 I want to be respectful of everyone's time. Thank you all for being here and for those of you all that are joining us virtually, we appreciate your participation. I'll go ahead and call this meeting to order and have our clerk take roll. Sure, it's Allison Farrell with the Department of Mental Health. Paul Jamal Akbar. Steve Cook, Five Points Association. Aditya Vussals. Matt Kennell. Matthew Brock, Rich and County Pervade Court. Kylie Sutton, Public Defender's Office. Let us bow our heads for a moment of grace together, for the beauty of this day and for all of the possibilities you've afforded us, for grace and for mercy, for your love that surrounds us. We simply ask that as we discuss and gather in this place today, that you might sensitize each one of us to the needs of this community and the city of ours. We understand that there are persons who feel as if they are disenfranchised and are broken. Our task here today is to continue that conversation and the brokenness and the flaws that our brothers and sisters are faced with on a 24-7 basis. Touch us individually. And yet, let your collaborative touch each of us as we move forward in this conversation and dialogue. We ask it. We claim it in the creator's name. Amen. Thank you very much, Councilman. I would now like to accept a motion to approve the minutes from our previous meeting that was on May 18th. Can I get a second? All right, do we need to call roll again or is it approved? Okay, all in favor? All opposed? All right, the minutes are approved. Well, thank you all again for being here today. Almost five weeks ago, we had our first task force to prevent and end homelessness. Since then, there's been a lot of activity and great discussion around the ways in which we continue this work. We have some great perspectives in the room as well as some much needed expertise around the ways in which we can continue to address this complex issue. I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge two new members that are with us today to continue to build out this committee. The first is Mr. Jabbar Ogburn. If you could just take a minute to introduce yourself and talk briefly about why you agreed to be on this committee, I'd greatly appreciate that. Successful, and when I mean successful, some people base success off of money, some base it off of prestige. I base success off of who I am as an individual and where I came from and where I'm at today. As I was talking to Allison next to me, I talked to her about some of the things I had to do in order to get out of how I worked with jobs and different things I had to do basically to get out of it. But in the process, the system is broken. There are a lot of things that are in place but they just don't work. And hopefully I can come with some fresh ideas and some new ideas and maybe we can better the situation for the community in Columbia as a whole. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. And then we have Ms. Doreen Skelton who is sitting over here. And Doreen, would you like to say hello? Of how to help solve the problem. And that's why I'm here because I wanna be a problem solver in helping them get off the streets. Thank you for being here. Thank you both for being with us today. Brother Jermal, you said something that sort of my antennae sort of came up. I think I heard you say that you moved from brokenness. Is that what I heard? Yes. You see, you got a deep voice. You don't need a mic. I heard you say, and of course that sort of wronged bail for me, we are broken. All of us are at some point, at some point. We all face our own up against the wall experiences. And it's refreshing to hear you say, 27 years. Yes. 27 years of recognizing that brokenness, quote unquote. And understanding and realizing that there is a path forward. So I appreciate you saying that today. It certainly gives some enlightenment to who we are as a city and perhaps as a council. Because we wanna recognize that there are folk in our city and in our communities that are broken. And the question that I ask, of course, is there a bomb in Gilead? Is there something that could restructure, reconfigure spiritually and holistically the concerns of those persons? And I'm not asking you to comment on that. I'm just saying that I appreciate what you say it because it sets the pattern and it sort of leads into a conversation of brokenness, disenfranchisement, and all of the other adjectives that are described in persons who find themselves in credulous situations. So I appreciate that. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Councilman. So we, as I mentioned, had a very rich discussion last meeting and we've had several subsequent discussions among us, among those that advocate for people experiencing homelessness, directly with people that are experiencing homelessness, and of course, working with our business and provider community to learn a little bit more about this issue. And so I really, for today, wanted to set the stage and really frame the conversation and talk through some of the things that I found to be the most salient in our discussion. So I'm gonna ask my intern to come up and help me with this because I decided to display it in a way that hopefully we can keep going back to it to ground ourselves in what we're trying to accomplish as this task force. All right, so first and foremost, we can put it here, actually, some more people can see it. One of the things that we learned last meeting was how much the city has already invested in homelessness. We know that we have about a million dollars that goes towards city services, specifically around our inclement weather center. And that has been, for the last several years, awarded to United Way with a pass through to several other providers. We also know that we provide dollars for security at Transitions, which is the shelter that is at the end of our Main Street corridor. A lot of our community development funding also goes towards homelessness about approximately 2.5 this year from our American Rescue Plan dollars will be going towards what we call non-congregate housing or housing that allows people to not live in shared spaces. It's an evidence-based practice for ways to uplift people experiencing homelessness. And then we've also continued to support providers, including homeless no more and Mercy in previous budget years around some of these efforts using these community development dollars as well. And finally, we learned that we have expanded the Pathways Unit, which is focused on embedding mental health clinicians within CPD and being able to intervene in a way that meets the needs of these complex conditions that often result from homelessness. So knowing that, there are a couple of things that we then started talking about about the goals of our task force. And so I wanted to pull that up. Any questions about the city's investment on homelessness so far? So we know that this work has been going on for a long time and we know that there's been previous efforts by the city, by the state, by our providers, but we also have seen an increase in people experiencing homelessness across the board, not just in Columbia. And so one of the things that I wanted to be very clear about as we continue our discussions is that we cannot solve the entire problem of homelessness, we can. But we can do our part in leading in efforts that we can control or influence as a city. And so first and foremost, we talked about how the population that this task force is really focused on is the chronic and visible homelessness. Typically, these are folks interacting with our commercial districts, including downtown, Harbison and Garner's Ferry. We're not necessarily focused on other populations like youth in transition, families, and other populations within those experiencing homelessness that may already be interacting with services. So something that I heard from all of you consistently was we want to focus on those that are visible, that are often resistant to services, no matter what the reason may be. So I hope that as we continue our conversations, we remember that because it's very easy to make homelessness a very broad issue and sometimes feels a little bit like too daunting to be able to address. We talked also a lot about the balancing, the need to balance an increase in crime with the need to provide effective options and services for this population. We talked about how crime is often a consequence of all of these other complex factors that lead to homelessness. And so really wanting to address those two pieces was a priority for this task force. And then we spent some time on language. And first and foremost, I would ask that we give grace to those that are learning and are a part of this process. But we talked about how inclusive language is important. The HUD term for talking about those experiencing homelessness is unsheltered homeless. And I think that that's the term that we can continue to use. And we also talked about how instead of saying the homeless, perhaps people experiencing homelessness is the more inclusive way of talking about the population that we are interested in serving. And I think most importantly, one thing that I kept going back to and would like to push all of us to think about is this task force was created with the intention of existing for six to eight months. Now I'd love to see it maybe be long-term, but the goal is that we are developing short-term immediate solutions to address the urgency of this issue. We know that there's a lot of systemic change that needs to happen, as Councilman McDowell said, the system in many ways is broken. And we can continue to invest and look at those things, but we also know that this is an urgent issue that many constituents, many community members have raised. And so I need all of you and your help to help find those short-term immediate solutions. Any questions about what this task force is focused on and how we will be framing our conversation? Let's talk about some of the key strategies that you all raised in last time's discussion. And I would really love your insight and input here because there are maybe things that I may not have captured that you may find to be a key strategy. So these were these immediate things that I pulled from our discussion in May. The first thing after getting an overview of city's investment was that many of