Unknown Speaker 20:41 All right folks we are just about ready to get started. That was a cool new documentary by some folks in Spokane, kind of highlighting the importance of the daily cleanliness that so many of us take for granted. I am just about ready to bring us in with a nice little open so just go ahead and strap your seatbelt on. And let's make the happiness happen. Unknown Speaker 21:17 Make a new world today takes everything you've taken a break from all your worries sure would help a lot Unknown Speaker 21:29 to get away. Unknown Speaker 21:46 You can see the troubles on people. Unknown Speaker 22:24 The coalition to end homelessness is filmed before a live studio audience. Well, not in the studio. Sadly, but welcome going for a Cheers. I love you guys. I love hanging out with you guys on Friday moment. And I am ready for us to get going. Today is my last meeting running the coalition meeting here, at least for a bit, and I'm excited because I'm going to be ranting to you about everything I've learned about homelessness. We're going to get some updates. But before that, Unknown Speaker 23:01 that this was my attempt here What is it, yeah. At a cheers moment. Mayor what it's gonna bring us into the meeting with a few words, Mayor waters. Unknown Speaker 23:10 Thank you Guerin and good morning everyone. Thank you for allowing me to be here this morning with you all for just a few minutes. And let me also say thank you for the work that you will do on behalf of our community. What you do is so incredibly important and we are so grateful that you continue to come together, every Friday to make a difference in the lives of people who live in our community. Especially those experiencing homelessness and so I'm just really grateful for the work that you do but my time here this morning. Unfortunately short is that maybe I could not let this meeting pass without showing up and Maureen thank you so much for sending the invitation to be here this morning. Unknown Speaker 24:04 What do we say about Gerrit Nyland. Unknown Speaker 24:07 Just that yeah No, Unknown Speaker 24:10 just an amazing human being. Unknown Speaker 24:15 I met Garrett before he even became a part of the homelessness coalition and began doing all this work I've known him for, for some years as a member of the disabilities committee task force for the city of Tacoma, or the Commission on Disabilities excuse me It's early in the morning and I've had no coffee so let me just, let me just, I know it's nine o'clock for most people, but I'm a late night person so it takes me a little while to get started in the morning but Unknown Speaker 24:41 I sent him in I met them in a bar I should offered you a drink so my apologies there. What can I get you to drink. Unknown Speaker 24:46 Was that anything was coffee in it this morning would be great for me. Um, but but I had, I had an opera I've had an opportunity to watch Gary work over the years. And it doesn't matter where he works, or what issue he decides to take on his heart is the same no matter what, no matter what he does, and Garrett just has an amazing commitment to this community and everyone who lives here especially those who are disproportionately affected by society, whether that be those with disabilities or those who are homeless. Garrett just he's like a dog with a bone kind of like when he gets in. He's not letting go until he makes till he makes some change. And so, Garrett, I just wanted to show up this morning and I wish I was too impressed because the first thing Garrett knows I would do was, would be to hug him. And I wish I could do that. But I can't so Garrett I owe you a hug. When I see you in a coven is over, make it to. One for you and one for me. Um, but here I just, I just wanted to personally show up this morning to let you know how much I personally appreciate what you've done for Tacoma, and your commitment and I am so honored that you choose to call this place Hubble. And so with that, it gives me great pleasure to read this today. Whereas Gerrit Nyland Director of Information Systems at Catholic community services of Western Washington is leaving his position. On August 21 2020. And whereas Garen has brought both humor and compasses his role as co facilitator co facilitator of the Tacoma Pierce County coalition to end homelessness, all while reminding us that ending homelessness requires a laser focus on collecting local and current data in order to understand the causes thoughtfully consider thoughtfully considering the consequences, and a commitment to bold solutions. And whereas he has been a creative leader in developing and supporting multiple online communication tools and resources, thus facilitating the growth of the Tacoma Pierce County coalition to end homelessness, as an essential regional network, and giving the entire community. And keeping the entire community informed and connected and connecting frontline providers who continue to meet weekly to better respond to the needs of people experiencing homelessness. And whereas Garrett has shared his knowledge, giving guidance to those who share his passion and dedication, nurture new leaders challenged longtime advocates and educated, politicians, I've been one of them and I see Councilmember Walker is here, she would probably absolutely agree. And whereas we know that Garrett will continue to advocate for the rights and stability of people experiencing homelessness, until they're all home. Now therefore I Victoria, r woodards Mayor of the City of Tacoma. On behalf of the City Council do hereby proclaim today Friday, August 23 August 21 2020 as Garrett Nyland day in the city of Tacoma, and encourage the rest and encourage the Tacoma Pierce County coalition to end homelessness, and the entire community to join us in wishing him well on his next adventure graduations Garrett, thank you so very much. Unknown Speaker 28:30 Thank you so much okay that was out of the blue, guys. Thank you Mayor woodards, you know, we appreciate you so much I oftentimes when you and a bunch of politicians to get together people you're like, they're my mayor, or they're my mayor and I'm, I'm gonna be a little possessive and say, Mayor woodards, you're my mayor. Thank you, Garrett, much appreciated. Unknown Speaker 28:54 Catch a friend back after. Unknown Speaker 28:57 All right. Yes, and I will take you up on that hug the world of social isolation is kind of getting me down, Unknown Speaker 29:05 social isolation I've been Unknown Speaker 29:07 here in the jungle. I got to come Unknown Speaker 29:08 all the way out here to the zoo world of Tacoma, Unknown Speaker 29:11 to help say tear it off with some style. So I've got a little song to sing. If y'all want to help me out by singing along, that'd be fantastic. You know, hear me all right Unknown Speaker 29:24 all right here we go. Unknown Speaker 29:31 Get your banjos out. Unknown Speaker 29:37 If you have a light in my wave. Unknown Speaker 29:40 Give them a moment. Unknown Speaker 29:46 There's so many songs about rainbows are Unknown Speaker 30:04 rainbows have nothing to Unknown Speaker 30:10 leave. Oh, Unknown Speaker 30:17 no, they're wrong Unknown Speaker 30:23 will Unknown Speaker 30:27 come next. Unknown Speaker 30:38 We know that it Unknown Speaker 30:51 forces them Unknown Speaker 31:00 in the sweet sound of a young sailor Unknown Speaker 31:06 might be one. Unknown Speaker 31:12 I've heard it too many times do we know Unknown Speaker 31:19 that I'm supposed to be. Unknown Speaker 31:24 Some day when I, you Unknown Speaker 31:28 know, Unknown Speaker 31:32 the jury. Unknown Speaker 31:50 Best of luck to Garrett have many, many wonderful years in greener pastures, Unknown Speaker 31:56 but remember that it is not easy being green. Have a great day everybody. Unknown Speaker 32:02 That is on I keep interrupting you but a group of us just can help ourselves, understanding that you are the person that's made these connections for all of us. I just to make a good song reference we would say that you are sometimes the rainbow and a gray world and we're really going to miss you, I think, more than anybody selfishly is going to miss you for lots and lots and lots of reasons and maybe I can convince you one day to do that podcast I keep texting you and you keep ignoring me about, but my, my kiddos also spend a few minutes, putting together something for you, that they wanted to share, it won't be a song or dance but they spent the week without schoolwork to do to make you a poster to say goodbye. Good luck. So, again, they're also here, available to help host sometime when we actually get back in live, but again get so many of us are going to miss you and feel your absence even before you're gone so. Best of luck to you. And. Unknown Speaker 33:05 Wow, thanks guys that's awesome. I get that someday don't I. Yeah. Unknown Speaker 33:13 All right, I understand. Unknown Speaker 33:16 Very cool. No, I'm, and you got the logo on there and everything. Unknown Speaker 33:20 Yes Did we have shirts you know so we had a top logo here's our award that we got. Last year, still. Unknown Speaker 33:27 Yes. Unknown Speaker 33:29 So we'll get, I'll give it to you. Don't worry. Unknown Speaker 33:36 And now you can go back to wherever now and go back to our regular schedule, could you guys do it's making me nervous now. So. Unknown Speaker 33:44 Alright, well. Excuse me, miss. Dr Radcliffe. Unknown Speaker 33:51 Reuters. I know you may want to send that proclamation to Garrett, and let you know that I lied to him the other day and told him I would probably never really need his home address but I would appreciate it if he would share his home address, I will provide it to you. And it's the first time in my life I've never really lied to it now i. Unknown Speaker 34:16 But, but it was worth it. Unknown Speaker 34:22 scheming colleagues. Unknown Speaker 34:27 I'm heading hell, she's got it. All right. Unknown Speaker 34:36 My good. Unknown Speaker 34:39 You are so good. Unknown Speaker 34:42 Okay, ladies and gentlemen, let's jump on board. This took me 40 minutes the one time I walked through it. So we'll see how long we last. My goal was to have an incredibly tight focused and with just one or two takeaways. And when I came up with my recommendation say total 15. And so that's probably a bit of a fail on my part. Unknown Speaker 35:06 That's kind of how life is sometimes cheats. I gotta figure out how to make this thing work. Unknown Speaker 35:21 Okay. Unknown Speaker 35:38 Just bear with me I don't know what I'm doing. Unknown Speaker 35:45 How about that are we seeing that PowerPoint. Unknown Speaker 35:49 Yeah, awesome. Unknown Speaker 35:51 I do not like PowerPoint at all but I put together a PowerPoint today and it has more than three slides, which is probably more than I've ever made in any PowerPoint. Today I'm going to talk about the good of Pierce County homelessness the bad of Pierce County homelessness and the ugly, and I've chosen this fine, Sierra Leone, film, as my narrative tool, and it's probably not an okay film to watch anymore because anything made in 1868 is probably horribly racist and sexist and lots of other things, but I'm gonna roll with it anyway because I like the title. And who doesn't like the good, the bad, the ugly right i mean really, the man with no name series launched Clint Eastwood and defame, I mean I think we all know the Clint Eastwood first film was in the return of the Creature from the Black Lagoon where he had a bit part as a scientist, but that film is certainly not worth watching because that is the only good thing in the entire film. I would rather recommend you it's just $4, or my favorite a few dollars more. However, we are going to jump right in to homelessness. Before we start this is, if you take away nothing else from this and perhaps you will take away nothing else from this. My two major points are we really in Pierce County, this is my major recommendation for actually ending homelessness. Someone needs to take charge, and get resourced for us to end homelessness in Pierce County. It's currently nobody's job. Nobody makes sure that the streets are not where people call home because nobody's responsibility lots of people are charged with spending money wisely but nobody has their job of monitoring and figuring out how to end homelessness. And that's probably a big reason why we struggled to end homelessness. Right, we don't have somebody that says they're going to figure it out. Nobody plotting it all out we need this many shelter beds we need this many other interventions and we're going to get the money from the feds here and from private funders here and from general fund here and, like, nobody does that plodding in a way that I've seen in my four years. The second thing is, and this is because I'm a data guy, but bear with me. The data tells us what we need to know in order to meet the need, and with COVID-19 we obsess over the data of COVID-19, and we need to do the same thing with homelessness, so that's that. And before we get into what we're not doing well, we're going to talk about what we do do well. And for the record