Public Safety Committee Meeting Transcript – 10/20/2020 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 10/19/2020 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 10/19/2020 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [2:03:35 PM] >> Flannigan: We're going to go ahead and get started. It is 2 03:00 P.M. I am chair councilmember Jimmy Flannigan. Also joining us and I assume more will join, councilmember kitchen and Ellis also with us. I think we're all -- all of us who are currently visible are pretty old hat at the webex, but we have a handful of presenters, just as a reminder. I am the Hosten I will mute you if you forget, police don't take it personally. I will move folks into the visible meeting when it's your turn to speak on the different sections of our topic today and move you [2:04:38 PM] back out as it goes. Assistant manager, I will keep you on during the whole meeting and if you see folks that need to be brought in and I haven't, please let me know and I will pull them over from the other side. Councilmember tovo has joined us. Kathy, do you want to do a mic check? >> Tovo: Hello. Good afternoon, everybody. Can you hear me? >> Flannigan: Sounds good so far. Very good. Okay. So we have two items -- councilmember alter, I see you joined us as well. Mic check? >> Alter: Good afternoon. >> Flannigan: Sounds good. Great. So we are -- we have two items on our agenda today. Our first item is a presentation on homelessness. I just want to preface this by saying, you know, as a council, we have been working really hard on this topic. We've had many different meetings on this issue over the last year or year and a half. And for some of us even much longer than that, going back many, many years. [2:05:38 PM] You know, we are in a situation now that I felt it necessary to bring it to the public safety committee, and what was originally going to be a joint meeting of the health and human services committee and housing and planning committees, but our law department thought that was going to be a tricky process so we rolled it back to a public safety committee for legal purposes, but I know the entire council as we've always been very focused on addressing this issue. There has been so much work going on on the staff side and because of the pandemic and other issues that have dominated our council agendas, I've been hearing from the public that they are not seeing and hearing as much on this topic as they have been before. So that's part of the reason why I wanted to bring this up. But also being in an election year, election cycle, it affords many of us an opportunity to talk to the public, many parts the public we don't normally get [2:06:40 PM] to talk to, zoom fatigue and maybe aren't jumping into virtual meetings as much as they might have shown up to personal meetings. Today the objective is let staff run through the system that we're building to address homelessness, and as we all know it falls into kind of these three buckets of public health, housing and safety. And I wanted to have this conversation so that we could in the future have multiple council committees focusing on the different parts of the system that deserve that type of focus. I think it's also fair to say that of the challenges that we face in addressing this economic, health and safety crisis, the public safety piece might be the smallest of the three. It's definitely a lot of work on housing and health, but this is a place where I think the community is hearing all these issues within the same joys and it's going to be good to -- voice. To see exactly what it is [2:07:40 PM] we're doing and councilmembers can be refreshed on what staff is up to and where we may want to focus our additional efforts related to oversight and the ability to push harder in certain areas. We've got a lot of speakers from the staff to go and I want to have our assistant city manager shorter review this, but before we begin, since this was originally a trilateral committee meeting, would councilmember harper-madison or councilmember Casar like to say anything and I'll, of course, recognize other councilmembers. Councilmember harper-madison. There you go. Gotcha. >> Harper-madison: There it goes. [Laughter] Thank you for recognizing me. I appreciate it. [2:08:41 PM] Hi, everybody. You will have to forgive me, I'm just getting set up in my iso-fac lodging. A couple things I wanted to discuss, this is something we would bring up for health and human services committee along these lines. A couple of things that I wanted to bring up and I look forward to just getting a more robust dialogue around have to do with sort of the history of homelessness. Like really talking about how we got here in the first place I think would be helpful. Sometimes the dialogue on certain -- I'm certain, chair Flannigan, when you are having these opportunities to talk to people you hear this general narrative that the otherness of it all. People not really thinking about the people we're discussing as humans, as their neighbors, as people who need help, as people who, you know, the system has failed. And so I've been trying to bring it back to that level of conversation with health and human services, and one [2:09:41 PM] of the things I hope that we're able to do is really just talk about sort of how we got here with the removal of public housing, you know. You think about the urban renewal process, you know, hundreds of thousands of affordable units were removed by way O that process and then never replaced. People who have been housing insecure since the '80s and prior to during this sort of concept around urban renewal. The other thing, and I may have mentioned this before, my mom worked at Austin state hospital so in a lot of ways I grew up on the ash campus, just wandering about and doing my thing and recognizing where it was then and now. The ash campus was this really robust fully functional campus where people were getting everything from just sort of limited outpatient medication monitoring to, you know, people who were, you know, unfit to stand trial because of, you know, sort of criminal insanity. And then everything in [2:10:42 PM] between including intense outpatient and medication monitoring. And looking at it now and seeing what it does now, the function it serves now and seeing how many people are not getting the services that they otherwise would have received, and what does it look like, what are our options for a place like that, a system like that. And, you know, we had a presentation recently where ultimately the presentation talked about, you know, just how little we have in the way of resources for people experiencing substance abuse and mental illness. We were getting a presentation from the sobering center and that's how I hope to see this conversation go. How we landed in a place where so many in our city even though visible now, the first responder friends who talk about the people they say that are visible now, they've been seeing them in the woods for 30 years. They know these people by name. It's not that they recently [2:11:44 PM] became homeless. I would like to see us be able to address how we got here, what it is we're missing in the way of resource and then how do we dig ourselves out of where we are. And hopefully do so in a way that we're recognizing these are human beings who is system has failed and it's our obligation to make sure we're putting systems in place that work for more better people. That's what I would like to be able to take back to the health and human services committee. >> Flannigan: I think it's a good reminder for staff when going through this presentation, acknowledge the challenges that we're facing. Nobody is satisfied with a scenario folks are sleeping on the street or that's the only option left to them and we want to be clear with the must be not just what we're doing but what we know we still need to do and how and when we're going to get there. I think that's the public knows as I talk to folks that it's a complicated issue, even folks who don't agree with some of our approach have to acknowledge [2:12:45 PM] that, so being direct is important. Councilmember Casar, would you like to add anything? >> Casar: I think you all have both covered quite a bit of it. I think ultimately while our committees could handle different parts of this ultimately it is so clear that if -- if we want to actually address the issue that housing and services are the thing that are going to address the vast majority of the challenges out there. You know, from a public safety perspective, there is nothing less safe really for a person than having nowhere street. It is one of the least safe conditions a person can put themselves in, and so if we want to -- and usually, probably a poor choice of words, very unsafe condition for a person to be in. So -- so, you know, not just from a -- from being the housing committee chair, but [2:13:48 PM] actually just from looking at the evidence, if we want to address the public safety issues, then the best thing we can do is to work really diligently to get folks housed and get services to those folks to keep people housed and I'm glad that's the approach that we're all thinking as we look at the -- as we try to tackle a really, really hard issue. We know obviously shelter capacity has been cut by the pandemic. We know it is more dangerous to be a person experiencing homelessness during this pandemic so I'm glad staff are working really hard in this impossible time, but I appreciate you having a meeting for us to get an update out to the community about where things stand. >> Flannigan: Any other -- I see mayor Adler has joined us as well. Any other comments? Councilmember kitchen, then councilmember tovo. >> Kitchen: Yes, I appreciate all the -- I [2:14:48 PM] appreciate what everybody has said and I share those sentiments. I would just add one other thing is that I wanted to thank our staff and thank acm shorter for the work they've been doing. I think it's one aspect of this that will be interesting to talk about is -- not just interesting, but very important piece of this is the -- is interaction between neighbors and folks that are living in nearby encampments. There's been a lot of good work done recently and I recently had the opportunity to work with acm shorter and one of our neighborhoods to really think about how that neighborhood could -- could handle the issues that they were dealing with in a way that was helpful to the folks that were living in a nearby encampment. So I think that kind of work [2:15:48 PM] is -- is work that we all need to be thinking about too, and so I appreciate that, and then, of course, the bottom line for me and I think for every single one of us is it's simply not good enough to have a city where people have to live under bridges and in ditches and in parks and things like that. We have to keep our eye on the ball, continue to do that, which is what we've been doing to get to a point where we are reaching effective zero. And I appreciate the work done in the past, the work the mayor did on effective zero for veterans and the work that's being done around -- done around our youth. It's a big -- it's a lot of work to be done. We have to be smarter, we have to make sure we have the right resources, but I know we can do it as a city and it's just not acceptable for us not. So I just wanted to add those comments. >> Flannigan: [2:16:49 PM] Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Thank you. And thank you, councilmember Flannigan, for talking about the origins of the meeting and the fact it was originally conceived as a joint meeting. I think it's really critical that we continue to to address homelessness not from a perspective of public safety and so had this been within the scope that we considered back when we made the changes in June changing the judicial committee to public safety, if homelessness had fallen within that, I would have expressed concerns there. So I'll just share now as I think my staff have with yours, but it's really important I think that these conversations around homelessness take place within our public health committee, our housing committee or at our work sessions, and I thank you, mayor, I know you are here now, maybe we have not been having regular briefings about more general homelessness plans in work session in part because the conversations are going on in different places and it's time to do that again because there is obviously a [2:17:49 PM] strong public interest to have those discussions. I want to also call to the attention of the public, a lot of us are hearing questions and ideas and other things regarding homelessness and service for individuals experiencing homelessness. We are having updates regularly within our covid briefings that are taking place at our work session, but I want the public to know there's a social service cabinet that four of us meet and we're having more intense briefings in that session about particularly how our staff are responding to the pandemic. So I expect we'll hear some of that information too, but I don't want people in the general public to think that during this pandemic there hasn't been kind of ongoing focus definitely of our staff who are actively engaged and have responded tremendously. And really a model for the nation in terms of how they responded to provide services and safe housing for individuals who are most at risk and are experiencing homelessness. So thank you with regard to [2:18:50 PM] the conversation today. >> Flannigan: Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: Just real briefly, madame chair, chair and chair, this is a wonderful time and a wonderful opportunity to discuss the challenges of homelessness in our community. Because it's something that so many people are talking about in our city. This city I think is so singular focused on ending homelessness. The value, the culture in our city calls for us to do this. We've demonstrated with veterans and with children that it can be done. We need to scale it and actually get it done. I think that our staff is doing an incredible job, joined with stakeholders in our community like echo, caritas and front steps and the arch and Salvation Army, [2:19:50 PM] everyone is doing so much, we are poised to actually be able to end homelessness and that's exciting because it's a big lift. That said, as we move forward in this direction and as we get that done, it's important for us to do it in a way that the community can see. Because I think the community is ready to join and recognize that nobody should be sleeping in a tent or on a corner, everybody should be housed in our community. But I think it's incumbent upon us, all of us, to be able to touch base with the community so that they can see the progress is being made. So they can see the plan and the path and the arc that we're going to be following so that everybody shares in the successes and also in the comfort and realizing that we're actually going to get there. So this meeting, pulling together such an incredible [2:20:51 PM] opportunity to touch base with the community so that they can see everything that's going on, and I would urge us as we refine the kinds of things necessary for us to end homelessness in our city, that we also spend the time making sure that we are managing the shared public spaces and reporting back to our community in a realtime way so that the community is with us as we do this work. As I go around the community, I am constantly being reaffirmed that this is a community that wants to end homelessness and we're going to get there. So Mr. Chair, thank you. >> Flannigan: Thank you, mayor. Councilmember alter. >> Alter: Good afternoon. I'm going to be brief because I share a lot of the facts that my colleagues have already expressed and thank you to councilmember [2:21:52 PM] Flannigan for convening and staff for all the hard work going on. I wanted to ask as we're having this conversation that the staff can make sure to clarify for the public how we are targeting our resources. The mayor has mentioned what we've done with veterans and you'll homelessness, but I think our motel conversion strategy really comes out of another direction where we're targeting that and I think there's confusion in the public it would be helpful for us to address. And also want to underscore the need for us to make sure that our management of public spaces is improved. There are a lot of very legitimate concerns out there that we need to address both for those experiencing homelessness and those in the community who live nearby. And I would like to know more about the staff's plans for interdepartmental cooperation in that regard. I know that that's in [2:22:53 PM] progress, been talking with you in detail about that, and I think that those two things are places where I think the community would benefit for greater charity on our -- clarity on our strategy. >> Flannigan: Thank you. Mayor pro tem. >> Garza: I just wanted to quickly reiterate what councilmember harper- madison brought up about the history. It made me think of the Obama tool kit on housing and I feel if you look that up, it gives a really neat overview of the history of, you know, zoning and how it -- it put us in a place that has required us to do things differently. So I just thought -- was thinking that would be kind of neat if there was an Austin homelessness tool kit where we give a history of all the, you know, failed policies, not city, you know, closing the state hospital, all these things have put us in this position [2:23:55 PM] and I'll just reiterate when I was a firefighter, we would go to medical calls in the greenbelt and that was almost 20 years ago. So it's important for people to understand this isn't a new problem, and as people are just coming into this conversation, it would be nice for them to be able to access the history and the things that have led us to where we are today. >> Flannigan: Thank you, mayor pro tem. Councilmember Ellis. >> Ellis: Thank you. I share so much of these sentiments and I'm excited we're going to be able to have this conversation today to show the public all the work that is going into it because I know what I'm hearing is a the love people want to go know how they can help and where their assistance could besting utilized if they are in a position to volunteer or donate or work with a part or the city. I'm excited to show this to the public so there is greater understanding while the hard work our offices [2:24:55 PM] and city staff have been doing over these past few weeks, months and years. >> Flannigan: Okay. Assistant city manager. Bringing in three of your next speakers. Let us -- let's let the staff make its way through the presentation without questions. We'll reserve our questions to the end. Take it away. >> Have I good. Very good. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, mayor, councilmembers, assistant city manager shorter, really appreciate the opportunity to be able to talk about homeless response in Austin. I know it has been a while, but we have said it today since we had the opportunity to come before you in the public and talk about our homelessness response system and the work that has been done and is being done. So again, really appreciate, Mr. Chair, the opportunity to come before you, so thank [2:25:57 PM] you for that. I also want to thank just the team within the city of Austin. Particularly Bella Carmer for continued efforts to coordinate and communicate and make sure partners are aware and we are aware of what our partners are doing. All of the staff within aph and really the team across the city. Just thankless work and continued work as we will see throughout this presentation. Have to acknowledge and also thank Matt morica and the team at echo who have been just extremely dedicated and working with us hand in hand throughout this pandemic. To respond to covid-19, but also to continue to do the great work that our teams do every day. And so to the providers who I'm sure some of them are [2:26:58 PM] watching, thank you for your work and hope to see some of that reflected in the presentation today. Thank you for pulling the slides up. We could advance to the next slide. What I would like to do is quickly go over the agenda. This is a very comprehensive agenda, hopefully we'll go through it and have time at the end for questions, but hopefully the questions, especially things that we mentioned in your opening that you wanted to hear, I think many of those things we actually have covered in our remarks. So that said, we're going to start with really an overview of the homelessness framework. This framework won't be foreign to any of you and certainly to the public we have for the last few opportunities we have before you showed and displayed [2:27:58 PM] really this puzzle piece of a high functioning homeless response system. It was introduced by our consultant team and Matt Dougherty is going to talk about the framework and how we look in terms of response today based on that framework. We'll then move into investing in result implementation. We'll have Stephanie Hayden talk about performance based contracting and the city and echo coordination around contracts. Matt will then come in and talk about the p3 competition in priorities. We talked about the p3 before, but I'm happy to have Matt join us to talk about p3. Then we'll go into our priority area updates. We'll start with Rosie [2:29:01 PM] truelove and talk about update on our housing programs. We'll then have Michelle miles and Pete talk about homelessness and basic needs services happening every day in the city. Laura will then start and giving an update on communications and all the outreach work that's being done from a communication and engagement perspective. We'll then have assistant chief Chicon and Andy who havemeister talk about public safety and Ken snipes will provide an update on public space management. Stephanie Hayden will then come in in terms of recent accomplishments and near term actions and talk about systemwide partnerships and city investments. Hopefully there we'll be able to answer some of the questions, councilmember alter, that you brought forward in terms of our allocation. And then finally Kerry [2:30:02 PM] o'connor will talk about the my pass program and I will wrap up with some of the near-term actions we've taken around public space management. So again, a very healthy agenda, very comprehensive. We'll move through as quickly as possible and hopefully have time for questions for things that were not answered during the slide -- during the presentation itself. So that said, you could advance. As I mentioned at the top of the call, in spite of and in some cases because of this pandemic, we have been as a -- as a system both within our government and our community partners and providers have been working to do what we always do and that is making sure that we are serving the population of folks, residents who are experiencing homelessness in Austin, but at the same time have been responding to what [2:31:02 PM] has been this intersection of homelessness and covid-19, an emergency situation. So what we want to do first is really give you a sense of in spite of all of that some of the progress that is and has been made in 2020. Next slide. Many of you know currently there are 20 pilots in the city of Austin. Next slide. Of those 29 kiosks, 22 are created or established in 2020. Next slide. We also have 37 clients at our pilot safe storage facility which the is opened again in 2020 and is unlike previous efforts I've seen some amazing progress and [2:32:03 PM] use from our residents experiencing homelessness. Happy to say that 530 residents experiencing homelessness have accessed temporary emergency shelter in 2020 during this pandemic. Next slide. The number is growing. 1,387 individuals have moved and exited out, moved through and exited our homeless system. And I'm happy to kind of talk about that a bit more and very happy to have Matt on the line to give context as well. Next slide. And then a number that many of you know. 500,000-plus meals have been served to individuals experiencing homelessness throughout this pandemic. A huge testament to you as [2:33:05 PM] councilmembers who have really focused on making sure we have the necessary funding and support to provide these services. So again, homelessness just a snapshot of some of the major accomplishments that have been made and lives affected by the response efforts being made by city staff and our community. All right. Next slide. We'll now hand it off to Matt Dougherty who will talk a bit about our homelessness framework. Matthew. >> Great. Thank you, Chris. Mayor, chair and councilmembers, it's my honor to have a chance to meet and speak with you all. I'm happy to have time to join with staff in this presentation. We thought it would be helpful to the a quick overview reminder of the framework that increasingly the city, echo, other partners are thinking about the work and way to respond to homelessness systemicly [2:34:07 PM] and systematically and think about this work is having for distinct and intersecting components and recognizing there is work on the catch across many different sectors and do think this framework provides an effective way to both think and respond and plan the strategies, but also to talk and communicate about the work and to help the public think through what element of work is being tackled through different programs and services and what are the outcomes that kind of work might be able to accomplish. Further the investing for results report that was spoken several times along the way about use this framework to help think through the nature of the response, the needs for the community and organized recommendations for activities using this framework. It has four essential elements, going to quickly go through those. First element focus on reducing inflow, reducing the number of people experiencing crises and falling into homelessness [2:35:07 PM] every year. Focused oftentimes this work really involves work well outside of the homelessness response system, but our other public systems, other programs that could be more attentive to the needs that people are experiencing around housing stability can intervene to prevent homelessness while people are being served by their systems or exiting those systems. I think this came back to some of the earlier conversation, this is part of where some of the history and policy and failures of these systems to address housing needs results inexperience of homelessness and in this area of work I would highlight many times the racial inequities that we see among people experiencing homelessness are the result of inequities within these systems and a lack of attentiveness to housing needs for people while they are receiving services through these systems. The second two elements of the system are closely interrelated. Crisis response and housing stabilization. With crisis response focusing on identifying [2:36:09 PM] people experiencing homelessness and addressing their immediate needs, their immediate health and safety needs, their need for shelter, for access to food, need tore access to health care. With housing stabilization being the element of the system that focuses on exiting peoples from homelessness, but needing to balance those two interventions so we're addressing people's immediate needs while also putting them on pathways for efforts out of homelessness that are lasting and successful. I would highlight the work of the city and especially Austin public health, but other city departments and the work of the continuum of care and echo's leadership have shared in joint responsibility and share responsibility for making sure there's a strong -- focusing on strong stabilization and outcomes in that area. The final component is on inclusive public space management. Several of you have already [2:37:09 PM] raised issues around this already, but trying to balance the needs for everybody in the public to be able to have equitable access to public spaces, but also to address the impacts of people experiencing homelessness may be having on public spaces, but in inclusive person-centered way that focuses on ongoing needs for health and safety and protective measures while crisis response and housing stabilization systems respond to those needs. Next slide, please. This slide visualizes many of the things that you are going to hear updates and reports about from staff to follow and how to think about organizing them within this framework of what element of the response to homelessness do different aspects of this work fall into. I think again it's a helpful way to both plan for where more work needs to happen along this framework, but also to communicate the wide array of strategies and itself that are underway and [2:38:09 PM] the different roles of those activities and strategies are playing within this comprehensive response to homelessness that's being built and constructed. So I think part of the intent of this slide is merely to help organize and show the vast array of activities that are underway, but also how those activities knit together into a cyst stem he can approach that over time can build a stronger system for reducing and ending homelessness in your community. There's only a few things, there's a lot of information so I'm not going to run through all the programs and strategies and activities underway but highlight a few things. For instance, the covid-19 response clearly spans across both crisis response and housing stabilization. And I think early in the response the primary focus being on crisis response and the health and safety of protecting people who are experiencing homelessness, but increasingly now focused on the housing stabilization needs of people who may have [2:39:12 PM] entered pro lodges or other systems so we're balancing both and the pro lodges crosser both of those providing and protecting but having resources to exit people successfully from the pro lodges. I would highlight some of the empties are about the system overall and underopinion work across all areas including strengthening contract performance management, strategies and activities and the work that's underway to really strengthen the partnership between the city and echo and to get to greater clarity on roles and responsibilities especially because there are so many areas in much which are shared responsibilities for the city and echo in the continuum of care. You will hear a lot about some of the work related to public spacing management and some of the activities underway in that area. Again, just trying to help people think through all of the different work underway in a way in a see it as a systemic approach of piecing [2:40:13 PM] together but all the piece of the puzzle that build a comprehensive and effective system for responding to homelessness. I'm going to turn it over to Matt, executive director of echo who is going to talk about the covid-19 response. >> Matthew, thank you very much. And I want to also express gratitude for having the opportunity to address the committee today and to thank our partners at the city of Austin and all the work that's gone into trying to help and protect people experiencing homelessness during the pandemic. And I want to also thank Matthew Dougherty for his -- you know, his passion and history of work and also all the work coordinating us here in the community that he's done has been of really fantastic and I think helped us put a framework together that's going to be impactful for years to come. So thank you very much. You can advance the slide, [2:41:14 PM] please. So I'm going to go over the project management team, which is a team that was put together in response to the pandemic, covid-19. I think we all know the pandemic is highlighted more than ever by access to quality, affordable housing and health care should be human rights and until we are guaranteeing those rights for everyone in our community, you know, we are going to be addressing, you know, public health and public safety needs of people experiencing homelessness, certainly sheltered on homelessness. Please advance the next slide. So we knew right away quickly after the pandemic hit it was disproportionately impacting people experiencing homelessness because of lack or inability or lack of access to the things that would keep -- that we know to keep people safe from covid. That's the ability to social distance and to quarantine [2:42:15 PM] if you have symptoms or are symptomatic, access to hygiene and hand washing and, you know, quality, affordable food and all the things that many of us take for granted. So quickly we worked -- city of Austin and echo worked with the -- many of the city consultants at the time to stand up this implementation structure that you see on the slide. So the project management team is a team that's composed of leadership at the city manager level and at echo, and the work of the group is to help to strategize and move forward the work of the implementation teams and the overall strategy around the pandemic response for people experiencing homelessness. So as you can see, currently there are four implementation teams that the project management team [2:43:16 PM] is overseeing, the hotel, motel implement team, or the -- that deals with services and operations provided at the pro lodges, the emergency shelter and unsheltered implementation team which was really focused on the initial response to get folks assessed that were experiencing unsheltered homelessness and referred to protective lodging if they fit the criteria for referral. And then also helping the emergency shelter providers provide safe, reimagined emergency shelter given that congregate shelter space as we all know is not -- was not the safest during a pandemic. There's also the funding strategies implementation and this team is focused on looking at how to get the funds that are coming into our community for the covid response allocated and encumbered and how to get the money out the door to serve people experiencing [2:44:17 PM] homelessness as quickly as possible and to have its greatest exact. The rehousing team is the team looking at how exactly going to be moving people out of the pro lodges and into permanent housing options in our community. Right now we're at a nexus point with some of the teams as we're moving from, as Matthew said, from managing it as a crisis to managing it and being proactive with our housing opportunities moving people out of the non-congregate shelter space and into permanent housing options in our community. So these teams are starting to take a little bit of a new function and role and the project management team has been working over the course of the last couple of weeks to redefine and reimagine some of the teams and we sort of refocus their charges moving forward. Some of these teams will take on a different iteration as we start to work really hard and [2:45:18 PM] diligently on putting the funds that are coming in through the stimulus, the C.A.R.E.S. Act funding in play in our community and having the greatest impact on people experiencing homelessness at high risk to covid. Next slide. So I believe right now I'm going to be passing it off to director Hayden for some more updates on the covid response and I'll be back to discuss p3 in just a minute. >> Thank you, Matt. Good afternoon. I'm Stephanie Hayden, director of Austin public health. And I know earlier today acm shorter recognized Bella Carmen so I am sitting in for her today, and we really appreciate her leadership during this time. She has done an exceptional job during this process. As you all know, we are [2:46:21 PM] continuing to be in the middle of a covid response, and one of the things that we really thought was really important for us is to have an asset in our community, which is our isolation facility. And so this is a facility where individuals can isolate or quarantine so either while they are waiting to test or waiting for results, or after they have tested positive for the coronavirus. The individuals that meet the isolation or quarantine will be able to use this facility, but we have also set up protective lodges. And so these protective lodges are for high-risk individuals, and we are using guidance from the centers for disease control [2:47:23 PM] to provide additional protective lodging for individuals. Currently we have five pro lodges that are open. All are at near capacity. So we have roughly about 320 guests that are there. And it's been a -- it's been a one-stop shop. So individuals we provided food, we provided behavioral health support. We've had case managers from our various partners that have come in and continued to work with the individuals to case manage them. We have folks come in to assist folks to register to vote. And we are also going to provide some flu vaccine while they are there. To date, we are really excited because as of today [2:48:26 PM] 42 individuals have exited from the protective lodges into permanent housing. As far as testing, we have a partnership with community care and Dell medical school. And we are providing periodic testing for persons experiencing homelessness and the service providers. And so we've tested over 728 individuals have tested. What a little about a .5% of individuals that have tested positive. We continue to test at the clinic that is located at the arch there. And then we have