Select Budget Committee Session II 10/21/2020

Good afternoon, everyone.

Again, welcome back to the October 21st, 2020 Select Budget Committee.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Select Budget Committee.

It is 2.01 p.m.

The meeting will come to order.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Sewalt?

Here.

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Council Member Gonzalez?

Present.

Council Member Gonzalez?

Here.

Council Member Herbold?

Here.

Council Member Juarez.

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Oh, present, sorry.

When you called Morales, it sounded like Lewis on my end, I apologize.

Council Member Ruiz.

Here.

Council Member Peterson.

Here.

And Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Nay and present.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Colleagues, thank you again for joining us.

This is the last three hours of our issue identification deliberations.

We have engaged in almost four days of conversations around possible issues that council members would like to bring to the discussion for how we amend the mayor's proposed budget.

Thank you for your questions, your comments.

any concerns and ideas that you've raised throughout the last three and a half days.

We really appreciate it as it does help us have a better and more informed conversation as it comes to Form Bs, which will be coming very soon.

Again, reminder, those are due tomorrow at 5 p.m.

Thursday.

We are going to move into item number 2 on the agenda.

As a reminder, we left off on item number 2 prior to recess.

So we'll do items 2 and 3. If we have time, we'll get to item 4. Madam Clerk, could you please read into the record item number 2?

Item 2, human service department for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much.

I see our friends from central staff.

We have Amy Gore, Jeff Sims, Ali Panucci, as always, and anybody else.

We're very excited to have you.

Thanks for being with us this afternoon and for your patience as we got to the Human Services Department.

We'll turn it over to you.

Thanks, Amy.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Good afternoon, council members.

Again, for the record, this is Amy Gore from Council Central Staff.

As the chair introduced, this presentation is on the 2021 proposed budget of the Human Services Department.

As you recall, the community safety elements of the budget were included in our previous presentation, and homelessness will be discussed later this afternoon.

Therefore, this presentation focuses on the overall department budget, but does not include issue ID or proposed budget ads for those topics.

Next slide, please.

Thank you, Patty.

This first slide presents the overall budget, department budget, which increases from $236 million in the 2020 adopted budget to $275 million in the 2021 proposed budget, which is an overall increase of 17%.

I want to highlight that the HSD budget relies heavily on outside grant funding, and the bulk of the increase in the department budget for 2021 is from these outside funding sources.

Furthermore, almost 30 million of this increases in one-time funding.

On the spending side, the largest increase is in homelessness programs, which Jeff will walk through shortly.

You can see on this table that there are significant changes to the preparing youth for success programming and safe communities.

This reflects the consolidation of programs into the new safe and thriving community division that we discussed just this morning.

Finally, I wanted to note that over the course of 2020, there were several increases to the adopted 2020 budget for HSD, primarily from state and federal grants to respond to COVID-19.

This resulted in a total 2020 revised budget of approximately $302 million, and this level of funding is not sustained in the 2021 proposed budget.

Next slide, please, Patty.

There are two changes in the proposed budget that I want to highlight for you today.

The first is the continuation or removal of programs supported by one-time funding.

The 2020 adopted budget included many investments that were funded with one year rather than ongoing funding.

The proposed budget continues 2.6 million in investments in some programs, such as continuing startup costs for the Mount Baker Resource Center, funding for the Seattle Helpline Coalition, and legal services for sexual assault survivors.

The proposed budget does not continue funding for some of the one-time investments.

Many of the investments were true one-time spending, such as capital funding for the Bill Hopson Comprehensive Clinic.

However, some reductions, like the substance use disorder treatment funding, was for ongoing operations.

If you want to see a full list of the investments and their status in the proposed 2021 budget, please see Table 2 on page 7 of today's memo.

Council may choose to restore funding for selected one-time budget appropriations or to take no action.

Next slide, please, Patty.

The second item I wanted to highlight is the elimination of seven positions at HSD, including four positions in the leadership and administration division, and three positions in the youth and family empowerment division.

As a reminder, this does not include positions eliminated in homelessness programming, which Jeff will discuss later today.

Table three in the HSD issue ID paper has additional information about the positions, including cost and whether they are vacant currently.

Council may choose to restore funding for one or more of these positions or take no actions.

Amy, on this slide here.

14 positions are being eliminated.

Can you quickly remind us how many are being transferred to the new Safe and Thriving Communities Division?

And you mentioned upcoming information about the Homelessness Authority, but can you mention on the 14, are any of them being transferred outright?

There are four positions that are related to the NAV team that are being repurposed for the Safe and Thriving Communities Division.

There's not any association between the positions or their funding or the people that are fulfilling those positions.

They are just being transferred to the new division.

We heard from HSD that they could have just as easily abrogated those positions and created four new positions.

But for simplicity, they decided to just transfer that to the new division.

And I'm sorry, what was the second component of your question?

So does that mean 10 positions are truly eliminated?

If four are going over.

No, the four, um, those four positions are not, um, included in the eliminated positions.

So it is 14 total positions.

Um, and Jeff can speak a little bit more to, um, which positions in the Homelessness Strategies and Investments Department are associated with that transfer to the King County Regional Authority.

I will say that two of the positions that are in the Leadership and Administration Division are being eliminated because they've because HSD says that their workload will be reduced with the new regional authority.

Thank you, Amy.

Let's pause here for one more second, just because this is a lot of information to absorb.

And Amy, correct me if I'm wrong.

The slides that you have just covered really do encompass pages one through eight of your memo.

Is that correct?

Yes.

OK, so if there were any questions that folks had about the base level understanding of how Human Services Department's budget is being proposed for 2021, or any of the investments that are highlighted beginning on page four through five.

Now is a great time to ask those questions just so we have that base level understanding before we go into budget-related legislation.

Okay.

I'm seeing none, Amy.

Very clear.

Okay.

If there are no questions on this slide, we'll move on to the next slide, please, Patty.

The next group of slides overviews four pieces of legislation that is related to budget changes that implement the HSD budget changes that we are discussing today.

The first is Council Bill 119910, which is the third quarter supplemental for 2020. This bill would increase appropriations in the Addressing Homelessness BSL by 3 million to support non-congregate shelter, which will be discussed by Jeff shortly.

The bill also increases appropriations in the promoting public health be a cell by $150,000 to support King County public health with a flu vaccination effort.

And then the 3rd thing that this council bill would do is increase appropriations in the preparing you for success be a cell by $250,000 to support the reentry work group strategies projects.

Just to clarify, these funds were appropriated previously and awarded in 2020, but were not included in the carry forward legislation.

So that is why it is in the third quarter supplemental.

But as I mentioned, those that funding has been awarded.

If there aren't any questions, I'll go on to the next piece of budget legislation.

Okay, next slide, please, Patty.

The next piece of budget legislation is Council Bill 119909, which is the third quarter grant acceptance ordinance, and it accepts the $3 million of ESG funding to support non-congregate shelter in 2020 that we...

Okay, next slide, please, Patty.

I'm sorry, I do have a question on number two here.

This is...

I have a question for you.

you know, pulling forward some of those dollars, let's just double it and say six million instead of three, we would just have three less to allocate in 2021. Is that accurate?

Yes.

Yes.

And we would need to make sure to increase the grant ordinance to reflect that for 2020.

Okay.

Um, and then very briefly still, On the, I'm not seeing it reflected on the slide here, but there's a note here about the 150,000 to support King County Public Health with flu vaccination efforts.

Yes, that's on the previous slide.

Okay, on the previous slide, then thank you.

One double check, given where we're at and the crisis that's in front of us, is there any holdup, or have those dollars already been allocated, or do we need to, and we're just sort of effectuating the check that's already been handed over, or is there a holdup right now that we need to move more quickly to get those dollars out the door?

I do not have the answer to that question, but I'm happy to follow up on that with you to find out the exact status of those funds.

Okay, thank you very much.

Okay, so I think we are actually on slide three or four.

Yes.

Thank you, Patty.

I'm sorry.

I have one more question.

No, that's okay.

About that 3 million from ESG.

As you can tell, this is an area that.

You may remember, it wasn't May or April where we were really trying to move dollars out the door for our hotels, motels, tiny house villages.

I can't even remember the alphabet soup of the fund source we were talking about at the time, but you will recall that this has been a conversation we've been trying to engage in in a very long time.

So yes, very happy to see dollars allocated for hotels and motels.

I wanna ask as well though, if we were to use any of that 26.5 million from ESG funds, Can it also be used for outreach efforts?

I'm going to let Jeff go into the detail about the potential uses of the ESG funding.

I know that we recently received new guidance from the federal government about how to use these ESG funds specifically, and it's different than the previous ESG funding that's been available.

And I would really hate to misspeak, About that, and so I'm going to let Jeff answer that if that is okay with you.

That sounds great.

Thanks Amy.

Okay.

Central staff, the recent guidance that we received most particularly, or this is what at the time I was focusing on is that it did allow for the use of funds to acquire facilities or.

or land for use for emergency shelter.

I don't have on fresh in my head what the permissible uses for ESG are.

Generally it's related to homelessness services.

So if it's okay, I'll follow up on that.

I might even be able to by the time we get to the homelessness topic paper.

Great.

And I see Ali as well.

Ali, anything else to add?

I just, I wanted to clarify with you Chair Mesquita, if you were asking about whether or not the ESG dollars could be used for outreach to help navigate people to these new beds, is that the, Is that the question?

Yeah.

Okay.

Um, I would just know I, we can follow up with whether or not the ESG funds specifically could be used for that purpose, but I do think the work, the, or the actions that council took in the budget revision ordinance, and then the revised legislation that was introduced on Monday related to, um, restricting certain funds already authorized for spending in I would say that HSD's budget is focused specifically on more funding for outreach and engagement, so you could think of this investment as also sort of supporting that additional outreach and engagement funding.

Okay.

Great.

Thank you.

And Council Member Harbold, I know you have some info as well.

Please go ahead.

Responding to your Chair Mosqueda's question about navigating people to these spaces, I know there is a conversation about how to how to create a placement process for these new spaces, moving people from living outdoors with whatever gets stood up to replace the nav team.

And I think that's a live conversation that's really important because it's my understanding that the intent is to open up this new space in December.

And so I know there's a lot of interest in the provider community with the folks who are currently doing outreach to unsheltered individuals, as well as those who will be doing more outreach to unsheltered individuals as we move towards I think it needs more conversation.

I think it needs more conversation.

And I just, I think that's really important discussion as well.

Without going into the policy or deviating from the conversations already happening, wondering how we can add to the outreach efforts and to make sure that 3 million, for example, isn't the cap here.

It's the example of where the dollar amount has been set by the proposed legislation.

So if there is a need for additional dollars, I think it would be helpful to know if we can, we could go there.

I just received confirmation that outreach, that the ESG dollars can be used for outreach.

So if there is a need, this could be used for that purpose.

Great.

And Council Member Herbold also let me know that the quarter three supplemental flu vaccine efforts are underway today.

Correct, Council Member Herbold?

That is correct.

Okay, so that question's been answered as well.

Thank you for letting me go down this line of questioning, colleagues, and I am seeing no other hands.

Amy, thank you for the opportunity to pause here for a second.

Absolutely, and thank you to Councilmember Herbold for fielding the flu vaccine question.

The third piece of legislation, which is on slide six, I believe, is Council Bill 119912, which is the recurring grant acceptance bill for 2021. It accepts a total of $140 million in recurring grant funds, $114 million of which support the HSD programs that we've been discussing in the presentation today.

Next slide, please.

Finally, there is Council Bill 119911, which is the Revised Jumpstart Appropriations Ordinance.

It includes $3 million appropriated to HSD to support ongoing service and operation costs of shelter providers.

Are there any additional questions about the budget legislation?

I am not seeing any questions, Amy.

And let me just pause real quick, folks, we got through nine pages of the budget memo in record speed here within 20 minutes.

So don't be shy if you do have questions before we get into issue identification.

All right, Amy.

Yeah, I do.

One thing that's a little bit different about the HSD budget is that I think there was a concerted effort to maintain or expand funding at HSD compared to a lot of other departments.

So which is good news.

And I think it like say there aren't quite as many cuts to discuss in the HSD budget.

So the final slides are the budget actions proposed by council members.

The first proposal is a duplicate of an action that was discussed this morning, related to diversion program reporting.

And unless there are any additional comments about that, I'll skip to the next proposal.

Okay.

The second proposal would restore $60,000 in funding to HSD for the age-friendly Seattle program, and it is proposed by Councilmember Herbold.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

And just a reminder for folks, we did discuss this, item number one, so we're not just skipping over it.

We definitely had a robust discussion, but we want to make sure that folks know if they were just tuning in this afternoon, a good conversation this morning as well.

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

So as it relates to the proposal to restore funding to Age-Friendly Seattle, the Age-Friendly team was formed following the closure of the Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens to develop and implement the Age-Friendly Seattle Action Plan.

This team handles implementation, oversight, and evaluation of an action plan to increase racial equity, reduce displacement, increase social participation and raise awareness about the challenges and opportunities that accompany Seattle's aging population.

The full budget for this programming is $540,000.

And so this cut amounts to 11% of their total budget.

If we vote to support this budget action, we would be restoring programming that would have been postponed, including creation of the online older adult memory loss training for staff and cornerstone in launch of the age-friendly business initiative.

the reduction would also impact printing outreach materials, translation, and interpretation for virtual and in-person visits.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I'll also note from that HealthONE ride-along, can't stop talking about it, that they noted how much isolation and what's the right term?

Elder neglect has increased, especially during COVID because there's fewer programs that are going in-person.

So I really appreciate you bringing this forward and talking about how it is still an appropriate program, even in this sort of online social distancing age, and perhaps even more important.

Let's go on to number three.

Okay.

The next proposal would add $100,000 for HSD to contract with a Native-led organization providing culturally appropriate services for the American Indian and Alaska Native community.

The funds would be used for preschool and the remainder would be used to support foster care parents.

And I just want to highlight that we're still working to find the appropriate department for these funds.

So the final proposal may not be an HSD, but it is sponsored by Council Member Juarez.

Excellent.

Council Member Juarez, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you for that great introduction, Amy.

This is regarding, as you all know, United Indians of All Tribes.

It's a social service provider for our urban Native community, a community center and cultural home for urban Indians since 1970, formerly Fort Lawton.

We, it has been under the leadership of the CEO, Dr. Michael Tooley of the Yakama Nation.

And so they have come to us and we've been working with United Indians for obviously, I have for decades.

So basically, some basic facts first.

Currently, 71% of American Indian Alaska Natives live in urban settings.

However, American Indians and Alaska Native experience disproportionately high rates of health disparities, including chronic disease, racism, poverty, and high barriers to education, as well as the highest level of police brutality.

United Indians have asked for $100,000 to support their efforts to continue providing services not just ongoing services, but services during the pandemic.

Of the 100,000, 67,000 would go towards supporting the Daybreak Star preschool program.

During this pandemic, families are experiencing greater unemployment, battling food insecurity, and struggling with remote learning for families with students.

Current state subsidies don't adequately fund program needs, and that is why I'm here today in support of United Indians.

Daybreak Star Preschool is the only indigenous run indigenous serving early learning program in Seattle.

