City Council - Community and Economic Development Committee

good morning everyone go ahead and bring us to order here uh today's our regular meeting for Bellingham city council it's October 21st um we are beginning with committee meetings this morning and our first one is community and economic development that is uh chaired by council member Jace cotton thanks council president um we have a pretty busy committee today so I'll ask um committee and other council members to keep uh comments and questions brief if possible today but um first up we have um a presentation on the 2024 point and time count report um Representatives um from wam County Health and community services and the wakam county homeless Services Center will make a presentation about the 2024 Point time count report an annual account of the unduplicated number of individuals experiencing homelessness in the community this presentation will specifically address larger themes over the past point in time count reports demographic Trends and this year's report and how local Trends align with State uh Trends Statewide and the mechanics of how this count was conducted and with that I'll invite um uh Chris Deno from the Wacom County um health and community services and Terry Bryant from the Wacom homeless service center hello Council my name is Kristen afre I work at Wacom County Health and Community Services as the housing program specialist um I don't have a presentation per se there is the port itself as well as the one pager and the packet that you might refer to but I'll

give you just a little bit of information about how we how we do this and sort of what the pros and cons are and where there are some Nuance that is important so the Appo time count is a federally mandated requirement for all the jurisdictions that receive federal funding each year this is passed on to wam County through the Washington State Department of Commerce the unsheltered count is potentially moving to an every other year um but up until now we've been required to do it every year um through some Washington State legislation uh the point in time count I feel is a little bit of a misnomer I feel a point in time survey would be a more appropriate term that explains a lot of what we did this year and how that differed from years in the past bit over um excuse me so what we do typically uh is send out different street Outreach professionals um we contact the shelter providers and we have them uh do the surveys with people that are either staying at their shelters regularly or going out to encampments and finding people where they might be living unsheltered and then asking them to complete the kind of the basic demographic information uh what we found this year uh what I heard from numerous different street Outreach teams was that there was a much greater difficulty in locating unsheltered households and that the people that they did locate um kind of made a break from the years in the past and we're much less willing to engage and complete those surveys so we learned

that uh late January early February uh right about the time the count is is typically done um and we started scratching our heads a little bit we didn't want to end up in a situation where we reported the number of surveys completed and had that misconstrued to signify that there are fewer people experiencing unsheltered homelessness now with the sheltered side of the count that's a lot easier um it's a lot easier to count people in shelters than it is to count people sleeping in cars or living out in the woods somewhere so we had this this kind of dilemma where we we had what we felt was a good count of the sheltered population and a not very good count of the unsheltered population so we thought we'd try to look at some different um uh data sources uh to try to figure out a little bit better what was happening there now in the past you might have heard me talk about using you know the the same method year after year and then observing the trends as they change and I think there's some validity to that approach um this year we didn't feel quite as strong about that because of what we were hearing back from the street Outreach teams that was both within and outside of the city that there's just kind of this General sense of of people not being willing to participate at the same level that they had in the past so we looked to a housing pool report this is a a database that is collected by the Wacom homeless service center as the Hub of our coordinated entry system it's

basically all the people that have um uh contacted that that Network um and demonstrated some eligibility and interest in in housing services so we used this number um because it's a little bit more consistent through the calendar um and because we hadn't seen any real changes that we could um measure as far as people's willingness or interest in signing up for services and we learned that that was at about the same level that it had been the year prior so we generally drew the conclusion that the unsheltered homelessness um in wam County was relatively unchanged from the year prior and the sheltered homeless population was about the same as well so that's a long way of saying that we didn't see a lot of dramatic changes but the methodology did change a bit and I just wanted to give you a little bit of background on why we implemented those changes and and what that might mean so the demographics themselves as far as you know the percent that are unsheltered versus unshun the you know the disparities we've seen in race um those kinds of things persist um so the kind of the news is that there isn't really anything new um what we knew last year is is most mostly true today as well um based on our our limited data sources and just to be really Frank and clear we have these different sources of information and all of them are very imperfect um it's it's exceedingly difficult to get information in a comprehensive way about people experiencing unsheltered homelessness a lot of them

don't want to talk to people they don't want to be seen um some of them do but the ones that do are probably not exactly the same as the ones that don't so even the folks that we talk to I I would hesitate to say that they're representative of that broad population in general so that's a little bit of background on on what we did and why we did it um ter do you want to add anything to that and Terry's gonna take it from there hi thanks I'm Terry Bryant I'm the director of welcom homeless service centered opportunity Council and what we do is operate a referral system to homeless housing some of those referrals are also opportunity Council but it's multiple nonprofits that are serving homeless folks in our community um and so I wanted to talk a little bit about that system and the way that system also tends to inform the point in time count it's not news that the need is outpacing the resource that's everybody in this room everybody listening knows that to be true but I often describe the problem as a a funnel with a spout right the spout are people leaving the system and receiving a Housing Opportunity with a multiple number of Partners but as homelessness expands the bowl of the funnel expands what's not expanding is the spout right so that's why it's so hard for people in this system to actually achieve a housing um you might have heard of functional zero that's um a term meaning that homelessness is brief and that presumes that a community has the resources to serve

everyone who needs housing right that means you need a big spout under that funnel or you need a small a small funnel over that spout um another part of functional zero is is a methodology called the by name list um and that's a list of the people we know of that are experiencing homelessness and seeking housing and that's who is considered and evaluated when we're making a referral decision we've actually been doing that for over a decade in our community but we can't get over it the tiny spout that's where our block is part of our referral system is called coordinated entry this is a federally required methodology to determine who gets housing to prioritize people between the length of time that they've experienced homelessness and the various factors our community chooses to prioritize for housing um this is enforced by the State Department of Commerce that makes sure that we're doing it this way um I want to get away from the funnel idea and kind of try to describe this as an onion with layers right so the onion can be the housing pool all the all the applications for housing it could be everyone we count in the point in time count everyone who is homeless um but the funding provided to program providers by and large specifies special populations right so people surviving domestic violence families with children youth veterans chronically homeless the most common so these special populations are constantly changing because people are entering and leaving our community all

