 and we will go ahead and call the task force to prevent and homelessness to order at 402. Clerk, could you please read the roll for us? Vernon. Present. Chief Holbrook, Mr. Pennell, Mr. Cook, Mr. Whitehead. He's sending an excuse. Ms. Pharrell. She's been represented by Ms. Allison Smith. Thank you. Mr. Wilkerson. Thank you. Mr. Clouse. Ms. McCullough. Judge McCullough. Judge Brock. Here. Thank you. Ms. Sutton. Mr. Flores. Ms. Skelton. Mr. Ogborn. And Mr. Dobbins. Thank you. Did I miss anyone? Thank you all. All right. I would now entertain a motion to approve the minutes from the June 29th meeting. Is there a second? All right. Well, then we can... Do we need to call roll again? Are you opposed? Okay. All in favor of approving last meeting's minutes. Awesome. All opposed? All right. The minutes are approved. Thank you. Well, good afternoon. I want to welcome everybody to the third meeting of the Mayor's Task Force Prevent and End Homelessness. Dang it. But thank you again for sticking with us for such an important topic. A topic that we want to take forward as a major quality of life issue that we all recognize needs some TLC from us. I think the biggest thing for today, you know, to know where we've come from to where we want to go is to how we got here in the current state of services that our wonderful partners in this city provide. We have been busy in the two months from the first meeting, second meeting, and here we are, third one, working with staff bringing forward ideas for consideration here in the future to this task force to eventually bring forward. As you can see, it takes everybody, businesses, communities, the religious sector to make it happen. We lean on a lot of involved groups. We had a case study to look at this week, our CPD shut down a store that I think we can all agree on was a nuisance to not just one neighborhood but several, a business district, a hospitality district. Chief, can you just give a couple comments on that? I'm sure people read in the newspaper about your initiatives on that. Yes, sir. Just in summary, I think most people know what was referred to as the blue store. It was mentioned in our last meeting when they reviewed the 2013 task force report that it had some key findings. One was that particular business was identified as one that was a problem and I think for the purposes of our conversations, the problem that we saw that was just one of many factors but we saw that that store was contributing and I would argue was taking advantage of some of those that were down on their luck and suffering from addiction. They seem to be a fueling spot for a voluminous number of purchases by people that were experiencing homelessness in any area. Oftentimes they were the same folks that we would see aggressively panhandling and obstructing traffic and at times being intimidating and being intoxicated so over the course of probably the last 18 months we were really taking a hard look looking at some numbers reviewing our reports. There was an excess of 200 calls for service. A lot of it was quality of life type violations that a lot of it centered around alcohol sales and alcohol abuse and public intoxication and other things that come with that. We had a few serious assaults but it was a I don't believe it was a surprise to anybody that we were looking at this at this particular store and just the pattern of practice of the operations. I think it may be a surprise that we're able to take some affirmative action but again hopefully it will be impactful for the immediate area in the surrounding neighborhoods but also maybe impactful on removing that an impediment or something that is contributing to some of the problems that some of our people experiencing homelessness are suffering as far as addiction. Great thank you. Safely providing those services we recognize that and that was a big reason CPD in city took that initiative. We want to the reason we asked the groups to present today is because they are wonderful partners either directly or indirectly with the city when it comes to funding and partnering and services. The we're going to hear from five groups today. Do you want to comment on the five questions that were sent out or yeah so as you all know we've been having a lot of meetings in between these meetings to really understand the breaths of services you know what our different options are what the history is you know as as chief alluded to we had a task force in 2013 that had some strategies that very much align with some of the conversations that we've been having and so it was really important for us to get our providers that work very closely with people experiencing homelessness or the unsheltered population in the room to share their experiences but also for us to have a collaborative discussion around some of the issues that you all have raised so prior to today's meeting we sent four questions over to our providers and so when councilman Brennan mentioned that they are directly and indirectly funded as a reminder we have a set a number of funds from our community development dollars that trickle down from federal HUD funding and we also have our general fund dollars which is direct city money and it's about a million or so direct funding and then a couple million in terms of community development and so we really look at that as our city's investment in the prevention of homelessness and so we really believe that this is a pivotal point for us to start thinking about really addressing some of the gaps that you all have discussed during this task force meeting and through other avenues as I know that we've been having a lot of discussions about this top of mind issue so the four questions that we shared really come from some of our previous task force discussions some of our providers they were really thoughtful and submitted their answers in writing and we have provided that to you all and I ask that you take a couple minutes to read their responses because they are very thoughtful and really get you thinking about some of the discussions that