 back to Davis Media Access. Thanks for tuning in to The City Considerers. I'm Autumn Lab A Renaud, your host today. And with me are Davis Mayor Brett Lee and Mayor Pro Tem Gloria Partita. We're having a conversation about homelessness and a proposal for a homeless respite center here in Davis. So welcome Brett and Gloria. Thank you for having us. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for coming back. So homelessness is an issue everywhere and it's an issue, a growing issue and growing concern in our community. And I know that the city and the community have both adopted various projects and strategies to sort of address homelessness and try to help people. Let's talk about a few of those from the city's perspective. From the community we have, the community comes together on the interfaith rotating winter shelter and the H Street facility and things like that. But the city's been doing some other things and then we'll get to the proposal for the respite center. So one of the things that I've been aware of is I've seen people downtown sweeping the sidewalks and doing, and I believe that's through Pathways to Employment. So let's chat just briefly about that and let people know what that's about. Yeah, so Pathways to, Gloria can add in here obviously, Pathways to Employment is a program where we pay some folks who otherwise would not have some level of employment and we get them to do sweeping, tidying up, things like that. And the idea is that they're sort of regaining job skills so that ultimately they can go on and find other types of work. It's a small amount of funding but we're hoping that it actually leads to employment for a good group of people. And importantly I think that it is part of a broader program called Pathways. And so Pathways has a lot of different components to it which are, I think some of them come from the county, supported by the county, but it includes Ryan Collins who is our outreach through the police department. And so it's really important to be comprehensive when you're trying to address the homeless situation. And so Pathways to Employment is one component of that Pathways program. And the Davis Enterprise did a really nice write up on Ryan's work recently and one of the things they pointed out is that for the homeless population, if you have other issues going on, if you have mental illness or you're on the LGBTQI spectrum or you can get even more lost in the system. So I imagine that that one to one contact that he's provided has been really helpful. And yet we still have unmet need and which is where this proposal for a respite center comes in. So what is the proposal exactly? So the proposal's evolving slightly but the general idea was there were, also I'll just sort of tell you where the idea came from, I was, we have several sort of pieces came together you just can't help but notice that there are some people sort of camping out kind of in the rough under some trees or along the outskirts of the city of Davis in various sort of areas. We have a lot of neighbors who are complaining about the homeless camps. So for them, they see the trash, they see sort of people kind of living in under some trees and they write to complain to us. So we're aware of the issue. Perhaps I would say we view it slightly differently. And then we also have folks, shopkeepers downtown are writing to us and we also see it firsthand where you have homeless people sleeping in front of storefronts and it's creating a challenge for the shopkeepers when they get up to go open up their stores in the morning and there's sort of people and there's sort of trash. And so these things sort of came together along with the fact that we had some pretty serious heavy rains out there this past winter. And you think, gosh, here are these people getting rained on for three or four days straight. Certainly as a community, we can do better. But that's not to dismiss sort of the neighbors' concerns about sort of the trash and all these other sort of aspects about sort of people sort of camping in random places. And so the idea with the respite center was twofold. It was to provide some well-defined overnight sort of camping space which would be monitored by the city but it was also to provide some daytime amenities so that people could come and do their laundry, take a hot shower, come out of the cold and the rain and things like that. And one of the interesting things and really important things that the Interfaith Rotating Shelter does is it provides a place for people to spend the night. But during the day, they leave the churches that are the host. And they're often dropped off on the outside of downtown and the people have nowhere to go. Later that evening, they can go back and have their shelter at the church. But during the day, they're sort of, here he goes, see you in 12 hours. In some cases, people do like to go hang out downtown but I would guess in many cases, people would just prefer a nice safe place to go and sit where it's heated in the winter and air conditioned in the summer where they could watch TV or read a book and also a place where they could learn about the different benefits that they're entitled to. A good proportion of the people are actually entitled to benefits but because of the sort of the nomadic life that they're leading, it's hard for them to sign up and actually receive benefits. Ryan Collins has been a really big help for the city in that Ryan is that outreach person who actually talks to the homeless folks and helps try to connect them to different resources that might be available. And the idea with the respite center in terms of the daytime component, it's a place for people to go and not feel like they have to look over their shoulder in terms of having to move along but where they can just go and spend the day. And then also where they can go and find out about the services. And connect to the social services, yeah. This is a little disjointed in how I'm telling it but the county is also interested in helping with these folks. So the county has talked about coming over and providing some resources to help people sign up for the benefits they're eligible for. Great, a big problem in getting services out to people when they are transient is that you can't get those services to them and the services are really important to get to them. And I think that it's also really important in the relationship that the community has with people who are living in our community because they are citizens, they are people who are living in our community. They're also Davisites like everyone else is that you begin to have friction and conflict because the shopkeepers are the people who are shopping downtown or living next door or someone who's camping block away is that then you begin to develop this us and them mentality. And that is not just from, I think the citizens, it's also from the people who are unhoused, they feel like they are not in relationship with the people, with the place that they're living. And I think if you did have more structure around how people are interacting with each other, it would alleviate a lot of that friction and it would make us a better community. There's the structure aspect, there's also the humane aspect. I mean, I'm aware that in very hot weather last summer, for example, the city opens cooling centers and I expect it's for that reason and for people who maybe live in a place that doesn't have air conditioning, that kind of thing where people can be safe and they can be