REALTIME FILE

Meeting ‑ CCSWW Tacoma‑Pierce County 
Coalition to End Homelessness

Friday, May 8, 2020

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>> Are you kids ready?  I can't hear you?
>> We're okay.  Good morning.
>> Good morning.
>> Aye, aye, captain.
>> I would love to be under the sea doing a little bit of snorkeling, filling the census with wow and awe, instead we are going to be filling our soul by doing the important work of the coalition and our usual work.  So I welcome you all to another fine Coalition to End Homelessness meeting.  
	We've got a fun interactive small group, let's make some recommendations on how to spend money on the most vulnerable kind of agenda today.  If you have a second, I would love it if you could post which of the small groups you would like to be in in the chat, and when we break out it will be smooth and awesome.  
	But before we get into any of that, we've got the pleasure of having the Reverend Shalom Agtarap to help us kind of get ourselves centered a little bit because I can't do that.  And I am going to go ahead and hand it off.  Shalom.
>> Thank you.  You said it pretty okay.  I am just glad any time anybody tries.  Good morning, everyone.  You know when they always go to NPR shows or any radio call‑in show and they are like, long time listener, first time caller, that's what I feel like I am to the coalition today.
	A long time listener, and fan of much of the work and the coordinated efforts that you all do.  But because I myself and my small crew is needing more connection and collaboration, we are all here on the call with you two days ago and we are here today.  I want to center our breath.  The first thing I do with my folks, both in person and now that we are on Zoom for Sunday gatherings, is to ask them to get in touch with their breath.  Any yoga teacher who is worth their weight will remind you it's all about the breath.  Without your breath being supported, you have nothing.  So I want you to get in touch with the belly, in a non‑violent way, let it all out.  And then the body does what the body will do, which is to take in air again.  So you don't need to labor for this.  Just let your body do the work.  It knows what to do.
	And after a few deep breaths, I want to you make some sound.  A good thing we are all muted.  And as you let out that breath, give it some sound.  We are going to need a lot of breath to get through the thickness of our work together.
	I want to share with you poetry from somebody that I hold dear.  His name is Steve Garnaas‑Holmes, and I want to offer this to you.  Whether you are tired this morning, you woke up tired, you went to sleep tired, or whether you are full of energy, but that's because you were able to take a break because you were very tired, receive these words.  Oh, ceaseless God, sometimes I am tired.  I get tired of serving when the need is so great.  I grow weary of loving the dying, healing the shattered, rejoicing with the hopeless.  I tire of caring for those who do not care.  And forgiving the unrepentant.  I am spent.  Crying for justice to unhearing ears, I am not a strong horse, but only a little [indiscernible].  God, I cannot carry the whole load.  And then these words come from the creator.  Beloved, you are smaller than that.  You are a tiny little butterfly in the blossoming tree.  I ask you to only do your work, in the room where you find yourself, for where in that labor, which is enough for one butterfly, the nectar of my delight will revive you, and the whole tree will rejoice.
	I offer that to us, just another reminder that the work for you is only the work for you, that strength will be supplied, that days of Sabbath and respite are there for all of us, not just for those who practice religion.  My hope is that by doing our small part we will do so in such a way that causes everyone around us, the whole ecosystem, the whole network that we are a part of, to rejoice.  Thank you.
>> Thanks so much, Shalom.  Much appreciated.  And honestly, I have been waiting for someone to say long time listener, first time caller, so that made my day.
>> [Laughs].
>> As we prepare to move into small groups to talk about the COVID‑19 funding, I thought it would be beneficial to have background on what that funding is and what it is to be used for.  So we have three speakers that are going to get us in the right mindset.  The first one is Derek Young, county councilmember, to give us info on the total package, how it's sliced off for services or however he wants to talk about it.  Councilmember Young.
>> Thank you all, and thank you, Shalom, for that.  That was ‑‑ this hasn't been a good morning to be honest with you on the economic news, and that was a nice way to recenter things, so I appreciate it.
	So I will be brief to be honest with you.  I have to get to another meeting real quickly, and I wish I could stay with you all.  The sentencing guidelines commission, our statewide body that represent counties, we are meeting to discuss a number of things that are related to COVID and trying not to make our problem worse with people that are experiencing homelessness.  I apologize for jumping off right after this.
	So Pierce County, as you probably heard, received $158 million worth of COVID funding, or CARES Act funding, in response to COVID.  We appropriated that on Tuesday after a lengthy debate.  Unfortunately, at least from my perspective, it didn't go quite as I had hoped.  The executive recommended we basically break it out into essentially five buckets, four of which are appropriations, the fifth being a contingency fund to hold back, basically to see how things go.  And about half the funding that's appropriated goes to the public health response, which is appropriate, and the other half to our human services response, economic development, and general government services.  So 67 million for both of those kind of larger responses.  
	What my frustration is is that we did not do it in a way that you would normally see a government appropriate money, and basically list out the objectives that we have and say we want to spend this much towards food security, this much towards housing, this much toward behavioral health services.  In fact, I offered an amendment to that effect, to actually do that with the recommendation, basically following the recommendation that the executive had proposed.  
	Unfortunately, the executive and the council majority locked up and decided to give him basically all of the authority to appropriate those funds.  So I will give you the amount here if I can share my screen.  The community response and resilience portion of this is basically the segment that I think you are most interested in.  You can see for housing stability and homelessness, they were planning on $11 million.
	The problem is we didn't actually appropriate it with that line item.  That was not passed by the council.  So that overall bucket, community response and resilience, has that amount of money in it.  So all of those line items there are basically up to the executive's discretion.  
	So effectively what that means is that the executive has the ability to spend money on community response and resilience up to that amount with no oversight from the council.  So I don't know if we can actually count on those funds being available for housing stability and homelessness.  That's what I had hoped, but we are not in that position right now.  
	So I guess the second thing I would let you know before I respond to any questions, is that the main part of this that I think is the most important is our public health response, because what's causing all this is the disease and our response to it.  If we don't get that correct, everything else falls down.  Unfortunately, that's the part that we are struggling with because the federal response has been a disaster.
