City Council - Community and Economic Development Committee

okay we'll go and get us restarted here with uh our next committee this morning and that's community and economic Economic Development and that is chaired by council member Jace cotton thanks council president um today we have uh one agenda item before us today this is um agenda bill number 24251 um the Oldtown base camp presentation by Lighthouse Mission Ministries Lighthouse Mission Ministries uh staff will will provide an up an in-depth overview of the new enhanced shelter Services located in Oldtown the enhanced shelter model is designed to address the complex needs of individuals experiencing homelessness the new facility will offer a comprehensive array of services providing support to individuals at various stages of life and Recovery up to 300 guests may be served per night with allowance for additional capacity during severe weather events we thank Lighthouse Mission Ministries and supporters who contributed to making it a reality for community members in need and with that I will turn it over to said um Lighthouse Mission Representatives press that all right good morning uh my name is Hans erchinger Davis I'm the president CEO of Lighthouse Mission Ministries and I know all of you and I know many of you have been down already to to see the new facility and hear about the programs that are in there I have Britney harrove with me she is our chief program officer that overse sees the program she's going to get into the details of what programs um this new facility is

going to facilitate um first off I I'd like to thank you all uh for helping this project become a reality in several different ways um probably some of the biggest ones were early on with the um the help with the rent and Renovations of the old base camp facility that's over on Cornwall that was a big thing I know it was both the city and the county that that worked hard to do that but that allowed us the space and the freedom to do the fundraising and the the building of a facility they wouldn't have had otherwise so thank you City for that that's a huge thing um there's other things too of course the the permitting office really helping us um make sure that stuff was streamlined as as best as it could be um the the contribution obviously can't contrib financially to the work we do as a private Christian organization but uh helping out alongside with the rest of Oldtown development with the streets and the Aster Street area um I forget what it's called in particular but this the street itself and the sidewalk work that'll be done uh here in the next year or two we appreciate that as well yes the mission has been operating 100 years in our community and it's the largest intervention for homelessness uh in our community and there's a lot of misconceptions about what goes on uh we gave a bunch of Tours to the community an open house uh just on Saturday and uh a lot of those were dispelled but if you have any questions as we go along in this presentation we encourage you to ask

I think we have a half hour we don't want to take too much of that time just with the the details but we want to hear what you'd like to know as well so make sure you you have good questions for us we'd like that with that I'm going to pass the mic here to Britney to go through what this new facility is going to be offering our community Britney all right that's a good height you can hear me okay all right thank you um so I am going to go through this presentation but again just feel free to interrupt me if you have any questions a lot of the detail is on the slide but I'll be expanding some of that um that won't be included in your packet so just let me know if you got any questions all right um so one of the big changes with this new facility is that we're moving to What's called the enhanced shelter model um and this is an expanded version of what we're doing currently we're pretty limited by our space and just by the facility that we're in right now and so providing enhanced shelter model services and Progressive engagement programs was a little bit difficult in the space we were in so with this new facility and the intentional design of the facility we're actually able to roll this out when we move into the building and all that means if you can picture um the full continuum of care starting with Outreach uh and an really walk-in emergency low barrier shelter which Lighthouse currently operates and then on the other end of the spectrum we have our year-long residential

recovery programs and so really what we're aiming to do is build in that missing middle so that there are um stair steps from low barrier through to residential recovery if that's what somebody is in need of not everybody wants or needs a year-long recovery program not everybody wants to be in a night by Night walk-in shelter so this new facility is going to have a variety of options based on complex needs so the four key components of an enhanced shelter model the first being multiple access points which is currently the case right now but we are going to expand that a little bit um in the last year we've implemented an intake coordinator um and so every individual who comes to the facility seeking Services has an opportunity to meet individually with that person uh really where they're given an opportunity to tell their story which is very therapeutic but also answer questions and identify what stage of programming they're going to fit best in we continue to operate our Outreach departments we work closely with hot um and with mcot and arts and other response division teams um who are able to make direct referrals into our low barrier beds that will continue uh in our low barrier bed space we'll also be holding some beds for uh folks who are released from the county jail hoping to bridge that Gap uh from incar eration to Services um and then again we just take off the street uh walk-in referrals so multiple access points uh regardless of where somebody's at they'll be able

