Public Health Committee (PHC) Meeting Transcript – 9/4/2024 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 9/4/2024 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 9/4/2024 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. [10:01:42 AM] >> Good morning everyone. My name is Vanessa Fuentes, Austin city councilwoman. I call to order this meeting of the public health committee. The time is 10:01 A.M. On Wednesday, September 4th, 2024, and we are in the Austin city council chambers. Welcome to welcome everyone to our September public health committee meeting. I am joined here today by our vice chair, councilmember Velazquez, and committee members, councilmembers qadri and Ryan alter. Thank you all for joining us today. We have a relatively short agenda. We'll start out with public communications. Then we'll move to approval of meeting minutes from may 22nd and June 5th. Then we'll have a discussion and possible action regarding the homelessness [10:02:42 AM] regarding the homelessness strategy office budget, strategic plan and shelter termination policy. Any questions with the agenda for today? Very good. Now we will welcome speakers from the community. May the clerk's office please start us off with our first speaker. >> We have one speaker. This morning, Sonja burns. Thank you. You have three minutes. >> Can, can. Okay. Can you hear me? Hi, I'm Sonja burns, and I'm here to discuss housing strategies and the population that we've left out. So, when you go downtown and you go to the arch, there's a woman who sits outside. Well, I mean, she screams outside. All the time when she goes to jail. She's incompetent to stand trial. She's unlikely to restore. This is her baseline. And that is the [10:03:42 AM] is her baseline. And that is the key. You need to hear that word because you will hear it over and over. When someone's at baseline, if they go to jail, they're not going to be put on the forensic waitlist. They're not going to be put on the civil waitlist. They're too acute to engage voluntarily in, I mean, meaningfully involuntary services. And they're not acute enough for inpatient because they are at baseline. So they will not benefit. We have no housing options for these individuals. And I work very closely with a lot of the people that you all are working with and housing our unhoused individuals. And I've had people come up to me now and explain to me, the population you've been talking about for years, Sonja, we have them in our spaces everywhere. They're screaming. They're dealing with their voices. Ems is their police, is their there? We need something that under regulatory, we don't in Texas, if I need to have a secure option for you, it's either a psych facility, a jail or a prison or a nursing home. The memory care unit. California has a whole model of care in between hospital and community placement. Arizona just passed [10:04:43 AM] placement. Arizona just passed legislation recently to address this population because they don't really need to be living in a hospital forever, but we do need to do something else, and not everybody needs that secure option. But some people need intentional, therapeutic communities. So until we address this and I know people hear me and say, you sound like everybody else, you know, listen to me. My population. But my population ruins everything for everybody else because they are prioritized all the time. They will be pulled out of the jail. They will be they will be pulled out of the hospital. And then I'm going to put them in the rapid rehousing or the permanent supportive housing. We've spent so much money on this. We know that they cannot survive there. And then you lose trust with your landlords, your property managers and your providers, and you all have given money for the mental health diversion pilot. And I was in the initial meeting when that was brought up, and everybody in the room said, what are you talking about? This is not what we wanted. We needed an involuntary option as well. This will not capture that. Most [10:05:43 AM] will not capture that. Most complex population in the jails. We've moved forward with it. You've given money. The county has given money. It's all voluntary. It is not going to touch the population I'm talking about. We also keep funding integral care. And at this point I have right now you can look them up. Robert Daniel Cummins, he's still sitting in our jail. Tcso pull him up. He has been cycling for over 20 years. He has been on the highest level of care for over ten years, and the last time he was arrested on assisted outpatient treatment. So that's through. The civil court is now overseeing his care. He's still sitting in jail. An integral care has not advocated for his true level of need. So I cannot keep putting people on the highest level of care, knowing that they're going to fail. And then what? And that has been the question in every meeting. And I do this at the local, state and federal levels. >> You all time has expired, ma'am. Okay. But then what? >> Thank you. All right. We will now move on to approval of the [10:06:44 AM] now move on to approval of the previous meeting minutes from may 22nd and June 5th. May I have a motion and a second, please. Motion by vice chair of Alaska, seconded by councilmember qadri. Any objections? With the approval of the may meeting. Minutes and June 5th meeting minutes. Seeing none those meeting minutes stand adopted. Now we'll move on to item number two. We'll welcome our homelessness strategy officer, David gray, to lead our discussion and possible action regarding the homelessness strategy. Officer budget, strategic plan and shelter termination policy. Mr. Gray, thank you so much for being here. >> Thank you very much. Thank you, madam chair. And thank you, council members, for having us today. I'm David gray, the homeless strategy officer for the city of Austin. And as ctm pulls up the presentation, I'll just go ahead and launch into some of your only item on the agenda today. So we have three topics that we'd like to discuss with you all. First is an [10:07:46 AM] with you all. First is an overview of the approved budget for the next fiscal year. The second is a look at the zo related items in the citywide strategic plan and last is an update on where we stand with our shelter termination policy. I'm going to pause for a moment, give our folks over at ctm a chance to get everything up and going for us. >> David, while they do that, is there someone on your staff who