The preschool program provides culturally appropriate activities and nutritious meals.

Families depend on United Indians to help their children develop cultural identity as they become kindergarten ready.

Unsurprisingly these same families cannot afford the cost of private child care.

United Indians are adding a third classroom just to respond to the need for a culturally responsive remote learning space for children with opportunities for outdoor play while families are at work.

They've designated this additional classroom for child care focused on children ages five to seven.

The remaining request for 33,000 would go towards their Indian Child Welfare Program, commonly referred to as ICWA.

For our Indian Child Welfare Program, we want to provide additional incentives to encourage families to become licensed and to support the child or children placed with them.

As I've shared before to this committee and throughout my life professionally and personally, Native American children have the highest rate of being put into foster care and adoption.

These efforts are intended to recruit additional foster homes so we can place Native children in Native homes and ensure that our homes remain licensed.

Historically, families end their licenses due to high burden of paperwork and training.

During this time of crisis, we are hoping to provide access to a child's cultural and tribal identity.

So supplemental funding would help us recruit and reach more families and caregivers and connect children to their heritage through an outreach campaign.

And I should add that our new first ever Native American Washington State Supreme Court Justice Raquel Moitoya Lewis penned one of the most well-written, ever reasoned, opinion regarding the Indian Child Welfare Act, and I would encourage my colleagues to take a look at it, because the historical perspective and the analysis of why it's important to have people in positions of power and authority that look like us, live like us, and have the same life experience can look at Anglo law and Western law and translate that into everyday policies of people that they are affecting, i.e.

Native American children and their families.

So thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Juarez.

Are there any questions on this item?

Low dollar amounts, but huge impact.

Thank you for flagging it for us, Council Member Juarez.

Chair Mosqueda?

Thank you.

May I make a comment?

Yes.

Is there a question?

Comment.

Oh, hello, Council President.

Yes, please go ahead.

Hi.

Sorry, I'm not using video today.

Amy, you mentioned as part of your introduction of item number three that some of these items may end up not being in HSD at the end of the day.

I think with regard to the Daybreak STAR preschool programming, I just want to say first off that I obviously support Continuing to support that that particular program.

I would also say that we got to make sure that we are running through the ordinary processes over at deal as it relates to our Feb levy funding.

That seems to me to be.

the most viable potential revenue source for that.

And so I just want to make sure that I go on record saying that I hope we are connecting with the deal on this particular proposal and getting their analysis on how this additional funding for daybreak will meet the standards and requirements of FEPP levy funding for the preschool program in particular.

Yes, thank you for highlighting that.

We received that exact feedback from HSD this morning and so that is the next step is reaching out to deal about that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

And yeah, that is a very helpful reminder, similar to our conversation yesterday about specific projects for SDOT, for example.

I want to make sure that it's being run through the prioritization rubric, but really appreciate the summary of where these dollars could potentially go in that impact.

I would also just really quickly, because because number four, I think, has a similar issue in terms of it being under HSD.

The FEPP levy did have some portions of it as authorized by the voters of the city of Seattle to allow for a specific amount of funding available for capital projects related to child care centers.

So I just want to also highlight that I think this one is additionally potentially miscategorized and would like to make sure that council central staff is going to So I think that's a great way to connect with DEEL about item number four as well.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

So preview of number four.

Let's do number four.

Amy?

Yes.

The fourth proposal would add 1.5 million in one-time funding for the development of a childcare center administered by a community-led organization providing culturally appropriate services for the Filipino community.

that we can continue to work with the sponsor, councilmember Morales.

Thank you.

So yeah, this is, as I'm sure we all know, the Filipino Community Center is in the midst of another project that will provide 96 units of senior housing, as well as an innovation learning center for young people.

This request would be to help fund the development of a child care center on a neighboring parcel.

And so just to Council President Gonzalez's point, we are working with the Filipino Community Center to identify what the right sources of funding might be at the city level, and then also working with them at the state level to see if we can help advocate for some state-level capital to finish this project up.

Well, to begin the project and make sure that we see it come to fruition so that they can provide some really desperately needed child care services in the neighborhood.

Thank you very much, Council Member Morales.

Just a quick question on this.

Given the current construction that's happening, when would it, is this, this is specific for capital projects, correct?

The, oh, go ahead, Council Member.

Yeah, it is, yeah.

So they have a parcel, there are several parcels in the area around the existing Filipino Community Center.

They have begun construction on one piece that they already own and are looking at a neighboring parcel that is for sale and the owner has indicated that they want to sell it to the Filipino Community Center for the purpose of this childcare facility and so they are beginning the process of trying to acquire it.

Great.

And we had chatted very briefly as well about trying to identify what level of state resources were going to be potentially available for this so that we have that bigger picture as well.

Great.

Okay.

No additional questions on this item.

Let's go to number five.

Okay.

The fifth proposal would transfer $1.4 million from Finance General to HSD to provide funding for the Seattle King County Public Health to contract with nonprofit community organizations to provide supervised consumption services.

This $1.4 million in funding was originally appropriated in the years 2018 and 2019, but has not yet been spent.

The proposal is sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

Councilmember Herbold.

Anything else to add to this?

Okay, we can come back to this if a customer has Oh, hi there.

Sorry, having problems with my mute buttons here.

Amy covered it.

Well, the council is long supported and appropriated funds for a chow.

These are locations where.

Narcotics can be consumed under supervision with access to key health and social services.

In the 2018 budget, the council approved $1.3 million for the shelves and added an additional $100,000 last year, both of which carried forward to 2020. Earlier this summer, as part of the 2020 rebalancing package, We took unanimous action to restore the additional 100,000 which had been inadvertently admitted.

There is a new approach from the approach that the council was considering in the past as it relates to CHELS, the Public Defender Association, ACLU of Washington.

have a child proposal that does not rely on establishing a specific new location, so it's not a bricks-and-mortar proposal anymore, to provide supervised consumption services.

Instead, it focuses on providing services in locations that are already serving these folks, and we had a briefing in my September 22nd Public Safety and Human Services Committee on this new approach.

to the Department of Health and the Department of Social Services.

I'm hoping we can take action to carry forward these funds as part of the quarter 4 supplemental.

And this action would transfer those carried forward funds in 2021 to HSD and express the Council's intent that the Department contract with public health to fund this

Council Member Herbold, I'm not seeing any questions.

Thank you for continuing to make sure that the funding that we have set aside now, how many years in a row?

three years in a row for this effort, at least is going to where we know the public health advocates and harm reduction folks want to see these dollars be used.

One other point I should make is that at my committee briefing, we actually did have public health represented at the table and they are also supportive of this new approach.

It aligns with the original recommendations.

Okay, great.

Not seeing any questions.

Thank you so much for including this.

Please go ahead, Amy.

The sixth proposal would restore funding to a total of $85,000 for HSD to contract with a nonprofit organization to conduct statewide lobbying and advocacy to restore contract funding to 2020 budgeted levels.

It is sponsored by Councilmember Morales.

Councilmember Morales.

Thank you.

Thank you, Amy.

So this is an important ongoing contract that has made a huge impact for Seattle and for our neighbors through the work that's been done on our behalf at the state level.

Just in the past three years, the funding for this advocate has increased TANF funding by 9%, 9.3%.

Extend to the support to families experiencing homelessness.

and to ease the harsh program sanction policies.

It's removed the shelter penalty in public benefits that lower grants to families that had access to no cost shelter.

It has reformed the state's legal financial obligation system that reduces interest, to reduce interest on criminal justice debt and helps previously incarcerated people reenter their communities.

I could go on.

There are so many things that, so many ways in which our community has benefited from this.

I think it is a really important and impactful use of a fairly small amount of resources that is having tremendous benefit for our neighbors.

And I hope my colleagues will agree.

Comments, colleagues?

Okay, Council Member Morales, I'm not seeing any at this time.

Item number seven.

The final proposal was accidentally omitted from the published presentation and issue ID paper.

We will update the record to reflect this proposal, which would allow HSD to extend its contract with community nonprofit organizations such as the Asian Counseling and Referral Services from 2020 into 2021. In 2020, HSD provided about $126,000 to ACRS to support programming with senior programming.

Due to social distancing, many of those funds could not be used.

And so this budget action would authorize the Human Services Department to allow ACRS to use 2020 funds in 2021. And it is sponsored by Council Member Salat.

Council Member Salat, please go ahead.

As Amy said, this proposal would authorize the Human Services Department to extend its contracts with community nonprofit organizations such as ACRS, which is the Asian Counseling and Referral Services, for congregate meals and community activities from 2020 to 2021. ACRS acts as a fiscal sponsor for nine senior programs, the Vietnamese Senior Association, Lao Senior Association, Hmong Senior Association, Seattle Korean Elder Association, Korean Senior Club, Duok Su Temple, Kent Bhutanese Group, Samoan Wellness Group, and Club Bamboo.

In 2020, HSD provided, as Amy said, $126,000 to ACRS to support congregate meals and certain cultural activities for the seniors served by these programs.

but those funds could not be used, so we want to make sure that the funds can be carried over to 2021 use.

I've had the honor of attending events organized by the Vietnamese Senior Association multiple times, which is one of the nine senior organizations funded by ACRS, and it's obvious that it's an incredibly important service.

for seniors to prevent isolation and depression, promote mental wellness, and stay connected to their communities, in addition to funding vital needs like access to meals and also transit.

So they're anxiously looking forward to restart congregate meals and activities once it's safe to do so.

And they hope that at some point next year that will become possible.

So this budget item would authorize the department to allow ACRS to use the 2020 funds in 2021.

Okay, colleagues, as a reminder, this morning I mentioned there was an item that was inadvertently left off of our memo and slides.

So this is that item.

If you haven't had a chance to yet review it, let us know right now if you have any questions that you'd like to raise.

Questions, colleagues?

Okay, and Council Member Swann, having worked my first job at CMR Community Health Centers in the Senior Information and Assistance Program, where I ran many of the information and assistance meal programs at various senior centers.

I know that this is, it sounds similar to the programs that the AAA runs, Area Agency on Aging.

How is this tied in with that bigger program?

No doubt that they are tied in in the sense that they provide similar services because these are age-appropriate services.

I don't know specifics.

I'm happy to look into it.

One thing I will say just from having observed especially the Vietnamese organizing from up close is that these are very I mean, part of what they offer, which really helps the community members, is that they are very ethnically appropriate and culturally appropriate services.

And so that's why ACRS works with many of these specific community organizations, but they all together benefit one another.

Yes, please go ahead, Amy.

I'll just mention that HSD acts as the area agency on aging and disability services for King County.

So when these are funded through HSD, it is through that entity.

And we serve in that capacity, or HSD serves in that capacity for the entirety of King County, which is why you see programs, for example, the Kent Bootenese group, So sometimes the funding through there goes countywide as well.

Great, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I would just like to understand a little bit more logistically.

about what it means that the dollars were not used in 2026. Does that mean that those dollars will carry forward in a carry-forward ordinance, or were they just used for something else in the 2021 proposed budget?

I need to confirm exactly what happened in 2020, but what we're hearing from Councilmember Sawant is that those funds were not able to be used in 2020. And so, yeah, I need to work out what exactly the mechanism is to make sure that those funds are available in 2021. And I don't yet know if that is carried forward or in addition in 2021.

Thank you.

I just want to signal my support for this budget action.

Thank you for doing that.

Council members,

Thank you.

Thank you, Amy, for providing the clarification, and thank you, Council Member Herbold, for your support.

So just to clarify, what we know is that the funds have not been used yet, but I really would appreciate Amy working with my office, continuing to work with my office on that.

And what we know is that ACRS did ask HSD if they could just simply just do a carry forward of the funds which were not used, but the department have declined to do that.

And so that's why we brought this amendment forward.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And thanks to CentralSoft for working in this slide here today.

We appreciate that.

I think that that brings us to the end of our Human Services Department overview.

Again, I'm not seeing any questions.

Thanks, Amy, for walking us through this presentation along with Jeff and Allie.

We do appreciate the full memo.

And if folks have questions about anything in the base proposal as transmitted by the mayor, please do make sure to reach out and ask those questions.

And you're free to ask them now, too.

OK, not seeing any hands go up.

Amy, thanks.

Jeff, thank you so much.

And we're going to move on to item number three.

Madam Clerk, could you please read item number three into the record?

Agenda item three.

Homelessness response for briefing and discussion.

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you so much.

I am just going to turn it over to Jeff here.

I see you off of mute.

I can't find my script right away.

Maybe you can let us know who all is involved in this presentation here today.

I see Brian Goodnight's name on the presentation, but we'll hand it over to you first and you can walk us through the presentation on homelessness response.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Jeff Sims, Council Central staff, and I'll be joined by Brian Goodnight to discuss some investments related to homelessness that are in Seattle Public Utilities.

I think it'll mostly just be the two of us, though.

We have some other central staffers ready to chime in if necessary.

So to begin with, you'll see that there is about a $47 million increase in, sorry, $42 million increase in homelessness response services throughout the entire city.

And that's covering every department, not just HSD.

Can you advance the slide for me?

Thank you.

But I will focus in first on HSD, just because it's difficult to see every single city department all at once.

So as you look through here, there's a number of places where you see that there are some reductions.

The primary one that I want to focus on, where you look at Line G outreach, That is primarily, I've talked to HSD about this, it's actually primarily the shifting of budget items, not actually reduction to outreach contracts.

So if you take what was provided in 2020, the majority of those contracts are getting their contract inflation.

The increases that are provided by the council as a result of this summer's budget actions, are not maintained, but you don't see those either in the 2020 adopted or in 2021 proposed.

However, there's not a major increase there.

It's just a reshuffling of things as HSD gets ready to transfer contracts this summer or sometime this year to the new regional authority on homelessness, and that causes a few places where you'll see some budget audits.

Then if you go to the next slide, you can see the remainder of the departments, and then HSD is just rolled into one line here.

seeing how things are generally handled.

The primary thing, which Brian will be talking about, is where the Department of Finance and Administrative Services, there is a contract that has supported the navigation team and that is being moved to Seattle Public Utilities, which is the primary change that you see here.

But otherwise, you see an overall increase in homelessness spending across all city departments.

And as you'll see in just a moment on the upcoming slides, the vast majority of that is one-time funding related to the COVID response to expand services for people that are experiencing unsheltered homes.

So with that, the next slide, please.

This is a breakdown then of the primary changes that are going on in HSD.

As I mentioned, there's a lot of shuffling of budget programs as we really get ready for the accounting pieces that need to make creating original authority possible.

But there are some major additions and the executive's presentations talked about a lot of these.

The first is the is utilizing one-time federal funding, ESG funding in this case, to acquire hotel rooms and provide the supportive services that would go with them as non-congregate shelter options for people that are experiencing unsheltered homelessness.

The second is similar.

It's also ESG funding, and so it's one-time funds again.

And in this case, it's almost $9 million for an increase of rapid rehousing That's assuming about 10 months of services for those for the people that would be served.

I'm sorry to get the wrong line there.

That's assuming about 230 households would be served by a rapid rehousing assistance, which is kind of like a shallow subsidy, allowing families to quickly reenter or households to quickly reenter into housing and become self sufficient.