Clint Eastwood hates cigars. So even though he's got a cigar in his mouth. He's kind of a nonsmoker. So let's just appreciate that about Queenie, but he actually threatened to quit the film if they didn't make them stop smoking but they didn't make it stop smoking. And, yeah, I mean still do them. The first thing that is amazing about piercing I'm going to take this time off, I didn't have a black tie which kind of goes to the coast look from Cheers. And so, yeah, and spray painted tight black. Good thing that I hated Unknown Speaker 38:44 is the evolution of homeless systems and Pierce County has been incredibly attentive as Pierce County government and following the evolution, and by evolution I mean the improvement of homeless systems so 10 years ago, homeless systems look very different than they do now, they spent a lot more money, and they did not serve nearly as many people. And that's all changed. Housing First, you know, working with people as they come to us. Rapid Rehousing where instead of instead of having this pathway of shelter to transitional housing to eventually their own apartment. We just dropped them in an apartment right away, cover their rent for a while, while they get themselves put together. So, that type of model has been something that, as a community, we followed we followed the research, and we've even led the way with a bunch of diversions a great example. And so, as homeless systems evolve. Pierce County has done a good job of funding things that have been shown to be most cost effective, and best for our clients right so they aren't just saving money at the cost of the client it's more common client voice, more choice of what goes on. And so my first recommendation, with the big thumbs up and a gold background because that's what recommendations need is we need to continue to obsess on best practices. And by that I mean, following the research, everybody that works in the homeless services industry, especially people involved in making decisions need to be able to rattle off the cost of every intervention the effectiveness of a nationwide locally that should be just embedded in our heads, right, what's the success rate nationwide of rapid rehousing 80%. What's an intervention cost in Pierce County, on average, 70 $200, right, what's transitional housing effectiveness. 78% nationwide so pretty close, what's the cost per intervention nationwide it's about $18,000 right so I get the same outcome at three times the cost. So that's why we do Rapid Rehousing and we all need to have that internalized. This is a chart bar graph, I'm not going to do too much of this, this is a bar graph from 2013 to now according to hm is so I might not believe the first couple years. These are the number of people housed by our homeless system every year, and the different colors are the different interventions so blue is diversion that's our least expensive tool, yellow, orange is Rapid Rehousing right that's covering rent for six months right diversion is the one time assistance. Rapid Rehousing we cover rent for six months, and then transitional housing is red, and we've not done very much of that in our community as you can see it's pretty minor in our tool to end homelessness, relative to rapid rehousing but even Rapid Rehousing spent struggling lately, mostly because in 2017 we decided we would only serve the most vulnerable, and that those people are really hard to serve. And we've also seen tightening of our housing market and costs going up and so those two things combined to make some of the housing, that was a little easier. No one would have said was easier in 2015, more challenging in 2019 and 2020 so my second recommendation is when you look at this blue bar here diversion and how successful it is, we've got to fully fund a version, and we do a pretty good job of that. And that's David Hasselhoff giving a thumbs up because who doesn't love Knight Rider well probably anybody just not a fifth grader. But anyway, love David Hasselhoff, and I love the version, and that is so cost effective 1200 dollars per intervention. It's almost free, and we just really need to make sure that if somebody can use diversion The money is there for them. Another thing that we do really well in this community is responding quickly to immediate concerns right in front of us. A good example of this is the stability site. Another good example is setting up the Tim shelter both in responses to rather dangerous encampments. And so we use local funding right so we didn't wait for the grant process we didn't wait for anything other than figuring out where the money was going to come from locally and making new happens that city of Tacoma doing some really quick responses to things and we've seen very fast responses in other places right COVID-19 has definitely shown organizations, or government able to do some quick pivots. So my third recommendation with a thumbs up from a random monk off the internet probably copyright protected photo but that's how I roll is, we need to respond quickly to immediate needs. And again, that's something we do well as a community Unknown Speaker 43:23 mapping where to find help. So, one thing that we often hear about is the challenges of knowing where resources are, and I actually think this is me, patting the coalition to end homelessness on its back, but making sure that we have a place where we can learn about resources and tell people about resources is incredibly valuable to us. And I kind of think of myself like sort of I create this map in my head like this chart of where you need to go to get something so when somebody says, Well, what would I do I mean, they're starting a job but where can they get childcare and say oh well. Turns out, someone presented a few months ago at the coalition, I remember who it was. And I'm going to go ahead and hook them up with some resources for childcare, and if I don't remember that part. I know, Kelley Blue choose email address and so I'll email her and ask her what the heck do I do, right so we create this map of knowledge of the local resources and people that can help us with that so my fourth recommendation is for us to make sure we make time to learn and share. And that's what this coalition is all about every week. You're crazy, but no it's every week, we're making sure we learn and share. Teamwork is another super huge asset in this community we work together, we do not work against each other in any of social services that I'm aware of. There is not infighting, it's not bickering there's like competition for things when it comes to funding but no one ba graduates anyone else and I hear people advocating for Catholic community services funding. I know we advocate for others, we all play well together. And so my fifth recommendation is that that teamwork gets supported by our agencies. Okay, so we do a lot of grass works teamwork, hire 253 is a great example, and an agency took that on because things get too big, at some point, and someone needs to own it. And so, I really encourage us to take ownership of things that are kind of crowdsource so they can continue on indefinitely, or coalition may be a good example of that kind of crowd sourced may be big enough that it's ready for someone to adopt inclement weather is another great example that just sort of pops around and nobody really has ownership of how we do inclement weather in Pierce County right different people do different bits, but we're ready for an agency to take that on and that's what really, it shows the value of our team work together we find a need, we meet the need, but sustaining it takes an agency or a government organization to get behind it. That was my good, and there's actually so much more good I could just go on about the good forever. But then, how would I have a picture of Lee Van Cleef. Right. We have Van Cleef the bad, and the good the bad and the Ugly actually they're all kind of bad and the good the bad and the ugly, but we have things that we don't do well in Pierce County and let's just think of them as opportunities, even though I labeled them bad they're just not good yet about that. Unknown Speaker 46:28 The bad is, even though we do amazing things and we do best practices, this is maybe my last chart. This is from 2015 to 2020 did a crappy job making the numbers big on the bottom. This is what I think, homeless counts look like every quarter, basically. So we look through time. And we see homelessness is rising in Pierce County right dramatically so I came on four years ago, 2016, we were looking at around 4400 people experiencing homelessness, we're well over 6000, and we saw warehousing more people each year, not dramatically more but more, but we're having this flow in of more and more. And not only is this going up, but every indication is that it's going to keep going up, we are plateauing this last year but it's only because spring and fall or rather summer and fall which usually are what drive our numbers up right this is the time when we usually get slammed by people looking for resources, COVID-19 made things a little weird this year. And I suspect that we're going to see an even higher spike in homelessness. Right. it'd be nice, but that wasn't the case but most of us are fearing more right so this is a bad and this isn't a bad that's anybody's fault because guess what, we don't charge anybody to be responsible for this. We still spend our money wisely. We still do best practices we respect our clients, but we still have the numbers going up. And if you've ever seen my online tool where you can putter around and try to end homelessness in Pierce County there's a there's a model right that you can plug stuff into I didn't set it up because that would take forever but but I'll go ahead and post a link to it later in the minutes. But this tool lets you adjust dollar amounts to kind of project what homelessness is going to look like in the future but in the chart in the left. There is a red line going up, and that's at our current levels of funding that's going to be our increase in homelessness, from our 6000 we have now to in 2023 about 7500 people experiencing homelessness in Pierce County, at any given time on any given night. That's a lot of people. And you cannot believe that number believe it, it's up to you, but it's true. And maybe made my first meme last night. I'm so proud of myself. Unknown Speaker 49:02 I Unknown Speaker 49:02 do not understand why I argue with people about how many people are experiencing homelessness in Pierce County, Iowa willing to sit down and go through the five different ways that I can count homelessness in Pierce County. We looked at that chart earlier. And you can see the point time count. Right, is a ridiculous count to try to base the actual numbers off of. Right, it's impossible for that to be terribly accurate, and it's dramatically inaccurate right to the tune of like a factor of three. All the other ways that we can look at homelessness. Estimating episodes looking at how many people are currently in the priority pool waiting for a resource, looking at the current inflow to homelessness versus the outflow. All of those things, indicate that it's very high, and I have these stupid conversations with people where they say things like, well, well according to point in time count there's 158 people experiencing homelessness, see well into coma and say well that's that's actually you miss reading the report like it doesn't actually say that. And it's terribly inappropriate to use that as a tool to gauge, our need and if we don't know our need we're never going to be able to resource to meet that need. So, I believe we need to learn to count. It's probably the second most important thing we can do I create a dashboard every week that I'm not going to create because I'm not gonna have access to ATMs anymore. Peter. Pierce County if you're listening to me. I'll make these things for free if you keep giving me access. This is the dashboard that tells how many people became homeless in a week it says how many people go like in this particular week 25 people were able to enter shelter. 