Select Budget Committee Session I 9/30/21

Again, for joining the Select Budget Committee meeting, I'm Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Committee.

Today is September 30th, 2021, and the time is 9.32 a.m.

The Select Budget Committee meeting will come to order.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Gonzalez?

Here.

Herbold?

Here.

Juarez?

Here.

Lewis?

Present.

Peterson?

Present.

Morales?

Salant.

Present.

Strauss.

Present.

And Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Eight present.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Colleagues, thank you again for joining our day two of the department deliberations.

We are having each department come in front of us and report out on the details for the mayor's proposed budget that we received on Monday this week.

On Thursday we do have a packed agenda today and tomorrow we will also go all day.

This is our chance to really ask departments a series of questions about what is included in the mayor's proposed budget and have an opportunity to have a foundational understanding of what that proposal We will have a finalized 2022 calendar year budget for consideration We will begin with a presentation from the Office of Housing.

We will also have the citywide homelessness response and a presentation from the Human Services Department in session one.

Session two is also detailed in your agenda packet.

It will include a presentation on public safety and a presentation from the representatives of Seattle Police Department.

If there is no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

I also want to welcome Councilmember Morales, Thank you for joining us.

That does mean that we have a full house today.

Thank you all for being here again on day two.

Appreciate it.

At this time, we are going to go into public comment.

We have committed to having public comment at the beginning of each meeting.

up until 10 a.m.

I am going to try to get through everyone on this list and that means I'm going to ask folks to limit their comments to one minute and 30 seconds.

So one minute and 30 seconds today would allow for us to get through the nearly 20 people that have signed up for public comment and appreciate your ability to get your message across in that time.

And also, of course, feel free to send us remaining ideas and comments to council at seattle.gov.

For anyone who has not been able to sign up for public comment this morning, you can email us at that account as well.

And if you don't get the chance to speak this morning, we are going to be looking for your email later today.

You are going to hear a chime at 10 seconds at the end of your allotted time.

That is your indication to wrap up, so please remember to try to get your final comments in within that 10-second time.

I'm going to call on three people at a time in the order in which they appear on today's public comment sign-in sheet.

Once you're done speaking, please do hang up, disconnect from the line, and continue to follow us at Seattle Channel or the listen-in options on today's agenda.

public comment period is now open.

The first few speakers on the list will be called and remember to hit star six.

When you hear the prompt that you have been unmuted, that is your cue to hit star six so that you will be unmuted on your line and that way we can hear you.

The first three people on my list today are Howard Gale, Peter Condon, and Jacob Shurer.

Good morning, Howard.

Good morning.

Howard Gale, District 7, speaking on the budget and police accountability.

On September 18th, the Seattle Times covered the story of Howard McKay, a retired longshoreman and an elderly homeowner who was brutally assaulted in his own home by the Seattle Police two years ago.

When the Office of Police Accountability Director Andrew Meyerberg investigated McKay's assault, he deemed it, quote, lawful and proper, unquote, without even bothering to interview the officers involved.

The city recently settled with McKay for a quarter of a million dollars of our tax money, to provide a small measure of justice otherwise unobtainable.

Our current police accountability system costs over $10 million.

This means that taxpayers pay twice for police abuse, once to cover it up if that fails, a second time to compensate the victims.

The solidarity budget demands that police accountability be removed from the SPD.

The mayor's budget gives more money to the SPD, including the bizarre addition of monies to fund a video propagandist at the OPA to convince Seattleites that videos of people being abused by police are not what they seem.

At a minimum, all $10-plus billion tied to the current police accountability system must be removed from the SPD and existing failed structures and redirected to create full civilian community control over police policy, misconduct investigations, and discipline.

Go to seattlestop.org to find out how.

That's seattlestop.org.

Thank you so much, Howard.

The next person is Peter.

Good morning, Peter.

Good morning.

This is Peter in district 6. City Council should follow the recommendations of the solidarity budget and defund the police and municipal court by 50% in 2022. This can be done by reducing SBD's position authority to 750 sworn police officers, transferring civilian programs out of the department, and ending all cost spending on technology, weapons, buildings, and PR.

The idea that 125 new police officers can address Seattle's needs requires maintaining a false perception of the job.

Policing is defined by surveillance, violent detainment, and displacement of people.

No police officer can house someone, no police officer can provide health care for someone, no officer can care for someone's child, and no police officer can protect someone from police violence itself.

Police actions can and do kill people.

Is that what you want to fund?

The most important feature of the solidarity budget is that it defunds the violent white supremacist structure that is the SPD.

These cuts would supply critical permanent funding for housing and community-led public safety programs, such as HSD community capacity building and participatory budgeting, both of which are already ramping up and will be putting money into community hands in 2022 or sooner.

In contrast, the mayor's housing investments largely utilize one-time federal relief funds and are not the long-term solution Seattle needs.

Cops don't keep us safe.

Black lives matter.

Support the solidarity.

Thank you very much.

Jacob, good morning.

Hi, thank you.

My name is Jacob Scheer.

I'm an organizer with Real Change, and I'm calling in today on behalf of Real Change and our vendors to ask council to dramatically readjust the mayor's proposed budget to align with the actual needs of our community, which is laid out in the 2022 solidarity budget.

The solidarity budget provides a deeply researched community-centered blueprint for providing true community care and safety, which was achieved by a participatory process that included people like Real Change vendors.

Our vendors have been directly impacted by policy choices and budgets like the one that Mayor Jerkin is proposing, and the solidarity budget reflects both the needs and ideas expressed by our vendors as to how we can create a city where all can thrive.

Our vendors need the commitment to funding deeply affordable and social housing laid out in the solidarity budget, not austerity, and the hiring of more police to perpetuate racist violence and the criminalization of poverty.

The housing and homelessness recommendations identified by the solidarity budget are urgently needed, stopping the sweeps, developing supplementary progressive revenue sources, and crucially, earmarking 75% of Jump Start revenue to fund affordable housing at 0% to 30% of the area median income to directly support our lowest wage workers and our neighbors currently living unhoused.

I hope that all council members will use the 2022 solidarity budget as a guiding document in all budget discussions and incorporate the recommendations, insight, and expertise of people like real change vendors into the council's 2022 budget.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

The next three speakers are Kaylee Condit, Madison Swain Bowden, and BJ Lass.

Good morning, Kaylee.

Hi.

My name is Kaylee Condit and I am an abolitionist in District 6 and a professor at the University of Washington.

City Council should follow the recommendations of the solidarity budget and defund the police and municipal court by 50 percent in 2022. This can be done by reducing SPD's position authority over 750 sworn officers transferring civilian programs out of the department and ending all cop spending on technology weapons buildings and PR.

The idea that 125 new police officers can't address Seattle's needs requires maintaining a false perception of the job.

Policing is defined by surveillance violent detainment and displacement of people.

No police officer can house someone.

No officer can provide health care for someone.

No officer can care for someone's child and no police officer can protect someone from police violence itself.

Police actions can and do kill people.

Is that what you want to fund.

The most important features of the solidarity budget is that it defunds the violent white supremacist structure that is the SPD.

Cops don't keep us safe.

Black lives matter.

Black lives matter.

Support the solidarity budget and defund SPD.

I yield my time.

Thank you and good morning Madison.

Just looking for Madison to pop up.

and after Madison will be BJ last.

So sorry, I was muted.

Can you hear me?

I can.

Thank you so much.

Perfect.

Good morning.

My name is Madison and I'm a resident of District 5 and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

I'm calling in support of the solidarity budget, which defunds SPD in the municipal court by 50%.

The solidarity budget should be the starting point for budget negotiations this year.

I urge the council to adjust the mayor's budget to align with the urgent needs of the community organizations have identified.

I'm especially concerned that Mayor Durkan's budget continues to give SPD more money than all of the Human Services Department, which includes addressing homelessness, preparing youth for success, supporting affordability and livability, promoting public health, supporting safe communities, and promoting healthy aging combined, particularly when seven out of nine members of this council committed to defunding SPD by 50%.

This year alone, SPD has murdered three members of our community.

They also, by way of their spog mouthpiece, Mike Solan, have said that they will refuse to comply with the vaccine mandate.

These people are lawless.

There are no repercussions for their constant endangerment of our community.

Mayor Durkin's budget says, great work, SPD.

You're doing a wonderful job.

There's more money for you to use to brutalize the community.

We need these millions of dollars that are currently in SPD's budget to be freed up to invest in housing, the Green New Deal, transportation, education, child care, food sovereignty, indigenous sovereignty, and so much more.

Thank you.

Thanks for calling in this morning.

BJ, good morning.

You are up next.

Good morning.

My name is BJ Lash.

I'm a Ballard resident.

I'm calling in support of the solidarity budget, which defunds SPD in the municipal court by 50%.

The solidarity budget should be the starting point for budget negotiations this year.

I urge council to adjust the mayor's budget to align with the urgent needs that community organizations laid out in their proposal.

I'm especially concerned that Mayor Durkin's budget keeps civilian positions including the community service officers CSOs in SPD.

If these positions are to be true service providers they should be transferred to the CSCC where they'll be under civilian control where the funding for them should be reallocated to community organizations.

Leaving these positions in SPD embeds them in the culture of SPD.

That's a culture where the Center for Policing Equity found that even after almost a decade of the consent decree officers stop Black and Indigenous people more than five times as frequently as White people and use force against Black people at more than seven times the rate as White people despite the fact that White people are most likely to be found with a weapon when they are searched.

And additionally.

65 percent of JumpStart revenue should be out our acquisition and operating costs of deeply green affordable housing.

We need the millions of dollars that SPD is currently in SPD's budget freed up to invest in housing the Green New Deal transportation education child care food sovereignty indigenous sovereignty and so much more.

This is not a choice of funding priorities.

SPD harms the community with its biased practice

Thank you very much.

The next three speakers are Hattie Rhodes, Trevona Thompson-Wiley, and Josh Castle.

Good morning, Hattie.

Hey, Hattie, if you are speaking, you are still muted.

Can you hit star six one more time, please?

There you are.

Hi.

Hello thank you city council members.

My name is Hattie Rhodes.

I'm the village operations manager for Lehigh's Georgetown Tiny House Village.

I wanted to express my gratitude for you all for your ardent support of the Tiny House Village program.

Currently I live in District 3 but I used to live in District 2 in the Tiny House Village.

Before I lived there before I arrived there I had been living in a tent down in downtown Seattle.

I was without hope for a future.

I had a full time job and it paid.

for numerous application fees for apartments that had never become signing a lease.

I was cold and wet when I went to work in the winters.

The tiny house village offered me more than a traditional shelter could.

It offered me a safe place to stay warm keep my things dry a space where I could breathe again.

It gave me my dignity back.

Your support of the tiny house villages helped save lives.

Yes I now work for the tiny house villages but how could I not.

I want to help others achieve the same thing that I got, permanent housing.

Should they be forced to suffer on the streets until that housing is available?

Should people living in their cars have to go through figuring out how to get housing on their own?

Or should they be offered a place that has dignity in a tiny house where we have case managers and that will help people get their IDs, help them navigate the housing market?

where other community members such as Healthcare for the Homeless or Recovery Cafe know they can find their clients.

You should all be proud of the tiny house villages that you have supported, you have helped.

Thank you and sorry to cut you off, please send the remainder of your comments in.

Good morning, Trevona.

Hi, my name is Trevona and I'm a resident of District 2. Many of today's listeners have heard me give public comment and demand changes to the City of Seattle.

Your community has been calling for a deep investment in addressing community basic needs and community-led programs around harm reduction and transformative justice.

I'm calling in support of the solidarity budget which defunds SPD and the mythical court by 50%.

The solidarity budget should be the starting point for budget negotiations this year.

I urge council to urge, to adjust the mayor's budget to align with the urgent needs that the community organizations have identified and laid out and this very detailed proposal.

I'm extremely worried about Mayor Durkan using $1.1 million for hiring bonuses for SPD despite SPD officers being some of the highest paid city employees.

Why are we not investing that in housing?

Why are we continuing to let people suffer?

We literally have SPD sweeping Cascade Playground as we speak right now.

And in a city that literally lies about being compassionate and being progressive, The City Council needs to stand by all community members.

We need millions of dollars that are currently in SPD's budget to be freed up to invest in housing, the Green New Deal, transportation, education, child care, food sovereignty, indigenous sovereignty, and so much more.

This is pretty just basic knowledge that you should simply care about people and that we need to stop investing in institutions that brutalize folks and that we truly need to invest in helping people and I relinquish

Thank you very much.

The next person is Josh Castle.

Good morning, Josh.

Good morning.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Josh Castle, Community Engagement Director with Lehigh.

I want to thank the City Council for your support of the recently announced $50 million to rapidly create new affordable permanent housing in Seattle, and specifically the $28.5 million of ARPA funding you passed in June.

This will open up 165 new homes in three buildings, that will be owned by Lehigh, two of which operated by Lehigh, for tenants exiting homelessness and tiny house villages before winter strikes.

We are grateful to our partnership with Youth Care who will operate one of the buildings and will serve young adults and many LGBTQ youth exiting homelessness.

These homes will provide permanent supportive housing for 180 women and men, including singles, couples, and people with pets who are transitioning out of our tiny house villages and emergency shelters.

As with our villages, these buildings will each have talented on-site case managers to provide supportive services and 24-7 operational staff.

Between this and several other developments such as George Plumbing Place, now accepting applications, this will bring Lehigh to over 70 permanent housing buildings and over 2,500 units of permanent housing for residents who came from homelessness, many who spent some months in a tiny house village receiving case management support to obtain housing, and are now entering into permanent homes.

Lehigh also opened the play apartments in March that is now providing homes for 30 residents who transitioned from our villages.

We are grateful to all of you on the council, and these investments are saving lives by getting people.

Thank you very much.

The next three speakers are Katie Rubin, Pini O'Grady, and Sarah C. Sarah, your list is not present, so please dial in if you would like to speak today.

Good morning, Katie.

Good morning.

My name is Kate Rubin.

I'm a renter living in District 2 and the executive director of the housing justice organization Be Seattle.

Seattle is one of the most deeply impacted cities in the nationwide housing crisis.

As endorsers of the solidarity budget we are calling on the city to defund SPD and the municipal court by 50 percent stop the sweeps and invest deeply in housing including creating permanent deeply affordable housing housing acquisition land banking emergency shelter and tenant services including legal aid eviction prevention tenant education and organizing and connecting renters to existing city services.

Homelessness has been in a declared state of emergency since 2015 and the working class who have proven to be essential in keeping our city operating during a global pandemic are continuously being pushed further and further outside of Seattle city limits with Black and Brown communities being disproportionately displaced.

We all deserve housing stability.

We need to listen to the people who are most impacted.

Many of the folks experiencing homelessness are labeled as service resistant when the services currently available actually decrease the level of stability that they have in their tents and RVs, or at least they can be with their partners and pets.

No one wants to live in a park and shuffling those who've ended up there somewhere else is a waste of taxpayer dollars and causing further harm and displacement.

We need RV safe lots with wraparound services, increased sanitation services, and permanent housing options, not just shelter beds.

Please protect all Seattle residents invest in our communities and use the solidarity budget as a starting point of budget negotiations this year.

Thank you.

Thank you very much Kate.

And Pini O'Grady.

Good morning.

My name is Penny in District.

Sorry about that.

I'm calling in support.

That's okay.

I'm calling in support of the solidarity budget.

It invests appropriately in our unhoused neighbors and other urgent community needs by defunding SPD and the municipal court by 50 percent.

Do you remember what happened last summer after we witnessed George Floyd's brutal murder.

Do you remember the groundswell of activism insisting that the system of racism and poverty be turned on its head.

And do you remember the ugly police response to people protesting racist police brutality.

the very demonstration of violent policing here in Seattle.

People were touched then by a vision to build a better equitable Seattle.

And do you remember City Council committing to defund the police by 50 percent to that end.

The solidarity budget balances necessary spending on true community safety by reducing the size and scope of the overfunded police department.

I call on you to adjust the mayor's proposed budget to align with the urgent needs that more than 90 underfunded community organizations have endorsed.

It is a roadmap for the kind of safe city we all need and no more sweeps.

Thank you.

I cede my time.

Thanks for calling in today, Penny.

And Sarah, it still says that you are listed as not present.

We do have three more speakers that are listed as present.