you talked about the concept of accountability and how important it is to keep those that are providing services for our behalf of the city accountable. And so one of the strategies that came out from that is revisit a RFP or a request for proposals process for city homelessness providers and determine what our accountability metrics will be so that we can see change over time. Another strategy that came out and this really was around the conversation that we all had about Columbia often having the burden of providing services for the entire region as opposed to just our city is to ask and advocate for regional and state investment around some of the work that we're doing because again, we can't do it alone yet. Many of our community providers are serving all of the Midlands, but the burden to support those things often just fall on the city. We talked about beat cops having more consistent police presence downtown to enforce regulations. And that was something that came out from our discussions around the ways in which we can prevent some of the issues that Chief Holbrook brought up with an increase in crime. We also talked about holding our community groups accountable for waste that comes from feedings and meals and make sure that we are coordinating these efforts. And then finally, we talked about revisiting how homelessness in our court system interacts. We learned about our homelessness court. We talked about competency and really thinking about options for pathways out of homelessness. And perhaps the court could be a way and a partner in making that happen. So any reactions to some of these strategies or are there any other strategies that you have learned about or have been thinking about that you'd like to bring up at this time? No, they're quite a group today. You were not last time. I mean, I guess nobody wants to talk first. I think that some of the law enforcement issue there was some pushback last time in that this is supposed to be a compassionate purpose for this. And when law enforcement gets involved, people think we can't criminalize homelessness, which obviously has been an issue in the past. But I do think it's important to be realistic and honest that everybody that is currently homeless in the city of Columbia isn't just down on their luck and just needs a boost. There's obviously mental illness, there's obviously drug addiction, and there's a criminal element among those homeless in Columbia. I just think it's important to be realistic and honest about that, and not to paint every person in that population with a broad brush. But it's something that as a member of the business community is important to me. I have a totally different issue with someone who needs some help versus someone who's actively doing criminal activity in neighborhoods. And that to me seems to sort of get pushed underneath with this, when it's talked about law enforcement. Thank you. Any other comments? Jamar, I see something bubbling up, so go ahead. There was a situation, I was going to the bus stop on Elmwood, and I happened to run into somebody that was from transition. We were just passing by and talking for a second, and there was an officer in McDonough, on McDonough's property, and he looked at all of us and said, if y'all don't move, I'm going to write a little ticket for trespass, put the sidewalk with publics. We wasn't on McDonough's property, we weren't up in the city street. We were just talking for a bit, that's it. And the problem is that I see that the police are, they stab you tight, especially in that particular metro. You know, if you look a certain way, you act a certain way, you get, you know, I used to teach a class called men making different transitions. Y'all know how I got involved with that, but they asked me to come back and help facilitate that class. And one of the things I used to tell my guys was that as soon as you walked out of transitions, you're already late. So you need to change your mindset. Walk differently and behave differently because if you don't, you're going to get stopped, especially if you're congregating in a group of more than four. And normally that is the procedure. I've seen it happen time and time and time again right downtown Columbia. You want to change over the police, they gotta change their attitude on it. Because the first thing that the police get when they approach them is a sense of resistance, even though they may be coming in truly to help because of their experience. So that's all that I really have to say on that. And I'll probably be playing a lot of devil's advocate units and I gotta be honest with everybody in the panel because of what I've seen and what my experience. Yeah, and we appreciate that. I mean, your lived experiences are very rich and that's why we appreciate you taking on the burden of sharing that with us. And I also appreciate Steve's experience as a business owner and seeing folks that may be experiencing homelessness, also engage in criminal activity that's affected so many of the businesses that he interacts with or works with in five points. And so it's really finding that balance and having those tough conversations. So I appreciate that you bring that up. Chief, I think you were about to, were you about to say something? I'm breathing. Oh, you're breathing? Okay. You know, I find it interesting that, you know, we're 10 minutes into this meeting and the first conversation is about law enforcement. And, you know, we spent a lot of our time in the last meeting to talk about how we get law enforcement out of the solution here. So, you know, I can assure you that, as I said, our last meeting, we would prefer not to spend 60% of our time in the Metro region dealing with unsheltered homeless. And especially now with staffing challenges that we have, we're very reactive to this, unfortunately. So what a public contact predicated on for us is almost entirely based on complaints. Or a reported crime that we're responding to. And, you know, we do have various corridors that are more active than others. You know, the area that you mentioned, you know, is where transition's located. We have a lot of quality of life, criminal violations that occur there. More certainly go unenforced than are enforced. And, you know, that is a sticking point for a lot of our business owners. And a lot of that is because it's something that occurs out of our presence. Or we simply, you know, don't have the time and resources at that particular point in time to effectively deal with it. But, you know, it's, law enforcement is always going to have to, you know, interact when it comes to violations of law. You know, we also, no matter what the situation is, we have to treat people with respect and dignity. We have to justify our actions. We have lots of checks and balances. We wear body cameras. You know, checks and balances for a charge. Trespass charge would be where they actually were. A lot of trespassing that we charge now is based on the business owner given the authority to law enforcement to act on their behalf after somebody has been properly noticed and said, you cannot congregate in this parking lot on this piece of property, be intoxicated, have an open container. We notice that. And, you know, and then there are times when we enforce the law. And I would just add, unfortunately, those are the things that as city council people, that is what we hear as well from constituents. Our examples of this person won't leave my property. I've asked them very nicely. This person is asking people for money while they're eating at my establishment. And so for us, you know, the hard question is, how do we solve that in a way that is meaningful, makes a difference, but also doesn't continue to perpetuate the same kind of tiptoeing around the fact that there are a lot of facets to homelessness, but we are seeing those consequences manifest from the current situation that's happening in Columbus. It was just to add, just to comment, I said me something. So we dedicate a few days. We have to, you know, we have to, again, do what we would refer to as a special operation to address this particular quality of life issue. We're having to pull officers and dedicate officers. In two days, we actually had to make nine custodial rests. It doesn't count what we call a rest citation. That's where we write a citation and do not take somebody in custody, but there was nine situations where we had to take somebody in custody. Every one of those were PR bonds, right back out. So this is what's happened in this cycle. A lot of resources have just been drained for those couple of days. And we're out there because of complaints from our business owners and citizens that have been, you know, in their mind, they've perceived intimidation as somebody's approach. They're a vehicle or banged on their vehicle. So we've taken an action, but now the police leave or we're answering our calls for service, but there's nobody's, you know, nobody's in jail. There's no accountability in the same people or right back in the same place doing the same thing. So it's just a cycle that keeps, you know, continuing over and over again. And then the, let me make sure, the unsheltered, the unsheltered homeless, they may have had a bad experience, just like, you know, you described, so they're mad at us. The business owner's mad at us because we didn't affect the change. It's, you know, I would like to, as we criticize law enforcement in this discussion, I sure would like to hear some solutions to what you would like to see from us. Well, that's one of the things that we talked a little bit about at our last meeting. I think one of the things that we need to recognize is that law enforcement officers are there to enforce the law. The sole responsibility of making sure and insuring that our population who find themselves in a real critical situation, CPD's sole responsibility is to enforce the law. Now, I understand what you're saying, I understand what you're saying, I also understand what Steve, but there are layers in terms of the kind of things that happens within our city and in our communities. We've got to look beyond, and I wanna say this as truthfully as I possibly can, we gotta look beyond CPD because I think that there are other options, creative, intentional options to make sure that those things that CPD deals with are totally different than the