REALTIME FILE

Meeting ‑ CCSWW Tacoma‑Pierce County 
Coalition to End Homelessness

Friday, July 24, 2020

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Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility.  CART captioning and this realtime file may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

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[Music playing]
>> I can't change.  Even if I tried.  Even if I wanted to.  And I can't change.  Even if I tried.  Even if I wanted to.  My love, my love, my love, she keeps me warm.  She keeps me warm.  She keeps me warm.  She keeps me warm.
[Music playing]
>> And I can't change.  Even if I tried.  Even if I wanted to.  My love, my love, my love, she keeps me warm.  She keeps me warm.  She keeps me warm.  She keeps me warm.  And I can't change.  Even if I tried.  Even if I wanted to.  My love, my love, my love, she keeps me warm.  She keeps me warm.  She keeps me warm.  She keeps me warm.  She keeps me warm.  She keeps me warm.  Love is patient.
>> My heart doesn't see race.
>> Love has no age limits.
>> That's my best friend.
>> We are neighbors and best friends.
>> We all have different religions, but we have universal love as well.
>> I love my sister.
>> Love is love.
>> Our family is no less than any other families.
[Music playing]
>> Love is kind.
>> Good morning, everybody.  Welcome to our Friday Tacoma ‑‑ oops.  Tacoma‑Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness meeting.  I am a total sucker for that video.  I think I have this sort of upbringing where we were taught not to really see color, or differences like that.  And I think that's an appropriate approach when we are talking about individual people, and I love that, you know, sort of recognizing the love we have for sort of everyone we bump into.  Like as a system we need to be thinking about how we are serving people of different races and religions and being constantly cognizant of the discrimination that's happening and how we need to be combatting that.  But on an individual level I like that we can just love each person.
	And we have a fun agenda today.  We are going to talk a huge chunk about voting, and I am excited for that.  That's certainly a super important part of a democracy.  And then we are going to get together and talk a little bit about planning we need to do for the coming tsunami of evictions.  Probably going to have a lot of problems with the ending of the federal supplement to the unemployment.  Luckily, we have ‑‑ hopefully you have all heard the extension of the eviction moratorium until mid‑October, which gives us time hopefully to plan and be prepared.  We are going to jump right in with the fine auditor of Pierce County, Julie Anderson, who has done some cool things to treat people like people.  Over her career ‑‑ I especially like the way our elections are currently working really hard to make sure everybody can vote, and things like felons.  You know, education efforts around how in Washington State we consider you are served your time and you are ready to be a citizen and you can vote.  It's inspiring we are recognizing people that have so much to ‑‑ I am going to hand it off to Julie Anderson.
>> Friends, allies, if I sound a little desperate because it's because I am feeling excited about August and November.  As news keep the getting more somber and serious about the pandemic, it's putting a lot of strain on democratic systems and access to democracy.  The great news is Washington State is really well‑prepared because we are a vote‑from‑home state.  And because we've got early voting, you can get replacement ballots, lots of people on this call already know about.  But there are a few things that are going to be really challenging.
	One, obviously, is volume, and unprecedented number of people are going to be voting in November.  We are expecting a 35% turnout for the August 4th election, but it may be higher, but it's really a dress rehearsal for the November election.  And I don't think that the pandemic scenario is going to get easier or the political scenario going to get quieter between August and November.
	So a lot of our plans for getting ready for November hinged on grass roots activity and what we used to know.  I was counting a lot on churches getting the word out on alternative language access to ballots.  I have told this meeting room before that we now translate election materials, both the entire voter's pamphlets, as well as ballots into Spanish, Korean and Vietnamese.  Getting the word out has been hard since institutions we counted on to carry that word are no longer meeting face‑to‑face, and I don't speak any of those languages or belong to those communities.
	So that's one thing.  The loss of those democratic institutions, and the face‑to‑face interaction that really drives participation, have changed.  We've also got a political climate out there that is feasting on and frothing on misinformation.  The thing that kept me awake last night is a wave of communication about demanding your right to vote in person.  We do not have in‑person voting in Washington State.  We are 100% vote from home, vote by mail.  If someone comes to the election center demanding their right to ‑‑ yes, I just wagged my head.  Demanding their right to vote in person, the only thing that's going to happen is they are going to join a line of people who need help, and then we are going to reprint the paper ballot that we sent to them in the mail.  They are not going to have a different voting experience.  There are no voting machines.
	In an abundance of caution, and to address cyber security concerns, and there wasn't a strong basis for those concerns, we don't have machines out in the field anymore where you actually ‑‑ that actually hold and store votes that then get brought into the election center on cartridges and get counted.  That went away a long time ago.  We are 100% paper‑based, 100%.
	So please help us spread the word that there is no such thing as in‑person voting.  Here is the twist.  There is always in‑person assistance.  So we want people who need help to come see us, but we don't want them to wait until the last minute.  So anybody that isn't registered to vote, that needs a replacement ballot, that's living with a disability where they need some special assistance, marking a ballot privately and independently, we want to see those voters.  But we don't want to see voters who want to have an in‑person experience or who simply want to ‑‑ are confused and think that we have polling places.
	So my number one message when you are communicating with members ‑‑ just anybody, your staff members, start there, or your customers, is that this date ‑‑ you can see this is the August ballot packet.  This date right here is a deadline.  It's not the day that you can vote.  It's the deadline for voting.  And we need people to use the entire early voting period of 18 days so that our election offices are not overwhelmed.
	I am going to show you, to keep our employees safe, we're doing all sorts of spreading and masking in the election center because we've got a facility that normally supports 13 full‑time employees, and we are going up to 200, and in November, 400.  To do that safely we have had to spread them across multiple buildings.  Please know that everything that we do that is secure, so that means the handling of ballots, archiving, tabulating them, opening them, all that have is high security work, and that is still taking place in the high security elections center.  That is not what we are spreading out.
	We are trying to spread out things like our call center, customer service, and signature verification that's done digitally without the ballot in front of you.  So that's how we are spreading.  And here is how we are spreading our customers for August and November.  Can I get a share‑screen permission?  Here is how we are spreading customers.  This is a difficult to read map, but it illustrates a drivethrough model.  The best way for us to enforce social distancing and keep people comfortable at the same time is to keep them in their cars.  And 98% of the people that visit us, probably more, come in a vehicle, a single‑occupancy vehicle.  We're going to be shutting down South 35th Street on Saturday, Monday and Tuesday, and all of this, the drivethrough hours have already been published in the voter pamphlet insert and also in the voter pamphlet, if people choose to read those things.
	If they don't and they just show up for that in‑person help I described, they are going to encounter traffic control, just like in a construction project, and we will figure out what they need and put them in the appropriate lane, but there won't be any reason for them to get out of their car, either to register to vote or to get a replacement ballot or to mark their ballot.
	This is the first time we have tried anything like this, and so August really is a test run.  We think we've planned well.  Some of you may be wondering ‑‑ because you have customers that ride bikes or ride buses, what's going to happen to them.  We are ready to serve them, and it's not going to be a problem at all.  They will make their way into the normal election center and have the same experience they normally would in the election center on foot or wheeling in.
	But for everybody that's using a car, we are going to have this drivethrough model.  Like I said, all of this is spelled out in the insert that came inside every ballot packet, and also the voter pamphlet.  This year, again, we started this in the primary of 2019, and the general of 2020, and then special elections, our partners in the public library districts, Tacoma, Puyallup, and rural Pierce County, so that's 27 public library branches, are, again, on election day only ready to help and provide that in‑person voter assistance.
	But here's the challenge.  They are closed.  Those facilities are closed, and I'm sorry to say I feel confident they are going to be closed in November as well.  But the librarians are really being heroes about this and they are ready to provide the service curb side.  Which means if you need to register to vote on election day or need that replacement ballot, they will be running out and providing that on the curb for people.