	And we are trying to stand up a test and trace program that would try to keep people more safe.  I am worried about underinvestment in that, but again you can see here ‑‑ can I scroll up?  There we go.  The public health emergency response, we have 13 million for testing and 16 million for contact tracing.  They are very expensive activities, very labor intensive, but that's ‑‑ if we are going to reopen, quote, unquote, that's what we need to do to keep people safe, and smother this virus and not get a massive outbreak, and I am concerned that we may not know that we are going to spend that amount of money or those amounts of resources to get it done.  In fact the executive decided to exclude the Health Department from his recovery disaster, recovery work group, so I hope you all urge the executive to make sure that his public health response is appropriate, and that the housing response is appropriate.  And, Gerrit, I am happy to take some questions here if you would like, and ‑‑
>> We are just going to power on through this, Councilmember, so people have questions, I gave them your e‑mail.
>> All right.  Do that, please send me some questions, comments, advice, whatever you've got.
>> Awesome.  Thanks so much for making time to come.  Much appreciated.  We are now going to shift from countywide funding to John Barbee, who is going to give us a little bit of more detailed look at the way that Human Services in the county is thinking about that funding.  Mr. Barbee.
>> Good morning.  Thank you, Gerrit.  A couple things.  I know time is limited here, so I will try to be brief and quick and to the point, but yesterday I had the privilege of attending the State of Black Tacoma hosted by the Urban League of Tacoma, and T'wina Nobles, and a couple things that really stood out to me was this concept of gaps and gains, and one thing is the incredible community response and buy‑in that we have, it seems to be obviously a lot of people responding to this and it's very promising and very inspiring.  And second, and maybe more importantly, is that we need to continue to acknowledge the small wins that we do have.  We have done an amazing amount of work throughout the community, agencies have really stepped up and people have gone out of their way, and it's ‑‑ I think we need to continue to praise that and be thankful to that.  We have a long way to, but I also want us to take time to acknowledge that there are some folks every single day and folks on this call that put themselves in harm's way to have a better community, and it's great for me, I am relatively new to working in the Tacoma‑Pierce County area, and I just ‑‑ I am thankful and honored to be part of this community.
	With that said, we have a lot of work ahead of us, and as we break out into our small groups there is a couple things that we definitely want to keep at the forefront, and how we spend this money.  I do believe that the executive and Councilmember Richardson are committed to really hearing from stakeholders, and that's going to guide a lot of how we appropriate and how we spend these dollars.
	So in your small groups, a couple things to think about is, one, is looking at sustainability of programs, essentially these dollars are one‑time dollars, but what really are there programs or ways that we can spend these dollars that are going to make impact long‑term‑wise?  We are responding to the pandemic in an emergency way, but we have to do our due diligence and really at look at long‑term sustainability and programs.  If it is one‑time dollars, what is the tear‑down or transition process look like for when the funding runs out or for when the pandemic comes to a point where we are going to need to transition?
	I want to make sure that people keep those things in mind because the funding is not unlimited.  We know that we definitely still are going to probably need money when these dollars run out, but what meaningful impact we make in the short‑term.
	And then the other thing that we want to consider and from the county's perspective is that the ‑‑ the 11 million that the Councilmember Young referred to under the Community Response and Resilience Division has been earmarked towards housing stability.  We are hoping in the realm of 12 million and not 11 that has been earmarked, but thinking about how the cities and our towns parallel the services with the county.  And so one of the things that is really, really important is that when we talk about equitable distribution of services we are not creating magnets for people, so we don't want to pump all of our resources into one city and one location and that's actually drawing or maybe draining our purpose, but thinking about how ‑‑ if it's possible, there will be different needs, but how we can have parallel services for city and county and thinking about some of the areas of our county that oftentimes get lost in translation, whether that's out on the Key Peninsula or out in eastern, rural parts of the county.  I think it's really important that we are strategic in how we think about what those needs are.
	The county will rely a little bit on some of our communities of focus works which looks at some of the geographical equity to determine some of those needs as well.  So I ask you to keep that in mind as well.
	And then the last thing is what's missing.  What are we missing?  We have some big pots of money that we know we need.  We know there is a high need for rental assistance, potentially even mortgage assistance, but what else are we missing?  And what can we enhance?  Are there programs that currently ‑‑ one of the things I really want to get folks to start thinking about, and probably bigger than just this meeting, we are putting quite a few folks in hotels, and that's temporary, and we've got to start to think about long‑term.  Where are those folks going to go in 30 days from now when those hotels are no longer available?  And they are going to end up somewhere, so we need to start thinking about transitions in some of those types of things as well.  And that's what some of these dollars could be used for.
	Again, just throwing out some ideas to keep ‑‑ and some guiding principles to keep folks moving along in this conversation.  Gerrit, any questions from you?  I know you are not opening it up, but anything else you would like me to share?
>> No.  That was great.  Thanks so much, John.  I appreciate it.
>> You are welcome.
>> We are going to shift on to T'wina Nobles with the Tacoma Urban League.  As we look at spending this funding, in fact [mic cutting out] and thinking about things [mic cutting out] that those communities need to be forefront in our minds.  I was in a meeting and T'wina went on a really impressive riff on the small business loans and how unfortunate [mic cutting out].  She is going to rock this, so go ahead.
>> Thank you.  Can everyone hear me okay?
>> Yes.
>> Thank you for the nods.  I am T'wina Nobles, president and CEO of Tacoma Urban League, and I hope you were able to participate in our conversation about the State of Black Tacoma yesterday.  Because if you were, then you would have heard really good information, much of it reiterated, but I always know there are folks in our community who don't know impacts of a crisis, impacts of daily life, on communities of color, on our community members who are experiencing poverty, community members who are experiencing homelessness.  And when all of those worlds collide together, when you are a person of color who is poor and also experiencing homelessness, and have a family and out of work, that is a lot of challenges to try to navigate in the community, especially now.  
	So we definitely have been speaking up, asking folks to pay attention to the institutionalized racism that is being highlighted at this time.  It's not new.  Sorry.  That's my husband trying to FaceTime me.  He is in his office now, so.
	But it's not a new thing, but I want us to pay attention to institutionalized racism, pay attention to the barriers experienced by many of our community members, and as you are thinking about where to ‑‑ where funding should go, it is important that you do that work, yes, with the racial equity lens.  
