missing title

Okay, thank you, everybody.

The April 1st Land Use and Sustainability Committee will come to order.

It's 9.37 a.m.

I'm Eddie Lynn, chair of the Land Use and Sustainability Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Vice Chair Strauss?

Here.

Council Member Foster?

Here.

Council President Hollingsworth?

Present.

Council Member Rank?

Present.

Chair Lynn?

Present.

chair, there are five members present.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you all for coming to this Wednesday morning meeting to discuss land use.

As always, thank you to our city clerks, council central staff, the mayor's office, and SDCI for helping us to prepare for this meeting.

Just to kind of give you a brief overview of how we're going to proceed this morning, we're going to start with public comment, and we have a number of public commenters, so we'll get to that in a moment.

Then we will proceed with some appointments, which we probably will have a vote on for appointments.

Then we will proceed to a public hearing on a different matter related to the stadium rezone potential repeal ordinance.

There will not be a vote on that today.

And then finally, we will wrap it up with a presentation on shelters.

So I just want to give people a sense of the order of business.

And so with that, we will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on the agenda or items within the purview of this committee.

Please hold comments regarding item six, which is the potential repeal legislation, CB 121171, until the public hearing, which will be held after the design commission appointments.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Currently we have 36 in-person speakers signed up, and there are three remote speakers.

Wonderful, and very exciting to have so many people come here today to come speak with us.

Because there are more than 30 speakers under our standard procedures, that does mean that time will be limited to one minute, so I apologize for that.

And speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

Clerk, can you please proceed with the instructions?

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

The public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

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

In-person speakers will be called first, after which we will move to remote speakers until the public comment period has ended.

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

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

The public comment period is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on our list.

Correction, the public comment period is going to be for 60 minutes, six zero minutes today.

All right, public comment period is open.

We're gonna start with Amy King, please, followed by Dennis Sills.

Good morning.

My name is Amy King, and I am the founder and CEO of Pallet.

We are a local company based in Everett, Washington, that makes shelter communities.

We have over 150 shelter communities across the country currently in 133 US cities and 29 states.

We're also in Canada.

I wanted to come today and speak in favor of the last agenda item, pushing for larger sites.

Pallet has sites over 200 people across the country that are very successful.

You're going to hear from one of our most successful service providers later today, Maggie from Catholic Charities in Florida.

Our sites have greater than 60% placement rate into permanent housing across the country.

This is a rapid, cost efficient way for us to get shelter increased in this community and get people connected with meaningful services.

The key to large sites is really good service provision with integrated care.

I am a Seattle resident.

I have lived here for decades.

I know the service providers here.

I know the clinical care available, and I'm more than happy to help and would love to be part of the solution here as well.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Next up, Dennis Sills, followed by Julia Bobo.

Chairman Lin and council members, my name is Dennis Sills and I work at the DSA.

We support the mayor's effort to expand shelter capacity.

We support proven models and providers like the Pioneers, the PDA, REACH, as well as Lehigh.

Thank you to the presenters today for sharing this vision.

These partners deliver results and should be empowered to scale.

These new shelter units are not enough.

We also need outreach services and supports that help people move into housing and stay housed.

Without these investments, the system will not deliver lasting outcomes.

We urge council to make additional resources that are available, like the $11.1 million for shelter expansion that has been paused, to bring these efforts to scale and to do them well.

Releasing these funds will help scale outreach, strengthen services, and enhance shelter, and provide financial support that helps people stay housed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Julia, followed by Ruta.

Hello, my name is Julia Beabout.

I am a District 7 resident living downtown at Third Pike and Pine.

As we all know, my neighborhood is considered one of Seattle's most intractable hotspots.

My neighbors and I witness the suffering of hundreds of people daily.

But behind the drug-using, dealing, and fencing are desperate people in dire need.

While housing is amongst these needs, the most prevalent urgent and chronic needs are mental and behavioral health.

I applaud the current surge to stand up more tiny homes and shelter.

This is absolutely needed.

but we need to ensure this housing is coupled with robust supportive services and low barriers to entry for the people we are trying to serve.

Local outreach programs show that 95% of people will come inside when offered help that makes sense for the circumstances.

I ask you to ensure truly workable shelter expansion plan that not only includes housing but robust behavioral, mental, and physical health support services for our neighbors on the street in need.

Next up, Ruta, followed by Steve Ribstello.

Ruta, Ruta Dwight.

Oh.

Ruth Deidt?

That looks like it, sorry about that.

That's okay.

Sorry, I was just getting my glasses out.

Take your time, Ruth.

Thank you very much for being here.

How much upzoning do we need and will it make housing more affordable?

The theory behind Seattle's mass upzoning assumes if more lots are available, developers can bargain for better prices, land being their biggest cost, and savings will be passed on.

The problem with the theory is no one can tell you how much upzoning will result in lower land costs.

There's no undisputed evidence that upzoning lowers land costs or makes housing significantly more affordable.

in Vancouver, B.C., third most unaffordable city.

It increased land costs.

New economic studies say regulatory constraints aren't what makes housing more expensive.

It's land speculation and income inequality.

If we can't prove up-zoning makes housing more affordable, why up-zone so much?

In addition to the 330,000 homes, we're adding more neighborhood centers, and to comply with HB 1491, new four and five street zoning must be adopted.

Do we understand what we're doing to our city?

Please pause the plan and evaluate what the totality of these upstones mean for Seattle.

Widen the debate, consider new economic information undermining the deregulation theory and seek strong .

Thank you.

Next up, Steve, followed by Ben Mitchell.

I guess it's appropriate that April 1st is a meeting date for this committee, but I am a little shocked and surprised.

You just handled allowing people to use federal programs, which is a perfectly rational thing to do, and now you're taking a look at the waterfront, but I can't speak about that at the moment.

So let's go to something else.

Let's talk about design review.

People in this city have been pulled out of the process.

Part of the compromises that brought about much more intensive zoning was design review.

In other words, the buildings that were gonna be built should be fitting in to the area that they go.

But now you have turned that upside down.

Now the neighborhood must adjust to the building because, quite frankly, we don't have design review in the sense of looking at the real issues that the building will present.

Thank you, Steve.

Next up, Ben, followed by Oliver Rothschild.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Lin, members of the committee.

My name is Ben Mitchell.

I'm a resident of District 2. I'm here this morning to testify in support of Mayor Wilson's proposal to create hundreds of new shelter units rapidly and eventually thousands over the next several years.

And I urge the city council to work constructively with the mayor's office to make her proposal a reality.

I also ask that the city council make sure that the implementation of this plan includes rigorous accountability standards, We should have clear goals for the percentage of people who exit shelter to stable housing or treatment, and the city should publish outcome data publicly.

This also means that our investment must match the scale of the goals.

Cheap, understaffed shelter will not help the people with the highest needs and will not clean up neighborhoods and will not produce lasting results.

So again, please support the mayor's proposal, but also set clear goals, invest in good implementation, monitor progress, and course correct when necessary.

Thank you.

Next up, Oliver, followed by Alex Lofton.

Good morning.

My name's Oliver Rothschild.

I'm a District 2 resident, Councilman Lind, and I live in Mount Baker right off Rainier with three kiddos.

When we walk around our neighborhood, we see folks in crisis every day, and they ask me why.

And I usually tell them it's because we haven't built enough housing and shelter.

So I'm here to support this package.

Please pass it.

But I also have neighbors who every year, every community meeting we have in Mount Baker, which you come to sometimes, come out against new housing and shelter.

And I don't think they're bad guys.

I don't think they're evil.

I think we haven't yet proven that the city can deliver for them.

So like Ben, who just spoke, I hope you deliver this package with programs that work, programs like PDA, and with accountability and data.

measure and let's talk about what these community impacts are and how we're fixing them, because I think the combo of results and transparency is what's going to turn my neighbors into supporters of initiatives like this.

Thank you.

Next up, Alex, followed by Aiden Carroll.

Good morning.

Thanks for having me.

And my name is Alex Lofton.

I'm a resident of the Central District, Hollingsworth District.

I'm here today as representing for Seattle Project, a new group here in the city that's supporting the shelter and housing coalition letter that was signed by over 200 organizations and community members.

This particular legislation is personal to me.

My grandmother left her home to my parents.

That home ended up being the first example of intergenerational wealth in my family, and that home set the course for my entire life.

And this is why I spent my career in housing, ended up back here in Seattle, bought my home in the Central District, and that's why I started this group called 4Seattle.

And we support this coalition's three asks, more high support shelter with real behavioral health services, throughput shelter to permanent housing, and neighborhood impact mitigation funding.

These are the right investments.

Just as we mentioned, we need to make sure we're tracking what's working and keep investing.

So I really hope we invest in this way.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next up, Aiden followed by Nicole Alexander.

Hi, I'm a D6 resident and here with Services Not Sweeps Coalition, here to support this shelter proposal, but also to say that we need to end weekend and extreme weather sweeps immediately.

and similar sorts of things.

Yesterday, we got a call from someone on UCT saying, hey, can you come jump someone's car?

Our liability for the city won't let us because of our insurance.

And we're always being asked to help people.

The city needs to let its workers do things, like give people rides and tow people to the place they want to go in an emergency.

We don't think that Lehigh should be allowed to operate tiny house villages.

They're good at creating them, but there's a lot of recent reasons why it's there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Nicole, followed by Lindsay Neddick.

Good morning.

My name is Nicole Alexander, and I'm the Director of Outreach and Special...

Is that better?

Okay.

Good morning, my name's Nicole Alexander.

I'm the Director of Outreach and Special Initiatives with CoLEAD and PDA.

It's just a fancy way of saying I'm the boots on the ground throughout our community, and I have been for many, many years.

What I wanna say is that working with over thousands of individuals, what we have found is that folks want to come inside.

There are not service-resistant individuals, there are resistant services, and it is very, very hard for us to break that narrative around those individuals.

Specifically within the sheltering surge program, we need to invest in high support shelter units, shelters that are designed for complex physical and behavioral health needs.

Those folks make up 63% of our people experiencing unsheltered homelessness right now.

Shelter and housing investments cannot come at each other during this program.

We need to invest in both of them.

Bottom line, we know what works and we know that shelter surge can be successful as long as we meet the needs with high capacity.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Lindsey, followed by Manuela Roneg.

Can you guys hear me?

Can you hear me?

Can you hear me now?

Good morning, council members.

My name is Lindsay and I'm proud to be standing with Co-Lead today.

Before this role, I worked in case and property management in a supportive housing environment, helping build programs from the ground up.

I also bring personal and lived experience, so I understand these challenges from both sides.

I've seen what works and we've all seen what doesn't.

When we ask, When we talk to people about refusing services, we need to be asking why.

Many are responding to past experiences that didn't meet their needs, creating more barriers, more trauma, and increased strain on staff and system resources.

Short-term approaches lead to worse outcomes and cost more over time.

We need to start at the foundation, building life skills that help people keep their housing.

That's where CoLead stands apart.

CoLead provides coordinated support across outreach, lodging, case management, legal services, and aftercare, meeting people where they are and supporting them every step of the way.

That consistency is what makes a difference, and it's what we need to expand.

Housing someone isn't success.

Stability is.

And right now, we're funding movement through a system when we

I urge you to listen to the voices and experiences of those doing this work every day.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Next up, Manuela, followed by Takisha King.

My name is Manuela Ronig, and I'm the program manager for the Vital Familiar Faces program at REACH and also a District 2 resident.

Our team supports individuals who are significantly impacted by the legal system and have chronic medical and behavioral health conditions.

One of the biggest barriers our clients face in maintaining stability is a lack of appropriate housing and shelter.

I've seen clients exited from shelter time and time again due to behaviors that are not necessarily harming others, but are off-putting or difficult to manage in close quarters.

Over time, these individuals decline shelter beds because their past experiences give them insight that it won't work for them beyond a place to sleep for that one night.

Years of work and evidence provided by agencies serving the in-house community in Seattle give us that same insight.

Shelter is often the first step towards permanent housing, stability, treatment and more.

But shelter only works when it is designed to meet the unique and complex needs of our most vulnerable and high-acuity community members.

In order for shelter to result in desired, long-lasting outcomes, it needs to have the resources and flexibility to provide effective, high-level support and be funded realistically.

Thank you.

Next up to Keisha, followed by Danielle.

I'm sorry.

Oh, great.

Good morning.

My name is Keisha King, and I am here with Co-Lead.

And I am speaking on the importance of shelter expansion.

Oftentimes, we think a huge part of it is getting people off the streets.

Why that is a part of it.

Another part is keeping them off the streets and keeping them housed.

Coming in is not a two-day process, nor is it a month for some people.

During that time, they are relearning everything, things that we often take for granted, whether it's getting a new ID, keeping that ID after being on the streets for 10 years, establishing care with the primary care physician, keeping a key, keeping a cell phone for longer than two weeks, things that to us may seem normal, but to people coming off the street, they are relearning those things.

