REALTIME FILE

Meeting ‑ CCSWW Tacoma‑Pierce County 
Coalition to End Homelessness

Friday, July 10, 2020

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>> So, welcome, everybody, to this Friday's Coalition to End Homelessness meeting.  So glad you were able to take time to join us.  As usual we have live captioning.  I always forget to mention that, but if you look at the options down below closed caption is available to help what's going on in our meeting.  
	We are lucky enough today to have a number of folks talking about I think some interesting things.  We are going to get into that in a minute, but before that we are lucky enough to have Ryan Mello here to bring us up.  I always dreamed what it might be like to have a Ryan Mello interpreter app.  I am always appreciative of the way he can frame an idea and express it in so much nicer ways than I am capable of.  Without further ado, Mr. Mello.
>> Gerrit, good morning, everyone, and Gerrit, that's not true.  You are always incredibly eloquent and push us always to do better.  Good morning, everyone.
	I have known about the coalition and followed the coalition through many of the leaders that I see here today for many years, and I am personally very grateful for the very important work you've done all year‑round, and just your week in and week out commitment and never giving up.  Our city, our county, I and many others, are indebted to your commitment and your effectiveness.  So thank you for what you do.
	I just wanted to share a couple of things as I join you this morning.  Thank you for the introduction, and the invitation.  It is ‑‑ with the pandemic, a lot of our annual routines are not what they used to be, and we are a little bit out of synch with our community, at least speaking for myself.
	This time of year every year I am usually really focused on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community celebrating Pride Month.  June is Pride Month in most of the country, most of the world.  July is Pride Month in the City of Tacoma, so I celebrate in July.  I welcome everyone to celebrate.  There are still celebrations going on throughout the city, albeit virtually, and you can go to the Rainbow Center's website to find different celebrations.  Many folks in the faith community are leading celebrations, which I am very grateful for, the arts and cultural community, so that's Rainbow Center, rainbowcntr.org.  
	And in Tacoma we are flying a flag that the community in Philadelphia created that added a black stripe and a brown stripe.  I don't have sharing capability, but I encourage you to Google Philadelphia pride flag.  New this year in Tacoma and many communities, we are adding a black and brown stripe to the traditional pride flag to really signal the intersectionality of the civil rights work with LGBT people, and how much even more difficult it is for our black and brown brothers and sisters who are also LGBT, so remembering and acknowledging that intersectionality.  I invite you to look that up and see that new Philadelphia pride flag, and adopt it if you are so inclined.
	I want to share two poems in the opening if I could.  One is by John O'Donohue, and I have gotten this recent compilation, and if anyone wants one I am happy to send it to you, but I just got this from a friend Monday evening, and it's lifted my spirit.  One of the poems in particular spoke to me in preparing for this morning, and it's by John O'Donohue, and it goes:  	Awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.  Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.  Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.  Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to follow its path.  Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.  May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.  May anxiety never linger about you.  May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.  Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.  Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.  May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.
	That particular poem and this compilation really spoke to me.  Perhaps it speaks to you.  I'm going to share one other poem that's really important to me.  This is on my home office desk now.  It was in my city council office, and I carry it with me.  This particular poem framed like this was given to me as a gift by now Speaker Laurie Jenkins.  Laurie has worked in the human service community and the civil rights community.  Many of you know her, love her and work with her.  When we were working on LGBT civil rights for a number of years, during the marriage initiative to protect the right for all people to marry, the night before election day we gathered our steering committee that's been working so hard for so long, and she gave all of us this framed poem by someone she really admires.  Her name is Jill Ruckelshaus.  Many of you might know Bill Ruckelshaus, very first EPA administrator.  Jill is Bill's partner.  
	Jill is a remarkable human.  She was one of the founders of the National Women's Political Caucus, presided over the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year, 1975.  She was the United States delegation to the United Nations World Caucus of the International Women's Year.  An incredibly amazing and accomplished women's and civil rights activist.  And she wrote this poem that I read often, especially when I am feeling a struggle, and feeling like I need to refocus, and refine my spirit and refine my inspiration.  I read it many, many times a year.
	Again, they are local.  Right now what one of the many things she is doing, she happens to be a board of director of Costco, but here is my favorite poem actually.  
	We are in for a very long haul.  I am asking for everything you have to give.  We will never give up.  You will lose your youth, your sleep, your patience, your sense of humor, and occasionally the understanding and support of people that you love very much.  In return, I have nothing to offer you but your pride in being part of the struggle.  And all your dreams you have ever had, for your daughters and sons, nieces and nephews and grandchildren, your future, and the certain knowledge, that at the end of your days you will be able to look back and say that once in your life you gave everything you had for justice.  
	That's Jill Ruckelshaus, and I read it often.  Thank you for letting me be here this morning and sincere appreciation for the amazing perseverance and commitment you all have for the most vulnerable in our community.  Thank you, Gerrit.
>> Thank you so much, Ryan, and we appreciate your years of service to the City of Tacoma.  He is obviously passionate about LGBT rights.  He is a go‑to guy when it comes to transportation issues.  We are missing you with you city, and excited that you are willing to continue service.  It seems like that should be enough for one lifetime, but as you all know, I suspect, he put his hat in the ring for the county council.  We appreciate your willingness to continue to serve.
	And we are going to move on to our agenda proper.  In the welcome I had a documentary being put out in Spokane, which is why probably every single person was white in those videos, things we notice, but I just really think it's important that we story‑tell, and that there is a group in Spokane putting together a full‑length document telling the stories about the programs and people in homelessness.  I think it's something that we as a community would benefit from.  We have had a number of efforts and it's a continuing need to have the real human stories right in consumable ways for people, so some stuff worth taking a look at for maybe ideas for things we can do here.
	We have next on the agenda is Erika Washington with the Child Care Resources, and it always surprises me how many things feed into homelessness, and the things that we need to pay attention to are so many.  Right.  All of the things that can cause a household onto edge to destabilize and not be able to afford housing, domestic violence, employment, transportation, and childcare is a huge one.  So without further ado, Ms. Washington, welcome.
>> Good morning.  Thank you.  So this morning I wanted to kind of talk a little bit about our new Pierce County financial assistance program.  We do already have a program in Pierce County where we are able to support families experiencing homelessness for things like childcare as well as things like diapers, wipes and bus tickets.  But today I want to talk about the Pierce County childcare assistance program where we have allocated $1.5 million of their federal CARES Act fund to assist families throughout Pierce County.  So families that meet the income guideline, families who have been impacted, their work has been impacted by COVID, families who are essential workers, but families that are unemployed or families that are students, we are able to support them with three months of childcare.  We launched the program about two weeks ago now and we already served a number of families.  We have already been able to get in those ‑‑ you know, the stories of families explaining how grateful they are for the support around childcare and how much it means to them.
	In order for ‑‑ once the family realizes they are eligible, what they would do is call into our call center and we would be able to support them with finding a childcare program if they don't already have one in mind, and then complete that application process with them.  Once that application process has been completed we would be able to then send over that next step e‑mail, kind of giving the families kind of like the basic guidelines, verification information they are able to send in, and someone on the team receives that information and we are able to reach out to that family and give the authorization that they need.
	We are really excited about this program.  It's something new for Pierce County families.  It's allowing us to support a wider range of families, and also families who are receiving the state childcare subsidy, so just a great program to kind of assist a lot of the underserved populations that we are not typically able to reach out to in regards to paying for childcare.
	So I have these two forms that we typically send out to families.  It's requesting to be our flyer, as well as some frequently asked questions.  Can families self‑certify any of their eligibility?  That is a great question, because we want to make this process for families signing up for this program as simple as possible, so when a family is unable to get any of the documentation to verify either their residency or their income, the family can sign a self‑declaration form and be able to get that information in to us.  This program ends at the end of the year, so our goal is to serve as many families in need as possible, and so we are trying to do our best to be able to work with that family in order for them to be able to be eligible for that subsidy.
	So I am going to pull up ‑‑ so this is our frequently asked questions that we typically send along to agencies when doing outreach, but as well as to families, to kind of just give the basic information.  It talks about what the program is, who is eligible, the income guidelines, and then how to apply.  It goes over the information of what ‑‑ the verification to send in as well as how to use the voucher.  And this is our flyer.  It just has the basic information.  Who would qualify for the program and income guidelines and how to contact us.  Families are able to call in or text.  Texting is a new feature for us, but it's to serve a wider range of families.  
	We are able to support families applying for this job care subsidy, as well as finding childcare in the area that meets the families' needs.  We notice a lot of our families are calling in looking for childcare with ‑‑ you know, like the afternoon hours, which is typically harder for families to find with families going back to work, so we are able to support families looking for those later hours.  We are able to support families looking for childcare with children with special needs, with families ‑‑ with programs who are accepting the childcare subsidy.  So we have a wide range of support in our call center, but we are really excited to be able to offer this for our families in Pierce County because this is definitely something new.
