Councilmember Andrew J. Lewis hosts town hall on public safety & the future of emergency response

Okay, well thank you so much.

We've got 115 attendees so far, which is great.

So I'll just go ahead and start.

So thank you everybody for tuning in to this District 7 Town Hall.

My name is Andrew Lewis.

I'm the Seattle City Council member for Seattle City Council District 7, which represents neighborhoods from Magnolia and Queen Anne all the way down to Pioneer Square, representing also downtown South Lake Union, my own neighborhood of Uptown, Belltown, among other parts of West Central Seattle.

This town hall is really going to be an opportunity to First off, at the end, solicit questions and feedback as we go into our summer balancing session.

And I do want to hear from the attendees tuning in today, their thoughts, their feedback on the pressing issues that are facing the council and facing the unprecedented decisions that we have to make.

To make significant balancing cuts to our budget, we are facing a $300 million shortfall as folks can Well, imagine the economic fall off due to COVID-19 has dramatically impacted a lot of the regressive taxes that the city relies on, including sales, B&O, soda tax, you name it, going down the list.

Those revenues have fallen off.

And as a result, the city has had to take measures to raise new progressive revenue, as we did with the jumpstart proposal.

but also to make some balancing cuts and that's what we're debating this summer.

Obviously none loom larger than the prospects of significant reductions to the Seattle Police Department.

The mayor has submitted, just by way of background, a 10% or $20 million cut.

There are discussions on the city council of creating larger cuts and larger reductions as part of our balancing strategy.

I, along with many of my colleagues, am committed to realizing a 50% reduction to the police department over time.

It remains to be seen.

whether a plan will come together to realize those cuts in the summer session.

But we do continue to discuss it.

And there will be more amendments about how a plan like that might come together tomorrow.

So that's just by way of a quick introduction of why we're all here today together.

I do want to say that in addition to the feedback, some of the big takeaways I want folks to get from this town hall Is a variety of different first response options, not just things that we in the city Seattle are cultivating already through the fire department or through our partnerships with service providers like the downtown emergency service center and our ongoing conversations with organizers at decriminalize Seattle, but also examples of systems from around the country.

And I am really honored to be joined a little later by some folks from Denver, Colorado, who are working on a response system called STAR, who will be able to share their experience of organizing and setting up this community-based first response.

and how that might complement some of the things we're already doing.

We'll hear from Dan Malone at Downtown Emergency Service Center about the Mobile Crisis Team, which is a King County-City-Seattle partnership based out of the Downtown Emergency Service Center.

We're going to hear from Chief Scoggins, who will be the first guest of the town hall.

about HealthONE and some of the related programs the fire department is doing to respond to low acuity calls and be an alternative form of first response.

We're going to be talking to Sharon Lee and some other service providers about some new interventions that the council is working on to get more shelter spaces for folks experiencing homelessness that are non-congregate to get them inside to get folks out of these unsanctioned encampments and inside where they can live with dignity and where they can be sheltered and not subject to the hostile environment or ongoing chronic public health problems.

So this is really going to be an interesting town hall.

I encourage folks to share their questions through the previous process that was stated through the Q&A thread.

Someone from my staff will be monitoring those questions.

And at the end, we will take them.

Since we have some folks who are on a tight schedule today, I'm reserving all the questions till the end.

I know that Chief Scoggins will only be with us here for the beginning of the town hall, for example.

And I know that our friends in Denver have a tight timeline as well, and I wanna make sure we hear from everybody.

So with that, I'm gonna jump in.

We're gonna start with Chief Scoggins.

And what I'm gonna ask initially here, Chief, is first, if you wanna give a brief introduction, And then I'll start asking you some questions, particularly about the health one program, and we can start really diving into it.

But first, thank you so much for joining us here.

And thank you so much for your service to the city and the great service of the fire department.

I really appreciate you taking the time to join us and talk to us about the important work our first responders and fire department are doing and ways that we can build on that.

progress in the future.

So I'll let you do a brief introduction and then we'll just have a conversation about about emergency response.

So thank you so much.

Sure.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Thank you for having me.

As Council Member mentioned, my name is Harold Scoggins, Fire Chief here in Seattle Fire Department.

I've been here since 2015. I've been in the fire service for 30 years.

This is my 30th year of service.

A lot of different experiences along the way.

Spent the first 26 years down at Southern Southern California and I've been here in Seattle for the last five.

So I'm really excited about the work that we're doing in this area.

And our goal is to serve, to meet people where they are, to get them the service that they need.

That's our goal with our programs.

Great.

Thank you so much, chief.

So I want to talk a little bit particularly about health one.

And the first things I want to ask you at the top, if you could just give a, a general description of health one, and we do have a couple of, um, visual aids that can, for the public viewing at home, to track along with our conversation.

And I wonder if IT can maybe get those up so that we can have them in front of us.

But Chief, I want to ask you, you know, first, what HealthONE is, and also if you could define the concept of low acuity, like a low acuity response, and why that's such a big deal.

Absolutely.

And in order to do that, I need to paint the bigger picture for you.

So each year, the Seattle Fire Department responds to approximately 95,000 emergency responses.

And of that 95,000, approximately 77,000 are EMS related.

That means there's a medical emergency of some sort, and that's what the caller communicates.

Of that 77,000, about 17 to 20,000 of those calls are ALS, which are advanced life support calls.

That means it's a cardiac arrest event, It's a stroke event.

It's a respiratory distress event.

It's a traumatic event.

But what's left is about 60,000 responses annually.

So what, what I noticed, um, when I got here a number of years ago is many of that last 60,000 calls, um, needed something other than, um, an ER.

And our goal was to try to figure out how do we get that person what they need.

And that's been the puzzle that we've been trying to put together.

So as we've been developing our mobile integrated health program, we've done a few things over the last five years.

We have four social workers on staff now.

That's really important for us.

They make all of our programs go.

We have a high-utilizer individual program and a high-utilizing facility program.

So what one of our social workers does, is they look at the people that are in our system that are calling 911 for medical emergencies on a pretty regular basis and we reach out to them.

We try to figure out, you know, do they have the services that they need?

What can we help them with?

Can we connect them up with social services to try to provide the person what they need to get the care that they need?

Because what they need, they don't need a 911 response, but clearly they need something.

We also have a high utilizing facility location.

We go to places over and over and over again.

So with those facilities, we'll go in, we'll do training and different things like that.

We also have a vulnerable adult program.

So our firefighters respond each day.

They may see those in our community who are older in need of certain things.

We may respond because They don't have their prescriptions.

So we need to figure out a way to make that happen.

We may respond because they don't have the food that they need.

We try to figure out a way to make that happen.

Their place they're living may be in need of some help.

So we figure out a way to make that happen with our Vulnerable Adult Program.

And then the third component is HealthONE.

And HealthONE is the unit that what we're doing is we're meeting people where they are to provide the service that they need.

Because like I said, of that 60,000 call that were left over, about 30,000 of those kind of fit into the low acuity type category.

Some of those low acuity calls, they do need to go to the hospital and get treatment for whatever the issue is.

But many of that 30,000 calls that are left They do not.

They are people who may be in crisis.

They are people who may need shelter.

They are people who may need a warm place to sleep.

They are people who may be facing some challenges for alcohol or drug addiction.

So they need all of these different things that we really were not set up to get them.

So what we did was we launched HealthONE.

So HealthONE is two firefighter EMTs with a whole lot of additional training, and a social worker.

So each day they're on our HealthONE vehicle, and their skill sets are very different.

Because the normal 911 response, if it's a BLS response, we're probably on scene for probably 18 minutes.

And then we turn it over and go to the next call.

And within that 18 minutes, we have a lot of things to decide.

What care do they need?

What hospital do they need to go to?

And how do we get them that care?

Each one of our health one calls lasts about an hour and 40 minutes.

That means that we're taking the time.

And if you need a medical appointment, we're going to get you that medical appointment.

If you need a ride there, we're probably going to give you a ride.

If we need to find you a place to sleep and shelter, we're going to call the shelters and see what's open.

If you're in crisis at that time, we're going to call someone to help you with whatever you need at that point in time.

That generally takes a lot longer, and you need a variety of skill sets.

So between our firefighters, who are very used to working out in the environment, and our social worker, who's very used to meeting people's needs on the social service side, we think it's a good formula, and that's what it's shown us to be so far.

So our unit is really doing a lot of good work in taking care of people, meeting them where they are, and getting them what they need.

Thank you so much for that broader review, Chief, and thank you so much for for really being a great innovator and driving this HealthONE pilot.

I know my predecessor, Sally Bagshaw, was really instrumental in getting the money together.

And I know that this year the department has done a good job putting that vision into something tangible and into practice.

So I just wanted to talk a little bit about kind of where HealthONE currently stands, like how big is the program and what are some of the opportunities for scalability going forward?

Because my understanding is it's just the one vehicle so far and the one team, but what could be the potential scalability of this approach?

So council member, you are correct.

Currently, we do have one vehicle and one team that's tied to our health one program and those other components that are behind it with our high utilizer program and our vulnerable adult program.