can email us this presentation? >> Yes, we can make sure you get a copy of the presentation. Thank you. >> Are what do you know? >> About. [10:08:59 AM] >> About. >> No. You know, if it's fine with with you all, I can run it off of whatever screen you pull up. This is fine. I can go with this. All right, let's see if this works. There. We go. So let's just try to focus on the big screen and not the little screen. Stealing my own thunder here. But that's okay. So today's agenda will focus on the fy 25 budget approvals. We'll talk about the citywide strategic plan and the elements that are so specific in that plan. And then we'll end up with the homeless shelter termination policy update. So just first diving into our fy 25 budget, I want to thank you all and your colleagues on the city council for approving the budget for the homeless strategy office. This is the first year in the city's history that we have a standalone budget for the homeless strategy office. So thank you for that. The total amount of funding in our budget is $36.2 million. Of that, $3.3 million is in our operating fund. That's the fund that our office uses to pay for our staff, for our office space, [10:10:01 AM] staff, for our office space, office supplies, materials, etc. The remaining $32.9 million is in social services contracts. That's what pays for our street outreach contracts. Some of our rapid rehousing work, a lot of our public permanent supportive housing services, and a host of other services in total. So staff have zo has been allocated 22 full time staff for the upcoming fiscal year. There were some key highlights from the fy 25 budget process. Things that were amended into the city manager's proposed budget for zo. The first was $2.8 million to support our operations at our northbridge and southbridge shelter. The second was $2.6 million that was added for permanent supportive housing, and we anticipate using that funding to support psh projects that will open next fiscal year. And the last is $440,000. That was added for the homeless engagement assistance response program, or the heart program, [10:11:01 AM] program, or the heart program, which is a street outreach program that was piloted by the downtown Austin alliance and we started having some conversations with Dea about moving forward with next steps in regards to that program. There was also a total of $5.7 million that was appropriated to zo as one time funding. In this budget process. Of that, $2.2 million was added for homeless prevention programs. And so we anticipate issuing a solicitation for those funds. 3.2 million was added to support our rapid rehousing support services. We're going to come to council and use those dollars to attach it to existing contracts, so that we can support clients who are in psh programs currently. And then if we have additional money after we supported our current clients. And if our partners say that they have more capacity to take on new clients, then we'll proceed with enrolling more people into rapid rehousing services. And then the last was a one time $300,000 allocation [10:12:02 AM] a one time $300,000 allocation for family homeless services, which we anticipate soliciting in the next fiscal year. I also want to take a moment just to update you on where we're at with our allocation from the federal American rescue plan act. As you all know, all of these funds have to be encumbered by the end of this calendar year and spent by December 2026 of the $95.3 million that was allocated for the homeless response system, we have 8.3 million remaining unallocated. However, you can see that we have an allocation plan for all the funds and just to walk through it at a high level, the remaining funds in the permanent housing capital and landlord engagement columns are actually a part of a solicitation that we announced today. It's a $2.1 million funding opportunity to help remove barriers for housing, and also to engage property owners to make more units available for individuals and families that are at risk of homelessness and [10:13:03 AM] are at risk of homelessness and those that are experiencing literal homelessness. The remaining money in the emergency shelter and crisis services row is going to be used to help us ramp down the marshaling yard and return that facility back into a good condition for the convention center. The money and supporting providers. We're having some conversations right now with echo around a new technical assistance and training program for homeless service providers, and so we anticipate using those funds to support that technical assistance opportunity. The rapid rehousing funds that are remaining will be attached to existing contracts to support our existing clients and then in other support services. That 600,000 is going toward supporting our clients in our shelters and in our programs. And this is helping them with things like soar enrollments, which is enrolling in like health care and other supportive services, as well as doing homeless prevention and diversion services to help [10:14:03 AM] diversion services to help people not remain homeless for very long. And then under homeless system support, those funds will support temporary staff that have been employed with our office. Those staff specifically manage contracts and programs that are funded through the American rescue plan act, initially we thought that we were going to have to let those staff go at the end of this calendar year. However through conversations with the treasury department and subsequently some new rules from the treasury department, we've received the green light to continue using this funding to support those staff. As long as those staff are working on the arpa programs. And so that's our spending plan. We will have all these dollars encumbered before the end of the calendar year, because my team knows that David does not believe in giving money back to the government. Yes. Council member can ask questions now. >> Chair, should I wait until the end? Right just out of curiosity, the 0.4 mil on the on the ramp. Ramp down. What does that look like? >> Like so some of that is being used to help clients find or obtain permanent housing. So our [10:15:04 AM] obtain permanent housing. So our strategy right now with the marshaling yard is to make sure every client who's there gets housed before we have to close it. And so this is helping with things like first last month's rent, maybe paying off, old balances so they qualify for new