the time they're entering and leaving the system all the time even if they don't leave our community and they're moving between populations so what our system does with the programs that we serve and we do serve people every day we just can't serve enough we're just shaving off pieces of these special populations and if you don't belong to a special population you're inside the onion you never get served and so that might explain a little bit why people who are in the middle of the onion and fill out their form year after year which has a lot of personal stuff on it don't want to do it anymore right because they're not getting help so I kind of call that the churn and that's why sometimes unsheltered folks do not want to talk to us about their disabilities their income other personal questions that we ask them and our community is super data hungry and we try to get as much information we can about the people who need help but sometimes we don't think about the toll it takes on the people we're asking over and over and over in situations like an application for housing a vulnerability assessment or the survey of the point time count the other part of the churn are the people who did not become homeless in wcom County there's about 31% according to the point in time count and that ratio like this 7030 ratio is pretty constant I mean it's been constant like this over the last 105 years that that 31% is like turning fast people are coming here and they're leaving they're coming

here and they're leaving so that's why you see such visibility right but it's not always the same people that are coming and leaving and to get housing in our community you have to be here for a minute right all we can get is those parts of the onion that serve those special populations but by not serving those people in the middle of the onion we're also creating special populations right so if we have children that don't get served or youth that don't get served they could become a family with children they could become a survivor of domestic violence they can become chronically homeless so it's frustrating it's frustrating for everyone we know everyone needs help um but we don't have enough sorry just adjusting my notes Here other communities have tried other things in coordinated entry and I read about this last week in the Seattle Times it was fascinating the state has an initiative to serve people in encampments get them out of an encampment and into housing so you don't have coordinated entry you don't have a vulnerability assessment you know give me your tent I give you a key right and it sounds pretty interesting but as I read this article I realized all they had really done was create a special population because they're basing their criteria on an encampment that has concerns health and safety concerns right so what they discovered is that they implement this program other unsheltered people are going to the encampment hoping to be served and that happens here too

I have had clients say I guess I'm going to have to get pregnant to get served to get housing um and I've have seen that happen so it's a novel idea but it kind of recreates the proc problem we already have with the lack of resources we counted 182 unsheltered households but we also know from the city's shower trailer behind the building here that we provided over 600 unduplicated individuals with showers and I think that's why Chris is talking about housing pulled out as opposed to point and time count we have lots of ways we can look at homelessness and that is one way of course 600 hours in a year is not the same as counting everybody on a point time count in one go right one is stationary one is overtime but I think it's reasonable to extrapolate that we have a lot more than 182 unsheltered households because of that and that's why that extra layer and lens is important to understand homelessness in our community the last thing I want to say is that just like HUD and the Department of Commerce oversee coordinated entry and Implement its requirements they do the same thing with the point and time count so we get our information from Commerce what we're going to do this year we CH this the answers to questions were changed and this is the first time so in the past um the question how did you become homeless um you'd have all these options you know I became homeless because of my disability or I lost my job or whatever right the housing answer to that was it combined lost

housing SL eviction I don't think that's helpful you're homeless because you lost your housing we already know that right so we want to really find out why did you lose your housing and so um our data analytics manager solicited Commerce like hey can we separate this option can we have lack of affordability separately from eviction and then we can really find out why people are becoming homeless so of all the stats you read in the point in time account I think the one to really look at is that 47% of surveys completed said that the reason they became homeless is they could not afford a home until we get behind that issue and I don't mean in the narrow mechanism that we have which we I think we use very well in our community which is like tax credit uh working with the Housing Authority public housing Etc but we need to think about affordability much broader than that if we're going to have a smaller funnel um yes that's all I had to say thanks for your time appreciate it thank you both so much um questions from committee council member R um first of all Chris and Terry thank you so much for coming and presenting between the two of you you have such an incredible amount of knowledge about this issue um and specifically in this area um it's great to to hear you talk um and and share with the public in particular because I know there are a lot of Miss myths and questions um regarding this issue but um one question that I had was um we've got a a lot of data here about our area

in particular how would you say that the information that we gather and that we've GA gathered over the years um is similar or different than other communities in western Washington or even in the nation are the trends that we see similar or is there anything that stands out as unique to Bellingham and Wacom County I got that okay um I think one thing that really makes our community unusual is our geography um because we're at the end of I5 a lot of people start out in the South and they keep moving up to find something better and of course they have it they think I'm going to try Alaska I'm going to try Canada and they find there's barriers to do those things and they get kind of trapped here for a while those people may stay and become part of our community or they may move on um that's one thing I think that makes us pretty unusual also I would say that be careful about what I'm going to say here there are not a lot of shelters in our state so communities that have shelters have people who need shelters I can add to that thank you Terry um if you look at the rate um if you go at the point in time count numbers which are flawed but perhaps flawed evenly across the country although they probably aren't but under that assumption you find that the rate in uh wam county is similar to the rest of Washington and indeed most of the the West Coast so we're not that different um we're a smaller Community than a place like Seattle Seattle I believe has the or Seattle King County has