And they all work together with our mobile integrated health program.

But as you mentioned, this is scalable.

We're working in the area of the city that needs the most help right now.

which is the downtown area where a lot of these calls are, but this is completely scalable and it makes sense to scale it after being in service since last November, November of 2019 to July of 2020, we have really seen an impact of the work that they can do and the partnerships that they have created to help change people's lives.

And the folks whose lives are changing, the responses that HealthONE is making Can you give maybe some tangible examples of what kind of situations does HealthONE respond to?

And then what kind of assistance are they able to provide one-on-one to folks who are requesting this service?

Sure.

So they're requested in really three different ways.

So one way is they're dispatched directly from our fire alarm center.

So that's one way that they could be dispatched to the call.

The second way is through our fire units who may respond to an emergency and know that this person needs additional help.

And the third way is they actually go and do follow-up.

So when they actually have a little downtime, they'll go and make the contact with someone they've seen before just to do follow-up to make sure that they're doing okay and they're getting everything that they need.

But the situations that you can imagine is, you know, when we had a little bit of snow this year, we changed our model because we knew we needed to get people out of the cold into a warm place.

So their mission was very intentional.

Look for people who are out in the cold and let's find the shelter beds and let's get people into shelter.

A person may be in crisis.

So they go, they take the time, they have the conversations.

And some of the conversations are extremely hard.

And I'm so proud of our social workers that we have with our firefighters because they really know how to connect with people.

So once they make the connection and build the trust, then they make the calls to connect them up even further to get them help if they're in crisis.

Sometimes people have a medical ailment, but they don't necessarily need an emergency room, which can be very, very expensive.

So what they'll do is they'll call the local clinic.

They'll see if they have an appointment available.

If they have an appointment available and they don't have a way to get there, one of two things will happen.

We carry taxi vouchers with us and Lyft vouchers.

We'll either give you one of those or we'll just put you in our vehicle and we'll give you a ride.

Sometimes when they're doing the follow-up care, they find that people don't have the nourishment that they need in their place they're living or don't have their prescriptions filled.

And we all know when we don't take our medications, things can get a little bit out of balance.

They figure out a way to make those things happen too.

So it's really a utility team that's serving people.

And, you know, I got one more question, Chief, and then I'll give you the last word on this.

But is HealthONE, as it's currently constituted, are you guys hardwired into the 911 response, or does someone else go out there, flag it, and then HealthONE responds?

Both.

Our dispatch center can dispatch HealthONE directly after they're going through their protocols.

or the fire unit can be on scene and call them to a scene, or they could just go do follow-up.

So we're very flexible and versatile.

And our 911 system, our fire alarm system, is the secondary public safety answering point.

All of the calls go through the primary public safety answering point, which is SPD.

And if a person says fire or medical emergency, they immediately transfer that call over to us.

That happens about 160 to 180,000 times a year.

That results in that about 95,000 responses a year.

So it can happen a lot of different ways, or we can get a referral from the community, and they'll go directly to HealthONE, and HealthONE will make the connection and show up that way also.

So it sounds to me like there's a lot of room, given the flexibility of the mission and given I'm really hearing a lot of agility and the ability to respond to lots of different types of calls that currently this one team is juggling too.

So I'll just tell you straight up right now, I really like the work that the fire department's low acuity teams are doing.

It'll definitely be a priority of mine to protect and expand the service.

And I really appreciate you coming by here to talk to the people of District 7 about it.

I know there's a lot of District 7 folks are already extremely grateful because HealthONE serves downtown.

So a lot of people in my district are very well aware of it already.

But I do think that there's a lot of chance here for scalability and it's a great way forward.

And I think the department has done a tremendous job with the pilot.

So, you know, with that, Chief, I'd like to, I know that We're going a little longer than I thought we'd go.

I'd like to give you the last word on this and then wish you a pleasant afternoon.

Sure, absolutely.

And I would be remiss if I did not thank Council Member Bagshaw, who was a champion for setting up this program, and our low acuity manager, his name is John Ehrenfeld, absolutely amazing.

But we haven't done this in the vacuum.

I can remember it was probably about a year and a half or two years ago.

When we had a one-day conference here, we held right here in Seattle, and we invited 25 fire departments from around the nation to come here and talk about this one issue.

And we invited departments from California to Arizona to Texas to Vancouver, BC, all with similar type programs and all sharing information and ideas.

So we're really working hard together as a public safety professional organization to figure out what's going on in Arizona that we can use here in Seattle and vice versa.

what's going on down in San Diego that we can use here.

And we're sharing that way too.

So we're always tweaking and looking for a better way to do it.

I'm really proud of our firefighters and our social workers who are doing this work.

And it's like I said, five years ago, we had no social workers on staff.

Now we have four.

I talked to my good friend in Spokane.

I believe they have about 12 to 16. That shows the transition that our profession is making in meeting people where they are.

Well, let's try to catch up to Spokane.

I'm willing to work with you on that.

That sounds great.

And thank you for all the work you're doing.

And thank you so much for joining us this afternoon, Chief.

I really appreciate it.

All right.

Thank you.

OK.

So transitioning now.

HealthONE and sort of low acuity first responses, like I just discussed with Chief Scoggins, could be one of the tools in our toolbox.

There are examples of first responses that are entirely based in a community, nonprofits, or community service providers that offer an interesting path forward as well.

And I'm really proud to be joined here today by Roshan Bliss.

And Roshan, I heard you, I think I saw you on the panel here.

There you are.

Okay, I see you.

You're being joined by one other person who I didn't get the name of before I went on here.

Is there someone else with you?

That's Carly Salon from Mental Health Center of Denver.

Okay, great.

Let me see.

Okay, great.

Yeah, they're okay.

Excellent.

So how's your last name pronounced, Carly?

Salon.

Salon?

All right.

Thank you guys for joining us.

Just as a little bit of background, as a lot of folks who are watching probably know, over the last couple of weeks, I've been advocating for a form of community-based low acuity first response called CAHOOTS, or Crisis Assistance Help Me Out in the Streets, which is a program from Eugene, Oregon, that is based out of a clinic called the Whitebird Clinic down there.

It's no small thing to try to adapt from the ground up or adopt a grassroots method of first response like that.

And we have a lot of tools here that we can build on.

And we'll be hearing from Dan Malone later about some of the things DESC is doing.

I think that the experience with STAR, and I'll let you guys fill in what that what the acronym stands for, but Denver's recently started up a program called STAR, which is based on Kahoot!

, so they they have gone through or they are still going through the same process that we would be as a community in designing a system of first response like this.

And I wanted to bring them on because I think there's a lot of things we could learn as a community here in Seattle from their experience and sort of getting this going in Denver and kind of what's been working for them, the community driven process they've used and the success of their STAR pilot so far.

So with that, I think I wanna hand it over Roshan and Carly, I'll let you guys sort of tag team on how you want to kind of give the overview.

But, you know, first off, I would obviously be interested in, you know, introducing yourselves, sort of your roles in that process and your roles in Denver.

And then also just kind of a brief overview of what STAR is and what your process has been and kind of where it stands now.

Great, thank you very much.

Carly, you want to do introductions?

I can do some background and then you talk about what's actually going on.

Read my mind.

Well, my name is Rishan.

Hello, everyone.

I am one of the co-chairs of a grassroots organization out here in Denver called Denver Justice Project.

We've been around for about five years working on transforming law enforcement by re-imagining how public safety can be achieved without relying all the time on police or incarceration.

And Denver Justice Project helped kind of start the conversation and supported the growth of this, what has become a pilot of a model of alternative emergency response based explicitly on the CAHOOTS model from Eugene.

So happy to be here.

Carly, you want to tell them?

Yeah, absolutely.

My name is Carly Salon.

I'm the program manager of criminal justice services at the Mental Health Center of Denver.

And I'm a clinical social worker and was lucky enough to go out on the site visit that Rashaun kind of spearheaded out to CAHOOTS in Eugene last year.

And one of the programs that my supervisor and myself have been running for quite a while is a co-responder program, which I know you guys also have in Seattle as well.

And really, you know, saw CAHOOTS as sort of a 2.0 version of that program.

Working with the police, we recognize that a lot of the calls that we showed up on didn't really need a law enforcement officer there or didn't have a law enforcement solution.

So this model was very valuable to us in the sense that we could keep police doing police work and get the right response to individuals when we have someone in crisis in our community.

Awesome.

Um, so I'll just give a little bit of background.

Um, Carly can say maybe a little bit of what's going on now in the van cause she's on it.

Um, and then we'll see what else is left, uh, Councilman.

Um, so like I said, um, Denver Justice Project is a grassroots organization.

Um, we have an abolitionists, uh, framework where we think that, um, we use the wrong tools to manage, um, public safety, um, and that, You know, they say that when you're holding a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

And we feel like policing is the hammer that our communities and our cities are kind of holding and trying to deal with every problem with.

And our interest in bringing something like Kahoot!

to Denver kind of started formally with a community forum back in 2017 called It Doesn't Have to Be Like This, where we were trying to showcase alternatives to cops, courts, and cages, the kind of major pillars of the criminal justice system.