issues and the population that we find us and the population that is within our city. I think the conversation ought to ensue itself around what is the responsibility of those persons who are providers. They are not law enforcement officers. I think chief and members of CPD are going to effectuate and make sure that laws are abided by. I don't think you can be, and I think that's one of the reasons why we've hired sociologists, counselors, for our law enforcement officers. Isn't that right, Chief? Yes, sir. How many in it? Two, is it two? Well, with part two, we'll have a total of five of us. That's why we thought it was important that those persons come on board. Counselors effectuate and navigate through crisis within the community. Now, we want our CPD officers to be reasonable and compassionate and sensible, but we also want them to enforce the law. And I think to put CPD in that posture where they are counselors and enforcers of the law, I think that becomes a real, it puts us in a real dilemma. Steve, one of the things that you said, which I think is important, is that when we talk about this whole issue of persons being in that credulous situation, whether it's crime involved, or whether it's a mental illness, or whether it's something else, if it's crime involved, it's these guys here that's gonna take care of the law. And if I was in church, I'd say, can the church say amen on that? Amen. It is very important that we make sure that there is a delineating line in terms of what CPD is doing and will do, as opposed to the counselors that are on board to help with crisis situations as it relates to mental illness and other issues that find folk against the wall. So I'm not with questions. Good question. I think it's very important, though. We can't lay the blame on our chief. We lay the blame, we give this to chief when there's a situation we really need to deal with as a council and as a committee as it relates to homelessness, but we also got to allow CPD to do his job as it relates to the enforcement of the law. Does that make any sense, chief? Yeah, we appreciate it, yeah. Absolutely. I'm sorry, Steve, it's very brief. But, you know, I just want to make sure that it doesn't come across in any way, and chief, I think we've talked many times. The only tool given to business owners in the city, is through CPD, unfortunately. We're told, call the police if you have a problem, call the police if you have a problem. It's incredibly unfair for your officers to have to be the front line to triage this. It's incredibly unfair, but we don't have anything else to do, unfortunately, and that's what we would all love for there to be another agency to call to have those counselors come first or whatever it is, because, I mean, we watch it all day. We're in the neighborhoods. We see that stuff bubbling up and we just know it's gonna be an issue. We're gonna have to call the police. The only resource we're given, and again, we think it's incredibly, I think it's incredibly unfair. The blame doesn't go on the CPD. It's just the only hammer we have. And that's the reality that we've heard consistently is that's typically where folks naturally go is call 911, not even the non-emergency line, just call 911. And, you know, with that, we've also seen that people struggle to find services after hours. Oftentimes, when you all are seeing your most traffic in your restaurants, because many places will close after a standard workday. And so, I think going back to what she was asking is what are our solutions? It sounds like, to me, one of the things that's come out of this discussion that we'll make sure to record, because we don't have up here on my beautiful flip chart, is that we do need to identify that after hours and first point of contact that can truly respond in a timely manner that doesn't put the burden necessarily on CPD, especially for cases that it's not criminal activity, if that makes sense, right? Because you all don't, you certainly don't wanna be dealing with just folks that have mental illness and just need support. That's really where our providers can come into play. And we don't, but to kind of bring us full circle to come back to, kind of, time back to what you originally said. So just with this one clinician already, I just wanna give you some relevance to everything. And it's why I think this is of a good path forward. So they really stood up effectively July of last year. So we're coming into our first year. This is just one person with our officer, but 337 calls for service, they've interacted with 214 different clients and made 238 different referrals based on those clients. But what I would also say to you is of those 214 clients, people experiencing homelessness, that potentially, and I'm not saying this in every occasion, but that's 214 people that have not gone to jail. They've got directed to the services that they needed. Now, what the disposition, what the discussion needs to be is what the disposition of those 214 are. And to come back to what Mr. Cook is saying, because this is where that circle continues. So those 214, because this number is gonna get bigger as this pathways unit continues. So we've really gotta effectively deal with these clients, persons that are experiencing homelessness, that come in contact with this pathways unit because they're in crisis, whether it's addiction through alcohol, drugs, and they're on the street. So that's, and they're suffering from mental illness. I mean, that's the challenge. That's, so that's 214 people that law enforcement doesn't have to interact with on an enforcement basis. And in addition to that, and then Jamar, I'll hand it over to you. The challenge is also that a lot of our services and options are all over the city or beyond the city. And one of the challenges that we even talked about at our first meeting is it's really hard to interact if you don't have transportation or if you don't have someone helping you navigate these things, there's no single point of entry that people have, they have found consistent success with in terms of navigating some of the services. And so all of that compounded has now resulted again in this problem where we have folks that need services and we don't necessarily have a seamless process for that. And we have folks that are engaging in criminal activity as a consequence of homelessness for whatever reason. And it's affected neighborhoods and businesses and it's something that we have to do something about. So Jamar? So call this number. I work Friday, Saturday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I had a three day thing. The funny thing about it, if there was a client inside there acting up and I knew they had a mental issue and I called that number, I got, well, we don't have nobody to send out. Being a shelter manager, I can't put my hands on them. It's, most I can say is leave. Sometimes they don't want to leave. I'm sorry, you know who I call, right? I have you and I have to call you guys. The sad part about it is, is they get there and they're like, what's going on? I'm like, I have this person to leave, they don't want to leave, they're going through this mental thing and they're looking at why you ain't called mental health. Only for me to say I called them and they say, oh, something we can do, call in the morning. So I, on the mental factor, I'm going to be honest, on that third with the mental side, I personally believe that something needs to be set up and in place where they have manned people 24 hours around the clock. Even it's a designated area that if something happened, whether it's within a business, if there's somebody standing on the street having a fit that somebody, when they call, they're able to talk to that individual. There have been some cases where I was able to talk to them down, they go to bed, they go. Other cases, they go straight rough. And what you're sharing, again, is a sentiment that we've heard before from folks as well. Talking with some of our partners at Transitions, they shared how many people they've had to ban from entering that facility because they, and so that has led to the unintended consequence of folks being on the street, right? So there's a lot of things that I'm hearing and as someone who really wants to focus on the solutions, something I'm hearing, Erica, is around the clock, we want to make sure that we have some, we actually want to be able to talk to a person or set of persons that can triage mental health crises in our city, and then Allison, I'll pass it over to you. Okay, and it's in every single county in South Carolina, 24, seven, 365 days a year. They call a 833 number, 833-364-2274. I can provide that next time, Dr. Bussells, but those clinicians, two clinicians will be dispatched if it's a mental health crisis, and it's actually a master's level mental health, a mental health clinician that's triaging those calls. Now, that being said, we respond with law enforcement. So it does not relieve the law enforcement burden of having to respond, but it does identify something as a mental health crisis at the get go. The other thing I wanted to say that I was looking up here on the list is that when with law enforcement, Chief, you can answer this, is when is it identified as a homeless issue? Is it on the dispatch? Is it dispatch identifies? It really could probably be a variety. It could be to complain it, so that would be through dispatch. They would describe the person as being someone's suspected of homelessness. It might be after we would be on scene and interact and we're identifying the person, and they identify themselves as no address, or they give address of transitions or another shelter, that would be, like when we would produce numbers and would identify somebody as unsheltered, it would be based on our field interviews or arrest reports or just incident reports where somebody's not listing an address. Yeah, just I'm thinking like with mobile crisis, that's already been triaged. We know that it's a mental health crisis and they go out and they probably deal with the mobile crisis all the time. So it's a law enforcement. Yeah, and mobile crisis is working well. Yeah. I mean, it really is. It works in complement with our pathways team. After hours, of course, it's somebody in mental crisis and you might wanna talk about the distinction between somebody that's in legitimate