opportunities, helping people get their identifications, birth certificates, etc. There are also some operating costs that we have at the marshaling yard that we continue to pay, this includes things like utilities, temporary showers and trailers. Our food service contract, with the food bank, etc. So we still have those ongoing costs which are slowly phasing down. But since it's still a full scale operation, we still incur full scale cost. And then there's once we close the shelter, there are some repairs that we're going to have to make to the facility to return it back in the condition that we got it in from the convention center. And that was our pledge to our sibling department. >> Got it. Thank you. >> No problem. [10:16:05 AM] >> No problem. >> Any other questions on the budget update? Yes >> I was wondering if and this is not specific to these particular line items, but a kind of an ongoing conversation. We've been having and we had at the work session potentially for a future meeting here. If there is a way for you to help, show us the not only the efficacy of these programs, and we're going to talk about that a little bit in the strategic direction. But the dollars per intervention, you know, we had that discussion of how much does rapid cost, how much does psh cost per person per year, and so I think it would just be really helpful to kind of see on an aggregate of what are these the costs for these various programs, and then what type of outcomes are we seeing based on those investments, and then I think [10:17:06 AM] investments, and then I think that feeds also into that larger conversation of the system. Right. And I know back four years ago, 3 or 4 years ago when they were trying to figure out how to use some of the arpa dollars, a model was created of what we think our system is going to need. And that model was, you know, very detailed in terms of the various interventions. And I'm curious what the status of that model is, if that's something that we might be able to, you present to us just to show kind of how we are making our decisions, because I think we got to the budget process and were yearning for some of these data that we didn't necessarily have. And so if we can have those conversations earlier, I think that would be really helpful. So I don't know if that was necessarily a question, but if there's anything in there that you would like to comment on, I'm sure in a moment I'll [10:18:08 AM] I'm sure in a moment I'll invite, Gary Pollack from our office to come up and talk through some of the cost per interventions that they've roughly calculated. >> And so that's my soft toss to Gary to be prepared to come up in just a second on the system modeling piece that you asked about. We're continuing to work with echo on updating the model. Echo did have some staff turnover, which impacted the timeline that we were working on to try to get a final model to council. I know Matt Malika from echo came during the work session and presented some data and also had shared some initial data with you all, we do intend to invite echo actually to this body at a future meeting to do a more complete presentation on that model with updated figures. But Gary and his team is working with Matt's new staff, who are now assigned to lead that effort. So with that, though, let me have Gary come up really briefly and just give you some high level cost per interventions. And then, of course, we're happy to follow up [10:19:08 AM] course, we're happy to follow up with a deeper dive into program outcomes tied to these different investments. >> Well, thank you, because that's a good segue to the question I had, which is that the 32 million that we have allocated to social service contracts for our homelessness response, can you give us an understanding of how much of that 32 million goes toward each intervention at a high level? >> Thank you. Yes, ma'am. And we'll make sure we follow up with that. Something told me somebody was going to ask that question today, and I was supposed to have that answer prepared, and I did not prepare that answer. So I'll make sure we follow up with your office directly to get you that information. And then at a future presentation, we'll walk through all of those, kind of funding breakdowns and program outcomes. >> And that 32 million, is it inclusive of the one time 5 million in budget amendments, or is that the I'm going to jump back to that slide. >> So this 32 million this is the ongoing funding that is in our in our budget. And so this does not include the 5.71 time [10:20:08 AM] does not include the 5.71 time funding that was allocated. Okay. So this would be in addition. Yeah. Thank you. Gary do you want to come up real briefly. Thank you. >> Hi. Council members, Gary Pollack homeless strategy office, can you was the question just about kind of the cost figures? >> Well, I think the first question is the model that was developed by Henry Carr and Mandy Chapman. Semple. I know we're also talking with echo, but are we basing that work on the existing model? Are we making decisions based on the existing model? What does the existing model even tell us in terms of our needs versus what we have currently available? I would just love to be able to have more insight into the information that we have or the data we're using to make some of the decisions that we have to [10:21:10 AM] the decisions that we have to make in terms of where we want to prioritize and balance. >> Yeah. Councilmember colter, great questions. And just to clarify the model that we've been using to this point was developed by Barbara poppy and associates. I know the work kind of was in, overlapping, but the work and the model was built by a member of that team named Matt white. Who works with a consulting company called housing innovations. And he has been working closely with echo to develop a kind of the 2.0 version or the updated model. Since that work that that he spearheaded for our community, it was really just something he developed himself and hud has released a tool called Stella M that's available to all communities, but you really have to put in the work to build out the model. And so what he did with echo and some help from us as well, was translate the old [10:22:11 AM] as well, was translate the old model into that new system and then update the assumptions. The cost figures that that we're seeing in our contracts to this point. So the model really is built on our work over the last four years. And then we