This is the Ward 8 NPA's planning, no steering, not steering, planning meeting. Yes. This is the actual meeting that we plan for another meeting. And so I, just the ground rules on this meeting is we really want to hear from people who are living in Ward 8. And we want to give you plenty of opportunity to express concerns, talk to our newly elected City Councilor. Hannah King is here. Gary Bolden is the East District School Attendance. And it doesn't have to necessarily about the issue we're going to try to talk about with this homeless families in the Burlington School District. But possibly anything that you want to talk about, we want to make sure during the meeting that we get to hear your voice. And so that's kind of how we're going to approach this and have approach that successfully, I think. I think we should go around and introduce Charlie and Sam. They're the ones that moderate make this meeting happen. Gary, you want to just tell a little bit about yourself and culture? Gary Bolden and I actually have a resident of Ward 1 and newly elected unhosed, thankfully. Lucky you. School Commissioner for East District and former employee of Burlington School District. I'm feeling the weirdness of that, which I attend the meeting. But as soon as I'm official, I'll put out ways for you to contact me. I'll start posting probably semi-monthly audio and written newsletters for people. And you'll be able to post questions to me and I'll be back to you. I'm Bill Church. I'm moderating today. I'm part of the steering committee. I live on Bradley Street. That's probably all you need to know. Them going to use yourself. Yes, hi, I'm Tim Doherty. I am the Councilor-Elect for the East District and I live on Colonial Square over at Ward 1. Hi, everyone. My name is Romeo. I am the Station and Custom Service Supervisor for Green Mountain Transit. I am also part of the NPA here for Ward 8. I'm Susanna. I'm a UVM student and I'm a warding resident at 348 College. Hi, everyone. I'm Hannah. I am the Councilor-Elect for Ward 8 and I also am a College Street resident. Anne Brenna, I recognize your name. Do you want to introduce yourself briefly? Okay. Hi, I'm Anne Brenna. I live in Ward 8. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I'm Anne Brenna. I live on Bradley Street in Ward 8. And can I ask two quick questions? Let's finish the introductions and then we'll open it up for questions and discussions. Okay. Dick and Linda, you want to introduce yourself quickly? Sure. Hi, I'm Linda Risve. I live in hunger for terrorists in Ward 8. Mary, I recognize your name from the library. Yes, I'm Mary Danko. I'm the Director of the Fletcher Free Library and I just had an announcement. Do you want me to make it now or to wait? In two minutes. Okay. Dick, it's good to see you. You're on mute. I'm Dick Brab. Hi. I live in Ward 8 on Hungerford, Belinda. And Sarah, thank you very much for attending. Can you introduce yourselves so we know who you, others know who you are? Sure. Thanks for having me tonight. My name is Sarah Russell and I am the Special Assistant to End Homelessness for the City of Burlington. Also the Co-Chair of the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance. Yes, sort of a first announcement. I'll make this for the three of us. None of us have been sworn in either to City Council or school boards, so we can't speak officially. We can at this point only pass long information and pass back information from irrespective organizations. But if you ask the theme tonight, it's me as a Ward 1 citizen and my colleagues as Ward 8 citizens. Or Ward 1. So we can't have any favors tonight. Mary, can you promise me anything? Mary, you want to tell us something good about the library? Sure. Well, I actually have a request. It's always great at the library, but we are looking to do our strategic plan refresh. Oh, I love it. We're looking to do our strategic plan refresh and we need input from the community on what they would like to see. So very quickly, if I could just give you the URL to go and fill out our survey. It's very simple. It's four questions will take under 10 minutes. It's fletcherfree.org slash survey. And if you wouldn't mind putting that out in your minutes, that would be great. A big part of how we want to move forward on the strategic plan is to know what the community wants. So they're open-ended questions we want to hear from as many people as possible. I've been going to all the NPAs. We're pushing this survey out as wide as we can to hear what you want from the library. So that's really all I have for today. And hopefully you can amplify our need for getting that input. So would you be able to come to a future NPA meeting, Ward 8, and take specific questions and input from Ward 8 members? Absolutely. So we'll make that, and that may be something that we might invite you back with. OK. The library is a very stabilized influence in Ward 8. Well, we love being in Ward 8, and we love being a polling place for Ward 8. OK. Dr. Brenia, if you're dying to ask those questions, go ahead. I'm not dying to ask any questions. Mary, if you're still there, can you access that survey just on the fletcherfree library website? Yes, you can. And that's our website is fletcherfree.org slash survey. Oh, OK. All right. And I just wanted to ask Gary, are you could you clarify? Are you the East District School Board Commissioner-elect? I am. I am. Oh, OK. I'm going to go to Ward 8, and she has a lab on 392. OK. So and then there's I'm not sure who the Ward 1 representative, but representative is, but you are our representative as well. Good. And I was going to ask that. The steering committee members, have you given any thought to. Reuniting with Ward 1 for the MPI meetings? And I have, I can just speak for myself. I don't want to. I think that our voice gets lost at Ward 1. I think those meetings tend to drag on for reasons other than. Important business in the wards. And having attended those meetings for a while, I don't really feel like they represent Ward 8. And I think part of that was actually shown in the redistricting, where our attempts to work with other people to improve our work were kind of undermined in the last minute. So I have some. You're in Ward. No, Ward 5. Well, no, you're in Ward 1. I'm in Ward 1. Maybe with leadership in Ward 1, things have changed, but I'm not in favor. Anyway, I live in Ward 1, but I was I'm East District, so I represent you guys too. Yeah. What do you think Dan, should we reignite? You were a member of that for a long time. What do you think? I just think it would make it much easier for the city counselors and the school commissioners if Ward 1 and 8 met together. Linda, you also were a part of that. What do you think? So I'm not on the steering committee. I'm not a member of it. Yeah. I actually hadn't given it any thought at all. So pros and cons or anything. So I'm not willing at this point to give a point. I mean, I can see the good and the bad. So it's another topic for a steering committee. Let me just make note of that. We have to elect Romeo as a member of the steering committee. And I'm not sure of the process. I don't have the bylaws for that. And do you know what they are? Somebody nominate and then vote. And then vote. Anybody in Ward 8 can vote. Yeah. OK. Go ahead. So I want to nominate Romeo to join the Ward 8 by the steering committee. And then all Ward 8. So you're on Ward 8, so you can vote. So I think it's just the handrails, yeah. And it's just people who live in Ward 8. OK, all in favor. Oh, yeah, Romeo, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit and tell us why you're here. What Ward 8 needs as an NPA member? Well, first and foremost, thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here. But at the same time, one of the key reasons why I want to be part of the steering committee is to be able to amplify some of the key things that I see happening at Ward 8, but also create a holistic discussion where I can bring to bear what I know best as far as my top is concerned and what I see happening at the transit center with transportation-wise, with homelessness issues, and so on and so forth. So more than anything else, just bring my talent to the steering committee and bring some resolutions to the table is the key thing that I want to be part of the steering committee. And I think the NPA is one way to help the committee in being able to see what can be done for the committee as well as the neighborhood as well. So yeah, so thank you for having me. And I look forward to helping. And where is your address? 26 University Terror. OK, that's right. You're at Paris. Yeah. All right. All in favor? Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you, Linda. Thank you, Romeo. So that was unanimous, one, two.  Yeah, three, four, five, seven to zero. Thank you guys. Thank you very much. Thanks, Romeo. Thank you. Anybody else from the ward want to speak up here before we get to the topic of discussion, Anna? Just a couple of quick announcements. I've been posting on Front Forge Forum, but obviously, as you mentioned, I'm not sworn in yet. But once I am, I'll be doing a weekly newsletter. And so you can sign up for my email list. I'll post it again on Front Forge Forum. I'll also be posting videos on my social media, like talking about a recap of our council meetings and anything important. Also on Front Forge Forum. On April 1st at 1.30 at Fletcher Free Library, I'm posting a listening session. So feel free to stop by. And I'll be happy to talk to folks. And I think that's everything. But we really can't engage you or Tim right now on specific issues. So here's one. I hadn't heard. It can be a listening tool. We can't, yeah, we can't speak on behalf of the city yet, but we can engage in the same way that we did during the campaign. So at least that's what I've been doing and it hasn't, no one's told me that it wasn't allowed. Right, more than you can even hear thoughts and things. Yeah. You can't ask us about what's going on in the city council, because we're not on the city council, but I think you can otherwise, speak as we normally would. Unless it's something of public record. Yeah, we just, we aren't an entity of the city. Technically.  It's just me and other people feel differently around the board aid that part of the problem that we have had as long time residents of board aid is being listened to by our city council people. And we had reached out many times we don't expect people to agree with us, but to at least listen to us. And that was never happening. And there at the end, it was, we were told everything and I can read newsletter after newsletter about how it was going to be, but there was never any opportunity for us to have input or to build a relationship that we could move forward together with our city council people. And subsequently they felt whatever they felt and it disappeared. So hopefully we can maybe change some of that now. I hope it would be my hope. Can I ask you a question? Sure. So was there a time you and Anne have been long time board aid folks, was there a time when your relationship with your city council person, whether it was the district city council person or the word specific or both was different and what made it successful? Because I don't think either Hannah and I want to reinvent the wheel. We don't want to reinvent the wheel. So we'd rather go back to an old successful practice and then maybe riff on it a little bit, but. Anne and Linda can weigh in on this. The reason there was a YMCA between College and Bradley Street is that was originally going to be a Champlain College dormitory. They were going to jump Main Street, which they had an agreement with the city that they were going to stay on the other side of Main Street, but they proposed a dormitory of 360 students at the old Ethan Allen Club. That was when the neighborhood got very active and with Max Tracy's help, who was the city council person, we were able to push back with that. And Emily Lee was on the planning commission or something and was able to push back at that. But it was so, we made it, we raised enough issues with Champlain College that for what, maybe that their Democrats were changing, they didn't say that, they didn't want to deal with the neighborhood. And it was then that we even proposed that the YMCA take that site. Because they pulled out of that, then Parmahlow came through and the YMCA leaders came through. And that was something that significantly improved the neighborhood, but I had a stabilized structure instead of 300 students and what was essentially all the time. And so there's an issue that by having the city council help us at that time. I felt like that was effective. And you have a, do you remember any better days or Linda? I just wanted to say that when Adam Roof was our city councilor, he was great. He was specifically very responsive in terms of constituent services and hearing concerns of all kinds. And he actually met with us regularly, not as part of the NPA meeting, pretty regularly. And how did he set that up, Linda?  