mental crisis versus somebody that's just intoxicate, bombed, right? And it's a difference. And there's a different standard in terms of voluntary commitment versus involuntary commitment. And when we can force somebody to go with us or go to the hospital and then oftentimes ultimately how they're treated at the hospital and just again for context. So once somebody goes to the hospital in lieu of jail, it's not unusual at all for the hospital to get fed up with dealing with that person acting out, pushing right out the door, shut the door and call the police. So I mean, we're just in an unwinnable situation all the time and I'm not gonna keep banging the drum but I'm gonna bang the drum when I get hit over the head. I mean, we want solutions from this task force also. So I think something that's been interesting for me as someone who represents almost everyone who comes to the city of Columbia Municipal Court with a competency issue. And for those of you who don't know, competency is when your mental health is so significant that you don't understand what's going on in court. You can't participate in your defense. That usually means you also then can't engage in services which is where we have a lot of this frustration and I know that we've said resistant to services and I would like to push back on that a little bit because I think a lot of the humans that we interact with, it's not necessarily a resistance but sometimes an inability to engage and to follow through in an appropriate way. So since the beginning of this year, January 1st of 2022 until June 22nd of 2022, there were 113 arrests for 10 different people. So 113 arrests over 10 people who have pending competency evaluations. And as much as I'm sure people would assume that I would love to throw that responsibility on law enforcement, I'm sure I could if I tried really hard. But at the end of the day, these individuals cannot be tried, they cannot engage in services, there's no solution. And so when we get into this issue of they can't comport their behavior in a way that allows them to stay in a shelter or participate in services, they can't be tried, they can't really be probated yet because they usually don't have family or the hospitals can't or won't engage with them longer than that 24 hour hold or one week hold or they don't have insurance that keeps them in a program. All of those issues, the appropriate thing would be a competency evaluation in the restoration process after their criminal charged, they are charged criminally, but that doesn't exist. And so that's on our list and that's something that we are working with the city to try and figure out. But I will say that the state Supreme Court order saying that that mechanism needs to be developed came out in 2019 and here we are in mid 2022 with no plans. And so that's a very clear, I mean that right there is 133, I mean 113 arrests and that's 405 days that were spent in jail by people who cannot be tried that don't, cannot self advocate that can't participate in services and so when they're discharged there's no change, there's no plan. So I think that that's just like those numbers are just startling. Right now, I think the last time I checked there are 23 people with competency evaluations pending. So that right there, that number is significant. I think also going to the discussion that's been about someone to call that isn't 911, I mean we have a robust service provider community but not every service is a one size fits all. In fact, I don't think any service is a one size fits all. And so what works for human A isn't gonna work for human B isn't gonna work for human C and so on. And so having someone that after hours person or that on call person is needs to be someone who's well versed in all of the services that are out there to make appropriate referrals because when we, for example, when I work with our partner agencies and someone makes a referral to Mercy because that's the organization they know that's a great effort to engage someone in services but if that person isn't experiencing chronic homelessness with a severe and persistent mental illness they don't qualify for Mercy services and so they might not be the appropriate referral. So we can't just rely on what we know, we need to, as far as referrals, either educate ourselves or rely on someone who knows and works with all of these agencies because we have a lot of really great partners who are doing really great work that haven't been mentioned that aren't here and some that are here, it's good to see all of you. And so it's out there and it's just a matter of collaboration and cohesiveness and clear referral with clear follow-up and clear, when we, warm handoffs I guess is the term, right? I wanna be able to work with someone from agency to agency and collaborating that way. And there have been a couple proposals for after-hour peer support specialists and weekend peer support specialists. We presented that to the mock board, I wanna say two years ago but the pandemic hit and it just couldn't go anywhere. So there are ideas out there that we could resurface. And then what's not on the list but I think has been mentioned both at the last meeting and today is this issue of transportation. A lot of the clients that I work with that are interested in engaging in services have also been banned or trespassed from the Comet and is speaking as someone who tries to work with individuals with those trespasses or bans. There's no clear policy for how long, there's no clear policy on notice, there's no clear appeal process. And so if you have one misstep and you're indefinitely banned from the only public transportation system but you're trying to engage in services, I understand that there's options for going to your doctor's appointments or sometimes your mental health appointments but sometimes you need to go to a drop-in center, sometimes you need to just go check in with your case manager, sometimes you need to work with a social worker at the library that doesn't constitute an emergency that would allow for an exception. And so when we don't have clear procedures and policies in place and we can't remedy that transportation issue, we're also putting a gap in breaking up that continuity of care, which is an additional hurdle to making it to that next level of success. So it's all compounded but I think that those are three very immediate solutions that would address a lot of the issues that we're all talking about and seeing. And just to summarize, so you said of course we have competency already up there talking about clear policies and suggestions for how we are allowing people to maybe become unbanned from transportation, right? And I actually would add to that that again, I'm going back to something I already mentioned, there are a lot of people that are banned from accessing services themselves. There are ban lists at all sorts of different providers and I'd like to know, especially if the city is funding them, what's the process if you want to engage in services again, right? And if it goes back to kind of what Jamar was saying, where my only option, if you're being troubling or having behavior that is putting the rest of the folks in my shelter at risk is to put you back out on the street. So there has to also be a sense of accountability across the board of like, as a city if we're going to fund services, what are our accountability metrics to ensure that we're not creating these unintended consequences? And the last thing that you said, I just want to make sure, what was the last strategy that you had suggested? Competency? The after hours pierced. And so we talked a little bit about the after hours as well. And Allison, it was great to hear about the mobile crisis and know that that's an option. But I think in general, having some sort of campaign that helps people actually have access, especially our business owners and community members, two numbers and a set of resources that actually work because numbers are dead. I've had constituents call and say, I tried to call the yellow shirts and it's a busy tone, right? Like these things are not working and it's okay for us to have these hard conversations that say you're right, we dropped the ball, it's not working. So I appreciate that we are really thinking in that lens and that frame because I don't want to hear the desperation of, I don't know what to do except call CPD. I want us to be able to have options for business owners and those that are feeling like there's activity going on around their property or in their vicinity that is criminal. You know, the best advocate in the world, but on the next one, I'm a public pretender. If I didn't know that those two perceptions existed, I wouldn't be doing a client a disservice by not knowing about it, but then also doing what I can to combat that. So when we talk about, for example, your experience with law enforcement, if we're not ready to sit here and say that your experience with one person might be different than the next person, and so we need to deal with that consistency of interaction and understanding or even talking about appeals and followups at shelters. If the rumor is that your weekend staff is different than your day staff or you can only go to the drop-in center on this day and that's the rumor, we as agencies and service providers and advocates need to be aware of those rumors and recognize if there's truth to it and be willing to say, okay, that's what it is, let's figure out how to fix it because if we sit here and pretend like that's not a thing, then we're gonna fix it. 100%, absolutely. Do you have, okay, and then we'll move on to the next. How many providers do we have here today? How many providers? Is that it? Middle Hill, that's it. And I will note that many of the providers are invited to our August meeting where they will be presenting on the services they provide and one of the things on the next agenda item is I'd like to hear from all of you what questions you have for providers for our next meeting that you'd like to be answered. So Councilman McDowell, many of the providers will be here next meeting. This is just not a mental health issue. It's a crime, it could very well be a crime issue. There are layers and I think what I'm hearing and maybe I'm wrong, I don't think that there has been collaboration with providers to say exactly what