	Again, to keep people safe and to not add extra stress and these systems, we are asking everybody to please plan ahead and not wait until election day to get registered to vote or solve a problem.  Um, now is the time to be confirming that your voter registration is correct.  Now is the time to be taking the ballot that we mailed you it and putting it in a safe place, not putting it on the kitchen counter where it's going to get scooped up and recycled or thrown away and destroyed.
	Half the people visiting us are needing replacement ballots.  I will say a couple more things.  If you can share the screen again.  If I can share the screen again.
>> You should be good to go.
>> Yeah.  Thank you.  Hang on.  Yeah, let's do this.  Uh, hang on, be patient with me, folks.  I hope that ‑‑ um.  Okay.  Share.  I hope that you are all familiar with ‑‑ you should be seeing our website now.  Is that what you are seeing?
>> Yes.
>> Okay.  Good.  You should all be familiar with piercecountyellections.org.  Everything you and your constituents and customers need should be here, register to vote, contacting us.  Again, participating in a primary language, if your customers speak these three languages, we can provide them and mail them, translated materials.  And I came to this website specifically to show you the video library.  There is a lot of self‑serve stuff that can be done online, and you can almost turn your office into a voting center if you are willing to do that.  I already told you that 50% of the people that need help are needing a replacement ballot.  So we would ‑‑ right now we want them to just call us because we will do it and mail it to them, 253‑798‑vote.  It's plastered everywhere.  But at the last minute you can help us by helping them print out their own replacement ballot.
	This suite of videos right here can help.  Sun of these are longer than two minutes, and I am going to show you a sample video right now.  Be patient.
[Video with captions]
>> Hopefully you noticed that I turned on closed captioning and was able to choose between languages.  Those were professionally translated.  That's not Google Translate.  Because we want people to understand the legal meaning of those words.  Hang on.  The legal meaning of those words.  So our top ten languages are available in closed captioning.  Please explore that video library.  Everything from registering to vote online, tracking your ballot to make sure we received it, tons of stuff in little two‑minute videos.
	The other thing I want to let you know about is we've created a social media toolkit that you can download, and I am going to show you where to find it and then a brief video clip about how to download those.  Just one minute.  And you guys are being really patient, and I hope somebody is watching the chat box with me.  Okay.  We are back on our website, and we just visited the video library.  There is also media resources.  Wait a minute.  We don't have the button up yet, but while I am on this page, those of you either running campaigns ‑‑
>> You stopped screen‑sharing, Julie.
>> Um, we don't have the ‑‑ I ended up on the wrong page, but while I'm here I wanted you to know that we have media resources.  For those of you that are running campaigns or doing newsletters, we would appreciate it if you downloaded and used these photos for accurate imagery of what a drop box looks like, accurate imagery of our elections center, and also points of assistance.  So we've got there under media services, and then I am going to show you a little bit about our social media toolkit.  So here we go.
>> All right.  We have our social media toolkit.  If you go to piercecountywa.gov.  Show this link to everyone.  So we've got a really awesome graphics, just some very basic ‑‑ like prepare to vote, funny ones, doughnut delay, and we have them all sized for Instagram and we've got Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  At the bottom you will have suggested copy to go along with these imageries for voter registration, updating your registration.  Now voting is pretty self‑explanatory.  You will click the download button.  It will open up in a not, right click it, rename it to whatever you want, save it to desk, save it to your desktop or anywhere on your computer, and there you go.  It's that simple.  When it comes to downloading the videos, or the animated gifs, it's going to download automatically into a gif folder.  When you share on Instagram you are going to want to use the [indiscernible] file because it won't support a gif, but for Facebook book, LinkedIn.  And if you don't want to use the animated gif or just the animated video, we also have images as well.  And, yeah, if you guys have any suggestions, also more imagery you would like to see, we are all for updating throughout the process.
>> There have been a couple of people using different browsers.
>> Okay.  That's the end of my tedious screen‑sharing.  We are happy to give you design files.  If you want to tweak these or if you want to translate them some way, all you have to do is write to us.  I am going to give the link to that social media kit.  I am going to give you Megan's e‑mail address.  And Gerrit is going to put that in his show notes that he is so good sending out after these meetings so that you can just contact us directly if you need help.  If you've got an idea.  At our last meeting somebody said, what about advertising for 16 and 17‑year‑old preregistration, which is a new law that went into effect, so we are busy creating one based on that feedback.
	Gerrit, have you been watching the chat box?  Let's see what questions I have.
>> People would like the links to the stuff in the chat box.
>> Yep.
>> And somebody wrote a really long thing about King County that I didn't read.
>> It's about homeless people voting and information specific to Pierce County needed.
>> Okay.  That's a great idea, and we'll put that under ‑‑ I know exactly where we will put that.  We will put that right under assistance for voters with disabilities, we will put that right in that list of resources.  Excellent.  Okay.
	I also want to let you know that we have invested in a video translator on demand, so for American Sign Language and for every language that you can think of, we'll have an on‑demand monitor so that our elections folks can interact with a voter of any language that needs assistance, and not have to share a telephone.  We did this ‑‑ we have been wanting to do this for a long time, but COVID really demands that we not be sharing phones, so this video relay that you may have seen in hospitals is what we are using.  Where we talk in real time with a third‑person translator.  So we are going to have that available.  And I think that's going to have the biggest benefit for our deaf and hard of hearing customers who are very shy and very reluctant to come into public offices because too rarely do they get the help that they need.
	So if you work with the deaf and hard of hearing, and I am working with the disability community on this, please let them know that we've got a really respectful, responsive way to talk with them in American Sign Language.  Do everything early.  There is no such thing as in‑person voting.  We're happy to help people who need help.  We are not thrilled about seeing people who want to have a stand‑in‑line voting experience.  And thank you for the suggestion about the voting when you don't have a permanent home.  We will stand that up.
>> All right.  Well, thank you.  I for one do not misinformed person voting even a tiny bit.
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> So I definitely missed a couple of elections because I screwed things up, and since I've had vote by mail I don't think I have missed a single election.
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> And thanks.  Lots of compliments in the chat, and we are appreciative that we don't have to worry about trying to go head to head with a public official that doesn't know what they are doing.  It's lovely that we can rely on your expertise.
>> Yep.  No fighting with us.  We are partners.
>> Absolutely.  Great.  Well, thanks so much.  And folks know how to get ahold of you.  You've got your e‑mail in there.  And we will get those links hopefully in the chat and out in the e‑mail.  And we are going to jump right from the voting officials to some serious advocates for engaging with our democratic system, the League of Women Voters, which isn't just women.
	So I am going to turn it over to Ann Williams and I believe Nancy is here as well.  So you are all on.
>> Thank you.  Nancy, you have the slides?  You are muted.
>> Always good to have a test, huh?  I will get the slides up here.  Okay.
>> So, hi, everybody.  This picture is ‑‑
>> You are not sharing it.
>> Hold on.  Do I need something from you, Gerrit, or do I need to do something?
>> I got you set up, so you should be able to share.  There we go.
>> Great.
>> Perfect.  If you could just do the maximize on the PowerPoint, we will be all set.
>> Yep.
>> Nice.
>> Okay.  So this is the historical picture.  We just can't do elections like this anymore, and so Ann is going to start by telling you a little bit about research we did to get our campaign for voting this year going.  Go ahead, Ann.
>> Next slide.  Before we get started on the strategy we felt that we needed to understand, since our goal here is to increase turnout in Pierce County, which is at the bottom of all Washington counties, who are non‑voters, can we identify them, and how ‑‑ what evidence supports different turnout strategies?
	Next slide.  Many of us are aware of the 2016 presidential election, but one way of looking at that election is that the actual winners of the popular vote were the 100 million eligible people who did not vote.  That was 43% of the electorate, and that is more than either of the two major candidates.  Next slide.