And we ended up inviting, kind of cold calling the Whitebird, the good people at Whitebird Clinic, and asking them to kind of do a video address, which they did.

And folks were very impressed with the model, and even more impressed with the fact that a lot of the initial funding for CAHOOTS came out of the city's police budget.

And we committed to trying to bring that type of model to Denver.

It started off with a conversation with a well-known Chicano movement-based social work services, social agency called Servicios de la Raza.

And they helped us kind of start networking with others in the city who would be supportive and it turned into a conversation about taking a sort of delegation of folks from 911, the safety departments, mental health providers, social workers, a couple of grassroots organizations, and the members of the DPD, Denver Police Department, that is, to Eugene to go see what this process looks like, what the CAHOOTS program was like, And we helped bring that delegation out to Eugene.

And folks kind of saw the lights.

And the man who eventually became our police chief out here, Paul Pazin, really was supportive from the very beginning, seeing that, you know, this is something like police are doing more than they ever should have been given more responsibilities than they ever should have been given.

And he and a lot of others from DPD were eager to see this kind of alternative rise here in Denver because it meant that police could be doing things they were better suited for, which is handling, you know, kind of violent crime instead of these mental health issues or substance issues or crises of homelessness.

And so we, a work group formed shortly after the trip with a lot of different stakeholders, including lots of folks from the city and county of Denver, and several grassroots organizations, service providers, and folks from Mental Health Center of Denver, where Carly works.

And we started basically planning and plotting what it would take to launch a pilot of this kind of process, this CAHOOTS type model out here in Denver.

And we got some funding from a local public foundation, which is a kind of innovative thing out here we have in Denver called Caring for Denver.

And with that money, we were able to launch on June 1st, a six to 12 month pilot of the Support Team Assisted Response Initiative, which is the kind of Denver version of CAHOOTS.

Right now it's only in operation in one sort of like downtown district from 10 to 6 p.m.

But they are hooked into the 911 infrastructure.

Um, and they send, uh, people like Carly and a paramedic out with no police response, um, to, or involvement, uh, to handle these kinds of calls.

Um, Carly, you want to say a little bit more about what, what it looks like to be in the van and whatever.

Absolutely.

Um, it's been great.

I think one of the, you know, we really hit the ground running, um, on June 1st and I, and I think, um, a lot of that success was due to the preparation of our 911 communication center.

working with the Eugene, Oregon Communication Center to sort of develop a decision tree that appropriately triages low risk calls to the van.

So I think our call volume and how busy we've been is kind of a testament to that decision tree working really well.

I will also just kind of highlight that we're up over 150 calls since June from, that was June 1st to about the beginning of July.

So we're probably well over that now.

and that we haven't had to request police backup on any of those calls, zero.

We've been able to handle them.

And I think that, you know, is a very, you know, that's exactly what we want and also shows that we're making it to the right type of calls.

We're not needing that extra backup or anything like that.

So it's myself and my supervisor, Chris Richardson, who's staffing the van, really, you know, working with the community group, that decision was made because, you know, the Denver Health Paramedics and Chris Richardson and myself are already sort of employed doing this work.

And we're essentially just reassigned a few days to cover this van.

So we were the most cost effective approach in the sense that new staff wasn't going to have to be hired.

And additional salaries kind of added to the initial budget request.

So that's one way that we kept costs down.

And our Denver Health paramedics, who they work with our local hospital authority, were also kind of on board to staff the van with us.

And we go on all different types of calls on some, you know, just to kind of give you guys an idea, we go to low risk.

Calls where individuals are experiencing suicidal ideation, maybe you're not an imminent risk or they don't have an immediate plan, but they're they're needing support.

So we will go and provide support to those individuals.

A lot of resource calls, we get calls, you know, that come out as an indecent exposure.

And we show up and it's a woman experiencing homelessness who's trying to change her clothes in the alley because she doesn't have a private place to do so, right?

So we get there and she's like, you know, hey, I just am trying to change my clothes.

And we can connect her to a day shelter where she can access, you know, private changing rooms and showers and meals and all that kind of stuff.

Also relying very heavily, you know, Chris, my supervisor and myself come from a case management background, we rely very heavily on our vast knowledge of community resources and the community partnerships that we've kind of built.

over the years of doing this work in Denver.

We have contacts at the VA that we reach out to frequently when we find an individual who's a veteran on the Starband and have had some really incredible connection back to the VA.

I mean, the VA will basically, you know, say, hey, can you bring them up right now to the VA?

And we'll say, sure, we'll put them in the back of the van and reconnect them.

So it's really great.

to be able to solve those problems in the moment.

Our initial data is kind of showing that we're actually a bit quicker than law enforcement on these calls, which I think shows that we're able, you know, when you have sort of the right professionals showing up, we're able to sort of wrap these situations up very quickly just because we sort of know what resources are available and are able to do that in a pretty low barrier way.

I'm trying to think what else we should kind of highlight.

Could I maybe jump in for a second to ask you a question?

I'm chomping at the bit to ask a question.

This is all great and I love listening to what you guys are doing because I think it's so instructive for how we can pursue something like this.

I want to go back and just sort of, I know you mentioned you've responded to about 150 calls.

You haven't, requested police assistance on any of them.

But I guess my first question would be, are you in a position where you can request police assistance and that would be provided in the event that you wanted it?

So that'd be my first question.

Second question would be, how many of those 150 calls that you have done, how many of those do you think that in a pre-STAR world would have been responded to instead by police as the responders?

Yeah, I can say that, yeah, first of all, I have a police radio.

So does the paramedic.

That's how we take our calls from dispatch is over the radio.

So I am able to call for police cover if I need to and have not needed to, which is great and exactly kind of what we see.

You know, I think that those calls, you know, would have likely had an officer show up with them if we didn't have any other options, right?

Someone's requesting, you know, assistance through 911. It may not be an emergent response, but here in Denver, we hope that it would have been an officer and a co-responder clinician who would have showed up so that we can still um, have that level of clinical expertise and that, um, sort of social justice lens, um, on scene if the police are there.

Um, but of course, if the police don't need to be there, um, I think it's more appropriate to keep them doing, uh, law enforcement work.

Um, and I think most, most police agree.

And Roshan, do you have anything to add to that too?

It looks like maybe you were, um, yeah, I mean, I would just add the, just underline that, um, the police are not needed.

in almost every situation where it's a mental health issue, and even where it's substance use issues, and especially where it's crises of homelessness, law enforcement is not the mode that's required or called for in responding to these kinds of emergencies, that this is the way that the STAR model works, mirrors what CAHOOTS does, that they're tapped into 911, which is part of the safety department, and they have the radios and can call for backup if they need, but they almost never need to because folks with mental health problems are far and away more likely to be the victims of crimes and violence than to commit them.

And this is just a really clear demonstration of how our cities and our country need to evolve better and different ways of handling mental health crises and lots of other kinds of emergencies that don't involve a person with a badge and a gun who often makes the situation worse or might hurt someone.

So in that spirit, in moving forward here to To round this presentation out a little bit more.

It sounds like you were saying star currently is sort of like a nine to six response window.

How are you guys approaching like scalability and and like what the future vision for how star could look because it sounds like you've had a good You know, first two months of being an operation like what is the future to this look and what are your scalability challenges.

Yeah, I'll start with this, Carly, if that's okay.

Our challenges are definitely about, you know, reaching full 24-7 coverage of a city that is, you know, many times larger than Eugene, where this has been in operation for, you know, 30 years, the Cahoots model.

And we started slow so that we could go, you know, sort of walking so we could run.

And the idea is that as the STAR program starts to get more traction, um, solidity and how, you know, kind of some of the approaches, um, that we can also use the increased notoriety to grow new partnerships with, um, local community-based, um, service providers of mental health or healthcare, um, supports and start finding a way to build on ramps, um, for, you know, progressive, for, for people who are, who are registered nurse, nurses, um, or, you know, providers of mental health care to get the necessary training and build an infrastructure whereby we can have a bank of people who can get in these vans and grow the kind of fleet of vans and the network of people and agencies that can be tapped into something like STAR.

Because, you know, we've got our sort of central downtown area, but Denver spans out, I'm sure, like Seattle into many other areas where it's just not practical to take someone across town if that's the only place you know, and we need to be tapped into the more kind of neighborhood and sector-based providers who can, where you can take someone who is hallucinating or just needs a place to sober up or needs, you know, to be connected to some kind of social service.

So right now, you know, we've got kind of till the first six months check-in to start building some of those partnerships.

Our hope is that we will start building this kind of constellation of different community providers who can work together, hopefully through a couple of the community-based organizations that are involved, like the Denver Alliance for Street Health Response, to help move from this kind of localized, just downtown response to something that can grow and be tapped into a sort of central administration and coordinating hub but then be available at the city level and on a 24-7 basis.

So it's kind of slowly growing and organizing, building relationships among different organizations, agencies, what have you, to try to make it so that we're all ready to slowly take on this transformation of the way that we deal with these public health crises.

What would you say about that?

A lot to add to that.

I mean, I echo what Rashawn said.