can adjust the assumptions. We can kind of model out a system that we feel is what we want as a as a community, but also what we can fund and so we're we're kind of at that stage of figuring out, okay, we have kind of the base model of where we are now, and echo is taking a closer look. They've had some staff changes, but through that transition they're taking a closer look at the model so they can really understand it and speak to it. And as David said, we'll have them join us at a at a future meeting to discuss the model and the costs associated with that. Great. >> Well, I think that'd be really helpful because I know one of the data points in there is we're going to need somewhere between 4500 and 5000 units over [10:23:11 AM] between 4500 and 5000 units over the next ten years. If we were to fully address that need, which, you know, averages out to almost 500 a year and we are, all, you know, very excited about what's coming in the next year or two. And it's on the scale of 3 to 400 a year, and that's awesome. But if we need 500 a year for the next ten years, that doesn't just happen overnight. That happens after years of investing and planning and building and, you know, all the many steps. And so I want to be really clear eyed about what our needs are. And then looking beyond psh into some of the prevention rapid diversion, what, you know, name your intervention that cost per intervention understanding. And then the outcomes associated shelter included so that we can figure out to your point what we [10:24:11 AM] figure out to your point what we do have the money to do and not do, and how we're going to best utilize those dollars and so I'm not necessarily looking for a full answer today. I think that's a broader discussion, but I just want to kind of bring that up today so that we can have those discussions over the next few months and into the year, because I think we're going to be having some really challenging discussions coming into the next budget of money we don't have and cliffs we are facing. The earlier we start having those discussions, the better. >> Yeah. Agreed >> Thank you. And next updates on the strategic plan. >> And thank you, Gary. So diving into the citywide strategic plan, and this is a process that's being stewarded by the city's financial services department. So I want to give them their shout out for guiding this process. The citywide strategic plan has been informed by input from over 200 unique staff from across the city. The [10:25:11 AM] staff from across the city. The goal of the plan is to help inform city decision making across the entire enterprise, and really drive success towards some common goals. This current citywide strategic plan builds off of sd 23, which was our aspirational strategic plan that was largely informed by imagine Austin, which is the city's comprehensive plan. The citywide strategic plan is really organized around seven strategic priorities, which is listed here on the screen. I won't read through all of them, but the one that's really important and relevant for us today is the one in purple at the bottom left, which focuses on homelessness and housing, developing affordable housing options citywide and reducing homelessness through strategic investments and partnerships. And so as you dig into the citywide strategic plan document, you'll notice that there's sub strategies within each of these groupings. And there's three sub strategies that are specific for zo and the work that we do. And so I will read through this a little bit [10:26:14 AM] read through this a little bit because I know it might be a little small on the screen, the first sub strategy looks at homeless prevention. It's the percentage of persons who engage with city funded prevention programs and do not repeat homelessness after a year, and so what I have on the screen is on the left, a breakdown of the strategic plan goals. And on the right is kind of our offices updates and what we're doing in that regard. And so when it comes to this priority 3.1, our office secured council approval just last week actually for homeless prevention and diversion services contracts. And that's a contract with sunrise that we're looking to roll out pretty soon. Also related to this, you know, is the $2.1 million funding opportunity that we announced today, a large chunk of that is focused on housing barrier removal. And so if folks are at risk of homelessness or they're experiencing homelessness and they're having an issue getting into an apartment or some type of permanent and stable housing, [10:27:16 AM] of permanent and stable housing, then we have a fund that will be established to help them remove those barriers and be able to rapidly get stably rehoused and so we are making some inroads on this goal, we're also very excited, frankly, to be dedicating some energy towards homeless prevention and getting upstream of people's experiences of homelessness instead of waiting for them to be homeless for so long that they're now traumatized and just the cost and the amount of effort it takes to help people recover at that point is far more severe. The second measure on here is hh3-2, which focuses on the heal initiative, it speaks to having the percentage of heel, bridge shelter participants who are enrolled in permanent supportive housing after enrolling in heel. And our target target for that is 80%. Through council direction, we have been partnering with our local leadership council as well as echo to finalize that rapid rehousing to permanent [10:28:17 AM] rehousing to permanent supportive housing transfer policy. In fact, the leadership council should be receiving an update from echo this month on the status of that transfer policy. The reason why this is relevant for this strategic goal is because under our current heel model, clients come into bridge shelter from encampments, and then from there they are connected to rapid rehousing. But we also know that over 70% of the clients who are bringing in through heel are chronically homeless. And as we've discussed with you before, rapid rehousing is not the best intervention for individuals who are chronically homeless. So we need a mechanism to help these clients move from rapid rehousing into permanent, supportive housing. So this policy will help us get there. Just as an aside, we are looking at heel in just that program model to see what tweaks we might be able to suggest to, so that we're not pulling in chronically homeless clients into rapid, but