3200 shelter from shelter 25 people became permanently house diversion permanently house 37. Yay, good week except in this top we see 200 people nearly 199 started a homeless episode. So we only had 32 shelter beds for the 200 people right we serve one of six in shelters, right. We need to look at that all the time, even if, even if it doesn't get better today or tomorrow, right, we're in it for the long haul. And we need to make it better. So I think we need to be publishing weekly so my seventh recommendation. Thumbs up young man with no hair, I couldn't have gone to school like that and not been ridiculed but I think he pulls it off, published data weekly right and maybe daily, right, we look at Hilliker lots of us look at the statistics published by the Tacoma Pierce County Health Department, about how many people are COVID-19 positive right we obsess over that data, and it's not good news right now right they're publishing it even though it's terrible like we want our little lever to be in the green took me a long time to figure out how these actual visualizations work I just want to be embarrassed and say that right now. Anyway, the dial is way out of the green and still we're publishing it because it's super important that we know as a community. We're not doing a great job keeping each other safe right now, let's work on that. Right, and long term paying attention all that's really important. We need to pay attention to a whole bunch of different statistics and the statistics are not all homelessness, but they're products of COVID-19 too. And we need to start working on that we need to pay attention to how many people become homeless how many are getting into shelter how many are exiting to permanent housing, we need to pay attention to how many people become unemployed, we need to pay attention to how many people are requesting rent assistance, right, we need to pay attention to how many people are behind them their utility payments. All of our tools to identify when things are really going bad. And when we're making an impact because we're putting good resources and we need to watch all of that. And we're not like we are not watching all of that in a structured way and we're not telling the story to the community. Another thing we do poorly, this is going to make me enemies, is we fund transitional housing still, I don't understand it, it's really expensive, and sometimes it feels like the right thing to do. But, I don't know, and I'm using transit, so I'm going to do wordplay right that's one thing that I get in fights with people over two is when they don't want to call a suite the suite. and we oftentimes don't call transitional housing transitional housing. We call it shelter. So the stability sites a great example of something that is essentially transitional housing. It does not have a 90 day stay limit. It has lots of services on site. Again, it's a very successful model, and it may be the appropriate model for some of our most vulnerable in the community, but it's super expensive, and when we've got thousands of people homeless. I'm not sure that we can provide that service right we need to do something different. We've also had incredible fails, right. A good example is Betsy Ross house. They permanently housed. Unknown Speaker 54:00 What eight people out of Betsy Ross house in its entire existence. We spent millions of dollars as a community to renovate it to operate it we spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And they created a program that had too narrow of an entry requirement. It's not a house. First, all sorts of problems it wasn't designed around what the people in front of us actually needed. And that's one of the failures of transitional housing design programs for the homeless that you want, not for the homeless in front of you. So, instead of doing shelters that are actually transitional housing, we need to be more cost effective. We need to do things like safe parking. This is a picture from a car dealer from a car dealer, and he had no idea where it's from he lets people that are homeless parked in this parking lot, every night. He's got huge lights he's got security cameras he had all the crappy art he needed, and he just kind of set things up, and he does it. I mean, how cool is that. Is it long term sustainable, maybe not, but it sure made a difference to some people, and certainly more cost effective than our high cost shelters, which again isn't to say we don't need shelters in our system, but we've got to look at how much they cost each night. Another great option are sanctioned encampments, and again I don't mean our model we do at the stability site or at Tim shelter, those are super high cost right sanction encampments are typically operated at 50 to $100,000 a year right and have a lot of self governance. And those are things that are hard to get going, I get all of that but you can't spend $1.3 million a year on the stability site to take care of 80 people right when you've got thousands, that are not being safe in our community, right, like, or you throw a lot more money at it you know one of the two so my eighth recommendation. And here I've got Scrooge McDuck which apparently doesn't do a thumbs up and any image on the internet, but Scrooge McDuck because that man's a miser. We need to deploy cost effective shelters. And as I walk away from Catholic community services I can start criticizing our stability site as really super high cost, I love that the program we are serving people in amazing ways and again it may be, what we need to do, but when I was spending a little time on G street because my lovely son was working on his Eagle project that new connections. I was walking around and Theresa, who's on the call right now. She has homeless people in her front yard, all the time. That's her community because we have failed as a city to give her a safe sidewalk, where she can stroll. It's not that it's incredibly unsafe, but it's not the sidewalk in front of my house. Right, which doesn't have people living on it, right, we have failed. many of our community members in ways, right not only the people that are homeless that don't have a safe place to be, but also the collateral damage of our community areas that had become unpleasant to be on, because we're walking into some of these living. Unknown Speaker 57:03 This is a chart okay I got two more charts. This is a chart, how are we doing we don't okay it's a fun. I'm having fun. This is a chart of how many households, everything else I've done before it's clients This is households, how many households moved into permanent supportive housing permanent supportive housing is the forever. Right. We cover your rent. Basically, we provide case management for the rest of your life, and permanent supportive housing is as one might imagine incredibly expensive. And this is looking at year by year, how many new entries into permanent supportive housing how many movements and this number needs to be going up really fast, and it's not right. We've had some good years 2015, we had 218. Well that's probably because Guadalupe VISTA opened that year and I think another project open that year so in one year. Right, a new building with 37 units right that gives you a nice bump. Right. Otherwise we're dependent on like new projects which we haven't had a lot of people leaving right because they're graduating and be able to be self sufficient or they fail with permanent supportive housing and are back on the streets again, which isn't a lot permit supportive housing super effective, but we need to bring more in so my ninth recommendation is for us to fund permanent supportive housing. And if you don't appreciate the pun of house with this Thumbs up for housing, I don't know what to tell you. permanent supportive housing is expensive we have got to bring money and do this and I hear people say this all the time permanent supportive housing let's get more permanent sort of housing, and we actually have lost some units and family permanent supportive housing over the past few years, like we haven't kept what we got, because it's really hard to run so we got to fund it in ways that make it so that agencies like Catholic community services, want to continue to do it, because if you make it so hard and so risky, right, that you might end up, unable to sustain it and have a massive liability it's gonna be a challenge I've seen MDC lose operating money out of, out of, you know, competitive grant process and it's like no, that's the last thing we need to do to support our providers, we need to make sure they're fully funded. Oh another chart. This is really my last chart. Rental vacancy rates rental vacancy rates are an excellent barometer for how fast housing prices are going up in your community, housing prices are going up in our community, every single year faster than inflation and it's because we don't have enough units available, because we don't have enough units, period. And we need a rental vacancy rate around 7% that's what communities that see inflation, as the increase every year instead of inflation and demand creating these much higher increases in rent every year. And this is Pierce County it's actually not Pierce County it's the Seattle Bellevue Tacoma metropolitan area. Because that's the statistic I could find quickly, and honestly housing the regional thing as is all homelessness, and we're seeing about a 4% we're averaging about 4% there's a lot of margin of error in that. But, it's, it's really, you know, every time it's below 7% right rents go up too fast. And so my 10th recommendation is change zoning laws now. And I mean, eliminate the need to have parking spaces. I mean, allow multifamily next to my lovely home. I mean, Allow heights to go up, up, up, right communities like Portland have simply done this. And we've got to do it, and I was going for a pun with changing zoning laws by having a thumbs up in the endzone. And you'll note that I selected Tom Brady with the Patriots as the thumbs up. And the reason I did that is because, as much as everybody hates that photograph of Tom Brady, with his thumb up in the endzone. Everybody hates changing zoning laws, even more every politician is scared to suggest to somebody in Proctor I was heckled in the north and neighborhood council meeting by the audience, and by the northern neighborhood council for suggesting that they could eliminate some parking requirements for an apartment building and Proctor, it was not popular, it is not how you're going to get re elected to the city council so we have an education requirement to get zoning laws change right both for our council members and for our community as a whole. It will be as unpopular as a patriot fan, and I'm talking to you my friend Robbie. It is not cool to like the Patriots. Ah, that was the bad. And now, my friends, we are going to head into the ugly. We've got ugly in so many ways. We have a new york Unknown Speaker 1:01:55 Jewish man playing a Hispanic gangster, and a movie I thought we'd stop doing that but maybe we have, and this is just the 1968, but Eli Wallach is amazing in this role, but I think he's gorgeous I don't know what the whole ugly thing is, maybe it's his soul, and the character. Anyway, Unknown Speaker 1:02:19 secrecy. Unknown Speaker 1:02:21 Right. This is the ugly underbelly of a lot of what I see in our government so most of our funding come from the federal government through the city in the county and the state money to not much general fund county money, some general fund city of Tacoma money. But one of the things that I think does us a disservice is when we operate in secrecy, when decisions are made outside of the public eye. And I see this, not so much in the county. There's times when you need to have things private like the county with its COVID-19 money, like, holy cow, I cannot believe they've done three RFP processes already, right, like, they went out of their way to make a public process right we do public RFP processes, so that the community can audit what we do, so that they see we don't play favorites, and the City of Tacoma it's got some real challenges, they have some real tendencies to secrecy. Stability site was funded by backroom deals, not evil right I was in some of them right good people doing good things, but it. It wasn't put out to the community to find the agency that put the best proposal together, right, sometimes acting quick that's okay. However, we're three years into a state of emergency. And I think it's simply being used as an excuse to allow less public oversight of the activities of homelessness, and that is deplorable. It really is. And there's other areas that I see in the city of Tacoma where this is happening. A good example would be how they've eliminated the civil rights investigators. They've ended the contract. Oh well, you know it's going to be part of the discussion and budgeting, no you ended a contract at the end of June. Right. You have made a decision to stop it, and are unwilling to have public comment around that particular decision, except in some far off distant way like after the contract ended, right, that secrecy does not serve as well. So, public money, public process, and I don't mean you bring one vendor to the city council to get a vote to approve it or not, I mean you have a public RFP process, and that would actually require you to have a plan for what to do in the community doing homelessness, you would have a plan of how we're going to do this or do we have 19 shelters planned across Pierce County, and they're going to be low cost are going to be some correct and then when money comes in, boom, let's put it out to RFP. This is our prioritized list of what we want to work on, to build up and give us a proposal for one of those things it's on our ranked priority list of things projects we need to implement like that, that list doesn't exist. If you gave $5 million dollars to a funder in the county or the city, right, they wouldn't know what to do with it right now. And that is why backroom deals happen i think is because they're just not ready to put an RFP process out right there. They're doing