Also just kind of emphasizing that we recognize that crises happen outside of the hours of 10 to six, Monday through Friday, of course, and in areas outside of our catchment area.

But as someone who's stood up a lot of criminal justice initiatives in the past few years, I think it's really important to get things dialed in, to start small, you know, sort of walk before we can run.

um and not bite off more than we can chew to make sure that we um are able to be flexible to community feedback and and are really um using the pilot as a as a time period to gather information on how to inform how to create a program that the city of Denver wants to see versus trying to sort of scale up and meet a huge need and maybe falling short.

Yeah and at least for my part you know I think that that's the smartest way for us to have gone about it, that if one of the worst consequences or scenarios we could have had was to start up a program that tried to go too fast or cover too much and have a bunch of people have negative experiences and suffer wait, wrong call times, you know, or not have enough staff to ever get to those calls.

and then have people say, well, this doesn't work.

And so we should just never call that line again.

And that's really critical for this to work is building trust and showing kind of effectiveness first so that we can get the community on board so that they'll trust when these people who aren't in uniform and are in this kind of like unmarked van show up that they'll trust them to help them.

And I think we should also say that, you know, the decision of the hours and the locations to serve were all based on data from the 911 communication center about where and when the kinds of calls that STAR and a program like this would respond to come from the most often.

So we kind of started in the highest need area and wanted to make sure we get it right and get some good practice and build some trust and rapport with the community before growing it to the whole city.

Right, so you guys have been really generous with your time.

I really appreciate that, given that you guys are also on Mountain Time and so have a little less time than we do here.

So I did just want to ask one more thing before I move on to the next panel of people.

And Roshan, I really appreciate that you just talked a lot about credibility and trust and building that into our first response so that we have first response that is seen as trustworthy and credible with the populations that that first response is serving.

I wonder if you guys could just talk a little bit about, you know, the ways in which that is conveyed and built and what your experience has been in the first two months.

I think you just alluded to the fact that the responders don't wear uniforms, for example.

But I think it'd be great to hear a little bit more about that before we move to the next panel, because I think that like details like that are very critical to the success of a new type of first response and it'd be good to hear what your experience has been.

Yeah, you know, we don't, I wear jeans and a t-shirt and sneakers.

I don't wear my, you know, ID badges on my lanyards because, you know, people don't know where those are from and it looks sort of official.

We have waters and snacks and Gatorade and I'm, you know, working on getting some socks and shoes for folks.

You know, and kind of just like your fire chief said, like sometimes it's not about like a huge, you know, sort of epiphany moment, right, in that moment.

It's just about giving someone a water and a snack and building some rapport and being a friendly face, you know, when we're having an interaction.

I mean, we always hope to be able, you know, to connect people to ongoing supports and do those wonderful things.

But sometimes people aren't ready, right?

So how can we just work on on being sort of a good community resource for people and that when they see the star band, they know that they can ask us for a bottle of water or fresh pair of socks.

And, you know, maybe one day they'll ask us for connection to a service provider or something.

You know, so we're really looking at Every interaction being valuable, you know, really approaching people with a nonjudgmental attitude.

You know, myself and Chris, the other person who stamps the van, and the Denver Health paramedics, we're big harm reductionists and we employ harm reduction principles in pretty much everything that we do.

And really, you know, just try to be casual and approachable.

and do what makes sense for people in that moment.

Give them a ride, you know, help them, you know, make a phone call if they don't have a phone.

I think those are the little things that really matter in a program like this and really what helps gain credibility with the community.

So we try to be as unassuming, you know, as possible.

Our van is kind of stripped down of all city insignia and stuff like that, so it doesn't look

um you know intimidating to people or people don't think it's the cops when we roll up um or sean anything to add no i just would underline the last part that like it's really important that a big part of how you build trust is just to help people be clear that star star workers are not cops and that they have zero law enforcement intentions or authority.

They cannot take people anywhere that they don't want to go, and that there's no way that this call ends in, you know, some kind of coercion, and that that's the way that CAHOOTS does it.

And, you know, their uniform is a hoodie with the CAHOOTS emblem, you know, and work boots.

They, I think it's really important for folks to understand that when you call 911 or the non-emergency line or the STAR-specific line, which is also important to note that we have, that you don't always have to get police officers.

And I think that that's a cultural shift that we need to create in our cities, our communities, that 911 is not just a call for police who will come enforce laws, but it's a call for people who can help you.

And we need to diversify the tools in that toolbox to apply the right kind of tool to the right kind of challenge.

And helping people understand that STAR is going to offer them help if they want it and will not force them to take help if they don't is a huge part of that trust question.

Well, thank you so much, both of you.

I want to get to the next panel because we're running a little behind, but I wanted to take a few more minutes because I think this is really, it's really, really helpful for us in our process here in Seattle.

Just to hear from folks going through the same thing who started earlier and just the great success that you guys have been making on STAR is really inspiring.

I wanna thank you so much and I'll definitely be in touch as more comes up.

I'm excited to see where everything goes and really happy that you guys took the time today to join us.

So thank you so much.

Glad to be here.

Good luck.

Yeah, thanks.

All right.

Okay, here, moving on now to this broader panel.

And I wanna talk a little more broadly with this next set of folks.

Um, not just about, uh, first response necessarily, but about some of the broader goals that, um, Decrim Seattle has brought forward.

Some of the work that is being done, um, around, uh, housing and homelessness, um, in the city, which I know has been a really big, I mean, it's been a big issue for, um, for years in Seattle, but, um, during COVID has been especially, uh, more noticeable with, um, uh, with large, um, Uh, proliferation of unsanctioned encampments and just making it really clear the massive unmet needs of people that are living, um, without, uh, housing on the streets of the city.

Um, and really talk about kind of what can be done, uh, what the council has been doing and, and how we, um, are going to move forward on that.

I, I, um, I was hoping that, uh, Sharon Lee would be able to join us today, but, um, it sounds like she, um, she cannot, um, but.

We are, in fact, being joined by Sheree LaSalle, and I hadn't heard that they had finally confirmed, but I'm really glad to see them here and that they're on.

And so that is a, it's great to have them here.

Also, J.M. Wong from D.Crim Seattle, and Dan Malone from the Downtown Emergency Service Center.

So I want to thank all of you for joining me for this last segment of the town hall.

I think we'll just go through one by one, like just an introduction, brief overview of the work that you've been doing and where we as a community should be going and why.

And then we'll dive in.

I have some questions for folks and for this panel too.

I think if folks want to interact with each other and build off of comments, I think that's perfectly fine.

So why don't we start, because I think, I think Sheree told my staff that they may have limited availability.

So I want to respect that and start with Sheree.

Oh, it's okay.

I'm actually doing double duty right now because of the mix up in the timing.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Sooner with a 10 minute lead time.

But actually, Jim is going to go ahead and do the intro and then pass it off to me.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

Great.

All right.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you star for paving the way in this conversation.

I'm JM, I'm part of decriminalize Seattle.

I'm also a registered nurse and have worked with a lot of folks who are experiencing homelessness and mental health issues.

And so I'm here to talk a little bit about the blueprint that decriminalize Seattle has presented to the city.

First is we want a civilian 911. And we think it's really important, not just in the response of having community groups be the first responders, but also be the folks, civilians be the people who do the dispatch.

Because currently what we know is it's already civilians who are doing the dispatch.

And it just reflects how civilians can also be in control of how 9-1-1 is being utilized, how the police SPD is being utilized.

So that's one part of a big part of our demand.

The second thing is also we know that just having civilian 9-1-1 responses to crisis moments, that itself is not sufficient.

We want to make sure that it's actually community groups that have the principles and values that we share.

For example, things like Starhead reference or harm reduction principles, anti-racist social justice principles, you know, being trauma-informed, having culturally responsive cultures in their responses, those are really important for us too.

And so we want money to go into CBOs that are already doing this work, that are currently underfunded, led by people, you know, who have experienced homelessness themselves.

We want them to be able to receive the support from the city to scale up as well.

And I know Sheree has done a lot of work in this area and can talk about it more.

And then the last thing is we really want to look at the root causes of why there are incidents like that happening in the city, right?

We know that the major crisis that Seattle has undergone in the last 10 years is the housing crisis.

And so we want more harm reduction housing.

We want housing for all.

And that's where we need the city to actually respond to this moment.

We know COVID-19, houselessness actually exacerbates the pandemic.

And so this is a really appropriate time for us to not just respond to crisis moments, but have this long-term vision on how to address the issues that impact our city.

So I'll pass it on to Sheree.

Awesome.

Thank you, Jim.

Thank you all for having me here today.

We talked about wanting to civilianize 9-1-1, and I know a lot of people immediately have a visceral response to that because it's just not something that we're used to hearing.

But, you know, education is kind of key to making this something that we can actually do.

And part of it is just educating people on knowing that 9-1-1 is already civilian-run primarily.

It's just under a department that might not be able to seek out as many holistic responses or community-based solutions to the issues that they're seeing when they get calls.