the third highest population of uh people experiencing homelessness in the country you go down to La they've got 70,000 Plus in LA County so we're kind of just a microcosm of that you know as you all know the housing affordability is a huge challenge here in some places it's a little bit worse places like in the midwest it's it's not nearly so bad so those things I think impact us in a similar way I think Terry's right about people coming up to the border and kind of running out of steam there um I don't think we're we're all that special the you know some of the states have the right to shelter um which is a a whole another can of worms there um but we're kind of on par for for Western Washington especially and for the West Coast more generally remember Stone thank you both for um for joining us this morning and I guess my question is focusing Terry on some of your comments related to thinking about that Continuum of what I think of as a Continuum of of care for those who are homeless and when you're talking about the funding um the funding mechanisms and how you have to qu qualify right in a particular special category and as people yeah move throughout life and circumstances change obviously that's hard to um to keep up with but one of the things I'm wondering is through our work in advocacy at the state level if there are any recommendations for um either pending legislation or proposed legislation that would help to address right any of those those pieces that might

obviously resources are limited but is there something we can do to better leverage the limited resources that we have more effectively yes I have big ideas on this um for all of the work we're doing and the rental assistance we're putting out and the case management we're providing as a community as a system we're not doing a great job at providing support before someone has that fortune of getting through the spout the people in the bowl of the funnel don't have a lot of help and and I really believe that people um are smart are capable um and can resolve their own crisis if they're given enough support people in trauma are necessarily prevented from accessing the logic producing part of your brain right so if there was more support on the front end I think there would be less need for the spout of the funnel and people could resolve their own homelessness and I'm going to say something radical and that is that I read um the other day that the governor of California said they spend $42,000 on every homeless person what if we gave 42,000 to every homeless person directly would we have the amount of homeless we have homelessness we have now I know that's a crazy thing to say I but maybe not I mean I don't know I I think people should be empowered to use money and the way they see fit to to navigate their crisis we people get their need it all of us do we do what we need to do to get our needs met and people experiencing homelessness are no different than that that's why

people will threaten to get pregnant to get into housing right or go to a new encampment to get into housing so um I know I'm rambling but really that prior support to hang out in this funnel and becoming more vulnerable and entering a special population I think is the key thank you and I look forward to following up with you all the chat more we're time limited today but we'll end with a question from Council mquest thank you I'm not on the committee but uh certainly been following is for a long time this may actually be more question for uh you miss sundine um I agree with your kque I've said it a long time I think there's something fundamentally broken about the federal approach what requires you to become a priority population requires you to have suffered chronic homelessness before you kind of rate service there are many people who are stuck in the middle of the onion as you describe it who I think could benefit from Services prior to them dwelling so long that they move to the outside of the onion I'm referring to the idea of Rapid rehousing which has been one of the fundamental strategies that walking county has been using but I don't hear as much about it these days and it seems to me that that would basically is a way of reaching into the middle of the onion to people who need a lighter touch and getting them out of the housing pool sooner without them having to become a special population or chronically homeless or you know going from just simply homeless to now

homeless and abused or you know something else um what can you tell me about the state of the rapid rehousing program because I do remember a couple years ago there was an estimate of what it would take to basically meet the rapid rehousing need it was substantial but it also promised great success I believe at the time several years ago the rate of success was 80% if someone is rapidly rehoused there's a certain kind of candidate go circum support after a year's time 80% of them were still permanently and sta housed that's a really successful program what can you tell me about the rapid rehousing is basically a way of getting to the middle of the onion and avoiding people being funneled down yeah I can I can jump in on that so rapider housing is is one of our bread and butter strategies um it's great uh it does have limitations um One Challenge we've had frankly is that the the rent prices are going up quite a bit and that makes it harder for families especially but any household to kind of reestablish that income and then when we do it which we love to do but the you know the movein costs are significantly higher um You' got your your deposit you got your pet deposit whatever first last month rent so for people who have next to nothing in their pocket that's pretty challenging so we come in and we have a heavier subsidy to make it work which in turn means that there are fewer opportunities to support fewer households um but it is one of the things that we do those those

rates you quote are I think pretty pretty accurate still we've been leaning into our partnership with the Housing Authority um and using some vouchers to get people over that rent hurdle you know for someone to come in at $2,000 $2,500 a month is difficult but if you have a a long-term voucher through the HUD it's a lot easier so that's been a little bit of a boost for us and also sort of lays out what some of our limitations are um but it's you know it's one of many strategies so we're trying to work with people kind of across that Continuum of Care you know if you want to drill a core sample into that onion we we as a public health agency feel that we need to find a way to serve as many of those people as we can so rapid re housing is one of our interventions but we're also really concerned about permanent support of housing uh shelter Street Outreach and other things to kind of do some of that harm reduction um even if it's maybe a little bit more expensive uh but it can be the difference between life and death in some cases so we do try to span that gamut rapider housing is one of our strategies it's getting a little bit more difficult because of the expenses um but that is something that we' we'd love to grow it's just a question of funding how much would you like to grow it I'd love to grow it a lot um give me a number thank you I have a statistic for you um when it comes to voucher need and this is a statistic that came out from HUD it used to be um so most of the

voucher funds go to Bellingham watcom count or Bellingham watcom Housing Authority um we have some funding and so does the county but they estimate that we have um about 20% of the need so we're receiving about 20% of the need so if you take the number that we're getting which is in the 20 million range and you multiply that by five that's the that's the need in our community and that's an annual figure so $100 million or so annual need to address just the affordability but then Chris and Terry have mentioned there's other needs in our community than just funding there's also the the Supportive Housing needs as well follow up from council member J thank you um I know the chair is going to look at me I know we're short on time today I just want to make sure that I understand the figures so with respect to Chronic homelessness um I know that's an individual who's been homeless for more than a year correct and in the charts that we have in our packet um I noticed there's no right data for prior years but chronically homeless um individuals are represented for 2024 and just looking to try and understand that the figure when it says right it's broken up into chronically homeless families with children it says 2% 2 plus chronically homeless adults without children 2% and chronically homeless single adults 41% so 45% of those members of our community who are unsheltered are chronically homeless or I know we're looking at sheltered and unsheltered I just want to make I'm trying to