several locations across the city that we are testing. Now, that testing is for individuals that are [2:49:26 PM] symptomatic and asymptomatic. With our last bit of testing where there was 100 individuals that were test understand the downtown area, there was one individual that tested positive. As Matt stated earlier with our cares funding, we have our emergency solutions grant that we are working with which has allowed us to provide that additional support for individuals that are exiting the pro lodges, as well as being able to provide some targeted funding to additional individuals that are at the protective lodges. Our downtown Austin community court is providing some case management services as well as our Salvation Army, front steps, and caritas are some of our partners that are going to continue to work with us in [2:50:28 PM] order to ensure placements are made. Our folks are continuing to do outreach across the city, including our past folks that are employed by integral care, our host team, and our groups are providing some employment services. At this point I will turn it back over to Chris shorter. I'm probably not saying the right person O is next after me? >> That's okay. Stephanie, you did fantastic. Let's get the next slide. We're going to have Matt morica, and then Stephanie you can jump back in to [indiscernible]. >> Thank you. >> Okay. >> Thanks very much. So I want to talk about the p3 initiative that was [2:51:28 PM] highlighted in a previous slide that Matthew Dougherty spoke on. But really what's been put together to address the needs of our need to scale up capacity in our community with all the new dollars that have come in, you know, we've looked to this p3 initiative to take on the task of working to identify needs through the providers of how to get this money out quickly, what program interventions we should be focusing on and what the needs are from the provider community in order to best address and get money out to them so they can scale up their programs. So the p3 public-private partnership is a group that is co-convened by echo and the city of Austin, that has leadership from many of the local service providers as well as the downtown Austin alliance, so we have caritas, life works, [2:52:29 PM] Salvation Army, front steps and integral care as well as the daa is part of that group. And the charge of that group is to try to focus on how to scale up and provide more robust programming that ends people's homelessness. And so when we talk about housing programs that work to end people's homelessness, we look at permanent supportive housing, we look at rapid rehousing, we look at diversion, and we look at emergency shelter as options across the continuum and this group is looking to address how to build capacity in those areas in our community. The first area that this group chose to address is through rapid rehousing, and that has a lot to do with the fact we have about $10.5 million of rapid rehousing money through the C.A.R.E.S. Act, both money from the city of Austin and [2:53:29 PM] Texas department of housing and community affairs that needs to be rfped out to our provides and used to end homelessness amongst people impacted, experiencing homelessness and impacted by covid. And so that is a substantial amount of new money to our community that I think, you know, a lot of communities are facing. How do you get that money out into the community, how do you do it well, how do you help providers scale up resources and services they are already there to provide to create new capacity in the community. And so that is the first task that this group has taken on. And more I think than anything else, bringing this group together has been, you know, beneficial from -- for all of our providers and echo and the city to be together to really define the roles of echo in the city and how we're going to work together with the providers and get them the resources they need to end [2:54:30 PM] homelessness in our community. Because it's the providers, the service providers in the community that are going to end homelessness and echo and the city of Austin as a partnership need to make sure that we are there to help them scaffold the programming out, that we are there to provide resources and there to provide support in meaningful way. That's what this group has been brought together to do. This group is also going to be looking at diversion and permanent supportive housing in the near future and how we're going to, you know, really impact the housing stabilization component of the four puzzle piece system that Matthew presented on earlier in the presentation. And that component, as you all know, is crucial to -- to ending homelessness in our community, bringing the right housing and services to people to end their homelessness. That's what this group is focused on. The rapid rehousing group is [2:55:31 PM] meeting weekly now, I believe, and the p3 group comes together once a beak to sort of work out the high level vision for our housing stabilization component of our homeless response system. And I'm going to pass it back to director Hayden, who I believe is going to go through performance based contracting, city of Austin and echo contracting rfa and contract M.O.U. And the homeless strategy officer. >> Thank you. Thank you. Austin public health has been managing new and ongoing contracts with over about 20 organizations. And they are on a continuum, so whether it's homeless prevention, outreach, navigation, emergency shelter, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, supportive employment, behavioral health, and other services [2:56:33 PM] to our neighbors that are experiencing homelessness. One of the recommendations was performance based contracting. And so as our staff continued to work on this, we are going to plan and implement a pilot project. And so with this pilot project, we are going to do an engagement process where we're able to receive feedback from the community to inform us of the -- about our plans to do this process and then collect that information from them. As a part of the work, we're going to also do some additional research, and then from there we are going to start the pilot process. This gives us time to -- to run the pilot, but it also will allow us an opportunity [2:57:33 PM] to analyze and report and provide a report back to city management as well. Our solicitation, we pushed it back a year and we adjusted it because of the pandemic, but this will allow us the time toism plea agreement and move the pilot through, gather the information from that and then from there the new contracts will start October of 2022. As far as our investing for results, we have worked very closely with the city and echo to really clarify our roles. We established a policy for assistant design. We have looked at a strategic process to -- to unshelter [2:58:34 PM] encampments and continued to collect and analyze data to inform further system refinement. And then the communication with homelessness assistant has really been -- has moved to the next level in order for us to provide those partners in the community at large that information. We have started coordinating a funding and program design effort for rapid rehousing and prevention services. We have used our cares act esg and our cbg funds and joined two competitive solicitations. We are finalizing a contract for echo to continue to serve as our continuum of care lead agency and his database administrator, and they have served in that role for quite some time, but we want the contract to be more [2:59:36 PM] reflective of the work that we have worked together to negotiate the terms of this agreement. We are working on an mou to establish agreed upon roles and responsibility for coordination, accountability and transparency that position moved over to the health department. We have established a homeless services division and within that division we have individuals that are providing support and working in the various areas to assist the homeless strategy officer. We are working on assisting the homeless strategy officer. We plan to conduct interviews next month and we will hire a person that will move into that [3:00:38 PM] role. Just as a reminder we know that this is a position where the individual has a significant amount of coordination across the city. However, as you will see later in our presentation, we still have significant needs across the city that all come together to be supportive to this homeless strategy officer, and that completes my section for now and I will transfer back over to Chris. >> Thank you, thank you director Hayden. As we move our priority leads in and -- Matthew out, just want to really remind the listening audience and certainly remind councilmembers that based on just a few slides ago our [3:01:39 PM] discussion around the investing -- all of the work the consultant team did, that these elements are very core to us implementing that work, so we are -- we are truly building a system that has the capacity to serve our homeless population and truly make homelessness in Austin rare, brief and nonrecurring. Do we have our priority leads in at this point? >> I am here. >> >> Good afternoon, the Rosie -- I am the director of the city housing and planning department. I am going to a brief you on a number of different items, starting with our tenant based rental assistance program. Housing and planning will be executing a new contract for [3:02:40 PM] tenant based the rental assistance with hoca, housing authority for the month of December of 2020 in the past three -- we have had multiple contracts with hoca to administer the program but in the new fiscal career we are combining these into one contract for efficiency. The $1.1 million contract will serve approximately 85 households, these households will be referred by agencies such as the Salvation Army, car it is a and provide households coming through coordinated entry system .. The existing contracts will be extended there 2 end of December with a new contract beginning December 1st. I want to highlight some of our part Shers that the housing and planning department has entered into with respect to ending homelessness. We have existing contracts with echo, with family elder care and with hoca, these consist of tbra contracts I just spoke about, a low barrier supportive rental voucher contract as well as contract with echo and recently executed a new contract with [3:03:41 PM] family elder care to administer $1 million of community development block grant covid funds to provide emergency rental assistance to households at risk of homelessness as a result of covid-19. And in addition we are planning for a local housing voucher program which I will discuss more in a few minutes. We regularly collaborate with other departments such as health and other agencies such as family elder care, caritas and other with covid-19 planning and programming and our housing and planning department staff and Austin talk health are members of echo's membership council. I wanted to provide an update on the motel conversion strategy. Housing and planning is working with office of president service real estate services and help to the identify existing hotel properties that can be 0 converted to housing opportunities, it includes property identification, due diligence and purchase negotiation. A former roadway inn hotel was purchased in may of 2020, it is located on the access road of [3:04:41 PM] ih-35 between Woodward road and -- street and renovation began soon after purchase and the hotel is now functioning as pro lodge 5, housing homeless that are at risk to contract the covid virus. A second hotel that country inn and suite closed last week, includes 75 rooms located in district 4, the property will remain effective as a pro lodge for approximately three to six months to a facilitate the transition to permanent support housing for that facility. A third hotel in northwest Austin is in the due diligence phase and final decision to purchase will follow shortly after we complete our due dial generals so more information will come to the full council as that gets further along in the process. I wanted to highlight a little bit about our rental housing development assistance program. That's the Roda acronym on your slide. One project that we are particularly excited about the sparrow at Rutland, sparrow Austin at Rutland, Austin housing finance corporation [3:05:43 PM] authorized a loan not to exceed 2.5 million for a multifamily rental development know as sparrow Rutland to be located at or near 1934 Rutland drive, the project will be developed .. By a partnership between carrot top of Austin and the -- group. They have end homelessness in Austin and supportive housing through various leasing partnerships throughout the city. The group is a national developer of mission driven housing with 23 active housing in 12 states including 18 supported housing developments. Austin housing finance corporation will be utilized for development costs of 171 units of deeply affordable rental housing. This project will help advance the city's goal of increasing housing stock available for permanent supportive housing as well as rapid rehousing programs. 101 of the apartments will be set aside for households experiencing homelessness as referred by echo and of those units 44 will be restricted to individuals experiencing long-term homelessness. [3:06:44 PM] 27 units will be available for households earning out of the low 30 percent median income and 117 will be available for households earning below 40 percent mfi. 27 units will be available at 50 percent mfi and all units will be fish city apartments. The developers will be pursuing low income taxing house credits and construction will optimally begin in late 2021 with units becoming available in 2022, 2023. I wanted to update the committee on tour local house something voucher. As part of the housing and planning department fiscal year 2021 budget, city council approved 3.6 million for a local housing the voucher program through the affording affordable housing trust fund. Staff is working with a consultant and stakeholders to create a program that will work seamlessly with local homelessness efforts and best leverage advancing low-income tax credits and today local [3:07:44 PM] housing vouch her provide stuff funding each year for between 250 and 300 people experiencing homelessness. A local housing voucher will be structured as a project based subsidy that will be dedicated to housing that provides ongoing social services and a low barrier, no barrier environment, serving the highest priority individuals through the coordinated entry system and anticipated that this will come -- that the first local housing voucher contract will come -- or will come forward in December of 2020. A few other highlights for the housing and planning department, we recently launched as you all know the second fades of our rent relief of emergency needs for tenants program. Low income households impacted by covid-19. Today thousands of applications and cam quantities record current average the income of $14,000.639. [3:08:45 PM] Of applicants today more than 77 percent are extremely low, earning less percent, less than 13th percent of the median area income. Increased landlord tenants mediation in court proceedings will be crucial tools in ensuring that austinites don't face the mounting weight of evictions that have been predicted. There will be on track services this month and rent program will be impactful in the city's effort to stabilize tenants and having families move into homelessness and lastly, director Hayden already mentioned some of this but I wanted to reiterate that in addition to continuing to manage the pro lodge and -- pro lodges in isolation facilities, administering the cares dollars as part of the cares act, 4 billion was included nationwide for emergency solutions and granted through the housing and you are want development. 2.3million and city council approved acceptance of this [3:09:46 PM] grant to prevent, prepare for and respond to coronavirus, among individuals and families for our homelessness or receiving homelessness assistant and to mitigate the impacts created by the coronavirus. The state of Texas was also notified of a first round allocation through Texas department of housing and community affairs and designated a little over a million dollars for homeless services to Austin Travis county through the ending homeless community coalition. The city of Austin and echo released a joint solicitation for rapid rehousing services targeted for guests at the pro lodge and city and state contracts are being finalized with service providers. Program and staff are being hired and programs will begin in the coming weeks. July 22nd hud announced a second wave of funding in the amount of 10.8 to the city of Austin and hud released requirements and guidance for this funding on September 1st and planning continues to be underway for these funds. And that's the completion of the housing and planning [3:10:46 PM] department's overview. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you very much. >> Move to the next slide, please. >> We are going to have Michelle -- starting out. [Indiscernible] >> Good morning, everyone. My name is Michelle miles. I am acting program manager of the -- homeless services division and I will be providing a part of the homelessness updates. The initiative into covid response issues that resulted from the impacts of covid and people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, as mentioned earlier in the presentation, more than half a million meals have been provided to our unsheltered neighbors. These consist of prepared and shelf stable meals. Homeless services division partnered with multiple city departments. [3:11:46 PM] Local nonprofits, faith-based organizations, and volunteer organizations to get food out to the entire homeless community. The initiative used two strategies, providing prepared meals that went to areas that normally provide the meals that people are experiencing homelessness pre-pandemic but who experience service interruptions. Community partners also delivered meals to people living in encampments and the shelf stable Neil bags, which each meal bags is seven days of provisions for people to encourage them to adhere to health guidelines to, at the time shelter in place and also limit the spread by reducing interactions with other people. In addition to the food provided, water was provided, toilet paper, face coverings, hygiene items, health and other information material, and pet food as needed for our pets. [3:12:51 PM] We utilized two shelf stable meal providers, central Texas food bank initially for the first couple of months and then subsequently who we partnered with Sisco through a contract with Austin public health. Prepared meals were provided by -- foods and more recently we pivoted to working with good works Austin, our local nonprofit that works to ensure that local restaurants are keeping people working and they pay a living wage of $15 an hour. We also worked with good works Austin to ensure that food provided would meet the needs of our unsheltered citizens. Regarding parking we are exploring safe parking options. The homeless services division -- delivery with the city of Austin metal with the [3:13:51 PM] representative from safe parks, from safe park from the beginning, safe parking and counseling center, Santa Barbara, California. The safe parking model that they utilized there is quite unique. It is more of a stealthy model. They partner with the county there, the city, and local churches and private entities to get a small portion of parking space available in the parking lots, and for this program all of the cars have to be registered, in working order and individuals have access to case management and there is also security at those locations. What we have noticed recently is that there have been some people who are experiencing homelessness who are sleeping in their cars within the city of Austin and during the census it was identified that 60 individuals, or 60 cars were [3:14:55 PM] identified as on, were folks experiencing homelessness. Regarding equity, the city of Austin and echo participated in a five week hud sponsored system intensive workshop and during this workshop we picked a certain area to study and Austin -- equity and coordinated entry, coordinated entry, equity issues was being investigated previously by the -- [indiscernible] -- Continuum of care. Are looking into the ways in which we can slice and dice the data regarding equity issues and coordinated entry. The homeless services division are seeking a more equitable homeless response system using -- solutions and not only coordinated entry but going through different intercept points through the response system because equity issues [3:15:56 PM] occur at every entry point and we want to ensure that we are addressing all of the issues that are -- that could contribute to inequities within our system. Regarding the pro lodges, the pro lodges as mentioned earlier is working on through housing efforts within the -- and the pro lodges. We are holding three meetings a week to discuss housing individuals in the pro lodges and we are utilizing -- [indiscernible] -- Multiple service providers working collabbively to come up with strategies to find .. Stable housing for people at the pro lodges. Regarding outreach, integral care's path outreach team has expanded due to new funding, the past two years for four additional team members which is needed for our community, and our community needs a lot more [3:16:58 PM] homeless outreach providers. Through work of the initiative our community partners have identified need for more robust outreach efforts within the community, the homeless services division is partnering with exthough discuss enhancing Austin's outreach strategies to develop a community wide initiative to improve the health and safety of the entire hunt leading to ending homelessness. Regard our cold weather shelter planning. Most of our home shelter partners are unable to participate in cold weather sheltering this year due to the nature of covid-19, a lot of the partners are churches and faith- based organizations and a lot of individuals who volunteer for -- to work at the churches, cold weather shelters are older adults with health issues and present a higher risk for [3:17:59 PM] negative health outcomes if they contract covid-19. As a result Austin public health has been convening a homeless shelter planning meeting and an organization called [indiscernible] Has agreed to fill the gap and provide coordination, manpower to -- so we can activate cold weather sheltering when needed during winter months. In addition, Alamo drafthouse has offered space to serve as a central hub for warehousing the items needed for cold weather sheltering, blankets, cots, food, things of that nature. The arch and Salvation Army will continue percentage in cold weather sheltering and planning. Regarding food immunizations as everyone knows, it is very [3:19:00 PM] important for organization this is year, in particular because of covid-19 and possible compounding effects of being infected with the flu as well as covid-19 as a result, the homeless services division is partnering with healthcare for homeless -- to develop immunization for people experiencing homelessness. The pro lodges, the arc, Salvation Army and churches and other places to be determined so we are very excited about the partnership and working together to make sure our homeless neighbors receive flu immunizations and the flu immunizations also also be made available to staff members as well. Regarding capacity building, the city has seen very few agencies applying for funds in recent [3:20:01 PM] competitions so aph developed a brief survey to gauge interest. Faith-based organizations nonprofits and other groups indicated interest in partnering with the city to provide one or more time type of homeless services. They will reach out to gauge their interest further Austin public health partnered with several city departments. Community partners to support the 2020 census count of those experiencing homelessness. This was a long planning effort and the goal was to try to get a complete count of those experiencing homeless sons that we can get funding from the governor. The city of Austin as well as echo are partnering to look into [3:21:02 PM] capacity building efforts for the homeless response system and there is going to be capacity building group that is going to be housed within a project management team structure. The areas of interest for this group, can be pretty broad and diverse, because there are many different ways that capacity could be impacted, and not necessarily in the same way that you traditionally think of, but some areas of interest would be -- as was mentioned earlier, supportive housing, on boarding, new housing units for people that are low barrier, looking at things such as mass producing, improving and increasing best practice training for people who are doing case management or homeless engagement work so we are utilizing the best practices to ensure that we are making these connections and the [3:22:03 PM] relationships with them to engage in homeless response system, so we look at homeless prevention and overall philosophy toward ending homelessness and iterating that knowledge as well as partnering with our community agencies to ensure that it is implemented. That is the end of my presentation. I will kick it back to Chris. >> Thank you very must have, Michelle and director Valdez. Did you want to say something now? >> I am here. >> Can you hear me? >> Good afternoon, councilmembers. My name is Peter Valdez and I am the director of the downtown Austin community port. Up the dates that we have regarding our services are the following. Since covid began we have been operational the entire time. We were designated as is [3:23:06 PM] essential so we continued to provide our services to the population that we mostly serve, which are individuals experiencing hopelessness. Our intensive case managers have maintained their caseloads with individuals, that they were already working with prior to covid-19 and one of the things that we did in order to continue communicating with those clients without putting anybody at risk was connecting them to a cellphone. So we purchased cellphones for anybody that was already in case management when covid-19 began, again, so he could, again so we could maintain contact with those individuals and they can continue to work on their stability, even though a lot of services were closed, we were still able to work on some of the items that they needed in order to move forward with their [3:24:08 PM] housing plan and housing applications. Additionally, our intensive case management group took on individuals from the pro lodges, from the protected lodges early on once the protective lodges were established. We took on 36 individuals that were designated as high risk and started with working with their housing plans almost immediately after they were admitted into the protective lodges. We also assisted the salvation Army or are assisting the Salvation Army front staffs and integral care with a you of 67 individuals who were designated as low risk, but were at the protected lodges as well. We provided some funding to help them move into housing as well. The goal for both the high-risk [3:25:09 PM] and the low risk groups were to move them into housing as opposed to have them go back to congregate shelter or back on the street. So we are continuing to work with those two groups and assisting with those housing plans as well. In August, August 17, we moved our triage case management services to the Terrazas branch library. We decided to do that because at our main facility on 719 east -- street we were not able to address the needs of the individuals that were lining up every day to get assistance in connection with services. And there were situations that were starting to occur with the people waiting in line, because it was in the middle of the [3:26:10 PM] summer, it was very hot people were having to wait for extended periods of time, so we reached to the office of real estate and asked them if we could find a temporary location that can help us bring people inside to wait for services as opposed to having them wait outside in line and they connected me to Roosevelt -- the director of the libraries and he graciously offered assistance. We picked the Terrazas branch library specifically because of its proximity to our pain facility on east sixth street and also because there is a direct bus line as well. So since we have been here the amount of people that we were seeing on average daily at our main facility has increased from 20 people a day to 50 people a [3:27:13 PM] day, and we had almost 5,000 interactions with individuals experiencing homelessness since March when the covid events started. I frame it as interactions because some of these individuals come in multiple times a week, so there are duplicate individuals within that 5,000 number. Nevertheless, we have had almost 5,000 interactions since March. The unfortunate thing is that we still maintain a wait list for intensive case management, because we are prioritizing referrals from the hose team and now also from the protective lodges, anything that wants in to Terrazas branch library asking for intensive case management is having to be placed on a wait list. Currently it is just above 200 [3:28:15 PM] people, so again unfortunately since we are not able to serve them immediately, when we do have a case manager available to assist them it is going to be difficult to reengage them, which is again the importance of having that ability when they are asking for the help. Our staff, specifically Robert and Laura Williamson continue to organize and facilitate the Austin homelessness advisory council. They continue to survey the individuals that are a part of that council and those individuals continue to provide feedback to other city departments and other service providers in the community that may impact them specifically based on their policies and procedures. And then lastly, in terms of in-house services, judge Coffey [3:29:19 PM] established virtual docks around September. These virtual dockets are available to anybody that is willing to handle their classroom -- via a virtual docket. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to develop the ability to help individuals experiencing homelessness connect with judge Coffey via a virtual docket but that's the next phase of that process. We are currently working on establishing that protocol so that individuals experiencing homelessness can also address their cases virtually. Since March, many of our case management staff have assisted with the emergency operation center bed management team. They staffed that bed management team and what that means is they were assessing and determining who would get into those protective lodges. And once they determined that [3:30:21 PM] somebody was appropriate for admission they would coordinate transportation and facilitate that admission. We started to phase our case managers out of the bed management team so that they can begin working with their clients more intensively. Again we have almost 140 individuals currently in case management. So the bed management team is now going to be staffed by employees from the municipal court so again we can have our case managers begin to work with their clients on our 140 person caseload. Again, the Robert keen familiar has been responsible for .. Managing the protective lodges and implementing the protective lodges for the city. He is our court operations manager and was reassigned to emergency operations early on [3:31:23 PM] into this event and he has done an amazing job, supervising those lodges and also staffing those lodges. Our -- leaders who typically conduct community service work crews are currently staffed at the protective lodges so they are helping Robert at those lodges and director Hayden mentioned we are hiring six additional housing focused case management staff members. That is five case managers and one supervisor that will be assigned to each of the protective lodges to work directly with the individuals in those lodges and get them housed with the funding that was [3:32:25 PM] provided to Austin public health. We have already -- to hire five individuals. We are trying to recruit one additional individual but we are hoping to have those positions in place by November 1st. And that is my update. Thank you. Thank you. Now we will -- are you on the line? I just want to give a quick acknowledgment for all of the work that Laura did putting the slide deck together and working with all of the various internal staff. >> Thank you, Chris. Good afternoon, mayor and council. From the public communications office. Thank you for opportunity to present on the communication efforts on homelessness, the [3:33:25 PM] homelessness issue in our city and also on communications for those experiencing homelessness. First of all talk about the dashboard and data collaboration. We have met with eight council offices to get, garner feedback on the launch of the dashboard that occurred last August. We have 30 council offices remaining and they are all scheduled and on the calendar so we are excited to get feedback from the remaining three council offices. We have gotten a lot of great feedback and some patterns are starting to emerge from the feedback, and we are the taking those recommendations to heart, including creating more -- a more dynamic experience and data that can be updated more frequently. To that end one thing we are working on is collaborating with various business process consultants, geospatial analysts and data analysts across the organization to leverage more of the data that is already being [3:34:26 PM] collected and marry that to our public facing dashboard. We would like to offer to meet once again with each of your council offices to propose these new mostly internal datasets and then Ben to marry them to our public facing dashboard. I would also like for the next iteration of the dashboard to provide for context, depth with links to videos and stories and background as was mentioned at the top of the meeting, adding a more human element instead of the very statistical bold elements, that a traditional dashboard shows, so we would like to add more three dimension facility and .. Highlight the fact that these are indeed not just statistics but each number is a person who is in crisis in our community, as mentioned previously by councilmember [3:35:26 PM] harper-madison. >> We are meeting with external stakeholders group and getting use of the current iteration of the garb board and a feedback on what should be improved on the dashboard. Secondly, we are exploring the idea of sending out a public -- a poll to garner public opinion, to get a benchmark Alabama and really a deeper understanding of public sentiment on homelessness across the city. As we all know there are some strong opinions on this issue and so our goal is to pet a good sampling of what sentiment is, not just from our fully engaged constituents but also from a broader sampling across the city to get a good benchmark of where we are currently. We have a draft poll and we are researching different ways to execute the whereds of only accomplishmenting that goal. [3:36:26 PM] Thirdly we are creating a value based communication training around homelessness. And the goal there is to build the skills and vocabulary to improve audience engagement with values based communication. So there are many, many items that make up a culture, some of the three most important are ritual, language and relationships, and so our thinking is building in the language of values will create better inner personal reactions with our advocates, community members, leaders, and of course our in members experiencing homelessness as well, and we hope that this builds cooperation and buy-in into our operations and programs and cuts down on some of the opposition and lastly we hope that it will build trust through consistent, clear transparent communication throughout the city. I think I mentioned this to this [3:37:27 PM] group before but we have four stated values around homelessness. They are health and safety, compassion, community, and transparency. We are working with APD on developing this values based curriculum and we will be providing the training to the district reps, Austin public health and code have also expressed interest in this. Fourthly we are creating a series of issues based one pagers to provide educational materials to our constituency. Also as you know, there is a great variability in terms of our constituencies understanding of this very, very complex issue, so especially as we gear [3:38:28 PM] up to the legislative session we hope to have some valuable one pagers not only for our constituency but also for leadership, some ideas that we have in terms of these one pagers include why the systems approach is important and what is the crisis response seasonal what is housing first and house does it work? Information about -- currently we had already created one on the clean city strategy but it is dated and we should be finishing that with a new version of the strategy and which