With our model here at CoLead, our clients have the opportunity to have a care team that meets them where they're at, whether it's in the streets with our outreach team outreaching them, our lodging team sheltering them, or our care team where I am at, helping them stabilize housing.

We're able to go to medical appointments, behavioral health appointments, legal appointments, and appointments that take hours.

And so that is why it is important.

Thank you.

Danil Zagorodny, followed by Gregory Greer.

My name is Daniel Zagaroni.

I'm 34 years old.

Before I met Kholid, I was at the lowest point of my life.

I was homeless for two years.

I met Kholid on 45th and 7th in Jew District.

They were walking around offering people housing, and I thought it was a miracle from God and a blessing that I'm finally going to have a place where I could sleep and not worry about getting hit by a car.

I felt safe with Kholid.

They treated me with respect, and they looked at me as a human being.

and I knew that it was an opportunity for me to get my life back together.

Colleague was with me every step of the way.

They supported me, gave me advice that I needed to succeed.

If it wasn't for them being out there that day, I wouldn't be here today.

I'd probably be overdosed somewhere underneath the bridge.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Gregory, followed by Lisa Nietzsche.

Hello, my name is Greg Greer.

My name is Greg Greer.

I'm from a participant in a share wheel homeless shelter.

And the shelters are there for people who need them.

And when, for me personally, in a time of transition when I didn't think I had any options, it gave me a way out of a difficult situation.

And I will also say about homeless shelter expansion that Housing is a human right, and without shelter, people die.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Lisa, followed by Jessica Yang.

Hi, good morning, Chair Linn and members of the committee.

I'm Lisa Nitza, principal at Nitza Stagen, a real estate company active in Seattle for the last 50 years.

I'm here as chair of the Downtown Seattle Association Streets to Housing Initiative.

I've worked over 30 years globally on social system change initiatives, and I know we can be doing better in Seattle to meet the housing, mental and behavioral health and addiction needs of our unsheltered neighbors.

I'm here to support funding for the mayor's proposed shelter expansion in downtown Seattle and beyond with tiny home villages.

I'm also here to support the work of PDA and REACH, whose system change models of operation are designed with intended outcomes in mind.

I've been working with Lisa Dugard and her team for over 10 years in Seattle neighborhoods on addressing the needs of our unsheltered neighbors in a systems change way.

And frankly, they're helping to hold the sky up for Seattle by tirelessly and often with less funding than needed, working to deploy homelessness solutions and help people get off the streets and find stability.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Jessica, followed by Tammy Green.

Hi, Land Use Committee.

My name is Jess Yang, and I'm speaking with 4Seattle, which is a new group of Seattleites that's working for a better city.

I'm also a Ballard homeowner, and I care deeply about our unhoused neighbors.

I commend the mayor for her proposal to create more opportunities for people to be inside and access services.

In my time working in homelessness services, it was clear to me that stability and support were keys to success for my clients.

I can't tell you how many of my clients were sent off to short-term treatment programs only to come back to our transitional program after 90 days because they had no follow-up.

They don't call it the revolving door for nothing.

We need shelter that truly meets people where they are, that supports their life circumstances, whether it's living with a pet or a partner or they work swings or nights.

And shelter services need to be prioritized and funded so they can provide warm handoffs and continued connection after people move to their next step.

We also want to emphasize accountability.

We need efficient mechanisms that ensure that we're actually reaching the outcomes we want to achieve.

I urge the committee not only to pass this proposal when it comes to vote, but to ensure that it provides for the kind of continuity of care that local organizations have proven to be successful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Tammy followed by Holly Willis.

Good morning.

Thank you for this opportunity.

My name is Tammy Green.

I work with REACH.

I work in District 1. And I truly believe that my voice this morning represents the people that I see every day.

I could probably tell you more than a million stories about their lives, about their circumstances, how they got there.

And yet there is one common denominator, and that I don't know one of them that wouldn't be willing and think it a wonderful thing to be able to go inside.

Tiny homes are a hot commodity.

I literally have a running list of many, many, many.

I love the idea that we are proposing to have.

Substance use disorder, I support that within 21 Villages.

Also behavioral health support.

There is a great need for it and I appreciate you all hearing me and hearing our clients.

Thank you.

Next up, Haley, followed by Noah Williams.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Hallie Willis.

I'm the policy manager at the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness, and I live in District 5. I'm here today in support of the mayor's proposed shelter expansion.

Everyone needs a safe, warm, and dry place to sleep at night that meets their needs.

We join other direct service providers to urge you to ensure that the new proposed shelter is funded in a way that ensures high quality services that help people find stability and that it can continue to be supported in the long term.

We can and must walk and chew gum at the same time.

While we expand high-quality shelter with robust services, we also need to ensure that our existing permanent supportive housing can continue to house people who would otherwise return to homelessness, even as we face massive shifts and losses in federal support for permanent supportive housing through the continuing care program.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next up, Noah, followed by Ashley .

Thank you.

Thank you, council members.

My name is Noah Williams.

I am a West Seattle resident.

I'm a tech worker with Stable Employment.

And I'm here today because I'm sick of watching my neighbors suffer preventively.

Every day I ride my bike past the encampments and breathe in the fumes of burning plastic that they're forced to burn to stay warm.

I can only imagine what that is like 12 hours a day.

Late at night I ride the buses that many of them are forced to sleep on as their tents are destroyed by sweeps.

We need to end these disruptions and give them stable and supported housing with integrated services right down to the details that many of them mentioned, like refrigeration for their medications.

This legislation is a step in the right direction.

Please pass it and critically keep going.

Enable city workers as other members have suggested and listen to the voices of my unhoused neighbors that have come up today and the ones that can't be here as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Ashley by Elena Arakaki.

Hi, I'm Ashley Norvig.

I'm here advocating on behalf of more than 200 plus organizations, unions, and neighbors who signed a letter urging heavy investment in high support shelter and throughput to housing.

Our contingent includes unions such as UFCW 3000, SEIU 1199 Northwest, and organizations such as Services Not Sweeps Coalition and the Downtown Seattle Association.

The political breadth of this group shows that right now the energy and will exists in this city to do big things and to do them well.

When it comes to people living outside, we know that the vast majority aren't service resistant and will come inside if the offered help works for them.

And when REACH surveyed 5,000 people living on the streets last year, 60% had behavioral or physical health needs.

Those 3,000 people should have the option of non-congregate high support shelter.

We have to build what we know works because we've been falling short for a long time and it demoralizes the whole city.

It makes us believe that we can't do big things and we can.

So please ensure that the shelter surge meets the needs of our unhoused people and significantly fund high support shelter.

Thank you.

Next up, Elena, followed by Tan Macaret.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Elena Arakaki, and I'm here representing Friends of Little Saigon in District 2. I'm here today to ask you for two things.

First, to invest in high support shelter programs for Seattle's most vulnerable residents.

And second, to prioritize people on the streets of Little Saigon for getting into shelter early.

We applaud the mayor's urgency around the housing crisis and her shelter expansion plan.

We need deep investment in high-support shelter units citywide that meet the needs of people experiencing complex medical and behavioral health challenges, the effects of which we see every day in Little Saigon.

Simply providing shelter isn't enough.

We need shelter and services that will help people find long-term stability past the summer and the World Cup.

Our second request is to prioritize people in Little Saigon to get placed into these high-support shelter units.

Shelter placement has not always been equitable, but this is an opportunity to make a noticeable difference in a high-need neighborhood.

We urge you to go where the needs are greatest and help people move from the streets of Little Saigon to safe and supportive shelters.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Tan, followed by Marma Kadane.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Tanmakra Egg, and I am an employee at the Low Income Housing Institute.

As a volunteer coordinator, I have chatted with so many people across the city, from Amazon workers to advocacy groups to students engaged in service learning.

Across the board, our volunteers see the need for shelter and know how much more effective enhanced shelters are.

I am advocating for Mayor Wilson's legislation for shelter expansion.

Not only expanding the shelters, but investing into deep supportive services makes this a holistic approach.

While there are many housing heroes, the true housing heroes are supportive services, our case managers.

I see every day how hard our case managers work to connect our clients to necessary supports and resources.

An investment into supportive services along with shelter expansion is a true wraparound solution to our crisis.

Every day I revel in being able to support our case managers through donations and programming.

I hope that you also revel in this opportunity to be part of the solution.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Marma followed by Molly Hardiman.

Thank you council members for taking the time to hear from community members this morning.

My name is Marta Kidane and I'm the community engagement manager at Low Income Housing Institute.

We believe that the homelessness crisis in Seattle needs to be addressed in line with the vastness of the needs of our unhoused neighbors.

We need high support shelter that provides wraparound services.

We ask that the Land Use Committee approve the legislation being discussed today that will allow the census limit for enhanced shelter to be expanded.

We have also advocated for the funding needed to ensure these larger shelter sites will receive the necessary behavioral health, case management, and substance use disorder services needed to support our community members.

We believe having deeply supported shelter will result in deeply supported people.

We, along with all the service providers and community members here today, see what is happening in our community and need your help to save lives.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Molly, followed by Madigan Liddell.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Molly Hardiman, and I'm a District 3 resident.

I'm here to advocate for shelter expansion by increasing the citywide limit for transitional encampments from 100 to 150 people and by allowing select sites to serve up to 250 people.

Expanding current shelter sites with necessary supportive services is the fastest and the most effective way to save lives.

Unsheltered homelessness is one of the most pressing challenges facing our city.

Almost 10,000 of our neighbors live unsheltered in Seattle.

In line with Mayor Wilson's proposal to add 1,000 units of new shelter in 2026, it's imperative that we act quickly.

Not only is housing a fundamental human right, but a critical social determinant of health that touches every aspect of a person's well-being.

When people lack safe and stable housing, everything from their health, employment, relationships, and sense of dignity is threatened.

Now more than ever, we need more high support shelters with behavioral health and case management services that allow our neighbors to thrive.

I urge you to move forward with empathy, urgency and a strong belief that everyone in our city deserves a place to call home.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Matt again, followed by Margaret.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Madigan Lodahl, and I live in District 3. I'm here today to support the proposed legislation that will expand the number of shelter beds in Seattle.

Unsheltered homelessness is one of the biggest challenges in Seattle, and this is not a new issue.

The severity of this issue is clear in every part of the city, and it is heartbreaking to witness the unsafe conditions that my neighbors live in every day due to a lack of services and shelter.

The legislation I am here to support will expand the number of shelter beds from 100 to 150 for all shelters in Seattle.

Additionally, this council bill would allow for some larger shelters to meet the needs of 250 people.

While it is important to increase the number of beds, the effectiveness of these shelters depend on the addition of behavioral health and case management services.

High support shelters are essential in ensuring that the unhoused population receives the healthcare and case management that they deserve, helping them get into and stay- Thank you for using your power to protect housing as a right for every resident of Seattle.

Thank you.

Next up, Margaret, followed by Francis Dinger.

Good morning.

I'm Margaret Shield, and I live in Lake City in D5.

My home is about four blocks from the new Olympic Hills tiny house village.

I have just one complaint about that village.

It is not large enough.

Otherwise, CoLead provides an amazing service model that gives me hope for the first time in many years about getting the services we need in Lake City to help unhoused people stabilize and rebuild.

But the 44 tiny homes are already full because people want to come in off the street.

We need more tiny houses to meet the scale of need in D5.

I've been talking with my neighbors about the new tiny homes.

People who are initially concerned become supportive when they learn about the security and the services and the staffing.

I'm so happy about it that I volunteered for the community advisory council for the village.

I'm sure you'll hear from others.

expansion in D5, but they do not represent me or my neighbors who want solutions.

Providing low barrier shelter with supportive services and accountability works.

Sweeps destabilize and don't house anyone.

Please scale up our shelter capacity in every district.

Support it, fund it, build it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Francis, followed by Kelly Martinger.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Frances Dinger.

I'm a District 3 resident.

I'm also with the organization Weld.

We provide reentry services to people exiting incarceration.

And I'm here to support the proposed shelter expansion and ensure that shelter planning includes people who are exiting incarceration or otherwise legal system impacted.

For my neighbors who express concern about public safety, I will note that the data shows being unhoused increases risk of recidivism by nearly 50%.

Providing housing isn't just the right thing to do for our neighbors.

It keeps people out of jails and prisons.

Thank you.

Next up, Kelly, followed by Tia Boucher.

Hello, my name is Kelly Merdinger.

I'm a social worker, and I've been a case manager, outreach case manager, therapist for many years, and a DSC at the beginning of the pandemic, which really was a very difficult time.

And the reason I bring this up is because I have seen firsthand how the variety of shelters do not meet the needs.

And one of the things I want to say is that it is not just having more shelter, but adequate shelter, because people deserve to live with dignity.

So yes, we need congregate shelters, but I think, people have mentioned before, like low barrier shelters, people will come in with pets, with partners.

I also have seen like the benefit of having your own room or very low, like one roommate, like it makes a huge difference to be able to close the door, to have privacy, all of that people deserve even in shelter.

