REALTIME FILE

Meeting ‑ CCSWW Tacoma‑Pierce County 
Coalition to End Homelessness

Friday, July 17, 2020

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>> Good morning, folks.  We are about four minutes away or so, but I am going to have Martin Luther King bring us in, probably played this clip before, but I sort of love the pivot that Martin Luther King did to working on issues around poverty, as well as racism.  And so I am going to throw just a little segment on that out.
[Video]
>> All right.  Welcome, everybody.  We are just about ready to get going.  Again, that was Martin Luther King, and just that powerful pivot around poverty at the end of his life, and I really wish that we had a lot more of Martin Luther King in our community than was able to happen.
	All right.  I am going to get us rolling here.  We've got a packed agenda.  So without further ado, let's go ahead and put the seatbelt on, and get busy.
[Music playing]
>> "Masterpiece Theatre" is made possible by support from the Tacoma Rescue Mission.  Good day.  I'm Gerrit Nyland, filling in for Alistair Cooke this morning, looking into the future with a preview of healthcare money going towards housing.  Just as it is tough to know if science‑based healthcare stretched 20th century lifespan, or if it was simply clean water.  Will we one day determine that health gains in the 21st century are yet to become is because we finally achieved stable housing for all?  Well, "Masterpiece Theatre" thinks so.  As this story of housing plays out this morning, we will turn to the City of Tacoma and look at their plans to expand their fleet of housing and homelessness programs while staving off simultaneously the shrinking core.  The plans are robust, but can the back of their shrinking bureaucratic camel support one more straw?  We will then transfer to the drawing room where your favorite armchair awaits you as you and your companions engage in a more intimate side conversation.
	But first, this message from the esteemed Luiz Riviera.
>> I don't know how I can follow that, Gerrit.  That was awesome.  I was asked to say ‑‑ to bring up a little reflection today, and I am going to share this with you as we ‑‑ oh, can you let me share screen, Gerrit?
>> Yes, I can.
>> Okay.  I looked at this since yesterday, and it kind of drove me.  Every day focus on your purpose.  Remember why you do what you do.  We don't get burnt out because of what we do.  We get burnt out because we forget why we do it.
	We have a very tough work to do, and all the participants here in this call decided to come back every single Friday.  It's been a tough four months, but whatever the purpose is that keeps bringing you back here is what you need to dig in for inspiration and for to ground yourself.  And, again, this purpose will be different for every one of us.  I love the inspiring words that Dr. King was saying that you were playing, Gerrit.  And whatever it is that inspires you, whatever it is that brings you to this meeting on Friday, whatever it is that drove you to work through the pandemic, harder than you worked before, keep going through that to get grounded and centered and to great inspiration to keep moving forward.
	So with that, let's keep going.  [Laughs].
>> Thank you, Luiz.  Much appreciated.  Today we are lucky enough to have the healthcare connection to homelessness brought in front of us to talk a little bit about some of their plans for the future, the One ‑‑ I can't say the whole thing.  OnePierce Community Resiliency Fund, and welcome to Lauren Fulton.  Lauren, thanks so much for making time to come talk with us.
>> Thank you very much.  I really appreciate it.  You aren't the only one who can't pronounce it.  It's a mouthful.  We call it OnePierce for short.  I was going to say hello and also share my screen if I am able to.
>> Yep.
>> I have slides just because I am a very visual person, and I just prefer to look at things.  [Laughs].  And so my name is Lauren Fulton, again.  I am with Elevate Health and OnePierce Community Resiliency Fund.  And OnePierce is sort of the new kid on the block a little bit, and I will explain how we sort of come about and what it is that we are doing with housing.  But I wanted to say first off that I have been planning to and trying to attend these meetings for quite awhile actually, and I thought back in March it was finally going to happen.  And that was just around the time that OnePierce was sort of officially launching, and then of course COVID wrecked all of those plans, not the least of which was the bigger launch of this fund.  So we are doing the work, but it's just been a little bit screwy in terms of timing with going out and getting to speak to people about it.  So thank you for the time now, and I am sorry that I haven't said hello before.
	So I wondered ‑‑ for those of you who are here, I was wondering who here has heard of Elevate Health and the Accountable Community?  We've got some hands.  So Elevate Health I will just say for those of you who might be newer to it is the Accountable Community of Health for Pierce County, and all that really means is that we have Medicaid funding that we provide to different partners with the overall aim of bringing together clinical and medical care alongside community care and social supports.  Housing is a big one of those.
	And so we do this with the aim of improving what we call whole person health, so this isn't just the healthcare outcomes, but actually the social and mental and, you know, well‑being of everyone in Pierce County specifically.
	So Elevate Health does this through a number of different strategies that are on the screen here, partnerships, data, innovations, with the aim of building this care continuum network, which is all about care coordination.  And so our care continuum network has three different care coordination programs that you may have heard of.  Pathways, the Community Health Action team, and Healthy Homes.  And those programs are, again, using community health workers to try to address everyone's needs, health needs, as well as food access needs, as well as housing and security needs, all of that, to really take a more holistic view.
	So that's Elevate Health.  A lot of you have heard of Elevate Health.  But on the bottom right of this little graphic, the investments Pierce, that's OnePierce community resiliency funds, which is the work that I do.  We view investments as funding for our community that can support the kind of longer term impact around improving systemic health equity issues, and once again housing is incredibly important here.  Access to housing and support for people who don't have housing or, you know, who are accessing homeless services, is incredibly important, and that's kind of what brings me to this.
	So for OnePierce in particular, our goal is to address the systemic health issues.  We do this by offering grants, community loans, and then what we call innovation funds, which are really around piloting different healthcare programs or piloting different healthcare interventions.  And the intention is to bolster health and economic vitality throughout Pierce County.
	We do have different areas of focus, our expected outcomes and aims, and we want them to be able to shift as Pierce County grows and changes and, you know, has new needs into the future.  But for this year and next year, our areas of focus include more units of affordable and supportive housing, as well as increased housing access.  Better access to behavioral health services, and increased workforce opportunities as well.  So those are our big three areas of focus, and through a lot of the conversations that I have managed to have with community groups, housing comes up time and time again.
	So we know that this is the kind of real need that we are certainly seeing within Pierce County.  So to give you an example of where you may have heard of OnePierce's name before or just recently in fact, within the last few weeks, as a sort of funding and investment arm we try to bring together funding from all different entities, so we are funded partly through Elevate Health.  We also work with public entities and different private entities, to give it the best terms we can to anyone who we are lending or granting money to.
	So we recently teamed up with Pierce County to manage some CARES Act funding for behavioral health providers, and through a competitive application process have been in the process of awarding that to 21 different grantees or warranties.  I know many of the groups listed on here actually have quite a lot of overlap with housing, and I don't know you all yet on this phone, but I imagine that some of you are from those organizations.  There we go, I see Rena.  So we're really happy to be a part of this, and we are really happy to kind of continue this work to use some of the networks that Elevate Health has to get the word out there about funding opportunities, and then to be able to manage some of these funds on behalf of different sort of Pierce County entities, too.  So that's just an example of our work.
	But really what I wanted to give you a brief overview today, was more of our housing related activities.  The three things that I wanted to talk about today, community loan products, which we offer over to housing developers, house bill 1406 collaboration with Pierce County and City of Tacoma.  I believe you have heard about this from Pierce County and probably City of Tacoma as well, but I wanted to say how we are sort of involved in that.  And referrals to providers.  This third part is the care continuum element so I wanted to share whether you want to make referrals or receive referrals from our care continuum network and community health workers, how you could go about doing that too.
	But those are the three things that I will spend one slide each kind of discussing.  The first one are the community loan products.  And I realize depending on your organization or depending on what you do, this might not be the most interesting to you, but if we have any finance people on the phone, this is really one of those three programs within OnePierce.  So our community loan products are broken into two different categories.  One is working capital loans, and they can help organizations who have variation in the timing of their funding coming into their organizations.  So lines of credit, I am sure most of your organizations have already, they are essentially like credit cards where you can drawn down money when you need it.  Bridge loans might be something where you have a commitment from a public entity or from a private funder, but there is going to be a gap of maybe three or six months before that funding comes in, and you just need to bridge that gap, and that's something that OnePierce can help with.  Growth and expansion loans, which are kind of difficult to talk about during this time period, but, you know, lots of us are shifting business models.  You could say we know we are going to have business in the future, but we need assistance for that.  And equipment loans for larger purchases.
	These working capital loans are things that we offer.  The ones that are more kind of specific to housing and housing developers, if there are developers on the phone, are more along the lines of facility loans.  So as anyone who has the misfortune of being in housing finance knows it's a crazy complicated area, but this is where loans have historically been used with pretty good effect in the pre‑development and design phase of building affordable and supportive housing properties.  Actually purchasing those properties through acquisition loans, and then even using construction and permanent loans to continue financing and development of those properties.
	So we do offer loans in all of them.  We are not just kind of another bank.  We know there are many banks and CDFIs and others that do that.  Our intention is to be a partner locally because we are only Pierce County focused.  And our other intention is through all of these different financing sources together, we want to be able to offer really good terms because we are a nonprofit, we are not getting money out of this, so we are just trying to fill gaps where we see them.
	So that is sort of what it is that we do around the loans.  If you are interested in any of these organizationally, feel free to reach out to me.  My e‑mail is on the bottom and I think also on the e‑mail list here.