Was it informal? I'm looking to set up, and Hannah and I had this discussion secret, we're looking to set up a mechanism, mechanisms, systems by which we can be present, that fit and that work and that we can accomplish. He said in my backyard. Yeah, so I think with Adam we were meeting regularly and we invited him. I think that was what usually happened. And it was really productive. So I think we kept meeting. That doesn't mean that that's the mechanism it has to be, but that's, we have kind of little neighborhood association which I don't think we necessarily have to be exclusive about, but before when we were part of Ward 8, we had this people street community. So that was what it was then, but it doesn't have to be that way. Could work again, I suppose. Okay. Well, that's my hope with the listening session, but I'm doing those once or twice a month. And so that should be an opportunity for you all to join over Zoom or in person with me and we'll be able to talk about things before we have to. Yeah, we're very clear that we want a neighborhood and be part of the neighborhood. And it doesn't mean that we agree on everything, but we at least kind of have to look out for each other, which a lot of that happens already and it comes from a long time residence, but it would be good if you could make some time available for that and we're gonna be able to. Excellent, yeah. And do you want us to throw anything in there? No, I don't really have anything else to add. Okay, so the business part of this, which I would like to turn over to Sarah and also with Greg is as we find out even last week at the YMCA that war date is particularly affected by the homeless situation in Burlington, probably more so than any other ward. And as a consequence of that, I think it would be good for us to have a discussion about not so much the extent of the problem, but what should we do or what can we do to take a position about how we can help end a problem that nobody wants? If not that we don't want homeless people, but how do we help the city and especially ward aid focus on that? Because when you see a bunch of people, I'll give an example, the YMCA has a little enclave that became kind of a homeless city a week ago. And you couldn't walk by there, there was drug use usual, but what they don't know is right across the street is a building where several years ago, somebody tried to sleep on the grill or the old telephone company and died. And so it's a relatively dangerous situation to be living on the streets like that. And I know the city is invested into that and Sarah has agreed to come talk to us, but I think that that's an opportunity for us in Ward 8 to maybe understand the situation and maybe if not provide direct help, at least ask our representatives to take this issue on. It's different than living in the people that are trying to live in the parks. I don't think we have a park in Ward 8 unless a memorial, unless a city call it in Ward 8. I don't think it is. It's not, it's Ward 3. Yeah, so sleeping in the parks is not an issue with us. People sleeping on the street or behind garages or the behavior that goes there is something that we should, I think it'd be good to talk about. And I'm particularly interested in a subset of the homeless people, which are those kids whose families are homeless. Because I think that there's not a lot of resource dependent what we can do, but if we can shine the light in our neighborhoods about these kids who really need a stable place in order for them to get through school, that I would be something I would like to see supported and maybe we can discuss how resources have come to that segment, how big of a problem is it? And I think it's particularly pertinent to Ward 8 because the entire demographic of Ward 8 includes what I think is the biggest landlord in the state of Vermont, which is the University of Vermont. They have more people living in university housing than any other institution I know makes up maybe the prison. And I'm not saying that they need to solve the problem but as members of Ward 8 and our neighbors, maybe they have resources that could be addressed to that that they might wanna think about. Or the reason the school district I think needs to be involved is the city has very generously provided a brand new school very generously have, I've never seen them vote down a school budget. And I'm questioning why are we building these big plants and things we need to provide some element of housing? Or if you're talking $175 million dollars, well, we need housing. University Medical Center has identified housing opportunities in South Burlington. Why can't the Burlington school district think in terms of building some housing in order to house the students' families that need that? I mean, I think there are just ideas that we could attach to big things that are happening here that would help the problem in Ward 8. And that's, you know, why can't landlord or why can't we rent from landlords for students? I mean, just, I don't get it a brainstorming here but I think that there's, it's a uniquely Ward 8 problem that we can probably come up with some ideas about with support. And so I asked Sarah to come to kind of talk about if I just met Sarah at a meeting about camping in parks. And so I guess I didn't know who you were and what you were doing, but could you describe the impact of the housing of the homeless population in Burlington from your standpoint? Sure, I'm happy to speak to that. I'll start off by saying that we, in terms of, so the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance, I mentioned I was co-chair of that group, is comprised of stakeholders from the community, including some community members. And we always hope people with lived experience of homelessness, however, sometimes those folks are tough to connect with and we're working really hard on that. So the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance looks at data every month. We do not break that data down by town. So that's county level data. So what I can share with you from a county level perspective is that we have currently about 584 total households who are experiencing homelessness in Chittenden County, about 64 families of those 584. We see 191 chronic households, which would indicate that a chronic household would be a household that has been homeless for at minimum of 12 consecutive months. We have 42 youth who are homeless. And when we talk about youth in terms of this homeless data, those are transition age youth. So they are ages 18 to 24. That is an increased number of youth that we're seeing in that age range. Additionally, we have I think 34 veterans who are homeless. So that 584 is kind of we break down into those sub-populations that I just mentioned. We have 218 households that are in the transitional housing program in motels. There are no motels in Burlington. Those motels are in Williston, Shelburne, Colchester, for the most part, and in South Burlington. So those families that are in motel, or will households that are in motels are not in Chittenden County. We also have an additional 126 households that are in the adverse weather conditions program, or AWC. They entered that stay sometime after December 15th and were supposed to be exited March 15th. However, I don't know if you've been following this at all. I sort of breathe it lately, but there has been a budget adjustment that has gone through without governor's signature to extend the both the transitional housing program and the adverse weather motel programs through either May 31st or June 30th, depending on eligibility. So what I will say about Burlington specifically is that Burlington sees the highest number of unsheltered homeless. And so when we say unsheltered, we refer to people who are sleeping rough, camping tents, parking garages, a shelter sometimes, garages, storage units, vehicles. For the most part, we see the highest concentration of people sleeping in what we call places not meant for human habitation is the HUD definition. We see the highest concentration of those folks in Burlington. So I think that that's really what many of you are seeing. Bill, you mentioned the Memorial Auditorium. There were folks there. They were kind of moved out of there. They moved down the street to the YMCA. Sometimes there are tents around some of the parks, such as in their urban reserve, for example, down in the waterfront and some of the other parks, occasionally Callahan and not small, so recently, Peaslick has some campers who are occasionally there as well. So I think that when we think about homelessness in terms of the data is that there are far less people in Burlington who are homeless than there are in the rest of Tooting County. So what we see in Burlington is around 50 to 60 folks who are unsheltered within the city right now. Some of those could be in outlying areas. For example, there's some spots in Colchester and Winooski where folks are, there's tend to be more people in living in vehicles in Williston and in Essex, actually. So when we think about that kind of like 50ish, number, 50 to 60 number of people who are unsheltered, who are mostly in Burlington, it's kind of a smaller chunk than that 584 that we see across the whole county. Nevertheless, the folks who are unsheltered, I don't need to tell you are the most vulnerable and the folks that we should really be most concerned about because they don't have a safe place to kind of be. I would love to give some updates about where the city is at with some of our policies and upcoming work. I'd be happy to provide an update on the Elmwood emergency shelter that was opened about six weeks ago. And I can certainly speak to some of the really recent outreach that we've done with the school district. But before I move on, does anyone, I went over some of that really quickly. Does anyone have any questions about that data or those numbers that I just presented or the subpopulations or anything? Sarah, I have a quick question. Will you be able to email those data to us? So we have an idea in via email in a written form to look at. So I can do that for sure. I can also direct you to the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance website where we have current meeting minutes from the steering committee meetings and current data is posted on that website. And we do look at that data once a month at the steering committee meetings. All of the meetings are open to the public. So anyone is welcome to join. We meet the first Thursday of every month from nine to 11 at Contways. There's also a virtual option that's so far less than ideal, but you're welcome to join virtually as well. So I can certainly follow up with some slides on that data, but also just so you know, in the future, if you're curious about that, you could find that on that website as well. So I'd like to make the point that probably Ward 8 is the best ward in the state of Vermont at finding places to live, right? Every time that students turn over, there's scattering around looking for apartments. So that's something that I think is unique to Ward 8 is that there's available housing, but you have to kind of know about these things ahead of time. You have to be tapped into that, but students are very good at that, right? Now they may have six or seven people in an apartment for four, but that kind of