Public Health Committee Meeting Transcript – 08/04/2021 Title: City of Austin Channel: 6 - COAUS Recorded On: 8/4/2021 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 8/4/2021 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. [10:11:21 AM] >> This is the meeting of thepublic health committee.it is is 10:11.we're meeting virtually, thankyou for being present today.welcome speaker number one.>> Hello.am I the speaker that you'retalking to?>> I think I maybe -- yes,indeed.if I would introduce yourselfand you will be provided withthree minutes to address theco-.thank you.>> Thank you so much.my name is Jill Ramirez and I'mthe CEO of the Latino healthcare forum, a local nonprofit.we are hear in support of alexfuentes and the testimony andinitiative that offer parentsand family as choice of water [10:12:24 AM] orunflavored drinks at localrestaurants.we've been in existence since2010.our very first project wassugary drinks, called health,and we were able to provideeducation to families aboutsugary drinks and we were fundedthrough the Michelle alabamaprograms. [10:13:59 AM] . . We are here in strong support of the American heart association initiative and for you all to help us become healthier and have a healthier world. Thank you. >> I appreciate it. Thank you so very much for being here today with us and for that testimony. Okay. I believe our next speaker's name is Alex. Alex, if you're on the line. >> Yes, good morning. Good morning, my name is Alex. >> Fuentes: , I'm the Texas government relations director at the American heart association. The American heart association is committed to our community, fostering improvements in care and feating for strong public health policies. As Jill mentioned, the ongoing pandemic has highlighted inequities in the Austin area, particularly in the area of nutrition access. Our region has higher rates than [10:15:03 AM] state and national and that's living more than a half mile from the closest super market or large grocery store. While that need is being recognized in planning efforts and budget discussions, it is also important we meet people where they are to offer healthy choices and we know when life gets busy we often turn to restaurants and drive-throughs to feed our families. Children consume roughly 25% of their calories eating out and 40% of children will eat fast food any given day. That is part of a high calorie drink wish is why children consume twice as many calories when they eat out or at a drive-through restaurant. This is the top source of sugar in our children's diets and they consume more than 30-gallon as year, which is enough to fail bathtub. This is more likely in low income communities where they're much more likely to are have fast food located nearby and marketed to them. While eating out is sometimes a necessity it present as responsibility to serve our kids [10:16:04 AM] better, making kids meals healthier can cultivate long time health behaviors for children, especially in low income and minority families. We can make the default drink the water, milk, instead of high sugar drinks. Parents would have the choice to choose a sugary drink for their child but this default choice would be a healthy one and they would do that two-thirds of the time. This is meant to support families looking for healthy options and is not intended to legislate what restaurants serve. This would make it easy for parents to establish healthy habits and put them on the path for a successful and healthy future. We will be urging the council to give serious consideration to this approach in the coming weeks and months. Thank you for your time and hard work for the city of Austin. [10:17:04 AM] We will answer question or provide more information. Thank you. >> Thank you. Sorry for the confusion. You were willing to call back later and I'm so glad we were able to hear your testimony at the beginning. I wanted to ask you to consider providing your testimony in written form there were some statistics you included in your presentation about the percentage of children eating most of their meals or a certain percentage of their meals at fast food and other statistics I would lake to be able to read and refer back to, and that would allow us to get that information to our committee members who aren't here. So if you're able to send that on that would be terrific. >> Yes, absolutely. I will send our testimony and that background information, as well. >> Thank you so very much. Colleagues, any questions forest city our speakers? Mayor pro tem. >> Not a question, I would like to add to the information our [10:18:04 AM] last presenter provided is, it is really expensive to be poor. People having to, you know, purchase those meals, those fast food meals, it's not checkcle and people having to purchase those meals from gas stations, it's not economical. And I'm not even just talking about food. Everything that you have to purchase by way of poverty is so much more expensive so I would love very much for us, as we continue to have this conversation, love very much for us to be able to take into consideration, like, the true impact, financial impact, of having to get fast food meals and having to buy things that cost 19 times more at the convenience store. That's all. Thank you. >> Excellent points, thank you. Chair. >> Chair Fuentes. [10:19:06 AM] >> Thank you, I want to thank them for presenting today and putting attention on the need to make the healthier choice the easier choice, and certainly having water or, you know, 100% juice drinks as the default option on menus will go a long way in making it the easier choice. And I certainly am supportive of those types of initiatives. As chair tovo mentioned would like to see the testimony in writing and would welcome a meeting with you all to further discuss this policy initiative. >> Thank you so much. That is a direct segway to my correcting my self-. I know a senior policy advisor on my staff has met with you and has provide immediate with some of this information before so I apologize for not saying that up front. It would be valuable to all the members of the Q. So we will put that alongside the information you've already [10:20:07 AM] provided my office with. Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> And thank you for your flexibility here today. Without further ado, let's go on and take up our minutes. Hopefully everybody has had an opportunity review them so I'll entertain a motion to approve. Vice chair Fuentes moves approval. Mayor pro tem seconds that. Fear favor? That is unanimous on the dais with councilmember kitchen and Adler off the deias. We have two items on the agenda, one is executive session and possible action. I'm going to swig do not do this right now. We don't yet have a full pool of applicants for that position, and so I would suggest we table that. Unless anyone has a concern, I [10:21:08 AM] suggest we table that item number three for our next meeting. Okay. Mayor pro tem, I couldn't tell if you were giving a thumbs up. Thank you. Let me just put a call out to individuals who are interested in the sobering center, this is a great opportunity, amazing resource in our community, and in the past we've had lots of interest and lots of applicants. So I think one of the questions I would ask our liaison to this committee to consider is what we would need to do to get back in touch with some of those applicants who have applied in earlier cycles to ask them about their continued interest. Mayor pro tem. >> If I may, maybe if we could give a clearer sort of sense of expectation around what does it require? What are we asking of people? I think that might be a good way [10:22:11 AM] to get people the opportunity to determine whether or not this works for their lives. >> Sure. Are you suggesting we talk about that a bit here today, or make sure that it is in the information or both? >> I would say we could do both or we can just add it for, in terms of fight items for discussion. If we could, you know, just lay it plain, be very explicit, what is required as a result of taking this really awesome opportunity. >> Yeah, I would be happy to talk blitz about it -- a little bit about it. The best process for today would be for us to provide direction with regard to the applications. For us to provide direction to our city staff to go back to previous applicants, applilicants in previous cycles as well as applicants in Travis county's cycles to let them know there is another spot and to determine their interest. And, if it is necessary, have them reapply. I served on the sobering center [10:23:13 AM] board since its everyoneseption and it is a very small board. In the past we have tried to ensure the Travis county and the city of Austin makes appointments to it, and we have a couple of joint positions. And we've tried to be very intentional about making sure that individuals who serve on the board have a mix of some of the following kinds of expertise. Lived experience, medical backgrounds, legal background or other kinds of community work that is very aligned with the mission of the sobering center, so it is a very small board, it is a working board. Because it's really early in the sobering center's founding that board, we have hireddage created a strategic plan but it is very much in the early stages so every member of the board of directors is expected to come to [10:24:13 AM] a monthly meeting, and every member of the board serves on at least one committee. Those really are working committees from a governance committee to some other committees that have been formed. So it is exciting work because there is a lot to be done and these early years especially are very important, but it is a board that requires a certain level of commitment and the expectation is the attendance will be regular. It is really hard, for such a small board, it is challenging if people can't make the monthly meetings. Same with