we will pull up shortly. And as covid allows we will allow our strategy of educational strategies as well. You may remember we had plans to create some educational videos in this space right as covid hit so we had to hit pause on that effort but as covid allows we hope to pick that up as well. Then down on the bottom left of [3:39:29 PM] your slide, since 1975, the week before Thanksgiving, has been hunger and homeless a wishes -- awareness week .. Nonprofits, churches and communication, draw attention to this issue related to those experiencing homelessness in each community. That is a nationally recognized program. There is usually a night where people sleep outside, that will not be happening this year, and so I can stead of that, our plan is -- this is still in the works but our current plan is to have a series of three virtual panels and the working titles as we create them are as follows, homelessness in Austin, understanding the crisis and how we got here, homelessness in Austin, what is happening, sharing the overarching strategies that make homelessness rare, brief and nonreoccurring. And then thirdly, homelessness [3:40:30 PM] in Austin, partnerships, collaborations and what is next? As mentioned, these are still in the planning phases and part of the plan is to reach out to some of your offices, especially the social services cab met to get feedback as we are still in the planning phases of these panels. And then the second little handshake, ikon we continued to meet with our external communication professionals and our, in our partner organizations and that meeting happens weekly and continues to add value. Some of the organizations that we meet with weekly are echo, family elder care, integral care, Salvation Army, lifeworks, front steps, carrot top of Austin, the other one is foundation among others, and we continue to coordinate on language and messaging and awareness and other campaigns, [3:41:32 PM] social media, press releases et cetera, we think it is really important for our continuum of care as well as organizations outside of the continue 0 united States of America of care to speak with one voice and snow community that we are indeed collaborating and there is a lot of work going on in this space. Penultimately the field guide, we are collaborating with the office of design and delivery on we are calling it a field guide. We are allowing the product to introduce itself to us, but the idea is to have a repository or a product of evergreen information that is helpful for those experiencing homelessness. So for example, covid and wellness information, he met, let me pause and say we hope covid is not ever reinbut we also know it is going to be with us for the foreseeable future, sadly, so it will have information on what to do if you get sick and thousand mitigate the spread of the sees, but also [3:42:34 PM] things like wild fire prevention, leave from trace principles, other things that are evergreen and we are collaborating with the partner group. We also have, have also heard and gotten feedback from the Austin homeless advisory council and also just as a personal note of privilege I heard while I guess it is a personal note of privilege from mark jenkar who fold three following information he a as lot of experience with these surveys we send to the Austin advisory council from time to time, I have seen six or seven, he has seen a couple of dozen and he let me know that the homeless advisory council wrote more on this topic that we had on any other topic and we are really excited about this piece, this collateral or product, whatever it may be, and the reason we don't know what it is, we want it to be both something virtual but also something that you can hold but then also won't [3:43:35 PM] become trash, so we will both have valuable information, it will have valuable information inside of it, ever green and sturdy to withstand the outside elements. As I mentioned, as I mention sod we received feedback from homeless advisory council, frontline service providers, partners and our fellow city of Austin departments, we are collecting the content and we will cull through that and make sure we are speaking with one tone and as I said, let that product come up and introduce itself to us and move into production of that. And then moving to the last topic, finally covid support, I sit on the homeless task force and the homeless priority lead team continues to support the covid response. I also sit on the joint information system so I collaborate with the task force [3:44:36 PM] and those in the joint information system on getting information out to this very difficult to reach audience. I splay mentioned this to this group but it is worth saying again, precovid our charge, the way we looked at our charge was to speak to what the city was doing on the issue and talk to our constituency about what the city was doing in terms of supporting those experiencing homelessness around public space management, crisis response, et cetera. Once covid hit, we switched our focus entirely to our audience -- 0 to those experiencing homelessness to let them know how to stay safe and meet needs and access services during a global pandemic. And I believe as Stephanie mentioned at the top of the meeting the percentage of homelessness, those experiencing homelessness who have contracted [3:45:37 PM] the disease is far less than the general public percentage wise, and so that was our goal is communicating to that con stitch constituency on how to stay safe. Since we set up a number of systems and gotten them going, including the texting system, texting those experiencing homelessness about information on how to meet those needs and access services, now that those systems are set up we are switching our focus back to doing both simultaneously, so continuing to communicate to the audience of those experiencing hopelessness and then back to talking about what city is doing around the issue which I know this body is very interested in, and that, I believe, is the end of my -- and I think I am going to turn it over to chief -- oh, Chris, I beg your pardon. >> Yes. As we begin to kind of prepare to hear public safety update and [3:46:39 PM] finally the public space management update by way of priority areas, I know we are -- there just is a lot in here and a lot of work that has been done but we are getting short on time and I certainly want to leave enough time for chair Flannigan for questions. So I am asking that wees, asking the team to move as quickly as possible through the content so we can -- so we that we have at least some time for questions. >> Thank you. Assistance chief Chacon, feel free to jump in. >> All right. Thank you. Chair, committee members, members of council, Joe Chacon with the Austin police here, I appreciate the opportunity to come in front of you and talk about this issue from a public safety perspective, myself and chief of Meister will be .. Talking about what we are with doing will the area of public safety. As a police department, you know, our mission is to keep the community safe and that includes all members of our community, [3:47:39 PM] including those that are experiencing homelessness. So I want to just kind of couch the beginning of my comments which will be brief to -- because I know there might be questions towards the end and certainly we want to leave time for that, on two different fronts. The first being what the actual kind of statistics and just the data looks like and then what is APD doing to mitigate those numbers. So just in preparation, to our research and planning division, what are the numbers of crimes or that criminal activity that involves individuals experiencing homelessness either as a suspect or a victim from January through September of this year as well as the same time period in 2019, to do a comparison. And what we saw is that there [3:48:41 PM] really has not been any big change in either direction, either a rise or a fall in those numbers, really largely they remain flat. And as in years past, we continue to see individuals experiencing homelessness disproportionately overrepresented in overall criminal activity in our city. So to mitigate that, mitigate those numbers, we are partnering on a number of different fronts for outreach for education, service need identification, and enrollment and then partnering with different criminal justice partners including the downtown Austin community court which you heard from just a short while ago to provide alternative out comes to our incarceration wherever it is appropriate. The most visible of those efforts is our host team, which [3:49:41 PM] chief off myself search will discuss shortly .. And let him go ahead and talk about those efforts but APD has members on that team in addition we are working in the area of mental health and mental illness to provide some better out comes. As you know, mental ill answer and homelessness intercept, intersect all the time and so we have been working through a number of different efforts to see how we can help improve rothose out comes. Our crisis call diversion program has been implemented and in progress since December of 2019 and we are starting to .. See some good movement on diverting those calls that intercept zero on that sequential intercept model so that we can get people that are experiencing homelessness who might be having a mental health [3:50:42 PM] crisis the help that they need from a mental health clinician rather than a police officer having to show up on the scene. We also participate in the behavioral health and criminal justice advisory committee, a group of -- it is a multiple disciplinary group that is put together to come up with alternative out comes to incarceration for those that are living with mental illness. So those are just a couple of the -- you know, a few really of the efforts that APD is partnering in. The largest complicating factor over the last several months by far has been covid. We have had personnel assigned to covid related facilities as security as well as a narrowing of the options for officers for any kind of enforcement efforts due to covid restrictions. That, wanting to keep this kind of briefly just go ahead and stop there and turn it over to [3:51:42 PM] chief of Meister so he can talk about ems and host and hang on for any questions anyone might have. Thank you. .. >> Good afternoon, chair. And fellow councilmembers [3:52:45 PM] . [ [Indiscernible] -- Reflects a significant increase in responses to those that are experiencing homelessness. When I compare the two years, the same areas within the city, still remain the impact is about the same. The downtown area and the 7701 zip code certainly has the largest portion of incidents involving persons experiencing homelessness with a few others in the east, southeast and more central areas, northeast parts of town. As it relates to ems specific highlights, we had a few [3:53:45 PM] different particular event and developments over the year like chief Chacon mentioned covid certainly had a significant impact on our operations, especially in the fieldn't and as it relates to ambulance responses but as it relates to those responses and those that we serve that are experiencing homelessness, there were a couple of really very beneficial developments throughout the year. One was there was -- we added a physician assistance, a pa that works through the office of the medical director. He was -- he was brought on board last summer, I believe, and since then has been exploring what options exist in terms of delivering nonhe her swrent care that can prevent someone from having to be transported to the emergency room and connecting them with better ongoing care, the disposition, a disposition right [3:54:45 PM] there in the field and he also provides follow-up care when she available. This is one physician. So over the last year he has been kind of exploring what situations are best suited for that particular role and he has done an outstanding job. That position was solidified in this current budget and we certainly appreciate that. Our collaborative care communication center or C 4 was implemented a while back and is now providing direct service or direct support to teen members on host chp field ambulances and what that provides is a central point of information that providers in the field can access and we can look at, you know, real-time navigation if they need to look as far as appointments, they can take anviled for some sort of nonemergent emergency or health related issue, they can [3:55:46 PM] coordinate that over the phone while the person on the field focuses on the person and the patient. And then again one thing that was a limiting factor in terms of in terms of the ems response was community health paramedics were stretched into a variety of different areas and were partnered up with different departments, so they worked with Austin public health, a variety of different nongovernmental agencies as well, they worked in the isofac, they worked in our call center and so they were stretched into different areas. But those chips that were dedicated to homelessness remained in those particular roles serving those that are experiencing homelessness. That is going to conclude my highlights in terms of just ems responses. And I am going transition to a quick update on information related to hosts, a and that collaborative effort that involves ems, APD, community [3:56:48 PM] courts, integral care, so the numbers this rear do reflect overall the unique number of individuals that we serve. And if we can go to the next slide I think it provides a brief update. Yes, there we go. So we did serve a total of 913 individuals. That is down a bit from the year before, but when I looked at the numbers to see what it could, what potentially could have caused that, covid struck right in the middle of the busiest time of year for hosts, and so they saw a significant drop in those, that they were able to engage because of -- because of their efforts they had to pivot towards the covid 19 they did make nearly 5,000, just a couple shy of 2500 field contacts, and that was important during the covid response because for some individuals experiencing homelessness, these were the only service providers that [3:57:48 PM] were able to go out in the field and actually meet with the individuals and try to address what they could. The team met a variety of different needs that involved medical care, coordinated assessments for access to housing, shelter services, pier support, id's, you name it -- peer support. They met about 2900 times and that stretches everything from getting people enrolled in case management, getting them into house, getting them into doctor's appointments, providing medical care in the field, addressing whatever specific need that person may have. We did divert a number of individuals, this was up slightly from the year before, and we diverted individuals experiencing homelessness about 270 times through the course of the year. This was up a bit and that prevented utilization of different services like our [3:58:50 PM] jail, psychiatric hospitals, and the team was able to provide more direct support in realtime especially for those officers that were -- that are working in those areas that are impacted by the issue of homelessness. So we're seeing a better -- quite an uptick in that direct response. A couple of highlights -- move to a different slide here. So I have a personal slide that I'm taking cues from here. But -- so covid- 19 did have a huge impact on the team. They had to pivot from addressing -- you know, getting people into housing, getting them into case management that take a lot of time and had to pivot into really emergent needs. There were individuals that there was no place to get food, they didn't have water, so the team were addressing those issues and had to shift into a mode that was to protect [3:59:51 PM] individuals and provide education and supplies sometimes that protected them from covid-19 infection. And some members of the host team from different departments at various times to address other issues including poring on the the pro lodge -- working at the pro lodges or having to potentially be pulled for staffing shortages that had been infected in their own organization. So certainly it did absolutely affect us. I mentioned earlier we did see a drop in unduplicated clients that we serve because of the covid. Response. We did actually, I'm very proud of this, we did increase medical care to those experiencing homelessness by 70% was we expanded and solidified our partnership with community street team and we were able to set up a schedule routine [4:00:52 PM] and frequent where we partner with one of their providers to deliver health care to those experiencing homelessness in the field, and we added the physician assistant, the pa to the office of the medical director that works directly with chp. And then, of course, we had about a 13% increase in die investigation like the jail and psychiatric hospitalization. To round out this particular part of the update, like I said, we -- the host team had to pivot very quickly on short order and deal with things they had never dealt with before and assisted, a ph, eoc and operations at the pro lodges and iso-fac and worked with echo, library, you name it, and they were directly providing things like education, certain preventive supplies, certain bits of information so that we could keep individuals experiencing homelessness safe from covid to the best of their [4:01:53 PM] ability. And then we also implemented the use of rgis and started exploring ways we could see where demand is for these types of services and be able to show where the team has been focusing their efforts in response to that demand. With that being said, I'm going to turn it back over to acm shorter and I'll be available for questions. >> Thank you, assistant chief. We can advance to the next slide. To provide an update on space management. >> Good afternoon, everyone. In the interest of time, I will offer a speedy version of my report. You know, I can't underscore enough how important it is for all of the city departments to work together on this effort and keeping our public spaces clean. I'm happy to say I'm seeing just that here in Austin. Our city departments are working together and [4:02:55 PM] aligning resources to maximize impact of cleaning surfaces in public spaces. More and more we're using the data driven approach to developing strategies for cleaning up. We're developing new tools. The latest one is a tool that will be used to identify coverage gaps. Each of the departments has usually a defined area which they clean, and we know we have gaps and we want to find