 Welcome! On Capitol Conversations we bring you movers and shakers from our state legislature to talk about what's going on at the Capitol and how it affects us here in Longmont. Today we have State Representative Jonathan Singer elected from House District 11 which includes South Longmont. Representative Singer is also a candidate for Boulder County Commissioner in this fall's election. I'm Marsha Martin and this is Capitol Conversations. Representative Singer today is here to talk about the nexus of public health and human services with criminal justice at the state and local level. Representative Singer, can you please introduce this topic for us? I'll do my best and thanks for having me here too. I know we're on a tape delay here but it is Super Sunday and so I can't think of a topic more super than what is costing our state, our county or local governments the most and what we can do to fix it. So you know I tell people you know we're in the middle of an affordable housing crisis, we're in the middle of a mental health crisis and the thing that's in the middle all of that is our criminal justice system. So in Colorado and even in Boulder County I tell people we do a great job of housing our folks feeding them and taking care of their medical needs in the most expensive least humane way and that's through our jail and prison system and so we have a chance really to be at a turning point where Democrats and Republicans and independents are actually working together to say we can actually save our taxpayers money by actually investing in these services upfront to be able to make sure that people have a safe place to live, access to medical care, mental health care so they don't enter the criminal justice system or once they've exited the criminal justice system they get those supports they need so they don't come back. I'd much rather spend $10,000 a year of taxpayer money on a whole bevy of people than $30,000 a year on just one person warehousing them. Well actually we think it's more than $30,000 a year at least here in Longmont so I'm with you on those objectives. We have a hard time housing a hard time here in Longmont with transitional housing which is there as you said two ways for that to flow there are people falling out of stable housing because they can't pay their rent or because they get in trouble or because they have a medical problem and then we have people coming out of the criminal justice system or the juvenile system and not being able to find a place to stay. What are you doing to address the latter? So there's people coming out of the criminal justice system so I think you know what's really exciting at the legislature we actually have a bill right now that I've authored that has bipartisan support and is focused on on that issue of what's going on in our criminal justice system. So right now we know that even in our Boulder County jail over half of the jail population is struggling with some sort of substance use disorder issue or mental health problem. So what we can do is once we've identified those things is start to figure out ways to transition those folks. Now the taxpayers in Boulder County have said that we're going to focus on this locally through a transitional program through our jails. It's a good step in the right direction. I think we can do one better and that's actually providing new grants for local nonprofits, city governments and county governments to be able to implement their own transitional programs and build capacity for those things. And so the most exciting part about this bill for me is really we're going to be focusing it on rural and frontier counties that doesn't sound like Boulder that doesn't sound right. But this is the thing and people in Boulder know this and this is where it gets back to transitional. Highly resource counties such as Boulder or even Denver see a massive influx of people from other parts of the state because the resources to address these issues aren't there. And so people want to live in Wellington. They want to live in the communities they grew up in whether it is in Peonia or whatever other part of it or Sterling whatever other part of the state they're in. And so what can we do as a state to say okay you do live in this really sparsely populated area. It's really hard for any community agency or city government to apply for grants because they're just keeping their heads above water with as little resources as they have. An infusion of anywhere between $10,000 and $100,000 could make all the difference in that community. Decrease the number of people coming to suburban and urban areas looking for help and actually allow people to live in the communities that they feel like they belong in. So that's that's a part of it. The second part is to say well we're prioritizing those dollars to rural and frontier communities. If there there's a lack of interest or availability or ability to deal with it let's bring those dollars into our local communities. And so there's a group here in Longmont called the Reentry Project. A lot of people are familiar with it. They primarily work with women leaving the criminal justice system. And what they've done is very much what this bill will do. It creates a supportive housing system and a lot of people they hear the buzzword but don't know always know what it means. What this is is it's saying we're going to find ways to not only provide housing for you but if you're struggling with mental health issues. If you're struggling with the fact that you've been in jail for 20 years and don't know how to use a cell phone. We're going to get you the fine-tuned case management services that you need to get yourself back on your feet. And then once again work in a transitional situation where we say you have subsidized housing you have a case manager. And as soon as as soon as we can we're going to get get you to a point where you don't need the those services anymore. Basically turn you into a productive member of society. Turn you into a taxpayer some people like to say. And but that looks different in different communities. In this community I happen to know that we've got waiting lines for people to get into that kind of transitional program that you're talking about. And we also have a problem with people who are in those transitional situations that are staying because they can't find a place to transition out of them. What is your program going to do about that because ultimately the implementation part always does seem to fall on the municipalities. It falls on municipalities and counties or on local nonprofits to figure out the middle part of that. And in my opinion actually I think that's some of the best places to do it. If bureaucrats in Denver are trying to figure out what works best in Longmont and they're not living here they're probably going to get it wrong more often than not. And so what we need to do is open up those streams of dollars for local community agencies, county and city governments to be able to figure these things out. In a perfect world you know we would actually just have enough housing for the people that need it. And I actually think that's