	We have been very critical of the funding process for SBA loans and how funds have not been appropriated for communities of color.  I really do commend the City of Tacoma in their process of like let this be a lottery so give time for folks to apply.  The first come, first served model I think does our community a great disservice because what we found is those who are more prepared, better resourced, have more staff, are going to be able to apply for those funds.  
	And that wasn't just a black and white issue.  When I heard Seth Farber, who has been a significant community members of ours, and an ALF fellow, when he said during passover he spent a little time with his family, was trying to work on his PPE loan, and by the time he sat down to actually do it, his bank had closed the process.  When you are the one person in the organization who has to do the finances and the high level business, which oftentimes is going to fall on communities of color, a process that is first come, first served, is just not going to work.
	Whether it's PPP loans or rental assistance or food assistance, it is not good enough to say first come, first served.  It is very important to think about the needs of our community, the barriers to receiving those resources, and as John mentioned think about the exteriors and think about the margins and not just be the magnetic places and people who always get the information and always get the services.  
	And it's really important to ask.  I really appreciated that the county asked, called the Urban League to ask, what might be your capacity?  We don't typically do rental assistance.  Well, our Tacoma Urban League has not under my leadership.  It might have been a service in the past, but as we are building our portfolio, that has not been a service that we have provided.  But in response to COVID‑19 that is something that we are doing now.  
	We started with reentry of community members, so community members being released from jail or prison during COVID‑19.  We are hoping to help 12 community members with rental assistance and basic essentials.  That's not a service we provided before, but because we were asked by the Department of Commerce, could we build capacity, do we have the capacity to do that work, and because the county called and said, could you go beyond that and help with some rental assistance, if there is funding available, and the answer is, yes.  
	So also think about who is missing at the table.  Who is missing on the Zoom call?  What organizations we might need to ask?  Can you help us to do this work?  Because you are in tough with the community members who need it most.  So talk with those organizations and stakeholders and not just count them out because they haven't done those services before or assume they don't have the capacity.  	Now is the time for us to utilize these means of communication, again, utilize a racial equity lens, but talk to each other and advocate for community members who are experiencing, you know, all the possible barriers.  
	But institutionalized racism and a lot of the systems that are created, they are working, they are not broken.  As far as I am concerned, they are working to keep folks away from resources, to not receive the information.  It is our job to make sure that we are aware and that we are doing better.
	So I wanted to take a minute to encourage you and let you know that funding is great, but if funding is not getting to community members who need it most and if we are not using all of our knowledge to think about what might be stopping someone from hearing about this resource or accessing this resource, we might want to do something different.  You can call or e‑mail and ask me.  I am willing to be a partner from home like the rest of you, or engage other folks that I might know.  But I know you are all doing an incredible job.  You are super passionate about this topic.  
	This is great funding that will help with food and transportation and rental assistance, and will help with hygiene and resources for our communities members experiencing homelessness that will allow them to feel safe and respected and well resourced and taken care of by their community.  You are all the right folks to do this work, and if there is a way if I can help, please let me know and we will do our very best.  	Thank you so much, Gerrit, to allow me to have a few moments this morning.
>> Thank you, Miss Nobles.  Much appreciated.  We are going to hand it off to Theresa Power‑Drutis to give us a little bit of direction for our small groups, but right before I hand it off, I want to remind you if you put in the chat what group you want to be assigned to, you will end up in a group you want to be in.
>> So those are three great speakers to get us going on this, and we also have this wonderful asset of this many people together in one space more or less who are all well informed and engaged in dealing with homelessness.  So I want to make sure we don't waste the time, so I am going to make this brief.  You are only going to have about a half hour in your groups.  I want to first say that to people who are here for the first time or people who haven't heard this before, we are not a dues‑paying organization that has any kind of status in that way, so these recommendations are not going to be presented as a consensus of the members.  So you don't have to make sure everyone agrees with everything that goes into the recommendations.
	So these will be presented as a compilation of ideas that have been gathered from this group.  Reminder that it has to relate to COVID‑19.  These monies are going to be spent by December.  I love that there is already some conversation about how can we leverage what we spend now to help us in the future, though.
	Also, let's not forget the things that have already started in our community in response to COVID‑19.  So some of those things are very short‑term funded.  If we want those to keep going into December even, we have to have them on the table as well.  So if you know of something, like the Bethlehem Baptist 24/7 project or the hotel project that Catholic Community Services and some of the other shelters have run, if we want to see those things continue, make sure they make it onto your list.
	Here are some things about the meetings.  You have these group leaders.  You can help them by doing a number of things.  First, make sure that you present your idea as concisely as you can so that there is time for everyone else to present their ideas.  You don't need to argue the ideas when they first get presented.  Try to focus on getting the ideas all down on paper and making sure that everyone's voice is heard, at least once.  If you don't have a specific idea you want to put on your paper, just pass.  You can come back and present an idea later, but keep the conversation rolling and focused.
	Anyway, that's kind of it.  So Gerrit is going to drop you into these rooms, and please do come back ‑‑ what time is it, Gerrit, that people are going to come back?  They have 30 minutes?
>> 9:55.
>> 9:55.  So come on back and so that we can all hear the ideas.  We may hear these common threads, and that will be important going forward.  So thank you all for your work.
>> All right.  Thanks so much.  It's been fun to see what everybody is interested in.  That would mostly be new shelters, safe parking and hygiene.  So I shifted what we are going to be doing.  We are going to have five groups, and one of the groups is going to be behavioral health and that's going to be led by James.  We have a number of folks in there already.  The support for [indiscernible] was completely unpopular, so we are going to get rid of that group.  We are going to have three groups working on new shelters, safe parking and hygiene, and we are going to have one group working on racial equity and homeless prevention.  Mike Yoder, if you are still here, are you here, Mike?  I need another leader for one of the groups.  Would you mind helping facilitate that for us, Mike?
>> Sorry, I was muted.
>> That's all right.
>> I was in the chat window.  Will do.
>> Awesome.  I appreciate that, Mike.  So I am just going to go ahead and get these meetings going and assign the folks who haven't asked anything to random locations based on what I think you might like.  Hopefully you will be given an invitation to join one of the rooms here in a sec.
>> Already discussed the substance use recovery?
>> That's going to be in the small group on substance use.
>> All right.  Can you put me in that group? 
>> Sure.
>> Thank you.