come up with an understanding of what that chronically homeless number is right so that is what you're looking at there are the percentages of the housing pool that that demographic comprises it's a little bit confusing the way that it's is laid out we couldn't figure out the best way but um yeah I don't have that number on the top of my head like I said we were trying to kind of deemphasize the number of people that we actually counted we didn't want to give people the misperception that that was how many people there are um so I can get back to you with more details and I'll I'll be sure to do that okay I appreciate it because one of the um appendix V is with respect to the coordinated entry housing pool and appendix a just looks at the point and time count survey data generally so any followup would be appreciated thank you aome thank you all so much and um just in the interest of time we'll have to follow up with I think our substantial additional questions and thank you to both um Terry and Chris for taking time to present today um okay and I'm gonna no Terry y sorry mute Council will turn it over to us um yes uh okay so great the next agenda item is a briefing um from Walkin County on the 2024 2025 winter severe weather shelter plans and Walkin county has been actively pursuing shelter options for the 2024 2025 winter season for the past several months in summer of 2024 wam County published an RFP for housing related services but not did not receive any applications for

either severe weather or seasonal winter shelters facing a lack of an outside operator um wam County will plan to reprise the role as a primary operator County staff will brief Council about their current weather shelter plans challenges and progress made to date at a future council meeting Council will be asked to approve an interlocal agreement to support winter severe weather shelter in the amount of 100,000 and with that I'll turn it over to um community and economic development manager terce and Dean good morning thank you um thank you for the time today um I know this is a lot of time and you have a busy schedule but we felt it was really important this is the time of year I'm always targeting October to make sure that we're coming into you so that you understand what the plans are for the winter because November comes quickly I also want to remind you that at the end of every winter at least for the last seven or eight Winters we have started planning for the next winter so we usually turn around in April um and start exploring who is available to help us or interested in helping us with The Following Season every year it looks different um and that's not because it's not because we haven't been planning or or trying to develop new strategies or Solutions it's because the capacity and the community changes and honestly people get pretty burned out on either winter shelter or severe weather shelter um this year wam county has really taken the lead after the city um

determined we didn't have winter shelter operators as a reminder winter shelter that we refer to is usually for a period of time it's every night for the winter months severe weather is um Sheltering is stood up when the weather conditions meet certain criteria and the health health department determines it's unsafe so we knew a while ago that we'd probably be um looking at just a severe weather option so uh county has taken a lead and then um we do have funding budget budgeted for supporting the shelter um as we have every year and we're still trying to figure out and and lock in that dollar amount but we're it's somewhere in that $100,000 range um thank you Chris and afero for um sharing more information with the with the council this morning thanks Tara um so there is a memo in your packet um I have a few updates I wrote this a couple weeks ago um the great news is that we have found a partner who wants to host um we're still finalizing that Arrangement um but Lutheran Community Services on North Forest Street has indicated that they would love to host uh a severe weather shelter over the winter so we're working with them now to kind of iron out the details um we're still kind of debating what the price will be um so that's one of our question marks still but we think that we can probably host up to 70 individuals there um as Tera said this is going to be a a severe weather shelter so it's not going to open and then stay open it's going to be really dependent on the that

weather um we've worked a bit with our community um a subcommittee of our Wacom housing advisory committee to kind of lay out what we feel are the best practices for a shelter in that kind of operating mode um we're still dialing in a little bit there again like what the temperature thresholds will be um but we're looking at probably doing more nights than we did last year last year I think we had 20 nights um we are limited a bit by our funding so we're looking at uh hiring a bigger staff to to keep a safe environment for a higher number of guests um we're still going through that process of bringing new staff on board and getting them trained um we're thinking that we're probably going to need like seven people at a time um and then two shifts every night so that's a pretty big crew um and supplying food and other like basic hygiene Essentials as well so we're we're finalizing our budget we think we can go above 20 nights this year um and then we're sort of figuring out like how do we do that in a way that's predictable um but also gives us the dynamic ability to look at how our staff is doing um how our costs are running and then make adjustments throughout the season as we want so mostly good news and that we got the site and that we are on our way to having things set up uh the weather's been holding out for us um so I think that we're in decent shape there but we're going to be kind of limited as far as how many nights we can operate um based on ability to bring in

staff and to to pay them for that time so those are the big updates I want touch real briefly on the motel rooms this is something that we've done every year we're on uh track to do what we did again last year uh we think we'll have about 60 additional motel rooms available for families with children we want people to access those through the community resource center of opportunity Council but we do have a network of uh partner agencies who have the ability and capacity and the funding um to put those families up and provide some oversight that's on the family side uh the severe weather shelter part would just be for single adults or adult couples if they want to add there and Beck Community Health and Human Services manager uh the only update I would say is that for the severe weather shelter because it has taken us so long to find an agency or an organization that was willing to host this spot um we're going to be hopefully taking the lease to our Council on November 6th uh and then hopefully the next day able to go in and start doing what we need to but I can safely say we will not be able to activate until at least mid November because we have a lot of setup we need to do so um we're hopeful that that it won't get that cold but we we don't know so just being mindful because I know the community gets very vocal we have been working on this for a long time and there is not a lot of cooperation in the community for people who want to host this space so we we're we're moving

