Housing & Human Services Committee 582024

All right, good morning, everyone.

The time is 9.30, and the May 8th meeting of the Housing and Human Services Committee will now come to order.

I'm Cathy Moore, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please read the roll?

Call the roll.

Council President Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Saka.

Here.

Council Member Wu.

Present.

Vice Chair Morales.

Chair Moore.

Present.

Four present.

I will note that Council Member Morales is excused.

Moving on to the agenda, if there is no objection, today's proposed agenda will be adopted.

Seeing none, the agenda is adopted.

All right, on to my report.

So thank you, everyone, for being here today for the May 8th meeting of the Housing and Human Services Committee.

Today we have five items on the agenda.

First, we have three appointments to the Seattle King County Advisory Council on Aging and Disability Services.

Second, we have an appointment to the Seattle Women's Commission.

And finally, we have a discussion on the Rural Health Center's Pathways to Housing Security Report.

This report is the result of a request by the Washington State Legislature for a local house to conduct a multi-year process of gathering information and facilitating discussions to inform recommendations for a long-term strategy to create pathways to housing security.

That's with the introduction.

We'll now move to public comment open for hybrid public comment period.

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

Madam Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Chair, we have three online public commenters signed up and no in-person public commenters signed up.

All right, thank you.

So each speaker will have two minutes, and as we only have remote, we will proceed with the remote.

Could you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

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

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

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

Okay.

Do the first remote speaker is?

The public comment period is now open.

The first speaker is...

Ana Paula Kytos Vasconcelos.

Please press star six to unmute.

Hi, good morning council members.

My name is Ana Paula Kytos Vasconcelos and I am a PhD student at University of Washington and a member of our union UAW4121 Housing Justice Working Group.

I'm here to discuss recent changes to MFTE student certification guidelines and how that now excludes graduate students from qualifying for the MFTE program.

As of 2023, new guidelines for certifying students requires that all full-time students apply for and be receiving federal or state-level need-based financial aid to be approved for MFTE housing.

Students in PhD programs are typically compensated for university-level assistantships and fellowships, which are not considered need-based according to the new guidelines.

Grad students at the University of Washington make on average $32,000 per year, which is not only extremely difficult to survive on in Seattle, but is also less than half of the $84,000 MFTE eligibility income maximum.

By imposing this need-based financial aid requirement on all students, the Office of Housing is run students ineligible for the program for reasons that are completely unrelated to income level and entirely due to technicalities of financial aid policy.

We tried to reach out to the Office of Housing directly to discuss how the policy can be amended so as to not exclude graduate students, and we have been met with silence.

As months pass, our leases are coming up for renewal, and graduate students who are required to undergo recertification are now losing MFTE eligibility.

We're being forced to choose between displacement or hundreds of dollars of rent increases to market rate prices.

I'm here to urge the immediate action of the Housing and Human Services Committee in support of amending the MFPE requirements, ensuring that graduate students can once again qualify for these affordable units.

Thank you so much for your attention, and I really hope that you take action in support of housing security.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Our next speaker is Vyom Ravel, and then we will have Audrey So.

Vyom, please press star six to unmute.

Hello.

Hello, city council members.

My name is Vyom.

I'm an academic student employee at the University of Washington, just like the previous speaker, and I'm a union member of UAW 4121. And I'm here to request the same kind of thing, to please not have this technicality in the MFTE program that would exclude my housing and so many other academic student employees and others who benefit from the rent control program.

I live in an MFTE one bedroom unit.

I've lived here since 2020 and 60 to 80% of my income goes to rent and other, you know, like internet and utilities.

And so that leaves me with around $500 every month for food, groceries, et cetera.

If there's a healthcare expense or a family support expense that comes up, I wouldn't know what to do.

The apartment I live in, there's no window in my bedroom.

It's a one bedroom apartment.

And in January, there was a freeze.

And so I live on the fourth floor and the sprinkler pipe burst.

And since then, the elevator has been non-functional.

And what if I had a mobility issue?

So even though I live in a kind of new apartment, these kinds of issues pop up, and now I may not even be able to continue living here because of this technicality.

So I please request the council members to expand housing rights, not to constrain them.

You know, I've worked a little bit with the houseless community through mutual aid, like Food Not Bombs, where we share free hot food, and I've seen directly how the houseless community faces direct violence from the police, from the city government sweeping them.

And how is this going to be any kind of humane solution to the housing crisis?

We need to provide that.

Okay, thank you very much.

Next caller.

And the last speaker is Audrey So.

Audrey, please press star six.

Do we lose Audrey?

Audrey, are you there?

You need to push star six.

Thank you.

It didn't work the first time.

Hi, I'm Audrey So.

And like the other two public commenters, I'm a PhD student at the University of Washington and a member of our union, UAW for 121. And I've lived in an MST unit for the past year and a half.

So as the other speakers mentioned, graduate students make very little.

I make around 40K a year, well below the amount required to live in an MST.

And I even make a little bit more than most graduate students.

Graduate students, many of them are entirely independent.

I don't receive any aid from, like, my parents or others.

So I'm, like, subsisting entirely off of what little I make.

And finding housing in Seattle at my price point is incredibly difficult.

And even at MFT prices, I am still rent burdened.

And this policy...

about that introduces technicality has induced lots of anxiety about where I'll be living this September when my lease is up.

And so I would just really beseech the council to reconsider this policy.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Chair, we have no more public commenters signed up.

Okay, thank you.

I would just note that my office has been reached out to about the issue of including graduate students in the MFTE qualifications.

As noted, we will be taking up the reauthorization of MFTE in this committee later on in this year.

We are mindful of the issue and certainly welcome the comments and we'll be following up with additional outreach and research into that as a potential, something, a potential amendment to the MFTE program.

So, that said, since there are no additional registered speakers, we can now proceed to our items of business.

To the people who called in, I would certainly encourage you to submit a written public comment through email to the council at councilatseattle.gov.

All right.

Clerk, would you please read the first through third agenda items into the record?

Agenda items one through three.

Appointments 2853 through 2855. Appointments of Joel L. Domingo, Patricia P. Schnepp, and Dolores Wiens as members to the Seattle King County Advisory Council on Aging and Disability Services for terms to December 31st, 2025 for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Great.

So thank you.

Today we have with us Mary Mitchell and Lena from the Human Services Department who are introducing us to our three appointees who are appearing remotely, I believe.

I will turn it over to you, Mary and Lena, to talk about the work of the Advisory Council and to introduce the appointees.

Thank you and good morning.

My name is Mary Mitchell.

I'm the Director of Aging and Disability Services.

Hi, I'm Lena Thibault, Executive Assistant, Aging and Disability Services.

And we are here today seeking confirmation for three new advisory council members.

The Seattle Human Services Department invests in programs that connect people with resources and solutions to support healthy communities.

And the Aging and Disability Services Division operates as the federal and state designated area agency on aging for King County.

We are responsible for supporting the well-being of older adults, people with disabilities, and the people that care for them.

Our work is guided by...

I'm sorry, I will turn it over to Lena.

Our work is guided by the Advisory Council, a 21-member board which advises our division by sharing the voices and experience of community.

Their guidance informs local and state policy and investments that impact older adults.

And with that, I would like to thank you council members for presenting our advisory council members with the proclamation in honor of Older Americans Month.

They were not able to join us today in council chambers, but they are attending on Zoom.

And at this time, I would like to turn it over to the members to see if they would like to share a little bit about their interest in joining the advisory council.

Thank you.

Who would be our first?

Dr. Domingo.

Dr. Joel Domingo.

Yes, thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair Moore, members of the committee.

For the record, my name is Dr. Joel Domingo, and I'm honored to be here in consideration in serving this capacity.

I came to Seattle over 50 years ago as a child and grew up in this wonderful city.

And my family and I, as new immigrants, benefited from a lot of programs through this human services area of Seattle to find ways to live and grow and thrive in the city and I now find myself at a stage where I'm caring for my elderly mother, as well as my adult daughter with a disability.

And having learned to navigate in many of these spaces in terms of the services needed to provide for living and other types of expenses and just thriving the city has been both a challenge, but a wonderful opportunity to see the different things that are available for them.

And so as this role continues to grow on me and myself being an older American, I look forward to serving this capacity because I recall the time that my mother took care of me to help find these services.

And now in turn, I give back to her and my family, as well as other members of my aging family to thrive in this city.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for considering me for this opportunity.

I look forward and I'm very grateful.

Thanks.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

The next appointee.

Patricia sniff.

Okay, well, I can share on behalf of Patricia.

Okay.

I'm here.

Yes, here I am.

Um, I'm very happy to be here.

Thank you very much for including me in the organization.

I'm an older adult myself and have experienced many difficulties being an older adult and navigating a lot of the systems, but there's so much available here in Seattle.

I am very, very appreciative.

I've lived in other cities.

I'm originally from back East New York and lived in Chicago for quite a few years.

So there's a big difference on how the Seattle organization, the grouping, treats their older adults.

And it is very, very necessary.

And I hope to be able, to lend my energy and my experience to further benefit the older adults in the community.

And I'm very proud to be a part of the organization.

And whatever I can do to help, please let me know.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Thank you so very much.

And our last appointee.

Dolores Weins.