rather diverting them from bridge into the more appropriate resource. The last strategic plan goal focused specifically on homelessness is [10:29:19 AM] specifically on homelessness is item 3.3, which speaks to stability here. What we're looking at is the percentage of individuals served by city funded programs who enter permanent housing and do not experience homelessness again within two years of a housing placement. And since we're on the front end of this new strategic plan, we just haven't had the benefits of a two year look back to see if we are achieving this target measure or not. That being said, Gary and his team do that work with echo and with other partners to look at our interventions and to track whether or not we're seeing clients return to homelessness, when it comes to permanent supportive housing, at least within our clc, we know that 98% of our clients remain successfully housed, and so we feel strongly that we're hitting this mark. But this is something that we'll be measuring throughout the next two years to make sure that we're staying on target. Before I jump to the shelter termination policy, were there any questions on the strategic plan goals? >> Thank you. And I really appreciate that. As part of the [10:30:21 AM] appreciate that. As part of the citywide strategic plan as it relates to homelessness and housing, I just want to read it out loud, for the record, our city's intention is to develop affordable housing options citywide and reduce homelessness through strategic investments and partnerships. And I think that is super helpful and really spelling out what we envision the city's role in addressing homelessness in our overall ecosystem. And so I'm fully supportive of us having that lens as we approach city operations and our budget making process moving forward. Some of the questions I had are around the target percentages that you have here outlined for these strategies, 75% for prevention, 50% for heal initiative, and 80% for stability. Can you illuminate how how you develop those percentages? >> Sure. Let me actually turn to my team. Does anybody part of that direct process? I'm sorry Gary, I'm going to invite Gary Pollack. Gary Pollack was the star of the work session during the budget process. So I'm sure you all know Gary. The question [10:31:23 AM] you all know Gary. The question focused on the targets for the strategic plan items and how we establish those, >> Do you want to? Sure. >> Thanks, Gary. >> Yeah. >> Hi. Councilmember Fuentes. The targets were generally set on either past experience or expectations for programs just based on, I think trends either locally or nationally. So permanent supportive housing, for instance, we see a very low rate of folks returning to homelessness once they're housed, you know, because the one of the big goals is to, to keep folks sustainably housed for, for a number of years. And so that two year metric really generally is met. For rapid rehousing, the national average, I believe, is around 70 to 80%, success and so we kind of average the two to, to come to the goal here, recognizing that [10:32:23 AM] the goal here, recognizing that we had a pretty huge investment in rapid rehousing and it was new to our community. So we were we were really kind of forecasting in that one, when it came to prevention, prevention is also generally very successful, and I'd have to look at when we develop these metrics, we did develop them about a year and a half ago. So during the strategic direction 2023 process, or 2028, sorry, when 2023 was sunsetting, I had worked with the homeless strategy officer at that time, Diana gray, to build out some of these. And so it's a little old in my mind, not so fresh, but I believe that was built on the success of the collaborative, as well as just general trends around homelessness prevention, which really do try to get to folks before they, they hit the crisis of homelessness. And, and [10:33:24 AM] crisis of homelessness. And, and have a generally very high success rate, and then the last one, the middle one, the heel that again, was based on our what we had seen in the initial about a year and a half of the heel program. So looking at the rates of folks accessing shelter and then getting connected to housing programs, it was extremely high at the time and the resources were certainly more flush with rapid rehousing. And so that's where that was set at the time. >> >> Okay. And speaking of the data and going back to, what director gray mentioned on the echo model that's being worked on and developed, you're basing that on the last four years, and I'm curious, how are we considering the effects of the pandemic and how that shows up in the data, >> Do you mean like housing stability and affordability? Yeah. >> I mean, just even you referenced some of the looking at local rates and the trends that we have here locally and [10:34:25 AM] that we have here locally and basing your target percentages. But also just overall, like how are we considering the pandemic impacts? >> To be honest, I'm not entirely sure we I know that the model, at least this this first version of it, right, was based on kind of the more recent trends. And so that would include that immediate experience of the pandemic, but I think the, the, the impact of the market over time is probably still being identified in some level, but I will say, you know, for instance, when we did our shelter assessment last last year, gosh, it's been a long year. We did look at projections from the chamber of commerce, for instance, for population. And then we looked at the demographers, projections for, the rate of poverty in our community and really tried to blend those two. And understand what would be the shelter need. As we looked forward. And so I think something, something akin to that would be helpful to understanding that need, but, I [10:35:25 AM] understanding that need, but, I think one of the big stress or one of the big points to stress for the modeling is the preventative side and really trying to stop the inflow as much as possible so that we can we can assist and help people before they fall into homelessness. And that that will require, I think, kind of a focus on that market impact and making sure that we're identifying those factors that could predict homelessness. >> Okay. >> Colleagues, any. Yes councilmember qadri. Yeah. >> Thank you, one of the questions I was going to ask about how we got to the to the target number percentages, but do y'all