 Good evening. My name is Jason Embry. I am the chair of the LBJ Future Forum Board, and I want to thank you all very much for for coming out and being here tonight. Thank you for joining the Future Forum for our conversation on the Hidden Homeless in Austin, focusing on children and families experiencing homelessness in our community. The Future Forum is an organization that brings together individuals with different backgrounds, experiences, and points of view to discuss local, statewide, and national topics that affect us today. Our goal is to create civil, informed, and bipartisan discussion, which is needed now more than ever. The Future Forum's events are made possible by our incredible members and sponsors, including the Jeff Eller Group, Austin Wine Merchant, and Joe Cook's catering. Tonight's program is generously supported by the Downtown Austin Alliance, and you'll hear from them later this evening at the end of our program. If you are not a member, I strongly encourage you to sign up before you leave. Members enjoy the best of what Future Forum has to offer, including first access to events and happy hours, networking opportunities, and benefits at the LBJ Presidential Library. Outcoming events include a member holiday happy hour on December 17th, and a discussion of the upcoming census on January 23rd. I'm eager to hear from our guests today. Please keep in mind there will be time for questions at the end of the panel. And now I'll turn it over to Joe Catherine Quinn, President and CEO of Caritas of Austin, to introduce our guests and moderate our discussion. Joe Catherine has served with Caritas of Austin for over 14 years and has been a critical leader on the issue, on this issue in our community. So thank you very much to our panelists for being here, and thank you, Joe Catherine. Turn it over to you. Thank you very much. It is my pleasure to be here tonight to talk about this very important topic. And to hear some of your thoughts at the end through your questions. The first thing I want to do is to introduce all of our panelists. Sitting just directly to my left is Matt Malika. For the last 14 years, Matt Malika has been working with people experiencing homelessness, both as a service provider and on the systems level. Prior to joining ECHO, the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, as the Executive Director, Matt worked as the Vice President of Housing Assistance at the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. Matt also worked in San Francisco helping to run the Direct Access to Housing Program, which was a partnership with the San Francisco Department of Public Health. The Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation and Brilliant Corners. Over the last 14 years, Matt has worked to dismantle the structural causes of homelessness and will continue to fight for the elimination of homelessness and the creation of a more just society. And then to Matt's left is Susan McDowell. Susan McDowell is Chief Executive Officer of LifeWorks, a youth and family service organization here in Austin that helps transition age youth achieve self-sufficiency through housing, education, workforce, and mental health support. Susan has been awarded Austinite Under 40 of the Year and Ernst & Young Central Texas Social Entrepreneur of the Year. Susan holds a BA and MA from Vanderbilt University and the University of Texas at Austin, respectively. Go Horns! She participates in numerous civic and planning bodies and is a frequent speaker around issues ranging from youth homelessness to organizational leadership. Welcome Susan. Lyric. Lyric Wardlow is employed through multiple organizations as a professional consultant and program specialist. Sharing her personal experiences with homelessness to guarantee service providers make the best decisions for people with their own stories just like hers. She is a member of the Ending Community Homelessness Office Council and the Austin Homeless Advisory Council, the Austin Youth Collective, and the National Youth Forum. Her main goal is to be a leader with potential power to make innovative changes for the next generations of youth in our society. Welcome Lyric. And then Kelly Susie currently serves as the Director of Student Emergency Services at the Office of the Dean of Students at University of Texas at Austin. In this role, Kelly oversees non-clinical case management and legal services for students, manages on-call responsibilities, and provides crisis response to 51,000 students. Kelly, she's here tonight. Kelly has her MSW and MA in college student personnel and has served in various roles, including violence prevention, residence life, and orientation, all focusing on access to education. So welcome to all the panelists and thank all of you for being willing to share tonight. This panel really represents a breadth of information and lots of information pertinent to our topic tonight, which is hidden homelessness. It's that homelessness that you don't typically see on the street corner. And so hopefully we will sort of uncover the layers of that for you tonight and provide some good information. I have sort of grouped our questions in sort of different, under different headings and different categories. But the first one is going to be sort of in a category all its own. And this is a round robin for all of the panelists to answer. And so I'll just read it as I have it written here. Why in the richest country in the world? And specifically in one of the hottest economies in this country are people experiencing homelessness. Sure. So I'm to your left and I'll start. So I think that the answer to that question, there's a lot of history behind how homelessness has been created and sort of manufactured in our society, specifically in the United States. And I think one of the things to remember is that homelessness isn't something that can be tied back to one specific lack of affordable housing or substance treatment or mental health counseling and lack of availability there or lack of affordable quality healthcare. But it's sort of an interwoven, there's a lot of interconnectedness there. And it's a braiding of all of these things that have caused people over the years to experience homelessness. And there's a lot of structural, a lot of structures in place, including the fact that housing costs have increased and wages haven't kept up with that. So we have this huge wage gap for people and a lack of affordability for folks in a lot of communities, especially a lot of urban communities. And here in Austin, you see that sort of gap continue to widen. And I think one of the things that here in Austin, which is so unique is that we're sort of at this crucial point in time where the growth is there and the economy is good. And there's a real opportunity here to sort of do an audit of our system, of all our systems, of why folks are falling into homelessness and why homelessness has been entrenched in Austin for some time now. And there's a real time to act. People experiencing homelessness here, the population is relatively small compared to the overall population and the city size. So if you look at other cities that are half the population, San Francisco, Seattle, maybe two-thirds of the population of Austin here have obviously significantly higher rates of homelessness in their communities. And that's because when the problem was, there were the people experiencing homelessness were at this level where there might have been 3,000 people experiencing homelessness in the community or 5,000, there wasn't enough done at that point, I think, to really make an impact and to sort of cut it off and have that kind of discussion. And one of the benefits to the discussion here and sort of homelessness as a flash point now is that we are having this discussion and we do have folks to the table here regardless of your reason to be at the table, but we're having a lot of folks there for this discussion. And I think that's promising here in Austin. I would agree and welcome to Austin, Matt, at a great time for you to arrive in the city. And so I was thinking a couple of weeks ago I was in San Francisco and in the last year, I've been in San Francisco, in Seattle, in San Diego, in LA, in Boston, and all of these cities visiting with colleagues who are, there are comparison cities and our comparison organizations. And one of the things I'm struck with is when I talk to my counterparts in different cities, larger, smaller, no one really has a sense that we can solve this problem until you come to Austin. And we really do have this sense of being at a tipping point where we have this, because of events of this year, this renewed understanding of human suffering and the kind of side-by-side coexistence of enormous opportunity and enormous suffering. And regardless of people's reasons for being at the table, everybody is at the table. And that makes it a just really unique opportunity to act and to act thoughtfully and in coordination with each other. The only thing I'll add to Matt's analysis, and again, I'm with LifeWorks and we work with kind of a transition-aged youth population. So think about up to the age of 24, 24, 25. And what we see with kind of some root causes for homelessness are, well, I will tell you, we know in Travis County, 76% of youth experiencing homelessness have been in foster care, juvenile justice, or both. So, you know, these are systems issues and some of the disproportionalities you see with racism in these systems then get translated to homelessness and then perpetuated in other systems. So the problem of youth homelessness is largely a problem of supporting youth who are transitioning from systems that were never intended to nurture children and raise them to adulthood. So that's a reason I think it's also worth noting, you know, often when you talk to youth experiencing homelessness and you say something like, when were you first, when did you first experience homelessness? And if you're asking this