housing, it sounds like you have resources and could certain properties be identified as not homeless shelters, but as transition housing for families with children who need a stable environment near the bus stop, near Edmond School, near city market? If we were able to find that kind of housing, is there support for it through your office? Support meaning? Pay the rent. Well, so the city of Burlington doesn't pay, doesn't provide housing subsidy. We do have- They just know all the hotel rooms, I'm sorry. Who pays for the hotel rooms? The state of Vermont. Okay, what about that funding? Would that be available in Burlington for families? The state of Vermont does have a new, they have a temporary rental assistance program for families. It's called the Homes Voucher Program. And that provides up to 12 months of rental assistance for families. So that is a voucher for a family to move into an apartment. I think that one of the challenges we see is that there is a huge lack of affordable housing. And one of the main challenges around affordable housing, especially in a college town, is that when you have, like you're saying, six or seven or eight college students living in a four bedroom home, that really would be suitable for a family is that their parents are co-signing on that lease and they're able to have really good credit. They're able to each pay $1,000 for each bedroom that their student is staying in a month, which raises the rent, right? So if you have six kids living in a four bedroom and the rent is $4,000 a month, working down by six individual families, they can pay for that. But looking at that same apartment at that same rent cost for a family that may be a single earner family, for example, that's completely out of reach. In order to use rental assistance, whether that has had rental assistance or rental assistance from the state, the rent for the apartment needs to fall within the fair market rate, which means that it needs to fall within a certain threshold and those are set every year by HUD. If those rents are too high, then you're unable to use a rental subsidy there. So this is an adult, but there is a house in Ward 8 that is owned by several people in the neighborhood that rent to an Afghan refugee family to the refugee resettlement program at sub-market rate. So to me, the issue is not how that's going to be paid for or what the rate is, but just the availability of a property that would be acceptable to housing standards for families with children. And so if we could identify that, could there be resource to maybe duplicate that effort which has been done with the refugee resettlement program, but we would have to have a consensus of how we're going to find that housing, right? Yeah, and a landlord who will be willing to accept those households for sure. So we have really tried the Chittin County Homeless Alliance has tried in the last year to expand our housing resources to private developers and private landlords. We have not had any success so far with private landlords. We have with two private housing developers, Summit Properties and Netty Properties and Development have entered into agreements with the Chittin County Homeless Alliance to accept up to a certain threshold of referrals for a couple of their new developments through coordinated entry, which is our system that allows access to housing resources. So there are some models around that, but we have not been able to formulate those same kinds of agreements with private landlords in part because it would require them to in many, many cases lower the rents on their apartments in order for a family to be eligible to have been there. So I have tried to inquire from the school board how many families with students in the Burlington there are that are homeless. And I'm sure that number is a very difficult number to get, but I don't remember what it is, but I think it's around anywhere from four to five families at any given time. So we're not talking about a lot of apartments. We're talking about a unique population, which is really different than the homeless encampment population that have mental health addiction problems. These are just families that maybe are related to some of these issues, but just need a place to stay so they can organize themselves with the support of possibly the community. And it doesn't have to necessarily, but who can write the check and where can we find the housing? I don't know if that's something that can happen in Ward 8, but I see that as a way that we can help address some of the issue, which is one of the biggest issues in Burlington. Well, it's also like currently the rental market in Burlington is working off of a June 1st rental period. And so I know we had to sign our lease in October, but we had to give verbal confirmation by August for the upcoming June. And I think that's what a majority of folks, not just students, but other residents and long-term renters in Burlington are working with too. Like it's the year before you're committing to living somewhere. And so with the vacancy rate being so low as well, there's just not apartments available, unfortunately to house folks that are experiencing houselessness. And so, and then until we get more housing, there just are not apartments to put people in. That's right. You have to know about what housing is becoming available and then you have to work and deal with a landlord. You have to have a consideration that yes, June 1st, but maybe that house should be rented by the year by the school district. And the school district isn't in the housing business, but they provide buses, they provide meals, they provide social services to students. Well, maybe a few students need some housing. So I see that as an extension in schools of them, but you're right, we have to hit the market at the same time, because you're competing against 8,000 college students. But I don't see it as something we can probably think about coming up with a plan. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a community housing model, right? Like that's an entity buying. Well, let's bring it to Ward 8. Yeah. Let's bring it down to the most local level we can do anything about. And maybe it's just one family, maybe it's two families, but at least I feel like we're doing something. Yeah. I have a question for Sarah again. How are the pots going? Are you involved in buying in any way or shape? And what can Ward 8 do with some similar effect if possible? Thanks for asking that, Romeo. I want to definitely talk about the Elmwood Community Shelter. Currently, there are 33 guests staying at the shelter. So we're at capacity. Our capacity is anywhere from 30 to 35. And we are at capacity with 32 guests on site. We had one guest actually within a few weeks of moving into the shelter community was able to secure permanent housing and has since transitioned out of the shelter. And we experienced our first turnover of a shelter unit this month, which was exciting. I knew it happened really quick. So that was great. So their CHT, as you know, is the operating partner and things are going really well. We've had some, you know, a couple of challenges here and there with, you know, behavior or whatever, but they've been remedied right on site by staff. They, you know, have not needed to engage law enforcement in any way and have been able to really manage any kind of behaviors or challenges or conflicts that have been right on site amongst staff. So we are looking for the first quarter of reporting ends on March 30th. And we are looking forward to seeing some outcomes to be able to report to the state by the end of April. We'll be submitting our first quarterly report. So things are going really well. We have a number of people on site who are engaged with a number of different kinds of recovery services that are, you know, coming to the community gathering space there, in addition to some people who have engaged with a contingency management program, which is a pilot program of Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform. Their focus is on incentivizing fentanyl testing and education and prevention of overdose. And that's going really well, really well too. We had our first community meeting there. The just on the 13th, I think, and had a great turnout. We had about 40 people come. We certainly exceeded capacity on the community space, you know, with a number of people who came. One of the sort of, I guess, awarenesses that we gained from that was that we only had about two, we had four guests show up to that and only two of them were able to stay. So they felt quite overwhelmed by being in a small space with a huge number of people. And we realized that, you know, our takeaway from that was that we need to kind of rethink about that, you know, going forward for the next meeting, but overwhelmingly positive, you know, feedback from the neighborhood. There have not been issues in the neighborhood.  But, you know, so far we have not experienced any significant challenges. So things are going well overall. Okay, I have another question if you don't mind. Just to follow up on what you just said. So the pods accommodates one person per pod or two people per pod? We have, there are 25 single occupancy shelter units and there are five double occupancy shelter units. So there are five units that two people, or I mean, I don't want to say a couple because they don't have to be like a couple, but two people who want to sleep. For example, we have a mom and her adult daughter who are staying in one shelter unit. So historically, I'll just throw out here that Ward 8 at one time had a combination with the Ethan Allen Club before the YMCA was built to have a wedge shelter there one winter. And it was wild. A lot of ambulances, it wasn't unusual to have people laying past that on the parking lot in the middle of February. And I think that they learned from that. But that was something that the Ward 8 neighborhood said, you know, they asked us about it. And we said, well, I think we're trying. So Ward 8 has a special compassion for these people because we see them on a regular basis. We're just looking to see, well, how can we help? And who can help us help them? Yeah. Linda, do you have anything you want to ask Sarah or? Anne has her hand up. Oh, Anne has her hand up. Sarah, I remember when the pod idea was first proposed and then developed, there were people living in a house adjacent to that site. I think it was McKenzie house. And they expressed some reservations about having the pods there. Have you engaged with any of those residents? Yeah, absolutely. And a number of them who incidentally were pretty vocal in their opposition and fears about this project. We had about, I think, five, four or five residents from McKenzie house join the community meeting and have been really engaged and positive. Great, thank you. Sure. Linda, did you add anything? Go ahead, Sarah. No. Sorry. I really support trying to do something. I feel like the problem is really big and I don't think a town can solve it. I'm glad that you're working, Sarah, with the county and their state programs. I mean, I don't know. I mean, maybe there's not enough charitable organizations. Maybe that was, there used to be more of that or, but it just seems like if I can put it this way, I'm not necessarily pointing only to this, but the distribution of income just gets worse and worse and opportunities and hope for the future. You know, it's really changed during my lifetime from when, say, I was in my 20s versus now. I'm not talking about recessions. I'm talking about something else. And I'm not saying a drop in the bucket doesn't matter because a drop in the bucket can matter to a family like Bill is saying, but this seems like a really huge national problem. You know, even if there's not enough housing, I mean, literally there's not enough housing, not just for homeless, you know, there's not enough housing for people otherwise, right? Who are homeless, right?  So I don't know, could you just maybe address this issue in the larger context? Yeah, I can for sure, Linda. I think what you're, as I listen to you talk, I hear kind of in your voice where kind of what all of us feel, which is like this problem is overwhelming.  