The next line is maintaining or expanding rental assistance programs.

This is $8 million for that.

Again, one-time ESG funding for that purpose.

After that, you'll see the line COVID modifications and de-intensification of shelters is almost $6 million.

This is a tricky one to follow, because if you've been really in the weeds, you'll recall, council members, that over the last year, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was about $5.8, $5.7 million that was spent to open up some additional shelter spaces and allow people in some of our congregate shelters to move into another location.

So it's still all congregate facilities, but they're spaced out more.

This is like the Miller Community Center, the people that were in Fisher Pavilion at the Seattle Center.

And that money, as we go forward, that de-intensification, we're going to slowly see while moving back into their original shelters.

And the reason that was possible is because in addition, as the council members are aware, there was a large amount of money distributed as a funding announcement to providers to reimburse them for costs that they had incurred, PPE, in order to continue their operations in response to the pandemic, but also to support the programmatic changes that some of these providers had to do in order to be able to have their normal number of clients present in those shelters more safely, given what's going on with the pandemic.

And so this $5.8 million is really kind of a merger of those two amounts to allow HSD to move forward, or I should say our contracting providers, to move forward with providing services with those modifications and continuing to support some of those emergency costs that they've had to have.

That was kind of complicated, so I'll pause and see if we've got any questions so far.

Not seeing any hands at this moment Jeff.

Okay.

The new enhanced shelter is one of the places where we are seeing HSD receive increased ongoing funding and so this is not ESG funds.

This would be funding for a new enhanced shelter.

A variety of facilities are being examined for that.

There's an estimate that it would be 125 units potentially but that could vary of course when you come down to the facilities and operations things like that.

Then you'll see some continuing one-time funding changes.

And actually, if you look at that last line, which looks like a large reduction, there are some budgetary changes there, things that were added over the last two years, either by the council or the mayor that may have just been given as a pilot program or as a one-time funding allotment to test a model or a service type.

$1.5 million is being spent to maintain a lot of those.

Some good examples of that, The outreach to the mental health out workers that I believe are actually operating in conjunction with the BIAs in the University District in Ballard, which is something that the Council has provided over many years, that's being provided one-time funding, and a lot of the other additions that the Council made last year as well.

The primary item that there was one that was highlighted as being moved into the Urban League contract with the South Lawn Mitigation Project And that as HSD presented last week is actually the Urban League is the fiscal agent for that contract.

And that contract is set up in a way that it's able to absorb those activities going forward.

And so they are not maintaining a separate funding line funding line for the Schofield mitigation project.

And so that's the one-time funded projects.

And then last is a diversion increase or an increase of the homelessness diversion.

This as with the ones I started with is one-time funding through ESG.

allowing us to serve, I believe I mistakenly put 230 families.

It should be 130 families in our memo that are currently experiencing homelessness.

So hopefully helping them to avoid a long stint experiencing homelessness.

I'm sorry, did I interrupt you on this slide?

Okay.

I believe I just want to check to see Council Member Strauss had a question.

I saw him pop in.

And Ali, did you have a piece for clarification as well?

Okay, no question from Councilmember Strauss.

No clarification from Allie.

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I'm sorry.

Could we go back to slide one?

One more, I think, right?

Yeah, there we go.

As it relates to outreach, I'm confused as to why it shows a 14.3% reduction.

and you may have already addressed this, but given that the council allocated 1.4 million additionally for outreach as part of a navigation team changes, maybe that just wasn't captured because of the lateness of that action as compared to when this budget was released, but just not understanding that line there.

Sure, so the first column, 2020 adopted, it would actually precede the action that the council took over the summer.

So none of the additional funds that the council provided is actually reflected in that $10.9 million as the 2020 amount.

Instead, that would be, if I had another column in here that showed the 2020 supplemental, for example, that's when you'd see that.

All right, super.

Thank you.

Did I miss another piece of the question.

No.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

Then I think that I'm going to turn it over to Brian then.

He's going to walk through the changes in Seattle Public Utilities related to homelessness.

Thank you, Jeff.

Good afternoon, Council Members.

Brian Goodnight, Council Central staff.

So Seattle Public Utilities, or SPU, their 2021 proposed budget includes approximately $9.6 million of appropriations for programs that are related to homelessness, a significant increase over the $1.8 million in the 2020 adopted budget.

As can be seen in the table on slide four, and if you're looking at the memo, it's on page four.

The increase is primarily attributable to the new public hygiene program and to the transfer of a cleanup contract.

So the public hygiene program began earlier this year in response to the public health emergency.

And as you've heard previously, it provides hygiene stations, which are the portable toilets and the hand washing units, and shower trailers for unsheltered individuals.

SPU currently has 15 hygiene stations deployed throughout the city and has shower trailers located at three sites.

So the proposed budget would appropriate approximately $6.3 million to continue the program with a similar level of service in 2021. The other item that's new to SPU and that accounts for a large portion of the increase relative to 2020 is the transfer of the $1.3 million contract from FAS.

The contract provides for encampment collection, or sorry, encampment trash collection in areas that present safety challenges for city staff or require specialized equipment.

And again, the services provided under that contract are not expected to change in 2021 relative to 2020. And then there are four other programs that are shown on the table, the encampment trash, also known as the purple bag program, litter abatement, RV remediation and sharps collection.

And all of those are also proposed to continue providing the same level of service in 2021 as they are in 2020, and they do receive relatively small inflationary type increases.

The one note about that is that of the programs, you can see that the RV remediation program actually shows the largest increase at $82,000.

But $57,000 of that increase is funding that was previously included in SDOT's budget and doesn't represent a true increase in the program's cost.

So in 2021, those funds will be used by SPU to pay SDOT for its continued participation in the program.

And if there are no questions, I'll, okay, see a question.

Thank you.

As it relates to the 2020 adopted, I'm seeing that there's a zero on the public hygiene column.

And that might be true as it relates to the Seattle Public Utilities.

Department, because I can't remember where we put the money, but we actually started the funding for the hygiene trailers before the pandemic, right?

We included funding for them last year.

and I'm not remembering what the dollar amount was.

I think it was like $1.4 million.

But it seems like that should be reflected.

The other piece of public hygiene that was started last year, again, before the pandemic, in response to COVID-19, city auditor recommendations that the council had the privilege of seeing before the audit was released in February relate specifically to SPU's RV pumpout program, which is just a, they've, public utilities has done a fantastic job of piloting this program where they actually take a pump-out truck to RV locations.

And they're doing many more this year than they anticipated doing.

And now they're piloting an actual location where people can, who have RVs that are drivable, that they can actually drive to the pump-out location.

I just, I feel like the 2020 adopted column doesn't fully capture the investments that the council made in the 2020 budget, maybe because they're in another place, but just want that reflected for the record that this council has really worked hard, again, before the pandemic to support HSD and Seattle Public Utilities on these programs.

Thank you, Council Member.

You're absolutely right.

I'll let Jeff respond to the amount if he knows it for the public hygiene, the mobile pit stops that was added last year.

You're absolutely correct.

The RV pump out, I think that's just my oversight.

You're right.

That should have been included in this.

The 2021 amount is $195,000 that SPU does have.

I would have to look back to find the number from last year, but it is similar to that amount.

So you're absolutely right.

Thank you.

And then regarding the multiple pit stops that the Council added last year during the budget, I believe it was about 1.3, like 1262, something like that.

I can get that number if needed.

That actually, if you go back to the HSD table, it's broken down.

You'll see a line that has, sadly, it's not broken down the way I'd love it to be, but it's hygiene, shelter, and day services all rolled into one line.

And because of that, it just doesn't show very adequately that the council provided that increase, because then when you take in contract inflation, things shuffling around, it's just not a very visible number.

But you're absolutely right, that is included still in the 2020 adopted amount for HSD.

Thank you, and just trying to remember what we heard from Director Hara when we asked the question.

I recall she said that those dollars provided by the council in 2020 for mobile pit stops were not used because we ended up using FEMA dollars, but that they, that SPU still intends to use them for new mobile hygiene services.

So I'm not sure if they're doing new mobile hygiene services.

There is a transfer from HSD to SPU in the budget.

It's $850,000, which is that funding.

It's a portion of the funding that was provided in 2020 to support it, but that amount is part of the $6.3 million that's reflected in the slide.

So it's not in addition to the $6.3 million.

Right, but it also doesn't sound like it's transferring over the full 1.3.

It sounds like, did you say they're transferring 600,000?

I believe it's about 830 or $840,000.

We'd have to check on the rest of the amount, but there is a difference there, yes.

Great, and if somebody could also confirm my recollection that they're working on actually fabric doing like a, a made-for-Seattle fabrication of these trailers.

I remember also hearing Deputy Mayor Sixkiller talk about this because he was wanting to correct my mischaracterization of the council's action that we did not include showers in what we were envisioning, and what they're building does include showers, which is fantastic.

Yes, I can confirm that they are building and purchasing to kind of specialize, as you said, shower trailers.

Can you also remind me, I thought that we did hygiene centers the year before that as well.

In twenty eighteen.

I have to go back and look at that council member, I don't recall actually wasn't even covering these investments at that point.

I think that there is an expansion of hygiene services, but I don't know that, I don't believe that we are funding mobile pit stops in that situation.

Council Member Herbold, you might have a better recollection.

That's correct.

I think previous council investments were really focused on funding hygiene services at locations like the Urban Rest Stop.

and hygiene services provided other compass, other community-based operations for homeless people.

Thank you.

Council Member Peterson, did you have something on this?

I'd be frozen.

Okay, Allie, did you have anything?

Yeah, I just wanted to know, um, we can verify, uh, chair mosquito and cuts number herbal, but I, I think that some, um, with, uh, FEMA supported investments, there is a city match.

And so some of the funds that were authorized in the 2020 proposed budget would likely have been used to, um, cover the 25% match that is required by the city, but we will follow up to confirm.

Great, thank you.

And I think we have Council Member Peterson back with us.

Council Member Peterson, did you have anything?

No, okay.

Great.

I had a quick question regarding the federal funds.

Let's see, pages two and three, prior to the SPU walkthrough, just want to confirm on the dollars that we are using that are either federal COVID, ESG, CDBG, There's no time limit in which we have to spend these dollars.

Is that accurate?

On the ESG funds?

Is that what you're asking?

Well, leasing hotel rooms, we're using federal COVID.

On rapid rehousing, we're using ESG.

de-intensification or using CDBG?

Are there any timeframes associated with any of these revenue streams?

I don't recall all of them off the top of my head.

They're not exactly the same.

For example, ESG, I believe, can go into 2022. I would have to double check to make sure that's correct.

Allie's nodding, so I must have got it right.

And I don't recall the end date for CDBG.

And then, obviously, the joint COVID funds, that's something with the city-generated revenue.

Sorry, the one I'm looking at is the leasing hotel rooms, which is one time federal COVID release.

Yeah, and so yeah, so that would be correct.

That does not.

That would be the funds that could extend until 2022, because it's emergency solutions grant, OK?

Alright, I think we got through half of this memo.

Let's get a third of this memo.

Let's get into issue identification.

Sure, there's a there's two identity items that central staff is flagged for as issues.

As council members are all aware, over this summer, during supplemental budget actions, the council redirected funding for the navigation team to provide it to outreach for unsheltered encampments rather than for the navigation team itself.

And the 2021 proposed budget restores a team that is similar in nature to the navigation team.

It's smaller.

The executive noted that it does not include police on that team.

It's only eight members.

Nevertheless, it is returned into existence and some flagging that for council members attention.

The one additional function that would be added there or a stronger focus of that team would be the coordination of shelter of emergency shelter and tiny home village availability for all outreach agencies.

There are a certain number of beds that are reserved for the navigation team or that give priority to a navigation team referral over some other agency providing the referral.

And so that centralized function would support all of the outreach agencies in having access to those programs and getting them filled together.

It's just primarily we're noting that that is restored.

And there seem to be four different options that council members could take in response to that change in the 2021 budget.

First could obviously be to not provide funds for that new team to respond to encampments similar to the action in 2020 supplemental budget.

We could, the funds that were redirected Therefore, because of the 2021 proposed budget makes this new team, you don't see a maintaining of that redirected funds.

So instead of there being a bump up for contracted homelessness outreach, for example, it's staying flat with what had already been provided.

So the council could choose to restore that bump up that was provided halfway through this year.

And then third, the council could, well, could impose a proviso on the funding for this unsheltered outreach and response team for a variety of activities, which could include something along the lines of defining when a removal could occur or adjusting the rules that guide when such a team would be engaged in a cleanup or how they would engage with people that are experiencing unsheltered homelessness, something along those lines.

And then clearly the council could choose just not to take an action at all.

Are there any questions on that step?

Any questions colleagues?

Seeing none.

Okay let's move on to item number two then.

I'm sorry Jeff I will just note.

that this is obviously the point of discussion right now given the bills that were introduced for 2020 there's still a question about what do we want 2021 to look like so I just want folks to know that just because it was put forward does not mean that and and there's no discussion right now does not mean that the council is moving forward with the proposal for 2021 as is given the ongoing conversations about what 2020 will look like and soon to the future conversations about 2021, which you will see also reflected in various proposals that we'll be discussing later, if that's accurate.

Council colleagues, anything to add to that?

Councilmember Morales?

I see that option C would be an opportunity to align the outcome of the conversations that are happening right now with the bill that Councilmember Lewis has

Thank you.

And yes, as you indicated, Chair Mosqueda, when we get to council member actions, I will be going through a proposal that we will be introducing for what 2021 would look like and to try to put in place for the future some of the things that we have recently reached agreement with the executive.

We will look forward to that conversation about 2021. Thank you very much, Jeff.

We are on page six of the memo for folks following along with that central staff document.

Yes, the page six is the second issue identification piece.

This is related to the resources that would be given to the new King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

As you might have noticed in the very first slide that I had out, there is a decrease in HSD staffing and administration.

And council members will recall that in creating the Regional Homelessness Authority the the interlocal agreement says that the Seattle would provide the same funding budgeted basically that was budgeted at that time in HSD for homeless services contracts and related administrative expenses.

Those contracts were understood and actually it was greatly discussed not to include capital funding for affordable housing the health care for the homeless in this contract.

HOPWA, which is a federally supported program, housing for people with AIDS, and also the navigation team, or in this case, as proposed in the 2020 budget, the unsheltered outreach and response team.

But generally speaking, the majority of homelessness contracts are intended to move to the KCRHA and the associated administrative dollars to manage those contracts also moving.

And then the county would be doing the same.

So you'd have a certain amount of administrative funds that would not be, we're not talking one-to-one here, but there would be some pot of funds then that had been used for administration with the county and the city that the KCRHA could operate and have its funding work.

And the 2021 proposed budget actually takes a variety of steps that decrease that overall amount of funding while still planning to transfer it to the regional authority.

And so in totality, there would be, could potentially be an impact on the funds that the regional authority would have to operate.

There is 6 FTE that are entirely eliminated from the division that manages these contracts.

There's 2 more that are transferred to a new division along with the associated funding.

