 Thank you. That was great. Sounded good. So what did you have to flip a setting so it doesn't block any of your sound? Is that what you mentioned? I was looking for that one. Yeah, my daughter's only been playing fiddle a few years, but maybe I can convince her to do it one of these months. For a few more minutes, I was thinking to make sure that we submit requests next month. I don't know if that was for me. You can submit a request right now if you want to hear something. Anything I might know that the tune of it could be? I don't know. Really, anything. If you have something that would go like, I don't know, two, three minutes, just as people filter in if we could take a break and we'll intro and then if you have another piece that we could do right after that, that would be awesome if you could just play as folks filter into the Zoom. I was thinking, I don't know, with inauguration and everything, maybe a little amazing grace. Thanks so much, Ben. That was great. And thank you for playing us in. Welcome, everyone, to the Ward 5 Neighborhood Planning Assembly meeting. For those who are attending for the first time this evening during the pandemic, we've tried to incorporate something new into our agendas, which is highlighting the music of some of our fellow Ward 5 neighbors. And so, Ben, I really appreciate you being here. Would you mind taking a second to just introduce yourself to the group? Maybe if you don't mind letting us know where in the neighborhood you live. Great. Well, thanks so much, Ben. That was great. And I think perfect tribute given the week we've had and heard that song now a couple of times during this week's festivities. So that was a really nice tribute. I really appreciate your being here. Great. So again, I want to welcome everyone to the Ward 5 NPA. My name is Ben Travers. I'll be moderating this evening. I'm on the Ward 5 NPA Steering Committee. You know, just briefly, we've discussed amongst ourselves in a steering committee that oftentimes it may be helpful to remind folks as to what the neighborhood planning assemblies are. You know, we put out there on Front Porch Farm where the NPA, and I think a lot of people may be wondering, well, what is an NPA? And as a reminder to some folks who may not be aware of it, the neighborhood planning assemblies have been around since 1982, when Bernie Sanders was mayor of Burlington and before he was an inauguration meme. And the intent of the neighborhood planning assemblies, if people are interested in it, they can Google NPAs and CEDO. The NPAs are run with the assistance of CEDO. They can Google that and they can see the original resolution that created the NPAs. But the intent of it is to, reading directly from the resolution, to help provide citizens with information concerning city programs and activities, to help obtain citizen views of city needs, to help provide citizens with an opportunity to participate in making recommendations with respect to governmental decisions, including the allocation of revenues. The neighborhood planning assembly shall also be encouraged to provide advice to the appropriate commission or this council with respect to community development, housing programs, the city's comprehensive development plan, and its waterfront planning activities, and the city's budget, among other issues. So that's what the resolution says. I think the NPAs have taken on different forms over the years. I think this iteration with this steering committee, I'm really proud that we've been able to be more creative in our agenda planning and to lean into issues like that we'll be focusing on tonight in our panel related to homelessness. And I mentioned the steering committee. Our agendas are put together by the steering committee with input from our neighbors. This evening we have myself, Joe Derry, Andy Simon, Sherston Bohm, Billy Clark, Lucia Campriolo, Nate Lantieri, and Scott Pavek. I think I got everyone there. So thanks as well to my fellow steering committee members in being here. Just as a matter of our agenda, we'll start this evening with public forum as we always do. We then have Jenna Olson here, among other folks, from Burlington's Water Resources Department. And as I mentioned previously, at 7.45 we'll move into our discussion on homelessness and where we are with respect to that vital issue in Burlington during the ongoing pandemic. So again, welcome everyone. Good evening. And as I mentioned, we'll now move into a period of public forum here. If you have any comment, we've moved everyone into a panelist here. So please feel free to just unmute yourself. And if you have comment for public forum, go ahead. Anyone for public forum? I'm unmuting and then muting myself. Hi there. So I am Grace Ahmed. I live on Howard Street. I've lived there, I guess about 15 years. And I am running for South District City Council in the upcoming election. So I won't take a ton of time here, but I would love to talk to anybody after this. If you want to connect with me, I'm easy to find. And then there's a graceforbtv.com. You can find me too. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Grace. And I suppose I should mention to folks, Grace, I don't know if we've reached out to you and Joan yet about this, but we were at least hoping that we would be able to host you and Joan for City Council candidate forum for our February meeting. We always meet the third Thursday of every month. So that would be on February 18th. But we haven't reached out to you yet, Grace. If you're available, please mark it. I'll be there. Okay, great. And I'll put the note soon. Okay. And so we're looking forward to doing that. I should also mention that of course we're the Ward 5 NPA. Every other ward in the city has its own NPA. Together we are the All Wards Group. And as an All Wards Group, we are working to put together an all city mayoral forum, as well as a forum for the five ballot questions now that will be on the ballot on town meeting day. We are hoping to do that the second week of February. So please stay tuned as well for information on that. Thanks, Grace. Anyone else for public comment? I neglected to mention earlier another steering committee member, Gillian Kirby, who's also very important to putting these meetings together. So I need to mention that, too. And it looks like Representative Bloomly had something. Okay. Yeah, I just... Hi. Good evening. I just wanted to share... I've been asked by, you know, via email about the status of housing support realm assistance through the Cares... Well, the second round of relief money. And I happen to serve on General Housing and Military Affairs Committee. And there... The money is actually sitting in the state bank account. It's about $200 million for... That is targeted specifically for rental support. It is... That's a lot of money. And it is tied to... There are income limitations on that money that weren't there before. Our committee is hoping to work with our congressional delegation and state officials to relax some of the restrictions on that money, not to reduce the commitment to rental supports, but also to extend that, as we did in this last round, to mortgage supports and also transitional housing and the programming that goes with that. So at any rate, there shouldn't be a gap in access to rental subsidies through the COVID program. And I guess I wanted to invite anybody who wanted more information about who to get in touch with to access that funding to get in touch with me. I could put my email in the chat. Great. Thank you very much, Representative Bloomly. And congratulations on your swearing in, which I think took place since we last got together as an NPA to you and to Representative Stevens as well. Congratulations. Yeah. Thank you. Anyone else for public forum? Okay. So we are running a little bit ahead of schedule, which is strange for us, but that's fine. Jenna, I saw you here, I believe. Yep, there you are. Are you prepared to go ahead with your Water Resources presentation? Sure are. Okay, perfect. If you could please just introduce yourself and have at it. Yep. So thanks for having us. So my name is Jenna Olson. I am the policy and programs manager for Burlington's Water Resources division, which is part of the Department of Public Works. I am joined this evening by Jessica LaVallette. She is our customer care and finance manager. Some of you may recall, we came to all of the NPAs in the fall of 2019. And we're planning to come back to all of the NPAs in the spring of 2020. And then the world came to a screeching halt. So just backing up a little bit as a reminder, this project is specifically about rates and affordability project, which was a city council directive that Water Resources was given in April of 2019 to evaluate the affordability and alternate rate structures and alternate revenue sources for providing water in the city. We postponed all of the outreach and the implementation for this project, just in the spirit of being sensitive to the very many impacts that folks experienced due to the pandemic in 2020. Not that that isn't ongoing, but we did have to reboot the project in January. And so we are back restarting our outreach efforts virtually now. We've presented to Board of Finance, DPW commission will be presenting to the Duke in a couple weeks next week. And we're trying to get to all of the NPAs. So we'll be going to some of the NPAs in February, but you guys were kind enough to give us some time on your agenda today. So kind of jumping in here, you know, as I was saying, this is really a, this has really been a study and an evaluation of the affordability of our existing programs. And the reason, one of the reasons why we really need to do this is that there's a constant tension between our core values. It's the constant balancing act that we're in here. Having sustainable funding is a really crucial component to providing access to clean water, because we need that funding to take care of the infrastructure that produces and then delivers clean, safe drinking water and also collects treats and manages wastewater and stormwater before it drains to our rivers in the lake, which is the source of our drinking water. But when our utility costs aren't affordable, our ratepayers may not have equal access to that essential amount of water that they need to live. So when we were launching this project, the first thing we asked ourselves was, how