And we need to really like the continuum of care that's needed.

It's not just ending in shelter.

It needs to begin with people on the streets.

So I also have done stuff with stop the sweeps and services not sweeps because we need to take money from the sweep team to put into shelter.

We spend millions of dollars for things that are killing people right now and we have the money to fix it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Tina.

Can you hear me?

Okay.

I'm Tina Bica.

I live in District 7. And I'm not gonna repeat all the wonderful stuff that people have said.

I'm going to say to you, I think the goal ought to be eliminating the need to have these conversations at all.

And what the woman two times ago just said, support it, build it, fund it, get it done.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Kara Nichols Barrett, followed by Elias James Barrett.

Good morning.

Thank you so much for this opportunity.

And I just am so grateful for all of these neighbors, too, coming and expressing their support.

I serve as a pastor in District 1 in West Seattle, as well as a volunteer at Westside Neighbors Shelter, the only emergency shelter in West Seattle.

And last night I shared a meal with neighbors who are so fearful because last night was the last night of overnight shelter in West Seattle.

And we also, we lost two neighbors this week.

And yesterday I had the privilege of visiting two in ICU.

And I've come to know these neighbors as real neighbors and as friends and even as family members.

And so I plead on their behalf, please support this legislation.

Thank you.

Next up, Elias followed by Michael Thornton.

Good morning.

I help out at the Westside Namers Shelter, and there's a sweet guy named Alan.

He was on the streets, and he died a year ago.

He did not do drugs.

He just died since he was out there for too long, and this is just going to keep on happening.

We need to change it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Elias.

Next up, Michael, followed by Brandon Masson.

Hi, I'm Michael Thornton.

Most of you know me.

I've personally seen Alexis feed people at mutual aid events.

Thank you.

Seattle has failed and stifled the transitional housing program.

30 years in, programs are still struggling to find sites.

And it's not because of lack of space.

Seattle has 83.9 square miles.

That's over 40,000 football fields.

Saying there's no acceptable sites is incredible.

The issue is barriers.

Even though the code allows for 4,000 units, we're not using it.

Here's the ask.

Lower the minimum site size, allow for permanent place programs for encampments that are already closed to compliant, use private land through incentives and short-term master leases for landlords with blighted properties, reopen the emergency shelter in this building, remove the barriers and use the land we already have, as well as expand the land we can use with this bill.

Thank you.

Next up, Brandon, followed by Jeff Palm.

Hey, y'all.

My name is Brandon Monson.

I'm here to advocate for Mayor Wilson's plan, increasing shelter in every council district, including my district, District 5. I experienced homelessness as a young adult and currently serve as a Seattle Human Rights Commissioner and I want to touch on a few important aspects of shelter that I hope are addressed in the shelter expansion process.

We need to reduce barriers, dogs, couples, age, gender.

The easiest way to get folks inside is to make it easier for them to be allowed in.

Increase overall cap and provide more services per person, more case managers.

We also need to create more pathways from emergency shelter to transitional housing.

I'd like to see outreach to foster care systems in schools to identify young adults in need of housing.

34% of UW students stated experiencing housing insecurity in the last 12 months.

I know all of you see our unhoused neighbors as humans in need of a place to say, so don't let bureaucracy, red tape, or a couple of loud neighbors get in the way of doing the right thing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, Jeff, followed by George Scales.

Hello, Council.

My name is Jeff.

I'm a District 3 resident here in my personal capacity as a member of the Services Not Sweeps Coalition.

You've heard so many wonderful comments this morning about the desperate need for supportive shelter services.

This is what the people of Seattle want.

This is what you need to do.

We don't want cruel and useless sweeps that kill people like my friend Tom and just shuffle people around the city.

We want actual solutions.

This legislation is one step in making that happen.

It allows successful shelters to do more, to actually bring people inside.

Let's fund it, build it, support it, and get it done.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, George.

Hello, Council.

I'm George Scales.

Unfortunately, I've been a part of the problem, the homeless community, but thanks to the wonderful Coley team, I'm now part of the solution.

Thank you for hearing us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll now transition to remote public comment.

We're going to start with Danielle Montrose.

Danielle, please press star six when you're ready.

Okay, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Hello?

Oh, okay, sorry.

Hi, my name is Danielle Montrose, and I'm a co-lead participant support specialist supervisor, and I'm here to speak about the need for a deep investment in high support shelter units.

I firsthand see what our program does, and what it does is it meets people where they are.

It supports them with their physical and behavioral health care, benefits, enrollments, removing barriers to housing by getting social security cards, IDs, quashing warrants, et cetera.

And because our case managers have smaller caseloads, we can give very individualized care.

And we also require that our clients are involved in the process, which gives them personal accountability.

And I've seen firsthand what wraparound support does.

We have an amazing aftercare team.

We have an outreach team.

People do not fall through the cracks, and they are successful in housing once they get into it, which means we're going to save money in the long run.

So the money that you invest today is going to be the money you save tomorrow.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up will be Tanya Wu, followed by David David David and Hilary Santini.

Tanya, please press star six when you're ready.

Okay, this is Tanya.

I live in District 2, two blocks from where those two teens were shot in Rainier Beach, and I have a small restaurant in Chinatown.

Two blocks, well, actually within one block from where two teens were shot yesterday.

I have a mutual aid group.

I'm confidential to Jackson, and my building, Louise Hotel, houses formerly unhoused folks through Housing Connector.

So we support a focused investment in high support shelter programs while stabilizing and expanding and operating permanent supportive housing.

And as you all know, 12th and Jackson has carried a disproportionate share of the city's challenges.

Even though the navigation center is now closed, instability still remains.

And what's missing is a consistent approach to actually work for both people in crisis and the surrounding community.

And, you know, I'm going to stress, we don't have service to resistant people.

We have people resistant services, and that's why shelter expansion is being designed to build trust.

So we need more shelter.

We need to support neighborhoods carrying this work.

And bottom line is we know it works.

Now we need to fully commit to it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, David Haynes, followed by Hilary Santini.

Hi.

Thank you, David Haynes.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

So take the action and stop the delay.

It's gonna be summertime before you get around to finally getting the shelters.

If you really cared, you could have a thousand units of housing within the next couple weeks.

But you have to be willing to utilize nobly the resources that are already available to you that you just have to pull the levers on.

And while you're building the tiny villages, that need to have an improvement on the proper interpretation of drug treatment and behavioral crisis instead of just issuing alternative jewel drugs and never delving into their problems.

You still have to consider there's innocent houseless people that are not on drugs that don't want to use the same porta-potty bathroom as a drug addict who's doing drugs inside the porta-potty and spreading their disease and their blood and their MRSA.

So anyway, you could use the noble...

National Guard to stand up, authorize encampments, graduate the drug addicts into the tiny buildings.

Next up, Hilary Santini.

Hello, I live and work in District 3. We need deep investment in high-support shelter units, shelters designed for those with complex physical and behavioral health needs who make up an estimated 53% of the people experiencing unsheltered homelessness.

We need full funding for neighborhood impact-level strategies, such as safety ambassadors, nonviolent de-escalation teams, and dedicated staff who can support real-time monitoring and accountability frameworks.

We also need proper siting, community impact analyses, dispersed placement of support services throughout neighborhoods, and sufficient funding to address community members in need of services as well as community impact.

Finally, this challenge is not unique to Seattle, yet Seattle is unfairly bearing the burden of many of the support services financially.

Much greater support is needed from King County, Washington State, and the federal government.

Please use your positions to address the needs of the community with an eye to longevity and sustainability.

Please work and demand more of your partners at the county, state, and federal level.

Thank you.

We have reached the end of remote public comment signups.

Thank you all.

This has been a very moving morning, at least for me, and I suspect for my colleagues as well.

Really appreciate everybody taking time out of your different busy schedules to be here and to share your thoughts and experiences with us.

As there are no additional registered speakers, we will now proceed to our items of business.

And we'd like to move on to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read items one through five?

Agenda items one through five, amendments three, three, six, excuse me, appointments three, four, six, three, through three, four, six, seven, appointments of Phoebe Erin Bogert, Tandem Lau as members, Seattle Design Commission, for terms to February 28th, 2027, reappointments of Kate Clark, Brian Markham, and Zubin Rao as members, Seattle Design Commission, for terms to February 29th, 2028, for briefing and discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

Can you please introduce yourselves for the record?

Sure.

Thank you, Councilmember Michael Jenkins.

I'm the Executive Director of the Seattle Design Commission.

I'm Phoebe Bogert, Landscape Architect Commissioner and appointed chair.

I'm Tatum Lau, the Urban Design Commissioner, and getting confirmed today.

Thank you.

Go ahead and please, if you have any presentation or thoughts that you'd like to share with us.

Sure.

I'm always happy to talk about the Seattle Design Commission.

Just a few opening comments before I give just a few comments about our appointees.

The Seattle Design Commission was established in 1968. We're the second oldest in the United States that's specifically devoted to the design of public facilities.

All of our commissioners are actually appointed based upon their profession.

We're required to have architects, engineers, planners, and people who work in the architecture and design industries.

All of our people are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council.

The focus of the commission is to look at the design and environmental implications of public facilities.

Currently, the bulk of our work is devoted to the design and neighborhood integration of light rail facilities.

We're completing our 10th year of looking at infrastructure to replace the State Route 520 bridges and the related investments in the public realm.

and we work on a variety of other capital projects as well.

Just very briefly, before you have any questions of our appointees, Phoebe Bogert is our nominee for chair.

Phoebe's a principal of Place Landscape Architecture based here and in Portland.

It's her final year in the commission, so we're happy that she's stood up to be our chair.

Tatum Lau comes to us from her work as a senior associate at AECOM, an international planning and architecture and design firm.

Her work is focused on social value and equity in the United States and the West Coast, advising clients and technical teams on methods to embed and evaluate equity in infrastructure projects.

We're very pleased to have them standing up and being a part of this commission, as well as the other reappointments that you have before you today.

And happy to answer any question of me or the appointees.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Colleagues, any questions or comments?

Thank you.

Thank you both for being here on a day where you're here before the committee to have your appointment confirmed.

We usually get into a lot of questions.

I usually have a lot of questions for you to expand upon your background and how you are going to help our commission.

We have a lot going on today.

I think you've heard the heaviness in the conversation.

So I'm just going to say thank you for your volunteer service on our commission.

Thank you.

Thank you, council member.

Any other questions or comments?

I would just want to open it up.

If either of you have any brief statements that you would like to make, I'd just like to sort of reinforce what my colleague said.

I really appreciate your service, your willingness to step up and to help our city.

No comments, just appreciation and looking forward to serving the city.

Thank you.

And it's been a pleasure and excited to wrap up this final year in this position.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

So with that, I'd like to move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointments 3463 through 3467. Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointments.

There are no final comments.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Vice Chair Strauss?

Aye.

Council Member Foster?

Yes.

Council President Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council Member Rink?

Yes.

Chair Lin?

Yes.

Chair, there are five votes in favor and none opposed.

Okay, the motion carries in the committee recommendation that the council confirm the appointments will be sent to the April 7th, 2026 City Council meeting.

Thank you so much for joining us.

We'll now move on to our sixth item of business.

Will the clerk please read item six?

Agenda item six, Council Bill 121171, an ordinance relating to land use and zoning, repealing Ordinance 127191, which allowed residential use within the Stadium Transition Area Overlay District under Chapter 23.74 of the Seattle Municipal Code for public hearing.

Thank you.

The legislation that we're going to have a public hearing on would repeal Ordinance 127191, which allowed housing in the Stadium Transition Overlay District.

This is in response to a Growth Management Hearings Board decision finding that Ordinance 127191 was incorrectly passed at Council and contained procedural errors.

We're gonna hold a public hearing today.

We are not gonna be taking a vote.

So as presiding officer, I am now opening the public hearing on Council Bill 121171, repealing ordinance 127, or sorry, on Council Bill 121171, repealing ordinance 127191. Clerk, how many speakers are signed up for this public hearing?

There are three in-person and three remote speakers.

Each speaker will be provided two minutes.

Clerk, I will now hand this over to you to present the instructions.

Speakers will be called in the order of registration.

The public hearing registration will remain open until the conclusion of this public hearing.

The same public comment rules apply to this public hearing.

A 10-second chime will sound when you notice that the time starts to wrap up for comments, as speakers' mics will be muted at the end of the allotted time.

Public comment relating to Council Bill 121171 is only being accepted at this public hearing.

Speakers are asked to begin their comments by stating their name.

First speaker is Dan McKisson, followed by Billy Hetherington.

Good morning, Chair Lin, committee members.

My name is Dan McKisson with the International Longshore Warehouse Union Local 19. I'm speaking in favor of item six.

Since Council Bill 127191 was passed last year, the Growth Management Hearing Board brought new perspective into the policy conversation that compels the city to act.