>> And if you end up in a group that you don't want to be in, just message me and I will get you taken care of.
[Breakout room sessions]
>> Welcome back, everybody.  I hope that was useful and exactly the right amount of time, neither too much nor too little.  And that you were able to really hammer out some great ideas, and I am going to spend a few minutes hearing out from each group, and we will start out with Rosemary, and the first of the shelter, hygiene, parking, whatever, brainstorming.  So Rosemary, you want to tell us what you guys focused in on after you unmute yourself?
>> All right.  There I am.  Sorry.  So we had eight participants, and we had a wide ranging discussion, but there was some clarity about things we will do and one thing to say initially is that Jan, who is in our group, offered to collect names of people who might be interested in having another conversation to move this more along.  So she's ‑‑ she asked people to put their names in the chat.
	Safe parking was a thing we talked a great deal about.  Several things are important to have a coordinating group that would manage such a thing to have it be multiple sites that throughout the county that was not Tacoma focused in order to have more potential, it has to be a county‑focused solution, to have navigators participating in those sites to assist people as they transition from that to something more permanent.  Potential for buying properties that might then be able to be leveraged in other ways that could also support the safe parking right now.  The importance of having hygiene spots there and also distributed was strongly recommended, Valeri says there is no place in Tacoma other than the Youth Shelter that's offering showers, so there is just nothing right now.  And that ‑‑ let's see.  What else?  And that we need new shelters because every shelter is maxed out.  So I think that's ‑‑ I will stop with that and I can say more if there is something I have forgotten, and then we have time later.
>> Great.  We are going to collect some written reports from each of the small groups.
>> Yes.
>> This is really just to kind of let us know what we missed out by not being in the other small groups, and we will bring the more detailed list together.  Allison, who allowed herself to be switched to the new shelter group.  What did your crew talk about?
>> We had some great ideas.  Safe parking, talked about needing resources for churches, organizations, who are willing to do safe parking, like training, some Safe Lot training that was mentioned, and I will share that with you, Gerrit.  Bathrooms, a shower unit, like a rollout shower unit.  It needs to be long‑term, that it's not always a transition for people to just park for a little while, but it might be long‑term.  And possibly for a nightly fee that's affordable.  For hygiene, talked about needing to be able to give supplies out to those living in encampments or unsheltered, like masks, gloves, Clorox wipes, as well as them having access to showers and laundry.  And then for new shelters talked about having sanctioned encampments, using public lands for this purpose, using possibly a land trust, land banks.  A county‑owned parking lot.  I guess that's back in safe parking, but what are the public resources that are already available.  Talked about having a long‑term camping site available for a small fee.  And then a big hit was rehabbing hotels into permanent supportive housing and SROs.  And with all of this, buying highlight on the need to support Key Peninsula.
>> I can guess who was in that group.  Mr. Yoder.
>> Actually, we had nine people in our group.  It was a good group that was very energetic about more safe parking, more hygiene and more temporary shelter.  I have a feeling that was a recurring theme.  Like I am hearing already, there is this groping interest in safe parking.  I think it's a resource we have got to figure out in our community, and I think it's one of the things we would all agree we can't waste this opportunity.  This time these extra resources, to figure out once and for all what that could be.
	People have suggested for the sake of making it a little more sustainable, yes, we could look at maybe some churches and nonprofits to host those sites, but that may not be as sustainable as if we just found city‑owned land or park land, or whatever, that could be used maybe a bit more long‑term for something like safe parking.  And that sustainability idea was recurrent through a lot of our conversations.
	The Cynthia Stewart was, as usual, is passionate that we can't waste this time just spending the money while we have it to do temporary things that will end when the money ends.  How do we invest now?  And I totally agree with this.  In system change.  How do we basically invest in identifying longer term solutions right now?  Because we've got to get towards affordable housing, and I don't know if any of this funding can be used, you know, to begin working on models for the future, things that we can invest in with this extra money, that we can use this extra funding to build systems that can operate even post the ending of the extra emergency funding.  And I love that idea.
	Calvin was talking about that we talk about all this infrastructure and facilities and vouchers and facilities, but we can't forget about case management.  One of the keys that he has seen and we see it as well in our work, one of the keys to success is this intensive case management.  And more than ever people are going to be navigating a crazy brave new world, you know, post‑pandemic, and to think that people just because they are given a place to stay or given a parking lot to park in are going to be able to figure out how to navigate into sustainable permanent housing without some kind of intensive case management is really ‑‑ it's foolish to think that that can happen.  And so we've got to advocate for the fact that we need these facilities, absolutely we need safe parking, we need to stand up more shelters, we need to put hygiene stations all over town, wherever people congregate, but we also need to make sure there is adequate funding invested in providing intensive case management so we don't just move people into these new facilities without the bandwidth to come alongside them and work on sustainable plans to get them permanently into housing.
	And so there is all kinds of ‑‑ so we stand up safe parking, but who is going to be meeting with every family and every household and every car and working on exit plans so they don't live in a parking lot forever.  I thought it was a really valuable thing to add to this conversation as we look at how resources will be used.  I think that covers the gist of our conversations.
>> I appreciate you jumping in like that.  James, health, family ‑‑ not family.  Behavioral health and physical health.
>> Yeah.  So we agree with all the housing stuff and agree it's most important for all health outcome to have housing, but I challenge them not to come up with housing, but how to access mental or physical health.  We talked about telehealth, both the challenges in expansion, so a couple ideas, getting cell phones is one thing, but folks living in a shelter or living in these campsites, they don't have ways to charge it, they don't have private places to get on line and technical support to know how to use Zoom, and I don't know how to use Zoom, and I have to e‑mail Gerrit to figure out how to use Zoom.  It would be nice to create technical support both for homeless and clients, and talking about intensive case management, so maybe a tablet or smartphone comes with their new house and someone sits with them and sets it up and allows them to learn how to access their behavioral health provider.