much does it really cost to provide water service in Burlington? Who uses the water and, you know, are they paying their fair share of the costs based on their usage? Now, on this slide, you're going to see three, you see three concentric circles. The distribution system at its core has to be sized appropriately to provide adequate flow to all of our customers. But each customer class is unique and doesn't place the same demand on the water system. So that base level of demand, that smallest circle, that's for normal residential and commercial water usage. That's what's represented by that smallest circle. And our pipes would be a certain size and then we would have fixed costs for chemicals, electricity, pumps, you know, all of the things that are needed to provide clean, safe drinking water, you know, all of that would be finite. But what happens when we add things like watering longs and gardens or peak demand when everyone's using water at the same time, like giving the kids a bath, doing dishes at night, cooking, things like that? What we can see is that second circle, you know, that's the little bit larger that our distribution system has to be in order to provide water for both that base level demand and those extra capacity flows. Now the final circle, the largest one that says fire protection, that's how large our system needs to be in order to provide flow for all the private fire services in the city if necessary. Every building has a domestic water service line, but almost all commercial buildings, institutions and large multi-unit residential buildings also have some sort of, if they have some sort of fire protection system, they also require a separate larger service pipe to provide that fire protection. Now as we mentioned before, as the size of our pipes increase, so do the costs necessary to treat and deliver the water. So going back to one of our original questions, are all customers paying a proportional amount of the costs to provide their property with water? The answer today is no because everyone currently pays the same rate even though certain customer classes place an inherently higher demand on our distribution network and they're the only ones that benefit from it. So I'm going to hand things over to Jess now and she's going to go over, you know, the proposed rate and policy changes and some of the impacts that folks may see and then we'll wrap up by just going over next steps and additional opportunities for the community to weigh in. Thank you, Jenna. I am Jessica Holat and the customer care and finance manager for Burlington Water Resources and as Jenna said, I'm here to discuss the proposed rate and policy changes along with some estimated customer impacts and what opportunities exist for residents to further reduce their bills. So we have six proposed rate and policy changes that are all considered standard best practice within the water utility industry. Additionally, these changes support our goals of ensuring the affordability of water while improving the financial health, sustainability and revenue stability of the funds. These changes are also meant to ensure our customer classes are paying for services in a manner equitable to the burden they place on the system. You're going to see some items there in green. These are adjustments made to our proposal since last March and an effort to mitigate the impact on commercial customers will still maintaining affordability benefits for our residential customers. So the first one we see here is fixed charges by meter size. We are proposing a fixed fee for both water and wastewater that escalates based on meter size beginning with our five eighth inch meters up to our largest size of six inch. This is important because our current rate structure is entirely volumetric, which means our expected revenue is based on how much water we think properties will use in a given year. And so unfortunately a cold rainy summer or global pandemic can't be predicted during the budget process and incorporating a fixed charge for all meter sizes is going to ensure negative revenue that we can count on to provide stability for the funds. This type of rate structure is also viewed favorably when we need to borrow money and allows us to qualify for lower interest rates in some cases. So one of the modifications here from last spring is a reduction in the amount of the fixed fee. We were able to achieve a lower charge by modifying the calculation basis along with a target percentage of our cost recovery. The second one here is the lifeline rate tier. Currently we have a uniform rate structure where everyone is charged the same amount per 100 cubic feet which is equivalent to 748 gallons. The introduction of a lifeline rate allows us to define the water needed for essential life activities as 400 cubic feet and charge less for usage under that threshold which we are calling tier one. Any water consumed above that tier one threshold would be charged at a higher tier two rate. Class based rates. As we learned earlier from Jenna, the strain each customer class puts on our water system is inherently different and so it doesn't make sense to continue charging all customers the same rate. This change allows us to recognize that difference while still providing support to our residential rate payers. Here's a modification from the original proposal as well whereby commercial properties will now be charged the same rate as multifamily properties in an effort to recognize the negative impact the pandemic has likely had on their businesses. The irrigation rate. We're proposing a higher rate for water use solely for irrigation or cooling towers but I've allowed an exemption for community based gardening initiatives like BACG or the Interveil. Private fire protection charges. This change introduces a monthly fee for customers with a private fire service or hydrant which is standard across the country. The fee will escalate according to the diameter of the fire service pipe and conceptually goes back to our cost of service analysis where we are paying more to have a water system capable of serving should these properties need to use it. There's a change here as well where the fee will now be phased in over five years. The original proposal had that assessed assessing the full fee in year one. The water resources assistant program. This is the change that I'm personally most excited about and believe has the potential to make a real difference in the lives of our customers. We're proposing to waive the fixed meter charge for residents of single family properties who can demonstrate they are at or below 185 percent of the federal property level. There's a whole slide later on dedicated to the details but I wanted to mention here that we made another modification to include any senior citizens living in single family homes along with nonprofit housing developments providing affordable and senior living units. Next slide please. So these are our current and proposed rates. We can see now that the fixed charges are assessed on all meter sizes. We have always assessed the fixed fee on meter sizes one inch or larger but this will be the first time since 1996 that we have assessed that on a five-eighths or three-quarter inch meter and so that first one you can see for five-eighths it's currently zero and it's moving for water to $3.34 a month and for wastewater currently zero and proposed to move to $4.68 a month. If we move down to the volumetric rates we see that the single family residential volumetric rate was previously that uniform $4.44 per 100 and now we have that tier that two-tier system. So tier one or that lifeline rate is for usage under 400 cubic feet and will now be $2.49 per 100 and the tier two rate will be $6.23 and that's for usage over 400 cubic feet. That threshold of 400 cubic feet was chosen because it's the median usage in Burlington and in 2019 54% of our residential customers fell into that usage category and we also preferred to use the median instead of an average because the median is unaffected by outlier data points. This rate would also apply to separately metered duplexes and triplexes so if each side of a duplex has a water meter then they would qualify for that tiered system but if there were only one meter for both units then it would fall under the multi-family residential rate which is a midway point between those tier those two tiered rates. So to recap all single family usage between zero and 400 would fall under that tier one rate and then any usage above that 400 cubic feet would be subject to the tier two rate. The rate for multi-family residential mixed-use and commercial is currently $4.44 and we're proposing that it remain the same for everyone but at a slightly lower rate of $4.36 per 100. This provides some relief because they are typically larger consumers and would actually pay more if they were eligible for the lifeline rate tiers. So our previous recommendation did have mixed-use and commercial classes at a higher volumetric rate to reflect that cost of service but we've decided for this upcoming fiscal year to leave them at that lower rate to mitigate the presumed negative impact the pandemic was having on them. The irrigation rate is currently a bit higher than the uniform rate but will be increasing substantially to $7.48 per 100 except for those initiatives we talked about before. This reflects the cost of providing service and sends a pricing signal to conserve water when use is not for basic needs. The wastewater volumetric rate is currently $6.20 for all users and we're proposing to reduce that to $6.08 for everyone. This rate is the same for all customer classes because volume is not a primary cost of service driver for wastewater however the strength of waste is a cost driver which is why we kind of sense a monthly surcharge when an industrial user exceeds the threshold set by city ordinances for waste drink. If we move to the far right column that's where we see the private fire protection charges that are proposed for the first time and they escalate based again on that diameter size. These rates reflect 20% of the intended full charge as they're being phased in over five years. The water resources bill also contains two other charges that aren't on this table. Stormwater is assessed based on property type where residential properties are charged a flat fee and all others are charged by their