And I think that you're right. So there is a recent HUD report that came out. It was utilizing 2022 data. We won't have the 2023 data available until the next probably month or month and a half. But according to the 2022 data, Vermont has the second worst rate of homelessness, the second highest rate of homelessness per capita in the entire country, second only to California. So when we think about it in those terms, what you're feeling is absolutely validated and backed up by the data. I think that what we are doing is coming together as a whole county. And I know that there was a real focus, you know, or you wanted to have more of a focus tonight on schools and families. And I wanted to share with you that we have done some recent, very recent outreach. I've been working really closely actually with Mayor Christine Lott from Winooski. Winooski, I can tell you is seeing a tremendous challenge with both homeless families within their school district and families who are at risk of losing homelessness or housing insecure or housing unstable. We've referred to that. And in response to that, we've held a couple of round table meetings with the Winooski school district and some housing resource providers and housing providers. And we've decided to dedicate a good chunk of our April Chittenden County Homeless Alliance meeting to discussing with both Winooski school district and with Burlington school district, sort of what they're seeing with families. I think, I don't know if any of you happen to see the recent Burlington Free Press article that talked about a really innovative and I think amazing. So Bill, when you're talking about what the school district can do, maybe the school district can't rent apartments, but they're in the Champlain Valley School District, they have actually employed a full-time housing, or she's called a family assessment coordinator. And she's doing full-time housing case management with families within the Champlain Valley School District. She put together an assessment and her first, I think it covers her first 10 months or first 11 months in her position and found that she interacted with 90 families within the CVSD and found that 41 of those families that she interacted with were not connected to any other services in Chittenden County and were either homeless, doubled up, or housing insecure. That equated in CVSD, which is the largest school district in the state and in some cases, pretty affluent school district compared to others that roughly one in every 38 students within the school district is either homeless or housing insecure. And that's like incredible data that we have now. Her position has been proved to be so vital in their work. And I really see that as a model as a way that school districts can support families, they can dedicate a staff person, a social worker, to be able to focus specifically on these housing resources for families. We can't ask teachers or guidance counselors or mental health providers within the school district what they're managing in terms of post pandemic, emotional and mental health challenges with the students that they're seeing is like profound. I have three children and I know that the school is out straight, we can't ask them to know all of the housing resources and to be able to navigate these incredibly complex social service systems in addition to teaching our kids. And so when we think about what the school district can do, that's a really good example of how the school district is recognizing that there's a challenge. They don't know the full scope of it and resourcing a position to be able to measure the scope of it and to be able to respond to it. So in the time we have left, I'd like to hear from UBM, our school district member and our four east district, your thoughts on this particular issue. You want to tell us about UBM? Sure, I mean, I definitely don't think I can speak to the administration. I am a social worker major. I'm Ward 8, yeah, so I guess I have UBMs for understanding for that. Ward 8 is not a UBM. It's certainly not at all. Yeah, as a social worker major, actually one of my field placements potentially could be working in line with the Burlington Housing Authority. I know a lot of my peers are certainly concerned about the care for unhoused people in our community and our curriculum we constantly talk about, just as Sarah mentioned, basically the extremely challenging social services, like programs that we have in the state. I know also stuff like COVID is going to be really scary. Once I'm that extra funding, I believe that they put into like the Motel housing program sort of comes out, that's at the top of my mind, but... So if we pride a few rooms out at UBM with the students there to support families that might be living in those spaces. Where are those students going to live? It's really just all... There's no housing. There's just not housing and I don't really see the administration at UBM already doesn't necessarily meet students needs. I have a whole obligation as a member of the community to support those needs in the community. They absolutely do. They don't want to ask about that. What about the school board? The issues school board might take up or not? Yeah, they would take it up. The housing is not in our charter as such. We are really limited to the education and resources to provide that really accessible public education by law. But to go farther than that is just, it's not really possible. But to model what Sarah was talking about with the Hentai Valley School District, that would be possible. We probably are already doing it through our school-based social work staff. I can check and I'll come back and fill in on what we're currently doing. And then Sarah, I think I can come to the April meeting and become better versed about what the school, our school will be doing. And your wife will probably be there from Winooski or Jean, one or the other. Yeah, so Sarah, my wife Kate is the principal of the Winooski Middle and High School. So this is an issue that we hear about quite a bit. And I'm encouraged to hear that you guys are devoting so much time to the April meeting on this. And I wonder if this might be an opportunity for both the Burlington School District and the Winooski School District to work together. That's our hope is to bring both school districts together. And I've been talking to Victor, what is his last name, from the Burlington School District, he's the community engagement coordinator. And I will say that I do think that social workers are working hard. I know he's reached out to me a couple of times around families who are receiving like a notice to vacate and what does this mean and how do we help them and that kind of thing. But I also think kind of the beauty of the position at CVSD is she's completely mobile. So she's going to motels to meet with families. She's going to meet with them. None of the work is happening in the school. So she's going to exactly where families are. Their children may be at school during the day and she's going to meet with a parent. She sat on hold with a parent for 90 minutes trying to renew her motel voucher because the parent didn't have enough minutes left on her phone to sit on hold for 90 minutes. So yeah, so I think we're doing, we're really working to kind of bridge between Winooski and Bryanton School District also with the great learning that we've had from the CVSD position. So that's really great. So I appreciate the fact that you've let me take a very small splinter of a very large problem and try to focus on it to scale of what Ward 8 can do. We can't solve substance abuse. We can't solve jobs. We can't build more housing, but we can help maybe some families in temporary need if we have resource or could find resource in Ward 8 and housing is one that is nothing, Ward 8 is nothing, it's not a bunch of apartments. So that's kind of what I'm hoping and I appreciate everybody coming here to share on this. And I hope that we can get to know each other and maybe come up with some plans or ideas about how we can look for available resource in Ward 8 that might help a very small population but a very important population. So that's what I think we're up to for this meeting. Anybody want to have four more minutes? Charlie, you want to separate another one? Linda, Dick, Anne? Well, Sarah, since we have a minute left, can we ask you, you know, from your professional in this area, what do you think a neighborhood group like they have and potentially have in Ward 8, what would be the best use of their energies to help with this problem? Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, I think that largely social service agencies are flat out, so they're experiencing huge staffing challenges, you know, and being able to fill positions and they're pretty under resourced. I know that donations can certainly be made to those nonprofits, including the United Way. They do a lot of work with those nonprofits and, you know, I'm also on their board, so I should say that as a disclaimer. But, you know, it's a great way to be able to invest in the work that's happening, you know, at these nonprofit organizations. I mean, the other thing is to reach out to landlords that you know and encourage them to be in touch with the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance and talk to them about some of these challenges. There are some great new incentives for landlords. For example, there's the Vermont Home Improvement Program through the state, which provides up to $50,000 per unit to get a unit to make necessary rehab to that unit to get it up to housing code as long. And the only thing they have to do, agree to is to, once the unit is fully rehabbed, is to rent to a household that is exiting homelessness. So we also have a new program called the Landlord Relief Program, which provides in some cases up to $10,000 to landlords in terms of excess security deposit, if there are, you know, damages to an apartment or that the security deposit doesn't cover if they are renting to someone who receives HUD rental assistance or Section 8 or if they're renting to a previously homeless household as well. So, I mean, I think we're trying to incentivize private landlords and the more that you all could talk about that and share about that, that would be great. And the last thing I would say is something that I don't know a whole ton about, but certainly you could find out more from CEDO is around adding accessory dwelling units, so ADUs. If you are a, you know, homeowner and have a space for an ADU, there are some really great financial support through the city to be able to, to be able to become a landlord in some cases. So that, what I would say is probably the most, hi, Marcella. Yeah, for a second, but I would say that what's important are the relationships that each of us have with each other to know what's going on. And I think that that probably proceeds that we have to have a non-profit in order to handle the money. I think it's about who we know and the trust we have amongst ourselves that we can make it do something that we don't have to depend on the organization to do. So, just coming to the NPA budget, you can make a donation. And Linda, can you remind me, we don't have to say what that money is going to be spent tonight. We have another shot at saving our money. Right. I think, I think we probably have to spend it by the end of the fiscal year, which probably was June 30th. Kamie, do you have some ideas so that can be knocked around? Right, as far as publicizing the meeting and getting more involved. So. Kamie, what was your idea that you said? Well, I don't know if you could use it to make a contribution. One of the papers, the parking floater. Yeah, definitely. If it promotes the NPA, you can, if you can find a way to connect it to expanding participation in the NPA, maybe you could. It drives to the meeting, so it needs a parking vehicle. All right, any last words? If not, we'll close. Thank you very much. Sarah, thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. Thanks for having me, everyone. Thanks, Sam and Charlie. Okay, thanks for coming. Yeah, thanks, Linda. Thank you.