to get in touch with us multi-layered programming which is what we just talked about and I'll actually go Slide by slide each dorm space uh kind of comes with its own programming so as we talk through the dorm spaces I'll expand a little bit on what that programming is holistic Services um this is just duplicating what we do currently that just means that we know there are um multifaceted uh Avenues to recovery and so for some individuals life skills uh spiritual healing different things like that so we offer a variety of services not just housing um and that includes case management and some of these Progressive engagement programs and then Community integration um again we just try to be a good neighbor um obviously we will continue our Good Neighbor project uh we continue to have the neighborhood advisory meetings we just relaunched that this last week and we continue to work with other agencies in town any questions on those four key components okay so how did we get to this point where we decided this was the model we wanted to move with and what does that look like um and so what we did really is go to this slide first what we did really was take the temperature of the folks that we were working with so we do a quarterly survey of all of our residents and we continue to check in with our our partner agencies and really what we found uh was this desire and this ask for expanded Services um it's not a secret that some folks feel uncomfortable coming to base camp because

there are folks who are in active use and and other Behavioral Health crisis uh and so really what we heard was we would love for there to be a place for us I don't have a substance abuse problem and I feel uncomfortable staying in a larger Community environment with folks who are currently battling that and so really taking the temp and and polling our residents to figure out what it was that they wanted to see in this new building um and throughout this whole point we we hold a lot of things Loosely so as we move into this building nothing that I'm presenting here today while while the foundation will remain the same we're holding those things Loosely so if we need to pause and pivot some of the stuff that we're doing in the building we're going to continue to have those checkpoints so we'll continue to take feedback obviously from local government other agencies and our current residents just a quick bit about the design the facility design and infrastructure we really wanted it to feel um like an a trauma-informed space right so we use the term radical Hospitality uh and that basically just means that anybody who walks in through my front doors is going to be treated as if this is the first time they're experiencing homelessness regardless of what their history with us is and so you can feel that welcoming environment as soon as you walk in um I think most of you had an opportunity to tour the facility so I won't go too far down that rabbit hole but any questions on the

facility design or how we got here all right so we talked a little bit about those entry to Services these are just the three key points uh that I reviewed earlier we'll continue to have our help desk staff 247 so again duplicating what we're doing currently continue to work with our Outreach departments and then referrals from other agencies that's our main entry points and I will say that uh progress is happening so quickly you'll see that several of these photos are outdated uh the facility looks much nicer uh when you went through the tour if you had a chance to join us for the open house but this will be the main entry point for anybody seeking Services one of the nice things about the facility is that we also have other entry points depending on what demographic somebody is so if I have a family staying in my family dorm they can actually enter the facility through a separate private entrance and they don't have to walk through this uh main gate here and through the day room to get to their dorm space that was based uh directly on feedback from some of our families all right that's that help desk we'll continue to operate mail services um shower Services we can do about 300 showers a day uh meal services we'll continue to serve three meals a day uh that's for folks who are staying with us and the UN housed who are not currently staying with us all right there's our day room one thing I want to talk about here in the day room while all of our day services will continue