measured impervious that's been in place since 2009. Those rates are proposed to increase by 5% across the board next fiscal year and the water bill also contains a franchise fee that were required to pay to the general fund according to city charter. This is currently set at 3.5% of all waste water and water sales. Next slide. This is a snapshot of the possible customer impacts. As part of the rate study we created a model that utilized consumption data from calendar year 2019 to calculate the estimated financial impact for each account and as noted the actual bills will vary based on water consumption meter size, availability of private fire protection and whether the customer is eligible for ramp. Our typical customer is indicated by that median volume row and they will see virtually no change in their water bill. That's because they're able to take advantage of the tier one lifeline rate and those savings offset the new fixed meter charge. If that same customer were eligible for our customer assistance program then their estimated bill now drops by about 15.7% a year. Our low volume customers will see an increase due to that fixed meter charge being assessed for the first time. Although being eligible for wrap here also significantly reduces the estimated bill and as we go down the list we see varying impacts with our other customer classes with most increases being related to private fire protection and the storm water rate increase. It's important to remember that a large increase doesn't always correlate to a significant monetary increase. As we see in that first example 15% increase is about $52 a year just over $4 a month. I also want to stress how the pandemic and the related emergency order is significantly altered consumption trends. This calendar year we have seen an average increase in our residential consumption of about 10% and a decrease on the commercial side of about 30% when compared to the previous year. So we have developed an account impact summer request for customers to fill out if they're interested in receiving a projection of how they will be impacted by the proposed rate changes. This will include data from the model along with information about their post-COVID consumption trends so they can take a look at that. Next slide. So we've discussed a little bit about the impacts of our proposed changes and how will vary by customer class and habits but overall we expect bills to be higher for those customers who have vacant homes or with unused irrigation meters. This is because of the fixed fee and it's certainly an opportunity for them to consider removing the meter permanently. Properties with private fire infrastructure could also will also expect to see an increase and this will be a chance to validate their internal records against ours to ensure there are no sizing discrepancies with that pipe diameter. We expect bills to be lower for customers who have that typical usage of 400 cubic feet or those who qualify for RAP. This is because of that lifeline rate tier and the fixed fee waiver and of course any efforts to reduce consumption above that tier two threshold with further shrink overall bills. Next slide. So the Water Resources Assistance Program is going to be with the very first rate pairing assistance initiative for water resources that we've ever done. The goal is for us to limit the administrative burden and cost associated with developing an income verification program so we intend to leverage existing state and federal benefit programs as our qualifying criteria. So this means a customer who already participates in programs like Lifeline or Three Squares Vermont, Crisis Fuel, Rental Assistance through Section 8 can apply and simply use their proof of enrollment in that program to be qualified for our program for the same amount of time. So if they're qualified for one year for three squares and they'll be qualified with us for one year or in the case of senior citizens providing proof of their age will also meet that eligibility threshold. We're also open to adding other qualifying programs and we encourage feedback about initiatives that we should consider to use for our criteria. I think one of the more difficult challenges we face with implementing an assistance program is how to provide relief to renters who don't receive a water bill. Ultimately, there's no way to guarantee that a landlord would pass any savings along and we're certainly not alone as most water utilities struggle with how to reach tenants in a meaningful way. We may not have the answer to that problem today but we aren't giving up and hope to address it with some future initiatives. We've also begun developing some additional assistance programs that address infrastructure and conservation needs. So these proposals will include offering grant funding for condition assessments of sewer laterals, making no or low interest loans available for proactive replacement of water services and sewer laterals, along with efficiency rebates for installing appliances that conserve water, availability of real-time water data to monitor and lower usage, and providing free tools to implement stormwater management practices like rain barrels. They're not going to be ready to roll out quite in July but we're actively working towards them. And now back to Jenna. Thanks, Tess. So I did share the project webpage in the chat function which all the panelists should be able to see. That's where that affordability impact summary comes in so you'll be able to access that from there. We have all of our presentations to date available and the current schedule for our outreach over the coming months. So as we were saying, you know, we've been attending the MPAs. We just presented to DPW Commission. We will be presenting to Tuke. We have presented to Board of Finance. We will also be doing targeted notification to those larger customers or customers with fire services, private hydrants, irrigation meters, and having, you know, setting up meetings with those key community partners and other large users. Early to mid-March, we're hoping to host a virtual open house on Zoom for all of our rate payers. So stay tuned for that. We will be advertising that on Front Porch Forum, on our Facebook pages, and probably taking out an ad in seven days as well just to make sure that folks know when that's happening. Continuous improvement will be happening between March and July. So that will be, you know, us incorporating all the feedback from our stakeholders, reviewing, validating, and responding to those impact summary requests that we receive, doing the ongoing QAQC with the data, and making all of the required updates to our billing system, and then drafting our affordability program policy and making all of the needed ordinance changes. We'll be seeking approval from City Council between April and June, both for the new rate structures and our RAP, as well as our fiscal year 22 rates in our budget. And then the project will be rolling out starting July 1st. So the new rates will take effect July 1st, which will then be reflected in the August bills that folks see. So I know that we just threw a lot at you, and we are, we have a little bit of time. So if there are questions now, we're happy to take those. But otherwise, you can reach out to Jess directly. You can send comments through that page that I shared. But yeah, we're happy to answer any questions. Hi, Jenna and Jess. I do have a question that was a lot of information. I noticed that I wonder what the impact is going to be for farms in the Interveil, for instance, if irrigation fee is going up significantly. Because I think that that's a really important part of Burlington, and I really don't want to burden them, overly burden them so that it isn't a viable operation anymore. Yeah, that's a great question. We're actually exempting the Interveil community-based gardening initiatives. So the gardens that BACG does, so they won't be subject to that higher irrigation rate. They're going to be, it's actually a slightly lower rate than what they're charged now. Just the multi-family residential commercial mix you, so that $4.36, and right now they pay $4.53. So it'll be a little bit lower for them. That's a good question though, Andy. Thank you. Anyone else? Again, I know that's a lot. Yeah, I was wondering if you're anticipating anyone changing their meter size based on the new kind of framework of cost? Yeah, I know that's... Yeah, if that were to happen, would the customer be responsible for that entire cost? So that is also a great question. We have an active meter sizing program. It didn't used to be a thing usually if you had like a two-inch line, they just gave you a two-inch meter. But building use changes, and how people use their water fixtures, things like that, has certainly changed. And so in order to assess that, we would need a fixture count from customers. So we have a whole list of things we need, and then we put it through a sizing program. And I do probably a couple a month, and I would say at least half the time, someone can actually have a smaller sized meter. Right now, most of the meters in our system are of an age that we can replace them for free. So if they're at their sort of end of life, that would be a free change for people. So there wouldn't be a cost, and there's not a cost for us to run that sizing program. So certainly say if someone has anything higher than a five-eighth inch meter, it's worth to count all the toilets and sinks and showers in your building, get that count so we can take a look at it. Okay, yeah, I just wondered from the, you know, not so much from the customer side, but the system side, if you're expecting a big expenditure for that, if, you know, lots of three-quarter inch folks said, oh, I just, I can get the smaller one and save $50 a year or whatever ends up being... Yeah, I mean, we have a fairly significant capital budget for me to replace, and it's just because most of ours are from the early 90s, early to late 90s, and they're ready to be replaced, so we have been ramping up that budget every year. I haven't really projected how many people might try to, you know, do the size of your requests to get a lower fixed fee, but we definitely have adequate money right now to do that, and it's, you know, something in the long run that's, it's beneficial for folks to not have a meter bigger than what they need anyway. We'll