Councilmember Lind's bill is simply the necessary step to comply with Growth Management Hearing Board's order of invalidity above and beyond this necessary procedural step to comply with state oversight requirements.

We know that the challenges confronting working families across the City of Seattle will require all of us to work together moving forward.

We can and should find ways to work together to confront historic challenges the City will face that no single politician, stakeholder, or stakeholder interest can confront alone.

I look forward to the completion of the study work being conducted by the SDOT and OPCD authorized by Council Bill 32097 to help us better understand the pressures facing our maritime industrial lands as major regional transportation and infrastructure projects such as Sound Transit move forward.

We also need to understand the impacts of any changes to operations at South Holgate Street, one of the few east-west crossings in SOTO we'll create for our local freight mobility systems.

And we also expect, some good news, expect increased cargo activity at Terminal 46 with the recently signed MOU by the Northwest Seaport Alliance and Brookfield.

Lastly, the pending Sound Transit West Seattle Light Rail Extension impacts to business in Soto have yet to be fully vetted.

All of these changes need to be accounted for in total, not in silos, as policy conversation continues.

I urge support of the Council for passage of Council Bill 121171. Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Next up, Billy Hetherington.

Good morning, Chair Linden and the rest of the committee members.

My name is Billy Hetherington.

I work for Lionel Local 242 and didn't really have any comments prepared this morning, but I did want to remind, when we were working on this ordinance last year, We had over 30 organizations that represented over 150,000 union members, 300 small business organizations, and had a large coalition that worked on this ordinance to provide housing, half of which would be affordable opportunity for small businesses, and to activate a community that welcomes well over 5 million people to both of our stadiums down there each and every single year.

While I am against the number six on the agenda here today, I know that we're working on either a resolution or some pathway forward which would allow this in the future down there.

And as far as the ordinance goes, the substance of the ordinance was being deemed valid and the procedural stuff can be changed and can be worked on by the city in the future.

So thank you for your time today.

Thank you.

Next, we have Rachel Kay signed up for public hearing.

Rachel.

Rachel, a moment of clarification.

This is a public hearing related to Soto housing repeal, not to previous items on the list.

Is your comment related to that?

Yes, it is related to the previous agenda item.

I can like fill out a comment card if anybody's going to read

Thank you, Rachel.

We absolutely will read it.

And also we have staff who would be happy to chat with you.

Apologies for that.

Thank you, Rachel.

Thank you.

That concludes in-person speakers.

We'll move on to remote, starting with Jessa Timmer.

Jessa, go ahead and hit star six, please.

Good morning chair and members of the committee.

My name is Jessica Timmer and I'm deputy director of the Alliance for Pioneer Square.

We understand that the city must take this action today to comply with the growth management hearings board's decision in the procedural issues identified with ordinance 127191 from 2025. While it's disappointing to see the repeal of a policy that many in our neighborhood viewed as a step forward, we recognize the city's obligation to address those procedural requirements.

At the same time, we want to emphasize that the underlying need that motivated our support of this ordinance has not gone away.

Pioneer Square and the surrounding districts remain some of the most transit-rich and infrastructure-ready parts of Seattle for residential development, yet we continue to see far less residential presence than desired.

Increasing residential density in and around Pioneer Square is critical to creating the kind of vibrant, safe, and economically resilient neighborhood we are all working toward.

More resident support Small businesses activate our streets more hours of the day and help balance the district's economy.

So while today's action addresses a procedural requirement, we hope it is not the end of this important conversation.

The Alliance for Pioneer Square looks forward to working with this committee, city council, and relevant city departments to explore pathways that responsibly allow more residential presence in this area.

Our city desperately needs more housing, and we believe Pioneer Square should be part of that solution.

Thank you for your time and for your continued work on these issues.

Thank you.

Next up, we have David Gloger followed by David Haines.

Good morning, Council.

My name is Dave Gloger.

I live in District 5. In light of the ongoing work by Council, I find it ironic that Council Bill 121171 is being considered even if necessitated.

We are consistently informed that we face a housing crisis necessitating the construction of more housing.

In phase one of the comp plan, we witnessed unprecedented upzoning.

However, the extent to which this housing will be affordable remains uncertain.

And in phase two of the comp plan, the regional neighborhood centers will upzone neighborhoods, potentially leading to their elimination.

Despite these efforts, we now have this legislation Council Bill 121171, which proposes the removal of residential housings from the stadium district.

How can we move this opportunity, again, even insuscitated, when the comp plan is actively working to increase it?

We either experience a housing crisis or we are not.

I urge you to maintain consistency in your approach to neighborhoods throughout the city.

Residential property owners contributed taxes just like large businesses.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, David Haynes.

Hi, thank you, David Haynes.

The fact that the Port of Seattle went out of their way to cancel a bunch of potential housing dictates and demands that the City Council remind the Port of Seattle that when they use the excuse that they can't have residential buildings in their pathway to the highway, that The port has to honor the respect and the slow speed that they speed through when people are going to the baseball game.

Like, 81 times people have to go downtown Seattle for a baseball game, and at the entrance is the road rage, inconsiderate, and disrespectful port of Seattle's trucks who toxify and road rage, blowing their diesel pedal and ruining the quality that demanded that people not have to live down there and suffer the suffocating consequences of toxic air.

And I'm going to tell you that the Mariners will never win a World Series.

And the main reason they have a home field advantage is because the Port of Seattle abuses the hell out of the people that come down there.

And we need an ordinance that says that the train is not allowed to honk its horn, that rules the bullpen, that messes up the mental health of the people in the stadium, acting like a 12th fan in a rage, just yelling as loud as possible.

But yet, when the port keeps speeding through that same intersection, honking their horn, going faster than necessary, it ruins the quality of living down there, and it drives people nuts.

And yet, we got a hotel on the other side of the stadium, but y'all don't want to, like, realized that the port has dictated a bunch of abusive policies that have cheated people out of a basketball arena down there and is ruining the quality.

We need a speed limit enforcement at 25 or...

Thank you.

Heather Smith is also signed up for remote public comment.

Heather, if you're able to please call in, we can return to remote public comment in a moment.

Next up, we're going to return to in-person Steve Rubello.

Please, you're up next.

Well, I assume my grandfather on my mother's side would probably be unhappy if I didn't speak to this.

He was a longshoreman and a kind, gentle person as well.

But our problem in housing is not number of houses, it's do they relate to the income of the people?

That's why we see people without housing in this city.

This was not a very bright idea in the first place to put housing by industrial.

That has never worked out very well anywhere.

It usually means transition away from industrial.

Now we have working class jobs and some of them are jobs that even lead to middle class incomes, which will not be there if we destroy the industrial zone.

And if we add housing to it, we will destroy the industrial zone.

Now, that logic did not work when this was passed by the council.

The only thing that seems to be protecting the industrial right now is the water table, which is gonna be hard for you folks to change.

So you're really not taking a lot from your developer friends by removing housing.

This is something which is very, very logical.

And my hope is that because it's logical, and they probably are not going to fully benefit from it anyway, regards the developers, that maybe you can do the right thing without any real problem, and maybe even feel a little good about it at the end of the day.

Some industry is very, very important to Seattle, and the port is very, very important to Seattle.

And I hope that you'll consider that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

Next up, Lindsay Wolpin.

Good morning, Council Members.

I was not initially planning on testifying, but heard some comments here and thought I'd share some thoughts.

I'm Lindsay Wolpa, and I'm here today to speak on behalf of the Northwest Seaport Alliance, the Seattle-Tacoma Port Authority overseeing marine cargo in both harbors.

We fully support the proposed actions of the Committee to repeal Ordinance 127191. As we've shared with this body many times, the global cargo industry is an incredibly competitive space.

That's why our organization was formed 10 years ago, and that's why we want to partner with the city to determine our collective future as a port cargo city.

This is not a procedural issue.

It's a substantive one.

This is not a housing debate.

This is about the future of our maritime workforce.

We look forward to continuing these discussions in the weeks to come.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

That concludes sign-ups for public comment.

Thank you all.

That was our last registered speaker present to speak at this public hearing.

The public hearing on Council Bill 121171 is now closed.

We're going to call a short, just couple minute recess here to allow our presenters to get situated and to allow the presentation to get set up.

So we are in a short recess.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

April 1st, 2026, Land Use and Sustainability Committee will reconvene.

It is 1054 a.m.

I'm Eddie Lin, Chair of the Land Use Sustainability Committee.

We're gonna call the roll one more time, so please go ahead.

Vice Chair Strauss?

Here.

Council Member Foster?

Here.

Council President Hollingsworth?

Here.

Council Member Rink?

Present.

Chair Lin?

Present.

Chair, there are five members present.

Thank you, and we'll now proceed to our next item of business.

And I see we have folks ready, but clerk, can you please read agenda item seven?

Agenda item seven, presentations and discussions with shelter and service providers for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

And thank you to our representatives from the mayor's office, to our shelter service providers for being joining us today.

Thank you again to the members of the public for providing comment.

That was very, very moving.

And it was kind of interesting to hear sort of such a coalition or such a that there's so much support for both shelter and services.

And so I'm very excited to hear your perspectives.

To my colleagues, I think we'd love to hear from the mayor's office and our providers first and kind of hold our comments and questions until the end, if that's okay.

So with that, I'd love to proceed.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you very much, Chair Lynn, and good morning, council members.

I'm gonna let my colleague, John, really go down through the full proposal, but I just wanted to take the time to offer kind of some initial high-level opening statement.

Mayor Wilson's shelter acceleration plan is grounded in a simple but urgent premise that we must dramatically increase access to safe, dignified, and effective shelter, and we must do it now.

The proposal that we'll be discussing today focuses on increasing census limits for existing and future transitional encampments, particularly tiny home villages.

so we can serve more people quickly within models that are already working.

Today, many of these sites are opening below their potential due to outdated or overly restrictive caps.

By responsibly increasing allowable capacity, we can bring together more people inside faster without the delays that come with siting entirely new locations.

This is a policy choice grounded in what we know what works.

Traditional encampments in Seattle have consistently demonstrated strong, excuse me, traditional tiny home villages have shown demonstrated strong outcomes, higher rates of engagement, effective case management, and meaningful transitions to permanent housing.

The proposal that we'll be discussing today builds on that success by pairing increased capacity with clear operational standards, ensuring that providers are equipped to maintain safety, quality, and performance as sites grow.

Each additional placement will continue to be supported by robust case management, behavioral health connections, and housing navigation.

We are not simply expanding numbers, we are scaling a pathway to stability.

Our overall approach strengthens coordination with our public safety and outreach systems by increasing available placements within trusted, accessible sites, we improve our ability to offer immediate alternatives to unsheltered living and address unsafe conditions in public spaces in a more consistent and humane way.

Importantly, we will maximize existing investments, leveraging infrastructure, provider expertise, and community relations that are already in place while advancing a more efficient and cost-effective response.

I think we can all agree that the status quo is not meeting the scale of need.

The proposal that we are going to be discussing today allows us that quickly, responsibly, and with improving tools to bring more people inside and move them toward permanent housing.

I want to pass it on to my colleagues, John Grant and Alison Holcomb, who'll kind of walk you through just, again, some examples that we've seen in other communities and really dive into the why the need to expand census.

So thank you for allowing me the time for the opening statement, and I look forward to the conversation.

Thank you so much, Deputy Mayor.

Just going to interrupt for one second.

Joined by colleague Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you for joining us.

Also, just I kind of forgot to provide just a little bit of context setting.

The mayor's office has transmitted to the council a bill that would modify on an interim basis development regulations for transitional encampments.

I just want to clarify that that hasn't been introduced yet, but we are hearing about these proposed modifications.

And I did just want to allow our council central staff, Ketel, to provide just a little bit of discussion about what it means that these are interim regulations, just so that we could kind of understand the nature of the interim proposal.

Ketel, can you just speak to that for a moment?

Sure.

In addition to what I'll say, of course, you have a memo from both that Jen and I have produced that you can also use for reference here.

But interim regulations should be pretty familiar to the council by now.

We have seen a couple in recent months.

The most recent example is the temporary moratorium on detention facility siting and expansion in the city.

And also, of course, extensions of floodplain regulations, which now the city is no longer I'm doing, but most recently that happened in December of 2025. So what is an interim regulation?

It is a pathway that allows the city to put in place temporary regulations and defer a lot of the procedural requirements that would otherwise be required for a piece of land use legislation.

And those procedural requirements can include things like SEPA and a required public hearing.

It doesn't mean that the city doesn't have to do those things, but the public hearing can be held after the fact, and a SEPA review can be done on what are considered to be permanent regulations, which take out the interim regulations after a period of time.

The bill that was transmitted by the mayor has a work plan for putting permanent regulations in front of the council that contemplates that the council will be considering those permanent regulations about this time next year.

In the meantime, STCI would do SEPA review on those permanent regulations and the Council would again consider the merits of, on a permanent basis, increasing the census for transitional encampments.

Thank you, Quito.