So I guess start to say there are nine that go on to the mountain, seven of which go up and two go down. Yeah. So definitely so many routes on Mount Kilimanjaro and which makes it an interesting mountain and also for a lot of people who try to plan to climb Kilimanjaro, it's one of the most important decisions to make early on. What route am I going to choose? So you will end up doing so much reading and there are so many factors that will dictate which route is best for you. So that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to just touch on some of these seven routes to climb up the mountain and then two. So it's a total of nine routes, seven up and then two down. We'll talk a little bit about them and then we will be sharing which route we chose for this summer's hike and we'll take it from there. Like Habiba was saying with all the choices, it gives you the most opportunities to get in your own head. So you'll actually find yourself caught up doing a lot of research and such as well and hopefully we'll be able to point out the good first choice ones here and be able to narrow down your decision if you're thinking about going. Yeah. So hopefully this is going to help you choose what route is best for you or if you're just curious about the mountain, this will give you an idea about what we're talking about. So we'll start first of all with the first route. It's kind of difficult because we're not sharing our screen to show you the route or some sort of graphics but we'll just talk through them. The first route that we wanted to share is the Murangu routes. Also known as the Coca-Cola route. Coca-Cola. I have to check why they call it Coca-Cola though. It's one of the classic routes and Coca-Cola was Coca-Cola classic. I'm guessing but that really makes sense. So the Murangu route is one of the very popular routes of the mountain. It is the oldest and then the other thing that makes this route different is that usually when you are climbing Mount Kilimanjaro you are going to be joining a tour operator or a company with porters and another group of people unless you want to do it as a private expedition and then you are going to be camping throughout the length of your climb. The difference for Murangu routes specifically is that you can't camp during your climb because they have huts throughout the way. So you will have, you are mandated if you choose the Murangu route to stay in one of the huts and then share them with a bunch of other people. Yeah. And I think this one also is the most straightforward in terms of the approach, like the physically straightforward.  We read that basically on the Murangu route it takes a minimum of five days to get up the mountain but they say that if you go on five days on the Murangu route the success rate is very low. And a lot of the older routes and we'll talk about this a little bit with the newer routes. Is there extra cost to stay in huts? It's probably built into your trip. So yes, because it's mandatory. You don't have a choice in the matter and as a result of this as well, this is a strictly up route. You can't imagine they wouldn't want to have to support people camping on the way down and the way up. This is an up only route and chances are it's built a little bit into your trip. I would presume if I were to have chosen the Murangu route some of it would have been for that sort of unique experience with the huts. Yeah. But last, this is not the one we picked. No. And also for a lot of people, you know, some people like being up in the mountains and going into an exhibition like this, but not everyone is comfortable sleeping out. Especially, I don't know, some of my friends told me, oh, Africa, are you not going to be afraid of wild animals? And I was like, no, not up in the mountain. They don't get up to that level. And if it happens, it's pretty rare, but it just gives some comfort for people who are not comfortable camping out in a tent. Sure. So that's Murangu route. The second route is... How about I say, I'm going to start with the Lamosho, that's what I'll say. The Lamosho route comes in from entirely on the other side of the mountain. While the Murangu approaches from the east, the Lamosho approaches from the west. And the Lamosho is one of the newer routes. It was introduced originally to get rid of bottlenecking with some of the original routes that were there as more and more tourism started to drive people toward hiking the mountain. They had a lot of congestion and Lamosho was then invented in a way to give people another route in. As a result of this being a newer route, the Lamosho route actually had some thought put into it in terms of favoring acclimatization. So this is a bit of a longer route onto the mountain and has a path that's kind of meant to allow hikers to acclimatize more appropriately. It also will go through four different ecological zones, starting down in a rainforest area, moving through some sort of jungle territory, and plateau, and then getting all the way up to the top. You'll hear about some of these different ecological zones as well when we talk about one of the other routes. Yeah. Yeah. The Lamosho route is definitely a good route to choose because it's just got a bit of everything. The level of difficulty is reasonable. It's quieter compared to other routes. And then we will talk about some of the routes that it connects with, but it's definitely quite as you can imagine. So many people trying to climb the mountain during the same season. It just makes it very difficult. You should be comfortable with a lot of people around you. This one actually is a bit more remote as a result of its newness. A lot of people seem to prefer routes closer to what we'll talk about, the Machame route at some point here, the Morangu route that we had talked about already. And it seems like those ones as being a bit more established have a bit more clout. But the Lamosho route is by all means advertised as a very beautiful route and being less popular that you will have longer stretches where you won't necessarily be bumping into people. I may give you a bit more of the isolated feel that you may be seeking for if you're going out on a big hike for something like this. So that's the second route. The third route we have on the list is the Rongai route. So this route is the one that comes from Kenya. From the north. From the north side. And then you make your way up the mountain. This also supposed to be a quiet route, a gentle route. And I think it takes usually between six to seven days to track up the Rongai route. And the Rongai one comes around and we'll connect with at some point the Morangu route. We'll discover as we start talking about these different routes that there are actually two ways onto the peak, but most of the reasonable people like us are only really looking at the one. In this case, the Morangu route and the Rongai route here do join up on their push up to the top. What was the comment there? The Rongai. Oh, on the right guy for a job. Yes, exactly. It's R-O-N. G-A-I. G-A-I. Like Rongai. And as a result of coming in from Kenya as well, and this is in the moment ad-libbing, you will need a different vaccination mandated upon you. If you are coming from a country that has yellow fevers endemic with yellow fever, you will need a yellow fever vaccination while it is not required. If you are only within Tanzania, it is required if you are in Kenya. So I will presume that you will need that if you're going to come in from the Rongai route. Yep. The next route on the list is the Ombui, Ombui, Ombui route. I think it's Ombui. The Ombui. The right way, the wrong way, the up way, the down way, the Ombui. The Ombui. U-M-B-W-E. So Ombui route is a route that approaches the mountain from the south. This is a down only route in this case. And it is short, it is steep, and it's usually chosen by aggressive climbers. Right. So it's not your typical limocho, machame, or the routes that we mentioned earlier. It's pretty, it's a very aggressive route. We probably don't need to talk about the Ombui too much if it's more of a down route. It's worth pointing out that the other route down is also called the Moeke route. Both routes off of the mountain come off the mountain to the south. And I can hold on my little picture I've got drawn here, something that I feel like. They say it's just a lot of facts and we don't have much to use. Like the arrows, right? Got skills. Cut that part from the video, that's proprietary. But again, the Moeke and the Ombui come down. I will admit it, and I took a picture of this so I can prove it later. It seems like you can kind of go down other ways. Permits are very much, it seems limited for many of the other companies. I've seen a route that goes up the Ronghe and seems to point going down the Merangu, which is different than obviously what I've just said about the Ombui and Moeke. But these seem to be very much the primary ways you would experience advertisements for these routes. It does seem like special permits might be available to certain companies to deviate from that a little bit, but I'm sure that they are rare permits in that regard. So again, Ombui goes down, Moeke goes down, and they're both on the south side of the mountain. Do you mind if I bring out the next up route? Sure, sure. So we'll talk about, let's see, I don't want to step on... Are you talking about the Shira? I was going to leave that one for you if you had it there. But the Shira route, I guess we'll tag team this one. The Shira route also approaches from the west side, and the Shira route actually joins up with that Lemosho route that I was talking about earlier. In this case, typically, if you're doing the Shira route, and maybe we can chat here in tandem, you'll actually take the southern circuit around the mountain, which joins up with many, or with another one of the routes that we'll tell you about in a moment, the Machame route.  