Housing and Planning Committee (HPC) Special Called meeting Transcript – 5/22/2024 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 5/22/2024 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 5/22/2024 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. [1:05:14 PM] >> And get started. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us here today at the special called Austin city council public health committee meeting. My name is Vanessa Fuentes. I'm proud to chair our public health committee. I'm joined today by vice chair Jose Velasquez, our council members, Ryan alter and council member zo qadri and councilmember Allison alter is joining us virtually. It is exactly 100 and 5 P.M. On Wednesday, may 22nd, and we are in city council chambers and we're thrilled to have our first ever joint committee alongside our housing committee and as soon as we reach quorum on, the housing committee will convene the housing committee. But for right now, we're going to proceed forward with our public health committee meeting portion. So today, we have a fantastic agenda centered around our homelessness response system. Specifically, we're doing a focus on rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing. Both the city and county have prioritized federal [1:06:14 PM] county have prioritized federal funding dollars through the American rescue plan act investments to support these housing programs over a number of years. So today's discussion is really going to hone in on how those investments and supports have been going. And where are our gaps, and what more can we and should we be doing. So to kick us off, we'll start with public communications . Then we'll move on to approving the April meeting. Minutes we'll have a discussion and possible action items on item number four, which is a briefing on permanent supportive housing capacity and the Travis county supportive housing initiative pipeline, followed by a number of item five, a briefing on the city's rapid rehousing program by our homelessness strategy office. Then these items will be taken up as a joint presentation following the briefings. We will the committee will then move into item number two with possible action regarding ongoing and future supportive, permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing projects and service funding, including collaboration with Travis county. Finally, we'll then head [1:07:15 PM] county. Finally, we'll then head into item number three, which is a discussion and possible action on the status and timeline of the amendments to the land development code. Are there any questions on the agenda for today's meeting? Nope. Seeing none. Let's get started. We will welcome speakers from the community. May the clerk's office please start us off with the first speaker. >> Good afternoon, chair, I would like to ask your quorum for your consideration to can take up all public comments from both, some list we have the question we have. >> We're not able to convene the housing committee meeting just yet because we've not reached on on housing. Okay. So are we able to we can do your the list of people that have signed up on your list on the public health side. >> Yes. Thank you. Okay so the first, speaker for the public health committee would be Sharonda Robinson. If you are here speakers, you will have three minutes, Sharonda [1:08:16 PM] three minutes, Sharonda Robinson, if you are here for the next speaker will be Paulette Cilenti. Paulette Chennault. >> This memo okay to them? Okay. We'll give it to her. >> Good afternoon. My name is Paulette Soltani, and I'm the co-director of vocal Texas and a resident of district nine. Vocal Texas is a grassroots organization we organize to end homelessness. The war on drugs, mass incarceration, and AIDS. I'd like to start by thanking the members of the committees for this opportunity to testify, and thanking chair Fuentes for coordinating this important meeting, as well as chair harper-madison. We're so grateful that this meeting is happening today. We launched our campaign to fix rapid rehousing and wind housing for the poor. In April, our leaders led a powerful survey project that you'll hear about today, where we talked to dozens of people in [1:09:16 PM] we talked to dozens of people in the rapid rehousing program about their experiences. We held a powerful town hall with nearly 100 people in attendance, including unhoused austinites and service providers, about rapid rehousing. Thank you, Sam qadri, for coming. And, council member Fuentes and alter for joining us as well. We knew that bringing service providers into this conversation was a critical piece of figuring out what the challenges are and how to improve it. Here in Austin, about half of the property, housing, recipients are people who are chronically homeless. Upon entry into the program that means that we're placing people into rapid rehousing who are on fixed incomes, people who have disabilities and who may never work and be able to take over private market rent. The program isn't working. The program was intended to be for people who who could work, would eventually take over their private market rents, and that's just not how we're utilizing it in Austin. So how did we get here? In 2021, Austin approved a plan to invest over $40 million of arpa funds into the program. We followed [1:10:17 PM] into the program. We followed hud guidelines, guidelines that said that we could put we could use rapid rehousing as a bridge to permanent supportive housing. Hud emphasized that in order to make this work, we needed to have enough permanent supportive housing units on the other side. That's not what's happened in Austin. So we have a lot of people that are now languishing in rapid rehousing without an exit path. And so that's essentially what our campaign is here to talk about today. We have talked to so many people across the community that are are in support of trying to fix the problems that are there are so many problems in the rapid rehousing program, but specifically, we want to extend the amount of time that people have in this program. Most people are getting 12 months of assistance or less. We need to ensure that people are getting 24 months at least, because that's what the standards and best practices say. And that's also what our homeless strategy office has, has also said that they're trying to align our programs to do. And so we're [1:11:18 PM] programs to do. And so we're calling for 24 months for people in the program. We're also calling to identify the folks who qualify for psh. And are in rapid rehousing currently to build kind of a bridge and ensure that those folks get into the housing that they're qualified to be in. Today, we're going to you're going to be hearing from rapid rehousing recipients about their experiences in the program. You'll hear from service providers about the challenges that they face with the program and the last thing I'll say is the memo that we delivered that you'll have, details, some of the recommendations that we're calling for in more detail, but that that memo is signed by eight service providers, it's we're collecting sign ons for it on a rolling basis. And we just started to collect sign ons on on Monday. So there's a lot of support for this. >> Thank you. Speaker. The next speaker is, Alfredo Reyes. Alfredo Reyes, if you're here, please come to the mic next speaker will come down would be [1:12:19 PM] speaker will come down would be Vernon Jarman. >> Hello. >> My name is Alfredo Reyes. I'm a leader of local Texas, many vocal Texas members and leaders have rapid rehousing, including myself. I was homeless for seven and a half years, sleeping underneath a bridge. I originally got coordinated assessment in jail when I was told that I would qualify for permanent, supportive housing because I have a bone cancer and I'm also a veteran. Me and my partner, apply separately for housing, but it feels like we got put together for convenience sake. We were told it was a lot less paperwork. My partner is going to say more about my experience, but I would just say it was very confusing. Singh process. And it took over a year to get housed. I'm not the only one who has been struggling with rapid rehousing. I'm here to tell you about the survey project. That vocal Texas leaders completed in March. For months, we were taking, talking about the challenges people were facing with rapid rehousing. So [1:13:22 PM] facing with rapid rehousing. So we decided to take to do surveys with people and gather more data. We were searching for numbers, and we wanted to hear directly from people about their experience with rapid rehousing and the problems people were facing, including myself. So for three weeks, vocal Texas leaders spoke to dozens of people and service providers, library on the streets and housing development. And we went to different locations. And there's all the same story. Different people have the same problem with rapid rehousing, and so did I. Here are some of the feedback we heard. The majority of the people were surveyed, received rapid rehousing for less than a year and then they were expected to take over their full market rate, of the rent, often 1200, 1500. We were, where people were expected to take over the rent and over a portion of the rent. This led to people being kicked out of the program and being evicted. Many people reported being denied housing and struggling to find housing due to conviction histories. Many other people mentioned challenges due to family needs, [1:14:23 PM] challenges due to family needs, child support payments, lack of access and transportation, mental and physical health needs , lack of services and case management and discrimination. We published some of these stories from our survey project and dropped them off. At your offices. Today, we're asking you to take to make recommendation to city council and the mayor to fix rapid rehousing and extend to 24 months with a bridge or an extension for permanent housing. No one should be on house and going through the struggles we have and, and from my own experience, I must say one thing it's very tough out there, it's not easy being homeless and not having not knowing what's going to happen next. And I just I'm asking, please, please pass this . Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Vernon Jarman. I am a leader with vocal Texas. I'm here fighting for housing and housing. Justice in 2023, I got [1:15:23 PM] housing. Justice in 2023, I got a house with rapid rehousing for one year after I was homeless for many years when I first moved into my apartment with rapid rehousing, I had no idea the program was temporarily. I was so excited to get off the street. I would have signed anything, and I would also put into an apartment that had lots of problem. I had report issued with my ac pest control, broken windows, and a leak in my bathroom. But none of these issues were ever resolved. I have a disability, I'm on a fixed income and I could not work. I don't even know. I was expected to take over the rent after a certain amount of time. Eventually, when my program assistant was adjusted without me knowing, I was told I had to pay back rent, even though the program gave me paperwork saying my rent was covered. I met with vocal Texas before this and all this happened, so we advocated together and got my provider to agree to cover my rent that was owed. As my lease was ending and my rapid rehousing was running [1:16:25 PM] my rapid rehousing was running out, I didn't know what I was going to do. I was stressed out every day. The day before my lease ended and the program ran out. Wu was still trying to get information about my housing and where I would end up. I thought I would have to pack my bags up, pack my bags up, and sleep back out there on the streets again. I was lucky because the week my lease ended, I got a notice that I had housing choice voucher and was moving to my new apartment. But I have, but I don't have a lot of friends, right? Right now I have a lot of friends right now in rapid rehousing, and they have no idea what's going to come next. No one should end up back on the street if they have if they have rapid rehousing, too many programs ain't working. And we need these programs. Programs to work. Don't do us like Charlie brown. Let us kick the football. Thank you, thank you. >> Speaker. The next speaker is dj Cortez. >> Hello, council members, my [1:17:35 PM] >> Hello, council members, my name is dj Cortez. I am a vocal. I'm a leader at vocal Texas and work at Texas harm reduction alliance. I have six years of lived experience of being homeless after after taking the coordinated assessment, and waiting for a year and a few months, I got a rapid rehousing rapid rehousing voucher within Denver's. As my partner stated, we applied separately for housing, but it feels like we got put together for, together for, for their inconvenience. After experienced with the voucher. It was tough. We moved in in February and we have a year with the program, the loops and dead ends. I went through to cause caused me to want to just give up on the so-called help that the city was offering us and the lack of resources that my case manager had was, our case manager had for us to be successful was upsetting. For example, they wanted us to recover our ids social security cards and birth certificates in just two weeks, which was impossible for us to accomplish. They gave us a list of places to apply, and they all denied us for one, our credit score and [1:18:35 PM] for one, our credit score and criminal history. We Qureshi many places, wanted proof of income and we did not. And why did our case manager send us to these places just for us to get denied? It was frustrating and a depressing experience. They had us apply for apartments that we couldn't afford. Once the voucher ended. Our current rent is 1495 and is going up $500 next year. Once we got the apartment, we noticed that there was no fridge or washer and dryer as it was shown in the website that we had been looking at. There was a leak in the roof and there was poor insulation, which causes our ac to be constantly running. And in Denver still hasn't paid our first electric bill. So now that we are housed, I'm still stressed on how I'll be affording this rent. Even though I have a full time job. It's already may and we only have eight months left. Our experience and