	The other suggestion could be mobile clinics, either legit clinics that go around, and I would volunteer Jan and the medical reserve corp, sorry, I didn't mean to do that, but to get access to medical care.  A lot of providers are limiting what they do on site, so if you have teams that are able to go out and keep their distancing or if they are able to go out and at least have mobile telehealth stations where there is a person on site who can give them a private space and set up a telehealth appointment, and is outside the vehicle with Wi‑Fi and charging and all that good stuff.  A lot of programs are discharging, residential programs, whether that be institutions, jails, hospitals, but the places they would normally go to aren't accepting or they have higher level of screen.  So one of the goals would be to work with agencies to offer ongoing support, whether that be nursing homes, mental health, residential programs, sober houses, other place that have chosen to elevate their screening right now, so that we can help them meet the screening needs to accept new clients, whether that be additional medical staffing or additional screening or some kind of criteria that would minimize exposure from transition, but also would allow folks to move into their new places.  I said mobile charging stations.  I had a suggestion that we could put like sound proof phone booths, look at things that don't have phone booths, but you can walk in and charge and get on would I fee.  I have seen them in the airports and some places.  I am guessing we could figure out how to make those things available.  Put them next to the sanitation stations and other stuff that we are trying to put out there, and people can get on their telehealth.  Hotels do offer space if we had hotel vouchers to put people in, which is great.  We could also use that to link people up with services as part of the hotel kind of process and intensive case management.  Any way that we can get access easier to both medications, IDs or screening or if we have funding that allows people to pay either co‑pays or if they don't have the right insurance.  Right now it's really hard to navigate.  Social Security, we have long phone call waiting or not open, whatever, so anything we can do to have a little bit of flexible funding to help clients, we are trying to access different services but don't have the right status with their ID or DSHS or whatever.  And then normal times a case manage manager would take them all to these appointments and fix it before, and now we are saying could we have some system to fix it so we don't have to have another barrier right now.
	Those are the gist of most of the things we shared.  Also create different opportunities for clinics to have six‑foot or whatever spacing, so those that are currently only doing telehealth but used to do in‑person, like my agency, if they need some additional support to create six‑foot spacing and sanitation stations before clients can in, can we open up more face‑to‑face but have a staging area that would meet whatever new health and safety guidelines agencies are requiring.  I will write this up and e‑mail it to Gerrit or Theresa or somebody.
>> That's a lot.  That's a tough nut to crack in a way.  The classic, how do you communicate with people that aren't able to maintain a telephone and aren't allowed to go anywhere where there are telephones.  Hmm.  Lucas.
>> Thank you, Gerrit.  We had I think about seven or eight folks that joined us.  And going to really quickly look at the highlights here.  One thing that came up quite frequently is kind of driven by the concept of nothing about us without us.  And so there was ‑‑ I think a consensus in wanting the people that are impacted, especially people of color, to have an ongoing say on whether we are landing rite, whether the services we are providing are actually meeting their needs as they see them.
	So aspects of measures to do that are important.  We talked about disaggregating data so we can look at issues around race and distribution and ask ourselves are we distributing these resources in a way that's racially equitable.
	I am going to add to that conversation by saying that nationwide a number of jurisdictions are beginning to look at the idea of clients as content experts, and that they are paid and compensated to offer their expertise rather than always being expected to volunteer it.  So those would the lived experience could actually benefit from these resources that are going to the social service industry, and could actually be compensated for their experience and for their insights.
	We heard from a number of folks around access to resources, including a minister that talked about their hands being tied.  They are a small operation and doing all of this out of pocket, and we have asked that these resources be more available.  And what I would add to that is the prospect that we might look at some of these funds on the short‑term being directed towards some kind of itinerate administrator that could help these small nonprofits, and especially the ones that meet the needs of families of color, being able to come and support them in putting together grant applications and doing some of the administrative work that is very difficult to do if you are a one or two‑person operation that is doing the funding yourself.
	Everyone indicated the need for sustainability and how do we sustain these services.  Disproportionality and again looking at how do we minimize or how do we reduce disproportionality of resources that are offered.  And then I added that most of us are impacted by our racial and social conditioning and by unconscious biases, and the research indicates whether we are white or a person of color that people of color are often deprioritized based on biases that we may not even be aware of.  So with the money that we have through the end of the year, one way to begin to impact that is to do widespread training around unconscious bias and race and social conditioning, so that our service providers are bringing more awareness into the way that they serve our communities, and especially our communities of color, and don't fall into the unconscious, sometimes choices of prioritizing or moving forward white families over those of brown families.  I will write all of these up for you, but those are some of the highlights.
>> Great.  Thanks, Lucas.  Those of you that don't know Lucas, he works for the City of Tacoma and Department of Equity.  
>> Office of equity and human rights.
>> And many other things, you may have bumped into him when he was running the Pantages Theater and all that.  He was poet laureate, probably five years ago.
>> Yeah.
>> A lot of spoken word.  And somebody worth knowing.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you so much for joining us and helping us out here.
>> Thank you.
>> All right.  I think that's going to wrap up our small group kind of brainstorming on that.  We are going to collect all of that and try to kind of synthesize it into a set of recommendations.  If that is something that strikes you as fun work, give me a holler and I would love for some other brains to be putting their energy into that.  Something that we turn around quite quickly.  I mean the goal would be next Monday‑ish.  And it's not like I am going to go backpacking this weekend as it turns out, so I have a little time on my hands.  And we are going to slide into ‑‑ again, thanks everybody.  Always happy to have feedback on the amount of time, the size of the groups, how we are spending our time, anything.  And with that, Maureen, are you ready to give us a bit of an advocacy, slash, IRS check update?
>> I am.  Thank you.  So IRS checkup is this, thanks to Theresa and the willingness of the women at New Connections we have had at least one successful bank account opened.
>> Yay.
>> With Seattle Credit Union.
[Applause]
>> And so ‑‑ okay.  So lessons learned.  All right.  Number one, Seattle Credit Union, these are real credit union accounts.  These are not special accounts for homeless people.  These are real accounts, and one of those real Seattle Credit Union accounts is sort of like a second chance account, and it really ‑‑ this particular person who was successful in setting up the account did not believe that she would be eligible for a regular bank account.  She had had poor experiences in the past.  Seattle Credit Union will take you if you are in the check system of, that sort of thing.  They will not take you if you have fraud.  The federal law precludes that.  So as you are thinking about long‑term sustainability, this is a resource for people who are un‑banked.
	I did based on the e‑mails that I had exchanged and Theresa had edge changed with our contacts at the Seattle Credit Union, I did a ‑‑ sort of a how‑to list and FAQs for folks so that we can make these available to all of the shelters, and all of the homeless programs, and we are waiting for the Seattle Credit Union managers to clear what I had drafted.