to take place here in the evening this space actually transitions to our walk-in emergency low barrier shelter so uh if you had a chance to join after we got some of the furniture in there you notice these large tables dining tables uh those just fold up really easily they move to the side and then cots get rolled out and we'll have 60 low barrier bed spaces right here on this floor there will be two case managers assigned to this space if anybody is interested in case management services but really by offering this entry point and this low barrier bed space we want to make sure that um we want to make sure that there's a spot for anybody regardless of where they're at in the stage of change so if they're continuing to mask trauma with unhealthy coping skills like substance use there's still a bed for you if you are uh not at at a point where you're wanting to go and get on medication for Behavioral Health struggles there's still a spot for you so so again kind of being that first entry point our Outreach department and other Outreach agencies can refer directly to these bed spaces our community deck space right here I've had a lot of questions about uh what's going to replace the courtyard right and so not only do we have this community deck space but way up there but what you'll see is that um each separate dorm has its own private deck space as well so we don't need to fit all two to three 00 people in one Courtyard each dorm space will have the ability to go to a private

deck this will still be available for the whole Community though all right so we talked a little bit about that we're also going to be able to accommodate up to 100 severe weather emergency beds uh that of course will come with appropriate Staffing that likely will not be the case this year because of our staffing but that is the goal um so in our Chapel space what you'll see is that that will transition into 100 severe weather beds that will be the same sort of setup with the low barrier beds where CS are brought out when uh weather permitting all right Progressive engagement programs so all of the dorm spaces that I'm going to talk through here in a minute uh we would consider Progressive engagement and so folks who come in through our Outreach department or maybe they're just having meals with us for a few months who are interested in case management maybe they want to work on a budget or be held accountable for drug use or different things like that go back to to school we would encourage them to join these enhanced dorm spaces so uh we've got a couple of main dorm spaces for that and then on top of that we've got specialized dorm spaces based on Behavioral Health needs so I'm going to go through each of those dorm spaces uh many of the services in each of the dorm spaces are similar but I'll talk a little bit about some of the differences any questions on low barrier beds or Progressive engagement programs all right so this is the main men's dorm and again if you got to

see it recently it's covered with beds um but this will have 80 Main beds in this space our women's main dorm or female presenting dorm will have 40 bed spaces each of those dorms also have 11 Flex rooms and we call them Flex rooms because we really don't want to um back ourselves into a corner with how we can use those and who we can refer into those dorm spaces uh it's going to be really just up to the intake coordinator and what sort of complex needs somebody has so a couple of examples could be somebody who's got two large pets right they would feel a little bit more comfortable in a smaller space or a private room rather than out in the community um you know our neighbors from the lgbtq plus Community they often feel safer if they can be in a room together or have a little bit more privacy and so we've built in some of those Flex rooms specifically for folks who uh will feel safer in that area but we also want to be able to Pivot to the changing need um we know that the face of homelessness has changed radically over the last 100 years 50 years and the last 3 years um and so being able to kind of pivot based on the changing Community need was really uh one of the key design elements in the facility so in these main dorm spaces um that's that Flex dorm space in these main dorm spaces um there's going to be programming required there right and so that's that case management that we talked about case management will be uh individually once a month and then there will be

group case management offered for folks all the other weeks of the month and really that's to help cultivate a feeling of community as they work through similar goals here's a schedule that will apply to anybody who's staying in our Progressive engagement dorms other than our respit dorm um and again I want to point out that we really use an individualized case plan approach so there is no one- siiz fits-all uh for our residents and so even with this daily schedule this can be amended based on where somebody's at um so you'll see our wakeup time breakfast is served lunch dinner one thing that's different and a a big question I get from the community is Will folks have to leave three times a day to clean the facility that will no longer be the case we actually will have folks who are in our Progressive engagement programs assigned a chore at intake and so after dinner service there is a short chore time that takes place and really that cultivates responsibility um you know I love the term responsibility is a Cornerstone to recovery and so when folks feel like they have some buyin and they're taking care of their own space that really increases um the likelihood of maintained sobriety and Recovery any questions on this all right medical respit dorm this is now moving to the fifth floor so on that fourth floor that's our main male and men men men's and male presenting and women's and female presenting dorm and flex spaces if you go up a floor to that fifth floor that's where we

