Good afternoon everyone very much apologize for the delay in the start of these study sessions We've had some closed lengthy closed session in interviews with housing authority candidates, which was on the good side We had multiple interviews versus previous years We've had four to five of them instead of the I think 12 or 13 we had today So assistant city manager going you want to lead us off with our study session the interviews So the first study session is a 4.1 Which is a pen potential use of former Bennett Valley senior center for homeless services Permanent supportive housing and our affordable housing and state homeless emergency and program Seat funds for Samuel Jones Hall homeless shelter and Bennett Valley senior center and to start off the presentation is director David Guine Yeah, good afternoon Mayor Schwedhelm members of the city council just wanted to put some context to The study session just mentioned by David Guine as well as the second one to follow These are both requested by the city council in recent months The first one with the Bennett Valley senior center We've aligned with what is fortuitous money from the state the homeless emergency assistance program a aid program that as to Has a staff recommendation for you to consider to bring forward to the newly formed homeless redesign leadership council And then the second study session is a review of the community homeless assistance program chat and a term called alternative housing options That is based on on the request that present by the council It'll be a chance for us to review that program where we're at and hear your comments and feedback going forward So Kelly Kajkendal our program manager will walk us through both presentations Good afternoon Mayor Schwedhelm and members of the council So as Dave mentioned in June of 2018 this past summer council requested for a study session on the Bennett Valley senior center for homeless services specifically for Shelter or safe haven I've provided a definition here of safe haven from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development Otherwise known as HUD and they define a safe haven as a form of supportive housing that serves Hard to reach homeless persons with severe mental illness who come primarily from the streets and have been unable or unwilling to participate in housing or supportive services HUD discontinued funding for this program with the passage of the hearth act in 2009 there are still some programs Existing in the United States, but there are very few and I think that there are many components of this original safe haven program That we're seeing now in navigation centers and also in low barrier shelters in terms of trying to engage Vulnerable individuals into services and housing One of the items we're talking about this evening in addition to the senior center in Sam Jones Hall is the homeless emergency aid program I'm going to refer to it as heap In September the state released a 500 million dollar block grant To assist cities and counties to address the homeless crisis throughout California All of these funds so they were Issued and have been allocated all 500 millions have been allocated throughout the state So there will not be a round two for the heat funds The Sonoma County CDC submitted an application to the state for 12.1 million dollars That was Sonoma County's allocation under the heat program in December of 2018 This application included set aside for capital need requests from cities in Sonoma County totaling 4.9 million dollars that included 3.6 million for Santa Rosa the CDC Sonoma County Community Development Commission, which is also the lead agency for the Sonoma County continuum of care issued a NOFA in January applications for the For the NOFA including the heat funds were due to the CDC last Friday, February 8th and Cities that had requested funds under the set aside for capital needs were also Required to submit an application so we submitted an application last week those applications will be reviewed by a technical advisory committee of the new continuum of care, which is called the home Sonoma County An evaluation committee will looking at those applications sometimes in March and be making recommendations to the leadership council of home Sonoma County in March So there is an opportunity to make some adjustments subject to your Feedback this evening on this request to that application. There is more time here even though we've already submitted the application as I mentioned Santa Rosa's excuse me Set aside request was for 3.6 million dollars. This was based on an immediate need to replace the roof at Sam Jones Hall Based on a presentation that was made to council in May of 2018 Regarding the condition of our city facilities, which identified the roof at Sam Jones Hall and then also your prior Interest in potentially using the senior center for homeless services So we requested 1.6 million for the roof at Sam Jones Hall and 2 million for the activation of a navigation center at the senior center And the total is 3.6 million dollars a little more on the roof replacement at Sam Jones Hall This is the cap part of the capital needs request. This is an estimate provided by our transportation and public works department It is a rough estimate I just want to be clear on that at this point in time further inspection of the roof will be required to Develop a full a complete scope of work and develop final cost estimates Some of that work is underway right now with with TPW staff looking more closely at that estimate and The the work that needs to be done at Sam Jones Hall and I see Dave wants to hop in Yeah, the the reason the the estimate is 1.6 million We've heard comments that that seems high just want to elaborate This is much more than a re-roof of the building the estimates and the engineers are looking at structural integrity of the members Holding up the roof deck the roof deck itself And so once that final estimate is refined will know the real number But included in this is the idea that if they have to daylight the roof and work on the structure We will have to relocate the folks that are in Samuel Jones Hall to Bennett Valley senior center while that phase of the work is going on So I just wanted to elaborate that's where the estimate came from for that number and Our staff in the transportation public works department are anticipating that we would have the final estimates and scope of work by summer to summer 2018 the Santa Rosa Navigation Center We've requested two million dollars that's for capital and operating and we're recommending phased Activation subject to the final cost estimates for Sam Jones Hall, so we have 1.6 million right now We won't know for sure what the cost will be until those final cost estimates are in so what we're suggesting this evening is that The Navigation Center be operated in two phases the first phase involves relocation of up to 40 beds from the Sam Jones Sam Jones Hall shelter to the existing facility this summer and then Once we know the costs for Sam Jones Hall We're proposing to expand the Navigation Center to include Temporary structures providing up to 20 beds in the parking lot at this point in time. We're saying Sort of a max of 60 beds at the Navigation Center based on the existing toilets and sinks Could provide for up to 60 occupants, but no no more So there are some restrictions at the facility in terms of how many occupants we can have there So the end goal of the real estate formally known as the Bennett Valley Senior Center is to see if we can't attract Development of permanent supportive housing so during this time frame if you were were agreeable to this We would develop a request for proposal Come back to council with that language to seek a developer partner And if we can time that with the release of the community development block grant that disaster resistant Assistance fund we have a resource potentially for the developer to compete with to actually take the first initial steps to repurpose the real estate For permanent supportive housing, so it's a it's a several ass tonight with the but we're tearing it and we will wrap it up here in a moment Have a few slides here. Just showing you the facility. This is the you're all probably familiar with this is the front of the building along Bennett Valley Road This is the floor plan for the senior center and so at the top of the screen You'll see the entryway of course on the left side of the screen. You have the auditorium and some Offices along this right-hand side of the screen. Those are classrooms At the bottom right of the screen is a large auditorium there And then over sort of moving over to the left side of the screen towards the bottom is the commercial kitchen And with this floor plan We think we have an opportunity to provide more Accommodation to shelter beds by using the existing footprint with without improving it for example the office space the smaller Classrooms could could possibly be used to help folks who might not be Comfortable at Samuel Jones Hall or other shelters Here's an aerial of the facility see the facility in the parking lot and where it runs along Bennett Valley Road and Rutledge So a little bit more about the Santa Rosa Navigation Center Navigation centers in general the concepts they embrace a low barrier model their housing focused and typically on a smaller scale So as you're aware you've provided additional resources to Sam Jones Hall over the last few years to Shift that or transition programming there to being housing focused or in alignment with housing first So we we've worked with catheteries that shelter to to bring it into being low barrier But there are a lot of beds there We have capacity for up to 213 beds and with navigation centers You'll typically see fewer beds than that. There are some models in the Bay Area that are around 40 beds As Dave mentioned the senior center provides us the opportunity to offer more options to serve persons with disabilities So there are two larger Door areas, but then there are also the smaller classrooms to provide people with more privacy And just more more options further for their disabilities As I mentioned we're proposing up to 60 beds so 40 beds in the existing facility footprint Plus an additional 20 beds with in temporary structures in the parking lot area The funding for heap is two years 50% of funds have to be committed by next January and 100% of funds have to be fully expended by June of 2021 We are recommending this This evening that catheteries be the operator of the senior center for a number of reasons one includes the reduction in number of beds at Sam Jones Hall as I mentioned there there really is a need to reduce the number of beds there on an ongoing basis we have 200 up to 213 beds and Excuse me there. It's a lot of beds for the shelter. We have maximized capacity there Also, we're seeing a need to potentially relocate Clients at Sam Jones Hall during construction of the roof We don't know the extent of it yet But parts of the roof if not all of it might have to come out and we could use the senior center for Sam Jones Hall clients during construction also Important to note the continuity of services Catholic Charities being able to serve clients at Sam Jones Hall clearly and then also at the senior center Including those that are coming over from Sam Jones Hall during construction And economies of scale having Catholic Charities operate both facilities does Create some cost savings Having them pull staff and resources from other programs including including Sam Jones Hall And the outreach team there are some cost savings preliminary numbers show about 250,000 to 300,000 dollars in in cost savings Certainly we're we're here this evening to to seek your your feedback on this and so alternatively council might Direct staff to go out for a request for proposals to seek an operator in lieu of just soul sourcing to Catholic Charities this does provide for greater equity among Other providers that might be interested in the in the property And also the potential for serving Vulnerable populations other than those that are targeted Sam Jones Hall Which targets single adults and chronically homeless? But there are providers out there that are that serve youth families veterans older adult older adults and other vulnerable populations Other considerations this evening and includes sustainability. So We have put a budget together for Two years of heat funding, but if we wanted to continue the navigation center past that point in time We'd have to identify other resources and as Dave mentioned the long-term Use of the site including permanent supportive housing and affordable housing subject to your feedback this evening their next steps include Potentially updating our application that was submitted to the CDC last week for heat funds As I mentioned finalizing the scope of work and cost estimates for the roof replacement at sam jones hall returning with a navigation center contract with Catholic Charities or issuing a request for proposals for an operator And obviously we would want to go out and we'd want to have a community meeting Once we know more about what specifically we'll be doing at the navigation center Or doing navigation center. We want to invite the community in to to hear their input and their their feedback And the last point on this slide is also as Dave mentioned The affordable housing piece of returning with a request for proposal solicitation Develop the site as permanent supportive housing and or affordable housing with that We recommend housing community services recommend that council hold a study session to discuss the following the potential short-term use of the former bennett valley senior center for homeless services including Shelter safe haven and our navigation center To be coordinated with Catholic Charities of the diocese of santa rosa and association with sam jones hall or independently through another provider Number two an application to the sonoma county community development commission Which is the lead agency for the sonoma county community care Continue a continuum of care. Excuse me recently rebranded home sonoma county For 3.6 million dollars in state heat funding for both the sam jones hall and bennett valley senior center facilities And lastly the potential long-term use of the bennett valley senior center site for permanent supportive housing and or affordable housing This concludes our presentation. If you have any questions, we'd be happy to answer them. Thank you Thank you for that presentation I just have a real quick question related to a harmless emergency due to this that status and the continuation of that I know it's an item later on our agenda. Does it provide us some Opportunities to expedite whatever we decide to do on the bennett valley senior center versus if we didn't have that declaration That is correct. Mayor if we did not have that declaration We would take longer in the development process But the declaration of the emergency allows us to move faster. Great. Thank you councilman. We're filming. Do you have a question? Yeah, this question is a legal question for miss gallagher. Do we have the Is it legal for us to award a contract to a provider without putting out an rfp? Do we open ourselves up to any liability? We there are grounds upon which we can sole source A a contract and there are we're waive Competitive a competitive process. So they're all there are alternatives Okay, other questions councilmember combs Following up on my colleagues question um I don't want this question to sound as if I have any complaints I just am asking the question When was the last time we did an operator rfp? I don't recall. I recall that we have extended contracts regularly, but I'm trying to sort out When the last time was We did an rfp. Does anybody Remember when we did an