to groups that said, hey, we would like to build, for instance, the small cottage on wheels, the kit to build that is about $50,000.

So if a church said, we would like to build one or two of these, and the city could say, we'll kick in, in this case, half of the cost of the materials, You could raise the money for the other half.

You would bring together volunteers and expertise to do the work together.

And then, you know, there's some work to be done on outreach and how we would place people into that.

Whether it would go through the existing kind of referral systems or some other network, I think there's some ongoing work to figure that out.

But I think it would be done, my sense is, intention is it would be through the Human Service Department as part of some of the other work they're already doing.

Department of Neighborhoods maybe?

I'm open to that.

I think it's probably not Office of Housing because I think they're focused on kind of bigger scale things.

But I think anyone else who's interested in it, I would love to explore options there.

Thank you.

All right, please continue.

Number four, add $100,000 in 2019 and $100,000 in 2020 for day center programming.

This is Council Member Juarez.

This money would extend operating hours from 15 hours weekly to 35 hours weekly and pay for case management services at an organization such as God's Little Acre.

God's Little Acre provides day center programming for the homeless, including hygiene services, food, storage, and case management.

Council Member Morris, please.

Madam Chair, would you indulge me because of the 10 budget requests that we have here on page 8, budget requests.

Numbers four five and six are mine and then on page nine number ten is also mine Wait till the end.

Well, I was since all four and they're all about the same because they're all brick-and-mortar They're all existing programs I was wondering if I could just do a general statement and then discuss four five and six and ten which might be easier It's good by me Alan.

Do you want to do an intro on those?

That'd be perfect and then I'll talk.

Councilmember Juarez too.

Yeah, if I could just read the lines and I'll just wrap it up.

Yeah, that'd be great.

So I just mentioned number four.

Number five is add $95,000 in 2019 and $95,000 in 2020 for case management and referral services.

Number six, add $80,000 in 2019 and $80,000 in 2020 for homelessness navigation services.

Moving on to number 10, and this is in the homelessness prevention and eviction prevention services section of the ads.

Number 10 is add 400,000 in 2019 and 414,000 in 2020 for homelessness prevention programming.

Okay, please.

Thank you.

I was going to say, Your Honor, Madam Chair, all four of these organizations, and I just want to briefly share this, all four community-based organizations are located in the north, but they provide services citywide.

And I just wanted to point out that let's starting with God's Little Acre has been around for 10 years.

Mother Nation has been around for 10 years.

Aurora Commons has been around for eight years, and I believe the Seattle Helpline Coalition, which organized in 2015 between the North Seattle Food Bank, West Seattle, Queen Anne, and Ballard, have a combined organizational lifeline of about 65 years.

So we're looking at four organizations with well over 90 years of experience, already brick and mortar, already programming of some of the issues that I had raised earlier about using what's already on the ground and existing services that we know that works.

So with that, I want to start quickly with God's Little Acre from the Seattle Mennonite Church.

Lake City Neighborhood Alliance requests funding to operate a day center to provide enhanced services including hygiene, laundry, food, storage, and case management for people experiencing homelessness.

Now, I've been to God's Little Acre a few times and they also have, besides doing laundry and storage, It's a place for people to come together to get services, drink coffee, wash their clothes.

God's Laker Day Center will be opened by the Seattle Mennonite Church, which they're already operating from 9 a.m.

to 4 p.m.

Monday to Friday.

It's currently open only from 9 to noon, courtesy of donations by church membership.

Now, what makes them distinct is currently District 5 has no year-round shelter for single adult men.

District 5 also has no all-day year-round service for hygiene services.

So, expanding GLA's hours from 4 to 4 would fill this gap in, critical gap in service, not just for D5.

We have gentlemen that we are serving from eight different zip codes.

Homelessness and related public health and safety issues have become more acute in Lake City and surrounding neighborhoods.

The Seattle Mennonite Church and Gospel Acre have proven themselves able to build trust with people experiencing homelessness and are therefore in a position to get people into housing and services on a neighborhood level.

We work very closely with them and we just recently housed a couple that were living unsheltered unlike CityWay.

Increased funding for neighborhood-based critical services, such as GLA, will reduce demand on the city's navigation team.