have our specialized dorms one of those is our medical respit dorm so there will be 13 respit beds for men and 13 respit beds for women and really there's a variety of things that could get you assigned to this dorm space of course my intake coordinator can do that after having a conversation with you but really what we would love to do is partner with medical providers in the community I have medical staff uh on my team and so we're really dependent on some of these other agencies who we work with closely right now to come in and kind of bolster some of this programming in this dorm space so we have an active conversation right now with um Folks at Opportunity Council and the way station we're talking about what that process could look like to step somebody down from the way station into one of our facilities into one of our respit beds uh another great thing about this is that we'll be able to provide all the services right there in the door so folks on this floor and in this dorm don't necessarily have to come downstairs for a meal or for medication time or anything like that we can actually bring all of that up to the respit facility questions on rbit that's what that looks like yeah I just want to uh understand the Continuum of car just little a little bit better so you got to mentioned the way station that'll be open up um sometime this year and so the order of operations um admittance to to a medical facility like St Joe's or to be receiving Care at Unity care and then

they go to to a way station and then they could have an opportunity to be in your breast pit program is that roughly order that would be one process yes I hope to establish that line um but again we can continue to directly referr people refer people to these bed spaces now so even in my Outreach team if they find somebody who was just released recovering from surgery they don't have to be admitted or just released from somewhere else we can bring them right in from the street into one of these bed spaces so a lot of flexibility with that but I do hope to carve out that pathway thanks right so again a smaller space here um one thing that we built into our respit beds and also our Behavioral Health dorm is their own private um single occupancy restroom and shower so again they don't have to go downstairs for any Services if they're unable to do that everything can take place right in their dorm space and some of those Services another question I get a lot of the times is um Are Spiritual Services required if I'm in one of these enhanced dorm spaces and the answer is no uh of course you know us you know our philosophy and so they're always encouraged and provided but they are not required to receive any services within this building all right Behavioral Health dorm so you're looking at the men's or male presenting Behavioral Health dorm this is going to have 38 beds beds in it we also have one for women or female presenting which will have 20 beds in it and again this is one of

those areas where we're really hoping to partner with other agencies we've got some conversations going right now uh with a few agencies in town and the hope is that we can partner for case management and again bring all of those services to this space um I actually had the privilege of talking to a social worker from one Central who was just beside herself that she'll have a specific place to refer some of her clients to when they're released um which doesn't currently exist and anybody who's familiar with Behavioral Health knows that sometimes that anxiety gets so high that community living and congregate dorm space is just not you know it's just not conducive to recovery really for them and so providing them their own space again with that controlled access so nobody else who's not assigned to the storm can get into this space um it's just it's needed it's definitely been needed for a long time any questions on Behavioral Health council member um so I don't know if it's directly on point but you mentioned that access I guess if you could speak briefly about the key card system or if you going to get that to that at another point but how that's managed no I absolutely can I skipped over that a little bit on that implementation side um but yeah so every person who comes to us for services and goes through that intake process including my low barrier bed spaces is assigned a key card which looks a lot like this a lot of questions on will they be able to hold on to a key card

and I would let you know that they actually are assigned one currently uh and do a pretty good job hanging on to that but with that key card through a computer software system I can actually assign access to that card so if I have a female who's staying in Behavioral Health she'll have access to my main entry she'll have access to the female elevator and stairwell and then access directly to her dorm space she won't be able to get into anywhere else and no one else can get into that facility does that answer mostly okay is H um I'm trying to understand how um care would would be provided for people with opiate use disorder or substance use disorder in terms of connecting people with resources like the um there's a clinic out on Northwest Avenue there will be um treatment uh provided at The Division Street property um coming up here through the DJ um uh clinic and so that the second one will have transportation that they'll come and get people and take them out there for sooo and methadon and such but the the first um Clinic that I mentioned I I don't know if they have that service available so how does it work when you've got a behavioral health it's not it's not a ward I guess like a floor it's a dorm yeah a dorm um how does it work in terms of accessing the services that might be needed for for patients that are people that are located there yeah absolutely that's a good question what we'll do is kind of duplicate what we're doing right now for individuals who need to make