operator rfp last? So this predates me, but the best to the best of my knowledge We did do an rfp when we were initially selecting a provider for Or an operator for sam jones hall and that shelter opened in 2005. So that would have been 2004 for sam jones hall Okay, there might be another one along the way, but it's not Coming to mind in about 15 years ago Um just based on the time And because I know things have changed in That we might want to ask for within an rfp um It concerns me to not go not do the rfp process Is it possible for us to do a short term agreement and then a longer term rfp so that we don't delay the process Yes, we can do that. Okay um And one of the other questions I have is at least I'm looking at the slide. I think it's 11 um I know that we have sam jones as a low barrier shelter and I'm strongly in favor of having low barrier alternatives available within our whole system It's not entirely clear that that means that every shelter we offer has to be low barrier And in fact some people have a problem if they don't have a low barrier A barrier option So is is are we committed to having This particular one be a low barrier in addition to sam jones because we're moving people from sam jones to here Or could this be a Not a low barrier shelter in the future I think that we do have some flexibility and I know that in terms of the heat funding As most state programs and federal programs are encouraging that all their programs Are lower barrier There is some discretion provided to you know the jurisdiction and the providers But that's the direction as you're aware that we've been moving With all of our programs. I understand that to me there's a difference between having low barrier system And having individual shelters each be low barrier And I think it in fact creates a barrier sometimes to have there be nowhere to go if you're really trying to avoid exposure to alcohol or drugs Um Can we also clarify I have had this question come up so I'm going to ask you to clarify These heap dollars are specifically earmarked for homeless funds We cannot use these dollars for repairing the senior center as a senior center. Is that correct? That's my understanding of the rules associated with the state funds. Okay. Thank you I'm I'm going to repeat that because I get this asked a lot We have the opportunity to have funds if we use this for homeless services that we do not have for senior Recreational purposes. That is correct. Thank you miss folly Yes, thank you. Um, I've been a clinical social worker licensed since 2012. I have a master's degree in community Mental health and social work from the university of california at berkeley And it's my understanding that homelessness is a long-term problem in the making And is not something that we're going to be able to solve in a temporary manner in 1929 We had 800 homeless individuals living in santa rosa and during the great depression. We had 2000 As a percentage of our population that number has gone down significantly and people continue to suffer Housing first is a term of art and it does not mean that We house people and only provide housing for them It means that we don't provide moral barriers to housing And so I appreciate your efforts and the efforts of catholic charity and providing low barrier housing. However We need all kinds of services and no wrong door and I understand that the county is the The legal authority on this and that we don't exactly have the money to do much here That having been said when I hear the term temporary and we have funding for two years and we have a structural deficit I have real concerns about extending services to solve a problem that I have in my professional opinion I know will not be solved in two years It won't be solved in 20 years We would have to have a new deal or a post world war two like investment in our social infrastructure To actually make a meaningful dent In homelessness that having been said it's gone down since our great recession and so I'm happy to support any increase in homeless services and to do the advocacy and community outreach to take care of our most vulnerable people But when we talk about temporary and two years and a general fund What I want to know from you Is what are we going to do in two years? When we still have all these homeless folks who still need housing and still need a shelter And we don't have any money to pay for it very good points the idea is is that If there are still folks at the navigation center formerly known as benett valley They would have and we have a developer selected and we have preliminary resources to move a development forward They would be offered first rider refusal for an apartment there and or at Caritas should that development move forward We could also have the option of moving the beds back to samuel jones hall after the repairs are done Or perhaps based on the discussion We're following at the state level under governor new sim the It seems like there might be additional state resources coming this way So in two years, we will certainly have this discussion on what our options might be Not not to beat a dead horse and I do appreciate all the hard work and I expect to support your initiative here, but um You know, it's a it's a big undertaking for us to take on with a hope Of having funding in two years and I just think that we need to go eyes wide open I mean I went on a tour of facilities yesterday And I don't think that in the 70s In 60 70s and 80s when we were building these facilities that people were thinking about council members in 2019 Or you know having to deal with these problems And I want to make sure that we have sustainable programs that we can fund in downturns And I expect that in two years Times may not be as good as they are now and times are not that great now so My two cents I have a question just process wise So you're just coming to council for feedback on the applications for the NOFA Then once it gets submitted to the cc or homesonoma county There's an evaluation process of another group from the technical advisory committee will make recommendations to leadership council Who in turn will actually direct that funding, correct? That is correct. So are There's no guarantee that the city of santa rosa will receive these funds for these two Projects that is correct. Great. Thank you. Are there any other questions? Go ahead miss comes Just to clarify the the the process again Are there other Will there be other heap dollars available to the city of santa rosa other than the this 3.6 million through the coc process or the Leadership so we would have there are other funding I mean other funds available through the NOFA that went out but As a city we only applied for the 3.6 million dollars in heap funding Yeah, so we would have had to apply for additional funding. Thank you councillor affluent. I apologize for Taking up so much time. However. I think this is really important and it's a great opportunity for us to Maximize our value Are we certain that repairing the roof at the bennett valley and excuse me at sam jones hall? For 1.2 million dollars is the most cost-effective way of us maintaining those shelter beds for residents Also known as are there is there another building we could purchase or lease or use for 1.2 million dollars that the operator could utilize rather than Maintaining this property to that tune of 1.2 million dollars We we haven't scoured what might be available, but if that was the Conclusion of the city council, we would be tasked with trying to find out what might be available I think some of the premise I'm sorry. Were any other properties or other options considered? No, just the bennett valley senior center and Samuel jones hall All right. We have several cards here. So let's start with scott wagner followed by thomas ells Good afternoon A couple of qualitative points. I guess one is I think we need taxes to answer the the question that Ms. Fleming brought up I don't think that you're going to be able to guarantee continuity on this without doing the kind of thing that was done in san francisco where they They applied sensible taxes That were targeted explicitly to take care of the homeless in their area and they're having transformative results as a matter Of course because this this comes down to an issue of money in my opinion Um, you know, many of us don't want to talk about the money aspects and and one critique I would say also qualitatively here is that there's there's no detail here for us to look at stuff We don't know what's in that 1.6. We don't know what's in any of it And I'd like to see some kind of breakdown between The capital portions and the service portions as a very basic beginning for both those two pieces And we didn't get to see it. We and we're supposed I guess not even talk about it, which I find Just goofy So You know, those are those are the two main qualitative pieces that I want to say I would also just Mention that in terms of going into the navigation center and getting something done one of the things that we wanted to To see in the proposals that we put forth for heap money Is to make sure that we have a systemic way of involving the community early And that involves more than just a community meeting And I don't I don't know what that meant exactly But I believe that we need to do aggressive outreach into all these neighborhoods for two reasons not just because It affects them greatly, but more importantly, there's an educative process here This is a regional problem that a lot of neighborhoods have to take some responsibility for and they're not going to want to do that For all kinds of of good and bad reasons And what we need to do from an education standpoint when we have situations like this is we need to come in there And we need to teach them And help them to reduce fears and commit in ways that the government needs to commit to make sure that the that the neighborhood Is not unfairly damaged unfairly harmed and fairly risked By what it is that we're trying to do to solve a regional problem Thank you Thank you scott. Thomas followed by george uberty Well, thank you very much. First of all Thank you for considering the bennett valley senior center For reuse it's very important. I've never heard of a two million dollar sole source no bid Contract ever issued in my 50 years experience I believe there would have to be significant findings And those findings you cannot have I'm going to talk about bennett valley And sam jones a little bit Christchurch at oxford, which was built in 1190 The roof was oak and the buildings And the builders planted a grove of oak trees called christchurch grove Because the roof would last 400 years and the trees would be built The trees would be grown at that time and matured and replace the roof 400 years in advance of needing the roof You need to think about these things a long term in advance In the abstract bennett valley senior center proposal isn't horrible But in the concrete here and now it does not address the current homeless difficulties It does not increase homeless service capacity whatsoever and it violates every principle of housing first Which is to utilize and create housing rather than sheltering I understand voting half the funds to sam jones re-roofing But let's not exacerbate the situation to throw good money after bad Bennett valley senior center itself does not warrant the investment and expenditure of two million dollars And none of it could be Recoverable Bennett valley senior center would be stuffed to the gills The proposal I heard was a hundred homeless 60 under certain circumstances With no ventilation or air conditioning And so in the best of scenarios subsequent to the re-roofing of the people who returned to sam jones bennett valley senior center Would be no better place than sam jones because the numbers of people I get it it seems like it's a good thing But it's not it's the same old incomplete methods Like it oxford sam jones should have been seriously considered sooner including use of the water agency Which has ventilation and air conditioning. I have a proposal that have proposed to use bennett valley senior center To house 60 people 20 inside the building and 40 outside a building You have a no-source contract Excuse me sole source no bid contract to build items that you have no plan for That's never that's never been done And you could have a Anyway, it's just really complicated. Um I met with mayor on june 30th And we tried to find the heat and and if I could just finish for one second Which was there wasn't enough time from june 30th to actually complete that and I'd like to talk to you further on this I would wish that you would Begin on this process, but to relook at it. Thank you. Thank you, thomas georgia barathe followed by gregor furan Yeah, uh, I'd like to bring to your attention some of the language we're using here It seems like like we're not uh I'd like to shift the way that we're thinking about this because I feel like we're thinking about it in ways That are overly rigid we're behaving as if, um, you know, there are uh concrete categories of person Right, this person is a homeless person Uh, and that's who they are. You don't get you don't get born a homeless person I've heard a lot about talking about people that are uh disabled that are incapable of taking care of themselves Right, so um, and that's a significant portion of our homeless population Right people without the cognitive capacity to care for themselves. We talk about extremely vulnerable populations to disabled um somebody who uh has mental retardation Who's physically disabled, uh, it's not a homeless person anymore than a nine-year-old is a homeless person If they don't have a parent they're not going to have a home These people are wards of the state and as such they are our responsibility They only become homeless people when we fail to house them Right now there are a lot of different options for people that are Incapable of taking care of themselves. I'm wearing the shirt of a organization I used to work for called, uh, bayberry, which we primarily did In home supported services type of things although there's ihss funding, right? There's um, there's supported living funding There's icf's right intermittent care facilities, right? These are all things Uh for people that are incapable of taking care of themselves who are not homeless people They're just people with disabilities Right and so uh thinking that we need to set up shelters to house people who are fundamentally and irrevocably homeless Is a flawed way of thinking about a more uh broad social problem, right? Which is our own need to take care of people who can't take care of themselves, right? That's what a society is supposed to do Um, we're failing in a really significant way when we do that Now another thing that i'd like to talk about is the benna valley senior center, right now I'm hearing talk about is the community development commission, which is the lead agency for the continuum of care now One of the primary features of a continuum of carers that is supposed to have a single point of entry Right, um a single point of entry that coordinates all services because if you're homeless You're not really going to be able to kind of hop and skip around to a lot of different service providers Um, so if that's going to be to benna valley senior center, we're going to spend two million dollars or whatever it is Um getting that set up. I mean how are homeless people going to get there? Right. I mean one of the reasons we do catholic charities, uh downtown is because you know, there's like the bus The bridges, right all these different soup kitchens and everything so we go down there Also, uh, there's absolutely no reason to hand off two million dollars to catholic charities Uh, I had to I mean absolutely not I had to personally get their financial