out where those are strategically and systematically and not just rely on old knowledge. This will also allow us to direct partner agencies, those who want to help out or groups that want to assist in those areas based on the size of the groups or skill sets or technical abilities to provide service in some of those areas. The overall goal is to become less reactive in our approach and create a more strategic plan that will allow us to be routine in how we approach the work. For example, public works is -- and watersheds have [4:03:57 PM] large spaces that they are required to maintain and clean up. And also watersheds. Public works is cleaning right now as we talked about before at 62 underpass locations. They have cleaned during this period 832 sites this year. 495 tons of debris have been removed or about 990,000 pounds. They've collected 1,186 bags and another thing they are doing when they go out is especially during the covid period here is playing a role in helping to provide protection by providing gloves and masks. They provided 830 pairs of gloves for folks and 563 masks. Again, watershed continues to do work throughout their properties. Recently they've done cleanups at east Riverside, Williamson creek, buttermilk branch, west bold in, little walnut creek, west breaker, [4:04:59 PM] slaughter, and along the east Riverside trail -- excuse me, east Riverside outfall. Pard is continuing to do work on their properties as well. They are working to identify properties using 311 data. This year they visited 291 camps and removed 191 tons of debris or 258,000 pounds. Arr has collected 77 tons or 154,000 pounds through the violet bag program. Acm Schroeder talk about the keep safe storage program. One of the things I would like to highlight is that we've been able to hire a person formerly homeless to work that program. In partnership with this individual, we've actually been able to enhance the program, the program is a lot better now that we have someone who has lived experience as a homeless person informing us how we can tweak the program and [4:05:59 PM] make it better. It's been a win on both sides. Going forward we will continue looking for opportunities to hire those members of the community who are either homeless or transitioning into housing. We're also currently exploring other options or opportunities for creating storage throughout the city and really focusing right now on storage of some of our pro lodge locations. And so overall I think the effort has improved and we're continuing to get better and better as we go along. Acm shorter? >> Thank you. We will move to the -- advance to the next slide and move quickly through Stephanie I've asked to abbreviate her presentation to focus in on the permanent supportive housing piece and then we'll move right into Connors presentation and wrapping up after that. >> With our permanent [4:07:02 PM] supporting housing strategy, Diana gray is our permanent supportive housing consultant, and she is developing a strategy. The city has worked with her in the past to develop the initial strategy. Our goal is to continue to move forward with this model that was formerly pay for success, we're calling it pay for success alternative. And the plan is that we will continue to target up to 250 individuals. It will be a four and five-year project. And it will have wrap-around services and outcome base and data driven, and we will definitely evaluate that program. So more with pay for success will be coming soon. I'll transition over to Kerry o'connor. [4:08:10 PM] >> Good afternoon. Mayor and councilmembers. If you could proceed to the next slide. My past project is a digital identity storage solution. It's meant to address a friction point in service delivery and it was first raised to our attention through the [indiscernible] Street team. Assess this project with a grant from the Robert wood foundation and over the years we've collaborated with all of these groups. Next slide. The next slide talks about [indiscernible] And we found that the -- client were not having an id when they were [4:09:10 PM] trying to access at least 13 vital services. The other ones foundation found 70 to 80% of people experiencing homelessness lack one or more key documents, and the pre-covid fact, it can take a client two to four weeks to replace a document, but since covid has slowed delivery and a lot of these records it can be taking a lot longer to replace missing documents. Hidden costs in 2017 when we initiated the grant application, the downtown court and the Trinity center estimated that they spent 20,000 annually on document replacement and one -- recorded they spent eight hours per week reacquire documents which adds up to over 1200 hours per year. Through the homelessness advisory council and others we've interviewed, the neighbors experiencing homelessness said it would give them more agency and control and less worry and the small act of an id can save lives. Next slide. [4:10:15 PM] There are two types of users on this platform. A document helper, case manager, family member or notary or someone who helps clients with documents and the document owner. Document owner has sole autonomy over how documents are filed and stored, and if they are shared at all. Next slide. The platform facilitates a document journey of up loading and either the person who is the document owner can upload themselves or receive help from a helper. It facilitates noteization so you can have a certified copy. Encripted storage sharing and verification of a particular document's legitimacy. Next slide. As an example of storing a document here, there's a screen shot of storing a birth certificate. Next slide. When these documents are stored, they are securely encripted so the original file is encripted in the browser before it is [4:11:17 PM] uploaded and before it is stored in the data base. When someone's identity document is secured, the administrator cannot access this document. The only way to access it is if you have the key and only the document owner has the key. Next slide. Whether it's for a family member or case manager, my pass will allow for documents to be shared in order to help people navigate services, and you can see in the screen shot the document owner can set a time limit for how long the document is shared, again to make sure that they have autonomy control over their own document. Next slide. It's not necessary to have the documents notarized, however, we have facilitated the act of note rising these documents. If you go to the next slide. Once those documents are noteized, if you have been [4:12:17 PM] the recipient of one of these documents, you can go to a verification site which would hold the information about the notary, signature, data, transaction and whether or not that document is in fact the original document that was uploaded. Next slide. One of the challenging prospects of this platform is make sure it's accessible for people experiencing homelessness and how arrive at this platform. Everybody is different. Logging in requires what you have, who you know, what you know and what you are. And so there's multiple ways to log in. Next slide I can show you how we have made this accessible. Oftentimes having security versus accessibility is a tradeoff that's really hard to do. But in this case when you are on board to do the platform, the document owners receive a short quiz that says how hard is it for you to remember passwords, to remember answers to security questions, do you have access to a device with a camera, how often do you find yourself losing your [4:13:18 PM] phone and how do you feel about biometrics. And after answering that quiz, they will get recommendations for a couple of log-in possibilities that meets them where they are. Next slide. We have been doing user testing with people experiencing homelessness from the advisory council as well as residents of the pro lodge and residents of -- with the other ones foundation. These are a few quotes from people experiencing homelessness about whether or not they would find such a platform valuable. One of the things that someone said is, you know, there is a limit on social security cards that you can receive in your life time. The number is ten. Most of us would never reach that number remotely, but if you are living on the streets, giving to ten lost security cards is actually fairly possible. So for those individuals, they can hold on to their social security card and have potential employers give them employment without having a lot of barriers. [4:14:21 PM] Next slide. This is our last slide. Our next step will be [indiscernible] Not everything is open source. To find the -- [indiscernible] Tecology is $900 for 10,000 users. Human resource costs of managing the platform which is what we'll done with the learning launching. We're looking for collaborators with our partners on working out the governance of this platform and how to work to a live launch and then we'll be completing a report for the Robert wood Johnson foundation. Further slides are available for backup that are not intended for this presentation. Thank you. >> Thank you so much for the presentation and for everyone who presented, I [4:15:21 PM] will say in term of near term actions associated with public space management, we have talked through much of the actionable items and I'm happy to certainly answer any questions, but also continue to meet individually with councilmembers to answer questions around public space management. We have taken up quite a bit of time and so we certainly want to wrap up and open it up for questions, but I do want to say to the public and certainly to councilmembers and chair, as you can see, there is a considerable amount of work happening every day across our city governments, but certainly outside of our government as well to serve our population. And so I'm going to pause now and so the chair turn it over to you for any questions. >> Flannigan: Thank you, Chris and thanks to all of the staff for their presentations. Colleagues, we have one other item and just as a time check, so if we can [4:16:30 PM] keep our question time to 25, 30 minutes knowing the intention is continue these conversations in multiple council committees so we don't have to deep drive too much and hopefully we can have some high-level conversations. The two things that I would like -- at least the one overarching thing I would like staff to address, and Chris, I don't know which staff member or consultant or Mr. Malik brought back in, for me ultimately it looks like a fully functioning response system is defined. A plan of how to address this crisis is defined. The unanswered question for me is scale. How -- how much more of this do we need? Are we 20% of the way there? 40% of the way there? 60% of the way there? How many years of work do we think we're looking at. Because when I talk to the community, when I talk to constituents, everyone acknowledges it's going to take time, it's complicated, but they want a better indication on the pace of [4:17:31 PM] change. And then there's a subtext to that which is when am I going to stop having to see it. Which I know is a gross way to put it and I don't think it's unfair question. Can we talk about scale and time? >> I actually will ask Matt Dougherty and Matt Malika to jump in. But the report did define a very clear road map in terms of the number of housing -- the number of beds needed per housing type. And so we -- what you saw earlier in the presentation in terms of the various programs that fit into that puzzle piece, that we are defining as our homeless response system, that that ultimately we are, you are absolutely right, chair Flannigan, we are certainly establishing the ground work and the foundation for very strong system, but it is [4:18:31 PM] going to take years for us to build the number of housing thanks we actually need to have the kind of capacity to move folks out of -- quickly out of a homeless situation and into a housed status. Matthew Dougherty or Matt Malika. If you want to add to that. >> I can say to this, there are two things that are going to really impact our ability to provide a -- you know, a more focused time line. One of those things is how well are we able to stop the inflows from our criminal justice system and our health care system into homelessness. And I think if you want to go back and talk about the history, you know, you heard councilmember harper-madison and pro tem Garza talk about what can we do or what has been done to get us to this [4:19:31 PM] point. Well, the massive disinvestment on the federal level in the '80s and where we stopped building public house, we stopped incentivizing private ownership to build and sustain public housing and section 8 housing and all of those disinvestments have led us, then the move to deinstitutionalize mental health and substance treatment hospitals and not provide housing at the end, but go to community based mental health care but not provide those folks with a place to be, take away their place to be and not provide another one. So we need to really focus on the reducing inflows and I'm sure we can put a tourniquet on people flowing into the -- and create robust partnerships in order to make sure we can stop that from happening. And then, of course, we [4:20:33 PM] can't answer that question without talking about the impact that covid is going to have on housing for people who are housing insecure based on losing their jobs and once the eviction moratorium is up, he we need rent relief on a federal level. But all these things being said, you know, we still show a deficit in our community of several thousand permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing units. What we're doing right now is building the scaffolding and doing the work to stand up a system that can handle when we have a federal administration that's ready to prioritize homelessness and pump money into our local systems, we will be able to handle that influx of funding to -- to address homelessness in a more systemic level. That's what we're trying to accomplish. And then, of course, use the resources on a local level certainly from the city of [4:21:33 PM] Austin investment, you know, as we have C.A.R.E.S. Act funding now to start to move towards reducing the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. But really because there's so many people falling in from these systems it becomes a difficult -- in my estimation, becomes a difficult answer to give. >> This is Matthew Dougherty. As Chris mentioned, forecast what would need to be in place for optimal system and made recommendations for investments to start the build towards that system. That modeling does need to be regularly updated and refined with better data and as conditions change. That's something Matt and his team are working on as well is be able to have more dynamic modeling. I worry about trying to provide a fixed answer about where 20% of the way there because of all the changing [4:22:35 PM] conditions Matt was describing. That's very easy to get locked in on a specific number without tracking the changes that are impacting things, but I think we can step back and do a little more calculation of these gaps, what's in the pipeline and what else needs to happen in order to get to at least initial projections. >> Flannigan: Thank you, guys. Colleagues? Mayor? >> Mayor Adler: A couple thoughts. First is an impressive amount of work being done. This is a terrific challenge that we have and so many things happening on so many different places, I think really does convey the magnitude of the challenge as well as everything that's being done. And I really appreciate the presentation, and when we get it up as a link, it's something I'm going to be sending to a lot of people in the community that are asking what it is that's being done. And I think that this is [4:23:36 PM] going to be a really important presentation because that link is going to be able to be set up. That said, there needs to be a better answer to the question that Jimmy asked. And we have a community I think that is with us, wanting to actually end homelessness in the city, and we're going to get permission to do that work recognizing it's going to take a lot of resources and it's going to take a lot of %-@time, only to the degree that the community knows that we know what we're doing and sees progress. That's kind of the permission we get from the community in order to be able to engage in this. We know that short- term there are some voices in the community that want to pull up short. I'm not exactly sure what that means, you know, we have some people in the community that say as Jimmy said, I don't want to see this anymore, fix it. I don't know what fix it means other than ending [4:24:39 PM] homelessness. There seems to be everybody in the city agreed that we cannot solve this by sending people back to the woods and back to the creeks. If we're not going to do that, then what is it that we do? And there are some people raising their hand saying just fix it, get these people off the streets and put them into homes. Well, I understand that and that's what we want to do, but the challenge that you have explained to the community is it doesn't happen overnight. And it's going to happen over time. So without coming up with a specific schedule, there's got to be a way for us to be able to communicate better to the community the path we need to follow, the scale of that challenge, and the fact that it's going to take time. We have to be able to answer that question better. We have to do better with -- and the other answer is okay, we want to do that, but what do I do about the shared public spaces? We need to find a right [4:25:39 PM] balance in the community with respect to managing the shared public spaces that we have. All those things for a community that I believe is really willing to spend the resources and the time to actually end homelessness, but we have to be able to demonstrate to the community that we have a path and that we can respond to immediate needs and concerns as well. I like the prescription, checking with the community, doing that kind of work to really engage in a polling kind of way to figure out what is it that is driving the community, where are those concerns, not only with those engaged in our process, but the community generally so that we can in fact do that. We are doing great work. But we have to maintain the permission the community is giving us to do that work and that's going to require us, I think, to be more responsive to the immediate questions that are being [4:26:40 PM] raised and do a better job of communicating what the path is. Tremendous amount of work, Matthew, Matthew, Chris, Bella, everybody, I'm