as a researcher or a bureaucrat or a think tank person, you know, you're expecting, you're thinking in terms of, oh, head category to homelessness or however, you know, these adult conceptions of it. And you may get an answer that says, you know, when I was eight and they took me from my family, you know, they're not, people don't think of themselves as homelessness, they think of themselves as experiencing life and loss. And that's, I just think a mindful thing for us to be aware of as we have these conversations. I don't think that I have like a simple answer for like why homelessness is happening in the country and in the city. And in my own opinion, I feel as though the way we kind of run our country, it's built on the red tape, the how hard it is just to get one thing done in this country when you have, you know, state senators and mayors and representatives, it gets so hard to make a simple decision because we're asking for input from everyone. And so when someone says like in the city, we're going to do this, but then they're not going in the actual community and saying, this is the way we need to do it. Or there's just a lot of barriers that have been set in place that cause it to be even harder just to get to a point of stability in this country, especially when it comes to housing and landlord tenant rights have really come to a point where land landlord has a lot of rights and the tenant doesn't have very many at all. And there's a lot of red tape when it comes to you being able to advocate for yourself. What rights do you have? There's not a lot of clarity. And then the red tape for that is not very clear of what that looks like and why it's so hard to be able to reach stability in the country. So we're kind of building a nation where it's really hard and complex to even get to a point where people feel normal and like they can live life and not be in that place. So just a couple of things that I'd like to add. One is the fact that our society hasn't really addressed how to deal with trauma and how to overcome trauma. And a lot of what we're experiencing with homelessness is something else has happened just like what Susan was saying. And so just thinking about how those systems and there's also stigma dealing with getting support for whatever trauma has occurred. And so thinking about that in context with homelessness. And I lost my train of thought. So I'll get back to it at some point. Thank you, Kelly. Thanks, everybody. Our first topic is going to be talking about the homeless services system overall. And the next few questions are going to be about that. The first one is to Matt. And, you know, it's interesting how you all are all sitting in order of these questions. Now, there's one exception down the line here. Matt, speak to how the homeless services system is structured. How many organizations are our homeless service system here? How many organizations are part of the system, secondary and tertiary layers of the system? How it works and how it doesn't work? Sure. So I think one thing that's important to recognize is that, you know, regardless of what you're doing in the city, if you're a resident here, part of this community, you're sort of actively participating in some way in the homeless response system here. Like, whether it's intentional or not, there's some part of what you do on a day-to-day basis that impacts the rest of the community. So I just want to lay that groundwork. And, you know, right now we have 36 organizations that participate in our homeless management information system. That's our HMIS, which is the program that gathers data on people experiencing homelessness here in Austin and Travis County. And it's a national database that's used to sort of measure outcomes associated with homelessness. And so 36 organizations currently participate in that. And that's a really high number compared to other communities around the country. 36 organizations, like putting their data in one place so we can better understand homelessness in this community. And so we have those folks that we would consider stakeholders or service providers in that realm. And so we have, you know, obviously keratoss life works, those organizations that are represented really in our sort of entrenched in that work. And then, you know, as we have more, you know, other organizations, whether it be parts of city government or, you know, food banks, the faith-based community is a really big one. The Downtown Austin Alliance who's here and sponsoring this event, the business communities, and, you know, transportation, CAT Metro. You think about that as a place where, you know, they're at the table talking with us about how to make it easier to get around the city for people experiencing homelessness, where they have to go, how they get there, the costs associated with that. And so there's just, you know, I think there's this insular piece around where the funding comes from. We see about 10 million dollars come from HUD directly to our continuum of care. And that's what ECHO manages. So ECHO puts an application into HUD each year. It's called the Collaborative Application. And we request funding on behalf of other organizations in the community. And that total is about 10, around 10 million dollars for this application this year. When that money comes in and when we find out if we're awarded, which happens in January every year. So I want you to think about that too. I mean, we're not guaranteed our money year over year from the federal government. We run these programs. There's a large chunk of money that goes to keratoss, to lifeworks, to integral care, to front steps, and to safe. And those organizations have budgets and they count on these funds, but each year we're in competition across the country for these funds. And we have to renew. And then there's the city and state and county funds that are brought to the table. So in the city budget this year, you saw a $65 million commitment for this city budget year on homelessness. Those funds are sort of woven into the fabric of these other organizations throughout our community. So lifeworks and keratoss, some of the same organizations that get that federal funding, also get the state funding and the city funding and the county funding. And so it's a very complex sort of mix of funding mechanisms. Our budgets are always really fun to do at the end of the year. And our grant reporting is always really fun to do at the end of the year. And those things, I think, are really, are complicated. But there are a lot of people that sort of support this homeless response system. We work with 30 different property management companies across the Austin and have formal agreements with 30 different property management companies across the Austin and Travis County area, which means that they're committing a number of their units to house people experiencing homelessness every year. And that's a big deal. And so I think we get, you know, everyone gets involved. We have a lot of folks that volunteer and do other things, but it's all, it's all sort of culminates in, in like our larger homeless response system. And I think what you're going to hear across today is that we do, we have a long way to go to like, to really coordinate that system. And I think that's some of the stuff you're hearing right now in the community. And I want to acknowledge that. And that's, there's a truth to that. But I think there's a commitment to, to push forward and get that right. So Susan, tell us a little bit about the recent history of major changes that we've made here in Austin in our system that have resulted in increased efficacy. I'm going to answer that by giving a little more color to something that Matt mentioned, which is HMIS, our combined shared database. And first say if you're, if you're here because you are concerned that you've seen human suffering on the street or, you know, you're an employee with, with one of our organizations and you just want to get housed, what you're not thinking in your head is an adequate response to homelessness. It's this really great database that we all contribute to, right? That's not what most of us aspired to, to work towards, right? And, you know, particularly the concern about the red tape. So let me give, let me, let me, let, let me get just a little bit of color to why that is so important. And, you know, I've done this work for a very long time. Joe Catherine has done this work in Austin for a very long time. And it is not so long ago that if you were experiencing homelessness in Austin, Matt mentioned 36 organizations, you might go around and put your name on probably not 36 but you could easily put yourself on a dozen lists. And these folks weren't talking to each other. And you were, it was incumbent on you to check in and to tell your story 36 times or what, which, you know, talk about trauma, right? That in itself is, is retraumatizing. Over the last, I don't know, five years and more recently with, with youth, the youth providers were, were slower to come to the table to, well, we participated in HMIS but another element of the system is coordinated entry. And that is the assessment process that, and application process to be on the housing list. Let me tell you why that's important again. Do you go on many lists or do you go on one list? And once you're on one list, then, and in the case of youth homelessness, what I can tell you is every couple of weeks now, case managers from LifeWorks and Safe and Caritas and Integral Care, all of these elements of the system come together. We've agreed on what, what is the prioritization so we can say who is number one on the list? Okay. What are their needs? What do we know about them? Which one of us is best suited not only to house them but to provide the wraparound support that meets their needs? So that's number one. Who's number two? The previous approach of all of these different lists, all of these points of entry, you know, we might have a lot of really good