There is a little bit more than $400,000 in assumed efficiencies that would occur so that funding is cut.

There's another 4 current FTE that would be retained rather than transferred according to what's proposed.

And so in totality, that's a fair amount of funding that is being changed or perhaps wouldn't be available for the regional authority.

The council will have a chance when it comes time for the supplemental budget to look at what gets transferred.

That would be when positions get abrogated and funding is, some of the funding changes are actually made.

But we are setting up a dynamic where in 2021, there'd be a certain degree of less administrative funding for the authority.

And so flagging that for the awareness of council members and noting primarily the options there are to identify some kind of funding.

Last year, for example, had some initial startup funding that is not provided in the 2021 budget, or also just taking no action and deferring to what has been proposed so far in terms of providing staffing and resources for the authority.

Thank you very much.

Council President and Council Member Lewis, as members of the committee, is there anything else to add to this for context before we take questions?

I'm happy to just chime in really quickly.

I do have a form a that I submitted.

So I think there'll be an opportunity for me to add a little bit more texture then.

So I'm happy to hold my comments until then.

But I think that.

Jeff welcome back has appropriately identified what the issues are and really appreciate that additional texture.

And I have a form a that.

We'll continue to keep this item on the front burner so that we can consider what we want to do in 2021, given the delay in the implementation of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

And happy to talk a little bit more once my issue form A comes up.

Thank you.

Great.

We will look forward to hearing more then.

Anything else Council Member Lewis for context?

I don't have anything to add to Jeff's presentation, but as we go through the other issue identification, I may weigh in.

Excellent.

All right, Jeff.

I'm not seeing any hands at this moment.

I will just note that there's a lot of concern from the folks that I have been in touch with within the contracting department who work closely with homeless service providers who I think have a lot of uncertainty as to when their positions would transfer over.

And as the, I think full council underscored in our earlier comments about the desire to see the regional homelessness authority stood up, It cannot come soon enough.

And I know that our good representatives on the body are making that call as well.

We do need to have a strong leadership at the helm in order to make sure that it's successful so we understand the delay.

But just wanted to underscore the importance of supporting those frontline providers and the folks working in our contract offices within HSD in order for them to feel that sense of security and stability and knowing where they're going to be transferred to.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

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Yes, so these are categorized into groups because sometimes there is a fair amount of overlap.

So the first section of these is related to tiny home villages, and the first proposal comes from Councilmember Lewis, making an ad of $10.9 million for the creation of 300 additional tiny home beds.

and which includes both one time and ongoing costs.

And I'll note that this could be the addition or provising certain funds in order to use those funds for something different than what is proposed in the 2021 budget.

Council Member, and I'll defer to Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Jeff.

And, you know, I also want to thank Councilmember Swann, who has ostensibly made the same request worded differently for item four, which we will get to later and would, you know, certainly in, In working through all of these, I think there's a consensus here that tiny house villages are one of the most conspicuously absent interventions or shelter options, I should say, from the initial proposal that we have received from the executive.

And we know from a lot of our grappling with additive shelter, You know, this is something that has a very high rate of acceptance, very high track record of success, and something that we certainly should have more of.

You know, from my conversations with folks who, in the provider community, with folks on the navigation team, with folks in HSD, you know, I mean, they have indicated to me that 300 additional tiny home beds would make a colossal difference.

which would increase the entire system to 600 total beds, or a little over 600 total beds, in terms of getting folks through that transitional shelter into permanent supportive housing by transferring the bottleneck more from the unsanctioned encampments and two tiny home villages where I think all of us can agree that that is just a much better place for people to be than on sanctioned encampments.

So the 300 tiny home placements is a number that my office came up with in consultation with a broad array of different stakeholders.

and being a number that would make a very material difference, and would certainly like to see if there's ways that we can get a little closer to a number that's that high.

And I'll leave it at that for now, but just want to make sure that additive tiny house villages are a part of the budget that we ultimately pass.

Even if not, it's ultimately being 300. More of them is something we need to be putting forward.

Thank you very much, Council Member Lewis.

And as a reminder, Jeff, could you remind us how many tiny house villages were authorized last year?

By last year, do you mean in the 2020 adopted budget?

Yes.

Two more, actually.

So for a total of almost 100 new beds last year.

And has the executive moved forward with implementing those?

Yes.

The the COVID pandemic prompted some rapid response to some of that in fact.

And so you have TC Spirit Village on Capitol Hill that was opened.

The addition of funds we council gave flexibility so that an existing tiny home village could be expanded rather than a completely new one being open.

That was done at Lake Union Village to add some spaces.

And then the council also gave the executive flexibility, acknowledging that sometimes the facilities that become available or the land that's available might not be suitable for a tiny home, but might be suitable for an enhanced shelter.

And in this case, a facility that was very useful for an enhanced shelter was opened up.

And that is Lakefront House, which is in North Seattle, I believe in the, I want to say near Bitter Lake, but Council Member Juarez probably knows better than me.

Okay, I don't hear her jumping in, but thank you for that overview.

And the other question that I had was the name of the tiny house village that was being threatened with shutting down, remind me of the name of that one.

Northlake Village.

Northlake Village, and that was not shut down.

Correct.

At this point, Northlake Village has been allowed to continue in operations.

I actually am not familiar with the latest status of their agreements that I believe that they are not, I believe that they were given a formal written notification that allowed them to stay for a certain period of time.

And I understand that they were allowed to extend past that because of the continuing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I do not know what written communications have been provided to that village.

Council Member Sawant, did you have an update on that?

From what I recall, they were allowed, I think, to the end of the year.

I don't know specifically if that was a written commitment or not.

I will say, though, that, unfortunately, the HSD under the mayor's office has had a track record of also going back on some of their written word, and it was actually credit to the North Lake residents themselves and the whole community that supports them.

They were able to push back on the mayor's effort attempt to close it down.

But yeah, I think as far as I know, it's till the end of the year and we know the covid crisis not ending at that time.

So we need to make sure it stays intact.

Thank you so much.

I'm sorry to use this as a springboard for that broader conversation.

I probably should have asked it in your base presentation, Jeff.

But can you remind us just specific to the North Lake Village?

Is there any reference to that in the mayor's proposed budget in terms of assuring that there's dollars to continue in 2021?

The they're not fun.

Last year, for example, there was funds provided to relocate and rank down that village and there was a reference to that.

I have not located anything along those lines in this year's budget.

Or for maintaining council.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off or for maintaining.

Apologies, I've only been back for a couple of days and I'm not.

I'm not that well-versed in the tiny home village funding to be absolutely certain, but I don't recall there being changes to that.

I would prefer to double check and get back to you though.

Okay, no problem.

Council Member Swat, did you have something to add?

Yes, not like is not being funded by the city, which was another really problematic reason why it was not acceptable that the mayor was trying to shut it down because it was not a budgetary question.

They just want the right to be there or have the ability to move to another safe location.

And then, of course, it'll be a question of helping them with the resources to move.

But in 2020, we repurposed the funds that were proposed to be used to remove them.

So, in other words, dismantling a tiny house village is not a good use of funds right now anyway.

Right, thank you for that.

And so that's a helpful reminder.

The North Lake Village is not listed in the tiny home section because it's not actually asking for a dollar.

It's asking for permission to be there or to not be kicked out from there.

Is that accurate Council Member Sawant?

Yes.

Okay, thank you for that background folks.

That gets us through item one in tiny house villages.

Let's go to the U District tiny home village.

Sure, this proposal would add $1.65 million, including startup and one-year operational costs for a tiny home village on land that the actual location for this has been identified already.

It's land that's owned by Sound Transit.

It's in the University District.

And because of that, this would actually be a temporary tiny home village, from what I understand.

And this is proposed by Council Member Peterson.

Wonderful.

Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jeff, for that overview.

So, yes, this is a location that Sound Transit used for staging area for the Brooklyn Avenue Sound Transit station from Sound Transit 2 that's going to be opening up next year.

and they will be building affordable housing on this site.

In the meantime, it can be available to actually add capacity.

We are seeing a lot more people experiencing homelessness in our district, in that area of Seattle, in the parks along I-5.

This would help to bring folks from those unsafe areas to an organized tiny home village under a performance-based contract with the human services department with case managers to help exit as many people as possible to more permanent housing solutions.

So because of the COVID pandemic and the need for additional spacing, we really want to add capacity.

This would just set aside money within the existing 2021 proposal, and I was trying to work to find a location and have done so.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Peterson.

Any questions on this?

Yeah, Madam Chair, I have a question I think might be for central staff.

So do we know, is there any consideration given this site?

And I do want to thank Council Member Peterson for proactively working with Lehigh and Sound Transit to secure this site.

And I'm familiar with the site.

It's in a great location and would make a great location for a tiny house village.

Do we know if these estimates on startup costs are impacted at all based on the nature of the site?

Could that possibly change the estimate to go lower or higher?

Because I know it's a pretty accessible and tidy area that SDOT has been using, as Council Member Peterson said, throughout the pendency of the sound transit projects in the U district and would wonder if that might have an impact in how expediently and affordably the startup could be put together.

But I wonder if there might be a way to work on quantifying that or if we'd have to wait till sometime next year to see if it ended up costing less than we thought it might.

Councilmember Peterson, it looked like you were going to chime in.

Do you want me to say anything?

Yeah.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

So these cost estimates, I actually, I think we got from central staff a few months ago as we were talking about expanding tiny home villages.

So it would be great if the cost came in lower.

I just wanted to provide as much transparency and detail as possible on this.

I can add a little bit more than I, as council members know, I wasn't on, I was on parental leave for the last couple months, but typically, and it's been reaffirmed that we still are using roughly the same estimates.

We assume $600,000 in startup costs and $900,000 a year for operations, but that 600 can vary very widely.

Even with the recent expansions, we saw that there was tremendous variation between the sites.

It all depends on the specifics of the location and I don't have any information from HSD at this point on the costs unique to that location.

I'm not sure if they've actually done that work themselves, since it's not a proposal that they had already come forward with.

But it seems likely that there would be that we, like, as we do some number of tiny home villages, regardless of which of these proposals, that our startup costs will vary.

I appreciate that, Jeff.

Thank you.

Okay, seeing no additional comments, let's move on to number three.

The third proposal is to provide $535,000 for the opening of two self-managed tiny home villages that would provide a total of 60 beds and would also provide, the funds would also support the residents of North Lake Village in moving to those locations.

And this was proposed by Council Member Morales.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you so I figured I would just wait till we got to this to before interrupting earlier.

So the North Lake village residents are interested in moving.

They're obviously having trouble securing their current location.

So I'm asking council colleagues to fund this form of shelter.

I've asked this in the past.

But we're bringing this form A to respond to the needs of these community members.

They've expressed a desire to live in a self-managed village.

And so this small amount of funding would allow what is already a self-managed village to relocate.

and for two others to be stood up as well.

It's a smaller number of total units than some of the other proposals, but it provides another option for unhoused folks to move into a safe non-congregate shelter and to be surrounded by the community members that they are already living with.

Questions, colleagues?

Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I'm just wondering if there is a location in mind for that.

My understanding is that they would like to come to D2.

OK.

Thank you.

We would welcome.

Madam Chair, may I add?

Yes, please.

Sorry, I was on mute.

Please go ahead.

So in the, as Council Member Morales noted, 535,000 is different than what we typically would budget.

The numbers that I cited just a moment ago, 600,000, 900,000, that presumes a size of 40 units per village.

And so, again, that would vary based on the number of units you could have.

And given I don't have information, those are all numbers that relate to an agency operating and providing the services, like case management services and housing navigation, things like that.

for the residents of that village.

And so a self-managed tiny home would likely have different costs that are incurred.

While in the interim from our earlier discussion about Northlake Village, HSD confirmed that Northlake has a month-to-month contract with Seattle City Light right now to remain on the property.

And the city is currently paying for the power, water, and sewer services at this site, but not other services at this point.

Any other questions, folks?

Thank you very much, Council Member Morales.

And I'm glad that the question I asked earlier helped prompt our conversation on this item here.

Appreciate you flagging that the interest is also in location in D2.

Number four.

This proposal is similar to, as Council Member Lewis noted, to an earlier proposal.

In this case, it would add $11.2 million to establish eight new tiny home villages, similar to what we've talked about The agency or operated ones consistent with what are mostly in operation now that the initial startup usually around 600,000 and then 900,000 operations for about 40 units.

But this proposal also has a second tier of villages that would be self-managed.

So to some degree, overlapping with proposal number three that we just discussed, that would be two new self-managed, or an allotment of funds, I should say, because sizes can vary, of funds for self-managed encampments that would not have an agency such as Lehigh operating it, but it would be the residents that are managing the sanctioned encampment.

This was proposed by Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

So just on in the outset, I wanted to say that I'd be happy to work with Council Members Lewis and Morales and also Peterson to submit a joint form B.

In reality, the proposal we have from my office is really a combination of what has been put forward by Councilmember Lewis and Councilmember Morales.

The item number three is concerned adding money to the HSD budget to support residents in self-managed tiny home villages.

I mean, that kind of fund would also be useful for something like density three, which is right now in district three on the property of a very supportive homeowner.

in the central district.

So this proposal is really a combination of the two proposals.

This budget amendment would essentially double the number of tiny house villages in Seattle.

It would add $11.2 million to establish eight new tiny home villages like those operated by Lehigh and would add an additional $800,000 to support Um, the operations of authorized self managing campaigns, like those operated by Nicholsville.

And share real, um, as I raised in the budget committee.

A couple of weeks ago, when I just, he was presenting their 2021 budget.

tiny house villages have been by far the most impactful homeless service Seattle has found and there is just absolutely overwhelming evidence.

We've heard from literally hundreds of homeless people over the past few years testifying in public comment about how tiny house villages saved them.

There's been no other homeless service that has had anything like the level of support on the actual people impacted for the simple reason is that there's nothing else that has worked in this way and, and it's not.

It's not a surprise why because the tiny house tiny homes are safe and warm and secure, and they provide.

community, they provide services, they provide kitchen and washroom and shower services.

I mean, it really, you know, it's a rare solution that brings back humanity into homeless services.

And in addition, we at the People's Budget Town Hall that I hosted last night, we also heard from residents about how tiny house villages have helped them keep COVID at bay.

So I think this is a very real phenomenon that has played a very prominent role.

We've also been, as you all know, working with Sharewheel and Nicholsville for years.

They have authorized villages that receive no support from the city and could be really transformed by electricity, tiny houses, garbage services, and hygiene trailers.

So they could also really improve their services as they have informed us if they had some city funds.

And every time Seattle opens tiny house villages, people immediately move off the streets to fill them.

So it's a concrete solution.

Ultimately, of course, what we need is actual affordable housing.

And when we discussed the Office of Housing Budget, I presented a budget amendment to do that.

But as long as people are homeless, they should also be warm, safe, tiny homes available.

Just, sorry, one correction.

I misspoke a little bit earlier.

Tent City 3 is in D4.

The Nicholsville Village is what's in D3 on the property of the supportive homeowner.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawant.

Questions on this item?

Okay, I appreciate you signaling that there's a lot of synergy here as well.

Colleagues, I look forward to hearing more about where various items could potentially fit together for a rolled up proposal, if you will.