I just wanted to kind of provide that context for what we're talking about, that the proposal would be interim, that there would be additional opportunity for the public, even if these were passed, to provide additional feedback, that there would be a possibility for the mayor's office to revise a proposal based on any feedback or any learnings that you're engaging in from as we conduct on this, engage in this new proposal.

So thank you so much and please proceed.

Thank you, council members.

My name is John Grant.

I'm a senior policy advisor in the mayor's office.

So as you know, Mayor Katie Wilson has set a goal of opening up 1,000 new units of shelter and emergency housing in 2026. We are going to have a very active year with FIFA just around the corner, and we just know that to alleviate the suffering that is caused by homelessness, that we have to absolutely accelerate shelter expansion and get more people inside.

What are the issues involved with this legislation?

Current land use code limits 100 people per site at transitional encampments.

That can include tiny house villages, tent cities, NRV safe lots, but for the purposes of the mayor's intent and proposal, we're really focusing on expanding micro shelter sites.

There are limited publicly owned sites suitable for micro shelters and most already have a micro shelter or tiny house village on them.

Many of these sites actually have a significant amount of unused land that's owned by the city or another public partner that is adjacent to the site.

So as a result, public land is sitting unused while demand for shelter remains high.

Just as Keitel was explaining, this is interim legislation that will expire after 12 months.

It will increase the census limit for transitional encampments citywide from 100 to 150 people and allows at least one site limited to one council district in each council district up to 250 people.

The intent of this interim legislation is to not allow process get in the way of the urgency and emergency that we are facing as a city in dealing with homelessness.

So the emergency provision within the legislation allows SDCI to start the process of the SEPA review concordantly as the Council potentially puts this into effect.

It allows us to act now and do the process at the same time.

Otherwise, the environmental review has to happen first, and then, you know, we're looking at potentially, you know, it getting pushed out to 2027 before we can move forward if the Council decides to do so.

So it's important to note that this is not new.

This is something that is done nationwide.

There are proven large-scale models, and we have spoken to many of these providers to learn from them, and you'll be hearing from one today.

What we're seeing across the country is that micro-shelter programs can scale to 100 to 220 units per site.

And again, you might have one or one and a half people living in each unit.

At the largest site, more than 300 people are served in a single location.

That site that we're talking about is the second example here, Tampa Hope in Tampa, Florida.

It has 215 micromodular units that are built by Pallet.

And the slide here says 75 tents, but we spoke to them recently, and they've actually expanded to 117 tents.

Excuse me.

I want to make sure I get that right.

116 tents located at that site, serving over 340 people now.

There's also the Jesus Center, which is located in Chico, California, with 177 sites.

We spoke to them, and they say they average about 200 people at any given moment, and that site is called the Genesis Pallet Shelter.

We also contacted the Arroyo Seco Village in Los Angeles.

This is about 117 units.

They gave us the updated number there.

And they serve currently 168 people, but they have the capacity to host up to 224 folks in their micromodular shelters.

And then at the West LA Veterans Association, it's 155 units with an estimated 200 people being served.

And the things that we've learned from talking to these providers across the country is that there are some common threads to make sure that these programs operate well and successfully.

Those common threads are 24-7 staffing, having on-site case management and services available to the folks that need them, having a strong wellness check on folks who may be at risk.

having controlled entry.

So there's a defined perimeter and security at the site so that not just anyone can enter the site.

So we wanted to give a hypothetical example, and I really want to stress to the council and to the public who is listening today, hypothetical.

We wanted to really give a picture about what would it look like if potentially this legislation were to go into effect.

This is Camp Second Chance.

This is land owned by the City of Seattle, specifically the Finance and Administrative Services Department.

This is in southwest Seattle on Myers Way.

The cost of renting the land to the city is zero dollars.

And I just want to point out that when the land is $0, the cost per unit, of course, goes down considerably.

And so that's why when we talk about micromodular shelters, the cost per unit is typically more efficient because when we can set it on public land, we get those types of efficiencies.

Currently there's about 69 units.

Under the legislation, an estimated 120 units could be added to get to a total population of 250. And again, about 1.3 people per unit is the calculation we're using there because sometimes there can be two people living in a single tiny house.

And so that population can go up and down, but the cap would be 250. This land, as you can see from the map, there's a lot of it.

It actually spans a few parcels here.

It's 143,000 square feet, but only about 40,000 to 60,000 square feet, which is in that yellow circle just south of the existing village, is what we would be required to expand it to get to that additional 120 units.

Again, just a hypothetical example.

So we know that with large sites, we want to be responsive to community concerns and interests around public safety, and that this is a partnership with the city, the provider, and the surrounding neighborhood.

We are talking about programs that have operational safety, that have that 24-7 staffing and define site boundaries and secure entry.

Every program participant in the program will sign a code of conduct that prohibits things like no weapons or any kind of illegal activities.

And some of our providers here will give a little bit more texture to what that can look like.

And then under the city code, there is already a requirement to have a community advisory committee for a transitional encampment program.

That is where neighbors can join a monthly meeting, talk directly with the staff, provide direct input, both to provide not just accountability but also support.

This is an avenue for folks to potentially do donation drives and support the folks that are in these villages, you know, perhaps with, like, food donations and clothing drives.

Additionally, every contract will have a good neighbor agreement or a neighborhood mitigation program that makes sure that these programs are being good neighbors in the communities that they're located.

And partnering with the Seattle Police Department to talk about what's called CEPTED, or Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, and make sure that there's good lighting, safe access points, and good visibility for these locations.

and every site is going to be reviewed by the fire department and approved before it's opened by the fire department.

I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Alison Holcomb, to talk about additional public safety issues.

Thank you, John.

For the record, Alison Holcomb.

I'm executive operations manager for public safety in Mary Wilson's administration.

Thank you for having us here this afternoon.

Excuse me, this morning.

As John was just describing to you, there are a number of safety strategies that our public safety partners, including Seattle Fire Department, and I'm going to focus specifically on Seattle Police Department, can engage in to support safety around new shelters that are offered.

Strong safety planning.

John's talked about this a little bit.

This is about environmental design, really.

making sure that there are design changes that are implemented when we're looking at locations that may not have lighting, lines of sight, et cetera, that are important to making sure that those who are staffing the shelters as well as public safety responders have the ability to provide safety quickly if the need arises.

You see here reference to deeper coordination between UCT, our unified care team, which goes and visits sites across the city, encampments that may be on public lands, may be causing obstruction, Seattle Police Department, the mayor's office.

That too is around maintaining safety in a space, in an environment, ensuring that that is happening at a very coordinated and nimble level.

And then strong communications need to be ongoing, not only in preparation for the shelter, but as we stand these shelters up and they begin operations, we want to make sure that we're maintaining the lines of communication that John referenced with neighboring businesses, neighboring residents, community-based organizations, service providers in the area.

so that they're able to contribute to safety by providing information to Seattle Police Department, other stakeholders, letting them know, here's what I see because I'm on the ground.

I have eyes on.

I want to share information about what I'm seeing on the day-to-day.

Next slide.

Thank you.

What I want to focus on as well is the reality that there are certain members of our communities who are targeting vulnerable populations specifically for illicit economic activity.

They're targeting vulnerable populations as customers for illicit drug trade, for example.

They're also targeting vulnerable populations as labor for human trafficking rings, for organized retail crime, for metal scrapping.

And Seattle Police Department has prioritized development of a strategy for investigating specifically those individuals who are engaged in that kind of activity and leveraging targeted enforcement against such individuals to ensure that these shelters have protection in the environs around them, that we are actually targeting those individuals who are taking advantage of the fact that we do have people who need help, who need shelter, who need services.

and two of our Seattle Police Department members, this isn't Chief Rob Brown, and North Precinct Captain George Davison, have met, for example, with Councilmember Juarez to talk specifically about activities occurring in her district, and Seattle police officers are available to talk with any of you individually about what you're hearing about particular activities that look like that kind of targeted.

activity against either encampments or shelters in your districts.

Thank you.

The final two slides is in regards to siting criteria.

We heard some very strong feedback from council members that we need to have a prioritization for public safety and good neighbor criteria when we are selecting these sites.

So we wanted to share again the citing criteria that we're using with a public safety lens that we want to take into consideration those neighborhood public safety considerations, looking at data like Priority 1 and Priority 2 911 calls, EMT calls, what is the adjacency to parks, stadiums, or retail or other sensitive areas, the CPTED analysis that Alison was just describing, fire and life safety, and those other good neighbor considerations.

So we just wanted to kind of share this prioritization around public safety.

And then that kind of informs how we mitigate those strategies to make sure that we can have safe and successful programs.

And then the final slide here just goes over kind of just the siting and zoning criteria.

You know, is it near an environmentally sensitive area?

Is there already electrical and sewer service nearby?

What do we need to do to make sure that these sites are ADA accessible?

Because we know that many folks who are unsheltered may require, you know, wheelchair or other ADA changes to the site.

And then also, like, what are other considerations like the soil conditions and other environmental concerns?

So that concludes the mayor's portion of the presentation.

I'm going to turn it over now to the next presenter.

And we're really excited and really appreciate all the providers who showed up today to talk about their service model.

And I just want to emphasize that not every provider wants to operate a 250-person site, right?

There's going to be a few providers that have the interest, scope, and capacity to operate site that way.

So some providers may not want to do this.

Some do.

And so we invited the Low Income Housing Institute to present and talk about ways that they might approach operating a site at this level.

So to put some texture about what this could potentially look like.

So I'll go ahead and share this presentation and turn it over to Sharon Lee, Executive Director of Lehigh.

Good morning.

I'm Sharon Lee, Executive Director, and I wanted to express our full support for expanding tiny house villages to 150 individuals.

Right now, our largest village is 74 tiny houses, which means that once you have couples and you, you know, you're sort of trying not to limit the number of couples, you're easily bumping up against the 100. So we think 150 makes a whole lot of sense.

Currently, we have a tiny house village in every council district.

So we've been through the whole process of working with many of you in the neighborhoods around community notification.

We right now have 11 tiny house villages in Seattle, four in King County.

We are really pushing.

We want to thank Executive Zahilay yesterday for his announcement, too, for adding 500 shelter beds and housing units.

So we right now have four villages in King County, and then we have two large ones in Tacoma.

and we have been very interested in expanding the use of public property.

So far, we've been on FAS property, Seattle City Light, SPU, also Sound Transit, Port of Seattle, and we're gonna...

and work with the county for county, King County property.

So that should happen very soon.

And then we have these wonderful community faith-based organizations like churches that have been sponsoring tiny house villages.

So we feel that the 150 is easily achievable.

And we agree with the mayor's proposal that maybe in a rare situation, a special situation, there could be 250. And so we're very happy that there's other precedents around the country where this can work.

And then also, if you have not been to the Hope Factory to build a tiny house, we welcome you to come and actually If you don't want to build it, paint it or help furnish it.

I think that we involve the community and volunteers and the neighbors.

And so we've been very thrilled with the level of community acceptance with tiny house villages because people would rather support a tiny house village and make sure that their sidewalks and doorways and alleyways are not having vulnerable people having to sleep outside.

So I wanted to say that one key thing about Lehigh is that we also own and manage 3,600 units of affordable housing, including PSH housing.

So we prioritize the people from tiny houses into our housing.

And then that's why it's so important that we have services and we have case management and behavioral health so that we can make sure that there's quicker throughput.

And I know that it's sort of been depressing about the situation with permanent supportive housing.

But I think if we can increase throughput, then we can free up more space.

And then as we build more tiny houses, we can get a lot more people off the streets.

So so far last year, we had 1,600 men, women, and children living in, sheltering in tiny houses.

So it's a big impact.

That means 1,600 people would not be on the streets today if it weren't for the support of everybody to get them housed.

I wanted to introduce Donna Anderson.

She's the regional operations manager and she's in charge of all the operations and services.

Hi, first of all, I want to say thank you for having us here.

And I just want to note that there has been a wealth of knowledge in this room today, not only from those of us with lived experience, but from all the service providers that are here who have been doing this for a really long time.

So I just want to just say thank you for listening to those of us who are on the ground and who do this work every day and taking our opinions and our knowledge into consideration.

So what it would look like to expand into bigger villages is really, it's key staffing.

You've heard the term high support funded all day, right?

So that's what we need.

So a village with 150 clients may look like two shelter operations managers, right?

So there's someone there morning and evening, two supportive services managers, along with six case managers.

three behavioral health workers.

A total of 25 shelter monitors, which means there would be five shelter monitors per shift.

So that's 24-7, where there's five additional people to keep the gate and the village safe.

As you go up to the 250, the staffing model just increases, right?

So three shelter operations managers.

10 case managers, five behavioral health specialists.

Those behavioral health specialists are not only addressing mental health, but they're also addressing substance use disorder for our program participants who are struggling with that.

And then you would bump up that operational staff to eight per shift, and that's keeping the village safe inside, right around the outside perimeter in the gate safe as well.

And then this is kind of what it would look like in a grid.