service providers but we were making no progress on addressing homelessness as a community issue and no even way to really know are we making progress or what parts of the system are working and not working. And now we're in a place to be able to do that. Thank you, Susan. Kelly, this next one is for you. When we spoke, you referenced the difficulty your office has in collecting and analyzing student homelessness data right on the heels of Susan's explanation here. Tell us more about this and how it impacts your ability to effectively respond to the crisis. Sure, absolutely. So Student Emergency Services last year helped over 3,600 students with just shy of 5,000 concerns. And so one of many of our areas is homelessness and food insecurity. And so one thing is the fact that no one wants to identify as being homeless. There's a huge stigma with that. And so if we have students that are flying under the radar and making ends meet, they're not going to come into our office to get support. Other things to think about on the student population is the fact that residential displacement could happen for a variety of reasons for either a short period of time or true homelessness of I have no place to live for my entire career at UT. And so we see a wide range of students that don't have a place to go between semesters. We have situations where there's an apartment fire north of campus, the entire building, the landlord decided to send everyone out instead of getting things fixed. And so here we are trying to figure out where we can put these students middle of semester, those kind of things. And so there's always a different puzzle pieces in figuring it out. I think ultimately the folks that are up here, we've been able to connect students to especially Echo and really having an opportunity to put the puzzle pieces together so that they're able to succeed academically, which is the whole reason why our students are on our campus. Thank you. Matt, you've experienced in the field, your experience in the field of homelessness has been in a few different places. Speak to any differences you've observed between the other cities where you've worked and Austin's homeless population. Sure. So, you know, I think my experience in homeless services in San Francisco was wildly different than it was Denver and now here in Austin. I think one of the things that one of the threads that carries through, you know, all those cities is that I can tell you for sure there's a lot of really good hardworking people doing this work. And there's a lot, regardless of in those communities, that there is, you know, differing opinions about how the work needs to get done and why people are experiencing homelessness. There is a strong desire here in Austin and in all those communities to end homelessness. And I think that's, you know, been very apparent. You know, San Francisco, when I started working there in 2005, had a sort of a point in time count, which is the count that happens once a year where people, you know, homelessness is sort of measured where you go out one night and physically count people in a space, you know, in a community. And that's how many people you report to Housing Urban Development that are homeless of your community. In 2005, when I started there, the point in time count for San Francisco was somewhere around 6,000 individuals. By the time I left in 2008, it got to be around 28,000. And I think in those four years, it just, you saw that sort of snowball over and over. And that was an affordable, it was an issue where rents just went up too fast. And, you know, the cost of living didn't stay consistent with that. And people were developed and forced out of their space. And so they found themselves in a really unique, you know, position nationally where it was, there was, it was a crisis and there was not a lot that could be done at that moment to interject, you know, new affordable housing stock into that city because it's a seven mile by seven mile city and there was no where to build on it. In Denver, it was a lot different where, you know, Denver is a really wide, like spread out geography and there was a lot of areas to build. And I think, you know, you see the problem there being tackled by, you know, through affordable housing development and permanent supportive housing development. So permanent supportive housing is, you know, being able to provide a lifetime vouch, you know, housing subsidy to somebody and then wrap around services in that space where they can have access to clinical services, substance treatment services, case management, primary care. And there is about 3,000 units of permanent supportive housing in the Denver metro area. And just today, the first permanent supportive housing building was opened in central Texas through integral care. It's 50 units in all of central Texas. And so I think that's one thing that's different about Austin. There's a gap there in sort of addressing people who have deep vulnerability and, you know, that are chronically homeless in our community and chronically homeless is defined by having an extended period of homelessness and a co-occurring disabling condition. So it could be a primary care condition or substance treatment condition or a mental health condition. And folks that are in that state generally need longer and more intense supports to resolve their homelessness situation. And here in Austin, we haven't built that support up to the extent that we need to. And that's one of the things that makes it a lot different than other communities out there. We acknowledge the need and there's a lot of organizations doing really good work on a scattered site model. So like tenants taking their vouchers and going into private landlords and renting units in the community, there's not a lot of support for site-based rental assistance and site-based services for people experiencing homelessness. There's a 54% rate of chronic homelessness here in Austin in the homeless population that's very high compared to other communities. And I think it's because we have that sort of gap in need there. So you see a lot of folks unsheltered homeless in Austin and a really high percentage of chronically homeless. I'm going to ask you a follow-up question just to get us back to our overall topic tonight. What differences do you see in Austin with regard to how we serve families in youth experiencing homelessness? Well, let me just say, as a community, we're very lucky to have LifeWorks and the service providers that work alongside LifeWorks and ending youth homelessness. I think we were the first, Austin is nationally recognized for its work in ending youth homelessness. And I think it's very clear that we're looked at as a model here for how to end youth homelessness, how to bring service providers and communities together to do that. There's HUD released something called a Youth Homelessness Demonstration Project funding about three years ago now. And Austin was in the first round of communities awarded for that, for those funds. And, you know, LifeWorks and ECHO took the lead on sort of running the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Project with with a goal to end youth homelessness by the end of 2020. So by this time next year, or sitting up here, I think there's a very good chance, and Susan will tell you there's a definite chance, and I'll tell you the same thing, that we will end youth homelessness here. So for Transition to Age Youth, you know, 18 to 24, 25, we will have homelessness in that community that is brief, non-recurrent, and we'll have housing resources available to those folks when they need it. And the right type of supportive services, because it was funded appropriately and because we know what ends homelessness. We know how to do it. We just need to scale it up and fund it. And so that example is, I mean, we'll hopefully be back here in a year, and Susan can give a great presentation with Lyric and her staff about how we ended youth homelessness. And that's because we were able to scale up the programs that LifeWorks and their partners are doing. So tell us a little bit, Susan, about how things were in terms of youth homelessness before we got the youth demonstration project, and then how that has evolved since? For sure. So, you know, as I was saying earlier, so, you know, LifeWorks has a history and reputation for housing and supportive services for youth experiencing homelessness. And this is kind of how we're known in the community, the reputation, the role we played in and the echo in our community's response to homelessness. And then about the time that our community achieved the benchmarks for making veteran homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring, and those are federal benchmark data-driven benchmarks that our community received. We got the opportunity to apply for a couple of federal federally-driven initiatives for youth homelessness. Include, one was a kind of benchmark study run out of University of Chicago, but the other was this kind of random, it was called a 100-day challenge. And, you know, you had to compete to get it. And I'll just be super honest, we were trying to, like, create some momentum for youth homelessness. We're also innately kind of competitive, so we're like, national competition, sure, let's do it, right? And so we applied with the echo, we were awarded it, it was announced at a national conference, and then we're like, oh man, this is a really big deal, we've got to get back to Austin and have a leadership meeting, and boy, I hope there are people at the table besides lifeworks, because historically we've kind of owned this. So we started sweating that out, called a meeting jointly with echo, and the room was full of Joe Catherine and Kelly White from SAFE and head of the school district, and everybody came to the table, we designed this kind of crazy plot whereby we would, without any additional resources, house 50 highly vulnerable, literally what we call category