	That event probably stimulated some research that I am going to summarize for you.  This is done by the Knight Foundation.  We have known for a long time that educational attainment, age and income are somewhat predictive of voting habits.  But none of these features clearly can segregate voters from non‑voters.  So, for example, among those who have at least finished college, more than 50% of them are regular voters.  But also among that same group, 37% ‑‑ or among non‑voters, 37% have at least finished college.  The Knight Foundation study is the largest study that has been done.
	Next slide.  And they investigated much more deeply into any potential social features that might differentiate voters from non‑voters and general attitudes on a number of subjects.  And they found that on many social features, it is really difficult to distinguish voters from non‑voters, so they are equally likely to be native born, to own a home, to be fully employed, and they had the same range of religious affiliations and the same range of political opinions that regular voters have.
	Next slide.  But there was ‑‑ there were other characteristics that really stood out among non‑voters.  And that was that 38% of regular non‑voters exhibited a lack of confidence in election results, a sense that voting didn't change the way government runs.  And they were decidedly less engaged with news, and, therefore, felt uninformed.  And they also in their survey, they had a thousand 18 to 24‑year‑olds that went through the same interview process, and all of these characteristics are much ‑‑ actually were more common among the youngest eligible voters than compared to the larger population that we're serving, which were all over 25.
	Next slide.  The other group that has done a major study on comparing voters and non‑voters is the [indiscernible] charitable trust, and they looked at the different ‑‑ whether there were differences between non‑voters who are registered versus not registered, and the difference, the main difference, that was given for not voting among the registered non‑voters was just a feeling of being uninformed, whereas among the unregistered non‑voters was an actual dislike of politics.  Again, that sense that voting doesn't change anything.
	So this suggests that for ‑‑ next slide.  A significant proportion of the non‑voting public who are actually registered, that a major need is encouragement and information.  Next slide.
	The next thing we wanted to understand is what strategies will actually increase voter turnout.  There is a lot of lore around how to increase voter turnout.  Fortunately in the last 15 years there have been political scientists doing randomized trials of different strategies, and the bottom line is that not surprisingly the gold standard remains on door to door canvassing, which is expensive and not really doable in the current situation, but interestingly, although there is less research in this area, it does appear that friend to friend contact may be equally as effective as door to door canvassing.
	And the other area that's unfortunately not available to us right now is simply increasing the festival effect of voting day, which is not really a strategy that we can partake in right now.
	Next slide.  The other area that has been investigated with randomized trials is the content of messaging, and it turns out to be not very effective to just simply remind somebody to vote.  Whatever message is given ought to be simple.  It's helpful to make ‑‑ to portray voting as a normative process, and it's been found that people tend to respond to expressions of gratitude rather than being berated.  And finally, if you can elicit a pledge to vote, that person is more likely to follow through and actually vote compared to just a reminder.
	Next slide.  So in summary, we have learned that voters and non‑voters share many common social features, despite statistical differences in age, income and educational status.  I think what this ‑‑ one thing that this probably needs for social service agencies that are serving populations that are less affluent and often younger is that not only should you be thinking about engaging your clients, but also your staff and your own social circle because non‑voters are in fact everywhere.
	Non‑voters are ideologically diverse and finally that friend to friend communication may be equally effective as door to door canvassing.  With that, we chose a communication platform, Outreach Circle, that Nancy will describe.
>> I happened to be in an interview with one of the founders of Outreach Circle some months ago.  Before his team created it, he ran for a school board position in the Bay Area community where he lives, against a well‑funded incumbent.  His campaign was running on a shoestring, so he went looking for ideas to make his budget go further.  He read research on motivational methods to encourage voting and ran across information about something called relational organizing.  He implemented this method in his campaign, and he won.
	So as our organizing team was discussing how we can have influence on this year's election, Outreach Circle seemed like a powerful way to put the resource of our own membership mind to get out the vote.  With the pandemic it was a lucky decision to implement it because it seems like it's the only kind of thing that will work at this point.
	So I love this picture.  As an expression of the power of one person's influence, and the impact people with a shared purpose can have to create change.  This picture describes visually how sharing a message with people you know can spread exponentially.  Like the way dropping a stone in a pond creates expanding ripples, using Outreach Circle can result in expanding influence by spreading messages from friend to friend.  The power is in the relationships that encourages the recipient to open the message and act on it.  We are inviting you to become supporters of our GoVote Campaign, and grow the engagement of the people you know on voting and community engagement.
	The plan is to accepted messages to supporters once a week from now until the general election, November 3rd.  Starting the week after the ballots arrive, so currently in process, we are sending messaging more frequently.  Some of the topics we've presented in our messages over the last several weeks are promoting the league's vote 411 customer voting site, recordings, the impending deadline of online registration, and the reasons it's important to vote in primaries.  And now after Julie's information I have all kinds of other topics I can explore.  [Laughs].
	So this is what the messages look like.  They are formatted for mobile phones and look like this whether you are on a phone or on a desktop or laptop.  There is an app for both Apple and Android phones.  On e‑mail or social media the message includes a picture to emphasize the topic and they are currently formatted so senders can choose to use them via e‑mail, text or by posting to social media apps.  Each person can only send one message per person, and Outreach Circle will keep anyone from receiving a message more than three times.
	The slide shows three messages that have been developed for GoVote Campaign.  The way Outreach Circle is most effective is if you get lots of people involved.  And we are reaching out to you, hoping to ‑‑ that you can help us engage different communities than we could access with our own members.
	So this is a map that was produced by the Tacoma‑Pierce County Health Department using the Pierce County election data from the 2019 primary.  It was created to show the areas of the county with low turnout.  The red areas identify the lowest voting areas of the county at zero to 22.8% turnout.  The yellow areas in the middle are a little better, but even the green areas, the highest rates, are as low as 26.7, and the high is only 51%.  This is why the league is focused on turnout.  Only five counties in Washington have lower turnout than Pierce County.  We are hoping you can help us reach some of these really low turnout neighborhoods.  But we also need to reach out to everyone else, too.
	To make democracy work we should be voting rates much higher than this.  As Ann told us, you can't tell by looking at someone if they are voters or not, and these numbers tell us we have a lot of work to do.  We want to help you engage your supporters and clients in voting by providing you with access to non‑partisan messages that you can easily pass on.  You can safely load your existing contact list from a CSV file into your Outreach Circle account where they can only be accessed by you.  Once you set up, you can personalize by adding your organize's encouragement of branding, and you will be able to e‑mail any number of contacts with one click of the send button.  Texting takes a little bit longer.  Messages can also be posted to Twitter, Instagram and most other popular social media sites.  Though we still have working on Facebook.
	If this sounds like something you would like to support by partnering with us, we would be happy to set up a virtual meeting to assist you in getting set up.  You can contact us at the league e‑mail on the screen, or leave your contact info ‑‑ I am not sure how you can leave it with us, but we would love to engage with you and try and make this useful experience for you, as we all have a lot to do these days.
	Thanks so much.  Any questions?
>> Looks like Al had a question.  Al, did you want to ask that?
>> I think essentially it just got answered.  The one thing I noticed is that your map is on Gmail, and the younger folks these days don't pay much attention to Gmail.  They are texting or they are into Facebook or whatever other.  So I was just wondering if those things have been shown to increase participation.
>> So the message ‑‑ there is a text message attached to the picture giving an explanation, but you are right, the younger voters do use social media primarily, and texting.  The texting wouldn't include the picture.  It would just be a three or four‑line text explanation of the concept of low turnout and trying to increase engagement in those areas.
>> All right.  I don't think I see any other questions.  Anybody?  Well, thank you so much for showing that.  I think a lot of us are super interested in seeing more people encouraged to vote, and this looks like a pretty easy tool to use.  I included a link to that Outreach Circle in the chat.
>> Great.
>> And so hopefully folks can jump right in with that.  
>> Gerrit, just if you go to Outreach Circle, open the supporter site, and do a search for LWV GoVote.