But I'm just happy to see so much support for this model, because we know that it is evidence-based and the data is behind it.

Councilmember Lewis?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just want to flag one more thing, because I do agree with Council Member Sawant's approach of seeing if we can harmonize these things into a common Form B. But I wanted to ask one question to central staff in terms of my Form A kind of focuses on seeking the 300 additional beds.

while Council Member Sawant seeks the additional villages.

Functionally, those things are basically the same based on the average number.

But I wonder if there's been an analysis done by central staff or if there could be in terms of village expansion as a strategy to get some additional spaces into some of the existing villages.

Because I know that, Directly after the COVID state of emergency, the South Lake Union tiny house village in my district was expanded in terms of the number of beds to be above the average number.

And I'd be interested in seeing if that's something that could be replicated in some of the other existing villages as well, in addition to standing up new ones, which we know we will need to.

But I'd be curious to see if there could be a way to do that.

I know that in South Lake Union, we were able to do it in a way that was compliant with social distancing and other COVID precautions.

There still has not been, to my knowledge, based on talking to providers, a confirmed case of COVID in any of the tiny house villages.

So they've been able to maintain very strong public health practices, including in South Lake Union where the number of houses was increased.

So I would be curious in doing that as part of the approach, because if we could, for example, if we could expand two or three of the existing villages that could, we could do that instead of adding an additional new one, for example.

So I would be curious in how that could impact this.

Councilmember the Latin last year's budget actually Councilmember mosquito included with I think a good amount of support, a request from the executive to provide a report that detailed the locations that would be suitable across the city obviously you have.

some large set of properties, a smaller number that are suitable, and then a smaller number that would be immediately available and really wouldn't cost an exorbitant amount.

That report was initially due before the COVID pandemic and then was given a couple of extensions, and at this point, we have not received that response at all.

That would provide the detail that you're asking for, but as I said, we haven't received that.

I do can say that the expansion of Lake Union Village was something that had repeatedly been brought up in conversations about the expansion of tiny home villages overall before.

So I know that that was at least at the top of mind for many people as a possibility because of the unique characteristics of that site.

I can't speak to the ability of every other tiny home to existing tiny home village to be expanded.

I'm sorry.

Appreciate that.

Thanks.

Thank you for the reminder of what we got in the budget last year too.

Can we also ping the executive to request that any draft of the memo that they have, any draft of that report gets sent down?

I mean, we do also have the enterprise map that is showing across the city areas of underutilized public land.

It should be hopefully an easier report to pull now that we have that large database.

That's really dynamic as well.

So look forward to getting an update on that.

Thanks for the reminder.

Council Member Swan, last item on this?

Yes.

Just on, I mean on the I think that's a good point about whether it should be increasing the number of villages or expanding the available beds in inside existing villages.

Obviously, needless to say, we don't, we don't care which way it's done, because the purpose is to increase tiny household space for homeless individuals.

for the space that's available and for the managing resources that are available in the existing village.

And the expectation is that it won't increase COVID risks in any way.

Of course, every tiny house village, the existing tiny house village that has an ability to expand should be helped and provided the opportunity to expand.

But I will say, and this goes to something that Jeff was alluding to South Lake Union Village was uniquely able to be expanded given the space of the property.

It was an exception to the rule and we should not make that the, I mean we should not assume that that's the way it goes.

In fact if you talk to Lehigh and other and people who actually you know build those tiny homes and who have a lot of experience scouring, scouting the sites where they can site them, they will tell you that often the reason it works out is because those are also spaces that are not being used for anything else.

For example, the spaces in the central district that have been used, for example, the space next to the Lutheran Church, it's because it's not usable for anything else because of the various factors like the smallness of the space, the land gradations, and I mean I'm not a civil engineer but you know factors like that.

So we should make sure that they are allowed to pick out sites that work for them and make use of that in addition to expanding an existing village where it already exists.

So I don't see that in any way in conflict.

I think we want both as far as possible.

Also, I'll mention something that I forgot to mention earlier, which is that Lehigh has already identified six locations for new villages.

So this is something that's viable.

It's ready to go.

All they need is the resources to go.

And one last thing I'll say in terms of keeping an open mind and allowing the people on the ground to do their work is also that we will, in addition to expanding new beds as much as possible, we will absolutely need new villages because otherwise we will not be able to scale up to the scale sufficiently given the size of the homelessness crisis, just given the number of individuals who are unsheltered on the streets.

I think it will have to absolutely Be both, so I will definitely be in touch with the various council member offices to proceed on this.

Thank you.

Great.

Okay, thank you all very much.

We are going to continue on here.

With hotel purchase.

Oh, Ali.

I'm sorry.

Did you have something I just thank you.

I just wanted to add in that as a general strategy and thinking about additional funding for tiny home villages or expansion of tiny home villages and sort of.

similar to what Council Member Sawant just said.

I think it may be best to not be overly prescriptive about exactly what the strategy is in terms of a specific number of villages or a specific number of expansions in order to allow the department to move as quickly as possible when there is an opportunity.

And so while there may be a desire to be really precise about what it would cost for each location or each village, we have to move faster or slower.

Ultimately we find that circumstances sometimes allow us to move faster or slower to stand up certain strategies.

Being too prescriptive may have the unintended consequence of holding up funds that could have been deployed on a different strategy more quickly.

the overview.

Okay, item number five.

Hey, Jeff.

Yeah, very good.

The next section deals with the purchase or acquisition of either a hotel or potentially even, in some cases, it might be suitable to look at another facility.

But these proposals look at acquiring a hotel using ESG funds.

I alluded to this earlier in the day when we were talking about the supplemental bill when Amy was presenting at the beginning of the 2 p.m.

session.

The guide, typically, ESG cannot be used to acquire property or a building to provide emergency shelter, but the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S.

Department, has amended its guidance and its rules for ESG for these COVID funds, and up to $2.5 million can be used for that purchase.

So with both of these, you see that as the reason, or I suspect that as the reason for these amounts.

So proposal number five would propose the purchase of a hotel using those funds or either using some some other allocated funds or by imposing a proviso or other restriction on our guidance on the use of ESG funds.

And so the first one comes from council member Lewis.

Thank you, Jeff.

I'm pretty sure, like looking at Council Member Sawant, specifically identifying 100 units, it's probably based on us talking to some of the same stakeholders on this one.

So I appreciate that these are essentially the very similar proposals.

As we discuss the, and I'd be happy to merge efforts with Council Member Sawant in pursuing this, as we look at the executive's proposal to do, 300 hotel rooms going forward, I would like to see if we might be able to stretch our federal money a little bit more by assisting a provider in purchasing a hotel to in the long term be converted to shelter or permanent supportive housing use instead of simply leasing a hotel on the market.

And if entering into that kind of arrangement might help us to reduce the current price tag of about $16 million for the 300 hotel units by having a third of them, up to 100 of those units, be in sort of a kind of like lease to own sort of position with a provider where we would use this $2.5 million to help them buy the hotel, and then we could use some of the rest of that portion of that $16 million to go towards leasing some of those units to go towards paying the hotel off.

That's something I'd like to explore through this with that $2.5 million.

I think It could be a good way to make sure that not only are we, you know, getting people exigently off the street and into hotels, but also sort of doubling the impact by inserting into our broader shelter system another hundred units of shelter that's on the same level as a tiny house village or an enhanced shelter and possibly in the long-term permanent supportive housing.

So I'll leave it at that for now.

I don't want to, you know, let Councilmember Sawant expand on her own provision here, but I think that we should definitely take advantage of the flexibility to use $2.5 million to engage in a deal like that, but it's something that, you know, I definitely want to talk to HSD about and some of the other potential vendors.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Lewis.

Jeff, anything to add to number six before we turn it to Councilmember Sawant?

No.

Thank you.

And yeah, I mean, we don't have to separately talk about item number seven, because it is the sorry, six, because it's the same as what Councilmember Lewis just proposed in item five.

And yes, and yeah, Councilmember Lewis, let's let's work on this offline.

to make sure this goes through.

And in terms of what Councillor Lewis was saying, I could not agree more.

We absolutely need to make sure that this gets converted really into affordable housing.

of some kind, maybe permanent supportive housing.

In fact, Lehigh, which is the organization that is ready to go on a project like this and who brought this proposal forward to us, that is exactly what they want to do.

That's what they are really eager to do, which is that once the current need is over for non-congregate shelter units during the pandemic, that they can renovate them into affordable housing after the emergency is over.

And absolutely whatever available federal dollars there are that can be leveraged for that.

We should absolutely make sure that happens.

Great, thank you so much.

Appreciate you both bringing this forward.

I know we've talked a lot about how this can be used as an economic stimulant as well locally when we have some of our Hotels or motels that are sitting vacant or even apartment places that might have single room occupancy opportunities instead of letting them go derelict.

This is a really good opportunity for us as well to house folks and make sure that those buildings are being put to good use.

love that you put this forward and look forward to hearing more about the combined effort here.

I also want to double check.

Oh, Council Member Hurdle, great.

I was wondering if you had a question about this.

One question real quick, if I can sneak it in.

The 300 rooms for $15.8 million, does that include O&M, operation and maintenance?

Does that include services?

I see, okay.

Yeah, the formulation is I understand that yes, they would include the operations and maintenance of the units.

The formulation took into account how much it costs to operate an enhanced shelter, meaning a tiny home village or a shelter that's enhanced services, and then applying the underlying cost for the facility in this case of getting a hotel.

So it is actually the services that would go along with it, not just the actual rooms.

Okay, and in terms of stretching these dollars further, as Council Member Lewis mentioned, one area I'd like to look into is our partnership with organizations like REACH, who I think earlier this year had indicated that they do have capacity to support people within hotel rooms.

What they needed was the city to move forward with renting those rooms or purchasing those rooms so that people could get into them.

I wonder if we can even further stretch out the number of units available if we are doing this in partnership with organizations that do have capacity for that supportive service side.

Just flagging that I have not looked into that.

I'll turn it over to Council Member Herbold at this point.

Just a question.

Are options five and six, are they additive to the executive's proposal or are they intended to use the funds from the executive's proposal?

They would both be, well, they would both be additive, I believe is how you would phrase it.

As I highlighted earlier, going through what is proposed, the HSD budget does include the acquisition of a facility for an enhanced shelter, and it's estimated around 125 beds.

That is not envisioning the use of these ESG funds from what I understand, and nor is it necessarily HSD that would be doing that acquisition.

So what I covered as the introduction to HSD does not include acquiring some facility.

It did include providing operations long term for once a facility is acquired.

And if I could just add, I think, I mean, it's additive, but it would be making a different, it would be using the funds perhaps in a different way, but to the extent that the ESG money proposed by, for hotel rooms proposed by the mayor is for leasing hotels, if it is instead used to purchase a hotel, then the service dollars would stretch, stretch longer.

So if you, you know, so, It's sort of a different way of getting at a similar outcome, except that there would be a more permanent purchase, and then could support those rooms with services, I think, into 2022, the ESG dollars could be continued.

Thank you.

Follow-up, council members?

Council Member Lewis, anything?

Well, yeah, I just wanted to say, I mean, I think Ali basically said what I was going to say.

So, I mean, I think that there, you know, clearly as Council Member Sawant indicated, there's a fairly detailed proposal from Lehigh about how they would see this going.

And I think that, I guess I sort of conceptually think about it as part of the almost 16 million that the executive wants to use in their hoteling strategy.

Um, but, but, uh, you know, I, I haven't really had conversations yet about whether all the circles square in going about it that way.

I would hope they would.

Cause like I said, it's, it's sort of a unique opportunity to do, to do two things at once, like help someone acquire something that could turn into permanent supportive housing and provide the hoteling that we want to provide.

Very helpful.

Thank you both.

All right, Jeff, I think we are ready to go on to item number seven.

The next section actually is related to hygiene service investments.

I'm going to turn that over to Brian Goodnight from central staff to walk through these.

Thank you, Jeff.

So the first item is a proposal from Councilmember Sawant and would add funds to plan and develop a hygiene center, including showers and laundry facilities at the site of a former wellness center in a building located in downtown Seattle.

Great, let us know more Council Member Swan.

Thank you.

As Brian said, this budget action is intended to help the development of a hygiene center in the old Women's Wellness Center in the Josephinium, which is on Second Avenue, adjacent to the Share and Wheel offices.

The location is owned by Catholic Community Services, who have indicated to Share and Wheel that it is available for that purpose.

The hygiene center at this location could Could provide, you know, given these funds could provide showers and laundry facilities, including laundry for program blankets to the residents of the basic shelters operated by Sharon wheel.

which obviously would be a huge help for them.

I do want to be clear that besides needing funding, this project will require further planning, including estimated costs and a plan for renovations.

The community organizers do not yet have a cost estimate, but it is an important idea and the city should support their efforts.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Is there a dollar price tag associated with this item yet?

Not yet, but we want to get that as soon as possible.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

I'm not seeing additional questions.

Let's move on.

Number eight.

Okay.

The next proposal would add $195,000 to SPU to expand the encampment trash program to 13 additional sites, bringing the total number of sites served to 30. I would also request that the expansion begin by adding encampments in South Seattle.

And this proposal comes from Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, everyone.

So as it says, the program would nearly double the reach of the Purple Bag program, which is a win-win for both encampment residents and for nearby neighbors.

I'm sure as many of you colleagues have, I've heard from lots of constituents about the need for more trash pickup near encampment sites.

And my office has reached out to SPU on a continuous basis to request one-time trash pickup in different parts of our district.

This proposal would help alleviate some of the trash concerns in our city.

and also address the hygiene issues during a public health emergency.

I am specifically asking for services to start in District 1 and District 2 due to the relative lack of resources spent in our parts of the city and due to the large amount of encampments in places like Soto and Georgetown, the CID and South Park.

really could use this service.

I was in Georgetown just last week talking with neighbors who are living in encampments and in RVs, and they showed me how they handle their trash, which is that they create piles a few feet away from where they are and dispose of it as they can, often forced to sort of covertly use nearby dumpsters overnight.

We don't want to have to do that.

Our neighbors and businesses don't want them to have to do that.

So folks are looking for any kind of solution to help them deal with trash removal, something that we all take for granted since we get weekly trash pickup.

And this expansion would move in the right direction to help support our houseless neighbors with the same kind of service.

Thank you so much.

Any questions, folks?

Okay, Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

I don't have a question.

I just want to signal my extremely strong support for items eight and nine and just appreciate Council Member Morales bringing these forward.

This is absolutely essential given that while all of us are working towards additive shelter, we know in the meantime, these strategies around mitigation, around extending just basic city services are the very least that we can do and really cut at a lot of the issues that members of the public associate with encampments, in addition to the people that are living in encampments and RVs.

And I mean, these interventions are just totally pragmatic, essential, and there's a moral urgency to them.

So very strongly support both of them and appreciate Council Member Morales bringing them forward.

Thank you so much.

Question for central staff.

63th Street.

I'm sorry, we are not there yet.

Okay, let's go ahead and talk about the next one.

I don't know.

Okay, thank you Council Member.