the experience of so many others is why we are calling for this change in rapid rehousing. Everyone should at least get 24 months and rent for rental assistance. People who need more supportive services [1:19:38 PM] need more supportive services should get them. We need you. We need you to fund more permanent housing. Please support our recommendation and pass the motion today to fix rapid rehousing and invest in permanent supportive housing. Thank you. >> We have one more speaker for the public health committee, and that's Sharonda Robinson. If you are here, please come to the mic. You have three minutes. >> Good afternoon. Thank you so much for your commitment to supporting our homeless response system. And I'm here representing finding home at. There are a couple of folks as well, Lynn Meredith is here Robert Ochoa. And then David gray supports the work that we do at finding home atx, my comments are more broad. It's about the system, and rapid rehousing is a part of that system, the work that we've been doing over the last couple of [1:20:39 PM] doing over the last couple of years is really to push forward on the goals that we set as a community, to rehouse and to build permanent supportive housing. So the issue that's in front of you today is an integral part of that system. And how we ensure that people experiencing homelessness are moved from that experience of homelessness into services and housing. More quickly than they are today. We're hearing the stories about people who are experiencing long waits and lack of coordinated services, and so as a community, the collaboration is important. And that's one of the things that I think is really critical as we continue to move the community's plan forward, is that we need to see greater collaboration from this subcommittee, from city staff, from our community leaders, to really move the system forward. So the funding is equally as important. And [1:21:40 PM] is equally as important. And that's the issue that's in front of us today is how do we fund and full rapid rehousing. And as well as the funding, it is the collaboration. It is the spirit of humankind that makes a difference. And then how we apply the resources. And so I just want to thank you for continuing to put this on the forefront of the agenda for what makes our community better, what makes our community great, and ask you to continue to lean in with us at finding home atx to ensure that our system is responsive to the needs of our community. Thank you. >> Thank you. Juanita. I do believe that we'll have a motion . >> So since I know we have some individuals who have signed up to testify for the housing committee, what I'd like to do is just make a motion to allow those individuals to as if they were signed up for the public health committee. So whatever rules we need to waive to let them be signed up for that. [1:22:40 PM] them be signed up for that. That's my motion. >> Thank you. Seconded by councilmember qadri. No objections. All right. We'll move forward. >> Thank you, madam chair. So the speakers for the housing and planning committee, are Barbara Elmore, if you are here, please come to the mic and then we'll have Darrell Carroll, I'm sorry, David Carroll. And then Walter morrow, if you are here in the in the audience, please come to the mic. Thank you. >> Hello. I'm confused. Are some of you on the housing committee? Are I? >> Yes. Yes. Okay, council member Brian Walter, councilmember qadri are both on the housing committee. Okay and I'm sorry for my ignorance, but does the housing committee deal with rental housing and the hakka operation? The housing authority? Okay, I have a [1:23:40 PM] authority? Okay, I have a problem. But it's not just my problem. I think it affects maybe hundreds of people every month. And it'd be a different group of people every month. Imagine you find a apartment in Allston that you like, and normally you sign the lease and you pay the first rent and a deposit, which is to be refunded when you move out. Now imagine that you pay the required rent up front, but you tell the landlord, oh, I'll just wait 30 days or 40 days or 50 days or whatever, however long it takes to pay you the deposit, you would just, you know, of course they wouldn't agree to that. But so you go ahead and you pay the rent and you pay the required deposit. Now when the lease is almost up, you give written notice that you're moving out. In my case, I gave two months notice instead of just one. You leave the apartment in immaculate condition, no dirt, no trash, no furniture or other [1:24:40 PM] no trash, no furniture or other belongings left behind and you leave it in. Perfect move in condition for the next tenant. And that's verified by photographs taken at the walkthrough inspection. And by the way, the person who did the walkthrough told me how great the apartment looked several times. Why then would I have to wait as of today, 53 days and who knows how much longer to receive my deposit refund? 31 days in April and so far 22 days in may. That I've waited and I have. I waited after the first month and called, and then I had to visit and I never got the refund. So my question is why does the city through its, housing authority, allow this to happen? Not just to me, but I'm sure to many others. And how can landlords keep the deposits for so long after a person moves out , if you just imagine the number [1:25:43 PM] , if you just imagine the number of people that move out every month, and if it happens to just a few hundred a month, that's a whole new set of people every month with this problem. And if a tenant has been responsible and has cared well for the property, shouldn't the deposit be refunded promptly? So I'm just asking you whether this is a practice that's justified. And if it happens regularly. I as I said, I waited 30 days, then I called and then I visited my previous landlord and still no refund. >> Thank you. And Amelia, if my team would you mind following? Can I have my team follow up with you to see if we can connect you to the right? Please do there at the housing authority. >> I didn't want to name this company, but I think they've done this to other people too. >> Thank you. Sorry to hear. Thank you. >> Next speaker is David Carroll. [1:26:43 PM] Carroll. >> Wonderful. >> And as Mr. Carroll is making his way, to the mic, we are this is a special call joint committee meeting. And so I'm very honored to be here alongside my colleagues on the housing committee, the vice chair, Brian alter, will be chairing this committee, and we have the chair, Katherine brie. Natasha harper-madison joining us virtually. So, councilmember Ryan alter, if you can convene the housing. >> Thank you very much. We'd love to do that. So, I would like to call to order the housing and planning committee here at 127. We are at Austin city hall. And with that, we can continue our testimony. >> Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. My name is David Carroll and I'm here today on behalf of aia Austin and Austin housing coalition to speak with you about the city's affordability impact statement process. In 2007, city council adopted the affordability impact statement ordinance to better understand the unintended [1:27:45 PM] understand the unintended consequences that city regulations have on housing affordability. Unfortunately, however, for the last 17 years, the city has not complied with this ordinance. The ordinance reads as follows a city department may not propose a change to an ordinance, a rule, or a process that impacts affordable housing unless the city's neighborhood, housing and community development department has prepared an affordability impact statement for the proposed regulation before the initiation of external stakeholder discussion, many cases, the affordability impact statement has not even been prepared, but often what we see is it has been prepared, but it's only issued as backup to a planning commission meeting or a council meeting, leaving no opportunity for stakeholders to have the dialog as the ordinance , requires, additionally, it [1:28:47 PM] , requires, additionally, it says an affordability impact statement is not required for council adoption of annexations, budgets or budget amendments except for those that increase development fees, that impact housing affordability, that are not otherwise waived. Once again, the city has not been following this part of the ordinance. The Austin energy power pole setback, rule change, the downtown density bonus fee and lieu recalibration, and the expedited plan review program are just a few of many examples of changes that have violated this ordinance. So I'm here today to respectfully request that this committee and city council direct the city manager and city staff to follow this ordinance. It's a very important that we understand the consequences of the rules that [1:29:49 PM] consequences of the rules that we're changing for the city of Austin. Thank you. >> I'm Walter moreau, the director at foundation communities, I had a health committee update and, something that's really developed in the last 60 days, foundation communities, we do income taxes for families, and we help people get health insurance. And we have a federal grant to be a navigator, during covid, if you had medicaid or chip, deadlines were extended, but those have started to come to an end. And CMS, the federal agency, has started to send to us the names of people who are disenrolled in January, that was hundreds of people and then thousands of people, 5000, 12,000. Over the last couple of months, it has grown to 67,000 individuals that have been dropped from medicaid and chip. Often they don't find out that they don't have coverage until they go to the doctor and they realize and they don't have coverage, we are [1:30:49 PM] don't have coverage, we are we've got 15 volunteers working a boiler room calling folks. We're the only agency in town that has, the personal information shared by the federal agency. We've gotten through about 20% of the 67,000 we've enrolled about a thousand people in the marketplace. We've got an eight month deadline at the end of the year. This, opportunity to get marketplace coverage goes away. I wanted to bring this especially to your attention because it's budget time, we're cobbling together the resources to, over the next eight months to do the best we can with this 67,000 name list. Tax help and health insurance help was not specifically in the budget last year, even though it's something we've depended on for 15 years. The city has made a public investment in this work because of the economic development impact. We do over $40 million worth of refunds and health tax credits for lower income families, so I wanted to update you about disenrollment [1:31:51 PM] update you about disenrollment and what's happening because that's a very quiet sort of crisis in the community. But also specifically ask you to find funding. We've been depending on about $300,000 a year as an investment from the city in tax help and health insurance, something that every major city in Texas invests in. So I'm hopeful that you'll be able to direct city manager and find that, funding in the budget to renew that support. Thank you . >> And that is that is all your speakers for public comment for both the public health committee and housing and planning. Thank you. >> Okay, colleagues, we'll now move on to approval of the meeting minutes for item number one. Can I get a motion and a second to approve the April 3rd meeting minutes as presented. Motion by vice chair Velasquez, seconded by councilmember qadri. Is there any objection to approving the April meeting? Minutes for the public health committee? Seeing none, those stand approved. Do we have any [1:32:51 PM] stand approved. Do we have any for. >> Yes, that'd be great. And I'd like to do the same. So, I'd like a motion to approve the minutes of the April 23rd, 2020 for housing and planning committee. I have a motion by council member qadri, seconded by chair harper-madison, anyone opposed? All right. The minutes are approved. >> Thank you. We'll now move on to receive a briefing on permanent supportive housing capacity in the Travis county supportive housing initiative pipeline and on the city's rapid rehousing program by the homelessness strategy office. These are items number four and five. I would like to welcome David gray, our chief homelessness strategy officer, and Jamie may with our housing and planning department. Both representing the city of Austin. And then we'll also have joining us today, Pilar Sanchez, the head of the Travis county health and human services division, and Nathan Fernandez for this joint briefing. And, and I just want to welcome I think we have several, provider representatives in the audience today, as well as many [1:33:52 PM] today, as well as many collaborative partners, including vocal Texas. Thank you all so much for being here today for this important discussion. >> Great. Thank you, madam chair. And thank you, council members, for inviting us to provide an update today on the work that the city and the county are doing in collaboration Ann to enhance housing opportunities for our community, especially our residents who are experiencing homelessness. As the presentation comes up on the screen, I just want to reintroduce the panel that we have that will be facilitating today's presentation, I'm David gray, the homeless strategy officer for the city I'm joined by to my right, Jamie may, who is our housing and community development officer. To his right is Pilar Sanchez from the county. She's the Travis county executive for health and human services. And to Paula's right is Nathan Fernandez, the senior planner, with the Travis county health and human services. And I think it's exciting that we're all doing this presentation together, because I think it's a demonstration of how the city and the county are working [1:34:53 PM] and the county are working across our jurisdictions to deliver these projects and these services for our residents. If we go to the next slide, just a quick agenda for today, several of the committee members had requested just an update on the American rescue plan act. And so I'll provide a brief update on just where we're at on the city side with arpa investments. We'll then talk about the city's rapid rehousing investments, things that we've been able to do through