I'm going to read your names, and then I'm going to read the names of the folks who are not present so everybody knows if you're listening, now's the time to call in.

The next three speakers that are present will be Ala Hassan, Andra Krentzler, and Bob Finlay, the people that are listed as not present.

Again, Sarah C., Teresa Barker, Bill Smith, Coco Weber and Samrita Khandar.

So good morning, Ala.

And if anybody heard their name and you do want to still testify, please call in.

Good morning, Ala.

Good morning.

My name is Ala Hassan and I manage the Volunteers with Low Income Housing Institute.

Before my current role, I was a case manager at Frye Apartments, a permanent supportive housing site.

While supporting over 230 residents at the fire, I had the opportunity to listen to their stories and many who had transitioned from tiny house villages.

They were able to rebuild their lives thanks to the onsite supportive staff at each tiny house village.

Our case managers helped them get access to permanent housing.

That's what tiny house villages offer.

The support necessary to connect individuals to resources, help them find a source of income, apply for IDs, or provide support through the immigration process.

Each resident receives an insulated and heated home with a door that locks.

They are welcoming for couples and pets unlike congregate shelters which do not provide the same level of safety and security for homeless individuals with unique circumstances.

In fact our tiny house village program has a 99 percent utilization rate compared to basic congregate shelters because of because chronically homeless individuals find greater security and privacy with tiny house villages.

Now as I manage our volunteers I get to see the other side of the spectrum.

We have hundreds of volunteers building tiny houses, neighbors that want to take direct action and address the homelessness crisis and give back to their communities.

Thanks to the City Council support, we are able to activate people into these positions, put up walls and a roof to insulate each house and to provide a welcoming environment to homeless individuals.

Thank you very much.

And Andra, you are up next.

Good morning, City Council members.

Thank you for the work you are doing to address homelessness and housing instability.

In my humble opinion, deep investment in housing stability for renters is the number one way we keep our public safe.

My name is Andra Kranzler.

I'm here on behalf of the Tenant Law Center.

I am the new directing attorney.

Our partnership with the city provides vital legal advocacy for renters experiencing housing instability.

I would like to thank you for funding eviction prevention work and the social services necessary to help people most vulnerable to ending up homeless.

The funding allocated for housing attorneys to work in concert with the City of Seattle's Department of Construction and Inspection is a vital resource for renters in need of housing justice.

It is truly helping those most vulnerable to eviction and homelessness stay housed in both market rate unit and subsidized public housing.

TLC is able to collaborate with community partners like Solid Ground to connect with tenants early on and help them equitably resolve a myriad of housing disputes, whether that's at the beginning of tenancy to remove barriers so that they can get into an eligible unit that maybe they were referred to through the rapid rehousing program and maybe using eviction prevention funds or the emergency assistance dollars provided throughout the council's history, but also through this COVID time period.

We are able to negotiate on tenants' behalf to resolve warranty of habitability issues.

But most importantly, we couldn't do this without your investments in case management, new housing, maintenance of existing housing stock.

We need...

Thank you.

Please send in the rest of your comments, Sandra.

And the last two speakers are Bob and Samira Kandar.

Good morning, Bob.

Hi, Seattle City Council.

Thank you for this opportunity.

I am a resident of District 2 represent, and I'd like, like many people here, I am here to speak on behalf of the solidarity budget.

And I would encourage the council to adopt the solidarity budget because for many of the reasons that have already eloquently be expressed, including it would allow you to keep your commitment of defunding Seattle Police Department by at least 50%.

I also, I just want to observe that Jenny Durkan isn't even running for re-election, so I would just question why anyone would, why her budget is even being considered.

Also, it's not too late for her to resign in disgrace, and I also want to give a shout-out to Tiny House Villages.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

Thank you very much, and Samira.

Good morning.

Hi my name is Samira Kadar and I am living in District 7. I'm calling in support of the solidarity budget for the housing and homeless recommendation specifically also defunding SPD in the municipal court by at least 50 percent and stopping the sweeps which are uncruel and inhumane.

They're in opposition to the CDC guidelines for public health safety during the pandemic we are all living through including our houseless neighbors.

They are also ineffective.

Most people who are swept just end up moving somewhere else because we don't have enough permanent housing options for members of our community.

They are like evictions and we should have a moratorium on these sweeps just like we have a moratorium on our evictions.

We shouldn't be sending the Parks and Recreation Department additional funding to sweep people from their homes but instead prioritizing creating permanent housing options and calling for the allocating of 65 percent of the jumpstart revenue which is at least $132 million annually to be dedicated to the construction or acquisition and operating and service costs for deeply affordable green housing.

That is the most sustainable and effective way we can all work to address the housing issue that members of our community have been facing for years at this point.

It's the only effective humane option because clearly what Seattle has been doing so far doesn't work.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Folks, that does conclude all of our public commenters who are present here today.

I want to thank you all for your comments, and that will end our public comment period for this morning, Thursday, September 30th, 2021, and we will move on to items on our agenda.

Madam Clerk, will you please read item one into the record?

Office of Housing for briefing and discussion.

Good morning to our friends from the office of housing.

I appreciate you all for being here today.

in-depth department presentations and appreciate you being here with us again.

I also want to thank everybody who called in for public comment this morning, those who've been continually organizing over the last year in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many more.

One thing that has constantly been at the forefront of my mind in the last year plus is that when it comes to the movement of defense in defense of Black lives, we have to remember that word movement.

It's not just a moment in time.

This is truly a movement that is going to require us to stay committed to fundamentally shifting the way things are done.

That is part of what I think callers have called in for today.

And it remains true last year and it remains true this year that we must continue to name the harms that have been done.

We must continue to center our discussions on those who have been inflicted, have received harm and have That harm has been inflicted on certain populations for generations.

I think that's an important reminder as we start this conversation today about what it means to create safety and security and health and housing is core to that.

So I appreciate us having a conversation that centers our discussions today on housing, services for folks experiencing homelessness and investments in community safety.

All of these issues affect our individual health and the public's health.

And if we don't address the necessary investments or if we continue the status quo of under-investing as has historically been done, We're in the midst of responding to the national, excuse me, international global pandemic that is COVID and at the same time needing to respond to these other public health crises of the need for affordable housing and true community safety.

So with that, I appreciate Office of Housing for being here because we cannot respond to our current pandemic without a safe place to call home, given that the number one order was to stay home, to stay healthy.

We're working on making more homes for folks.

So look forward to hearing from you all about what is included in the 2022 proposed budget.

And I just want to say it's been a real honor to be able to work with the Office of Housing directly as chair of the committee that oversees housing investments for the last now four years.

It's really been a privilege to work with you and proud of the investments we've made, both the monetary investments and the policy changes that we have worked on together.

to make sure that housing is truly being created by those who have been most disproportionately affected by underinvestment and by displacement over the years.

Director Alvarado, it's been a privilege to work with you, and I look forward to continuing to enhance the funding for 2022 and our policy objectives as well.

So let's have you kick us off.

Thank you so much, Chair Mosqueda, members of City Council.

I'm Emily Alvarado.

I'm Director of the Office of Housing.

Do you want to introduce yourself, Becky?

Becky Guerra, I'm the finance manager for the Office of Housing.

Okay, next slide please.

Thank you.

So I'm going to start this presentation to talk a little bit about the work that the Office of Housing has accomplished in partnership with community in 2021. Most of the work that we do is really focused around our effort to ensure that all people have a safe, stable, and healthy affordable home, especially those farthest from housing justice and facing the most housing insecurity.

We also did our effort to further our mission to build equitable communities and advance community wellness through place-based initiatives that are anchored by affordable housing.

We know that we have so much more work to do.

and we are proud of the work that we were able to accomplish in 2021. First, you see our capital investments.

Through our investments we work to continue to invest quickly in a way that's responsive to communities.

So instead of putting out resources through one single NOFA, which the office has done for many years.

This is our second year where we put out three rental housing NOFAs.

And because of that, we already have several hundred affordable units that are already funded even by September, delivering those resources more frequently and efficiently.

In addition, we published or are publishing three homeownership NOFAs this year, which really reflects our city and community's strong interest in helping families benefit from the equity and stability of ownership, especially BIPOC families who have been intentionally excluded from homeownership in the past.

And our focus is on creating permanently affordable homes that benefits our city for generations.

We'll keep co-creating with our partners to keep affordable housing development going.

We also spent a lot of time this year in 2021 administering emergency rental assistance through our three-part approach.

I'm going to speak more about emergency rental assistance tomorrow as part of the COVID presentation, but just to say we're making good progress in providing roughly $50 million in federal resources to tenants and landlords who are struggling from the economic impacts of COVID.

Next slide, please.

Hmm.

As we wait for this slide to advance I will keep going.

More as part of our 2021 initiatives and programs is our work around homeownership stabilization.

and healthy homes.

We have expanded these efforts.

I'm going to talk more about them later.

But we are focusing on the efforts to make sure that low-income homeowners are stable, comfortable, and do not experience displacement.

Thank you for forwarding the slide.

In addition, for the first time, the Office of Housing is helping to steward many critical housing and community development projects.

through land stewardship and collaboration.

This includes efforts at Mount Baker, South Park, and Northgate, among others.

And we continue to support and to resource our critical community partners, including through direct investment of pre-development funds.

Next slide, please.

So that leads us to our work and proposed budget for 2022, and I'll hand it over to Becky.

This slide gives us an aggregate picture of the many discrete changes that are happening in our 2022 proposed budget.

I want to start with the middle column, the 2021 revised.

What you see here is primarily the significant one-time mid-year changes related to the city's COVID response.

The general fund bump that you see in the 2021 revised column represents two things, the 6 million ECI investment, and also the shift of $8 million of general fund into OH for rental subsidies.

The other appropriation row below that, which for OH, that means anything that is not general fund, be it levy, MHA, federal funds, payroll tax, et cetera, the 2021 revised column amount is driven by one-time federal resources we received in 21, such as the 50 million of rental assistance, the infusion of Clifford and home ARPA funds for our rapid acquisition NOFA, and some other smaller things.

Now shifting to the 2022 proposed, the column on the right, there are a lot of ins and outs, both policy decisions and technical adjustments represented here.

And in the subsequent slides, we'll focus on the net new ads that are part of the change from the 21 adopted to the 22 proposed.

Next slide, please.

So speaking of the net new proposed funds and changes.

First and most significantly is a proposed nearly $85 million investment in capital investments for affordable rental housing.

A breakdown of those funds, you see the various funds listed here, but this is $50.5 million in Clipper federal funds, federal relief funds, $17 million coming from payroll, tax capital, 15.7 million, which is payroll or jumpstart that's focused really explicitly on creating rental housing outcomes in communities that are experiencing displacement and in projects that are led by and proposed by communities that have historically experienced displacement and are historically rooted community organizations, and $1.3 million from the TNC tax.

That totals the $85 million that we would invest together to support production, so development, rehab, reinvestment in affordable housing, and acquisition of land and or buildings to create affordable housing at or below 60% of area median income.

Second, you see a $6 million investment in homeownership opportunities to expand generational wealth.

The real majority of these funds here are to support 4.875 million is to support permanently affordable homeownership development focused on creating and advancing equitable access to homeownership.

And also some investments in homeownership retention, also focused on stabilizing communities low income homeowners in communities of color.

is a $1.587 million investment in oil heat conversion.

And so this really supports the work that we do in partnership with the Office of Sustainability and the Environment.

This allows us to support the conversion from oil heat to electric for low-income homeowners.

It benefits the homeowners themselves and is part of our broader efforts to advance climate resilience.

Next slide, please.

Fourth is a $750,000 proposed appropriation to support workforce development for housing providers.

And really, we know we've talked much about the impacts that the workforce, of the workforce and on the workforce as people seek to participate in organizations that are supporting people who are experiencing homelessness.

As we seek to scale our efforts to build more housing and support more people we need a strong and stable and well-trained workforce to do that alongside us.

This investment will fund a multi-year program with Catholic Community Services and Seattle Colleges to establish a new certificate program focused on homeless housing which will lead to an associate's degree.

The fifth Items here are technical adjustments, $23.8 million, which is primarily comprised of revised MHA projections.

So that's funds that come in as payments under the mandatory housing affordability program.

that gives us the authority to be able to spend as resources come in.

As I mentioned earlier, our office is really intentional about being able to put dollars out into community hands as soon as we get them.

And this adjustment ensures that we're able to do that, even though it reflects a projected availability of MHA.

Next slide, please.

So it's really important for the Office of Housing to state that our work is inextricably linked to a broader effort to achieve racial justice and racial equity.

And we are constantly, that means that we need to constantly be reflective constantly examine the work that we do, the way we do our work and our outcomes, and be prepared to address or update or adapt our efforts to better achieve racial equity.

Part of that is through our policy work and our policies that focus on increasing equitable access to safe, affordable housing, our efforts to prevent displacement and affirmatively further fair housing choice, and to end disparate racial impacts of homelessness and homeownership.

But it's not only in our policy work, it is also in our programmatic work and our processes.

So the Office of Housing continually looks at how we target and design our direct service programs to make sure that we're impacting and supporting folks who are most impacted.

It means that we are making our capital investment decisions with a focus on racial equity.

One change that we've done for a process perspective is to include members of our change team on our capital investment credit committee to make sure that our decisions are centered around racial equity.

Our work is also about making sure that we're analyzing and collecting the data that helps us be accountable to whether or not we are achieving the racial equity outcomes that we seek to achieve.

So we're collecting disaggregated demographic data and seeking to do that in all of our programs, including new programs like our rental assistance delivery.

And finally part of the work that's really important to me personally as a leader is advancing the Office of Housing as an anti-racist organization.

I was proud that this year our change team in endeavored in a process to identify key priorities that our office should pursue to advance racial equity and the recommendations from them became part of our offices policies policy priorities that we continue to work together on.

and I think that concludes our presentation.

Any questions from council members?

Thank you very much.

Great, thank you very much.

So really appreciate the overview here as chair of the committee that receives reports from the Office of Housing.

I'll start with a few comments and then ask a few questions per our practice yesterday, and then I will turn it over to council members.

So if you'd like to get in the queue, please do so.

Council Member Morales, I see your hand up first, so I'll make sure to call on you after our series of questions, and then Council Member Kerbal.

Again, thank you very much for being here today, to your team at the Office of Housing, as we have had the chance to work with you not only over the last 18 plus months during this pandemic, but also prior to that, your team has been constantly acting as if it was a state of emergency, because it is.

It is a declared state of emergency in our city in terms of the lack of access to affordable housing, and I believe you have been acting with urgency both yourself and your predecessor, Steve, who was tremendous as well.

We appreciate all the work we've been able to do with you at the Office of Housing in the last four years.

Over the last several budgets, the housing priority has consistently been a major center of what this council and my office have lifted up in the 2020 adopted budget, as a reminder for folks in the viewing audience and for our colleagues We increased affordable housing investments by securing an additional $19.75 million to invest in shovel-ready affordable housing projects using the Mercer Mega proceeds.

We also passed legislation to enable the city to collect a portion of existing sales tax revenue for affordable housing, leading to an additional $50 million for permanent supportive housing.

Last year, we passed the landmark Jumpstart Payroll Tax historic legislation that is expected to generate at least $136 million per year for affordable housing when the full 62% of the Jump Start revenues come in the door.

As a reminder, Jump Start spend plan has a large focus on housing.

62% is the total, and that includes within that, 82%, the vast majority of the funding for affordable housing, going to multifamily rental housing and services for households below 30% of the area median income.

That includes 13% of the funding for affordable housing, going to community-focused acquisition, development, and program support to make sure that housing has affirmatively secured the funding necessary for the fair housing components to address past discriminatory practices and policies such as redlining, restrictive racial covenants and other discriminatory practices.

Within the amount allocated for affordable housing, 5% is going to permanently affordable home ownership opportunities, serving households that are at risk of displacement from communities that have been facing barriers to equitable access to home ownership.

in all parts of our city due to past discriminatory practices.

And that includes past practices such as red lighting, in addition to mortgage lending discrimination and other restrictive racial covenants.

A few thoughts on the presentation and a few thoughts on initial priorities that we have for the upcoming 2022 calendar year budget as it relates to housing.

We've heard from advocates about the need to increase this year's affordable housing NOFA or notice of intent for We've also heard from organizations in our community housing roundtables that we convene regularly about the need to make sure that these dollars are unencumbered by partnership requirements for community organizations developing affordable housing within their communities.