all this other stuff anyway public money public process, and happy little light bulb right in the light of day. Some up for that recommendation number 11. Unknown Speaker 1:05:28 Oh, I don't remember what this one was about I got a skip for Unknown Speaker 1:05:33 risk. I would like talk about risk. So now I'm getting way far away from kind of traditional recommendations and heading into my little bucket list of things I care a lot about this one is about risk and this is the stability site, when it had tents in it. People can have food, not prepared in these tents, right, they've got burner. They've got barbecues they've got food delivered, right, this is a pretty safe place to be. There's fire extinguisher if there's been one fire and no injuries related to that are not significant. In the four year three years of operation so this is a pretty low risk environment, relative to People's Park. People's Park is pretty high risk. These people do not have access to food in the same way. And so, it's a much higher risk they don't have the safety provided Scully site they don't have, they don't have bright fire extinguishers available they don't have places to wash their hands, and yet the city decided they were going to reduce the size of the stability site so they could eliminate the temps, because it tends for high risk. Well, those tents. And the way of living for the 30 people that no longer had a space there, they went to right probably like a way to think about it, right, is a less safe environment, right where they're in a tent somewhere else, but the risk. Isn't the city's risk, and the risk is in Catholic community services risk. The risk is the individual experiencing homelessness. So we are unwilling to take some risk, and we put huge amounts of risk on to our people experiencing homelessness because we are so risk averse. And so, and it's real. This is a photograph of an encampment fire right like it is real, and it happens, but it's gonna happen less in a site operated by people that have fire extinguishers, right, and no need to cook in their tent. So my recommendation number 12 is, let's accept some more risk. Right, kids have skateboards not because their fathers wanted skateboards kids have skateboards because a little risk is okay. And so that's my recommendation 12, let's accept some more risks so we don't shove it back on to the person experiencing homelessness. I love this picture, this is from maybe six or seven years ago, this was a conservative magazine publishing a political cartoon that's Barack Obama, and he is among the flames, write reference to old Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned. We all know Nero didn't do that because they didn't have fiddles back then. But anyway, the authors were of this world, the art. that was, that was putting this editorial piece that was basically saying, everything was going to pop the economy is having all kinds of problems, and Obama wasn't doing anything about it he was just fiddling around, and I like this because it's like you thought that was bad. Welcome to 2020 my friend. But this notion this criticism that somebody isn't taking ownership of it right which is basically you're not taking ownership of the economy, President Obama right was what this editorialists was saying, and I'm saying that, again, we do not ask anyone to take ownership of as a community we don't ask anyone to take ownership of homelessness. And so my 13th recommendation. Lucky 13, is that we need to charge someone with ownership of homeless, as I talked about this at the beginning, I cannot stop thinking about this as so necessary. again. The Human Services Department at the county does a really good job of, of making sure that the money goes right the federal money goes to, you know, agencies that are doing good work, right, that it goes to best practices programs and the city does the same thing for the most part, a little bit more transitional housing going on right 73 bucks a bed night for the Tim's emergency shelter 60 bucks a bed night for the stability site. Right. That's how much it cost to have one person overnight in those facilities, is really expensive but we need to charge someone and I've got Griffin doors, prefect badge. Right. Basically, they gave someone responsibility. Right. And hopefully resources, right they got the cool prefect bathroom. Anyway, too much, Harry Potter. But we don't do that and I don't know why. Sometimes our main funding agencies talk together, but Unknown Speaker 1:10:22 they do not. We do not ask anyone in the newspaper, I had my major talking point like if someone has a heart attack and 911 doesn't show up to help out. We will be appalled and we will find out why because someone's responsible to make that happen. And we provided them the resources to make that happen. We've done neither with homelessness, and I don't know how we would end up doing that. Is it the CFC. Is it a new body, what would have to happen is the county, and the city would have to give up some control of how their money is spent, and they would have to be collaborators in a way that perhaps the City Council and the county council members are unwilling to allow happen. I don't know, Unknown Speaker 1:11:11 poverty, Unknown Speaker 1:11:13 I could go on about the poverty that causes homelessness, but this is about the poverty of people working in the homeless field. I started my job four years ago making $19 and 38 cents an hour. As a 44 year old man with two children and a wife. I was making a salary that I would not be able to afford to live in the house I was living. Unknown Speaker 1:11:44 And Unknown Speaker 1:11:47 I have a college degree or to write and some work experience. Eventually my amazing This was noticed and I got a raise to $26 an hour, right, which seems nice it's a lot more than we pay a lot of our case managers who are toiling at the 19 2021 $22 an hour range, but $26 an hour $52,000 a year, still doesn't rent me a two bedroom house for my family of five now, because my father in law lives with us. This is a picture of Uber. I don't know how many people that work in the homeless field also drive for Uber, because they can't make ends meet. They have a second job. They're a single parent they've got two children and somehow they find additional childcare, in order for them to get their bills paid marine saying 16 or 17 an hour. Right. And part of why I'm leaving is greed on my own part, and I probably could have negotiated a higher salary. But, that feels a little unethical. I don't think that I can ask for more money when I know that my co workers are making so little. And so this is my next recommendation number 14. We need to lift homeless workers out of poverty. And this is going to take everybody. This isn't Catholic community services isn't paying enough for goodwill isn't paying enough. It's really hard to pay more. Right. We have to be competitive for our grants, or they don't get funded, we have a mindset that says that we need to be living in poverty to serve people in poverty. And that's crazy. That's a picture of two thumbs up, right next to the loop right who wants to go to the loop, but right too crowded. I'd rather go to the museum and Lille. That's frickin amazing, but most of my co workers are not going to be traveling to France to visit the less populous BJU Arts Museum and Lille because they can't freakin afford it. Right. They're probably thinking about how they're making rent, not how they're going to enjoy the Dutch masters room basically to themselves because everybody flocks to Paris and some misguided sense. Anyway, but you get what I'm saying those things just, I was trying to get it to anyone to like it was a Disney Paris, but it was, yeah, it was watermark, I don't think the watermark Is that cool anyway I borrowed a lot of people's pictures off the internet, but you know what I'm getting that here. We need to talk to our funders and our funders need to take some responsibility. Right. There are ways we can get there, do we need to do unions, I don't know, it's got to be something though maybe it's working with all of our funders maybe it's, it's grading, our social service providers on how well they compensate their employees, and setting that base wage. Right. What is our base wage probably three times the monthly cost of a two bedroom house, that doesn't bug me. That might work okay. But, but the poverty that we force our homeless service very broken, it actually makes us inefficient. People change jobs all the time because they have to, you get two more bucks an hour, you're going to go right, there's just no way you can justify staying and providing stability for your clients when you can get two more bucks an hour, right, because you're on the edge already, and the tires are getting kind of balled. Alright, almost to the end, folks. Number 15 is coming up. This is a picture of Donald Trump's cabinet, in 2019 64% of America is white, basically. Unknown Speaker 1:15:29 But you can't tell that from this picture, can you. Unknown Speaker 1:15:33 It's 92% white. Unknown Speaker 1:15:37 And I'm not sure that that cabinet is going to do a great job of understanding the needs of all of the people that they're serving. Right, let alone, most of the white people, but certainly not a lot of the other cultural backgrounds that people come. So my 15th recommendation, my final recommendation is to continue to diversify all levels of our organizations. And I don't mean just black people. I mean, everybody that we serve. If you were serving veterans, by golly, you would bloody well better have some veterans doing that work. If you're going to serve LGBT community. It just goes without saying. They need to be the LGBT community. If you need to serve poor white people. You need to have some people that understand that experience, just like we need to serve Asian Americans and Native Americans and African Americans right, we need to have that knowledge within our boardrooms within our management teams and within our direct service providers, because that's how we do, is by fully understanding, right, as much as we can, the experiences of the people we serve, and we don't do a terrible job of this, right, I put this in the ugly and it probably should have been up earlier, I kind of added it in at the end and I didn't want to remember all of the recommendations so this really belongs in the good but, you know, sometimes it's just too late. I should do a few more close ups, right, good, bad, the ugly panoramic VISTAs and really tight close ups of people's faces that that's directly to a tee. So to recap, boop, boop, they're all there I'm not going to read them. And I just really want to say, I love all the work I'll have you do all of these things are important and we can individually work on one of these ourselves and progress, as a community, because we're a team. Nobody needs to do everything, but we can help advocate for these different things we can chime up when one of them comes up, we can take one of them as our own right. I have every intention of trying to get some folks that care about increasing income for social service workers and coming up with some strategies to do that. It doesn't need to be all of us but it needs to be some of us, right. And I'm excited for what this group can continue to do because even if we don't do any of these things except make time to learn and share. We are going to help people exit homelessness sooner because we're going to know how to serve them better. Unknown Speaker 1:18:12 And with that, Unknown Speaker 1:18:16 lovely sunset scene. Anybody know what movie that's from Unknown Speaker 1:18:20 maybe a sick person if you do, Unknown Speaker 1:18:26 Indiana Johnson Last Crusade and that should have been the ride into the sunset I have no idea what they were thinking about that last school thing. I really just watched through the last arc and the Last Crusade, and just don't mess with template Doom right. Nobody needs to see that movie again. So thank you. I apologize for not having my beautiful face on there and having to look at my PowerPoint I haven't read any of the comments, although I saw some scrolling because I was talking the whole time. Unknown Speaker 1:18:58 Here it, dump. Unknown Speaker 1:19:03 So somewhere. Unknown Speaker 1:19:06 I've got an agenda that I have no doubt loss. Unknown Speaker 1:19:11 So we'd love some feedback on any of that at some point. But I'm going to go ahead and hand it off to marine to give us a little bit of an advocacy update because I don't know my agenda says and I see Marines face right there. Ah, Unknown Speaker 1:19:27 thank you Garrett. Unknown Speaker 1:19:29 Thank you. Unknown Speaker 1:19:33 So because I'm, I have been, but I'm no longer a frontline provider. Most of my thinking is more structural. And if you're on the listserv, you got an update and advocacy Update, I'm not going to go through it point by point. What I'm going to do is highlight a couple of things because I think they tie in nicely to what garrets just said. Unknown Speaker 1:20:04 Over the years, one of the things I've learned is that we