Dolores, if you're able to unmute Okay, I can share a little bit about Delores' background.

She has had a wonderful, successful business career with PACCAR, Boeing, and starting up her own companies.

She remained committed to her values through volunteering at her church, her children's school, and sports.

serving on campaigns for Jay Inslee and Barack Obama, and as the Seattle leader of OFA, and that's Obama's social justice group.

She's also helped to organize WaGuns, and that organization later merged with Gabby Giffords Alliance.

She's worked on initiatives to help bring affordable care to Washington.

She also helped to found and is currently a board member at the Elder Councils B Seattle, which advocates for the respect and rights of senior tenants.

Thank you.

And I'll turn it back over to you, Council Chair.

Great, thank you very much.

And thank all three of you so much for your willingness to serve.

It sounds like you bring a lot of passion, commitment, and life experience.

I'm really, really grateful and privileged that we have people who are still wanting to serve our community.

So thank you.

Colleagues, are there any questions or comments for our potential nominees?

Yes, Council Member Pressent.

Well, first of all, thank you very much, all of you, for being willing to serve and bring your expertise and lived experience in service of people in Seattle and this commission.

I read a little bit about each of your backgrounds and I just have to say, Dr. Domingo, I really appreciate that you are living the, what I think is called the sandwich situation or basically caring for a parent and a child at the same time, and I think that that will be very beneficial for a lot of people because many people my age find themselves in that same situation, and understanding how best to care for both generations at the same time is really important.

Ms. Sneff, I'm sorry I'm mispronouncing your name, but I noticed that you have computer skills tutoring in your background, and that is absolutely crucial.

My mother-in-law, really struggled to master some of those skills.

And that is key to remaining, you know, being able to participate in basic life needs nowadays.

So thank you very much for bringing that forward.

And then finally, Ms. Wiens, I think that your political background in advocacy is exactly what this commission needs as well.

So thank you very much to each of you for stepping up and serving.

Thank you.

Any comments?

No?

All right.

So thank you.

I appreciate all of that and echo your comments as well.

So seeing no further questions or comments, I now move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointments 2853 through 2855. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointments.

Are there any final comments?

Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to confirm the appointments?

Council President Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Council Member Wu?

Yes.

Chair Moore?

Aye.

Four in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation to confirm the appointments will be sent to the May 14th Seattle City Council meeting.

Again, thank you very much Mary and Lena for being here and presenting and also to the appointees for joining us today.

Thank you.

All right.

Will the clerk please read agenda item four and to the record.

Agenda item four, appointment 2857, reappointment of Stephen Prey as a member to the Seattle LGBTQ Commission for a term to October 31st, 2025 for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

So, thank you.

Do we have Janet?

Okay.

Janet Stafford from the Office of Civil Rights is here with us virtually, and there you are, and will walk us through the appointment to the Seattle LGBTQ Commission.

So I'll turn it over to you, Janet.

Yes, good morning.

Thank you, Chair Moore, and good morning to all.

My name is Janet Stafford, and I am here through the Seattle Office for Civil Rights.

Today I am here on behalf of the Seattle LGBTQ Commission, who advises on issues concerning the LGBTQ community in Seattle.

Some of their event collaborations with City Council and the Mayor's Office have included the annual Pride flag-raising event at City Hall.

Last year they connected with City Council and Mayor's staff.

and really look forward this year to meeting many of you and sharing their work plan and priorities of the year.

Today we have one reappointment of Steven Prey.

Steven is an active member since 2021 and has completed his undergrad from Seattle Central Washington and moved to Seattle to start law school at Seattle University.

After he graduated from law school, he began to work as a union representative at Pro Tech 17. And since then, and since his time on the commission, Stephen has been an active participant and has taken a chair lead of the Commission Operations Committee.

He has led work on updating commission bylaws and this year's work plan.

So the commission really looks forward to having Stephen continue another term.

Thank you.

Wonderful, thank you.

Colleagues, are there any questions or comments before we move to a vote?

All right, seeing none, I now move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointment 2857. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of the appointment.

Are there any final comments before we vote?

Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to confirm the appointment?

Council President Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Council Member Wu?

Yes.

Chair Moore?

Aye.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation to confirm the appointment will be sent to the May 14th City Council meeting.

Thank you, Janet, for joining us today, and please pass on the committee's gratitude to Stephen for their interest in continuing to serve on the commission.

We certainly appreciate that.

Thank you.

All right.

Will the clerk please read the fifth agenda item?

Item five, pathways to housing security for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

All right.

So today we have with us the William D. Ruckelhaus Center to present to us their Pathways to Housing Security, a report meant to advise a long-term state strategy to create pathways to housing security.

As mentioned, the report was released in December of 2023, so it's quite timely.

We have only included the PowerPoint presentation and the executive summary on our agenda today, as the entire report is really too large to attach to the agenda.

But I do strongly recommend or highly recommend that people read the full report on the Ruckelshaus Center website.

It's very detailed, very thought-provoking.

So, to walk us through the presentation of their report, we have with us Phyllis Schulman, who's the project co-lead and the associate director of the William Ruckelshaus Center, Molly Stenevec, Jed Chalupa, and Bridget Kelly.

So, thank you all for being here today to talk about your work, and I will now turn it over to you for your presentation.

Thank you, Chair Moore.

We really appreciate the opportunity to come and present to all of you.

I'm just gonna start with just a very short introduction about who the William D. Ruckelshaus Center is because not everyone necessarily knows that.

The William D. Ruckelshaus Center is co-hosted by the University of Washington at Evans School.

as well as Washington State University.

So we're Cuskies, is how we kind of claim ourselves.

The center was begun about 20 years ago by Bill Ruckelshaus.

Bill was the first head of the EPA.

He was also the assistant attorney general.

He was also interim FBI director.

And in his vast public policy experience, He felt that the most durable and creative and sustainable solutions to public policy issues actually came when people came together collaboratively across differences, ironed things out, worked through collaborative processes, and actually came up with things that people could agree to.

And so he wanted to create a center where there was facilitation and skills of people who would come and be able to serve in Washington state and the region to do just that, to create collaborative opportunities and to work through some pretty sticky conflicts that often emerge when we're trying to work through things.

So we work in a whole variety of different topics.

Most of our work comes to us from the state legislature, as well as local and regional government, but we also serve private interests as well.

We work in a wide range of topics.

Whatever those that come to us, we generally do not create our own projects.

And so we've worked in natural resource issues.

We've worked in criminal sentencing reform.

We've worked right now in recreational impacts on tribal treaty rights.

We do health policy.

We've worked on housing and homelessness.

We've worked on climate change and resilience.

So there's a really wide range of things that, and municipal water, we have a new project on that.

So, you know, there's a lot of things that both affect cities as well as the broader region.

So I will now pass it to my colleagues to continue on with going through some of the highlights of the report.

Thank you.

In 2021, in section six of House Bill 1277, the legislature directed the Ruckels House Center to conduct a multi-year process of fact-finding and information gathering around the nature and scope of homelessness and housing instability with the ultimate purpose of facilitating discussions among individuals representing various roles, sectors, and geographies to explore what is needed for a state long-term approach to creating pathways to housing security.

To do that work, the Center has partnered with Washington State University's Division of Governmental Studies and Services, and their work focused on the fact-finding tasks outlined in the legislation.

Specifically, they've conducted a literature review of program evaluations and working to analyze information regarding contributing factors to experiences of housing instability across the state.

And then the center focused on facilitating discussions, which informed the development of guiding principles and recommendations.

Status reports were released in December of 2021 and 2022 with final reporting released in December of 2023. And links to all of those reports are available on our website.

Over the past two and a half years, more than 400 individuals with knowledge or roles related to policies, programs, and or lived experience around homelessness and housing have contributed their time and perspectives to those conversations.

And the final report provides a synthesis of those conversations across the whole project.

Thank you, Molly.

The center now has this great opportunity to help work with agencies, organizations, and various communities throughout Washington to engage with the information that we were able to identify through this engagement with over 400 individuals that we talked with.

In these efforts to help uptake the information of the report, it is important to keep in mind the full context of what we were asked to do.

So to start, we would like to recognize that we are not the experts on housing and homelessness, but rather we're experts in developing processes that help bring people together across their different levels of expertise.

Therefore, the findings in this report are not claims made by the center, but are a summarization of diverse expertise drawn together across consistent themes and identified shared goals.

Furthermore, the scope of this work was statewide, long-term, and a holistic view of housing security landscape.

This means that we did not investigate the resources and actions of specific communities, but instead our work looked at what is needed to build cohesion across the state in ways that maintain local autonomy and context-specific needs over time.

The long-term lens also meant that We looked at the continuous balancing of addressing immediate acute need alongside actions that are needed to start implementing to build a sustained pathway to housing security.

This is an aspect that can be overlooked at or that can be looked at as both and situation and what you recognize that addressing acute needs need to be in conversation with supporting long-term goals rather than viewing these things as an opposition to one another.

Also, taking the holistic view means that we paid close attention to breaking down the unintended silos that can often be created through recognizing the interdependencies across sectors, such as our issues like housing security and homelessness are often associated with aspects like health, infrastructure, economic security, and community.