have do y'all have a breakdown of sorts of, of a timeline of when we hope to hit, you know, 25%, 50% and, you know, kind of what what steps and what we'll be doing to kind of hit each milestone as we as we go on. [10:36:27 AM] we go on. >> So you're saying like, like a look ahead of sorts. What milestones? We don't have that level of detail mapped out yet. But we do have though is working with financial services. We have sub teams. You can think of them as like working groups across departments on each of these items. And those teams meet regularly to look at the data, track our internal performance. We do set benchmarks for ourselves as we go to make sure that we're hitting the measures. But we don't have like a kind of forward looking, roadmap of sorts where we've said by, you know, December, this is where we want to be by January, this is where we want to be. We're still in the process of finalizing those materials. >> Got it. >> Okay. That's it for now. >> So building on the chair's question, you know, setting these targets at it sounds it sounds like we just looked at [10:37:27 AM] sounds like we just looked at what we're doing and set the targets kind of where we think we are or, you know, the rapid program. We think is between 70 and 80. So it's 75 or he'll experientially we've seen it around 50. So we set it at 50. And I'm. I'm struggling just a little bit in that it feels like we should that our targets should be something that is something we aspire to do. Right. So if, if we're seeing 75% success with rapid, then our goal should be 80 or 85. You know, something realistic, but also something that is better than just where we are today. And to councilmember Cordray's point, then a roadmap of how we get there. You know, we think that we'll do this much better by next year and this much better by the year after. I know this is all still new, and being developed. And so I'm this is in no way a criticism of where we are today. But I think that we should not aim to be average. We [10:38:28 AM] should not aim to be average. We should aim to be better and figure out what it takes to get there. And maybe the answer is it is going to take too much investment in this one area. And so if you want to see that kind of outcome, let me be real clear about how much that's going to cost. And we can understand that and say, okay, well, maybe we're being a little too ambitious, but I think it's, there is room for growth within our targets. It's just kind of where I will leave this. >> And councilmember at that point is noted, and we'll take that back to our colleagues at the financial services department and in our huddle teams. I think as Gary might have alluded, you know, some of these, this actually all of this specific work around the target predates me and kind of predates us. But I will say to your point, when we bring our contracts for renewals, one thing that we started doing on the contracting side within zo is doing exactly what you've talked about, really looking at our performance metrics for how [10:39:29 AM] our performance metrics for how we're evaluating the effectiveness of our service providers and setting performance metrics that are rooted in some type of justification, plus a little bit of aspiration. Right? So if we know historically, this, street outreach program has always hit a thousand people, okay, within this year we want to try to hit 1200. Let's see how we can do a little bit more. And so, so we share that value. We're doing that work internally with our contracts. But I have to take I have to go back to FSD and understand how these targets were set and then how we can maybe adjust them moving forward. >> Okay. And one, and I have mentioned it to FSD, but I will also mention it to you, I think one target that is missing in these is number of unhoused individuals in our community. I think we should have a goal and set expectations of here's how many people we think, you know, [10:40:30 AM] many people we think, you know, at the end of this year or in one year in five years, we aim and hopefully that's a decline. But to have Wright so is it realistic? But also semi ambitious to say at this time next year we are not going to have one additional homeless person than we have today, right? We're going to we're going to stop the growth and we're going to just try to plateau. And then in five years, we're going to have 2000 less or, you know, I think that that is a meaningful metric that we are not putting on paper, but that should be part of our goal set and figure out once again to councilmember Cowdrey's point of what's the path to get there? >> Yes, sir. >> Thank you. >> More of a question out of curiosity, where are we now with these numbers? Right. Our goals are 75, 50, 80. You know, in [10:41:31 AM] are 75, 50, 80. You know, in respect to the three different measures. But where are we right now with percentage of persons who engage with city funded homelessness prevention and, you know, the other the other two, Gary might have the more precise information, if you want the actual number, maybe I'll invite Gary up. >> Gary, do you want to take that one? Do you want me to just provide the general? Do you have the precise numbers? >> I can give an answer to probably wanting to. >> Okay. Why don't you? Gary told me that he can give us an answer to one and two. Number three is a little bit more tricky because it's a it's a new metric that's like a two year kind of look ahead. So that one we do track and I do know of clients that are placed in sch 98% of them remain stably housed. And so, you know, by that regard we would be exceeding that target. But yeah, with respect to one and two, Gary, do you want to take that? Thank you. >> Hi, so for, for, strategy [10:42:32 AM] >> Hi, so for, for, strategy number one, prevention, as you may know, we've not had a great deal of prevention in our community since the shift during the arpa funding days, to rapid rehousing. But we did have two prevention programs funded through arpa, and they met in nearly 100% housing stability rate, one of those contracts was through family endeavors, and the other was through foundation communities. And they both met nearly 100%. So more than 95% of the folks that they served, were or were able to maintain their housing after that service engagement ended. The heal initiative number two, our rates were actually quite high, the last time we looked, I think, just making sure I'm reading the strategy right, so I can speak to it, I