As I explained earlier, if you have community-based organizations that are already on the ground, you will have a more increase of people accepting offers, and then that, of course, will decrease how many times the navigation team or other Seattle service and systems have to keep coming to the scene to offer the same services, which can be denied sometimes four to six times before we can get people into housing.

So, funding would include additional staffing, including two staff, which would be for case management to look for rent, utilities, and supplies.

And so, quickly on Mother Nation, which is a phenomenal organization.

Mother Nation is run by Noreen Hill.

She's a former council member of the United Nation.

They've been around for about 10 years.

Mother Nation works with high-risk, unserviced, vulnerable, homeless Native women, rejective or non-responsive to local mainstream services in Seattle.

Mother Nation provides culturally informed services for survivors of gender-based violence.

Mother Nation's goal is to work with Native American, Alaska Native women who are disproportionately impacted as we know from the Seattle Indian Health Board study and the national study, by gender-based violence suffering the highest rates of violence in Seattle and across the nation.

Native American, Alaska Native people are homeless at a higher rate in King County than any other racial or ethnic group, though we make up less than 0.2% of the population.

Funding will support two part-time staff, one who is focused on elders, which is new, as well as supplies and rent in eviction prevention.

With the help from the City of Seattle, Mother Nation's goal is to assist women in reuniting with family and securing permanent housing and employment as well as reclaim cultural identity as a way to move beyond trauma.

This organization started with just a few beds and now has moved to a larger home-like structure, and we're hoping that we get someday can advance and create more of these homes for these women either experiencing trauma, homelessness, recently incarcerated, or coming out of the court system where they've lost their children.

Mother Nation has received $30,000 previously from the city of Seattle for identification of need in the Native American, Alaska Native community and gender-based violence budget and met the goal in the first month.

So they've been very successful.

We're very thankful of the money that they received from this council.

Mother Nation has 179 participants this year.

That is up through August 2018 and reports that chronic homelessness attendees begin seeking housing early in July.

So, with that, let me move on to another phenomenal organization that not only services the North End, but all across this city.

That's Aurora Commons.

The last two budget sessions, this council was generous in providing money for programming and additional staff.

However, Aurora Commons provides navigation services for homeless, vulnerable populations in the Aurora Corridor.

including sex workers and those affected with opiate addictions and mental health disorders.

Aurora Commons has been operating for eight years and counting, providing a safe and central location as bridge for housing, medical services, and addiction treatment services.

Aurora Commons programs and clinics include law enforcement assisted diversion.

In short, Aurora Commons works very closely with the LEAD program.

I want to thank Councilmember Johnson for last year with co-sponsoring with me the expansion of the 750,000 up into the north end.

Aurora Commons works closely with REACH, of course, Seattle Police Department, Harborview Medical Center, Seattle King County Department of Health, Washington State Department of Health, UW Gynecology, Puget Sound Christian Clinic, Pacific Hospital Planning and Development Association, and the City of Seattle Human Services Department, and I could go on and on, but my point is we are finally servicing and finding homes for women, getting them into treatment, and some of the women I've learned this year for the first time are receiving actual, receiving medical services.

Aurora Commons has minimal staff to support a huge growing number of individuals who have urgent and acute unmet needs.

Currently, there are no full-time staff members employed.

Aurora Commons is the sole community organization in the Aurora corridor or area to provide necessary services, including navigation to housing, medical care, and employment.

Eighty percent of the women served at Aurora Commons are unsheltered or, as we would say, homeless.

The number of people Aurora Commons serves has doubled in the last three years.

Since January 2018, Aurora Commons served 280 unduplicated victims of commercial sexual exploitation and are expecting to surpass 300 served by the end of 2018. Aurora Commons remains to be an essential element in the continuum of care for vulnerable people needing safety and stability in their lives.

And as you can see, we are requesting, they are requesting 80,000 for 2019, as well as 80,000 for 2020, which would be 160 total, which I think is a phenomenal number considering it's been a great investment, a great return on our investment in humanity and the services that we are providing for this organization.

And last, this is something that we've worked, and I want to thank Councilmember O'Brien for his help on this, as well as Councilmember Chair Bagshaw.

The Seattle Helpline Coalition is four organizations, as you all know.

It includes Ballard Food Bank, North Helpline, Queen Anne, and West Seattle.

They are requesting, I believe, $814,000 total.