we've had so the question number one is cpd estimates that there are approximately 200 to 250 unsheltered homeless what are your recommendations for addressing the growing number of unsheltered homeless on the street as a reminder this task force decided that of course we can't solve every facet of homelessness but we can focus on the most timely and urgent issue and that is the unsheltered population that we typically see interacting within our entertainment districts and our neighborhoods question number two is the task force has identified a lack of coordination and services after 5 p.m what would you suggest on how to address this our last task for me force meeting we spent a lot of time talking about this with business owners talking about how that's typically when they see an increase in their patrons but don't really know who to call and how police typically becomes kind of the default and then also recognizing that there aren't really a lot of options after the nine to five or weekend hours and then finally you know based on the the great work of inspire real change who has been our research consultant throughout this the task force has identified over a hundred services in the in the richland county area addressing homelessness how can these services be better streamlined to address the needs of the unsheltered population where do you see your role and so one thing we learned from Tracy's presentation last meeting was it's not that Columbia doesn't care because we have some really amazing programs but they really are pretty widely spread all over richland county and what are some ways in which we can streamline that and ensure that we have a very deliberate response and are really addressing all of the different facets that people have recognized that contribute to homelessness or our consequence of that so with that I believe we will go ahead and get started we've given the providers about ten minutes and that doesn't include time for questions so we we ask that you all think of some and wait to to ask those questions after they give their presentation and really today's meeting is dedicated to our discussion with providers but in the interest of ensuring that all five can present we'll limit it to ten minutes and we'll try and keep you all on that time schedule and then of course we'll have time during committee discussion if there's anything else that arises that you all want to talk about so we thought we would start with our general funding recipients so this is that one million to support our inclement weather center and currently that is three entities that is united way transitions and the USC housing first program so I would love to invite Jennifer from united way to come up and present Jennifer Moore United Way thank you so much for having us here today I'm gonna keep my phone here so I can make sure I'm within 10 minutes we sent our responses in advance so I hope that you have that I see you have one there so thank you anyone in the audience I have extra copies I'm happy to give out after if it's okay what I thought I might do is just kind of hit some of the high points and then see what questions you have because I know you guys have been really digging in and doing hard work so and I feel like my back is to both of you so I'm sorry so looking at the responses itself so what we wanted to do first is just kind of give you a little glimpse of united way so we are a six county united way we work in the field of health and human services so we fund a variety of programs from children's programs through senior programs and things like that so we work typically for our unrestricted funding with what are called certified impact partner agencies they go through a vetting and a review process to understand their financial stability and their governance practices and to make sure that they're compliant with standards of non-profit practices for state law specifically in the role of homelessness what we wanted to do is kind of point out that we have three roles in this space to kind of talk through a little bit the first one is we're a funder so we are the community's largest private funding source of homeless and emergency services there are government entities that provide more than we do certainly the federal government does but we we do have a big role in that space so we provide 2.3 million dollars this year for emergency services emergency shelters street outreach and prevention services when I say prevention I'm talking about a more rent mortgage utility services to prevent homelessness because that's an incredible need in our community this past year we started a two-generation approach specifically looking at families experiencing homelessness or those who are precariously housed I know you guys are really focused on unsheltered in the setting but our two-generation approach really works with the caregivers to work on their workforce skills and improving their housing stability over time and then working with services for the children and the family and these are through partnerships with our school districts is how we get the referrals there so this is a new initiative that we have through a private foundation we also through our McKenzie Scott gift that we were amazingly fortunate to receive about a year ago we have dedicated five million dollars to affordable housing and we see that as a range of housing so just good affordable safe decent rental property for a variety of incomes to voucher supported housing to permanent supportive housing we currently have funded two projects around home repairs and that is to prevent homelessness particularly with people with disabling condition and seniors and then we have three projects that we are working on right now that are incredibly exciting I can't mention them right now but they're very very exciting and they'll add about 160 new units here in richland and lexington county because we believe in geographic diversity as well of housing so that's the funding number two research and data collection so we operate on behalf of the