	And one example of where we have worked with the county, and the City of Tacoma, to be able to offer those specific housing development loans is through the HB1406 housing projects.  So, again, I am pretty sure you have heard about this that the county ‑‑ this request for information around this work was issued in April, and closed in June.  And for those of you who kind of want part of that or haven't heard of it, it is essentially ‑‑ the request for information was to see if there was interest from developers in accessing funding that is able to be bonded to sales tax revenue in the future for Pierce County and for City of Tacoma, and to use that funding for different affordable and supportive housing projects.
	So there are certain restrictions on what that funding can go towards from the 1406 dollars, the county and city dollars part of this.  For example, they cannot go towards the pre‑development and design phase of those properties and property development.  And this is where OnePierce stepped in to say our funding is a little bit more flexible.  We would need it back, unlike the 1406 dollars.  We can offer this money alongside yours.  So while I think the details of this are still being worked out, including exactly what the next steps are given the current climate, and everything happening nowadays, the intention is that OnePierce would put up to 10 million to be made available for any projects who are accessing or applying for 1406 dollars.  So it would be one application where you can apply for Pierce County funds, Tacoma fund, OnePierce loans at the same time in a streamlined way, to make it a one stop shop.
	So the next steps on this, the county is meeting to understand exactly what's come back from the RFIs and to decide whether or not they can make that case to the county council for actually bonding the funds.  And if all that goes well then there a joint notification of funding availability between Pierce County, City of Tacoma and OnePierce as well.
	And so you may have heard of this, you may have seen OnePierce's name and I wanted to explain who we are, but also how we are sort of saying how can we fill a gap, and if that's pre‑development loans because that's something the public funding can't do, then we will do that.  So that's just one example of how we are kind of working with them.
	Okay.  And the final piece that I wanted to talk about here has to do really more on the service end.  So if you are not a developer and you are thinking I have no interest in any of that in terms of housing finance, I have tried to stay away from it, then this might interest you a little bit more around service side of things.  As I mentioned our care continuum network team works with community health workers who do assessments of individuals' whole person health, so that includes the clinical and healthcare side, but it also includes the social supports and understanding whether rental support, access to food, access to housing, any of those different supports, are also needed to improve this person's quality of life.
	And so the CCM makes referrals to housing and homelessness service providers as needed, CCN, and if you are not already part of that network, there are a couple ways that you might be interested in getting involved.  So the first one is that I know one of our ‑‑ one of our ‑‑ one of the colleagues on the CCN team says she has spoken to different homelessness service organizations in the past, supporting individuals who don't have a fixed address, who are maybe in some of the safe parking lot spaces, and they have said that, you know, it's difficult to find a care coordinator who can support those individuals.  CCN has two programs, Pathways and the Community Action team, who are mobile, so they will work with them wherever they are.  So if you know of individuals who you think could benefit from this service and this kind of wrap around assessment and support, you can absolutely refer them to the care continuum network who will do their best to follow up with them and go out and find ‑‑ to do that sort of assessment and support and referrals.
	So you can do that by calling the number at the bottom of the screen here, or by filling out an online form as well, which just asks for basic information about yourself and then about the individual that you are referring.
	On the flip side of that, if you would like more referrals coming into your organization, also feel free to reach out, and I can put you in touch with our CCN team and the community health workers just to make sure that they know what services it is that you offer, and that they can sort of best assess when to make a referral to your team, and because it's a two‑way system.  So if that's something of interest, again, please do get in touch.
	And then finally with all this talk of referrals, there has been other talk within our community about what we are calling a sort of closed loop referral application, or closed loop referral process.  And so this is the idea that I am sure a lot of you know, that referrals can sort of be received or made at the touch of a button, but then more specifically that the person who has made that referral can see the outcome of that.  So they know what happens.  They know whether that referral was accepted by the organization.  They know whether it had a positive outcome or it had a negative outcome, and maybe they need to make another referral somewhere else.
	And that sort of bidirectional data that we term it, it is an application through a technology vendor.  We know there are other technology vendors out there, and in fact I would be really interested after the slide and a little bit of a discussion to see if this is something that others are using or testing, other sort of closely referral applications and if this is something that is of interest to you all, but we are certainly doing some testing of our own.  If you not only want to make or receive referrals but want to test this out, the new technology, please feel free to get in touch because we are working on it actively, as I know many organizations are across the county.
>> Lauren, can I interrupt really quick?  We had a presentation bayou night us.
>> Yep.
>> Are you familiar with them?  So they are funded and are operating within what, Snohomish, King, Pierce Counties.  And I was just wondering if ‑‑ but that's not the technology you are talking about.  You are looking at an additional product?
>> We are.  Yes, we also know and are figuring out how to partner with Unite Us as well.  Our biggest concern as kind of Elevate Health being a neutral convener, providers have to use multiple, or if they are only using one, they are not going to get full information.  So, so far our sort of approach has really been to play the role of trying to encourage all of these vendors to get essentially backhand data feeds that will make it so they can share data between them, so that no matter what platform an organization is using, they see the same data.
	And that has been tricky, to be perfectly honest, because these are all sort of competitors, competitive collaborators in this area.  And so we are still figuring that out, but that's the biggest risk that I see of all of this work.  We have been using Innovaccer because we use it in care management platforms, so they have a much broader care management system that our community health workers use, and so from that sense it's already fully integrated with the app that they offer around closed loop referrals.  But we are trying to do now a little bit informally a listening session just to understand how community organizations are finding all of these apps before we figure out what is the role that we can play and sort of promoting an app or multiple apps that talk to each other or how can we help to build that system and actually break down silos, but it's all quite new right now.  So that's a very long way to say, yes, we are in conversation with Unite Us as well.  We have been testing a different one, but we are very kind of open at the moment to figuring out what all the differences are between them.  And even knowing things like actually multiples are free, so how do we kind of measure them all up against each other and figure out what works well to integrate the most with people's platforms that they are using for their clients or case management, too.
>> And there is regional aspect.  We are working with another product in Thurston County.  A lot of us are Pierce County specific, but folks like my agency that operates across Western Washington, and it's daunting to consider using a different product in each county, which is part of the charm of having that back end integration like you were discussing, but ‑‑
>> Yeah.
>> That's not there now, and you know only one of the vendors that I have run across looks like they have any real pathway to that, but.
>> I know.  I think many of them [indiscernible], but I think they are all kind of waiting to see what their market share looks like, they have the capability.  It feels like a lot of these rollouts are happening at the same time, and without any kind of real direction from, you know, the state level or anything, about what should happen across these.  I think we really do have multiple systems that are all trying to get their hosts in different places right now, which isn't the best situation.
>> There is a high cost to organizations like our service providers rolling out new technology, and we are unwilling to absorb the training and the kind ‑‑ kind of the challenge costs associated with that, only to have it be, you know, a beta product that gets replaced in nine months with something else.  So I think you will have almost nobody interested in jumping in on something if there isn't a sense that this is going to be a three‑year, you know, commitment that a lot of agencies are willing to make.  It's kind of chicken and egg.  I am interrupting, so keep going.
>> No, that's great.  It's good feedback and all things that we are hearing and trying to figure out how we deal with as well.  Yeah, because I think we have the same fear about what happens a year from now or two years from now with any of these different platforms, too, depending on their funding and how sustainable that is.
	But that was actually ‑‑ that was really it, so that was good timing to start the discussion.  I really wanted to say, you know, in terms of takeaways, we offer the organizational financing and housing finance loans.  Elevate Health can make referrals.  So if you would like to discuss any of that, please do feel free to e‑mail.  And then I would love to hear from you all as well around if there is anything ‑‑ of course anything that is unclear, anything else that you would want more information on, but how else can OnePierce kind of stay in touch with this coalition and what you all are doing, because this is certainly an area of interest to us.  So I will kind of leave it there.
>> There were a couple questions.  One of them was, can say provide a copy of those slides to the coalition?
>> Yep, absolutely.
>> Another question had to do when you were talking about facilities, whether you were talking just about housing facilities or other facilities as well.
>> It can be other facilities as well, yeah.  So that's house ‑‑ housing is probably the most common one, but new offices, any other facilities as well where we are happy to [indiscernible].
>> Could I follow up on that one, my question, quickly?  Lauren, thanks.  This was wonderful to see.  The one thing, though, that just in terms of that terminology, as a houser, a facility is not housing.  A facility is not housing, so you just might want to kind of think about that and maybe clarify it a little.  Yeah.
>> Absolutely.  Thank you.  That's a good point.  I know it's a little bit of a finance‑y term there, but I should be adjusting that.
>> The other thing is that it's clear that it's working, working capital for operations, or for the construction, the development side as well?  Again, just sort of clarifying.  And then are you doing social impact bonding?
>> Yes.  Those are what I spend a large part of my last five years working in, so I am very happy to [indiscernible] if there is interest here.  I know the sort of pitfalls of them as well as what they can do, but they fit very well with a lot of healthcare, Medicaid, value‑based purchasing arrangements, which are all about paying for outcomes rather than just paying for a service being provided.  Yeah, if that's something you would like to talk about offline or in this forum at a different time, I am more than happy to talk about it.
>> Yeah, we would probably take it offline.  Thanks.