the committee meetings, those are very aimed at tasks that need to be accomplished. Again it is an amazing resource for our community and succeeding in huge part because of those community members who stepped up to serve on theboard so thank you for that opportunity to talk a bit more about it. Welcome, mayor Adler. So, let's take this up again [10:25:16 AM] next month. I have learned in the course of this conversation the city clerk's office is reaching out to former applicants at the city and Travis county so that will be something to talk about at the next meeting about the amdant being we received. We may call a special called meeting to do that kind of work of identifying them and schedule those interviews. All right, super. Let's go on it our next and only remaining item, which is number two. This is the briefing on issues related to homelessness so, committee, we talked about really focusing the work of this committee on a couple key areas, and one of them for this year being homelessness. Now, when we scheduled today's brief, we didn't realize there would also be a full briefing at the councilmember. We will try to be targeted in our approach since we're taking up the issue of homelessness with relation to the budget [10:26:18 AM] tomorrow. Today is more focused and deliberate so hopefully, there will not be much overlap. I will invite those presenting this to take away from here. And while they're getting organized and ready for that presentation, let me just thank them. I know they are working, they are pa small but mighty team working on multiple other things that are in progress this week so thank you for joining us. We will try to be really efficient with your time, knowing you are back before the full council again tomorrow. Welcome. >> Thank you, chair. Thank you for having me. I just want to echo the hard, hard work that is being done by our team and they are in the thick of it now. I'll describe a little bit more some of the activities of this week but want to make sure to acknowledge the tremendous [10:27:18 AM] amount of work they'ring could this week I will be giving a verbal briefing today, focused on shelter and designated encampment and some other updates. We will focus on protected longs and a little bit on funding in terms, framed by the 6.5 million of additional gf dollars in the fiscal year 21 budget for hsd and homeless services. Before I do that I want to take the opportunity start with some good news which is just a reminder of the progress we are making. We closed on Monday. The acquisition of the Texas bungalows hotel, which will be become about 60 units of permanent supportive housing. So a long time coming and clearly that is something we would talk about from a capital development standpoint and housing and planning, but we're [10:28:19 AM] also in the process of completing the contracting process for the services that will be provided on site by integral care who will be the operator and service provide sore robust wrap around services under way there. Council has already authorized that contract so we hope to execute it fairly soon. We will be looking to nail down what we hope will be a pretty compressed renovation timeline, and are looking forward in the not so distant future to a grand opening there which I think will be a fantastic day. We also, there is a ground breaking on August 9 at rut lend, which is 171 unit new construction project for -- that will be set aside largely for people experiencing homelessness. [10:29:23 AM] The operating budget be has been used to support the services needed on site there. Yesterday, no, today is Wednesday. On Monday, you may have heard that the -- what used to be the membership council at echo, sort of the governing board of the continuum of care, has recently been reformulated, redesigned to have a much stronger emphasis on equity and on the representation and active participation of people with lived experience. And so sitting on that council, we've met now three or four times. I'll just tell you that out of 13 people, we have three individuals with lived experience, I believe five of the 13 are African-American, which is something that was very important, given the over representation among people experiencing homelessness in the African-American community. One of the first actions that that council has taken, as of Monday, is to approve a revised [10:30:24 AM] prioritization tool for the coordinated entry system. So, the coordinated entrial system, we talk about coordinate aid saysment, for people to access housing through the system, there is a common assessment which I think overall has been very positive for our community in terms of efficiency and in terms of actually referring people to organizations that have capacity. But, one of the things we'd learned over the last 10 years not just here in Austin but across the nation was one of the tools that many communities, including ours were using appeared to have some potential negative impacts around equity. That African-Americans were largely scoring lower on this assessment, and therefore, were not rising to the top in terms of prioritization for housing placement. Thus, sort of reinforcing already sort of over representation in terms of people that experienced homelessness. So I think that we will obviously be watching this [10:31:25 AM] closely in the implementation phase, but the equity work group of the former membership council, now the homeless response leadership council, spent a lot of time assessing what, how that assessment could be adjusted and changed and doing some statistical analysis, so I'm just really hopeful going forward that we are looking at really concrete tools, perhaps not the sexiest pieces of our system but the critical elements of how people actually access housing that we are improving our performance on equity. So, having given this quick update, I think the three things I thought I would talk about today in this order were shelter and sanction encampments and a little bit about pro lodges but want to check in with the chair and members of the committee to [10:32:26 AM] make sure that is consistent with your priorities. >> So, number one, thank you and congratulations on those really important steps from Texas bungalows and it is beautiful to hear Rutland is getting started. Those are all great pieces of news. As I understand keel and -- what is the other item. >> A brief conversation on pro lodges but that will be very linked to the other ones, as well. >> And so there's one other item that I would like to hear addressed, but perhaps it is more appropriate to table it for tomorrow so maybe we can talk a little bit about information that I think would be very valuable and with the intention of talking about it tomorrow. Colleagues, anything else you would like a quick update on today? Very yes, vice chair Fuentes. [10:33:27 AM] >> I think those three items are big and weighty itself, and I'm grateful we have this time to talk about it at the committee level. I do have concerns about us being able to have a robust conversation tomorrow on the dais around the homeless because these three topics will need to have a full conversation on the dais and the budget and how we willal row indicate to reducing homelessness. And so, colleagues, as you all know, there is at least a few budget items from yesterday that we're carrying takeover Thursday, in addition to an executive session, and so just I want to highlight for our community that, you know, I on it think we need a dedicated session towards discussing our response for homelessness in one where our community has the opportunity to provide input and feedback, and I certainly, just with the pending deadlines of having the deadline on the city manager's phased implementation [10:34:27 AM] approach to responding to the reinstatement of the camping ban. And of course with the statewide camping ban coming into effect September 1. Thank you. >> Thank you. Miss gray, is it -- let me ask you two different questions. I understand from my conversation with the manager just right before we popped on this meeting that part of tomorrow, part of your conversation with our full council tomorrow involves sanctioned encampments. Is that true? Would you like to -- is it best if we try have that conversation tomorrow verses here today? >> So, I am prepared to have that conversation today or tomorrow. I will say that, because there are not separate agenda items on the agenda for tomorrow, those conversations will really be council directed as they relate to the item that is on the [10:35:28 AM] agenda, which is the budget briefing. And so, you know, we do not have that explicitly set aside, but I understand that that has been the will of the council. It may be -- I actually think it might be easiest to talk about it to some degree today, as well, because, you know, we may be able to further focus our time tomorrow knowing you have a packed agenda. >> Thank you. And with the suggestion from our vice chair, are you prepared to speak a bit to the property enforcement? >> So, I will certainly, I think that if we want details about open forcement, always we would want to have APD present, since they are charged with enforcement. What I would be speaking to today is really the public health response in terms of trying to align the resources and where we are on that front. So, if you, you know, I can certainly answer my understanding of where we are on [10:36:29 AM] enforcement and am in constant communication with those folks but just know that preparation today has been focused on the public health service. >> That sounds good to me. Let's begin then, thanks, and we will start with what you -- so let's start with the sanctions encampment. >> I'm noticing that mayor pro tem has her hand raised. >> Oh. I missed that. Mayor pro tem. >> Thank you. I appreciate that, director gray, and also chair. I continue to have great, great