think our, our rate of connection was, around 80%, but [10:43:34 AM] connection was, around 80%, but we'd have to get back to you on the real number. And the reason why it's been reduced is because of that, that future funding question for the heal initiative, and so that was one thing that we were able to adjust, just this past year through the strategic planning process with FSD, knowing that we don't have rapid rehousing commitments tied to our heal programs anymore, and so, yeah, those are those two figures at this time. >> Got it. Thank you. >> Can I councilman, if I could just kind of piggyback off of Gary slightly, and so I think when it comes to number one, you know, we had talked about that new contract with sunrise. One thing that we're doing in parallel to that is entering into a research contract, not just to evaluate the effectiveness of the sunrise work, but more importantly for us to understand what types of prevention interventions are most successful versus which ones maybe help somebody for a [10:44:35 AM] ones maybe help somebody for a few months, and then it leads them right back into homelessness. And then for 3.2, as we tinker with our heal strategy and program design, and we get this rapid rehousing to transfer policy going, I think will begin to see changes in the data. And so if there's any hesitancy on my side in providing number, it's just because we're tweaking some things as we go and we'll be tracking those program outcomes against the citywide strategic plan goals. So the data that Gary has now is great kind of for where we're at now. But as we reimagine what some of this work looks like and we get smarter around our investments, we could have different numbers moving forward and just out of curiosity, and I don't know if you guys have these numbers on you, but how long did it take us to get to the numbers that Gary just highlighted and how much of how much of an investment did it also take? Sure. I would have to get back to you on both of those. [10:45:36 AM] those. >> Got it. Thanks >> Thank you. I think we're ready to move on to shelter termination policy. >> No worries. If a member of my team could just make a note of that last question for me, I'd appreciate it. Thank you. So, jumping into shelter, termination policy. So we've recently rolled out our new shelter termination policy. This is something that was really client driven. We heard from a number of clients who had contact our office or approach our staff at shelters, and they would express concerns about different termination policies for homeless shelters in Austin. And when we say termination policy, that's kind of our industry language for saying the rules that you have to follow and if you don't follow them, you get kicked out. Right. And so we worked with our clients who are in shelters. We talked to, homeless advisory councils, other city departments, including the equity office and our peer departments. We talked to our shelter operators, even the ones who don't have city contracts. And we did this to try to craft a policy that we felt like yields consistency [10:46:38 AM] felt like yields consistency across all the different sites. We also wanted to make sure that any policy that we enacted led with harm reduction, and it prioritized consequences that we really felt would help maintain clients shelter, participation. You know, the last thing we want to do is, is terminate somebody's residency as a shelter. If you are in one of our shelters, it's likely because every other safety net system did not support you in the way it was designed to do. And so now you're here. And so as much as we can, we want to hold people in our shelter. So we rolled out this policy. It has gone into effect this month, it is mandatory at the marshaling yard. Our two shelters, arch and eighth street. When it comes to the other shelters in the city, that the city either doesn't own the facility or maybe we fund, but we're only a partial funder of the operations. We didn't feel like we had the authority to impose a regulation on them. However, we have requested voluntary adoption and we are continuing to engage with those [10:47:39 AM] continuing to engage with those shelter operators to see how much of this policy can be incorporated within their standard operating procedures. Basically, the way the policy is broken down is into three different categories. The first looks at terminations as a result of multiple documented violations of program requirements. And when we're talking about violations of program requirements, we're talking about behaviors that negatively impact the shelter operations or the experience of other clients. So this could be things like having drugs or alcohol in the shelter, refusing any of the reasonable or mandatory searches, repeated incidents of smoking in places where you aren't supposed to smoke, or maybe consuming alcohol on site or communicating in what we call a verbally abusive manner, which is different than a more terroristic manner which I'll touch on in just a second. And so for these types of behaviors, clients can be removed from the shelter, but only if the [10:48:40 AM] shelter, but only if the violations are documented and they're escalating and they're exceeding and before any removal occurs, our shelters have to prioritize other consequences that give people the opportunity to remain their residency in the shelter. So this could be things like participation. And in programs like anger management programs or substance use groups. It can maybe mean meeting with your case manager to develop a housing plan or achieving milestones like getting your driver's license, getting your birth certificate, and rolling in benefits programs, it could even mean a temporary suspension from a shelter, a four hour cooling off period just for somebody to kind of get out, calm down, and then reengage when they're ready. I will say, though, that the cooling off intervention cannot be the first intervention, nor are the operators allowed to utilize that intervention during inclement weather, so all those things have to happen before a shelter can approach zo and say, [10:49:43 AM] shelter can approach zo and say, we want to terminate this client's residency. When it comes to the second category, what we're looking at here are threats to health and safety. These are activities that pose an imminent threat to the safety and the well-being of the other clients at the shelter, as well as our shelter staff and our shelter