So yes, the third and final Council Member proposal in hygiene services category is, would add $58,000 to SPU for the provision of 63 street sink style hand washing stations.

The proposal intends to increase access to hygiene and hand washing services throughout the city by specifying that the deployment would be nine sinks in each of the Council Districts.

And the proposal comes from Council Member Morales.

did not mean to jump in there, Council Member Morales, on the punchline.

So please go ahead.

Sure.

So COVID aside, we know that providing ready access to hygiene and to running water for folks who are living outside isn't just good practice.

It is a necessity.

And the street sink model that we're proposing here is inexpensive.

It is semi-permanent.

It's ADA compliant.

And it's low maintenance.

The sinks currently running in our city have helped folks wash their hands, wash their clothes, and give them access to drinking water, which is something else that we heard about last week as we were talking to folks in Georgetown is just their inability to get fresh, clean water to drink.

So as we've talked to folks, they've talked about walking a mile to get water or having to steal it from a spigot on a nearby business or a residence.

So just as with the trash pickup, you know, they don't want to do that and they would rather have some options available within walking distance for water access so that doesn't become a survival situation, you know that there is something available.

So as Council Chair Mosqueda said, the program would bring us 63 publicly accessible sinks for anyone to use.

We are thinking nine sinks in each district, which means folks won't be having to make a trek to another neighborhood just to wash their hands or get a drink of water.

And this, again, is especially important during a public health emergency.

At minimum, folks need access to the basics, and this would allow us to cross drinkable water off of their list of things that they're looking for to survive.

Wow.

Thank you so much, Council Member Morales.

Just a quick question for central staff.

I don't see any other hands from calling, so I'll jump in.

Can you remind us how many sinks or hygiene centers that are just related to hand-washing are currently deployed across our city?

Sure.

The hygiene station programs that include both the portable toilets and the hand-washing stations, there are 15 of them right now.

Okay.

And is that the full amount that the council had authorized in the last one or two years?

Those are the only ones that I'm aware of, yes.

I'm just asking because I know that this has been a conversation over many years, especially with Councilmember Baggio and myself about wanting to see more of these street sinks, as Councilmember Morales has called them, and the hygiene centers.

I mean, we're not even talking about the showers, just being able to wash your hands at this point.

And it was a long conversation.

So I just wanted to make sure that the dollars that were appropriated for that have actually been implemented.

It sounds like the answer is yes.

Okay.

Council Member Morales, thank you so much for flagging this.

Really appreciate your description as well.

Let's go on to American Indian and Alaska Native Homelessness Investments.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

There's actually two updates in this section.

First is that at the time that the request for these proposals was submitted, we had received information that the amounts provided by the council last year for services that for expanded services that would go to agencies that specialize in serving the American Indian and Alaska Native population, that there was going to be a decrease.

That was incorrect.

As I mentioned earlier in the presentation, there is a lot of shuffling of budget programs and where programs are categorized and things like that in order to prepare for the moving of contracts to the regional authority.

And so that's how that error arose.

My understanding now is that the amounts that were provided by the council last year, which totaled a million dollars, are not reducing in the 2021 budget.

In addition, both the Council Member Juarez and Council Member Lewis, their offices, seeing that they were working, have both told me that they plan to work together on a single proposal related to this investment.

And so I'll turn it over to both of them to talk about that.

But they are listed as two separate items here, knowing that it would be a single item.

That's excellent.

Thanks, colleagues, for doing that.

I'll turn it over to Luis and Juarez.

I'll defer to Council Member Juarez.

I'm following her lead on this and really proud and happy to support her efforts.

Excellent.

Council Member Juarez.

Thank you, Madam Chair and Council Member Lewis.

Thank you.

We just have some to combine the two, which, again, we were just pulling our A forms and our B forms together.

So for the Chief Seattle Club, the total ask to continue what they've been doing for homelessness response is $1.6 million.

And this is to reduce homelessness and housing instability for American Indian and Alaska Natives.

And it will go towards the day center, homelessness prevention, outreach, domestic violence, sexual assault, and reentry.

And as Council Member Lewis shared, We have been coordinating with Councilor Lewis' office to form these to consolidate, so we're not repeating requests.

I'll remain the primary sponsor with the additional co-sponsorship, including Councilor Lewis.

And Councilor Lewis, thank you.

So let me just give you a few, a little bit of overview and some background here.

American Indian Alaska Natives remain disproportionately negatively affected by homelessness.

10% of the region's homeless community are American Indian Alaska Native, although our community represents less than 1% of the overall population, which is pretty scary.

As Seattle and King County continue to face this complex issue, in the meantime, Chief Seattle Club has provided a model for a successful housing pipeline for Seattle.

Chief Seattle has demonstrated a consistent track record in serving the needs of American Indian and Alaska Natives people with an 86% success rate of households exiting to permanent housing in programs such as rapid rehousing with only 3% returning to homelessness.

Chief Seattle's CLUGS programs are targeted towards stabilizing American Indian and Alaska Natives and moving them on a pathway towards permanent housing.

The Day Center is their front door where they build trust with members through basic needs then stabilize with on-site services such as healthcare, mental health, and traditional wellness.

The day center costs around or approximately about $1,300 per member per year.

I just want to add a few items on an overview here regarding Chief Seattle and some of the work they've done and what units they have in the pipeline.

In 2019, Chief Seattle spent about $1,800 per client for HSD homelessness prevention.

That included staff and financial assistance with a 97% success rate.

In 2019, Chief Seattle also spent about $3,000 per client overall, that's multiple people in the household, includes people who did not move into permanent housing, or about $6,800 per household to move into permanent housing for HSD rapid rehousing.

That, again, success rate was about 87%.

A quick overview, though, of Chief Stan and what they've been doing, the housing pipeline data.

Right now with Eagle Village, with 24 units of housing, there are currently 31 Eagle Village residents who are 100% American Indian Alaska Native, 100% homelessness, 35% women, 13% Two-Spirit, and 6% veterans.

Most of the residents have been chronically homeless for over five years.

Eagle Village provides bridge housing to help members transition from homelessness into housing.

The second piece is called Allah Allah, I'm saying that wrong, I know it, but it is a Lashute word for home.

And construction is underway for the 47 million mixed use facility.

The nine story building is 50,000 square feet and includes 80 units of affordable housing.

60 designated for homelessness, 10 for veterans, and a health clinic to be leased by the Seattle Indian Health Board.

And one other issue, we have the Sacred Medicine House to come online, which is 120 units of permanent supportive housing.

Due to COVID-19 and Seattle's homelessness crisis, the City of Seattle is fast-tracking the development of 600 units of permanent supportive housing.

The club, GCL club, is partnering with the developer of sustainably developed panelized building technology to reduce the cost of construction operations.

Let's see, in August 2020, the club was awarded $12.3 million from the City of Seattle and is seeking funding from low-income housing tax credits and the State Housing Trust Fund and King County.

Again, Sacred Medicine House includes 120 units of permanent supportive housing with construction starting in 2021 and hopefully open in 2022. Thank you.

Thank you for that helpful overview.

I'm really excited to hear about all of the work that this effort could support.

Just want to double check on the outreach element of the 1.6.

Is this embedded in this, is this one outreach person or is there two?

Can you remind me what the breakdown is?

Maybe central staff, no.

Actually, I can't.

This proposal will need a little bit more refining, as is often the case with our Form As, but especially because we received some rather late information from HSD clarifying some new numbers.

So this is going to need some recalculation to some degree.

Council Member Juarez, anything else?

Oh, sorry.

Go ahead.

Well, we have a difference in numbers here, but somewhere between if I were to break down the 1.6 around 78,000 is slated for outreach.

And again, we're still trying to calibrate where exactly, what that equals with FTEs.

Did you say 78,000?

Yeah, we're at 77,000.

77,882.

Got it.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate that summary and that little of a detail and look forward to learning more.

Okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments on number 11 here?

Okay.

Seeing none, let's move on to number 12. Okay.

Our next section of investments all relate to homelessness outreach and sheltered response.

The first is to provide behavioral health outreach workers in North Seattle services.

It would allocate $200,000 to hire two individuals that would act as the liaisons to small businesses and residents in the Lake City neighborhood providing de-escalation and crisis intervention services.

This is proposed by Councilmember Juarez.

So at this juncture, what we would like, of course, is the proposal would add 200,000 to hire two individuals to act as liaisons to small businesses and residents.

So since the onset of the pandemic, we've had many more new encampments have quickly become unmanageable in the Lake City neighborhood, and they're located behind the community center in Albert Davis Park.

In the middle of the business district is Lake City, and I don't want to go off and list all the parks, but three or four are probably the biggest ones that we're having difficulty with between Aurora and Lake City.

The encampments pose a threat to public health and safety due to prevalent drug, substance abuse, trespassing, and volatile or threatening behavior associated with the encampments.

I'm not saying that everyone there is volatile and threatening, but I am saying that there is an issue there with the residents and with the businesses.

Residents of the neighborhood emphasize with the homelessness in the area, but are experiencing compassion fatigue.

That's one way to say it.

This has led to conflict between unhoused individuals with behavioral health issues and local business and house residents.

Working with our community, Lake City community organizations, this is what they're proposing is that we can work with community and have people that are actually navigators, if you will, and helping our unsheltered community get to the services that they need.

For the past five years, the Seattle University Public Safety Survey identified the number one safety concern for Lake City has been the lack of police capacity and presence.

Right now, it's just the lack of having people come out there to help these folks get the services they need.

So right now, thus far, over 30 residents and 10 business owners and two nonprofits and one church in Lake City have signed on in favor of this proposal.

Like I say, we've been working with our, again, I don't want to ramble off a half a dozen community-based organizations that we've been working with since 2015 for these, to have these proposed behavioral health outreach specialist positions support of the Lake City neighborhood and our unsheltered neighbors.

It's just been an ongoing issue and now that we no longer have or we're reimagining a new team to go out and provide outreach, we're hoping that this budget cycle will provide these two north end navigators.

And I believe Council Member, we're also working with Council Member Strauss on this matter as well.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Juarez.

Are there questions for Council Member Juarez on item number 12?

I am not seeing any questions.

I will note from my initial glance at these items, it does seem like there is a lot of commonality between item 12 from Juarez, 14 from Morales, 16 from Herbold, and 17 from Straus, as they all have some element of working with our unsheltered population.

and providing assistance and support and outreach as well to our business community.

So I would love to see, as we have this conversation here today, if there are overlapping issues as you described them for your council colleagues and to follow up on that, if there is connective tissue there, that would be helpful to know.

Okay, let's go ahead and go into item number 13.

So the item number 13 is a proposal to actually in some ways it interacts with what I had as an issue identification related to the navigation team and what the 2021 budget proposes as an unsheltered outreach and response team.

This proposal would take the funds and the FTE that are proposed for that unsheltered outreach and response team, and instead create a new five-person team that provides administrative oversight and support to homeless outreach agencies and coordinates interdepartmental location or coordination for the litter picks and unsanctioned encampments.

This was put forward by Council Member Morales.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Let's see.

As Jeff noted, the unsheltered outreach and response team is in the 2021 proposed budget really takes on a look of a smaller navigation team.

And I believe this council made clear in the summer that we have closed the book on the navigation team and are really looking forward to how we can really begin to serve our neighbors.

We're calling this the hope team and we think it reflects the decision that council made over the summer.

Reflects what we've heard for years from unhoused neighbors from providers from outreach workers and from advocates that if the city is gonna be part of this ecosystem of provision of services to our homeless neighbors.

and we as a city really should step back and provide the support on coordination, but really let the experts lead on the response itself.

So the idea here is that the HOPE team would be structurally different from the navigation team.

and it would serve the following purposes.

It would really let the providers set the tone for what criteria are, how the approach to outreach would happen.

Agreed upon with the city would really be letting them lead the conversation.

The HOPE team would provide resources, oversight, and ongoing support for a provider-led homelessness outreach strategy.

So they would facilitate and coordinate interdepartmental support, for example, litter pickups, sharps cleanup, the purple bag program.

but would not be involved in direct outreach, that work would really be left to the service providers.

This HOPE team would cost less than the team proposed by HSD.

There would be, as I said, no direct outreach done by city employees and there would be no police involvement.

It would still allow police or other first responders to respond to any crimes that are happening in or near encampments.

And by funding the HOPE team, we can finally leave the navigation team discussion behind and move forward with a more collaborative provider-led strategy.

So that's what we are proposing.

As I said, we have been in communication with, I don't know, a dozen outreach providers, service workers, with our homeless community themselves.

And I do want to give Devin Silvernail on my staff, a huge shout out for a lot of the work that he's done to pull folks together and really listen to what they think we can do better.

I want to thank him and I want to thank all of the providers and the homeless neighbors themselves for all of their contributions to this idea.

Councilmember Lewis, did you want to add any comments?

Yeah, I want to thank Councilmember Morales and Devin for bringing this model forward, which I mean, I'll just say I think it's a great iteration of the jumping off point that was proffered by the executive a few weeks ago.

And it is in keeping with a lot of the conversations we've been having with the provider community and the kind of model they want to see that really begins with and centers engagement.

You know, I would certainly want to see kind of through the process that we're using right now to continue to work through squaring a lot of the circles with with creating a new outreach system, what in this model would be sort of consistent with what HSD would like to see and whether there's parts where there would be pushback.

I would hope that we could reach an accord that is fairly similar to this, given that it really is in the spirit of what a lot of folks have been representing on all ends of the spectrum we want to be moving toward.

So I really appreciate this proposal coming forward.

And I do want to just say for the viewing public that the legislation that I put forward for releasing money for a team to close out 2020 is unrelated to these 2021 conversations, which is important to note.

These are separate conversations and that our conversations about 2020 don't lock us in as a council to committing to any given model for 2021. So I'm glad this is on the table and that Council Member Morales has brought it forward so we can be talking about this as an approach.

I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales, anything else to add to that?

No, I don't think so.

OK, great.

I appreciate that.

And I see Council Member Peterson, one comment from you just before Council Member Peterson.

While they might be separate discussions and separate pieces of legislation at this point, I think as we endeavor to try to create a seamless transition for those provider organizations from 2020 to 2021. I'm looking forward to seeing how these proposals provide that ramp into next year.

And I know that that's what you've been endeavoring to accomplish as well.

So I just want to make sure that the provider groups and the folks who are doing the direct outreach here, that area of interest for all of us as well.

Sure.

I appreciate that.

And you're right.

I think because we've been in conversation with them for ever, You know, I both understand the concern.

We are looking at how we can, how this transition happens.

I think because of the conversations we've been having with Council Member Lewis and with the executives, with the Deputy Mayor.

I think, you know, we are all sort of moving in the same direction with a really clear understanding from the provider community about what they think this should look like.

And so that is what we are endeavoring to do here, is to make sure that we are moving, giving them agency in figuring out what this should look like.

plan is to continue this conversation as we get the form B ready and as we have, you know, need to put a little more structure in place to move this forward, we will be having additional conversations with the provider community.

Excellent.

Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

And I'm glad to hear the discussion about working with the executive, because I know there's obviously expertise among certain nonprofits.

And also, I just want to lift up the expertise in our own city government, in our human services department.