those Clinic appointments we actually have an Uber business account or my staff if I'm adequately staffed that day will be able to drive somebody to an appointment appointment um and so we we absolutely want to make sure that's one of the first connections we make uh for folks with sud MH thank you is there a third question there I don't think so please continue okay again just all those same Services um case management will be a requirement of this dorm space it'll look a little bit different based on individualized care plans because Behavioral Health is so unique all right I'm probably most excited about this dorm space um so building in this family dorm and and this has been a need again for a long time everybody has had an eye on the numbers of unhoused families in our community we continue to see the need increase um and just to kind of highlight the need I heard from kellyanne our director of Crisis services that within one week they received a call or received calls from 21 different families none of which we were able to house because our two current family rooms have been full uh and remain full um and so it's just heart breaking for my staff as you can imagine and again we try to work closely with opportunity counsil and other agencies to get these families housed but having six walk-in emergency family rooms is really going to change the game for folks uh emergencies don't happen at 8:30 on a Monday morning they typically happen after hours over the weekends um

and so being able to bring somebody in at any time of day is is going to be a big deal so we have six private family rooms and another question I get is how do I Define family and we don't really think that that's our responsibility uh to Define family because family Dynamics again are so unique um but I will say one of the great things about this dorm and again the intentional design of the facility because we built in single occupant restrooms I can actually house an intact family I can house a single dad I can house a two dad a two mom family uh but having those single occupant restrooms means I don't have to limit uh what gender can come into this space or the age of male children in a lot of traditional emergency shelter settings you'll find that they have to um pivot and serve just single moms uh just single dads or they cap the age of male children at about 13 that's typically the age that you'll hear which again is heartbreaking um and so this intentional design into this dorm space gives us that flexibility you can see we got a little bit of a family room a little living room section right there so my hope is to see a bunch of kiddos running around that hallway little home work corner of course we provide parenting classes there's case management to each of our families uh one cool thing is that our intake coordinator Jay Grove will actually be able to provide case management to any fathers um or older male children uh which is something that we don't currently

provide right now so that will be great they'll also have their own kitchenet uh so if you can picture some different dining tables in here um an all-in-one washer and dryer uh and different things like that so again if our families don't want to go down to the second floor to engage in day Services they really don't have to they could continue to come into that private entrance and their entire program could take place within the storm helping to insulate uh insulate those children from some of the trauma that you would be exposed to on the second floor that's just a picture of one of our large family rooms again we want to be able to Pivot um the average size of a family that we see is 3 to five uh but we know that that can range all the way six or seven we see multiple Generations sometimes s so again that family Dynamic and not defining what a family is if I have a family that comes in and maybe grandma has been staying with them for months I don't want to separate that family Dynamic that whole family can move into one of our larger family rooms right any questions on family dorm before I move to med clinic over yeah I'm just wondering um on a couple of slides ago you had like uh leign with Children's Schools as your last bullet point I'm just curious as to how that how that would work in terms of for example Bellingham School District or any of the other districts here in wam County in terms of how the uh liaison like how are they invited um how are the how are the kids

like how does it work when it comes to the educational component for school age children yeah absolutely so um I'm not going to have all the details in front of me but bikini vento Act is actually something that we really benefit from um and so right away we're connecting with the school liaison if I have schoolage children uh we also are connecting with some some of the individual teachers who have expressed concerns but our kiddos will be able to be um they'll be able to remain in their school regardless of what district that was in if they come to us for services but not only can they remain in their school districts they'll as also be picked up first and dropped off last which is a big deal because that means other children on the bus don't see that they're staying at an emergency shelter and so um and we also sit on the strategic planning committee for families uh homeless families with children and so I have representation there at that committee as well so just kind of keeping our finger on the pulse um and again I would say in each of these enhanced dorm spaces there's also provider rooms and so any provider or any agency working with any of our residents would be able to come in and bring those Services uh including parenting classes so I typically provide those onsite all right the medical clinic is another really exciting um development so I love to share that in this last year Lighthouse uh our Medical Clinic was approved as part of the retired and volunteer