we can do to help solve and have something that is resolution. Has that conversation been had? I don't think so. And if that's the conversation in August, we should have started this conversation three months ago. Six months ago. I think it is extremely important mental health has sort of given us some idea of what takes place during a mobile crisis. I didn't hear anything else. And I think we don't hear about this in August. And the same question I'm going to raise is this, what are you doing collaboratively so that resolution or some resolution kinds of things can effectuate themselves? Yeah, the conversation today is good, but it does not, again, CPD is not in the triage business, not in the triage business, not at all. And Steve, I keep referring to you because you made it multi-layered in terms of the situations as a business owner and businesses as it relates to middle illness, crime, or just for lack of a better word, just being homeless. I think we gotta do a better job, folks. We gotta do a better job. And not only identify, we've identified what the issues are, we have not have a hard conversation about what we can do collaboratively. Again, and I wanna say this very, very realistically, we spend a million dollars a year, million dollars, and the questions that I get in my district is simply this, are you getting your bang for the books? Now, that's a conversation we will have in August, and I just think it's... So just very briefly, and I might not be understanding the full question, I can tell you some of the collaborative efforts that we participate in. There is at least a monthly case conferencing meeting that talks about in more intensive case conference for, I think it's, I don't know if it's a list that CPD provides or is provided by Mock, but there is at least a monthly meeting. There's a youth specific meeting, there's a family's meeting, there used to be a VA meeting, I'm not sure if there is any more. Clean of Heart has what they call the next level services where we do intensive case management as a group table event. The library has partnership days. I don't, and I'm not sure he meant it directly towards you. Yeah, no, and that's not... I think it was more in general. That's not just me, I'm just saying that there are collaborative efforts, and I'm wondering if maybe the question is, what, like is the question, has there been a collaborative effort to discuss specifically what the city could do different? Because I don't think that that's happened, but if the question is, are there collaborative efforts on how to coordinate services and better serve our fellow humans, then that is happening. So I just, maybe I don't understand the question. But of course, simply put, the question that I would ask, and would sort of respond to is, we're having these intensive conversations with others. Is it working? Is it working? And if it's not working, we need to fix it, or at least find some resolution of things where it can be fixed. Conversations between Dr. Bussells and I, it's fine. But if we are not making a difference in terms of that conversation, and what's doable in that conversation, and what's resolutional in that conversation, then I'm, we're talking about sounding brass and gung and cymbals. We cannot, we cannot continue to just have conversations between ourselves. It has to be a collaborative conversation that's going to engender itself around solutions. And that's good that we're here today. And hopefully the intent of what we, as Dr. Bussells has alluded to, a genuine conversation, a real conversation, what can we do? And we can't do it by ourselves. It doesn't matter if it's this or that, whether it's this agency or that agency. It's not working. So it becomes, it becomes a hard pool for CPD, of course, when there is issues and situations, and the only thing we do is down 911. There has to be a genuine conversation, not between us, but between, as a grandmama used to say, not between us, but between y'all. We can effectuate change, we can do it on our part. But the question that keeps resonating in my own spirit, what's the end result? No results right now. And I'm through. No, I appreciate that. And I think, I think it goes back to, again, what we've been talking about. What is currently happening is not working. And we have to revisit the ways in which our community, our business owners, and our providers are all interacting. It's not working. We have a lot of great pieces, and they're not moving together in one cohesive puzzle that then allows folks to engage with services correctly for CPD to stay in their lane and respond to the situations that make the most sense and are in their purview. And I think it's scary to say that, but I think that's what you're getting at, is what we're doing right now is not working because it's continued to escalate. Not to say that there aren't great things happening, but this is the number one thing that we've continued to hear about from constituents is people and the increase of people experiencing homelessness. So I appreciate you sharing that. So I wanted to move forward and talk a little bit about some of the materials that I had sent to you all. One being, thank you to Lila Anna, who shared the 2013 homelessness committee report. So that committee was actually created and had four subcommittees. Sam, if you could put that up on the door. I just wanted to summarize some of the strategies that they had focused on that I thought could be interesting for our discussion. So they in 2013, that was an area of concern. The third was around meals and feeding and the last was around sanitation. So in terms of the winter shelter, the four key recommendations that this committee had was that they should have a four year plan to start basically having effective enough services that they no longer have to have an overflow. They wanted to change transportation and make sure transportation is accessible and timely and is provided in a reasonable hour. They shifted the times in which meals and services are provided in the winter and had recommendations for how to manage overflow instead of having those experiencing homelessness moving into MLK Park. They had suggested that we use the existing structure to address that. In terms of the main street corridor, this was a committee that had several recommendations and we can talk about this. I'm not sure how helpful some of these pieces have been now, but I'd love to hear from all of you. The city, they added more no loitering signs. There were more garbage cans and trash patrolling done in areas of feeding. There were more posters handed out to city center partnership about how to address homelessness. They urged the city to pursue vacant properties. And then they talked a lot about the blue store which is the store right across the Elmwood and Main Corridor, which has continued to be able to sell single serving alcohol, which has led to some of the increase in alcohol consumptions and substance use around that business. And they urged in 2013 for us to look at ways in which to halt single serving alcohol. And then there was an emphasis put on the Mock or the Bidlands Area Coalition of Homelessness to make sure that they continue to do a point in time estimate which estimates the number of people experiencing homelessness and really launch a public awareness campaign of the different services that are available in Columbia. The Meals and Feeding Subcommittee, they suggested that we have fixed locations for meals and feeding, which we do. They suggested restricted times for these feedings because there were so many feedings that were overlapping or were right after each other. And then they also suggested discouraging the continued activity of outdoor meal providers and enforcing and revising city regulations to ensure that they are feeding only in fixed locations to help with some of the issues around trash. And then lastly, the Sanitation Subcommittee explored options for public sanitation. They did not include specific recommendations, but said that they were talking with Savannah and Asheville at the time to look at models for having more public bathrooms and sanitation options. This was in 2013 and many of these issues we've continued to talk about. I'd love to hear from all of you about your reactions to some of these recommendations and if there are some of these that you think we should continue to pursue. Bustles, one issue that, the blue story is a major issue. We fought that tooth and nail when they tried to allow to open and sell alcohol. And it actually, I mean I had to testify before the Department of Revenue and so forth and for a year or two, it was, they were not allowed to sell alcohol and somehow or another, I think by hiring more expensive lawyers or something, they were allowed to open and it has been a major problem ever since and the single serving alcohol from that and El Chippo and other places is a major problem and I think that is an issue that perhaps council could deal with by ordinance and I would suggest that the single serving issue, I think is an issue, that is certainly one. The other issue I was gonna comment on was public sanitation. There has been some success on that. I don't need to be jumping ahead, but the city has put in, there's somewhat controversial and not very pretty, but the city has put in some Port of Johns and there have been some maintenance issues over the years and so forth, but I think anybody that works in the Main Street District would say it's better than it used to be. It has created a 24 hour place where people can do what people need to do. I think there are better solutions. I just went to Austin, Texas recently and asked them what they do and they have installed one which actually another committee recommended called the Portland Lou. Yes, so I went to Portland to go visit the Lou. Okay, well it's a beautiful thing, also very expensive. Very, the maintenance costs are over $250,000. And that's really the issue. That's exactly what I heard in Austin. They work extremely well, but they're extremely expensive. So I just wanted to share that with you. They really like them, but they're also very expensive. And again, we're talking about solutions. So that's something I'd like to put down and right now we're just brainstorming potential things and we'll see what's feasible, but the Portland Lou was something