And I'll be bringing forward a companion resolution to make it explicit that we are intending to allocate JumpStart dollars to be accessible to community-driven development without requiring that type of encumbering partnership that has been required in the past.

And the reasons that we've invested in large portions of JumpStart dollars into affordable housing is because we know there are dire needs to ramp up our investments, not just to backfill or swap in JumpStart dollars for other priorities.

We want to see investments in this to the scale of the need identified in the jump start spend plan that we passed so that those dollars are added in.

I will take a quick second to thank Director Alvarado as well.

I know within your department and under your leadership, you've also, on that second point, been looking for ways to reduce the encumbering requirements for the partnerships on a project by project basis.

And so that's really appreciated.

And we look forward to bringing that commitment into policy so that we can see that commitment live on in statute.

So thanks for your initial work on that as well.

So a few questions for you and then we'll turn it over to other council members because I know we probably have a lot of interest in this area.

And this may be a question for you, Director Alvarado, or your team, but also I know we have central staff on the line here as well, so feel free to have them respond as well.

The proposed 22 budget proposes the Office of Housing include roughly $40 million in Jump Start funds, and this includes $1.7 million of Green New Deal funding from the home oil conversion.

That seems like it's less than about half of what was outlined in the jumpstart spend plan.

And perhaps for central staff, based on the estimates that you've seen, can you confirm that my initial read is correct on that?

We were expecting around $98 million.

I know I saw Ben Noble's face pop in for a second, too.

That $98 million was initially in that slide we saw yesterday.

But is it accurate to say that of jumpstart spend plan, we are seeing about half of that initial amount going towards housing?

Chair Mosqueda, that is correct.

About half of what we would have assumed for Jumpstart revenues is going towards housing.

And then the other half is made up by the one-time ARPA funds to meet the target, but not the full amount of payroll tax revenues.

I just waiting to confirm the same that the slide last yesterday was to highlight the total amount and indicated that the funding target was achieved with a mix of funding, given the other demands and other priorities overall in the budget, but yeah.

to be able to see where the color of money aligns with And I know that we do have a cliff issue as it relates to federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars.

We're all painfully aware that those dollars may not be available in perpetuity because they are one-time allocations from our congressional and sometimes through the state pass-through.

to address the immediate emergency.

I think part of the questions that I will be asking of central staff and my colleagues here is how we can make sure that the dollars from jump start are truly additive to the degree that we had included in the initial spend plan.

That will be something I'm looking at.

I'm Emily and team, the budget indicates that there is 15.7 million that will be used for strategic fund investments.

What is the intent around these funds?

Are there broader opportunities for fund projects that didn't participate in the strategic investment fund process, but would align with the intent of the jumpstart spend plan?

Thank you for that question, Chairman Skater.

Yeah, I I think that the goal here is really first and foremost about the outcome.

to invest in projects that are in communities experiencing a high risk of displacement and that are proposed from historically rooted community-based organizations.

So that's the purpose.

And we feel that we can meet that intent through a variety of ways.

One is that we have projects that really fulfilled that intent that apply to our typical NOFA process.

And some of those same projects are projects that had previously applied under the Strategic Acquisition Fund too.

So we see a lot of crossover and this would give us the opportunity to support those even more intentionally on the housing side.

We also have projects that apply to us through our acquisition funds which as you know right now outside of our rapid acquisition NOFA is typically a financing tool.

We are borrowing against future money so the dollars don't get fully invested in those projects as we do acquisition.

this fund would allow us to make more permanent acquisition investments, too.

So three things.

One, I think the intent is the same as the strategic acquisition as it relates to addressing displacement and advancing racial equity and working with community-based organizations.

Two, I think there are some projects that could be invested in that had also sought to apply for strategic acquisition funds and also apply for the Office of Housing.

And three, I think we have processes underway already in which those projects will elevate themselves and can be ready for funds pretty quickly.

Thank you.

I see central staff on the line.

Did you have anything else to add to that?

No.

Okay, just making sure.

So Emily, just to follow up on that one then, I'm trying to understand where the mayor's 6,000 affordable homes since 2017 gets calculated, right?

The mayor has been out there talking about how the housing investments in the budget are aligning with leveraging additional dollars to create 6,000 affordable homes since 2017. So what are the assumptions that are baked into getting to that 6,600 unit number?

And can you remind me of whether or not these are projects that are in the pipeline now, or are they not yet in development?

And what is the AMI levels for those?

Is that including the strategic investment possibility there?

Great question, so I know that this question has also been asked by Council Central staff and we have sent over a detailed.

analysis, which probably better captures the AMIs and other details that you asked about that I won't be able to come up with on the top of my head.

But what I can say is that the 6,000 is counting units that were funded and announced by Mayor Durkin starting in 2017 through 2020, but not including the investments that were announced as part of 2021. So those units were funded using a mix of housing levy, The majority of those units are probably under development in the construction process.

Those some may be farther along.

So that does not include things that we are funding this year that we may have talked about but are not rolled up into that number.

And the full description is with council central staff.

I'll say that in part that is a significant number from things like one-time resources that we've gotten over the years from increases in MHA.

There was action taken by council to implement some new state authority around the sales tax that has boosted our production numbers over the last few years.

I'm going to ask this question related to workforce development, because I know this is something that Councilmember Morales' office is also looking into, and then we'll transition.

Hopefully that'll be a good transition to Councilmember Morales' questions.

I do want to know more about this workforce development program.

There's the proposal for the $750,000 for workforce development program to develop and strengthen the workforce and housing social service agencies through the city.

Can you describe this program?

Are there proposed partnerships with unions or technical community colleges?

Is this a wage increase that we're talking about for partnerships with the existing workers?

What is it that we're actually funding with three quarters of a million?

Thank you.

So the proposal here is that for many years Catholic Community Services has been working with Seattle Colleges to create a certification program that would help people who are moving forward getting an associate's degree to grow their interest and also expertise in being part of the workforce around housing and human services organizations.

They have not yet run that certificate program.

They've been working with some pilot cohorts.

And that program is under development.

So this is not a specific wage increase.

This is about creating the curriculum actively with Seattle colleges to help grow the expertise of people who are going into the field.

And that includes growing expertise about trauma-informed care and housing first models and other areas that are really important.

You know, one of the things that we hear from providers, we get some First time people entering into the workforce, working in our housing and human services organizations, it is really hard to find the folks in those middle tiers.

There are certainly a lot of reasons why that's the case.

One is wages.

One is stress of the job.

It is really challenging, particularly during COVID.

These are high intensity jobs, certainly, but also is about growing expertise and pipeline.

So this is focused on that as it relates to union jobs, I'd love to collaborate with you and others.

on how we make those connections.

I know there's a lot of interest from Kappa Community Services and others to also look at janitorial staff and the growth in the field of janitorial workers.

We have a shortage there too as it relates to housing and human services organizations and those jobs are historically represented folks as part of a union.

And I think there's a way to create additional complementary investments with this workforce one that can simultaneously grow that piece of the workforce as well.

I'm going to turn it over to

Good morning, everyone.

Nice to see you, Director Alvarado.

Before I get to my questions, I just want to thank you for being really explicit in the ways in which you are trying to lead this organization, this department, through anti-racist principles and incorporating them into the practices and policies and programs that you're doing, so thank you for that.

You know, disaggregating data is a huge issue, so I'm really glad to hear you call that out specifically.

I did have a question about workforce development, but I think Councilmember Mosqueda has addressed that, so I will just get to the other questions that I have.

So beyond budget sources, can you talk about the difference between the $17 million in investments in affordable housing capital, the roughly $50 million in expanded capital investment in affordable housing production, and the $16 million in investments to address residential displacement?

I'm just trying to see Are these all different things?

How are they connected to one another?

And, you know, I think a theme departments will probably be hearing from us this week is, you know, we don't want to be duplicating programs.

If there's work that needs to be done in different departments, we can do that.

But I think we're just trying to sort of, you know, peel back the onion a little bit and understand what all of these programs are and how they're funded.

talk a little bit about those, that'd be great.

Good morning, Council Member Morales.

Thanks for those questions.

So I would say largely in that first bucket that you saw as part of the ad for the proposed 2022 budget that was the 80 some odd million in housing capital, largely the distinction is one about fund source.

really we imagine that the majority of those funds would be invested through the typical ways that we invest resources now, which could include our annual NOFA.

So to the point that Council Member Mosqueda made earlier about trying to think about ways to enhance our NOFA actually from this year, because we have a lot of demand relative to the availability of resources.

We could also imagine it helping to allow for more investments under our rapid acquisition NOFA that continues to roll right now and allow us to purchase buildings that are currently under construction and could be available for acquisition on the market.

And then to also support our work around reinvestment, which is really important.

I need to be on the record of saying this, that we can build affordable housing on year one.

And one of the things we have to make sure is that we don't lose that affordable housing by virtue of it.

I don't imagine different processes for these funds than the ones that we have now.

I think the $15 million explicitly focused on anti-displacement We will lead and ensure that that will meet the outcome, but otherwise it will be through our regular investments.

Our investments, as you know, are guided by council-adopted funding policies that drive the population served, the income served, and our goals to further fair housing as well as meet transit-oriented development goals, which are also consistent with the TPNC funds.

Okay.

Thank you, that's very helpful for trying to suss that out.

So I'm assuming that all of these line items feed into the multifamily housing BSL, is that right?

Okay.

That's correct.

And so can you tell me then the remaining 20 million in the multifamily lending, where is that?

The base, I'm sorry, you're asking about the base of our,

Is this the technical adjustment piece of the $23 million?

Yeah.

That also goes for the same investment strategy.

That is mandatory housing affordability proceeds, but it comes in as a separate item on the budget description here because it came in a different way.

It is because it's a projected increase in funds that we otherwise would have counted as a part of our baseline budget.

Okay, very helpful.

And then my last question, I'm excited to see an expansion in funding for homeownership.

It looks like we're going from 2.6 to 8.2 million, so that's great.

Can you talk a little bit about how successful the program has been?

How does one qualify for assistance?

And then what kind of programs will the additional funding go toward?

Yeah, so.

Thank you.

So our homeownership funds do two things.

One, they support down payment assistance, which extends to an individual home buyer who seeks to purchase a home on the market in a way in which that's subsidized.

Or we invest in the development of homes that will be permanently affordable.

Some people know of this as a land trust model.

It is permanently affordable home.

where when the home is initially availed, it's made available to a low income home buyer.

And then upon resale, the subsequent home buyer is also low income because the equity is capped to ensure that it stays affordable.

So those two models we invest in, we have historically partnered with Homesite to do the lending and partnership around down payment assistance.

That program continues to move forward, though I should be clear that it is harder to use down payment assistance when the market prices for homes are so high.

trying to chase the market is very challenging.

So that's why we have more invested in our permanently affordable homeownership development.

That's working well.

We have a few community partners primarily who apply to us, namely Habitat for Humanity and Homestead Community Land Trust are our primary development partners that we seek to expand and grow our partnerships.

They work on homebuyer readiness and working to identify homeowners.

We have other models too, where, for example, Homestead did a development and then worked alongside Africatown Community Land Trust to try to recruit homebuyers as part of an effort to use community preference.

So we don't, homeowners, homebuyers don't apply directly to us.

They work with our community partners.

to apply for homes.

There are certainly more need and demand by home buyers than we are producing home ownership.

I know it feels very small when we announce that we've created 50 some odd permanently affordable homes this year.

That is scaled for us and we seek to continue to grow that.

Very good.

Well, look forward to working with you on how we can expand all of that.

one of our priorities is to increase particularly black homeownership and to preserve homeownership for them for the for the community so um okay thank you very much uh madam chair those are all my questions right now wonderful thank you uh vice chair herbold please go ahead great thank you so much uh

Good morning, Director Alvarado.

I really appreciate all of the work of yourself and folks on your team.

I appreciate your lifting up the investments that you're making in housing in South Park in this presentation as well.

I have questions about two print programs.

The first is the Home and Hope Program.

You may recall we allocated funds in the past to help by development work on possible affordable housing locations from our partners at Enterprise.

And it's, I think, been a really useful investment.

The budget indicates that The $200,000 in one-time funding was removed from the proposed 2022 budget.

I was wondering, is there any remaining funding for this program in 2022, or is it removed entirely?

As you know, Director Alvarado, you've been a great help in my district.

It's been really helpful in working with Enterprise in determining the possibilities around the use of a Seattle City Light-owned site known as the Dumar site that a local community would really like to see developed, including affordable housing.

Several years ago, during the MHA discussions, we ensured that even though most of that particular neighborhood was receiving the minimum bump because of concerns around displacement, we made sure that a larger zoning increase was done at that particular site because we wanted to use that site for housing.

So just wondering, wanting to know what with the statuses of that program.

And then the other question is a similar-sounding program, but completely different, Home for Good.

I should note that both of these programs that I'm asking about are programs that Councilmember Gonzalez work to champion as well.

The $200,000 in one-time funding for the Home for Good program also seems to be removed from the budget.

I know the intent of the funding was to ensure that low-income folks who are transitioning from state HEN to federal disability benefits, didn't lose their housing during that transition.

And then we found out last year that it was not necessary because the state was not kicking people off of benefits due to the pandemic.

But I don't know if we can continue assuming that as we move into 2022. So I'm just wanting to know if we have any indication of when the state might reverse that practice and resume transitioning people off of HEN and do we know whether or not there's funding necessary for Home for Good included in the 2022 proposed budget if that should occur?

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I will answer most of that question.

I can confirm that the Home and Hope funding is included in our baseline.

We have incorporated that into our baseline, so though it doesn't show discreetly in 2022, it is incorporated into our base budget.

Home for Good, we did consider a one-time add, and that is not included in the 2022 proposed.

And so on the policy side of the answers to those questions, first of all, I will confirm with staff and we will get back to Council Central staff.

I do not believe we have fully expended our Home and Hope contract for this year, but we are regularly billing that with support on pre-development and analysis for projects like the one you mentioned at Dumar.

So that partnership continues.

On Home for Good, you're right that it is really thoughtful and very much needed subsidy that came at a time in which it's less needed because people are not transitioning off of HEN.

I don't have the information about when we might anticipate a change in the state policy.

I will look into that.

But at this point, we continue to work with Catholic Community Services on whether there are better or different ways within the intent of the contract to expend this year's contract.

Thank you both.

Excellent, thank you.

Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

I will pick up.

Council President, I'm so sorry, your audio is a little garbled.

Do you mind trying one more time?

Maybe just mute, unmute.

Ah, yes, that may help us out.

Is that better?

So much better, thank you.

All right, I guess my headphones aren't as reliable as I wanted them to be.

Sorry about that.

I'm gonna go ahead and pick off where Council Member Herbold left off on the home for good investments.

So I just wanna be really clear that I understand that the allocations that we made in 2019 were actually not spent.

Becky, do you have a better update on expenditure?

The 2019 $750,000 was spent.

And why don't I say, let's go back and I'll confirm all this.

I believe that the first was spent, it is the 2021 amount that we are struggling to spend.

OK.

And remind me what the 2021 amount is. $200,000.

$200,000.

OK.

And that $200,000 has not been carried over into the proposed 2022 budget.

That's correct.

OK.

Okay.

All right, that's helpful.

I'm going to switch gears a little bit.

I want to go back to the new investments in housing capital, which are approximately $89.5 million.

I understand that there's going to be a renewed focus of those dollars on 0% to 30% area median income, which I'm extremely grateful for.

Thank you so much for that.

I do have some questions about the granular details related to the intention around those investments.

So I'll just put the questions out because they're both related to the Strategic Acquisition and Development Fund.

So will the $89.5 million include a percentage set aside for new permanent supportive housing units?

And if so, what is that set aside and how many permanent supportive housing units are we hoping to realize as a result of this $89.5 million new investment?

And then secondly, much of the proposed budget for the Office of Housing is for acquisitions and development.

And I would like to get a better understanding of what resources are baked into the 2022 budget or what kind of that is specifically dedicated to operations and maintenance funding.

What we do have is, as I mentioned earlier, we expect a portion of these funds will help us to continue to take applications under our rapid acquisition notice NOFA.

And through that NOFA, we were working with community partners to purchase the buildings that are being used for people who are experiencing homelessness.

So while not the highest intensive Permanent supportive housing that's done by some other agencies.