make that work, but I am running some numbers between now and July and our next budget season to try to figure out who's going to do it and who's not. Yep, thanks. Any other questions for Jenna or Jess? Okay, Lucy has shared the link to everyone again, so it is very informative, and please check it out and again, reach out to us directly if you have questions in the meantime. Yeah, thank you both very much for being here. I saw that Lucia mentioned in the chat, Lucia's been taking notes for us. She'll certainly include links in the minutes as well. I should have mentioned in the beginning too that with the great assistance of Town Meeting TV that this is being streamed on Town Meeting TV as well and will be available as a recording after this meeting, so if you feel like folks who are not here this evening would be interested in Jenna or Jess's presentation, that link will be available, and please feel free to share it with them. And Jenna and Jess, it's clear you put a ton of time into this. Thank you very much for your work and thank you very much for coming to the NPA. I'm always impressed with the level of expertise here in a relatively small city that folks like you bring to our services, and so I'm really grateful to have you. And Jenna, I think last time you came to our NPA you had a little baby with you, if I'm not mistaken. I did, she's bossing me around now, and she has a brother coming in May actually. Well congratulations and thanks. Virtual format a little easier than having to drag a baby in a car seat to an NPA meeting. Oh, a little bit, yeah. Great, well thanks for having us. Thanks very much. Take care. Great. So then that now takes us to, we're right on time, which is great, to the main part of our agenda, which is a discussion on experiencing homelessness in Burlington. I should give a plug here to fellow steering committee member Andy Simon. It was a little over a year ago, I would say, certainly pre-pandemic, that we first hosted a discussion on this topic. We got together at the space at Queen City Brewery next to Pizza 44 and we were able to all have a meal together and hear this great discussion. Obviously, this topic remains just as if not more important now than it did when we last discussed it, so I'm glad we're still able to connect and have the discussion virtually. I suppose I should acknowledge that one of the downsides of our having it virtually is that there are a number of people who, if I recall correctly, were able to attend the last go around who have some lived experience with experiencing homelessness who were able to come and to join the meeting the last go around, which I wouldn't be surprised if this virtual format, unfortunately, presents barriers for certain communities, but I'm nonetheless glad we're able to have the discussion here. We are lucky this evening to be joined by Kevin Pounds from a new place, Stephen Marshall, a homelessness advocate, and Travis Pullin from CVOEO. I suppose if we could start with just going one by one, if you don't mind just giving us sort of a brief introduction to yourself as well as the work you do, and then we as a steering committee have some questions to guide the discussion here, and then of course as we move along we more than welcome questions from other folks who are here for you all. So Kevin Pounds, do you mind our starting with you with an introduction? Yeah, for some reason when you're the director of a new place, you're always first in alphabetical order, so get to go first a lot. Yeah, I'm Kevin. I'm the director of a new place. We've been around in Brillington for a while. We actually started in 1982 as Brillington emergency shelter, probably the most relevant thing to the people in this neighborhood meeting is about a year ago, September 2020, we took over running the city's low barrier shelter, which I mean low barrier just means we try to take away as many, remove as many barriers or requirements as possible for people to access shelter. It started off in the basement of the Turing Point Center 179 in South Winooski, and then COVID hit as everybody knows by now and had to move out of that space because it just wasn't safe for either the guests or the staff, moved into some campers at North Beach Campground, moved in from there into tents, and this is just one of the facilities we run. We run a couple other facilities in town too, and then I think as probably most of you all know, in December, we moved into the Champlain Inn, and there are a lot of renovations there beforehand, but reopened it, I think it was December 7th, and with a really focused on providing a low barrier facility that was more, I guess, COVID-proof and could also create just a more supportive environment for the people we're serving there. We have 34 units there, we have 50 beds. We run, usually our evening census is around the mid-40s, and yeah, and one of the good things about it is it's allowed us to provide on-site services, so for the first time since we've been ever seen a low barrier shelter, a low barrier facility, we've been able to have on-site case management. We've also, as we went into the new year, been allowed to have other services from the community come on-site and meet with our guests too, which involves community health center, Burlington, with doctors, nurses, and mental health counselors, so that's a quick snapshot. I know there's probably a lot of questions about it, but that was the 90-mile-an-hour snapshot of what we're doing right now. Thanks, Kevin, and we welcome you of course to Ward 5 with your new facility there at the Champlain Inn. That's awesome. Thank you. Stephen Marshall, could we turn to you for an introduction? Sure. I'm afraid I was shut off, so I'm not quite sure what all you want to hear from me, but I'll give you the basic bio. I was elected to the steering committee of the Chittendon County Homeless Alliance about five years ago, approaching now five years ago, so I served for four years as a member of the steering committee, and in that time gotten trained into the habit of working on the point-and-time count and as an advocate in a variety of other ways, so I've since then become a member of the Vermont Council on Homelessness, which is a advisory, the premier advisory panel to the governor on homelessness. I'm also active in the community, just being aware of trying to be aware of what's going on on the street. That's my basic bio. Do you want to hear my main talking point to the night, or shall we come back to that? Well, why don't we turn to Travis and then we'll get right into that. So thanks, Stephen. Travis, could you give us a brief intro? Absolutely. My name is Travis Poulin. I am the director of Chittendon Community Action, which is one of the programs of the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, CVOEO. We provide a number of services to Chittenden County residents. Our free tax site, our Avidah site, opens up February 1st. We're taking appointments now, 211 is booking them for us. And when it comes to housing, we provide two primary services. We work with individuals who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, per federal definition, providing housing case management services, which is really support and guidance and helping lay out a structure toward long term stable housing. And we also manage the housing opportunity grant with the state of Vermont, which is providing financial assistance to pay a security deposit, for instance, so somebody can get into housing or pay a back rent so that they don't become homeless in the first place. And most recently, we also, speaking of COVID, we also worked with the state and were the administrators for a COVID funded program called Rapid Resolution Housing Initiative, which was based off the first round of COVID money and ended as of December 30th. However, there is every expectation that next week I will find out more details about a second round of Rapid Resolution Housing Initiative, which will run from February 1st through the end of June. The nice thing about our RHI funding is that it is fairly flexible and can help address barriers to housing that other program funding can't. So as much as it took up a lot of time over the last four months, I am looking forward to having those funds available again, though we understand that we will probably statewide have only about a third of much money as we had in the last round. And by the way, in that last round, we helped transition, we being all of the community, all of the agencies, COTS, a new place, CHCB, spectrum, steps, we helped transition 156 households that had been experiencing literal homelessness into long-term stable housing. So excellent use to funds, which is again why I'm looking forward to having more of it. Thanks Travis. Before we really jump into the discussion, I think it's important when we have these discussions, particularly now more than ever on social justice issues, to take a moment to acknowledge that stigma and that unconscious as well as conscious bias exists and that individuals in our community and elsewhere who have experienced homelessness, I believe unfortunately are no strangers to stigma and to bias in that area. And so I just want to take a moment to own that and I also want to sort of for a moment acknowledge this is by no means an area that I'm an expert in and I want to be careful that I and that others here don't inadvertently perpetuate that stigma by using incorrect terms or terms that are out of date at this point in time. So I mean, I've heard different terms used in this area about, you know, I've mentioned, for example, individuals experiencing homelessness or houselessness in our agenda. It's referenced as a discussion on experiencing homelessness. But before we dive into discussion, would one of you mind sort of speaking on that and just sort of setting the framework for what's the appropriate way for us to be discussing this issue and for people beyond this meeting to be discussing this issue in their everyday lives? I'll be happy to jump in. Thanks, Stephen. I think what we need to bear in mind when we think of the word homeless, the homeless person, we're talking about multi-dimensional population. One of the dimensions is on the scale across incomes. So that you're running from people who are living in poverty and in danger of becoming homeless, losing their housing down to the very least, the