arpa dollars, as well as the road ahead. And I think we have some some questions that we're going to have to wrestle with as we think about the future of rapid rehousing and what that looks like, and then I'll turn it over to my colleagues to talk about the permanent supportive housing project pipeline. On the next slide, this is again, I know many of you have seen this slide already. This is just an overview of the arpa spending framework, the $93.5 million that the city council allocated to address homelessness in our community, the two categories [1:35:54 PM] community, the two categories that are particularly relevant for today are the top category, which is the capital investment for housing development. That was a $11.1 million investment from the city to help essentially build new things. And so a lot of the projects that Jamie will talk about are projects that were funded in part through that section of the arpa spending framework. The other section that's relevant is the rapid rehousing section, which is $42.5 million that council had allocated to rapid rehousing investments in the city and on the city side. The next slide shows where we're at in terms of the spending status for arpa funds, as of today, 99% of the federal dollars that were allocated in this spending framework have been committed to projects, and you can see the breakdown here. I won't walk through it in detail. What I will say is that 1.2 million that's listed as balance to commit, those are dollars that have been allocated to a [1:36:54 PM] have been allocated to a category in the spending framework. And my staff do intend to put forth recommendations on how to utilize those funds. But we currently have about $5 million, that is in a contract development phase that we need to work through, but rest assured, we do wholly intend to spend all of our arpa dollars and have those funds committed, we our goal is to return no arpa dollars back to the to the federal government. Sorry, Mr. Biden, if we go to the next slide, the next slide will kick off our discussion around rapid rehousing. And I think it's important that we kind of have a common understanding of what rapid rehousing is. Sometimes these programs people hear about them and they could develop their own understanding or their own meaning of what these are. And so just to ground today's conversation, when we talk about rapid rehousing, what we're talking about is a program that's designed to connect individuals experiencing homelessness to housing through a time limited to Ed package of assistance, when we talk about [1:37:56 PM] assistance, when we talk about the time limited component, what we're talking about is, housing assistance for folks that allows them to exit homelessness and stabilize their housing need, and that for the city contracts that assistance is delivered over a period of 24 months. The additional tailored package of assistance includes connection to a case manager who is there to help individuals overcome their barriers to maintain their housing. So when we talk about the 24 months, I do want to be clear that for our contracts, when we're entering into our contracts with our vendors, we are budgeting for full support for 24 months. However, the way rapid rehousing works is over the course of the 24 months it's expected that the client is given the tools and the resources to wean themselves off of the need for the city assistance. So by month 25, that client is whole, and they're able to live and to thrive on their own without the need for assistance. And so that that's [1:38:57 PM] assistance. And so that that's the whole philosophy around this type of investment within the local, homeless response network. So as I mentioned before, the city, homeless strategy office, we oversee 13 rapid rehousing contracts, the bulk of these contracts recently came over to our staff when we were established as an office in December of last year, but now we have full capacity to oversee all these contracts. These contracts are designed to provide up to 24 months of support, in terms of people who we've supported last year, I'm happy to say that we supported 2226 people through this investment last year, 74% of our rapid rehousing exits have been, positive exits. That represents 510 households, 26% of the exits have been negative, that represents 177 households. The next slide takes a little bit of a deeper dive into our rapid rehousing service contracts. And [1:39:57 PM] rehousing service contracts. And I'm not going to walk through all the details on this slide, although I'm happy to revisit it during the question and answer. If you'd like. But I think it's important that our office is transparent with you and with the public around who we contract with to do this work. What is the dollar value of each of those contracts? What our annual client goals are for each of our vendors and the actual number of people who we are serving, and so in total, what you see here is annually, our contract amounts are in the ballpark of about $23 million. The significant majority of that is arpa investments, arpa makes up more than $18 million. Of that $23 million total, the general fund picks up the rest. And so as we talk about arpa and arpa being one time funding, this is something that we're being cognizant of because I think the proof is in is in the data, our goal with this investment, this whole investment was to serve, 1800 [1:40:58 PM] investment was to serve, 1800 individuals through the work of all of our partners, we've been able to serve 2200 individuals. And so we are surpassing our goals, and at the same time, we're preparing for our system to somewhat rightsize once those arpa dollars eventually fade away, I do specifically want to note here also, when it comes to lifeworks, you'll see that, lifeworks client goal is 145, but their client serve is 55, we actually recently increased the goal for lifeworks. And so this 145 represents their new goal, but I do want to give lifeworks the credit for both their rapid rehousing arpa as well as their general fund contract. They have exceeded their goals as well, we just had the ability to increase their goals. But even with those increased goal numbers, we're still performing above where we expect it to be the next slide will, just want to talk about next steps when it comes to city funded rapid rehousing contracts [1:42:01 PM] funded rapid rehousing contracts . And this is the conversation that we've been having with all of our stakeholders, our providers and our vendors all the way to the community organizations, many of whom are here today, a lot of people are concerned about what happens when the arpa dollars run out. And so we are not blind to that. We want to be very transparent that we are forecasting this as a challenge. You know, when the when the arpa dollars were allocated to rapid rehousing, it was specifically intended to address a backlog that existed at the time, and as you saw in the previous slide, I think in many ways we've been able to successfully work through that backlog. We're now planning for arpa rapid rehousing contracts to reach their capacity, and we're having those conversations now with all of our providers as part of our midyear spending plan. Conversations where ensuring that each one of our providers has enough funding to support the clients who are currently in their care, and we're also seeing what providers have additional capacity to take [1:43:02 PM] have additional capacity to take on new clients. And we want to make sure that we're setting clear targets for how many new clients we can serve. So we're not over enrolling. And then under delivering on the promise because the federal government requires all arpa dollars to be spent by December 2026, our organizations that have arpa rapid rehousing contracts will have to cease accepting new enrollments in December of this year, and it's designed that way to ensure that all the enrollees receive the 24 months of assistance that were promised Singh them. If we enroll somebody June of next year, they will not be able to receive the 24 months of assistance because the federal guidelines do not allow us to spend the dollars beyond December 2026. We also anticipate that ongoing funding is going to be needed in fy 2026. If it is council's desire to support the ongoing, system capacity, I do want to note that when we talk about some of our [1:44:05 PM] when we talk about some of our other investments like heal, which is our compassionate encampment closure program, many of you know that the beauty of heal is not just compassionately closing the encampment and moving everybody into shelter, but it's also, once they're in shelter, they're fast tracked into a rapid rehousing opportunity while those rapid rehousing opportunities are arpa funded, opportunities. And so a funding lack here could have some some negative consequences on our ability to continue to make heal, occur at the rate at which we're able to currently do it. There are some near- term actions that are right in front of us, and these are actions that we are currently taking to make sure that we're addressing and getting ahead of some of these forecasts. Nobody wants to drive the car to the cliff and then just fall off the cliff. And so we are doing things now to make sure that as the arpa dollars fade out, we are able to also maybe phase out some of that work. And so the very first thing that we're doing is making [1:45:06 PM] thing that we're doing is making sure that all of our arpa rapid rehousing contracts are extended so that they do not end until December 2026, this will ensure that all of our providers have the time that they need to provide the assistance that we're promising to the community. As I mentioned a moment ago, we are conducting our mid-year spending plan reviews with all of our vendors, this will allow us to establish some very clear enrollment targets for the remainder of 2024. So if we are enrolling clients between now and December, we can guarantee that those clients will receive the 24 months of assistance that we are promising. We also recently released a request for proposals for homeless diversion services and diversion is not rapid rehousing. However, with diversion does is it allows us to get upstream of the need of rapid rehousing. If we're able to keep people housed, they don't need this intervention. And so the beauty of this strategy is that it allows us to mitigate the need for ongoing rapid rehousing and hopefully also permanent supportive [1:46:06 PM] also permanent supportive housing by trying to resolve individuals crises quickly and resolve those upstream, the next portion of the presentation will begin to talk through our permanent supportive housing inventory and so I will transition to Mike over to Jamie may. But of course, I'd be happy to answer any your questions at the conclusion of our collective presentation. Thank you. >> Thank you. David, Jamie, may, housing and community development officer with the housing department. If you'll go to the next slide. So this kind of shows our pipeline of inventory for permanent supportive housing over the next several years. As you can see at the beginning, in the last five years, it's a slow climb. Most of that is due to the fact that, we needed developers, we needed money, and we needed to, have cash in hand. And through the 2022 general obligation bonds, as well as through other funding sources such as the downtown density bonus and project connect, we have been able to invest in, permanent supportive [1:47:07 PM] invest in, permanent supportive housing. As you can see, in 2024, this year, we do expect to see an additional 600 units coming online, and we'll go through those developments shortly after that, I also want to point out in 2026, we're going to we expect to see another, additional chunk, large , number of units coming online, that number is expected to grow as we continue to invest in development in permanent supportive housing, we do expect to see more developments. And in fact, we can project out to 20, 27, through this presentation today, I would also point out below, the national psh production up through 2023, if that number stays consistent and this is not a number that we have control over, it's from hud, but if that number stays consistent, you can see that we are far surpassing, the average in investment and the growth rate in permanent supportive housing, throughout the country, so we are doing the work we're investing the dollars in trying [1:48:09 PM] investing the dollars in trying to get as many units on the ground as possible. I do want to point out that it takes time and capital, so we'll go to the next slide. These this is our existing inventory today, most of these have come on in the last couple of years, Waterloo terrace, capital studios, these are foundation communities developments. Chalmers west with hakka, provide Singh eight permanent supportive housing units for veterans, what is important here is that not only do we have the 237 units on the ground, but hakka has also partnered with us to provide the vouchers. Those are, mainstream vouchers for individuals exiting homelessness, as well as vash vouchers, for veterans, in concert with that, the city of Austin has dedicated housing trust fund dollars to a local housing voucher program. Our first deployment was to a sparrow at Rutland, which is a, Austin housing finance corporation partnership with caritas. Through that program, we have been able to provide [1:49:10 PM] we have been able to provide 101, permanent supportive housing units in that development. The 70 units, remaining at sparrow at Rutland are occupied by clients of caritas. So they may also be permanent supportive housing, but they are defined by caritas as opposed to defined by the voucher. We'll go to the next slide. In this year, in the calendar year 2024, these are the developments that we expect to see coming online, in the next several months, six months or so, pecan gardens, balconies, terrace. We expect to see those in, this summer, and we would like to invite you all out to the grand opening as soon as that is scheduled, kensington apartments, bungalows and libertad, those are going to take a little bit of time, but they are currently underway, and again, I'd like to point out that of the 293 permanent supportive housing units, you see here, 255 have support from hakka, in addition