statements myself and they were absolutely important You all need to look at them. That's your job. Thank you very much. Thank you. Greg if you're on followed by christina healy Gregory had an emergency. It had to leave Thank you Uh, christina healy followed by caron Fitzgerald Hi everybody Thank you for all of us all of us on this planet together trying to plan it I don't know is it? Anyway, what do you say help me out? Okay, sir Anyway, I'm I'm not prepped for this at all, but um, I'm new to this town and I think it's wonderful what you are trying to do for the homeless There's incredible services incredible amounts of food but I think rather than Having a hand out We need a hand up And I think you have a lot of things in the waste stream Such as the pallets lying around the fire has it the food scraps all of us are scraping into our You know plastic bags we have An opportunity to do what victoria was talking about I think which is give us The green new deal so that we could have bicycles pull-alongs gardening tools and we could actually Help restore a monarch Habitat Santa Rosa is so beautiful. You have so much open space left Practically every business has a borderland where they could actually house a individual who wanted to be an eco-steward with the proper training you know to help Set up those pallets and create a three bin compost system and actually return the soil from our food scraps and our leaves And our grass clippings that we could make ourselves sequestering the carbon from the atmosphere from our cars You know creating the fungi and the root systems that would then Give us the oxygen that we need and you know any Thing called heap. I think it's kind of ironic heap to me is a compost pile And we are like flesh and blood in the heap and we are suffering from fire and we For some reason refuse to change what we're doing And if we had a green new deal where kids could sign up and learn how to install Stolar Paneling and learn how to retrofit the pipes coming out of your kitchen sink in your bathtub in your laundry And filter it through a beautiful Waterfall system that could then be reintroduced to your yard so that you're going to have a lush yard That's not going to attract fire And you're going to be you know, we're going to be on bicycles, you know But it goes beyond that it goes to the smart train that you have which is another Amazing opportunity that's almost been lost because They choose to put old-fashioned Pavement for the bike trail when we need something that's porous. We need something that's like beveled sand We need to plant and the homeless can do this. We can do it. We're already all along the train tracks You know, we got turkeys walking around hungry. We got possums that are dying of thirst We got raccoons because we put everything in the waste stream and we can't they can't get at it Soil is the one thing that we need to make when we should be given Thank you Christina that opportunity to live and learn in green buildings that are healthy. Thank you all of us Karen Fitzgerald followed by dwayne duit Thank you. My name is Karen Fitzgerald. I'm with the living room I want to take a moment to thank julie combs for the workshop she delivered in the december right in this room I want to uh say that I didn't hear um of all the buckets that were put out for us to uh spend money in A roof for sam jones, but but That said I did hear a lot of good ideas and I made an observation that day when I heard all these good ideas That we could collaborate and we could come up with something new and different And now I want to just take one moment to do a shout out to homeless action Because they have very conscientiously thought this problem through and and the living room has observed what they've come up with and we have Worked or some of their people have come up with and We want to support that and we have put our fiscal sponsorship seal on those programs Some of which include uh benham valley center for What has been identified as true solutions to true emergencies and and Councilwoman fleming thank you for your observations on some of these things about the infrastructure We need to solve a problem that is going to be a long-term problem Anyway, I would simply encourage that The council or those in charge of spending the money look very seriously at those ideas That are more comprehensive and perhaps more closely address Meeting the serious emergencies that we do have in this county at this time In in determining the usage for the senior center. Thank you. Thank you Dwayne do it Followed by adrian lobby Dwayne left Adrian followed by steve dunright. Thank you council members There was a time when we heard a Estimate for the roof of sam jones of I believe 300 000 So I think we would really want to see these estimates and I understand from the staff that this includes maybe more than that original estimate Which leads us to uh council member fleming's point about putting a lot of money into this particular building Which was pretty old and weak when we Turned it into a shelter So we might need to do a little more work on that There is a proposal for the heat money for the use of the sam uh the benham valley parking Lot for some safe parking that proposal asked for 56 thousand dollars from the heat money And it includes the desire and willingness to work with the city It wouldn't change that what the city is also proposing these things are compatible options I just want to say in a general way. My name is adrian lobby. I work with homeless action as Karen said we've been working on this for three or four months now And we believe that the heat money is very specific from the state This is for homeless emergency funding It's for cities that are having trouble with homeless people In a crisis emergency vein So we need to look at things that are not Oh, maybe someday we'll get to functional zero if somebody finally gives us enough money to do that We really need to look at we have people dying right now Maybe three or four people in the last couple weeks We have people cold out in the wind in the weather. We got five days of rain coming up I don't see that this really addresses that And what we've done in trying to bring more people together with new ideas Is to come up with things that are called the tiny villages particularly Safe parking Things that will get people out of the rain fast and provide them with shelter for Four or five six years Maybe more for under five thousand each So let's spread the money around. Let's use it for emergencies And yes, let us put out requests for proposals We believe that we need a very rich and diverse service provider universe here We're not getting new and unusual ideas Because we always have to go to the same providers And that's because the providers do not have the capacity To bid on these large projects because we do not put out enough rfps They do not get the bids. They can't develop the capacity So whenever there is something about homeless services or homeless Capacity you will see me in here saying Please put out rfps invite a lot of people to bid and let's see how this can go. Thank you very much Thank you, agent Steve Dunright followed by Bill Patterson Good afternoon. Happy tuesday I know a word. I think has more letters than mississippi and that's called misappropriate funds Just what I heard about the cost of the roof alone. I built mansions that sleep 24 for less than that. It's a roof I know it was only built by some Probably some lackadaisio homeless cities. Oh, no by the army core engineers and they could land an airplane on it So how much that really needs to be done in that roof structure? Is who doesn't know anybody will believe it does the roof leak? Yes. Where does it leak? I bet they never tried finding a leak on a day when it's raining when it's not raining with the holes and find out possibly it needs flashing So if you want to slam the army core engineer and tell them that all that stuff that they did was a failure I'm really disappointed in the united states army because Well, I'm actually disappointed in the united states army. Anyway, that's vietnam The other thing we're talking about moving beds at homeless action I witnessed people leaving an ambulance more than once and some of them are to this day crippled Because they stepped on some mattresses that should have been replaced 10 or 15 years ago But there's always an excuse why not who the hell wants to spend one dollar to move those mattresses? Which have more swells in them than a ski slope in wisconsin I used to sleep on a bed backwards because people thought they wanted my head to be exposed. I said no less back damage Not even permitted to use a mattress because the mattresses that were good on the floor For the homeless that had to leave at six in the morning So both all these shelters you kick the homeless out Who gives a damn what the weather is come back to six back in the days catholic charities That does nothing for the homeless and say get the hell out of here I've got my car stolen stitches in my face and my glass is broken I've got nothing but a hung-up phone and not allowed on a property I can't put toilet paper in a porta potty that we paid for So why do we want to give these people that's so far approved that they do a little bit more than you? But there's a heck of a lot of misappropriate funds and where's that five hundred eighty two thousand dollars I have sore feet looking for the porta potties that some people three out of four voted for Boy, I sure would hate to be judged by the god whether I was a mayor or the best cheerleader The best football player when I denied hundreds of people a place to go to the bathroom and wash their hands Come on. What are you going to do you waste my time? It's just all these atrocities And and you talk about doing this building on homeless funds at the senior center and I heard about resell Where's that money go whose pocket does that go in?  They can't afford it You can't even call beyond five miles when you borrow to use their phone. They must be misappropriating funds, huh? There's money being made for every person that's kicked in and out of sam jones Money's being made off that building money's being made off the casino But none of the money's being spent So you guys are to stand still because there's no more fencing and barb wire to put up and you cut down every damn bush There is to expose the homeless and say they're there But you're asking for more money when I left in June the only time the mayor stood up and had attention was and I heard Five hundred eighty two thousand dollars was coming for the homeless Now we tried to get attention by shutting people by shutting down the council All I said was let's do something different because nothing's being done And what was the fine two thousand five hundred dollars for a seventy seven year old woman?  I'm telling you every damn vets got to be pretty upset any homeless vet And by the way, you're not even filling up how many vets you're supposed to have when you've got the palms which is making money I know a veteran that's out on the street because he can't afford more I know somebody literally has cancer and I put my finger in his whole firm infection The catholic charity's backballed not on the street because he said he failed to sign a release form while being kicked out of Onto the street from sam jones for making a comment of an injustice And if you want to make a report it still goes in a garbage can sometimes a square one sometimes a round one Have a blessed day bill paterson followed by biranna pucca My name is bill paterson. I'm the chapter 28 vice president of the local association association of service council representing the local auto repair shops I'm here today to represent the six automotive repair shops on rutledge avenue across the street from the senior center For the 12 years that i've been at this location. I've seen the senior centers serving the senior people Doing an excellent job. I've seen churches meet there. I've seen ballet classes Numerous different groups meeting for Alcoholics anonymous and so forth And I was really surprised when the city decided to close the center Which was doing such a good job. They had paying clients Using the commercial kitchen there for food catering And the reason that I heard was that it was no longer safe to occupy So it seems ironic that now it's being considered To be reopened as a homeless shelter So we were concerned about the safety of the seniors But now we're going to endanger the homeless there It seems ironic to me But anyway, our big concern is is that we have a serious homeless problem And they choose rutledge avenue to park their rvs their trailers their vehicles And I know the catholic charities has tried to help they provide one day a week That trailer for showers But it hardly gets used and I've I work with catholic charities And I've talked to them To the city about why don't you put a couple porta potties out there? So these people that are sleeping in their cars have somewhere to go Because as businesses we're finding human feces and piles of trash On our property on the sidewalks My customers, especially women with small children Are intimidated when they're walking by all this stuff and seeing homeless people Drinking and doing drugs And We've tried to get help concerning especially the parking situation which is really limited For our small repair shops We called a few weeks ago and asked the city if they could please come and get some of these vehicles to move And a police officer promptly showed up And informed all of our businesses that we needed to move our cars out of the loading zone Behind the senior center Which seemed to me like they were just saying, you know Mind your own business But it is our business. It's our livelihood You know something has to be done. I have I'm really concerned about the homeless and they need help But I don't think the senior center is the way to help them. Thank you bill Brianna followed by Anita Lafellette Good afternoon. Um, I I don't hate this either I think it needs to be a older women's shelter We have so many older women on the street just struggling. They don't think that senior housing is for them Or they don't know how to get senior housing. So Um, a navigation center is definitely the best thing to call it Does catholic charities need to run it as a good question? Um And if they're going to spend the money refurbishing and whatnot also don't park in loading zones people, you know That's just the thing. Um, that's probably why they said that Um, uh, so, uh We have the money To let people live these are souls in a body suffering And we're letting them suffer just like um the last gentleman said or the gentleman before that It's souls in a body suffering. It doesn't matter where they come from. They're mostly from here though born and bred um and They we don't have the shelter space. We haven't been offering the shelter space for it sounds like a decade Going on 20 years. I've grown up here always known to people living in their cars I mean, it's just a thing you do in Sonoma county Um, I knew someone from mexico who was like Oh, you guys live in your cars? And it's like Yeah, that's just the thing we do because we don't allow people to have a spot All you need you own 1600 properties Rent them out to yourselves for a dollar a day or something figure out something with the liability. Sorry It sounds like a lot of work council, but figure out something with the liability Nihai who we can't the lady from Nihai who we came had come here. She had a great insurance company We just need places for people to be they do need to be low different barriers Low barrier is a big one because people need time to figure out their self medication And figure out how to get off of it They all went off of it But they can't because they have to stay