one, literally homeless youth in 100 days with no new resources, right? And I will tell you that, so there was no money involved, and we're like, why don't we compete for something with no money, right? Didn't make any sense at the time, I was a little at first, you know, like, oh, why did we do this? But then when we got into it, what we found, first of all, we found our eyes open, it's like, wow, Caritas is actually playing a much larger role housing youth than we had previously thought, we started looking at the data, and SAFE, and integral care, and front steps, right? So we started getting a wider, more realistic view of everybody who's deeply involved in this issue. Lifeworks had the leadership posture, but we weren't doing the proportional work that we all just kind of assumed. This is what sharing the data helped us with, right? The second thing we learned is we were all around the table, trying to make things happen at a ridiculously fast pace, was we were able to hold up the mirror and say, hey, you know, we're working well as colleagues together, this is very collaborative, and you know, some days I can't even tell who's working for what agency. That's fantastic. But we also saw ways in which we were not working well as a system. And what the consequence of not working well at the system's level is people fall through the cracks to Lyric's earlier point, people who have experienced trauma and frustration and don't have resources can't access housing, right? So it has real, us not working together as a system has real consequences for people in crisis and people in trauma. So, you know, I say with a lot of humility, we learned a whole lot that we had not been doing right. So we rebuilt up the system to, again, participate in the coordinated entry, make sure we were collaborating regularly down to the who is serving who, that we were sharing data and that we plotted out a community plan that put the client and their needs in the center and really held all of these service providers and systems accountable for how we were really meeting the needs and how we were assessing ourselves, including creating the Austin Youth Collaborative. And I say creating, we just created the opportunity and Lyric and her colleagues took ownership of shaping how youth voice would have impact and empower that work as well. Thank you. So this is another question for all the panelists. And I'd like for Lyric to start first to answer this. What we know as experts in this field is that the population of people experiencing homelessness is not monolithic. Speak to some of the various situations you've encountered during your stint, which illustrates this. I mean, everyone's different. So my circumstance was different from another youth. I didn't go through juvenile justice or foster care. So I didn't have to face nearly as many barriers as I've seen other youth that I've worked with have to go through. I went through homelessness from the age of nine until I was about almost 17. And so my mom was chronically homeless. We stayed at shelters and in motels, almost my entire childhood and all of my teen life. But once I kind of decided, you know, I wanted to emancipate myself at 16, they said, you know, you can't do that unless you're being abused. And I was like, okay, fine. But when I turned 17, I basically took the chance and I was like, you know what, I have to see if like being on my own is going to make me not be homeless anymore. Like maybe if I leave and I try to start my own life, like maybe that'll work for me. And not in the best way, I just started to go ahead and just like enroll in school, get my first car, like get my first apartment. And I thought like I would have all of my stuff together. And didn't realize that I had severe PTSD from an old family member that something happened. And I couldn't afford the rent. I couldn't afford my car. I couldn't keep up with school because it was completely opposite of what I thought school would be like, like you go to high school and you're like, oh yeah, I'm good. And then you go to college and it's like they like, they really expect you to like be on your stuff. And I just was not, I wasn't there yet. And when I started to really figure out that like, oh crap, like I really signed up for a lot right now, like who do I go to? I didn't have family members. My mom was still kind of chronically homeless. She didn't have income to come and say, I'm going to cover your rent for the next month or I'm going to cover your car payment. She couldn't do that. And when I started to realize I had no awareness or resources to be able to figure out how to keep myself stable. And so I just started to decline. Like immediately I dropped out of college, I lost my car, I got my eviction notice. And it was just, and my trauma was still there. So I was like mentally just at a point where I thought I was just like my mom. I thought I was going to end up just like her. And the complexity and how much there was, I didn't think that there would be a youth serving organization who could help me. And fortunately I was like, okay, one thing, let me try to take care of one thing first. Like let me go ahead and like try to take care of my mental health. And so I reached out to LifeWorks, who was like right down the street from my apartment. I had never seen, never even passed by before. And luckily it turned into me meeting with someone. They were like, yeah, I'll meet you at like a Chipotle and we can talk about why you need help. And I told them and I was like, you know, I just am struggling and I don't want to be homeless again. And I want to learn and I want to go to school, but I have no family to support me. What in the world am I supposed to do with my life right now? And they're like, okay, like let's take like a deep breath, like let's like, slip this down. And I was just told about all of these resources like rental assistance and case management and career learning and workforce solutions, all of these kinds of things that were going to help me dig deep into what was going to help me keep stability. And it was still a trial and it was still, I had those moments where I went back into this deep like, I can't do this. Like no matter how much help I get, maybe this isn't going to be enough. Like, you know, that life is just life right now. But luckily, I was able to get out of that into a point where I got my rent taken care of and I figured out a car program that did a very small amount of money each month. And at the end of however long you had that car, they would give all that money back to you. So you could buy your own car. So I started to find all of these resources. And I am privileged because I was not a youth that had foster care or juvenile justice that was a big barrier. If you're turning it into an adult and you already have tons and tons and tons of complex issues behind them. So I'm a privileged girl, I think, for myself. And I'd be able to see other youth and say like, how can we split this apart for yourself? How can we look at the complexity of issues and not the one issue that you have and start to really go deep and figure out how to get you in a point of stability for yourself? Thank you, Loret. Kelly, speak to some of the various situations you see among students. Sure, absolutely. So some of the situations definitely deal with not being able to manage, you know, life first time, not having their family taken care of them or maybe their first generation student and don't have that support at home to really understand what they need to do budget-wise and things like that. But then we have the other extreme of students who are dealing with severe mental illness or student veterans who are really dealing with trauma and coming back to college and trying to figure it out. Some of the other situations that unfortunately we experience is students that lose their support systems. And so whether that's coming out to a family member or a family member loses their permanent job. And so now they don't have that monetary support to get them through the situation. And kind of like what I talked about earlier is the fact that our students deal with homelessness in a variety of ways and maybe not always the chronic homeless. But if you think about once my semester's over, I have no place to stay. Trying to even get to the end of that semester can be very difficult for our students. And so thinking through how do we get them better supported throughout the entire year instead of semester by semester just making ends meet. Matt? Yeah, I mean I think, you know, I'm not sure I could say it. Certainly can't say it any better than Lyric. But I think the, you know, the pieces are, you know, everyone hits the system at really a different point in their lives. But there are some really real structural things in place that cause homelessness in our communities. And so, you know, whether it be, you know, through the criminal justice system, which is a big part of it, it's hard to rent an apartment to get a job with a felony. You know, right now there's five million Texans that aren't covered that have no health insurance. And I think that that piece of it is so, it's probably not talked about enough, you know, your one health care emergency away. Lack of affordable quality health care is a huge driver in our, you know, in people experiencing homelessness in our communities. You know, many times, you know, people that don't have quality health care, affordable health care fall into homelessness because of a physical health condition. They can't manage that physical health condition while they're homeless, which leads to, you know, severe and persistent mental health and substance use in order just to manage a physical, like a pain, a hip, a broken hip, you know, something as treatable as that, something that we could really, you know, if they did have access to quality, affordable health care, could have really intervened quickly and kept that person from hitting our homeless