	Once we have that I will send it out to everybody.  Theresa, I asked Theresa if she would be willing to do a Zoom training or a YouTube kind of training for people from the different shelters and programs to try and identify ‑‑ my hope is that each of you who operates a shelter is willing to learn enough how to help your guests or clients walk through this process that you can do it with minimal hassle to your client, your guest, to yourself, and to Seattle Credit Union.
	And now this is only going to give them a bank account for direct deposit.  It's not going ‑‑ in terms of the IRS, the economic impact payment, they still have to go to IRS.gov, have to use the non‑filer portal, but it gives them the option of using the direct deposit and getting that money into their account more quickly.
	They've got to have ID.  They've got to have ID that has expired no earlier than January of 2020.  Now I know that CCS scans in IDs.  I don't ‑‑ when they come into the coordinated entry system, I don't know about anybody else, I haven't asked, but if you've got guests or you've got clients that have not yet received their economic impact payment, get on the ID part because even if they choose not to use the bank account option, the Seattle Credit Union option, they are going to need to cash that check.  And my guess is they are going to need ID to cash that check.
	We are still waiting on Harborstone Credit Union to see if they will offer a non‑member check‑cashing option that people could elect to convert to a debit card of some sort.  They are just ‑‑ that's just more traditional credit unions taking longer to get through their system.
	So that's where we are with the economic impact payment, and I think frankly it's all pretty amazing.  Theresa is going to reach out to a calm of other small groups, small shelter programs, and see if they would like to do this while we are still waiting.  Nothing precludes you from going ahead, but it might be easier if you just wait until we've got the FAQs and the instructions actually available to give out.
	So, again, the other thing is I am picking up on James' report from the behavioral health committee.  If they are going to use the Seattle Credit Union option to set up an account, they've got to have an online capability, and they really need a phone because the Seattle Credit Union is going to do business with them, you know, automatically with their cell phone number.  So things to think about.  And IRS.gov is online, folks, whether it's a paper check or a direct deposit.  So that's another thing to think about taking this forward.  And, you know what, you are the ones who know how many people are eligible.  They have a Social Security number, they do not owe past child support, they are not married to someone who does not have a Social Security number, and they are not claimed by anybody else as a dependent on the tax return, that person's tax returns.  You've got a sense of who those people are, and so, you know, think about if you want to really make this a big deal, that's something that's fundable it seems to me, or ‑‑ you know, so maybe there is a mobile sort of VIP program out there or something.
	Anyway, so that's it.  At the federal level I am just passing ‑‑
>> Maureen, Maureen, can I jump in?  Theresa had a question.
>> Oh, okay.
>> Actually I wanted to say, Maureen did all the legwork to make this thing happen.  She is just amazing.  There is an option within that, when people are signing up for the bank account, they can choose overdraft protection so there is no way they can spend ‑‑ there is no way they can use their card for money they don't have, and I just would highly recommend for anybody who has a history of some difficulty with banking that they choose that option.  If you don't choose it, a person could still get into trouble.
>> And this is part of what's ‑‑ thanks, Theresa.  This is part of what's in these FAQs and the ‑‑ you know, the sort of instructions for making this option, these direct deposit accounts, work as easily, as painlessly as possible.  And if you think about the long‑term of it, you know, once we open up access to credit, access to banking services for people who are really on the margins, then we help them move out of those subprime, high‑interest, high‑fee programs that they are often caught in.  So I think it's like pretty exciting.
	So all right.  So back to at the federal level, I am just passing on the National Low Income Housing Coalition.  He e‑mails to all of you.  There is some just amazing work being done across the country, and there are links to this work.  If you follow the federal level, you probably know that there is a COVID four bill moving forward.  How much it's going to have, I don't know.  Denny Heck has a bill for a hundred billion dollars for rental assistance nationally.  Pramila Jayapal has a right to housing bill, a paycheck protection bill.  How much of this gets folded into one giant bill in the house, I don't know.  There is some ‑‑ no, there is not bipartisan support at this point, but there is senate and house support, like for Denny Heck's bill.  So if you are in a position to advocate at the federal level, then all you have to do is follow the clicks in the e‑mails that I am forwarding.  And think about how we can use this money.
	Remember, it's not how we are going to fund it.  We fund wars off budget.  That's not the issue.  Federal government can fund this.  The issue is are we willing to do it for the most vulnerable people among us.  Economists now are saying we are in a 10‑year period before we have a real recovery because we've got a consumer‑based economy, and the official unemployment numbers are coming in just not in our state, but nationally.  We are now approaching the numbers from the Great Depression, and so what's the counter to that, it's a Roosevelt program.
	So we have to move forward.  At the state level, I think one of the things ‑‑ I sent this out.  I know you are probably sick of seeing Maureen's updates, but I just feel like maybe you don't have time to do this, and I do.  So for those of you ‑‑ so the money that we have been talking about, the 158 million that went to the Pierce County, that is the CARES Act relief fund for state and local governments.  That money was limited.  The allocation was limited to local governments with populations of 500,000 or more.  So that meant in Washington State only King, Snohomish, Pierce and the City of Seattle actually got money directly.  
	The rest of the money went to the State of Washington.  What Inslee did was that for every other county in the state he gave them a threshold of $250,000, and he gave every city a threshold of $25,000 with the allocation based on population on top of that.  And you actually have that in one of yesterday's e‑mails from me.
	So every city, every city in Pierce County and how much money they got and the money they have can be used for all the things that Councilmember Young was talking about this morning.  There may be some of you working in some of these cities that you had thought didn't have any resources, you can do something specific for the folks that you are working with in that particular city.
	So I will continue to pass on the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance.  I know your time is stretched beyond belief, but these calls are recorded, and so if you are so inclined you can always pick up a call and listen.
	One last thing, everybody is thinking about shelters.  Daniel Malone who runs the ESC, the big shelter system in Seattle, was excellent on this week's alliance call, and what he is talking about is that we will not have congregate shelters in the future, that they were already talking a non‑congregate model, and COVID‑19 has exacerbated that push and he is encouraging people, and others across the country are saying the same thing, is that we have to have a better model.  