treated as humans, as fellow citizens as Gloria said. So to some degree would be an extension of that effort but making it a more year round. So where might it be located? And I imagine all of this is under discussion still and how would it be financed? So the council took up the discussion of this in a general concept way and the council sort of said they like the idea and the ask was really give us initial sort of budget amount just as a ballpark figure and then can we have permission to look at city-owned sites? And so the initial budget is targeted at $80,000 and we do have sort of council support for the idea of looking at some city sites where there might be some capacity. One important thing about the respite center is it's meant to be a pilot. It's meant to be a pilot and so the duration is meant to be for under one year. We're trying to prove the concept that this will be a benefit, that it can be done relatively inexpensively, that the community will view it positively. So we talk about the people who are upset about the legal camping around the perimeter and the trash. Sure and the impact on the downtown. So that should be reduced in terms of that impact in terms of the downtown shops instead of people sort of just milling around with nowhere to go. A lot of them probably will choose to go to this respite center, but we prove the concept and then we can hand it off to a nonprofit or various other entities to run. But I think it's important to take that first step because there have been several groups and there are currently several groups that are trying to do something but they've been working on these ideas for years. One of the important pieces about the respite center is we want to have this up and running in months, not years, but it's meant to be a short duration, prove the concept, show that it can work and then hand it off. But the council recently, so rather than getting too far ahead of the council, it was important that we brought the idea back and sort of made sure that all five of us were comfortable with the direction we were heading. And so long roundabout way of answering your question, the idea is a city parcel to be determined and then a rough level of budget. And so we're expecting to have a proposal back before the council in about a month with some sites identified as possibilities. So right now it's at the staff level and they're working through the details. They're working through the details. And there are other pots of money that are out there if we do have to absolutely go above the $80,000 initial, but we are really trying to keep it there. But it's also good to, I think, do that outreach to other entities because it is a community issue and it should be addressed that way. And I also think it's really important that timeliness is important because you can talk about something forever and it's challenging to get things to come to fruition, but I think unless you have someone who says, make this happen within a certain amount of time that things tend to drag, I read an article recently where Long Beach decided that they were gonna do account of homeless people and they were gonna do it in 48 hours and they managed that. They counted, I think, 700 people and then set a timeline that they were gonna have something up and running that they were gonna have so many beds. I think it was in a month, do you remember this? It was amazing. It was amazing that they said, these are the parameters. This is what our goal is and they did it. And so I think that unless you absolutely set goals, you can kind of, you know. Sure, and we have many, we have such a good base in this community between organizations like Davis Community Meals and Steak and the Food Bank and all the whole faith community, but I think the reason things take time and I'm speaking from the experience of running a small nonprofit is we're strapped for cash and resources and so the city push may be just the thing to head it in that direction and pilot it. So we're down to just a couple of minutes to wrap this up. Any two things, any obstacles that you're concerned about and where can people get more info? I see on the city webpage, but. Yeah, the city will have some information once we have the next council meeting where we're discussing that. So I guess a couple things. So imagine I said we're gonna look to house maybe 10 to 15 people. The natural response for the people who are involved in this area is like, that's too few, we need 40 or 50. Well, the thing about it is we're trying to do something sooner rather than later and this is not intended to cure or solve the homelessness issue. The homelessness challenge is multifaceted and there's not one solution. And so we have a lot of good nonprofits doing a lot of work. This is meant to just address a piece of the puzzle. And it's a pilot. And it is a pilot. One of the things in terms of challenges is imagine that I said there's gonna be 40 or 50 people living on this site. Understandably, neighbors would be concerned. They would be, wow, I'm not sure that's gonna be good. I'm worried about the safety and what about crime? What about all these unknowns? And sometimes when we're confronted with an unknown, we assume the worst. So I think it's important from the pilot perspective is to show that this type of thing can be well run and the neighbors should feel comfortable with it and recognize that it actually makes the situation better. So we have to prove to the community that it can be done and then in the future we'll be given more latitude in terms of the size and scope. But initially it's gonna be relatively small because we wanna get it up and running and we don't wanna create a lot of anxiety in the community. So I would say that would be one big challenge. That's probably the biggest. That's the biggest challenge. Fear of being known, right? Not knowing what's gonna happen. And people thinking, yeah, that's a great idea. Not on my side of it. Not in my back area side, exactly, okay. There's actually, I don't know whether we have time. You may have been reading about all these other communities that are moving pretty rapidly on sort of these organized camping. Recently the ninth circuit court came out with this ruling which basically says if somebody's camping on public property, you can't require them to move unless you can tell them where they can move to. And this is a dramatic change. Before it'd be, oh, you're illegally camping, you have to get out of here, that is not allowed anymore. If you want to say, you can't camp here, we have to be able to tell them where they can move to. So it's really gonna be hoof communities to have some kind of organized effort along these lines. We wanna be proactive because I think it'll be fairly chaotic if we don't start taking some steps to have an organized program in place. Well, I really look forward to hearing what happens with this and I'll be watching the council meetings to see what's going on there. And I hope that we'll be able to have you back and talk about it maybe six months in and see how the pilot is going. Any last thoughts? No, I think that's it. All right, well, thank you both for your time today and for always making time to come into Davis Media Access. We appreciate it. Always fun. And thank you for tuning in. You can catch an archive of all the City Considered Shows online at dctv.davismedia.org and we also have a YouTube channel under Davis Media Access and we funnel things that way too. So check it out. Thanks for tuning in.