	So I would like to send this information out how guys in order to try to service as many families as we can with any networks that you may be connected with.  Is there any questions in regards to the Pierce County childcare financial assistance program or what we do here at Child Care Resources?
>> Erica, I wanted to clarify, those of you who know about the Child Care Resources, childcare subsidies for families experiencing homelessness, that that program is still running and still exists, but this program will offer support to a broader range of families because it doesn't have a worker activity requirement because it doesn't require for families to be homeless or in permanent housing after a period of homelessness.  So this is able to support families that with the homeless dollars that we have, you know, families often come to us when they feel like they may be homeless if they can't find a solution for their childcare needs or for their working care needs, and our homeless program is more constrained in terms of its funding, so we can't support those families if it's a possible homelessness in the future, and these dollars are something that can support a broader range of families regardless of their current housing situation, whether they are working or not, those sorts of things.
	So both programs are still up and running.  The program I always talk about is still there, but this is just an additional option for families that may not be eligible for the homeless dollars and maybe over he income for state subsidy or some other reason not eligible for state subsidy.  This is another option.  It doesn't remove any of the stuff that was there before.
>> Yes.  Thank you so much for that.  And then we have another question in the chat.  If folks need assistance, can we refer them your way?  So families are able to call in the call center or text our call center number, and once families call into the call center the process is pretty simple, about five to ten minutes when completing the application.  We are asking the families basic demographic questions, we will ask for their Lowe cation if they are looking for childcare, the days and times they would need childcare, and then we are able to complete that process and get that e‑mail over to the families.  If there is any trouble with families calling into the call center or texting the call center, we do have our intake forms, and we can send that via e‑mail as well.
>> There is a question in the chat, Erika, from Maureen, about evaluating continuing with funding after the end of the year.  Do you want to take that or do you want me to answer?
>> Go ahead.
[Laughter]
>> [Indiscernible].  So because this is currently funded by the CARES Act, the sort of mandate is everything is not just invoiced but spent before December 31st of 2020, as we talked about with the Pierce County folks when they were here.  The idea I think, and there has been a lot of energy, we have served several dozen families, with the encouraging feedback that we have about the program that we can use amplifying family voices and looking at the numbers we are able to serve to ask Pierce County to step up and continue this funding.  We have been really happy with how it's been administered so far.  But no fiscal commitments exist at this time.
>> But looking at the Low Income Housing Alliance or preparing their agenda, not just numbers, but what difference did it make?
>> Yeah.  We are always looking at advocacy efforts.  This program it was like a hurry up and wait kind of thing.  We had the commitment for the funding but we didn't actually start administering this program until about last week.  So right now we are looking at the effect and the demand since we just starred getting those calls, and there just was a push for advertising to families, but we are certainly collecting success stories in order to amplify family voices and collecting data on who we are serving and where.  One nice thing about this program it's serving not just City of Tacoma, but everywhere in Pierce County, and there is actually a consideration about the percentages that we can serve in Tacoma versus the balance of the county, and so we are working really hard to get money out to families that often are [away from mic], so part of what we want to look at is the broader reach of this program versus some of the other programs that folks have access to.
	And so, yeah, we are committed to trying to figure out the best advocacy avenues and also the best fundraising avenues to try to continue this program because we think pretty clearly, even though it's only been a week or so, that there is ‑‑ I mean we all know there is need, and that there has been a super rapid and super causative response already, even though it just started.  So I think I am accepting any and all suggestions and feel free to e‑mail me, Maureen, if you have ideas about advocacy, but we do have an advocacy manager and team at CCR that's working on making a plan for this being on the agenda with as many agencies as possible.
>> One last thing, and I think this is not just for the childcare, but for the other programs that we are funded out of the relief fund money, is that what do we learn?  How are these programs helping us identify gaps in our system?  And how can we fill those gaps?  And certainly on childcare, man, I would line up the employers because they are running the odd shifts that there is no childcare for, on and on, and, boy, I would start there.
>> I think it's a both/and, not an either/or.  We are always looking to amplify the voices of these small businesses that are disproportionately ran by women of color and immigrants, and so we do want to amplify the importance of the providers and the work that they are doing and making sure they are seen as a part of the need of the community and not a stand against need in the community.  Certainly employment [indiscernible] that they are asking to come in is a huge part as well, especially independently.  Sorry, Erica, were you want to go say anything?
>> No.  This is just background noise.
>> This is Joy.  I would also like to say that I hope that the childcare providers are able to withstand whatever structure school districts are going to come out with because there is all these different plans rolling around, and the question is is your community infrastructure going to be able to sustain that, and part of the infrastructure is childcare, not just the YMCA, but small businesses like in‑home childcare and small facility childcare centers.  So that's just another ‑‑ to me, that's what I was concerned about when we were talking about reopening school.  How are our childcare providers going to deal with multiple shifts, dropping off kids, one day on, one day off, whatever that's going to look like, so just something to think about.
>> Yeah.  The state of childcare is kind of worrisome in terms of the pandemic, so we have lost a lot of providers because the small businesses weren't in a financial position to close and survive it basically.  And the supports that are available for those businesses and the folks that run them are limited, kind of limited at this time, but also a lot of people are using childcare as a replacement for school since schools have been closed, and so the demand is really high, but one of the ways that we have dealt with the pandemic is asking the providers taking in fewer kiddos, and making the ratio of staff to children lower.  So it's a tough catch‑22.  Also Joy asked in the chat about the amount of money per month that is paid.  Generally what this program ‑‑ we are paying a lump sum of $1,500 a month per child for a three‑month commitment.  So the benefit of that in part is that that's often more than folks would be paying for their slot in childcare, so especially for school‑agers, that's usually for preschool and school‑agers, that's usually a sort of benefit to the provider of taking our program because we will still pay that lump sum despite it being more than their subsidy or private pay.
	And that varies a little bit only if, as Erika mentioned, we do pay Working Connections co‑pays for families as well if they are unable to meet those.  And so in that case we would just pay the co‑pay amount.  But generally speaking it's just a lump sum, so that's a bit of an encouragement for the provider to take subsidy kiddos and use those spots, and then gain a little bit more financial support from the CARES Act sort of as well.
>> I think Benita had a quick question.
>> Good morning, everyone.  My name is Benita Moore.  I am cofounder of Native Daily Network, and I am representing the indigenous population as much as I can.  And I would like to know if any of this homeless coalition is addressing the need for individuals as well as families.
>> So not quite the childcare topic, but, yes, certainly we spend a lot of time on both individuals and families.  So why don't you circle around offline to me sometime and we can maybe talk a little bit about what you do and kind of where the homeless coalition fits in.
	So it sounds like we are wrapping up with childcare.  Super appreciate you coming on, Erika, and kind of getting us rolling, and Hava for jumping in.  And we are going to shift over to Maureen Howard with an advocacy update.  Maureen.
>> Thanks.  So, good morning, everybody.  First of all, thanks for this opportunity.  It's really pretty amazing that every week I get to do this.
	So some of the things that I would normally report on we are going to see later on the agenda, certainly the City of Tacoma budget process that everybody needs to participate in, and all of your guests, all of your clients, everybody we can find who is potentially affected.
	Something I learned and I still don't pretend to understand, that there is a conversation on the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance's call from this Wednesday about hotspots and how I don't know how to find the ones the state has.  So if you've got technology gaps with guests or clients around the county, there are hotspots everywhere.  It takes somebody a lot more familiar with technology than I am to be easily able to find these and make them work.  So that's kind of on the followup list.
	Because I have nothing else to think about, and Kendra asked about where homeless working folks could purchase a vehicle, I went back to the Seattle Credit Union to see if there is any kind of a possibility there, so anybody who is interested in ‑‑ for right now I am calling it safe vehicles, that whole part of people's lives because we don't have transportation for everybody who needs it, we are not going to have it in the near future and they got to get where they need to go, so anyway appreciate thoughts on that, and I will let you know what happens.
	And one of the things I have learned being on different national calls, especially around the CARES Act relief funds, is how incredibly lucky we are with our Pierce County Human Services partners.  That I hear people report all sorts of things about how difficult it is to work with the recipient and a county, and all I can ever say is that I think that Human Services, Pierce County Human Services, which got a good chunk of that 157 million, is working as quickly, as fairly, as efficiently as possible to get that money out.  And they are rolling, they are clear, their staff are accessible, they are responsive, they are I think the only piece that we don't know yet and it's because the money is just starting to go is that we don't really know if the money met the definition of being spent.  It's that this money is different from every other money that we have had in the past.  So it's not the grant award that indicates the money is used.  It's when the grantees turn in that reimbursement request and that check gets cut by Pierce County and all this money has to get out by the end of December.