local homeless coalition which i'll talk about in just a second the homeless management information system so this is the internet-based database that our shelters and service providers use in the community so the vast majority of our I call them more of our mainstream you know not the grassroots organizations that you would think of but our large providers use the system this is how you log a shelter stay this is how you log a client clients attaining stable housing increasing their income it's how providers can coordinate services across agencies as well so you can see if a client is working with this agency and they come to you for a different service you have the ability to communicate in the system with that other agency so this is our this is our HMIS system which is very important for homeless coordination we do research also on the on the information we get from the system so an example right now of a current research is we are working with Chapin Hall which is the nation's leading expert in youth homelessness we are cohort communities with Austin Texas in New York City and we are trying to discover the pathways of youth homelessness using administrative data sources through our state data warehouse so that's very exciting the third ray is we are the lead for the local homeless continuum of care bring in federal resources for homelessness so our community has a local homeless coalition called the Midlands Area Consortium for the homeless mock and so I hope everybody comes to their next meeting which is next Friday on the 26th at 10 a.m we host them at united way because we have a great space but really in our role and you can see on the second page it kind of goes through some of the responsibilities that we help them with but mock was established in 1994 it is an all volunteer organization that covers 13 counties here in the in the central Midlands there's four continuous of care in the state what our role really is to secure federal resources for housing for people who are experiencing homelessness and all the federal compliance that comes along with that so this year that will equate to about 3.5 million dollars for 500 plus units of housing and so that's individuals and families with children so equates to much more than 500 people so i'm going to skip over again i have the listing of those continuous here kind of things that we do on the back and i'm happy to kind of pause for a second and see if there's any questions before i go into the worst recommendations question about sure mock yes sir probably have a large attendance to that do local cities counties towns and representatives yeah yeah absolutely and we would love to have city staff there that's great we we typically have strong representation i know from richland lexington county rock hill comes to me a city of rock hill that comes down and things like that i know in the past we've had city representation i think we've had cpd there as well so yeah we would love to have strong regular participation that would be amazing perfect yeah and similar as we're thinking through kind of the different entities and coalitions and opportunities from a federal level and there's certainly a lot coming down the pike one of the things that you know we've been thinking about and would love to have your insight on is i mean rock hill is very different than columbia which is very different than allendale and so when you think about 13 different counties that's a very large coalition of counties and columbia is one of the only that has those that low barrier shelter like transitions have you seen that we are maybe taking on the burden of those other counties because we are the only ones that invest in those services well i'll say rock hill city of rock hill has a very sophisticated system they have strong participation with their city government there strong interest they have they actually the city of rock hill actually runs a coc funded program for rapid rehousing we've been talking to city staff here to see if there would be interesting capacity to look at that here as well um yeah i mean the the thing is i mean between here and charleston you've got one shelter which is samaritan house in orangeburg so i mean you do have needs across our state you really do what we have done in the past we we haven't done this in about a year and a half with the pandemic is um we would work with our street outreach workers to do kind of a summer survey if you will to kind of ask people if they saw new faces that they didn't recognize because our street outreach workers in this community are amazing and they know the population they know the people ask them you know how long they've been here and where they've come from typically we find it's fairly low percentage of people it's somewhere around 10 to 15 percent which i think is about roughly in in kernel curry can correct me on this i think that's roughly what transition sees in a year of people who are not from the midlands um in a given year so i think that typically lines up so i'll go through the recommendations as matt has a question no my question relates to i guess in one of your response to the questions i don't mean to be jumping ahead but i know go for it she offered go for it well you know i i did notice when you were asked the question about how to deal with the 200 to 250 and sheltered and you referenced the inclement weather center being closed and you know we know from the main street district when that center is open we do seem to have less people on the streets than when it's not open and uh and you know and it is a by definition a seasonal shelter and those kind of things so um i guess i'm just emphasizing that that you know having that low demand facility does seem to help and and and just you know any any thoughts on that i guess yeah absolutely so the city uh came to us oh gosh six six years ago or so to to help coordinate the city's inclement weather center which is the cold weather shelter and we work with partners to do that so we we do the coordination of it and then obviously