concern about what feels like to me a lack of conversation around mental health as we are having these conversations. Not just generally, but, you know, a real broad spectrum. Where are people supposed to go? What level of care do we have [10:37:30 AM] available? What levels of care do we have available. And I mean from our act to work with our partners at the state around medical power of attorney for people who will negative be able to take care of themselves. And people who just, you know, who need to go to group and take meds, that's it. Intensive out patient. But I continue to have a great deal of concern about what feels like a significant lack of emphasis in all our conversations around a comprehensive approach to the city of Austin becoming the first city in the nation to really get a grip on unsheltered homelessness. I think there's no conversation that we have that doesn't start with that part. And so I just wanted to put that out there. I don't know if it is a necessary part of the conversation today, maybe it's [10:38:31 AM] tomorrow but just in general, I have a lot of concerns around our not discussing that more intensively. I just wanted to put that out there. Thank you, chair. >> Thank you nor that really important, really important comment. One of the budget amendments I endon't make is to add funding to the health care homeless program we co-sponsor with the downtown Austin alliance. Certainly tomorrow in context of the budget, that's something I would like to talk about, because it is really critical for all the reasons you just said. Mayor pro tem. >> If I may, just real quick, even just talking to some of our advocates around having additional options for law enforcement forcement, it doesn't matter if we have an additional mental health option if there's literally no place for people go. If you just are taking them to [10:39:33 AM] the triage at the E.R. And they wander around in hospital gowns, I mean, just -- I can't put enough emphasis around how concerned I am. Thank you, though. >> Valid concerns. Vice chair. >> Thank you. And mayor pro tem, just wanted to echo your sentiments and also add that evening we need to have that conversation with other partners at the table, as well, with integral care central health who also have a role in the continuum of area, especially as it relates to mental health services and mental health response. And, you know work like to see them involved in part of that conversation because it cannot simply only just be city of Austin, we need our partners, they are with us, and talking through what does that coordinated system of care look like in our response to addressing and reducing homelessness. >> Yeah, thank you. And I don't know that it fits in [10:40:35 AM] today's conversation or potential low tomorrow's either but many of those conversations have involved, certainly the pea for success initiative, all of the partners are involved in those conversations but it may be a good thing to get a briefing about how those continue. Oak springs terrace, it is a partnership between integral care and the city of Austin and other partners. Yes, mayor. >> I think it is really important and I think the mental health component really has not been called out as much as it needs to. Because it has, as you say, councilmember tovo, it is a significant component of the wrap around services and how that works so, at some point, if they could talk about, I think a significant part of the $100 million that was identified even used with about 3,000 in [10:41:37 AM] three-year goal would be spent toward mental health support and intervention. But, it needs to be called out in a way the community can see. >> Great so speaking of places for people to go and the need for them, miss gray, if you would brief us on where we are and the sanction encampment conversation. >> Thank you. And I will say, as we have this conversation, I think we can certainly, we'll speak to the elements of it that relate to behavioral health, mental health and substance use disorders. Within the summit plan, not only do we know that the rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing, et cetera, are very supportive of people with chronic mental illness or chronic mental health conditions but part of what I'm hearing mayor pro tem sail again and [10:42:37 AM] again, we haven't fully wrapped our arms around is what about those particularly those crisis services for people who are experiencing homelessness when it is notes about when they're already stabilized in housing. There are resources set aside for shoring up ancillary pieces of that care, if you will, of behavioral health services, and one of the ways we're talking about convening around that is pulling together a work group together with echo and all the providers that you've talked about and frankly who may not have been at the table and talking about, okay, we believe we're going to stabilize people in housing and that is really going to be been fit to their health and stability long-term but there will be other services that are necessary and particularly among the unsheltered population, thises we of where do you go particularly because it is [10:43:39 AM] difficult to achieve in-patient admission for psychiatric services and even when that happens it tends to be quite short. It is very often two or three days so really thinking about what else really is there for purposes of stabilization. So I welcome that conversation and look forward to it so in terms of heal, at the last report we had relocated both the encampment at terases library and Ben wheat in the menchaka underpass location. That was completed right around July 18, I believe. If memory serves. Those two sites comprised about 70 people that accepted an offer to come into shelter and move into permanent housing programs. I believe that was of about 74 offers. So lower than -- less than 10% said no thank you. [10:44:39 AM] And, you know, we do have people, and those are often people who staff engage with on an outreach basis, talk with them and may not see them again. So we're definitely learning a lot in terms of there is fluidity in the population and sometimes it can be difficult to as ascertain with certainly who is living there, but of the folks staff are able to identify as living in those encampments, very high acceptance rates. We opened south ridge shelter in mid Justin to accept the first guests from terasis. South bridge has a maximum of 75 guest rooms. As I said, we've moved about 70 folks in there. I believe we are at about 90% capacity at south bridge right now. And we on rated with staff and tell -- operated with staff and temporary city staff before [10:45:40 AM] turning it over for on going operations. Integral care has staff there on site during business hours for any mental health supports that are needed on an ad hoc basis, if you will. We are now moving forward the 3rd and 4th sites and I will say because we are near capacity at south bridge, we are really dependent on creation of additional bridge shelter or turnover, in other words people being placed in permanent housing in order to move to that site three and four. What we have done and are doing today and this week generally is demobilizing pro lodge four, which is the country inn located near I-35 St. John. The country inn will be eventually permanent supportive housing so we have a plan to move towards that permanent [10:46:41 AM] disposition, full run of that building for permanent housing and in the interim we will utilize it as shelter, as well. We today should move the final occupants in. So I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself but to wrap up the pro lodge, we have a total in that one leased facility of 77 individuals. All of those have been connected to a house regular source, so are being offered rapid rehousing services. And we are placing people regularly. And have over the course of our experience with the pro lodges, as of a couple of week he's go, had placed 268 people in permanent housing so back to heal. We are working to prepare what we will now call north bridge [10:47:43 AM] shelter for the next stage of heal. We have two more sites. And are moving a paste pace in that direction. We anticipate the location of the third site at the end of the month. Depending on the number of people coming in from site 3 and the pace of rehouse we may have to wait a little bit until we can ensure we have capacity for the fourth site. You know, therefore, I think hope that we ideally would be able to do both sites by the end of August but again are going to have to see how the housing placement rate goes. Our next step at that point is really to come back to council and to report on what we've learned in terms of the demographics, in terms of, you know, challenges that we are experiencing, other resources that might be needed and I think importantly to come to council [10:48:43 AM] with a recommendation how we might prioritize future encampment sites. Because heal was framed as an effort to really focus on those encampments where there were significant concerns around health and safety, even above simply the lack of safety implied by being, living unsheltered. So Ben wheat and manchak for example had suggest accident risk, had a fatality in that area and multiple incidents so looking at wife danger, flood danger, all of those things. Matrix, we will have a afternoon, take a pause once we -- having a conversation and take a pause before we come back to the council on recommendations on that front. [10:49:44 AM] Demographic information important because we want to ensure the way we are doing work supports our goals in equity and doesn't unintention legal unintentionally reinforce that. The other piece has been encouraging is, as I say, we've had 90% of people accept shelter and the offer of housing. You know, typically, as we do these kinds of programs, we will have some people