That's for two years.

The Seattle Helpline Coalition requests funding to support neighborhood-based homeless prevention services by providing assistance to prevent evictions, prevent utility shutoffs, and to help with moving deposits.

They have been doing this since they organized in 2015, but as I said, the other food banks and organizations have been doing this work since 1982 and 1989. They report that the prevention efforts are underfunded to match the scale of the affordability crisis Seattle is facing.

Prevention of homelessness is a critical cost-effective component of homelessness services.

So, just on a side note, this is why last week, I was concerned, I don't know if I want to use the word anger as some people said, but that is why the sugar beverage tax was so important to myself and some of my other colleagues, why we actually had food banks written in the ordinance so that these, the Seattle Helpline Coalition, freeze up revenue so they can do these other amazing, offer these other critical services while knowing that they have a stable revenue source to not only provide food, but to use those other resources to continue to provide the resources that they have been doing for well over, as I said, if I combined all the, added up all the numbers and when they were created, well over 90 years.

I'll leave it at that.

Thank you.

Okay.

Any questions?

All right.

Well articulated.

Thank you.

I appreciate that, Council Member Juarez.

Alan, do you want to hit the remainders?

Yes, moving on to item number seven.

Add $39,500 in 2019 for homelessness outreach services.

This is Council Member Johnson.

This funding would provide for a mental health outreach worker to contract with an organization such as the University District Partnership.

Just brief, the UDP, which has its own version of the Metropolitan Improvement District called their Clean and Safe Program.

A lot of their work has been with individuals experiencing homelessness.

They would like to contract with a reach outreach worker to focus just on placement of folks with service providers in the university district.

This funding would be one third of the funding necessary to hire that worker.

They would, the UDP and their corresponding business improvement area would put up one third, and they're expecting to raise the final third from philanthropy.

Number eight, create a statement of legislative intent regarding homelessness services.

This is Council Member Herbold.

The SLY would request the department to report on the alignment of contracted emergency services with the LGBTQ Commission's recommendations to the mayor for homelessness services.

Thank you.

In addition to the LGBTQ Commission, I've had several other LGBTQ organizations and community members reach out to me wanting to ensure that our LGBTQ communities are being well served by city-funded services.

I've been contacted by the Pride Foundation, the Gender Justice League, as well as the Commission.

The SLY would ask HSD to develop guidance for the providers that they contract with on how best to serve lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and specifically, and especially, transgender people.

Special attention must be given to other marginalized communities within the LGBT community, including LGBT people of color, seniors, survivors of domestic violence, as well as those living with HIV and young adults.

The slide would require HSD to develop expectations for all contracted organizations that provide shelter, case management, and other homelessness-related services, and utilizing the best practices that have been developed by leading state and national LGBTQ organizations.

With recent concerns that we've heard and we know of about harmful federal policies directly targeting trans people, it's even more essential that we work to make sure that our investments are in service to those communities being targeted for violence and hate.

And there's a lot of good information about, not just about the best practices that have been developed by advocacy organizations, but also by government funders, local and state funders who have actually adopted these best practices in providing those guidance and guidelines to recipients of state and local funding.

Okay.

Number nine, moving now into the homelessness prevention and eviction prevention services area.

Number nine, proviso 615,000 for eviction prevention services.

This is Council Member Herbold.

This proviso would limit funding for a tenant service RFP offering eviction prevention services pending the executive submittal of the RFP design to the council.

The department may rebid the funds in 2019, which could entail a new theory of change in performance metrics.

The executive should consider recommendations of the Seattle Women's Commission losing home report, which include improving administration of rental assistance, strengthening tenant security by addressing lease regulations, and increasing funding for legal defense and tenant outreach.

Any questions?

Yes, thank you.

As Alan has been good to remind me, there are two different types of tenant services that I think we're talking about here.

We're not only talking about the education and outreach services that are funded that we talked about in a previous discussion, but really want to focus on the eviction prevention services that are funded by HSD.

This is basically rent assistance money.

And one of the findings of the losing home report is that tenants need to access eviction prevention subsidies quickly.

It goes on to say the most effective way to accomplish this goal is to centralize eviction prevention services.