as fast as we can but we won't be able to open till mid November um quick questions from Comm um council member Huffman thank you um with the new lighthouse Mission building what will be their capacity for winter or severe weather Sheltering this year so last I heard which was a few weeks ago um they were planning to have 20 people to start with uh able to be served during storms um and that is contingent on them having enough staff to provide supervision they're hoping that they can get a a bigger core of volunteers um through some of their uh faith-based Partnerships get that up to 40 um may be higher um but they're thinking right now 20 is going to be where they start they do have the the physical space for 100 extra costs up there um but they're also constrained by having enough staff in there to to keep the environment safe council member Stone and then Andrew yeah one question um maybe it's for you Tara I know that coming in the agenda bill it was saying that there would be a future item for the inter local agreement right for that $100,000 that you reference um I just want a clarification about whether that was you know an addition or that's that's what we've contributed in the past and this is just a renewal of that commitment but what the total we're looking at for the city's contribution for shelter so I believe the county is got $450,000 so as you recall the county receives funding from Commerce homeless funding kind of a a through Commerce for our entire Community

these would be local dollars that I'm talking about our affordable housing sales tax and we have spent those funds or either that that fund or general funds for for years past so we usually last year I believe we spent more than that because we were operating a winter shelter at Civic so this year the total would be 100 100ish I think it could be higher than that City okay member thank you um I just to clarify I assume that um the new partnership with a potential of 70 beds that's for the night shelter or um what is our if it's not daytime have we got a plan yet for a daytime shelter because usually we run in tandem or if that hasn't been solidified do we have an expectation when Council will be briefed on it yeah I can confirm the hour so we are looking to open around 5:00 p.m.

so it is an overnight only and I I will just say that last year when we had those particularly cold days um where the city did open up we maintained our shelter during the day as well so people who stayed there that night were able to stay there during the day if there are more days like that we would do our best to scramble um to to staff it and try to keep it open during the day as well but we can't always guarantee it it depends on Staffing I'm just just to clarify again the question um I'm assuming we will probably need to open an additional day shelter if we have feet of snow and I'm just wondering if the city has plans for that yet or when we'd be briefed because we did a great job last year on a very short notice so I'm kudos to staff and the mayor for pulling that together because I think you were office maybe a week um and many of us had volunteered at that shelter and I'm just wondering if we're planning for something similar to my knowledge there is not a plan for another shelter the facility that that was used last year um we've been told or the County's been told it's not available this year what I would rather see us do is if there are leadership um volunteers or Council volunteers that we reach out to watcom County and try and and um get you the county better better volunteer supports during the day so that they can operate and not move people around the the community great thank you both oh um uh we are a little short on time um so uh I'm sorry I'm such a weak

chair but um I think we'll follow up with folks over email if that's okay yeah okay um thank you both so much um uh next we have um agenda bill 24287 um the council briefing on community interim shower program on uh September 11th 2023 the city council authorized a budget expenditure of 320,000 to contract with the opportunity Council to operate an interim public shower program at the rear parking lot of City Hall following that on October 16th 2023 the city council authorized an interlocal agreement with wam County to pay for 50% of the operations cost contract uh with the opportunity Council um this program officially opened for service on November 10th 2023 and since has provided I skipped an agenda Bill item okay sorry about that guys um great right okay um okay go uh one two pages back the council briefing on the new YWCA emergency shelter for women and children and sorry y' um the city supported the ywca's acquisition of um 315 lway for an emergency shelter for women and children by providing a $1.3 million deferred loan the amount was anticipated in the action plan and approved by City Council in May in addition staff is recommending funding the wwc's application for the renovations needed trans transition this property from an office building to a shelter renovation funding was not anticipated in the action plan therefore St is informing City Council of this additional action and the YWCA will be available to provide an overview of the new facility including the

program and services that will be provided sorry again all and with that I'll turn it over to terce and Dean good morning terce and Dean community and economic development manager I'm very pleased to um have Ali Sheen in here today I'm excit so excited about this project um that we were able to put together in relatively short order um the city and um our colleagues at wam County uh and Leadership at the Y came together um and solved kind of solved this this puzzle rather quickly as you know we've been trying to serve more families with children we've been seeing that number grow and grow too fast in our community over the last handful of years um but the capacity of our community has been rather limited so very pleased when the why had indicated um their willingness to expand into um uh Sheltering and Sheltering for for women that have small children and so I'm going to turn this over to Ally but I want to thank um well Ali and and the board the why but also wam County for working with us to turn this around so quickly Ally thanks hi I'm Ali Shane the YWCA um thank you for having me here today I'm so excited to get to talk about this opportunity um we like you mentioned we uh acquired the building at the end of September um after a long but fast process with the city of Bellingham and wam County um we acquired the building as of September 26th and we have been moving forward to get the space ready for shelter use we have land use permitting underway uh so far there haven't

been any hiccups in that process but um we're waiting to see how that's thank you knock on wood we're waiting to see how that's going to roll out um we have Renovations planned to start as soon as the land use permitting is ready to proceed there aren't actually that many updates needed to the building to be able to transition it into shelter use we need to expand the we basically needed a bathroom remodel to make sure that there's enough toilets and showers and laundry services for people to dwell in the building um we My Hope Is that that will be ready by the end of February also hoping that there's no hiccups with the renovation process um My Hope Is that we'll be able to have the operations of the building starting mid-march I'm using that as a huge caveat to allow any hiccups that may uh arise we also are hosting a winter shelter program and so we are hoping that this our winter shelter program can be a little bit of a stepping stone into this new building so we'll be able to help people during the warm winter or the cold winter months and use it to step into the new building as soon as it's ready we do need within 5 years of the program operate uh opening we do need to install a fire suppression system in order to maintain the uh operations at this specific building and the w WCA has um taken on that uh role to either fundraise or get uh grants for that capacity um again we have five years to do that assuming everything goes uh smoothly with the Contracting process I by