This is strong supportive housing serving people who are experiencing homelessness and a portion of the funds will certainly be used for that purpose.

Another portion of the funds, as I mentioned, goes to invest in our typical NOFA.

Usually, we have about one or two applications in our round that are seeking to produce permanent supportive housing.

As you all know, we ran a permanent supportive housing pilot last year, and because of that, we really accelerated and grew more investments in PSH.

We will be sure to continue to invest in any PSH that applies, but the opportunity to continue that pipeline in part depends on willing partners creating more PSH projects for us to invest in.

So again, not a set-aside percentage, but we'll continue to invest in a way that prioritizes serving extremely low-income people, and that is part of our policy guidance as well.

This really does relate completely to your second question, though.

Our ability to invest in 30% AMI housing and serve vulnerable populations is completely dependent on our ability to ensure that those buildings can not only be built, but also operate and have services.

OMS is a critical component of the three-legged stool of building permanent supportive housing.

You know right now what we seek to do is to leverage new state and county resources that have been created for OMS.

We believe that Seattle will be competitive for those funds and also we are eagerly awaiting the county and the state to make decision on the availability of those resources.

So it acts as a moderator on our ability to build more PSH certainly.

Regarding your question about the baked-in amount of O&M in our budget, the baseline includes about $3 million for O&M subsidies fully funded by previous levies.

The technical adjustment that was in our presentation includes an increase of $2.7 million on top of that, again, using the 2016 levy representing new projects that have come online last year and this year.

So we are up to almost $6 million.

Yeah, OK, thank you.

Really helpful growth.

But just to clarify, growth of using new housing capital on new permanent supportive housing is relative to availability of those resources.

Again, we're seeking to partner with the state and the county, but that is a significant consideration.

OK, so if I am tracking what you are describing, let me just repeat it back to make sure that I confirm my understanding.

So what you're saying is that the dollars in that bucket are sort of for general purpose.

So any housing provider who serves the extremely low income population would, in theory, qualify to be able to apply to the NOFA.

And the decision about how much of that funding goes to permanent supportive housing versus the step below, which is just supportive housing, will be determined by project readiness and applications.

So is my understanding sort of generally accurate?

Yeah, that's correct.

OK.

And so so tell me when you all are looking at those NOFA applications, though, on the inside, right?

Because we're the ones we the royal we as the city look at those applications.

Is there going to be any prioritization or or or sort of weight given to to projects that are really designed to stand up additional permanent supportive housing infrastructure.

I just am really concerned that in order for us to effectively permanently house those who have experienced chronic homelessness is gonna be rather challenging if we don't continue to scale up.

our permanent supportive housing infrastructure in the city.

And so I just want to get a sense of sort of internally, you go away, you look at these and sort of what are we doing to, you know, is the office of housing going to be working with housing providers and human service providers to create an opportunity for there to be more robust and plentiful applications for permanent supportive housing?

Yeah, thank you for that question.

And I, I agree that Permanent Supportive Housing has to be a priority for a funding area in order for us to address our homelessness crisis.

For our end, what I can say is the priority for PSH is somewhat baked into the both the policies of the office and the ethic of the office by virtue of the fact that our housing levy, which is our core funding for the Office of Housing, by ordinance directs 60% of the combined capital in operating to be serving folks at or below 30% AMI.

So we already have that That prioritization that happens internally because of that I know these are not levy funds but they get invested consistent with our policies in which that remains a priority.

I think to the question is in part about how we continue to grow.

our pipeline and opportunities to invest in permanent supportive housing.

That's a lot of the work that we do.

One example of how we do that is we can work with partners using our acquisition lending to help secure sites that can make PSH available.

For an example, right now we have an acquisition loan with DESC.

to create new permanent supportive housing that help set up that property to then come in to our NOFA round this year to seek permanent financing.

So that work is ongoing.

And then I would say the last thing that's important is that we don't just fund 30% AMI housing in permanent supportive housing buildings.

We do have a lot of office-wide intentionality about encouraging 30% AMI housing in mixed income affordable housing where there are 30s, 50s, and 60s, that's good practice for buildings and it's good practice for the, it's good.

living for the people who live in those buildings.

So I can say that of the many applications that we have seeking $100 million right now in our NOFA, many of the projects that are not all at 30 include 30s within them.

And that's something that we seek to continue to work with our partners to ensure that not only are those included, but those can have the subsidy for operations as well.

Thank you for that.

I appreciate that response.

And, and I'll just sort of signal that, that because we are in the midst of the sixth year of a declared civil emergency around homelessness, you know, I think I think that that would merit a, a, a policy change in terms of what we are choosing to prioritize at a minimum for the next, you know, couple of years, while we create that infrastructure that is going to be necessary to actually house those who are experiencing chronic homelessness because of a lack of affordable housing and permanent supportive housing for those individuals.

And so I understand the need to, or the desire and the intent to want to serve a spectrum of individuals within the 0 to 30 percent AMI.

I think that is a good overarching goal to have.

But I also sort of want to encourage us to be flexible in terms of lifting up and centering the priorities that are crucial and critical in this moment in time.

And so wonder if there is an opportunity for us to have a conversation about how we can effectuate that intensification, if you will, of front-loading investments.

in the permanent supportive housing and the sort of supportive housing area that really will help us address some of the throughput issues that we're seeing in our emergency response to homelessness.

You know, I'm not quite sure how we achieve that, but I would like to have ongoing conversations with you and Council Central staff about how we try to achieve that goal.

That's not an abandonment of the best practice that you described around having mixed income homes.

It's more about where should we sort of focus our energy now in the short term in order to produce those long-term assets that are going to be critical to address the throughput issues.

Absolutely, Council President.

One thing I should add is that this emphasis, this growth that you're talking about is exactly what we had tried to achieve by virtue of our Permanent Supportive Housing pilot last year, where we really worked intentionally with partners to co-create additional opportunities and to advance, put our money where our mouth is, advance an extra year of housing levy resources to put out 600 Permanent Supportive Housing units as opposed to a typical year of 200 and 300. and look forward to collaboration with you and others on what it looks like to continue that kind of emphasis.

I think we have a lot of lessons learned from what we were able to do.

And thank you for the reminder around that PSH pilot program.

I would like to not make it a pilot and just make it the thing, which is, I guess, what I'm advocating for, is identifying ways through this budget process in which we can support that level of intensification and emphasis around creating additional permanent supportive housing.

All right, I'm going to end my line of questioning and hand it back over to the chair.

Thank you so much.

And customer Morales, I see your hand.

If you don't mind, I have a few comments just as a follow up to this line of questioning.

Director Alvarado, again, I think some of these decisions were not necessarily made within the Office of Housing, so, of course, feel free to defer to Director Noble, or if Central Staff is on the line, can we confirm this as well?

Specific to permanent affordable housing, though, I want to remind folks that we had an assumption that there would be $98 million from Jump Start in this year, more in future years, but $98 million in this year for affordable housing.

Of that $98 million, 82% was supposed to go to deeply affordable construction of multi-family housing units, and that includes permanent supportive housing for families at or below 30% AMI.

By receiving a proposal that includes only 40 million of that 98 million, We now have a situation where the remaining amount to get to the $98 million is being made up by the federal emergency funds that we're receiving from our purpose.

So $50 million, in essence, is coming from the feds to get to our goal of $58 million.

of 98 million.

But that's about 50% of what we had anticipated going into affordable housing in this section.

So there's a lot of headlines about the historic investments in affordable housing here, which is a huge priority for me and I know for this council as well.

It could have actually been about $50 million more had the full allotment of JumpStart gone into place.

And I think specific to affordable housing, I am concerned, and I don't know that we have the capacity to show this slide, but we did receive a breakdown of what the $40 million that is from Jumpstart is going into.

And of that $40 million from Jumpstart, $17 million is going to investments in the capital construction.

I understand that there's some crossover with the residential displacement where we're using the SIF funds, but if only $17 million is going into the capital construction, that further limits our ability to create the buildings that we can then couple with state and county dollars to create that permanent supportive housing.

So I am raising a concern about the overall investment in affordable housing.

And I'm noting that it could have been about $50 million higher had the total amount of jumpstart funds gone to construction of affordable housing.

in the plethora of ways that we're talking about, but recognizing that 82% of that original jumpstart allocation for affordable housing was intended for the creation of actual affordable units that we can then pair with state and county dollars to create more PSH.

To the tune of, we were anticipating up to 3,900 new affordable housing units in one year.

central staff or I see Ben, you're off mute.

Feel free to jump in.

A couple of comments.

General point taken, but again, this table doesn't highlight that there is the $50 million of federal resources that can be used to match the state and other funding sources to focus on capital.

And as importantly, and again, just to make the general point, there could have been $50 million more for affordable housing if there were not also additional funding priorities that have been identified by the council and taken actions over the course of this year and previous years.

So the discussion about affordable housing and the use of the payroll tax, and this is actually the point made in the letter that was provided in July, it's It's frankly dangerous to take that conversation in isolation away from the rest of the overall budget and the other priorities that we are trying to fund, that the council has asked that we fund across a variety of needs.

And that's what led us to balance the sources of money to the uses that were most well aligned with the constraints that might be on them.

So we were working very hard to meet the policy intent.

And I'm not saying we met word for word and letter for letter, but the constraints are not just in the space of affordable housing.

There are other priorities in a variety of areas that the budget was does also meet and was also trying to meet.

So just that broader context, I think, is important as council considers its overall approach.

But this is your opportunity to review and consider and make changes as you choose.

Thank you.

And just for central staff, either Tracy or Allie, we do have a slide up here that breaks down that $40 million in more detail.

Did you want to just explain to folks what we're looking at here very briefly?

And then I'll turn it to Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I'll ask Tracy if she has anything to add on this.

The only thing I would know on this particular slide is a lot of numbers have been thrown around in terms of the total amount of payroll tax going to housing.

Some of it is in HSD's budget, which is why some of the numbers are.

not quite matching up.

I would just add to what Director Noble just commented on, that we are looking very carefully at the proposed budget and all the uses of the payroll tax and the different choices that Director Noble was just highlighting, and we'll have a better breakdown and analysis for you for discussion in issue ID and provide some options for the council.

I would also just add that Director Noble mentioned that in trying to put this budget together, there was balancing sort of the jumpstart spending priorities as well as other Council spending ads and changes that have been made over the years.

I would just add to that that it is both that that is accurate.

We will look at what where that there is overlap there, but there are also commitments made by the mayor that are supported by some of these switches.

So it is a both and and will provide a deeper analysis in issue identification on October 13th.

I appreciate that.

Let's turn it over to Council Member Morales.

Oh, excuse me, Tracy.

I have nothing to add.

Allie's covered it well.

Oh, thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Let's turn it over to Council Member Morales to round us out, and thank you, Patty, for that quick work on the slide.

Thank you.

I just have a follow-up on the conversation around permanent supportive housing.

You know, as I'm understanding this, there's funding for the capital, but we're waiting on having enough partners.

We're waiting on state and county to release funds.

And so it sounds like if we've already done a pilot to try to address some of the partner issues and get more folks submitting projects, can you talk a little bit about the state and county piece?

How much are we talking about for the operation and maintenance?

What are the state and county sources?

And I'm just trying to understand the extent to which that piece is really holding up our ability to perform.

And so that we can start to talk about our intergovernmental relations strategy, how we start working with our county and state partners to try to push that money and help us unclog this clog here.

Yeah, thank you very much for that question.

And we, the Office of Intergovernmental Relations is aware of this issue, and I know we have been connecting with our delegation on this.

legislative session, a significant new increase in operating and services funding was established at the state.

The state is working right now on a analysis and study in partnership with the Corporation for Supportive Housing to drive some information about how the rates and priorities should be set for that funding.

So there is a process, and we're waiting for that process to conclude so we can continue to leverage those funds.

In addition, there has been an increase in the document reporting fee.

That's been a historic key resource for us to leverage.

We typically leverage this in partnership with the county to use those sources.

They will now have more resources.

They're also expecting some potential resources from the federal government around McKinney.

But it is a bit of a limbo and timing issue as we seek to work with partners to ensure that those critical services are in place when we need them, when buildings open.

And the more we experiment on bringing units online faster, the more it takes really close negotiation to make sure those resources are there.

Thank you.

I appreciate having a little bit more detail about where some of the bottlenecks are.

And I will say, I've long been a fan of the idea of on-site production too.

I know that is a whole separate issue, but I do think that the idea of making sure that you know, units that are more affordable for working families are incorporated and included in all of the production that we're doing.

I think we would be in a very different place right now if our grand bargain had been a bargain for working families, so.

I will leave that at that.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, colleagues.

I think that, oh, okay, Council Member Peterson to finalize our questions, and then we're going to turn into the other end of the spectrum, which is how we get folks into housing who are experiencing homelessness.

Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, director Alvarado.

I just wanted to echo that emphasis of prioritizing those applying for OH funds that they are perhaps given priority if they are helping more people experiencing In terms of, I know we focus in a lot on permanent supportive housing, which typically would have those supportive services on site.

I just wanna note that in some way, sometimes these services can be provided offsite.

Sometimes somebody is experiencing homelessness that may not need the full range of supportive services.

If they've recently lost a job, For example, they may not need behavioral health services as well or substance use disorder services.

So just looking at the focusing in on the zero to 30 percent, that extremely low income range and even doing more to get I would like to echo the comments made by councilmember the MHA funding and incentivizing on-site production since that happens faster if it's built on-site when the original MHA project is being built.

And I'm interested in looking at those MHA fees and determining whether it makes sense to recalibrate those a bit to incentivize that on-site production of on-site low-income housing.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

The one thing I will say on your first point about how do we support people exiting homelessness in the greater housing investments at large, you know, I mentioned earlier that we do seek to invest in buildings that have a mix of units at 30 and 50 and 60. And one of the partnerships that we've seen that's really successful is creating memorandum of understanding between our housing providers with those 30% AMI units and some other units with Housing Connector.

And then Housing Connector serves as a referral and services model for you filling those units.

So actually we do see that we've had really successful strategies of accessing the portfolio more broadly, even in the other affordable units by creating those kinds of partnerships.

Okay, wonderful.

Well, thank you, Director Alvarado, and I appreciate you starting with the end goal.

Our end goal is for everyone to have a home, and this is an important place for us to start today as we think about community safety, community health.

It all centers around having a safe place to live and call home.

So thanks for all your work, and we look forward to working with you to scale up the number of units, the number of families served, and to make sure that we're addressing displacement.

and the ability for folks to live and retire in our city and live with dignity, all centers around the home.

Thanks for all your work and we look forward to more conversations over the next two months as we finalize the budget.

Thank you very much and thank you also to the entire team at the Office of Housing and to our community partners who are really the folks who effectuate this work.

Well said, thanks so much.

Okay, Madam Clerk, can you please read item number two into the record?

We have a number of individuals who are present with us today to provide this report as it relates to providing services for those who are experiencing homelessness.

Tracy Raskliff and Jeff Sims from central staff are here.

Mark Jones, the CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, will be joining us at approximately 1145. Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington, I saw your screen pop up.

Thanks so much for being here with us from the mayor's office.

Tanya Kim is the acting director along with Tess Colby from Human Services Department.

Welcome to all of you who have been with us.

and we know that it's going to be an in-depth discussion.

I'm going to turn it over to the team here to lead us off.

I'm sure you have a chronology of who's going first, and I'll let you kick us off.

And we will then turn it over to Councilmember Lewis as chair of the Select Committee on Homelessness Services.

to offer some comments and questions first.

And then colleagues, I know that you all probably have a handful of questions.

We'll get to all of those as well.

We do have time baked into tomorrow's agenda as well.

In case anything goes over, we can absolutely try to make sure that we're accommodating everybody's questions and appreciate your participation in these in-depth discussions.

Welcome, everyone.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, and good morning, Councilmembers.

Thank you for inviting us here to speak today.

We're here to discuss changes to the citywide homelessness response budget.

So today you'll hear about significant changes in the city's homelessness response within the Human Services Department, Department of Parks and Rec, and Seattle Public Utilities.

who is working the slide.

I just wanted to ask our central staff.

Sorry Tracy and Jeff.

That's on me.

I'm sorry Deputy Mayor.

I handed the baton over.

I'm not doing that slide over again.

That was my intro.

That's good.

Wonderful.

All right, Tracy, Jeff, welcome.

Thank you.

Good morning, Council Members.