providers uh in Washington and what that means is that any provider any practitioner in town who wants to donate their services free of charge can receive free malpractice insurance through the state of Washington which just removes a huge barrier for a lot of our practitioners who want to become involved uh but can't take that Financial Risk and so by being in this program we're actually able to invite more folks into this space so that med clinic say I don't think I have a photo of it um that med clinic actually has two private exam rooms and two single occupant restrooms as well um it also has its own entrance so again for folks who want to receive Medical Services they don't we don't have to call their name out over the day room they don't have to walk through 200 people to get to this Clinic space so there's dignity uh and being able to walk outside and come in through the separate entrance directly into the waiting room for the clinic questions on that always looking for dental care if you know anybody all right and then at the end of our Continuum is our residential recovery programs um and the reason I mention this is just because with our storefronts if you had an opportunity to tour you probably ended on that first floor with those three storefronts and so one of the unique things about having social Enterprises not only do all of the funds generated go to our operating fund but I'm also able to guarantee a part-time job for folks who are in phase three or the last

phase of my residential recovery programs that's really where the rubber meets the road you know can they Implement some of these coping skills that they've worked on for the last year um what that does is you know we heard from a lot of our folks that in their past life if they got into an argument uh with a coworker something that you and I would be able to handle really easily they threw their hands up and walked out they gave up on the job because they didn't have the coping skills to walk through that healthy conflict and so by providing them this part-time job before they reintegrate fully into society uh it it lets them kind of practice some of those skills so if they have to hit pause in the middle of a shift go collect themselves talk to their case manager whatever that looks like that's not only going to be approved it's going to be encouraged in this space and so really that full picture of transformation and so anybody who uh comes down to our mini donut or coffee shop uh just know that you are likely being served by uh one of the men or women in our recovery program which is pretty cool Anderson sorry just out of curiosity um how do you handle like the part-time employees with wage or um do they receive wages for their work tips compensation yep yep absolutely so we haven't rolled that out just yet but they will be considered part-time employees and so they would make at least minimum wage whatever it is at that time all right that's kind of the brief overview so

I'm available for any questions any questions from committee Council M Williams um I just want to say congratulations on this when I did the tour the other day I was totally impressed with the growth of your facility the expansion of services that you're going to provide and I and and I walked out of there thinking this is going to be a real game Cher for us in concert with the other newer service provision service providers that are coming our way as we get back to a sense of a more strategic approach to um implementing Recovery Services here in our community I just want to say thanks for putting all this together I really appreciate that and you know this really is my life's passion I was a recipient of services and an enhanced shelter in Southwest Florida after a period of about eight years being unhoused um and I can honestly say if it wasn't for those Progressive engagement programs I absolutely would not be standing here today with a dual Masters and 12 years of sobriety and and doing all the things that we're doing so from the bottom of my heart I can tell you that my staff is so passionate about this um and just really appreciative of any support there was a lot of nerves going into this and rolling out something so new to the community um but just overwhelming support has been felt and appreciate it thank you council member Stone and then Huffman so one is with the facility opening I don't know if you have a sense at this time but whether I think about it when you

know the school district builds a new school and then on day one there are already right trailers out back to handle overflow so if you have any sense you know are you going going to be at full capacity when you open and what your waiting lists look like or you know where you see the biggest gaps um in need yeah that's a great question and so I I keep some pretty rigorous safe Staffing ratios I'm I'm pretty serious about that and so really one to two staff members per 50 residents is minimum um and so as we move into this new facility we will be moving all 200 folks who are currently living with us into the facility we will not go up to Max Capacity until I have that adequate staff in place and so um as far as our waiting lists I can tell you that we have our family waiting list is is ongoing uh we try to keep tabs with those folks as they're currently unhoused so we don't lose touch with them I think that will be the quickest dorm to fill we've also done a uh new intake if you will with our new intake process on every resident who's currently staying with us and I have both of the main uh men's and women's dorms almost full completely with those folks who want that Progressive engagement program and so I imagine that um you know it it'll probably be a year in the making uh to get up to that safe Staffing level um so thank you to for the presentation for the tour uh and for opening up the doors to the general public on Saturday as well so that people could see the inside of