no means want to take five years to do that I want to get it done as soon as possible um I wanted to just kind of throw out a couple um anticipated questions that I've been receiving about the sh fter the the way that it's going to be operated is that they on the main floor of the building there's 20 units all of them are secure entry all of them have sound proofing all of them are ready to be used for women and children the Upper Floor of the building is going to be used for administrative and social services staff it will be staffed 24/7 at the beginning of the shelter and for future um anything um mov moving forward until we would get approval to get that changed if we deem it efficient and safe to do so we are hoping to plan a women and shelter dedication with women and their accompanying children ages 0 to 5 we chose that based off of the space and the safety of what we deem those units to be appropriate for they are rather small units so our hope is that we would have women with one to two young children depending on the space and what units are available we will be using the coordinated entry system we have reserved two to three beds to keep apart from the coordinated entry system to use as a night by Night emergency service this could be conducive to people who may be leaving the hospital outside of when the the coordinated entry system is operating so basically out of daytime um regular business hours if room cannot be filled with that population we which sadly I

don't seem I don't see that being the case if that is the case we will open it up to individual female identifying individuals over the age of 55 with a priority of individuals over the age of 62 again I don't see that being the case but we do have that plan in place as a backup system we will be offering intensive case management offering intensive case management to all of the individual ual in the building um I don't see uh I don't see the point in recreating amazing services that are already being used in this community so a major thing that I'm excited about with this shelter is being able to have collaborative efforts with all the other amazing nonprofits in our community so we are creating those relationships based off of history but also creating new relationships with folks like the walkom center for ear learning and Bridget Collins and um Lydia place and we are just navigating and using as much resources as we can to educate ourselves and to make sure that we are building a strong successful program moving forward the like I said we are very excited for this opportunity and we were excited to be able to step in and to make even a small small dent in the need in our community and so we've been really honored to be able to use this as an opportunity to grow our organization thank you I also want to mention that um while we helped with the acquisition which the agenda bill um discusses we are also um going to help and actually pay for the renovation which is about

$600,000 that has gone through the Community Development Advisory Board um uh a little bit out of process but I just wanted to we do have budget authority to do that work I also noted that Ally mentioned the long process that it took and I mentioned the short process that it took but it really Ali it is a it was a pretty quick um quick process to to pull a shelter together I think it will be just shy of a year by the time um we looked at the building to the time that um people will be served there so thank you very much thank you and Committee Member council member Huffman um um thanks so much to the YWCA for stepping up to do this it's uh you know four years ago we saw the numbers of homeless families with children jump um just horribly High and um and it's such a heartbreaking need in our community um you know as we know children who experience homelessness are more likely to experience homelessness as a as a grown-up as well and so um these interventions are so critical for long-term the long-term future health of our our community um so thank you so much for doing that and I'm really um heartened to also hear about the emergency uh space that's going to be reserved um when I was in the hospital with my child I um there were other children that that we encountered that um weren't as luckely to have a home to go to after they were going to be discharged from the hospital and um and so that one's personally uh really uh important to me to hear that that some of those babies

that are being born now to folks who are mothers who are homeless will have somewhere to go that um is safe and supportive and um that they get a a a leg up um to uh to in our in our community so sorry it's a little bit a little bit emotion on this one um so again just thank you I don't have any questions but I really look forward to seeing this up and and running appreciate it robone thank you so much Ally um so my question was with regard to the so in the packet there was a note that two to three beds would be withheld for emergency occupancy um at the ywca's discretion and I a couple things I just wanted to confirm is one with those 20 units if if a family is um or a woman and their child or children are staying there since it's a winter shelter their um their spot is sort of guaranteed if they're there one night they're going to continue to be able to stay there and so wondering how the two to three beds for emergency occupancy would be handled and if someone is a you know in an emergency is utilizing that would that only be for the night and then they would be required to go somewhere else or how that would be yeah thank you to be honest we are still working through all the program details the hope is that we would operate it as a night by Night emergency service and because there will be 24-hour Staffing that contacting the shelter directly is going to be the best case scenario to find the information out about that we've been so heavily in the acquisition process for

so long that we're just now shifting gears to really get these program details down nailed down um so I'm I'm hoping that we'll have details more firm in the coming months but that's the current the current plan with with more details and more concrete information to come mayor um council member Stone I I think I heard you say that this would be winter shelter but this will be year round shelter that these programs and services will operate year round once it's open so I just wanted to make sure we were yeah had the opportunity to clarify that point um council member Anderson thank you um thank you very much for uh stepping forward and providing this support as more of a comment you're I'm going to be located in my ward and York neighborhood is a fantastic place for families it's very welcoming we have a lot of events that we do as a neighborhood for um families and kids and so I'm sure once it gets up and running um the neighborhood will be very embracing and uh we have a couple well we have a great Park and one that's being redone um with short walking distance so I I think um the location is going to be very supportive for um young families so looking forward to um the ribbon cutting and making sure that those connections to um the families there are um are made within the neighborhood I think um within Bellingham I'm a little partial but I think the site location of this will be a wonderful Sur supportive location for um these families so welcome to the neighborhood super