work with hmi us on the data collection side in the analysis side so work with transition salvation army the comet and then private security um average headcount last year was 104 people um so um again you do feel that when the center is not open um other things just to kind of give you a snapshot of kind of the big picture of services because you'll you'll see in my recommendation i the first one i talk about is housing because getting through the bottleneck is really what we need to accomplish from a systems level approach in the community you know getting people where um they can increase their income and then identify housing because i housing is incredibly scarce um especially housing that people can forward so just a couple quick things to kind of also paint the picture so in hmi us what we do is we track what's called system performance measures that measures how long people are homeless in the community so how quickly they are able to exit the homelessness system based on housing and other opportunities available to them so um in last year we uh in hmi us all 2989 sorry i'll say that oh that's my timer okay i'll be real quick uh 2989 unduplicated people and so these are people in shelter beds street outreach things like that that qualify as as as homeless um beds that we have year-round is 2089 81 seasonal beds is another 269 now these are these are 13 county statistics but 80 percent is richland county just keep that in mind that means you have a gap on any given day of 639 people who need housing of some sort that do not have that opportunity so that is your housing gap so 639 people the difference between the number of beds that you have including your seasonal which are not year-round and the number of people who are unduplicated last year and then think about 80 percent of that typically is richland county so you have over 500 people on a given day that need housing that do not have that opportunity and that was my 10 minutes so jennifer can i have a follow-up to that yes so those are very helpful numbers and being that you all are the coordinating entity for the city of columbia's efforts do you have a way to break down the numbers for the city population of unsheltered we we can we're working on that right now it's a little bit more complex um sheltering facilities are easier to identify than unsheltered people because we may have an amazing agency like for example 180 place that does street outreach here but they also do it in akon so it's a little bit more complex to understand in the system where they interacted with someone so we want to be exact we are looking at it but i don't have that today and so i would just suggest being that again the nature of the questions are and the going forward of course um if you all are still working with us in this space um that's a pretty important number to understand and know for us um and i think it also goes to the bigger discussion about the continuum of care in this 13 counties so a lot of that information seems um it's all mixed up you know with the all the continuum of care counties and we're trying to i know get more micro as to what's going on here so that would be a request that i would have thank you yeah absolutely and there is some complexity to the way the HUD does formulas so if you look at the not to get too technical says three point five million dollars is the continuum of care money correct so if you look at how they allocate money per county now we put it into a big pool and typically 90 percent of those dollars are focused here in richland county specifically really in columbia um and again those are housing units those are people in beds you know in a safe decent long-term bed if you look at the actual HUD allocations though columbia is only 300 000 is what you're supposed to get lexington county is 1.5 million so so i would suggest potentially as a lobbying or an advocacy effort you can look at the HUD allocations if you look at other surrounding states south carolina per capita gets far less money um in the HUD continuum of care competition than comparable states connecticut gets it's a tiny state has less homeless people than us and gets about 10 times per person than we do here so if you um had those paid lobbyists that would be an amazing thing for them to be talking with HUD about is the formula itself so jennifer this is more probably of a comment and a question but of those 500 people um so those are 500 that you know the question would be of those 500 you know how many of those are ones that is is a gap after hours on who you contact what's available where can people go uh those types of things yeah it's it's complex i mean there there is very limited intake after hours and weekends but the the unfortunate reality as well as our shelters are full so even if you interacted with someone or if an officer interacted with someone they're like more likely than not there's not going to be a bed for them to go to if there was intake available so that's that's the other complexity that we have so when i think about this i tend to step back and say we have to take a step back and look at the systems themselves we need more ranges of housing options for people so we can get people out of transitions or out of all of our gospel quicker to free up those beds for people who need those beds i you can see in my recommendations i don't advocate for additional shelter beds i advocate for more housing options that the system can flow faster for everyone on the average length of time people are homeless is 59 days in a shelter bed that should be at least half okay yeah we're we're absolutely an advocate and i think it's amazing what you did adding the mental health professional to your team that was wonderful okay i'll ask for questions and i'll look over at the city clerk to make sure that's okay and if you guys think of more we have plenty of opportunities after everybody presents as well i think as people are presenting there may be some other questions about thank you jennifer we appreciate it yes thank you so much thank for