don't go forward without the law. Without good laws. They won't solve everything, but they will force us in the best of all worlds. To begin to do the right thing. So we've all been watching Martin V Boise, that is settled federal law. And what's happening now is that cases are beginning to come forward in the court system at different levels that interpret what Martin V Boise means. So I spent a fair amount of time on the advocacy update talking about Blake, versus Grants Pass. That's a district court decision in the state of Oregon, it may or may not go to the Ninth Circuit it may or may not be broader, but the language in both damak is brief, that the national homelessness. Law Center. Trustee Bauman, and the others filed in support of that case, and the ruling, give us, I think, a lot of language to use locally. One of the things that happened in Grants Pass, in this case is that unlike Martin V Boise, this is a class action suit. So it's over, 600 people experiencing homelessness, who formed the class. They also had on record a city council saying that they were going to do everything they could to make it so difficult to be homeless in Grants Pass, that people would leave some of that sounds a little familiar. So one of the things that I'm suggesting is that we collectively or we find somebody who takes a look at all of the ordinances, in all of the jurisdictions across our county, including our county, and just lays out, if in fact there's any room for somebody experiencing homelessness, to actually have a place to sleep, the homeless people don't have a protected status. There have been bills, but there isn't anything in right now, but there could be something at the state level, there could be a local ordinance, all I'm looking at you. There, they're the Human Rights Commission in San Francisco, basically got protected status, based on housing status. So I think that there are things we have tools that we might not have known about that we, I believe should consider. And I'm pretty clear about things that I think we should do. One is the Human Services Commission taking a look at what's happened at some other places about protected status. Another. I mean, I think we had to force the city staff to do the review. In each jurisdiction, and the county to actually lay out all of the ordinances that affect people experiencing homelessness. And that we also in the languages in the Blake vs. Grants Pass about appropriate roles for law enforcement and training for law enforcement. So, so that that's one piece that's out there that I think we need to keep an eye on and we might want to have to see Baumann come and do a presentation, I'm sure she would just did one last week for the state coalition state Alliance. Okay. Second thing is that the Iraq money the eviction rent assistance protect prevention program is out from the Department of Commerce that hundred million dollars. There's 10.7 coming to Pierce County. My understanding is the 18 recipients have been selected. I don't know where that list is I haven't seen it, we can add that under the secrecy. Excuse me along with the 4.7 million in the state shelter grant application. I don't know who went in, who got recommended for that either. Unknown Speaker 1:24:24 But what I do know is that as counties are moving forward on the irap program this state. This is current. The cares act relief fund this is the end of December money as counties are publicly announcing that these programs are in place the Department of Commerce is sending that money out. King County just announced yesterday and they have an incredibly sophisticated program, and they have brought together. Several funding streams into one eviction prevention rent Assistance Program, which includes a pot of money that goes to landlords, so that their tenants, and under certain conditions can in fact the landlord's received the assistance directly the tenant does not apply in this case. So, there and there also are people working in rural counties who are just doing incredible things with how they are on the ground handling more money than they've ever handled at you know turnarounds within so many hours that sort of thing. That's real public and real clear. The. Some of you will have seen, or maybe are following this $300 a week that President Trump had put out a couple of weeks, Sundays ago about additional unemployment. That's not unemployment money. That's FEMA money. All right, it's a different federal pot, it has a different set of processes states had to apply Washington State has applied. It does not yet have approval. It is not clear whether or not. As with other FEMA money, the state will have to come in with a 25% match. And if so, where that match would come from. So the last thing that I heard was that if it happens, it would apply to a very narrow band of people who apply for unemployment from the end of July until like the middle of August sort of thing so this is don't think that this mirrors the $600 a week federal unemployment. I think with that, I'm gonna, well I did put something at the bottom of the list that lines up with one of garretts recommendations about the data. And I put this forward before, but Unknown Speaker 1:26:59 how can we track in Unknown Speaker 1:27:04 with availability for normal human beings not having to dig through umpteen websites or anything else, or interpret data in some way. How can we track what's really happening. So how many people were housed. How many people got into permanent housing. What are those folks, I forget the number Garrett 90 or 100 or whatever. Last week who didn't get into a shelter or diversion or any other quantifiable documentable sort of stability housing stability. Where did they go and just, I mean I think if we don't start keeping it in front of us. And in ways that all of us can use with our, our boards and when we talk to local elected officials when we try to hold staff accountable. If we don't have this information at our fingertips, then they're just numbers. Once a year numbers or somebody will fall back on the point of time or somebody will say Oh, isn't this wonderful well it isn't wonderful until everybody goes home. So, as always, I thank you for allowing me to do this, and I did find out, apparently Spokane County use some of their relief funds to purchase a hotel that they then renovated for shelter, and I do know that Heather moss the director of Pierce County Human Services is following up on that. And I'm trying to I've got some folks nationally tracking other jurisdictions, who are doing the same. We have money we have never had before and will probably never have again. And so, where's it going, how, how do we impact it, and how do we support it going, where we need, we know it needs to go. So, as always, thank you for Unknown Speaker 1:29:08 letting me do this. Unknown Speaker 1:29:17 You're muted Garrett. Unknown Speaker 1:29:23 Just my first time with zoom got a bear with me guys. Unknown Speaker 1:29:30 Civil Rights investigations. We, and I haven't had chance to talk to make. But Megan's on the verge of putting together. Well we're on the verge, I'm going to help Megan, putting together a letter campaign to help support those positions within the city owl did you have something Unknown Speaker 1:29:53 to mention that last night and Unknown Speaker 1:29:57 the pressures been felt but the results are not Twitter at all. At this point, and the city is in its budget process and all of that and it is actually time that we swap. My judgment that we swap the city council with such letters Unknown Speaker 1:30:15 and Unknown Speaker 1:30:17 encourage whatever plan you're coming up with there I encourage all of us to join in individually. Also I think came up that the Commission on immigrants. Refugees I think that's what it's called, is trying to get the council to budget, a slot, the staff slot of somebody who is from the immigrant and refugee community to be their voice within the city staff and it would be. Also good if in separate letters we invoice them simple support for that request. But the. I think maybe the council is hoping they can figure out how to solve the investigators thing but they need all that encouragement that we can provide. Unknown Speaker 1:31:09 Thanks. So, so I think Megan and I should have a request coming out hopefully if you've got free time, this weekend or early next week. Megan we can, we can kind of get that rolling out. Unknown Speaker 1:31:18 Yeah. Can I just say you're interested and working on this a letter campaign is essentially a comedy as a as an Action Network account which is fairly expensive but it's a tool that I just want to lend to the coalition, a letter campaign essentially emails and floods. A target's email inbox I found this is really helpful for putting pressure on local governments. If you are interested or have skills and want to help write this, or have skills in copy editing. The other aspect is we're going to we're going to reach out to folks if your organization would like to be a cosigner on this, please let me know. I will drop my email in the chat. The more organizations that sign on shows that there is public support that makes sense. Unknown Speaker 1:32:20 Awesome, thanks for lending those tools and gsase amazing advocacy work to this effort, Unknown Speaker 1:32:27 Eric. Unknown Speaker 1:32:28 Yes. When you do that letter. Can you do it so that either an individual or an organization can sign on. Unknown Speaker 1:32:37 Ah, Unknown Speaker 1:32:38 or is it not a sign on. Unknown Speaker 1:32:40 It's not a sign. Okay, sorry, mission, it's like, folks can send. Okay. Unknown Speaker 1:32:47 Yeah. All right. Thanks. Unknown Speaker 1:32:49 Yeah, cuz I think, again, as we mentioned one letter with 30 signatures or 30 letters with one signature, I think 30 letters with one signature is more fun. So, and more effective. Unknown Speaker 1:33:02 And for those organizations that are a little bit leery about risking the higher the city council. Remember, Jarrett's admonition that we should all be willing to accept a little risk in order to get a better return. I also want to comment marine has raised the issue of setting up some kind of a bill of rights for homeless folks in Tacoma and I'd be happy to participate in all of that. But we need to sort of make a formal request from the coalition. After we figure out what it is we're really asking for. And I will push it in human rights convention. Unknown Speaker 1:33:42 Great and the coalition's on death I can't even think of the name of it to comment area Commission on Disabilities sent a letter into. So it's a city council appointed commission sent a letter in support of retaining silver it's investigators early on I think we saw associate ministries board sent a letter. And so some so and Cynthia just mentioned in the chat that the League of Women Voters has also provided some comments so that's super awesome folks. All right, I'm gonna slide into government updates and top of the list is Jeff Rogers and Valerie Knight, Jeff we're hoping to hear a little bit about what the city is submitting to the state for that $4.7 million. It has to rather ridiculously start being spent quickly, which has made it a challenging process for you guys I'm sure so jeffer Valerie. Unknown Speaker 1:34:45 Hello, sorry, Mike is on correct. Unknown Speaker 1:34:49 Yeah, but I never do that myself yes I can hear you. Great. Unknown Speaker 1:34:52 Great. Good morning, Jeff Rogers Pierce County Human Services, great presentation this morning Garrett I really appreciate all that you had to share. Yes, I was prepared this morning to talk about the roughly $4.7 million that five jurisdictions have come together collaboratively to work on, and submit an application to the state. Those five jurisdiction that the state has identified as eligible to receive this funding our Pierce County. City of Tacoma city of Lakewood city of Pugh all up and city of university place, I think I got all of them in there. Those five jurisdictions are on a chart eligible to receive funding from the state to implement emergency shelter beds, the focus here is to increase the number of beds in those jurisdictions or a collaborative application. If each jurisdiction chose to go into the state individually and apply for funding. It was at a reduced rate, it was at 80% of the funds that are potentially eligible to be received here in Pierce County. That was roughly 3.76 6. million. If jurisdictions went individually. If we were to come in as a collaborative applicant and all five jurisdictions working together in an application. It raised that dollar amount to $4,708,000. So just over 4.7 million we, that's what we refer to as the 4.7 million. This application has not been finalized, what I can share with you is that the greatest news of all of this is that several of these cities who have not come to the table to discuss homelessness are at the table. There are conversations going on about programs that may not be funded through this fun source, but the opportunity for programs to be placed in places around the county, and in some of these