	The last thing I will say is that Daniel said that one of the staff or volunteers said, you know, I saw these two men, and I didn't recognize them because they looked so much better for having been in the hotel rooms as opposed to being on the floor at the ESC night after god‑awful night.  Well, the god‑awful part is mine.  Thanks for letting me do this for you.
>> For letting ‑‑ yeah, for letting you do it.  You are welcome, Maureen.
[Laughter]
>> So lovely way to phrase it.  Any questions for Maureen that you had that you wanted answered right now?  All right.  Maybe we can use some COVID‑19 money to pay for Maureen.
>> [Laughs].
>> Okay.  Let's jump into government updates.  Carrie, what's going on at the EOC and the Health Department?
>> So here at the Health Department we are working on general guidance on the four phases of Governor Inslee's opening businesses and modifying physical distancing.  So more to come on that.  And also I wanted the group to be aware that the healthcare authority has loaner laptops to issue to nonprofits to help connect clients with medical or behavioral health services.  So I will send that out later, the link, on how to request and apply for these laptops.
	And I think that's about it.  Thank you, Gerrit.
>> Sure.  Any questions for the Health Department?  Cool.  All right.  And I think Erica had to step away.  I don't know if there is anyone else from the city, from the city's Neighbor and Community Services Department.  Valeri, what do you have from the county?
>> Thanks, Valeri from the county.  And I just got permission to release this, so to address part of the hygiene situations, Sprinker in Parkland it going to be open starting next week for folks to take showers.  That has been a bit of a process.  We have actually worked very hard with the Y over the last ‑‑ thank you, Jan.  So getting folks back from furlough and so forth, it's been a process.  It will be opening next week for folks who want to take showers, and we are going to coordinate with outreach teams to offer those services, so as soon as I get the hours, dates, all of that stuff, we will send it out.  Also know that we are in communication with several other locations throughout the county, including three, maybe four different YMCAs.  They are engaged, they want to open.  As I said, we have to make sure there is no light and they don't have a cost at the end of this.  Our goal is to never hurt an entity such as the YMCA.  Anybody else?  Can we have a laundry truck, absolutely, Maureen, we will figure out a way to implement it.  The thing that we have to have folks remember is the county can only do so much.  If an agency isn't stepping up to provide those services.  If you know there needs to be a shower location or laundry services in Roy, make that proposal to us and to Roy.  We need to have that conversation so we can look at that funding.
	About towels and donations, I will find out, Jan.  Good question.  So I will forward an e‑mail here at the end as soon as I get more answers.  We are also trying to work really hard with the Y to get them open, so Carrie from the Health Department and I, I feel like we have spent tons of time together in the last few weeks, from Sherry with Valeo as well as the Y.  93% of the YMCA staff have been if you are loading, so that's slim communication.  We did allocate that first round the 1.6 million, so it is out in the community and we are starting to work on the ESG funding as well as the new dollars that have come in from the stimulus funds, that you are going to make amazing proposals and I am sure I will dream about them the next coming weeks as we look for funding.  I am looking forward to that.  So excited to hear what I have to say, and if you have any questions for me everyone knows how to reach me I am sure.
>> Thank you, Valeri.  It's a bit of a horse before the cart, a chicken and egg thing where it's hard to run a program in Roy with showers if there is not an agency that runs it.  It's also hard for an agency to realize we need showers in Roy without the request to put that out.  So I feel like there is kind of two parts to it, which is if the county learns about need and can articulate need that they may be willing to fund, you know, and I think the coalition's part of kind of putting that together, like what would we like to see, and then let's badger the providers in the community to get them to do just a little bit more to make those things happen.  So it's all of us doing more, and some collaborative way.
>> Yes.  And one thing to answer your question about the towels is we did get that big donation from Ikea, and I believe we had planned on extra towels to help with this exact service.  That is my first assumption, that we utilize that Ikea donation first, but I will take everything from the chat box that I am seeing pop up and then we will ‑‑ I will go back and get you more information and I will do an e‑mail to the full LISTSERV.
>> Great, thanks so much, Valeri.  Thinking about the furlough thing cracks me up, too.  The government will pay somebody through unemployment, not to work, and then when we could really use them manning the showers working there, like it's somehow harder to do, which, again, I know how it works and the way it works, but, yeah, so our government is paying people not to work that could be monitoring the showers, letting people that are homeless get some hygiene by paying them to work.
>> Yeah.
>> We are going to slide into our shelter update, but before we do that, Rob Huff asked me to do a couple updates last week and I totally screwed it up.  Do you have anything else, Rob?  I realized I didn't do so well.
>> No, that's fine.  So real briefly, I just wanted to make sure that everybody was aware that we do have ‑‑ we are up and running in our detox in particular, and at the Center for Outpatient Counseling, and if folks do have clients that they especially want to refer to inpatient medically assisted detox, that is available at MDC.  I will put the phone number in the chat box after this so that everybody has it.  But I just wanted to make sure that people were aware that although we did briefly have a ‑‑ we decreased the census in our detox because of social distancing, we are back up to capacity now.  So just want to make sure that everybody is aware of that resource that's out there.  The other thing I would mention is I know the City of Tacoma's rental assistance program that was being administered, it closed on the 6th.  MDC's energy assistance program has been authorized to do a smaller amount of money for rental assistance for residents in the City of Tacoma as well, and that will start on Monday.
	 So I will put that phone number for our energy assistance program there as well, but you can always have people refer to our website if they have access, MDC‑hope.org.  So that's it.
>> Anything going on at Bethlehem Baptist shelter that's new?
>> No.  Other than we continue to be at capacity, and open 24 hours a day during the stay at home orders, so, you know, we are continuing to operate and try to be as safe and ‑‑ we did also decrease the census there to 34 people, but have been ‑‑ had the same consistent group of folks there for quite some time now.
>> Cool.  Melissa Moss, what's going on at Nativity House and the Stability Site?
>> So we are still doing meals outside for Nativity House, so our Day Center is still not accessible to our outside community due to social distancing [mic cutting out].  We still have a hotel staffed up doing case management and providing services there.  Our mental health team is working on our virtual appointments and kind of trying to serve all of our sites, including the hotel site.  Stability Site has been quiet.  It's just running as normal, so nothing new, and that's actually good.  So I think we are all finally settling in and just kind of going with this as our new normal.