	So I think that's just really important to keep in mind.  The other thing is that Gerrit is going to talk about the State Department of commerce's eviction rental assistance program.  They want comments.  Please comment.  They don't have to be full sentences.  You don't have to know laws or anything like that.  All you have to be able to do is read those documents, know your population, and say this is what Pierce County needs to make this work better.
	And the last thing is that ‑‑ I am as guilty as anybody, about a lot of sort of negative conversations about how are we ever going to get this much money out this fast, especially when we don't have a system.  Like we don't have a countywide rental assistance system.  We don't have a history of that, and now we are looking at over 10 million coming from Commerce on the proposed distribution on the eviction prevention program, and another I think it's 1.2 going to the homeless, the Office of Homeless Youth in Pierce County, plus what the county has already allocated, plus what the city has allocated.  City of Lakewood has done some.  I am not sure about any others.  Here is what I was thinking about how we can change that narrative.
	If the funders could give the providers a really simple cheat sheet, not just tell us to look at a website, but just a really simple, yeah, cheat sheet, about six bullet points, about here is the money and here is the main link.  I think that we should ask our colleagues who have been awarded these grants what they need from us to extend their outreach.  And, you know, Associated Ministries, Goodwill, LASA, there is a whole list, so what do you all need from frontline providers, especially those who have clients who are currently housed?
	And I think the extent to which we can identify other channels that can be used, certainly that childcare presentation we just heard, I mean who already has access to people who have a likely need for this rental assistance money?
	So if we can ‑‑ those are just my early morning thoughts.  If we can create another way of looking at and thinking about and talking about this rental assistance money so that we extend the outreach, I've seen on a national level enough social media tool kits that are prepared by social media experts for social media experts.  I don't think any of these tool kits are prepared for people who sit in food bank lines.  We need to rethink how do we get the information to the people who need it when they need it in a way that they can use it.
	So, anyway, I will send things out from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.  There is going to be a big national advocacy push around that $100 billion for housing and the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance, and that's what I know.  Thank you.
>> You put a statistic out of the people that are paying rent with their credit cards?
>> That came from the census data, yeah.  Over 400,000 in the State of Washington reported that they were using credit cards or loans to pay their rent, and that's a huge issue going forward because the folks that we know are not ‑‑ you know, these are not the people who are getting the zero interest balance transfer requests.  These are people who are probably paying some pretty high interest on those loans, those credit card loans.  So, yeah.
	I asked Michele Thomas with the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance if the alliance was going to track that.  The Census Bureau is putting out a pulse report, a weekly basis.  I am not sure how much we will see in Washington State, assuming the moratorium eviction ends August 31st, and people are trying to get it extended, but assume that ends August 31st, and the $600 a week federal unemployment benefits, that's ending I think the week of July 25th, so I think we are going to see the first real sort of cliff, if you will.
	When those notices start going out in the beginning of August, but certainly September, and I think one of the things that we are going to want as a coalition, and I think more broadly, Human Services providers and the county, is sort of an eviction prevention, or eviction defense fund, prevention kind of cheat sheet, also, that if you get ‑‑ if it's a pay or vacate notice, this is what you tell your client, or your staff.  Providers are going to have staff who are affected by this because a lot of providers, for all kinds of reasons, are not paying a housing wage, and we know that.  So how do we get this information to folks who are working every day to try and keep people housed, or get people housed, just keep people safe?
>> Great.  Thanks, Maureen.  That Visa, really speaks to something Maureen is pushing really hard, is the money doesn't do any good if the people that need it don't know how to get access to it or that it's there.  And that's a real challenge, and as we put money out to do rental assistance, we need to be intentional to divert some of that money that could go to rent assistance to fund some outreach efforts so the people that really need it know exactly how to get it.  Right.  That it's there and that it's there for them and they can get it.  Those are just super challenging.  Hard enough to get the money out in an amazingly effective website and set of providers, and, you know, it's like we need people to come to it, too, especially those who need it.
>> One last thing, you are all about to be modestly famous.  I get to do a seminar following this meeting with something called the Urban Leaders Fellowship.  I think we should think about this.  So they are like early and mid‑career professionals who are interested in policy work, and advocacy, and they have a paid internship, seven‑week internship, and like 11 different cities across the country, where they spend half their time working on policy with an elected official, and then half the time working on that policy with a nonprofit.  And so I am using the coalition as one of the examples that I am including in this morning's seminar.  Or this afternoon's seminar I guess.  So anyway, you are going to be famous, more famous.
>> Thank you, Maureen.  And we are going to shuffle into the point‑in‑time count.  I think most of you at this point in time are well aware that I am no fan of the point‑in‑time count.  However, I am also a fan of the point‑in‑time count.  It's a love/hate relationship.  And like many of you I spent my late night and early morning hours doing the point‑in‑time count this January.  I have always enjoyed the chance to meet folks and learn a little bit about what's going on with them.  I counted a lot of cars this year, that's what I did, knocking on cars, and clearly disturbing some people who were attempting to have a quiet night in a Wal‑Mart parking lot.
	But we are going to get the results of that.  And, again, the changes that have been made in the past two or three years of the point‑in‑time count I believe have done a very good job of getting our numbers higher.  And while it drives me batty that we oftentimes see funding directed based on point in time counts, that's the reality of the world we live in.  Even though it's not the best way for us to determine homeless counts in Pierce County, it's one that's used nationwide and in our state.  
	I very much appreciate the energy put into this count every year, and I am going to hand it off to Jeff Rodgers for a presentation about what we learned in the point‑in‑time count in 2020.  Mr. Rodgers.
>> Good morning.  I am going to try to share my screen if possible.  I have so many things on here.  Let me make sure I got the ‑‑
>> I always worry I am going to share the wrong thing on my screen.  Not that it's really dicey, but.
>> I can't find what I am looking for.  Hang on one second.  Hang on one second.  Ah.  I am going to talk about the point in time count if I can get to the top of this.  Hang on.  Sorry.  I am not an expert with this work.  I don't do this type of presentation often.  Okay.
>> While he is looking at that, we can all tell Valeri how wonderful she is and how much fun she is to work with.
>> We love you, Valeri!
>> Thanks, everybody.  That's nice.  I do love the point‑in‑time count.  It is one of my favorite parts of my job.  I know I am a rarity on that, but I do love it.  I think it's a great opportunity to connect with the community that we normally wouldn't have a chance to.  Thanks, everybody.
>> Do you see my screen?
>> Yes.
>> You see the 2020 point in time update slide.  I truly appreciate Valeri as well.  I appreciate your love/hate relationship with the point‑in‑time count, Gerrit.  I have a hate/love relationship.  Hate is higher on the list, but we are required to do not just nationally, it is a requirement from HUD and State Department of Commerce and their homeless work that they do at the state level.  We provide this information to them, and they use it as best as they can with other information to determine funding allocation of resources.  They don't solely use the point‑in‑time count data, but they use it with other data.  I am Jeff Rodgers, I wanted to say thank you, Maureen, for your wonderful words.  I have a great team that I work with that is working really, really hard during this situation.  Several have been deployed to the Pierce County Emergency Operations Center in Tacoma and recently we have a staff who now is deployed to the Emergency Operations Center to do COVID work in Puyallup.  So we are doing additional work above and beyond what we usually do, but we are managing to survive, and Maureen says trying to get our money and contracts executed and the money out the door.
	But let's talk point‑in‑time count.  It's an annual count.  Most of you already know this, but this is just the standard presentation that we do with this work.  We count unsheltered persons, persons that are in encampments, in parks, in cars, places not meant for human habitation when we talk unsheltered.  We talk about people who are temporarily housed in emergency shelters and temporarily housed in transitional housing.  If you don't have a home where you routinely sleep at night, that is not your place of residency, we attempt to count you.
	The data for the unsheltered is counted going out onto the streets into an encampment and different places, going to food banks, different other DSHS offices.  We do a project homeless connect on the same day to try to get people to come in.  For any of the things that we do to count unsheltered people, a couple years ago we implemented a mobile app on people's phones to ask the questions.  It's live.  The data is live.  Once they hit the submit button for that data it is entered into our database and we are counting people as we speak.  It's really improved our process in the past for most of you that have been around for awhile, we used to carry a piece of paper and pen and a piece of paper per household.  It was a lot of information on that one piece of paper, and small boxes to put information in, and when it's raining and wet out it's kind of impossible to keep them dry, so we have really advanced how we collect data, how we count that data and report that data.  That's been a huge advantage.
.
>> Jeff, can I interrupt real quick?  Can you click into presentation mode?
>> You are right.  Okay.  Thank you.  Yes.  Sorry.
>> Beautiful.