I mean, these are folks who have been putting together performance-based contracts, making sure that they're investing tax dollars wisely, Keeping track of those dollars and the performance outcomes.

So I just I think that there's there's expertise, you know, there's lots of expertise to go around and I hope we get to Utilize all of it as we craft something that we can all agree to Thank you.

Absolutely.

And this is the idea here is that the the team would be for, you know, for doing sort of the interdepartmental coordination, but also for doing the contract management and the, you know, setting those kind of back office, for lack of a better term, kind of infrastructure and supports that need to happen in order for the service providers to do their job.

It's really just a pulling back of the actual direct outreach and letting the other experts do that piece of the work.

Excellent.

I'm not seeing any additional questions at this time.

We are on number 14, a continuation, I think, of our conversation around better outreach and liaison with businesses and our unsheltered population.

It is from Council Member Morales, and we will have Jeff walk us through it first.

As you've noted, Madam Chair, this is Somewhat similar to proposal number 12 and some ones that we'll get to shortly, it provides $98,000 in this case, and the type of agency that would specifically receive these funds is specified as one representing Black, Indigenous, and people of color with lived experience of homelessness to provide outreach and engagement.

In this case, the focus would be on the Columbia City and Rainier Beach neighborhoods, again, acting as a liaison with business and residents.

And it's proposed by Council Member Morales.

Thank you Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Yeah, I am really glad to see so many of my colleagues are seeing the value of this work.

I think we are all hearing from our constituents about the need for additional outreach, for somebody to serve as a liaison with our neighborhood commercial districts.

And so much like my colleagues who are requesting funds for similar positions, I've certainly heard from my constituents about the need for more homelessness outreach in our district.

And so we are requesting or submitting a Form A to be able to find a position, particularly in the Columbia City business area and in the Rainier Valley.

Excellent.

I am not seeing any questions on that.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Okay, item number 15.

Item number 15 on the next slide is related to the NABAP, which is the application or the software that has been used by the city's navigation team to track the people that they came into contact with and the outcomes of those engagements and make referrals and things like that.

This would add funds to equip homeless outreach providers, so our contracted agencies, with the tools and training that they need in order to be able to utilize that application and also support the staff time associated with that additional data entry.

This is put forward by Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Herbold, thank you so much.

Just pausing for a second.

Hey, great.

Um, yeah.

So this item is one that we pulled together early on.

Um, my primary interest is making sure that contracted outreach providers have access to the real time information about shelter availability and, um, the ability to make direct referrals as they're interacting with people living on shelter.

Um, I want to make sure that, uh, we, eliminate any process barrier that helps them from helping people access shelter.

Access to the NAV app may or may not be the best way to accomplish this.

I'm continuing my discussions with providers on the best way to accomplish this goal.

That's it.

Thank you so much.

Are there any questions?

Okay.

look forward to learning more about this as well in terms of what dollar amount we're talking about.

Thank you.

Let's move on.

The last two items.

Item number 16. Item number 16 is homelessness outreach in this case West Seattle and the South Park area.

This has a lot of similarities with two earlier proposals providing a liaison between individuals and businesses and community organizations in that area.

and this was put forward by Council Member Herbold as well.

Great.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

As mentioned, this item has some similarity with other Council Member requests.

I think the specific unique issue for my district is We did have Reach going to visit District 1 about once a week, and that's very welcome, but the closure with the West Seattle Bridge puts a strain on providers who are not based in District 1. So the idea is that it's more possible for us to have somebody that's based in District 1 serving not only West Seattle, but South Park as well.

We make excellent points.

Thank you so much.

This bridge is affecting all aspects of life out here.

Any questions, colleagues?

Okay.

Council Member Juarez, any comments from you?

Just wanted to note, I do have you off mute.

I'm good.

Okay, great.

Let's do the last item along a similar vein.

Council Member Strauss, and I'll turn it over to Jeff to walk us through it.

As council members are aware, last year, the budget continued funding to the agencies that serve as the project program managers for BIAs to provide outreach in the U District in Ballard.

And this proposal would build on that to expand that approach, utilizing to provide homelessness outreach, cleanup and security services towards to the community in the area, working in collaboration with the program managers for those BIAs.

And as you know, this is put forward by Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Jeff.

As Jeff mentioned, several BIAs, including the Ballard Alliance and New District Partnership have previously contracted for several years to provide reach outreach workers who work with local businesses and conduct outreach with people in crisis in their neighborhoods.

These programs continue to be popular with businesses and residents of those neighborhoods and provide a way of engaging with people in crisis that keeps law enforcement focused on more higher uses of their time and ensures that reach outreach workers are the first group of people to interact with these people in crisis.

My proposal would increase the funding for those services as well as for cleanup and security services for BIAs since the unactivated hours of our business districts have increased from 4 to 6 a.m.

to today within the pandemic.

The unactivated hours of those spaces are from about midnight to 6 a.m.

I will be reaching out to Council Members Juarez and Herbold to see if we can combine our requests.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Jeff.

Great, thanks.

And perhaps if we could also fold in Morales as well to see if the D2 outreach is in a similar vein, that'd be great.

Welcome, yep, that's welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, questions on this one?

great.

Thank you very much, Council Member Strauss, for thinking about your district, yes, and about how this applies across the city as well.

Really appreciate you bringing that forward and the future conversations to happen there.

That brings us to the end of the specific areas.

Before we go into other proposals, I wanted to see if any council members would like to make some comments and first offer our Council President the chance to chime in.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I just thought it would be important at the end of the homelessness outreach section to mention that I think that it is really important that we continue to invest in these areas.

And I'm really happy to see so many proposals in the homelessness outreach area that are innovative and some are expansion of prior past Investments that we've made in this area.

And, and, you know, I think that what I wanted to share was that I was on a call last week with Leo floor from King County, who mentioned and reminded folks on the call that is it relates to homelessness outreach.

One of the system gaps is that we have, as a city and a county, invested quite a bit of dollars in programs that support outreach to our unsheltered relatives and neighbors throughout the region.

And I don't think he was making an argument to reduce those investments.

I think he was making an argument that it's important for us to continue to invest in outreach while also making sure that we are in the same vein and commensurately investing in places to send people to that are appropriate for those individuals.

And as I look at this budget, both the one proposed by the mayor and some of these council member proposals through budget actions, I still don't have a clear sense of whether or how these outreach services are matched, I suppose, for lack of a better term, Um, I did see something related to tiny homes and I think that's super important, but I, but I want to make sure that I, we have an opportunity to hear from, um, Jeff and others on council central staff about.

About how our homelessness outreach dollars and investments, um, compare in scale to what the city.

And the region, as we think about the regional authority, are investing in terms of brick and mortar for where we are sending people to and referring people to in sort of what I think is an expected natural byproduct of outreach investments.

Well said.

Thank you, Council President.

Appreciate you bringing that up.

And I see Lisa Kay on the line here as well.

I'm happy to open that up to central staff.

And then I have a question that dovetails with that.

I'm happy to do further analysis on that.

I haven't done it.

I don't have a good dollars to dollars comparison that might be useful or a comparison to how other jurisdictions handle that approach.

And I'm happy to work further on that.

I will note that the council receives reports on the outcomes that the navigation team has achieved over 2019 and 2020. And most significantly, as the executive highlighted, there was a dramatic improvement in outcomes for the navigation team.

upon opening the approximately 100 new emergency shelter beds between tiny home villages and the enhanced shelter, and the ability to place people.

And so I think that the point that the council president is making is well made, that the more options we have to actually move people into a shelter space, that's the structure that people are willing to move into, and then also into, out of those shelters, which are temporary, into a true housing situation.

As we've seen that expand, that has yielded some more success for our outreach providers.

Anything else?

Go ahead.

And Jeff, I think that last comment you made is really important, right?

Because if we're just engaging in outreach, and I'm not saying that we just engage in outreach, but if we don't have appropriate offers of Permanent or transition or transition housing for folks that we're doing outreach to then.

Then then we're sort of accepting that we're doing outreach for purposes of providing services in field, but not for purposes of connecting people to something better than living.

Outside and so so I do think.

that in terms of this particular issue, it's both an investment question, right?

Are we investing at the scale needed for brick and mortar that is commensurate with or greater than the type of outreach services that we are providing?

And then secondly, related to that is, does, if there is a heavy investment in outreach as compared to brick and mortar options to transition people to, then is that out of line with our strategies, broadly speaking, about how the system should be squarely focused on not just outreach, but outreach plus housing, right?

So I think I worry that we haven't done a robust analysis of how the outreach meaningfully connects to providing people options that are designed for their unique needs.

Because we know that the unhoused population is not a monolith.

And if we're not doing that, then I think we need to reevaluate where we're setting the dials.

in this space so that we are doing outreach that is actually going to turn into placement in something more stable and permanent.

Thank you, Council President.

I also want to chime in here.

I think it is the latter question, as you articulated, Council President, and this goes to every ride along, every conversation we've had with outreach workers, that there is nowhere to navigate people to if the shelters are at capacity.

There's nowhere to free up space if we're not building the housing that community needs to get out of shelters and stay permanently housed.

I really appreciate you underscoring that point.

It does dovetail into a conversation that I think we need to have in terms of our proposed budget and the ways in which we had assumed that the Jumpstart funding would be used in 2022. Knowing that 70% of the funds that we had appropriated for Jumpstart would go into housing, that we had hoped that those dollars would allow for Office of Housing to free up funding that they were holding for 2022 and front load that into 2021. Allie, I'm hoping that maybe you can provide some context to that issue.

And even with that clarification, the point is still very valid.

We do need to evaluate how much money is going into actually building that housing and the permanent supportive housing elements as well.

And then after Allie, I'm going to turn to Council Member Herbold.

Yeah, I think that all of what I would agree with all of what has been said I think having sort of a, a variety of types of interventions is important here and having some flexibility in the funding I think, as you mentioned.

council adopted the jumpstart spending plan and in 2021 the the focus was primarily on extended COVID relief and continuity of services as well as startup money to start implementing the longer term spending plan and so the idea would be to spend have additional dollars available in 2022 for investments in housing as well as the equitable development initiative and the green new deal.

While the proposed, there is not a proposal for the 2022 budget before you.

Now in looking at the financial plans that was provided with the proposed budget, it is not assuming that those additional dollars will be included.

in the office of housing's budget and in fact most of the funds would be used to continue supporting sort of ongoing um base sort of budget budget needs and then it's unclear um whether or not there's about 100 million dollars the budget book does say that the the proposal for the equitable community's initiative is ongoing.

So our assumption is that that money that is really freed up from the payroll tax proceeds would be used for that purpose and not specifically for the housing investments proposed in the jumpstart spending plan.

So it's difficult to tie up funds for 2022 through the 2021 budget, but I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, but I'm just confirming that right now it does not appear that the intention is to program the proceeds from the payroll tax in 2022 and beyond for housing, but that will be a question for the council next year.

Which is very problematic, right?

We all agreed to do a one-year budget because of the crisis that COVID is presenting.

But for us agreeing to just have 12 months in front of us, we would have levers to address 2022 spending.

And I think that, thank you for articulating that.

I know we've covered it in the past, but you've really underscored, I think, exactly what the council president is getting at.

We must have a way for us not to just put a Band-Aid on the solution and do outreach and get folks into temporary shelter, even the best temporary shelter.

We really need to be creating that housing stability.

So I will look forward to working with all of you and central staff to see if there's anything else that we can do to ensure that the spending in 2022, it is adhered to as the council passed through our detailed spend plan.

We got criticized in past years for not having a quote spend plan when we had one.

There's no doubt that what we pass along with the payroll tax and jumpstart proposal was a detailed spend plan to get at exactly this concern about housing, affordable housing, permanent supportive housing being constantly put on the back burner.

And this is very important for us to make sure that that spend plan is adhered to, especially because I believe I'd like to explore If we can ensure that the funding is going to go where the council had directed, then there's the possibility that we could front load some of those office of housing dollars that are being held for 2022 and put more into housing in 2021. I look forward to working with you on that to make sure that I fully understand the options that exist there.

I just wanted to also just acknowledge that there, I think this has been the council and previous councils have been moving in this direction for some time.

And some of you have been part of that and will continue to be.

But for example, some of the funding that is going to provide about 600 units of permanent supportive housing next year, we'll then free up some spaces and shelter.

And so it just, demonstrate sort of the need to have that sort of path to transition through, um, as well as partnering with the county and other regional entities and sort of, um, getting more housing online council member herbal.

I think what I was going to say is covered much better than I could have covered by yourself.

Chair Mosqueda and central staff Ally Panucci, I was just going to talk about the 2022 plans for Jumpstart.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for reminding us about that.

Council Member Gonzalez to close us out.

Sorry, it took me a minute to find my mute button.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

conversation and I just, I guess, from my perspective, this is much more than just a conversation about the revenue source.

I appreciate the points that you Chair Mosqueda and Council Member Herbold are making, and I'm not being dismissive of those points.

I think those are very important points to make sure that we are advancing the council's priorities around meaningful interventions that will be available to both on the prevention side in terms of housing affordability and Um, and also on the, um, options for housing for folks who are currently experiencing homelessness.

Um, but I, but I, I want us to really have a conversation, not so much about the funding source.

Um, but, but more about the bigger question of where are we, where are we outreaching people too.

Like where are we, where, how does outreach services programs that we are funding intentionally and deliberately connect to placements in something that is not just emergency shelter?

And, you know, I think it's important for us to have emergency shelter, but I also think that it's important for us to you know, continue to evaluate and ask the difficult questions of HSD around, around how does this, how do these outreach services intentionally connect to placement in, into those affordable housing options that we are As a council investing in through jumpstart and through other general fund dollars.

So I think I just want to sort of for purposes of clarifying what my line of inquiry and comments were is that I want to you know, may have an opportunity to just clarify that I obviously support the work around the revenue, but I also, I think there's more than just, there's both a funding question and a strategies question about how those interventions are connecting with the outreach work that we are doing so that we aren't left with a question of outreach to where.

Council Member Herbold?

One of the budget items that I mentioned, number 15 here, is intended to partially get at that issue.

Because one of the things that we hear from outreach workers is they don't have access To the, the sort of earmarked spaces that the nav team has historically had access to.

And so the thought is by using the, the nav app, which has real time information, not only.

Could we be ensuring that outreach providers are providing the data to the city that the city requires for determining whether or not providers are meeting their contracted outcomes?

But it would also give the outreach providers access to the information, real-time information about where there are actually vacancies.

That's just, that's a sort of a logistic part of the question.

But I think to be fair to the executive and to HSD, I do think they have put some thought into this.

And I understand that there is interest on the council in moving in another direction, but what I've heard them explain as it relates to the 300 units that they're looking to bring on in December, is that those units are intended to be the place where people from outside go to.

And that's what I referenced earlier today when I was talking about the fact that one of the things that the provider communities are, the outreach providers, in our discussions around the changes that we need to make to the NAV team to stand up this new outreach model is what the placement policy is going to be.

Will it be the outreach providers that now have access to these new 300 spaces?

to refer people to them, with the idea that those 300 spaces are not intended to be permanent.

They're intended, people are intended to move from there to permanent supportive housing.