fall out of shelter, exit shelter before they are housing permanently so really tracking ever step of that process, what is our attrition rate and what can we do better to ensure that people do not only get a permanent housing placement but that their stability there is supported and they're getting the right kind of services. So I think that is probably my [10:50:46 AM] high level overview of heal. Chair, would you like me to go on to shelter and sanction encampments or take questions on heal at this time? >> I think we should take questions on heal at this point, so I'll open that up. Yes, vice chair. >> Thank you. Do we know the third site for the heal initiative, where is that? >> So, we have not been disclosing the location of the sites explicitly because of frankly the risk of people in-my greating to those sites to the agree we are not able to place them shelter because we have too many folks. The resolution identifies four sites, one east, one south, turasis and Ben white. The who other descriptions were a central business site and northwest Austin site. >> Okay. [10:51:47 AM] And you did mention -- I know you referenced this about at some point having demographic data available, but for the one being, the 70 individuals who accepted the offer to move into permanent supportive housing from sites one and two as part of the heal initiative rushing able to share a brief overview of the demographics for those individuals? >> We have some of that. What I would like to do, vice chair, if it is okay, because I think that the third relocation is going to happen very soon, be able to share all of that with you at the same time. You know, so that we're getting that global look. Bull we can certainly get that to you in the coming week what the numbers on the first between campments and them subsequent to relocation often campment number three, we would update that for you. [10:52:49 AM] >> We have 70 individuals accepted the offer to move into permanent supportive housing and that is in the south ridge location? >> 70 accepted the offer to more into the bridge shelter with the linkage to rapid rehousing services to place them in permanent housing not necessarily permanent supportive housing but rapid rehousing is robust but time limited so case management and rental supports for anywhere from three months to two years, we believe some of those people we will eventually place into permanent supportive housing but the resource we had at "At the ready" at the time, which can serve as a bridge if needed, was rapid rehousing. Yes, those folks came into the shelter with the understanding they are being innovated into shelter and then would be enrolled and working directly with a case manager on getting into permanent housing. [10:53:50 AM] >> Okay so then what is the it number of how many individuals we have been able to help get rehoused? >> We were abouts same time standing up the shelter operations so they didn't begin enrolling for a couple weeks after we initiated shelter. As of last week, I believe we had 40 to 50 of the roughly 70 individuals enrolled in a housing program. None of those had yet been placed because they were still in the process of the housing search, et cetera. What we anticipate is that because it usually takes about 60 days, has been our average in pro lodges from the time of enrolling in the rapid rehousing program to the actual housing placement so about 20 people arrived in June. They weren't really, they began to be enrolled in the housing [10:54:52 AM] programs early July and the 50 folks from Ben white and manchak arrived in July. We believe we will begin to see placements in August and it will pick up from there. >> Wonderful. Thank you. >> Mayor Adler. Mayor pro tem harper-madison. I have some questions bull want bed to give you the opportunity to ask first. >> I appreciate that thank you, chair. It's bothering me so I will defer. >> Chair, I don't have any questions right now about the heal program. >> Thank you. Dianna, aid few questions. Miss gray, I should say. I had a couple of quick questions I wanted to make sure I was following all. So country inn is now going to be referred to as north bridge shelter. Is that correct? Okay. And I believe you said, would you mind reminding us of the [10:55:53 AM] capacity there, please. >> The total room count at north bridge is 75. We set aside rooms for service staff, because we have on-side, the case manager working with souse we think there will be about 65 guest rooms, active guest rooms, between setting room aside for offices and a little bit of turnover. Sometimes we need to move someone out of a room to do repairs. >> Wonderful. As I under stood the information you gave me, which was super helpful with regard to the protective lodges. They were the public health intervention bring individuals into emergency shelter, noncongregate emergency shelter, at highest risk of getting very ill on spreading the virus to others. So within those, there was a housing component that and so those individuals who are housed in those protective lodges, of [10:56:53 AM] those I think I heard you say 268 of those individuals left the protective lodge into permanent housing. >> That's correct. >> That's terrific. That is is really dynamite. And there were 77 individuals still remaining in protective lodging, and they are now going to be moved to shelter? Be. >> Consolidated into the one remain progress lodge. We closed country inn, converting it into a more general bridge shelter. Pro lodge one remains as a lease fad sillity. It was larger so we were able to take the people that were at pro lodge four, which is at this point only about 20 people, and move those over to pro lodge one so all 77 individuals, as of today, the end of today, I believe, will be at pro lodge one. >> We have 77 individuals in protective lodging. We have 70 individuals in bridge [10:57:55 AM] shelter at south bridge, and then you are beginning to roll out seat number three of the heal initiative with the home that you will be able to do both option business August but it depend being on the bridge shelter options. Thank you. I know you and I had an opportunity speak about some of the information I would be seeking about who were in those encampments, now in bridge shelter, and I think I heard you say in your response just a minute ago that would be best to get that information later after site number three. But if you have any of that information at this point, I would love to hear it. And particular, I'm interested in the demographic break down as well as the kind of the interesting that echo collects when they do the point in time, how long have individuals typically been homeless? Are they newly homeless? Are they chronically homeless? Coo you get any sense of that information so today and in the [10:58:57 AM] future. >> I think I would appreciate the opportunity defer that conversation because the staff doing that work is the same staff attempting to set up shelter this week. So we've begun to pull some data but don't have the full profile yet and I think we can certainly look to get that to you probably within next week or so, and it's plausible that, you know, it will, stars will align so we will have data on site three, as well. We will have to seal. >> Wonderful. The most important work, it is challenging what you're asking us to do. You're here providing with us information and it is the same staff as you've just indicated that are doing the work. The work is connecting those individual with temporary shelter and permanent housing is really the most critical of that work so thank you for prioritizing that. Just for -- that's some of the information at the appropriate time that I would be interesteds in seeing. [10:59:58 AM] Also, often, as you know, people ask us, you know, are these individuals who are coming to Austin, are these individuals who are experiencing homelessness already in coming to Austin and the data year after year in the point in time count shows that that is not the case but I think it would be very useful and instructive to be be able to answer that question for those who are part of the heal initiative, as well those are some of the pieces of the initiative that I would be interested in. Colleagues, if you have questions, if you could raise them now or provide them to Ms. Gray afterwards so she could pull them into her report whenever it appropriate. Mayor pro tem? >> Harper-madison: I certainly don't think this is information that Ms. Gray will be able to respond to now, but I just want to be able to flag it. I know I get a lot of questions about if for no other reason, I think I might be the only person who sits on our dais who has experienced homelessness. [11:00:59 AM] And that said, I have some insights. And I also have family members. And I know for a fact not everybody wants to be housed. So that's a very difficult, very difficult conversation. But I don't want us to not have that conversation because folks are asking me. What about the happy hob os who are just fine being exactly where they are? What do we do with that population of people? And honestly I don't know how to respond to the question, if for no other reason that I want us to appear that we are so knee eve that we don't recognize there is a population of people who don't want housing. I don't want us to not say that. If for no other reason, it's disingenuous. So I do want to have that conversation at some point and then I also want to have the opportunity to say what [11:02:01 AM] do we do? And one population of folks, I don't think this is the appropriate -- I just want to make sure that flag it. >> Thank you, mayor pro tem. I just did some quick calculations. It looks like you're rate, Diana, was about 23%. I should never do on the dais, but I'm pretty sure it was 93%. I I was able to meet with new cadets to talk to some of the officers latter razz association doing some of the