>> Yes.  Our data that we count for persons that are sheltered in emergency shelters and transitional housing, that is our homeless management system.  It is a database where all the nonprofits who do homeless services in Pierce County put data into a database, so on that night we count the number of people who are in each shelter and each housing program to compile this shelter data collection.  On the night of the count, the 24‑hour period we work with in, this past year is we provided webinar volunteer training.  All of our volunteers must go through training to be a volunteer, and in the past we would do classroom settings for everyone, but when you have done the count three and four, five years in a row, you know what we are doing because you have the experience.  What we are allowing is in the past if you have participated in a point‑in‑time count, you are more than welcome to in the future, this past year as well as in the future years, just do the webinar.  It's shorter, quicker and a lot easier for people to do a webinar than to come into a site to be trained.  And since we have this pandemic, who knows how we will do our count in January of 2021.  I guess we will figure that out when we get there.
	We had some targeted outreach teams this year that were targeted for veterans and youth and young adults.  We have those typically every year looking for though targeted populations.  We also had some focus this past year in the Key Peninsula area that we have attempted in the past, but this past year we had a bigger focus in the Key Peninsula area as well as out in the Bonney Lake, out in really far‑reaching East Pierce County.  We conduct our count starting on that Thursday before the last Friday in January.
>> Hey, Jeff.
>> Yes.
>> Can you change the slide?
>> This is information that's not in the slide, Valeri.
>> Okay.  Great.
>> I am giving you context up front.  I feel it's important to share it.
>> Awesome.  Thank you.
>> Yeah.  The evening count where we are doing outreach into encampments, on the streets, and those areas, we start at 9:00 P.M., go until 3:00 A.M. in the morning.  We target those persons and hope outreach workers are trained in this work.  We have a few other volunteers that go along with each of the outreach workers.  Each team is led by an outreach worker.  Elected officials come at this time as well.  We go to libraries, health facilities, DSHS sites, food banks, a variety of locations, to do all that we do.
	I am adding a little bit more than the standard pitch to give full context of all of this.  So that's the meat of all of that.  So in 2020 we counted with the app.  We continued to encampments, outreach workers are telling people we are doing this point in time count, we will be back on this night and we will be asking questions so people hopefully are prepared and not surprised that we are coming into an encampment at 1:00 in the morning.
	We also conducted an observation count for unsheltered people.  This is something we started a couple years ago as well.  In the past if you didn't want to give us information, and we came to your encampment and you said leave me alone, we would leave you alone and walk away and wouldn't count you.  Now what we do is we count you.  We may not have the full details that we are going to ask everybody, but we still feel it's important to count people that are sleeping in a tent, that's not a normal place of human habitation on the night of our count, so we do an observation count.  We only do that portion of the count observations during the evening street outreach locations that we go to, so that's only conducted between 9:00 P.M. and 3:00 A.M. for that piece of the work.
	In 2020 our results were we counted 1897 homeless persons, 42% was chronically homeless, 7% is households with children, 8% were veterans, 46% were people of color.  However, people of color make up only 27% of the Pierce County population as a whole from the most recent ACS estimate of 2018, and that ACS is part of the census data that the federal government has.
	I am going to share with you the details of this data if you are really interested in digging into the percentages and the numbers.  We on our website have the full dataset in an Excel spreadsheet that's easily accessible and usable, and I will share that with you at the end if you want to dig into what these percentages and numbers mean.  We would encourage you to go to our website and take a peek.
	The main causes of homelessness in 2020 were family crisis, the lack of affordable housing for people to secure housing, and the third was domestic violence.  These are responses that the survey respondents provide the to us when we asked them the question of why they are homeless, what's the result and why are they there.  These are the three top things that people identified as the reasons for their homelessness.  If we look to the right, when it comes to disabilities, mental illness is the most commonly reported disability.  Right behind that is physical disability, chronic health condition, substance use, and developmental disability is at the bottom end with 9%.  These disabilities, one could have multiple.  They could have a physical disability and substance use.  But this isn't each individual themselves, but some people have multiple disabilities that they have to deal with on a daily basis.
	When we look at income, 43% reported some source of income.  57% did not report ‑‑ they reported they have no income at all, nothing at all as a source of incoming.  This map right here, if you look at this, this is a map of Tacoma‑Pierce County area.  You will see where people were counted.  You can see to the far left there were some people counted out in the Key Peninsula area.  The yellowness, the darker the color, the more people.  So you can see in downtown Tacoma the bulk of people counted, a lot of that is attributed to most shelter programs pretty much all shelter programs are in the downtown Tacoma area, so we are counting on this all people who were housed in shelters, all in transitional and in encampments and on the streets, but the farther out you get into the county where there is less programs, where people stay in those programs, you can see where people were counted.
	At the bottom, Spanaway, kind of hidden a little bit there, that line going upward is kind of Pacific Avenue, and a stretch of land off of Pacific Avenue going into Tacoma, we tend to find people.  And to the far right the big dot you see there right over the word Puyallup.  Puyallup does have a day shelter out there for homeless persons as well, but the bulk of the rest of it is mostly where we find people outside.
	Here is an interesting slide about the last zip code locations, where people have reported that where they are from.  If you notice here we have a 39.3% indicated that when they became homeless they were in the City of Tacoma.  Next on that list we have 10.2% that say they come from the Lakewood area.  Right behind that are is 9.4% ‑‑ I am looking at the wrong column.  No.  That's 9.4% that come from Parkland.  That column are people who basically are in our shelter programs.  When you look at the unsheltered, you still see the highest in the next column is 27% are coming from Tacoma, Lakewood is at 7.8%, and as you can see this data here, you can also see this last zip code if you are interested in the full dataset that I am going to show in a minute.
	Some of the outcomes, we believe as Gerrit said, it represents an accurate more snapshot of homelessness on one evening.  It is just one evening.  We don't get in touch with everyone.  We don't observe everyone who is homeless.  We attempt to get all of the locations.  Some locations we don't go to due to security of the people who are doing the point in time count unfortunately.  But we believe it's a better representation with the best that we can do.  
	The app as I mentioned has increased accuracy and uniformity of surveys, decreased paper use and it's increased ‑‑ it's reduced data by a ton.  Another benefit we think was a great outcome and success, we appreciate going out several nights before and sharing with people the point in time count is coming and we will hope they will participate.
	We do also during this count provide some hygiene kits, some water, some food, different things.  Sometimes we have blankets and socks is a big thing.  Hat, gloves, those kinds of things, because in the winter that we go out.  So that is this piece of the presentation.
	What I will try to share with you is ‑‑ it's not there.  It's here.  On our website, if you go to Pierce County website, and you go to the Human Services Department, and go to the homeless section, you will find a point in time section with the website.  We have this document, not the Excel version, but we can provide that to you, but it has a little brief description at the top and it goes into the persons counted, some historical data on the right over the last five years of counting, total sheltered, unsheltered.  
	There is some trends down below.  We have the data here based on the households, the race, ethnicity, age, gender, where they came from, where they were sleeping, variety of information here.  The disabilities by aggregate numbers.  It's really a great tool if you are writing grants.  So this is on our website.  It's available.  If you want the Excel format, we can provide that to you.  
	That's my quick presentation, Gerrit.
>> Thank you, Jeff.  Do we have any questions?
>> I am going to unshare my screen.  Is that okay?
>> Questions or comments maybe?
>> I noticed a couple of fairly significant differences from the previous year.  One being a significant decrease in the percentage of families with children.  I don't know how you are accomplishing that, but I am delighted to see that drop.  I am also seeing a very significant increase in the number of people living in their cars.  Our car, safe parking effort needs to key in on that statistic.  It will went from 14% last year to 31% this year.  I think those are two very important changes.  I don't know what it means.  Jeff, do you have any theories about why the differences?
>> What I would say about families with children is that a few years ago the Tacoma Housing Authority provided some funding to Pierce County to provide Rapid Rehousing for families with children.  Those dollars were solely targeted to families with children.  It's a resource we never had before for that population, so I believe that once the Housing Authority gave us that million dollars, that's made a significant difference in families with children.  But we have always historically had a problem counting families with children in the past.  They aren't as visible as single people.  We think they park in cars, they find places where we don't know they are at sometimes.  They are just more of a challenge to count.  Many people ‑‑ I am representing the county today, but many people have a difference of opinion about families doubled up and families tripled up.  To me if you are living with someone, and this is Jeff Rodgers speaking, and you are not on that lease, you are not just at risk of being in your car, but whoever is on that lease is at risk of being in their car because they are violating their lease by having additional people living there.  It's putting more people at risk when you ask me when families are doubled and tripled up.  Historically we don't count those persons who are doubled up.  We are just looking for people that are literally homeless in streets in their cars or in those programs.  So that's where families tend to be, or their children can stay with family and they find alternative places to park their cars as adults in the family.  I think the data in our HMIS is way more richer data than the one night point‑in‑time count.  It's annual data that really shows us the need of people that contact our system.  There are some who don't contact us, but people who contact us and they are in need of services, we count for them HMIS.  It truly shows a larger need than a point in time count shows for one snapshot.  Just remember it's one snapshot, something that's been required for the last 25 years.  They have never really updated anything around the work in this point in time count.  But we have advanced so far in data collection through our HMIS, we have better data elsewhere that can inform us on the needs of people and trends within our community.