Tracy Ratzlaff, Council of Central Staff, joined by Jeff Sims, Council of Central Staff.

Wonderful.

So Council Member Lewis had requested that central staff provide some baseline information on homeless housing and shelter capacity in the city as context for you as you begin your deliberations of the 2022 proposed budget and particularly focused on the homeless investments.

I will be providing information on the homeless housing units in the city that have opened or will be opening from the beginning of 2020 to the end of 2023. As a starting point, at the end of 2019, there were approximately 4,300 city-funded homeless housing units in operation.

This is out of a total of 14,400 affordable housing units that were open that served a variety of other populations.

So as we look to the first slide, we will see that beginning in 2020 to the end of 2023, the city's inventory of available homeless housing units will actually increase by 2023 units.

1621 of these units will be funded by the city through the prior NOFO awards, the PSH levy pilot, and the Federal Rescue Rapid Acquisition Fund.

And 402 units will be funded by the one-tenth of 1% sales tax imposed by King County that supports the acquisition of housing through the Health Through Housing Program.

In total, these 2,000 units represent a 47% increase over that base of the 4,300 units.

The chart also shows the specific annual number of units that will open in each year, whether they be state funded or county funded.

So you can see for 2020, the total is 294 total units.

The total units for 2021 is 811 units.

the total for 2022 is 816 units.

And in 2023, 102 units will be opened.

These numbers don't include the 2021 Fall NOFA awards that will be made that could result in some additional units coming online.

So I just want to be clear about that.

And I also want to be clear that these opening dates are estimates.

There are things that happen with some of the projects that are unintended that might delay some of them some, but this was the general, deadlines or timing that I got from both the county and the Office of Housing in terms of when these are going to open.

What is of note, which we already have talked a little bit about in terms of Emily's presentation, is not only the number of units but the speed with which many of these are going to be coming online and being opened.

And that really is a credit to OH and to their innovations in trying to work with the current real estate market and the opportunities with four partner developers who were in process of constructing some units or nearing beginning of construction of units and then seizing those opportunities to work with them and our nonprofit partners to develop those units and I'm talking now primarily from the PSH pilot program but also with the rapid acquisition program that afforded us opportunities to secure some buildings that developers were looking for new partners for.

So it really is the ingenuity of OH in these couple of program areas that have gotten those units up and going much faster than our typical development cycle which were again a typical project financed in year one and about two to three years before those units actually open and come online.

So fairly significant and kudos to OH for their working on new ways to try to bring those units on quicker.

Any questions about this chart?

All right, now I'm seeing questions.

We will start with Chair Lewis, and we will have Council Member Peterson.

Please go ahead, Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Just really quick, Tracy, and you alluded to this, but I just want to dive in since it is 2021 into the 2021 column here and the 811 units.

How many of those do we anticipate to be opening in 2021 and are any of those currently open?

No, all of these are, except for the 2020 numbers, which are actual opened units, the rest are estimates as to when they will be opening by the end.

We use the time frame by the end of 2021 and sometime in 2022 and sometime in 2023.

Good, I think that's just an important note to emphasize since 811 units is significant and will have a very visible impact.

And I just want for the viewing public to emphasize that those are being built this year, but we don't have the situation in the city and have those open.

I just think that was an important point to make.

So thanks for clarifying that.

I think I'll hold off on additional questions here until we get further into the presentation.

Thank you.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

And just to clarify that last answer for the 811, did you say they will be online?

That's what I understood.

That, again, is the information that I've gotten from both the county and from the city office of housing, again, with the caveat that that's their expectation.

And things sometimes happen that stall that.

So I'm just giving that little caveat there.

But that's their expectation that they have communicated to me, 811 open by the end of 2021.

Okay, thank you.

And then, and I'm sorry if I missed this in the beginning of your presentation, but when you're saying homelessness housing, is that just permanent supportive housing or is it any zero to 30% AMI housing or how is that defined?

So it includes permanent supportive housing, which is the highest intensity housing that we provide both with services in terms of the population served.

And then we have the permanent housing that has support services.

So this would be for people who are still homeless, but their level of service need is less than those that are served by permanent supportive housing.

So they still have case management, they still have some light services, but it's not the full cadre of intensive services that are provided at PSH.

including lower ratios of case management, health, mental health, behavioral health services, 24-7 front desk, those kinds of intensive services that go along with, typically with a PSH building.

Okay, so it's not just permanent supportive housing and it's not all zero to 30% MI, it's sort of in the middle of that.

It's permanent supportive housing plus this lighter touch supportive services for zero to 30.

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

And targeted towards people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, for sure.

I think we have one more slide and I do want to call

So moving to the second slide, this slide specifically shows the number of units that will be opening through King County's Health Through Housing Acquisition Program.

So as you can see from this chart, 666 units are anticipated to open by the end of 2021, and 489 units are anticipated to open by the end of 2022 for a total of 1,155 new units of housing.

And these again are countywide, reminding you again that 402 of that 1,155 are projects that are located, and units that are located in the City of Seattle.

And this does not, just to be very clear, this includes their acquisition of units.

They have a separate program, relevant to our conversation earlier, that will provide O&M subsidies, and there's about 496 of those, and we, the City of Seattle, have an MOU with the county, and they are going to actually provide 350 O&M subsidies for city of Seattle funded capital project units for homeless individuals.

So these numbers don't include those O&M subsidies, those service subsidies.

And I think we can go to the next slide which will cover shelter.

I just want to make sure that everyone on the call is oriented to what you see here.

The dark blue part of the column is your base shelter capacity.

And you can see that the first column there is the end of 2019. These are actually quarterly numbers.

So when it says December 2019, it was from October, November, December.

So basically, before the pandemic, we had 2,284 units.

At that time, the council planned for an expansion of emergency shelter.

And so that's why you see the white part of the columns are planned expansions.

That's where the council was providing funding with the intention that our shelter system would get larger and handle more people, not with the intention of replacing beds.

And I think that's an important distinction as you look over what happens over the next year or two years.

As you see over the course of the pandemic, the next column covers really April, May, June is the next column where you see an initial decrease.

Even though we start bringing online those 98 units that the council plans to be additive, you still start seeing our base was going down, so we haven't, so we're not really getting that level of expansion.

By the middle and late part of 2020, you've seen we lost a lot of shelter capacity and that's because of COVID modifications.

We had to space people out and make other things, make other modifications that were protective.

There's a lot of work by the Human Services Department that should be acknowledged to de-intensify and provide other locations like in places like Seattle Center, things like that.

You see then, you skip now to the fourth column.

Now you can see that there's a light blue bar, temporary beds.

That's the Executive Hotel Pacific and the King's Inn coming online, as well as you still see the tiny home villages that the council had planned to be additive.

They're back now, or they're online now.

They haven't gone away.

They're still shown there.

So we are basically back to a total shelter capacity that is above what we were at the end of the year.

primarily because of the work to launch those temporary beds through the two hotels.

But our permanent ongoing capacity is still down in the long term.

And then if you look by the end of this year, we aren't there yet, but there's both in the permanent, both in the dark blue box as well as additional tiny home villages that the The select committee on homelessness has talked about a great deal that the council plan for expansion as well as the temporary beds that that have been funded throughout the year.

All of those things combined are going to get us to by the end of this year, a total of 2850 shelter spaces that are available.

There's a substantial number of those, as you can see, 286 are one-time ballots.

They're going to be going offline.

I think the latest for many of them is June, but many of them in January.

So if I add another column to this, you're going to see a big drop coming soon.

But I was asked to make sure it was clear to the council what the city-funded shelter capacity has been from pre-pandemic to now.

Are there any questions?

I can answer those.

I'm sorry, I muted myself.

If there's any questions, I can answer those now.

Otherwise, I'll turn over to Deputy Mayor Washington to go to the next steps.

Let's have Chair Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And Jeff, thank you so much for preparing this chart.

So just for some background for the committee on September 6th, I sent an email to Jeff and Tracy saying, as we go into the budget process, I think it would be very, good for us to review exactly what has happened with our shelter system over the course of COVID to inform our planning.

And I think where this has been most useful as preparation is what Jeff just queued up in terms of the temporary space is going away and making sure that the temporary space is going away coincides with new permanent capacity coming online, just as a general policy goal.

So I guess my first question would be, and Jeff, maybe you've covered this, but is that jump in temporary spaces from 197 to 286, that's representing the Just Care hotels that are going to come online?

Yeah, I don't want to say hotels, plural.

Well, I guess that would be correct.

But the council provided funds in March that were then amended in June, and about five and a half million dollars were used to open 89 hotel beds with the Just Care program.

I'm not sure if that's what you're referring to.

that we're going to work with the regional authority to stand up?

It does not.

So I want to make sure we have really good clarity there.

The council in the 2021 adopted budget provided funding, again, to be a planned expansion of our shelter system.

Those are going to be in Friendship Heights, Rosie's Place, and an expansion of Interbay Village.

So I'm giving names just so we're all clear on what those three are.

$2.4 million.

Not shown anywhere on this chart is the potential for three additional tiny home villages that will be created partly with capital funding graciously provided by the state in the most recent capital budget.

And then the mayor's proposed budget for 2022 uses jumpstart funding to provide the operational funding for those units ongoing.

So if there was a 2022, like a first quarter 2022 panel that would incorporate.

That's probably not included here either.

The RVs.

And so any new expansion with RVs also would not be reflected.

The only caveat I'd put, I think you got that correct, Council Member, the only caveat is that I can't guarantee that you would see those three new villages with the state funding that I did not identify by name, they haven't been identified yet.

I don't know that that'll be first quarter of 2022. That can be the hope for sure, but I can't guarantee that.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that.

It just wanted to clarify what is and isn't reflected in these charts.

And to a certain extent, you know, that's a good thing because it means we can sort of pencil in maybe a few more things if we're able to come together on them.

But I do think that this chart really puts in stark perspective the causal relationship of why we're seeing so many of our neighbors living in tents in the city.

You know, just looking at this curve of the correlation between shelter capacity taking a big hit and seeing an increase in public camping.

So I think this is helpful to guide our deliberations and I'll hold off on more questions until we get a little further in here.

Councilmember Lewis, I appreciate that.

I do see Councilmember Herbold and then Councilmember Morales in that order.

Just to follow up on that last comment from Chair Lewis, I'm wondering if this slide might be added to, so we can see what was also funded but not yet implemented in 2021, if that makes sense.

Go ahead.

Certainly, I could, I mean, I could obviously make, I could not at this moment, but yeah, any of that information I can certainly provide as we go through the budget process.

And as we approach where central staff, me among them, will be back to present issue identification, I can keep that in mind as a component you'd like to see.

Thank you very much because I'm thinking it's the 100 or 50 so beds in tiny house villages and then the 45 or so spaces at the, excuse me, 25 or so spaces at the RV safe lot.

So adding those as a visual representation of what was funded in 2021 and not yet implemented will be great.

Vice Chair Herbold, please go ahead.

Thanks.

I think Councilmember Lewis got to my question, just that it would be useful to see what January 2022 is going to look like, um, another bar for that chart.

And then maybe July, since we, we've, we've heard that, um, some of the temporary units are going to be coming off both in January and then more in July.

I appreciate that there will be, um, some additive, um, uh, elements as well, but again, it would be, it would be useful to see what all that looks like.

Thanks.

Thank you.

I see some nods from central staff.

I appreciate that.

Councilmember Morales?

Thank you.

I have a question about slide one.

We've got in 2022, 2023, I'm just trying to get clear on whether those are included in the mayor's proposed package or if these are already in the pipeline.

Can you just sort of tease that apart a little bit?

And then what do we mean by unit?

Is that a studio, a hotel?

What is a housing unit?

How are we defining that?

Housing unit is a standalone unit or in the case of the city, those are going to be just like your standard rental units.

Likely, yes.

Like how big, so is it a studio or do we?

Yes, yes.

Those, I mean, I think typically the units are studios.

I can ask, I don't think that's, I'm not sure that Emily is still around, but I think.

She is on the screen there.

Emily, maybe you want to answer that and let me just answer the question on the, as it relates to the King County units.

They consider the units that they're purchasing and some of these are in hotels and some of these are in actual rental buildings.

They consider those to be housing units.

Some of them include full kitchen as well as bathroom and bedroom all in one unit.

Or in the one space, some only include kind of a microwave and other things.

And so they consider those emergency housing units.

And those are the units that might be.

Subject to redevelopment as units.

So, they kind of characterize their units is that emergency housing, which doesn't have a full kitchen, but all the other things in a studio or a hotel room arrangement and then the that have that separate.

A kitchen facility and more like a studio apartment, essentially.

I'm just sad that anything that was funded by the Office of Housing during this period would be a full studio apartment approximately 300 square feet or a small efficiency dwelling unit that's approximately 200 square feet or so.

But we fall fund fully contained units with bathrooms and kitchens.

And so are these, so I'm looking at the dark blue here, are these already in the proposed budget or are these already in the pipeline?

I'm just trying to get a sense of where in the development process these show up in documents.

Yeah, so these are already funded and awarded.

So actually to track back to the 6,000 number, these are probably captured in that 6,000 number.

and are now on their way under construction and and in opening.

Got it.

Thank you.

OK, wonderful.

Is there any other questions for this opening component here?

I want to thank Councilmember Lewis for the request for this information and for central staff for providing it.

I do agree this is a helpful foundational understanding for 2021 and as we were here, there is quite a bit of transition plan for 2022. As a reminder for folks, we have a human service department that included largely our HSI department that was providing services to folks experiencing homelessness.

The total human services department is $115 million in funding to address homelessness.

91% of that, or just over $104 million, is going to be transferred to the regional homelessness authority to support programs that were started within HSD that will be I think having this foundational understanding of what is currently in place as we think about 91% of the funds that we've allocated for homelessness being transitioned over, understanding what is currently being deployed is important.

I'm not seeing any additional questions on the two slides and the memo.

And with that, Deputy Mayor Washington, if you have anything to add to the foundational understanding there, you're welcome to.

And thanks again for your patience.

And we will transition over to you, Deputy Mayor.

Thank you.

I don't have anything to add to the slides that central staff created.

I'm just going to kick us off.

And if we can go to the key takeaway slide.

All right.

And so during this presentation, we will include, go back one, sorry.

Thank you.

Key takeaways from the 2022 homelessness response budget, citywide homelessness response structure and budget.

We will start with HSD's homelessness response in 2022 with a brief update on 2021, and then we'll finish with budget changes at SPU and parks that increase services to keep public spaces clean and accessible for all community members.

So that is what we are planning to go through.

Next slide.

The changes that were made to programs as a result of COVID-19 as one-time federal funds ramped down.

It maintains and expands shelter capacity and it shifts programming oversight to the regional authority while retaining funding to keep public spaces clean and accessible.

Next slide.

So this is a chart that hopefully, I know some of you all had, some council members had questions about this area.

And so I hope this chart makes it a little more easier to understand.

So this is our citywide effort to address homelessness.

The city's homelessness response, as you can see, it stretches across multiple departments.

but with the standup of the Regional Homeless Authority, the work to design and fund homeless response services will shift to them.

So in that first column, that will primarily be shelter and outreach.

The remaining columns here illustrate the key city operational roles that the city will continue to lead on to ensure public spaces are clean and accessible for all.

We will focus sometime in the presentation on significant budget changes found within HSD, SPU, and parks.

And if there aren't any questions, which I'll pause, I'll hand it off to Director Noble, and he will take us to the next slide.

So do folks have any questions here?

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

I'm going to try to ask folks to hold their questions to the end of your presentation as a package.

I know it's going to be challenging, folks, because there's multiple facets to it and multiple presenters.

But that way, we will come back around to Council Member Lewis, and then we'll go through the council members' questions.

So please do make a note of your questions and the slide and appreciate your opening remarks so that we can get this kicked off, and we'll turn it back over to you.

Noted.

Thank you.

I'm going to hand it over to Director Noble.

who's gonna walk us through the next few slides.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Washington.

We've got two slides on the budget side of things.

And I think it's actually the second slide that's more informative, but I want to start here because this is the full budget picture.

So this shows you over time the appropriations for homelessness citywide.

And as you can see, obviously significant increases during the pandemic, so in 2020, and most significantly in 2021. You'll note that there are two columns for 2021, both the adopted budget and then the revised.

The revised includes the additional federal money that was allocated mid-year.