>> Nancy and I are happy to meet with you virtually and walk you through how to get started.
>> Thanks, folks.
>> Thank you.
>> Thanks.
>> All right.  We are going to jump into some small groups to talk a little bit about preparation for the end of the eviction moratorium, which luckily was postponed a little bit, and also the end of the federal ‑‑ I don't know what the word is.  Supplement for unemployment.  Before we do that, Laurie Davenport wanted to talk briefly with us about evictions and whatnot.  Laurie.
>> Here I am.  Okay.  Am I unmuted?  Can you guys hear me?
>> You are great.
>> All right.  Well, hi, everybody.  It's great to be here and it's like things are changing every 15 minutes, literally.  I just ‑‑ I have two or three things to announce.  The first I think everybody knows the eviction moratorium was extended to October 15th, and maybe further extended depending on circumstances at that point.  The messages that we want to get out there obviously, it's meant to protect renters from falling into homelessness, obviously, and the expectation that landlords and tenants will remain in communication.  So that's extremely important.  It doesn't give people right to refuse to pay rent if they can pay rent, obviously.  And also does not allow landlords to harass or intimidate tenants, and obviously we are finding that going on, and we are prepared to help with situations like that, or anything else that comes up, those people who are dealing with landlords.  Obviously criminal behavior and other threats to public safety are still a cause for eviction, but otherwise it's not going to happen.  As far as I know, the court will not be hearing eviction hearings, but we are working with the courts pretty much every week and coming up with strategies for how to make this work for everyone when it does happen.
	The other news that I have is it is ‑‑ again, I just found out like 15 minutes ago, but we have a partnership with Center for Dialogue and Resolution and Fair Housing, which very recently has been funded by Pierce County CARES Act.  So specifically we are working with victims of domestic violence, but the services are going to be there for people facing eviction, for people needing help with family life issues, basically whatever you need in that area.  And we are going to be able to offer free mediation, which is huge, because if you are at some point down the road facing an eviction hearing, or if you have any kind of issue that would require dispute resolution, we can cover that.  It's free if it fits within our program.
	So that's huge, and we just found out that we are going to be equally well‑funded by the Pierce County Connected for the same purpose, same partnership, more capacity to provide free mediation.  This isn't limited to victims of domestic violence, so we are just ‑‑ our capacity to help has just gone way, way up.  So we will be getting out a lot more information on that.  We want to make sure at this point right now that everybody has information about if you have any kind of housing issues, we are not just talking about people who are housed, people who are homeless, people who have civil legal issues, people who are facing domestic violence, anybody that you encounter who needs help, all housing issues, you can send to HJP at tacomaprobono@tacomaprobono.org.  We have rental assistance, links on updates on eviction moratorium.  We will be coming out with more stuff.  I haven't seen the proclamation yet.  That's pretty much all I have.  It Jen Ammons is here.
>> There is not much point for a lawyer, but Laurie and her team are putting on another outreach presentation as soon as we have that moratorium announcement to give you all the latest details on that.  But in the meantime of course the longer the moratorium goes, the more landlords are chomping at the bit to try to find a sneaky way to get people out, and of course not just HJP, but also Northwest Justice Project, are very interested in hearing about those cases, so if you know of someone who ‑‑ especially if it's been a more difficult to house client, so the landlord really would love to get them out and tries to evict someone during the moratorium, do send it our way or get in touch with us about that.  We are looking at one right now where the landlord is trying to kick out somebody trying to use that new ‑‑ the new ‑‑ well, the exception for three‑day ‑‑ what is it?  Waste, nuisance, criminal activity, and we successfully defeated one where the owner was claiming they were going to move in, and attempted to get our client out on that basis, but never intended to move in.
	Yeah, more information coming when we get it.
>> Much appreciated.  Did anybody have any quick questions as long as we've got those great brains on the line?  Theresa.
>> Hi.
>> Hi, everyone.  Again, my name is Rita Lawrence, and I work for Wellspring Family Services.  I wanted to ask anybody, is there any proclamation questions in regards to garnishments?  Do we know?
>> Um, that has been continued.  Give me a sec here for me to find the most recent one.  The most recent one just extended that to August 1st.  So we may see that get extended.  Again, it looks like the governor tends to wait until a couple of days ahead of time to extend that.
>> Okay.  Thank you.
>> Mm‑hmm.
>> Theresa, you had something?
>> Yeah.  I'm just ‑‑ I have been watching the chat and I want to say that I think it's really important if we are going to come to any sort of good resolution that we recognize that not all landlords are blood thirsty evil people, and I know many landlords who are really worried about how they are going to keep paying for their mortgage when they are not getting the income.  If we are not addressing that root issue, there are two things that will happen.  One is that people will amass a huge amount of debt, and when the moratorium is over we will be slammed.  And some landlords who are really good landlords will lose their ability to provide the housing they provide.  Are you doing anything with landlords who are on the edge, I mean people who are not high‑income landlords?
>> We are here to help people on both sides.  I mean that's partly what the mediation piece is about.  It's very, very important.  The other thing to remember is that there is help out there for landlords who may be facing foreclosure or need help with mortgage issues.  But I think the county just awarded some funding for that.
	This is a huge issue.  It's not just about homelessness obviously.  This is just as big or bigger, probably bigger than it was in 2008.  It's going to hit everybody.  And so I want to make this point again, that we have the ability to help with a lot of underlying issues that may be there for people, including past criminal records, past evictions, things that people need to address, that are underlying a lot of this stuff, and we can help.  We can help with a lot of it.  We can keep people out of eviction court, you know, so just ask us if you think it's possible we can help.  It's a huge, huge issue.  We are trying to get information out there for landlords and tenants.  We are working on something now that we have to revise because everything has been put off a little bit, but that's coming out.  We have a sample payment plan, so that will be available.
	The other thing that I did not say much about that's really, really important right now is Fair Housing.  There is a lot of stuff going on, just because it's a tough time and people aren't watching, and it's really important to remember that this is absolutely essential that we don't forget these things while we are dealing with other issues.
>> And I appreciate all of your work, and I am also really excited about the Center for Dialogue and Resolution partnership.  That is very good news.
>> Great.  Thanks.
>> We are really encouraging people to access rental assistance sooner rather than later, not put their heads in the sand, and that will help landlords keep paying their mortgage, as well as keep people from having such a high amount of debt at the end that they really can't enter into a payment plan, that makes any sense.  We typically only represent people, homeowners, who are living in their home, or tenants, but in some rare instances we do represent landlords.  Typically in like elder abuse cases, where someone is taking advantage of mom or dad or there is a complicated domestic violence landlord‑tenant overlay.  So in some unusual circumstances, yeah, we do help landlords.
>> Yesterday I sat in on a webinar that I can't find at the moment, that had some really good ideas about ways to ‑‑ the community to address this upcoming surge, and among the things were things like they had done research and discovered that many, many places have empty bedrooms, many houses, many apartments, and so on, and the primary obstacles to using those are, number one, zoning, and number two, home sharing programs, one of which we have.  As soon as the slides for that come up, I will post it here, because there were a number of good ideas.
>> Let's do a quick final question from Sharon.  Sharon McKellery.
>> Good morning.  Thank you very kindly.  I want to first say, oh, my God, you guys are doing such a great job, and it has to be noted.  I really appreciate the hard efforts that you have already put together.  But I had a question.  My question is, okay, so you guys probably already mentioned this, I apologize, I might have missed it, but like for me I'm still homeless, but you guys ‑‑ I am getting help, but the problem is right now I lost my income and I am getting everything back together.  However, nobody wants to rent to me because of my credit.  Because I am making payment arrangements with my old landlord.  I have no evictions and I am willing to pay double deposit.  I am trying to do the best I can with the tools that I have, but I am still getting denied.  Any suggestions?