With all this in mind, when looking to use this report, it represents a guide for developing strategies and innovations that will create greater alignment of actions and goals over time, and help various entities such as cities make tough choices in their communities using the same guiding foundation as others across the state.

Therefore, it is important to recognize that discussions that we held included input across the state, including Seattle and King County, but analysis and the resulting findings and recommendations are not specific to each context.

The recommendations are action-oriented but not prescriptive in terms of exactly how to carry these things out, but instead provide a guide to help make those tough decisions in the context you find yourself in.

Therefore, we quickly realized that there are many efforts already being done throughout the state So our efforts worked to complement rather than duplicate these other aspects that were in parallel to ours, and these included such things as the Affordable Housing Advisory Board's engagement to update the strategic plan, the work of the Governor's Poverty Reduction Working Group, and the work of the Indian Policy Advisory Committee affiliated with the Department of Social and Health Services.

ADDITIONALLY, OUR WORK ENGAGED WITH THE STATEWIDE ADVISORY COUNCIL ON HOMELESSNESS AS A GROUNDING PIECE FOR THEIR UPDATE TO THE STRATEGIC PLAN FOR THE HOMELESS HOUSING CRISIS RESPONSE.

Our work also works to identify different gaps that are currently being recognized within efforts to address the housing security landscape.

One of these gaps as an example that often presented itself was the need to address precarious housing rather than only addressing housing issues once individuals have fallen into homelessness.

And overall, this report is meant to be a tool for guidance, for support, and for entities and localities to develop strategies that select or as they select and design actions specific to their context.

This is a recognition that a statewide report loses its effectiveness if it becomes overly prescriptive.

With that said, we'll go ahead and move to the findings of our report.

The context of this report, present four different core elements.

The first of these is the foundational themes, which are the synthesis of the different voices that we heard.

And those really lay the foundation for all the other elements.

We will talk about these elements today, which include the conceptual shifts, the guiding principles, and the recommendations.

And then we will give some more examples that we have kind of identified that we think are connected to cities.

And with that, I will turn it over to my colleague, Bridget.

Thanks, and we really appreciate the opportunity to be here and share this report with you.

We decided to focus on just one of the foundational themes in talking to you today.

many in the report, but the one that really underlies a lot of the rest of what comes out in the report is understanding homelessness and housing instability in its full complexity.

This is probably not going to be news to anyone on this committee, but as appealing as it would be to be able to just find one cause and focus on addressing that and everything would unfold from there, the reality is that there are a lot of different contributing factors that go into housing challenges and that need to be part of the response.

So this graphic has some examples of that.

Some of the key factors that come through in the literature in the data in people's experiences and pretty much coalescing from all those sources of information.

So for example certainly people's ability to access and stay in housing they can afford has a lot to do with the supply of housing and the cost of housing.

And that has a lot to do with the economic profile in a given community.

Those economic conditions also affect employment opportunities, income levels, which also affects the ability to afford housing.

At the same time, the ability to access care and support services affects the extent to which co-occurring conditions make it challenging to access and afford housing, and also the extent to which housing makes those conditions worse.

So there's a back and forth interplay between those two things.

And certainly racism, other systemic disadvantages and societal exclusion interact to produce disparities in all of the other factors that you see on the slide.

And this is really a situation in which there are structural factors and embedded within them are factors that for some people amplify their vulnerability more than for others.

And you can't really address one of these things in isolation of the others.

If you just have more housing, it may not be accessible to those who most need it.

If you're in housing but don't have other supports that you need or vice versa, each of those conditions will make each other worse.

The good news to that is that the flip side of having a lot of complicated factors contributing to housing is that a lot of different actions can help contribute to the response.

So you might need to be working across different systems and different players, different kinds of measurement and assessment.

But if those things are working together in a coordinated portfolio and not competing with each other to be the best solution, that's sort of where the opportunity lies that the report lays out.

I'm going to hand it back to Jed.

Awesome.

So we'll also look a little bit at quick things like our conceptual shifts and our guiding principles.

Again, the conceptual shifts guiding principles and recommendations come from the foundational themes.

Looking specifically at the conceptual shifts, we identified three overall.

One of them, Bridget, so eloquently just covered was this need to recognize a holistic approach to addressing housing security rather than just trying to find a few root causes in isolation from one another.

Another part of this shift, of the conceptual shifts that are needed, is one to a shared aspirational future, which breaks down silos and builds more intentional connection across the entirety of the housing landscape.

This can be looked at in many different ways.

Housing continuum, for example, includes such things as emergency shelters, temporary housing, and all forms of various permanent housing.

Additionally, housing continuum is also affected by intersecting things such as behavioral health and economic security.

The more we are able to align these different aspects and get them working towards shared aspirational futures, the better we'll be able to address housing security as a whole.

The third of these conceptual shifts is one towards a relationship of support, alignment, and coordination.

In our discussions with people, they regularly recognized a desire to foster inclusivity and learning.

Then this was often put in conversation with a recognition that currently they feel that the system is designed for exclusion and penalization of people in ways that are counterproductive to the goals of achieving housing security.

The more we are able to build into a system of support and across all aspects of the response, then we can create a system that adapts to various circumstances.

I also want to note that these conceptual shifts can really be looked at as mindset shifts that, And mindset shifts are those things that really help ground our initiative and actions that we take.

So if we are able to shift our mindset in a lot of these areas, then we are able to also have a pretty strong effect on what type of initiative and actions we put into play.

And again, I will turn it over to Bridget.

So in the legislation, it specifically called for identifying desired principles, which was good because that is a particularly fitting approach for something that's complex and where context matters so much.

So these guiding principles were pulled from the input that we got from the participants as well as from reviewing either principles or statements of different strategies and mission statements that exist in the housing landscape.

And they're really meant to be kind of a scaffold or an umbrella for the whole of the response.

So this slide on the left is sort of like, how do you use guiding principles?

What is their function?

One is that they guide ongoing decision-making, guide meaning not prescribing exactly what to do, but giving shape and guidance for how to assess and choose actions.

And ongoing in the sense that we were given this long-term scope, they're meant to be relevant now, but also enduring so that as things evolve, they continue to be useful.

They're also meant to serve across sectors and roles and localities and across levels.

So they are relevant for strategy development.

They're relevant for program design.

They're relevant for service delivery.

They have meaning across all the different aspects of the response.

And the idea is that they help with alignment, not because everyone is aligning and doing the same thing, but because everyone is pointing towards the same shared future that Jed was just talking about.

And that means that there might be different specific actions in different contexts, different places, different time frames.

Another foundational thing, we didn't go into detail, but that came through frequency is this need to balance flexibility with consistency.

Certainly, consistency is needed to have a coherent strategy and shared progress.

But at the same time, flexibility is needed because success really depends on not finding the one best solution but on the best match.

And so the guiding principles can help when assessing different options to help with that balancing act.

When there are aspects that seem contradictory or adversarial, the guiding principles can help make those trade-offs and have transparency about why some decisions are being made.

and they contribute to this comprehensive approach.

They can also be a really useful tool for periodic assessment.

So this is kind of a collective accountability that's more about the extent to which the principles are met.

Subsets of the response still need oversight and accountability in more traditional ways, but this is sort of a zoomed out way of approaching accountability.

There are 11 guiding principles.

I won't read all of them.

It's worth noting that a lot of them are interrelated.

For example, there's one about employing a sense of urgency about both immediate needs and steps that are needed for long-term needs.

And that kind of points to how you need both mitigation of the crisis of homelessness, but also steps towards more permanent housing supply solutions and also prevention into homeless.

That connects to the principle about addressing the inability of the housing market to meet housing needs.

That reality has become apparent and kind of filters through the whole response.

And it also speaks to creating conditions that reduce competition and facilitate cooperation and really mobilizing a multi-sector response.

So they're interwoven with each other, the guiding principles.

In this idea of these as a planning and a healthy reframing, the question isn't really yes, no, are we or are we not doing each of these guiding principles.

It's more to what extent are we already consistent and what opportunities are there to go deeper in aligning with them.

We do have a couple of examples that we can go into in more detail later, depending on time and what you're most interested in.

Okay, so the bulk of the too-long-to-attach report is the 18 recommendations that emerge from the discussions.

And in our own framework, we were attending to the extent to which these bolster those conceptual shifts and align with the guiding principles, so the whole report kind of works together in a coherent framework.

The recommendations are grouped into the six areas that you see on this slide.

They really are meant to work strategically, so they're kind of like gears.

You can't move one without moving the other.

entities in the response might have core responsibilities in different areas of recommendation, so you can kind of pull out the one that's most relevant and still think of them together in the whole.

There's a lot to cover in this report, so I'm just gonna go through the slides.

We'll have all the detailed words, but I'll try to give a quick overview to start, and then there are a few examples we can go into in more detail.

I'll say a quick word about the first area on the slide, which is opportunities for partnership with tribal governments.

Because the state has government-to-government relationships that respect the sovereignty of the tribes and the sovereignty of the state, this was important as its own area of consideration in terms of how the state could better partner with tribal governments.

And there are so many commonalities in housing challenges that this area is less about having different recommendations and more specific areas of emphasis.

And they're really relevant.

to the state government, but also in working with urban Indian organizations, so for cities and counties and their relationships with tribal governments.