Obviously, you also see the significant drop in appropriations into 2022. And there are multiple reasons for that.

And actually, the next slide will, I think, really highlight the most important aspect of it.

But just three big drives here.

One is that some of the money that is in this chart has actually been moved to other places, and there's no longer either.

So a share of it, the LEED funding that had previously been attributed to homelessness is now in HSD's Community Safety Division.

So it drops out of the chart, but we're not actually, we haven't cut the spending there.

And that's a significant amount of money, more than 10 million.

And then there's an additional amount, excuse me, I think that's 6 million.

Then there's an additional amount of money that is McKinney-Vento funding that is in the 2021 revised and the adopted column.

But that money will now be, as part of our work with the regional agency, that money, federal money, will go directly to the county.

So north of $20 million of the decrease is just that shift in the way we're describing the money and where some of it lands initially.

But I think the bigger issue, though, in terms of, and it's really highlighted in the next slide, and actually, why don't we move ahead to the next slide.

This slide is showing the intended spending on an operational level.

Because the other big thing that's happening here is that the funding that was allocated mid-year 2021 federal dollars, only a portion of that is going to get spent in 2021, given how late it was appropriated.

We always anticipated that some of that resource would be spent in 2022 as well.

And so you can see then that in terms of spending, the allocations are roughly equal across 21 and 2022. which is consistent with what you'll hear, and the goal that we stated previously, to the extent possible, maintaining the overall level of shelter and related services that we are providing.

So the appropriations are heavy into 2021, but anticipated carry forwards mean that the actual funding levels between the two years, the actual spending between the two years is essentially consistent.

So I think, and I think it's actually really helpful as we dig into the next few slides, remember the rest of the presentation, digs into the specifics on that and lets you understand how the 2021 investments are being sustained or in some cases increased and in others slightly decreased.

Thank you, Director Noble.

I know folks are holding their questions till the end, but I did see the chair's hand.

Did you have a quick clarification, Council Member Lewis?

Just quick, because I think it's germane to this slide, but maybe Ben could go into a little bit more detail on it.

How much, because I would imagine that there is a decent amount of underspend this year relative to when investments and assets were realized in terms of added shelter capacity.

And something I get a lot of contact from constituents about is the amount of money that the city spends on our homelessness response.

But I think there's a distinction between what is appropriated and what is spent.

And I just wonder, Director Noble, if you could sort of touch on with this how much of the 2021 adopted budget we're going to be passing forward due to anticipated underspend.

Because I think that that would also be informative.

I mean, at this point, that's, you know, it's a good thing for us because we potentially have more resource to work with for our response next year or give to the authority.

But I'm just curious.

where that's coming out this year.

And that's essentially what these two charts together show.

So if we back up a slide just once to the previous slide, you can see, and I have some trouble with my screen given the size here, but hang on a sec, total appropriations in 2021 revised of almost 200 million for 2022 proposal of 140 million.

So roughly a $60 million difference.

Move to the next slide.

In terms of the actual spending that we're planning, approximately $30 million of the 2021 appropriations aren't anticipated to be spent until 2022. Julie is on, may be able to provide some more detail at a more granular level, but that's exactly the point that I was trying to make, and I appreciate their clarifying question, that we appropriated the federal monies as an example, the first tranche of Clifford, knowing that not every one of those dollars would get spent.

I mean, the appropriations didn't happen until, I don't know when the final votes were, June, right?

So it takes a little while to stand things up, and some of that was for operational monies that we knew would continue.

But Julie can provide perhaps more detail.

Ben really nailed it.

It's really the combination of the underspend, as you know, Councilmember, which is significant and primarily from the Clifford dollars.

There is a little bit of ESG in there as well.

There's also, if the Councilmembers remember, there was a joint relief plan passed at the end of 2020 to support 2020 and 2021 operations.

It was sort of a precursor to the jumpstart spending plan where another $10 million was added in the homelessness space.

And so some of that money is transferring, is carrying forward as well and transferring and coming out of that total.

So it's the carry forward of the federal grants.

It is the sort of removal of one-time items.

And then it is the transfer of certain grants that the city used to be the direct recipient of, that the county is not going to pass through to us any longer since we don't directly operate homelessness programs anymore.

So those will be redirected to KCRHA.

That's really helpful information.

So just to put a point on it, is the underspend number $30 million?

Is that what Director Noble said?

So we don't, given where we are in the year, that's roughly the amount.

We are still in September, so we don't yet know how the full year will shake out.

You'll be able to consider the carry forward in early in Q1 of 2022 from the departments, and that comes down as legislation to the council for you to consider how those resources should be used.

So we won't know that final number until later, but it's an approximation.

Great.

Useful context.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Please continue.

So that's really what we had on sort of the bigger funding picture.

And I think now to turn it over to Tanya Kim and team from HSD to give you more granular detail on the specifics and the funding changes there.

Great.

Thank you.

Next slide, please.

So again, I'm Tanya Kim.

Good morning.

I'm honored to represent the Human Services Department as the new acting director, but I am not new to the department.

Tess Colby, Interim Deputy Director, and Joe Kaspersky, CFO, will present on the significant budget changes within our department's homelessness response.

Changes in 2022 include Homelessness Services Program Oversight that will be transferring over to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, or RHA.

HSD will retain a small team to manage the contract.

And the HOPE team will remain with HSD.

And in 2022, our focus, or their focus rather, will be on collaborating with the RHA and city departments to ensure systems and processes stood up, maintain service and shelter connections for people living unsheltered.

We'll present the policy priorities and budget changes to HSD's homelessness response in 2022, demonstrating how the proposed budget supports our policy priorities and show how these changes support increased equity for services in services for black, indigenous, and people of color, BIPOC members who are experiencing homelessness.

And with that, Joe will give an overview of our budget details.

Next.

And this is you, Joe.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Acting Director Kim, and good morning.

The fiscal year 22 proposed budget supports 114.9 for HSD's homelessness response.

The majority of these funds are, of course, from general fund of 70.3 and the Seattle Rescue Plan of 22.3.

Even with the reduction of almost $34 million from our 21 adopted budget, the 22 proposal budget funds the majority of services currently provided in fiscal year 21. As you know, the hotel-based shelter programs are funded with one-time COVID response funds and are slated to close in Q1 of 22, specifically March.

Most of the adjustments are from one-time federal funds or from projects that do not receive ongoing funding in 21 and therefore were not added to the base budget in fiscal year 22. The following slides will show how the budget mitigates the impacts on these services.

Next slide, please.

Through our fiscal year 21 one-time funding, or even though our fiscal year 21 funding is ending, this slide reflects the funding strategy to ensure that services are maintained in 22. HSD will continue the services that are currently offered with the exception of the hotel-based shelters As I previously mentioned in the earlier slide, that will end in March of 2022. The reduction comes from the removal of the one-time funds, and the City has identified alternate funding that is included in the proposed budget for your consideration.

The next slide will provide the details of technical adjustments that transfer resources from the homeless response budget.

But with these adjustments, there will not be a corresponding reduction in services.

It's a transfer.

These transfers slightly add up to 24 and a half million dollars will transfer to other divisions in HSD or to King County and are considered technical adjustments.

These adjustments, as I've previously stated, do not impact services, which will continue in 22. The major contributors are the LEED funding will transfer to the Safe and Thriving Communities Division in HSD.

The Mobile Crisis Team Budget will transfer to the Addressing Public Health Budget within HSD, specifically in the ADS Division, and approximately $17 million in McKinney grants and the funding for the NAB Center.

will transfer to King County.

With that, I will turn it over to Tess Colby, who will now present the program details of the HSD homeless budget in response to fiscal year 22. Thank you.

Thank you, Joe.

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda and council members.

I've got seven minutes left before I get to say good morning to you.

Today I am going to give a brief 2021 update and then we'll discuss the 2022 budget priorities.

This 2021 update will be familiar to you from the July Select Committee on Homelessness with a few little updates.

As you know, Homeless Strategies Investment Division is sunsetting on December 31st of this year.

So we're focusing on completing work in progress before the end of the year.

To help the King County Regional Homelessness Authority be ready to issue contracts and implement existing and new programs next year, we are partnering with them to launch their 2022 operations.

As you know, they are staffing up in 2021 and already beginning work.

So we're really looking ahead to all of the lifts that they'll have in 2022. This work includes planning for and implementing the 2021 Seattle Rescue Plan dollars, preparing for winter response, and finalizing details related to current provider contracts.

HSI staff through the end of the year will continue to provide technical support for existing and new programs.

We will be expanding the Diversion Services Program, utilizing the Seattle Rescue Plan funds.

And of course, as you will see in the next slide, we will be standing up over 380 new units of shelter.

Thank you.

This chart shows the last push to significantly increase the number of shelter beds by year end.

Of the 380, excuse me, 384, 295 are permanent beds.

All of this work to get to the 384, of course, represents the very hard work and dedication of both the HSI staff and our provider partners can't do it without that collaboration.

So during the pandemic, when everyone was stretched incredibly thin, we collectively pulled together to not only address the health and safety of shelter guests, but also to increase and improve our shelter inventory.

By the end of this year, we will have significantly shifted away from basic shelter to enhanced shelter, up 31% over 2019, and to villages.

up 53%.

As you know, this is a best practice that we have been committed to doing and have successfully made these shifts year after year.

While, as Jeff noted, the number of shelter beds fluctuated during the first year of the pandemic, the first full year of the pandemic, not unexpectedly, because we were focusing on de-intensification and the health of shelter staff and guests.

We will end 2021 with an overall increase of over 530 beds, of which 250 are permanent.

And again, I must reiterate, I know I've said this before, it bears repeating how very lucky I am to be working with my colleagues in HSD and with our partner providers.

They are all an inspiration for the work that I so enjoy doing with them.

Next slide, please.

As we move into 2022, I just want to remind us all that the regional authority will assume responsibility for the crisis response programs.

Specifically, they are prevention, diversion, outreach, shelter, transitional housing, rapid rehousing, and the permanent supportive housing services.

As you know, the Office of Housing retains all activities related to the development of affordable housing.

Next slide please.

So I would start to go through the key priority areas for the 2022 budget.

In 2022, our budget goal is to support the design of a homelessness response that expands access to safe sheltering and increases throughput from emergency programs to housing.

That's a theme that you are going to hear across my presentation as we get into the actual dollars.

The budget supports the authority's stated commitment to program design that is centered on persons with lived experience.

As you'll see in the next slides, the proposed budget invests in four key areas.

Sorry, you're faster than I am.

Good deal, thanks.

ensuring success of new and existing shelter programs, including maintaining improvements that were made to shelters during the COVID-19 pandemic, designing and implementing alternatives to traditional shelter, creating quicker pathways to housing for sheltered and unsheltered persons, and addressing workforce and organizational needs of service providers and the regional authority.

Next slide.

Thanks.

All right, this budget prioritizes resources to expand services to agencies that provide culturally relevant services to our black, indigenous, and people of color who, as we know, experience homelessness at a disproportionate rate compared to their representation in King County.

It's been noted, thank you, Chair Mosqueda, that we are transferring about $104 million, that's, again, 91% of the homelessness budget, to the regional authority for which racial equity is its guiding principle.

The authority centers the voices of people who have personal lived experience with homelessness, who, again, are disproportionately BIPOC.

It acknowledges that all individuals have an agency to select services that meet their needs and is committed to building programs that provide services to people with dignity and respect, ensuring that programs are responsive to the needs of their clients.

reductions in funding, should they happen, would adversely impact the regional authorities' ability to achieve its mission of creating a crisis system that is responsive to persons with lived experience and reflective of those experiences.

Next slide, please.

To ensure the success of new and existing shelter programs, the 2022 budget supports additional funding to sustain shelter improvements that were made with one-time 2021 dollars.

$3.7 million will extend the COVID mitigation funding for shelters during an additional year.

Salvation Army, which operates a large shelter in Soto, will receive funding to continue operations in 2022 and 2023, including funding to support the relocation of the Soto shelter next year when we expect the current lease to expire.

There's $6.6 million of funds for the new Africatown-Cairo shelter.

that will cover three years of operations.

This provides much needed shelter services to address disproportionality of African Americans, especially African American men experiencing homelessness.

Excuse me.

Next slide, please.

The proposed budget supports the design and implementation of alternatives to traditional shelter.

There's $2.4 million for services and operations of additional units of alternative non-congregate shelter that could be developed in a variety of program types.

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Sorry.

Don't worry, take your time.

to their representation in King County.

The homelessness portion of these funds will support day centers, prevention, and outreach.

And the 2021 Seattle Rescue Plan funds will carry over a total of $900,000 to the regional authority for vehicle safe lots and for operations and services at alternative non-congregate shelters.

Recognizing the urgent need for more safe spaces, we are working to move those funds to the authority this year so they can begin their implementation.

Next slide, please.

We are expanding access to housing, improving throughput from shelter and streets to housing by reaching a broader range of people.

The budget supports $6 million in services to pair with federal emergency housing vouchers.

HUD's priority for these vouchers is to help persons experiencing homelessness move into housing.

Without support services, they are, frankly, of little value to persons who need both rent support and service supports to successfully both attain and retain housing.

We are one of several cities that are pairing services with these vouchers to demonstrate the impact that additional investments in services can have on reducing homelessness, especially among those who often wait the longest for an appropriate housing option.

The budget maintains funding for Muslim housing services, which operates its culturally appropriate family transitional housing in this underserved community.

and the budget transfers $6.7 million in rapid rehousing funding from Seattle Rescue Plan to the authority for its implementation in 2022. Next, please.

Finally, the proposed budget includes dollars to support both the new regional authority and workforce needs at contracted agencies.

There is a $2.4 million funding for provider contract inflation.

And it continues funding to the regional authority for positions that were funded and hired in 2021. Additionally, $2.3 million in Seattle rescue plan dollars will transfer to the authority for capacity building within the homelessness services system.

So at this point, I will turn the presentation back over to Deputy Mayor Washington.

And on that last point, just a clarification, can you define the capacity building in that piece?

Yes, the authority has begun working with providers and with a lived experience coalition around what that capacity building will look like.

It will be a consultative process that will address, basically address capacity among agencies to continue to provide existing services and to expand those services.

Next slide, please.

Thank you, Tess.

And so we are returning to our citywide response to ensure that folks that are living unsheltered have access to shelter and that we keep our public spaces clean and accessible to all community members.

So as I mentioned earlier, The regional authority will manage all of the outreach contracts and the shelter strategy.

The purpose of this slide is to show a high level framework on how different parts of our system will work together in 2022. Both the operational role is staying with the city and the outreach and shelter program, again, moving to the regional housing authority.

They will coordinate with one another to ensure that the process works.

Also, just to mention, this is going to be a process where we need to remain flexible because it is a new process where we are sending our outreach providers over to the regional authority and our shelter management over to the regional authority.

And so over the last few months, we've been working together to pivot to a model that we believe will work.

But we will incorporate continuous quality improvement in 2022 as needed.

Next slide.

All right.

So I am handing it over to SPU to talk through RV remediation and a few additional items.

SPUs adopted 2021 general fund budget is $20.8 million and is supported by approximately 19.8 full-time employees.

In 2022, this increases to 22.3 million and approximately 22.8 full-time employees.

The utilities 2022 general fund budget increases prioritized public hygiene and health as well as removing trash, litter, and waste from the public right-of-way.

With respect to Houseless People's personal hygiene needs and public health concerns related to human waste, the proposed budget includes an additional $274,000 to expand the number of hygiene stations from 18 to 21. Mommy, excuse me.

Sorry.

Can we advance the slide for Mommy to show?

There we go.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

The proposed budget, so the new sites will be near and around RV encampments to keep the areas cleaner, free of waste and healthier.

Moving on and regarding the increased trash removal in the right of way, we will be increasing collaboration with people living in RVs and expanding our mitigation strategies.

On the topic of RVs, sewage pump-out services, during the city's pandemic response, SPU scaled up its response to provide additional support to RVs.

The proposed budget expands even that level of service by increasing the utility's frequency of pumping so that every RV can get pumped every four weeks, which is more optimal than where it is currently at six weeks.

SPU estimates that over 90% of RVs with tanks that can get pumped out are getting the service that they need.

And lastly, the proposed budget includes funding to support increased service levels, to reduce trash, litter, and waste near RV encampments.