that was very interesting to see so many cities adopt and for those of you all that are not familiar, I'm happy to share more information about that model that's been successful in some cities comparable to us in terms of size. Any other reactions? I had a question actually. To be curious to know what were the barriers in 2013 to getting some of these recommendations? I mean, that's a great question and I can try and find out from folks that were on this committee. Some of it is probably that we all, it's very easy to continue to work in silos and it's easy when something ends to just be like here's your report and not think about it. Others is also probably resources, but that's a great question, Alison. I'll definitely check with folks that were on this committee. I want to speak to the sanitation piece. During COVID, they had the hand washing stations all around downtown near the Calhoun area and they went away. I'd like to see maybe those come back. I think that was a great resource. Any other reactions? I think it's a great question. I think really every one of those areas has been touched in one way or another since that committee brought forward those recommendations. I inherited police department post recommendations, but Warrant Shelter has certainly been massaged and worked over and over again and it's not perfect, but it's certainly has been an important resource for us, Mange, and the situations with homeless individuals and inclement weather. Main Street Border, as was stated, I mean, it's changed. I mean, we've seen some of resurgence here lately, but the complaints that we had related to people relieving themselves, it's been a pretty dramatic shift, actually, but again, we've got Porter-Johns, rather, our business district, so it's not the greatest thing to look at. The feeding, man, I'd be awesome if this group could come up with some solution there. We have not been able to get our arms wrapped around that, in my opinion, from my perspective. And that leads to a lot of trash issues. You can have all the trash cans you want throughout the city, but you gotta build a service, those cans, and some of them are cans, the city fits out, some of them are cans that individual businesses put out, but we still have feedings that occur throughout the day, every day, at various places, some scheduled, probably more, or the same not scheduled or even more not scheduled. And again, it's people trying to do the right things for the right reasons, but it's hard to, even with the best efforts, we have seen that it's nearly impossible to coordinate that, for some reason, and as soon as you, and inevitably, there'll be a problem that'll pop up and we'll have to address it through enforcement, and then we may move that, but it just moves it somewhere else or some other location steps up and says you can use my parking lot. So it's, that continues to be a problem, but I think it is fair to say that all these areas have been touched in one way or another with various successes. So hopefully we can build on those successes. Those are all important areas. Chief, when you say that you wanna, we're having a problem coordinating those areas. First, I think that problem can be solved likely through some type of technological innovation or a website or something where all the providers, once we get them all in the room, all the people that want to feed, if they do it regularly, can coordinate that website. So not only do the homeless know, but the police know, and so that the police can be there when those feedings take place. If, well, not necessarily that you have to be there, but that you guys know where those places are so that we can have better coordination. I'm not gonna put any more. United Way, who is our homeless provider, does have that schedule of and tried based on these recommendations to create kind of that standard feeding. But you all know that we have lots of churches and nonprofits and other kind of groups that are not traditionally in the provider community, but want to do something kind for their neighbors. And so these kind of come up ad hoc and there's no way to be able to capture all of these things that are happening until after they happen and we get a phone call about there's trash or there's bags of clothes that were left behind and we're not really sure what group was here, but they were here. And so that's been, and I know, and I was able to see that schedule and United Way did a great job of trying to kind of organize where the feedings were and what time, but we know that the reality is there's much more happening. That is kind of tangential and happens on its own. I understand that, but I'm not saying that people can't feed. I'm not saying that, but giving maybe the city or through city ordinance some type of 24 hour notice or something before you just go and be, because you usually know the day before unless it's like you had a church picnic and we got all this food left over and then, but even then you would still let the city know. I like that. I really like the idea of the 24 hour notice because oftentimes, yeah, folk, they don't tell us and they decide to maybe go to a park or a public place and I like that idea. Appreciate you thinking of that. Thank you. Thank you for the story. Dr. Buston, it sounds really cold and really hot, but there's a major difference from when I moved to Columbia, South Carolina in 88 to what we have today, case in point. 88, the only place that that food was Salvation Army when it was right across from the strong Thunderville. Out of the gospel mission, you had the church on Washington Street and you had on Sunday, the church on Senate Street. So they've been around for, since bathroom. The difference is that Salvation Army back then didn't let you take food out. Out of the gospel mission didn't let you take food out. They would, on Monday through Friday, on Washington Street, what they do is they get the little sandwich and they wrap it up and they put it in their little pocket so they can have something for later. And on Sunday, because there was nobody else feeding, the church on Sunday would give them a bag of lunch. So normally on Sunday, you would see the little white bags somewhere around the city. But since that time, you got massive churches you have law firms, because I remember McVellinger or whatever, what he get out there and feel the fault and put out a spread like it was Thanksgiving every Sunday. And what would happen is they put them in the little white trays, right? That's what y'all talking about? The little white tray? Yeah. If you don't feed them, you don't have it. I like your idea. Coordinated at a certain area or moving away from the city. Moving from the main corridors because if they're downtown, you know what they want to do. Then you may have seen it even this far away. They got the little thing and they sitting there eating it, throwing it down. Now you got trash in front of your business. But if I don't bring it there, then it's not left there. Gotta stop it. Coordinated at times, but stop it, but still let the main people still do what they've been doing for the last garden as to how many years. But all the extra, stop it. Tell me something that you can't come downtown and feed the homeless. We're not having it. Because if you do, this is what's gonna happen. You ready to go to work. How many times have you been called to the transit station because somebody was out there feeding somebody, trying to be nice and all of a sudden there's a disruption at the transit station. I'm sorry, I get to it every time. That's right. So it's why we stopped it there and then they went right across the street to the church. So it's just the, and then. But if the city says you can't do it. You can't give notice to it. Or you can't find it because nobody likes to pay the ticket, right? And if the find is empty, then we have something different. I appreciate that and I will just, I will note on behalf of Theresa Knox, our city attorney who did mention that there have been several cities that have tried this approach. The one thing we do have to keep in mind is unfortunately in many of those cases, these groups sued and they won on the rights of the First Amendment to be able to feed. So there are creative ways in which we can encourage and help people understand those unintended consequences. But that is also the reality is we will legally probably not be able to just say you can't feed at all. Thank you. I knew there was somebody here from the, would you mind repeating that on the mic for those that are virtual? Jacqueline Pavlichek, city attorney's office. The city of Columbia does not regulate churches pursuant to the First Amendment. And so those are problematic there. But there have been numerous lawsuits largely based in the First Amendment, whether it's speech or religious. And the city of Columbia cannot have an official policy that would find them for that because that would expose them. That's helpful, that's helpful to hear. I mean, but I appreciate, you know, I think another strategy that's come out is continuing to find ways in which we can help people understand some of those, those unintended consequences. Dr. Bussell. I'll have you, and then Ms. Gelton, and then we will actually then afterwards move into your presentation. Yes, that's correct. They're not doing it in their churches, but they're doing it on the public street. Or filling hearts. We have a place designated that if you want to feed them, you can come down here, put your name on the list, and come on down here and feed them. And don't allow it to go in, to go stuff. You know, they have to be fed there, all government is focused there, and they go on about their business. Yes or no? No, I appreciate that very much. And maybe looking at potential policies around the waste itself and the to-go containers could be something that helps us get around some of the issues with the trash that's left behind. Ms. Gelton. Solution is we all get together and let's help these people have a place of their own where they can feed themselves. That's interesting. Like several states have done it. Matter of fact, I have a presentation that I hope to be able to show how so many cities have gotten together with social workers, community programs, and the city that they live in to help have tiny homes where each person have their own