up all night being aware of themselves Otherwise people are going to take their one sleeping bag for them and they're one like tiny little shivering old dog and You just need to do it right now You close the armory not you but you know we close the armory on Both weekends and it rains and there's no other place for people to go We are going to spend if the difference is is in the money between 300,000 to fix the roof and 1.6 million to To do it all with moving all the people that's 1.3 million that we're spending on moving all the people If we spent that 1.6 million on yurts and on public property We could house 533 people And they could do things like the composting that we need we could grow food for ourselves You all want to earmark money tax money double tax it whatever Give the police something to do to get over time. It's like Please just stop hurting people. You're killing people four or five people died this week I saw a woman get taken away in the morning under the night street bridge for um freezing to freezing. I don't know if she Dead body I've ever seen except for like in a funeral. So I mean Stop it. You have the power this week to stop hurting people Think about it Thank you. Anita followed by victoria yannis Good afternoon. It's Anita Lafollette It's been a long time. Um, I'm really tired of talking for homeless action because It seems like it goes up to a barrier. I mean talk about barriers I just want to let you know that they're like she said four or five dead people this week That means there was a lady underneath the underpassing that died for freezing I see them every single day up and down santa rosa avenue. They're trying to find enough plastic to wrap themselves in This is a homeless emergency. It's not a time to be thinking about capital improvements You're going to spend heap funds to make a To make a roof What we need to do is put some of these people in shelter now whether it's a shelter That includes safe parking because a lot of people are living out of their cars When are you going to wake up? Do you not see them? They're sleeping in their cars and sleeping under bushes They're trying to prevent being swept By the policemen who don't want to sweep them anyway. We've gone through this so heap funds should be for safe parking in canvass And certainly for homeless shelters ones that can be done At the senior center, we have the water agency vacant. We have a huge bank downtown We have a building right over here that's totally empty It's amazing to see all these empty buildings and people still sleeping in the street. Is this the united states of america? I cannot believe the humanity That's lacking In our city council. Yeah, you guys Okay, so true solutions to problems are what we need with these heap funds So listen to some of the suggestions that are being put forth To the heap committee at this time and make more homelessness Diminish not increase. You're going to put 80 people into the senior center when there are 3000 out sleeping in the rain I Can't believe it and um So I just want to Increase the number of places that people can go and have shelter. I don't care whether they're Drinking or using drugs or eating chocolate candy. I don't care They need to be in a shelter Thank you. Thank you. Nina victoria yannis Thank you victoria yannis homeless action exclamation point But i'm speaking for myself really because homeless action has not reviewed my comments Um, I don't want to be a catholic charity's basher like I always have been Because of their failure to recognize The civil rights of their service population Um I've complained here many times about The failure of catholic charities to have a viable complaint process What we have here is a private organization receiving public funds With no oversight just about because When somebody files An appeal of an action You know, this is still the united states We still go by the u.s. Constitution Once a person is granted benefits by catholic charities the taking of that property interest Kicks in civil rights considerations This is public money Now the meetings of catholic charities are not open Okay, so Them having a viable Appeals process for the actions that they take when they throw people out of the program or just continue their benefits Um, we must have A process I've been representing somebody who was thrown out of the homeless service center for quite a few months already I've sent two letters By snail mail To the homeless service center because it nobody signed the action It and and the appeals rules said to just send it to The person in charge at homeless service centers. So that's what I did twice And this is range complaint. No response It's like it got lost before it got to jenny lin. I don't know what But I'm here begging and pleading and this is the same subject. I come and talk about jenny lin. You know, that's true We really want Because this is public money We have to have a right to challenge catholic charities decisions when benefits are being denied to the homeless. Thank you Thank you victoria Bring back to counseling for staff. Those are all the cards we have Do you have a recommendation because this is a study session? There'll be no actual vote, but you wanted to get feedback from the council Did you want to you have three different items that you were looking for feedback on Do you want to just go through each council member and give feedback on all three or take item? Individually get your feedback. What's your preference? Better if we just did it one at a time one two three Okay So the first uh item Why don't you reframe the first item? We all have an infront of you, but make sure that you get the information you want from us Are you just seeking me to repeat basically the recommendation so so there are three items where We're seeking feedback on this evening. The first is potential short-term use of the former bennett valley senior center for homeless services Including shelter safe haven and our navigation center to be coordinated with catholic charities of the diocese of santa rosa In association with this samuel l jones hall home of shelter or independently through another provider All right, is there someone like to make first comments Let's start the animal work our way this and then we'll alternate councilmember flaming I want to voice my support for much of the work that catholic charities does and this is not An opinion about the work that they do. This is a broader opinion about not having um an rfp or a way of having a review of services for 14 or 15 years and we weren't able to get a specific date on when the original rfp was Issued I don't think that we should be issuing Any changes of contracts with such an old Contract, I do believe that it's in the public's best interest to have an rfp process even if we end up with Catholic charities. I think that that would provide transparency and an opportunity to have a open and robust conversation that meets our needs and meets the needs of Whatever provider would come to us Councilmember combs Before I comment may I just ask this has already been submitted the due date for these applications was last friday, wasn't it? Is that correct? That's correct. Okay I again If I may I just want to clarify that yes the applications were submitted, but they can be amended Okay And I've sorry to interrupt councilmember combs and I've indicated in the application to the cdc That this was not going to council until the 12th and there would likely be changes to the application following the Meeting tonight this afternoon Thank you for bringing us A homeless services shelter safe haven navigation center at the benet valley site. I think that Uh, I'm very supportive of those uses there the exact configuration there I'm not as clear about Uh, but whatever we can do together to get uh additional sheltering there If it's initially supplementing sam jones With a future possible other use that's great if we can coordinate with safe parking on that site. That's great Um, I agree that I think That while I can be very supportive of the work of catholic charities I think 15 years is long enough to be continually extending contracts and that we really do need an rfp. Thank you Vice mayor rogers Thank you, mr. Mayor and thank you so much to staff. I know We have heard a lot from the public Particularly over the last year and I know director you in particular have taken that to heart in trying to balance Not just what you've heard from the council in terms of housing first But also from the public in terms of what the need is so I really appreciate you trying to find a creative solution And I do know We have heard from folks in sacramento like the governor Lauding san eros's efforts and trying to be creative when it comes to creating housing and creating some form of housing unit for folks So I do want to make sure that that's put out there as well I am very supportive of figuring out how to move forward with the benet valley senior center as a long term Supportive services and in the meantime It seems like it's a good nexus to allow us time to make necessary changes to sam jones hall So I think that that is in particular really interesting as a way for us to Start that conversation understanding that we're going to have to talk more about the long term as well But in the short term it does allow us to move forward with changes at sam jones hall It does end up providing us another opportunity potentially down the road for additional capacity of services If if my colleagues want to go the direction of doing an rfp That's fine with me But I do Hear from the public that there's urgency in what we are doing. We have heard that I am also concerned about catholic charity's capacity Because we have been asking them to take on a lot that they did not initially want to do And I know that given the big hearts of folks who are doing the work there that they never wanted to say no But I think it is worth having a conversation with them about what their capacity is How they are able to deliver the services if we are asking and make sure that they are in a position to deliver For us what we think we need to have here Moving forward, so I can go either way on the on the rfp Or on the the sole source But it would really be contingent on whether or not catholic charities has the capacity Thank you vice mayor councilman rooster Thank you, mayor. I agree with the vice mayor In his comments. I'm very very pleased that An alternative to just selling the benna valley senior center has been looked at and that we can Quickly transform it into a into a safe haven in shelter for our homeless Residents and More than happy to have catholic charities be in in in charge of that They have the most Experience of any other a non-profit here in san aroza that may change in the future But i'm very pleased again with the creative use of this building which is now A greater asset than it was perhaps a few months ago, so i'm willing to move forward Mr. All there's thank you, mayor This is a natural next step in our direction as far as meeting some of our needs And of course meeting the immediate needs over at salmon jones hall as relates to the funding to understand This is one time funding that we're dealing with and the other thing that i don't know i'm not clear about is the The allocation to benna valley senior center the the percentage that will be needed for upgrades to make it Inhabitable and so my assumption is the remaining dollars would be used for potential programming of providing the services. Is that correct? Yes, and it would also Sponsor the leasing and installation of another shower restroom trailer to be joined with the one we have currently leasing portable buildings connecting those portable buildings to electricity and a sprinkler system for health and safety Thank you So there are still a number of things that can be contemplated happening at that center as far as the types of services And and then the other question i would have is related to ongoing funding of whatever we decided to do that Will be something we will deal with in a year to year to year basis based on available funding to Be able to manage that site and this angle jones site correct. Thank you. So i i'm not opposed to RFP process, but i would ask that we explore other options I see Three main uses here with the shelter the safe haven The navigation center there may be other Uses that come up as we evaluate the use of that building So i would not exclude the possibility of exploring an rfq process for example In trying to identify What are what are our needs as it relates to providing services to our homeless population? And then in turn trying to identify what are the qualifications of our service providers in a community to provide those services Because i know i'm even with catholic charities being stretched. They do a lot others have certain Tribes and services that they provide others others So I think again if we're looking at this as a more holistic community-wide approach There may be some opportunities that exploit an rfq process where we may be able to use More than one type of provider for different things And i think it also will allow us to demonstrate some stronger collaboration Amongst our providers in in meeting the needs of our homeless community Thank you, mr Oliver's And for me i'm definitely in favor of the ben valley senior senator being transition this homeless services And i am supportive of catholic charities remaining the service provider And mainly the what i heard from you kelly saying that We'd be able to leverage resources It'd probably be two to three hundred thousand dollars cheaper to be able to do that And the assessments that catholic charities is doing at sam jones hall. We're talking about the same clientele They know those folks better than any other service provider And i'm not sure how from the individual perspective how that would improve services by having someone else Actually take the handoff or the transition from Facility a sam jones hall to facility b ben valley senior senator with different operators It adds a level of complexity that i don't think the clients themselves need to be put through So on Bullet point one. Do you have enough feedback and was there i was trying to keep somewhat direction? Did you get what you needed on that item? Yes, thank you, mayor Okay, so then the second item is the applications cdc For 3.6 million in-state homeless emergency aid program funding for sam jones hall and ben valley senior center councilmember combs if we'll start with you um I don't have any uh issues with this particular item though I do have a question about where we actually got the 3.6 million from because i It wasn't clear to me that it That we got it by Adding up the costs, but that we kind of went the other way with it We had this number and we made the cost fit So if you could sort of just clarify that otherwise, um, I think we clearly need to move forward with this So the 3.6 million is based off of for sam jones hall It's based off of a preliminary estimate from transportation and public works to replace the roof 1.6 million dollars Then the ben valley senior center or the navigation center that we're proposing is two two million dollars That's based off of a number of things So there are some capital improvements that need to be made to the facility life and safety sort of things Also the cost of a bathroom shower trailer or shower trailer because there are no showers there And then all also based off of operating costs Which we know from sam jones hall and operating a shelter I also consulted with the communities of berkeley san francisco and oakland on their navigation centers to sort of compare You know costs at the sites that they've opened Let let me also if if I may mayor Um, I had originally asked the question with regard to the rfp if we could do