When we created programming specifically for Green Light Project, where we do direct harm reduction services and outreach to street-based sex workers, drug users, and people experiencing homelessness, we started off with consistency.

And I know that Star was talking about this earlier, our friend that was speaking on that, about the consistency and making sure that your purview and your availability is really spot on to build that trust with the community and then ask them what they need or what would help in situations.

And most folks think that people that are paid to do these type of services aren't necessarily their friend.

They're trying to create a box that they have to fill in order to get services.

And we feel like there are so many organizations that are culturally competent, do many direct services based on the exact needs of their community, because they actually counseled them on what they needed and asked them what they needed.

And it's efficacy in changing their conditions and preventing crises from occurring as frequently that require any type of 911 intervention in the first place, It's actually, to use a really colloquial term, mind-blowing, that all you really have to do is ask folks what they need, and they're pretty good at self-determining what they need in order to prevent them from going into situations that might cause harm to others or themselves that would require an intervention at any time.

And as we know, and as J.M.

said, housing is kind of the cornerstone of people's precarity that may put them in situations where they're outdoors and exposed to neighbors that are concerned and don't know anywhere else to go except for calling 911. And it being a catch-all with only one response definitely escalates a lot of people's situations.

It doesn't necessarily help.

Seeing a badge and seeing an armed officer when you're already in crisis is absolutely terrifying.

Seeing someone that you know that's been there for you throughout the week when you're not in crisis is kind of the answer to deescalate.

That trust, that bond, that relationship can change your outcome in those moments.

So it wouldn't just be that we'd be on the phone on the other end of 911 to be dispatched when there's a crisis.

It's that we've already built these relationships.

They already know us.

We've already asked them what they need in those situations.

And when we hear that they are in crisis, we already kind of know the roadmap to help them get out of that through self-determination while respecting their agency and their timing.

The scaling up part is really just a matter of resources and being able to share cultural competency and education with other organizations that would be doing service providing in this manner if they had access to the resources to scale up in that way.

And I know that our friend from STAR that was talking before us, they started out really small and they're building coalition and they're building a membership base that wants to create cultural competency within their chosen profession, whether that be nursing or, you know, psych or, you know, literal doctors, et cetera.

And just like with Greenlight Project, we started off with a bunch of peers that were like, you know, these are our friends, these are our family members.

These are people that are in a similar situation as us.

We're going to go ask them what they need.

And as we built that, nurses have come.

Doctors have come.

Mental health professionals have come.

We even have a doula now.

We have wraparound services for what our community needs.

And they know that they can call us when they can't find what they need or it's too high barrier through an institution that is connected to police.

I think that an investment in what we're doing and what other organizations are doing especially the folks that are on this call and other organizations that can't be present all the time.

We go a long way to change the number of calls that even happen.

It's worth trying.

Thank you.

And I think, Sherea, all of those big questions around capacity and scalability, it's just it's really becoming evident to me that that really is one of the biggest hurdles that we're trying to overcome right now.

And I think it's a great transition too, to Dan Malone, right?

Our next person on the panel, because there's a lot of great work DESC is doing as well, that is falling in that same category as some of the work Green Light Project is doing.

And so Dan, moving to you for your introductory comments, you know, obviously, first, I want you to introduce yourself, what you do, your broad overview of what DESC does.

But I'm really interested in talking about mobile crisis team, King County, Seattle mobile crisis team, and how that offers a really good example of the kind of emergency response and, and just really to for people that are watching this at home to really get a sense that, I mean, I think from all of our presenters today, it's like we're not We're not starting from nothing with alternative types of first response.

We truly are really blessed that are capable of stepping up global crisis team.

So with that, I'm going to hand it over to you, Dan.

It looks like Sharon Lee has joined us.

Sharon, if you could make sure you're on mute, and then we'll get to you after Dan Malone.

But welcome.

It's great to see you here.

Ready?

Well, thanks so much.

I appreciate being here, council member, and for you hosting this important topic.

My name is Daniel Malone.

I work for DESC.

We're a nonprofit social services agency with a harm reduction focus, trying to meet the needs of as many people as we can who are experiencing chronic homelessness and have significant behavioral health disabilities.

And so we operate a variety of different kinds of programs, including survival services like shelters, permanent supportive housing, and then an array of behavioral health care services.

And one of those behavioral health care services we operate is crisis focused.

And there are several components to it, one of which is called the mobile crisis team that we've talked about and that I believe you wanted me to focus on primarily here today.

So do you want me to just go into an overview of that specifically right now or wait for that?

No, I think that jumping into that right now would be great.

Okay.

OK, great.

And I really feel fortunate to have followed JM and Sheree because they set this up really, really well.

Something that I wanted to be sure we were going to talk about in this conversation today is why are so many people having crises in the first place?

Behavioral health crises, we find, very often are associated with the circumstances, the life circumstances that people are having.

And the vast majority of crisis events that we are responding to involve people currently experiencing homelessness, which says that being homeless itself is a condition that produces a lot of crisis.

And so if we can provide appropriate housing and other social supports for people, we're going to have a lot less crisis in our communities to have to be dealing with.

While we don't have that in place, and we have a lot of crisis events happening in the community, there are some things that are in place to try to assist people who are experiencing those crises.

And one of those supports is this program that DESC runs called the Mobile Crisis Team.

And this is a group of behavioral health professionals, mental health and substance use disorder specialists, who serve all of King County 24-7.

It's a team of 38 professionals.

And They are summoned mostly by first responder units, police or fire units around the county.

Although not exclusively, I can get to that in a minute.

About a situation where a person is having some kind of mental health or substance use disorder crisis.

And there is a hope that there can be support brought to the person in order to avoid an outcome involving jail or a hospital visit.

And so the mobile crisis team unit of two people goes out anywhere in King County around the clock, typically have about 4,000 plus such events over the course of a year that we respond to.

And they spend as much time as it takes with the person to try to help resolve the immediate behavioral health issue going on.

And that includes things like suicidal ideation to a whole range of other types of behaviors that have been of concern to people in the community that, you know, has brought the person ultimately to our attention.

And sometimes the team is able to help the person find a disposition that involves going somewhere that the person is able to go.

Maybe it could be their own home, although usually the person is experiencing homelessness, so they don't have their own home to go to.

could be going where they have family.

But sometimes it involves going back to another facility DESC runs called the Crisis Solution Center, where people can stay, receive psychiatric support, rest, receive food, and be there for a limited period of time to further help resolve the immediate crisis, as well as work on plans for the future when that stay at the facility ends.

The big sort of limitation that I wanted to raise here that is in place currently is that because of the dearth of of available and appropriate resources in the community that people really need, starting with housing, but also with shelter beds and other kinds of immediate basic supports that people really need.

It is very often that the disposition at the end of the service, whether it's the, the several hour long mobile crisis team service or the end of the stay at the crisis solution center, too often the end result of that experience is that the person doesn't have a stable place to go to when that is all over.

They don't have their own housing and there is not enough capacity in the shelter system to ensure that everybody has a place to go to.

And so some people end up returning directly to the streets.

And of course that creates conditions that make it much more likely the person is going to go back into crisis again at some point.

sometimes in the not too distant future.

So there's a lot of good that can happen from these kinds of interventions to help resolve immediate crises.

It happens every single day, multiple times a day across King County, but the lack of appropriate long-term support for people causes this cycle to repeat all too often.

Thank you, Dan.

That's actually a really good segue before I want to ask you some follow up questions, but I think that since Sharon has joined us, I think it'd be a good segue to talk about the dearth of housing as a resource on the other end of the contact.

So I think it's a perfectly cued up transition.

So I think Um, I want to go to Sharon and Sharon first, if you could provide maybe just a brief introduction of, of the work that you do at Lehigh, um, and, and your background, um, but then really talking about, uh, you know, I know that we've done a, had a lot of conversations about permanent supportive housing, about tiny houses, villages, transitional shelters, and just, um, uh, um, you know, how we can sync up all of these types of first response that we're talking about here with those kinds of backend investments so that you know, the contact is just the first part of it.

It's about, you know, how do we also get people inside, keep them inside, get them the resources they need to be successful.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to you.

So thank you very much.

I'm Executive Director, Low Income Housing Institute, or people will call us LEHI for short.

And I wanted to let people know that we don't just provide rental housing.

We own and operate 2,400 units of affordable housing.

But we also operate the three urban rest stops, the hygiene centers for homeless people.

We have one downtown, one in Ballard, one in the U District.

So homeless people can clean up, take a shower, wash their clothes, get ready for work, or go for a job interview.

Hygiene is so critically needed.

And then we also operate 12 tiny house villages, of which nine are in the city of Seattle.

And we also operate permanent supportive housing.

We have been very fortunate that the city council has voted to approve the jumpstart Seattle initiative, which is the payroll tax.

And what that really means is that there is going to be significant funding for permanent supportive housing and rental housing, as well as some operating subsidies for people who are zero, almost like zero income or 20% of their median income.

The other thing is that Mayor Durkin has recently put out a request for 500 units of permanent supportive housing, which is key.

I mean, it's key to everything we're doing.

So while we have people living in tiny houses, they're safe, it's stable, it's staffed, but it's a bridge.