Yeah, so Shira route, yeah, same thing, it also joins with the Lemosho route. Starts from the west, and it's usually on the Shira route you don't have much time to acclimatize, because you already start from almost 12,000 feet, so it's pretty intense from the get-go. Like camping. Intense. What else? So another route that's worth pointing out, and this is the danger zone, the Western breach. Oh yeah. And like I said, there are two different ways to get actually up to the summit. There's the traditional way that you would experience coming from one of the Shira two camps or something to the effect of that. And then there's the Western breach. The Western breach is the adventurous, more mountaineering way. It actually takes you into the crater rather than the other routes that take you along the crater wall, you'll actually go into the crater. And the way that I imagine this route working in my head is if you were hiking up the traditional way, and you saw the big sign that said, you're at the top of Kilimanjaro, and then some crazy guy with a parka on with big furry things climbed up over the other side on the other side of the sign with glasses and goggles on, that's the Western breach. It's like a mountaineering route. Now, this route was closed down for a long period of time because three Americans actually died on this trail back in 2006. The problem isn't necessarily that the climate itself is so dangerous. The problem is that as the glacier continues to recede, it reveals more rock that is now available to fall. And it was indeed a rockfall that killed these three Americans back in 2006. Again, the route was closed down after a period of time, the route reopened again because there are still plenty of thrill seekers out there that wanted to just take on this challenge. But the Western breach by all means is a very technical route. And if you're looking to spend your money wisely and get to the top of the mountain the first time, probably not the best one, but it could be depending on who you are. Yeah. Exactly. So, the next one I have on here, I think the last one I have on my list is the Machame route. Did you have any other? I think we... I can talk about the northern circuit if you put this one. Okay. We'll talk about the north. So, the Machame route is also known as the Whiskey route. It's one of the most scenic routes on the mountain. So beautiful. It goes through different climate zones. You hike through the rainforest. This is the one that I was talking about the other day. It's supposed to be really scenic. And then it also has high success rate, but it's very busy. So very busy, high success rate, very beautiful. So you should be really comfortable just sharing the trail with so many people and so many porters. And that is the route that we chose. We like the four ecological zones. I can't say I think we're going to be too bothered by people on the trail. It does seem like there will be times where obviously if you get to a bottleneck that we were talking about earlier. One of the most popular bottlenecks is the kissing wall. Did I say that right? It's a kissing wall. Yeah. It's what it is. Obviously a very narrow area where you kind of have to get intimate with the mountain. And narrow areas like that are obviously where you might have a lot of people that slow stuff down depending on the pace of your group versus other groups. I don't think we're going to be bothered by that. If we're up there and we can look around and snap some photos. Yeah. Good news. Yeah. So definitely when we were looking at the routes, we were kind of thinking considering the Machame route and the Lemosho route. And then I don't remember exactly what was the reason why we chose the Machame. I think we chose the Machame because it was supposed to be more scenic. I think price. And I think we were really interested in taking a lot of days on the mountain because we wanted to really take advantage of the acclimatization. And at that point, it really was six or one half a dozen of the other for us. And I think we'd heard a lot of people also just spoken highly of the experience they had on the Machame route. Yeah. And that was enough to convince us. At the end of the day, sometimes just the prices. As you can imagine, all of these different routes start from very different sides of the mountain, very far apart. So depending on where you might fly into or where your route starts, you may have to find accommodations or you may actually have a long drive ahead of you in certain stages, depending on where you fly into to get to your starting point, let alone hike the mountain. Exactly. Yeah. I think the Machame, though, just looked pretty. Yeah. A lot of documentation on it. Yeah. And there's no issue with the limo show, though. And then also, no problem with a lot of people on the trail. I mean, sometimes it's nice to have company on the trail. And I personally don't mind it. I think it's nice. And you get to meet some really cool people and you can make long-lasting friendships on that type of adventure. So it's not a problem at all. Yeah. So this last route that I was talking about, and it's worth pointing out that the Northern Circuit and the Southern Circuit, imagine that the mountain is a big dot, and the peak is a big dot in the middle of a circle. And you have the opportunity to take the northern route around the top half of the mountain or the southern route along the bottom half of the mountain. A lot of these routes we've been talking about so far, the Shira route, the Machame route, go take the Southern Circuit, right? They pass underneath the peak of the mountain on the southern side, whereas the Morangu route coming in directly from, I feel like a weatherman. I'm like looking at little things, where the Morangu route coming all the way in from the east side just goes straight up. It doesn't pass underneath the mountain. And a lot of these trips underneath the mountain, either on the Southern Circuit or on the Northern Circuit, give you time to acclimatize as you go over many peaks, go higher, sleep lower. Northern Circuit takes you around the top, though, which is a little bit of a longer route. And the route that I've seen that connects and usually gives you the opportunity to take this path is the Lamosho route. This also means in my mind that you could create a hybrid one if you had the right size private group from the Shira trail as well, which, like we said, connects up with the Lamosho route on the west side. On the west side, yeah. But then the Northern Circuit, a bit of a longer route, gives you more time on the mountain, but you're going to be paying money for that and you're going to be spending time there. But I'm sure it would be a unique experience. I don't think we had any reason to say we didn't want to do it from a natural perspective. Probably just a question of time. Time and price is very much what would deter us from doing that at the time. Can I just say, by the way, a Coca-Cola route, Morangu, and we made our little joke as to why it was Coca-Cola because it was a classic route. And then obviously the whiskey route, the Machame route. And you could probably have a good guess at the tip of your tongue right now as to why those two have nicknames. They're very popular routes, as they are said, and they're like whiskey and coke at that point. They're parrots, right? And it seems like those are two of the very popular routes that people would look for. And again, and we fell into that category as we picked the Machame route. So I think these are the routes up the mountain. There's obviously a lot more information to share. I am guessing at the end of the whole trip, if we make it or even if we don't make it, we'll probably put a very solid video just talking through them with details and some graphics and some more information. Chances are a lot of the stuff we'll talk about now we'll really talk about the Machame route, to be honest with you, because we're probably going to be researching the one that we're doing more. As you can imagine, there are a lot of established camps on the mountain and you just have to apply for permits to be at these because they want to regulate how many people are in each spot. You obviously don't want a thousand people at one camp and zero people at the other. So we'll probably be able to talk a little bit about some of those more popular ones. Again, as the routes converge higher and higher up the mountain, you start to bump into people who are hiking up from many other trails. I do the whiskey route just because of the name. That's not a bad reason. This is apparently a very good route, so you'd be fine. But yeah, anyway, so some of these camps we could probably talk about that are more popular at some point, Shira 2, Shira 1, stuff like that. But another video. Yeah, but I think we're a little bit early, 6.21, but we covered what we wanted to cover for this live stream, so we'll just keep it probably open a little bit for anything.


You want your hair to look right? I'm the guy, man. I'm gonna show you all the products that I use. What'd you just zoom into? Wait, no, no, I can't look at you. All right, babe. I'm gonna show you guys what the process looks like. Your water looks depressed. It looks like you're just pissing over your hair. All right, first thing you wanna do is get your hair a little bit wet so that you can start applying the shampoo and conditioner. So let's get to it. You just wanna get into like the roots. You don't wanna just let some space in and then you wanna get into the roots. Make sure like the roots is wet. The roots is what's important. You get to the roots. Next thing, man. You're gonna need some Shea Moisture Curling Shine shampoo. Check that out. Wow. You wanna get an even amount. Scoop some of it right there and get an even amount all across the top of your head, man. You wanna get inside? Do you see how I'm getting inside right there? I can't release. I can't see. Do not. What the f**k? What the f**k? Motherf**ker. You gotta do any more effort from me. Hold this. Hold this. Please, though, please. It's cold. It's cold. Please, please, please. Did you fart? I did. Nice. Hey, I have more gas coming. I'm sorry. Wait, now, bro? Yeah, I'm sorry. Wait, what the f**k? I'm done. I'm done. So what do you think about Agent Zero's hair? Oh my goodness. Yo, the first two years I knew him, I never saw his head. Like, I was like, did he even have a head? Or is it just his face?  He was a bit of an overwhelming experience.  And then I came in, he didn't have his hat on. And I was like, that was that. Then right there, that was the moment I knew. I don't know what I knew though. Hang on, I'm gonna think it's some clever. How often would you say Agent Zero wears a hat? I literally have never seen him leave his house without wearing a hat. So every day for sure. Even when it's like nighttime or like just going to the gym or going to Popeyes or another Popeyes. Like it's, he's always, or sometimes like a third Popeyes too. But literally, he always has his hat on. He showers with, I wouldn't know that, okay?  