Currently, all levels of government contract with multiple private organizations to provide the bulk of eviction prevention funding to tenants.

process is not efficient, contracts often have very specific qualifications tenant must meet, and only a limited amount of money that they pay, and centralizing eviction prevention services in one place will ensure that tenants can access eviction prevention quick enough in order to prevent or stop an eviction from proceeding.

Again, tenants only have three days after receipt of a pay or vacate notice to come up with all the rent owing.

Landlords are not under any obligation to accept partial payment during those three days, nor are they under any obligation to accept full payment or even double payment after the three days is over.

So tenant services programming offers also the legal assistance education outreach and is covered by three providers.

That is the separate approach to eviction, I'm sorry, the tenant services that we refer to.

And this budget action would require the departments to come back to council and inform us about the design of the RFP before it's released.

Any comments?

Item number 10. Add $400,000 in 2019. Oh, excuse me.

So this is the item that Councilmember Orr has included in her comments.

Great.

Thank you, Councilmember Orr.

Moving on to the next section, public health and sanitation.

Number 11. Add $388,716 in 2019 for communicable disease response.

This is Council Member Mosqueda.

This would enable the operation of public health communicable disease response team to address the spread and prevention of diseases among the homeless and other vulnerable populations.

This would be a new service administered by Public Health Seattle King County in response to coordination, the coordination needed to address health needs in encampments and the broader unsheltered homeless population.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you Madam Chair.

I am handing out a little background document that I thought was very helpful.

This comes from multiple conversations that we've had with our partners at Public Health Seattle-King County.

I want to underscore that the issue of communicable diseases is not something unique to any individual.

who lives unsheltered, as we talked about before.

When we have folks who are living unsheltered, when we don't have enough sanitation services or hygiene services or enhanced shelter services, people have fewer places to wash their hands.

They have fewer places to take a shower.

And especially if you think about some of the diseases that many of our population face at this time of the year, including the flu and pneumonia, When you have a communicable disease, you must be able to have the sanitation services you need.

Right now, we don't have those services out there, and so we're seeing an increase in the number of communicable diseases and infections that we know are preventable.

We have done some incredible work through Public Health Seattle-King County to try to get the word out about basic hygiene services that any of our homeless providers or homeless service providers could help to reduce the spread of illness.

But right now we see an increase in the number of hepatitis A cases, HIV, TB, and we know that it is critical that we do the work necessary to respond to that crisis now as we hopefully invest in hygiene services.

The document that has been put together by my team reflects some of the analysis that Public Health Seattle-King County has done to identify how we can do a better job at both responding to communicable diseases across Seattle in a more coordinated way.

You will see that there is a combination of three staff, both a public health nurse, epidemiologist, and an administration specialist, number two.

who would have a combined total of 1.5 FTEs.

I'm sorry, I should share this with our friends at the table as well.

So we'll get a copy down to you.

And that is really to provide a team so that we can do communicable disease investigation and response.

You may remember when our team was here When the mayor's team was here a week or two ago, I was inquiring about whether or not there was a communicable disease response team, and this is why.

Because my analysis and the feedback that I've received is that we don't actually have an entity out there that is helping to respond to the increased incidences of outbreaks that we know that are both preventable and infectious when not treated.

The second item on this list also includes the request for a .75 FTE that would work with public health as well to help go to encampments to basically work with residents.

We know that many of our encampments have a governance model that allows for individuals to take responsibility and provides coordination both in terms of sanitation and management of the camp, but there is no guidance.

There's very little operational plans when it comes to hygiene services and communicable disease responses, and we want to make sure that each of our, that our sanctioned encampments have an individual that they can work with so that there's better site assessment, monitoring, and compliance in coordination with our own HSD office and public health.

So this really comes from our experts at Public Health Seattle King County and in response to some of the earlier questions I've received from the chair and others, I wanted to give you a better sense of what some of those positions would do, some of the duties and responsibilities, which is what you see outlined in the document in front of you.

So you have a better sense of what some of those job descriptions look like and the coordination might consist of.

Councilmember Mosqueda, I know and really support the work that you are doing in our public health and I know from Patty Hayes she tells us this is just critical to get this this kind of funding and backing.

Do you know what King County's investment is right now in these or are they looking to us for this completely?

So I don't have an exact dollar figure, but I do know that this proposed ad would go to the communicable disease, I believe it's a unit in public health, Seattle King County.