>> But it is an interesting question thinking back to a conversation Larry roped me into talking about a state bank, but essentially finding ways that we can bond community government basically, state, county, city, can bond at a much lower cost.  Right.  And that the state bank is sometimes capable of doing that if they've got money sitting around.  Obviously you have to throw a billion bucks into it or something like that, but is that sort of a role that OnePierce is looking to play?
>> You know, we would be interested more in ‑‑ the social impact bonds, it is a misnomer because it is not really bonds in the sense of city and counties bonds funding.  It's more paying for a social outcome.  
	So, for example, if a homelessness services provider were part of a social impact bond, they would be paid for their services when people were housed, for example.  Or maybe even when people have been housed for six months to see kind of longevity of that.  And in order to make sure that that doesn't put a provider at risk, because everyone knows that things don't always go according to plan, it has a third party come in and essentially pay the provider up front and take that risk of whether or not the outcome is going to come through.
	So it's more of a sort of how do we all focus on paying for what really matters, which are the outcomes of the services, and yet at the same time how do we protect the providers if there is going to be a shift towards that when most people don't have huge amounts of data saying what their current outcomes are.  You know, so that's more of the social impact bond thing, and I think that's more of what we would be kind of interested in doing.  I don't think we would have the capability really to bond against ‑‑ bonds like the city or county does for multiple years against a funding stream just because we don't have a sort of projected funding stream that we can say will definitely be the same, that will give us the same amount year after year after year.  It's something we could look into, but at the moment we can't do that.
>> Lauren, do you mind ending your screen sharing so that folks can see faces a little better?
>> Oh, yeah.
>> We got a question from Theresa Power‑Drutis.
>> So this is all very interesting and good.  As a really small organization, it doesn't have to deal with the things that Gerrit was talking about, do we get behind some big product.  I have been for years promoting 211 and saying please don't start another network.  Now I am convinced the stuff that you are talking about and the stuff that Unite Us is talking about has a much greater capacity, so I want to get behind that, but I would love it if I could get behind one or the other.  If possible, if you could work with Unite Us, which is already a place that we are beginning to trust, to make the stuff you are doing on the back end, most of us aren't going to care what you are doing on the back end.  What we care is that we have one place on the front end that we can connect to.  So it seems to me at this level of technology right now, and you are in the beginning stages of this, this is the time to say let's really do break down those silos and working what works.  If you talk with Unite Us and they say, no, your system is better, we will hop onto yours, but it sounds like yours is all for Pierce County, and theirs is universal.  So anyway, I just want to put that out there that it would mean a lot to those of us who don't have the capacity to do this on their own if you would work together in a seamless way.
>> Yeah, absolutely.  I think that is something that we have heard from many people and something we are very aware of.  I should also specify that the work that we are doing testing this out is with a couple different local partners, and it is in testing kind of phase right now, and we actually are working with 211 to see how this could work together with all of their different kind of resources on there.  We are gathering feedback.  What is most wanted and what can we make work to providers.
>> It looks like Unite Us was briefly on the line and is interested in getting into the conversation.  She is a software vendor, but it is great she is making time to learn what our community needs are.  And as you were asking how can we be more involved, you can have a community engagement staffer at least monitor meeting topics or attend when they seem relevant or always attend and become an active part of the Coalition to End Homelessness.  Volunteer opportunities abound.
>> Thank you.  Yeah, I will take that back, too.  I really appreciate it.
>> There is a question about in what ways is racial equity being incorporated into the work and funding of OnePierce?
>> Yeah, that's a great point.  So our kind of overarching aim is around systemic health equity issues and racial equity is obviously a component of that.  So we are doing a couple different things.  One, as I know some of you on the phone know, Elevate Health is a Community Advisory Council, which is made of at least 50% of people with lived experience, which includes a diverse range of ethnicity, race, as well as people who have had experience with the behavioral health and healthcare systems in Pierce County.  So we kind of take a lot of what we are doing to them for feedback, for guidance, for what else should we be thinking about, how can we do things better.  And I know Al who is on the phone here can speak to some of that as well.  But one of the ways that we are trying to include that in funding decisions, for example, as I mentioned with the example around behavioral health CARES Act funding, OnePierce managed that process and is part of putting together a review committee, and we were able to reach out to the Community Advisory Council and say can we have someone with lived experience on our review committee.
	And to be honest it was a wonderful process.  It was also a little bit of a learning process for me in terms of how we can do that better in the future sessions, too, but I think that really is our intention, is to have people from the communities that we are serving be involved in the decisionmaking around funding, as well as around strategy and what we look towards.
	And the other piece I would say in terms of the funding that we do, making sure that there is a health equity component and a racial equity component in our kind of selections around what we fund, too.  So, you know, at the moment it's no surprise to anyone I think that we are reaching out to the communities that have been disproportionate affected by COVID, which also against happens to be communities of color, and trying to work with the faith community on the Hilltop area, for example, and the faith ministries, to say where are the funding needs that we can help address with you.  Baby steps, and there is a lot more we can be doing, but it's part of ‑‑ it's our mission, so that's what we are moving towards.
>> All right.  It looks like I am going to take a question from Al, and then Joy, and I think we are going to let Ms. Fulton move along.  Dr. Ratcliffe.
>> Mr. Nyland, as usual I have a multipart question.  Number one, what's your definition of affordable?
>> Sorry.  I am taking myself off mute.  We do look at this project by project, but in general I sort of look at the definition of affordable as below 60% AMI, annual median income, for affordable housing.  But we are also interested in supportive housing, which is focused on 30% of AMI, so we are trying to focus on the low income populations.
>> I am going to jump in, Al.  In homelessness we serve maybe one in a thousand is above 60% AMI.  Anyway, Al.
>> I lost my thought.  Um, it sucks getting old sometimes.  Um, oh, obvious question.  About a third of your membership of your Community Advisory Council are providers, street‑level providers, but they are providers.  This group is a whole bunch of providers, street‑level clear on up to administrators.  Is there a role for this group to collaborate with OnePierce in either reviewing projects or suggesting projects or giving feedback, not just to be a passive participant in this very important effort that you are developing?  And then the last part of the question is, where do you get your money besides from the COVID relief?  And who are your directors?
>> Yep.  All great questions, of course.  So onto ‑‑ I would love to hear suggestions.  It's sort of an application process for funding, so if there is a little bit of sensitivity because we don't want to be throwing everyone who applies making it kind of public if it's not something that they want to make public, but they are applying for and how much and all of that.  So I am not sure in the kind of funding decision part that that would be something for a kind of large forum like this.  
	I think in terms of suggesting projects, I would love that.  We are constantly looking for new affordable and supportive housing projects, which is really how that collaboration with Pierce County came around.  So if there are any organizations on the phone who are themselves planning projects or actually who know of others who are, I would love to get in touch.  So I think maybe that is the sort of the community engagement officer being part of this group on a more permanent basis role as well that was mentioned as one way to do that.  But we welcome other thoughts, too, on what makes sense there.
	In terms of where we get you are funding, as I was mentioning we were really hoping in March we were going to launch with this big private investment in the fund as well, and be able to officially launch with multiple funding sources, and then COVID happened and everything kind of got pushed back, for very good reasons, and we were focused more on the grants than on bringing in any private investment, which would be loans even to us.  Our funding right now is from Elevate Health.  So Elevate Health as an Accountable Community of Health actually receives incentive payments when there are population health measures, which are metrics improved within Pierce County.  So they earn those payments based on outcomes.  And they have committed to putting 10% of those payments into OnePierce, so that it can continue investing in things more upstream like housing, like grocery stores and food deserts, like whatever that might look like to improve the health of the community in the long‑term.  So certainly Elevate Health is a source.  We are also looking at but do not yet have, I will say commitments, from private investors, primarily within healthcare impact, because actually a lot of healthcare entities realize these things make a difference to the health of their population, and in fact a lot of them for whatever reason might want to improve the health of their community as well.  And also philanthropic, to looking at grants and other sources as well as trying to collaborate with the public entities like the city and the county.
	So that's a little bit more kind of aspirational in terms of how we would like to be funded, but those conversations are underway and we are restarting this in this recovery, resurging crisis around COVID.  We would like to make headway with those, too.  Directors, because OnePierce ‑‑ it's effectively a subsidiary of Elevate Health, it shares most of its board with Elevate Health.  So we have Alisha Fehrenbacher, who is the CEO of Elevate Health on the board.  We have Steve O'Ban, the senator, and special advisor at the county level.  We have Pablo Bravo from Dignity Health, who is the head of their community, I think called the Community Investments team at Dignity Health, and then we have Doug Bowes who is the head of the UnitedHealthcare's Community Plan for Washington.  And am I missing one person?  Oh, Louis Fernsteen [phonetic], our chair in fact, who is with MultiCare.  But those are the directors at the moment, to answer that question.
>> Cool.  Thank you.  Joy, did you still have a question?
>> I do.  So mine is a two‑part as well.  So I'm Joy with Shared Housing Services so I am always going to ask why we are not in the table and in the conversation.  We are still housing people through this pandemic with a lot of protections and making sure that there is ‑‑ you know, everything to protect the provider and the seeker.  But I wish we had known about this.  And then the other part of the question is when did the funding requests go out?  I didn't hear about any kind of platform where we could say, hey, we're part of the solution to housing, and we would like to be a part of this.