>> Similar increase in the number of people living in their cars?
>> I don't know that off the top of my head.
>> That's a data element that we do not collect right now, so we lump everybody living in the rough, so if you are in an encampment or in your car or any of that, we put it in a place not meant for human habitation.  Which is unfortunate.  We have talked about adding a little more granularity to where people are living so we can better understand that need.  So this is a point in time win.  It gives us an information that we do not have in our main system, which is where exactly outside are you sleeping.  You know, what type of shelter are you creating for yourself basically.
	One example of the point in time, so veterans is a group that the Veterans Administration pays Catholic Community Services to obsess on a little bit, and so we keep pretty good tabs on where all the homeless veterans are, and at the point‑in‑time count there was 480 that we had been in regular contact with, like within the past six weeks, that we knew were living homeless.  And in the point‑in‑time count, it was identifying only 160, 140, something like that, and so that's a good like point that I have a lot of confidence, both in the HMIS number, and then can use that as a comparison to the point in time to get a sense of the number that are left uncounted.  Right.  Which historically I have this theory on the point‑in‑time count, that it came out of communities that had very low unsheltered homelessness and very high sheltered homelessness.  So a city like Washington, D.C., or Boston, or New York, those are all cities that are right‑to‑shelter, so the city and the government are obligated to provide shelter for people experiencing homelessness, so they have very low unsheltered homelessness.  They are getting most of the people experiencing homelessness, whereas San Diego or Tacoma are going to have less accurate counts because we have such a high unsheltered population.  I don't know, that's my theory, Jeff.
>> Yeah.  But also keep in mind that not everybody across the country does their count the same way.  King County alone does their count differently.  King County, our understanding, they hire a consultant, pay big money to have a consultant come in.  They will go into one part of the county to do a count and extrapolate out of those numbers.  They don't do a full‑blown outreach to all parts of the county to count people.  They use experts with statistics and data to extrapolate from one part of the county with several demographics.  If we have ten here, we have ten elsewhere.  So each jurisdiction across the country does their own thing.
	We have always just counted people that we come in contact with, that we literally come in contact with when it comes to the street count here in Pierce County.
>> As I say, this number gets used a lot as representing a true count of homelessness.  The City of Tacoma has that pass part of the metric.  When we were looking at the veterans task force to end veteran homelessness with the county, the number that the county council staff came up with came out of the point in time veteran count.  When the State Department of Commerce was deciding how to allocate the money across Washington State with the CARES Act, they used allocations based on the point‑in‑time count.  Even though this is a flawed statistic, it is often drown out and cited.  I think super valuable that all of us on this coalition and the community at large is taking such an active role in making this as accurate a count as is humanly possible.
>> Yeah, but I think that we need to also take the opportunity to educate all of these entities, and whoever is using this, and inform them about what kind data we have and try to gear people towards using other data to make decisions that they make.  They are used to this data because it's been around so long.  We do a one‑night count and it gives publicity in the media.  All the news channel want to talk about it.  But I think we need to educate councils and staff of different entities, that we have better information from HMIS about people needing assistance from our program.  It's an education opportunity I think.
>> Oh, and I say it every time, although oftentimes it has the same feeling as when I bang my head against the wall.
>> I understand, yes.  I understand.
[Talking simultaneously]
>> 30 years, Maureen, she has been doing this for a very long time.
>> More than 30 years.
>> A question I want to highlight from Megan was asking the significant increase in car campers, is the county and city open to changing their stances on funding safe parking lots?
>> Our response for the county, I am not the executive level leadership.  I can assure you the leadership is very aware of this conversation.  There are several people of this community that have sent e‑mails that I have seen that have come across wanting action on this issue.  Current stance from the county is that we don't support that type of a program at this time, but I would encourage you to keep advocating.  That's me speaking as a supervisor.  Those are decisions from higher than myself.
>> Theresa?
>> Usually I can push my space bar and that turns off the mute, but it didn't this time.  So two things.  One is I really hope you will ‑‑ anyone who is gathering this data will consider putting the car question in there.  I think if you asked people if they stayed in a car or a tent or other, I think the other are the ones who are going to not want to say where they are staying perhaps because ‑‑ I mean that could be a problem if they are staying in an abandoned building.  But I think if you ask people to say car or tent, that gives us something to work with when we are trying to have a rational response from government entities about providing a safe parking lot and providing safe camping.  This would give us some more data, and of course they love data.
	The other thing I wanted to ask about, my understanding this whole thing of the point‑in‑time count comes through HUD, is that the truth?  Yeah.  So I am hoping that there is some county somewhere taking some leadership in pushing back on that because everyone I read says the same thing that Gerrit just said, and so if everyone understands that it doesn't work and it isn't accurate, there are so many other ways we could use that time, and Valeri's energy especially, getting out into the outreach piece of this, rather than collecting data that people are saying is so very ‑‑ even what you said about Seattle‑King County doing it differently, it really is meaningless.  That's my two bits.  I hope someone at least has said to HUD, look, we are doing this because you insist that we do, but this is ridiculous.  If people aren't saying that every single year, then that's part of the job that's not being done.
>> I second what Theresa says, and I am curious, is it possible to include in HMIS whether the person is living in a car or not?
>> What I will say is we can add fields in HMIS, but there are certain things where we are required to report both to the state and to HUD, and there are a million people who want us to add something in HMIS which results in us asking a million questions, and so we look at adding additional things because of the time‑consuming that it play take for people to add additional things.  But I've got a note on that question.  We can create a subassessment.  We can't charge the current assessment question because it will break our system and we won't be able to report on our data to HUD, but we could create a subassessment on that question, were you in a car, encampment, were you in the park, whatever the drop‑down menu.  Keep in mind we get asked all the time to add this and add this and add this, and we need to ‑‑ we take ‑‑ yeah.  We really think hard before we start adding things because then we get to a million questions, and we are trying it take into consideration the population we are working with, and what really is beneficial for them in their traumatic situation that they are in, sitting across the table from someone asking them a million questions about their life.  Yeah, I got a note about it.
>> That's probably because people regard HMIS as a valid set of data, so they keep raising questions, which is a compliment to you guys.  But please consider your suggestion about a subquestion or something because this thing about people being displaced and having to live in cars is going to get worse and worse and worse over the next months.
>> Yes.  Jeff Rodgers wholeheartedly agrees with you.  I will give you an update on the decision that's made with that subassessment.
>> Question on the strategy, going back to the discussion about the fact that even though we recognize that this isn't necessarily a really accurate or proper count, it's still a very important number for a lot of policy decisions, and, Jeff, you outlined the fact that King County may use a very different strategy, not at all taking away from all of the work that goes into what you are doing and how well we do the counting process, but is it possible we would be more effective in getting a number that would support policy decisions better if we use something more of a statistical analysis and the consultant approach that could possibly get us a number that might are more impactful when we are making policy decisions and when the state is making policy decisions, et cetera?  Did I word that well enough?
>> Yes, you did.  We have had these conversations before.  I can assure you on the federal level, the homeless funding that comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, they don't use this data in their funding.  I have been told that the Veterans Administration does, but HUD does not.  But I have been told by more than one person that the VA does.
	I wasn't aware that the state uses this data in their funding decision.  I am going to check into that.  I took a note on that, Gerrit, because hour HMIS data is uploaded into a state database, so the state has HMIS data has data for the statewide homeless programs across the whole state.  I for years have encouraged people not too use [indiscernible].  There is a bunch of other resources that can be used.  Sure.  We can have that conversation again.  You have to remember King County is filthy rich.  Just from the CoC funding alone, King County last like $50 million.  Pierce County gets has over 3 million.  Our resources are very limited compared to our sister county to the north who gets a lot of attention with their crises that they have of homelessness.  So sometimes it's a challenge just because of the resources we have, and those consultants I understand get paid really good money to do that work up there.
	But it's a conversation that we can have.  We have some savvy people in our community who can extrapolate and do such things with data.  I am going out on a limb right now and say Gerrit Nyland is one of those amazing people.  There are other people in our community as well.  Maybe we can tap into some local expertise we have that's already committed and is passionate to this work.  Just saying.
>> All right.  I am going to go ahead and wrap us up there, Jeff.  That's a nice ending.  I really appreciate you talking about the point‑in‑time count.  I think we need a session to talk about data, but we won't because we have super cool other stuff to talk about.  Again, I always put e‑mail addresses for folks, if you got questions for Jeff or Valeri, I am sure her e‑mail is bouncing around in everybody's inbox somewhere.  Don't hesitate to reach out.  I am sure they will regret a huge number, but it will be just the right number.