the building um I've seen a lot of talk on social media people sharing their experiences and pictures and I think that that's um so beneficial because there there's a lot of curiosity um and as you said some myths that that need to be busted but I think um my experience walking through that building there was so much more that was impressive even than you're able to cover in this presentation there's so many details that were thought of um clearly you know your organization's hundred years of experience in this line of work uh as well as the input of the people that you serve it's very clearly shown in all of the details um most impressive I think is the flexibility of that building it it really looks like it could be adaptable to the everchanging circumstances that we're facing um and uh and also the programming that's that's going to be adaptable there's so much new that you're presenting in in with this space and with this um this programming I really do as skip said I think it'll be a game Cher um where you know our community is unveiling a lot of a lot of stuff that's been in the works for a long time um and it's a really exciting time uh to see all of that unfold but um can you can you talk a little bit about um what the next step is what's uh when's Opening Day what's that going to look like what's it going to look like for our community as well as the people that you serve yeah absolutely so we have um quite a strategic IC plan to move all of our residents in October

7th we've partnered with WTA and so we actually have scheduled uh bus rides bus loads that will be coming over to uh the new building and what we're going to do is have um obviously adequate Staffing and volunteers we're actually also working with response division teams so that those folks can be there in case anybody's experiencing heightened anxiety um but what we'll do is move them over based on what dorm space they're coming over to so again that idea of radical Hospitality we don't want it to feel messy chaotic for them we're going to load them with their stuff take them directly to their new bed give them an orientation of the facility and then bring over that next bus load so we've got most of those Logistics worked out for October 7th again we hold everything Loosely you can you know make all the plans in the world and something some sort of a wrench will be thrown in there so that first week I anticipate just the dust settling us getting into that space residents likely giving us more feedback on that space and US kind of having some checkpoints we have a strategic meeting every week um where we look at some of these things so as things start to be uncovered we'll we'll be able to address those in the moment and then again we started up our neighborhood advisory committee um last week which was great we had a lot of good questions a lot of good feedback um not just from local businesses but also from Neighbors in the community who had a lot of questions on what this

is going to feel like and so um again with intentionality we have this new position uh which is called the neighborhood Outreach liaison uh his name is Alec if you ever get a chance to meet him he was also part of the Bellingham partnership the downtown Bellingham partnership so you may have seen him out there with his garbage Grabber but um his whole role is to be in the community in the neighborhood specifically the shelter protection Zone responding to neighbors responding to situations emergencies and really just being that key point of contact for any of our community members who might have some fear nerves questions different things like that um was there anything else specific in that roll out um I didn't ask a lot of questions but certainly Britney your presentation provoked a lot of reactions inside me um I've been living for a decade with status and concern with regard to Sheltering this community and Taran Hans you and I have been through a number of iterations and early on I think there was an immature understanding of what we really need in this community there was talk about a big enough shelter for everyone but I think we have learned that congregate and drop in shelters are actually not much of a solution to housing they can to to homelessness they can be a way of perpetuating it three Hots in a cot you you said recently just bring the summon in for shelter and they go back out in the street and they come back in again the next night and they goes on and on