It's basically the tiny house is a bridge for people who are living in their car or on the street people who are chronically homeless, many years living on the street, and then they can have their own tiny house and the tiny house is heated.

And especially during the pandemic, they're not needing to share space with people in a congregate shelter.

So I think we should take this opportunity to make sure that hotel rooms, hotels, maybe some hotels should be purchased, more tiny house villages.

You sponsored an amendment that was very successful for the city to add four to five tiny house villages because people can, you know, they don't have to share the tiny house with their neighbor next door.

So it's been very, very good in terms of the pandemic.

But we have to scale up not only shelters, non congregate shelters, but also permanent supportive housing and rental housing.

So what's great about the tiny house village is that the case managers are on site.

And we also have behavioral health.

And so the case manager is there helping people fill out housing applications, employment applications, getting income support, getting their stimulus check, you know, education.

And so We have a very high success rate of people moving from a tiny house, reuniting them with family or friends, or moving into long-term permanent housing or Section 8 housing.

But because the system is so clogged up, people have to wait somewhere until their name gets called if there's a waiting list or unless there's an opening.

So I think with the pandemic, we have to keep people safe.

And the quickest way to do it is to either purchase hotels and make sure that the hotels can house people long-term and also build more tiny house villages.

And while we wait for the permanent supportive housing to get built, which hopefully, you know, hopefully it'll be 500 more units of permanent supportive housing in a year and a half from now.

So the situation is such that homelessness is increasing And once the moratorium on eviction gets lifted, even more people are going to have a crisis, experience a crisis, because they may not have been able to pay the rent during the moratorium and they owe the rent and they're gonna have to leave their apartment.

So Sharon, can I follow up just real briefly with you?

Because one thing that I wanna talk about a little bit more is the tiny house villages as a transitional strategy on getting folks out of homelessness and into permanent supportive housing.

If you could just maybe give an overview of the success that you've seen with the tiny house villages and how quickly they can be scaled up, because I think that is an important should be an important part of our strategy as a city in terms of, you know, we have a bottleneck right now of thousands of people living in unsanctioned encampments, right, and moving more of those opportunities into tiny house villages instead, or giving people the opportunity to be in a tiny house village, and how we can do that a little faster, because permanent supportive housing takes time.

And I wonder if you might just give us a little overview of that, because I do think it's an important part of our conversation today.

Well, absolutely.

So the City of Seattle has been a great partner, because some of the tiny house villages are on city-owned property.

And also, we have four villages that are on church-sponsored property or church-controlled property.

And then we also have the Port of Seattle.

We have one village with 50 to 60 people, housing 50 or 60 people on Port of Seattle property that's not being used.

And so there's a variety of land that's vacant or could be developed into the future.

But while it's vacant, there's an opportunity for two to three years to use it as a tiny house village.

When the pandemic hit, We set up TC Spirit Village in five weeks.

So we had tiny houses that were being built by volunteers and we have donors.

And one of the builders is the Tulalip tribe and they built these beautiful, the students in apprenticeship program, they built these beautiful tiny houses with Native American art.

And that village, I think is the first in the community that's dedicated to the needs of African American, Native American, and Alaskan Natives, who have been overrepresented in terms of the homeless demographic, but underserved in our community.

And then we also have True Hope Village, which is sponsored by two churches, and the referrals are coming from the Urban League, the Indian Center, homeless students from a job training program, as well as people in the community.

We are having community buy-in and support locally.

And each village has a community advisory group.

So the community advisory group includes neighbors, businesses, church leaders, and they sort of monitor the progress and actually befriend the villagers and support the villagers.

So it's been very, very successful.

In Whittier Heights, we have one village for homeless women, and that's a harm reduction model.

And then in South Lake Union, which is by the Marriott Hotel, we have a low barrier harm reduction village as well for men, women, and couples.

And what's great about the villages is that you can bring your belongings, and you have a, you know, it's your own tiny house, And then there are plum toilets and showers.

There's kitchen access.

There's laundry access.

So you don't have to hunt around the neighborhood.

You don't even need to go to the urban rest stop.

Everything, it's like you've got all the facilities right where you live.

And so it's been really, really good for people who have been chronically homeless and people who have felt very isolated.

and miserable living out in the cold or living in their car or under a bridge.

So people's lives have been transformed.

So we have over 50, I think it's 50 to 54% of people who exit a tiny house village move into long-term housing.

And we have over, at this point, we have over 400 tiny houses.

And so in Seattle, we're helping about 1,000 people a year, 1,000 homeless people a year.

So it's making a big impact.

Sharon, thank you for sharing that.

I think it's so important, because just as a strategy to get rid of unsanctioned encampments, which all of us can agree, no one in Seattle wants folks to be living in unsanctioned encampments, but we need to provide folks a place to go.

And I've really appreciated working with you on this.

I want to pivot back over to Dan on the same subject, to talk about some of the non-congregate work and de-intensification work that DESC has been doing while we're still on this.

And then I want to ask Dan one more 911 response question before we close out the panel so I can get to some questions before we sound off for the afternoon here.

So Dan, I guess first, DESC has been doing great work that's been getting into the news around kind of hoteling, de-intensification, And I'd be curious in just kind of getting an update on that and how that has also helped to reduce COVID exposure and also just get more folks inside.

Yeah, thanks a lot.

Yeah, for a long time DESC has operated shelters.

They have typically been set up in congregate environments and usually, quite frankly, they're crowded environments and the sleeping accommodations are bunk beds in rooms with lots of other people and so When the pandemic emerged, it was quite clear that we needed a different kind of environment in order to avoid the spread of the virus quickly among a very vulnerable population group.

So the DSE shelters have long had an emphasis on serving people with very high needs, very often people who have have been referred directly from hospital emergency departments and inpatient units.

And so it's a very frail, medically compromised population quite often.

And so we've had the opportunity during the pandemic to relocate some of our shelter operations to a hotel setting.

King County leased a property that DESC moved our staff to operate in Renton and closed down our main shelter operation in Pioneer Square and moved everybody there to this hotel setting.

And that allows people to have individual rooms and be socially distant from each other.

And we haven't had any COVID cases at all in that environment, which is not true of some of the existing congregate shelters we've continued to operate during this time.

And more importantly, it is proving to be just a much better environment for people in lots of other ways.

There is much less crisis that happens in the environment because it's a more pleasant, spacious, commodious environment that allows people who are under a lot of stress to have a better opportunity to manage that and regulate their own behaviors than when they're in the crowded environments that are much less pleasant to be in.

And so we think it's a real model for what the future could look like in terms of emergency shelter to the extent that shelter continues to be necessary.

We'd like to not have any shelter at all because everybody should have actual.

housing that's permanent that they can maintain but it's been a good transition for this period during the pandemic to have the hotel setting instead of the big crowded congregate shelters.

Thanks Dan and I wanted to to just say too that your example in that and the leadership DESC has shown was instrumental in the council, you know, making a commitment to put more resources into non-congregate shelter settings.

So I appreciate your innovation there.

My last question, and then I wanna transition to questions for me is, you know, we talked a lot today about these sort of alternative harm reduction based first responses.

You know, we talked about the mobile crisis team.

What is the prospect, do you think, for scalability and 911 integration with the mobile crisis team?

And could that be a model that could work in King County?

And what do you think the big hurdles to that would be and how we might go about it?

Yeah, thanks.

You know, as some of the earlier panelists were talking, including the folks from Denver, very often there really is not any need for a law enforcement presence during the behavioral health crises that people have.

And so the question for our area is, is there a way to have more direct referral so there is a first response of behavioral health specialists instead of that really being the second response, which is more or less what's happening today, because police or fire units have gone first, because that's what 911 does.

It dispatches police or fire in this area.

So it seems totally doable to me that we could make these adjustments to our local system and work something out where, a program like the Mobile Crisis Team could be summoned by the 911 system without it first going through police or fire.

I am very eager to engage in those kinds of conversations and see what we can do.

I think we're gonna need to scale this up to be much larger.

Right now, it is limited to some extent because Police or fire units will make the determination first about whether they want to utilize the services of the mobile crisis team, and then they hand over the case.

They don't stay on the scene in the mobile.

crisis team gets there because there really isn't a purpose for them to remain there.

And so it makes all the sense in the world to me that there would be modifications that we all could make to this.

There is a way currently where the mobile crisis team can be dispatched without there being any kind of law enforcement or fire EMS involvement in the first place.

And that's through the crisis line that people can call and report a situation.

And then the crisis line makes a determination about whether the mobile crisis team might be an appropriate intervention in that situation.

And that happens a minority of the events.

And I think that's mostly because the general public is unaware that the crisis line is something that they might think about calling when they see a situation they're concerned about.

Most people are just conditioned to dial those three digits that everybody knows.

And at least in our area, we have not yet made any kind of provision for the 911 system being able to dispatch behavioral health specialists directly.

And I think that is something we ought to start solving.

Well, I look forward to continuing to have those conversations with you, Dan.

And thank you so much for being here and sharing that.

You know, with that, I want to move on because we are well past when I said I would start taking questions.