>> You can certainly call us with that ‑‑ not call us because everything we are doing is online, but contact us online.  We do have attorneys who are available to give advice just in terms of like financial counseling, trying to figure out how to do something to raise your credit.  There are probably other service that is do that as well, but feel free to go to our website and fill out the form and hopefully there will be somebody available to talk to you.  Everything, again, is virtual right now.
>> Yes, ma'am.  What's the website please?
>> Tacomaprobono.org.
>> A practical suggestion we give to people like that, target smaller landlords, people who are renting one or two units, because the bigger property management corporations tend to have guidelines that they feel like they can't deviate from.
>> Oh, okay.
>> And people dealing with a few units may be more likely to give someone a chance, especially which you have income, which right now is unusual.
>> Yes, ma'am.  It's hard.  Yes, ma'am.  Thank you very much.  I appreciate you guys.  Keep up the good work.  And I want to join you in this.  I feel that I could be a resolution solution to the gap that is missing between the public and the beautiful resources you are providing.  Thank you.
>> It's called ‑‑
>> Thank you.
>> Thanks.
>> Yes, ma'am.
>> Awesome.  We are going to shift into something we haven't done for awhile, which is to break into some small groups.  This was suggested by Rosemary, so you can chime in if I screw this up.  But the idea is to talk a little bit about how we as a community need to prepare for the probable flood of coming evictions, and I think it's really nice that we don't have both the federal unemployment kind of supplement ending at exactly the same time as the eviction moratorium, so if they do have to end, at least they are staggered.  And so it doesn't feel like the crisis will maybe be with us at the start of August, like many of us were fearing, but it's a really good chance.  As we break into groups I am going to break us into probably like seven rooms.  August though I might have to putter with it.  A lot of people sort of slide off when we do this.  The goal is to talk about what preparations our agencies or ourselves are have done to get ready for these extra flow into the homeless system or need for rental assistance, and also talk about what preparations as a community we need to do.
	And, Rosemary, did you want to chime in with anything more than that?
>> No, not really.  I just knew that this must be happening in everybody's mind, and wanted us to have a chance to brainstorm a bit about the effects we see.  So that was it.
>> All right.  So I am going to break us into like four parts.  Again, I have these different groups, but I would like you all to introduce yourselves and say hi.  I feel like I miss a lot of social time because I live in a tiny room now.  So kind of a quick hello, introduce yourselves, what agency you are with, and then kind of hit on those three things we just talked about.  What have you planned already?  What do we need to plan for?  And what resources do we need?  And some of that might simply be, you know, we need more rental assistance money.  Some of it might be I need to know how my clients can connect to a rental assistance money, or I need to know the rules.  What do we need to do to serve folks that we have helped house in the past, that we are working with now?  So I am going to break us into seven groups, which would be six or seven folks in each room.  And I might move you guys around a little bit, if I see some groups who don't have enough folks.  We will probably spend ‑‑ I am going to go with maybe 20 or 25 minutes, and see if each group could have somebody just provide maybe one item that they all really felt like was an important thing for them to bring back to the group.
	So off we go.
[Breakout rooms session not captioned]
>> I am going to put my information up here for anyone who wants to contact me.  Hi, Gerrit.  [Laughs].  I was talking to our group.
>> I know.  I pulled you out, yeah.  Like the ‑‑ yeah.  Like those fantasy novels, you know, where the wizards can sort of teleport you from one place to another.
>> Right.
>> That sort of forced you to operate out of the ‑‑ yeah, yeah.
>> For those of that are a little bit more seasoned, it's "Star Trek."
>> Yes.
>> Teleporting, yes.  There you go.  That's probably the right visual, isn't it?  Yeah, I often wonder if the ability to teleport would be a boon for man signed or would it just ruin every really cool backpacking location in the world.
>> You guys are very a very different conversation.
[Laughter]
>> I think it would ruin the universe.
>> All right, folks.  Let's bring ourselves back in.  I hope that was a good use of our time.  I am interested to hear some of the things that came up in the discussions, so I am just going to kind of let maybe somebody lead off.  I don't know if you remember what group you were in.  I didn't pay any attention to that, so, if someone wants to jump in with what their group sort of looked at as things they have done or things they are looking to do, things we need.
>> All right.  Hi.  This is ‑‑ I am Kelly Blucher from Goodwill.  I turned my camera on.  Look at all these amazing faces I miss so often.  I'm back.  [Laughs].  So we were in breakout room four, in case you guys didn't remember.  So we talked about some interesting things there right at the end, we got into a great conversation, but certainly touched on the City of Tacoma and MDC, I was with Rob and Mariah and James and Valeri.  So talked about the different assistance that's being offered out there for rental assistance, and the possible extension of that I guess you could say.  Valeri mentioned the new funding coming down the pipeline here pretty soon.  We did talk about the inevitability of people's rent piling month on month on month on month, if we can help them for two months or three months with their four months back on rent and still have no possibility of having employment, what do we do then?
	Towards the end, Rob, I am picking on you, too, feel free to jump in on anything I missed since you called me out on this one.  And then towards the end there we talked a little bit about the childcare crisis and schools going to online next year, and, you know, what we are ‑‑ what we are as a community and a county looking at to alleviate some of that pressure.  And Valeri brought up a really interesting idea as far as utilizing high schoolers that are now going to be doing online school and take classes such as woodworking or whatnot in a normal high school atmosphere, but being able to watch their siblings or other people's siblings and having that count towards high school credit.  I thought that was really interesting.  So anybody on here that wants to push that towards the school board, that's a really great idea.  I know it would benefit my family.
	Did I miss anything else?  Excellent.
>> No, I don't think so.
>> Thank you.
>> Cool.  Thank you, group four.  How about another group?
>> I can go for group three.
>> Awesome.
>> Hi, y'all.  My name is Megan Capes.  I am with DSA.  But our group, we had a wide, wonderful group of people.  Our conversation also talked a little bit about the looming eviction crisis and having panics over what is going to be racking up rent debt, and seeing that as a huge issue.  But also interlaying with concerns that we are seeing in our community now that are going to be kind of exacerbated, needs which are like day spaces with Nativity House, day space still continuing to be shut down.  There is really like not many spaces where folks can hang out during the day, especially single adults, especially single men, and with libraries and our quasi day centers like coffee shops remaining closed.  Especially as we approach the hot summer days, and also the rain season is coming.
	We also talked about like with that, like access to water, especially not sinks where folks can fill up water bottles, like that is a huge need right now.  As well as access to bathrooms is huge.  And lastly, and not least, Janet was in the group, so we talked about safe parking and how getting services or supporting our neighbors that are car camping is a huge need.  Janet or anyone else in my group, pitch in if I missed anything.
>> Awesome.
>> Cool.
>> Excellent report‑out.  Next group.
>> This is Jan from ‑‑
>> Go.
>> Oh, somebody else go ahead.
>> Okay.
>> Jan Hutchins, group two, and one of the questions we were looking at is the planning for the future, and several of us have talked about different plans that kind of ‑‑ the minute you make a plan, things change.  And I was the one provider in the room, so one of my concerns was that, yeah, we need to prepare.  One way I think we can prepare is to try to prevent, to do some prevention, and so I have personally spoken to some tenants who think they don't have to pay rent because there is a moratorium.  Okay.  Well, what does moratorium mean?  I don't think that we're doing a good job of communicating with the community about what a moratorium means.  I think that we need to use very, very simple language, and that's not going to help the really biggest group that's going to become homeless.  But I can see that that ‑‑ that there is a few households that are being impacted because, for whatever reason, they think moratorium means that they just got the golden ticket and they don't have to pay rent.
	The other thing that ‑‑ one of the things that we talked about was that while we are coming together, that's great.  It would be really nice if the county came together with all the local jurisdictions because there is all this rental assistance money going down the pike, and quite frankly I think people have been ‑‑ considering what we have been through, I think we are doing a heck of a job, but I think it could be better.  I don't think that the county, and there was some agreement with me in the group, that the county is in line with some of ‑‑ like the City of Tacoma, City of University Place, and so on.  And then also there is different rules and so on.