outreach and they shared conversation they were having with someone who was somewhat reluck at that particular time. It would take multiple conversations. I would be interested in hearing from you and others [11:03:02 AM] who were doing that outreach if the escalated time frame was also the change for some individuals who had concerns or fears or unanswered -- I know that you and everybody else involved attempts to do the best you could answering questions about what that next step would look like. But my guess is that for some individuals for those couple of individuals who did not go to housing, that may have been a component as well. I don't know if you have thoughts or want to speak to that at this point or that table for this fuller conversation. >> I appreciate both lines of thinking and comments of questions. I think that, yes, we need to be frank about the difficulty of engaging some folks who may not accept housing initially. But if necessity% of the folks on the street will, [11:04:03 AM] then obviously that's the bulk of our work. And then we do have certainly experience of other communities, but there's us digging deep beer for those individuals for whom it's very difficult to engage, whether that's because of -- for a variety of reasons. There are some communities where they targeted a particularly area and most of the people accepted shelter and went right away and then it took them a long time to get certain people into housing. And frankly, we do have some people who will be housed for a period and then fall out of housing, so we certainly need solutions and approaches for those individuals. I think it's both and. It let's make sure we are getting the resources and the system in place for the vast majority of folks who are ready. And then talking about what [11:05:07 AM] low barrier or resources can we utilize for people who are not at that time willing to come into housing. Safe havens for something that is mental health oriented shelter that our community has had in the past for people -- in this case particularly for people with severe mental illness where it is a shelter where they're not forced to come in -- there's no expectation in that point until they stabilize. We want the real data. We want to learn more as we move along and get better at this. I think that being focused on the real shortage of housing for those who are ready to come in and meeting that need and also get a bit of understanding of what you speak to, mayor pro tem, and I think importantly as someone with lived expertise both permanent and familial [11:06:08 AM] really what can we do for those individuals who for what are reason are expressing through word and/or deed resistance to coming into housing. >> Harper-madison: And if I may just to be real clear, I want to make certain that as we have these conversations that we talk about all of the layers, all the complexities. I think not talking about it. It doesn't mean it not true. So I just want to make sure that we do what we are able to do and bridging some divides. I think this conversation has become so political and that people are able to other one another based on us not really deeply going into some of the complexities of the conversation of that. Thank you for that. I are really appreciate it. >> Tovo: Yes, mayor Adler. >> Mayor Adler: Real quick, I will say that a lot of the people in the public ask the same question that mayor pro tem raised as you're trying to find people [11:07:10 AM] and I hear that question a lot. I really do appreciate the invitation for us to be able to address that because you hear that question a lot, as well as the question that you raised, councilmember tovo, about we do services better then are we attracting people to come to the city? And the last point I'll make is to Ms. Gray, boy, your little staff is doing an awful lot of stuff in a lot of different ways and I hope we come out of this budget session with you having a little bit more assistance to get the work done. >> I appreciate that, mayor. >> And so actually I think it might make best sense, Diana, if we talk next about prolodges since we've done that to some extent with heal and then move on to evaporationed encampments. >> And looking at my notes I think we've covered the high point of what we wanted to brief you on today, which is that we have now consolidated from a total of [11:08:12 AM] five prolodges at the maximum, which I think at which time we had around 350 bed capacity, to a single prolodge with 77 folks in it. And are continuing a pace at re-housing those folks. We have not taken new folks into prolodges for months now with the knowledge that we would need to demobilize. The rates of infection in our community have fluctuated quite a bit, but we are I think now moving toward placing these individuals and going ahead and demobilizing the final prolodge when that happens. >> Tovo: Additional questions about the prolodges? Okay. Designated encampments. I know we will have a fuller conversation or a greater conversation with our colleagues tomorrow because there are some important questions that really the [11:09:12 AM] council as a hole needs to provide guidance on that informs budget choices, but if you would kind of lead us through what would be helpful for the community to hear today and to engage in in terms of that conversation. >> And again, I think that these three conversations are all very much interwoven. I think we took the direction from the council in the context of the passage of proposition B on may 1st to take a seriously look at the possibility of designated encampments on city-owned property. So that from my perspective is in the context of a need for that question where can people go that is legal for them to be, safe for them to be. Always with I think the understanding that it's resource intensive. Probably not going to be able to create shelter for the 2,000 people that are on the streets every night, but that we needed to create [11:10:13 AM] some additional resources in general. And so over the past now three months we have been through a multi-step process through which -- and I do need to G give I think a lot of credit to the other departments, parks and recreation really carried the water on the site analysis in partnership with public works and other departments. So we've started with a list of 78 city owned properties. In fairly short order cut that list almost in half as council clarified that they did not wish any parkland, whether developed or undeveloped, to be considered. Those properties came off the list. We had provided for council some of the sort of general criteria that would make a site baseline feasible the size of the site, at least a couple of acres, access to utilities, at or near the site. And some access to [11:11:16 AM] transportation. So in an iterative process we came down last month to two sites. Manor road, 3511 manor road, which is currently owned by public works, but is being transferred into ahfc's ownership, and property on convict hill, also an ahfc property. So at that point one of the things we had discussed previously as further work that would need to be done was really looking at the entitlements at the impact of bond financing if in fact that were the case. Community engagement and understanding timeline. And in what we provided and didn't quite get to go through last week, I think the summary was for those two sites both would need to be rezoned to commercial and [11:12:16 AM] that we would likely need a site plan or a site plan exception. For the convict hill site plan an exception is not possible because it's in the Barton springs zone and then we would be looking at permitting. And then also informed by the vigorous input on the part of communities surrounding these sites that it was going to be very necessary if we wanted to move forward to do intentional, expensive and probably not brief community engagement around this because at this point we can't point to what this would look like, right? We don't have an example of what we are intending. And so the timeline we believe is at least six months. We had previously provided cost estimates we thought were quite conservative cost estimates to council and by conservative I mean probably on the low end of [11:13:18 AM] 1.3 million minimum to operate it for 50 people, and that I think to your comment about we are trying as the staff on board at hsd right now to be really strategy about where we are investing our effort, so that we have the greatest impact. And that if we were going to engage in that more intensive community engagement process, that really would take probably two full-time equivalent folks spending their time on it. And so I think the message that was able to sort of give briefly last Thursday was we are at a point now where I think we understand more about the process, what the costs and resources needed are to move forward on those two sites. I think I would seek more [11:14:18 AM] sort of clear council direction before asking my staff to come off of other projects. And really begin to dedicate a lot of time to it. So that conversation I think is very related to us having now we set up south bridge in the space of 30 days. We now believe we'll be able to have northbridge up and operational in 30 days. Looking for opportunities to move relatively quickly. We don't have endless city-owned hotels. Those are really the only two we have that are available in this way, but asking city goals of me and our division of what we want to get done and allowing us to come back to you with our considered opinion about how we can most quickly respond to the need in community to [11:15:19 AM] get some additional crisis capacity. I think final note there is just council, as you will recall, approved $4.2 million out of the arp funding for crisis response, if you will, the prop B response. We had developed that budget based on the assumption that