response system. And so I think, you know, there's a lot of reasons and why people experience homelessness. I think some of the major causes, there are some real funnels that push people into homelessness. And when people access that space, it's usually because, you know, of lack of, you know, family support or lack of support systems in general, race and racism in our country plays a huge role in factor in homelessness here. You know, obviously socioeconomic status. I mean, even controlling, there's a lot of studies out there. So even controlling for poverty, even when you take someone, you know, you take people's socioeconomic status out of it and people are living in poverty. If you're black or brown, you're 85% more likely to have experienced homelessness in your life. And I think that leads, you know, firmly into looking at systems and structural systems in place that impact disproportionately people of color. So I think just looking at all that across the board, and then everyone hits that system and those funnels at different points in their life that cause, you know, their homeless situation. Susan? Just to, I'm going to give you a picture of the issue of race and this in Travis County. So again, we're talking youth 18 to 24. The population of youth this age that's black in Austin is a little under 9%. Overall, it's closer to 8%, but this youth population is a little under 9%. But if you look amongst youth experiencing homelessness, 40% are black, right? So that is the skewed disproportionality of it. And it, that disproportionality reflects, again, the disproportionality that we see with juvenile justice and with youth aging out of foster care. So, you know, we just keep having to go back and back and look at at what point did families experience systems and how is our community set up to help families succeed rather than rather than fail? And how is race related to that? And these are some of the conversations that we really need to have as a community that are really uncomfortable, that I may not certainly won't have fast solutions, but part of solving homelessness is also as a community owning these owning these really difficult issues and having the conversations. And just to wrap up that question, I would add to that we will not really be able to get our arms around the issue of homelessness in our community until we start to recognize that homelessness isn't only the crusty guy on the corner asking you for money. And until we pull back the layers of that and look closer at all the various situations, we will continue to struggle with this issue. Lyric, I want to ask you a question. What was the transition like from homelessness to stability? What are some barriers that put you at risk of being homeless again? And what could have been more helpful on this new path? So I think I kind of summarized it accidentally, but I think I had when I was a teenager, a lot of frustrations, a lot of frustrations with the way that my mom and I were being served while we were homeless. And at the time, it wasn't something where I felt the authority to go to someone and say, this is not right. I don't understand why you do it this way. You're supposed to be helping us and you're doing the complete opposite. It was not as 16 years old. That was not my priority, but I did notice. And so when I was going to high school and living at the Salvation Army downtown, the family shelter right next to the arch, I would be having to walk outside into the alleyway every single day to go to school as a 16-year-old girl who didn't want anybody to identify her as homeless unless you let you know, and got catcalled and saw other children and their baby strollers with their moms seeing stuff that you should never see when you're going through this kind of stuff. And I'm a kid and it's traumatizing. And I never thought to say, like, hey, why are you guys making me at 7 a.m. in the morning leave the shelter in this alleyway. I don't get it. I didn't think to do that and say, hey, why don't we figure out the better way of doing this? But there were just situations that I was put in that could have been changed if someone had just thought to ask. If someone had thought, hey, the people that live here, the ones that are experiencing it, and they're the ones who can tell us the best way to help them. In the shelter that I stayed at in Salvation Army, there were no case management services for the young people staying there at all. So I was going through my own trauma experiencing what I was experiencing outside the arch and outside in the streets and stuff like that. Just even in school, I was experiencing bullying and discrimination. And it was frustrating for me that no one was in the shelter trying to actively pursue helping the young people that were living there, the family that was living there. My mom didn't receive any kind of case management or counseling for her own mental illness. Why is she chronically homeless? How many times have you been here or how many times have you been homeless? No one ever asked the right questions. And she ended up going back into homelessness after I became stable. She went back. She lived at the same shelter I used to live at. And the transition for me was rocky. It's still kind of rocky. I think I'm very stable compared to where I was three or four years ago. But there's still points where I'll go and check my bank account. And I'm negative 200 because my car payment came out. Or stuff happens. Stuff happens. And I'm living paycheck to paycheck. And I know that if I don't get more work done, more hours and more advocacy, more public speaking that I might end up getting evicted from my home. I might not be able to pay for my next meal or get gas in my car. And so even though compared to youth that I've seen at LifeWorks who are at a completely different stage in life, they don't even have a place to go at night. I am still at the place where I'm not sure if I'm going to have the same home next month. I'm not sure if I'm going to have to downsize to be able to afford the way that I live now or take away something from my life so that I can keep the stability that I've kind of striped for. And that's a difficult thought for me. So for youth who are even starting out, you can just tell how complex and hard that would be when you literally have nothing to begin with. So one follow-up to that lyric. What particular needs does a teen experiencing homelessness have that are unique? So we had talked about this on the phone and it's never talked about and it gets so frustrating. When I was a teenager, I'm a teen. I want to have fun. I want to go out and do things. And I can't have a sleepover at the shelter. No one's going to come in the shelter and have a sleepover. So I was always frustrated because South by Southwest would happen. ACL would happen. There would be marathons. There would be all these activities that I would see adults doing. But there were rules against me being out overnight, me being out after seven o'clock. Even, and I can't afford South by Southwest or ACL tickets even now. So there's no way as a 16-year-old, I'm going to be able to do half the stuff that I see normal youth being able to do with their families and the support that they get. And so there were no places for me to go, even that were like, you know, cheaper, like not the crazy, you know, outlandish price stuff. But even like the roller skating for me, when I was younger and I lived in South in Indiana, the only thing for us to do was to go skating or go to the mall. And so the mall is like super far out from the shelter. There was no way I was going to take three buses to get to Barton Creek. And the skating rink was also the kind of same distance. I couldn't stay out late. I had no way for me to be a young person. It got taken away from me. And that's still currently, like there's no place that I know, like even now where I'm going to go and have fun with young people and not feel as though I have to drink or, you know, do stuff that's stupid. Like, there's no place for, affordably, for young people to go. And I think that they're missing out. And then when they later on get older, they're like, where did my childhood go? Where did the opportunity for me to do the normal stuff that young people, they're like, oh, yeah, I went to camp when I was younger. I did this. I did that. And the one person in the room who never had the ability to do that is left out and gets kind of pushed into this wall of, like, I'm not the normal person in the room and I'll never be. I'll never have those cool memories. I'll never have the cool circumstances that you did. And I think that's like huge for me. I really hope someone will come in and be like, we're going to create all those cool stuff for like all young people to do. So happy. So thank you. So our last topic is what is working and not working. So we're going to wrap up with this. This one is to Matt and Susan experts in Austin know what works to end homelessness. As a couple of the experts tell our audience what practices work to reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness and increase the number of people who are enjoying stable housing. Sure. So I'll share just quickly a couple data points with folks to give you a sense of the work that's being done in this community. And I can take credit for none of this because I've been here for four months. So I want to put that caveat out there. But since 2014 in Austin, we've housed more than 6,000 individuals and helped end their homelessness and by providing housing and supportive services. From 2017 to 2018, there was an 82% of those households that we housed didn't return to homelessness. So I mean, it's a big deal. That's a system effectiveness right there that 18% of the folks that entered the system and received the services returned homelessness. But 82% did not return to homelessness. Another thing I think worth mentioning is that there was, you know, we've tracked some utilization data