facility, their own sleeping quarters, and they're able to put their belongings in it. You know, usually they just have their clothes. And then they set up like bathrooms, they have bathrooms there, they have social workers, they have all the resources these people need in order to go out and live on their own. Eventually, Dr. Brasso mentioned a lot of money that's been put out for bathrooms and things like that. These could be places where these people, and what I'm talking about, you can use recyclables to help these people. And they can also help themselves by helping to build these places. It's been done. It's right on YouTube. So many different cities. Like I said, if I get a chance, I'll be able to give you all some more information about how this is done. I appreciate that. And so with the last 30 minutes left, we wanna give about 10 minutes or so to Tracy, who's gonna give us a presentation. One of the strategies we did not talk about but is and has been key to this task force is really understanding the landscape of our provider network. We know, again, that there are a lot of robust services, but maybe sometimes there are opportunities for us to strengthen it because we know what's happening right now is not working for all of the people experiencing homelessness. So we tasked Tracy and his organization to catalog these services and provide us with a presentation. This will also then flow into our conversation in July where we will prepare for our providers to be with us in August, where we can then have a set of questions or really make sure that we are on the same page for how we would like to work with and collaborate with our providers on developing and continuing to develop some of our solutions. So Tracy, I will pass it over to you. Great, thank you, Dr. Bussells. Tracy Dobbins with Inspiro Change. We entered a partnership with the city to do what's called the Social Services Advancement Project. So we realized from the very beginning that there were so many resources and so many organizations within Richland County, we really needed to get a handle to understand who's out there, who's doing what, how they're operating and kind of from a structural type of system. So our goal was to build a catalog, but something that was not just a, something that was just a list of organizations and what they do, but something that was actually usable and functional. So what we did was we used the program and we built it in a PDF and that right there you can see with the content. So we just built the contents easy to use where you can go through and you can select what functional area that you wanna go and see and it'll take you straight to that page. And then once you get into the actual catalog itself, it's broken down into functional area. So you've got your shelter, transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, going all the way through healthcare, substance abuse to include faith-based substance abuse programs and then going down through hygiene and then food serve and food pantries. So that was probably the biggest part of the tasking there. We ended up when it was all said and done, we ended up with 41 pages. And like I said, I think it's very user-friendly. When you go through the individual programs under the functional area, it gives you a small kind of blurb or eligibility blurb if you will that tells you what the program is, what the eligibility criteria is. If it's a shelter, it tells you how many beds are there and whatnot. And then you also have a link to the actual organization's website where you can explore that further if you'd like. So I don't wanna use the term one-stop-shop but I'll call it user-friendly. So we're very happy with that. When it was all said and done with 41 pages, we also ended up with 102 programs and services. And I don't say organizations, I say programs and services because there's a lot of organizations out there that have multiple services. So based on the functionality is where we listed them and we landed on 102. For shelter services, if you go to the next slide, please. Yeah, you can just see a breakdown of shelter. We included the IWC with that, which is seasonal. Transitional housing programs broken down by the demographic. They serve rapid rehousing. If you go to the next one, you've got your health care, behavioral health. We always list substance under health care. Veteran services, interesting enough, you think about this, we've got nine individual veteran services that are directly, and all of these services are directly related to somebody who is unsheltered or at risk. So it's not just a random service per se, but it's basically focused for that demographic. So interesting enough, nine veteran services. So if you think about it, if a person is unsheltered or is a veteran, you can put on top of all of those another nine additional services on top of that. So that's a healthy amount of services for somebody who's a veteran. The food security, the food serve, there's so many organizations out there and like you stress, Dr. Bussells, there's pop-ups, feedings here and there. Hey, meet me Tuesday type of stuff going on, but as far as hard organizations that are serving food or providing food, that's what you got a total of 33. And then also within the catalog itself, we have a mapping link where you can go and you can click into that and it'll map out all of those individual churches, feeding sites or whatever it is. So that's basically the first part of our project that we're really happy about. Interesting point as well. So with that 102 programs, we strictly focused in Richland County. So we're not even talking about the Lexington County, anything like that. So we're strictly focused on Richland County. So that's a lot of resources. So our next step or our continued work is we're gonna be evaluating and assessing the current social services delivery system within Richland County. You probably asking, what the heck does that mean? Well, that means that we're gonna be looking at how services are delivered. We're gonna be looking at the process. We're gonna be looking at the process from a big picture perspective, but we're also gonna be looking at it from a service level, which means case study. So we're gonna be working, and we've already started working with people, where we're gonna be going through a process with them and we're gonna be evaluating where the challenges lies or where the gaps are in service or what the needs are based on the resource and how those get connected. So we realize that even just from this catalog, we've got a lot of resources. We've got a lot of people in need that this gap in between here is what we're gonna be analyzing and looking at and seeing how we can better bring those together efficiency wise. And then from that, we're gonna move into the latter part, which is we're gonna be providing to the task force recommendations on potential restructuring or even consolidation of services that we think would better the delivery to these individuals and that would bring some efficiencies to the system because I think right now that we've got a system that it could use some work and I'm a big believer of never accepting something for just the way it is. We can always make it better. So that's what we're gonna be looking at. So we've got our catalog, we've got our organizations or programs. Now we're assessing how they're integrated with clients and then from that, we're gonna produce an assessment of potential solutions and efficiencies that we can bring to the task force. Tracy, thank you so much for this comprehensive overview and work. For the task force members, the catalog itself is available in your packet at the end. We plan on releasing this to the public as well and share it with those that helped you in gathering this information, including our providers. Going back to some of our discussions, you can see the numerous pages of providers, 102 services specifically just in Richland County, but yet we are still seeing some of these challenges I think continues to reinforce that we have the puzzle pieces but it's not put together in a way that's working. And so I hope that you all will take the time to review these and we will certainly, from the city's perspective, share this great work with the community over the next couple of weeks as a starting point to just let people know that it's not that we don't have a compassionate city because it's reflective of all the providers that are here but there are still a lot of challenges that we're facing and we need to revisit how we're providing some of these supports. So with that, are there any questions for Tracy? I wanted to ask Tracy, the quality assurance piece because there are a lot of transitional houses out there, I'll just say transitional houses. They say they are transitional houses but they're not. And they bad service all along. Is there anyone out there evaluating if that should come off the list or if we should not refer people to these places? Are you looking at any type of quality assurance? There's no real quality control, if you will, within that system. People have the, people start sober living homes or whatever they want under an organizational name, which they're a legitimate organization and they're chartered to perform whatever service that they do. But there is no real quality control piece of it where somebody's going around and validating who's doing what and who's doing it correctly. No, there's not. That would be my concern, Dr. Vosles, that we will refer people to places that are not gonna make them successful and no one has gone to these places to kind of vet them to make sure they're doing what they say they're supposed to do. And I think from the city's perspective, there's a real opportunity going back to one of the strategies I was identified. The one million that we're investing directly towards professional services, I am in full support of accountability metrics and outcomes that need to be monitored over time and treating these contracts with providers as grants where we're able to see through a logic model or some sort of model of what are you going to accomplish in the short term and in the long term. And that hasn't happened. So I, and as a data person, I think that that's really important. And then that's a question I'd like to table for the providers is what are the accountability