And they have to do a lot with thinking about how frameworks of policy and accountability might need to be different in the context of autonomy, having the flexibility to have culturally attuned housing and programs and services, and really having consistent exchanges and relationships with tribal leaders and leaders of urban Indian organizations.

the long-term predictability and stability and funding that's needed for those autonomous services and programs to be functioning.

Again, those are themes that are particularly salient in this context, but actually resonate, you know, across much of the response in the state.

So, we have a slide for each of these areas.

I'll give a quick overview.

An observation, I think, about the recommendations as a whole is that we spoke to people who are engaged in all different aspects of the response at different levels with different roles.

And so some things are new and familiar, and some things are familiar depending on your perspective and your context.

And we really recognize that, and we hope that what we were able to do is kind of bring that together so that everybody is affirmed in what's familiar to them and exposed to what's new from different parts of the response and different perspectives.

So that will probably resonate for you as you listen to these recommendations.

The first we called setting the strategy up for success.

This is given that it is going to be a multifactorial, multipronged approach.

That means a slightly different framework for what success needs to be and how you are going to understand and track success so that you have success that doesn't get in each other's way.

So a couple of things that contribute to that.

One is just recognizing that there do need to be coexisting ways of understanding success.

The other is really maintaining a comprehensive understanding of all the investments that advance housing security.

That was something that came through that different parts of the response didn't necessarily know about other investments that might not even be called housing assistance, but are very much integral to housing security and thinking about where those come from, what benefits they yield, and for whom.

And then amplifying the insights and expertise of those who are most directly involved in the response and those who are affected in experiences of homelessness and housing instability.

Not that that is the only insights and expertise that are relevant, but recognizing that that has been underrepresented in much of the discourse.

And this is something where There's a direction of change already happening, so it's sort of reinforcing a pattern that's already seen.

That's setting the strategy up for success.

The next two areas are probably closer to the frontline nitty-gritty implementation aspects of addressing housing security.

The first is responding to the continuum of housing needs, so recognizing that...

Anywhere on the housing continuum, success depends on the rest of the housing continuum.

What we mean by that is emergency shelters and temporary housing only serve their function if there are options that are more permanent available.

Those two things depend on each other.

Then similarly, the potential for stability and more permanent housing solutions depends on the availability of housing, which depends on the housing market and economic conditions writ large.

So this bucket of recommendations is thinking about some of the more structural aspects of that.

The recommendations have to do with the supply and, importantly, the variety of housing options, ensuring equitable access to those options, accommodating the ways in which things manifest differently in different places, but at the same time recognizing that housing challenges do not constrain themselves to jurisdictional boundaries.

So some aspects of the response do need to be carried out cooperatively.

The next bucket is related, but shifting more from the structural level to meeting the needs of individuals and households.

So this is a little bit more focused on the center than on the person than on the system and ties back to that.

foundational thing we talked about in which individual vulnerabilities, individual circumstances are embedded within those structural factors.

The recommendations here have to do with basically connecting people to what they need, whether that's within housing programs and services or beyond housing programs and services, and kind of trying to broadened the view to get around some of the ways in which systems are siloed.

So that includes coordination across systems, thinking about eligibility criteria and the ways in which eligibility criteria are actually counterproductive to success in some cases.

case management and care navigation that cuts across sectors in a way that is responsive to the person and not the system they're accessing, and then supporting stability in housing, whether that's people who are currently in housing or people who have been recently placed and are working towards stability over time.

There's a bucket that is really about the capacity to carry out all of the rest of the buckets.

So this is the capacity and workforce.

Section which covers topics from having diverse entities contributing to the response and how that helps bolster success.

Fostering the stability of those entities by thinking a little bit differently about kind of funding models and other ways of supporting capacity.

Improving the conditions and the supports and skills of the workforce who are most directly involved in providing programs and services.

And then there is a bucket about accountability and performance management and adaptation over time.

This cycles back in many ways to the first bucket.

You set yourself up for success and then you have accountability measures that track in the same way.

And this has two recommendations, one about aligning policymaking and the other about how information is gathered and used over time.

Okay, that was a lot of very quick talk through of the different areas that the report talks about.

We have a few specific examples that we identified are likely to be resonant for cities and therefore for the city of Seattle.

So we can talk through those just to get a little bit more concrete than this big overview question as a start and then we can have a dialogue within each of them or across them or about things that we don't touch on in those examples.

The hope here again is that, you know, we don't have a city level analysis in which we've looked at the exact circumstances of the city of Seattle and can say this is the right match for it.

But the hope is that we can kind of spark the possibilities and see how they resonate with you and sort of illustrate how the report could help bolster the extensive work that you're already doing in the area of housing.

Okay.

Should we do them just in the order we have them?

I was going to say, do you all have, before we start going into examples, are there any questions that you would like to ask before we start getting into these?

Any questions?

No, not yet.

Okay.

All right.

We'll get a little more concrete, and then we'll see what questions we can help you with.

So one thing that really came through in our discussions was doing more to stabilize the circumstances of people who are we're using the word precarious.

People used a lot of different words to describe this.

So these are those who are on the verge of potentially entering homelessness or people who have recently exited homelessness and are striving towards stability.

And this came through as an area of concern because it can fall in the gap between, like there's a major effort on addressing homelessness and a major effort on the supply of housing.

But then there's this gap where people might not know about services or be eligible.

And that's actually feeding into the burden on the homelessness crisis response system and is also you can have affordable housing, but what you want is not just for it to exist, but for people to be stable in it.

So it's kind of critical to the success of both of those things, but a little bit lost in the middle.

And it was also really apparent as an area of opportunity, because smaller scale investments can potentially sort of meet needs before they become crises.

So it was an area where you don't necessarily need a huge investment in each case or where different localities, different entities have a little bit more agency over what they can do with amounts of resources and connections and referrals that they can make.

So it was kind of a need and an opportunity all rolled up in one and resonated really across it.

A couple of the potential actions that came through.

One is relatively straightforward, which is that unanticipated expenses for people whose finances are really on the brink of stability can just supersede mortgage payments or rent payments.

And so a person can really meet that, avert that becoming a crisis through either small grants or short-term loans and just putting resources towards people temporarily.

getting the help they need until they're back on track with their own stability that they had preceding whatever medical expense or car repair, or you can imagine all of the different needs that might come into play.

The other is really finding ways for people who might be in precarious circumstances to be matched to the services they need.

So these might not be people who are entering the service system.

So what are the ways that they can be less invisible?

And then they might not need everything.

So it's what they need and not more than what they need in terms of a service navigation model or delivery model.

And thinking about is it employment support or is it child care costs?

Is it being able to access educational services?

Is it getting connected to health insurance?

What is that particular person's source of instability?

And you can imagine how this then relates to some of the other recommendations I mentioned about navigation services that cross sectors.

And so if they're funded in one funding stream, how can they still be a part of other sectors?

and also thinking about eligibility so that people who don't qualify and probably don't need really robust housing assistance could still have access to some of these supports and how people who, so that people don't fall off an eligibility cliff when they're placed in housing and they might still need some support but less and less over time.

And then eviction mitigation and mitigating eviction and default is certainly an area where some things have been happening, but more attention is really needed and attention that is not just about kind of a binary prohibiting eviction or allowing eviction, but more about trying to mitigate eviction.

through things that are more relational, kind of recognizing that stability means stability for renters, for new homeowners, but it also means stability for property owners who also want someone who's, everyone in that situation actually wants to be able to pay their rent and pay their mortgage.

So it's often set up as something contentious where maybe it doesn't always need to be, and if the approaches reinforce that idea of shared stability, there might be some opportunities around The bridging support would be an opportunity like that.

And just services that sort of promote responsible, make it easier for people to do what they want to do anyway on both sides of that relationship.

And then the kinds of mediation services that might help people avoid going into formal eviction processes.

It doesn't preclude the need to be able to support legal protection for tenants.

It doesn't preclude the need for eviction services for the cases in which mitigation doesn't work, but it's another both and situation.

Yeah, we put on here, an interesting thing about this one is that opportunities across scales really came through.

So we have a couple of examples of that.

Internally, as an employer, Um, what is it that you could be doing to support the housing stability of your employees?

That might be short-term supports, it might be reviewing HR policies, because signs of instability often show up as performance...

effects on performance, and maybe the question is not, you know, should you be fired, but what help do you need, and how could an employer, you know, the City of Seattle is an employer, how could you be helping connect people to those resources?

And then in the core functions of different entities that participate in the response, what are some small things they could do to augment their services or to better connect to organizations that provide these kinds of prevention services?

And then the idea of what can be done externally in terms of partnerships, in terms of having a shared advocacy story in the crisis response and prevention so that they're not having a competing ask but are actually talking about achieving the same goals.

Yeah, that's stabilizing precarious housing.

So the next one, I think there's always interest in this accountability and performance monitoring piece because it is very challenging.

And the question of how do we know whether or not what we're doing is working is pretty much constantly on people's minds.

I could go on this topic forever, so I will try to keep myself short.

There are two main recommendations in this section.

One is just this idea of aligning policymaking.

So really recognizing that policies in one area are profoundly necessary for each other.

So there are a lot of things that are not called housing that contribute to housing stability, but the converse is also true for people, Health care is more effective if the patient is stably housed.