across systems, so health care systems, criminal justice systems. And, you know, what we saw was we did, we tracked this data with 861 individuals, we saw a 26% reduction in inpatient stays, a 43% reduction in ER visits, and a 39% reduction in 911 transports after they were housed. So the programs, supportive services, being in housing, having access to a case manager, clinical services, all of those things are so important to the community and just like someone being well. Permanent supportive housing, rapid rehousing, those types of interventions, they work. They end homelessness in communities. We know that they work. We have, you know, Joe Catherine's not going to tell you, but Joe Catherine runs a PSH program at Carritas, 98% retention rate in that program, 98% of the people that go into that program stay in that program. That's a huge number. I mean, that's just that kind of, you know, if we could give Joe Catherine and Carritas $10 million more dollars to run that program, we wouldn't have on Shouldered Homelessness. That would be awesome. Yeah. So I mean, I think that those are the types of things we know. We know that these things work here in this community. We know, and we know that they work nationally. We've actually been collecting data now, I think for long enough nationally to know that permanent supportive housing, you know, rapid rehousing, diversion as an intervention. They work nationally. They've worked for years, housing first, harm reduction, those practices you hear talked about so frequently work, providing a home to somebody without a requirement for sobriety, without a requirement to engage in mental health services, without a requirement to see their case manager, and then offering those services time and time again in ways that they'll engage with it. So like Lyric said, let's create systems that are participatory and not paternalistic, right? We all, I think, even good intentioned people want to help, but they also, like my parents did, always think they know what's best. And I'm sure a lot of people out there experience that. It's not always the right way to, you know, to attack a problem. I think we're learning as a community and nationally that we need to take a participatory approach and engage people experiencing homelessness in their help and in their care and in what options they want to help resolve their situation and not just throw a blanket over people and say, like, this is, this works. And so we're going to do more of this, whether you like it or not. And I think that, you know, we're moving away from that with the help of, you know, peer support services and engaging people in experiencing homelessness and bringing them into the work that we're doing. Susan? I will add to that by saying, so Matt mentioned a lot of the individual type of services and approaches that work. Housing first as a philosophy, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, things that, again, because we have this national database, we know from a data driven perspective these things work, but they only work when implemented in communities that have coordinated, highly coordinated, funded responses. So, you know, as I mentioned earlier in 2016, our community met the federal criteria for making veterans homelessness rare, brief and non-recurring, and we have sustained that success. That's huge. Our point in time account data indicated between 2018 and 2019 that we were able, as a community, to reduce youth homelessness by 25 percent, right? If we had all been out kind of doing our own things with these individual services, I don't know that we would have seen those kind of results. It's when we all come to the table, the life works, the keratos, the safer lines, the integral care, the front steps, and take a very coordinated approach specific to populations using the evidence-based practices. And those are highly coordinated. They're resource intensive. They don't make headlines because they are not quick solutions, but we know they work. They just need to be scaled to capacity. So, we're not going to get to all of our questions because we want to leave room for your questions. So, Sarah? Hi. I don't know if I should stand. I have a question. So, I love that you've spoken about HMIS and the coordinated entry, and I think that's so amazing that we've gotten to a spot where we can be so coordinated. But talking a little bit towards the hidden homeless, I'm just wondering, sorry, I wrote it down. It sounds like how people get into these systems comes by them reaching out and finding you. Lyric, in your story, you said you had never heard of LifeWorks before and you didn't really mention how you found it. I'm guessing maybe a Google search or something to that effect or word of mouth. So, how exactly do these people find you? Are you doing anything to get in front of people who maybe aren't looking for you who are hidden? Okay. For me, I ended up, I dropped out of high school my senior year and so I found GED from, I got my GED from Goodwill Industries. I didn't even know they offered GED program or anything like that. They do a whole bunch of stuff. Had no idea. And so, when I was kind of struggling, I did all the stuff. I, you know, decided to get my first apartment. I told them like I was struggling and so they reached, they told me about LifeWorks and how they do their own separate thing. And that's how I typically see other youth. They get referred or they hear from someone else that you should go by here. And it's like a game. Like you're just trying to go to every single point to see if somebody's going to tell you you won. Like that's how, like how I see it, so. For UT, we have what's called Behavior Concerns Advice Line and we go out to our community and say you're the ones that see what's going on in our community and we need you to let us know so we can intervene. We can work with you to make a positive impact and so a lot of the information we get about our students is from those community members that care. And so I think last year we served about 1200 students solely from that program that got put on our radar because they didn't walk in our door. I think what we're learning is part of building a system because, you know, the solution, again, to you to homeless, any kind of homelessness is not one agency's heroic efforts. But how do you really build a system with kind of multiple points of entry where everybody's on the same page about the message we put out about how to access services so youth aren't sent place to place to place. And I think we've come a long way. We have a long way to go. But it's, you know, also speaks to the importance of engaging youth to say where are we not? Like where do we need to put the word out? How do we need to do that? What's what's engaging? We probably went a couple years beyond what we should have in utilizing social media, right? So it's then continually refreshing what's the best way to do this? How do we involve youth and how do we make sure we're reaching out just really broadly in the community? Yeah. And so quickly, I just want to recognize it's a very it's a really good question. I think that's one of the things we're we're look at as an organization, you know, certainly echo does is how can we create a system that has, you know, more singular front door? Like, hey, I go here and I know that when I go here, I can get referred out into these services that the that the service providers have. And I can access the network of of supports that exist. We really haven't been able to build capacity out to the extent that we need to where if everyone experiencing homelessness came to one organization, and then that organization was responsible for for sort of triaging that individual or that household or providing that household with the resources, we I'll tell you, like, it's something actively we're trying to we're trying to build out, like, how do we do that? If it's online, or if it's on the phone, it requires you to have access to the Internet or have a phone to get there. So we, you know, we have outreach teams that go out in the community. And, you know, they're there all the time we have, you know, they're going to people that are experiencing homelessness that are unsheltered and trying to connect them to resources. But we don't have that front door that one place you can go and say, you know, how do I how do I access the system from there? And so I think it's lacking. And I think, you know, echoes, one of echoes roles as a convener needs to be to try to create that a little bit more tangibly for for people. So I want to recognize that as it's a good question. And the reality, too, is that there's not always space for the person to be able to be involved in the organization that they need to be involved with, because there just isn't the capacity at that organization. That's that's frequent, frequently the answer across the system. Hi, my name is Chris Gehring. And the first thing I'd like to say is thank you to each of you, because I dare say none of you are getting rich doing this. This all comes from compassion. And so thank you for your compassion. I know Joe, Joe Catherine, I know somebody on your board 30 year friend of mine who has shared a lot of the success that your organization has done. So thank you for that. Susan, I've worked directly with your organization on bringing some of your clients into Dell. So we've had great success there. Kelly, you've opened my eyes. I mean, I would think that if somebody has the ability to get into a university this size, right, you would assume they got their stuff together and nothing bad ever happens to them. So thank you for that. And Lyric, your voice is so articulate and so intelligent, we need to amplify that as much as possible because it's important that we all hear that. So many questions for you, Matt. I love what you said about the front door. I think that's really important because listening to all of you talk about 36 different organizations, I don't