And so I do think that, I'm not saying that they've come up with a perfect solution, but I do think the executive has put some time into thinking about this outreach to where question.

And I do admit to being a little bit, I understand that the interest in buying hotels instead of leasing rooms is about helping providers have a permanent asset, making the service dollars last longer.

And, you know, again, having hotels that you can convert to be permanent supportive housing.

I do, I am concerned, though, that it kind of disrupts the intervention that the executive is trying to stand up for that, to answer specifically that throughput question.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate this conversation.

As somebody who has continued to try to push to get more funding into housing, along with many of you over the last few years, this is how we are going to create a healthy, thriving local economy and prevent people from being able to get sick, prevent people from being able to cycle out into homelessness.

So we will definitely be bringing this issue back up as we continue our conversations around the budget.

We have five more items to get through.

We're gonna go slightly over 5 p.m.

So I hope folks will stay with us.

But I do want to note that my comments are also not just about the fund source.

We have had a lot of conversation about that, I get it.

But my comments were really about how if Office of Housing were given the ability to actually assume that the Jumpstart dollars were actually real, what we could assume for the 2021 investments is three times the amount in the NOFA investments for housing.

So building the units that we need to get people out of shelters.

We estimated that housing would bring in 132 million and some of that would be home ownership.

Some of that would be rental units.

Some of it would be for the operation and maintenance.

And we, I think have an opportunity in front of us given this question that's been posed.

And I think the real need to make sure that people have an exit out of that shelter into something real.

both for the people who are trying to stably house people and for the outreach workers who are trying to get people off the street and into some form of housing and shelter, they need to have spaces freed up and those spaces should be freed up in shelters and tiny houses or hotels.

by allowing people to be in more permanent stable housing.

So I think the big question that I'm laying on the table is not necessarily about the funding source, but really about how do we pressure or how do we ensure that the office of housing is allowed to factor in the jumpstart funding beginning in 2022, so that in 2021, in this budget, we can actually see three times the amount of dollars going into the NOFA program.

Allie, anything on that before we go?

Yeah, I just wanted to add to what you're saying there in terms of that in the need for funding in order to have places to navigate people to with the levy ending, I think, in 2023 and not knowing about that and that sort of decisions to forward commit some of the levy funds in previous years to get more units online now.

Having that additional source of funds will be important to be able to move quickly when there are opportunities like we saw the Office of Housing do this year with some, the mid-year NOFA for the permanent supportive housing projects.

Very exciting conversation and really one that is about creating economic stability for families and our local region and really appreciate the conversation.

Let's do the last five and then we will ask for your indulgence to read through the memo on COVID response.

And Ali is available as well to walk through that with any council offices, but we will get through this presentation and that will be it for today.

Proposal number 18 is rental assistance for families.

This is A proposal to increase the amount of rental assistance funds that are available and the precise target population here would be families that have children either in child care settings or in Seattle Public Schools.

This was put forward by Council President Gonzalez.

Please go ahead Council President.

Just really briefly, I think it's pretty self-explanatory here, but I think the intent here is to have some targeted investments for populations that we know are particularly vulnerable, and those are, of course, families.

with children who are currently in childcare or Seattle Public Schools, we are still exploring what the revenue source would be and working through a potential number that we hope to have crystallized by tomorrow for Form B submission.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Sorry, I was going to say, I cannot stay past 5 p.m.

Second item, my form A is item number 21, and I was hoping to ask for the chair's indulgence to allow me to address item 21 out of order.

I think it's item 22. We can definitely do that.

Jeff, do you mind summarizing 22 quickly?

Do I have it wrong in my seat?

This is a request to examine the Appropriations provided for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, given the delays that we've seen in implementing the standup of the regional authority, and there are continuing plans to transfer contract management and ownership of those contracts from HSD to the authority, but given those delays, a request to examine the cost impacts of that and other feasibilities.

And that's President Gonzalez.

Great, it is listed as 21 on this slide, so please go ahead Council President, sorry for the confusion.

No, that's okay.

Just really quickly, I want to continue to signal my support for the regional efforts via the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

Council Central staff, Jeff in particular, already highlighted this is as a issue identification by Central staff.

I submitted a form a in part because we did not have enough time to discuss this item during the HSD department budget overview presentation that occurred earlier this month.

And so I wanted to make sure that we use this forum to continue the conversation around the city's plan to move significant resources and functions out of the Human Services Department into the King County Regional Homelessness Authority at some point in 2021. As we know, the implementation timeline has been delayed by months for many reasons, including um, including the, um, you know, need to more appropriately staff the lived experience, um, cohort at resources to be able to continue to meaningfully engage both in, um, sensitive policy questions, but also in many of the issues related to hiring the CEO.

And so, um, you know, again, uh, I, I think the city is in general remains committed to this effort, but given the implementation timeline, I think there is a question for the council to consider during our budget process, which is our biggest leverage point as partners in this effort.

It is, I think, incumbent upon us to evaluate the proposal made by the mayor in terms of the implementation question for 2021. And, you know, colleagues, I would be remiss in not mentioning that while I have a strong commitment and belief in this regional effort, I continue to be cautiously optimistic about the direction that we're headed here.

For those of you who missed the news, eight of our suburban cities in King County recently voted to, um, oppose, uh, a one 10th of a cent sales tax at the local level, deciding instead to take it to take a different approach and choosing to house, um, excuse me, to, um, pass a proposal that would focus on funding, um, a, a, higher income threshold than what the county has proposed through its sales tax proposal.

That was unfortunate news.

And I think that it presents a little bit of a signal into the work that we need to continue to do to be on the same page as a region.

But setting that aside, at some point in 2021, We all know that the plan is for the city of Seattle to transfer around $73 million worth of human services contracts and the staffing and administrative resources related to those contracts to the regional homelessness authority.

But it's still unclear exactly how soon the RHA's administration will be stood up.

And I think we need to be cognizant of this while making budgetary decisions about HSD and the management of these resources and contracts.

should consider whether it would be appropriate to maintain more resources and staff at HSD in 2021 in order to continue effective management of homeless and service contracts currently being administered by HSD while we continue to attempt to stand up the RHA through the King County Regional Homeless Southerly Governing Committee and the implementation.

board.

So this is an opportunity for us and I'm happy to continue having conversations with you all colleagues about whether it's a phased strategy and phased approach, whether this takes the form of a proviso that is dependent on implementation Success at the, um, RHA.

So I think there's many ways to address the concerns I've expressed.

Um, and some of the concerns that, uh, the chair expressed, she's heard from a frontline service providers and workers over at HSD.

And this, this form a is, um, uh, submitted by me with that, um, intent around, around those proposed dollars and, um, I look forward to submitting a form B to continue to allow us to evaluate alternatives and strategies to this big question.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Questions?

Seeing none.

Okay, three more items.

Council Member Swat, you are up next.

Item number 19, 24-hour operations.

Sure, I'll give some background context.

There are a large number of basic shelters that are funded by the city.

And many of those, because of changes in the facility that they're in or other changes, have transitioned to providing their services for 24 hours.

So a person could stay there the entire time.

And this proposal is to allow them to continue doing so going forward, as before by Councilmember Sawant.

Councilmember Sawant.

Thank you.

And thank you, Jeff.

Some of what I will say will definitely overlap with the background Jeff has already given.

This budget action would add $655,000 to the Human Services Department to contract with nonprofit organizations such as Share and Wheel to maintain 24-hour operations of basic shelters.

share and we'll operate self managed basic shelters in our city as we know, basic shelters are the shelters that do not have many of the services provided in shelters but because there aren't enough shelters overall and there isn't enough enough shelter space overall in Seattle.

I think we need to protect every possible shelter bed.

Also, the fact that shared wheel shelters are self-managed allows them to build a community in a way that other shelters, even enhanced shelters, aren't able to.

And clearly we've heard tremendous advocacy from the residents of these self-managed shelters, self-managed environments themselves, that it is really working for them and that they want to build on it.

This year, the basic shelters that shared wheel operate were provided extra funding to allow them to provide 24-hour services instead of just being overnight, which is essential to keep people safe during COVID, but even without COVID, a 24-hour shelter is a huge improvement compared to overnight.

For housed people, imagine not being able to go home during the day, even to use the bathroom.

So the residents of Sharon Wheel have been fighting to maintain the 24-hour operations for their shelters in 2021, and this budget amendment would make that funding possible.

Thank you, Council Member Swat.

Questions?

I was just surprised by the low dollar amount associated with this.

And is it because it's only associated with two locations or how many locations are we talking about here?

Anybody?

I believe we're talking about two, but to be honest with you, we are not entirely sure, but I'd be happy to get back to you on that.

But overall, I can say that the reason it's a small amount, and I'm glad you raised that, is because it's basic shelter services.

Okay.

Jeff, anything to add to that?

No, I don't know anymore.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I want to thank Council Member Sawant for bringing this forward.

I did some preliminary inquiries with HSD about the issue of what it would cost to ensure that we do not lose any beds associated with our deintensification efforts.

The 2021 budget provides some additional funding to maintain some of the RFP deintensification efforts that we've already supported, but there are programs that are not receiving additional funds through 2021. share wheel is one program for their 171 beds in a church space.

Angelines, DESC, Lazarus, and St. Martins also could, we could find that they are going to lose, lose beds in 2021. And so we've asked the question to maintain de-intensification for the agencies.

what would it cost?

And the response that we got from the executive is that DCHS over at King County is working with the agencies to identify a permanent solution and the funding needed to support the the de-intensified beds into hotels into 2021, but we have not yet, and we have contacted King County to find out if that's indeed the case, that they are working with these agencies to identify a permanent solution, but we have not yet heard back.

So again, really appreciate Council Member Sawant taking this on for share wheel, but also note that there are 20 beds, at Angeline's, 338 at DESC.

Well, they're not at, they are DESC beds that are in hotels.

They are Angeline's beds that are in hotels.

There's 16 beds from Lazarus that are in hotels.

And there are 102 beds from St. Martin's that are in hotels.

So this is a huge area that I think we need to figure out how to work out a permanent solution for 2021.

I appreciate that.

Council Member Swat?

I appreciate Council Member Herbold sharing that information.

And I hope council members will support this budget amendment now.

And if we understand about the expansion of it to include other shelters, we would be happy to support that too, of course.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, when I read, you know, 650, I thought for all shelters across Seattle, why haven't we done this before?

So if the price tag is slightly different, then obviously look forward to hearing that information, but appreciate both of your comments and the urgency of this issue in 2021. Let's go on to Council Member Herbold's number 20.

As a matter of introduction, the Social Service Provider Academy is an existing program at South Seattle College that provides the opportunity for advancement for individuals that work at homelessness and housing agencies in Seattle.

This proposal would provide $100,000 to support a navigator position related to that program that I imagine Council Member Hurdle is going to speak more to, so I will turn it over to her.

Thank you so much.

We were visited by Dan Wise this morning who gave testimony in support of this program.

Students will complete 25 college credits to earn housing and homeless services provider one and two certificates.

Each certificate can be earned in one of two evening college quarters.

Overall, the program costs $330,000 a year.

The budget request is for $100,000 to fund the Navigator, who works to disperse the direct student support, which then is used for the support needed by the students from anything from late utility bills to childcare needs to bus passes.

The program began this year in September.

and currently has 21 students enrolled.

Students are recruited and referred from Plymouth Housing, Catholic Community Services, Chief Seattle Club, Mary's Place, Reach, and DESC.

The student racial identity of this particular 21-student cohort is 13 students who are Black, African-American, One that is Native American and seven that's white.

Majority of students have lived experiences of homelessness and housing instability.

And credits from this program are transferable to the Seattle Community Colleges two and four year degrees.

I have a one pager about the program that I'd be happy to share with folks as well.

Thanks.

Would love to see the one pager.

Thank you so much.

Any questions on that.

OK.

Thank you very much.

I do want to just check in to see how this might intersect with some of our 1199 homeless service providers and the work and the training that they do at some point, just flag that as an area of interest.

The last one's mine, and I promise I'll keep it short.

Go ahead, Jeff.

The last one is a homeless prevention facility acquisition to provide funds for the acquisition or long-term lease of properties for use as non-congregate shelters.

That could then be affordable housing or approved support housing in the future.

Budget Chairman Muscat.

OK, well, we've already talked about this quite a bit today.

I will leave it pretty open to say I'm very interested in working with other council members on this issue.

And if it's not about freeing up dollars for the purchase of hotels or motels for a long term transition into affordable housing, we want to make sure that there's also the long term lease options.

And again, I think this is a win win.

for those who are looking to provide shelter options and those who might have vacant spaces that we can use for immediate housing.

And I don't mean just shelter, I mean turn into housing in the long term.

Questions for me?

Okay.

Thank you, Jeff and Brian and everybody else who provided feedback this afternoon.

Is there anything else on this item?

Okay, I will note, Ali, I believe that there is a memo coming from you with clarification on form B fill out.

Okay, and it's going to include an online link if that's correct.

Go ahead.

Yes, thank you, Chair Muscat.

I will be, in just a few minutes, sending out an email to all the council members and staff about the Form B process.

Specifically, I've gotten some questions about the sponsorship requirements.

So there will be some additional information, and I will, again, include the link to the form if anyone needs it.

It is getting late.

I could not find the mute button.

Okay.

So thank you again, everybody.

It's been a long four days.

We really appreciate Central Staff's time, Seattle Channel for covering this, our clerks and communications and our IT folks and Central Staff.

You've all been tremendous, so thank you for getting us through the last four days.

Next week, starting on Wednesday, October 28th until October 30th, we will go into discussions on the council budget actions and statements of legislative intent.

We will have central staff summarize each proposed item, and the member sponsoring the proposal will have the opportunity to speak to their proposal.

It's going to be very exciting.

A quick preview.

Communications has figured out a way for us to show visually to the viewer who is signing on as co-sponsors so we won't have to do the hand raise and the you know, Zoom sort of nightmare.

It'll be a very nice way of showing it visually on the screen for council members and members of the viewing public more to come on that.

We've made it easy for us this year, especially with our remote meetings.

We're going to also make sure that you all know that this is an opportunity for us to have a deliberation, for us to ask questions, any concerns you have.

This is going to be really the chance in those meetings for you to get those issues daylighted so that we can have those robust discussions before our draft council budget is put together.

To have proposals incorporated into the presentations that central staff is working on, again, a reminder to please complete the Form Bs.

Allie's going to send the link and the memo momentarily so that you'll have all the information at your fingertips.

Does need to be submitted by 5 p.m.

tomorrow, which is Thursday, October 22nd.

Form Bs do require sponsorship from three council members, so that's one prime sponsor and two co-sponsors.

Just quick note, three total.

I don't see any questions on that.

In advance of that meeting on the 28th, we will have the public hearing on the 27th.

I've talked about it many times, 5.30 is when we start to sign up for public comment.

If you are still listening, thank you for sticking with us.

And we hope to see you and hear from you on the 27th at public hearing.

If there's no further questions, thanks again to everybody, including my staff, for helping us manage getting all the information we need for these remote meetings.

It is 517. Have a great rest of your night.

Thank you all.