	So before October 15th, I personally would like to see, and the group agree, that all those county officials get in one room, around a table or Zoom, or whatever, to come up with how the next steps should be, and that they need to include housing providers in that planning process.  And that, also, another group that should be included would be landlords, because not all landlords are evil.  There are some ones out there that are so bad that they make everybody look bad, but they might be willing to take a reduction in rent if we were to approach them with some sort of a plan.
	So I think, if anybody wants to add on, I think that's pretty much what we talked about.  Thanks.
>> All right.  Rosemary?
>> Yes.  Well, our group started out with the sort of humanitarian crisis in various ways and indicating how the groups that people worked with were having a difficult time getting rental assistance for people, and that led to a discussion of last week's presentation about the city's program and the lottery system that wasn't needed to be used.  So we discussed for awhile the need for better information to get out to people, and thinking that we were impressed with the folks who presented on the elections process and all of the things they did about getting information out, and hoping that some of us could work together to get more clarity about that out to people.  In fact one of the things that I remember Joy said is that with her shared housing program, a lot of people just can't pay the rent to ‑‑ and they don't provide assistance, so they are trying to point out to folks who need assistance where to go, and everywhere they go the money is gone apparently.
	So whatever it is between the bureaucratic arrangements for how money is shared with groups and how people can get it, there seems to be a lack of clarity among some providers about how the money that is there could be shared more, more equitably.  And the idea that the CARES Act money is reimbursed money rather than money that's paid up front makes that kind of process even more difficult because groups that provide the assistance might not have the funds to make it available before it's needing to be put in for reimbursement.
	I know our time is short.  I think I will stop with that.  One last thing was the idea that at least the democratic candidate for president has said one of the things he wants to and sure is that everyone for section eight housing would have it, with currently only a quarter of the people needing it receiving it, it doesn't solve the problem, but it could help with the situation as soon as this moratorium is over.
	Anyway, that's what I think what we did.
>> Thank you, Rosemary.  Another group?
>> I'll go.
>> Thanks.
>> So in addition to things that have been said, we talked about looking ahead, both in terms of planning and into the future.  A need to do something about the duplication and the replication of efforts around collecting resources, which I think falls into line with what others have been saying, the ability to incorporate new information that comes into somebody within the system.  And flexibility, nimbleness, and new or unsuspecting kind of partnerships going forward.  Anybody want to add?  Also we had early notice on the safe parking money, because we had Colin for two minutes.
>> Spoiler.
>> Yeah.  Pretty good.
>> All right.  Got a couple more groups?
>> I'll go.  We were group five.  We had quite a bit of discussion about the fact that under the current moratorium it's been very difficult to get the folks we are working with housed right now because of lack of available units because people aren't moving out.  So with the extension we will continue to face that challenge and expect that it's going to be even more challenging the longer that it goes.
	And also being better about communicating rental assistance programs, those types of things, and what was previously said about people, making sure that the folks we are working with understand that you do still need to make your best efforts and attempts to pay your rent.  It's not just, well, I don't have to pay my rent now.  So making sure that we continue to do as much communication with everyone we work with on that, and connecting them to those rental assistance programs.
	And if it ultimately does end up in someone being evicted near the end, if there is any advocacy work that we can do with politicians, Maureen, I am looking at you, wink, wink, that if you end up with an eviction due to COVID, if there is something we can do that says that cannot be used against you and you can't be penalized for that in trying to get rehoused at the end of all of this nonsense and chaos, that would be really beneficial.  Because obviously any of us that are working with folks and trying to get them housed now, we know that if they have an eviction, that makes it ‑‑ that's one more barrier in getting them rehoused.  So if it's related to COVID, if we could get that stricken from their record in the kind of political arena, we feel like that would be really helpful and beneficial.
>> All right.  There is one more group out there.  Or maybe not.  Well, so much for counting.  Thanks, everyone.  It sounds like a lot less asking for buckets of money and a lot asking for clear information to be communicated to folks, and a clear understanding of how to engage services.  Lots of other parts in there, too, but that's interesting that a lot of our need is that ‑‑ yeah, collaboration, understanding what other people are doing so we know how to connect them with exactly what they need.
	Okay.  We are going to jump into our portion of the meeting where we do some updates, and I am going to go ahead and start that off.  I am going to start that off with a quick update on the city's plan to eliminate its civil rights investigators.  So I mentioned last week that the city has a plan to eliminate civil rights investigators, so those are the folks that are contacted when somebody feels like they have been discriminated in housing or employment or public accommodations, something the city has done for years, and are looking to stop doing because of budgetary reasons.  Last week the city's Human Rights Commission met and discussed and was not pleased with this, they had been briefed on it before, and they are meeting on Tuesday in a public meeting, which should be posted on the city website, to put a letter together to the city council to explain their extreme concern with that change.  And I am still waiting on information about a report on the specifics of the plan that City Councilmember Ushka asked the city manager to provide.  So I will give you that information when I have it, and I will send you all a link to the public meeting at the Human Rights Commission Tuesday at 6:00 or 6:30.
>> 6:30.
>> Thank you.  That's an opportunity to provide a couple minutes of input, largely I don't think they need input, I think they know exactly the letter they want to write, but it won't be bad to have some more folks just paying attention to this issue.  At some point we might have a bigger ask if we need to have a harder push on the city related to this.  So go ahead and shoot me an e‑mail if you have questions or you want to be more involved in this.  I know a couple of you mentioned interest in getting involved last week, which was much appreciated, and I still know you are ready to jump in, so.
>> I am involved as a member of the Human Rights Commission, and certainly will be advocating because we've got to do something to get these people housed.
>> Yes.  And a note from Cynthia Stewart saying input is important even when they know what they want to do for reinforcement.  Thank you, Cynthia.  Okay.  We are going to head into an advocacy update with Maureen Howard.
>> So there are so many things happening so fast.  One of the things I am wondering if there are people who really want to delve into these issues.  I am more than willing to do a separate Zoom meeting just around the policies, the money, that sort of thing.  So, you know, put something in the chat if that's of interest, because really it's coming quickly.
	So ‑‑ and I think sometimes there is information out there, especially from Pierce County, but if you are not on the right mailing list, you don't know it's there.  Like there is a really good summary of the waivers at the federal, state and local county levels that Jeff Rogers put out the end of June that I accidently found on the website last night sort of thing, so I just think that if there are people who want to do more policy work, more issue‑based work, I am more than willing to do that, you know, in some period.
	If you follow the county council, you know that it should have gone to council Tuesday.  I was looking at the Human Services agenda.  The county is already making decisions on how it's going to use its ESG COVID money.  And they can do that because some of the things that have changed under COVID, under HUD, are the public processes that were around certain pots of money.  And I am not suggesting they are making bad decisions.  I am just saying that if we want to be involved, we have to figure out how to do that.
	With respect to the rental assistance money, the state will announce its $100 million eviction prevention rental assistance program, either later today or sometime early next week.  The rules will be different than what Pierce County is doing with its relief fund money and what the City of Tacoma is doing with the program that it started in April, and probably with Lakewood, University Place, anybody else who is out there.
	What we know about what the state program will be is that it will include the friends and family housing, where people are couch surfing, that sort of thing.  If they have an existing financial arrangement.  That's pretty unique, and that should help a lot in preventing a whole range of evictions coming in the future, and it should also give us data we don't have about that level of the risk of homelessness.  Right now there will be a three‑month limit on the rent, and that there will be an aggressive outreach requirement to what the state calls by and for organizations that are led by or for people from communities of color.
	And I think that we can use this opportunity to really try and address some of these communication issues that have been brought up in the small groups around rental assistance in this outreach part, and expand that beyond the by and for organizations so that everybody has the information they need at the right time in the right way.