know how somebody navigates that, right? And so having that would be great. But specifically for you, having the experience in San Francisco that you had, and I think we can agree that San Francisco is somewhat the poster boy of failed homelessness advocacy. What would you say are like the top three things that you saw fail in San Francisco so that we can avoid a Pyranos? Sure. So that's a good question. And first I want to just, I appreciate you specifically calling out the people on the panel here. I think that's really important and you were spot on in everything you said. And I think recognizing the effort that it goes into this work is crucial. And so I appreciate that. In San Francisco, I think there are a lot of factors converging at once that is sort of like a perfect storm of things that caused homelessness to explode in that city in the early 2000s. I can tell you the first thing that happened that I think if you went back, the mayor at the time was Gavin Newsom, who's now the governor. But if you went back and talked to Gavin Newsom, he would say he would stop building shelter and he would start building permanent supportive housing. I think one of the things they did is they stood up a lot of navigation centers there. They stood up a lot of shelter there and try to triage people into a system where the housing was becoming less and less affordable for them and their options were less and less available. And so you had scenarios where we had these large shelter operations that were growing and growing and growing. And the idea of those shelters being sort of housing focused and we could move people through those shelters quickly into housing was not a reality. And so we just kept growing and growing people experiencing homelessness in shelters and didn't on the back end build out the permanent supportive housing stock that was necessary and didn't do some things legislatively that could have led to more housing and affordable housing being built for people experiencing homelessness. Secondly, I can say they drastically underestimated the need for mental health and substance treatment services. There was a real lack of that being provided in the space with the idea that some faith-based communities would fill that vacuum. So Glide Church is an organization out there that's really well known, wonderful community there, but they weren't set up to take all the referrals that they were being pushed into their queue for people experiencing homelessness from mental health and substance treatment and had those needs. And lastly, I would say one of the things that they really that I think they would have immediately done differently that they regret is that it became so politicized so quickly and that's sort of what's happening here a little bit. And it's a little traumatizing for me and I don't have a lot of trauma in my life, but I can tell you that one it's one thing that I can say is like, you know, I I wasn't in the role. I was, you know, sort of a service provider at the time and not doing systems work. But it very quickly became a risk like the response was, oh, our tourism is suffering. We have aggressive panhandling on Market Street. We want to push that into the into the tenderloin, keep it out of the, you know, the embarked arrow and off the Market Street and out of, you know, away from the museums and away from Union Square and all those things. And it quickly became a very political issue where the, you know, the business community and and some and, you know, rightfully so they were they were being impacted. I mean, I think that but the answer quickly was we're going to draw our battle lines, our lines in the sand. And there wasn't a lot of crossing those lines. And as as we've seen here, and my hope is that we can reverse this, but those lines start to get further and further apart. And there's less work being done in the middle. And we're starting to see that happen here. And that's that's one thing I think or those are three things I think we would go back and sort of reassess. Yeah. So one of the things that I think we can all agree that we love Austin about is that we are a very engaged, very engaged community. And so what is one thing that you would ask of the community, if you could kind of look at your wish list, what is one thing you would like to see someone or groups of people in this room, perhaps get done for you, whether it's donations or volunteers, we'd like to hear how we can help donations are good. Money is always a surprise answer. You just have to you have to say I speak the truth of it. Right. So well, well on that, so you know, we've everything we've learned about what's working with youth homelessness. So we know as a system to reach our benchmarks for ending youth homelessness, you know, we've got to raise something like five million dollars in the next year. So there's a financial reality to it as well. But I think to tag on to this kind of tipping point we're at with public debate and what maybe went wrong in San Francisco. I think as as we've really struggled as a community to how to how to have this debate, how to understand homelessness, how do we how do we wrestle with our feelings of compassion, our feelings of kind of horror now that homelessness is more visible and we're just trying to figure it out. I think everybody somebody I met earlier tonight said, you know, I'm here just to learn, right? Tonight's about learning. Tonight's not about me deciding what the solution is, but to learn. I think as a community, frankly, we will all do ourselves a favor just to kind of breathe through this. And again, really refocus ourselves on, okay, really what's working and what's what's not working. You know, we've got a new visibility to to the human suffering in our community, but it's not it's not new. And it's not accelerating at the rate that we would see what that we saw in San Francisco. We've got a shot to get this right. But we've got to breathe through it. And speak to also an earlier point, we all, you know, our daily lives, we all have an impact. I'm asked all the time, you know, what do I do with somebody I see on the street doing it's a bunny or the granola bar or anything? You know, there's no one answer to that. It's kind of figure out where you want to engage what you're comfortable with, what you feel safe doing and and what acknowledges human dignity. You know, we have not really talked about faith based engagement in in this issue, which is significant in Austin. And so, you know, often, if you were part of a faith based community, there is likely a mission associated with with your institution regarding homelessness, maybe it's a house you sponsor or a drive or those kind of things. And those, you know, all of that makes makes a different, you know, to, well, you can plug the point in time count coming up. Sure. Yeah, I mean, so yeah, I mean, if you want to get involved in in the point in time count, I believe it's January 25th this year, there's a on our website, you can sign up to be a volunteer. We, you know, we need we're looking to try to get 90 volunteers or 100 volunteers, we had 80 last year. So any, any volunteers are helpful to get out and to get that work done. I'm going to say I'm just going to sort of, you know, just say that I think that that what you can do is start to help us bring these lines a little closer together and like be willing to step into over your line and like have a conversation and see a different point of view. Not in me, too. I mean, you know, being in neighborhood, like I understand why people think that the homeless services system here is not functioning to the extent that it needs to. Like I get it, you know what I mean? Like I understand it's, you're seeing people suffering, it's a hard thing to watch. I'll go to your neighborhood association, meaning I'll sit there and I'll have, I'm not the most articulate person. I'll have conversations with people that disagree with me. I'll do it all day. And I think that's what we really need you to do whatever side of this you're on, like sit and talk to somebody that has a different point of view and don't belittle them and don't talk down to them and hear them and walk away and say like, man, I might change this, you know, let me see if I can try something different with my idea around why homelessness exists and let me go and get involved a little bit to see if my preconceptions or misconceptions are true. Just be willing to do something different because gosh knows we just need something different to happen. So just be willing to do that with someone or something. Yeah. The conversation needs to be different. Our, and then I would like to speak to something that Matt said earlier, which was about the scale of our system. And that's really the thing that must change because right now there's not any fluidity to the system where lots of people can go in. And so as long as our system is pretty rigid because of lack of capacity, we don't have the ability to serve all the people that need to be served. And that's a way that the private sector can get involved. I've learned from living years in Austin being in a government town that often in a government town, you're always looking to the government to do it all. And certainly there is a role for the government in this issue, but the government is not going to in our low service state or low tax state not going to get it all done. It's just not going to be at the capacity that we need 100% done by the government. So the private sector individuals are going to have to step up. So that's something that you can do. You can give money and it sounds crass from, you know, all of us who are taking your money understand how that sounds. But it is the reality that we cannot grow our capacity until the community makes a larger investment in what we're doing year over year. I must say because I'm the kind of person who hears something like that and I'm like, well, I can't afford it. Or I just I already do so much