to the 28 local housing vouchers, that [1:50:12 PM] local housing vouchers, that does leave a gap of about ten, units without vouchers, that's something that can be handled, however, once that gap gets too large, then you risk having the development run into operating challenges, operating funding challenges, particularly with investments into the facility, repairs, putting a new roof on, things like that, the final column on this end is a service funding, and I would note that the city of Austin is a primary funder for a majority of these. These come through Austin public health and through the homeless strategy office, but as we get further down into the next slide, you'll see that we have some question marks, and we'll talk about that more later. We'll go to the next slide here. We'd like to point out that, this is calendar year 2025, again, another 288 units coming online in 2025 with another 213 in, 213 vouchers from hakka and a 75 vouchers from the city of [1:51:14 PM] a 75 vouchers from the city of Austin. The red highlighted entry Karen point at Cameron is a property, that is supported by the strategic. I'm sorry, the Travis county, ship supportive housing initiative pipeline. Too many acronyms, we are, so we're excited to see that one coming online next year. And that is the first of several that we'll be talking about. We'll go to the next slide. These are the other, ship properties. As you can see, we have 410 units lined up to come online in 2026. That's 260 vouchers with 120 local vouchers. So doing some quick math in your head, you can see that we've got about a 30 voucher gap, and there are some service gaps, however, with the these investments coming online, I would point out that Seabrook square is a partnership or a ground lease, from the Austin [1:52:14 PM] ground lease, from the Austin housing finance corporation, to integral care, and we are investing in all of these properties, along with, Travis county and the next slide, I believe, gets us into 2027 for 2027. We can see an additional 117 units coming online, these last two properties. Bailey at Berkman and Bailey at stassney, are both applied for the low income housing tax credit. The 9, which will be awarded in July, one or both may be awarded or neither, so that's, just one of the challenges that we have is finding the funding, securing the funding and being competitive for the funding, the 9% tax credits are extremely competitive. But they if these do not win, there are other ways to build these units, and to find the capital necessary. Overall, I'd like to point out that our total existing units and pipeline, we've got 1345 units at the end of 2027. We [1:53:16 PM] units at the end of 2027. We should see approximately 1300 units with over 1000 vouchers being deployed by hakka, and more than 250 vouchers being deployed by the city of Austin. The bottom line is that the investments are being made. It does take time to build, but we are approaching, solution burns in a collaborative and thoughtful manner. And with that , I'd like to go into some more detail on the ship projects with our friends from Travis county. >> Good afternoon, Pilar Sanchez from Travis county health and human services, next slide, please. So what is the supportive housing initiative pipeline? We like to call it ship, it is, $115 million of investment through Travis county, out of $247 million that [1:54:16 PM] county, out of $247 million that was received by the county. And arpa funding. The 115 are allocated to 11 projects that are, mostly made up of over 2000 supportive housing units. The funding was presented to the community as a one time funding opportunity. It was a partnership with several nonprofits, ten nonprofits, and it was a result of a larger community goal that came from a county wide housing summit, together, a larger group, a large group of people, partnered people from the city, from the county and the nonprofit community, along with philanthropists, and the philanthropy side being, huge, largely supported by prior, mayor Adler and, we're we've we've worked very closely [1:55:18 PM] we've worked very closely together to try and catalyze the, the development and the construction of these 2000 units. It was, it was agreed that the counties, role would be to fund the construction Ann and the nonprofits role to fund the supportive housing through either fundraising or finding other government funding. Next slide please. So the ship includes several types of housing it throughout the entire continuum of housing, we have, we serve, the we have shelters as part of the, the project. Through the other ones foundation. Esperanza we have tiny homes through mobile loaves and fishes, and then we have community living, through a new entry recovery living, and multi-family units and single [1:56:18 PM] multi-family units and single room occupancy through several nonprofits. A lot of those had experience building and operating supportive housing. But we were also very interested in helping organizations that did not have that experience. And so we, we sought out a new entry in Austin area urban league to, to bring into the fold as well. Next slide please. I really like the way that Sharonda put that, the spirit of human collaboration is what we're seeing through, through this. We've collaborated very closely with your city departments, especially in the housing department, and, and, but it's been federal funding that's come in for these projects, state funding, city and county funding, along with, at home at philanthropy funding. And it's been it's been a great opportunity for Travis county to [1:57:20 PM] opportunity for Travis county to endeavor into this type of, initiative. Our health and human services department did not have the experience and had never funded, housing in this manner before. So we are very appreciative of your housing department because they've loaned us best practices. They've met with us continuously. They've shared documents with us that we can replicate so that we didn't start from scratch, we meet on an ongoing basis with the housing department, and we're making sure your city housing department, we're making sure that we're lock and step with each other to ensure that these, projects are really going to be viable. And that we're on the same time frame. We've aligned, closing needs to close together. We've aligned, when you know who's going to fund what and timing on, who funds first, who funds last. Just several details that have really helped us put this, really forward, this [1:58:21 PM] this, really forward, this initiative. We're also at the county working very closely with, echo through their latest health care collaborative, which is looking for solutions on how to fund permanent supportive housing. And the city and central health have been a part of that. And it's being led by Dell medical school. In addition to that, we're a part of another partnership with the city and central health, which is called at home that that was something that came out of the pay for success initiative. And the house, the Travis county health and human services is contributing $3 million towards that at home, initiative, which is going to fund permanent supportive housing at a couple of, supportive housing properties. So Travis county hasn't really done this before. There's a there's a there's a [1:59:22 PM] There's a there's a there's a difference in mandates for a city and for a county, the cities the city's budget is five times bigger than the county's budget. The city's staff, labor force is three times bigger than the county. And so we hadn't done this before. And so we're very happy to be a part of this now. And to continue to collaborate. Commissioner Howard has been leading the effort in collaboration. And so we're really hoping to continue this, next slide, I'm going to turn it over to Nathan Fernandez, our senior planner at HHS at Travis county. >> Appreciate it. >> All right, I'm going to run through a few of the, programs and developments that the city through the rental housing development assistance Rota and [2:00:23 PM] development assistance Rota and the county through our arpa funds, have, co-funded and collaborated, for capital financing, so the first one is the urban empowerment zone. This one will be operated by the Austin area urban league. As mentioned above, they will have 80 units that are now fully vouchered, and the county is contributing arpa dollars towards this one, and the city is contributing, funds through the general obligation bonds, next slide please. The next project is Karen point at Cameron. This is a project that's currently under development, slated to come online next year. It's going to be operated by caritas of Austin for low income seniors, and people experiencing homelessness that are aged 55 and older. This one will have 150 efficiency studio apartments, as of now, I believe two thirds of them have vouchers. And the county and city contributed a similar [2:01:25 PM] city contributed a similar amount of dollars for capital on this project. Next slide please. This project is called real gardens. It will be operated by family elder care for seniors aged 62 and over experiencing homelessness. This will be a 60 studio apartment unit complex, completely vouchered and coming off the coordinated entry list. The city and county are both contributing, similar amounts of dollars through arpa and go bonds. Next slide please, Jamie mentioned Seabrook square one earlier, just recently we are Shaw, Seabrook square two has broke ground through integral care, who will operate a 60 unit facility for adults experiencing mental illness and or, living with drug and alcohol experiences. This will also be a 60 ish, apartment complex, fully vouchered as well, Travis county and the city's housing department worked very closely [2:02:26 PM] department worked very closely on this one in order to, complete funding gaps that arose. There's always very interesting developments that come up on every project, that we have to help work together. And it's been very, integral there, excuse my pun, to work together, on this funding next project, please, the last of the projects I'll go over is, the works three, this is through lifeworks, for our youth and young adults experiencing homelessness, there will be 120 units in this complex, in Travis county. And the Austin housing finance corp. Are working on closing on financing later this year. Next slide please. Oh one more. Sorry about that, the Lancaster. Oh, sorry. Go back. Thank you, the Lancaster is a project that is breaking ground here in just a few weeks to the safe alliance. This will be, designed for survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence that are also [2:03:26 PM] violence that are also experiencing homelessness. And this will be also a 60 unit property with a mix of unit breakdowns, and that will also be fully and vouchered. And Travis county and the city of Austin funded a similar $7.2 million figure on this one. Next slide please. So there are several other projects in our ship portfolio, some of which are our collaborations with the city. Some are not, as Pilar mentioned earlier, we helped a new entry with their webberville transformation center. It's currently an inpatient recovery housing for folks that are experiencing substance use issues. The county, provided funds in order to expand that development. So they can provide more beds for transitional housing, those folks, are generally coming off coordinated entry as well, where they have transitional housing at the webberville center, and then [2:04:27 PM] webberville center, and then they place them in more permanent supportive housing destinations, as Paula mentioned as well. We also funded, through our, through the general fund, the other ones foundation, Esperanza community, it's a great community off of south 183, they're currently in the process of building 200 tiny homes that are designed for transitional housing, and they have great success in transitioning those folks into more permanent housing destination is, the biggest chunk of our arpa funds in this portfolio went towards the community. First. Burleson village, three, $35 million of arpa funding, contributing to 650 tiny homes of permanent housing. They are designed for folks to live there permanently. Only 50 of those units are with vouchers, and that's currently under construction. And last but certainly not least, we have two projects with foundation communities, last year the city and the county both contributed funds towards the development of [2:05:30 PM] funds towards the development of juniper creek apartments. It's 110 units that's currently in construction, for folks experiencing homelessness as well as low income families with children and then later this year, we'll be closing on Burleson studios. It's co-located with the mobile Lowe's community. First, Burleson village on the same property, $15 million of arpa dollars will go towards building 104 units. Currently, 50 are aligned for psh with vouchers. So that's it for the county ship investments. And I'll pass it back to David. >> Thank you. Paula and Nathan, and so council members, I think what gets us most excited about this work is the fact that these are projects that, you know, we're not talking about them in these, like, theoretical kind of conceptual phases. These are projects that are being developed and under construction right now. You could drive by [2:06:31 PM] right now. You could drive by almost all of these sites and see dirt being turned, cranes in the sky and buildings being built, however, there is one more slide in the presentation, and I know my technology team is probably not happy with me right now, but there is one more slide in the presentation, because part of the story that we also have to talk about is the services funding. Every year, the homeless strategy office, through contracts that we've now inherited from Austin public health every year on the city side, we invest close to $10 million in psh services, funds, and those are dollars that are supporting individuals that are residing in the units that exist today. Now, we're planning for a large influx of new units being constructed. You just heard from Jamie and our colleagues at the county, talking about the new units that are coming, as we prepare to bring those units online, we also need to be prepared to make