>> Yeah.  So a couple different ways to answer that.  First one is that of our kind of two main funding offers at the moment, one has been around grants, and to be honest that didn't go out as we would have liked this year because we sort of made a decision in March with COVID that we actually wanted to contribute our grant pool for this year to the Pierce County Connected Fund, and so whereas in other years we planned to have a sort of separate grant competition and be able to run that and publicize it widely.  This year we really felt like we wanted to be part of that coordinated overarching response to COVID.  So we are very much a part of that, on the funding committee for Pierce County Connected, and would encourage actually all of you to apply for funding there if you haven't already.  Because they recognize housing as a big part of the response, and they have funded many different housing initiatives.  It's quite a low‑barrier application and they are reviewed very often.  So Pierce County Connected funds, if you haven't looked at that, please do.  And that's really where our grants went for this year, so that's why you haven't heard about those.
	And then in terms of the community lending and the repayable funding around that working capital for operations, and then different housing finance pieces as well, we are always happy to talk about that.  We were going to launch that part in March before everything else happened, and so it's been more of a sort of slow trickle I think of different information out than it would have otherwise been.  But because we are sort of new, I think this is part of getting the message out.  So we haven't ‑‑ to put that into perspective, we haven't actually made loans yet.  I am hoping we will actually at the end of August, so there are absolutely some that are in the pipeline, and that we are aware of, but it's still at the beginning of the process.  So, Joy, please do feel free to reach out and we can see how to work together on that.
>> Yeah.  I would love to have a conversation with our team and you guys so that we understand the process and what you are doing.  And you also understand what we do and how we contribute to the community.  Thank you.
>> That would be great.  Thank you.
>> Lauren, if you are trying to get information out, our LISTSERV would be the vehicle to tap into.
>> Great.  Thank you.
>> All right.  Well, thank you so much for coming.  Very much appreciate all of the information you provided.  That was a little longer than we expected because it was so interesting.
>> Sorry about that.
>> No.  No apologies.  I think that's the level of interest.  I think we could keep talking about all sort of things like how loans to build affordable housing don't really work.  We kind of need grants and things like that.  The realities of a lot of the funding mechanisms are challenging.
>> Yeah.
>> And so would love you back any time, and would certainly enjoy having community engagement folks take an active role.  This coalition is incredibly loose knit and can certainly benefit from more healthcare involvement.  So thanks a lot.  And we've got your e‑mail address on the agenda, so if folks have additional questions they can reach right on out.
>> Great.  Thanks so much, and thanks everyone for listening.  I hope to speak to you all soon.
>> All right.  We have the City of Tacoma up next.  A couple weeks ago we were having a conversation on here, and Allyson Griffith indicated she would be willing to come and talk about a bunch of things that kind of felt like we sort of kept waiting for the city to kind of have plans put together, so I doubt that every plan is solid, but it would be interesting to hear what's gone on with the funding that they injected into rental assistance, what the philosophy behind distributing the ESG CARES Act funding and what rounds there are.  I don't fully know exactly how the different money is flowing in.  Certainly that 2.6 million.  And I think that's about it.  So without further ado, I always appreciate Allyson being here.  Although I at all times struggle to put your name on the agenda.  Somebody hag a name that's always misspelled, I know there is a Y and a couple double letters, so hopefully it's all right.  I do my best.  Allyson, welcome.
>> Blame that one on my mother because it's been a lifetime of trying to tell people how to spell my name.  I am going to go ahead and share my screen, so it might take me just a second to get what we need to see here.  So give me just one minute.  Okay.  Are you all seeing my PowerPoint presentation?
>> Yes.
>> Awesome.  Great.  Perfect.  So good morning, everybody.  Assistant director for the City of Tacoma's Neighborhood and Community Services Department.  As Gerrit said, he asked if I would come and provide you with an update on our COVID‑19 response.  This PowerPoint and discussion today will be primarily around issues dealing with social service, so I do want to highlight ‑‑ I know there is a couple other partners on the call that I have seen, so I am not going to touch on utility assistance or anything like that today, so just keeping that kind of in your awareness.
	So there is a little bit of I think some confusion and even in for the organization there has been a lot of discussion about how different things of funding are coming in and different monies are being used, so I want to set up a little bit of the funding for you all.  Washington State overall received $1.6 billion in coronavirus funds from the U.S. department of [indiscernible] and Governor Inslee rolled out 298 million of those with states and towns below the 500,000 population threshold.  In that whole calculation Tacoma received $6.3 million in coronavirus relief funds from the State Department of Commerce.  That is done on a reimbursement basis.  I want to be very clear that those are dollars that the city actually has to kind of have on happened to expend, and then ask for reimbursement.  A little bit different than the types of funding that the county has received for example.
	So we primarily used that $6.3 million to cover operating expenses related to the emergency and to keeping our essential operations going.  But after covering those expenditures, we believe we have about 1.6 million remaining, and so we are using $800,000 of that to address food insecurity in our community and we are actually working right now with the Emergency Food Network to expand their contract to take in that $800,000 so that they can push that money out to the various food banks serving our community.  The other $800,000 we are working with childcare providers throughout the community to address needs that we believe are coming as folks return to work, and there is of course gaps in childcare.  So that's kind of the 6.3 million in coronavirus relief funds.
	And Gerrit touched on our emergency grant dollars we are receiving.  There are two rounds, so we have received $760,000, and we are anticipating an additional $2.8 million in emergency fund grants.  The $760,000 we have received we are working to invest those dollars in expansion and operation of non‑congregate shelter beds in our community, which include that expanded capacity over at East 60th and McKinley.  I will give you an update on the microshelter itself in a moment.  The 2.8 million, we haven't actually received.  We know those are intended funds coming to the city and we do intend to, again, look at additional shelter capacity, how we can add non‑congregate shelters in our community.
	In addition to those funds that we know we have coming our way, we have some in‑process funding as well.  So the city has put in application to Pierce County for $1 million of their CARES dollars, 500,000 of which we would like to put towards microshelter expansion and supporting that development over at 60th and McKinley, and 500,000 that we requested in rental assistance fund to kind of backfill, and we will talk about the rental assistance program in a minute, with those dollars.
	And we have also put in for FEMA reimbursement, primarily around our 24/7 operations expansion over at Bethlehem, Altheimer and Beacon.  So when we ‑‑ when Governor Inslee declared the Stay Home, Stay Healthy orders, we went ahead and expanded operations at those three shelter operations for 24/7, so people put in for reimbursement to cover the costs associated with that.  We have some setup costs, the actual development costs associated with the microshelter sites that we have included in that reimbursement request with FEMA, so that is working its way through the FEMA process.  As you all notice these funding kind of avenues are a little bit fluid as Gerrit talked about.  We are not ‑‑ the total picture isn't necessarily all together yet as we get information about what we are receiving.
	Then we are also working on a joint application with Pierce County for funding for additional shelter beds.  That application is $4.2 million in total, of which we expect to receive $1.3 million.  That's for new shelter beds in our community.  So, again, that's an application that's in process right now.  So the county would be able to provide the most information on how that process has been going.  They have been leading that process.  The city has been providing information about what we would like to pursue there.
>> Is that an application, too?
>> I believe that's also through Commerce, Gerrit, for the state.  So then I am going to move into just talking about giving you all an update on rental assistance.  As you might recall, we pivoted and utilized $1.2 million for housing dollars to assist [away from mic].  As of July 14th, so I get a weekly report that we provide to the council, so we have made 155 payments.  That's a combination of our lottery and direct referral program.  But you might remember our program is a little bit split.  We are doing lottery funding open to the entire City of Tacoma community, and then we are also taking direct referrals from agencies, particularly agencies that work with persons of color, to try and meet the disproportionate number of individuals who experience homelessness in our community, are disproportionately persons of color, so we are trying to close that gap in that funding.  So we have made $140,000, or just a little over $140,000, in payments.  We did have a second round of lottery that opened on July 8th, and closed on the 15th.  As of July 14th we had 153 applications in that round.  So we are going to work now to get those dollars out as well.
	And as of the 14th, all knowing I know we received one additional gift from the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, but we received 11 gifts totaling [away from mic].  Those dollars will be put towards that fund as well to try and, again, assist more households in our community.  We are also just ‑‑
>> Allyson.
>> Yes, Gerrit.
>> You are still on the initial slide.  Is some of this information on slides that are kind of flowing through?
>> Yes.  And you can't see them, huh?
>> No.
>> I'm sorry.  Let me ‑‑ let me try stop sharing and then start sharing again.  Let me see.  Sorry, Gerrit.  And everyone.
>> Someone else pointed that out.  I was just rolling with it, but.
>> Give me one second.  I'm sorry, everybody.  Yeah, I am giving you all these great numbers, and I purposefully have them on slides because I know it's a lot to keep track of, so hang on.  Let me see if I can figure this out.
>> They can always be sent out later.
>> Yes, they can, but let's see.
>> There we go.
>> Are you seeing them now?
>> Yep, moving now.