jurisdictions that we mentioned that is not the city of Tacoma, so that's exciting news that these jurisdictions are discussing having conversations and that we're moving forward with even more and better things to come down the road. I'm speaking on behalf of the County and not the city of Tacoma. So I believe Erica was on this call earlier I hope she's still here. She could have half of Unknown Speaker 1:37:23 two seconds. Unknown Speaker 1:37:25 Okay, you're here. Great. But I'll finish up real quick, then I'll turn it over to you. we are looking at a project in East Pierce County location not identified. Don't know what jurisdiction, it will be in, but the right people or, as far as these jurisdictions are in the conversation. And we're also happy that the work we're doing is in alignment with the new continuum of care. Homeless plan that was recently adopted in like December of 2019, where within that plan they call out a goal of identifying and creating and providing emergency shelter in eastern Pierce County so we're working really hard to help the continuum of care with that goal to accomplish that. With these funds and potentially other funds. This application has currently been sent to those five jurisdictions for their review of what we're doing. We're waiting on signatures and to get it submitted to the state as soon as possible. it's been a very short turnaround for these dollars, rapid movement, the dollars are available from now until June of 2023. So we're looking at funding programs that will be funded between now and through June of 2023 with the hopes of these programs being successful and identifying other resources to sustain these programs beyond june of 2023. So that's the project that's outside the city I would let the city share whatever they want to share with what's happening within the city. Unknown Speaker 1:38:54 Um, so So what I can say because we're still looking at, we a potential site, but we don't know how many shelter beds right now. Unknown Speaker 1:39:05 Can I jump in, there's a couple requests, a couple of requests in the chat if you guys can oh Unknown Speaker 1:39:09 no your video. Unknown Speaker 1:39:11 There we go. Unknown Speaker 1:39:15 When video is turned on. Unknown Speaker 1:39:19 Ah, got it. Okay. Unknown Speaker 1:39:23 Here we go. Thanks Teresa. Thanks for the reminder I appreciate it. Unknown Speaker 1:39:29 Okay, so better. Unknown Speaker 1:39:31 Okay, good. So we do, we do live potential site, we were right now trying to see exactly how many units, we'll be able to do. I think once we have everything tightened up and then we'll kind of present and see what it what it looks like. I hate to present half baked information so I like to make sure I have all my ducks in a row. We're very excited about the potential of having more units available to folks in the area and I just want to echo. I actually am going to be completely honest I was out for five weeks so I was only able to be on to the meetings that Jeff was talking about. But just seeing some of the individuals that are at the table with us and being able to kind of share some of the practices that we've done, and seeing other people taking interest and hearing the opportunities of having shelter available outside of Tacoma and Pierce County and being able to talk them through that. That was very cool so I'm very excited about that so Unknown Speaker 1:40:33 I need the preparators, and I wanna in the meetings I have been in there weren't providers or I don't know if there has been historically Valerie or Jeff, like I said, I came in at the very very tail end right when we're sending things out for signature Pretty much, Unknown Speaker 1:40:47 yeah providers have not been identified location has not been identified providers have not been identified. We have until December to identify the locations and the providers that sit next step. What we're providing to the state from the county's part of the application is East Pierce County approximate number of beds, and the next step for that project is to identify providers to bring to the table to have the conversation about how we best implement something, and get those beds in place by December. So there hasn't been any providers brought into this part because this part was just the jurisdictions coming together and identifying what they're doing. The city is a little bit along farther in the process but that's for the city picture I can only speak to the project it's outside the city, with regards to how we're dealing with providers. Unknown Speaker 1:41:37 Jeff there's a question about public input and how are collecting recommendations from away for this particular line of funding that we're collecting recommendations all together, or should the separate jurisdictions that are receiving funds. Unknown Speaker 1:41:51 Sure, you could you could submit to us any recommendations that you have. Unknown Speaker 1:41:56 We're at the very initial stages of this process, we're identifying where kind of we want beds to be and a potential number of beds. And so from the county side. After this is submitted to the state and the state agrees with what we're trying to do. We will put word out of what we're looking for, and a provider hasn't been identified the jurisdiction is going to be in hasn't been identified. It's still in the very very preliminary stages of this work, but we have to get this piece of the work into the state. So there's more to come and more opportunity for feedback very very soon, could we have to move rapidly on this process. Unknown Speaker 1:42:37 Well, there'd be a public hearing Unknown Speaker 1:42:40 what I can share is due to the crisis we're in with the COVID stuff, all of our procurement policies at the county is my understanding have been suspended. So not all the normal protocols that we're doing are in place because of the pandemic. So as far as the county side of this that's where we're at with all this work we're not following all of the procurement requirements because of the pandemic is my understanding. Unknown Speaker 1:43:06 So Garrett with five hours left at work Unknown Speaker 1:43:11 would like to make the comment that this was a private process, that could have been much more public a decision could have been made to involve the public in a way to see what's happening, or in a way to have some input. I can think of a gazillion different ways that that could happen. And I would recommend couldn't remember what number that is, but recommend you think about not what you have to do, not what the least you have to do. But what is it that you, as a community member want from your government, in terms of transparency and figuring out how to make that happen. Next time, because this is exactly the type of secrecy and Valerie said no, it's not really secrecy, don't really know what else to call that you can come up with a word where we keep private what we're doing until we are ready for you to see portions of what happened, right, that I think is secrecy. So just think that through, there are ways to do this, that meet your business needs that meet the transparency goals that are public meeting x, and our, our community is continually advocating for, and that our politicians run on every time they run for office. Unknown Speaker 1:44:35 I'd like to add one thing to perfect language there Garrett. Remember the program I referenced in King County. That was announced how they're handling the eviction. Unknown Speaker 1:44:49 Rent Assistance Program. Unknown Speaker 1:44:53 So if you read through their own release, there's a point in it where they say. We even though we've designed this the best way we can. Nonetheless, and even though we're not required. Nonetheless, we're taking public comment for the next five days or something like that. Unknown Speaker 1:45:12 So I think that Unknown Speaker 1:45:15 I understand the waivers federal at the federal, state, local levels, all that sort of thing. But if you want us to support the decisions you're making in private, that affect the people who are living on our streets. Then we have got to be part of that process, it's public money, public process, public accountability. Unknown Speaker 1:45:40 And I don't work for anybody except you Unknown Speaker 1:45:43 all. Unknown Speaker 1:45:46 I have taken notes of what you said Garrett and what you have said Marina and I will share that, but I will reiterate a decision on where this project is located in Pierce County, and any provider who will be the lead on this project has not been determined. We have not gotten to that level. For this project, more to come. Yes, we have a short timeline. But we're not at that stage just so you're aware but I do understand the public meeting concern you have, and the public comment period you have and I will pass that information along about what's happened bringing these five jurisdictions together to discuss these dollars that the state has provided. Thank you. Unknown Speaker 1:46:29 In a great comment from Greg Walker in the chat. We advocate to include our clients in our programming planning. And again, I hear what you're saying that no decisions have been made about a provider, but some decisions have some sort of been made. Unknown Speaker 1:46:46 Right. And Unknown Speaker 1:46:49 there's ways to do this. Unknown Speaker 1:46:50 Yes, a decision has been made is that the state has told five jurisdictions in this county that they're all eligible to receive funding individually or come in as a collaborative application, and the decision that's been made is that we will submit an application as a collaborative app bucket with all five jurisdictions that I mentioned coming together to receive these funds and strategically placed these programs, what we were going off of was the Pierce County continuum of cares plan, which outlines and identifies the need for beds in eastern Pierce County. That's why we're being broad, because we don't know where really how many, and what we will be doing is updating our plan from our piece of the plan to the state once we know that information because we don't have it to submit, but keep in mind I'm only speaking on behalf of the County, not the city. I'm just speaking on behalf of the piece of this application is the county. That includes funding from university place Lakewood Pierce County Puyallup, the dollars won't be distributed evenly amongst that way because you won't have a project and Lakewood won't have a project, but those jurisdictions are fully involved in this process and even talking in the future about projects down the road maybe being in other jurisdictions so that's a huge benefit to our homeless crisis response system and the work we all do so I'm just speaking on behalf of the County. Unknown Speaker 1:48:15 So if I was running that decision making process, about what you're going to submit to the state, I would have set some meeting times with the five jurisdictions and invited the public to make public comment and listen in on what happened because transparency is the beautiful thing. I even asked you, yep, even if right and Unknown Speaker 1:48:37 I wrote it down, I wrote your comment about public meeting and access to the work and Marines comment about public comment once something has been proposed to be submitted that public comment should still happen. So I have those comments, and there Unknown Speaker 1:48:51 was a question from Marine, and to be sure I understand you have not talked with any providers about potential use of these $4.7 million. Unknown Speaker 1:49:00 Pierce County for the project in these Pierce County, I can only speak for Pierce County in this process has not talked to providers or identified any providers that Jeff Rogers is aware of, maybe there are things that have happened with people from Pierce County at higher levels or different levels, that's happening but from Jeff Rogers understanding. No. Unknown Speaker 1:49:22 Erica has the city, been in conversations with homeless service provider. Unknown Speaker 1:49:26 Yeah, there has been some outreach to look at some capacity what can be done. I know that conversation has come up here about bandwidth is very challenging about who can take on extra work. I do want to just touch back about transparency I do agree with you there, there are there are significant areas of improvement we can make about, including conversation so I will go ahead and agree with everyone here and we're trying to get better out of it out at it. Unknown Speaker 1:49:53 I'm also trying to get better articulating my words. Unknown Speaker 1:49:57 And so I'm totally on the same page with you, and I do think, you know, I'm not making excuses you know when there are tight, tight timelines, it gets very challenging we're trying to respond really quick we know there's dollars on the table we want to take advantage of it. I know for me specifically with some of the staff we had in and out and trying to pick up work. It's very clunky right now for us and so just know they're having conversation with us and how we can be better partners and communicate more and get the feedback for