sure that there's adequate resources for [2:07:32 PM] there's adequate resources for those residents to receive access to the supportive services that will truly help them be successful. And so this slide lays out where for each of the projects that we anticipate coming online, from calendar year 2024 through 2026, which of those developments have units where housing vouchers have been allocated? However they are unfunded from a services perspective live. And so we've identified about a $2.1 million funding gap in support of services for units that will be opening in 2024 and 2025, I will say that, you know, many hands make like, light work, and there are a number of entities that are working towards identifying funding, opportunity for these units. So in addition to the homeless strategy office and Travis county, I know echo has convened a health care collaborative that is part of their work, is looking at [2:08:35 PM] their work, is looking at funding opportunities, I believe Paula mentioned that many of the nonprofit providers are looking at other strategies to bring on supportive services funding, and as part of the developments, too, right there, there are kind of strategies that are being envisioned and finalized around, bringing in some supportive services dollars. And so there's a lot of people who are oriented towards this. But I think it's important that we have just a public recognition that there's still some more work to do here. In addition to that $2.1 million, there's an additional $4.3 million in gaps for supportive services units opening in 2026. Now people will sometimes ask, why don't you take the arpa dollars and use that to pay for supportive services, and part of the reason why on the city side, and I can imagine maybe even on the county side, why we haven't done that is because permanent supportive housing services are an ongoing expense. And so it wouldn't help anybody from a capital [2:09:35 PM] anybody from a capital perspective to take one time funding and try to allocate that towards an ongoing expense. And so this is why many of us are now engaged in this work of saying, you know, it's great that that the units are being built. I mean, that that is huge. Austin and Travis county are really leaders, nationwide when it comes to building the housing capacity that we need to support people through this intervention, but now we're trying to make sure that we can bring the services dollars to the table, so that we can get these units filled up as quickly as possible, so that concludes our our briefing. I appreciate your time and giving us the time to talk through this work that we're doing. Just some key takeaways, because I know we talked a lot. The first is rapid rehousing is an effective intervention to help individuals in their homelessness. Especially when we're able to connect the right people with the right intervention. We also are aware that arpa funding for rapid rehousing will largely begin to run out as early as fy [2:10:35 PM] begin to run out as early as fy 25, which will necessitate ongoing funding. If we are looking to sustain this program at its current level. And, as Jamie polgar and Nathan mentioned, the available psh units in our community are anticipate to grow by more than 300% this calendar year, and that pipeline has more than 1000 units, which will be delivered to our community, by the end of 2026. Should all things consider on their current project timelines and so with that, madam chair and Mr. Chair, we again appreciate your time today, happy to answer any questions for me. >> Thank you, thank you, thank you. Such great information. We appreciate having both the county and our city staff here for this very timely topic. Colleagues who would like to kick off our questions. Councilmember qadri sure, I appreciate sorry, I appreciate the, the presentation. I have a lot of questions, and whoever wants to take them can can kind [2:11:36 PM] wants to take them can can kind of take a stab at it, my first question, well, I guess this one is for you, David, but, you had mentioned that the city budgeted 24 months of assistance and rapid rehousing contracts, but we hear that people often getting much less than that, even though they may need more, given the reality of the lack of affordability and the challenges, people go through from being unhoused to being housed, what is the city going to do to ensure that rapid rehousing programs offer 24 months of rental assistance? If a person needs it? >> So currently, we are doing a mid-year spending plan evaluation with all of our arpa funded, rapid rehousing providers as, as part of that work, what we've instructed our providers to do is to pause new enrollments into those programs so we can calculate the total number of clients that we're currently serving as of today, and make sure that each one of those providers has enough money in their budget to provide the [2:12:36 PM] in their budget to provide the 24 months of support, now we know that there's not new money on the table. And so part of this is going to be some rebalancing, we know that we have a good potential that some of our providers have under-enrolled and are not projected to spend down, and so we do plan to come to council with some rebalancing across contracts to make sure that if somebody is enrolled, that they have the 24 months of support. The other part of that, too, council member, is once we finish that process, and I've told my staff that we are going to finish this process by June 15th, it's not a target date. We are going to be done by June 15th. At that point, we will know how many new clients we can enroll into these arpa funded contracts, guaranteeing those clients to 24 months of support. >> Great. Thank you, and then have you, have you and this is for anyone, have you heard any feedback from service providers about challenges they face implementing rapid rehousing for people who also qualify for permanent supportive housing? [2:13:37 PM] permanent supportive housing? >> I could probably take that. I'm sure all of us have maybe heard some challenges in that regard, you know, rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing are two very different interventions, and in large part, they're designed to serve, very different types of clientele. When you think about rapid rehousing, you're really thinking about individuals who can achieve self- sustainability with up to 24 months of support. Whereas permanent supportive housing is really designed to serve individuals who are chronically homeless and who are going to need significant, more levels of care and support and coordination until they're able to thrive on their own. The city nor the county direct the referrals into permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing and I think it's just important to be clear about that, because sometimes people will ask why the city chose to put somebody in a program and that's not the way it works, our continuum of care has a process by which people are routed. And [2:14:38 PM] by which people are routed. And what we find in conversations with our providers is when certain clients who truly need psh are routed into rapid rehousing, it it becomes very challenging for the case managers and the providers to provide the right level of care that that person needs, because what they truly need is a permanent supportive housing type of intervention, I'll just say kind of even outside of that, you know, this, this work is hard work, and so there's challenges with respect to workforce challenges, challenges with respect to finding units that would Eid, could be made available and utilized by these populations. But to your question, council member yes, it's really important that we're working with our continuum to make sure that the right people are being Teed up for the right intervention. >> And I and I and I think it's safe to say the whole dais really does appreciate the work that every single one of you, [2:15:39 PM] that every single one of you, you know, the part they all play in all of this work, I got three more questions, of folks who returned to homelessness, do we know how many people were qualified for, permanent supportive housing? Or were or were chronically homeless? And then and then, I guess a part B of that question. But I'll let you guys, I'm sure I believe that data exists. >> I don't have it in front of me at the moment, but we would work with our continuum of care lead and our hmmis administrator, which is echo, to pull that data. >> Do you mind sending it to our offices? >> I don't mind at all. We will do that. Thank you. >> And then? And then this might also be some information. Might have. But do you guys have any idea what some of the reasons are that people returned to homelessness, when their, when their assistance ends? >> Sometimes it is because a person who's rooted into rapid, you know, that that's not the right intervention for them. Unfortunately, and so they're just not set up, and ready for that intervention to end, and so that kind of speaks a little bit [2:16:39 PM] that kind of speaks a little bit to how the referral process works or doesn't, sometimes we have clients who don't fully comply with program guidelines, and then sometimes we have providers who have issues maintaining levels of case management or other types of support. And so these are really the reasons why we've decided that now is a good time to pause, every year we do these mid-year spending plan reviews, but this is the first time that we've truly said, let's pump the brakes, kind of reevaluate what our performance across the board here, and then set ourselves on a better chart and better path forward. So we could mitigate some of the issues that are resulting in, you know, 25% people or households exits exiting negatively, really trying to reduce that number and grow the number that are exiting positively from 75% to as as high as we can take that. Great. >> And then second to last question, kind of around data. [2:17:39 PM] question, kind of around data. Are there people who may be counted as positive exits, but then they kind of slip through the cracks and they end up being homeless again? Does that sometimes happen? >> We do track, yeah. The number of people who return Ann to homelessness, after they go through rapid rehousing. I don't have that data in front of me directly. I'm sure we have some some echo staff here who could speak to that right now. But I do know that as an intervention as a whole, we don't see very many people who positively exit rapid rehousing, return to homelessness. And that's part of the reason why, you know, this intervention is a great intervention. It works really well for the people who it's designed to serve great. >> And then last question, could could you provide any update on further updating and replenishing our multiyear partnership effort for permanent supportive services, housing, permanent supportive housing support services? >> I think I understand the question. Yeah, sorry. >> It became yeah. Sorry. It was [2:18:40 PM] >> It became yeah. Sorry. It was a word salad. >> It's a lot of support in these conversations, so our our supportive services. >> There you go. >> You said it better than I got you. Sorry, I got you, those contracts are general fund contracts. And so what we do is we renew those annually contingent upon the budget process. And so should council, allocate the same level of funding for psh supportive services, then when we meet with those vendors at the end of the year, we'll negotiate, renegotiate those contracts at that same funding level. Great. >> Thank you. >> Thank you sir. >> Thank you. Yes councilmember Brian alter, thank you very much , I think it's really important at the outset just to kind of recognize guys, the diversity of the voices we have in the room. And that's what it takes to have success, right? We have community members. We have I see caritas, echo foundation communities, the dac, the county ourselves. Right. No one can do [2:19:41 PM] ourselves. Right. No one can do this by themselves. I think, you know, finding home at they were did such a great job bringing a lot of these groups together and that is what it is going to take for us to continue to have success. So I really just want to, at the outset, appreciate everyone being here who has such , a demonstrated and vested interest in helping us address this issue for our community, but looking at some of the information here, I wanted to kind of back up for a second. When we talk about the services, the vouchers, the capital, you know, just so we can all be on the same page when we talk about the vouchers that we're getting from hakka. Those are operating subsidies, but not the service subsidies. Is that correct? >> That is correct. It is an operating subsidy to provide, support for the facility itself, if there is, repairs that need [2:20:42 PM] if there is, repairs that need to be made or just to keep the lights on and, help pay the front desk staff, but it is an operating account, not the services themselves. >> And when we talk about these numbers, whether it's the, the 4.3 million, the 1.6 million, those are annual numbers. Is that correct? >> I would like to say that when a property receives vouchers, they are able to collect at a much higher rent for this population than than they would otherwise. So if you're housing people who were previously homeless, then that usually that individual has a very, very low income and can pay a very low rent amount. If you have a voucher, then that property can charge market value and so that creates a cash flow that can then support services. So you're usually what happens is your operating costs are so much you have a cash flow. And then you [2:21:44 PM] have a cash flow. And then you use the surplus for services. So I think there's a lot of room for there for the cash flow to support services. >> Okay. >> And the services gap is that on an annual basis it's like 4.3 million inches 2026. Is that per year. Right. >> So the way that we talk about services, we think about those as an ongoing basis. So correct that that gap is an annual gap okay. >> Looking at the pipeline. And it is really exciting where we're headed. And I, I think, you know it was touched on here, but it bears repeating. You know we are in a position today to have these units because, you know, finding home atx and Murray Adler and