guests. And so this is actions like setting intentional fires at the shelter. Harming other clients or other staff, any type of sexual harassment or sexual violence in the shelter, distributing illegal substances in the shelter, making terroristic threats towards other clients, staff or visitors. And so those are threats where, you know, it's very loud. It's very aggressive. And it's something like, I'm going to blow up this place or I'm going to come back and set everything on fire. Well, we can't have you do that. If you possess a weapon in the shelter, this can also lead to immediate removal. We do, take weapons when clients come into our shelters, we secure those [10:50:45 AM] shelters, we secure those weapons. We will give clients their weapons back when they leave the shelter. Even if they're just leaving for the day and coming right back in. But all of our clients know that possessions of any type of weapons, guns, knives, etc. Is not allowed in the shelter, any other illegal activity theft, rape, etc. Could also be treated as a threat to health and safety as clients. And again, these have to be documented. The shelter operators have to talk to us about these things before they exit somebody. But that's that second category. The third category speaks to bed abandonment and this does happen when clients were just on their own. Leave the shelter without telling anybody. The way this category works is if a client does not give a shelter staffer a heads up that they left the shelter, or that they're leaving the shelter for an extended period, and they're gone for more than 72 hours, then that bed can be provided to somebody else on the waitlist. Now before we do that, our shelter operators will call local jails, local hospitals, mental health [10:51:47 AM] local hospitals, mental health authorities, etc. To try to find clients. And if we learn that a client has been arrested or admitted for a medical reason, we will hold that bed for them for a reasonable amount of time, but if the client just disappears and they don't come back, we will secure all their stuff, especially their personal effects. If they leave any, birth certificates or other forms of identification behind, all that stuff will be secured on site, but the bed itself will be turned over to a new guest. When it comes to the actual process of termination and just what that looks like for any of these categories, we do require our shelter operators to do a few things before somebody is officially terminated. The first and foremost is our shelter operators must maintain a copy of the termination policy, as well as a grievance policy. That's approved by the homeless strategy office. The grievance policy is something that's given to all of our clients upon intake, and includes an opportunity for all clients who are being terminated to file a [10:52:49 AM] are being terminated to file a grievance directly with our office. Our shelter operations and expansion unit lead, Greg Mccormick, who is here today, is the individual who I've assigned to review those grievances, as well as review anything related to terminations from shelters, all of the shelter operators have to provide the clients and submit to zo a written termination notice that clearly explains the reason for the termination, as well as provide a copy of the grievance policy again to the client upon termination, any clients who are involuntary terminated cannot be restricted from future services unless authorized by our office. The reason for this is oftentimes we know that we have clients who make mistakes. Maybe they're in a bad place. Maybe something's happening in their personal life, and that's resulted in them being exited from shelter. But we also want to make sure that we're providing people with a second chance and a third chance and a fourth chance. It takes everybody multiple times to get [10:53:49 AM] everybody multiple times to get it right, and so unless it's really a serious scenario, more often than not we will welcome people back into our shelters after they've been terminated and then have had an opportunity to cool off. Lastly, and I've alluded to this, all of our shelter operators must complete a shelter and voluntary termination report form when a client is involuntarily terminated for either the multiple violation requirement or for the imminent threats to health and safety. And that form is submitted to us when it comes to the clients who are terminated because they vacated their bed, we have standing Tuesday and Thursday morning meetings with all of our operators, and typically they'll tell us at that point this person hasn't showed up for 72 hours. We've kind of made our list of phone calls. We can't find them. Our outreach team will try to find them, and if they can't find them, then at that point we'll go ahead and authorize that bed to be overturned, so as I said, this [10:54:49 AM] overturned, so as I said, this is the policy that we've rolled out, our operators are excited to have a policy that brings some consistency to their operations. Frankly, our clients are really excited, too, because now things that could lead to termination at one shelter, leads to termination at all shelters. There's really no no guessing here, and then our staff is really excited because this is data that will help us better track why people are being terminated and exited from shelters. The rate at which people are being exited from shelters, and of course, all of our policies are living, breathing documents. So if at any point we see a need to amend this or adjust this policy based off of client feedback or operator feedback, we'll receive that and then we'll make amendments accordingly. But that's the update on where we're at with this termination policy. And madam chair, I'm happy to take any questions from you or the other council members. >> Thank you. >> Colleagues. All right. Any last questions for director gray? Very good. Thank you so much. [10:55:51 AM] Very good. Thank you so much. >> Thank you all. >> All right. So next month we will have an agenda item likely regarding the sobering center appointments. We've received notice of the resignation from board member Anna Sophie. Are there any other future items that the committee would like to discuss or consider? Seeing none, I want to thank everyone for your participation and contributions to today's important conversation. If there are no further business before us, I will adjourn this meeting at 10:56 A.M. Thank you so much.