mechanisms that you all have with each other? And where is the quality control and how do you all kind of work with each other to identify some of that? Because I'm also aware that there are a lot of federal opportunities from HUD coming down the pipeline to address homelessness. And we wanna make sure that we are receiving those funds but that they are actually making a difference in our community. So I know that there are certain touch points that evaluation has to happen as a part of those grants. And so I think for our discussion with them, it'd be helpful to hear what those look like. With the last kind of 20 minutes or so, I wanted to open it up. I know we have some folks that are here that want to do public comment. Ms. Gelton wanted to share some of her ideas as well. And so we'll move into that and then we will close. But the last thing I did wanna share is there are three articles in this document. I'm giving you guys some homework. Please take some time to read them. One of them is an op-ed from a local business owner. The others are two kind of promising examples from other cities and we will kind of circle back to those pieces at our next meeting given that we've had a lot of great discussion and I didn't want to interrupt that. So with that, Erica, we can move into a comment of public discussion and is there anybody that has signed up to speak? Yes ma'am, Ms. Diane. We should have no homeless. My thing is you need to have people that they wanna roof over a tree. Once you start with that, give them a chance. Basically, I'm homeless myself from the flood but it wasn't for my mother. I would have nowhere to stay. I could've been just like you. So I feel for you, because if I didn't have that, I would be without you. But my thing is give them a shelter. Give them pride, a job. Show them, okay, with the mental problem, have a place where they can go. It's touching. I was sitting back there listening. I wanted to cry, because I know I'm there. And I gotta sit up and have a stroke. And right now, I'm traveling 55 miles. Just these people walking down at the park, Finlay Park, it's a whole lot of people out there that they need our help. That's good right there, but they need it now. The tiny homes, great idea. The other thing that you was talking about, great idea. But they need shelter now. I don't feel like you need to be in there a couple of hours and go out. You need a shelter 24 hours. Well, you need a shelter 24 hours. We can talk all day. I've been there on 2013. They try, but they need shelter now. It's gonna get cold. It's hot now. Just a little place to lay your hand and go to the bathroom. Give them some kind of pride. It's hurting my heart, really. You know, it's hurting my heart. And I feel, because I know how I feel. When I've seen that water come into my house, it was over. I didn't have no money to go to buy no place else. But they need shelter now. And that will stop. If you give a person pride and you know, it feels good, you go out there and get a little job. Give them some kind of help. Help them with their little mental problem. That's all you need to do. Find a vacant building. The tiny homes, what you said. All this can be just wiped up. We're in, you're not ashamed. This shouldn't be happening. The more we do this, the more it's gonna be more homeless people. Thank you, Ms. Wiley. I appreciate it. Any other comments from the public? No one else has signed in. Okay. Ms. Skelton, would you like to give your presentation? Okay. Ms. Skelton, please grab the microphone. It's a solution to help anyone that is experiencing any type of homelessness, building a community of at least maybe 12, the 20 units. I want you to listen to this lady talking about how the city that she lives in, I think it's Seattle, or how the- Okay, so we'll share the video. I think we're having sound issues. But if you could just speak about it in the next few minutes. There's a lady in this video talking about how she went through the city to get money to help build these tiny homes. And the video really tells you all about it. I really wasn't prepared to really like emphasize on it. I just was given some information about it. And I wanted you all to see it and view it for yourselves. The overall thing is houses for the homeless. Okay, that's my intent to have a place like the lady said for the homeless to be able to go to every night and lay their heads down. I know that some people are gonna be hard to get off the streets. The video also talks about how this one man didn't wanna get off the streets. They told him that there was a place for him to go. But he was so used to sleeping on the streets that he just didn't believe that there was really any place for him. So the benefit is the resources on site, okay? They will have social workers right there on site that they can visit whenever they need to and need a job is right there on site. Per community, three different phases. The first phase would be to get the people living on the streets, sleeping on the streets, off the streets. That would be the first tiny home. Is what I wanted you to see. These are some of the tiny homes that they built for the homeless. But, and they only, they don't have bathrooms in them. All the facilities are outside of there as on a community property. And they have bathrooms, showers, and they have like a little dining room where they can go and eat. And they have meetings every week where they can meet and discuss any problems that they're experiencing. They do put people out, but it's after they have tried to help them tremendously before they put them out. They're also gated. They're fences around this whole community. So they can't go out of the community and they can't come in unless the guard at the gate allows them to come in. So, and they all eat together or either they can eat by themselves. They have microwaves and different things for the people to warm food up and cook and all. So the cost, like I said, we could use recyclables. This one, they look like they spent a lot of money doing this. The one that I wanted you to see, the first slide was showing you just little buildings that the homeless helped them build, the builders built. And a lot of builders are donating their time and their material to build these places. So that's my solution for getting people off the streets. And like I said, I'm here because I cannot stand to see people sleeping on the streets. I cry. I've helped try to give people food and because I saw this man sleeping on the street, it made me cry. And I went and asked him, I said, why are you here? I talked to the homeless. I try to find out why are they on the streets? Some of them don't have family. Some of them just came here from maybe Georgia and couldn't find a job or couldn't find, don't have any family here. They just wanted to be here for some reason. And some of them are on drugs, mental problems, so many issues. But the solution to helping them is give them the resources and a place to sleep. And like I said, there may be some, we might have to pretty much force to get in a place because they don't want to be off the streets. So I understand all of that. But let's do what we can do to help them. Thank you very much, Ms. Skelton. And I know you and I have talked about this, but we'll be following up. I know that there's some great examples of the tiny homes across the country. And so we will put that down as a potential solution and the committee will receive the link of the video that you can watch on your own time to learn a little bit more about what Ms. Skelton was presenting about. So with the last couple of minutes, I believe, Missy, did you wanna say anything? Thank you, Dr. Bussells. Actually, Chief really addressed a lot of what Ms. Farrell was mentioning about the 2013 study. And thanks for sharing that information. A couple of outcomes did come from that that were worked on. Obviously the mill share through the United Way coordination. There's actually a food share committee. We'll talk a little bit more about that. That could be a good point of topic during the August meeting with the providers. And of course, we did solicitation and now we have the Inclement Weather Center that's operated was two of those results here. And then a couple of other things, of course, that I mentioned through. We can speak to that. I think a little bit more as we get them in the future meetings. But we need to also, we'll talk as well about who all will be invited to the August meeting with regards to the service providers that you're expecting here. Absolutely, and we'll talk a little bit more at the July meeting about that structure. I want it to be an opportunity for all of you to get as many questions answered with the providers as possible. So I am gonna ask you to do a little bit of work before that meeting to send some of your questions over because we really, we don't want this to be just that a death by PowerPoint where they just give a presentation to sit down. We want this to be an interactive discussion for us to really have some of those hard conversations. So stay tuned on that. And we'll dedicate a lot of our July meeting to really thinking about some of those metrics, following up on some of the conversations that we've had and then really responding to some of the examples that we have seen from other cities. I'd love to hear your reactions on that as well. But I do want to thank you all. This was an incredible conversation and I appreciate everyone being open minded to having discussions about a difficult topic. So with that, I will pass it over to my colleague, Councilman McDowell, to close this out. What a good day to have a conversation and particularly this conversation and resolution of things that we could will very well institute and initiate as our city continues to grow and expand. Thank you all so much for taking your time, taking the time out of your schedules to come and be a part of this dialogue. Of course, I want to thank my colleague, Councilwoman Bussells. Thank you so very much for your leadership. Councilman Will Brennan could not be here today, but of course, I'm sure he senses and feel this conversation was very much needed within the confines of this community. We look forward to seeing you in July and August. It's gonna be an interesting time, I think. Thank you all so much. Thank you all for being here.