People can succeed in their jobs if they have a house.

All of those things are interrelated.

On the more structural side, what the transportation needs, the burden on the school system, all of those things are also a part of expanding the housing supply.

So this idea that assessing policies in advance for both mutual benefit and for unintended consequences.

So you might not even be aware because it's not your domain.

So you don't imagine what harm or benefit might be possible for another aspect of the city's work, the county's work, the state's work.

The other area, oh, the other potential actions there are it was really important in what we heard in the discussions to recognize that that kind of assessment, any kind of coordination really does require time and resources.

So kind of a mandate to coordinate or a request to coordinate does fall flat if it's not resourced and if there's not infrastructure and relationships that enable it.

And Jed mentioned this earlier, but the close connection between economic security and housing security was very, very salient in everything that we heard.

So this idea that housing security aligning really closely with poverty reduction strategies or economic security strategies at the community level and at the individual level is a particularly kind of win-win.

Don't find the win-wins and don't accidentally get in each other's way.

We're adding some...

says it exactly that way, but that's the basic idea.

And then measurement.

One thing that really came through in what we heard from all of our participants is that there is a need to kind of think of measurement beyond metrics, not to throw away the idea of metrics.

They're very important.

They're a very good purpose.

In something that is as complex as housing security, there's going to be a lot of different aspects of the response that need to be understood and tracked over time and learned from, and kind of taking a step back to really have a question-driven review of what's needed.

So it's about measuring what matters, not which measures are available.

And that leads to a couple of the questions that are kind of difficult to answer in current measurement systems, like how well matched are housing options and placements?

So it's not just the number of placements or the number of units, but actually how well matched they are to the need.

What happens to clients over time?

So having better measures of longitudinal outcomes for people.

Measuring prevention is always challenging, but given that prevention is such a critical part of success, finding ways to measure effectiveness in that is important.

And then in that balance of flexibility and consistency, actually measuring how well that balance is going.

Is flexibility affording the kind of good outcomes that you anticipate?

And is there enough consistency in the guidelines that you're getting the kind of overall progress that the scale calls for?

So that starting from the questions then leads to kind of what is the best way to track that progress.

So sometimes metrics are going to work really well, but there might be other things that are needed like targeted evaluations, studying some things on a smaller scale, systematic collection of qualitative data.

different options that were named and that there are, you know, examples of in small sets across the state that could potentially be learned from.

And that really, I started in the middle in this box.

The top relates to this in terms of needing to draw on diverse and complementary sources of knowledge.

So this is thinking about not saying which kind of knowledge tells you the answer, but more how are you going to integrate the different knowledge so that you're interpreting a good coordinated and effective response.

So the lived experience of people experiencing homelessness is really critical for understanding what's needed and what matters and what does and doesn't work for whom.

The practice expertise of the people doing the work kind of takes those patterns across clients.

So that is a slightly different source of knowledge than the individual lived experiences.

and also kind of what works in context versus what works in another place or in a research study.

And that kind of expertise that comes from experience is complimentary to the technical expertise that helps indicate how to design what to do in response.

And then the policy expertise of how to get the resources in place and the political will, and that is the expertise that you were all bringing.

And I think one of the...

challenges, but also recognitions that came through in our discussions about this topic is that you can have these diverse sources of knowledge.

You are not going to be able to always do what every source of knowledge indicates.

It's very complicated.

There's going to be different ideas based on different perspectives, but the diversity helps you be a little bit more transparent about what kind of knowledge is driving the decision.

And that helps with the accountability back to THE CONSTITUENTS, AND IT ALSO HELPS WITH THAT UNDERSTANDING NOT JUST WHETHER THINGS ARE WORKING BUT HOW AND WHY THEY'RE WORKING.

YEAH.

SO ANOTHER AREA THAT WE SEE PRETTY CLOSELY CONNECTED TO CITIES IS RECOMMENDATION 7 AND 8, WHICH REALLY LOOK AT THE VARIETY AND CROSS-JURISDICTIONAL ENGAGEMENTS.

A continuous conversation had among people that we engaged with was the need to find balance between local response and a more regional state approach.

This was often discussed as people recognize that each community has different resources and needs and must work within those to address housing security but still need some level of consistency across the state as the problems people are facing do not stop at the city or county borders.

With this in mind, the report recognizes that it is not a question of whether the response should be local or regional, but what aspects of the response need to be locally flexible and which can move to a more regional cooperation and to what extent does that cooperation need to happen.

Cooperation does not mean you implement everything collaboratively.

At times that might be the case as some aspects of the response become more stable if implemented across locations.

But with other aspects, it is more about, more advantageous to simply have some coordination and to, which takes a lot of open and robust communication about what is being done and how it relates to other aspects.

With this conversation, it's also important to recognize that as things get larger, they often need to be solidified in a bit more or solidified a bit more, but that does not negate flexibility.

Everything is both and, and flexibility needs to remain present in all aspects of the response to ensure easier adaptation as situations change, which we recently saw how dramatically situations can change quickly with the COVID-19 pandemic.

THAT SAID, FLEXIBILITY DOES MATTER, BUT SO DOES CONSISTENCY.

CONSISTENCY DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN THAT IT HAS TO BE PRESCRIPTIVE RULES, THOUGH.

CONSISTENCY CAN BE MORE OF A GUIDELINE TO HELP ALIGN DECISIONS ACROSS DIFFERENT AREAS AND PROVIDE GUIDANCE AND TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE AS ADAPTATION IS NEEDED.

WITH ALL THIS IN MIND, RECOMMENDATION 7 AND 8 ARE NOT IN OPPOSITION TO EACH OTHER, AS SOME MIGHT PASSIVELY ASSUME, but rather they need to be strategically merged and diversifying the approach is needed for every situation.

Recognizing this interconnectedness of these two recommendations also draws in their connection to other recommendations in the report, such as recommendations four and 13, which both address the need for diversity, some at the level of diversifying the various housing types that are available to people, but others also recognizing the diversity in implementation of programs and services.

So if I may interrupt you, I think that this slide gets to kind of the heart of some of the discussions we're having right now with KCRHA.

You know, there's a lot of talk about do we need a regional model or, and my mantra has been answer the question, how do you do hyperlocal within a regional model?

So I like the fact that you've pulled out these questions to consider, and I think it's a discussion that the city and the county and all of the other jurisdictions need to be engaged in.

And I'm wondering, do you have recommendations about how to facilitate those kinds of discussions?

And how do we begin to...

accommodate ways in which challenges manifest differently in different places, provide the tools to respond, and yet work cooperatively in a continuum of care.

I think the recommendations that tie into kind of how to do this do have to do with that who is engaged and what types of knowledge are being brought to bear on those questions.

So I think, first of all, it's starting from the questions, as you were saying, and then thinking about in order to anticipate how those answers are going to work or not.

The different options and the answers is starting from a diversity of input on that.

And that's probably a practice that you already have in mind.

So it's not news to suggest that.

But I think that the piece that the report emphasizes is kind of the transparency and accountability around that.

So it is being able to map back.

This perspective or this idea, this proposal came from this information, and then we decided to go this way based on what?

So being really transparent about the trade-offs.

that are being made.

And being kind of intentional and conscious about them, I think, is a really important part of having those facilitated processes feel like they're genuinely mapping to what gets done and not being kind of a token, we're getting all of this input, but really doing whatever is most feasible based on one perspective or one infrastructure.

So I think that that's one piece of it is not just kind of having the diversity, but also having robust processes for how that diversity is being translated into the decisions.

That sounded a little hand-wavy.

And I think the other thing is the infrastructure for doing it over time.

So the report, the input that we got would suggest that it's not enough to just do that once.

Things are going to keep changing.

You're never going to know for sure that what you're proposing is going to always work forever.

So the idea that it's not just about having a plan once, it's about having ways that you can be revisiting it regularly and rethinking how those trade-offs were made.

How many things you're going to say have to be done the same everywhere, which things need to be communicated regionally.

So that those are two pieces.

What else comes to mind for you, Jed?

I would also say that, you know, in our conversations, what surfaced a lot is people feel like there's this constant pendulum swinging between different responses where an idea comes up, it gets a lot of support.

So a ton of investment goes to that thing, but that ends up cutting investment in other areas.

And so we just see this pendulum back and forth and as everything goes there, but then they start recognizing issues with that solution.

then the pendulum swings the other direction, and a new perspective on the other side gets brought up, and it goes back and forth, and there's rarely a lot of sustained attention over the long term in a lot of those areas.

So I think, for me, I just keep coming back to that old saying of don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Like, just because an idea comes up and it's intriguing and there's potential there doesn't mean that all the investment needs to go there, that it's really about...

trying to create investment in that so that it can be sustained and supported, but while continuing to sustain and support other approaches that diversify the portfolio that is being done because no solution is gonna work for everybody.

And so, I'm just recognizing that, for me, some of this is recognizing that when you move to regionality, that doesn't mean you stop investing in more local, specific things, that you can find a way to balance those a little bit so that both some more local attention is being given while regional approaches are being attempted and worked towards as well.