>> Okay.  I apologize, everyone.  So we will go to rental assistance, but I am happy during questions if you need to go back to the funding slides, we can.  So what I was in the middle of saying is that we are in the process of establishing ‑‑ we are also just at the very beginning stages of looking at establishing a mortgage assistance program in the city, so I don't have a whole ton of information on that yet because that is a request we have started to look into this week, so that is something that we have been hearing a lot from our community, a concern about being able to provide mortgage assistance.  We are looking at that as well.  And moving into the microshelter expansion, I want to make sure you all have an update on that.  Just to remind you that as 623 East 60th Street, towards the railroad tracks, the site will have 50 units, and serve a max capacity of 65 individuals at any given time.  So of course it will serve more individuals over the time, lifetime of the site.  Though residents from 8th and MLK will begin their transition to the new site on July 23rd.  So that's move‑in day for the folks to that new site.  And then we expect to be fully operational by mid‑August.  If you think about, we are going to have everybody from the microshelters at 8th and MLK move with their belongings over to East 60th and McKinley, and pick up all the units and bring them over, and do a little bit of repair, clean‑out, things like that, and start moving folks primarily from ‑‑ our homeless outreach team will be doing the referrals from individuals experiencing homelessness [away from mic].  So that's where the primary referral will be coming from.
	There is a community advisory committee associated with the microshelter site, so if you all are interested in participating on that committee, I would encourage you to contact Josh at Low Income Housing Institute, and his e‑mail address is there.  Very interested in having ‑‑ would you actually have a pretty robust committee already, consisting of several of the neighbors as well as business owners, but would love to have further participation.
	And then I know that Gerrit is going to touch on some other conversation, but I want to remind you all it is in fact budget season for the City of Tacoma, so we are in the process of setting up our '21‑'22 biennial budget.  It is a budget where we are experiencing an $8 million gap in financing, right, so it is something where council is going to have to make some difficult decisions about what receives funding and what does not over the next couple of years.  I want to invite you all to be part of that conversation.  There are several surveys out to the community to take.  They are available at cityoftacoma.org/budgetdevelopment.  Around ‑‑ let me count.  Yes, seven, eight priority areas.  I'm sorry.  I said seven surveys and it's more than that.  Safety, jobs, housing, racial equity and anti racism, access, engagement and health, and to invite you on a budget virtual workshop on July 23rd, information on how to log into that virtual workshop is available at that budget development website.  Also available on that website which I didn't have room for on the slide is an opportunity for what budget is calling a balancing exercise, and that's an opportunity to kind of put in where you would like to see increased funding and then decreased funding to get an idea of how if we increase funding in one area it does impact other areas.  So I want to invite you all to engage yourself in that conversation.
	And then everything that I have talked about today I just want to remind you is covered in regular briefs to the city council, so if you ever need access to their agendas or their meeting times or [away from mic] those are available at the cityoftacoma.org [away from mic].  And since folks couldn't see my slides on funding, I am going to go back to those, but I am happy to take any questions that we have.  And I haven't been watching the chat, so I am hoping you have.
>> Yeah, a little bit.  Lots going on there.  Maureen, do you just want to jump in with some of those questions?  And also Kenny Coble has been providing some links for ‑‑ you mentioned a link.  Kenny stuck it into the chat, so thank you so much for that.
>> That's teamwork.  [Laughs]
>> I'm sure.  Allyson, thanks a lot.  Some of these actually got fixed when you put the slides up.  So but a couple of things.  One is it seems like not very much money is going out actually in the rental assistance payments, and yet you put in another 500,000 from the county's CARES relief money.  If we can't get money out already, why ask for more money?  I guess that's one part of it.  Then the other is the McKinley, the movement of the microshelters to McKinley, so like are they going to report now in HMIS, and are they going to be part of coordinated entry?  If the team is doing the referrals, that's the police plus the city staff person, right, how are they going to handle COVID‑related safety with the referral process, and I was really pleased to see that you are going after FEMA money to reimburse those non‑congregate costs.  I have been trying to get the county to do that, but their hang‑up has been the 25% match, and I am just wondering what the city is going to use for that match, or is there a way to get around that?  And do you actually have ‑‑ it's the Emergency Operations Center has some sort of relationship with FEMA for this use, which I am just really pleased to see.  I am sure you've got about a thousand more, but this will do.
>> Yeah.  Okay.  I will try to remember all of them, Maureen, and ones I don't get to, please repeat them for me.  Your question about rental assistance is a good one.  We used 1.2 in hour housing cost funds.  So whatever we can to backfill that, we are hoping to kind of ‑‑ that was our total.  When we talk about affordable housing and what's coming next in terms of what our community ‑‑ we would like to if possible backfill that expenditure with our other applications.  So that's why it looks like we are looking for additional dollars, but really what we are trying to do is kind of shore up what we've committed to there.  So I don't see ‑‑ it wouldn't be an increase.  We want to hit the threshold of 1.2 if that makes sense.
>> Yeah, definitely.
>> So that's the piece there.  Your question on microshelters, I think I missed one in the middle, Maureen, so I apologize.  The question on microshelters, so the question about HMIS, yes, Low Income Housing Institute does have a contractural requirement [away from mic].  I know this has been a question and concern for us, so we are emphasizing that with them, and trying to work through those.  We have connected them with the county to get them the ‑‑ to get that information in there.  So that piece we are hoping will be a little bit more smooth going forward.
	And then the question about COVID and handling COVID, LIHI is testing individuals as they come to their site right now at 8th and MLK, and the expectation is that will continue forward.
>> Are they getting results fast enough?  I mean do people ‑‑ I mean, where are people going while they are waiting for the test results I guess?
>> I would have to ask them about specifically.  I know they discussed that with the community just recently, so I will reach out to LIHI and get more information for you about what's happening there.
>> The missing question was, will they participate in coordinated entry now?
>> So because the individuals will come from direct referral from unauthorized encampments, they will be put into coordinated entry, but they won't come from coordinated entry.  Does that make sense to you?  
>> No. I am more interested in the data and their access to resources that coordinated entry provides.
>> Yes.  Right now they've got one individual at 8th and MLK at coordinated entry, and we are going to work with everybody there.
>> Thank you.
>> Yep.
>> When you refer to the homeless outreach team, were you referring to TPD or to Comprehensive Life Resources team?
>> The TPD, NCS homeless outreach team, although working with positive interactions as well, so both.
>> So Megan Capes had a quick question.  She had a question about the referral process.  Megan, do you want to jump into that, and we will get to you Theresa?
>> Yeah.  Hey, Allyson.  Thanks for jumping on this call today and doing this presentation.  I just have a question, I have two questions right now.  One is why is ‑‑ I just ‑‑ I have always had this question about why does the main referral person is a specialty team of cops.  The HOT team is a police team.  It also carries on encampment clearings, it also tracks people experiencing homelessness, it tracks encampments.  It just seems like when especially when having folks take a risk and move in a new direction, oftentimes takes trust and relationships, and that just seems like a provider that does mental health and long‑term case managing would actually be a better fit as a referral, especially with relationships.  I also have a question about as COVID continues, and expected libraries to be closed and Metro Parks' water fountains being closed, what is the city to care for folks' basic needs?  One that's a super high need is access to water for drinking water because the fountains in Metro Parks are not opening back up.  Thanks, Gerrit.
>> Okay.  Thanks, Megan.  Hello to your dog, too.  [Laughs].  So in terms of the homeless outreach team, you are right that there is a component that is TPD personnel, but there are also two NCS outreach workers as well as a dedicated [away from mic] team.  The NCS outreach workers are the folks who do the conversations with individuals in the encampments.  We do have TPD personnel with those folks for safety concerns, but it is [away from mic], who are doing conversation with those individuals, and helping to connect them to those resources.
	So that piece.  The question about basic resources and particularly drinking water, Megan, I think that's one I will have to take back and talk about how to think about that one going forward, especially as we move into the warm months.
>> And just to kind of piggyback before I get to you, Theresa, the way referrals happen to the Stability Site is that the outreach team at the Rescue Mission does assessments of clients, put them on a wait list that gets prioritized by vulnerability.  So the entries into the Stability Site are essentially the most vulnerable folks living in the community that, you know, had developed relationships with the Rescue Mission.  Is there any plan to instead of looking at the person that you come across next when there is an opening to kind of actively work to enroll those that are most vulnerable?
>> And you are right, Gerrit, we do have the outstanding list for the Stability Site and those referrals, so those are certainly folks that we can work to try and get connected to the microshelters as well.  Thank you for that because you are correct, we do have all of that information.  And as you know, the Stability Site has been on pause in terms of referral at this point in time, when we were making transition to the shelters there, so we certainly have several folks who might be good candidates for microshelter locations.
>> And it's a list of 129 people, so.
>> If I can jump in, Gerrit, the wait list also has been affected by giving priority to the HUD team taking the people straight into the Stability Site rather than going to the list.  So people that have been on the list for a long time waiting their time have been jumped by people that were grabbed by the HUD team and just put in there.  And that affects the way ‑‑ the ability that I can do my job putting people there.  They have taken already intakes because I brought five people in maybe two or three weeks ago.  So they are back.
>> Thanks.  Dr. Power‑Drutis, question.