like I already put so much money into other stuff. I can't. We have a city that has events every single month. And something that I get really frustrated with is like when the trail of lights happens this next month, they do certain days worth a certain price, we need to start thinking creatively and holding ourselves accountable to what we can do with an opportunity like that have one day where if you attend that event, all the proceeds go to homelessness or some kind of agreement of we're going to build a new shelter or whatever happens in Austin that we're all kind of trying to do in the city. Let's all think creatively about how we can afford to do that how we can with the money that we already spend be putting that into other things for the city and homelessness in general. There's just so many opportunities that I see I go to Panda Express I buy Starbucks there's all kinds of things that I do and I spend my money which that's not going to a nonprofit but it could it could there there's ways that we could be doing things but we're not holding ourselves accountable when we take an action we're like yeah I just spent however much money on this but like how else could I use that money or how how how could the the business that I'm putting this money into be using it for the initiatives that are going on in the city hold yourself accountable and think creatively about the way we're using the money in Austin so just real quick going back to the trauma and programs that need to support outside of the homeless piece we have a real deficit in mental health support here in Austin and even though we are not a rural community you know we've got thousands of folks that are needing support and so I think having those conversations as well that we need a system approach to all of these concerns so that when that trauma occurs we deal with it then and so therefore chronic homelessness does not happen down the road Medicaid expansion sorry well I think we will wrap up there with this portion of our program I want to thank this panel this has been an incredibly thoughtful and meaningful discussion so thank you to all of you for for being here and also for just all of the incredibly thoughtful things that you've had to say as I mentioned earlier I want to bring up from our sponsor this evening Bill Bryce the vice president of investor relations at the downtown Austin alliance Bill has been one of the most vocal advocates in this city to improve services and shelters for individuals experiencing homelessness he's led many initiatives that have had an impact on our community such as creating the homelessness outreach street team the financial support of multiple housing first projects and pulling together 19 nonprofit and service providers to map Austin's homeless service system and identify clogs or gaps in the system and Bill is going to come up and give you a quick overview of some of the recent initiatives that the downtown Austin alliance has taken on in the past couple of months thanks very much for that introduction I really appreciate it I'm not up here to plug the downtown Austin alliance this is about the issue that you've all come to be better educated about and I think that's really important before I say anything more I really want to thank lbj futures forum for hosting this and providing the opportunity to better inform people about the issue of homelessness and particularly the hidden homeless but I also want to acknowledge our panelists thank you all and I echo the comment pertaining to Lyric and and and what you bring to the conversation by sharing with us your lived experience I know that can't be easy I trust that that experience which I cannot in any way closely appreciate as much as you have that it's just so important to us all and it's very relevant to obviously to this conversation and what I'd like to share more about in just a minute but thank you all again but thank you for being here downtown Austin alliance is immersed in this issue as was mentioned in the introduction our charge really is to to create a downtown that's a vibrant place it's clean and safe and welcoming to everybody that helps to inspire people to want to live work visit and invest in downtown and that investment helps to fund a lot of what we put towards homelessness in our community and while homelessness is certainly a problem that affects the entire city and not just downtown the reason that we are so interested in the issue is because more than a third of the people counted last January on that one night count who are experiencing homelessness both sheltered and unsheltered we're in downtown Austin and so years ago I've been with the organization 16 years and years ago we started to shift our view to focus more on how do we help to solve the problem and we do that by helping to educate the community through efforts like this advocating for improved policy and planning and by providing direct funding both for housing initiatives and other things such as echoes pay for success program testing initiatives over years ago with Kara tossing community court to test housing first for one of the first times to see and be able to collect data to demonstrate how well it really works last week we launched an initiative in partnership with a number of other private sector organizations called ATX helps and that focuses the fill gaps and while the focus shouldn't be sheltered for the long term right now it's taking a long time for people to get housed and in the meantime they're laying on the streets and we as a community must do better than that so we believe in temporary shelter at least temporarily and we're working toward that but also providing places for people experiencing homelessness to store their personal belongings the number one need expressed by people experiencing homelessness it's not a house it's a place to store their stuff and by doing that by providing that people experiencing homelessness are far more likely to go to a case management appointment engage in treatment go into a shelter if there's no other option go to a job interview and even to work because otherwise they fear that if they leave all their worldly possessions out on the street they may be stolen or sometimes confiscated before they get back and so we know that's critically important the other prong of that the third leg is providing increased outreach and particularly focusing on reuniting folks with their family support network that helps divert them completely from the system or at some point through the system so those are some of the key areas of focus of ATX helps ATX helps.org for more information on that the main thing I want to touch on right now though and I'll just take one more minute to do this is maximizing and efficiently using the resources that we have some of you everyone's familiar with Salvation Army and the great work they did that they do but right now we've got the Rathgaver Women, Children's and Family Center that's located out near Mainer Road in 183 that was funded through a great capital campaign and is not fully operational because Salvation Army doesn't have the operations funds to do that. About two months ago downtown Austin Alliance partnered with Dick Rathgaver the namesake of that facility and Dick said if you can help raise 400,000 dollars I'll throw in 100,000 of my own funds to close that 500,000 dollar operational gap and get this facility fully up and running. The importance of this is very simple Lyric hit on it better than I ever can. Right now on any given night we have about 80 beds at the downtown Salvation Army Center occupied by women with children and some complete families. There is no worse place for a child to be than across the alley from what we see happening outside of ARCH manifesting across the street which by the way has gotten a lot better in the last few weeks with efforts that were led by the mayor and the city and others to help get the folks there housed and really focus on providing them the services that they need. But operationalizing the Rathgaver Center not only moves all the women and children out of the downtown shelter and complete families it also drains Salvation Army's waitlist of women and children and families waiting to get into their services so that is critically important. The other thing that it does is that it opens up the beds currently being occupied by women and children there to provide for more single men and especially more single women who desperately need a place to be until such time that they are housed. So I would offer that if you're interested in learning more about this please go to downtownaustin.com look up the foundation you can find out more information about it you can make a donation there but these are critically important pieces and I would say above everything else someone asked what can we do as a community as individuals in our neighborhoods we must start saying yes yes to solving this problem we've got to be unified as a community to do it. We can't complain about the negative impacts of homelessness and then for example when there's a shelter planned for somewhere near our community or a housing project planned say no not here not in my front or backyard that has got to change or this problem will never be solved so I would ask if anything else you can inspire your neighborhood neighbors your neighborhood associations to do is to start thinking about the problem differently it's about people not the problem how many do you know who are one step away who have been homeless how close have you been maybe you've been there someone paycheck away it's about people we've got to do better than we're doing today but we can only do that if we're united as a community and if we start saying yes thank you again for this opportunity panelists thank you once again for your words of wisdom and all of you thanks again for being here to become better educated about the problem that we can all do to solve it we really appreciate it thanks