we would be opening up another shelter of some sort in a leased facility because we now are going to use country inn, it won't be quite as expensive. And one of the things that we are looking at is potentially nailing down the amount of funds that might be available out of that $4.2 million. And issuing a request for interest, essentially an informal call for proposals from the community who may have an appropriate site for a designated encampment that's appropriately zoned already. Where people who are anxious [11:16:19 AM] to contribute to this effort could use some city match for their own resources, but the city is not necessarily paying for 100% of the operation of shelter and/or designated encampment. So we're still working through to understand what that might look like and how long it might take us, ensuring that we are within the good graces of the procurement. But generally speaking I think that is where I sit with the designated encampments. We can certainly move forward at council direction, but we believe that in terms not only of our overall work, but particularly narrowly around crisis capacity there may be ways that we can be successful more quickly. >> Tovo: Mayor pro tem. >> Harper-madison: Thank you, chair. [11:17:20 AM] Oh, man. Thank you, Ms. Gray. There are so many things that I'm just about to jump out of my seat because I'm so excited to hear that you're saying the things out loud, including we've had so many people make offers for private property, privately owned property, private dollars. They would like very much to be a part of us open to be a part of the solution. And I hope that we find a way to help facilitate their philanthropy, their altruism. How do we find the way forward? I've got more offers in my inbox than I know how to respond to, to be perfectly honest to you, so there's that. Then there's also something you said that really got me scratching my head a little bit. About designated encampments. I just wonder if we're never going to find ourselves in a [11:18:24 AM] position where any neighborhood, any community anywhere says okay, go for it, do it. In which case do we have an exit strategy of sorts? Maybe I'm not articulating that well, but I certainly want to know like we found ourselves, we started at 47 and then we got to two and now even those two are so highly contentious, I just -- maybe this is a tomorrow conversation, but at this point it's just, y'all, let's go keep it real. What are we doing here? Are we doing this or not doing this? And in this case I just have a lot of doubt that, as you well now, one of these is in my district, and my constituents are not happy [11:19:25 AM] about it. They don't want it. I could tell you all the reasons why they don't want it, but at the end of the day does that even matter? Are we ever going to find ourselves in a place where this is a strategy that works. And that said, I'm not one of the sponsors of that resolution. I don't know if what we need to do is just have a group of us get together and talk through. Like, well, I can appreciate what we tried to accomplish here which I supported, even -- not being a sponsor. I did support what I thought we were trying to accomplish. But I just don't know if we're ever going to get here. And I think not being straight up, I think at this point we should not have conversations where we're with our constituents and saying hey, I have concerns about this too. And my constituents are not happy about this manor road location and I have to listen to them. [11:20:29 AM] So I'm just worried that we're never going to get there as a strategy. >> Tovo: I do really think some of that confession is appropriate for tomorrow because it just needs to be a conversation we have with our full colleagues. I was the sponsor of that resolution. I can tell you because my constituents are right across the street from the manor road, my constituents were unhappy with it. We have got to, though, have a real conversation about, number one, where people will go, and two, where -- how we get some diversity in geographic location because my constituents are also very unhappy about the large encampment that was under 38th street and near airport. They were very unhappy about one of the very largest encampments in the city that was on Cesar Chavez and town hall. And so we have to have a real conversation about that too that the designated [11:21:30 AM] areas are in some areas of town and not areas and we have resources in certain areas of town and not areas. And whether they're designated encampments or whether they are emergency shelter, they need to be all over the city. And yes, we're going to hear concerns wherever they are. But we're also going to have a real conversation about the fact that there was an expectation set that there could be undesignated catching areas throughout the city and we now are trying to manage from there and trying to build back public support for what are really proven great methods of addressing the situation, which is through bridge shelter and permanent supportive housing, but we're really struggling in my opinion we're struggling to get the support of our community largely because of some of what's happened in the interim. So we have a lot of talking to do and I think some of that's really got to be with [11:22:30 AM] our other colleagues. We have to figure out what the path forward is. And it's upon us. In a couple of days people will be arrested and we've yet to -- I'm super pleased that the permanent supportive housing, the work Diana gray that you are doing and your staff are doing and supporting, identifying options for permanent supportive housing, for bridge shelter, for protective lodging as the public health intervention, but we know it's not enough. So what is the stopgap measure. Mayor? I think I saw your hand up. >> Mayor Adler: I agree with you that this is a conversation that we need to collectively be a part of and I'm hopeful that Diana and the city manager are active participants in this conversation as well so they can bring their professional expertise to bear. [11:23:34 AM] Diana, the -- Ms. Gray, we have organizations that are supportive services and they're over 90% successful in helping people stay off the streets for an indefinite period of time. We could also have sanctioned camping area and try and put the same services there. And I looked at other cities that have done that. It appears that when you do that and try the bring the same services to the people but in a sanctioned area as opposed to housing, but it's far less effective. I mean, down in the 20% range as opposed to the 95% range. Do I have those numbers right? >> So I'd like to I think come back to you on that, mayor. I think what you're asking is so the 90% effectiveness is usually about people who are actually placed into [11:24:34 AM] permanent housing, right? But the differential in effectiveness between a designated encampment and again the nature of a designated encampment, which is wildly on the part of the public is they don't know what we're talking about. Are we talking about a piece of land or providing supports to congregate shelter or non-congregate shelter. Our experience with prolodge as a model, lends itself to an understanding that non-congregate shelter it's way more space for an individual person, a bit more expensive per person, but our success in getting people housed out of that space was higher because people were stable. They had some privacy and if they were having -- I think that proximity to people with no privacy is [11:25:34 AM] incredibly stressful and particularly for people who have experienced trauma over time. And so I think does lend to some degrees in congregate shelter and also to turn major. We can come back to you on that. And again I think what I want to be clear is that the resolution did not ask staff to my read for recommendation about whether the city would ever fund and does it provide for analysis and looking at specific properties. What we are saying is of that pool and properties that the city owns, we did not find many sites that and to be suitable. And even those that were closest, it's still a time -- there's a time element there and I believe at least for many [11:26:35 AM] communities part of the attraction of a designated encampment is that you're not building a shelter. It can be done quickly. So that's why I say I think that one way for us to proceed is also to be open potentially putting out an rfi or figuring out a way forward for allowing people to bring personals to us or put together projects where the zoning may already be in place. >> Mayor Adler: So you're looking at ways to institute that and you were asked to take a look at it. I want to continue to ask a couple more questions that to me hope we can discuss together as a group but are important questions I think for me to be able to evaluate the strategy. I really appreciate the resolution that councilmember tovo got that I think really focused us -- a lot of people in community that are asking for this solution and I think it's really important that we talk through it and decide whether we do it or how we do it or where we do it or [11:27:36 AM] how much money we put against it if we're doing it because there are forced choices involved in it. We can't do everything. We can't do everything all at once. We're going to have to make choices. So my questions go to the kind of information that's important for me to be able to evaluate how to make those relative choices. So one thing that we -- it's better to have somebody in a camping area of some sort or a sanctioned camp area or some kind of even congregate living than to be living in the woods and the streams depending on what kind of resources that you bring. You could bring security into that place, you could bring in bathrooms or port-a-potties into that place. You could bring lighting into that place. You could bring in