And as you work towards those regional things, as Bridget was saying, making sure that those that what regional things will be implemented are also a regional collaborative process and decision making as well that reaches out to the various different communities that will be affected by that regional approach and making sure that we have that robust conversation of what negative things might come from this and can we mitigate those and think about mitigating those before we even start implementing.

I would add just a few things more process-wise.

I think that one is, what's the nature of the relationships currently?

And if the relationships themselves need to be strengthened in terms of who's in the discussions about that.

There's been years of interactions, some of which probably carry tensions with them.

some where relationships are better.

And so at the core of it is establishing whoever it is that's gonna sit down and talk about it.

Are those relationships established strong enough and respectful in the sense of being able to come together?

I think the guiding principles in here and whether they're these guiding principles or other guiding principles, like what are those guiding principles to guide the process along?

so that people can have the conversations that they have.

And I think that when you look at the questions to consider, so many of these things really have to do with really thinking through what is it that's really important for us to ask of ourselves in these conversations.

And so that's, in some ways, that's a design piece, I want to say, in terms of...

um really identifying the purpose of the time together and clarifying together what are those key elements that really require the conversation that you're you're wanting you know over a region or over a local city so you know it's the question um you know like i think about some of the state things you know some of the things i've been involved in some of the core questions have been like Does local control really benefit us in this situation, or are there issues that we really need to kind of pull away from that and realize that we need a different kind of approach?

That's a hard question to ask in the state context, but that has come up, for example, as one example of, you know, to what degree do we need Independence, to what degree do we need interdependence?

And so the ability to kind of clarify what are those core questions that are really important to guide what your conversation is.

So a lot of it comes back to the purpose.

Thank you.

Any other questions on that topic?

Or any topic.

Or any topic.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

I'll go to one more example as well then.

As we were thinking about areas that cities can have a lot of influence on, our guiding principle A quickly came to mind in fostering productive narratives around housing security and homelessness.

When we're thinking of this, so what we're really recognizing is that it goes, you know, often when we talk to people, they immediately would go to communication campaigns and, you know, what gets said in commercials on TV and that kind of thing.

But really recognizing that Narratives are communicated through a lot of different actions besides just communication campaigns such as the implementation of programs and services and what we choose to implement and provide funding for contributes to a narrative.

The way we fund proposals, the way we even call for what proposals we're going to try to fund does that as well.

The ways we build accountability frameworks and the ways we make decisions all contribute to narratives around issues.

Um, so when we're looking at that, uh, there's these questions as well of, you know, really trying to grapple with what narratives, um, do, does the city currently foster around homelessness and housing insecurity through the actions that are being taken?

Um, and then also thinking about what narratives would we, do we want to, uh, contribute to this conversation and are they the ones that we are contributing?

And if not, what do we need to adapt And a lot of that will be working again with that lived experience with service providers to understand what are going to be those productive narratives.

One thing we saw in our conversations is that often this idea of a productive narrative seemed to circulate around an idea of building dignity and humanity among people as a community.

And so that means really recognizing what does it mean to build community within Seattle that doesn't actively seek to other certain people out of that conversation.

and prioritize some people's safety, security, and desires over others.

And that's not a simple thing to address, but really recognizing what new actions can we take to create a narrative in which everyone in our community is supported and work towards striving and being viewed as part of that community.

Jed, can you give a few very specific examples?

Because people did talk about what, you know, when you give an example of what a negative narrative is or what is a common negative narrative now, and what does it look like if you were to transition that into a positive narrative, like more specifically?

Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of conversations around, you know, When we look at different actions that prioritize safety of people who are homeowners, who are viewed as, you know, their tax money is mattering because they are paying their taxes and all that, their needs often were being felt as being prioritized over those who are struggling be housed in general.

And so really grappling with how do we not pick one of those constituencies or those communities over another, but how do we make sure that we build community among them and get everyone to recognize that we're all community members here and that all of our needs need to be met if we're going to have a thriving community.

I don't know if Bridget wants to add some more to it.

Well, I think another one that relates to that foundational theme about what causes homelessness, I think there's still a lot of strong narratives about each potential cause almost has its own narrative and its own proponents.

So that people telling a simple story in which this is either caused, it's only caused by the supply of housing or it's caused by people's preferences or choices or bad decisions that they've made, or there's kind of a lot of different narratives attached to all of those different contributing factors, and thinking about how that whole story needs to be one more productive narrative about how this is really a complex problem.

It's kind of an all-hands approach, and it's more about the community thriving.

That's the shift that people were really hungry for in the participations, that how can this be about the whole of the community thriving.

And it was a very similar narrative shift conversation in the economic security conversation about how can it be about, you know, how does the whole community thriving kind of make it so that all of the different people in the community can thrive without being in competition with each other for thriving.

So that, I think that's another one.

It's another of the guiding principles that we thought about highlighting, which is this idea that it's about actually reducing competition.

There's a strong narrative of one person's safety is competing with another's.

One person, one solution is competing with another solution.

Private sector solutions are competing with public sector solutions when in reality what you need is for all of those solutions to be working together.

And it's kind of a natural outcropping of the way some of the systems function that there's a competitive nature to most funding proposals.

It's about binary yes, no, get the funding now for a short period of time, as opposed to having a lot of check-ins that are less about yes, no, and more about if it's not working, what do you need to make it work?

And that's, you know, we talked a lot about facilitating cooperation, and I think this might relate to the question of processes for hyperlocal nested within regional, which is not just facilitating cooperative approaches, but really actively reducing competition that doesn't get as much attention when reviewing policies and practices that are inadvertently reinforcing those competing narratives, competing solutions, all of those pieces that are counterproductive to this sort of large scale, all hands on deck approach that's needed.

I think we even have a slide.

One of the slides is on that guiding principle.

What are the questions?

Just so that we can discuss questions so that we don't just talk at you.

Questions?

I have a question at the end.

Do you have one more slide or are you...

No, no, I basically spoke to it.

There's a couple of specific prompt questions on there about reducing competition, but I basically just spoke to it.

So, yeah.

Well, I have a question.

Have you done workshops within unhoused communities, within encampments?

I'm really curious to see what feedback you may have gotten from people who are currently experiencing homelessness on this study.

Um, so, I mean, obviously, we haven't been able to talk to everyone.

In creating the report, we did do some active work in going into encampments and talking with different people currently experiencing homelessness.

And that's the other thing, is recognizing that when we're talking about lived experience, it's not...

A thing that often came up in those conversations is not...

making sure that we're only including people who used to experience being unhoused but are currently experiencing being unhoused because context shift and situations change.

So we did do that in creating the report.

Since then, we have had a lot of public forums where we've talked through different aspects of this.

Last week, we did one specifically focused on precarious housing.

Next week, we have one on coordinated pathways and person-centered navigation.

Those have been very openly publicized.

I do know that I've seen a lot of familiar faces of people who we've talked to that have been experiencing housing insecurity for quite a while, and they've been a part of these conversations.

While, again, I can't speak to it being receptively by everyone, there is that continued engagement with us is usually a pretty good sign that they're enjoying the processes we're going through and the information we're sharing.

So there does seem to be some good uptake of it in that space.

And in this, we also have a lot of service providers who are very close to their constituents and their communities of unhoused individuals, and they seem to be pretty engaged in these conversations with us as well.

One thing worth mentioning about our approach in this context might be that we took kind of a, we took an approach in which we had some smaller scale forms, which was more kind of like perspective, speaking with like perspective, so that it was an opportunity to speak in an environment where you didn't feel like you had to be making your case or advocating.

It could really be a candid conversation.

And then we used those conversations to pull out the things that we then raised for discussion when we had mixed perspectives in the room.

And I'm mentioning it just because going back to what are some process suggestions.

If you start right in with an open forum in which you have all of the range of perspectives, it's very easy for everyone to default to.

kind of take my stand and sometimes treating things as being contradictory when, in fact, you might agree if you didn't sort of come in feeling positional about things.

So in that sense, we not only had some of our own efforts in engaging with people who were experiencing homelessness, we also collaborated with the State Advisory Council on Homelessness because they were doing some of those engagements for their own plan.

So we collaborated on those questions and shared those findings so that we could use that in both of our analyses.

directly do it because it would have been duplicative going to some of the same communities, doing some of the same outreach.

We merged efforts around that.

So that was an example of kind of the smaller focused conversations among people with more similar types of expertise and experience and then bringing that, having more, having a layer of analysis before bringing something to a wide open mixed perspective.

And we found that to be a very effective way of kind of starting the conversation in a new place, but still being able to honor and respect all of the different lenses that we had spoken to.

So I want to thank you for an amazing presentation and report.

I think you did a really great job providing the high level of view on a lot of very complicated issues.

And so I think it'd be great to, if you go into the encampments and you talk to some of our in-house residents, and learn about their story and hear about their experiences, it'd be really interesting to learn about how they feel everything has been implemented on the ground level.

And I've learned a lot from doing that.

And so I think you mentioned that a couple times in your report about making sure that lived experiences are essential, especially when it comes to implementation, to see what's working, what's not working.

Are you doing anything in the sphere of...

I guess, analyzation of current implementation methods or studies on, I know KCRJ has a five-year plan, this sounds very much in line with the study, but just looking at what's currently being done and giving recommendations

Well, I won't speak to what the center may or may not be doing, but our analysis for this report is finished.