	And I also put in the chat a little dashboard that I make that I call this week in homelessness that draws on what happened in homelessness in my current count based on how many people I see are currently connecting with their system to get help because they are experiencing homelessness.  Thank you, Valeri.  She just put her e‑mail into the chat.  Fine work.  I am going to hand it off to Kenny Coble to talk about the housing survey, and we might try to draw a bit more information out about different things.  Kenny, it's all yours.
>> Thanks.  Hi, everybody.  I am happy to be back at this meeting.  I kind of got lost after we moved into work‑from‑home mode and don't have people at the city giving me a ride to this meeting on Fridays, so now that we are on a different day I will be back and really happy to be here.  
	I want to talk a little bit about the budget surveys that we are doing.  Thank you, Maureen, for shouting it out.  I agree it is really important to hear from folks on this.  We definitely want to hear from all of you.  I am going to post in the chat right now three different links.  And then I will have one thing I think I would really love your help on.  
	The first thing is we have seven surveys essentially on housing, safety, jobs, racial equity, access, engagement and health.  We want to be hearing from our residents, want to hear from providers like you and your clients for sure.
	This other thing that I think is really cool, on Thursday, July 23rd, the city is hosting an interactive budget workshop where we are going to have anyone who comes to this meeting collectively kind of co‑create how we can balance the budget.  I think most of everyone here knows that the city is kind of facing a projected $67 million deficit in 21‑22, and my job exists, I am the community engagement coordinator at the city, it exists to bang the same drum over and over and say the city makes better decisions when it listens to its residents, so I would love your help in doing this.
	And so I wanted to show you how this tool that we are using looks, hoping that you all will play with.  You can either do it with the listen being, or you could come to the event, or do both.  It looks like this, and I am really into it.  It kind of shows you our budget in this big circle.  And then you will notice at the top it says that we are in deficit currently, $67 million, and then you as the thought leader and the genius in our community, all of you kind of get to decide what you could do.  
	One thing you can do, you can probably reduce every one of these budget items by 15%, and you would get pretty close to that number.  For example, you could go to community engagement and you could say, Kenny Coble gets way too much money, let's reduce him and his program in doing engagement at the city, and now you will save the city $1.6 million, and your little tool could kind of shift down from 67 to 65.  Please don't do that.  That would make me so sad.  [Laughs].  But the city is facing really hard decisions.
	And I think y'all know better than anyone ‑‑ well, not anyone.  You all know in a deep and meaningful way how impacted vulnerable members of our community could be with these reductions.  I think a lot of y'all are going to care about the items under the housing tab.  If you want you can click this link and be working on this during the rest of the meeting while listening.  I would love if you did that.  We would love to hear your feedback.
	One thing this does do, it provides a few opportunities like this where we just want to get your ideas on what you would think if we had an Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and then it gives you a little more information on it how that would happen.  And if you do end up selecting it, let's say I want to give 40 million to it, then I have to then give an idea, I think that should be a sales tax, property tax, both, or changed my mind that I don't like that.  And then when I do that, at some point it will kind of change the number and it will kind of reflect that some money is raised that way.  And, yeah.  So we kind of want to know what your priorities are.  If you think we need to be spending more than 800,000 or less than 800,000 on homeless, housing services, this is where you would check that.  If you have ideas about multifamily, landlord tenant, you can do this on your own just clicking that link, sharing that with your folks, or you can come to that virtual event.  Let's say a hundred people show up, it will kind of average all of our recommendations at the same time and throw that up on the screen.  So I think that's kind of fun.  I am really looking forward to that event.  
	With the housing survey in particular, we have had about 410 people respond already.  I have a feeling that a lot of that is from your folks, just from scanning it.  Y'all have been doing a great job.  And on top of the 410, we've gotten 23 that have been in Spanish, so we do have all the surveys available in English, Spanish, [indiscernible], and Vietnamese.  If you could share that out to folks, that would be helpful.  We would love that.
	And the part that I could really use your help in, I am going to post the file right now, I accidently did it earlier, we also created a print version of our survey.  It's all condensed down into two pages.  And if you don't know me, I am just a huge advocate that we have to be listening to the voices of the people who are going to be most impacted by the decisions that we are making in government, and it is definitely a space where we need support in hearing from those voices.  Our engagement team is really small.  The entire engagement team for the budget outreach is me.  And I am passionate about this.  Care about this.  I was so grateful that Megan Capes reminded me of the opportunity to come to you all, and ask you, beg you, to get involved in sharing this because I would love if you kind of took this outreach handout, printed it out, and either pass it out to your clients, or you could use it to interview them and then send them back to me.
	Getting it back to me is going to be the tricky part.  I am afraid of pandemics, and so I am hiding in my house, but if it's just a handful you could scan them and e‑mail them to me.  If it's more than a handful, I will ask one of my co‑workers who drives to come pick them up from your organization.  And, but, yeah, I would love to see those budget outreach handouts get out.  I will be extremely committed to any that we get in print.  One way we listen equitably is by considering the level of disproportionate impact a person faces when we consider their ideas.  I am going to make sure that we really listen to the voices of your clients here.
	So Maureen asked about the timeline.  It would probably be best if we got responses by the end of July, but we can keep going after that because these recommendations are going to a report that goes to council to help council to know the voice of the community when it's approving the proposed budgets that departments send to the city.  I am going to try to get to a couple of other questions.  A lot was happening while I am sharing my screen.
	Maureen also asked, you don't have the high earner taxes and option for the Housing Trust Fund.  I don't know what that is because I am not an expert.  I know a little bit more about engagement than the actual budget side of things, but I will pass that on to the budget office so they know that.  If there are any other questions I would be happy to take them, if you raise your hand.  Rob, thank you for saying you like the budget tool.  I actually think it is fun.  For me it really helps.  Like frankly I didn't know ‑‑ I work for the city and I had no idea how many of the budget went to community safety, and I am a huge proponent of spending money that way, but I didn't know that less than 3 million went to housing services.  I have a feeling you will have strong feelings about that, and we want to hear your strong feelings.  So let me know if I missed any other questions.  I love the idea of food baskets.  Thanks for sharing that, Maureen.  I am going to post the links one more time, and I can pass it back to Gerrit.  Thank you, everybody.  I would love to partner with you on this.  Feel free to e‑mail me.  I love all of you.  Thank you.
>> Awesome.  Thank you so much, Kenny.  That's great.  And, yeah.  I went through and used the budget tool, and it was sobering.  Right?  The other thing to remember is that the City of Tacoma budget is bigger than what we are working with here.  Right.  That a lot of money comes into the city budget that's designated for certain things, like HUD, ESG money, that comes into the city that isn't in this because it's basically dedicated.  So really talking about general fund and some other things.  And like transportation is another one where a lot of the money comes in from HUD specific things, so we do transportation projects, but not general fund money.  So it's a much smaller world kind of what's ‑‑ you know, what's required of that general fund money.  It's challenging.  I learned a lot.  I thought I knew the budget pretty well, but there were parts that like, wow, I didn't realize we were paying for that out of the general fund.  It was hard.  I apologize to the Police Department.  There was definitely some de‑fund the police going on when I was balancing that budget, so.
	I am going to take a few minutes and just go over the state's rental assistance funding.  The state is allocating $100 million to go to rent assistance.  Pierce County's share of that is a little over 10 million.  And they have come up with a number ‑‑ oh, Rob is like the actual person to ask about budgeting the City of Tacoma.  His prior life he was a director of communications, so knows way more than I do.  So read what Rob is writing.
	Back to general fund, rent assistance with the state.  So the rent assistance in Pierce County, it's good to remember, is pretty straightforward and I think has the least number of rules that are necessary.  So basically I am looking at Valeri, basically you are over at 80% or under, 80% of AMI is the requirement, and that's pretty much it.  And in order to get rent assistance, I think it's important that we make it easy.  We were just talking about how challenging it can be to learn about it and get it.  When I first started working at homelessness, I went to a conference, and how important it is for shelters to have as few rules as possible.  The more rules you put out, the fewer people you will able to help.  80% under AMI, the state is looking at 50% or under, area median income rate, so that's a financial target that a lot of HUD and homeless funding uses, so a lower amount.  So you have to earn less money to be able to use it.
	We found we were struggling to get the money out to people, that people were struggling, which is why the county selected 80%.  My recommendations would be that we reach out to the state and say, hey, why don't we make it easier to get this money.  So where I have just matched up the two things that the state has and the county has, 80% at the county, 50% at the state, it would be nice if the state was a little more lenient on that.  The other thing that the state requires, the county doesn't.  So the state requires that you have to be rent‑burdened.  I have no idea what that means.  Anybody under 50% or 80% area median income that aren't rent‑burdened has got to be some type of magical unicorn because I don't think that's happening.  They have to have rent past due.  And this is one of the ironies that I run into all the time is we don't really serve people until all of the crap's gone bad and they are actually on the street.  And rent assistance is designed for us to prevent people from being on the streets.  And it sort of bums me out that you have to be already past due to get access, not simply have rent due and no income to be able to pay for it.