Under the mayor's proposal, SPU would add one field coordinator position expand the purple bag program to support some of the RV encampments and use contractors to provide more RV remediation services.

I see that I have a couple of questions.

Actually, mom, your slide is the last slide and then I'll pass it back to the chair Mosqueda.

So I think this is the last slide before it's time for questions.

Chair Mosqueda, so do you want to just power through?

If I may add, is there not another slide for parks?

Yes, there is not another slide for RVs.

I see Director Aguirre is there.

We'll just send a quick thank you to Joe and Tonya, who are also part of this panel.

They have agreed to come back with us tomorrow afternoon.

So colleagues have no fear.

We have about another hour, 50 minutes for this portion of our meeting today.

So don't worry.

We will have plenty of time for questions and appreciate your generous time today.

and thank you to Joe and Tanya for coming back with us again tomorrow.

So item number three will be moved to tomorrow afternoon, and we will stay on item number two here until we reach our one o'clock recess period.

So we'll get through everybody.

And thank you for raising your hands.

And again, Sheryl Lewis, you'll be first in the queue.

Please go ahead, Mami.

That's it for my slide.

Perhaps we should move to Jesus.

Thank you, that sounds great.

Thank you, Director Hara and Council Members.

So Seattle Parks and Recreation's role here is, as Deputy Mayor Washington articulated, is this idea of ensuring that we have all of our parks and open spaces are clean and accessible for all and ensuring that we are able to maintain restore all of our natural assets.

As you can imagine the work, our work in this area has has been quite challenging over the last couple of years and now we're also adding some additional responsibilities to Seattle Parks and Recreation as the work some of those were transitions over to the regional authority so The mayor's proposed budget adds a couple of pieces here to try to address those challenges.

On the operational side for us, really trying to respond to the significant challenges we've had with staff safety and having enough staff out there supporting this work and training.

So we're adding a couple of positions here.

Our field coordinators, these are the individuals that interact directly with unhoused individuals living in the parks, both as we do our regular litter abatement and cleanup around encampments, and then as we partner with HSD and the Regional Housing Authority and HOPE Team, as these individuals get connections to housing services, we come in and support as those unhoused individuals get moved.

In addition to supporting our own operations and doing this work effectively and efficiently and in compliance with all the MDARs, we're also taking on additional responsibilities on the data and management piece and communication piece that were formerly taken on by the navigation team.

Uh, in terms of the capital side, as you can imagine, uh, this, this different use in our parks have created some significant challenges, uh, in terms of, uh, the state of the parks and open spaces.

So we are proposing, uh, significant funding here to try to restore, uh, the parks.

Uh, and every park is different.

And, and, and, uh, when we've had encampments, uh, particularly longstanding encampments, there've been some significant restoration work that has to be done.

And this, uh, proposed line item will help us.

address them.

And again, every park is different, so we're estimating for these 50 sites.

But this also does not cover, for example, we've had situations where existing equipment like playground equipment and other things is damaged.

This restoration fund does not cover those expenditures.

So I'm happy to answer questions about that.

I think that's all we have.

Chair Mosqueda, passing it to you.

Well, excellent.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate the full panel here.

I'm not seeing yet.

Director Jones.

I want to thank you all for your presentation.

I'm going to turn it over to Councilmember Lewis for comments and questions as well.

I just have a couple clarifying questions, and then I'll go into things that are more systems issues.

But I want to go back to slide 16 in Tess's presentation for a second, if that's possible, if we could put this that slide back up.

No problem.

And I want to thank Patty for their work to help manage all of the back and forth here.

Thank you so much, Patty, for managing that breath.

Yeah, but that was that was quick.

Thank you so much.

So I do want to just ask you a question here about we're anticipating 2.4 million for operations for the tiny house village edition.

But if you go to the previous slide and the Salvation Army shelter that's anticipated to to be 12 million for twice as many units.

I'm just kind of curious about our like cost per unit between those shelter options.

It's just sort of surprising to me.

Um, and I wonder what the, uh, what's the salvation army doing that is, that is costing so much more than the tiny house shelters.

That's an excellent question, and I apologize.

I might have glossed over this a little bit too quickly.

So they are receiving a combination of operating support over a two-year period, but also embedded in that is capital funds that we anticipate that they are going to need to identify and stand up a new site.

Again, as I mentioned, the lease at the Soto site that is with King County is scheduled to end this fall, excuse me, not this fall, next fall, we've already moved on, next fall.

So again, those are two years worth of operating dollars plus capital.

Oh, okay.

So that 12 million represents two years of operations?

The 12 million represents two years of operation plus capital for the standup of a new site.

Okay, so that would be like an apples to apples would be more of the tiny house budget item was for like 4.8 million on the operations.

I'm sorry.

I'm not I having a little bit of trouble getting to that math.

Can you would you mind going back to the previous slide?

Please look like Julie had an answer.

Sorry.

Okay, great.

Yeah, it's closer.

And just also note that the number of units is significantly different.

So Salvation Army is 240, whereas the Tiny Home Village line is only supporting 120 for one year.

So there's quite a few elements that make it not an apples to apples look.

Right.

That makes the numbers end up getting closer with the context that that $12 million is for two years of support.

Yeah.

And again, if you take the $2 million that we're estimating will be needed for capital to stand up the next site, we're probably looking at closer to $10 million.

Divide that by 2, that's about $5 million for 240 units, which is twice what we will, twice the operating.

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274,000.

I have information from central staff that we're spending $130,000 to $190,000 per month to operate hygiene stations.

Is there more granularity there?

Are some hygiene stations more service intensive than others?

Because that seems like a lot of hygiene station we're adding for just 274,000.

or 0.5,000?

We can definitely get you more information.

We're pretty confident about the numbers that we can add the three hygiene stations.

The hygiene stations just include one accessible toilet, a regular toilet, and a sink.

And this includes the maintenance for those twice a day throughout the year.

But we can definitely get you more information about the per station costs.

But they're all maintained twice a day.

Brian, where did the numbers you emailed me come from about the 130 to 190 per month for these hygiene stations?

Sure.

Council Member Lewis, if I may, Mark and team are

waiting they need to be added into the they're in deputy mayor thank you so much yeah i know it's a lot of a lot of squares on this screen but thank you for flagging that and what we're going to do is we're going to go through the last two hands that are up and then we'll have uh mark and team um uh be welcome to make some comments so brian so sorry to interrupt you

Oh, absolutely.

Thank you, Council Member.

Just for the record, Brian, good night, Council Central staff.

So the numbers that I emailed you were for the trailers, the hygiene trailers, which also include shower facilities.

So those are entirely different than what Director Hara is mentioning about the hygiene stations, which are just toilet facilities and hand-washing.

So it's a different class.

I'm happy to work with SPU to confirm the per-unit numbers as we go forward, but that's the difference there, different type of service.

Okay, yeah, I mean, this is something I'm definitely going to want to get into a little bit more, especially as it relates to acquisition versus leasing and see if maybe we can have a conversation with the department about some.

things we could do to maybe reduce cost and maybe change up some of the units.

I mean, I've been made aware of some hygiene products I'd like to talk to the department about and see if it could suit their needs.

And I think, Brian, you're already doing that on my office's behalf.

So I look forward to continuing that.

But that clarification is helpful.

So these are for non-shower stations, which is why there's the difference in cost.

OK.

No, that's right.

And we would welcome any new ideas about technologies.

You will be happy to know that the shower, permanent shower units that we've purchased and even designed for the highest level of durability are coming online probably at the end of this month, maybe a little bit later for the second one.

So we won't have to lease shower trailers anymore after that.

Unless the program gets expanded.

I was going to highlight that point that, per Councilor Lewis's observation, already shifting to a strategy of purchasing the shower trailers because it does make more economic sense in just the way that you have implied.

Great.

So I'm going to focus the rest of my questions here on outreach and the future of the whole team.

So if we could maybe go back to that almost Venn diagram slide thing that we said there, this right here.

Perfect.

I'm sorry to interrupt, but I do have one question for Director Hara.

So I just want to make sure that I have a chance to ask that before she has to leave, if that's OK.

Oh, certainly, please.

Yeah.

that.

Okay, if that's okay with you, Council Member Lewis.

Okay, thank you.

And we'll ask as well if anybody else does.

Thank you.

Dr. Herr, thank you for being here and for sharing this information with us.

So regarding the hygiene services, I'm sure you'll be not be surprised to know that I'm looking for an update on the street sinks network.

that we funded last fall.

If you could just share a little bit on where we are with implementing that.

And then I'm also very interested to know if SBU is exploring the idea of the need for access to permanent public toilets.

My staff has been very entertained that when I've been traveling around, I send pictures of public restrooms from cities all over the place.

So, and I have been asking Tracy Bratzliff and our central staff for some support in getting a better understanding of how much they cost and what is actually involved.

So Council Member Lewis, happy to hear that you're interested in similar things and we can probably work together on that.

But Director Hart, if you could give us an update on the street sinks network and then any information you might have about permanent public toilets.

I'm sorry to interrupt you, Director Hara, and I'm sorry, Councilmember Lewis.

I know you're still up in the queue.

I understand Councilmember Herbold's question pertains to SPU as well.

So, Councilmember Herbold, I'm going to ask you to ask your question along with Councilmember Morales' so that Director Hara can answer both at the same time.

Thank you.

So, oh, now?

Is that what you're saying?

I have a question.

As it states here, it's being framed as an enhancement because you're proposing to increase frequency every four weeks because it's every six weeks currently.

I just want to flag that change to every six weeks this year, I believe, as a cost-saving measure.

When we funded it at last year for this year, it was service every four weeks.

And so the initial pilot for the program was funded at, I think, $200,000.

This proposes to add another $175,000, but it doesn't seem to...

I'm just trying to get a sense of how it...

It doesn't really increase the frequency of the pump-outs.

It just goes back to what we were previously doing before the reduction.

So I'm just trying to see if there are additional services being offered, if we're going to different locations.

The program was originally planned to service between 40 and 64 RVs every month in order to, of course, protect our waterways as well as providing critical public health services to unhoused people who live in RVs.

And then during the public health emergency, the utility expanded goals to provide increased hygiene services.

And apparently between July and August, SPU was averaging over 100 pump outs a month.

And so I'm trying to get a sense of, what the level of service is here beyond the frequency, the number of locations, and whether or not there are additional services.

And then I have a same question for RV remediation as well.

It's previously funded to go to a certain number of locations.

How many numbers of locations are we looking at now?

Should I go in the order that the questions were asked, or should I start with the one that has the most numbers so I can remember them?

Let's go in the order.

Okay.

For the street scenes, the grants that were budgeted last year were awarded, and the contracts were in place by June 2021. And Clean Hands Collective was awarded $60,000 and Seattle Makers $40,000.

The status of the project is that one sink has been deployed at El Centro de la Rosa.

Real Change Clean Hands Collective plans to deploy up to 15 more units this year.

Several locations that met site requirements have declined adopting a sink due to staffing shortages.

and concerns around being able to maintain the sinks.

Real Change reached out to over 110 locations in partnership with Department of Neighborhood staff.

And nine of those who were interested were surveyed for Americans for Disability Act, you know, ability for compliance on the site and drainage compliance.

And five of those declined the sinks due to ADA and gray water concerns.

They just didn't want to, you know, they didn't feel that they could handle the Americans with Disability Act concerns for access to the sinks.

And so, you know, the project is ongoing.

And the idea would be to, increase or to add an additional year of funding that would be consistent with the 2021 grant program efforts.

But there have been some significant impediments with finding partner sites for the sinks.

And in terms of permanent toilets or bathroom facilities, You know, it's absolutely true.

The bricks and mortar bathroom facilities are the best, you know, for providing these kinds of services.

Seattle does have a significant number, you know, in their parks and recreation centers that during the pandemic were not available to the public, but that are increasingly available.

I'm guessing that perhaps Council Member Morales, you're also talking though about kind of more permanent structures that are just hygiene stations.

Is that correct?

I'm just looking for public bathrooms and I'm happy to send you photos from Vancouver, Washington, from Austin, from other places where there are plumbed bolted down bathrooms for people to use as they are moving about the city.

I got pictures from Berlin.

I'll add to that.

I want to make sure we go back to Council Member Lewis.

And Mommy, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Did you have more answers for those two questions?

I have.

Yeah, I would look forward to this.

We would look forward to receiving those images and any further ideas.

So to get down to Council Member Herbold, questions about the nature of the RV pump-out services?

Yes.

SPU is averaging, instead of the 100 that had been originally budgeted or previously budgeted, Council Member Herbold, it's 140 services per month.

So we have significantly expanded the number of folks that we are reaching out to and the number of RVs.

And if this was in response to COVID, lack of access to hygiene, We were pumping every four weeks for those that we were serving, but because we started to run out of money, we tried to see if it would work at six weeks.

It's not optimal for about 40 percent of the folks that we're serving.

It looks like every four weeks is the key spot, so that's why we're asking for an increase, so that we can continue with the broader number.

at the original frequency that we had desired to have.

Sorry for using shorthand and explaining that earlier.

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to be recipients for that program as well, but just would love to be able to compare what we funded as it relates to numbers of RVs remediated per month under previous budgets to what you're proposing to do this year.

Okay, so in terms of the RV remediation work during COVID, Well, all of the RVs have remained resident.

You know that we've shifted to emphasis cleans.

That's right.

Most of the emphasis cleans take about an hour.

We're able to do about 8 to 10 RV sites per day.

We can give you the total number in aggregate.

Later on, I don't have it in my head.

also, you know, try to in this area as well, you know, expand the number of places that we, that we're outreaching to.

Perfect.

I do want to flag, if I could, just very quickly.

In the past, the program did ask people to actually move their RVs when there were RVs that were capable of moving so that you could clean the entire area.

It also gave house people and other businesses and other folks in the community to have sort of a little bit of a break for a while.

And I understand that with the suspension of the 72-hour enforcement and court cases around that, that there's some complexity around enforcing parking laws, but I would like us to think, and I know this is probably a conversation also with the police department, I would like us really to think about how the remediation program, when we were asking people to move on, how it actually worked.

We weren't really towing people's vehicles.

90% of people moved voluntarily.

To allow you to clean up an area.

And so I guess I would like to think if wonder, I'd like to talk about whether or not we could think about a non enforcement based approach that still gets people to move on for a little bit.

and allow you to more fully clean up the area.

Because again, it was successful in accomplishing that in the past without really having to tow or ticket vehicles because so many people voluntarily complied.

So just putting that out there.

I'm going to ask Director Hara if they have any last comments and then I'm going to turn it back to Councilmember Lewis for their final questions and any comments that Councilmember Lewis has.

And then I'm going to turn it over to Mark Jones who has joined us as I noted for part of their presentation as well to be part of this panel.

So thank you very much for your questions and Director Hara any additional comments or answers to those?

I'm just to say that we welcome any discussions and that we are always willing to adopt the city practices and policies.

So thank you very much for your time.

Thanks for your time.

And I'm sure we'll follow up in writing with some more questions for you as well.

Council Member Lewis, as chair again, I'm turning it back over to you.

And then we will turn the microphone over to Mark after that.

Great, thank you.

OK, let's go back to that Venn diagram slide thing.

There we go.

Okay, so I think this, I appreciate the slide and I appreciate this getting queued up and I think it's a good transition to our conversation with mark.

Because I think 1 thing we really need to do in this budget cycle is very much reconcile what the division of.

responsibility is going to be in the outreach realm.

And I want us to be very careful and very intentional.

And I'm very, I mean, I'm just flagging as an area I think of intense scrutiny for this budget cycle, at least as far as I'm concerned, is going to be really figuring out what the HOPE team role is and whether it's honestly appropriate to rename the HOPE team to something else to kind of reflect this new sort of intermediary role.

Um, I'm worried about inconsistency in outreach strategy.

I'm worried about people experiencing homelessness, um, misunderstanding, uh, who is interacting with them, um, and whether you know, there will still be some kind of outreach component that is in the HOPE team.

And I want to make sure that we're in a position where outreach, the outreach contracts under the KCRHA can do their thing without feeling like they're on kind of a timeline or a countdown that's been imposed by the HOPE team, for example, posting a, like an MDAR removal, for example.

So, you know, I think that there is a role and I've talked to Jeff Sims on central staff about this to kind of queue this up.

And how we sort of a portion where we fund things.

I think there is a role for the city to have sort of an enforcement.

Position, or maybe even like a.