folks with the absolute down to nickels and dimes because they don't have social security or other income. So they're just struggling. But there are other dimensions. The population is fitted with a spectrum of different groups. You have formerly incarcerated. You have people who are addicted to substances to have mental illness. And you have a number of people who just don't understand how to be cooperative and operate within a society. They don't understand the basic idea of working with other people. That's one of the. So I think that we have several dimensions means we have to think creatively and openly about who it is we're actually talking about. When you want to talk about housing is the answer to homelessness, you are taking kind of a narrow or a very linear slice of the population that we're discussing who are actually people who would prefer to have housing who are possibly employable, possibly retrainable. Then again, you've got segments of that population where the challenges are multiple. And you can't just, they say housing first and there's a lot of validity to that. But you have to keep in mind that you're going to be providing services of other kinds to help them to be stable. And I would invite Travis and Kevin to jump in and modify anything I had to say. No, I think everything you said was right. For myself, I try to use the term individuals experiencing homelessness because, you know, people may be homeless. They are not homeless. It's not an inherent condition. It's something that they are going through for the most part. And there's a lot of complex reasons why people may be experiencing homelessness from the very direct and sort of obvious I don't have enough money to get into housing or keep it to folks who are really struggling with addiction or really struggling with mental health or are facing a social attack kids that get thrown out because they're gay or anything along those lines. So as complex as the reasons why someone might be experiencing homelessness are, so too do we have to have a broad spectrum of services and ways of approaching people that can help. It's almost a cliche, but greet people where they are. You know, when you're working with someone and you are creating a housing plan with them for achieving housing, one of the first things you have to do is, as Steven sort of mentioned, make certain that that is what they want. First, you find out who they are, what their challenges are, what their strengths are. Then you find out what they want, where they want to be. The space in between is the initial work of providing services. Yeah, I appreciate Steven and Travis know them both well. I've learned a lot from them. And I think that just in my own personal life, before I worked for a new place, I also volunteered just with a new place and caught some of the shelters and got to know people. And one of the things just even in my work in the last few years, just with some feedback loops with guests, I always made the assumption, I do think income versus cost of living is a big thing. But one of the things that surprised me is when asking guests why they are clients, why they lost their housing, is I always made the assumption it was like, oh, it was because it had to do with paying the rent. But a lot of times it was other things. It could be like struggling with substance use. It was not having any community of support around them, things like that. And I think that's one thing I just want to put out there is that a lot of the, and this has to do with, I think the stigma attached to homelessness is that it can be felt very isolating and that having a community of support is a really key part to somebody breaking that cycle. And that means quite often the people they don't know that are in close proximity to them wherever they happen to be. And so I think that that's a challenge, of course, developing that supportive community. But I think over and over again, the people we've seen that have really been able to be on a trajectory of escaping that cycle is that's always a key to it. Which is why it's important to me to be at a meeting like this because that means you're a key to that. Thanks, Kevin. And thank you all for weighing in on that question and helping to frame the discussion here moving forward. If any folks, any other folks again here have any questions, please feel free to turn on your camera and wave us down and we'll get to you. We sent to our panelists here and as I mentioned before, we have three questions to move through here for the rest of our discussion. They're really the same three questions that we asked the last time we got together. I suspect the answers in January 2021 may be significantly different than the answers that we had pre-pandemic. So the three questions are what is it like to be an individual experiencing homelessness in Burlington? What supports exist for people experiencing homelessness or what support should exist? And then I'd like us to end the discussion with, if we could, a discussion on how people who are here or how people who view this later can help. What can they do to help people who are individuals experiencing homelessness? So if you don't mind, if we could start with this first question of what is it like at this moment to be an individual experiencing homelessness in Burlington? And I leave it to any of the three of you to unmute and go ahead. I will go first then. This is Travis again. What's it like to experience homelessness in Burlington in general? One of the first things I always think about when someone asks me about this is this sort of weird twist that it is expensive to be poor and it is expensive and very, very challenging to be in a situation where you have lost your primary shelter. For most of us it is the rock that we build our lives on. People experiencing homelessness have every aspect of their lives upended. They often have no easy access to clean food and water. They have no easy access to cooking facilities, to restrooms, to laundry, to showers, and that impacts everything that you are trying to do. Whether or not you found yourself experiencing homelessness due to situational poverty and you have a great work history and you're trying to get back out into the workforce, well certainly COVID has impacted that, but so too does the very experience of being homeless impact your capacity to get around town, to make it to interviews, to give your back sometimes depending on how your poverty is affecting your capacity to have a working cell phone number or receive mail. It's an enormous uphill climb and I'll leave it at that so that Kevin and Steven can weigh in as well on other aspects. Hi, what's it like to be homeless? So I have to qualify that I mostly interact with folks who are on the street, not folks who are in shelters. I'm not providing economic services, the way Travis is, I'm not trying to help people move from homelessness to self-sustaining housing. I'm working with people who are either choosing to be on the street or have challenges that prevent them from moving off of the street. And so I have a high high level exposure to people with substance abuse. I also have a high level exposure to people who are rent protesters, people who just say, you know what, I'm not willing to give up a half of my income or work 40 or 60 hours a week and give up 50 or 60% of my income to give to somebody so they can buy a building. And that's a small fraction, but those are the folks that I personally interact with the most. That's the basis for one of the things I wanted to talk about tonight. I put a link to my personal blog where I have the proposal in the chat box and I also sent a copy of the proposal to the email address for this NPA so that you guys can pass that around. My basic proposition is that there's a continuing stream of people moving into homelessness for a variety of reasons, some of them economic and some of them otherwise. And the first stopping point for a lot of folks is to move into a tent or to move into a car. And my basic proposition is that that ought to be safe. It should not by definition be illegal and merely tolerated by the municipalities of the state. So we'll learn more about that on my blog post and see what you think of that. Thanks, Stephen. And before turning to Kevin, just to just follow up on your comment with respect to your experiencing being interacting with people on the streets, as you said, I know that you mentioned earlier that you've done work with a point in time count and I saw you put in the chat that we should ask about the point in time count. I suspect that perhaps COVID has put some different limitations around how that has worked here over the last year. And so do you want to just weigh in on that before we turn to Kevin? Yeah, quick remark. So we are getting ready to do our annual point in time count on January 20, starting January 27, which is also a homelessness awareness day. And I ought to put the link for that in the chat box also. I'll see if I can do that while I'm sitting here later. We go along. But in the meantime, I think the fact that the state has housed almost everyone who was otherwise unhoused. So not only folks who are living in shelters, not only folks who were living on the street, but also folks who are couchsurfing. We've housed in the hotel system a very large number of folks that we've never saw before. And so I'm very curious this year and looking forward to learning this year what fraction of the number of people the state is housing who are actually aren't traditional quote unquote homeless. It has to be specified that when our Kevin Travis or I talk about homeless, we are usually speaking of what housing and urban development calls homeless. It has to do with literal homeless. They're talking about people who are literally without housing, without having a habitable place to live. But if you're couchsurfing, you're not homeless quote unquote, according to HUD. But of course, we all know intuitively that if you don't have your own home, if you have to ask friends for a couch to sleep on, you're actually homeless. And so we're hoping to learn a lot more this year about what the fraction of the monitors are actually couchsurfing because of the unique situation that COVID created. And that was just a thought that I wanted to share about what we're up to, because there's nothing really to ask for you to do. Thanks, Steven. And