But a couple of things worth noting, which is that Molly mentioned that we had a partnership with the DGSS.

And so on our website, there's also their report, which includes a literature review.

So that speaks a little bit more, at least to the extent that the research evidence speaks to some of those implementation lessons.

So that is available.

We didn't present those findings, but it's very consistent within what we heard, which is that...

it's the success really comes from the match.

So there are some type model, some program models that are matched to some needs.

And the most important thing is not necessarily to implement the best program, but to have really good high quality programs in enough variety that they can be matched to needs.

So if someone needs wraparound services, permanent supportive housing is the right match.

If someone just needs the kind of bridging support that we were talking about, that's the right match.

So they go through that in some detail in terms of the research literature.

So that piece is probably going to be resonant with some of the other resources that you described, but that resource is available in a little more detail for the literature review.

And I think that the integration of those two things was really telling in terms of some of the findings of our report that resonated with what the literature was saying.

And it's also just as important to find differences that might speak to a little bit like why something might be different in Seattle, even though the research letter suggests that it might work somewhere else because there's a different, you know, the cost of housing is different here than it is in other places.

Those, you know, the kind of back and forth between the direct engagement that you're talking about and the aggregated knowledge from the literature.

So going forward, we don't have any projects on housing.

So we were really fortunate in this particular project that we had six months once the basic analytics were complete to be able to have the opportunity to engage with whoever was interested in engaging with us to do some additional, whether it's helping to look at how might the implementation of certain things work.

certain topics people wanted more clarity about, to be able to explore across areas as well as kind of the nature people like.

So what happened was we asked, would it be helpful for us to provide some workshops?

And so we put out an open call basically to everyone who participated and others to say, if you're interested, we're happy to come in and literally just sit down and talk whether it's to staff, to do a workshop, to do a more open forum workshop.

And so that's what we have been doing.

So we ourselves aren't the implementers.

We have been offering to help guide what other implementation questions or discussions people want to have.

And so that's manifesting in a number of different ways.

So some are like this, and we'll be doing this with the King County Council as well.

But we also identified there were three particular topics that people really want to dive more deeply into.

And so we created open forums.

We've done two of them now, and like 90 people signed up for each one.

So it was really significant interest.

And we asked people whether they wanted to do it within their own realm.

or whether they wanted to cross, you know, whether it's geographic boundaries or the type of work people did, and people across the board really wanted it to be a mix, which is very interesting.

They didn't want to stay necessarily just talking about it in their particular organization or their particular city.

They wanted to So we've done two of the three now.

We will be going to Spokane and also to Bellingham, who asked that we work more directly with their cities and what's going on there.

And so we're offering that.

And all this is just part of our existing work which is funding that's come through the legislature, through commerce.

And so it's not like there's extra pay.

People don't pay for this.

You know, we've just put that request out.

So if there's anything more the city of Seattle is interested in, in terms of, you know, sitting down and asking more deep questions or to say, I don't understand this part or to say, can you help facilitate the conversation, which is one of the things we're doing, for example, in Bellingham amongst different people who are doing different plans, et cetera, we're open to do that.

We just got some extended time to be able to do that.

At first it was until the end of June, but Commerce has now actually given us almost another year if there's interest in people coming back and saying, how do we really utilize this?

Or here's what we need to talk to you about.

So I'm just putting that out there that that's certainly an opportunity.

as people are working on plans.

The other thing I would say is that Commerce is updating their strategic plans, is that what they're calling it?

It's the State Homeless Crisis Strategic Plan.

And they're depending on this report very intimately to inform that report.

And so that will affect the policy level and even funding things on the state level.

So.

I'm really interested to see like what's been working, what's not working, especially we're in a declared emergency of homelessness for years.

and going forward, how we can make those tweaks and changes, especially during this time.

There's a lot of mental health needs, a lot of fentanyl is on the streets.

We see it's next iteration, trank quickly evolving, and the amount of deaths is quite distressing.

So I'm really excited to be delving into this report a little bit deeper and learning about your ideas regarding those areas.

I also have one final question.

This last couple of weeks, I've been hearing a lot about the homeless industrial complex.

In your views, I feel like when we keep things at a very intellectual level, we run the risk of going into that direction.

Can you talk a little bit about if you've looked into that, if you have done any studies regarding that, how do we avoid that?

I mean, you gave a lot of great umbrella ideas, but has there been any discussions around that issue?

I'll start, is that okay?

Unless somebody else wants to jump in.

That concern did come up in our discussions.

And I would say that it came up in the context of a lot of different perspectives and observations about the infrastructure of the system and the response.

And I think the one...

piece that maybe speaks most directly to that in the synthesis of all of those perspectives was that there needs to be a diversity of entities involved in the response.

So it's sort of that reducing competition, which is that what's needed is to make it more possible for more to do an effective job contributing to the piece that is their piece in a way that adds up and is effective.

And that it can be counterproductive to spend a lot of time on which is the best type of entity, which is the best infrastructure, which is the best system, and a lot of energy goes into kind of advocating for that, which isn't speaking directly to that idea that some people hold about the complex, but it does speak into the idea that of less energy we're going into competing for funding and competing for longevity and debating whether or not the private sector or the public sector is the best person to be involved and more of that energy was going to everybody contributing to the same shared aspirational future, that is where people saw opportunity.

So it's kind of trying to shift the narrative a little bit in that way about what would a diversity of implementation and the response mean.

And that includes everything from maybe leveraging some of the skills and capital of the private sector having more engagement with organizations like the buy for organizations, I think is the phrase that a lot of people are using now, where it's the people who are really closest to those experiencing who are actually implementing and being hired and being involved.

So kind of that whole looking for opportunities across that whole spectrum in a way that's more all pointing in the same direction and spending less time on on a competition of ideas or resources.

The report doesn't have a direct message to that, but I think that's the closest conceptual piece that matches the concerns that people have or that speaks to those concerns that some people hold about that.

I don't know if I could add to that.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any other questions?

No?

Yes, Council President.

Thank you very much.

Just a comment first, which is that I really appreciate you focusing on or highlighting, at least in this presentation, precarious housing, because I think that we forget that a little bit because for the past several years, many years, there's been so much attention on acute housing chronic homelessness and I do think it's important to think about precarious housing because we can prevent prevention is always preferred, I would say.

Let me stop right there.

But what you're hearing, I think, is a desire for just tell me what to do.

And I'm sure you get this a lot, right?

I mean, because we were just touching on, all right, when we're making choices with a limited amount of resources, I heard you say understanding the knowledge source.

I think what you're getting at is you're going to hear different various providers talking about why their approach or their mission or their scope of work is the most important.

So how do policymakers negotiate that?

And you haven't set out to answer those questions.

You've provided a framework, right?

But you're not going to be able to get away with that.

I don't believe, because I think that...

So I'm reading this legislation, and under Section 6D it says, a report of this effort is due to the governor and the appropriate committees of the House of Representatives in the Senate by December 1st.

That already happened.

Do you anticipate being called upon...

to offer advice this upcoming session on, okay, how do we operationalize this framework to make the best decisions going forward?

That could very well be.

So, typically in the fall, we are invited to committee, you know, meetings in the fall to help give, we've done a few of these already, but it was preliminaries before the report I think was finalized where we went to some committee.

The day that it was released.

Yeah.

So yeah, that could very well happen.

And so, you know, that's where we are here to help think through those things.

But again, we're not the content specialists, right?

We have amassed a synthesis of a lot of perspectives to try to move things along.

And so we are helpful in that, but ultimately the decision makers, you know, and the program people have to figure out a lot of this, but yes, we will be available to them and I expect that we will be called.

And we are constantly in contact with legislators who were part of this.

So yeah, definitely.

I think that...

I think when I was trying to think about what are some of the really key messages, and then how do you implement them?

So there's a lot here.

And that's true.

And it's meant to be a lot.

It's complex.

And if it wasn't, then we probably didn't do our jobs.

But I think that one of the things that I heard in thinking through this was really how to like there's a lot of decisions around funding and there's a lot of competition for funding and how to incentivize cooperation and collaboration and reduce some of this the other is how to um you know in whatever ways you control um the different programs or have input, I would say not control, but have input, you know, what are ways in which you look at some of the key recommendations like around system flows and how services are provided to somebody and what's exclusionary and what isn't and how do you break down some of that and really looking at the experience of somebody going through the system.

And I don't know, some of you may want to, you know, Bridget or Jed, you may wanna give an example of that, but that's a really, when I listened to all that and read that, it was like, that gave me some direction as to, oh, this is the ways these different entities who provide these different services need to better connect to each other.

So what is your role in being able to help them do that?

And so I think that that's, cause there was a lot of examples of where that was needed.

But again, we're available for a little while still if you ever want us to delve even more in and when you really think about more specifics, it's easier.

It's hard in a broad presentation to give too much of that.

Thank you.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you all for being here today and for doing this presentation.

This is such important work and I really appreciate all of you for doing it and the state legislature for calling for this.

Obviously, we're all grappling with the same thing.

I want to echo Council President's comments about the precarious housing.

I actually had the occasion more recently since I've been in office to help one of the constituents in my district who is housed.

There was a family situation.

You know, folks are living, what I say, one paycheck away from homelessness.