	Then they have this crazy set of additional requirements, and really only applies to the first 20 days of rent assistance, but still seems a little weird.  You have to have 50% or under area median income, rent‑burdened, you have to be past due on your rent and you have to meet one of these criteria, which is you have to have been previously homeless or have a history of evictions or have your housing disrupted because you are a protected class of some sort.  Veteran, disabilities, minorities, or you can have some sort of an illness or be high risk for illness, so you have to be over 65 with health issues, or have a disability of some sort.  You have to match one of those.
	So under 50% AMI, rent‑burdened.  I would highly recommend that we make this easier, make it under 80% of AMI and that's good enough.  However, I think that this state the worried is that $100 million in rent assistance isn't going to be enough, and I think projections as high as $2 billion are going to be necessary, an and so I think some of their impetus is to really tighten the rent assistance down to the folks that they see won't have any other options.  And that may well be legitimate, but that's not really what we found so far in Pierce County.  But as Maureen mentioned, the whole world changes at the end of July when the federal unemployment $600 a week, $2,400 a month extra, goes away and people are back to normal unemployment, which is a little under half of your typical salary, and when the eviction moratorium goes away.
	So we definitely will see a higher need, but I don't see anything wrong with supporting folks under 80% of AMI that are having trouble meeting their rent.  So that's my spiel.  Any other thoughts you can send out to the group.  Again, an e‑mail address, I will send that out again as well as my talking points here.
	I am going to shift over.  I noticed Colin was on, and I don't know if Janet is on here as well, but it would be lovely to get an update on what's going on with safe parking.  Colin or Jan?
>> I can talk.
>> I defer.
>> Oh, well, and then I will pass it to Jan.  I can give a quick update, and truly I was hoping to hear if there was any more funding around safe car parking or camping.  We haven't heard anything back yet, so there is an application in for the third round with the county, and then we have a Greater Tacoma application that's out there also that we have not heard back on.  So I am excitedly waiting to hear about those.  We have had a lot of partners from the county, faith‑based organizations, Paula Anderson, others from the City of Puyallup, who have stepped forward, and then also organizations, faith‑based organizations in Tacoma that have also stepped forward.  I am hopeful.  I will be honest it's concerning to hear the county's stance on it, and I kind of put it in the message.  I really don't understand why that's such a strong stance because there is no arguing that there is just a population of people living out of their vehicles.  The same as people that live on the sidewalks.  If they can't be here, where can they go, and to be safe?  I think that's my question back to the government entities.  Where do these safe cars go?  Where do these cars go to be safe?  Because ultimately at the end of the day I think what all of this is about is trying to give these individuals an opportunity to be safe and get back on their feet.
	And I think it's very fitting that the county was here talking about the point in time because in having ‑‑ as we all have done the point in time stuff, I think we all know that people live out of their vehicles, and I have said this before, they are one of the most challenging groups to count, to quantify, and so I think this is a really great opportunity to really find out a little bit more about this population.
	I honestly think a lot of these individuals could be diverted out of our system if we intervene early enough with them.  What I think we all know what happens, we have all seen, if you go up to G Street, we have seen the broken‑down vehicles, and not just RVs, what we know, that is what will happen, eventually the car will break down and they will end up on the side of the street.  To me, I just scratch my head because it seems like there is a resistance to serve this population, and I just haven't heard a reason why.  Otherwise, we just don't support this.  I am all about understanding that, but I think there ‑‑ we need to be given more of a reason than what we are given.
	I am get to get off my pedestal and stop talking, but I am kind of baffled by it to be honest with you.  So I am very still very optimistic, still hopeful, that some funding will come through.  There is a large group that wants to serve this population, so, yeah, that's kind of where I am with it.  I will let Jan talk.  She probably has way better things to say than me.
>> Two points.  What am I supposed to do with the agencies that are contacting us?  Tacoma city parks has contacted us.  They are willing to go ahead with a safe parking lot.  Faith‑based, what are we supposed to tell them?  From a public health perspective, what better way to do contact tracing than to know where people are.  So the contact tracing prevention piece is one of the most successful measures that we have to reduce COVID.  How else can we even find this population which if we use the data that's coming down from King County, 50% of the unsheltered live in their cars?  So that's a big number.  It's a big number, so I am just frustrated, and I will just shut up.
>> Thank you, crew, for the update.  One of these times it's going to come back with good news because you guys are nothing if not persistent.  I don't know how anyone can say no to Jan to be honest.  I am scared of Jan, so I say yes to everything she asks.
	Hopefully Valeri when she touches in on Pierce County updates, she will give us information about the round three funding and how that announcement is a little bit delayed.  But before that, I am going to have us get a quick update from the Health Department.  Manu?  So bad with names.  I don't see him on here.  Or is somebody else ‑‑ whatever.  Among operations center.  Ivan?
>> Yeah.  Actually, it's Naomi.
>> Yay, Naomi.
>> Hey, I just ‑‑ it's been a couple of weeks since we have had this call so I wanted to make sure that everyone on the coalition was able to access or see the mask guidance that the Health Department put out via a letter from Dr. Chen.  Was that shared with this group or is there ‑‑ hopefully you guys have had a chance to see it.  Are there any additional questions?  I am not hearing any.
>> Seems straightforward.  I'm on.  In your office with the doors shut, you don't have to wear a mask.  In the car with your doors shut by yourself, you don't have to wear a mask.  If at all other times, if you are at work, you are wearing a mask.  Does that sound right?  Outside, six feet away, don't need a mask.  Closer than six feet, wear that masks.  It sucks to wear my mask when I jog on Ruston Way, but occasionally you need to.
>> Yeah.  Just to throw that out there, we have tried to message as clearly as we can to the shelter providers that while we aren't the enforcers for masks, we are happy to work with any of the shelter providers, anyone out there, who wants someone to help them work through that in terms of setting up their own policies.  We are definitely still an advocating for a positive reinforcement, if there are any ideas on incentives, we are happy to share any best practices from other shelters.  We are working through as much of this as possible just to make sure that we are really focusing on positive reinforcement for mask wearing and helping any shelter providers who need to work through their guidance where available.
	I do see a question about masks, so that's probably an Ivan question, but we have distributed 370,000 masks that were made available to us at the Pierce County EOC through the State of Washington, so that is out in the community, and I do believe that all of our shelter providers were able to access as many of those as they identified they needed.  We also have masks available with our mobile testing trailers that go out into the community.
>> Naomi, there is a question about the letter from Dr. Chen and how that was distributed.
>> It was e‑mailed out, and it came out right before ‑‑ it came out on Thursday, right before ‑‑ so July 2nd before the holiday weekend, so if anyone has not had a chance to see that, I will go ahead and make sure that, Gerrit, I can accepted that to you.
>> To the full coalition at pchomeless.org.  It will get through.
>> I will do that right now.
>> Cool.
>> That's it from us.
>> Questions from the Health Department, Theresa.
>> So this is a request I guess.  It would be great to have something that could be distributed.  Here are a couple of problems living in the community with a lot of people who are unhoused as my neighbors.  I notice when I talk with my other neighbors, we all have a sense of staying the six feet apart, but as soon as one of our other neighbors enters who is living in a car or in a tent, or whatever, that space is always being challenged.  I find myself always stepping back.  I don't know if other people are experiencing this, but my sense ‑‑ first of all, there is no one living on the street wearing a mask on my street, even though we have given them lots of masks.  In fact some level ones that were handmade by these groups who make these handmade masks.  And by the way, if there was something made for people, specifically for people who are ‑‑ I don't know what about living on the street that makes it feel like maybe there is nothing to lose.  I don't know what's going on.  But if something could be made that would be helpful.  Also the information about the fact that, yes, you don't need to wash the cloth masks between each use, but if you use them use the ear things to put them on and to have.  Otherwise those cloth masks are pretty much useless for people in that situation.
	I am wondering if anyone is working on something that would help us when we are doing outreach, or we are working with our neighbors, to get across the message that they really are just as much at risk as anyone else, if not more, and the idea of masks ‑‑ I don't know how to make them sexy to that particular group of people, but they certainly aren't right now.
>> I think if anyone could solve the problem of making masks sexy, we would have ‑‑ [laughs].  We wouldn't be in half the dilemma that we are now.  So, Theresa, that is an ongoing issue with masks.  And we do have an infographic that was designed specifically for outreach.  I will also re‑share that again.  It is a very simple graphic.  If you are asking if we have a specific mask infographic, that you could distribute, I will check and see what we have in our library, and I will share all the resources that we have available.