something quickly And then follow up with the rfp or the rfq. Um, I am willing to entertain that conversation further. Thank you Thank you. Mr. Rogers Yeah, no, I definitely am supportive of us submitting this application Going forward Mr. Sawyer Thank you, mayor. I do have a question. Um, though generally supportive of the use of these funds The um, as far as our ability to be creative, um, and consider Possibilities that we have not had the opportunity to do in in No small way due to In some cases a lack of space and our ability to Coordinate for instance safe parking It's a large parking lot at the bit of valley senior center. Um, is it something that the, um, The the sonoma county that the home sonoma county will be considering and could that be A conversation where we actually consider that as a as a short-term potential on that site If I understand your question councilmember Sawyer the We are currently not aware of how many applications are going to home sonoma That may be contemplating safe parking That may be contemplating this site as one of those sites they they have in mind But that certainly is a an evaluation process that'll be working its way through First the technical advisory committee forming a recommendation to the leadership body and then that decision being made Great. Thank you. I'm just I'm looking for um, and I when we first had the conversation About home sonoma county. I know that creativity Was one of the things that they were going to be Putting into high use so I'm I'm looking forward to that as at least as a possibility And moving in directions so we have not moved together or moved in it for one reason or another but I'm very supportive of Getting these funds moving and and used as soon as possible. Thank you Mr. Alvarez Thank you, mayor. I am I am supportive of the application Councilman Fleming I am supportive of the application with the the reservations that I've expressed And I'm also very supportive of the 3.6 million application. Thank you And the last item is feedback on the potential long-term use of the ben valley senior center site for the permanent supportive housing and or affordable housing Mr. Rogers will start with you Thank you, mr. Mayor, and I uh Do want to echo some of the concerns that I heard from councilmember Fleming earlier in the discussion regarding One-time funding in on time and ongoing programs. And so I am cognizant of that I am supportive of us figuring out how to make this supportive housing and affordable housing moving forward For folks. I think we don't have enough capacity in our community and developing that is going to be a challenge given our budget constraints, but I am Supportive of this potential for now and we'll talk about the details as we get there Thank you, mr. Sorry. I am also supportive of the long-term use Mr. Alvarez Thank you. Not knowing what the final product will look like. I am supportive of the concept Councilman Fleming I'm conditionally supportive of this project. I would like to see Some of the questions that I've proposed. I have some answers I know that there's no good answers But I want to make sure that we provide the public with the biggest bang for their buck and that we Get as many services to as many people and prevent any more freezing deaths. I I think that it's unacceptable Councilman comes I'm supportive of this project becoming more permanent And have and recognize the potential for long-term use Um, not generally the person who's willing to make a leap of faith with regard to our finances But in this case, I'm willing to see what happens in two years. Thank you Thank you. I also am very supportive of There's been a valet seen senior senator is the permanent supportive housing I think that is our answer to our homeless challenges And I am hoping I plan on advocating in sacramento for additional funding I know governor brown said this is one time funding for his administration It was but I'm very optimistic with for governor Newsom that it's not the last time that we'll see the state Assisting us not just the city center was the entire state with homeless services. So I'm very supportive of this Anything else to add or is that the conclusion of this item? Thank you that concludes it. Thank you very much Mr. Gowan item 4.2 item 4.2 is another study session community homeless assistance program otherwise known as chap And alternate housing options and presenting as kelly keckendall So as Dave mentioned when he teed off both the study sessions We're here this afternoon almost evening now at council's request to discuss this program as well as Temporary or alternative dwellings before I jump into the community homeless assistance program otherwise known as chap I just wanted to provide you with a brief overview of our homeless services and the chap program is part of that Sort of array of services that the city supports and provides There are four Broad categories that are referred to we have emergency shelter Day services street outreach and rental assistance under the category of emergency shelter The city provides support to the samuel jones jones hall homeless shelter And family support center. These are operated by catholic charities The council has provided additional funding to these facilities or these programs over the last couple years to align them with the housing first model And this year the council also provided some funding to the ywca for shelter beds at its safe house Under day services. We have the homeless service center. This is a drop-in center And under street outreach. We have homeless outreach services team That's operated by catholic charities as is the homeless service center And host and coordinated entry are um their home base is the homeless services center Um council provided additional funding as well this year um and last year for the homeless service center to extend hours Under the fourth category rental assistance. We have the housing first fund This is a new program this year and it's operated under host. This provides landlord incentives risk mitigation and tenant assistance And the hc family fund council has provided funds for administration for this program for a number of years It's operated by community action partnership of sinema county and funds are provided By a private donor to help with security deposits and rental assistance There's the chat program I'll be talking a little bit more about that in the next couple slides. We also have the homeless encampment assistance pilot program That started a couple years ago to address growing concerns around encampments in our community And as you know regional efforts I touched on this in the first study session through our Sinema county continuum of care, which is now called our recently rebranded home sinema county So on to chap um in october 2015 council approved an initial pilot It was the community homeless assistance pilot program That was for one winter and it was for november through april It allowed for the provision of safe parking placement of portable toilets and temporary overnight shelter And the intent of this was to engage the community in developing solutions to address the homeless issue This was allowed at basically for churches to provide these services. It was later extended to commercial properties With the expanded program that i'll talk about A year later in october 2016 council approved an expanded year-round program Under your declaration of homeless emergency that you declared in august of 2016 This allowed for Safe parking safe camping the placement placement and maintenance of portable toilets and access to existing bathroom facilities provision of temporary overnight shelter and storage for personal belongings and as I mentioned This is for churches or Properties or facilities that have the assembly use or commercial properties In a november Following approving the expanded program council directed staff to make available available up to 20 000 for chap applicants There we have a set of guidelines. They're included with the staff report. Um, the process is really pretty straightforward We ask a property owner to fill out a registration form With the following information addressed contact info proposed services hours of service Number of occupants and other information as required Temporary overnight shelter requires an on-site inspection by the fire department prior to occupancy, but the the fee for that is waived And we we ask that the um owners comply with the chap guidelines and coordinate services with host We currently have Two churches uh participating in the chap program The first united method is church. They might have some representatives here this evening I spoke with them last week. They have safe parking. They provide up to 10 spots at their Their campus on giffen avenue And they've they've been approved for a chap grant approximately 9700 dollars And they've had a program since 2015 They first started when catholic charities received funding through the county That program lapsed for a bit until they got it started up again last december so december 2017 Their program's been running for about A year They just submitted a progress report to me which they do from time to time So for 2018 they served about 44 individuals And nine of them have gone to either temporary or permanent housing Christ church united Methodist It just opened up safe parking in december and they are providing Three spots and both of these sites are working with catholic charities and with hosts And in coordinated entry as well to screen applicants for their programs Um first united Methodist church the the safe parking program that they've built Um christ church united Methodist has modeled their program after that as well as a church in sabbasta pool So part of the study session that was requested by council a few months ago Was that we also talked about alternative housing options So in the chap guidelines under the safe camping and safe Safe parking and safe safe camping provision of the guidelines There is some language in there that allows the property's discretion discretion vehicles rvs and trailers And they these shelter tips may include tents or other temporary structures tiny home modular dwellings and or other innovative shelters So the chap guidelines do allow for that These structures do have to comply with our building and fire requirements And there has been some some issue with that and that for example the state has issued some guidelines some temporary guidelines on temporary structures But cities don't yet have guidance on how to Implement those so I know that's in the works And I think that those those guidelines will be be adopted into code at the state level in 2020 And it would require the city to then adopt those here locally for for our use And for guidance and we do have our chief building official here this evening if you have any questions about that And our fire marshal Scott moon and assistant fire marshal Ian heartage To answer any questions that you might have about building and fire requirements as as they apply to the temporary structures With that we can move on to council discussion. I'll cover the recommendation real quick So it's recommended by the housing community services that the council hold a study session to receive a presentation on the community homeless assistance program and alternative housing options So this concludes my presentation. We're happy to answer any questions that you might have Thank you for your presentation council questions Go ahead miss combs you first thing mr. Tivitz Thank you for bringing this forward I would like to ask If we can adopt the state guidelines for alternate housing Uh that are in existence at the state level now in advance of the state building code adoption It's my understanding for example that this happened in oakland And that we can adopt these guidelines in advance of the state code processes Good evening. Thank you Yes, we do have the option to adopt Could you introduce yourself first just everyone? Sorry, uh jesse oswald chief building official So we do still have the option to adopt the previously known interim measures that came out last year The measures are being proposed for the current code That is upcoming to be adopted in one one 2020 and that's Going through the process currently the measures appear to resemble much the same that we saw in the previous measures So the option is to adopt the previous ones or adopt the new ones upcoming Thank you. I would have no problem with adopting the new ones early And hope that we could have that conversation and consider it I'm also I know that part of bringing this forward was because we were somewhat surprised At how few churches took on Safe parking issues Basically as a council we got out of the way of commercial property So they could do it we got out of the way of the benevolent community the churches so that they could do it And we're not seeing the sort of flood of response that we had hoped to see So At what stage do we have the conversation about using city property or public property for Um chap program like Setups and Would that be something that is part of your recommendation as we go forward is that part of the Study session that you're suggesting we come forward move forward So technically i'm saying can we ask to expand the chap program to include city properties That would be a good conversation for the council as the program was conceived a few years ago Is it was for private property to assist us in trying to resolve this issue? Okay The other question that I have is that is your recommendation is to hold another study session We can't hold have votes or have a an opinion a strongly held opinion as a body under a study session Is there a reason you're suggesting a study session instead of a report item so that we could bring the Some closure to the conversation by having a some kind of more definitive conclusion You know, um, we didn't want to confuse the council But this was at the council's request to bring forward a study session about the chap program So as your staff, we thought we'd go through a review which we just did and then hear your discussion on where you would like to Take this item from here All right, thank you. I I would be Very interested in having this come forward as a report item instead of as a study session. Thank you Thank you. Mr. Sivitz. Thank you, mr. Mayor a director grind I think I was one of the people who asked to bring this back just to get an overview of How successful the program has been or what we could do what tweaks we could make to potentially make it more Successful and reach more people experiencing homelessness And and what also kind of moved me in that direction to talk about it was we brought forward the resilient city ordinance in which we created zoning policy that allowed People who were who survived the fires or lost their homes to live in trailers In in front of a residential property In your opinion would could the city basically follow a similar zoning ordinance consistent with the declaration of homeless emergency meaning Can we treat it as the same level of crisis as the fire and apply similar policy standards? Check in with the city attorney about an opinion on that Yes, you may the the declarations are both declarations of local emergency and you can treat them this Essentially the same So i'd be interested in having that conversation. I think it is the same level of magnitude It's something that i don't think can be permanent in the long term But since we are recognizing this is a crisis I think it should deserve the same level of treatment as the other crisis that the city is undergoing right now So I guess that's a as much of a comment posed to my colleagues as it is council any other questions Okay, we have several cards from the public Scott Wagner followed by george uberty Council