Dude, I wasn't gonna say the shower thing, okay? I saw him fall asleep one time. Did you sleep beside him? No, I said, that was so weird. I showed him to his crib one time, or he was just knocked out, right? When he was knocked out like this, his hat was stuck onto his head. So did you break into the house or something? Broken to the house, literally. Were you trying to imitate Travis Scott with your haircut today? Huh? Oh, okay. All right. The good thing about getting list three and port on you is that your eyes start to feel minty. It feels fresh as sh**. So check it out, fellas. Curling the shine shampoo. Let's get ready to apply that. You wanna get it in there. You wanna get in. You see me? You see how I'm going in though? You are going in right there. Now, if you're white, you can still do this. It probably won't work, but you can try. You wanna get in. Lee, stop. Lee, please, please, bro. Please, it's expensive. How expensive is expensive? Like for real. Okay, now my mind is cheap. Let's see if you don't mind. I don't know how. Will you please my eye? You can't see my eye turn. I wanna get this over with, bro. I'm just washing my head.  It had no pressure. Shout out to the people with nose patch shower pressure. You make it, man. Don't let anybody tell you your shower pressure defines you. Lee. Lee, I saw that. You gotta know that. Lee, I wanna get out of here, please. It's not f**king ending. Have you ever seen Agent without his hat on? No, I haven't.   What do you think about his fedora collection? Agent?  Did they throw the garbage? I hear this drama buzzing about. This is how you speak when you're frustrated that your editor is retarded in every dimension but you have to push through it. This is how I'm gonna speak when that happens. Hypothetically, of course, that didn't happen in this instance. Well, it is the greatest. So I'm gonna speak and project my... You also have to detangle your hair because they'll get tangled from time to time. We all have... 100% of us have curly hair, right? 100%? 100%. It literally might fall apart because it's broken. So it did.   You see that? You see how I'm not getting my scalp, though? You see that, bro? This is a skill. It ends, but you don't wanna get your scalp. It's gonna dry out your scalp.  You fit the hats. It's a strategy to it. First, you wanna get two hands. You see how I got my hands like this? Just like that. Just like that. Wow. This is step one. Step two, you wanna get in good position, your arms and feet, good distance apart, right? And then you wanna just... What's good with y'all, man? We're back with another 2K20 moments video. You know how we get down. What's wrong again? Let's go back to this. What? Okay, so how we get down now? Yeah. Agent!  Yeah, I've actually showed my hair plenty of times. Oh, yeah? You had to do it with a Googler? Yeah, you had to do it with a Googler. The whole time, you guys could've just...  I don't know what to tell you, man. Davis probably watching this. Davis, this is how you apply lotion. You wanna get it in a... You wanna push it into your skin. You see that right there? Now, this is the type of time I'm trying to be on right now. If I could get even 1% of the type of swag Davis has, I'm gonna be on another level, man. I don't know, you gotta try to get me to see what I can ever... I've done my... Hey, bro! Oh, my God! The 2K YouTuber says something controversial and offensive, so I can get some more car parts. Oh, wrong hat for that. Oh, wrong hat for this hat right here. Yo, I hope another 2K YouTuber ruined their career so I can get some more car parts. Yeah, I got it. I've never seen what I had on. Never seen what I had on. I have never seen what I had on. Yes, sir. He's an easy guy to impress. What do I think of his hat collection? I'm impressed, because for some reason, he never has to pay for them. Companies just send them left, right, and center. What? When was the last time you saw an agent without a hat? I get this question all the time on my Instagram DMs. Go ahead and follow me. But I was there when he was born. He had a hat on. Which is agent's best hat? Best hat. It's like, the answer just feels like it might just fly at me. That looks so bad, I'm fucking... I tried to get it. Early 2K14, I started wearing hats. I found out that the comment section went crazy. You know, a man would wear like a Seattle SuperSonics hat. And then all the comments would be about that. Whoa, I used to love the Seattle SuperSonics. So it was just like a way for me to get bare comments. And it was working, so I kept doing it. Then years went by, you know what I mean? Turns out more people knew me with a hat than without a hat. I just kept the hat thing going, man. Then it's like, I couldn't even leave the house. I was like, I don't have a hat in my car. How am I going to go to the gym? There were people like that would take videos of me. And I'd be like, you can't post that because I don't have a hat on. And then I'd have to start explaining to people why because I haven't revealed it.  This got frustrating, man. I was like, I don't want to do this no more, man. This is what my hair looks like. It's messy almost all the time. All the time. Yeah, all the time. Everyone wants to know one thing, bro. What's that? That hairline look like. Oh, shoot. You're going to show this. Hold on. Let's show it on the set. I want good lighting. Hold on. Let me try it real quick. Am I allowed to do that here? No, probably not. Just do it. It's valid. So when I detangle my hair, you know what I mean? Boom, boom, boom. You get on the sides, but you also want to get like this part right here so it doesn't like crumple up. So you got to hit him with some of these right here. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I saw some. I saw some.  Hit him with some of these right here. Make sure it's not properly detangled.  My edges is very sensitive, guys. Very, very sensitive.  Let's get it. This is pull back. Like with your hands. Hold it back. All the memes are going to come. The memes. It's probably a real weird scene without a hat on. It's like the first time I saw Hannibal Burris without glasses. It didn't feel like Hannibal Burris no more. It was the same jokes and the same cadence, but it took me at least 40 minutes before it felt like it was Hannibal Burris. So what I'm going to do is not wear any hats for the next year. What? I'm joking. Of course I'm going to wear hats. Look how many there is, guys. Maybe not this one. As a final pick in this decade's NBA 2K draft, Agent Zero selects NBA 2K18 from f**king hell. There's more to throw. I've actually spent, I'd say, like more than half of my time with a hat on. I've never seen without a hat on. Exactly. You just pulled up like I was doing something. I was just standing still. Why did you pull up? Like it was action on the side of the Walmart. I'm sorry. Oh, ever since my bed broke, I've been like kind of subconscious that everything I sit on or lay on is starting to break, especially when there's cameras around, because then even if it's not my fault, people would just blame me for it. Oh. This is heavy duty. Yo, buy the most expensive one possibly. I'm not going to do that. Let's go back this way. I don't have that kind of money. I spent it all on Valentine's Day. Trying to make myself not feel miserable for being alone. Okay, get this one out. Yes. That's better. That's kind of scary. I can't lie. How affordable is it, though? This is America. Murd. Weapons are affordable in America. Murd. 8.24. Oh, my God. It's so affordable. Wow. This is what happens when you play one Assassin's Creed game. You just think you know how to sharpen tools and stuff now. It doesn't work, man. Wanna bet?   Hey, sharpen that real quick, man. So let me sharpen the saw to it. Oh, my.  There's sparks? It's the end of the air, ladies and gentlemen. There's only one way to commemorate that with a shovel. So let's get to it. Oh, that was... Wow. We're going to retire the OG Oklahoma City Thundercap. This is my hat, reveal fellas. Hopefully now some more snapbacks grow out the floor. I think that's how it works. I need to hurt. I'm not going to be doing a lot of videos without a hat. I'm just growing accustomed to having it on. I think when I first started wearing hats, I was like, man, this is annoying. I'm sweating under this. But then once you get used to it, you kind of just like, that's just... You don't even feel it on you. You couldn't convince me that a hat was on me because it just feels like it's a part of my head. No cap. Oh. But yeah, so I'm on 2K19 because I remember... Look! I did a face skin. And I had no idea if 2K was going to reveal this s*** for me. Because they have photos of me without a hat on since time. So technically, you guys have been seeing me without a hat on. This character just doesn't have as big a forehead. Actually, he kind of does. It's just the hairline is better. This would be what I would look like if I just worked out some more. But technically, this was my first hat reveal.


Hello everyone, this is financial author Amit Dam of Iran Journal. Today, I'll talk about why you should avoid American Express use points for purchases. American Express Canada recently launched a new option letting card members fall for instant gratification by letting them redeem daily purchases for small amounts. According to AMACS, this option will provide ultimate flexibility and make daily life seamless. However, what AMACS is not saying is that clients lose big time when they redeem points for daily purchases instead of converting to miles. American Express points provide the best bank for your buck when you convert them to airline miles such as airplane or avios. The transfer rate is 1 is to 1, meaning you'll receive one air mile for each point. Now, if you're knowledgeable about airline viewers programs, you should be easily able to extract 5 to 6% return per dollar flying business or first class. Sometimes the return can be astronomically high like 30% flying business or first class on airline miles. If you fly economy class using miles, your extraction rate would be a poor 1 to 2%. So, what's the rate you're getting from AMACS if you redeem points for purchases? Not even 1%. On the AMACS gold card, the redemption rate is $7 for redeeming 1,000 points. What it means that you get $0.007 per point, which is less than 1 cent per point making it a 0.07% return and not even 1% return. If you use AMACS trip flex option to redeem points for travel, you'll get a 1% return or 1,000 points for $10. The best value, American Express viewers points generate when you convert them to redeem into miles. Of course, you need to know how airline miles work and if you don't want to follow that path, you should not have this card in the first place. There are other cards that offer higher rate of return for redeeming points for groceries and other purchases. There's no point in having American Express credit cards, paying hefty annual fees and redeeming points at such a horribly low rate. And also, don't forget that although American Express is charging a hefty $150 on its popular American Express gold rewards card, it does not provide many common benefits and features that other premium credit cards would provide for a $150 fee, such as trip cancellation insurance, concierge service, and so on. That's all for today. Thank you.