And I'm sure Camila has a lot of them stored up.

So, you know, everyone who was on this panel and the previous panels, thank you so much.

for tuning in and if you want to stick around, if there's a question that comes up and you are willing to help me answer it, if it's about something pertaining to your area of expertise, you're welcome to stay.

Otherwise, I'm not going to ask you to stay if you don't want to.

So I'll let you get back to your evening and afternoon.

If you want to stick around, that's perfectly fine.

I greatly appreciate all of you coming here to share what you're doing and the work that we are doing as a city.

So thank you so much.

With that, I want to move to Camila on my staff who has been patiently aggregating a lot of your questions.

It's 4.56 with the indulgence of IT and comms.

I'd like to go to 510 and maybe see if I can get off a couple of these questions, just answering as an individual.

I know that we've been able to aggregate a lot of them by theme.

So I think that we would be able to do that.

And obviously, if we can't get to all of them, we can get to some in writing.

But with that, Camila, I'm going to turn it over to you, if you want to start asking questions, and I'll just provide some answers.

Hi, thank you, Council Member Lewis.

The first question that I have is why did the city council specifically pick 50% funding cuts to SPD?

And the second part to that question is why isn't SPD involved in this town hall today?

Thank you.

Those are really good questions.

First, the 50% number has come from the decrim Seattle coalition of folks that we as a council and honestly, a city government are working with indeed, a lot of the recommendations that the mayor has put forward and part of her broader cut plan have actually come from decrim Seattle and King County equity now.

You know, as I've said in the past, I think that 50% is a good goal when you really look in the entire perspective of what the department does currently.

And when you look at how, and I think JM is still on this call, but when you especially look at how, as was discussed earlier in this presentation by Sheree and JM, you know, some of it is the civilianization of existing services.

moving 911 to be an independent civilian body would maintain that service, but taking it out of SPD would in and of itself be a 10% cut.

And I'm not saying that to imply that, you know, we're going to get to, you know, a defund goal at any level merely by doing ledger changes, but just saying that some of it is the civilianization of existing functions and existing services and moving them.

And when you start looking at it in that context, it does become a more reasonable goal.

The, you know, the extension, or by extension, Part of the reason that I didn't invite SPD to this town hall, you know, I don't have an aversion to inviting SPD to future town halls or even necessarily this one.

I spent this morning doing a ride along with the crisis intervention team, which is another collaboration between DESC and the police department that responds to potentially more dangerous mental health calls that is an officer teamed up with a social worker The purpose of this town hall in terms of the presentations is I wanted to respond to what has been a common concern in the community, which is okay.

So if not police, then what?

And I think that we have a decent idea.

If I did have police presenting in a panel like this, it'd be like, okay, well, we're the police, we respond to crimes.

What I really wanted to show is that we have a lot of responses that the police are currently responding to that are public health or low acuity kinds of calls.

And I wanted to give the public an example and the people of District 7 an example of the types of first response systems out there that could take on those calls so that the police don't have to.

And that is the question that I was trying to answer at this town hall.

And, you know, certainly in the future, because we are going to be having conversations about significant public safety changes for the next several months.

It's not going to end right now in the summer.

I certainly intend to have presenters from SPD present as we go into the fall budget session and are making really big decisions about the 2021 budget, which are going to be really, really critical for reshaping how we do public safety.

So Camille, I can do another question.

Did we lose Camila?

Or maybe you're still muted, Camila.

I'm sorry, can you hear me now?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you were muted.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

Oh, no, no worries.

So the next question that I have is, is the vision to have a model that supports responders from groups like both HealthONE and STAR slash CAHOOTS?

Well, we're going to have a community visioning process with Decrim Seattle, with a lot of community and neighborhood organizations that's really going to shape what this is going to look like.

What I wanted to do in this town hall is just give the community an overview of kind of where we're starting from and the example of what some other cities are doing.

And that can be a jumping off point for what we're going to do in a community-driven and community-led conversation.

I'm not necessarily here to endorse any one of these responses that came up today, but more to just sort of make it apparent that there are some, there are alternatives.

There are things we can do to respond to these types of calls that aren't police, that are viable, that other places are doing, and that are showing success.

And there might be room for having, you know, HealthONE respond to certain calls and having something like STAR respond to other calls.

There might be ways to build on and expand the mobile crisis team to make it something that is kind of like a STAR or Kahoots.

And, you know, I think it's also going to be a question, no matter what we do, we need to be scaling up, as Sharon and Dan Malone, Sharon Lee and Dan Malone were saying, the housing and the exits on the other side, because a lot of these problems are related to chronic homelessness.

And we need to be making sure that as we go forward, we're not only providing first response, but we're also providing those exits on the other side and those resources on the other side.

So that was what I was trying to accomplish with this town hall is providing kind of a, you know, here's a bunch of our options.

Now we are gonna have a community process to determine, you know, do we do just one of them?

Do we do several of them?

And, you know, I won't be the only voice in that discussion.

And I hope to use my position to, uh, continue to use forums like this to, to present a variety of different ideas and, and, um, and inform the public on, on the universe of things that are out there.

Okay.

The next question is during your 2019 campaign, you advocated for more officers for SPD crime has not gone down.

So how would you support a 50% defunding of SPD now?

Thank you for that question.

Um, so, uh, When I was running for Seattle City Council last year, I did totally support an increase in police staffing.

I actually supported an increase in police staffing as recently as February of this year when we had a police staffing report in the Public Safety Committee.

The thing that really changed for me was when we got a presentation recently during our summer balancing session from SPD, and contrary to some narratives that have been out there in the world, The council has been actually working extensively with SPD in this information gathering stage.

And SPD has been really great at providing that data, providing that information and presenting it to the council.

We've been working extensively with Dr. Fisher, who is one of the head policy folks in the Seattle Police Department.

And the statistic that really stood out to me and what makes this town hall so relevant.

And I actually should have set it at the top of the town hall.

56% of all of the police calls, all the 911 calls police are responding to, 56%, a clear majority, are non-criminal calls.

And that doesn't mean that those are calls that are non-violent, or that doesn't mean that those are calls that are, you know, like for misdemeanors or something like that.

It means they're non-criminal.

It means they are for conduct that is not criminal.

Um, you know, there's always going to be a role in Seattle, um, for, for the police.

I am convinced and I believe that, that, you know, in a, in a, um, country where it is so easy to get a gun.

There are going to be exigent public safety situations where we need an armed first response.

But the reality is our police are spending a lot of their time responding to public health and quality of life issues that they should not be the first responder for.

And when I heard that, I mean, what it made really clear to me is that we certainly need more first response.

There is no way we don't need more first response, but that those new first responders should be the police.

The 911 call data doesn't bear that out for me.

And that's why I'm certainly open to right sizing our first response by engaging in the kind of systems and responses that we discussed in the town hall today.

Because the police should be, they should be spending their time responding to and working on crimes.

They shouldn't be spending their time necessarily responding to these types of issues that a low acuity first response like HealthONE or like the STAR program in Denver or CAHOOTS in Eugene.

or mobile crisis intervention team could take on.

And I think that that's really the conversation we need to be having is we need more first response, but the data doesn't necessarily bear out that that should be the police.

Thank you for that.

The next question deals with how do you work with people who do not want help or can't recognize that they need help, or they don't want any kind of like housing or assistance?

Yeah, I mean, and that's always going to be a really big challenge.

And I post that question all the time.

I know that Dan is still on here.

I don't want to put him on the spot, but I kind of do just in the sense that Dan is actually a service provider.

Whereas I am, I'm a policymaker, but I'm not, I'm not myself an expert in behavioral mental health.

So I think that I would hand that over to Dan to get an answer from him.

Well, thanks.

I mean, it's a common question, actually.

And I think the answer lies in that when it appears people are rejecting help, What they're really rejecting is what's being offered to them because they don't perceive it to be meeting their needs.

And we've discovered over and over again that people who are labeled as difficult or difficult to serve are actually very eager to improve their life situations.

And they will accept something when They assess it to be applicable to what their needs and wants are.

And housing is usually that thing for people on the street who are experiencing homelessness.

A lot of times people do not want to go into a program.

That's very often because they've been through programs, every conceivable kind of program before.

But having a safe, decent place to stay is almost universally desired by folks.

Now, sometimes they may not really believe what you're offering, that they think they're going to be a lot of strings attached and, you know, they're going to have to go into something where a young social worker is going to start telling them all the changes they need to make in their lives, and so they are reluctant.

When you can establish rapport with people and form some relationship and you can get past that kind of stuff and really get to the place where folks who were believed to be, you know, kind of beyond help or refusing to make changes are really eager to accept offers of housing and they do so much better when that happens.

Thanks, Dan.

The only other thing that I would share that's just anecdotal is as I've started doing more press talking about cahoots and kind of that model of like a low acuity community-based first response, you know, my office did get contacted.

I'm not going to say their name or even use gendered pronouns to refer to them because I do want to respect their privacy.

But they did tell me that they had received, you know, that they were homeless in Eugene.