So this would augment an existing unit or office.

And have we researched what public health money might be available from the state to assist us with this?

I know that poor public health keeps getting cut at a time when we really need to see more of an investment from the state and the feds.

Yes, so coming from public health, we know that the MFET money used to provide a significant amount of resources to public health.

Over the last 10 years, our partners at Public Health Seattle King County have been going to the state legislature every year and advocating for more.

When public health does well, nobody sees it.

When our water is clean, when our air is clean, when people don't see infectious diseases that have been eradicated for years crop back up, public health is doing its best.

And because of that, often we see public health receive reduced funding, especially from the state level.

Our statewide partners have been asking, I think, for the tune of about $400 million to try to backfill many of the holes that have been created across our state.

This is just one corner of our state that needs additional funding.

I think we can follow up and make sure that you get the answer to the question about what dollars King County has put forward.

In partnership with King County, The mayor's office and the executive I know jointly administer Public Health Seattle-King County.

This is sort of the highest priority ask that I believe did not get funding in the King County budget and is not yet reflected in ours.

I know that they really appreciate that partnership and they really appreciate our work at the Board of Health.

And these are the top two priorities that came from the director and public health because there was not funding yet provided.

So looking forward to hearing more if we can get that answer about King County.

But at the state level, I think this is their last ditch effort to try to make sure that we're addressing some of these communicable diseases that could have been prevented had the state legislature been able to better fund public health before.

Any comments?

Council Member Herbold.

Just a question.

As I see the description under position functions and duties, under number one site selection, evaluate and mitigate environmental hazards associated with proposed sites.

Does this suggest that these services would be focused on the locations of sanctioned encampments?

So, as I understand it, this would include unauthorized encampments.

So, this is a service that Public Health, San Joaquin County currently does using existing FTE, but that service is limited.

So, they employ a...

an encampment checklist that they use to assess public health risks at various unauthorized encampments.

And that function would be one of the other functions that this position would do.

So they're currently providing these services at unauthorized encampments.

This proposal would be to fund them at city authorized encampments.

As well as actually the unauthorized encampments.

Continue with the unauthorized encampments.

Yeah.

And the reason why I'm asking is it would be great to have a better understanding about the scale of the services provided at the unauthorized encampments.

These services are definitely needed at the authorized encampments, but the level of sanitation at those locations is far better.

than at the unauthorized encampments.

And we've talked here about the need for working with the navigation team to incorporate these kinds of services everywhere they go.

So it would be helpful to know exactly what King County Health is currently providing as it relates to unsanctioned encampments.

Absolutely.

Okay, great.

Item number 12 comes from Council Member Herbold, and it would reduce the proposed new leadership position for the Clean City programs from an Executive 2 down to a Manager 3 position, which would save approximately $50,000 in position costs annually.

About $38,000 of that is attributable to general fund.

Nothing further to add.

Okay.

Please continue.

And the last item, item number 13, comes from Council Member Bagshaw.

And this would provide additional funding for SPU to expand the SHARPS collection program.

And the SHARPS collection program currently operates six large collection boxes and three smaller collection bins within the city.

And it's currently in the process of expanding to add three additional large collection boxes during this year or early next year.

So my interest here is not necessarily to add the big boxes, because I understand they're $10,000 a piece, which is just a shocking number to me, but for us to investigate and explore whether there are other options.

And one thing Councilmember Gonzalez, you brought up yesterday, which was can we make monies available to, let's just say a restaurant who's willing to put in or to match or to have more receptacles available.

I just think that the more we have where people can drop them off, whether they are in a public restroom or in a park.

that we need to look at that.

And I'm not convinced that the $10,000 model with like six or seven places across the city is doing as much as if we could have the smaller models that are inside.

But I'm not dictating that.

I'm just suggesting that I really want to see more places where these needles can be deposited so that we're not having workers reach into garbage cans and get stuck.

So it's very preliminary.

And that concludes the homelessness.

Okay.

Any questions or final remarks then it is anything else from Council Central staff Allison.

Thank you once again for a well organized briefing.

We will pick this up again at 2 o'clock today and then reminders to all that we have the public hearing tonight at 530 and look forward to continuing these conversations.

Thank you so much.

This part of the meeting is adjourned.

We are in recess.