quick followup from counciler next new question uh two comments and a question uh the first comment is thank you so much for expanding um the wise capacity and the other comment has to do with uh Council Anderson's comment I really appreciate the fact that we're seeing a variety of shelter and interim housing located and for that matter permanent housing spread throughout our community um it's nice to see it kind of everywhere in every neighborhood uh the question has to do with the the choice and the role of making the shelter housing you have I believe the Y has I think two other Housing Programs the one upstairs and then the building behind your the Y WCA building itself are those transitional or interim housing but this one is shelter CU I'm trying to you know there's a distinction that seems small but it's really important whether or not it's shelter or whether or not it's housing and kind of you're you're you're there for a while as opposed to on a very shortterm basis can you talk about like the choice of shelter and your other programs are they interim housing and how does that work yes thank you we offer multiple housing problems or H not problems I'm sorry we offer multiple housing programs at the Y as you mentioned we have a permanent Supportive Housing program which occupies the second and third floors of our main building downtown and our Garden Street Apartments also offers permanent Supportive Housing we have two shelter Services also within the YWCA main

building um for a long time those were considered emergency housing services with date or length occupancy guidelines on them and honestly we've recently removed the timestamp on our programs because of the housing crisis in our community if we put a time stamp on something but there's nowhere for them to go and we exit them from our program because they don't have the next step in place we're only increasing the problem increasing that that turn wheel that's not being helpful to the the solution so we chose shelter services for this new building based off of the building itself and what we saw it to be um best used for and our hope is that this day would be approximately a year or less but ultimately we want to see progress if there's nowhere to go we don't feel comfortable and will not be asking people to leave the program but we will do everything in our capacity to continue forward movement um thank you both so much um and I'm sure there will be other follow-ups over email but thank you again um okay and our final uh agender Bill uh is um uh the council briefing on the community interim shower program I'll spare us another rendition of the summary statement and um but the presentation today will detail program stats key takeaways and speak to some of the challenges faced by the program and with that I'll turn it over again to Tera and Dean good morning Tera sandine community and economic development manager um I wanted before I turn it over to the opportunity Council I

want to thank them for stepping up to do this work this was an ask the mayor's office and um I really just appreciate your kind of goto we can we can make this work kind of approach um especially in this time that we're finding where where resources are stretched I also want to thank Katie Sullivan in Community Development she kind of is our go-to and overseeing this program um this is one example of how multiple departments at the city are coming together to address homelessness in our community and so uh mayor's office was open and and willing to to locate this facility here at City Hall um and Public Works um really leaned in on on facilities so Carol and and Tom and Facilities um are working on this every week week and also our parks department who I believe is still um doing the laundry for this service so just an example this is one example of of many projects that we do at the city that where we come together and and pull this off but a big thank you Marissa um thank you thank you hello thank you for inviting us to come and speak um there is slides in your packet and if you just start out really quick we'll see um Raph our shower coordinator on the left and Drew our regular shot employee on the right those two have been just two steady Edy employees since the beginning and absolutely amazing um if you go to your next slide just to give you some information we've been providing hygiene services to people experiencing literal homelessness um the shower trailer has been

providing free hygiene kits and clean towels to each person that comes to shower there's no limit to how many times someone can shower during hours of operation um we have full sterilization process that happens in between each shower so everybody is able to enter into a very clean and sterile environment um which has been really great too because we also have the MRC Street medicine team that's been coming to see people at the shower and so that person that is getting wound care or whatever their need is can can actually shower before and after their services if needed so that's lovely um shot has been absolutely amazing in creating trusting relationships with people and giving out resources um the one of the challenges which I'll mention in a little bit but is that uh since shop was only in oper or is only an operation Friday Saturday Sunday Friday is the only day that's an actual business day so a lot of the information resource-wise that's coming out is a referral that they send over to my homeless Outreach team hun and then my Monday crew follows up with those requests um as far as the shot crew in general they're encouraging people to make personal hygiene an absolute priority they're encouraging case managers and other partner providers to send people to the trailer in the event they're having problems finding resources for hygiene and it's great because it's been helping reduce Community illness it prevents the spread of certain communicable diseases and um it really

helps to again keep wounds clean and shot has acted as a wonderful resource to intro services to the homeless Outreach team so some of the people that hot has attempted to engage and receives a I'm fine I don't want to talk about anything we're good can I just have a bottle of water they've encouraged them to go see people at the at the shower trailer and then my shot crew is re encouraging people to come back to hot so it's been a really nice connection um our start date again was November 10th 2023 total showers to date as of last weekend was 4,136 our total unique users to date was 591 and our total resources offered to date is 9,51 now as of 1020 which so that was Sunday our total showers are up to 4,34 9 with a total unique user count of 614 we're due to shut down on the 27th um but our average shower total per month has been 376 our average shower total per month in operation for Unique users is 54 and our average referrals made per month in operation has been 823 so it's really great to show up on site and see that there's conversations happening connections happening and to see this shot crew be able to encourage someone to try something new while offering a service that is absolutely immediate and tangible has been amazing to witness um as far as shot Trends um again this is from my last uh bit of data so that doesn't include this weekend a majority of shots clientele are expressing or experiencing that literal homelessness we're estimating roughly six clients

accessing the shot trailer have reported being housed um an estimated six clients um have reported working full-time we do believe there are more clients that are working full-time they're just not comfortable or even part-time possibly but they're not necessarily comfortable sharing that with us at this time um we have an estimated four clients that have reported working part-time but again I really do think that is more four clients accessing or excuse me eight um miners have been utilizing the shot trailer with a parent or present um a majority of the our shot clients we found out are living in encampments RVs cars or literally on the street shot's been super busy during winter months um due to being a way for people to actually stop and warm up and in the summer a way to cool down so that's been really great um we did get some information from some of the clients that are telling us that they're coming from B Camp to shower and they personally are quoting weight times and some cleanliness issues however what we've seen base camp has done a great job of keeping their hygiene stuff going so again that is that is off of some client report um we've got a wonderful amount of encouragement that's being given to clients to come and visit us and those are people that actually have case managers or trying to get connected to case managers so knowing that our the word of mouth got out and that we have people encouraging folks to come and use this is just it's beyond incredible just