thanks to Travis, who I saw added a little note here in a chat about some more information on what the point in time count is. Kevin, can we turn to you now? My apologies if I spelled anything wrong. Are you not the world's fastest typist? No worries. Kevin, can we turn to you on this question of sort of what it's like to be an individual experiencing homelessness right now? Yeah. And I always feel a little weird speaking to that since I haven't experienced it myself. But I think one of the first terms that comes to my mind is trauma is just that if you spent, and I think I can say this for any of us on this call, is that if any of us spent a year on the street navigating what Travis described and what Steven described as we would experience trauma, and we would probably come out at the end of that year with mental health challenges that we never anticipated, and maybe even turning to substances we never anticipated to. And I think that sometimes it's often difficult to figure out what's the chicken and what's the egg as far as cause and effect when it comes to people experiencing homelessness. But I think we do know this much is that if you provide somebody a safe environment, shelter environment, home environment, and begin meeting their basic needs, and it's a situation where people are building trust with them and connecting them to supports is they actually have a fighting chance at breaking those things that have come into their life to cause that cycle. But yeah, I think that's just as I get to hear people's stories is that there is some kind of trauma in their experience of experiencing homelessness that has actually caused that cycle of the snowball. And I think that I think I could speak for Steven and Travis on this. We're all three part of the Chin and Homeless Alliance interact frequently is whether it's somebody on the street where that Steven's interacting with or somebody in a shelter environment that I'm interacting with or it's somebody Travis's team is placing in the long-term housing is we're trying to meet them at their place of need wherever that trauma is to move them forward. And that's just going to be a different point with each person. And it's, you know, I really appreciate what Steven said about it being about it not being this a homogeneous group of people all the time that we're working with you, you know, where it's like a one size fits all approach because that's I think that's so true. Thanks, Kevin. I want to just focus on this question now about experiencing homelessness in Burlington. I want to turn it to the rest of the group to see if they have any questions for any of our panelists. Otherwise, I'll move to our next agenda question. Go question. Yeah, go ahead, Nate. Hi, everybody. Thanks for coming. So yes, kind of particularly related to Burlington. I know over the last year there is kind of a growth of of this mutual mutual aid network throughout the city. And I know that several of the organizations is particularly interfaced with the folks who are experiencing homelessness. And I was just wondering, you know, if you saw anything regarding kind of that that growth of mutual aid and if it if it moved the needle for anything or, you know, just kind of, I guess it's anecdotal really, but you know what what effects you may have seen on the ground regarding the impacts or or none. I would definitely say that covid exposed a more accurate face of homelessness of housing instability being faced by our community. If I remember my numbers correctly, the 2020 point in time count last January showed 217 individuals, that's maybe single individuals or groups of families all together added up to 217 people that were experiencing homelessness on that one night snapshot. And that was lower than the year before. And you always look at these numbers with a squint and a pinch of salt because it's a one night count. So you you accept that it is not a perfect system. But we thought, okay, well, we're moving the needle in the right direction. And the veterans have been doing great work at trying to effectively end veterans homelessness. And then covid hit and quite rapidly, we had over 400 people that were presenting as homeless that literally came out of the woods that had not been counted for the point in time, that had been couch surfing that couldn't no longer do so because their family or their friends they were couch surfing with said physical distancing get out. And we still have over 400 people in motels despite the fact that we've housed over 156 in the past four months. So it's it's an issue that doesn't speak directly to what you were saying. Very quickly, I would say that I think that all of the agencies have been working together, even more effectively than we ever have orging networks and and leaning on networks with the with CEDO with the city with the state to try and make certain that services in general are presented to the population from mass food drives to masks to trying to figure out methods of helping people access housing services. And you know that may be a good segue actually into our next question about what supports exist for people experiencing homelessness or what supports should exist and whether it be mutual aid or the services provided by your various organizations, Travis perhaps we could stick with you and you've referenced some of it already if you want to talk some more about what CBOEO has done but also perhaps touching on you know as we hopefully see some light here at the end of the tunnel and we move beyond COVID as a society what do we need to be thinking about about some of these supports that have been put in place related to COVID and you know what can we do to ensure that these supports stick around become more permanent and don't just be a temporary fix for this point in time. Well I have to agree with something you said earlier I think you've got three great people to talk about this issue because we really all do have a little bit of a different perspective. The first thing I thought about when I read that question what supports exist for people experiencing homelessness is from my sort of narrow focus if you will which is we try to work with people who want to be in long-term stable housing. So we look at things like the HOP grant the Housing Opportunity Program which is a multi-agency grant that CBOEO happens to be the fiscal administrator for COTS and I'm going to forget somebody's steps and CHCB, AHS we all work together to work with people experiencing homelessness who are seeking financial assistance for a security deposit or a back rent to prevent homelessness if they're at risk. Again we have to be very specific I have to be very specific about those definitions because this is grant funding and I have to make certain that everyone who is being presented for financial assistance meets the federal definition of homeless or at risk of homelessness with appropriate documentation. But we have the HOP grant eligibility criteria for the HOP grant has not changed has not been tweaked at all at this point due to COVID. We have homeless shelters and certainly Kevin will be able to speak more about that we have the GA program if you are experiencing homelessness and are seeking emergency housing there's really if the shelters are full or if you can't stay there for some reason the only real option is to apply to the state of Vermont to see whether or not you will be granted a motel room. Now that did change significantly under COVID given that at the beginning of this pandemic the state had made it clear they were going to be working very quickly within a year to doing away with the GA temporary shelter program and they were asking the community to work together and come up with solutions come up with ideas about how to continue providing services and COVID hit and they went from wanting to do away with the GA program to housing over 400 people in motels. Supportive services such as offered by COTS community action and other agencies that is as I said sort of a housing case management you meet with people you talk to them you get to know who they are you get to know what their strengths are what their challenges are what is it that they want and I'm going to Stephen because he's going to hand it out. I just wanted to correct you on the number Travis. Chittenden County has something over 500 people but the entire state of Vermont has over 2000 people in the hotels. I took a very quick glance at the list I got from the state today and I was trying to add them up so I'm glad you corrected me and as I the other big thing that I'm I can't believe I'm actually excited about what I am because it's it is work well there you go I'm I'm blessed to be working is the RRI and again that's the rapid resolution housing initiative I can't even say it and that is COVID related funding which is directed toward trying to help people who are experiencing literal homelessness in a shelter outside unsheltered in a motel paid for by the state trying to help them transition into long-term stable housing long-term affordable housing and we expect to have another round of those funds available which don't have quite the same restrictive eligibility criteria as Hop does we expect to have the next round of those funds available very early in February. Kevin could we turn to you now on this question of the supports that exist or the supports that should exist I mean we've mentioned your your new facility now here in yeah you're on I believe the ward five side of Shelburne Road so if you could speak to that and other supports that exist. Yeah I can't I don't want to say I'm really I think Travis and the and CVO EO knows us we're a really big fan of what they do because I can speak for our whole staff team and this sounds like it sounds somewhat paradoxical because we even though we run Champlain Inn we run a sober shelter at 89 North Street in the old North Thin and we've co-managed some apartments with Cathedral Square we really like our end goal is not to create more shelter beds but to see more people move out of the cycle of homelessness into long-term housing and so like that we're really really thankful for partnerships with groups like Travis is just because like that's our end goal for the people we're serving is and given there are some people that don't want that but for everyone that does we want to do everything possible to get