person tivots you I think you reduced the volume level of my talk by probably five or six db with your statement, um, and i'm not going to dwell on it, but I I find it continually frustrating that we We ignore the shelter crisis declaration when the The virtual purpose of it Is to wave quote any and all on quote ordinances State county local government To place people in homes It's a really really simple point and I just wish that we would begin to use that lever somehow now The wonderful thing about that statute is that it opens up doors and eliminates your liability It doesn't say that you have to do that. It doesn't say that you you shouldn't just Use common sense and try and mitigate risk Safety and neighborhood and otherwise in doing this and I'm deeply committed to making sure that the tensions involved here Are taken care of properly Between neighbors between and homeless people Between freedom and between the constraints of death and and disease The unhealth of living out in the cold Let's please utilize this thing and begin to have it as part of our vocabulary So we're not dancing around it And one of the ways that this comes up is conversation that that we've had with the mayor on several instances Has to do with Neighborhoods You know neighborhoods can say that they don't like something and they should say that and they should be articulate and Coordinative and in making sure that they oppose things that they think are unhealthy for a neighbor a neighborhood But a shelter crisis does not give a neighborhood the same degree of power That the neighborhood has under a normal political setting Where everybody listens to the neighborhood and they just bow over because they say well the neighborhood doesn't like it Well, the neighborhood doesn't get to say that they don't like it under a shelter crisis declaration And have their word be the word of god It is just another factor that we must consider when we are trying to take care of a disaster And we need to listen to them carefully and we need to make All kinds of adjustments to make sure that the neighborhood is taken care of and that was what I was alluding to in my earlier conversation Because it's a big job and it's one that we need to take seriously as representatives and me as an activist trying to take care of people Because there are important tensions that we need to take care of and address But let's please loop this in secondly just in passing I just want to say that the format for this Where you're just going to to staff and back Does not enable the public or yourselves to understand in a rich way how you feel about these situations And any potential conflicts or issues that have nothing to do with what staff is bringing up that you're concerned with I would really love to see you'd converse around these things For us to have an open session. Thank you. Thank you, scott. Georgia berry followed by adrian lobby Thank you I think for reasons that are very clear We need to be very wary of Any measures we take addressing a homeless emergency That are organized around concentrated camps of people For reasons that I think Are unavoidable in the discussion of it. I don't think that we should Focus on anything that concentrates people in camps Period and I don't I don't think I need to unpack that for anybody in this room I don't know if this is a joke to you or not. I really don't at this point But I don't think it's funny And and your inability to stop messing around about it I I don't get it I really don't Um Yeah, I mean people are dying. It's not funny Don't don't concentrate them in camps institutions have a way of repeating themselves if we focus all of our efforts In this direction if we focus all of our efforts around, uh, this emergency this emergency is not something that fell from the sky All right If we are believing the pretense under which we're all assembled here Right, it's that this society is something that we've created Right, so if our society is in a state of emergency then that state of emergency is something that we've created All right, and doing things that reinforce only handling the fallout of an emergency that we've created Right are doing things that reinforce a system of emergency, right? It turns our society into something that pushes people into a life threatening state And then is designed just to handle them there In a way it just makes us into a mechanism that pushes people to the bottom and then That's it Right, we can't be that That can't be what society is At the very least it's not something that i'm just going to accept that my society is just an engine that pushes people to the bottom And then you know is organized around mitigating the erasure of them from there I I just I absolutely refuse to just allow that to just be some Play school production That I that I take part in silently i'm not going to do that And I don't think it's what we should do either and I don't I don't think it's what we have to do All right, there's there's absolutely no reason for it to be this way We've made it we've made it into an emergency we can make it into something better All right Someone else to say Thank you. Yeah, adrian lobby followed by steve den right I'm homeless action. It's really nice to see such a full chamber tonight and at this moment I know that people in Santa Rosa really care about what's going on with homeless people And I think that people will be interested in hearing this discussion I want to first thank the council for the funding that you do do for homeless services I know it's outside your mandate So it's extra that you do and especially for the extended hours for the homeless service Center known as the drop-in center has really been a lifesaver I do want to criticize you for the heat pilot program Which has been a failure Which has scattered people and is one of the reasons we have people dying in the last week or two Because people are so scattered. They're unable to help each other And we need to get rid of that program and reallocate those funds and that staff time About the chat program You know, we've tried the churches. We've tried the private businesses There's been some help, but it is not enough. It's really time for government to step in I want to just point out one of the the elements of the christ church experience Almost for 25 of those people have gone on to something better from their safe parking program As far as I know, that's as good as any shelter any program in town can do Safe parking tiny villages Even sanctioned encampments can be housing first just as anything else can be And I want to talk a little bit about the proposals that you come down because part of this conversation is alternative housing options And because of the amazing heat funding that we've had from the state We've been able to put in proposals not us homeless action, but us the community for a wide variety of solutions And some of the things that I just happened to know about Is applications that that are up to five million dollars of that heat funding Includes two tent villages two safe parking lots One rv parking Six tiny home villages all of these on city owned county owned and private business lots So i'm reason i'm partly saying this is that the city needs to get some skin in this game The city needs to get some private some city owned property involved And why do I say this because the cost Individually to do these programs for each person is four thousand two hundred and ninety three dollars a year Per month it's three hundred and fifty eight thousand What is expected to be raised in donations and rents from people is up to 30 of the amount So this helps leverage other funding that comes in It includes case management It includes some construction costs, but these are low cost options because there are not a lot of infrastructure And they are very quick We have a total peak capacity Were those all to be funded 687 individuals could be inside and dry tonight Thank you very much Thank you jane Steve den right followed by rain You guys don't use the same Trash container that catholic charities use is when you file a complainer in atrocity. Do you? I'm hearing you guys sound like you just realized somebody just said About how this is coming to attention it seems to be an emergency I remember 2015 talking about and I asked you guys to please spell it in capital letters I know when there was a fire there was an emergency and I saw many things done The best the homeless of santa rosa had it was when there was a fire because there was people saying can we help and we got help One of the last times I spoke here years ago before the shooting underneath the 9th street underpass I was dodging bullets because I was going against certain community I had a community people stand up and say, you know what mr. Mayor a different mayor We'd like to get the u.s. For the community involved and the lady stood at this pulpit said we are involved We are the committee. I have a white picket fence farm on morgan street I try to hand out food a hat and a blanket, but your people instructed Instructed and catholic charities has it removed every day No, sooner than she's saying we got the community involved and I go to an advocate meeting on a monday Dumpster came everything I had was underneath there and all I want was my car to be returned It was illegally told by catholic charities and my glasses that got stepped on. That's all I was asking for Now if this is an emergency, why are you guys talking about in 2019 because you're still going to be talking about 2020 2015 this problem has been here.  You've exposed us and yet There's more fatalities and we try to put something together and it's denied we talk about those little houses You commended Homeless action for putting together little houses denied. We've had church people here of different religions Asking for parking lot who needs a fire marshal when you're on a damn black top to have homeless people But no the community said well, we got to have 6700 voters say they can have a parking space on Talbot and montgomery I can come up with some other ones and 3.6 million You could have had the water agency. You could own it. There's buses there. There's water there There's a community that used to bring us food. I have four seven elevens Delivered food to the water agency homeless let the community find a place for the homeless So the community can get involved and make the city of san rosa seem like there's some angelical people here But no every single thing that's been brought to you guys goes in the same waste container as a complaint to catholic charities Have a oh and there's a building on heelsburg that was Government funded for low income. They're charging high rent all those offices on heelsburg have been vacant since the day I've been here, but I can give you 30 places I can go bibwack down and told I can't sleep there It's illegal and only illegal to block passageway of commerce only while commerce is doing business Nobody should ever be kicked in a rib feet or head at three in the morning when it's cold and raining saying get the hell out Unless an owner calls we're not breaking the law But since you guys funded that building on heelsburg and no longer let anything go on It's past inspection time. It's under penalty. Why don't I just start putting some homeless people there? Will I get arrested because every step we take has been thwarted by city council Thanks, Steve rain followed by gregory furan and if gregory's not here john crueger Hi, i'm rain and most of you guys know that i'm um A part-time ethologist that was studying catholic charities And also that I was trained as a pastor So I went to catholic college at concordia catholic college So I am a catholic when i'm about to say what i'm gonna say since they called me out of having been kicked out of the host teams That uh, I got kicked out for trying to offer a couple a ride to see their child And the staff said that they were going to tow their car their housing If they had because they had come too close to there and I was going to get kicked out if I gave them a ride to see their children Which was at cpi So I decided to give them the ride. So then they they discontinued my mail, of course And then all of my uh gym goes off and then the repayments for the joining fees Which resulted in a huge amount of backed-up fees on all the storages and all the showers places and all of those things In the end it cost me about 900 dollars to give that kid those two kids a ride and they did lose their car When I was asking the staff as a christian to christian not to do it I said that would be the workers of iniquity You can't do that And so the point is what some of those these complaints are not coming at it that way is that you trust them because they are christians you say But the truth is that jesus lived in a tent Peter built tabernacles heaven is a tabernacle city You guys are forgetting what the word tabernacle means and what the word home even means home It comes from jom and jom it means tent Tabernacle it was a new word for the bible that meant a tent you live in and also worship in these are holy They're also holy to native americans. I keep telling you you have 1200 black foot cherries not black feet and plus cherries black foot Cherries and they're these people are going to join a study in the midwest I found professors to fully take over Steady in this group because there already is a steady ongoing for 15 years about the black foot cherries and all their Dissemination to different places and yes their food was here. You do not have a treaty with them To kick them out of the trails to kick them out of the tree creeks According to every Siberian tribe in the country. There were redheaded tribes here already when they got here Now we have the genes for those original people. We've dug them up from 50 000 years ago Which is before the Siberians got here every single Siberian tribe says that they try to kill off those people When they got here therefore you did not make treaties with the appropriate parties On this land and you cannot even see these natives. They do look white. They do look really light You're like they're not natives But most of the cherries are blonde and redhead People do not know Why because they had turbines on when they first got here And that's what I usually do talk about because since I was called out about being kicked out of the drop-in shelter And they talk about no fair process There wasn't signed anything that wouldn't respond to anything about about when the length of it was going to be Or a process to appeal it And the hardship of of just giving someone a ride that it was already kicked out They came there looking for somebody who would give them a ride. I did not even know them And nobody would give them a ride that morning. I wasn't doing anything So I got kicked out for being a christian from a christian organization That we keep continuously trusting but none of these campers you call trust them Thank you rain gregory ferron followed by john krueger Good evening gregory ferron 2040 elizabeth way. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you tonight The reason I left earlier Was that I had a urgent Task of trying to help a gentleman whose van Was towed by the city in one of your heap Evacuations I guess we you call it And has been for six months living on the street. He's in memorial hospital right now for the third time And we needed to get his signature on a claim against you which I just filed Now we shouldn't have to do that We should have safe parking a lot of places And he should have been left alone on the what we thought was a fairly safe place over by a challenger way But if there'd been an alternative he'd have been there Now to julie's point. Yes There are safe parking applications for benet valley senior center that have been turned in and we would love to partner with you There are other properties that have been submitted for safe parking We want to partner with the city It is not enough to depend on churches when we went after churches as jack knows They'd complain about two key things that should be changed right now one is insurance There's no reason why your 20 000 dollars or whatever you put can't buy a global insurance policy for the five or six places We end up having a safe parking There is no reason why you should require the churches to allow the people in the parking lots to go into the church We have had those objections and you should end them You should allow us to have safe parking on private On public on commercial on wherever we can do it Now please There are 600 people on the streets of santa rosa who are in their cars And they're chasing Safety they're being busted. They're having to go every 72 hours somewhere else That's inhumane Thank you Thank you John krueger followed by brianna paula I'm john krueger. I'm with the first united methodist church in santa rosa The thing that comes to mind is a story I heard from the church before I was there. It's a couple decades ago at least Used to in an ad hoc way sort of let people stay inside the church at night when it was cold and they didn't have a place to stay One particular night a woman arrived. There were already people waiting there She was the first one that had a key.  They are us We are them they're people and One of the reasons it's so slow getting churches to adopt safe parking, which is actually very easy to do Is that there's a great deal of fear? Because an image a caricature of homeless people has been created and perpetuated For whatever reason And people are very afraid of that image When I take people from a church to our safe parking site and introduce them to the people who are in fact staying there It's like in one case the the group from the church just looked at me and said well What why are we waiting? Because they realize that these people are just trying to get by they're working They're raising their kids the kids are in school. They're trying to find a place to live Many of them have lost their homes because the rent went up. They did nothing else other than Be just a little bit short of what it would cost to live in a normal shelter. It's not that they Had any other issues except they didn't have enough money And once they're in a car they're living in the car they're Barely able to keep the cars running. They have to leave every day if their car Stops running they can no longer be in safe parking ricks my heart But we've seen people not be able to stay in park safe parking because they couldn't repair their car It was too far gone for us to help them on that so um all I'm really saying here is These people are us. We are these people. I could be that person anytime and I would just hope that there would be people Who would help me? and make it possible for me to somehow maintain some dignity and some health In the midst of all the wonderful plenty we have here in this area. Thank you. Thank you, john Brianna followed by tom sells so To be clear I don't think it takes a lot of money. I don't think we need to find any more money I don't think it needs to take 10 or 20 or even two years for us to actually find an effective zero homelessness Here in Sonoma county a couple weeks ago. We talked about our market ability and Had a lovely presentation by a woman from nevada who you know You know, you talked about progressiveness. You talked about generosity. You talked about all the things that make us Sonoma county And we're not being those things anymore We're going to talk about fire stuff, right? Our our market ability our brand whatever you want to call it. I got out of that business because it's disgusting, but We're a phoenix and we need to show the world that We can rise up and we can take care of people as a community take care of our community We're taking care of all the fire victims And they have from the most part insurance. They have FEMA money. They have the community behind them Um, we're Wasting money 1.6 million dollars is a ridiculous amount of money to fix a roof Um that houses 200 and some odd people when we know and we spend money and time and you went out yourselves to count people Um hashtag invasive. I don't do that much often, but seriously invasive. Um, I know you have to do it legally, but Use that information if you're going to do all these studies use that information to actually make space for people I don't want closure on the issue of um having city property for people to be at because um, you're violating um, the california welfare and institutions code by not actually doing this today um, you're you're Um telling these people that they don't belong here on earth There's no space for them on earth And a lot of them are suicidal.  I guess it must be so But still you cannot see I cannot see if the savage one is me How can there be so much that you don't know? You don't you think you own whatever land you land on The earth is just a dead thing you can claim But I know every rock and tree and creature Has a life has a spirit has a name You think the only people who are people Are the people who look and think like you But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger You'll learn things you never knew you never knew So yeah, you're you're not right. Thank you, bianna. Thomas ells Well, thank you again for extending this Chap ordinance and emergency ordinance. These are very important I want to address essentially very similar comments to what I had before both the bennett valley And the finley property adjacent to sam jones can be used in the chat program I'm representing my church here We are looking at both of those properties. I have an agreement and principle to To lease the finley property and I would put The people from sam jones on that property On the finley property and there's plenty of room and we've built tiny homes Totally willing to build tiny homes on that property Following the chap procedure Building a little chapel A church property that's assembly and going forward with that Similarly with bennett valley senior center They could be done immediately as quickly as the chap process which doesn't require Either council or planning commission actions so they could be done very quickly As far as the tiny homes they could be built really quickly as well and they're very Low cost the savings would be immense of two million dollars would be saved by the city To be utilized in these other programs for instance By utilizing the finley property It's a 40 10 finley and the and the bennett valley over 160 people That would be in addition to the 600 and some people that adrian just talked about So getting up to close to 800 people now they're Their proposal costs money Our proposal saves two million dollars That you could apply to that proposal so there'd be 160 people Let's say you did all of that would be half The number of people that would be protected under that That would be some 200 or 300 people In addition to the 160 people we're up to 460 people approximately Of existing homeless who are unsheltered and taking them into shelters that what we're talking about with tiny homes These are permanent structures in a tiny home facility that is in the nature of permanent supportive housing I'm not saying it's permanent supportive housing Exactly and that has to do with who the client is and how the how the services are provided But the facilities would be there for the long term or for the intermediate term But they should begin immediately. There's no reason not to begin immediately There's no reason for the community itself the churches and so on not to begin immediately to house These thousand people who are homeless who are really unsheltered. It's very very important I could show you little diagrams of drawing that It's immaterial the the drawings are there the the opportunity is there Let's please consider this further. Thank you. Thank you, thomas Those are all the cards I have for today On this side i'm going. Yes, sir Go ahead Hello, my name is dewayne dewitt I wanted to thank You for looking into this issue And the churches the first united methodist church and christ church They've taken the time to make some of their asphalt available to help the folks that are so deeply in need I often go by large churches with large parking lots and I think of That whole approach of asphalt for christ It's only used maybe once or twice a week And then they just leave it like it is So if they were going to walk their christian talk like the first united methodists are They'd be making those spaces available When I talk with folks at some of these churches, they say it's the city that keeps things from moving forward I know you folks would say no, that's not the case But I thought you know I wanted to bring some documents here that could help us to understand something better First I wanted to tell you something from a good american philosopher A man said that goodness is the only investment that never fails So maybe if we get you folks to look at investing some goodness We get some success in this Today I brought with me the comprehensive affordability housing strategy for this city of santa rosa from december of 1993 And in it it points out the fact that prices have outpaced incomes is making it more and more difficult For people to be able to afford Especially the very low the low and the moderate income households They can't afford decent housing That was said 25 full years ago I brought a newspaper article from 1995 which had Affordable housing war heats up And the reporter pointed out a battle is being fought in sonoma county to keep homes affordable Housed by mary fricker. She had been interviewing steve burk on the housing authority I also point out here on number 33 page 33 of this study It says housing prices in santa rosa are among the highest in the nation This is in 1993 It is virtually impossible for most low and moderate income families to be able to purchase their first home Which means their renters And they've always been under a bit of a difficulty So I wanted to thank you and ask you to expand the Program of safe parking and chap and at the same time Have the city staff Work to help folks Get past the obstacles that may came come up I looked over at some projects and I was told that it was the planning department Had actually requested an eir for one project and then just less than a mile and a half away It was approving a 48 unit housing subdivision with no eir And a conditional use permit. It just happened last thursday So if it's good for one, it's good for the other. Please house our homeless. Thank you. Thank you doing Bring it back to davin kelly. Um, I know your presentation has done any other information You want staff to consider this is just a or council to consider that is just an update on the chap program Is there anything else to add? Not on the staff's part. No, if you wanted to have a discussion about Expanding the chap program or other things that'd be fine. Yeah, thank you. That's why I want to bring it back to council And so what I would ask and this is a study session So I'd just like to go to each of you and hear what your thoughts are on the chap program If there are any additions and whether or not as councilmember combs said I would like if we're gonna or councilmember Tibbets if we want to bring it back on a report item so we can actually make some decisions Are we going to go in this direction or not? I think it would be helpful for staff the public and all of us Which direction are you going? So council any start with you? Councilmember soya if you can kind of give staff that feedback and we'll see where we go from there Thank you, mayor. Well, I am a little curious as to why and disappointed there hasn't been more a larger response to the chap program it is um It's Very comprehensive and seeing it all together in one presentation It was it's really pretty impressive what what we what the intention was and what it was to provide I would be curious as to to the reasons behind its lack of popularity. I do question The reality of of um Government being cheaper Then the private sector rarely have I heard the words government at low cost in the same sentence And I would I would like to know Well, I think the the private sector can be more nimble than the public sector And I would like to to continue and my my hope is that we could see some More success stories. I'm just not sure what is holding them back So as far as understanding the lack of the popularity of of of the community homeless Um assistance program I I'm not sure that You know, whatever vehicle we would need to answer that question. I would like that answered First is what what are we doing wrong? Or what are we not thinking about as far as this this program and how might we change it to be more successful Thank you, mr. Oliver's Thank you, mayor. I think uh regardless of who's doing it This is not an easy thing to do is providing shelter for for the homeless And I know that even running the chat program can be complex and complicated for those who choose to do it But I think uh councilmember Sawyer is right. I think it'd be good to try to get some information back to us related to Those who are using it. What's going well? What's not what could they change? Again, it's it's difficult to Put it into context of everything else that we do and related to funding and limited funding I know the expectation is that somebody's running the chat program They're doing it based on what they have as follows their as far as their own resources and volunteers But I think this probably will be a big Part of our discussion as we as we meet later this month So I would hope that we have some information coming back to us at some point Maybe in the form of a report. I don't am I sure yet To help us make some better decisions or or consider changes to the chat program But I think getting a sense for For how it's being used and maybe reaching out those who have maybe thought about it But didn't and try to identify what what made that happen But I think more information will be valuable for us because it's not going to be easy for whoever does it Especially if you plan if you're planning to do it long term Uh and and again even for the private sector or other nonprofits to try to find the resources to make it happen Is also as difficult as for us to find the resources to make it happen Thank you, mr. Shibas Thank you, mayor. I actually want to just take this opportunity to thank the first united methodist church I see some parishioners in the audience and I think it was also christ united church You know for them to come forward and actually engage in this this Policy is a big deal because it requires a lot of oversight and participation from the people in the the respective churches So I just wanted to make sure that that got recognized by the council tonight I also do want to actually underscore what uh, gregrie furan brought to the table You know, I'm looking at this policy thinking. Hey, we created it a lot of time and effort went into it to build it Now it's I think my responsibility to continue to make tweaks and test the results And one of the results that I'd or I'd like to see on the tweak side is Can we have a discussion and entertain private property owners? Allowing for example up to one person to park their trailer there and speaking from example. I was working with a young man over in the west end And he parked somebody gave him a trailer to occupy it was a great situation You didn't I mean truthfully there was zero impact on the neighborhood. He went to work He worked two jobs And then he went back to his trailer and he went to sleep and repeated his day But our code enforcement division came out I told him