And they had received first response over their lifetime on the West Coast, the East Coast, everywhere that had been, that had not categorically helped them get through in their life for their particular high barrier needs.

And that the Kahoots response was immediately and noticeably different to this person when they were in crisis in Eugene, and really helped to turn their life around.

And a lot of the things that the STAR people mentioned earlier about, being dressed more casually, being more approachable, you know, just really having a different rapport that worked for that person.

And I really think part of it is, And this is an argument in favor of having multiple types of first response available is, you know, different things are going to work for different people.

And I think some of it with the population that we routinely label as high barrier or having a lot of issues and refusing offers of help is just making sure that we are structuring first response systems that are more directly responsive and perceived as being more credible.

to that person.

And, you know, I mean, that story of mine is just anecdotal, but this was a person that took the time to, you know, to see this in the news, who was living in Seattle, who was housed now, and had their life been turned around from their contact with cahoots, and it hadn't up until then.

And, you know, that's just one person, but it's still a powerful story, and it still matters.

You know, there's no easy answers.

But Camila, how about we do one more question?

Yeah.

So I believe that J.M.

wanted to jump in and respond to one of the questions, but let's look after.

Oh, sorry.

J.M., I didn't know you were still on the call.

I'm so sorry.

Yeah.

So after this response, can we have the last question?

Yes, I think that makes sense.

Yeah, this is kind of.

Oh, go ahead.

I'm sorry.

Sorry.

Okay, I'll just go real quick.

I'm responding to the question of 50% why do crim Seattle propose that.

And so we have been learning that the SPD budget has grown by 43% in the last 10 years.

And since 2012, there's been $100 more spent per Seattleite on policing.

And so this doesn't correlate with an increase in crime rate, but it does correlate with the increase in houselessness and gentrification in the city.

And we're seeing that the police are the first responders for many of these situations, and that's too easy.

And it comes at great cost to BIPOC communities.

And when I think of Chardonnier Louse, a lot of us have been impacted by this police murder.

things would have been really different if it was not police who responded to her situation.

So that's why we're saying, you know, the 50% can go to community programs, can go to community responses, to housing, to support, rather than just be invested in the police as just this really easy, almost lazy response to social crisis in the city.

J.M., thank you so much.

And sorry, if I had seen that you were still here, I would have actually asked you to jump in on that question earlier.

So thank you for reaching out to Camila and flagging that.

I appreciate that.

So yeah, Camila, why don't we do one more question, and then I will...

I will commit to responding to the rest of the questions personally by email.

I know that we did get a lot in, but we can aggregate those and try to respond in another forum.

But what's the next question, Camila?

This is a question that came in from maybe three other people curious.

Who and what kind of response would be available for prostitution of both drug use and illegal encampments under this 50% defund?

That's a really good question.

I kind of wish Sheree was still here to talk a little bit about what the work that Greenlight Project has been doing on sex worker outreach.

and diversion.

You know, I guess that, I mean, my response to that would be going back to the conversation earlier with Sharon and Dan, you know, like, when we have on offer placements for tiny houses, placement for hotel rooms connected to vouchers, placements to transitional shelter, to permanent supportive housing, that is the surest fire strategy to get rid of unsanctioned encampments.

So I'm gonna say that first off.

It's also a surefire strategy to provide some safe place for someone to be if they're trying to get out of a cycle where they are engaged in sex work and trafficking.

So, you know, I might actually turned it over maybe to Sharon for a second on this one, just to kind of talk about the work that Lehigh has done with the NAV team in being a referral service for the NAV team and just how that, you know, a lot of the folks that get into tiny house villages came from unsanctioned encampments.

So Sharon, I don't know if you want to take that or not, just to answer briefly.

Well, yes.

Well, I think what the NAV team has found out is that the people who are living in dangerous locations or where there's what they consider hotspots, problems, that when they offer people shelter, people will accept a referral to a tiny house village.

but they're less inclined to want to move to a congregate shelter because they're already in their own tent or they're in their car and they want that privacy and they value that privacy.

So we did find out that the NAV team has told us that there's a great receptivity when there's an offer for a tiny house.

Now, what I will say is that historically, Reach, which is a nonprofit, was involved in referrals.

And we are supporting sort of like that we don't have to have the NAV team make referrals.

Because oftentimes when the NAV team is making referrals, it's sort of like also under duress.

You know, the place has been posted.

There's going to be a sweep.

The sweep has been announced.

People are frantic trying to figure out, you know, When the police are coming and then the nav team sort of comes with the police.

What we're finding out is that if we had community based outreach workers that can Go to the same places right and voluntarily.

not under, you know, coercion, but voluntarily say, hey, we've got a tiny house here, or we've got shelter there.

We'll show you a picture of the village.

You know, this village is a little different than that village.

This shelter is over, you know, in this part of the, you know, in the community, or it's far away.

Or do you need, you know, do you need gas money?

Do you need transportation home if they're, you know, out of state?

It's much more, our social workers and case managers and outreach workers are much better at engaging people to have them successfully leave a place that's dangerous.

And I just want to give one example.

There were a lot of homeless people who were camped out at CHOP.

who were camped out on Capitol Hill and Cal Anderson Park.

And they said that they thought that they were gonna be given a place to camp together, right?

But then they quickly heard from the mayor's office that no, the mayor's office was not gonna allow them to pack up, move together to a park, right?

Because of the ban on camping in a park.

So the place got posted.

Um, you know, and they were on the Seattle Central College campus.

So, um, on July 17th, um, Lehigh staff and volunteers went to, um, Broadway and Pine without the NAV team.

And we moved 20 people, 20 people that weekend into tiny houses and shelters, our lakefront shelter, which is a 24-hour shelter, right?

And we were successful doing that, and we didn't have to have the NAB team.

And then, of course, sure enough, on Tuesday morning, after we had moved everyone, Tuesday morning, the NAB team and police came to do their sweep.

And so basically, we got people out of harm's way with voluntarily asking them to, would you like to move here?

Would you like to, you know, we move someone to, you know, this village, that village, you know, and it worked out really well without the NAV team engagement.

And I will say another thing I would advocate is that people who have lived experience, people who were formerly homeless or currently homeless are actually very good at doing outreach as well.

So if we pair people who are currently, you know, with lived experience with a traditional outreach, you know, case, case manager, outreach worker, I think we have a winning combination.

So we sort of, you know, make sure that the police are not involved in moving people into housing, but that we have friendly, you know, peers and, community workers who are doing this, I think you'll see a great, great success with this approach.

Thanks, Sharon.

I think that's a good way to end it out here.

And I just want to make a couple, a couple brief closing remarks here to the town hall.

We didn't get to all the questions, but we did I did work to try to incorporate some of them into the panels earlier to inform those discussions.

And certainly, I would like to respond to them in writing the ones that we couldn't respond to here in the town hall.

But I do want to thank everybody for tuning in and attending.

certainly invite people to continue to make their views known on the issues before the council via email.

I would warn everybody, we have an inbox of over 20,000 emails because people have not been hesitant to write in and express their opinions, which is great and good for our democracy in the city.

So I encourage people to continue to do that.

We do still sort by subject matter and try to be as responsive as possible given those hurdles of being able to do quick one-on-one responses given that volume, but people are free to email me at andrew.lewis at seattle.gov to express their views on these issues today or anything else.

You know, I do just want to state that, you know, we are in the middle of trying to do something really unprecedented in this country.

We are not the only city that is talking about fundamentally rebuilding how we do public safety and really critically examining the historic power imbalances that have served to the detriment of our black and brown neighbors And how policing has historically been conducted in this country and in the city.

You know, we can take stock of a lot of the great progress that we've made.

And, you know, I'm, I'm one of the first to admit that the Seattle Police Department has made a lot of progress over the last decade, but that progress has not nearly gone far enough to rise to the type of system that we really need to come together to create.

And that path goes through the types of first response and community investments and BIPOC-led projects that we discussed today in this meeting.

My hope is that this conversation will help allay the fears and concerns of some folks out there.

who are worried that a potential decreases in the police would lead to no one responding in the event that there was a violent crime.

I think it's the commitment of myself and my colleagues to make sure that we do maintain functional first response, but that certain types of first response and a considerable number of types of first response require a different approach as evidenced by a lot of the ideas that we talked about today, and indeed looking at some of the stuff that we ourselves are doing that can be scaled.

So I look forward to continuing this conversation, really appreciate all the great panelists that came and joined us, including Chief Scoggins from the Fire Department, Roshan Bliss, and Carly Salon from the STAR Program, Sheree LaSalle and J.M.

Wong from Deep Crimson Seattle, and of course, Daniel Malone from the Downtown Emergency Service Center.

and Sharon Lee from Lehigh.

I want to also thank Catherine Sims for helping set this up and Camilla Brown for moderating the questions on my staff.

And of course, our IT team and our comms team at the City of Seattle for making this possible.

So thank you so much.

A link to this will be provided on my website.

So if you want to share this town hall with your friends or distribute to your networks, more than welcome to do so.

I greatly appreciate the opportunity to spend the afternoon with everybody here and I hope you have an excellent evening.

So thank you so much.