>> All right.  Thanks, Naomi.  Much appreciated.  And we are going to hit up ‑‑ is Ivan there?  Anyone with the emergency operations, do you know, Naomi?
>> I don't.  I know that Ivan is here, and he might have been pulled away doing other emergency operation duties.  But I do know that we do have an updated list of our mobile testing sites, and that's both at the Health Department and on Pierce County.  Again, I will share that if you guys have not had access to that.  We are starting ‑‑
>> This is Manu.
>> Hey.
>> Hey.  I was trying to connect via phone.  It's been a matter of gathering criteria requirements for applying I guess to be a mobile host site for the mobile testing unit.  The mobile testing unit is out in the community, has been doing testing, and the e‑mail has the instructions or steps for the criteria for what requirements need to be in place to offer testing.  So if there is any questions, please e‑mail me, but we have had a few people inquire already, so we want to make sure that anyone who serves has access to folks who are in shelters or who are unsheltered, are added to that cue.  There is a short wait list right now, but we want to make sure that they are on the calendar.  The option of, you know, I guess securing either monthly or bi‑weekly testing right now, just depending on availability, but it's live and it's ‑‑ the e‑mail has been sent out for how to request ‑‑ or how to initiate the process.  But if there is any questions, please contact me.
>> Just want to throw out that is amazing.  Bi‑weekly testing for a community area, so if you are staying at a shelter on the eastside, maybe on a church and you wanted to vehicle to come to your parking lot twice a week, wow, it sounds like they are open to making that happen.  Obviously it's a limited number of places that they can be at any time, but that's what our community needs.
>> Thanks, Gerrit.  The update from my end would also be to check into the community locations because those trailers are out there, so I will include that in my e‑mail.  We do have upcoming sites.  We were just out at Key Peninsula yesterday.  We have been out in Buckley.  We are partnering with Asia Pacific Cultural Center.  We have a couple of those upcoming.  So we are definitely out in the community and increasing that testing availability.
>> All right.  Valeri, what do you for us at the county?
>> Hi.  Thanks for a few moments.  A couple of things.  So the round three testing, the round three application committee was delayed to the 21st.  We had heard we were going to get additional dollars and it made sense to allocate everything in large buckets.  We wanted to pre plan and have those dollars available to get them out into the community as fast as possible.  A couple other things, rental assistance program is going well.  I believe as of today we received just under 300 applications, possibly more.  I know the uptick day‑to‑day has been increasingly hard, so word is getting out there.  But one of the things that I started look at and that I am going to challenge you with, we are seeing a ton of Puyallup, a lot of Lakewood, a lot of Tacoma, only six applicants, Buckley those kind of areas, so we need your help to get word out.  This is a service available and folks need to apply.  I will send that information out to the LISTSERV.
	The 10 million and the 1.2 million, so please make your suggestions to the state.  We want to help as many people as possible.  So write it up nice and pretty and get it to the state by Monday, and it will go to Jeff strings.
	We briefly talked about some things going on at the City of Puyallup and their homeless services.  Annemarie has hired a temporary position, which will go through December 31st, a community services planning specialist.  The purpose will be to work on planning development and evaluation for homeless programs, and her name is Melissa Moss.  I knew you would all love that.  So just now official, brand‑new, hot off the press.  Just a shout‑out, it's been a really large collaboration and they really want to do great work in Puyallup.  So just a shout‑out to them for all of that, but new partner in Puyallup that you all know and love very, very well.  [Laughs].  Other than, that I am happy to any questions that you have.
>> It's Naomi.  We still currently two days a we can have Daisy Riaz, who was part of our original outreach team when the temporary expansion site was there, so she is also there as well working alongside the Pierce County EOC staff, and this new position to make sure that we are addressing their needs and that will be right now until August.
>> Yeah.  And Daisy is amazing.  I get e‑mails from her almost daily making sure they have gone through coordinated entry and are they connecting, so Daisy is a true asset to all the work that's being done, so definite huge shout‑out for that.  Yeah, that's great.
	Let's see.  Relationship between the county's funding and the CoC.  Currently now.  They are informed of all of the work.  They are eligible to serve on application violation committees, but they are not going through the Continuum of Care.  They are updating the governance charter and working for HUD assistance on governance structure, and we are getting ready for the Continuum of Care application to open.  To the dollars don't go through Continuum of Care for a variety of reasons, but they are involved in funding decisions as they see fit, absolutely.  Any other questions for me, anything I can chat about today?
>> Awesome.  Thanks so much.
>> One minute.  Valeri.
>> Yes.
>> Will you be, you, collectively, I mean Pierce County Human Services, will you be updating say weekly the amount of money that actually is spent, IE, reimbursed on the rental assistance?
>> Right now our rental assistance program invoice is monthly unless they have a need.  Some of our smaller organizations are eligible to invoice more frequently, but that's [indiscernible] I can work with leadership to figure out the best way to disseminate that.
>> I think that would be good to give us better ability to support expanded outreach, targeted outreach.  The form that goes to the county council right now shows that award have been made, but it doesn't show that money has actually been spent.
>> Yeah, yeah.  Okay.  Yeah, I will see what I can do for you.
>> Thanks.
>> You are welcome.
>> Theresa.
>> Theresa has her hand up.
>> No, she is just clapping.
>> [Laughs].  I will take it.  I will take a clap any day.  Thank you.  I appreciate it.  You all know how to reach me.  If there is anything I can do.
>> Do you have anything for us at the Coffee Oasis?  Greg.
>> Um, we are still doing well and doing healthy at the Serra House.  We are actively at work on the preparation to move to a new location that's going to give us the opportunity to double our bed space.  Hopefully in the next few months.  So there is still approval processes.  The state fire marshal just threw a loop in my plans.  Everybody else had said we were good to go the way it is, and the state fire marshal has notified me last night that they are determined that we need to put a sprinkler system in before we can move in, despite lots of other professionals saying we didn't need that.  So now I am scrambling a little bit to figure out how all that works.  But good news is it's going to happen, and we should be in there this fall, and lots of other opportunities will be coming along with that.  So we are doing well.
>> Very cool.  Rob, how are things going at the Bethlehem Baptist shelter?
>> Actually Colin might have more insights than me.  Colin, do you have anything?
>> I am actually sitting at the Bethlehem shelter right now.  So, yeah, I am doing work for MDC here.  Things are going great.  We are almost at full capacity.  We just had two families move in, one while I was sitting here and one last night.  We are served families and couples without children and videography mails, so quite an interesting mix of participants in the program, and I think one of the things we are doing here is really trying to prioritize and focus on the families that are out there.  So that's kind of been the shift since I have been doing some work here.  Things are going great.  You know, Dr. Jackson is a great partner, the church is a great partner.  We are setting up a new office here.  We are really doing some redesign.  That's kind of stuff I have been doing.  Things are going great.  I am working with having a new shelter supervisor, so the previous shelter supervisor is no longer with MDC or the Bethlehem shelter, so I am kind of training a new one right now.  Her name is Angela Moore.  Unofficially.  I am hoping that she will be the shelter supervisor as long as we don't scare her off first, but she is doing great.  She has been here for awhile, so things are going really good.  It's a really neat shelter, and they are really serving a very in‑need population.  So, yeah.
>> And we are just about up to the edge.  I don't see a lot of other shelter providers.  Allen, did you have anything you want to bring up with the Family Day Center over on South Tacoma Way?
>> The Family Day Center is open.  We got families coming in.  We are enforce being, strongly encouraging mask‑wearing, and everybody is on board with that.
>> Always a challenge, isn't it?
>> Hey, Gerrit.
>> Yeah, Doug.
>> Yeah.  The Tacoma Rescue Mission, the women's shelter, is now open, opened two Fridays ago, and we've got, you know, quite a bit of room left, and it's really nice.  It's a really nice shelter.  So for all you folks who may have women that are needing immediate shelter, we have that available for you.
>> I am glad to hear you make that announcement.  Lieu whiz has been talking about it very quietly as if we should pretend it's not actually open right now.  I am glad you are coming out into the daylight.
>> I will have a banner next week.
>> When people do the check‑ins, if there are things you need, it would be great to hear that.  I have to keep turning away donations because I don't know where to send them.  If there is something you need and you put it out to us, we can help with it.  So that's just a request during the check‑ins.
>> Great.  And everyone, with that, I think that we are going to go ahead and wrap ourselves up.  I think a productive week this week.  Next week I am hoping to have the City of Tacoma do a deep dive on their CARES Act funding and kind of the state of affairs of the homeless services and where they are looking to expand and things like that.  Allison was on briefly at the beginning, but it looks like she had to peel off for another meeting.  So that's next week, and I think a couple items on the agenda that I can't think of off the top of my head.  So everybody stay safe, enjoy your weekend, and we will see you next week.
[CART session ended]