your work i believe so kernel curry and and for those of y'all that um may not know so currently the way that our inclement center weather center is supported is that united way contracts with transitions to provide those services and in the past it's been christ central ministries um so we've had a lot of different models to operate that seasonal shelter if you go ahead first of all thank you for having me tonight i appreciate the chance and the opportunity to talk a little bit if you look in your handouts you'll see a data sheet that was sort of what i'm going to try to talk through in a very quick manner it starts with our mission there engaging and equipping homeless adults in the midlands to transition into stability and permanent housing we are about getting folks into permanent housing that's what we want to do we are not we do not regard ourselves as a normal shelter we are here to try to help people overcome barriers and to get into housing as quickly as possible so we're a one-stop facility where people can go and ideally partners are there and they can get help from case managers and be able to meet their needs and then move into housing we do have 260 beds that are available we're at 91 occupancy so we're pretty much full every night especially at the lower level emergency beds some of the veteran beds may not be full but we don't tend to take a person off the street and put them in the veteran rooms that we're working with the va on so those 260 beds another 70 or so that walk in so that's some of that unsheltered population it's also some of the oliver gospel folks who come to us for the day you can see we've placed 3,298 folks into permanent housing we regard that as a major success since we've opened 3,000 plus people walking around the streets of columbia slash richland county slash lexington would really be a disaster we'd start to look like LA so we regard that as a big success the next number there number six we we touch over 3,000 people a year so this is our various case management people in the day center people in outreach finding folks we've done 2.3 million meals since we've opened we're the largest feeding organization around for everyone's knowledge though we only give meals to people at lunch if they don't have beds for the city agreement we only do breakfast and dinner for those that have a bed and that's that's per city guidance not ours you can see other things there the different aspects that everyone can take advantage of job searching bathrooms which i know are always a source subject with many in the community we have bathrooms available throughout the year for folks to use the 214 outreach we like outreach i'm a believer in outreach the nice thing there of the 247 people we touched with outreach 143 of them got beds at transitions so we're always trying to get people that we meet on the streets into housing into into the shelter beds at transitions so we can then work with them and move them on to permanent housing always a good news story major partners there thank all of them Salvation Army Cooperative Ministry you can they're listed there for you to see the VA rickson county bar does stuff and i'd highlight one of your members is very helpful with the homeless court which is also at transition so lots of good things partners are key partners we we can't do everything one of your questions on duplication we don't try to do certain things i love it when everybody comes to transitions because it helps that one-stop concept so our doors are open i love when partners come in some of covet has hurt a little bit with some folks you know congregating and congregate settings but again i think we're getting past some of that and some of the volunteers as well as partners are coming back in force now the streamlining efforts there you can see i think part of this partnership is streamlining the different organizations that are out there trying to help homeless folks so reminders on what transitions is it's not a shelter it's not your standard shelter and it helps people work through barriers so and aid them in recovering and getting them into permanent housing jobs are critical for us 70 of our folks will need a job to pay for an apartment what's called the government will call that self-resolve i mean they're not going to go into permanent supportive housing so jobs are critical and we need to help people do that and get to where they need to be the day center is great that's a way of reaching the unsheltered population they come in that 70 a day they're coming in we can engage them in services and try to get them in the housing and get them off the street so they move from unsheltered to sheltered to answer the questions and you can see the different things that are listed here one thing i would just caution folks maintain what works if there's a program that's working well let's keep doing it if you don't work on the sheltered population they'll become unsheltered and your unsheltered population will just get worse so i i really stress that we need some shelter beds i'm like jennifer though i don't know that we need to build tons more or any more but they are helpful they're part of the continuum of care and we need to have them so that the unsheltered population when they decide for help can immediately get in a shelter and be helped um outreach worker i can't stress that enough if you're concerned about somebody at 10 o'clock at night somewhere well first thing you need to get them during the day some of there's a kind of a misguided notion that waking people up in a camp at two in the morning is really going to be productive all you're going to do is infuriate folks and unless you're there to close the camp it's really not the best time to engage him the best time to engage him is actually in the day center and try to draw them in and not actually even be in the camp but we have folks who go out to the camp i really think that's an important aspect to have that outreach person and not necessarily a coordinator a person who's actually working with yellow