confident if we can answer those questions for the community, we'll continue to get the permission necessary for us to get this job done. Thank you. >> Flannigan: Mayor pro tem? >> Garza: I -- I agree with most of what the mayor said. I guess I'm just -- I believe it's also our responsibility as leaders and having the bully pulpit to be able to continue to emphasize it is not just the city's problem to solve, and I know you did not -- you didn't -- you weren't saying that it was, mayor, but I feel like we need to continue to emphasize that. And so when I get asked that question, you know, when is this going to be fixed, what [4:27:41 PM] else are you doing, I say when we have a country that truly believes that housing is a human right and health care is a human right. I was just -- I was on a housing the other day and put this up behind me and I have to -- I have to -- we have to keep emphasizing that because if we push our staff to come up with a time line, I feel like we're setting them up for failure if we don't at the same time say we need help from our state, we need a state that values housing as a human right, we need state leaders that do that and we need federal leaders. Because we continue to be the last resort, the city continues to be the last resort to solve all the problems and with such limited tools that we've been given. So this was a really comprehensive presentation. Thank you. It's great to see the work that we were doing. I know that there's so much [4:28:42 PM] more, but, you know, just the last couple council meetings we've had speakers very angry at us because of, you know, the restaurants are closing and businesses are closing and city council why haven't you fixed this and how dare you, you know, not fix this. And it is -- I get it, I understand people look to their city leaders for help, but I just -- I can't emphasize enough how we all need to keep emphasizing we need state help. We can't do it alone, and maybe that's part of this time line that we create and say here's when we solve it, when the state, you know, gives us more money for housing. When the state expands medicaid. When the state, like these are all the things that have to happen before we can truly holisticly meet this challenge. >> Flannigan: Well said, [4:29:43 PM] maybe. That is exactly the type of message we put out. It is not a simple answer as Mr. Malik and Dougherty said. I think -- the role the state is currently playing exacerbating that system as councilmember harper-madison talked about the state hospital and recidivism and people exiting the jail and then the federal investments that have been reduced year over year over year across the country, and being really clear with the public, you know, it's only two weeks till the election so I don't know folks are having those questions when they go to vote for their congress people and state reps and state senators if they get to vote for state senator she but those are the types of questions voters need to be asking of anyone running for office is how serious are you about actually solving this problem. Other questions, colleagues? [4:30:44 PM] Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: Thanks very much. I know -- I can certainly make general comments about the issue, but having heard more than two hours of presentations, I actually have a slew of questions about some of the content so I'm just going to dive into what of those I think can be answered quickly. First of all, thanks very ch and I just want to appreciate as always the tremendous work of our staff all the time. I really want to emphasize to our -- to the listening public that our staff have worked hard and effectively for a long time on issues related to homelessness, and I completely understand that until every individual in this city has a safe and stable place to call home, that we will continue as a city and as a community to have room for improvement. And so while saying that, I do want to appreciate really the great work of our staff. [4:31:46 PM] A couple of the initiatives that we heard about today that I think haven't been covered in the past are the my pass program, this is very exciting. The violet storm program at health south, which are both such needed additions, but thanks to the continued good work of the dac and the great work you were doing before the pandemic and [inaudible]. Okay. To clarify the dac five case managers plus the supervisor, I assume this is question for Pete Valdez. I look back at the memo, it sound like those are two-year grand positions and I -- grant positions and I just wanted to verify that. I guess chair, are all the staff who were presenting here [indiscernible] >> Flannigan: I'm pretty sure everybody is back in. Pete is here. >> I am here. Can you repeat the question [4:32:46 PM] please? >> Tovo: Sure. The [inaudible] You are in the process of hiring, I looked at the memo you sent and I wasn't clear are these permanent positions or -- >> These are grant funded position. >> Tovo: Is that the time period, two years? >> Yeah, I believe they are funded through July of 2022. >> Tovo: Okay. Thank you very much. So those case managers will continue to work with the individuals in the pro lodges and then when housing -- for those individuals, they will continue to follow them or is the thought [indiscernible]. >> They will -- >> Tovo: [Indiscernible]. >> We anticipate they will be wrapped up with the individuals from the pro lodges because our -- our program is going to target the most acute individuals from the pro lodges. So, you know, that's going [4:33:46 PM] to take a while to get them stabilized. I don't know that it will take the two years, but we are going to follow them as long as we possibly can. If by chance they are able to take on additional clients because those clients have stabilized enough, we will do that as well. So that we're able to definitely utilize that resource as much as we possible can. >> Tovo: Thank you very much. Thanks again for all the great work that you do. >> Thank you. >> Tovo: And, of course, my thanks to Laura and Robert and the [inaudible] Staff. My next question relates to the -- I've forgotten who presented this information about the cold weather shelter plan. We were talking about the changes pause -- because of covid and it wasn't clear to me whether facilities had been identified. I think I heard that [4:34:47 PM] facilities had been identified, but I wasn't clear on which those were. If we could get some -- the appropriate staff member to provide that information. >> Rec centers have been identified. >> Tovo: Thank you. That one piece of information. Super. Thank you. I think I heard you say the Austin -- [inaudible] Is going to be our new partner in that. >> Yes. >> Tovo: Staffing. And would I find -- have they done this sort of work before? Are they evolving from another organization? What's their experience with this work? >> Their experience is providing services to people the community [indiscernible] This is kind of what they do. And so they pitch in wherever whatever is needed. So we're mapping out the scope of work now with them to define that to make sure that, you know, everyone is on the same page and we identify the impact work that needs to happen. >> Tovo: Thank you. [4:35:47 PM] Will that be a contract with them in a paid position or are they a volunteer? >> It's a volunteer organization. It will be M.O.U. >> Tovo: Thank you for that additional info. I think I have a next quick question for Kerry about my pass project and then I wanted to go back to director truelove with regard so some of the pro lodges and then I think that will wrap up -- I have more questions, but that will do it for today. Kerry, I heard you mention a cost and I missed when that was. And I also heard you say something about further slides are available. I wasn't sure where these were available, if those were in the email sent out where that's in another place that we needed to request it from you. >> Thank you, councilmember tovo. The cost currently is $917 per 10,000 users. The technology -- >> Tovo: It sounded so [4:36:48 PM] low, I thought I must have heard it wrong. >> The technology infrastructure is very minimal. Although the technological architecture we put in place was very innovative. The team that we hired that Robert wood Johnson enabled us to hire was amazing. And they worked to design a system that could cost that little. >> Tovo: Wow. >> That does not count for, you know, sort of the personnel costs of administrating the platform so we're going to be making those calculations in the next couple of weeks. >> Tovo: That is still extraordinary. It just really meets such an important need and is really cost effective. She said Trinity budgets about 20,000. I know other organizations that are allocating costs for document replacement so that's wonderful. That's really exciting. Thank you. And then I guess my last questions are quick ones [4:37:48 PM] also for director truelove about the hotel-motel strategy. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Tovo: Director truelove, I wanted to be sure I was catching what you said about transition from the pro lodges. The roadway inn, renovations have happened, it's being utilize add as pro lodge number 5. Could you remind me if the renovation included putting in sings or the other infrastructure they needed to be used as permanent supportive housing? >> Not at this time. We anticipate that this facility because we have the flexibility, recall that we acquired the property with community development block grants, not G.O. Bonds. We have the ability to use that as shelter space or transitional housing, not strictly straight supportive housing. So based on the length of time it would take to make renovations to add the [4:38:49 PM] second sings and the cost of -- sinks, opt to go keep it more transitional housing so we're not anticipated installing that second level of sinks or that more extended rehab to the facility. It didn't make sense considering that we recognize that we're going to need to have still that type of housing in a longer term. >> Tovo: Thanks. And then the country inn is being used as a pro lodge you said for about six months. >> Yeah. >> Tovo: Does that have the second sink? >> Yes. It will require much less rehab to be ready transition into client supportive housing. Just slight, slight work to fix some things like leaks and things like that. It's nothing major by any stretch of the imagination. So it's -- we're maintaining it in its space because in order to transition to supportive housing we're going to have so exi [4:39:50 PM] everybody and we're taking the time to make sure that happens smoothly. We anticipate it will take three to six months knowing we don't have to do major construction or rehab, just minor things. >> Tovo: What were you estimating -- what were you estimating in terms of the veneration in terms of time? >> There's a couple ac units that need to be replaced -- >> Tovo: The timing. >> I don't have that in front of me. I know it's minor and we're working on the time freezing rain that it would take -- frame it would take to do that and it's mostly exterior, not even hitting the interior rooms. >> Tovo: So the six to eight months was for transitioning guests staying there. >> Yes. >> Tovo: Is there a possibility doing a portion while renovating another portion so residents can alter among the different rooms? >> I don't think we have that level of detail yet. That's part of the planning we're doing right now, as [4:40:51 PM] well as making sure we have a good understanding what minor rehab we need to do at the facility. And how that might be phased and what impact it might have to the residents there. And it might be minimal impact. I anticipate based on what we're looking at it should be minimal, but that's all being planned out so that we don't -- we did just close on that property last week. >> Tovo: That's wonderful. I wonder if there was a possibility for keeping at least a large number of them on site so we don't have to identify or you don't have to identify housing for them without knowing that -- knowing that it will be available. There was another property you referenced that is in northwest Austin and that you are completing due diligence for. >> That is correct. >> Tovo: Is that one that has the double -- the two sinks? >> Correct. That one -- as I recall, it's a newer property and it should also need little to no rehab. >> Tovo: And it would be [4:41:53 PM] also used then as kind of a more permanent supportive housing for individuals -- >> That's correct. It's not something we're utilizing as a pro lodge, assuming we moved to purchase on it it would move directly into psh whether than stopping in pro lodge world. >> Tovo: Thanks very much. >> Casar: Sorry. Just talking about [indiscernible]. >> I'm sorry, could you repeat your question? >> I lost the building you were talking about there at the end. You were talking about a different one. >> It is a third hotel that we are in. We are remodeling right now. It is in district -- northwest Austin. >> Thank you, councilmember. >> Yes. So [indiscernible] -- presentation. [4:42:53 PM] >> I was just going to say, councilmember tovo asked a question about the additional slides. Those are in the appendix of this deck and when that goes out, those slides should be available. >> Great. Any final comments on this before we go to our last item? Because, councilmember harper-madison. >> >> >> Harper-madison: Thank you, chair. It is a question, and I think, I think this I think this one is for lawyer remarks I just have been thinking about communications. I have some questions and I am just curious how we would go about addressing it, so I think when I was talking about historically how we are right here, made specific reference to the eighties but I want to go like way back to the 1880s and talk about from the perspective of this is really great Frederick Douglass quote. He says you may have emancipated us, you have, or you say you [4:43:53 PM] have emancipated us, you have and I thank you for it but what is your emancipation? But when you turn us loose you gave us no acres, you turned us loose to the sky and to the storm, to the whirlwind and worse, you turned us loose to the wrath of our infuriated masters. This quote resonates with me if for no other reason when we are talking about a region like the origins of homelessness and poverty, and I think where this intersects with modern day policing being the direct manifestation of, you know, slavery era slave patrols a, that's how policing was born and that's how, you know, free labor was produced outside of legal slavery, so I think some of this conversation around homelessness it really does go way, way back when people were emancipated to absolutely nothing, or they did inherit land that were promptly [4:44:54 PM] stolen and then they were homeless again, and so I think, I would like very much to really dig into that, I don't want us to gloss over ate little bit because it really is the origins of what it is that we are talking about today, and so just curious, like how would we go about communicating that in a way that we really force people's hand in recognizing -- I think it is way too easy for people to make assumptions about, you know, shift less people who don't want jobs and who don't want houses and really not recognize where a lot of this, most of this started. But I don't know what that level of communication looks like today without actually having to go through a comprehensive history lesson given that we don't learn these things in our schools. What would that even look like from a communication perspective and I don't know that I am asking you to answer the question today but just get it on your radar. When I am talking about history [4:45:54 PM] I am talking about way back history because it started there, so just to get it on your radar thoarksz are the kind of things I would like, for us to be able to communicate. I think it really would help a lot of people to start of shift their assumptions about how people find themselves homeless. >> If I can meet you halfway, just for an idea I have been thinking about for a while, we are nine short years away from the 100th anniversary of the 1921 -- and so I think that the city of Austin has some work to do to meet that date with something -- of heft so I am happy to talk to you about going back even further than that for sure, but something that has been on my mind for a couple of years now back in the spirit of east Austin was an initiative that -- that was an initiative in talking to council offices [4:46:55 PM] about marking that date with something deep in terms of communications and other things. But I would be delighted to talk to you further about that. >> That would be great, thank you. >> I might also suggest, Chris, that maybe there is a role for the library department and the history center to play in that conversation that there could be curriculum developed, there could be one day that we partner with the ISD and school districts on and an opportunity there as well. >> Absolutely, I was tracking that one as the discussion was happening. I appreciate that. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember tovo. >> >> Tovo: Just a quick comment or a question I meant to ask earlier about this. I wasn't sure whether you are saying a particular body of information in terms of the framework of this 0 you know the [4:47:56 PM] frame work -- was mentioned -- this being a very important way to talk about homelessness and very person centered and alliance with your value centered approach that you referenced so again I just wanted to throw that out, that is something that would have value in engaging with that. >> I am going to move us the along. Thank you, Chris, staff, everyone who presented today. This is really helpful information. New information to some of us I think, to the breadth of the work that is being done so far, not the last conversation, I think my colleagues who chaired the committee will find pieces of this to work on and continue to work about the small portion of this which is actually about public safety and we are going transition now into our next item which is the intersection more specifically of homelessness and public safety in our downtown community court. So, Chris, any final sentence [4:48:57 PM] you want to say before I transition us over there? >> Thank you very much for all of the time you all have given to this presentation this afternoon. I appreciate your leadership and support to continue to build this system. Thank you. >> Okay. Bringing in -- from real estate. And Alex, who else will you be -- >> We have a couple of backup in case there are additional questions with mark dorchek, and Paul Mendoza. I see Paul. Okay. >> And I will leave Pete in here too. >> I am going to bring up the [4:49:59 PM] presentation. >> Alex, why don't you take it away. >> All right. Thank you. >> Thank you, councilmembers, Alex gale, the interim office for real estate services today we wanted to do a presentation, I know we are running a little low on time so I will try to walk through it, but I wanted to talk to you about a resolution regarding the relocation of downtown Austin community court and I see a spelling error on there and I apologize for that. Resolution, 201-8021 5-0 48 if you want to move to the next slide, councilmember. Basically, I have three items, the one I wanted to talk to you today is what I talk about is the relocation of the downtown Austin community court or otherwise known as dac must be [4:51:00 PM] located near a transit line within the geographical bound bound drills of the city code including parking options for staff and -- and well as vehicles for community services and that includes space planning for colocating with municipal court, and additional services for the population served. So just a quick recap of Dax current space, they are current in 4,900 feet of space which was originally leased in 2001. It was originally allocated for 15 -- at that time. >> The lease is approximately a little over $10,000 per month, which equates to roughly $122,000 annually. In addition to the lease we do current lease 20 parking spaces at about $157 per month per space which comes out to a [4:52:00 PM] little under -- $40,000 annually in addition to the rent for the space. The lease expired as a of may 31st 2020, although the landlord has agreed to allow us to basically lease this space month to month. I think Pete has talked with you all in the previous presentation about the current full time employee count, there are 38 full time employees, but in addition to that, they also need space for two security guards two, police officers, and a prosecutor and just to talk a little bit about current conditions, I think most of you or all of you are aware of the current conditions they definitely there are some past issues there. There have been several occurrences of a raccoons falling through the ceiling. There is definitely not space to allow for social distancing [4:53:00 PM] with this current covid-19 space and the current public restroom, we have to go through secure space to actually access the public restrooms. So Pete and judge Coffey if she on can definitely speak to the current conditions but I just wanted to give a quick highlight of those current conditions. >> The next slide is just a discussion of what we did when we were looking at options considering the relocation for downtown Austin. I think when we came back to the previous year, the predecessor, the judicial committee back in may I think of 2020 we talked about these, so we looked at the library, the first floor of the library, we took a look at the municipal building and for both of those facilities we tapped into our office of the city architecture, architect with our public works office and they helped do a feasibility analysis [4:54:00 PM] on those two facilities we also looked at acquiring or building a facility, either a stand-alone or colocated with other services in downtown area. We looked at a potential to do a public-private partnership, build or purchase of a facility. That one we didn't pursue because of not knowing if really the banks and the private industry is ready to focus forward on something like that and then of course a lease with a lease to purchase with spaces is a potential option as well. Next slide, so first, I don't know if you all remember, but I did extend out I think, I sent out a memo to mayor and council back in September 17th of 2020 about our pursuit and looking for space for dacc. Within that memo on the 17th we did include the feasibility [4:55:00 PM] analysis that the office of the city architect did help provide. With that I just took the pros and cons of the feasibility analysis that they provided for the first floor of the fall. As you can see, the pros is it is within the jurisdiction, it is downtown, it is owned by the city and available for use. The cons is that, you know, that there was a 2018 bond to use as the archival use for the Austin history center, the first floor of the Faulk doesn't meet the space needs. There are parking issues, there are accessibility to the site, minimum on site parking as well as some security issues and major upgrades to the mechanical engineering and plumbing systems and components. The next slide. So this is the same thing on the municipal building, which is the old city hall that many of you [4:56:02 PM] are aware of. The pros similarly it is within the jurisdiction, it is downtown, it is owned by the city. And this space does actually have the required net square feet available and it is, of course, available for city staff, if we are able to relocate the individuals to that space. So there currently is a current use with the purchaser's office and other financial services groups that are currently using the municipal building there. Some of the cons, same thing. Parking is an issue with this site. Accessibility, it is a historical building, so doors and rampts would need to be putty facility. Total interior demolition to remove the existing asbestos materials would be required, and then the existing NEP, mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems would be need to be removed and reworked. [4:57:02 PM] So for those purposes we didn't really want to move forward down that path and that's explained this that memo on the 17th, so what we have lined up is bringing to council the lease that we had actually been pursuing over the past several months. We would like to bring that on the November 12th council meeting agenda for council to consider. Some of the just quick bullet points on this facility that we would be bringing as a lease is it is approximately 30,000 square feet with amenities and it would be a three story building with potentially 45 underground parking spaces for staff and clients. There would be access to public transportation and a city shuttle. It would be a ten year lease with an option to purchase after the initial ten year term and for some reason we chose not to [4:58:03 PM] or, for some reason, we just chose not to purchase we would have an option to, option to extend for an additional ten years. The costs for the entire lease, including all of the buildout for that facility would be roughly $21 million over that first ten year term. And you can see the cost per square foot annually for that first year and how there is a two percent annual increase. So that is just a quick overview of what that lease that we are planning to bring on the 12th would look like and what we would be asking council action for. The next slide is just some concept use concept you wills based on the work that judge Coffey and Pete Valdez have done .. With landlord, with our office in working on doing some design work of the facility. So you can see the conceptual design, all new construction with a modern design, that we [4:59:05 PM] would want to bring. And just one thing to note as this location on east second, I know Valdez mentioned in the previous presentation about they are currently using the Terrazas library and this is roughly two blocks from the Terrazas library so from my understanding they are getting just as much if not more clients utilizing that space as Terrazas so that is on the far from that location as well. The next slide is just some floor plans like I said. This would be a three story facility, so the first floor is the top left, the second floor, top right and then the third floor, the bottom, which you can see on the top left floor plan the entry is kind of at the bottom right of that first floor plan, how you would work, how you would get into the facility, go through a security and be able to access the courtrooms, [5:00:07 PM] the lobby, the waiting area, and then secured space, of course, behind that, behind those walls, getting out to the second and third floors for the staff, judge's office and reading rooms as well. So quick timeline overview of what this would look like, if we did move forward with this lease. Of course we would plan to have it on the November 12th agenda. We would hopefully execute the lease agreement in December, December of 2020. The landlord own ore would secure permitting hopefully in January 2021 an what we are looking at because this is a full buildout of essentially a new facility, right now it is just a one-story building so this would take full buildout of -- for a second and third floor, full 1218 months so we went with the 18 month timeline for [5:01:08 PM] June 22 with a move-in by July of 2022. So just a quick overview of what that timeline would look like if we did move forward as planned with this lease agreement. >> And then just as additional backup of the jurisdictional map showing the current location on sixth street and then where this lease location would be on east second street. >> Questions for real estate? >> For Pete? Councilmember Casar. >> Casar: So I struggled some with this idea. For me, though, you know, I understand we needed a new city buildings as we are a growing city with growing needs and growing staff. And those buildings don't necessarily have to be in the [5:02:09 PM] core downtown area. It does make sense and this one is required to be downtown or as close to it as we can. What I struggle with in the feasibility study that you presented is that it would cost us a good chunk of money to renovate the Faulk or a good chunk of money to renovate the old city hall. But since those buildings are never going to be torn down, because they are historic billions and they are great buildings, so nobody is talking about tearing them down, when -- when is it right for the city to renovate those, so that they are modern and good for people to work in? Does that make sense? Like we are going renovate those buildings eventually unless we just want them to be totally, unless we want to totally neglect the city's oldest assets. So when is it appropriate to renovate those buildings? What use is good enough for us to renovate those buildings for? [5:03:11 PM] That's the thing I am struggling with is, if it was a building that maybe has extended past its useful life it is not worth renovating it, but it is my understanding we will eventually ren investigate old city hall and these other buildings. >> And I plea with you. I think that's definitely something that we would want to keep, you know, long-term for the city of Austin, right? Like I agree that there is a path where we need figure out what that building can be used for. I know there has been a multitude of different types of uses that it could be used for. I know we have talked about it before councilmember and I know I talked with other officers as well about some of those other uses. And I think it is part of this overall, this overarching conversation about all of our facilities. I know we have directions on [5:04:12 PM] Rutherford lane and one Texas center, there are other properties that, you know, have reached their useful lives and we are working on trying to come back to council and say here is the work we are doing, right now I don't have the answer to what the use of the municipal building is in the future but I think there is, like you said, a use for that. We just don't have an answer for that right now but I do agree that the answer to that as well as all of to other facilities within the city can get back to council in providing recommendations of what we see but also working with your offices to get your recommendations as well from what those facilities or what those buildings could be used for. If not working with Ed and the community -- >> The main reasons for not using that -- was because it might be expensive, but the fact of the matter is that's an [5:05:13 PM] expense we are going incur sooner or later no matter what, is to renovate that building, so it is hard for me to say that is more pensive than other options because if we are going have to pay for that at some point soon, so -- >> I was going to say, I mean, that definitely is one of the things, the expense for it, think parking, is kind of a big item that, you know, that didn't seem feasible for it as well as the timing. So the timing to do the renovations, the costs to do the renovations and then the issue for the parking I think pushed us uh as a way of saying -- I know there is a cost to go lease a facility as well, right? Like I know that is a large cost that we are bringing to council, potentially for that lease, but I think for the timing, the parking, and the costs is where I think we weren't ready to move forward with going down that [5:06:14 PM] path for dacc at this point. >> Got it, because of the typing issue you have to move the staff that is in there out, find them a place to, go renovate the building and move people in and you are saying that takes much longer than 2022? >> Correct. >> Casar: It would be helpful for me between here and -- [indiscernible] -- To know how much that would take [indiscernible] >> Alex and I think you and I keep fighting for that mute button. Assistant city manager. Thank you, councilmember Casar, your questions are very valid questions of both things. They are both beautiful assets of the city and what Alex is presenting isn't necessarily, is not utilizing both buildings but utilizing them for this specific [5:07:15 PM] purpose. In the past the way that we have approached former city buildings that are changing its use, we typically will go tarred with some kind of plan to figure out and like what we can use these buildings for, have conversations with the community what they would like to see in those buildings, and then come back to council with kind of a range of options of how to use those buildings, what the cost entails, what time considerations are, things of that nature, and so just to support what Alex said we are not necessarily talking about we can't ever use these buildings, but the question in front of us is whether or not we should use these buildings for this particular purpose, and so we talked with public works, it didn't seem right but we certainly are open to having conversations about just broadly how can we repurpose those facilities and what might we use them for? [5:08:19 PM] >> I would add to councilmember Casar's thoughts on this when I look at the cons that listed, parking and accessibility for people with disabilities, those are -- and then the building issues. >> Mayor Adler: You are going to have to solve for that no matter what and we are talking about a building location which is approximate to our busiest and most well served corridor so I am not convinced that parking is a limitation, because this is one of the best served areas with transit, and the other issues are issues that would be present no matter what potential use was proposed. Accessibility would be a problem, asbestos and lead, I am a little -- I am a little convinced, a little, a little, a little convinced by the amount of time, but if it is 18 to 24-month to build the building from scratch, I am not sight what the competing issue is. [5:09:21 PM] That's just where my head kind of is on that. We are ten minutes over and you know how much that bugs me but I will hopefully if there are other questions we can answer them quickly. This this is not an action item. This is an information item from staff. Other questions? I love you all. If there are no other questions. Alex, thank you and Ms. Valadez, Mendoza, thank you all for bringing this to the committee and allowing us to put it on the meeting today. I think some of us are going to continue this conversation afterwards and figure what we think the best path forward is. That is the end of our agenda today colleagues. >> Chair da. >> Mayor Adler: Councilmember tovo. >> Tovo: I think this is a very interesting conversation and would ask there are conversations still going around Faulk, that those conversations -- that that be made money to the many people in this [5:10:22 PM] community who have weighed in on to the important of nine tank -- maintaining this to the voters. So let's pencil in an opportunity to talk about it at the work session so that those stakeholders understand whether there is a different proposal coming in. I found councilmember categories to be about the -- and I am not sure whether that is .. I thought those were very interesting and valid considerations but if there is still an interest in pursuing the Faulk I am sure I and others will be interested and would like more input. >> Mayor Adler: There is no interest from me. The lack of space on the first floor closes the door on that, as fa as I am concerned. >> Thank you. >> Tovo: I would be welcome if anyone else has thoughts on it. >> I am happy to chime in there. You know, I have always said [5:11:23 PM] that we should still, 100 percent meet what it was we said in the ballot proposition, so I think that folks having sometimes raised the question are we going to do something different in the ballot proposition I have always said no. The question is was there an additional -- was there enough additional space that wasn't contemplated in the ballot proposition for dacc or some component of the dacc, it seems like the answer is not the whole dacc because there is not enough room. I haven't asked the question about components of it, filling into any space that wasn't committed for the voter composition. >> Okay. Thank you for that. I mean we can have that conversation. They do have space needs for the entire facility. As I understand but again if it is a moot point we don't need too have that conversation. >> It really depends on whether [5:12:26 PM] or not [indiscernible] >> For what it is worth my understanding of this, councilmember tovo is the same member as councilmember Flannigan's, so I am comfortable with the course that we are on at this point. >> Mayor Adler: I will say that that other building is just absolutely gorgeous and I want us to find a use to be able to use that and it is such a beautiful building that having something that relates culturally or something that relates to that part of our city I think would be phenomenal so that becomes a very publicly used space or one of the prettiest structures I think we have. All right. Sorry to cut you off, mayor. Any other comments? All right. If there is no objection it is 5:13 P.M. I am so sorry. I took 13 minutes of your time away. This meeting of the public safety committee is adjourned. Thank you.