You can see the staffing.

And again, this is just preliminary staffing.

This could change right as we get onto those bigger sites.

Same thing, just kind of a staffing plan in a different way, what that 24-7 shift looks like.

And then for the supportive services, so our housing case managers, they do a lot of things, right?

You can see on the screen, they're getting IDs, they're getting birth certificates, they're applying for SNAP benefits, they're working maybe family unification, they're working with the VA, ABD, ORCA, all of these things.

So it's not just...

It's not just housing.

There's a lot of steps for program participants to get housed, and many times that comes with simply even trying to find a birth certificate, maybe from another state or another country, to get all those housing documents ready.

And then as we're talking to them about housing, we're also talking to them about treatment and how it looks to keep their space and how it looks to do all the things that we need to do, right?

Because some folks haven't been inside four walls for a very, very long time.

So it's not just as easy as getting an ID and a social security card.

There's lots of things that those case managers do outside of that.

And then as far as the code of conduct, kind of standard is case management participation is required.

No alcohol or illegal drugs or marijuana in the public spaces of the village.

So I wanna be sure you guys heard that, in the public spaces of the village.

We also do not allow loitering, trespassing, or disturbing neighbors.

We address those issues head on with neighbors that come and say they may have had a problem, possibly with one of our shelter participants, and then we'll address that with the neighbor and we'll also follow up with the participant.

And they must comply with all shelter, property, city, and state regulations and policies.

This slide is currently Camp Second Chance.

John mentioned it earlier.

So this is what it looks like now with all the orange dots being security cameras.

You can see gates, entrances.

You can see where the fire access is.

So that is just kind of, it looks, that's our safety plan, right?

It shows where our cameras are so staff can see.

And it also shows, you'll notice outlined in blue, there's two different staff offices.

So both of those offices are staffed 24-7.

So there's not just staff in the front, there's staff in the back that can see that back half as well.

So thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you so much for that presentation.

We're going to move over to Chloe Gale with Evergreen Treatment Services.

And I'll get your presentation up momentarily.

All right.

Good morning, everyone.

As way of introduction, I'm Chloe Gale.

I'm currently a VP of Policy and Advocacy for Evergreen Treatment Services.

We are a local leader in opioid treatment for over 50 years.

Daily in our clinics, in our treatment and motion van, we serve approximately 1,200 patients a day.

And then our REACH program provides street outreach, intensive case management, community justice, diversion work with our law enforcement partners through the LEAD program, and then ongoing housing support, particularly for those who are using substances in the community.

Next slide.

I wanted to talk a little bit about, as this project was coming forward, the mayor's office asked us a little bit about data of folks who are living outside that we encounter.

We have 150 REACH staff who are daily doing street outreach.

And when we looked into our data, We found that close to 4,000 people were connected with our staff last year, and when we asked them for what services they wanted, over 60% requested support with mental health, medical, and substance use needs.

So this has told us that the majority of people living outside want support for their physical and behavioral health.

I think you got to hear Tammy Green earlier, one of our providers in SOTO, who's an expert with lived experience around working with people with substance use, and I would say, she would say this number could possibly be much higher in terms of every single day people asking for support.

So what we believe is that people want health and recovery care, but they cannot manage those treatment systems from the street.

And often, their unmet needs prevent them from succeeding in our shelter system.

You've heard from many, many people, folks on the providers, neighbors, partners, business leaders, all asking for service-rich shelter programs.

So I'm going to lead with a couple of recommendations from our organization.

We want to be a close partner in both designing the care and supporting the care as we go along.

So the first is around matching each person to their shelter needs.

You got to meet a couple of our folks today and on Monday who are out on the street every day.

They connect with people and build trusting relationships.

And generally what we find when we've worked with projects like the Just Care program, the statewide right-of-way model, Our project in Leary Way, in close partnership with Councilmember Strauss, is that over 90% of the people that we encounter are ready to come inside if we can give them the right space and the right array of services.

And if they have the sense that ongoing, this engagement in shelter will move them into permanent housing.

So a couple we support creating a local priority for shelter options.

Currently right now, a lot of shelter referrals are on first come first serve basis.

And we know because we work closely with local communities that they also want their vulnerable neighbors inside.

I think as Sharon mentioned that people don't want their vulnerable neighbors in their doorways.

They actually want them inside where they're gonna get services.

We would do that in partnership with what people say that they want, where they want to live, and also services that match their need on-site.

We also recommend bringing a transfer option for people.

Currently, right now, someone generally has to become homeless again in order to access a different facility.

And also, people's needs change over time.

So we may find that they're going to be better served somewhere.

Because we're substance use experts, I just want to say that recovery for substance use and addiction in particular is not a linear process.

Most everyone frequently, as they go on that pathway, have to have several different tries to figure out what works for them.

So we want to have an opt-in model in terms of our shelter array that people are expected to come inside and stay inside, and our providers get to work with each other to sustain that over time.

I lost this slide.

Our second recommendation is really around models of opioid treatment.

So right now, the best model for opioid treatment includes medication.

And I wanted to name two excellent, because this is what we do, I wanted to name two excellent models that could work in conjunction with these new shelter sites.

So one is our opioid dispensaries.

There's a new statewide possibility.

We have treatment in motion vans that can deliver medication dispensaries right downtown to people in isolated areas.

But we also have an opportunity to do fixed site dispensaries where we could bring medication and treatment providers daily if that design is built into these new shelter options.

So that's one option we would like to explore.

The second is a long-acting injectable buprenorphine model that really has been piloted by Dr. Waters at DESC.

It's done a brilliant job of getting people with very chaotic lives onto treatment and medication right away.

I do also feel it's important to name When we see people outside using drugs, it is typically not just one drug.

Fentanyl is certainly the highest risk for overdose death in our community, but most people are using multiple substances.

And you know, as shelter providers, that we need to manage all of those.

We can't just work with one, so we have to also work trauma that they're coming on board with, mental health conditions, and medical conditions.

It is heartbreaking for us when we know that we have a perfect array of services in one location, but because there are medical needs that we can't meet, this person is now gonna have to stay on the street until we can find a better situation.

Finally, I'm just going to name whole person care.

Integrating models, as I've just said, around making sure that things are accessible and that people with complicated needs can also continue to get support.

And I wanted to call out a few of our, because we love partnering with our many different diverse shelter models, and I do think having multiple types of partners is critical to success.

I'm going to call out a few things.

I've gotten to speak with Sharon Lee recently about one of their spaces that has a lot of pregnant women in it, and they've actually involved the services of a doula because they have so many young pregnant women there that they really needed to bring extra support.

A second is the PDA co-lead model, where everyone has had some kind of criminal law violation in part of their process, and they bring legal system advocates so that the barriers, so that legal barriers are not preventing people from getting housing and services.

Finally, Chief Seattle Club is not here, but I really want to name that they have created beautiful spaces to connect people to their native culture so that they can heal in collaboration with their family members.

We can help describe what is needed for folks outside, and we want to bring services to continue their path to recovery.

Thank you so much.

We have joining us from Tampa, Florida, Maggie Rogers, who's the executive director of Catholic Charities and the operator of Tampa Hope, which was in our presentation.

Maggie, if you wanna go ahead and take yourself off mute, I'll go ahead and share the slide and you can go ahead and get started.

Thank you for joining us today.

Well, thanks for having me.

Can everyone hear me?

Wonderful.

Well, like you said, I'm Maggie Rogers.

I'm the CEO for Catholic Charities Diocese of St. Petersburg.

We cover five counties.

I have about 265 staff.

We have a broad array of services, about 2,000 units of affordable housing, four pregnancy centers, four medical clinics, immigration department, rent and utility assistance programs, adoptions.

You name it, we've done it.

And we have six homeless shelters dating back to just over 20 years ago when we opened our first one.

in the 1990s for those with HIV AIDS.

And what we've really built is a model where we're able to respond to a crisis quickly.

And so 20 years ago, we opened our first shelter, large shelter, Pinellas Hope, which was in response to some tent slashing.

And that currently has 255 homeless in the front portion and then 156 apartments in the back.

And then we looked to replicate that and ended up with Tampa Hope, We closed on that property in November of 21 and in December of 21, less than a month later, we opened up with a hundred tents up on platforms and then move to another 125 and then went to 200 and something.

We are now at 215 cottages made by the pilot company, 116 tents.

We have 345 people on the campus every single night.

And that's because some of the cottages are made for two people, some are not.

And I'll push the campus to over 400 in 2027. And I'd like to get as close to 500 if possible.

And the only reason I would not do that is if I run out of land.

Since we have opened, we have served nearly 2000 people and 40% have moved to permanent housing.

And really the success of the program is that it's not Catholic Charities doing all of the work.

It's really us bringing in all of the partners that do their great work, allowing them to use our facility and do what they do best.

And so intake at our shelter is, you know, one of our biggest partners is our police entities.

And so police, as well as other outreach teams in the community, help us bring the folks into Tampa Hope.

We do not do any, there's no background tests, you know, there's no background checks given.

We don't do drug testing at intake.

We really wanted to be able to serve the community that needed us most, that most agencies don't serve.

When we were looking to open, the mayor said, you know, how big do you think you could go?

And I said, well, I could probably buy a few houses.

I can buy some small land and I can maybe rehouse, you know, 25, 50 people a year, but you're not going to notice that on the streets.

I wanted it to be impactful.

And so you really notice, you know, 500 people, 400 people not being, you know, downtown, you know, city of Tampa.

and so since then you know nearly 800 people have moved to to housing since we've opened and really it's a the services that go on site so it's just not the bed night yes they get three meals a day you know showers laundry you know restrooms it's the case management the mental health counselors that we have on staff our partners that come to to the facility to provide their services as well And if you break it down, the larger a shelter goes, then cost per person comes down.

And so, you know, Tampa Hope is under $30 a night, and that includes all of the wraparound services.

What else?

My apologies, I'm on staff meetings.

I'm like running back and forth here.

Case management, it fluctuates usually between 40 or 50 people per, you know, is usually their caseload.

I'm hoping that after, you know, the new year we'll be able to, we're gonna be bringing in more electric.

The property that we purchased did not have any infrastructure in the back.

And so we've gone ahead and put the infrastructure in and made it essentially a small town.

When we purchased the property, I sent notices out to all of our neighbors and said, hey, you know, Maggie Rogers is in town.

I'm going to be opening up the shelter.

I want you to know what I'm doing.

Here's an open house.

None of the neighborhoods came.

And then I opened and everyone's like, oh, she's really going to do this emergency shelter.

And so everyone was the neighbors were upset.

sent letters.

And it was really about continuous conversation and dialogue, having ongoing communication with the neighbors.

And now those neighborhood associations are having their meetings at our facility.

They're raising dollars for us.

They're having clothing drives or blanket drives, toiletry drives for us.

And so, but it was constant communication and awareness that just because a person is walking on the street does not mean that they're homeless.

It doesn't mean that they're committing a crime.

and really just having those ongoing conversations with people.

I think that's about it.

I was trying to get that all out quickly.

Mr.

Thank you so much, Maggie.

That's incredibly helpful, and it's really an incredible accomplishment that you have a program serving 400 on the road to serving up to 400 people soon.

So thank you for joining us today.

Ms. Thank you.

I'm going to go ahead and turn it to Tara Moss with Purpose, Dignity, Action, and I'll go ahead and share my screen.

Thank you.

Good almost afternoon.

We're almost there.

Lunchtime soon for all, hopefully.

My name is Tara Moss.

I'm a co-executive director at PDA.

I run and oversee the co-lead program that Chloe's already referenced.

You took some of my talking points.

Thank you.

So you're still getting the slides up.

We're gonna mostly talk about the co-lead model, but I wanna go to our mission here, and I don't have it memorized, so thank you.

Because it really focuses on our goal to find innovation and take public health and public safety seriously, and I know that we've been talking about things such as neighborhood impact and coordination.

So Purpose Dignity Action plants seeds for a world rooted in community and care instead of punishment and neglect.

We activate public health and safety strategies rooted in system coordination and trauma-informed evidence-based framework.

And some of those things that we name here are just really baked into all the work that we try to do, including the LEAD program.

And those lessons learned have fed into the co-lead program.

One thing that I just wanna point out in terms of public safety and coordination is that we always try to check our work.

And one of the things that we found is with our co-lead program that we have seeing that 911 calls go down based on a University of Washington study.

And that's intentional.

Our staffing takes what our participants are doing inside and around the facility and area very seriously, but we also have a safety team to help deescalate situations.

Then we're also trying to coordinate with our neighbors about what's working, what's not.

Really appreciated Margaret coming in and talking about that.

It's also proof that we are doing outreach ongoing engagement and coordination conversation for all of community members from making sure the programs work for our unhoused and housed community anywhere that we are doing our work.

So moving on to the Co-Lead program, Co-Lead pairs temporary lodging and intensive case management for a sustained whole-person care-based response to chronic homelessness.

Our program has three phases that I will talk about.