	The state will also allow a 15% admin, but that's not the people who are doing the ‑‑ running the program, doing the eligibility reviews or anything.  You can staff up for this.  All right.  And so we are talking about 12 million, roughly, coming into Pierce County, either directly to the county or through the office of the programs that are listed for the Office of Homeless Youth.  So this is not a time to do more with less.  This is the time to really think about the infrastructure that you need if you are going to be one of the ‑‑ either one of the providers of the rental assistance or if you were going to be one of the referrers for rental assistance.  So think about the system.
	The other kinds of things that I think are important, the extent to which we want to take this, so to my mind we have a window.  We've got from now until the middle of October.  The feds will probably, I think, this is me, I think the feds will do something about extending federal unemployment insurance.  Not going to be $600 a week, but I think there will be something.  Then we've got this eviction moratorium window in Washington State.  So we really do have an opportunity to do some more substantial planning.  And Al is going to offer information that he learned the other day.  I've got some information out of Phoenix.  I mean and other places.  And we've got the new partnership that Laurie described.
	So we have time to do some local work that we didn't know we were going to have.  And with the safe parking added, that's going to take a little bit of pressure off.  Sharon Lee has a proposal.  LIHI has a proposal for a second tiny village in the City of Tacoma.  They are waiting to hear from the county on that.  They are looking at a third or maybe fourth one in the county.  Tiny houses may not be your first choice, but at this point I'm like we need everything we can get.  Sharon, she'll do an SRO.  LIHI will do whatever it is we want them to do.
	I think with that I am going to wrap it up.  We put a couple of links in ‑‑ I had Gerrit put a couple of links in, and, yeah.  As always, what did I put in for links?  Right.  So one of the links that we went ‑‑ that we put in is on this equitable framework for COVID‑19 response.  So this is coming out of four major national organizations, National Alliance to End Homelessness, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the National Healthcare For the Homeless Council.  And they begin each of these sections with the unsheltered, and they identify not just the sheltering needs, the human needs, the COVID‑related needs, and the funding opportunities.
	So I just think it's one thing that we can look at and see, you know, almost use it as a checklist.  My personal goal at the moment is to find out all the shelters that are actually operating, whether they are congregate, non‑congregate, hotels, or something else, and how one gets somebody in without actually being part of the existing system.  But a normal outside human being.  So as always, I thank you for this opportunity.
>> Thank you, Maureen.  And we all know how to get ahold of you if we have any questions.  Janet, you want to talk a little bit about what's going on with safe parking?
>> I will talk just a little bit.  Thanks to Theresa, we are sending out a notice to be able to speak to the city council.  Several of us submitted letters to the city council meeting for last Tuesday to include the issue of safe parking, and the Tacoma paper on Wednesday, an article, reflected that there was a lot of public interest in safe parking, and so thank you, Theresa, for bringing that to our attention.  In fact that was the second article this week in the Tacoma "News Tribune" on the safe parking issue that we have in Pierce County.  I think it's becoming a mainstream awareness item, which means it's easier to carry the flag forward on that.
	Colin reports to me that he had a meeting early this week with Greater Tacoma Community Foundation.  They have not made an announcement yet.  And I have not heard from the county yet, so I am still standing on one foot and then the other.  Does anybody in the room have any information?
>> You know, Valeri is here with the county, and she will give us an update on the announcement of the phrase three funding.
>> That's all I have.
>> As long as we are talking about the county, Valeri.
>> Great.  Thank you so much.  I am sorry I am not on camera today.  Many of you have heard I was in a motorcycle accident on Saturday and so I am okay looking, but I just feel like exhausted.  [Laughs].  I am going to stay off camera.  Updates from the county, yes, we cancelled the round four because all the funds will be allocated in the round three.  We are getting final approval from Heather as we speak, and then those announcements will be made to the providers who were awarded funds.  The only kind of stickler point is the emergency services, so all of the shelter money, there needs to be one more additional conversation with the committee because folks were eligible for round one and round two, and there is a different scoring tool for round one and round two, so they want to be able to make sure they have all the information.  I was not on that call due to my current situation.  Announcements will be coming out any moment from Heather and us and hopefully we can put it on the website and accepted a link rather than doing the individual letters.  We do know 10 million more dollars are coming from the state for rental assistance, and additional to that 10 million is 1.4 million to the county, Pierce County, not the county, for Office of Homeless Youth funded organizations, which is going to be rental assistance programs for any youth and young adults, and that will include, REACH, Pierce County Alliance, and others.  
	Shelters are not deemed eligible for rental assistance, but they are part of the conversation.  So that conversation is being had today, and so if we can all get aligned, as well as more conversations about the 10 million and how to get those dollars out the door as quickly as possible.
	I am happy to answer any questions that you all may have or anything I didn't touch upon.  We have had about a thousand applicants for rental assistance.  So far.  We are going through them very, very quickly.  Some organizations are receiving way more referrals per day than they can handle, so we are working out that process as we go.  We are looking to set up a call center over at the Department of Emergency Management.  We have heard concerns that folks don't have Internet to support ‑‑ to apply for rental assistance dollars, so we are going to have a number they can call in.  Someone will actually walk through the application, fill it in on their behalf and then submit, which is awesome.  And we are able to do that with Share and Care.  A couple options coming down the pipeline are rental assistance.  We have heard the same as Maureen, because Maureen told us, that the state is doing the three‑month.  We were hoping they would go to six because the county was going to align with whatever was in the best interests of the clients that we serve.  Maureen Howard, please make the call center 24/7.  We will have that up and running as well.
	We are working through everything as it comes in, but happy to answer questions and anything else you want to know.
>> Any questions for the county?  Awesome.  Thank you, Valeri, for powering through when your body is not cooperating.
>> Yeah.  My pleasure.  Thanks, everybody.
>> My wife doesn't let me have a motorcycle.
>> Yeah, well, that is not an option.
>> How about Manu with the Health Department.
>> Sure.  Hi, everyone.  I can share just a few updates.  This week we are just continuing to see kind of a sharp increase in cases in our county, and so we have been active in responding to that, and one of the updates I have is that our response leadership just confirmed that for anyone who is sheltered or sheltering unsheltered guests who don't have a place to isolate, who are tested but awaiting results, kind of that in between space of finding if they are positive or negative, or what their status is, they have a chance to have the ‑‑ we have the space at the TCC that's an option for them to isolate and quarantine there as they await results.
>> The TCC stands for?
>> The temporary care center, the isolation and quarantine center that we have set up.  And Naomi is on the call, too, so feel free to fill in any gaps.  And then that and just wanted to remind folks that we are ‑‑ we have the mobile testing unit out in the community set up doing testing, to be able to do a high volume of testing so far, and just naturally with the more testing we do, the more positives that we will be identifying.  That's just part of the process.  And we will just continue to send out guidance once we have more.
	The other update I guess I wanted to give is something that's in the works, I know I am working with some Health Department folks to get ahead of the ‑‑ just thinking about kind of the convergence of COVID and flu season.  I know we are still a few months out.  However, we want to be as prepared as possible.  I am working on coordinating, you know, pretty much universal flu shots at the shelters, if at all possible, with MRC staff and Health Department resources, so more to come on that.  I will be setting up time to meet with shelter providers to just review best practices as we just move into these next months of who knows.  A lot of implications for schools and community, and we will, again, just continue to share guidance once we have more.  Naomi, anything else you would like to add?
>> No.  I mean I think heard someone mentioned it earlier, but just to make sure that everyone understands that Tacoma Public Schools sent out their notification yesterday after recommendations came from the Health Department director, Dr. Anthony Chen, around remote learning, so that has really significant impacts for all of us and all of our communities, but also specifically to this group, the students.  So just keeping that in mind as we move forward into the fall with students studying remotely.