>> Thank you, Melissa.  I think Allison with the Rescue Mission had to leave, and I don't see anybody else, anyone on the Rescue Mission.  My name recognition is pretty good, but sometimes you guys are logged in as iPad four.  I don't know who iPad four is.  James, up in updates with the Youth Shelter, Young Adult Shelter?
>> Yeah.  Nothing that's different.  If you haven't been on the call for awhile, we are operating 24/7 out of Beacon, where the big changes similar to Nativity House, we have stopped our drop‑in services, which the drop‑in program allowed us to take minors, and our overnight shelter was only young adults, so we are not taking minors right now, so we are doing young adults 24/7.  Our normal capacity is 40.  Our winter and cold weather is 50, and we have been at 50 the whole time.  And we are keeping that capacity staffed up at least through May, and we are planning through June and we will kind of play it from there.  We never turn anyone away, so if anybody has a young adult experiencing homelessness who would like to stay, they can walk to the Beacon Center where you can call me or send an e‑mail to the coalition and I can hook you up.  We have never turned away anyone for capacity.  We try to keep it social distanced, and we have two different rooms that we use, a gymnasium and a cafeteria.  We could probably get to 60 if we had to, but we would have to have more staff.  Anyway, that's a problem I will deal with when we come to it.  If you have someone who needs a safe shelter that would hit our criteria and age range, send them our way.
>> Cool.  I don't see Greg with the Serra House, but they continue to have some capacity for minors.  The only weird wrinkle there is that they can't be involved with the foster care system.  I don't see Allen or Delmar, so I will give the update on the Family Day Center, which continues to operate.  We are looking at expanding hours so that we can meet more need and be a little more convenient.  Hopefully that will happen, I don't know exactly what the timeline is, but still open Monday through Friday, 9:00 to 5:00, Wednesdays a little bit later for showers and hygiene and access to coordinated entry and all of that good stuff.
	I thought someone from the Recovery Cafe, do you guys have any update on what's going on at the TEMS Shelter?  He is totally not expecting that.  Either he is not on the line or, no, I am not going to do an update.  And I kind of think ‑‑ any other shelters.  I don't think we have anyone from Helping Hand House or Altheimer.  That's kind of the run of them.  So hearing nothing else, I am going to go ahead and say thanks, everybody.  Next week we are going to have coordinated care talk a little bit about what healthcare is like.  I see Al.  I will get you in a sec.  What healthcare access is like and a couple other things coming up.  We would benefit from an update on homeless prevention funding next Friday.  I am interested in where things are sitting.  Other ideas, go ahead and shoot them my way.  And Dr. Radcliffe.
>> Thank you.  Just a couple of ideas from the conversations we have already had, but regarding the safe parking, I am curious as to whether we might have better luck with some of the shopping center parking lots and things like that if we had some way to indemnify against them any lawsuit that might come up.  I don't know whether that's possible or anything, but I think that would reduce their fear of risk.
	And the second thing is I want to give you a progress report.  I said last week that I was applying to Starbucks to try to get the emergency responders in our system covered by their offer of free coffee and recognition, since you guys get almost no recognition from the outside world.  So I am going to take a minute and read you what I asked, and tell you where we stand.  I said I am requesting that Starbucks shops throughout Pierce County also recognize the work of homelessness first responders by offering them complementary coffee upon request.  Homelessness first responders include staff who conduct outreach into homeless camps, operate homeless shelters and day centers and other such settings, and offering referral case management services that bring them into contact with persons of high risk of infection, and that would include their immediate supervisors.  They take a lot of risk and are almost invisible to the greater public.  Starbucks would be giving important recognition and affirmation.
	I learned this morning that the request has been passed up to the Starbucks regional manager, and I assume we are caught in their bureaucracy, but I am optimistic that there will eventually be some positive response.
>> Thanks for working on that, Al, and for working on that amazing beard.  Looking good.  Melissa would like to do a quick update.
>> Hey, everybody.  Melissa Haney from Northwest Physicians Network.  I know that you had sent an e‑mail out to everyone about the care coordination platform called Unite Us, along with CHPW and Kaiser Permanente, and our funding across Pierce, King and Snohomish Counties, but sometimes the e‑mails I get, it's easy to miss one, so I want to take a quick minute to explain to everyone what it is and how it works.  So a lot of the different resource recipients are social determinants of health agencies that are nonprofit.  So from food to housing, pretty much all the different things that you guys are doing.  It's a way for your organization to be able to send and accept resources for patients, and to be able to coordinate with one another.  Which sometimes is really nice, especially when you have patients that have pretty complex needs.  For all of the nonprofits it's completely free of charge.  There isn't anything you have to pay for at all.
	We have been working on this for a little bit, but with the COVID epidemic and the great amount of people who really have increased needs at this time, we are set to launch it in midi‑June.  So that will be the first round of it being launched.  We are doing two different presentations that are exactly the same, but just at different dates.  One next week and one the following week.  So I believe that the e‑mail that I was sent out has the link to be able to do the invite, so that you can learn more about it.  And I also have people ask if it's just for NPN, Kaiser Permanente and CHPW patients, it's not.  It's for everybody.  It's our way of being able to thank the community for the things that you do and for helping our patients and we want to be able to help everyone coordinate on all of them.
	And so if you have any questions, my e‑mail is also attached to the e‑mail that you received, so please feel free and to e‑mail me with any questions.  That's about it, unless anybody has any questions.
>> Melissa, I have been in communication because you connected me up with the Unite Us folks, and they are going to do a presentation on that platform at a coming coalition meeting, so if you can't make it to one of those information sessions next week or the following, I will have them present here for us, which is cool.  So I know that we do have an existing referral tool in the community.  It will be interesting to see if this one might supplant that or be in addition to that.  Anyway, kind of fun to have a new way for us to work together.
>> Yeah.  That would be great.  Thanks so much.
>> Yeah.  I appreciate you talking.  And I think that kind of wraps us up.  I appreciate everybody's time, and not to be outdone by Al, I as well have been working on a pretty amazing beard.  I have just typically filter it out with some of the tools I have, but I love you all, and have an excellent weekend and carry on the good work.
>> Thank you.
[End of meeting]