you. But this is, this is just one of those situations where unfortunately it didn't happen and I just want you know we have our, you have our commitment to make those steps to go in a better direction. Unknown Speaker 1:50:38 All right, there are a number of questions and things that came through the chat I've kind of lost track does anybody have any other questions they want to say out loud to the to either get information from the city or the county and raise your hand or wave Theresa. Unknown Speaker 1:50:54 So I just want to say that I understand it is very complicated with lots of moving parts, but for instance this organization has number, over and over again said safe parking safe camping. And as far as I know, because these decisions about what to even ask people to do are made in private that's, Jeff, I really want to be clear, we're hearing you that once you decide what you want to have done that you have to give some thought about how you're going to put that out to people to see who can do it, but this is about even what we do with our public funds, and we. I know I don't particularly feel like I've been listened to everything I hear is, we're not even going to consider that. So where do we have a public forum where you do actually give these ideas some serious consideration the things that Garrett talked about. Where can we get into that before you start giving contracts to people to do things that we don't think are the best practice, that's just, That's the piece that I think has been missing from your responses I haven't heard you answered that question and that's what we're asking for, and not just from you, Jeff, I mean you were you. We appreciate you and Erica, and all the people who keep coming and taking, you know, Basically absorbing everything the community is feeling about how these decisions are made. That's not what we want. We want to take this straight to the people who are making the decisions, not to the messengers. So thanks. Unknown Speaker 1:52:26 I appreciate that preset and I have taken a note about your concern about a public forum for people not just providers that provide the service directly but for anyone in the community. Interested citizens concerned citizens businesses or organizations, that's more broader than just the small key core group that we consider our homeless crisis response system but even broader than this. So I hear, I'm taking notes, and I will share this information with leadership here at our department. Unknown Speaker 1:53:02 When we hear a response to that. Unknown Speaker 1:53:08 Well, um, potentially by next week. Unknown Speaker 1:53:13 I'll have a conversation with them and I can assure you that Pierce County will get back with you. Unknown Speaker 1:53:21 Can't hear you so well Megan. Unknown Speaker 1:53:24 Can you hear me better. Unknown Speaker 1:53:25 Yep. Unknown Speaker 1:53:26 Okay. So when we talk about equity, and talk about equitable decision making. We need folks who are experiencing homelessness explicitly at the table, we talk about solutions to address homelessness. We need the resource of folks who have lived experience to be at that table, and it's going to needs to be explicit in community input, because it's hard. I just want to like echo that statement I call it through in the chat It is so vital without making without having their input about citizens that affects their lives. That is not equity, just gonna say thank you. Colin. Unknown Speaker 1:54:16 Yeah, I mean I think that I have a voice that I can speak to both sides of this and I know that's probably a lot of people don't want to hear that, but I was inside of that and I would say coming back after two years of being at a city that did all of the things that we're talking about, and was very open. It can't happen at the government level, it happened in Olympia, and I was able to roll out intervention after intervention successfully So, and I think the difference is and I don't mean this pointed specifically at anyone, but if you're genuinely not interested in making these things better than it will never happen if you're always scrambling to check boxes and just stay ahead of this coalition so that we're not laying into you, then it's never it's that's just not genuine and if you, the fact that it's been two years, and we're still having conversations about bringing individuals experiencing homelessness to the table to take care of the same issues that were here 10 years ago, I mean I all you got to do is drive down Tacoma Avenue, hop up to G Street. This, we're not hearing the voice of those individuals, the fact that there's pushback for safe parking after there's funding already in place and I'm optimistic that future conversations with the city and the county which will happen. Will you know will be open to that but the pushback and the resistance to the exact thing that we're asking for which is the voice of the homeless, the people living in their vehicles want somewhere to have the opportunity to be successful right now there is nowhere outside of these innovative, you know people like Garrett's talking about car dealerships that that is absolutely ridiculous so that's where people living in their vehicle have to go in Pierce County. That is absolutely ridiculous. And we have $150,000 on the table for safe parking thanks to greater Tacoma Community Foundation and to this point, all that we've heard about from the city and the county is pushed back, and it's not going to happen here sorry, this is what we're talking about, and this is ridiculous and I mean it just the words are words, we need actions. Unknown Speaker 1:56:30 There's a question in the chat, which is why is the government consortium not inviting a rep from this coalition to engage in the planning process. Unknown Speaker 1:56:42 Well, I understand the question is it about that specific group of people talking about that funding. Unknown Speaker 1:56:48 Yes, I think that five set of municipalities, why was that decided to be restricted I think just to the five municipalities and not have representatives from the homeless community. Unknown Speaker 1:56:59 I took a note on that and that will be part of our response to you. Unknown Speaker 1:57:05 Well, I'll have to tune in for that one. Unknown Speaker 1:57:09 All right. Unknown Speaker 1:57:11 I have to say, real quick, I'm just curious, you know, Jeff, Erica I know you both I respect you both but so I say that stuff and I blow on but is there any responses to that stuff or is it just don't say anything and hopefully it goes away. Unknown Speaker 1:57:25 I don't think that we are explicitly not including people Unknown Speaker 1:57:31 in in our conversations, it's not we sit down and were like, We don't want them involved in it. And like I said before, we're trying to be better about we're trying to get better at bringing those people to to the table I can't speak directly to that the the group that Jeff was talking about, like I said, I came on at the very very end. And you know, in terms of safe parking, Colin. I haven't seen a proposal come to my desk I would love to see one from you, come to me so we can talk about that more. And Unknown Speaker 1:58:03 so Unknown Speaker 1:58:11 excited that Colin was able to change his name from iPhone to call it. Mac Unknown Speaker 1:58:17 Mac Book wasn't Mac Pro. Unknown Speaker 1:58:20 But Collin I took notes on what you have said, I know there have been lengthy conversations at levels way higher than me. Regarding safe parking. So I hear that piece of it. And I've taken notes from all of you about the engagement and the involvement that the community needs to play in all of our funding processes that we do here at Pierce County. So I have notes on all of that, we will respond. Once I have received guidance from those above me. I'm hoping maybe one of them could come and respond to you directly, Unknown Speaker 1:58:55 which is what I'm hoping but we will provide a response. Unknown Speaker 1:59:00 Rob, Huff, do you remember back in the day when you worked for the city, and you were putting a bid process out for a new website platform for the city. And why didn't you make me relive this, and I had spent so much time harassing the city about that, that they let me sit on the selection committee. And that was such a powerful decision by the city to say that I'm not really enjoying listening to complain but not just that you actually have some expertise that can help us make a better decision so come to the table and make a decision with us, and that that that's an opportunity that Rob took, and the city took that that made a real change in the way. I thought about that group as collaborators, instead of a dark box that I occasionally glimpse through a window, who was happening. And I was thoroughly thrilled with the process it was healthy it was, was proper it was, ethical, it was legal. It was challenged by the people that didn't win the bid. It was great. But, you know, those are those are opportunities and I don't know that it cost you that much did it Rob I hope I added something to it right but like those things you added a lot. They don't cost that much, and they build so much you get a better product, and he gets some goodwill in the community. Unknown Speaker 2:00:26 When, when, and when you're thinking Unknown Speaker 2:00:28 at the table like I'm, I'm a Unknown Speaker 2:00:30 big table guy y'all kind of know that right like I want everybody in their dog to be involved in the conversation that can provide some positive input because that makes good decisions. Unknown Speaker 2:00:40 Yeah, I just want to share quickly, all the processes that we've done before this covid pandemic has hit, we have used many people that sit on this coalition we've used many people from the continuum of care committee, we've used other people from the community that are from different systems of the community. We've had homeless people. We make a very good attempt to find people from the community that come and help us with funding decisions that we make here at the county level within human services so I think this pandemic has put us all in a tailspin kind of sorta with what we do and things are allowed to be waived and this can happen that can happen we've always had a commitment of using people from this committee people from this EEOC and just citizens at large, including homeless, to help us make decisions on our funding recommendations that are made. Just wanna make sure everyone's aware of that. Unknown Speaker 2:01:41 Great. And since I'm moderating, I'm going to get the last word. And my last word is when you do things outside of the public eye, and we notice it. And we asked to be involved, we get a little butthurt about it, but what it really does is it makes us wonder how many other decisions have been made, outside of the public eye that we didn't find out about, right, that that's where the trust starts to fail. And so it just takes one or two of those times for us to say, wait a minute. Right. What else is happening that I've got no visibility to because invitations aren't being made. And so Unknown Speaker 2:02:15 you're holding us accountable, Garrett which is your right and your job to do. So I mean, Unknown Speaker 2:02:23 my job. In my Unknown Speaker 2:02:25 role everyone's job here not just care. No, Unknown Speaker 2:02:28 hold us accountable right final word dr Ratcliffe Unknown Speaker 2:02:35 dissipated in a webinar recently where I was very impressed that organizations that encountered obstacles would go up their own administrative line as far as their CEOs to talk directly to the organization that was created the obstacle CEOs. In the event that they are requests for public comment in this process is not approved by a higher authority. I request that the higher authority, attend the next meeting and between themselves. Unknown Speaker 2:03:12 Well, we also have a higher authority here. Councilmember young from the county at least that's interested in pursuing this so thank you for putting some energy in on this. I know you're a fan of open government. Alright, let's head over to the health department with. Yes, Unknown Speaker 2:03:29 I would note that Cynthia Unknown Speaker 2:03:30 Stewart has asked in the chat, at least five times have any criteria been established for how they're going to decide where these beds are or who is going to be Unknown Speaker 2:03:43 providing services, she's asked various iterations of that question, and I thought that was a good one. Unknown Speaker 2:03:49 Thanks for bringing that up, so Okay, one last moment. Erica, or Jeff. Unknown Speaker 2:03:56 I know this Oh, go ahead, Jeff, I didn't see it go off. Unknown Speaker 2:03:59 Well, I will quickly say from the county's perspective no criteria has been determined, our first priority was to get this document back to the state. It was actually due two weeks ago and we've asked for two extensions of a week, to be able to do this, they put it out like middle of July and wanted it back like end of July, which is impossible to do. So we're trying to respond to their requirements, as well as, do