to see the numbers roll in and how much positive feedback we're getting um hot receives consistent calls about information about the shower trailer so that's really cool that we're able to continue to advertise during the week and then watch that opening day on Friday um and then basically we have our weekly advertising on our Wacom homeless service center opportunity Council um Facebook page that has been shared multiple times every week so it's really cool to see the different people that are just picking it up for advertising um again last day for shot to serve clients October 27th the shower trailer will officially shut down at 5:00 p.m um on Monday October 28th through the last day of our contract the 31st will'll be decommissioning the trailer making sure the propane tank is set up the area is clean it's well um final sterilization everything's locked up and then once the shot trailer is decommissioned um we're told that it will be moved to North Haven for the homes now not later tiny Home Project that's coming in um I feel like there's a lot of wins and less challenges but here are some that we all came up with as far as wins it's an amazing number of clients serve despite being in operation three times a week um clients are really happy to shower with the with the shot trailer and they feel very welcomed by the crew that is there so that's wonderful we've received positive Fe feedback again from the community and Partners um our partners are excited to help advertise

shot we're creating trusting relationships with clients that again are an invitation to come to hot and figure out how else we can serve them and bring them to services that they need um the clients truly enjoy experiencing the consistency with the shot staff and the services that are offered and we've received amazing support from the city of Bellingham city council I mean Public Works you name it anybody and everybody that has gotten involved in this has just been AB absolutely incredible in supporting us some of the challenges um we only operate 3 days a week we figure if we could run this s days a week it would yield some incredible numbers and really help fill a gap um our weekend hours do create challenges just as I said because we only have one specific business day that we're operating so if you're delivering information or offering resources on a Friday depending on what happens Saturday and Sunday sometimes it's a little hard to track someone back down on Monday and follow through um as far as the location absolutely great location the only downfall is it's been a little hard from the reports that we've received for people in the north side of town to get downtown so if that trailer in the future were to happen again and it had maybe a couple different spots it could visit during the week I think that we would be able to serve more folks um limited storage capacity is always an issue because of supplies and being able to store enough because we are estimating what

we're going to serve in a day but you know sometimes that number goes up sometimes it goes down um laundry again completed offsite the only challenge of this is if we run out of towels we have to dispatch somebody to go up the street well almost across town to be able to pick up more towels and come in um and then basically the last challenge that we really identified was just the lack of space to be able to have a private conversation in the event somebody was having a hard time um and then finally uh Unity care now I don't want to speak on behalf of unity care but this is what I know they will be uh offering clean towels and hygiene kits they will have washing machines that are Auto dispensing laundry detergent and dryers um their official opening date I've been told maybe the 28th of this month I'm not sure if there's um any change in that hours of operation for the showers and laundry from what I understand will be Monday through Friday 7:00 a.m.

so other than that I just wanted to say thank you again because it's been an amazing program and in the future if we can get it going again I'm definitely open to it so thank you I just wanted to mention that um this this date is not arbitrary that we're wrapping this program Up This was um budgeted um as onetime f funds this was budgeted using our general fund um and it was um always envisioned as a gap between um closing Arie Hannah for this program to opening of the way station so I wanted to connect that dot for you the way station is opening and will be providing um services for our community thanks so much fora um uh committee um and note we are we are over time uh canc member thank you thank you council member cotton um thanks Marissa for highlighting how this program was so much more than U just a shower um that that's not not surprising but it's great to hear it um and and see those numbers um and and also I I have to say just kind of to sum up what we've experienced here in this last hour um you know when I started on Council five years ago um things got pretty crisis level we had some very clear examples of how there was really great need in our community and there lots of ideas about how to address those needs um all of them seemed like huge lifts all of them seemed very expensive and and uh barely attainable and I just have to say we're seeing the fruits of the cooperation and the collaboration between local government and nonprofit agencies and people who care

about this stuff and who are incredibly knowledgeable and and know what needs to be done and are adamant about helping to make sure that it gets done um and you know we're it's through that cooperation and collaboration that these amazing things are happening like the YWCA um shelter and the shower program that's now going to get an upgrade with the way station which is also so amazing and seemed like a huge lift but it's happening um and and we're just going to keep getting better at this because of the people who care so much and are putting so much hard work into this so thank you to you and people in this room that do this work and to everybody everybody else that's contributing it takes us all to doing this work to make it happen so thanks well said and seeing no other questions or comments oh a mayor I just want to say I'm personally going to really miss Fridays and the chance to say hello to Raph and the whole shot team and even celebrate with some of the clients I got to celebrate with someone who was taking a shower getting ready to go to their first day on the job at Wendy's and being able to have that kind of Engagement I'm going to miss it so so thank you for all that you've done well said and thank you again and with that I'll turn it back to um president thank you all right so our next um committee is committee of the whole we have a budget work session um this is going to be taking place in the mayor's boardroom is that correct okay so I'll go ahead and um

resuss this very temporarily and we'll reconvene in the mayor's boardroom I'd like to um see about having the next uh agenda Bill item the Ord amending the 2023 2024 Bal uh budget amendment number 15 if we can conduct that in the mayor's boardroom just in the interest of time rather than come back here and then recess so let's go ahead and do that so let's go ahead and and move to the mayor's boardroom