them there you know I think that our idea is fairly simple with what we do especially at the Champlain Inn is most of our you know if there's 40 something 50 people there on a given night um you can know that just being a low barrier facility it's people that have been through some of the most traumatic stuff I mean just and that's really official social work terms traumatic stuff but I don't know a better word for it and so um again our idea is pretty fairly simple is if you meet someone's basic needs of safe shelter clothing and food if you create an environment of trust where you can connect people to supports and services then you have a fighting chance of helping them break out of the cycle of homelessness and chart a sustainable path forward and so um you know that's there's no quick fix to that and I think that uh COVID has definitely made that more difficult because people are more isolated and um people um I would say that the mental health emergencies have gone up significantly um no health challenges gone up significantly and even you know just physical um medical emergencies have gone up significantly and I think some of you who live in the neighborhood you probably have even physically seen it I mean I imagine you have is that um we we uh between Christmas Eve and New Year's we probably had our most difficult week as an organization to be honest with you is like usually um holidays actually get pretty smooth for us and this year it just I don't know any other way to say it it was bonkers and I I think some of you maybe some of you even talked to me about this is it's so I just I just want to say it out loud so you know like we're well aware that between Christmas Eve and New Year's we had 19 emergency service calls like sometimes people will call me did you know that I was like yeah we knew it because uh there were a lot of yes we knew it and um some of those were we're pretty dire I mean I don't show this much much in the public sphere but one of the people actually ended up dying in intensive care and so I think that it was a that's been eye opener you know it's and your staff carries that with them right you know because then they're like replaying it's like oh what if we had you know five minutes earlier whatever and so it's been um I have to say it's been nice since as we've moved into the new year and we've reshuffled some staff that you know just have more people a better guess the staff ratio mentioned having a mental health counselor visiting doctors on site once a month stuff like that because I feel like we've gotten we've gotten a little bit more preventative on that but I think that just talking about you know kind of answering your question I think one of the things that really hit me on that is that if the people had not been at the Champlain in during that week it's not that those things wouldn't have been happening but they would have been happening in encampments and in alleyways and dumpsters around our city instead of in a place where we could have gotten them quick medical care in those moments and so I mean it's it was challenging but and I know it's challenging for the neighborhood but I think in the end we got back to a place of equilibrium and actually got some people the care they needed in the process too. Thanks Kevin. Stephen before I turn to you it looks like we have an attendee here who's called in who's raised their hand and I want to provide participants attendees an opportunity to ask questions so the individual is called in I'm going to allow you to talk right now if you have a question I'm trying to unmute Joe I don't know if you're able to yeah I don't have that kind of power okay well the individual on the telephone star 60 individual on the telephone I see I see you raised your hand okay we can hear you now I think hello yep we can hear you oh I just I really just call it a say I hate black people and I think you okay well that is incredibly unfortunate thank you for removing that person Joe Stephen let's get back to the question at hand here you know there's no space for that I should mention here obviously in this NPA we've been very grateful that we haven't had a situation like that before and so there's absolutely no space or room for that here Stephen if we could get back to the discussion at hand though sure so I just want to express my gratitude for the for the moment I I learned so much from my fellow co-worker my colleagues here and it helps me a lot to focus on some of the things I hadn't really thought about earlier um one of the things that I would like to see done is for us to take up for the city of Burlington to take up the initiative to create a plan for addressing people who are living in cars and camps um besides that I really have to communicate what some of the homeless folks have told me they say what do I said to them what do you want to tell the legislators and they said we need help we need we need mental health help we need workers so and I'm just thinking in the era of quote unquote defunding the police or reallocating what the funds from police work to social services work I think we could be talking about how to get more mental health services to the community to folks on the street to folks that are struggling I think Travis uh hit it on the on the head when he talked about this um these some of these struggles that people go through and the fact that it is so being homeless is a self-perpetuating cycle you I mean from my my personal experience I I was able to with help never by myself with help pull myself out of homelessness but the reality of it is it knocks you down every time you turn around something's getting stolen something's getting broken and you have to find a way to pay to replace something that you were you were using to live in the camp or you know the relationships that you have are so critical and they're so unstable the um so I guess I would just add you know suggest that more social services to the people on the street Andy Simon I see with your hands raised thank you Stephen just following up on what Steven said I just sort of had a general comment and question is that you know I know that Travis um and Kevin and anybody who's working in social services um is constantly struggling to figure out where that that money is going to come from to do what you do and I I'm noting that you know in this pandemic emergency somehow we've come up with all this money that previously wasn't available and um to to address some of the issues that have come up for us on an emergency basis which makes me wonder and must make you wonder I think you know when you're when you're struggling when you're you know uh working with the legislature or with the city um to to try to come up with money for essential services um uh and and you know having to beg borrow and steal to to get that money to do things that are absolutely necessary to see all of a sudden all these funds become available must make you wonder about you know what the actual resources of the society are um to perform this kind of uh basic service that's that's just a comment sort of question yeah you know philosophically I didn't know shade to anyone but it is very weird and I think we can all on some level understand this it's very weird to work at a job where you are there to serve really you're there to serve the population you're working with people who are experiencing horrendous poverty we can all acknowledge that what is it the average american household has less than a thousand dollars in savings and then you go home and there's an article on tv about a kardashian and you just you know what um where are our priorities um but uh it has been very interesting I mentioned earlier that at a year ago the state had been telling community action agencies and agencies across the state the local continuums of care that um you know for a number of reasons we need to do away with the ga temporary shelter program how would you propose that we work with you to still provide some level of services if this program were to go away and the local continuum created a subcommittee and we all started debating this and one of the first meetings we had we acknowledged that really one of the things we have to address is we need more housing we do need more affordable housing how will we go about doing that well one of the ways we housed 156 people as a community over the last four months was because champlain housing trust was able to use some of that covid money to buy two motels and renovate them into long-term stable housing long-term affordable housing um kevin knows this well their offices are now relocated to a larger facility um so it is it is uh I don't know if the word irony is correct but it is a weird situation that something as horrendous as a health plague has resulted in our being able to take steps forward in a very positive fashion to address the issue of homelessness and yet we have more people experiencing homelessness right now than we knew about a year ago thanks travis um Dave lin I saw that you had your hand raised you have a question Dave can you hear us we'll move on from there um I want us to take a few minutes here to make sure we get to the last question and actually end to your questions good segue here as to what what people can do in the community uh to help here um um can we turn to uh kevin can we we have it's almost 8 30 now but uh if folks don't mind sticking around a few more minutes I just want to provide people an opportunity to if they want to be able to weigh in and help in this issue how can they do that yeah I think um you know something travis used the word ironic I mean I think that's true about how the you know funding coming and this season and it feels weird sometimes but it's we're thankful for it at the same time but I mean I have it like I had last week off from work was able to take a week off and provides time or reflection and you know and I think for us in a lot of agencies we can think of times that where we've been like Easter famine you know and I think for for us and I'll just speak for a new place but I'm sure it's true for a lot of other organizations too is like the make-it-or-break-it thing for us has always been I mean as much as we appreciate the the you know city money state money federal money all that it's really really the make-it-or-break-it thing for us has been whether our neighbors in burlington value