those things. And the more things you bring in obviously the more expenses there is, the more dollars you're investing in that. [11:28:36 AM] And the ultimate question for the community is do we put the dollars there? Do we put them somewhere else or some combination thereof. So when I look at this and evaluate and I say it's better for a person to be at one of these places and being told you can't be here and you have to figure out what you do and as it was two years ago when we just had the ordinance, at the same time it's not a really efficient way to spend money if what you're looking for is to get people out of homelessness if you're trying to get them to a home. If you're trying to do a long-term solution. So it helps more with the interim issue, but doesn't help as much or as efficiently or cost effectively or successfully as investing in rapid housing or bridge housing as you're doing with those instances or permanent supportive housing. We've had other cities that we could look at to see what the experience is I think, [11:29:36 AM] right? So I think Portland is one. I was reading an evaluation of San Francisco in a news article and it just came out the other day where because the community was asking for immediate fixes they invested a lot of money in kind of sanctioned camping areas, but it didn't move people out. So the people that went in there, while it was intended to be temporary, tear finding it really hard to keep them temporary. So at the end of the year so many people were still there or they had left to go back to the woods or the stream. But it began to be a situation where you had to create more and more of this kind of sanctioned camp area because people weren't being pulled out of these things into the other spaces. They didn't have money to create together spaces because they were spending all their money on dealing with the immediacy of the issue. And so part of the challenge I think we have as a [11:30:38 AM] community is then we have an ordinance in place, as councilmember Fuentes points out, we have a city ordinance and a state law that will come into play. How much money do we spend on answering the immediacy of the question verse spending the money in a way that two years from now, three years from now, five years from now, will actually have led to us getting more and more people off our streets to be able to reach equilibrium. I would imagine that we're not going to have people arrested only because the experience we had two years ago is because we weren't arresting people, but people were being told they couldn't be here and they would move and where would they move to? They were susceptible because they moved again. But the public said that it wanted to move back to that place with those ordinances because it didn't want to have the camping. I think they wanted us then to backfill that and provide places for people which is [11:31:39 AM] where we are, but there is no direction on do we spend our money on short-term interim kind of things that don't ultimately take people off the street, get people into better places or do we invest the money in things that would actually over two, three, four, five-year period of time actually decrease the number of people that are experiencing homelessness and get us back to equilibrium. Does this debate involve or does this discussion involve those kind of choices? >> Tovo: Mayor, if I could just say of course it does. And you know the couple of times we've talked about it on council it continues to be phrased in that way. Like do we want to invest in putting restrooms on a piece of land for people to come camp or do we want to invest in permanent supportive housing? Of course if it's phrased that way we're all going to choose the latter. I'm not sure that that's really -- that that's really [11:32:40 AM] this. But I guess I would suggest since this does involve budget and how we're spending our money that we table those questions for tomorrow to have with our colleagues about what the right balance is. I do think there are questions -- I have some very factual questions to ask about some of the estimates we've got bank with regard to the sanctioned encampment estimates, but I want to just -- let's think about the questions that the mayor raised and think about whether this is the venue or tomorrow is. Vice-chair Fuentes I know you have to leave and I wanted to offer you the opportunity to ask a couple of quick questions before you depart. >> Fuentes: Thank you, chair tovo. I'll reserve my thoughts and comments for tomorrow's discussions, and the question -- I wanted to point out that if we do go down the rfi route I would like to see if we can also identify funding to have as you suggested, Ms. Gray, to have ftes available to do [11:33:42 AM] that community engagement because that is definitely a need that we have whether the city has a designated encampment site or if it comes forward through the public. We need to make sure that we're actively building that in. So I do have to hop a thank you all for this meeting. Thank you, chair tovo for this meeting. And I look forward to our conversation tomorrow. >> Tovo: Thank you, vice-chair. Glad you had an opportunity to comment. Mayor, did you want to pick up with your question for Diana? >> Mayor Adler: It's not so much a truism because I think we have to make a budget choice but I do want to know whether or not that was a forced choice. My sense is that we need to do that to some degree and it's a question of finding to what degree do we do it. I'm concerned, for example, about women having a choice to just go back to the woods [11:34:45 AM] and the streams and I think there's an exigency that exists that I would like to now how if we are going to invest more money on the long-term solution how we deal with that. I think there is also the question that you raised, councilmember tovo, with respect to the undesignated camping areas that are very much also camping areas and we just don't own up to them being that way, but then there are ways that we should be better managing those shared public spaces in this interim period of time while we're moving people out. But I do think we have to enforce the ordinance that was passed because that's what the public said to do. So on these forced choices I'm looking for more professional direction from Diana and from the manager with respect to learned experiences we have in other places and how we balance short-term versus longer [11:35:47 AM] term and what the advice are. But councilmember tovo, if you want for me to wait until tomorrow to ask the question, I can do that. >> Tovo: Diana, your preference I think it does -- I think we need to have the conversation again so I think we can -- why don't you share with us what your thoughts are, but I do want to ask our colleagues to join us in that conversation tomorrow. >> And come tomorrow I can come with perhaps some more concrete thoughts around numbers, etcetera. What I would say is that we think about creating crisis capacity, that is matched by our ability to make permanent housing placements. So just as an example we're opening up northbridge. We're going to use it for heal. We don't know in the future [11:36:47 AM] if it's for heal only or for a general population that might be referred as more vulnerable off the street. But for something like heal where we say O if our average getting folks into shelter, 'rolled in a program and housed conservatively is three months, right, that's how long it takes us, and we're only going to use the facility for heal, then we should have capacity to permanently rehouse four times the capacity of that shelter because -- let me go back to south bridge because it is for heal and it's easier math. It 75 rooms. If we know that resources available we can move somewhere from arrival to housing in three months, then we want to make sure the resources are available so we do that like clockwork and hopefully we get faster. So we should have rapid re-housing and permanent [11:37:49 AM] re-housing resources for 300 people at least, right, to make best use of that facility. So that it is truly shelter. Bridge shelter, right? So I think that there are conversations to be had both about immediacy, you know, danger to health and safety of individuals who may be going back into the woods or certainly at risk of citation. And -- but also that we're talking about a system that is right sized. So I agree that it is both a forced choice and it is not an either/or. We can and will do both, but it is a relative investment strategy. >> Mayor Adler: This is the first time I heard the right sized element of that. Chair, those are questions? >> Tovo: Thank you, mayor. [11:38:49 AM] I think that's helpful. And a lot of this -- because a lot of this really depends on what those costs are, I want to just focus in a little bit on them. So we -- we've gotten a couple of memos with costs and one of them is July 1st and then the other is may 14th. And so I want to understand them because it seems like such a reasonable cost, five to $10,000 for the pallet shelters. Obviously that doesn't include the infrastructure that would be in place to provide restrooms and some kind of meal facilitation. Entitlements has come up a couple of times. Can you tell us exactly what zoning is required to do either one of those, either the temporary pallet structure type things or the tents? >> So cs zoning is my [11:39:50 AM] understanding and poor Jerry rusthoven as you know is biting his nails when he hears me talking about zoning when he's not present, but I'll go ahead and do it. So commercial services, and that -- and my understanding is that that can be found in some of the mixed use zoning categories as well, right, as long as it has a commercial use. And it is within that zoning that campo ground is an -- that campground is an allowable use so it has to be commercial at present. >> Tovo: Clearly our park