You can go to the next slide.

Our three phases are outreach, lodging, and aftercare.

Please forgive me as I also shout out and appreciate all the team members from all these phases who came out today, so I may drop some names here.

So for our outreach phase, which Nicole came up and spoke about a little bit, but Daniel also talked about, and he kind of talked about the endpoint of the outreach goal, which is, you know, Nicole would say, please don't say I'm coming out giving out housing, because as we've seen and everyone's talked about, there's way more demand than what we have and are able to provide.

And Chloe, you already did a great job of talking about who our co-lead population is.

We're really trying to work for the folks who, honestly, other services have not been successful with and haven't been a good match.

So, you'll see some strategies that we use, but I think that you would...

It would be good for you to remember in each strategy that we do, we're more intensive because we have found that that's what's successful for a population that hasn't been successful in more low barrier or less staffed programs and services.

So in our outreach, we're really trying to engage with people, understanding best match for these services.

We're looking for things like criminal history, substance use, mental health.

What are some services that we can coordinate and stabilize?

But we're also having really important conversations with those individuals, such as Daniel, around expectations and behaviors and safety measures.

So when people come in, that they know what's expected of them.

And as you've said, Chloe, we have found that we can have up to a 90% acceptance rate because we're transparent, we're best matching, and we're providing services that really work for them, and they aren't nervous that they're gonna fail out of within the first one or two days.

And the other piece that's already been named but has been really successful and really appreciate the partnerships with Lehigh and Lake City is that we have found and listened to community members around their advocacy that the community members who are outside are getting the services inside in their own neighborhood.

So we have really found success in doing at least around a third of the units being prioritized or the village homes being prioritized to prioritize for those who are within that community.

So right now, we are full with a third of individuals from Lake City inside Lake City Tiny Homes.

So I'm really gonna focus here on kind of the service provision, and as I've talked about, it's pretty intensive.

Our goal is to bring people in, stabilize them, but ideally, as I think Sharon and others were talking about throughput, we're connecting them to ongoing long-term services permanent subvertive housing that is not dependent on our service model.

So super intensive.

Keisha and Lindsey...

yeah, Keisha and Lindsey.

See, I gotta call my staff out or else I'm gonna get in trouble.

Keisha and Lindsey both talked about this.

You know, Keisha's not just getting someone ID.

She's not just going to a medical...

setting up a medical appointment.

These are individuals who need support, sometimes need advocacy, need to be taken seriously.

So that intensive case management's there.

Appreciate...

Chloe talking about the legal coordination because that's a key piece that we've learned is, you know, resolving warrants, working with people through their court cases.

We often find when people are stabilized and we can really do this intensive case management that, you know, we can get people a lot stable a lot faster than if they're outside.

And that sets them up for success for their next point of service.

I'm gonna stay on that.

I know I'm jumping ahead, but not yet, John.

Go back.

That was my fault.

I'm going to talk about that preview aftercare in a second, but a little bit more about lodging.

But that intensive case management does make them very successful in terms of when they're placed into aftercare.

And ideally, this is just a short-term spot with a lot of success.

So I just really want to talk a little bit more about we do a lot of care.

You can see all the different services.

benefits are long-term.

Again, we don't want them to be dependent on our services to be successful when they move on.

But I will add that some of the services that even Chloe named, we do need to augment.

There's a lot of need out there, so we're definitely look forward to especially behavioral health and other services that sometimes can be augmented by other service providers or the city to bring in.

But again, we're asking our case managers to do as much as they can to connect to the services that they have here.

And also, I just want to reiterate that we do hold our participants accountable to the rules.

We hold them accountable in terms of engaging in case management at minimum three times a week on their goals that they set for themselves to help have them to be successful in the program and for themselves and what they want.

And then the last piece that I will name in terms of, now we can move to AptiCare, is that we found that our permanent supportive housing and other providers are really stretched thin in terms of their staffing, and we were having experiences of our participants coming back.

and asking for help or asked to come back to co-lead.

So we did, again, not long-term, but we realized that our folks really need to be stabilized a little bit longer.

And especially some of the pieces that we offer for our folks, such as criminal legal coordination, other service providers just don't have the resources or ability to do so.

So we do, have an aftercare program, and we try to do that for those who need it, and it's all optional for up to a year, ideally, to, again, really stabilize individuals.

So we're only bringing them from outside once, stabilizing them one time, and getting them to be as successful as possible in their next home long-term.

I think I will end it there.

I guess I will just add, especially for our model with the amount of intensive case management and support that we're having, that it really needs to be well-resourced and well-staffed, so we do have 24-7 staffing here, and that is...

That is something that is important and we can't really adjust without impacting the outcomes of individuals, because we'll lose folks and we'll lose our opportunity to really have a key moment in time where they can feel safe, stabilize, and have trust in their journey of recovery and be successful with that.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate the in-depth presentation, the wealth of knowledge, as you mentioned.

Colleagues, I know it's already 1146. I'm hoping we can go a bit longer here.

And one, I would also just like to thank Councilmember Foster for your hard work in helping to prepare for this meeting.

and I believe at least Council Member Rink, you have a hard cut off at noon.

So if colleagues, if it's okay, I'd like to allow Council Member Rink to start the questioning and comments or did you, you have three minutes?

Okay, okay.

Okay, why don't you go, Council Member Feist, Chair Strauss.

Well, thank you for the viewing public.

You may or may not have connected this meeting to yesterday's Finance Native Communities and Tribal Governments meeting, where we are moving forward the funding that is needed to build these programs, both the shelter and the supportive services.

I just want to remark about how far we've come because there's always more work to do.

But the place that this conversation is today is remarkably different than it was even in 2016 or 2017 when the conversation of KCRHA was being set up or the NAV team or any of the state of homelessness.

But I just recall in my first votes here at council, it was whether we do 20 tiny home village sites or 40, possible, just if it was possible, maybe one day.

and there was an argument about do we do fewer high intensity shelter beds or more standard?

Like the plan that you shared today, that safety plan is absolutely necessary for serving most people's needs and for the folks who remain on our street, a higher level of service is needed, right?

So it's the yes and both and approach.

But where we've come from in my short term here at City Council is a place of having an argument of are we doing tiny homes or not?

An argument of should we invest more money into a higher level of service or should we just create the highest number of units no matter if they actually serve a person or not?

And so the place that we are today, I want to thank Mayor Wilson and her team for bringing this forward with expediency.

because the place that we are in this conversation is so much better than it was even just a few years ago.

And there is so much more to do.

At my town hall last week, I heard from a woman in a wheelchair who's unable to access the services that we provide because of her wheelchair.

I've heard about this with pets, with partners, with possessions.

And what I know, Director Holcomb I do walkabouts in District 6. I ran into Director Holcomb on one of my walkabouts, so I'm impressed, I'm grateful.

The words that you shared accurately represent the situation that is occurring in District 6 right now.

We have, I'm gonna say something that sounds troubling, but it's actually a good place in the long run.

We have, the people who are currently experiencing homelessness in Ballard have been kicked out of existing service providers.

That sounds really bad, and it is, but in 2019, we couldn't even get those individuals into shelter, much less to be kicked out.

What that says to me is we have done the good and important work for many people in our community, and we need to provide a higher level of service for those that are remaining on the streets.

That predatory framework that you were talking about is a barrier to getting somebody off the streets because their needs are currently being met by somebody that is preying on them.

These are the things that we have to address, and it requires a much higher level of service, a higher cost per bed than what we've been investing in.

I've already spoken more than I expected to.

My apologies, Chair.

My apologies, Councilmember Rank.

I said much more yesterday.

I'll leave it there.

Looking forward to continuing the conversation.

Thank you for your hard work with expediency.

Thank you so much, Vice Chair.

And colleagues, I do just want to preface this by saying we wanted to make sure that we invited service providers to the table to hear their experience and their knowledge.

And so I think we'll probably have the opportunity, hopefully, to hear from the mayor's office again.

But I'm hoping we can kind of focus our questions a little bit towards the service providers.

Well, that dovetails perfectly, Chair.

Thank you.

And thank you all for being here today.

And I have to take a moment again to thank everyone who turned out to provide public comment.

I am so reassured to see how many folks have come out in support of this proposal.

I know I voiced this during our last briefing on this, but just want to again voice my appreciation to the mayor's office for moving with urgency on this issue, overdue urgency.

And so I want to express my appreciation for that.

And in the spirit of that urgency, we have a lot to figure out.

And I know we're moving quickly to try and really bring folks inside and craft a plan that's really going to work well.

So I want to start with that appreciation and lift up one key issue, which I do want to turn to our providers at the table on.

Just bringing in the element and speaking as chair over our Human Services Committee, we had a discussion just a couple of weeks ago, actually roundtable with some other provider organizations talking about wage equity.

We have heard loud and clear today from public comment about the absolute need to ensure that all of the new sites that we're bringing online have robust services.

And what we haven't talked about is, again, the amazing people who are carrying out this work, taking care of our neighbors, our frontline shelter staff, behavioral health, health staff and so on.

And so thinking about right now some of the challenges for staffing at our existing provider agencies, I'm wondering from your perspective, can you speak to the kind of support that's needed to be able to staff for this rapid expansion and scaling?

I mean, this is my favorite topic, but I'm looking at my co-AD to make sure I don't talk out of turn a little bit here.

All right, you set me up.

Wage equity is really important, and adequate compensation is really important in terms of stabilizing staffing.

We were able to, since we started Co-Lead during COVID, we funded our staff like first responders.

who are also doing this work, because these were individual staff members providing services inside before vaccinations were even available.

We've tried to keep very competitive wages since then, and it has really paid off in terms of the stabilization of my staff.

I had one year where there was zero staff who left on their own terms in direct services roles on their own terms.

Had to let some people go, as we do sometimes.

But that really says a lot to not only staff morale and quality of services, but that means that our participants are talking to the same people around the same things, and they know their journey.

So it really creates quality case management and support, and it also stabilizes our staff as well if they're not equally worrying about their gas money and coming to work every day and childcare, because we have a lot of people who have lived experience, who are the primary income earner in their family, and that creates peace of mind.

But it's not just in terms of wages.

We have found that it's robust benefits, also staff support and trainings and other things that really look the staff member almost as holistically as the participants, but expecting them to do high-quality, important work as well, which they are doing.

Hi.

I wanted to contribute to that.

That is a great question.

So our staff, we actually are unionized.

And so our staff is represented by OPEIU Local 8. And so we are working very closely with our staff around safety issues.

I think there's been back and forth around guest policies.

Before, we used to have guests.

And then during COVID, we did not allow guests.

And we found out that many people are actually feeling safer when they don't see their guests or other people's guests because you really don't want unwanted guests.

And so that's been a policy.

And I think the key thing will be relationship in terms of people feeling, the staff feeling safe and the participants feeling safe really has to do with the relationship with the community service or police.

because that's where, you know, same thing with our neighbors are concerned about is that is there quick response when there is a, you know, criminal activity or people feeling threatened because there are issues around violence.

There's issues around people feeling like, well, this job is not safe because we have to wait too long for the police, or it can't be resolved, or there isn't enough de-escalation.

There's not enough staff on site.

So that's why we ended up with, depending on the village, we ended up with two people who are handling the security issues.

And so that's been very helpful.

And then security cameras, I guess there's pros and cons around that, but we found out that security cameras have really helped with critical areas, like some of the common areas, some of the back, you know, different, where you really don't have the sight line, that has really helped.

And so we feel that if we have enough financing for the really good case management, really good coverage, that that makes a whole difference.

And we also hire a lot of people with lived experience, and that has also factored into how the community is feeling like a community and looking out for each other.

Yeah, if I can just add, absolutely, workforce comes down to wages and benefits, number one, having been in this sector for a long time.

I wanna just name that we rely on all of our partners across the sector, so it also is critical that our entire sector funds each other adequately.

We've benefited sometimes from having better wages and benefits than other neighbors and gotten their employees, and sometimes our employees move on elsewhere.

So we need our colleagues to also be well-funded.

And then secondly, I'll say I think that in terms of our staff is mission driven.

And so they come to our work with a purpose.

And I've been there 30 years.

I'm guessing Tammy in the audience has been there close to 10 years, and then decades of work before that.

It is not particularly our clients, I think, that get people down.

I think it is the work environment, the conditions of work.

And it is pretty hopeless to go outside and not have something that you can offer somebody every single day.

So this is exactly the kind of project that will inspire and support our kids.

And I will say, we have excellent partners with SPD, care team.

So I do think public safety is critical, but we do rely on our system structures, our team should not be responsible for public safety.

So thank you, Alison.

Thank you all for speaking to that.

And this is such an important issue when we talk about the success of human services.

We need the incredible people to be carrying out the work, and human services relies on humans, that connection.

in supporting folks in, at times, their most vulnerable moments.

And so thank you all for speaking to that element.