to move along because it wasn't consistent with our law And I thought that that was such a shame because here was this chap ordinance And if we just moved a couple of sentences in that ordinance He could have stayed in that trailer and not been put back out on the street, which is where he ended up two weeks after that The other thing to look at if that's too far of a stretch for the council or the public and I recognize that it could be Is looking at the global insurance policy ideas. Would that $20,000 be best used? Getting that that policy and just reaching out to the churches in this community to say hey If you have the space we have the policy to protect you Will you be our partner? I think that could increase the numbers Even if it's slightly it's probably worth the little bit of effort that goes into it So I'll I'll be looking for those two things in particular in the future But I do want to thank you Dave and kelly Because I know that this has been a long and evolving process for you Hey, councilman Fleming I don't have a comment at this time. Okay, councilmember combs Thank you So yes, I would like this to come back as a report item so we can take some action Yes, I hope that that discussion will include an expansion of identifying city-owned property I agree with my colleagues that we need to figure out How we do better outreach to the benevolent communities so that more churches understand how it actually isn't so hard and Uh, perhaps we can work with the first united methodists to go to visit folks and and engage them So that the program as it was designed can work better But I think after what is it three four years of trying to engage The benevolent community and the private sector. It's time for government to step up and I hope that we do I also hope that we You can bring back to us The information about the best state guidelines for us to adopt in advance of the formal adoption of the state building code so that we can get Tiny homes The tough sheds like they're using in Oakland or Those other mechanisms for housing folks beyond tents and RVs implemented in our community without Having either no guidelines or You know having to haul them off because we haven't passed the ordinance yet to have there be guidelines for that So I hope we can bring that back also. Thank you very much for the presentation Vice mayor Thank you, mr. Mayor. I think Many of the folks that I've talked to that are have been really deeply invested in this issue Understand that I've been really sort of torn on the city's policies and To scott's point about having a dialogue that actually Talks to the community about where we're at. I think for me in particular I come from a public policy background And I'm taught how to look at numbers and look at what policy outcomes are and how to move in that direction And then I also come from a mom who runs a nonprofit working with developmentally delayed kids And her mentality has always been She does the work that she does because if she had a kid who was in that same situation She'd want somebody to care enough to do that work And so when we have these conversations about the chat program I'm always torn between looking at how we allocate funds in a way that intellectually makes sense for the best long-term outcomes And it is really difficult to say I can allocate these funds in this program And I can help a limited amount of people in a way that I think is going to end homelessness for them long term And at the same time that means that I am ignoring a large chunk of the homeless population Where I could make their life a little bit better But at the same time not move them towards ending homelessness and that's where I always get really caught up in this conversation about Utilization of city properties What doesn't make sense to me and I've I've asked this before As we've had this discussion is Is there a way that we can do both? Where our funds are still allocated towards programs that we have seen successes with while at the same time understanding that We're really good at telling people where they can or where they can't be But we don't have a place for them to be and so I think for me what I would like to see in our discussion And I do think we should continue to have this discussion Is an understanding of utilization of city properties for safe parking at night for Even outside of a car that doesn't require Diverting funds away from the programs that we are doing for example City hall at night. There is nobody here on some nights What is the harm in allowing folks to park in the parking lot? And I don't want to take up staff time and I don't want to take up a lot of resources in doing that But I think that there is room in that conversation for us to Continue to provide places for those 600 folks who do have access to a car Or for those folks who do need to camp in a place that makes them safer That doesn't end up having a long-term impact as well The other thing that I need in that conversation is an exit strategy And that's where my conversations with folks who are doing this day in and day out Their proposals tend to fall short is there is no exit strategy And when those encampments will no longer be Where they're at when they're when we reach functional zero is not a great answer To some of the comments that my colleague made earlier And there's going to be an impact on the neighborhood. So for me Having that discussion understanding an exit strategy and then to councilmember tibitz's point about the insurance Really trying to ask the public to step up in a way that they have not And that if this is a community problem, we need a community solution And that if you're relying on us to be able with our limited resources to solve this for you You are going to be very disappointed So thank you for the presentation and um what it's nice just to get from a council perspective And members of the public to be reminded of all the efforts that we're doing Because since i've been on counseling several uh appear have been here longer The city of santa rosa has been very proactive. I think a leader in this area Do we still have an issue with homelessness? Absolutely. Are we perfect? Absolutely not But we're trying to our darned is you know, I just read another article that um a couple continuum of cares in the state of Minnesota ended veterans homelessness I'm immediately looking okay. What are your strategies? How did you guys do it? And so what i'm really in favor of you and those consistent evidence-based practice that are ending homelessness across the country Not just in our isolated region. So what i'm very interested is actually I am in favor of it coming back as a report I'm sure we can make some decisions so people actually get this is the clear direction the city is going I would also ask that on february 21 and 22nd during our council goal setting this come back because it's I know having been on both sides of the dais here. It's easy to ask. Yes. Staff just come back for us Um and tell us you know give us all the information that means you're not going to be doing something else So I think it needs to be part of our conversation when we do council goal setting So you you actually have the tools to actually have a product ready for us And I believe on the timeline one of the reasons that we did the redesign of the homeless system of care that we're all working together So i'm hoping with the leadership council that you explained on our item 4.1 Those decisions will have been made and we as a body can do things that are going to enhance and complement The decisions that the leadership council as a whole has made whether or not we like them all because I think for me That's what the big important thing us working together in the same direction Even if we don't like it all but we're all moving in the same direction is so much more important Then we start going off and aren't the way we've been quite frank in for the last 20 years. We're not all in unison I'm also very interested in if we do a report I'm to do the community outreach because although some people have mentioned that It's an emergency, you know neighbors may have a voice, but it's not the driving voice Well, I along I know with director guine and some other members of the audience were there on november 30th 2016 when we talked about the chat program. We had about 150 angry neighbors there They they have an opinion and I think it's our duty not to just represent It's our duty. I think to represent the entire community. I want to make sure that they have a voice So I would like to have the discussion Shall we have it on private property and let this community know whether we have to enable the Office of community engagement to help us get this word out. This is something very real. We're considering Where are you with this issue and again? I'd be interested in hearing more is it one position? Is it you know whatever that is but we have to have that community discussion because we're not going to solve it On our own here. This is the bigger picture So I hear private property the public city property that should be part of a report item too So we can give clear direction and make decisions on that the insurance the state building codes I think all of that needs to be bundled together so we can set that clear direction and again I think the timing of it should be again. We'll hear on the 21st and 22nd Let's get the direction from the leadership council. This is the way the rest of the county is going I'm hoping we can come up with some additional things that can complement our efforts Did you get what you needed if not more from this study session? Go ahead councilman fling Thank you So I wanted to echo the sentiments about the code update and hopefully that we can get some codes that are more flexible during our next Opportunity to hear from you and then one of the things that is an opportunity in having moved to districts is that As councilmember rogers mentioned that this needs to be a whole community response And I know as you know, I don't need to go through my soapbox one more time But I do know that we need Multiple right doors, you know, we we should have no wrong door in terms of a navigation center but that we need to have multiple places and coming from a specific district and Not being formally at large I do believe that we need to look at a regional approach to this where each neighborhood comes forward and Says where we would like to have Services and where we would like to accommodate our residents regardless of their income or their mental health status or their Whatever types of moral codes that we would like to impose upon people That having been said, I'm I'm heartened and grateful to have been appointed to the measure The violence prevention partnership and I do see that there are opportunities for the city to Cross utilize our resources. I met with director carter last week and he talked with me about Efforts that they have in tutoring young people and getting Really early intervention around education and reading and my mom being a reading specialist and a professor of education Is constantly harping on me and be very pleased to hear me say this that The the reading ability of a young person is really indicative of their long-term economic And you know, not just economic ability, but also whether or not they're going to be incarcerated or homeless I understand that the city is not involved specifically in the business Of educating people but I do see opportunities for us to use our measure o funds and also for us to work collaboratively with Santa Rosa city schools and other school districts that are in our area as well as the libraries and the library foundation To make sure that young people have as many opportunities as possible because like I said, I do believe that While it is possible in some limited circumstances to get to eliminate homelessness in the short run That it is a long-term problem that's going to make need a long-term solution in that I agree with councilmember rogers that early intervention is is probably our best bet Thank you Are we really We need a quick break to roll back in our regular meeting. Are we ready or Where we go? Thank you. Dave and kelly and jesse Um, all right item five can we get an announcement of roll call? Yes, let the record show that all council members are present. Uh, thank you Study and close item seven sessions. Mr. What since we had one of each or two of each? Who would like to go first? I'll report first on the closed session The council did meet in closed session on the agendized item and gave direction to staff Great anything you want to say on the study sessions that we just experienced Yes, we had two study sessions and received feedback from council on various items to bring back So we have that feedback and we'll report back out. Great. Thank you. I'm seven proclamation. Mr. Surry. You have this item I do mayor. Thank you, and it's my pleasure to um Read this proclamation for the rivet empire chinese association Well-known organization that does a great deal for the community Whereas the rivet empire chinese association is holding their 2019 chinese new year celebration at the veterans memorial building in santa rosa on february 23 And whereas we would like to publicly recognize the importance of this intercultural Organization in the fields of cultural language Education by offering community participation organizational networking public interactions with intercultural activities And there are many additional events which bring members friends and families into social contact And understanding with governmental agencies and diverse people through events such as their chinese new year celebration Pollock socials multicultural poetry poetry reading and chinese language school And whereas we acknowledge the outstanding work done by the edward empire chinese association in providing programs to children and youth By giving presentations to local schools and from elementary through college levels From mandarin chinese classes for all ages and levels for providing two groups of lion dancers who also perform with three dragons And for providing the opportunities for children to perform at community events Also providing an active youth group which focuses on teen self-esteem and positive community involvement And for the r e c a annual scholarship for sonoma county high school seniors And whereas we also acknowledge the benefit of the redwood empire chinese associations adult programs including the adult chorus adult tai chi club adult mahjong club And r e c e's community involvement in assisting governmental agencies businesses and schools With requested assistance in matters concerning chinese and agent cultural and language issues And now therefore be resolved that tom schwedhelm mayor of the city of santa rosa on behalf of the entire council Does hereby program proclaim a sincere acknowledgement of the successes of the redwood empire chinese association Signed by him on this date Congratulations Thank you. It's honor be here to receiving the uh proclamation. I know the meeting last solar. I want apologies to malaya First time coming with me to receiving the proclamation She's here since 3 30. I gotta give her a lot of credit. Thank you malaya to that being so patient Actually, we um, we were gonna bring our lion team because with all the basketball team if I know what's that late They can be here to finish the 5 30 their program So it's okay. If you want to see our, uh, fantastic chinese new year celebration coming to next week saturday The uh center was a best building um, I have some flyer there if anybody interesting can have it and also on the website and Because we're a nonprofit and um Malaya is our drummer for the lion and dragon. She's the youngest team. We never had she's only 10 years old Then she's going to china for