>> So I have three things.  Actually first I want to ask if we can stop the screen share.  That's always my cry‑out in these things so we feel more like a meeting.  And then I had a couple things.  The first is that since this coalition began we have been asking the city, and this isn't to you, Allyson, because I don't think this is your department, but I would like you to take it back, that we need a better public interface for all of the services that are offered, homeless services offered, and paid for by the city.  So just when I go to the city shelter site, the same thing it was a long time ago, and you have these innovations.  So one of the things is it's almost impossible to find anything about Altheimer's.  What it is, what it costs, who is there, how do you refer people.  Same thing for ‑‑ I go to Gerrit's sheet for the shelters, which is so much better than what the city has, and that doesn't make sense because at bare minimum you could cut and paste his.  So I do really want to strongly encourage you, and I want to strongly encourage the other people on this call, to make this known as a problem.  The website is a major problem.  There is ‑‑ it would not take ‑‑ I could go in there for five hours and make that a much more responsive website.  So you've got professionals, so some of their funds, some of their time, needs to go to this really, really important emergency.  So I say that with frustration because I have said it so many times before, for years, literally, Allyson, years this has been coming up and zero has been done.  So that's not to you.  That's to the mechanisms of the city.
	The other thing is that the OnePierce did a great job when they are doing their presentation of saying this is how much things are costing, this is where they are spending their money, and it would be really good if the city would do that as well.  So if you are giving a certain amount of money to a shelter, one of the things I really like that Gerrit has also done is said this is how much it costs per person, and if it's a really big price tag per person, just put a little note there that explains why.  It's sort of like, yeah, we get there are different level of needs, so sheltering certain individuals will cost more, but, oh, my God it costs so much, put the amount you are spending per agency that you are funding that we, that we are funding, so that the people who are the constituents can go and find it.  How much are we spending?  How much does that come out to per person?  And I have a little hidden agenda that probably isn't that hidden to you, if you did a safe parking lot the money per person would be a lot lower.  If you do something that allows people to camp, and not in my front yard, the amount it would cost you would be a lot lower.  So please, please give us the information we need as a community.  If you are concerned that there is not enough community involvement, part of it could be that the city is not doing a very good job of communicating with us.  And then, thank you for coming today.  [Laughs].  And for the good work you are doing.
>> Yep.  Totally hear you, Theresa.  Thanks for the feedback, and we are still working on it, as you know.
>> Just out of curiosity, Allyson, what does one bed night cost at the new TEMS Shelter versus the Stability Site?
>> I don't have the numbers off the top, but I can follow up with you guys on because there is questions from other members the community right now, so.
>> It's just always interesting.  Those are numbers on the top of my head, so.  They are pretty similar.  All right.  Around 55 to $60 a bed night.
>> I don't have specific.
>> One thematic question I had is what is the city anticipating in terms of change in the homeless population with the lifting of the eviction moratorium and with the ending of the federal unemployment benefits?  So are you guys doing analytics to sort of look at what your knowledge of the existing population is, and then make some estimates so that there is a sense of what the actual rental assistance need is going to be in the coming months?
>> Yeah, Gerrit.  Thanks for that.  Of course we do anticipate a potential increase in individuals experiencing homelessness in the community because of the pandemic.  It is something we are working on.  Ali at UWT has put together quite a spreadsheet on what he is seeing in terms of economic forecasts, and so that's something we have been working with him on through the affordable housing action strategy.  Yes, we've got some data and indicators that we are looking at, but if you have other sources that you want us to take a look at, happy to take a look at those as well.
>> I guess my ask would be I would like the city to take as active an interest as they did, say, in the affordable housing action strategy in really mapping out what that need is so that we can attempt to resource it.  Because 1.2 million, it seems like it's going to go away at the ‑‑ you know, assuming we get enough outreach, so that people are aware of how to engage those services, folks that may have never connected to our support systems before, but, yeah.  Monitoring that, do we do ‑‑ so you do some reporting of Tacoma homeless, rent assistance payments, just rent assistance payments.  Are we integrating that data at all with other providers of rent assistance payments?  So like it seems as we look at COVID‑19 statistics, it would be really smart for us to have if not a weekly, a daily tally of the number of new requests for rental assistance so that we can be very active in monitoring what could be a most important key indicators for how the economic health of our most vulnerable is.  The question is, are you working with the county to understand daily and weekly how many people are accessing or attempting to access rental assistance?
>> Yeah.  And so, Gerrit, for us because we do it on kind of a lottery round, we don't have ‑‑ we have kind of this chunk at a time, or snapshot in time in terms of rental assistance requests.  But it is something that Valeri and I were just talking about how to ‑‑ especially now that the county has expanded their rental assistance to City of Tacoma residents, it's just something we were just talking about how to better integrate our information, so something we can take a look at.
>> Why do we have a lottery system if we are not spending the money we have set aside?
>> Again, because first come, first served isn't from an equity standpoint, necessarily super equitable.  That comes when people have an ability to access immediately, so we went with a lottery system to make sure that we had an opportunity for folks to submit their application over time and be considered as needs arise.  We were able to fund, to your point, 100% of our applicants that qualified in the first round, and we imagine we will be able to do the same in the second round as well.
>> There really isn't a lottery system.  Like you have never done a lottery.
>> They do it ‑‑ they pull applications randomly, but then get through everybody because of the available funds, yeah.
>> So you are doing a lottery that you don't need to do.  I get it.  There is lots of questions coming through.  We currently had 800 applicants for rental assistance and some 200 applications for veterans assistance.  Yeah, I am not going to read through all those comments.  You will have to raise your hand if you want something open to the whole group here.
>> Yeah.  I think I can ‑‑ we can certainly take a look at these, too, following the meeting, Gerrit, so I've got access to them.
>> So how many more shelter beds does the City of Tacoma thinks it needs to house every single individual that's homeless in Pierce County, or rather in the City of Tacoma right now?
>> In the City of Tacoma, you know, Gerrit, I believe our most recent pick count had just over 500 folks experiencing homelessness in the City of Tacoma, so we think ‑‑ we are slowly adding, as you all know.  I mean we got expanded capacity at East 60th and McKinley by about 30 shelter beds.  We are currently looking at another site to add an additional probably 50.  So working towards that goal, but as you know from our last report we said around 400.  We may need slightly more than that now.
>> So you are using the point‑in‑time count as the statistic, and that 500 from the point‑in‑time count, is that the people that identified a last permanent address in Tacoma, or people that were counted in Tacoma during the point‑in‑time count?
>> I believe it was people counted in Tacoma, Gerrit, but I would have to confirm that.
>> From the data that the county published on its website?
>> Yes.
>> That is not how many people were counted in Tacoma.  That was the number of people that identified as City of Tacoma as their last permanent address.
>> I apologize.
>> It's probably two‑and‑a‑half or three times if you look at other mechanisms to count.  That bums me out that we are still as a city looking at the point‑in‑time count as an accurate indicator of the need in the community.
>> I have a question.  So I asked in the chat, but I have been really frustrated by the city's stance against safe parking lots, funding safe parking lots, and also its stance around not pursuing alternatives to shelter beds, especially when we have so many folks that are living unsheltered in the City of Tacoma.  It just feels very forgotten, and it feels very like the community and neighborhoods that have encampments are feeling the brunt, as well as the responsibility to do the work.  So I just ‑‑ especially when the point‑in‑time count had a 93% increase, I am wondering why the city is not revisiting this stance around safe parking, as well as with increased unsheltered homelessness and with the rise of homelessness expected with COVID, and lifting the eviction moratorium, whenever that happens.  Why isn't the city proactively looking at these steps to make sure that even if folks are not in the most ideal situation, that they are still safe and have access to bathrooms and water?  And this brunt isn't being felt on like especially the neighborhoods that have been feeling the brunt that the homelessness like the Hilltop and around Tacoma Avenue do not continue to feel this pressure.
>> Megan, was there a question in there?  Or just a statement about ‑‑
>> Is the city going to revisit their stance on safe parking, or sanctioned encampments?  If not, why?  [Laughs].
>> Yeah.  At the present time the city does not feel that safe parking or that type of ‑‑ or a sanctioned encampment provides the best safety for individuals.  As you know, we've gone the route of providing shelter that is more close to indoor shelter, and that's not something at this time the city is reconsidering.
>> Yes, the perfect getting away on the good is what that feels like.  I don't know how many tents you all saw this morning on the side of the road as you traveled into work.  Hopefully none because you are working from home.  However, if I look out my office and the number of tents on Yakima Avenue, it was substantial, at least enough tents to fill up another Stability Site, and that was in a four‑block region that I traveled through.
	I have another question, and I think we are going to have to dump a couple things off our agenda again.  You have had I guess ‑‑ half of the homeless staff have been on temporary layoffs for the past month or so, and as we look at going into this budget cycle, is there a discussion of permanently eliminating some of the homeless staff in the next biennium?  Is that a discussion that's happening?
>> Gerrit, you are correct, that we have been having temporary furloughs throughout our organizations.  The budget process is one where directors do make a presentation to the city manager, but the city manager brings that budget forward to council, and council of course makes the final decision.  So at this time I cannot speak to what is being proposed in that budget.  That will come from the city manager directly.
>> So I realize it puts you in an awkward position as a city employee, and we certainly don't expect you to advocate for more or less staffing, but if you could let us know when you have heard information about intentions to increase or decrease so that we can provide some voice to the city manager.  I think we would all appreciate that.
>> Yeah.  Again, I think another way to make sure that your voice is heard is by taking an opportunity to compete those surveys and participate in that virtual workshop on the 23rd.
>> A lot of us have done that already, and that's good advice.  Just when you hear information, you don't need to advocate, but you can certainly be informed.  All right.  I think I am going to have to ‑‑ well, any other questions on my list?  I guess my last question, it sounds to me there is not going to be an open [indiscernible] for any of that CARES Act funding.