shirts with cpd and actually has beds in their pocket so that when a yellow shirt finds somebody they get a bed i mean yesterday we had cpd call we gave the person a bed the day before that they found another person walking on 277 they got a bed so i mean you know and and yesterday they worked through the outreach worker because that's who they know so they called alicia and we got the person in a bed so that's a productive thing increasing education i do think a challenge for us is defining what success is i i don't know that we're ever going to get every homeless person off the street i'd sure love to do that but as soon as we do that you know somebody's going to show up somewhere or the house is going to burn down so i mean what is the the va has used the term functional zero uh there's smarter people than i that can explain that to you but what is success and i think if the task force helps to define that that would be beneficial i know you're you're focused on the unsheltered population but does that mean you know there's nobody on the street we're never going to see anybody i think some of that's a little bit unrealistic for a major urban area in america today um maintaining the inclement weather center the bus ticket program very successful a great program it stopped cold now we have no funding so that stopped as of one july i'd love for that bus ticket program to resume i think that's a very good way of helping sheltered and unsheltered folks get back to their families and so those are some approaches for number one number two a services after five we mentioned the outreach worker i think that would be important if you're trying to target someone i've had complaints about somebody at a gas station at 10 o'clock at night you know hey they're at a gas station at 10 o'clock at night um and it's several blocks away from transitions so the only answer is to have an outreach person engage them and the other answer is to tell the gas station to deal with people who are there if the gas station's not happy or unhappy with the people there then that's a police issue or the gas station owner needs to decide is that a problem so part of this becomes having that outreach person to get there i know chief and i have talked about a police drop-off point i'm all ears some cities do that there are some safety considerations with that uh those are usually known by some more derogatory terms uh someone's inebriated where do they go the ideal thing is not always to take people to alvin s glenn so i'm open i want to make sure it would be done right certainly folks like kylie could help you know what's legal here what's the right way to do this but you know that can be something especially in the non-iwc season that facility is open and and it could be used uh you know with mats for people who were worried about you know stumbling or falling there's different ways to do things and i'd be interested uh in anybody who wants to discuss that we can certainly go further dmh is a key element here folks like mercy has great outreach in usc housing first they have great outreach to you're working with mental health folks you got to get it is and again it's not eleven o'clock at night it's during the day it's when people are more open to discussion and we we work to get people off the streets so after five they're not a problem they're in a health healthy place doing well i think bathrooms i've been through this you know columbia cares plan bathrooms are an issue i get chewed out about people going to the bathroom uh away from transitions we have you know obviously bathroom facilities but those are only available to people really from eight thirty to five if you're part of that after population and you're not at transitions bathrooms are a problem and so again i think that might be a profitable thing to look at we had the portal it's after the eclipse i thought that was brilliant i thought that was brilliant they were never taken down and i don't know i'm not sure who they hurt but they're gone now and i know there's reasons for that but you know that that might be something that is worth looking at and deciding what's going on question number three are biggest challenges affordable housing and single room occupancy units rooms that are ADA compliant you're disabled folks ramps you know one stair can be a disaster for folks you know especially in a walker or in a wheelchair so we we're committed to making more of that type of unit available for the homeless and the public in general funding more you know everybody likes to say fund more on the provider side but i know on the city side that's not always the most popular thing but we need to quit saying one million a year please say something else because i've listened to that for ten years and it'd be nice to just change let's say one point one million because inflation is eight percent this year and so if we're staying at one million for ten years after a while i think we need to say something else to everybody the chronically homeless folks they're tough to house we work with them again mental health and addiction issues partners need to help with that incomes have not kept pace with the inflation for rental units so there's problems there as well sex offenders is one the city controls we do not take sex offenders per the city agreement they're on the street after five because they cannot go anywhere and it's not us by law state law they are allowed to go in any shelter regardless of school location or anything so we do not take them because we commit it to the neighborhoods originally that we would not take sex offenders and and we're people of our word and we're not going to take them unless the city comes back and says you know craig this is all messed up you need to take them and if that happens i'm all ears and i'll talk with people who are neighborhood leaders and make sure hey yeah craig we'd rather have them that transitions in in our backyard and then maybe we can do something i think that's an easy fix that you know i don't see a counter to that really um