the community at large was willing to invest in this. And so that's really exciting. And I think we should, it's important to, to acknowledge the hard work that was done to get us here. And our housing staff continuing to build on those efforts over the [2:22:44 PM] build on those efforts over the past few years to get us even further down the road, but one thing that I, I truly believe and have deep concerns about are we invested a lot of capital starting in 2022, and we are seeing the result of that. And it's and it is really impressive . We don't have another arpa coming in a few years or even right now. And so what are we going to do in order to plan for the next 4 or 5, six, seven years? Because as to your point, these are very expensive projects. You know, there are only so many 9% tax credits out there. And so how are we going to meet the level of need and not just have this big surge, but then once again level off, because that's what is available? >> Thank you for that. Yes and I'll if the county has some ideas, we'll pass it over. But I will say I will point out that [2:23:47 PM] will say I will point out that as barrow Rutland and I keep talking about this one because it's a great property, it opened in February, and we funded that before arpa, that was actually the funding, story behind that one is, winding and, entertaining. And I'll tell it to you over a beer sometime, the, but with, the investments that the city has made in housing, both from the general obligation bonds as well as our density bonuses and fees in lieu housing trust fund, we've been able to invest in permanent supportive housing, outside of arpa, outside of our, our federal one time dollars, so we do intend to continue building. We know that 1000 or 1500 units that we will have on the ground by 2027 is not enough. We know that it needs to, be more. And at the groundbreaking of a sparrow, council member kassar said, oh, this is great. Now we need nine more in every council district. So that's our goal. [2:24:48 PM] district. So that's our goal. We're we're hoping to build as many as we can, finding the dollars is always a trick. No matter. No matter what type of building you're building, the services dollars. That's another question for this guy. >> And council member, if I may. You know, I think part of the realization also, at least on the staff side, is we also know that we're not going to build our way out of this, especially if we don't help people upstream before they get to the need. The point where they truly need. Psh. And that's part of the reason why earlier this month, our office launched that preventative homeless prevention pilot demonstration program. You know, our goal with interventions like that and with rapid are to kind of catch people early in their homelessness experience. We also work with housing and their anti-displacement team under nefertiti to even try to get to them before homelessness even becomes part of the conversation. Right but if we can catch people early, it costs significant less dollars on the [2:25:49 PM] significant less dollars on the city side and on the funder side to help people early in their experience than when they become chronically homeless. It's also better for the clients, because I can guarantee you that the people who spoke today would much rather have had the support to stay in the apartment or the house that they were in, rather than having to become homeless before they qualify for support, so it's better for the clients and it's better for our providers. And so we're doing more work upstream also. And those are investments that we're making, not just with arpa dollars, but also with general fund dollars. And we're grateful for council, in your last budget session, specifically allocating dollars to allow us to do the prevention work. So we're trying to address the bell curve at both sides. >> And I'm about to go there. I'm glad you you brought that up . But one more question before I do and that you know, we are you mentioned that some of these projects are currently undergoing review for the tax credits for 2027, right. That's how far out we are looking. And so the question I have is that, you know, the planning we need [2:26:50 PM] you know, the planning we need to be doing now for the end of kind of our current horizon. What is our our target for 2027. Do we think we need 300 units, 400 units, 500 units. You know, I think it would be really helpful for us to look out over the next, few years beyond our current what we know is coming and help us understand not only what the target is, but what then the funding needed. And do we have that within the bonds? Do we need to, you know, we are very long term planning projects. And so sadly, we are now planning for four years away. And if we don't do it,- we're going to be in a really bad spot. And so I'm curious where we are in that. >> Yes. Thank you. The last number that I saw from echo's point in time count was about 6000 individuals who are unhoused and unsheltered. That's our target, we know that at the end of 2027, we'll have 15. So we're 25% there, it's going to take more money. It's going to [2:27:50 PM] take more money. It's going to take more time, and it's going to take more investment, but but, through our existing resources, I believe, at the, the adoption of this year's budget, council member qadri had a resolution to, dedicate at least $10 million to permanent supportive housing, we've done that. We just need to write the memo now and get it back to you, but that's that's how we have to do it through our rental housing development assistance program, through a competitive award cycles, through partnerships, and through all of the resources that we have, building as many units as possible. So that we can serve the entire population and about about services. >> Sure. >> So, council member, in addition to everything that that Jamie just stated, one project that we are working on with echo is updating their the gaps analysis, and so you might recall a few years back, the city and others supported this report and funded this report called investing for results, [2:28:52 PM] called investing for results, which kind of spoke a lot to system gaps, not just in psh, but in every intervention level from shelter all the way through, we're in the process now of looking at that model and this is through some funding that echo received from the federal government. And then they've invited us to participate in this conversation. So we're looking at the model number one, just to reassess the integrity of the model. Is the model modeling the right things. And then running the analysis through the model to get us those updated results, I think last time I checked with my team, we're still about maybe a month or two out. But we are doing that work just in recognition that the state of homelessness today is, is a little bit different than what it was when that report came out a few years ago. And we want to make sure that we're having, better data informed conversations so that when we come back to you all and we talk about things like the need for shelter, the need for rapid, the need for psh, we have some more up to date figures to help inform the recommendations that [2:29:53 PM] inform the recommendations that we're bringing to you all. And I'm sure that the recommendation is that our county colleagues are bringing to the commissioners. Yeah >> Well, and I know Matt has joined us from echo and is doing that work. And I'm really excited to see we're going to finally get a comprehensive look at what does our system need so that hopefully we don't need to build 6000 units because it's so expensive that we know what that number is. We know what the rapid number is. We know what the diversion number is. We can rightsize our system and invest appropriately. As my last kind of issue here, as we look at, the comparison of the programs within our, our broad, homeless services, delivery, we see what is the typical psh cost per individual. I mean, I know there's capital in the services, but if you were to put a dollar on, like how much that intervention costs per person, what would that be? [2:30:54 PM] what would that be? >> I'll speak to the services side. I don't purport to know anything about the voucher side. On the services side, we've estimated roughly $20,000 per person per per year, of course that number can vary person to person, but just on on an average basis, about 20,000 per person per year. And that's the denominator that we use on the on that last slide that we presented. Okay, I'll have to yield to the housing or the Travis county staff to talk about the voucher side. >> So in, as mentioned before, the hakka vouchers are integral, no pun intended, to our our inventory, in concert with those vouchers, since we know that, they are dependent on federal awards, and things that we cannot control, we have created the local housing voucher, which is funded through the housing trust fund, we dedicate $3.6 million from the housing trust fund annually to those vouchers, and that serves as, as noted, [2:31:55 PM] and that serves as, as noted, about 250 units per year, as as individuals are, more are stabilized, to Piller's point as individuals are stabilized, those vouchers do not have to cost as much because the individual can, can support more of their own. Be more self-sustaining, however, we, we know that rent is going to continue to go up. We know that prices are going to continue to go up. So even as we save money on individuals, we're going to be, spending more money on those on on things like rent and power and, phone bills. Right. So, yeah, as far as a dollar per person, it's tough to say why not like the hakka number is like $15,000 a voucher, right? >> That's what they I believe that's about about. >> Right. >> So if we think about that plus the 20,000, you're looking at about $35,000. The based on your numbers here for rapid, we're looking at just over [2:32:55 PM] we're looking at just over $10,000 a person. So clearly the ability to have that intervention work early. We can serve more people with the resources we have and hopefully also not have an individual who has to wait two years before before they receive the service. And so I, I just want to leave it and we're going to have so many more of these discussions, but making sure that we match up the service with the person and have the conversation about whether we are it is incumbent upon us to not necessarily go based on who's ever at the very top of the list. If that service doesn't match up, because we might be able to better serve the broader community if we are able to, to have that match and not have someone who is put in rapid rehousing. Because of course, they want a housing solution instead of waiting [2:33:57 PM] solution instead of waiting however many years for psh. But then is ultimately being set up for failure. And that's a really difficult conversation that I know we're going to have to have as a community. But I think it's something that we can't just wait for someone to become the most expensive, and then provide a service. We want to help at the front end, so they don't become homeless. But then if they do, how we get the services in place quickly. So I appreciate you giving me the time here. I lots to talk about, but thank you all for the work you're doing. >> Thank you. Councilman Velasquez, if you have questions, let's take your questions. I do want to highlight for the committee here that we do have 12 speakers on the next item. And so I just want to make sure that we give time for, for our community members to have an opportunity to share their concerns and feedback. >> Thank you, how many people are housed with rapid rehousing and also qualify for permanent supportive housing right now? >> So, councilman, we'll grab [2:34:58 PM] >> So, councilman, we'll grab that data from echo, and we'll make sure we get that data back to all of you. >> Perfect. Thank you. >> All right. I'll reserve my questions in case we have time here towards the end. But if that's okay, I want to move on to item number two, item number two is a continuation of this item, but it's a posting for discussion and possible action. Can the clerk please call the speakers? >> Thank you, madam chair. Your first speaker is Tony Carter. You please come to the mic. You will have two minutes. >> To. >> How y'all doing this evening or this afternoon? First off, my name is Tony Carter, and I'm a leader with vocal Texas. Me and my fiance, Jennifer are currently housed with rapid rehousing Singh. I was unhoused [2:35:59 PM] rehousing Singh. I was unhoused for seven years before this came up to me, I stayed in the Salvation Army when I first became homeless after that, I stayed in other places. I camped around Austin before I got rapid. We had been staying out in the woods. We had to go get further and further out because the cops kept sweeping our camp. And they still do that. This right here today. I had done the housing assessment a bunch of times, but I never scored high enough. Even though I struggle with drug use and mental health. Last December, I even went to treatment. I should be in permanent supported housing where I can get more services and support. The last assessment I did, I had to do it with my [2:36:59 PM] I did, I had to do it with my fiance, Jennifer, because with us, with me, myself, I couldn't do it because they said we had to do it together and someone came up to me in 2023 and said, I had it. I didn't even know what they were saying, what they was talking about, and I know I was on the list right now. I was rapid rehousing, pay for an apartment that cost 1700 per month. Our program is supposed to end after 12 months, and we're not sure what we're going to do. So with that being said, I couldn't finish it up. But, I receive okay. Speaker, your housing, your time is expired. >> The next speaker is Taylor [2:38:01 PM] >> The next speaker is Taylor cartwright. >> Hello. Thank you for having me. My name is Taylor cartwright , and I'm a leader at vocal Texas. I'm currently in the rapid rehousing program. I found an apartment in November and was offered 12 months of help with rent through dac. I'm halfway through the program right now, and it's going by too fast. I've been in house since I was 20, about 11 years, and had untreated PTSD that early in my time being on house led to a felony. Finding