what we do I mean honestly that's just been the make-it-or-break-it thing for us if it's if like our neighborhood and community around us values it values what we're doing as an organization and cares about the guests we're serving we've thrived even during financially difficult times to be honest with you we've done well as an organization somehow and I think that that's um I mean honestly just has a lot to do with our neighbors and I think that kind of this burlington ethos of like what happens to one of us affects all of us um I think like what that looks like concrete for us and I think this this is one of the big been one of the big personal losses um to me as far as COVID is one thing we always valued at our different locations at a new place is like shared evening meals like like every evening is having um meal providers from the community come in and bring dinner and actually share dinner with our guests and um there's kind of a two-part reason for that is it's been it's it kind of there there's something of that happens and I have to say this is how I personally got involved in this was providing meals and sharing meals with um guests at different organizations that were experiencing homelessness but I think something happens is you sit across the table from somebody um enough times and you share a meal with them instead of them becoming a nameless faceless stranger you actually get to know their story they get here's the crazy thing they get to know your story and sometimes you even become surprisingly friends and um and I think for us that's one of the things we're looking forward to post pandemic is like just being able to reopen that and and to our neighbors say would you come provide a meal and even if you can't provide a meal come share a meal and just build a relationship with somebody that you didn't know that was possible with and and I'm just saying that because I think we're all we all do this right as we we see the person on the street and it's we don't even know how to enter the conversation but over over a shared meal it's it's so much simpler and um that's not an immediate thing but I look forward to just that reopening because I think it's transformative on for both people sitting at the same table thanks Kevin and uh Stephen do you have some input as to you know folks want to help out more in this area what they can do I don't quite know how I can beat what Kevin had to say I mean or even add to it I I'm just really impressed by the community of compassion that we seem to have found here in Burlington and the number of people that really care about folks who are homeless noting noting that there's a criminal element there's uh an element of um I mean some of the people that I advocate for are you know create horrible messes trash where they camp and I'm at I'm at great pain to understand how to make that right but yet people in this community still have compassion and I'm I'm just deeply moved by that um that's really important and I guess the main thing the the next thing is you know make sure you talk to your uh city counselor and your state rep and your state senators and make sure that you they know that recognizing that people at the bottom of the social hierarchy are there for a reason and not always of their own making sometimes of their own making but most importantly uh very often being capable of enjoying using the hand up that's being that could be offered to them I mean I can we talk about systematic systemic homelessness and systemic poverty we talk about how the economy and the society through our pursuit of status and our own personal advantage we we run routines that force people other people down I mean it's almost automatic in the way the economic engine works and and so it deserves our our thoughtfulness and compassion but how do we try at at least to create a smooth ramp for self-improvement if somebody wants to improve themselves I don't know thanks Steven Travis I'd like to um echo uh what uh Kevin and Ted uh oh go ahead I I think maybe we're delayed and but I just if I could give I'll give you the final word on this question of what people can do to help before turning to you though Travis I just want to uh see you know we're running a few minutes over here but if any of the other participants um here have a question for you three and then Travis I'll give you the final word on this what can folks do to help question the anyone else any attendees have any questions for our just awesome panelists here um I'll jump in just for a quick second um Kevin I just want to say that you know um we at the npa and I'll speak for myself and I'm sure the other npa uh steering committee members you know we're really happy to have you in the neighborhood and we hope that you view the the us as a resource um in the neighborhood um you know I'm really happy that we've got this going once a year now um but obviously this is a you know something that you're dealing with every day so feel free to reach out to us um if there's any you know specific things that you know we can do as neighbors because we we view you know anyone who has any places one of our you know one of our neighbors just like everybody else so I I just want to say you know several neighbors have reached out you know over the um over the last few weeks and some with legitimate concerns too about you know what's happening you know the sampling in and one thing that has been and I think the right word is blessing to me personally has been the graciousness of those conversations you know it's I mean I mean and you know just that people being like hey this is what I see can we talk about it and like and knowing that it's you know just like when you move into a new neighborhood with your you know me and my family moved on north abt 10 years ago it's like you get to know your neighbors it's a learning process right and so I just really appreciate the graciousness that neighbors neighbors have had in this conversation so thanks well no yeah and if we can be a resource for the you know for the graceful conversations but not so graceful conversations which may you know come up you know whatever we whatever we can do you know I'm I'm right over on Locust Paris and you know very happy to have you guys you know nearby I think it's a it's a great resource for the for the city so before Travis gets to sit put in the final word I just wanted to throw in one more short comment um the more people complain about the trash in the homeless camp the more likely it is the city is going to help us clean it up so it don't put the brakes on telling people in the city you know what could you guys help with that trash because I'm ready to take the help thanks David Travis could we give you now that final word on how folks can help you know um I'll just echo some what's already been said be open to learning about the complexities of homelessness try not to paint anybody with too broad a brush everybody has unique experiences and are going through different types of things uh encourage your community leaders to actively think about the issue of affordable housing and what that means um and hey if you've got the ability donate to your local nonprofit um it's it's amazing what grants can cover and equally amazing what grant funding can't I can't help somebody get a non-driver ID or a copy of their birth certificate to apply for housing paid for by any grants that I have so that has to come from donations because the grants just don't cover those types of expenses so um donate to a new place donate to cvoio if you can uh may as well may as well put that plug in thanks Travis and are the three of you okay with if we wanted to share your contact information in the minutes for folks to reach out if they did want to join you and help out or are you okay with our sharing your contact information oh I was in Kevin I know it's your work address Stephen I think it's your personal address so please let me know um my email address is fun okay great so I think um Lucia can put those in the minutes and and we'll get those out to folks um I really want to thank you all uh for this uh great discussion and thank you all for uh on behalf of our npa for uh everything you've been doing for our community um I think that probably brings us to the close of the meeting unless anyone has any final very brief or short comments here okay um well I want to thank uh all of our attendees as well for coming out to this I know these are not easy times I know that after virtual workdays it's not easy to sign into yet another zoom and I appreciate your uh coming to this space that we're holding for these conversations and um you know I suppose just uh I just want to say once more um that uh you know we had an unfortunate person who raised a question before and then and then another individual I'm not sure if that was purposeful or not who sort of interrupted with a strange question there we've been I think very lucky that we haven't had sort of these zoom bombs over the course of this but I think it's very important that our community knows that um you know we we need to be having these discussions on issues like those we've had tonight um and and I think it's important that people know that these npa forums are safe spaces for those discussions um there was a terrible comment made by an individual tonight with respect uh um uh our our neighbors of color in our community um I think I can speak on behalf of our steering committee when I say that uh Black Lives Matter um that we are uh happy to have been able to host discussions with uh Black on Businesses in this npa like with Juniper Creative we were happy to be able to host a discussion at our last meeting about uh reparations with the Burlington office of racial equity inclusion and belonging we look forward to continuing to host those discussions and there's again allow me to reiterate there's absolutely no room for hate for discrimination for bias uh and stigma as I mentioned before uh in these types of meetings so I want to take an opportunity to say that this evening looking forward to continuing these discussions and to making sure that this is a space full of allies and a safe space for us to have these really important dialogues so thank you to our panelists and thank you to everyone else I think that uh that closes the meeting thank you all thanks a lot then thanks for adding that thanks a lot thanks