Hey, what's going on guys? Welcome to a new video. So today we're going to be discussing exactly how saturated dropshipping actually is. So when I do the strategy calls for people looking to join the academy, one popular question which keeps cropping up is how saturated is dropship and how competitive is it and can you actually make any money doing it? So I thought I'd make a nice topic to do a video on YouTube for it. As always, I'm going to be giving you my honest answer and also backing up my answers with the proof and evidence behind the reasons I give. So I've got some pretty interesting images to show you which will illustrate just how competitive dropshipping is in certain countries. So make sure you stay tuned for that. And then at the end of the video, I'm also going to give you my top three countries to dropship to and the reasons behind them and then also my top three tips for making sure that you and your business stand out from the competition which will ultimately increase your chances of success. So that's the topic of the video. Thanks for tuning in. I hope you enjoy it and let's jump straight into it. So how saturated is dropshipping? And there's going to be a couple of points in which I go through. Number one is going to be it depends on where you're selling. And then number two obviously depends on what you're selling because not all niches or not all industries are absolutely going to have kind of like the same rate of competition. One thing before we jump into it that I want to preface it with is I'm a big believer that no matter what you sell or where you sell it to some degree obviously then you can be successful. There's always for example new shoe brands or new clothing brands coming onto the scene which are typically like some of the most popular and competitive industries in the world. But it doesn't stop more brands and so on kind of coming into that space and doing really really well. Ultimately it comes down to the products that you sell and then obviously how successful you are in terms of the marketing campaigns in which you run and kind of like the desirability behind the brand. Anyway with that being said then number one it depends on where you are selling. So if we take a look at this first image this is taken from Oberlo so feel free to head over to their website and kind of look at the post they did behind this. So essentially what you're looking at is the order volumes broken down country by country that go through Oberlo. What you have to remember is Oberlo is the link between Shopify and AliExpress. So these order numbers are going to be purely from dropshippers. What a lot of people forget is that AliExpress isn't just for dropship and there's a lot of end users and consumers actually shopping on that platform. So if you see a particular product on AliExpress which has thousands of orders that doesn't always translate into it being a good product to actually dropship. But these numbers because they're coming direct from Oberlo these are purely orders processed through their platform and therefore dropshipping products. So looking at the graph we can obviously see Great Britain is the most popular countries from the ones listed. Obviously a Great Britain Australia Canada France and so on. So depending on which ones of these countries you do decide to actually go into and sell in from what we can see from this particular image is that Great Britain is more popular than for instance say Italy or Spain. However what a lot of people tend to do when they think of dropshipping because the space in terms of education is dominated quite a lot by people in America and people tend to associate dropshipping with America and that's where a lot of people go straight to to actually sell their products. But if we take a look at the same image but include the US we can actually see the America in comparison to the UK Australia all of these other countries is significantly more popular in terms of how many people actually selling there and how many people are actually processing orders to customers which are being shipped from AliExpress to the United States. If we carry on then and have a look at the USA versus the rest of the world. So essentially this image is the same thing the order volumes for the United States versus the rest of the world. Essentially there's more orders going through the Oberlo platform to the US than there is versus every single other country in the world combined. This is also reflected in the CPM costs. So your CPM the information that Facebook gives you for CPMs is your cost per 1000 impressions impressions is essentially when somebody sees it so when it pops up on somebody's device as an example and according to this particular website lead guru then the USA has an average CPM this is on Facebook too of $7.34 and the UK has an average CPM of $3.15 and essentially what this means is you can reach twice the amount of people when advertising in the UK versus advertising in the USA. What you have to keep in mind to take a pinch of salt with this particular information is this is all based on averages. So obviously depending on what kind of audience you're trying to target within these countries can obviously reflect how competitive or how expensive the CPM is that $3.15 is obviously as an average that $7.34 is obviously as an average it can be higher it can be lower depending on how big or how large how big or how small sorry the audience is that you select within these individual countries number two then it also depends on what you're selling so to answer the question of how saturated is drop shipping it depends on exactly what you're selling so again these images all taken from Oblo Oblo is a great resource for finding out this source of things because obviously all the orders they process are from drop shipping businesses and this is the total orders by category for the entire world so what we can see is that women's clothing accessories and home and garden are pretty much identical and if you compare these to say beauty and health and sports and entertainment then these two on the left are obviously a lot more competitive versus these two on the right if we scroll down and take a look at this other image taken from Oblo these are the total orders by category for the UK so what if we compare these two against each other then what they kind of indicate is that women's clothing and accessories is not wholly that competitive in the UK if we compare it to against the rest of the world so potentially if we can find a product within that niche then there's a lot of potential there moving into the summary then just to quickly recap on what we've been over and it's no need to make this video crazy crazy long don't always immediately jump to the US or think the US when it comes to running a drop shipping business yes there's a whole lot more products available there and shipping times may be quicker depending on obviously where your supplier is located but it's so much more competitive in terms of the illustrations which I've shown you in this video so even though yes there are more customers and people do spend more money there's also a lot more competition over there so it doesn't always translate into an easier business when it comes when it comes to being successful and if there's one piece of advice that I want you guys to take away from this video is instead of immediately thinking US think English speaking countries that aren't in the US and this leads me nicely onto the top countries to drop ship to outside of the US so this is the top 12 English proficiency index taken from Wikipedia and essentially what this illustrates is all the countries which have an English proficiency score of very high and what proficiency see means is essentially the population of the country which actually understand English can read it can speak it so on and so forth so my advice is if you did want to experiment with some of the suggestions in this video and test some of these countries would be to set them up set your assets up to buy them up country by country measure things like your click-through rate your cost per link clicks if you can actually get any conversions from any of these countries once you've got all the information and data back from the tests you've ran on Facebook then it'll give you a clear direction to go in so let's say for example we take the top five countries and we separate our ad sets up for each one of these and we find that let's say Sweden is the highest converting we're getting really good results then what we do is actually then kind of double down on what's working to set my store up to kind of be based around a Swedish looking store in terms of the currencies and you can even look at maybe getting a virtual address over there so you can have maybe even like a Swedish phone number two so it is set up as essentially from somebody looking at it from the outside is a Swedish business based in Sweden which in turn is going to help customers trust you a lot more so definitely something worth taking away from this video it's don't always think us think other countries outside but also have a high English proficiency not to mention obviously England itself moving down then into the top three tips to stand out from your competition they're quite simple but trust me the impact of these can make a significant difference number one is original content every social media platform out there prefers original content I've noticed it myself when I repost something from somebody else the reach it gets will be insignificant versus an actual piece of content I've created myself on Instagram and on Facebook so don't underestimate the power of that when it comes to original content make sure your ad is original and make sure the product photos on your Shopify store are original as well so for instance if they see a particular ad for products they go on the website that website looks really really dodgy or the products super expensive there's no contact information they're going to leave the website go back to Facebook and think I'm not trusting them the guys are not going to buy the products from them one day later they see the exact same ad but it's from your particular Shopify store they're not going to click it they're just going to think I saw that ad yesterday assume it's the same business and therefore potentially going to lose out on the sale you can lose out on the customer but by having original content original ads original products photos it separates you from everybody else who has a typical Ali express dropship in store and in turn it's going to lead to a higher CTR a cheaper cost per link click rate and a higher conversion rate more ultimately on Shopify as well number two really quick easy simple one is to brand the product it makes you look much more professional this can help if you brand the site as well and actually name the site after the particular product so for instance if you come a really across a really cool product and that has loads of kind of information and photos and content behind it you can build a one product store behind it so give your product an actual name not just a description so as a quick example if you're selling let's say charging duck stations and instead of naming it the description which I see a lot of people do so a lot of people will just name it four in one Apple charging duck station give it an actual name and actually brand the product so it could be called the pro charger four in one Apple charging duck station because it just helps your business kind of own the product it takes ownership of it and again it just separates you from say a generic listing on eBay number three is credibility probably nine stores out of ten while I review do not have these fundamental and basic expectations that customer would want to see when they go into a site I've seen it countless times before in people's ads on Facebook somebody will somebody will comment sorry scam store no telephone number and no address so what you need to do is include all of these things on screen it may seem pretty daunting but you can pay for these services so you haven't got to put your personal telephone number haven't got to put your personal address and you can get all of these things for about forty fifty pounds per month which seems quite expensive but in reality you only need to really make two or three orders and it covers the cost of these and plus by having these things it will overnight it will drastically make a difference if you're getting a significant amount of volume to your site these things can make a difference overnight and trust me the return on investment for these sorts of things and far outweighs the cost of them so have things like a telephone number a physical address you can use a virtual office PO box I don't really recommend PO boxes that often to be fair opening hours if you have specific opening hours on your store you haven't got a hit here by them but it just gives off that impression of professionalism like you have a physical office that has people in between certain hours a live chat function super easy to do customer photos so one thing I like to do on some of my stores is when customers tagged me on Instagram or sends me a photo or puts it in the comments I'll put it on the website I'll put a badge over the top of it which clearly states customer photos because then it's like a real life photo of the particular image of the particular product showy and actually shows that somebody's bought it and again it's just great social proof and obviously not to mention reviews it's over 60% of online shoppers will look for reviews in a product before committing to a purchase so if you don't have reviews on your site on your products then you're losing money there's no two ways about it you're definitely going to be losing out on potential customers so with that being something guys that pretty much wraps up the video if you're still watching still with me I really do appreciate it the support on the channel is awesome trust me it doesn't go unnoticed if you enjoyed the video please do make sure you leave a like any comments questions video suggestions just post them down below and ultimately if you enjoy my content make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future videos one last thing before you go if you are looking for a program which comes with tons and tons of content and resources my full support and guidance make sure you check out the Ecom Academy there is a callback service I jump on the phone is me who will be talking to you on the phone before you commit we can go through any questions or hesitations you have put those to bed and get you started on the right track basically so yeah make sure you check that out first link in the description and I'll see you in the next video