work is extremely challenging and even now, six months into my rapid rehousing, I still can't find work. It's funny, I could find more work on the street than when I'm housed right now. I've done countless applications, indeed cold calls walking into stores. But no matter what I try , when they run my background, it seems to be a dead end. I feel like I need more support and resources to stay housed after this. It's going too fast [2:39:01 PM] after this. It's going too fast and I feel like I have to do too much on my own. And sometimes I don't even know what's out there, and I'm not even sure of what I need. Two weeks into my rapid rehousing from echo and sunrise services, I was notified by dac that my permanent housing came up and I was finally approved. The paperwork in my case management was picked up by my dac caseworker. I was notified that I needed to find a place that would take it. So not only have I been trying to apply and get a job, but I've also been looking for an apartment that will accept my permanent housing voucher. Since November, I've been visiting apartments and been turned away from unemployment. My background, my income, even though I have a voucher and case manager letter of support, I still encounter apartments that need proof of income or won't accept the vouchers. I don't know what to do as my background is hindering my job search. My voucher expired this month and I've already sought an extension. I should be looking for an apartment as we speak, but I'm here because there's too many of my shoes that need this to be voiced. The thought of losing this chance after waiting so long to get the housing I need makes me feel like I'm facing death. Going back to the streets [2:40:02 PM] death. Going back to the streets is a whole nother world. And finally I feel like I'm getting a chance to escape from it, the city needs to support making sure people like me are assisted in transitioning into permanent housing. People need more services and more months of rental assistance to find housing that lasts. Thank you so much. >> Next speaker is Lori Ann Martinez. Laura Ann Martinez. Next speaker is Darren Thornhill . >> All right. My name is Darren Thornhill. I'm the incarcerated outreach specialist over at Texas harm reduction alliance. And within my job, I work with our participants and I do their coordinated assessments as well as their push packet. If they qualify for that over at Texas harm reduction alliance, a lot of our participants are in [2:41:03 PM] of our participants are in active drug addiction, and most of them are unhoused at the moment. A lot of people come to me to do their coordinated assessments, and what I'm finding is when they come to me, that's the first time that they qualify for psh. Why is this happening, you may ask? The reason behind this is because a lot of people don't feel comfortable with the person giving them their assessment, so their scores are actually low and they're not getting the score that they deserve because they're underreporting on their coordinated assessment. This is a huge problem that I've seen across the board. People will come to me after that are on rapid rehousing. They'll come to me and try to do an assessment to try to get the ach. But since they haven't been on house for a year, they're not allowed to do the assessment to get the psh. It's a catch 22, to be honest. I've been in the same situation where I was homeless and I've taken multiple assessments. I've underreported myself. I got a really low score when I really deserved a score, but I just underreported because I did not feel comfortable with the person that was giving me this assessment. We definitely need more, time on our rapid rehousing. One year is just definitely not enough, especially when you're dealing with someone who's been homeless their whole life and they're [2:42:04 PM] their whole life and they're just trying to get comfortable and understand that the living and the responsibilities that come with that during that one year, by the time that's up, they honestly don't have the funds, they don't have a job. They're having a hard time finding a job due to the criminal records. So that one year is honestly for them to get comfortable. And then that second year will be for them to find a job and be able to pay their rent. I still don't know many people that would be able to pay $1,600 a month. When their lease is up. You got to remember, these people have been homeless for all their life. $1,600 is hard for me to do, and I have a full time job, during this time, of me being homeless, like I said, I was not able to get any housing due to my criminal background. I ended up having to get housing by myself. So I'm just asking that you guys please approve more rapid rehousing for two years. That way we give people a chance. Thank you. Thank you. >> Miss Martinez is available now to speak. >> Am I city council members? Oh sorry. Didn't know that. My esteemed city council members. [2:43:06 PM] esteemed city council members. I'm addressing you today as leadership and vocal. Texas. A member of community powered atx, a citizen of the city of Austin, and a formerly unhoused citizen who has endured a substandard, rapid rehousing program. My experience included an early exit from the program for not cooperating with the program rules that was basically an unreasonable request. As part of the program rules, I was asked to save over $600 a month out of my $1,100 a month income. I do not personally know anyone, nor can I even imagine anyone saving almost 60% of their income every month. Does that sound like a reasonable request? No. It seems to me to be an unreasonable request. Other people in other programs are either rejected or removed from their programs for [2:44:08 PM] removed from their programs for various reasons that, like me, have often been unreasonable or impossible. Rules my point is that we need to set standards for the assistance that's given through the rapid rehousing. We need to know each and every person is afforded a fair and equitable access to both the program and staying in it until permanent, housing is secured. The early exit from the rapid rehousing can cause many problems, including evictions, owing monies upon move out, and as was the case with me, a return to being unhoused. Wright all of these can make these situations even worse. For those experiencing these difficulties, it may make it harder to get an apartment later, when the permanent supportive housing does finally become become available. >> To the speaker, your time is [2:45:09 PM] >> To the speaker, your time is expired. >> Sorry, but if you could share your testimony with us via email, or if we can make copies of her of her testimony, we'll be sure to share that out with the members of the committee. >> Thank you all right. >> Thank you, thank you, thank you. >> The next speaker is Liz baker. >> Hello. My name is Liz baker. I am the chief programs officer at the other ones foundation. Rapid rehousing is one of the most complex and challenging projects to implement. And there have been several amazing providers across the city that have done a fantastic job of implementing it's really complex model very quickly in response to covid. And I first just want to, commend their efforts, the project, the rapid rehousing model is flawed. I think that information has has been shared and understood, I will reiterate that a significant amount of chronically homeless clients are not maintaining housing at exit, [2:46:11 PM] not maintaining housing at exit, let alone what happens weeks, months, or even a year after their exit from the project, as David gray mentioned, rapid rehousing is not effectively meeting clients needs, mainly because of mismatch of intervention and I would just say from a provider perspective that that's been my perception as well, I encourage you to support and encourage any and all efforts to match the client to appropriate housing interventions as, this, this I understand a lot is driven by the continuum of care and, that's the leadership council in echo. As a member of leadership council, I can only speak for myself and not as a, for the entire group. But I am committed to partnering with city staff and other providers to try to move the policies and practices forward to make our system stronger, and I would ask that in addition to, to moving those policies forward, that city encourage and support efforts to [2:47:13 PM] encourage and support efforts to create a safety net. This is going to take time. These policies don't happen overnight. And in the meantime, we have X number of clients that are currently in rapid rehousing. I don't know that number either, that are currently in rapid rehousing who are chronically homeless. And we know we're going to fall back into homelessness, and we have an opportunity to, to change that. Thank you. >> Thank you. The next speaker is Maria Cepeda, and then Christina Allen. If you would be prepared to come to the mic, you'll have two minutes. >> Hi. How are you all doing? Respectful council members, my name is Maria Cepeda, and I'm a leader of boko Texas. I'm here because I have rapid rehousing, and I don't know when I'm going to do. When it runs out in three months. Before I got into my [2:48:13 PM] months. Before I got into my house in olivette, the salvation Army and then the bridge shelter, and before I slept in parking lots or anywhere that I was safe, I was always trying to find a safe place. You know, nothing is safe when you sleeping on the streets. I stacked together with other people so we can watch each other's back. When the salvation Army shut down, I end up at the bridge shelter. And that's how I got rapid rehousing. I'm moving to my apartment on August 2023. A lot happened to me after that. My mother passed away. My son got locked up. I got a knee injury after a car crash. I've been struggling with my mental health and physical health and it's not been easy. But my apartment is a the apartment is very affordable. The rent is $763 and my rapid rehousing [2:49:15 PM] $763 and my rapid rehousing covers it. I am happy there. I just like to be at peace there. My first case case manager told me I will have two years of rental assistance, but now my new case manager says they won't have the money to help me with the rent on the next year that they are running out of funds. I'm supposed to take over the rent, but I don't have a job right now. After I went through all this, it's been too much. My mom, the hospital, my son. It's just been too much. My knee is finally healing from the car crash. I don't know how people are supposed to do this. Time goes by so fast. Peep, peep. >> You can finish your sentence, please. >> Okay. People have so much going on their lives and people need time. But every night I think about what's going to happen when my rapid rehousing runs out and I just. And I know it's just not be. It's just not me. If I end up back on the street, what is going to happen [2:50:17 PM] street, what is going to happen to me? I praise you what the city is doing for me, but I just wish rapid rehousing was longer. I'm not just speaking up for me, I'm speaking for other people that they're sleeping on the streets and who have rapid rehousing. Thank you, thank you. Next speaker is Eli Cortez. >> Thank you. Christina Allen, would you prepare to come to the mic, please? >> Yes, please, colleagues, we have about six speakers left. We are posted to take action on this item. So I just want to make sure we can continue to have quorum for action. We're going to go a few minutes over. Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you, city council members I am Christina Allen, the deputy director of partnerships and collaborations at caritas of Austin. Thank you for giving us this opportunity today as well as our providers, the city needs a comprehensive approach to homelessness that is equitable and flexible, based on community needs. A comprehensive approach means the inclusion of diversion programs, homeless prevention dollars, rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing, rapid [2:51:18 PM] supportive housing, rapid rehousing was designed for people who have not experienced chronic homelessness to receive 3 to 24 months of financial assistance, with the goal of maintaining housing after the assistance ends. Many rapid rehousing providers are receiving referrals that would be more appropriate for permanent supportive housing. Currently there is not clear policies or protocols in place for rapid rehousing service providers to advocate and transfer clients to permanent supportive programs or vouchers. We are seeing inconsistency among service providers and confusion for clients as to the length of time financial assistance can be received. Given the level of experienced trauma and complex needs of the people we serve, creating a standard of providing up to 24 months of rapid rehousing assistance will greatly benefit our clients. All vouchers for housing must have support services and the funding to pay for them. Support services are the key to improving client outcomes at caritas of Austin, our permanent supportive housing program has a 97% success rate, which we attribute to the case [2:52:19 PM] which we attribute to the case management and the support services. Given the current rental market, many of our clients struggle to keep up with cost of living regardless of being employed or receiving disability. Having increased access to low income housing will also benefit rapid rehousing. Clients maintain housing after exit, keeping individual individual housed saves our community money in the long term. When people are housed, it is less capacity and cost burdens for our criminal justice departments, medical providers and community shelters . It is critical for our community to follow best practices set by the national alliance in homelessness, housing and urban development and substance abuse. Mental samhsa so we can create a system that's equitable standards. Thank you. >> The next speaker is Kate grisoni. >> Hi. Good afternoon, council, my name is Kate Graziani, one of [2:53:21 PM] my name is Kate Graziani, one of the co-directors of vocal Texas, I, I really appreciate y'all calling this hearing, this special hearing and addressing the challenges with rapid rehousing and the lack of permanent supportive housing in our community, I don't want to