that's a possibility that people haven't really thought of that the housing is a basic human right. I have always thought so. Well you know I think most of the rest of the country does but if you look at what the Reagan administration did in the 1980s there was this massive cut into housing services followed by a massive shift of people into our jails and prisons across the country. Because of the state hospitals, state mental hospitals all being unfunded. Well it's de-institutionalization but it was also literally tens of millions if not billions of dollars that were cut from housing and urban development's budget. So you have less resources going into one place and that all of that shifted into another which was our criminal justice system if we want to use the word justice in this case. So really this is a paradigm shift where we have to swing the pendulum back and say this is a basic right and the funds are available if we use it the right way. So what's the right way and where are the funds going to come from under the program you're proposing? So there's a couple of grant programs actually in the state. There's a housing development grant program that was partially created through our marijuana tax cash fund. There's also we'll probably be looking at using the general fund if Tabor has any money left over and so these are really tough conversations to have. The third thing is that we're going to use these grants to allow local governments and communities to build capacity. This is the grants from your bill that you're working on and that we're talking about. That's correct. Does it have a name yet, a number? It has a bill number and if I could remember any of my bill numbers I would say them. But you know around this place what I just tell people is you know this is Jonathan Singer's bill to focus on transitioning our criminal justice system for housing services. Well I read a bill like what you're describing and I don't remember its number either but I did see that it had grants in it which made me feel good until you said we're prioritizing cities that aren't one mind. So how do you get a piece of this pie? Well actually so reentry initiative is already applied because this builds off of a program that we helped start several years ago and it's been building on itself in different ways and so actually the the short answer is call my office and call the Department of Local Affairs. We'll go through the division of housing and those dollars are available now. They're available now. You know this bill is in process. The bill builds on on an existing program in dollars that have never been fine tuned for our rural communities but we have local area agency nonprofits doing this and this is so important as well I'm sharing the message right now and this is the communications I've been having with our local nonprofits as well. These programs are out there sometimes we just need to know where to look and so I'm putting up the red flag right now. Okay so what we beg dola on a regular basis on an annual basis I would say what new money comes from the bill that you're working on? So it's right now assuming it passes it's a pocket of about three million dollars and so those would be new dollars added on to a grant program that already has actually several million dollars in it and so what you can do as a city council member as a member of the community is reach out to my office and we can talk to the division of housing and say what's the disposition of those funds today what's left over and what's the next grant round and you know it's one of those challenges that as much as we can get our money out there we need to make sure that the message is out there as well. But what's the money earmarked for that is is it for case managers is it to build housing is it to subsidize housing what does it do? It's in all the above actually and so really it's a proposal that you would have to send I love talking about grant proposals on on Super Sunday so it's a grant proposal program where you would talk about how you would provide supportive housing for your population so this isn't just building new buildings it isn't just providing vouchers or subsidizing other programs it's about doing that in a continuum where individual case management services are also provided so if you want to do that through county services if you wanted to do that through area agency nonprofits those we want to have a maximum flexibility with those dollars so we can fine tune this to those communities so those those are important questions and there's no one-size-fits-all answer. So the the innovative thing about your bill then is what does it does it provide a more streamlined method of coordination or allocation or is it basically just a funding bill that that sequesters some money for these purposes? Well here's the most exciting part of this is it really it really does a handful of things one is it builds on a program that exists targets it to rural communities but it also says we need to collect data and research to see how many people are actually succeeding how many people are returning back to our jails or back to our prisons the more research that we can do with this the more we can show there's real savings but preliminary research on these types of programs shows basically anywhere between a one to seven and one to twelve return on investment so we're actually saving money while building people's lives back up and the return on investment comes from what? Well if you have someone who is leaving the criminal justice system unfortunately some in some numbers say half those people go back right and so if we're not housing people through our jails spending 30,000 40 50,000 a year we can be really saving money also it takes into account things like payroll tax income tax property tax when people become functioning members of society they're literally contributing back to the base and building on a system where we can continue to grow and serve people better so when you say they go back there are two places that are back for them to go one is recidivism where they get back into the criminal justice system and the other one is homelessness where they become free people but can't find a job or housing or any of those things um we know that um in Longmont a homeless person costs the city between 30 and a hundred thousand dollars a year depending on whether they're sick or well and uh so that certainly is a cost but which when you are calculating that cost which kind of back were you talking about back into criminal justice or back into homelessness well and yeah I you know I say it's uh people experiencing homelessness because hopefully they it's not uh hopefully people are not homeless for for their entire lives and so for for those who are experiencing homelessness really it can be the criminal justice system you can go back into homelessness and you know what Medicaid is footing the bill and those are some of our highest utilizers of emergency rooms once again our taxpayers are paying for that so it may not be it may be the city it's probably not the city if it's Medicaid with the exception of maybe a law a touch from