>> For the city's portion right now, yes, we are going to use it to establish ‑‑ I want to be clear because I have seen a few comments in the comment.  Non‑congregate shelter, it is shelter designed to address those issues of COVID‑19, so there has been several questions, are we putting them all in one space and how is that going to work.  So similarly we are working for non‑congregate shelter opportunities.
>> So I would really like the city to take the tact that the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation and that the county have in making that money available through a public process, and I am bummed out that that money continues to be handed directly to providers even if the providers are going to use it wisely.  It would really be nice to see that money come through a process that invites other community providers into the fold, that I know it's not required by law because of the emergency declaration, but it's that type of open government that I think a lot of us are very interested in seeing.  So would you mind taking that to the director?
>> Certainly can take the message back, yep.
>> All right.  Thank you so much, and we know how to get ahold of you.  If we have other questions or comments, we can certainly feed them through.
>> Thank you.
>> I am sure this has been really fun for you.
>> That's all right.  Part of the job.
>> Thanks for being the face of the city.
>> Yep.
>> And maybe we could schedule another little session like this in a month.
>> Probably about a month would be good, Gerrit.  As you point out Erica will be back at that time, and again we will have a little bit more information on how to have some of those [away from mic].  Thank you.
>> Great.  I think I am going to muddle with the schedule here a bit.  I would like to get a lot of updates.  This was a Rosemary idea, talking about our plans for how to handle what we think is going to be a tsunami of homelessness with the eviction moratorium ending and the unemployment.  I want to push that back to next week.  Again, I really ‑‑ I would like us to have more human one on one interactions, and a lovely idea, Rosemary.  The next item on the agenda is one that someone just mentioned briefly that the city was planning to permanently eliminate its discrimination investigation team.  So that would mean that the fair housing, the public accommodation and the employment discrimination investigators would no longer be a service the city offered.  So basically laying that staff off.  A chunk of that is pro ‑‑ a chunk of the funding is provided by the federal government through a couple of grants.  I don't believe it covers the entire costs of those positions.  And those folks do ‑‑ you know, it's racial discrimination, it's discrimination on the basis of disability, and it's been something over my years as a disability advocate I have fought, and fought is probably the right word, fought hard to make sure it's functioning well.  So I am a bit freaked out that the city has decided to eliminate those positions.
	I brought that concern up to the equity and whatever it's called, equity and human rights and invited to talk about can you tell us why this is happening, how services will be offered in the future, and I basically got, no, talk to the hand.  They said they are uninterested in providing any type of engagement, that they will be making a decision and they are not seeking public input, and they will simply let us know when a decision has been made.  And as one might well imagine, that is not the right answer for a government organization.  And so I sent ‑‑ I am giving you the background here, Al.  Al is going to jump in in a second.  And I wrote, sort of on behalf of the coalition, to the city council, and they have a committee that oversees human rights and saying, hey, I gave them the e‑mail thread and said this is pretty unacceptable.  Would somebody on that council committee be willing to talk to the coalition, and Councilmember Ushka said, hey, I haven't heard anything about this, and asked the city manager to provide an update on what they are doing and why.  And I asked Al Ratcliffe what he knew about it, and I am going to hand that off to Al.
>> Thank you.  Good morning, everybody, again.  Before I start on, that in regard to the safe parking I was thinking back to the days before the Stability Site where the city went into always kinds of denial that we ought to do anything about people who were homeless and in tents, and then something happened and it finally tilted the windmill, and we spent all this money on the Stability Site and all of that, and I don't know what's going to tilt the windmill on safe parking, but sometime it's going to happen.
	I am a member of the Human Rights Commission, and those of you who aren't familiar with the Human Rights Commission of the City of Tacoma, not Pierce County, in the past the city has had contracts with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to investigate complaints of discrimination in housing and employment within the City of Tacoma.  And in order to carry out that function the city has employed two investigators within the city Department of Human Services.  I am not sure that's the right department.  To carry out investigations.
	The Human Rights Commission was notified a month ago that the city had decided that it could not continue to pay 80% of the costs of those folks because of the budget crunch, and had notified both HUD and the EEOC that the city was going to get out of the business of investigating and enforcing housing and employment discrimination within the city.
	But we were less than pleased to hear that.  There were some discussion at that meeting, but it was presented as well this decision is made.  We started challenging the decision and then we heard, well, maybe it's not a good idea.  Anyway, the Human Rights Commission had a meeting last night.  Gerrit attended and observed.  And the result of that is that the commission voted unanimously to communicate with the city council and the city administration that we do not support the elimination of those two investigator positions.  And that there are a number of consequences both in terms of people who are going to lose housing in the upcoming wave, or lose employment in the upcoming wave, and will have no recourse at a practical level to complain because instead of complaining to the city and getting a reasonably rapid response, they will have to complain to HUD and/or to the State of Washington, depending on the issue.
	And we know that the complaint backlog at the State of Washington's EEOC is at least six months, so there will be essentially no practical remedies for people who experience housing or employment loss because of this decision.  And we understand it has fiscal cost to the city.  The city ‑‑ there were a couple of sources of revenue that come in that offered substantial amounts of money for the city to carry out these kind of functions that will be lost if the city isn't carrying them out.
	So there will be a letter going to the city council and to the manager and staff within the next week or so expressing our opposition to eliminating those positions and the reasons why.  Questions?
>> So just as another side note, there are things we have in ordinances in the City of Tacoma that will simply not be enforced, so if they are not something that's handled ‑‑ that's also protected at the state, a good example would be all of the work that was done to eliminate ‑‑ to prohibit discrimination based on income source.  Right.  So at the state that's a matter that gets handled with a civil lawsuit.  There isn't any investigation that happens.  And so it's is City of Tacoma, if you are being discriminated on the source of your income, the city would investigate and provide a mechanism hopefully to get a remedy.  Basically that will be unenforced.  That's just an example you could take the law off the books because there is no way that you are going to be held accountable for that as a landlord.
>> Actually that's not correct, Gerrit.  That's the one thing that's in the local ordinance that is the city has to enforce, the source of income.
>> Well, I mean the city ‑‑
>> The city will have to enforce that, and the bathroom signage issue.  But essentially what the decision was was to render the Human Rights Commission toothless.  In a city that asserts that is welcoming and values equal employment and housing opportunity and equal human rights.  So we'll see what happens, but ‑‑
>> So maybe something that we need to ask a lot of you folks to weigh in on.  So we will see what the city manager provides to the city council and what the city council wants to do about that, but it may take some real work.  But, you know, in a time when we are becoming much more aware as a society of the systemic racism that just holds people down, and we look at eliminating one of the more responsive tools that we have to help address that, it just seems tone deaf at best, and criminal at worst.  And so, yeah.  It may be something that we do need to ask for some more push on, and I just can't imagine that the optics of this is something that the city council has any interest in.  And I don't understand the city's hesitancy, reluctance, disinclination, to engage with the community in the discussion.  We are having bad budget times.  It may be necessary to eliminate things that we really care about, like this.  But that doesn't mean that you don't have a public discussion about it.
>> Yeah.  Everybody stand by, because there may come a point at which we have to ask the homeless coalition or its participants to communicate with the city council.
>> Right.  You say that the city has to enforce that income stuff, but without the investigation arm, like that's the tool to enforce it.  Right.  Like without that tool, you know, you don't have any traction.  A lot of these laws get enforced because somebody's friend got investigated and they understand that that it's something that's real so when you lose one investigation oftentimes I think you create a sense that ‑‑ like our speeding laws or fireworks laws, those are simply things you get to ignore because there is no negative impact to not following the rules.  Yeah.  Maureen mentioned we should talk to "The News Tribune."  So Al has never talked to "The News Tribune" about anything, but I was on a call talking about Lakewood of all things, and I was rather steamed that the City of Tacoma was basically saying, no, we are not going to engage with you, we will tell you when we have made a decision.  So I did bring it up with "The News Tribune," and they seemed interested because, again, it just doesn't seem like it matches up with the openness or the attention to racial inequities that city council members are espousing and seem to be what the city is indicating it is prioritizing.  Anyway, if you want to work on this, give me a holler.  I would be happy to have more on the team.  It is fun to sink my teeth into something that's so important, but also really sad to have to sink my teeth into something that is so important.
	All right.  I would love us to jump into a bunch of updates, and I guess I would like to ask for maybe to skip a few things.  So safe parking I imagine that you folks are still waiting for the announcements which is supposed to happen on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday about the third round of CARES Act funding.  Does that sound like we are still in a holding pattern, Jan?
>> Yes, holding with fingers crossed.
>> Fingers crossed holding pattern.  And there was actually a request from Sean Dennerlein to do a quick update on rental assistance.
>> Thank you so much.  I was messaging with Maureen, and I wanted to give an update.  I actually messaged some of our folks at Pierce County Human Services to see where we are tracking the data.  They confirmed on Monday's, they will be putting out updates.  This coming Monday there will be how many people have applied for rental assistance and how many people have been reimbursed, how many people have received payment.  So I can tell you right now based off of what I can see that there have been 900 people that have applied, and all of those applications are practically instantly sent to the providers, but there is going to be a lag time to reach out schedule appointments, document collection and the works for the case management.  Of the 900, most of them actually have applied in the past three days.  We started on Wednesday.  We only had 400 applicants.  So we had 500 applicants yesterday, just yesterday alone.  So 150 as of yesterday have received assistance so far.  And that number will be updated on Monday.  So they are hoping that a lot more people will get ‑‑ receive their actual payments by Monday.  