there's nothing being done to break the cycle of homelessness and so um years ago the alliance uh to National Li and homelessness said that if your shelter isn't actually working with your your your guest every day about talking about moving out of shelter and into something inim and maybe permanent then you're not really doing a service and so when you say enhance shelter Services I say yes that's exactly it the other lessons that we learned through for example the homeless strategies workg group several iterations that I went through is that we didn't just need congregant shelter we needed special shelters and purpose shelters we needed family shelters we needed uh Behavioral Health shelters we needed uh shelter opportunities internal housing opportunities for people who were fragile or had medical conditions um we needed all of those things and those were going to be smaller and special purpose and staffed differently and I was looking and hoping for one of those to occur what you've done is several things in the same building we needed all of these things we've needed them for years and now we have them in one building that that is amazing that is impressive that is what I think we learned years ago we need it and now we're seeing it so I want to I want to show incredible gratitude for understanding that uh shelter alone is not what our community and not what the people need they need more than shelter and they need different things for different people so I'm really

happy to see that here's actually the question though I don't expect the mission to do everything we need and we have other providers opportunity Council Lydia Place uh uh the uh tiny home Villages by um you know homes now and road to home um this is great and I don't want to like look at the the the cup that's not completely full but um what is it you think the mission is not able to do once it's up and running where does the need remain um because is I'm going to try to work on that too love that you asked that question uh transitional housing transitional housing continues to be the bottleneck of course we could use more family shelter absolutely uh I know there's a few conversations with an agency in the works right now for that but transitional housing is uh where we continue to see the Gap and so I can get somebody to a point where they're able to be successful on their own uh but if they can't afford the next step then they're either bottlenecks they lose that hope they revert back to old coping skills and so in our residential recovery programs I've had the benefit of working with local sober homes like Summit House Oxford homes so that's a natural next step for my recovery program folks uh with individuals in our enhanced shelter really what they need is a 2-year transitional building so they can move from base camp into this building and start to uh create some of that rental history with continued Case Management Services and I know we've talked about some other

agencies who uh have attempted that I would say that our flavor would be a little bit different uh but that continues to be a huge gap that I see remember Stone so I just had a follow question regarding um the funding for right the the facility because I know since you're both here and hopefully people will watch they're not watching now we'll go back and watch this presentation um I know I've heard some confusion in the community I think because of the city's involvement with base camp um and now the transition here just if you could speak at all I know this is a huge project um I think the estimate was 23 million um I don't know if I had that exactly right for this facility I speak to it and the um just how the facility is funded so the facility is privately funded there are and so that's people generally in the community that wanted to see this project occur and you know separation of church and state is necessary as well as a religious organization uh so we can't take dollars necessarily from um from tax dollars but there were a couple of things that that have been able to be helpful for example the county I believe used car dollars to help provide uh for our kitchen equipment uh that was one thing and then the state helps support the solar panels on the roof uh those are it the the uh the city does support Cleanup in the neighborhood uh we hire a contractor to to clean in the the blocks surrounding base camp that'll continue uh from what I understand uh thank you by the

way um and to to also be good neighbors that way but yeah it is privately funded now the project when we started this a few years ago uh started the fundraising and kind of figuring out what the cost of a building like this would would be was initially around 16 to 18 million is what we thought and then as the pandemic progressed and labor costs and things like this increased uh started slowly growing uh from to 21 million to 26 million and has landed on 29 million and um again still privately funded we still need about 1.4 million to be debt free so if a Community member wanted to support uh to that degree we certainly welcome that um if we do have to float that debt later that just means a bit slower grow in terms of our ability to hire additional staff great um thank you oh uh and I see we have a question for the mayor and I just note we're running a little bit over time but go ahead mayor just quickly um would you be able to share what your plans are after that October 7th transition for the current base camp guest and what it will look like for the base camp facility from your perspective sure so we don't own that base camp facility the one we're we're leaving and I'm not sure what the owner's going to do with it I think it's available to lease We'll add though we'll continue cleanup efforts for two weeks after the move thank you so much Britney for the presentation today and Hans for arranging tours for many any of us um and uh I think with that see no further questions

um I'll turn it back to you president Hamil thank you thanks for the presentation uh we will continue with our uh next committee which is committee of the whole and that starts at 1:00 and until then we're in recess [Music]