we need to do locally to make sure we're successful but no criteria, have been set for the project that or projects we're looking at in, in the county outside the city I Unknown Speaker 2:04:39 think the one criteria I know is that they have to be new shelter beds, absolutely can't be. They have to has to be an expansion effort can be supporting ongoing ones are current ones. Unknown Speaker 2:04:50 Correct. And that's criteria that was established by the state there's been no county criteria added to anything besides the state's requirement that it'd be a new bed, and that new bed could have been created as of January of this year. So if there is a bed that was created between January one and now that we want to include it can be included in this application. Unknown Speaker 2:05:12 All right, Councilmember young got your hand up, Unknown Speaker 2:05:15 sir. Unknown Speaker 2:05:20 Thank you I'll be brief in it. And unlike Unknown Speaker 2:05:25 the other day as a staff for the county I actually don't speak on behalf of the County I speak on behalf of myself and my one staffer so I don't want to contradict too much what they're saying but the transparency issue has been an ongoing frustration for me and I just wanted to note that this is something I'll bring up with the department staff and potentially prepare a resolution to order it so i i hear you and I share your frustration with the spending process. I also don't want to slow it down so I just want to be clear about this like, I want to try to sort through how we work this out but, but I do appreciate your input and, at the very least if this is something that comes up to the council, I'll make sure that you're all notified, and I appreciate you bringing it up. Unknown Speaker 2:06:19 Thank you. Unknown Speaker 2:06:22 Alright health department monitor how are you. Unknown Speaker 2:06:28 Hi Garrett, I'm doing well how are you. Excellent. Thanks. Unknown Speaker 2:06:32 Yeah, thank you for all that you've done with this coalition I know I'm new to the health department and everything but I appreciate all the passion and the advocacy and just the accountability, as well. Not a lot of updates for our testing strategy, we're continuing to do the mobile testing in the community. I'll post actually go ahead and post a link to our testing info page in the chat, just so you all can see upcoming testing events. I've been doing the consultations with the shelter providers who indicated interest throughout the week and into next week as well. And it's been a great opportunity for me to just collect that, you know, feedback and provide that health and safety guidance and best practices. I want to thank Maureen for sending over or sharing with the coalition the operational. It was a continuity of operations plan that really, that was from the Tacoma housing authority and I highlighted and just sent over I think, or highlighted relevant notes and shared that with those shelter providers as well. Just because a lot of shelter providers are really sort of, you know, wrestling with this that I that that issue of how do we continue to protect our staff ourselves our guests, while remaining mission centered and that's really the conundrum I think a lot of us are in right the biggest sort of value that we had with open doors is also has become our biggest fear and so just talking through and problem solving, through those issues with the shelter providers through those consultations. And we have been planning and moving forward with planning with the immunizations and the flu shot, and the the Cova testing, are sort of joint efforts. And so those consultations have been really important to collect preference from the shelter providers in terms of what they prefer as far as setup and layout for that. And so that's that's been a good practice for I think for Naomi and I to really sort of again involve the shelter providers in that decision making when it comes to those events and planning. But we can always improve and I'm definitely open to more suggestions so if anyone has any, any other shelter providers have any other suggestions for me I'm open to those reach out to me, I can post my email in the ER anyone on that on this call in the Coalition for that matter, I can post my email in the chat box. And then more will come on the temporary care center there have been there will be changes in sort of management operations and who will be sort of taking over that contract. At this point, not again to be in like a secret sort of state but those contracts have been finalized and, I think, August, I think Monday is when the new management will kind of take over and. So, I'll be all I'll make sure to inform the coalition and the shelter providers specifically who may have any isolation and quarantine requests or needs or questions about that updated criteria and information. And that's it for us. Unknown Speaker 2:09:54 I have enjoyed watching man who become a force to be reckoned with. And I'm excited for his work with the homeless community, he rock, Unknown Speaker 2:10:04 as I've Unknown Speaker 2:10:04 been around I didn't see him on there but maybe he's Unknown Speaker 2:10:09 in some room tucked away with Unknown Speaker 2:10:11 that. Can you hear me here. I Unknown Speaker 2:10:13 can. Unknown Speaker 2:10:16 Oh yes, I just have a very brief update from the Pierce County EEOC perspective. Yesterday, our mobile testing team went to pee wallop tested a total of approximately 460 patients, and our logistics team, continue to work with school districts on PvE resources for staff and youth to include ADA. Clear masks as well. And otherwise, still in the ELC with the COVID-19 response with the health department Human Services and and other liaison departments. And that's it for me. Unknown Speaker 2:10:54 Thanks. Good to hear your voice and welcome back. Unknown Speaker 2:10:59 Glad to be here. Good, thanks. Unknown Speaker 2:11:01 All right. Janet and Callie Do you want to give us any more information about the safe parking. Unknown Speaker 2:11:10 I'm calling. Go ahead, but before that I just want to talk briefly about a greater tool McKeon Foundation has has money and Colin has expertly navigated that that resource, but they are asking, they are asking that they want to be aware of, of how to communicate quickly for needs that are identified that need a quick response. They're asking that anything that they find having health or an equity and justice component to it. And they are wanting a common voice to to address an issue that they can reply to such as a matrix that they can use in terms of funding any agency or any issue. And in consideration of refunding projects going forward. So with that I'll turn it over to Colin. Unknown Speaker 2:12:13 Colin asked me to get the update cuz it's totally fine we can join to it Colin but, um, so we've been meeting weekly for safe parking read a meeting on Wednesday morning. And so we had a couple things come up in our conversation one big thing to, first, first thing to note is freezing nights program is going to be happening in in Puyallup this coming winter season which is really daunting one of the participants on the call is a part of pure gallop UMC, and they are looking. They that church has been in conversation and dialogue about with this closure of not being able for it to be made happen because of safety of COVID safety and health regulations, they're like, what can we do. And one thing that they're thinking about and really actively moving on starting soon is a safe parking. Oh, Colin just dropped out is start starting up a safe parking lot. So that is just shows a little bit about how communities kind of scrambling to fill that need. We also talked about like what is it what what what do we need to do as a group to get this project moving so we talked about volunteer training volunteer, how to recruit into community engagement. We talked about an organization application process so what would that look like and what features. And also like rules of sites How can it be both providing safety but also flexibility for the organization that's doing this. We also talked about. There's professor from ups, Carolyn who is helping put together a data subcommittee so generating questionnaires so that we can really move the move to push forward on why this. This project is is essential. And also talked about, just for a little bit, how do we organize together develop a strategy to push back against this. I'm gonna be blunt negativity against a parking from the county and the city. So, um, so yeah, we're talking, we'll be talking about that. A couple things. We haven't set a next meeting. We have a went to meet survey out right now. You're part of. And so it's pretty easy to help figure out where there is gaps in people's schedules, find out the best availability. And so, in how you find that if you want to get involved is please shoot me an email, it's capes megan@gmail.com or housing at Tacoma gsa.org. I'll get you added to the Google group, which our Google group, and I use that as a major resource to communicate on sending out our meetings we have recordings of our conversations. And also, any kind of detailed conversation but I'm just helping out with logistical support with this and some advocacy but, um, yeah, that's what I'm good at, calling us or any updates that you might have. Unknown Speaker 2:15:35 My Computer died so I missed you and I hopped on another one and got back on so I missed the first part of it. Thank you. Um, as I'm sure Megan said I was gone this last week so I was unable to be on the zoom meeting that we had. I'm guessing Megan kind of covered everything we're kind of in a. I was not expecting the end to be really clear, I have not had any direct conversations I haven't conversation set up with the county next week. We've had some really good conversations with Metro parks, which I don't know if Megan touched on or not have enough conversation today with actually Low Income Housing Institute is very interested in this project also. So we have a lot of it, not to mention the faith based organizations that I'm confident we could probably get to off the ground ASAP. But I was not expecting the some of the in the zoning I'm guessing we're gonna have some zoning challenges. This is all gonna fall under kind of state ordinances around emergency housing ordinances. It's pretty common that that's what it is. I think that ties us to basically they have to be faith based RAM, if we do get any pushback from the communities the county or the cities. If we don't get pushed back from the cities and I think we can look at some other partnerships also so we're, I think is plugging along, I'm a little concerned that if we do get the kind of pushback that could come from the counties in the cities that this could really hinder us rolling this out quicker, which I think we all know there's the need, as I mentioned, I'm not going to kind of repeat myself earlier but gosh just drive around. I mean, other than p all we have people living in their vehicles all over the place and we know who they are, these aren't our V's, these are single moms fleeing domestic violence with their children. These are people that have happened on circumstances that they're the last thing they have is their vehicle many of them don't think they're homeless because they're living in their vehicle. But what the commonality is amongst all of them is there's no safe place for them to go, and ideally stabilize so we're going to continue meeting, work on. We're putting together an advisory committee. We're working on requirements policy documentation kind of the application process what that looks like. Ideally, super flexible that's what's great about the greater Tacoma money is, we can be very flexible with it and really make quick changes, if this site's not working. Shut site now we go somewhere else. If this site is having problems, you know, if this site is working really well, let's increase this site. So, that to me is the key and that's what's exciting about this money is having the flexibility kind of a lot what Garrett's talking about when something's work, working, let's increase that when it's not let's decrease that. So, yeah, that's kind of the updates right now I'm hoping by next week we're going to have some more conversations I appreciate both the city and the county saying that they're interested in having conversations on this, and I'm just looking forward to the actual follow up of those meetings so. Thank you. Unknown Speaker 2:18:42 All right. That's awesome. Unknown Speaker 2:18:47 I'm excited about this. Unknown Speaker 2:18:49 We have time set aside for shelter updates that we almost never get to and we're totally out of time. Unknown Speaker 2:18:57 So, I guess we're not going to get to them again unless you guys have something super important. Unknown Speaker 2:19:03 Even middle important. Unknown Speaker 2:19:06 Thank you. All right. Unknown Speaker 2:19:09 It's been a pleasure. Everyone and I will certainly be around. I'm going to send you out with one of my favorite videos from one of my favorite singers.