	As far as veterans, our turnaround time is a lot faster right now.  We have had 200 applicants.  Of those we are at like 65% have been served.  And others are just waiting on their rent to come due in August, so it will be automatically served when their rent comes due in August.  So the county will start reporting weekly on not only how many applications we receive, but how many dollars have gone out and how many people have received those dollars.  So more to follow on that.  Valeri is working on it.
	The other thing I would like to add is we are trying to come up with some creative ways to expand our services, where we are talking about opening up a call center to help these providers deal with that large volume and for the people that can't do an online application they can call in and have somebody fill out the application for them.  As well as doing a mobile application site to more rural parts of the county with Wi‑Fi and computer access so we can go to people and help them.  So you will be hearing more about that as the weeks come.
>> Always appreciate hearing from you, Sean.  And really hats off as well to the county for the portal it created.  They took internal resources and threw them into doing something to make things work well.  And I have been frustrated because of the person they sidelined to do that work isn't doing some other things that I sort of count on her putting out.  Every time I start thinking that way I have to say, no, wait a minute.  What she is doing is actually exactly what she should be working on.  So hats off to the county for putting a tool in place and now we have to pound the streets to get folks connect to that resource.  Glad to hear you are looking at other ways.
	Let's head into some government updates.  Do we have ‑‑ I didn't look to see.  Do we have some folks from the Health Department on the line?  I am going to give a hats off to the Health Department as well.  I have been attempting to bludgeon them for some time about having testing available to shelters, and they have come through in spades.  Mobile testing units are being made available in ways that are more than what is probably the demand, which is unbelievable.  So just really can't emphasize enough how available they are making that mobile unit.  So if you've got a place for it, I think Manu provided really clear instructions on how to make the request, and we have done it and they have been like, great, let's do it now, and this time and this time and this time.  So wow, wow, wow.
	Health Department, you want to jump?
>> Thanks, Gerrit.  This is Manu.  Can you hear me?
>> Yes.
>> Hi.  Great.  I mean you pretty much summarized the update I was going to share, really no major updates.  We continue to respond to testing needs and make testing more accessible to the community, and responding to [away from mic] questions as they come.  And, yeah, just continuing to engage in conversation with community members, shelter providers, about how we can improve the process and the conditions at the current temporary care centers that we have established.  So more to come on that.
	And as Gerrit mentioned, I have shared the ‑‑ I have distributed the list of upcoming and scheduled testing events in the community, so please feel free to share widely with your networks.  That's it for us.  Unless anybody on the call has anything else, but.
>> Cool.  Does Ivan have anything from the Emergency Operations Center?  All right.  And I am sure all of you have noticed that we have record number of COVID‑19‑cases in Pierce County, so, yeah.  That's not the record we were hoping for, but.
	Um, let's see.  Valeri, what do you have from the county?  I am adjust assuming Valeri is on.
>> She is off.  She is doing some self‑care and taking time off I believe.
>> Gerrit, that's why I was trying to give the update.  Valeri is out today.
>> Perfect.  Okay.  Thank you.  You will update.  So round three is going to have the group, as I mentioned, evaluating the applications and she said yesterday hopefully getting the letters out on Tuesday or Wednesday, maybe Monday.  So that's great.  And if there is funding available, which it looks like there will be, there will probably be a round four of the CARES Act funding so another chance for agencies to get some resources to serve folks impacted by COVID‑19.  And Allyson, did you have anything else?  I think we kind of did the City of Tacoma.  And I would love to hear some things about shelters, and there is totally a shelter that I was supposed to call out, and I can't remember who that was now.  So, shelters, you want to kind of jump in?  I would really love a little more information about Adams Street.  How are things going there?  I think I saw somebody on.  I don't mean Adams Street.  I mean the new women's shelter run by the Tacoma Rescue Mission.  That's what I was trying to say.  Anyone?  So they have gone public.  That sucker is up and running and you can send folks there.  Exciting, exciting.  Again, that was heavily funded by the City of Tacoma, so kudos to them for putting some capital dollars into getting that facility renovated and figuring out how to get some operational funds.  Tacoma rescues mission bringing private donations.  Hats off to them for making something somebody in like a year, so pretty fast.
>> Gerrit.
>> Yes.
>> I just want to let everybody on the call know that the Day Center is still up and running, and they are welcome to send their families to the Day Center to access services, like showers and a place to cook.  And to speak with the case manager.  We also have coordinated entry walk‑in in that facility, so just wanted to make sure everybody on the call knew that the Day Center was up and running over at 57th and South Tacoma Way.
>> All right.  Anyone from Nativity House want to chime in about anything?  Faatima?  Probably multitasking.
>> Gerrit.
>> Yes, I will also add that we are doing walkup COVID testing at 5050 South Tacoma Way on Tuesday from 9:30 to 3:30.
>> And that would be anybody that's in a heavily impacted group, African‑Americans, any of the people of color essentially, that would be somebody that's had symptoms, somebody that's been in a large gathering, so if you can't make up a story to get yourself tested, you need to look in the mirror and decide exactly who you are.
>> Yeah.  Could be anybody.
>> All right.  And I am just going to open it up to any other shelter providers want to throw an update in?  All right.  Look.  We are like four minutes from 11:00, even though we jettisoned one of our agenda items, we are going to call it a meeting well attended.  Oh, my gosh, advocacy updates from Maureen, you got four minutes or as long as you want to go Maureen.  I can't believe I skipped you over.
>> Oh, I know.  Life is like that.  So I have put some things out.  I will put other material out on the distribution list.  But one of the things we didn't get to was that small ‑‑ the rooms, talking about the tsunami.  And so thanks, Sean, for that update just now, 500 applications in one day.  Folks, think about how we are going to have to handle at least a thousand a day.  It's $12 million is the estimate coming from the State of Washington to Pierce County to be used for the eviction prevention rental assistance.  That money has to be spent out as in the nonprofit submits the request for reimbursement and gets paid by the county.  The last date I heard was October 31st.  Now the county has to have so much time to process the front end, do the contracts, and that money is going to turn around really fast.  So we really have to think about like Sean was offering some suggestions people have made.  There is no suggestion about how to get this money out from outreach through processing that is a dumb one or anything else.  And so really make those suggestions to Valeri, to Sean, and have them ready for next week for a discussion.  Because this is ‑‑ I mean this is an opportunity.  And it's an opportunity for the awardees, for the nonprofits, to develop what ever infrastructure you need to be able to do this.  This is not doing more with less or more with the same.  This is what do we need to make this work.  And then we can reflect on it after the fact, and think about things that we might want to incorporate into some permanent programs going forward.  But this is like a once in a lifetime opportunity.
	There is a national window that will define our lives over the next few months, and that's if congress does pass and Trump does sign another COVID relief kind of bill.  Senate comes back Tuesday.  The house has already passed the HEROES Act.  The conversations are going on in the senate about what the senate would be willing to pass, and what Trump would be willing to sign.  And so I sent out this morning the information on advocacy, including a tweet storm for all you tweeters, on Tuesday, and so we want to keep housing in that bill.  Whatever passes, we want housing to stay in it.  Housing and homelessness.  There is a hundred billion dollars, as in B, boy.
	So then the other thing is the head of the Washington State senate last night on the Washington Low Income Housing Alliances action funds event, where Joy was one of the panelists and also the Urban League people who are candidates, so he put the statement out that the legislature should not repeat the actions of 2008.  Those of you who have been around that long, we never did recover from those cuts that were made in terms of the most vulnerable in our state, and so what the senator has said housing need to be a part of the recovery.  So the legislature has 3 billion, again, B, in the reserve fund.  That's going to take care of part of the $4.5 billion revenue shortfall for this year that we are in.  So we just ‑‑ whatever you require to be able to contact your legislators, whatever you require ‑‑ whether it's at the local or state or national level, e‑mail me, and I will connect you with whatever the best source is.  So you don't have to rely on me.  You will have information directly from the sources that I am passing on to you, and we just ‑‑ we have this moment and I know that's a lot of balls in the air.  It's like how in God's name are we going to get everybody unsheltered into some sort of safe shelter, whatever that is?  And then keep them there.  And so thank you for your day in and day out work, and thanks for this opportunity.
>> All right.  I think we are ready to wrap up.  If you didn't make it to Wednesday's statewide call, with the Washington State Low Income Housing Alliance, Daisy Reyes and Toney Montgomery both spoke a little bit about homelessness relative to Latinx community and Latin Americans in Pierce County.  And I must say Toney hit a home run.  I am going listen to what he said again because I thought it was so valuable.
>> And the clip.
>> Yes.
>> Send the clip out to people because it's not particularly sort of how many people or anything like that.  It's a lesson for those ‑‑ for the white people, talking to white people, it's a lesson for us.
>> Yeah.  And Tony right now is someone we need to listen to.  I will leave that and get that clip out to you all, and yourselves a great weekend.  Looks like it's supposed to be sunny and nice someone said, and I will believe it when it happens.  So keep up the good work.
[End of meeting]