That's actually how I grew up in It's how a lot of people in this country live.

And so we were able to help this person stay housed, this one person, because they had a change in circumstances with how they were paying for their unit, if you will.

But there are many people like that.

And so I really do think we need to give focus to the folks that are in danger of and are curiously housed, as you say.

And so I'll leave that there.

We definitely need to have focus on that strategy.

My question is about, you know, you've talked and I agree about the incentivizing cooperation and collaboration.

And I know that initially when the city and the county entered into their interlocal agreement, It was to foster this cooperation and collaboration.

It was in 2019. We're now in 2024. I'm wondering if you all, as part of this study and work, worked with or looked at that system.

And to be honest, I'm not sure if there are other similar collaborations happening across the state.

Obviously, I'm most familiar with Seattle, so there might be other collaborations similar.

And whether you looked at those, if there are any, or certainly the one in Seattle and King County, to look and give recommendations on how can that better be working?

Because obviously, we see KCRHA is running into a lot of issues.

It is not working the way it was intended.

And I think we need to be looking at these types of collaborations and how can we help them set up for success so we can achieve these goals that we're all grappling with together.

And especially because, to Council President's comment also, we have limited resources.

And I heard you say, you know, about the sustainability of, but we have all of these pieces.

And I do believe we are addressing many of them, right?

We are addressing the folks that are precariously housed.

Like I said, I was able to help.

in that instance, many more needing more help.

So I think, and we are addressing the acute homelessness and we're addressing the temporary and the permanent supportive, there just isn't enough resources to scale up any of those.

And so anyway, back to my original question about did you reach out to collaborations like KCRA to study, How can we better the intent?

I think that the intent was a good intent entered into for the reasons you've identified here, actually, and to address the questions that you've so greatly pointed out.

We have a model that we can study.

How can we, you know, did you do that or is that, would you recommend that as the next iteration of the work that you've done?

We had participants from King County and Seattle and, you know, involved in different degrees of closeness to what you're describing.

We didn't do kind of a case study, case example analysis of any particular case.

And I would say that there's actually a hunger for that, that idea of some of the people who came with examples and were sharing their experience with examples of documenting that more fully across the state for the kind of learning that you describe.

Our analysis wasn't structured that way.

It was really kind of rolling up the themes from all of the different experiences that we heard.

people with the experience local to Seattle and King County, as well as to some other, you know, maybe not similar in context or operations, but similarly trying to do collaboration in more rural areas, in other smaller cities.

So I think that learning is possible on a more detailed level than we did in our analysis.

But the themes that came through were very consistent.

I think one of them hearkens back to something that Jed was saying on that slide, which is, kind of a regrouping around what really needs to be collaborative and what doesn't.

So if you're sort of adding the infrastructure and the burden of collaboration for things that don't really need collaboration, maybe they just need communication so you know what's happening.

Or maybe they don't even need that.

Maybe they can really just be doing something local that's nested within it.

And that sort of not having an all or nothing approach to is it an entirely collaborative approach or is it not.

So I think that's one theme that came through.

in pretty much all of the experiences that we heard.

And I think the answer to that question is different in different places, how big the scale is, how much crossover there is across jurisdictions.

You know, the King County region is different than large, geographically large, but less densely populated counties who still might need to have some collaborative aspects, but maybe not quite as closely as something that's more urban density.

So those in, when there is, and I know there are assessments happening about that experience and, you know, trying to do the learnings and hopefully facilitating a process, but some of those, you know, we, We have more like prompt questions to offer you than solutions to give, but I would say that there is a real hunger across the state to have some of those more case example kind of experiences documented and shared.

So that's a message potentially for the state potentially to scaffold for the different parts of the state.

And just recognizing the interconnected of like, when you look at our report, it really is about doing the best to connect all these things and not say, you know, oh, these things align with what we're doing.

So we're just gonna focus on like having that conversation of, okay, but how does it impact all these other things?

And if we're not impacting all these other things, how do we make these actions impact that more?

And I would say in our conversations, What often came up, again, going back to Bridget's point of the metrics not always being enough, is really with such a strong focus in our structures today on our metrics being met, there's a lot of complexity that cause problems in that type of a system.

partially because it doesn't create a community of support.

You're meeting these checkpoints or you're not.

And if you're not, the structure is currently set up to say, well, then you lose your funding, you do these types of things.

But that doesn't mean that there wasn't success in that.

It wasn't a failure.

And so some of these collaborations that often get marked as, oh, well, it failed, it still did some good work.

It may not have hit these predetermined metric check boxes that we've come to look at as whether it succeeded or not.

And so another way I would like to push people to think differently is recognizing that a lot of times those check boxes do leave a lot of the success out and that they don't measure everything that's happening.

And by focusing too much on those metrics and not saying that they can't be important, but too much focus on them can lead to that competition and that stress that people are feeling.

and that when we really try to look at what, rather than saying you're meeting this or you're not, so you lose funding or this or that, it's what can we help you do to bolster you if you're not hitting these metrics?

Why aren't you hitting these metrics?

What's needed in support, and what can entities like a city or a county do to help support that, recognizing there are resource structures with that and all that.

But the more we can slowly start building that, and that's I think another thing that's really important to recognize with our report is as much as we would love to tackle this all tomorrow, chances of that happening isn't going to happen.

And so a lot of this report is how do we slowly start moving towards those things over time, recognizing that we're chipping away into angling at a right direction over time.

And that's not always the easiest thing.

And it's frustrating, especially when we're hearing things You know, again, going back to metrics, how many people were served this year?

Those numbers can be great and they are significant and they matter.

But that doesn't mean we got everyone out of homelessness.

And for people who currently are experiencing homelessness, those numbers really don't matter to them.

And so, again, that metric is only telling part of the story.

And where do we start recognizing multiple different markers of success that aren't necessarily checkbox things?

Yeah, the report includes a cautionary note about target setting, that targets can be really important benchmarks and aspirational goals, but setting overall targets can also lead to inadvertent consequence, can be leading to just focusing on reaching the easiest to reach.

So that leads to some of the questions about what really works where and really understanding the experiences of homelessness.

So if you only have kind of a universal target and you don't also have goals that are related to reaching those who are most difficult to serve, most difficult to place, most difficult, then you're gonna be perpetuating the crisis while maybe meeting your percentage target.

And I think that's...

also an important thing to be discussing when you are getting into collaborative approaches, because that can affect what feels effective to different collaborators.

So maybe where you need the most collaboration is around the aspects of the response that are going to be most difficult to succeed at scale are going to require the most intensity of resources.

Maybe that's a particular focus of collaboration because things that are, you know, known to be pretty effective and are working pretty well and you're getting pretty good placements aren't the stickiest part of the problem.

But you can't have the same expectation for kind of pace for every aspect of the response.

So that's something that...

was both raised directly by people and was sort of implicit in some of the frustrations around the difference between changing the rate of homelessness and actually addressing individual experiences of homelessness that are very varied and have very different circumstances.

Yeah, and it's tempting, right?

Like, every collaborative effort is like, our target's going to be to reduce by X amount in X number of years, and that's a really important benchmarking exercise, but it also needs to be accompanied with, okay, who does that leave out or bring in?

I think of it a little differently.

I will say that I do think doing a case study on the efforts that are underway in the various cities, because bigger and smaller, we can still learn from each other.

So I think that's the next natural step of this, whether it's going to happen or not.

I would say that would be really helpful if it did.

In terms of metrics, it's both.

It's not or, but it's, we need both.

We need to know what folks need in order to help them stay housed, be successful.

We need to address all those needs and we need the metrics to help us understand where we need to, you know, where we're doing well and meeting those needs and where we're not, because then it helps us set the policy.

So I, it's troubling to me that folks are constantly at odds with that.

It is both.

You need both.

It's probably a good overall theme.

It's both and, and it's also which when.

And it's a lot of either or, for understandable reasons, because the scale is so large and resources are constrained.

For all of those reasons, it feels like You need to discern the best thing.

But there really isn't any aspect of the response that we talked to people about where it was either or, actually.

I'd struggle to come up with an example of something that really is pretty clearly either or.

And I have to say back in 2019, I used to work for Council Member Tom Rasmussen who served on the King County Committee.

It was a 10-year plan to end homelessness.

You may be familiar with it.

And here it is about 18 years later.

And there were folks with lived experience as part of the committee.

I mean, I think it was a great model, but almost 20 years later, we're at the same place.

So, you know, I think these conversations are really important.

I think this is why I feel strongly that these case studies, there should be case studies to identify where are we doing well with these collaborations, where we're not.

Because I do feel inherently and maybe I am an optimist that we all want to do well and it's how do we get there.

How do we get there?

And that's the thing you can't answer, and I don't expect you to, because if we knew, we would have done it and we wouldn't be here today.

So thank you really.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Well, thank you.

We're almost at time, so thank you so much for the presentation.

Very thought-provoking, as you can tell by the questions that have been asked.

Lots more for us to think and do, and looking forward to following you in your next steps.

And again, thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right.

There being no further business, this concludes the May 8th meeting in the Housing and Human Services Committee.

The next meeting is scheduled for May 22nd, 2024. The time is 1125, and we are adjourned.

Thank you.