lands are clearly not commercial. And something -- >> There may have been another route -- there may have been another route should we have utilized the parklands or the public zoning but those were not -- I believe that was a potential for a temporary use permit. I would need Jerry I think [11:40:53 AM] to clarify that in looking at the remaining. But in my understanding is that in the code currently the one place where clearly camping is allowed is in commercial services and therefore campground is is an allowable use. There are some other places that get a little bit gray about whether it's shelter or transitional housing, etcetera, but again, for camping itself commercial services. And it seemed like that was certainly the most straightforward in any scenario. We do not currently have -- we offer temporary use permits for other types of activities in our code but a campground is not one of them. So if you wish to not have to be tied to that zoning itself, but for there to be a temporary use, that use [11:41:54 AM] would require a use to the land development code, which has its own complexities and process. >> Tovo: Thank you. I would be interested and maybe I'll circle around to Jerry to maybe better understand that. So mayor, I have some really specific questions about some of the different dollar figures. Can you give us a sense of like what the time -- how do you envision tomorrow's conversation? What of this should -- with regard to encampments in particular, what do you see are council discussing tomorrow? Is it primarily these kind of high level questions and the relative expenditures or do you think there will be time to get into the nitty-gritty details about what costs would be associated with any one of these? >> I hope we could get more into the nitty-gritty on this issue than probably any [11:42:54 AM] of the other issues that are coming up. Because of the ordinance that goes into effect, the state law that goes into effect in the last stage of the ordinance. So I think this is really our opportunity to elevate these issues for community to be able to see and hear in terms of what it's doing. And as you know, you and I both have been trying to get this conversation going now for a month and a half. I think -- I think this is the shot to lay it all out to the community and my hope is that we lay out enough for there to be a knowledgeable and educated community conversation about this issue as we move through August. >> And that is tomorrow. Okay. Then I think I would suggest that maybe we could just raise -- kind of use this remaining time because I know you have a hard stop here in one minute. And I know mayor pro tem is [11:43:58 AM] off the dais, but coming right back. Are there any other questions -- once you leave I can share some of what I see as questions that I would like to take up tomorrow. >> Mayor Adler: I have a few more minutes. Why don't you go ahead and -- >> Tovo: Are you sure? >> Mayor Adler: Lay out your questions. >> Tovo: I would like to drill down into the cost. When it came up in work session I asked you to think about which of the costs in the may memo were site by site and which were serviced that extend across. And I'm not sure that our most recent memo kind of addressed that. I am interested to know because it matter for the reasons getting back to the mayor's question about where are our best -- as I'm summarizing it, this isn't exactly what I hear but when you ask that question what are our best investments. For me that other depends on some of the other elements which is what is the capacity in the congregate [11:44:58 AM] shelters. And the answer tomorrow may be different than the answer two weeks ago, but kind of where are we -- >> Absolutely correct. >> Tovo: I was struck by the cost for parking. So there's a bit in the more repeat memo about city owned safe parking sites and the estimated cost of parking site of 80,000 just seemed extraordinary to me so that's another area I would like to drill down on tomorrow. >> Like where are those costs falling? If we have the parking lots, I know Walmart and other stores have created these safe parking areas so it must be the fees that we're talking about that are creating that need for security and for whatnot, but not amenities because restrooms are an amenity, they're a basic need, but if you could help us understand kind of the estimates there. Those are the questions I have at this time, but those [11:46:00 AM] are the high level questions that help me to understand the first question of how much is our real investment in those encampments? >> I appreciate that, chair, particularly because what we will do is ask pard and asd and [indiscernible] To be present to answer some of those more detailed questions as they come up. If there are other questions around whether it's around designated encampments or any sort of the more technical questions about anything that we're doing, any head's up would be useful so we have the resources available to answer your questions. Because as well demonstrated just a moment ago I'm probably not your pest person on zoom. >> Tovo: I want for stay web page your comfort level. One last question but it's not really for public session. I know that many of our offices probably forwarded to you ideas we were getting from members of the community about different [11:47:00 AM] sites. It would be nice to have somebody circle around back to signed of give us the disposition of those. So I think that's not a conversation that everybody needs to be involved with, but I think if it was director Mcneeley who was providing leading that up if she could reach out to d1 or d9 and say we went through these sites and they won't work for these reasons or we're pursuing -- it would be nice to have that follow-up. >> Okay, thank you. >> Tovo: Mayor, do you have additional things for tomorrow? >> Mayor Adler: I'm now really intrigued by this right sizing the emergency response element so that it fit within the scale of -- that the goal of housing 3,000 people in three years needs a corresponding element of emergency response element to it. So knowing what that size was. Because it's such a big question here and trying to get a handle on what we'll do and not do. That might be an actual way [11:48:04 AM] for the council and community, staff, providers, everyone to really align everybody's vision of what it is that happens, recognizing that if we did something like that there are going to be some people that we're just not able to provide places for now any more than we could two years ago or four years ago or 10 years ago. Can we just have a moral obligation I think as this entire council feels and I know our staff to get through this just as quickly as we can at a scale necessary to actually take care of everybody in our community. So that's all. Thank you, chair. >> Yeah, thank you. Good considerations. Mayor pro tem, anything else? I think you were probably back when we kind of talked about what we're doing here, which is just to highlight other questions that we want to address tomorrow in the encampment conversation. >> Absolutely. And I appreciate that. Thank you very much. I think I would just concur with some of the questions [11:49:04 AM] that have been expressed and then I've already expressed some of my primary concerns. If I need to highlight them again, a really deep dive into our conversation around mental health and wellness and resources surrounding that. I think an additional measure there that I know it will have to be a state level conversation and maybe even beyond that, but our ability to admit people, people who will never ever be able to take care of themselves. I know for some folks there are two things that really, you know, send them to a dark place we'll call it when it comes to unsheltered homelessness. It's the archetype of the unpredictable, unreliable, volatile person experiencing deep, deep mental health crisis. [11:50:05 AM] I just -- I mean, it's in your district. That's one of the ones I'm just like what are we doing, y'all? If we don't have a place where people can go and if we don't as a community have an opportunity to really dig deep into recognizing when there are folks who just won't ever be able to take care of themselves. I know there's that and then there's the [indiscernible]. Bob nix is helping me work on something right now if not for something I have opportunity by way of being married to a firefighter, I know how often they make calls to border houses, houses full of trash that are straight up kindling that set their houses on fire, the houses adjacent to them on fire that put our first responders in serious, severe danger. But that would be the second thing that I think really concerns, rightfully [11:51:05 AM] concerns citizens in our community, but I would like to be able to expand on the conversation and so we're not just saying because you're unhoused and your trash is visible but housed and your house is invisible until of course we put our first responders at risk because they have to put that fire out. And you're going to burp your neighbor's house down. I would like very much to -- I look forward to our opportunities to expand on these conversations to make them more whole, more full, more less otherring. Yes, I look forward to tomorrow. Thank you. Chair. I appreciate what a tight meeting you've conducted. You don't play any games. Thank you. [Laughter]. >> Tovo: Well, and with that I think we probably do need to wrap. I know we all have different commitments and we're all working on budget and Diana, thank you. Acm hayden-howard, thank you [11:52:06 AM] for being on this call. Director Sturrup, I know you all are working hard on implementing the solutions this week as well as on budget and probably lots of other things in addition. So thank you all and thank you, colleagues. We'll see you tomorrow. Continue the conversation. >> Mayor Adler: Thank you.