I mean, as as the park superintendent went into.

a focus on making sure that we're restoring spaces once outreach teams have finished their work and housed everybody in a location.

But I do worry about a position where we have outreach teams that are chafing up against the HOPE teams, sort of more enforcement things, and that people perceive a commingling of enforcement and outreach, which should be avoided.

So that's just a lot of things that I'm throwing out there right now, but I am just wondering what is sort of the vision in this budget that's been proffered in this slide of exactly what the HOPE team's gonna be doing and how can we avoid some of those problems from occurring?

It's a good question, Council Member Lewis.

Can we go back to the slide that had the roles and responsibilities?

Essentially, we should not even use the term HOPE team anymore.

There is no HOPE team.

Because we're moving shelter, which is a function of the HOPE team, and outreach, which is a function of the HOPE team, to the regional authority.

And so it's just a misuse of words.

I think it's easier to look at roles.

And so I'll walk you through that.

One thing to remember is, do you folks remember earlier, I think it was last year, where all the outreach providers refused to sign their contracts?

It was about a three month long thing.

So Mark and I met with all the outreach providers, and what they said was, we do not want to be on site the day of a removal fair, right?

And we don't actually want to be there once a removal is posted.

In the navigation team, five years ago when I was overseeing it, they said the same thing.

And that is why we hired system navigators, because someone has to be present on the day of the clean to offer shelter to the one or two people that are left there.

So just wanna state that.

So Mark and team will have all the outreach providers and all of the shelter.

Parks will be in charge as they are now of going to a site once all the folks there have been referred to shelter to clean and restore it.

The HOPE liaison role that you saw in the middle there is one person.

In the budget, and I'll let Ben or maybe Julie describe it, what we're essentially doing is there's an outreach coordinator, who will be loaned to the regional authority next year.

The system navigators will be loaned to parks next year.

And the only people staying in HSD is the one person who has to answer all of your questions, the mayor's office questions, the community questions and liaison and help all of these four different buckets work together.

But effectively, If you wanted to say in 2022, does the hope team go away?

The answer is yes.

The reason why the positions are loaned is to give time for Mark and team to work through the hiccups that are going to happen.

Because effectively, starting January 1, when there's a removal, the outreach folks have asked that they receive removal dates a month in advance so that they can go out and build relationships with folks.

So in January, what will happen is Mark and team will get a copy of the removal calendar.

And Mark and team will coordinate with outreach to figure out where folks want to go and where they have relationships, and then parks, when Mark says the parks, we've got it clear.

Folks are all in housing or in shelter, then parks will go and do a clean.

So that's very, I mean, this is one of the most complicated things to explain.

And so keep asking for clarification.

Mark can jump in if needed, but that is the easiest way that I can explain it.

Julie, do you want to add?

I'm Julie, I'm also, this is a good point for Mark to jump in at some point, but Councilmember Lewis, I don't want to interrupt you.

I also know that Councilmember Morales still had some leftover questions.

Julie, if you don't have anything.

to throw in.

Right now you do.

Go ahead.

Oh, it's totally fine.

I can wait.

Okay.

Mark, that was a good lead in to helping us understand the flowchart in the concentric circles for next year.

Thank you.

I want to welcome you to the table and also recognize you're still in the process of setting up your team.

and the department.

So please go ahead and share a few comments with us.

And we do have about 20 minutes left for this discussion.

We all have a hard stop at one.

So I'm going to let you say a few words, and then we're going to open back up for questions.

I know there's a handful more.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

CEO Mark Jones, for the record, a pleasure to be with you all.

And I will keep it extremely brief.

I apologize for being late.

I was with the mayor of Issaquah.

I'm trying to be regional, trying to run around.

I think that the most important things for me to say are that I just want to offer first appreciation for Julie, for Deputy Mayor Washington, for Tess Colby, and the HSI team for walking alongside us during a very bizarre budget cycle.

This is not how this was designed to work.

But I am, I have a lot of gratitude and our team has a lot of gratitude for the support that we received in a what could have been an incredibly painful process.

And instead it was just kind of a little weird.

I also want to, you know, lift up appreciation for the mayor's above baseline proposal.

As I think you all know, or most of you know, my job is to say it's not enough.

And so I'm going to do that, but still want to offer appreciation for the fact that we are starting above where we could have.

The authorities' priorities for 22, just very briefly, are going to be on continuing to ramp up.

And in particular, administratively, right, we will be working in quarter one To develop the system wide RFP that will rebuild all of the contracts, the entire system from top to bottom.

We anticipate being able to release that RFP hopefully quarter to probably mid quarter to and then score.

make awards so that when we turn the lights on in 23, it is a very different system.

You know, my hope is that that process leaves no room for surprises on how that is done and what's in that system, right?

That we really are able to walk alongside folks and have the appropriate collaborative conversation with our provider community, with our, thank you, someone brought me coffee.

with our provider community and with, you know, all of you as elected officials and our elected officials across the region, right, so that we are really operating in transparency and accountability.

The other priorities we have, right, are to respond to a crisis like it's a crisis, right?

And so we have a number of initiatives that we would like to get off the ground as soon as possible to begin to house people and respond appropriately.

So some of that core work is looking at, you know, what we are sort of latching on to as a sort of a downtown recovery initiative.

We believe that there are around 800 people living semi-stably in the downtown area.

We would like to get them housed.

I think that it is really important that we be clear, right, that like What, you know, the fact that so many folks have to experience unsheltered homelessness across Seattle metro region right has to be a core function.

of what we respond to.

And so we really want to begin to do that, you know, sort of essentially, you know, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, you know, identifying an area and saying, we're going to connect with the folks in this area, service plan, match to housing and shelter options, and then house.

I'm appreciative of what Deputy Mayor Washington said about, you know, the importance of the connection being made available for us to at least begin to direct outreach staff at least a month in advance, some of our recovery planning work for the downtown core and other sort of large and areas where a lot of folks are experiencing unsheltered homelessness, you know, we have budgeted between two and three months, actually, of connection by nameless generation and service planning.

We think that that is the amount of time it would take to do it really well and at high quality and ensure that we are really matching people to the appropriate resources.

We are also really focused on standing up our peer navigation work as a sort of reframe of how outreach and connectivity happens across the system.

That work is based on well-documented outcomes in the behavioral health and substance use disorder space where peers have become the gold standard.

It's a Medicaid reimbursable framework.

And we're really focused on ensuring that how people are traversing the system right is held appropriately in a relationship framework.

And the last thing that I'll just lift up, there are a lot more things I could say, but I'm really trying to be brief.

The last thing that I'll lift up is we have a focus on what we are referring to as our high acuity folks, right?

So those are folks who have really significant behavioral health or substance use issues, sometimes co-occurring, right?

And ensuring that those folks have access to shelter that has the appropriate level of care connected to it from a psychopharm and also medical perspective.

We are really looking for funding to be able to ramp up in Q1 150 beds of high acuity shelter in addition to our broader non-congregate shelter initiatives.

I'll stop there.

I, again, apologize for being late.

I welcome any questions, follow-up in writing, or opportunities to brief any of you one-on-one over the cycle of budget deliberations.

Thank you.

appreciate it.

Thank you.

And I do know we have a handful of questions.

So before we hit the one o'clock hour, I'm going to ask for folks to get those questions out.

And then we do have a process for any questions that don't get answered or asked today to go through central staff.

So we will try to get all of those as many as we can air today.

Council Member Lewis and then Council Member Morales.

Yeah, thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

I just have a follow-up.

I mean, because there'll be plenty of time to talk about a lot of these things throughout the budget process.

But I do just want to set the stage again and appreciate Deputy Mayor Washington's answer.

I thought that was a really great answer on the future of what the interaction is going to be in dividing the responsibilities around outreach and enforcement.

I do still have a question in terms of where is it going to reside?

Will it be in parks or will it be in HSD?

Or when there's a decision that an area is going to be flagged to go on the list, that is going to then ping the authority to say, you have a month, go do outreach.

Who's making those calls, and how has that kind of manifested in this architecture we've been talking about today?

For now, it's parks.

I don't personally think that that's ideal for parks for the entire city of Seattle.

But when the NAV team was removed from the budget, parks needed to pick it up.

Back in my day, it was FAS.

And so what we know to be true is someone in the city, it's not HSD per council's strong request not to have the helping arm be the enforcement arm.

It is parks for now and further discussion needed next year after we see how some of this shakes out.

Okay, that'll definitely be something I want to dig into a little bit more because does that mean if there's something posted for removal that's on like a stop property, it's still residing with parts.

yes because s dot uh contracts with parks to do that work i see okay can i add one thing council member i apologize yes yes please yes given that this is an area of interest i will just flag that the authority is interested in in participating actively right in how that that work gets done and we've had this conversation with deputy mayor washington and I believe we're in alignment that there does need to be a clear policy linkage, right, between how scheduling is done and how the authority is then postured.

So I just want to lift that up as a place where there is already conversation to the extent that that's helpful.

Great.

I will make space for other folks to ask questions, Chair Mosqueda.

I appreciate it.

Thank you, Chair Lewis and Council Member Morales and then Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

So I have a lot of questions, but I'll focus on two.

So there's been a lot of concern about the work that Clean Cities is doing in parks.

We have advocates, people who are unhoused, people who are housed, really concerned that their people's belongings are being moved without their consent and, you know, removing tents without a whole lot of effort to confirm that they have actually been abandoned.

So I understand that there is some perspective that there needs to be enforcement, and I'll get to that in a minute.

But I do think it's important to acknowledge that that shouldn't be happening in parks.

That department shouldn't be there in that role.

So I'm wondering if central staff can tell me which BSL this line item falls under, because it's not clear in the budget book or in this presentation.

where that work happens.

That's one question.

And then my last question is, There seems to be some confusion around council and service providers goals for the HOPE team.

So I wanna clear that up.

This was never intended to be about enforcement.

My staff and I, other council members and their staff spent a significant amount of time last summer with service providers, with Deputy Mayor Sixkiller, with others in the executive branch to close the navigation team and stand up the HOPE team.

which is a reminder was about homeless outreach and provider ecosystem.

And the goal of that program was to build a collaborative system between the city and providers to give providers more control.

about input on whether an encampment should be removed or not.

So this is really about centering the people who are experiencing homelessness and the people who actually are on the streets with them every day trying to provide shelter and services and letting them make the decision about whether there are the resources needed to move people or if they really should just, you know, stay where they are.

So So my question related to that is, if we have a sense of how many encampment removals in parks were supported by contract service providers in 2021?

I do have some other questions.

I can direct them to central staff, but if I could get those two questions answered, I'd appreciate it.

Appreciate that.

And I see Tracy Raskliff from central staff pop on.

I have not yet been able to do a deep dive into seeing in what BSL these existing because it's a combination of some existing expenditures and then new if we're going to talk about the clean city.

So I will have to get back with you about that information.

We'll have to get back to you on that.

What I would say, Councilman Morales, is your description, as provided, is accurate.

And that's the work that Mark will continue to do with the outreach workers, minus the term hope team.

They'll just be outreach workers working with Mark and the regional entity.

We'll get you the numbers on the removals.

And you want the number of removals in parks for 2021, is that correct?

That was supported by contract providers.

Okay.

We'll work on that and get it to you.

I appreciate that.

Council Member Morales, is there any?

I know you have additional questions.

I do as well.

So we will be, I think, combining a list of questions for central staff that will probably make it easier, Jeff and Tracy.

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I do have a lot of questions, but I'm going to narrow it down to three.

First one's super quick.

There is a little-known part of the MDARs that I was under the impression that we were still trying to adhere to when it came to what happens at certain locations where there already has been a removal and what is considered to be part of the restoration work.

I know sometimes fencing is considered to be part of restoration to keep people from returning to the location, but the MDAR say that there should not be any more than 10 fenced locations at any time.

I'm just interested to know whether or not Parks is intending to still adhere to that principle.

And I can just pause there for Parks, and then I have a couple other questions.

Sorry.

Council Member Herbold, excuse me, I'll have to follow up with our staff on how many currently park locations have fencing and we'll get you that information.

But obviously, if it's in the MDARs, we're going to strive to comply with everything.

Perfect.

Thank you so much.

And then my other questions.

relate I think to, well, the first one's about outreach.

In last year's budget, we provided for an increase in outreach workers specifically to focus on geographic areas that were hard hit or underserved with an understanding that often a place-based approach can actually yield better relationships between outreach workers and the folks they're serving, create relationships with members of the health community, and sort of leverage partnerships there, and result in better results.

So I'm just wondering, given last year's funding for outreach centered in particular geographic areas.

And like I said, it's been a great help for me in my work with constituents to address these issues.

How is the 2022 switch of the contracts to the KCRHA going to preserve this policy direction that this council gained in the budget last year?

Mark, do you want to take it because I think we talked about this when we met with outreach about this very issue.

So I'll hand it to you.

Sure.

Thank you Councilmember.

So my first answer is there will be no changes to contracts going into 22, right?

So like we are level funding, we are keeping the same contract language, we are not like So what, unless someone has raised their hand and said, I have a terrible thing in my contract that makes it horrible and hard to do my work, right?

Like we have not opened the terms of anything.

And frankly, thank you, or thanks to Deputy Mayor Washington, strategically structuring that conversation with outreach, right?

Like that I think would have been the thing that we would have had to reopen and we don't.

So there should be no changes that I have been informed of by my staff.

So you should expect to see that continued policy direction in place.

I will add, I'm a huge believer in place-based strategies.

Our team is a huge believer in place-based strategy.

And so you will see us double down on that, not walk away from it.

Thank you, Mark.

Really appreciate it.

And then my last question relates to RV related issues.

So we know that the council and the Seattle Rescue Plan included funds to establish a pilot safe lot program.

We know that $500,000 wouldn't go very far based on our experience in the past.

And frankly, I understand that.

And I understand that the county authority, that these are gonna be transferred to the county authority.

We probably shouldn't expect to see anything happen this year.

Hopefully, we'll do some experimenting with safe lots in 2022. Totally understand that you are looking for a model that supports folks not just not getting their vehicles towed and not just having a location to get the vehicles out of a residential community, but that you're looking for a model that helps to move people out of RVs and into permanent housing.

I wanna just mention that one of the ideas, and this is just, I think, the first time I've had a chance to say this to you, Mark, is it's my understanding that one of the reasons why this is a challenging population to convince to move out of their RVs into another type of housing, permanent housing, is their RV is the most precious asset they own.

And the idea of having to give it up when many people have been unstably housed for years, have gone from an apartment to the streets, from the apartment to the streets.

Now when they have an RV, they'll never be in that position again, right?

Going into apartment, maybe it not working out and ending up back on the streets.

So one of the ideas.

Yeah, it's your question.

If you can, because we're at time, I know that I would hope that the regional authority looks at safe lots as a place where people can store their RVs while they're getting used to the idea of living in an apartment so that they just have that peace of mind that if it doesn't work out that somebody is taking care of their RV for them.

so just kind of kind of throwing that out there and then lastly um want to know whether or not either in the in the city's budget or in the money that we're moving over to king county what are we doing with scofflaw mitigation um i know that um we i think it was uh it was council or madam care muscata champion funding for the scofflaw mitigation team contracted through university heights I, my staff saw a note in the budget document that the program is not performing and continues to struggle.

Certain people at the contract level want to know what contracted outcomes are not being met and whether or not we are intending to continue to fund these services.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold, I'm appreciative that that is on the record.

And I do, too, want to know the answer to that.

Unfortunately, we are at time.

I'm going to ask for all Councilmembers to share with us, and Tracy and Jeff can help coordinate.

These are all questions that I have as well, including, I'll throw out there, I know you mentioned over 500 new beds will be created by the end of the year.

I want to know if that is for who because we are at a deficit of at least 400 beds right now for high acuity needs people.

We know that is going to be scaled up by the end of the year.

important population of behavioral health and mental health addiction services that are needed, and we want to know who those beds are going towards so that we're addressing that deficit.

But with that, colleagues, please do formalize your questions and send them to central staff.

We will send around a memo on how to collect all of those.

I want to thank everybody who's here today.

Obviously not the end of the conversation, just the beginning with many more questions to come.

With that, we appreciate your time here today.

We are going to go into recess.

If there's no objection, we will come back from recess at 2 p.m.

Enjoy your recess and your lunch.

Please stretch your legs and we'll be back at 2. See you then.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.