And I would just build on this point to say I'm hopeful, and as we're moving forward, I'm wondering, this is just a question for the mayor's office, do we have a sense of approximately how many folks we will need to hire in sum total to support the planned expansion?

That's a great question, Councilmember, and I think it's going to be dependent on the number of sites that we open.

I think the feedback that we are hearing loudly from the community, from providers, and from Council is that a deeper, more service-rich environment and those types of programs is what we are aspiring to stand up.

So we are going to get some analysis back from CPO and try to get back to you with an answer to that question.

but I think that more service rich environment will require higher levels of staffing and so we can follow up with you on that.

Certainly.

Thank you for that.

And it sounds like there's also some good lessons to learn about staff retention as well, but wondering as well if we can have a continued conversation around how we can do a focused recruitment effort as well, given that we're going to need a workforce to support this level of staffing and support and want to ensure that we can retain folks and compensate them fairly for this incredibly important work.

Thank you.

Thank you for answering my questions.

Thank you, Cher.

Thank you, Councilmember Ring.

Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to all of our presenters and public commenters.

I want to direct a question to Ms. Rogers, who I believe is she still with us from Tampa Hope?

Did we lose her?

She is in the middle of an all-day staff retreat, so she left that to join us and had to go back to that meeting, I believe.

Okay, I will email her my question.

Let me move down my list.

The reason I wanted to ask her questions, I wanted to sort of ask about what the lessons learned are from operating a facility that's a larger facility in a larger population.

As you know, they've got 300 and more folks and that's one of the changes that we're considering is moving from 100 to 150 people as well as allowing up to 250 folks.

So maybe what I'll do is I'll direct my question to to PDA and to Lehigh in terms of sharing with us what you believe would be critical for operating a larger location.

And I know in particular, and I want to appreciate what PDA, what you shared in terms of the UW study and the other work that you all have done to make sure that you are taking care of the folks at your facility and really engaging deeply with the neighborhood.

Can you share what that would look like at a larger scale?

I would say in some ways it's more of what we're already doing and in some ways it stays the same.

And I say that because if we're in a larger scale area and we have a safety team and we have staff who are kind of overseeing what's happening outside in the community, we're just doing that in a larger space in terms of, staff members.

We do need an increase in staff members, but not hugely, because we're gonna be still in one location.

But we wanna keep our caseloads low enough that staff members can still go out and do all the intensive case management and engagement.

One of the things I think is as important as, you know, maintaining the site is really making sure that we are stabilizing people, we're supporting them, we're connecting them to services, and we're getting them to the next place.

If we have people who are in a large site and they're just stuck there, that is a different kind of environment that you're managing, instead of someone that you're bringing in, you're stabilizing, you're supporting, and they're moving on to their own permanent, next permanent housing.

And I know that that's an issue that we are raising a lot, and I know that there's a lot of barriers to that, but that's super important in terms of doing this work.

But it's also constant coordination and communication from the community and neighborhoods.

There's always gonna be things that kind of pop up, and we just need to address them immediately.

We had an individual bring some things kind of close to site that they're used to storing on a sidewalk, and our outreach team caught that pretty soon.

And like, sitting, found the individual, said, we already had this conversation.

This can't happen here.

This is a new way of living.

just a reminder.

And if this continues being an issue, we're going to have more than just a reminder in terms of that conversation.

So quick engagement and awareness in the community is something that's going to be super important, no matter the site size, and just more eyes on, walking around, checking in, things like that.

So to piggyback off what Tara just said, she's exactly right.

It's the staffing, because what we don't want is to not have the funding for the appropriate staffing, and kind of what Tara touched on is then having someone in that 150-person site who gets forgotten.

right so we want to have the staff there that everybody is still engaging everybody's talking to our clients every day and everybody knows who's there and who's not there and we're doing the wellness checks on our clients so the biggest challenge would be the staffing so we need to be sure that we are staffed properly and to do all the things inside and outside of the village when those things pop up outside of the village we can take care of them quickly It really just comes down to funding and being able to have that staffing.

I just wanted to add a little bit about the physical layout.

I think if you had a lot more, let's say if you were doing a community with townhouses, you would try and maybe cluster.

You may have a little neighborhood here, a little neighborhood there.

And you don't want everyone going to the same kitchen at the same time, right?

And you don't want everyone going to the same smoking area at the same time, right?

So you may decentralize some of the services.

Have a second kitchen, have a second laundry room, have a third laundry room.

And so that people don't feel like they have to interact like all in one space, right?

There's different parts of the village where people feel that they can identify with.

They feel more close to like this group of neighbors than another group of neighbors.

You know, Not to bring up anything controversial, but when we had True Hope Village, that happens to be one that has families with children.

We group the families with children in one part of the village, and the singles and couples in the others.

And if you go to True Hope Village, all the tricycles and toys and everything and the noise are where the families are, right?

And then the singles, it's a different environment.

But obviously, right, we're talking about in terms of expansion.

I think we can lay out, make sure that there's the correct ratio of hygiene facilities, the correct ratio of like how many people can cook at one time or where food can be prepared or where people can sort of develop a sense of community.

Thank you for that.

And Chair, if I may ask a follow-up question.

I'd be curious to hear more about, and actually let me say first, I really appreciate the attention to detail around the staffing as well as the potential for having neighborhoods.

I'd be curious to sort of hear more about whether there is a best practice or a standard in terms of the size of a location in order to ensure that we could provide those neighborhoods and those multiple facilities.

Yes, we actually have a standard in terms of how many people does it make sense to use, you know, they're using toilets, showers, laundry, so there's a ratio.

So instead of doing one gigantic laundromat or obviously you want to spread it around, right, because you absolutely want to spread the restrooms and hygiene facilities around the village so that everyone has access.

Yeah.

Got it.

Thank you.

I know there's another question from another council member, so I'll just wrap up with one over to the folks at REACH.

So thank you for that presentation, and I really appreciated what you shared around those three critical elements for integration.

Am I correct that the on-site access to treatment that you mentioned, is that currently part of the plan, or is that something that you're recommending as a best practice?

I believe part of the plan is to integrate behavioral health treatment.

And I've named a couple different modalities.

I've spoken with our directors on the clinic side.

We have a treatment in motion van right now, which would be great as one example of being able to have a vehicle.

And the city has helped fund that over the last few years.

We want to expand that.

But even there's a new opportunity for fixed site dispensary where we could have, and we've had folks offer that, like we could have a facility there and then our providers could just go so that we don't have to drive and set up a whole van.

Does that make sense?

So we'll look at what model serves each population and each partnership.

We actually have partnerships with a number of behavioral health providers.

And for instance, we have therapeutic health services.

They weren't here to testify, but they are actually planted in our tiny house at our site.

And they just purchased and completed a van.

And the van is going to be dedicated to also coming to our tiny house village sites.

And then we've also worked with Evergreen as well.

And we're open to, as we expand more villages, we expect that more behavioral health services and budgeting will be needed.

Thank you.

I think that's helpful.

And I guess what I'll say here is more of a comment as you already spoke to the treatment modality and the work that's been done here locally for the injection-based treatment of bup.

And I think it's just been really important and incredibly impactful.

And we've seen the reports that have come out around how much that's made treatment accessible to folks.

And so as we're thinking about the high support factor, I want to make sure that we have a follow-up around the integration of that.

So I loved hearing about that idea of the on-site availability, and that feels like it could just be really important.

Of course, we know that not everyone living outside is living with substance use disorder, but I know that with what you shared with those statistics earlier today, about 50% of the folks that you surveyed who are reporting substance use disorder.

I want to make sure that we are a partner in integrating that modality into this expansion.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Thank you.

And I'll be quick because I know we're running up against time and I have a hard stop.

Thank you all for being here.

I'm lucky because I get to sit on both committees in which some of the legislation is in, Councilmember Strauss's committee and then Councilmember Lin.

One of the questions I had was the budgeting piece.

It was a rough estimate between 20, it's going to cost between $25,000 to $45,000 per unit to operate.

From the providers, would that seem like a...

Would that seem like an adequate, because I know I've heard people talk about adequate funding, making sure we're staffed well.

Would that seem like a pretty decent number?

for your program model?

Okay, I will say that the range, there is quite a bit of range in terms of the villages.

We have one village that is for homeless women only, and it's very small.

But because it's very small, it actually has a lot of staffing, because you still need the 24-7 soda ratio.

It's much on the high side, okay?

And I think the other factor which is why it's so important for this package of legislation to be passed is because if we have access to public land, It's zero, right?

If we have to pay market rent, or in some cases, we're not able to find sufficient public land, then the rental cost of the land is a pretty expensive contributing factor to the overall operating costs.

So that's why I think we want to make sure that our public partners are providing us as much low cost or free land as possible.

And then, of course, the service.

I think in the early days, the villages were not, let's say, focused as much on services.

And so it's been a struggle to add services to some of the older villages.

as an example, some of the, sorry to say this, but some of the villages in King County are still begging for behavioral health services.

So that's something we're gonna be addressing with King County.

It's just that it's uneven in terms of the level of behavioral health and services that are really needed for the population.

So I think if we can just bring everybody up to a base level would be great.

And then also talk about which ones are the ones that, depending on the size or the need, need additional services.

Understood.

So it ranges differently between what type of level of service.

So it would be different for LEAD.

as well.

Yeah, and kind of tying into our high-intensive case management and service model that we have.

So that range that you're saying is close to what we need, or close enough, but I would say that, additionally, things like the STAR Center are much higher than that, and we need more STAR Centers, we need more resources.

because of behavioral health, mental health, whatnot, that we really need to connect folks to.

It does cost significantly, but in terms of that range, yeah.

Understood, awesome.

So it could cost more.

That would be super helpful to understand, too, for me. the numbers just so as we're scaling up when we're making commitments we want to make sure that we can follow through with them and keep going and scale them up to ensure that like services aren't going to stop because there is a budget issue or whatever that we're you know doing it responsibly because I know that the need is high and we want to continue that and yeah so looking forward to that so I know there are different ranges yes

I just wanted to call out one.

We're not a provider, but we get to visit all of them, honestly.

And I just wanted to call out some of the real opportunities in intentional design.

And I'm just going to name the bridge shelter that we were very connected with and Councilmember Spouse spoke about recently in terms of our LEER UA work.

It recently had to close due to funding, but the intentional design there was if they could take people who are on stimulants a lot because the public space had a lot of observation about it.

They had overdose prevention facilities inside the restrooms so that if people stop moving in a restroom, with front desk staff would be alerted.

And I think that as Sharon mentioned, a lot of places have been stood up as best we can with the funding that we have, but there's a real opportunity for intentional design for people that have serious challenges in the community and how do we think about ensuring that they get support.

Awesome.

No, that's super helpful.

Thank you.

So I hear there's opportunity with better coordination that we can have a greater impact is what I'm hearing.

So awesome.

All right.

Thank you, Chair.

Those are all the questions I had.

Thank you so much.

It's getting late here, 1214. So I don't really have any questions that I'm going to pose at this time, but just incredibly deep appreciation to the mayor's office, to all of our service providers, to those who support our service providers.

I want to give a special thanks to Maggie Rogers, who joined us from a very busy day in her work.

And just a couple of comments.

One, just, you know, want to I don't want to say that, you know, don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good here.

You know, it is hard trying something new, but I think the biggest danger is, you know, not doing anything.

I think the biggest danger is to continue sort of on the slow pace that we have been going on.

I also think that the proposal from the mayor's office is interim legislation And I think it's important that we be transparent with the public about lessons learned and that we improve as we go, that we have an iterative process.

We've been doing this.

Thank you to our providers who have been doing this for many, many years, who have been I think improving things.

And unfortunately too often, I think we ask our service providers to do too much with too little resources.

I think that that's one thing that has been crystal clear.

And so I do think it's essential that we resource this appropriately.

But we will get the opportunity to have more questions and information to be shared with the public at future committee meetings.

Again, just deep appreciation for you all, for the members of the public, for my colleagues, for engaging.

Let's see.

Oh, Councilmember Foster, I do see a hand.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you in the midst of your comments there.

I just had that hand after Council President's comments.

I wanted to just share, I really appreciated that question around the budget.

And we've been engaging, as the Chair mentioned, and so I just wanted to share.

My understanding is that the annual cost per unit of the high support shelter that's currently run by LEED and CoLEED is at that upper end of the range of $45,919.

And so that's got the aftercare that was mentioned in those other components.

I just wanted to share that in response to Council President's question.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Foster.

And finally, just want to again share my appreciation that the work that you all are doing is really saving lives.

I mean, we cannot understate the importance of that.

And it is, again, what we ask of our providers is incredible, especially when we ask providers to go find sites, when we ask them to go through our rigorous permitting process and or to answer questions from the public.

And you all are providing this essential public service.

And so it is incumbent upon us to lean in and take more of a proactive role.

And so that's what I really appreciate from the mayor's office in doing that.

Again, thank you all.

We have reached the end of today's agenda.

Is there any further business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

Okay, hearing no further business, we are adjourned at 1218. Thank you.