belabor this topic because I know that we can take action today and we'd like to move on, but because the budget items, and the budget deficit has become such a topic of conversation, I want to just talk a little bit about what we're investing in here. We know that, the research and evidence shows that it's far less expensive to address homelessness at the root cause and through prevention. These band-aid solutions are expensive because they are far too down the line. We haven't had an updated plan since the 2021 summit plan to house 3000 people. We know that the number of people experiencing homelessness currently is well above 6000, and we need a plan [2:54:22 PM] above 6000, and we need a plan and a system that is adequate to meet that need, I do want to talk a little bit about shelter and the cost of the marshaling yard, opening. That was a $10 million plus investment, for a 300 bed place. If you think about housing folks in a rapid rehousing program and offering two years of support, we're coming in well under a $10 million budget item. And so we have the opportunity now with the thousands of folks who are housed in rapid rehousing to keep them housed, prevent them from exiting to homelessness and until we see these units come online that have been promised for years, we know there aren't enough units planned either. And so we still have our work cut out there. But if we continue to only invest in band-aid solutions, we will never get to the to ending homelessness in our community, which I think is what we all want, and I just need to name that the root cause of homelessness is the rising cost of living in this community . We have to create affordable housing. We have to create low [2:55:22 PM] housing. We have to create low income housing, or we will never stem the tide. So let's not forget that in our discussion on the budget. Thank you. Thank you. >> Speaker. >> The next speaker is Walter morrow and then Robert Ochoa, if you will be prepared to come to the mic two minutes, please. >> Walter Mario, the director at foundation communities, I just wanted to share with the committee some of our experience doing supportive housing, we are really struggling right now with, funding and staff for the social services. We have about a thousand residents, single adults, 20% chronic, 30% short term homeless and 50% at risk. So we're trying to not fill an entire building with the highest acuity folks, but serve folks before they end up on the street , we have on site case managers, 24 over seven staffing nursing team. Our budget is about 6.5 million for services over eight [2:56:23 PM] million for services over eight communities. That's about 800,000 a year per building. For services. And we have to design the building services for a building because if, like we have a resident, this week who's decompensating from mental health schizophrenia issues, she's afraid there's, thing beings in the building structure . So she's pulled all the cabinets off the wall. Now she's got holes in the wall and she's getting into the electrical and the plumbing. So I have to think about the building safety, of course, we've reached out to integral care, and they're offering some help and maybe a respite care situation where, she needs more immediate psychiatric issues. I just shared just. That's just like one little example of, many residents who are doing great, but we have many residents who have very, very high needs. Our cost is not $20,000 a resident a year, but of late, it's $540 a month per resident, over a thousand residents. I only have [2:57:23 PM] thousand residents. I only have about two thirds of my budget for services covered every year through Wu. We do receive some city funding, nine different contracts, some transportation money, some food money. We try to patch that together a couple of million dollars from foundations and individuals that give specifically for services and supportive housing. And then we've got a gap of about 2.5 million that we're covering right now through other gifts and resources from other properties. I can share some more details if you'd like, or I can follow up in writing if you can follow up with us, that'd be great. >> Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. >> The next speaker will be Eli Cortez and Robert Ochoa. If you would come to the light, please. >> Good afternoon, city council. My name is Eli Cortez, and I'm an organizer at local Texas. Today. You've heard from people with lived experience that have gone through the rapid rehousing program. You've heard from service providers, you've heard from, the homeless strategy office. You know, our community is calling for changes in this [2:58:24 PM] is calling for changes in this program, we we've heard from people on the streets through our outreach, our leadership, this program is not lasting long enough. And right now, with the influx of arpa dollars, our our housing providers took the opportunity to get people off the street today. And we applaud that because we want people to have access to housing. But we know is that rapid housing is a very specific intervention. It works with people who need immediate intervention, that need, you know, a couple like a year, six months to kind of get their feet up and be able to get back to work. And right now we have individuals that are placed in that program that qualify for permanent supportive housing. And they have the same case management that somebody with that rapid intervention needs. And I know that today we can take action to ensure that those people have the support that they need, the length of care that they need, and that they get transitions into permanent supportive housing. And we're asking you to take action today to pass a motion that allows people in that program to have access to a full 24 months of financial assistance, and one thing I do want to note about that is, although zo programs may say that they offer 24 [2:59:26 PM] may say that they offer 24 months, we've heard from people today, you know, they have maybe one year of financial assistance and then a year of case management after that. So we're actually not seeing in our community today, people receiving a full 24 months of rental assistance, even including a taper off. So, we just want to ensure that people don't return to homelessness. I think we can all agree in this room, but we can't continue to operate this system and do it the same way that we've been doing it, because it's failing some people. And so we're really asking for your support. We appreciate for y'all. Y'all having us out today to speak, and look forward to the opportunity to collaborate with your offices. Thank you so much. >> Robert Ochoa, if you are here in the in the council chambers, would you please come to the mic? If not Connor, Kenny. >> Thank you. I have a couple of slides coming up, my name is Connor Kenny with capital a housing. Privileged to be the developer for six different [3:00:26 PM] developer for six different nonprofits building supportive housing and residential substance abuse treatment in Austin right now, totaling 380 units and 90 treatment beds, we've been able to work with the great teams under, pillar at the county and Mandy at the city, and, all of their teams that they work with. And if we can go to the next slide, I just wanted to give you an update. These are many of the projects that we're in the briefing, but we have completed fundraising for all 470 units, there's still a couple of bureaucratic approvals to go through, but it's basically all there, they're, one of those bureaucratics is that there's going to be a revised budget authorization up before you on may 30th at city council for a new entry. Many, just, something, some stuff on this slide. Just to note how we got here is that while we did see about a 7, budget increase, it was really, pretty devastating loss of funds from the state as well as the planned philanthropic campaign, that really just punched a huge hole [3:01:26 PM] really just punched a huge hole in the budgets and the county and the city and then the nonprofits themselves have stepped up tremendously to plug that hole and get these projects done. And then finally, next slide, something that miss Sanchez from the county mentioned that I think is worth pointing out, is that all of these projects are all actually owned by the nonprofits that operate them. So all those vouchers that are generating operating cash, all that cash is getting plowed right back into the projects. It represents about $1 million a year, or about 10% of their support of services budget. The PFC tax breaks that you all passed in July are also contributing almost $1 million a year to the support services budgets and the nonprofits are projecting that they can probably raise about another 35. So what that has done, in addition to having the efficiencies on site, is it's brought the support services projected gap per unit down to about $6,400 a year, so it's significantly, cheaper than the sticker cost for your kind of typical, program. But I do want [3:02:28 PM] typical, program. But I do want to note that these are all projections and estimates, and they haven't raised this money yet. And so I know the nonprofits, many of whom are here, are, looking forward to working with the city and county and raising that additional dollars. But one thing that we're real proud of is that these projects are have a substantially almost half the cost of, to the city in terms of services dollars for your, your typical project. And that's, that's taken a lot of hard work and sacrifice by, by everybody involved. There are any questions? I'll make sure your offices all get this. And, we're happy to, provide more information at your request. Thank you. >> Thank you. Last call for Robert Ochoa. Robert Ochoa. >> Thank you. >> That is all you speakers. >> Thank you, colleagues, I do have, before you, a motion that I would like our committees to consider recommending to the full council. The motion sheet is in front of you and I'll read it. For the record, the public [3:03:29 PM] it. For the record, the public health and housing and planning committees jointly recommend to the full council that the city manager undertake the following work one. Coordinated assessment and wait list review work with the continuum of care leadership council, Travis county service providers and community organizations to evaluate the coordinated assessment and referral process and make recommendations to improve the wait list for rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing. Number two improve pathways to permanent supportive housing. Explore and provide recommendations with the leadership council on the creation of a bridge to permanent supportive housing program to support individuals eligible for psh and who currently receive rapid rehousing and provide increased flexibility for the homelessness strategy office to deliver rapid rehousing vouchers in the most effective and impactful way for up to 24 months as necessary. Number three collaborative long term planning and investment. Initiate collaborative Ann with Travis county central health and other partner agencies, including the private sector, to establish a forum for the partners to understand the scope the current scope of public [3:04:30 PM] the current scope of public sector and philanthropic strategies to address homelessness in our community. Discuss the opportunity and challenges of the homelessness response system, and to identify opportunities to align strategies, programing services and or funding to better address homelessness in our community. Thank you for sharing that on the screen. If I get a second, I'll speak to it. Thank you. Seconded by vice chair Velasquez. Colleagues, y'all have heard the concerns and feedback that were just raised by many members of our community. This recommendation for our entire Austin city council really seeks to receive more information and direct the city manager to address those challenges and the concerns that have been made, particularly around the coordinated assessment around the rapid rehousing pathways and the permanent supportive housing pathways, and with that, I will move adoption. Is there any objection to adopting this amendment? With no objection. This motion passes. Thank you. I, I do want to give a special [3:05:33 PM] I, I do want to give a special thank you to nirav shah with commissioner Howard's office, who is in the audience. I want to thank him for his service and work on on this item. And thank you to vocal Texas, who also supported this item, and many other community partners. Chair >> I think just for, I was told for parliamentary purposes we have to do the same thing. So we are I would also like a motion, if I may, to do this from councilmember qadri, second from councilmember or chair harper-madison, is there any objection to adopting the same direction from the housing and planning committee seeing none. We will also send that to the full council. Thank you. >> Thank you. I will now turn it over to vice chair Ryan alter to continue with item number three as part of the housing and planning committee meeting. >> Thank you very much. So we have one final item, it is as it [3:06:33 PM] have one final item, it is as it relates to the timeline of the land development code items. I I see Veronica walking up so she can give us a quick overview. I don't know that we have a whole lot to discuss. We just did a lot. So, very brief manager. >> We provided a memo and the updated Gantt chart and are happy to answer any questions you might have. I do not have planning staff with here with me here today. They had a training, but we will be happy offline to give any responses you might need. >> So we should ask you all the really technical questions right now? >> I'll commit them to all kinds of crazy things. There you go. Happy, right? >> Any questions from anybody? All right. With that, I will take a motion to adjourn the housing and planning committee. So moved by councilmember qadri, if there are no objections, the housing and planning committee will stand adjourned at 3:07 P.M. >> Thank you. I also take a motion to adjourn the public [3:07:34 PM] motion to adjourn the public health committee. Seconded or motioned by vice chair Velasquez. Seconded by councilmember Ryan alter. It is 307. Without objection, we will adjourn the public health committee meeting.