law enforcement but then you know one visit to the ER that can easily be anywhere between one and ten thousand dollars so so we're calculating we're calculating costs to the state when I say that but it could be Medicaid costs it could be state prison costs um and it could also but there's also costs associated with county jails and obviously city services so it it runs the gamut and um you know this is something interestingly enough that even uh conservative Republicans go look I I don't believe in subsidizing people's housing but I really don't believe in subsidizing people's housing in our jails and our prisons where you're limiting people's freedom even more and costing us even more so we've we found a way to thread that needle and it's um it's something that the more we describe this to people you know I say housing is a fundamental right if I tell people on the on the right wing side okay you don't believe with me with this one issue well how do you feel about spending 30 to 50 thousand dollars of your money on these issues in another venue I usually get a pretty resounding now um sometimes when I ask questions like that it's just make them go away um but that doesn't ever happen of course oh it goes away it goes away into a place where unfortunately our sheriffs and our deputies are our warehousing folks and creating almost uh you know it's almost a boiler room or uh situation where you're overcrowding our jails and prisons our jefferson county jail is now trying to figure out how to let people out of jail faster because they're so overcrowding well interestingly um while trying to prepare for this interview I asked our deputy chief of police about the situation about the nexus between public housing and public services and law enforcement and he said that he was very concerned about solving the problem by having few by by making it easier to get out of jail when you're not really ready to be on your own so uh someone has mental health issues that are unresolved and they don't have a support system that allows them to get access to mental health services it is a problem for them to be out of jail yeah um how do are you doing anything to address that to make that to make that process make more sense absolutely and actually I think our county has done a pretty good job of stepping up and it's something we should work on expanding you know there is everything from being in jail to work release to actually making sure that we um are working on supportive housing issues so many people are we are getting stuck in this never-ending cycle of being released on parole or probation and then for minor infractions being sent right back and so what you do is you do upfront case management services with people before they leave let's get you on Medicaid let's get you talking to a job counselor have you um have you thought about what your plan is to stay um stay clean and sober um I'll give you one really important example actually um people struggling with opioid illnesses or opioid dependence um if you're in jail it's much harder to access illegal drugs but as soon as you get out and those stressors start to hit um if you don't have an outlet and you and someone chooses to use again the likelihood of overdose is greatly increased because the tolerance has gone down and now people are getting sick they're overdosing and they're dying and so making sure that we have the right transitional sources and resources including medication and counseling at that front end is so critical um I'll say one other thing actually um we're working on another bill just on on just on the medical issue okay well I know that you have an opioid for me the burning question is where those case managers coming from because the the way I have understood the problem is is that people aren't being transitioned out of jail because the counties can't provide enough case managers well I mean that's that's arguably one of the worst reasons not to release people well but not your fault and and so what we're doing is I'll work backwards and say we're working on a continuum of care right now and so I'll give you an example I have another bill that's just looking at data and so let's say I have health insurance and there's a mental health issue that ends up lands me in jail I now lose my insurance and I'm on the jails program if that jail doesn't have access to my electronic health records they might go well we don't know what's gonna what's gonna best serve me struggling with anxiety or depression you get put on the wrong medication and all of a sudden that exacerbates into an issue at the jail and all of a sudden they send me to prison well in prison if they don't have access to those electronic records in jail wash rinse repeat and so what we're working on is creating that continuum of care to make sure that people's records follow them follow each other so we're providing the right services and the other thing is there is not going to be a strong state program for this there will be dollars not enough but there will be dollars that will be sent out to local communities for them to figure out how these resources are going to work best now lawn moth has a fairly strong program for doing the kind of work you're you're talking about although it's less transitioning people out of of jail and prison and more about keeping them out of of the criminal justice system um and getting them into drug rehab systems and and uh i wanted to say this at one point when you um uh mentioned well maybe it's one touch from the from the local municipal police force because the transition programs that we provide have a lot of touches in them yeah they belong they involve getting our police and their associates in terms of mental health services uh get to know the whole the population that is living on the streets and try to transition them into the right program so we're about out of time but i want to give you a chance to to wrap up maybe by saying well if we're longmont and we're not rural um and we have these programs that are inadequately funded but working pretty well as far as we can get them to reach um how does that work are we gonna are we gonna are you going to be doing stuff for us the data thing is going to work for us right well i will definitely be doing stuff um so so i think this this is so important i think that anything that we do at the state level is not going to be enough and we need to send a strong message to our community that if we value people's lives and we consider um housing and healthcare a moral human right we need to create our own system look for other state and federal dollars to flow in to help support that but we're going to have to go back to our taxpayers as a city as a county and say this is the new plan here's where we're going to go here's how we're going to build it and we're going to make sure that we're no longer warehousing people who are struggling with mental health issues in our jails we're actually going to be providing the right services for them and make them the best people they can be and productive members of society thank you representative singer and this was capital conversations thanks