>> Or not studying remotely as the case with one of my children.
>> Sure.  Yeah.  I would also say, too, that making sure that if we are advocating for, um, additional resources for those students and families who are living homeless, you know, now is the time to be able to do all that you can to be able to advocate for any additional resources, including mental health, behavioral health, social‑emotional, access ‑‑ equitable access to technology, all of the things that are critical for our most vulnerable populations.
>> Just mentioning that, maybe we should see if someone from some of the different school districts in Pierce County might be willing to come and join us for a meeting and talk a little bit about how the homeless system can support them or ways that we can support the schools.  So anyway, I will find maybe ‑‑ if you've got a good contact that you have been working with in the different school districts, that would be a productive use of our time to learn how we can help each other help a lot of these kids.
>> Yeah.  I will ask some of our partners and see if I can get something for you, Gerrit.  But, yeah, I definitely would appreciate that, especially as we have growing concerns about increased homelessness, a lot of those families, too, are on the edge, and are potentially at risk.  We still hear stories from landlords who are still, you know, not complying with eviction moratoriums, so I am apprehensive and nervous for a lot of those families, and especially as we move into the fall, and we also don't have the additional resources potentially, right.  We are definitely going to have feeding for our students.  You have to get access to those, have regular transportation.  So a lot of things to think about.  I will see what I can do, Gerrit, to find somebody who might be able to come and speak to your group.
>> Cool.  I've got contacts, but sometimes the wrong contact is no good.  You know, like big organizations.  It's nice to have the right people.  Cool.
	Any questions for the Health Department?  Theresa.  Is that from earlier?
>> That's for the Health Department, and that is about people coming out of prison.  I don't know what the Health Department is doing in terms of assisting families or halfway houses or tiny shelters like ours.  All the places that people from prisons land, and the prisons seem to be doing nothing about isolation before release, nothing about helping people with the resources they might need when they get out, and nothing to help me when I am trying to get people to accept someone who that is ‑‑ who is coming out of incarceration into their home, to say these are the resources you can use around COVID.  So I don't know if the Health Department is working on the DOC in any way, or working with the communities in any way, but I would be delighted to hear what that is and how to access it.
>> I do believe there was at least an agreement that there would be ‑‑ there obviously would be no one who would be released that was actively positive so that they would be testing them before they were released.  That might have been from Western State Hospital and not our prisons.  But ‑‑
>> We are receiving somebody in a couple days and they are doing nothing.
>> Well, then I will definitely make sure that we can share that with our appropriate staff here at the Health Department, and I will ‑‑
>> Actually they are taking their temperature.  It doesn't seem adequate.
>> Yeah.  Well, I will share that with our staff, and if I can get an update on if we are working with them directly, or if they are working with other service providers, and I will share that out to Gerrit as soon as I have any answer on that.
>> Cool.  Did you have a question there, Reverend Pitchford?
>> I had a statement as far as inmates coming out of prison.  They do have a program because I have several young men, they do have a housing program for them when they come that is requested on release.  As far as them checking them, I am not sure about that, but I will call DOC and request that information that you asked for.  I have a relationship with them, also.  So I will try to get that out to you, that information out to you.
>> Great.  Thank you, Reverend.
>> Awesome.
>> Yes, ma'am.
>> All right.  Is Ivan there at the EOC?
>> Ivan is hopefully very much enjoying a well‑deserved vacation.  He is out for the next two weeks, and spending some quality time with his daughter.
>> Good call, Ivan.  All right.  That brings us to some shelter updates.  I had a quick update from Nativity House.  They are beginning to take more people into the shelter, and that's coming mostly through relationships the case managers already have.  Also, they had another round of comprehensive testing.  I think I mentioned it last week, but I am so pleased that the Health Department has been able to put together so much testing available for people experiencing homelessness right now.  It's everything that's needed, which is super cool.  And so the Nativity House had another round of testing, and they had all negatives.  So that is lovely news as well.  So that's hard work that happens every day for our staff in the different shelters, but these folks go out into the world and come back in, and that we have had so few cases at our shelters is a real I think tribute to the seriousness and the diligence that shelters staff, Nativity House, Rescue Mission, everybody, has put into keeping folks safe.
	Other updates, I saw Nate is on here.  Neigh from the men and women's shelter at the Rescue Mission?
>> No updates.  We are chugging along, alongside our folks at the women's shelter ‑‑ excuse me.  Just trying to get a process, a strong process, going for accepting and getting resources to our ladies, and then for our guys.  So just, you know, keep us in your prayers.  [Laughs].  And if you have any information that you guys need, feel free to give me a ring, and that's it.
>> Thanks, Nate.  And I haven't actually been paying attention who is on the call.  Just kind of looking through.  Anybody else have any updates on shelters?  Rob, anything from Bethlehem?
>> Nothing really new.  I know Colin was on the call earlier.  He sent out new contact information to the shelter, to the coalition, earlier this week, so hopefully everybody got that.  And we are operating and moving forward.
>> This looks like a question sort of for the Health Department, sort of for the county, and city is not on the call, but is there any plans for hot weather for unsheltered people?  Does anyone have anything going on in the hopper or know of any efforts around that?  Traditionally we just try to have our shelters more available and remind people about libraries, but that ain't going to work.
>> Yeah.  Cooling centers is an issue.
>> Just dump buckets of ice around the city?
>> No.  I don't know, but, again, I will add that to my list and check and see if there are any additional recommendations that we can put out for the extreme hot weather people who are outdoors.
>> The Health Department does usually distribute some information about cooling centers, which is typically the mall and things like that, so maybe that will be a little different this round.
>> Yeah.  I will definitely check and make sure that if we do have any updated information.
>> Cool.  And also drinking water is another big need, but I don't anyone is leading that fight to get more accessible drinking water locations around the county.  Is anybody actively putting projects together?  I would say that's a big no.  So probably something, it would be nice to be on somebody's plate.  Whether that's just a lot of bottles of water, or other, you know, water buffaloes from our army days, or what, to get that in people's throats.
	All right.  We are running over the end.  Al, did you want to touch on the work with the ‑‑ actually, does anybody else have any shelter updates?  Did I miss any shelter folks?
>> You always forget that we do have a shelter at comp.  I want to throw that out there.  We also do outreach and bring bottles of water.  If you have bottles of water, I will have my team take them places.  We have been buying it ourselves, but luckily it hasn't been really hot lately, so we haven't been going through it too much.  As it gets hot in August, if someone donates, we will take it out to the folks on the street.  But, yeah, the Youth Shelter, Young Adult Shelter, is still running 24/7.  Just walk up, there is no ‑‑ you don't have to be referred.  Anybody who is experiencing homelessness that's a young adult up to the age of 24.  We are also looking at as part of our kind of community response, both Office of Homeless Youth and the ACI are having additional funding, not for sheltering, but for diversion assistance for young adults, rental assistance, other things.  
	So we are trying to learn to be experts for people who walk into the shelter who aren't homeless that might need case management, or maybe they are unstably housed or they are friends of a person who is unstably housed, to make sure we know the resources available for those that might have housing but need some additional stability services.  
	The shelter is still running at 50 beds.  That's ten over our normal, but we have had the capacity in the last month or so.  At this point we are offering three meals a day now, too, for the young adults, if they need a place to go to eat and everything else.  So that's pretty much it.
>> Nicely done as always.  Though I think at some point our shelters need to start having second breakfasts and tea time and things like that, but I guess that's another day when we have met all our immediate need.
	Al, I think we should take a little time next week to talk about our work with the Chamber, and go ahead and wrap things up.  So we are a little bit late, but I thought it was an interesting and informative meeting.  I am always surprised, and I shouldn't be, just at the depth of knowledge that everyone who attends possesses, and we are all so much better for everyone being here.  So thanks, everyone.  Have a good weekend, and keep up the good work.
>> Thank you, Gerrit.
[End of meeting]