to streamline the service the final question here i'm trying to get there before that beeper goes off we've got partnering with 50 agencies i'll partner with anybody you know as long as we're doing moral and good things i i love when we partner hospitals when i get those hospitals back in some of them kind of took off they need to come back they want to reduce emergency room visits then you know you need to be working with shelters especially transitions and we can try to work to reduce ambulance calls because i know we have ambulance calls i see the ambulance um so there's you know that the education educating the public that you know there are a hundred agencies i'd like to see that list but you know they do different things and like lilanis folks with families we don't necessarily work with some of those partners so i you know we're single adults 18 and older so men and women so some of the groups are that plentiful because there are different aspects some do mental health some do substance and that's good this is a team sport everybody's not going to we're not going to shrink this to three people it's going to be a lot of folks because there's a lot to this problem and we need to work together to get there um final thing avoid duplication hey we do that the best we can i don't want to do something that another agency is doing well i just want them to come over to transitions and help they're doing what their expertise is i think i made it before the beeper so now it's question time please go ahead and and i'll do the best i can to answer questions kernel i got a couple really more to spark just your comments of people can understand a couple of things so on the sex offender issue okay how many what's the the number look like for how many people you're turning away that you confirmed it would be very very small i mean we check per the city guidance we check for sex offenders and when they come we check the county state list and the national registry to make sure that they're not a sex offender that's only to be a resident to get a bed so we'll help them during the day but again if we're looking at five o'clock it's bye bye because i don't even have an answer and i don't even know where to send them but point being it's a small number it's a small number but it's a number so again you're going to eat this elephant a bite at a time we're not going to swallow it whole and i'm you know i know neighborhoods had concern about criminals but we can take a murderer at transitions a former murderer but we can't take a sex offender right and there's and and it's a pretty broad brush and it is and some of those charges are kind of you know we could talk to the lawyers and somebody you know did something with a 16 year old and they were 17 or whatever you know that kind of thing or 18 and 17 so i'm not defending the action certainly because it is abhorrent but i i do think we need to look at it and decide is this really what the city because we we don't take them now because the city tells us not to understood so and then the next thing it's a little bit connected to that would be what what causes someone to be banned from the facility and how often does that happen and can you ever get unbanned from coming back you can get unbanned a bands are different what what causes it is a discipline infraction that's threatening to staff or clients so if i say i'm going to kill you we generally you know i have to the staff they're not you know bulletproof we they're they get scared and sometimes people have to go we try to minimize that it's not the ideal but we find that we're going to have to to you know occasionally we have to do that can they come back yes they come back by talking to camisha the program director and say i've changed my ways i really want to come back and generally we will let them back in okay so so there is a there's a process for that there is a process to come back in and certainly if somebody speaks on their behalf they're almost back immediately if they go to another provider and hey they're working now they're fighting their addiction issues they're doing much better hey we're all ears and then last could you speak to the the bus ticket program or the reunification program and the bus ticket was done by our outreach folks so some of those people didn't even come to transitions it was done with the contract through united way to get the tickets we worked with cpd because they would often call our outreach person say hey i got three people over here can you come talk to them they they have to have the the case manager has to talk to a relative or close friend who agrees on the phone that they will take them in help them get a job and help support them so we're ideally we don't do cold sends where we're sending someone to montana for no reason we're not going to do that somebody's got on the other end at that address has to say we're going to do we're going to take them in yeah come on get up so we do track the data on the bus tickets through hmys and we track returns and colonel staff tells us where they're going and things like that and obviously you have to verify supportiveness on their location so 25 bus tickets last year we started a little bit late in the contract so they missed about two or three months of the services so it was a little bit lower than the previous year which was 47 so 25 tickets typically about half are in state half are out of state and we have about a 15 return rate on average is really because we track over time people who show back up into hmys locally and keep in mind we can track statewide so it is a statewide hmys system we manage our portion but we can look to see if they've gone to greenville or you know and then if they show back up in the midlands we can track that here so it's about a 15 return rate we think it's a great program that we would encourage you to continue so yeah I bring that up I'm a big believer in and I think it's you know reunified a lot of people with loved ones and again the criteria for purchasing a ticket and putting somebody on a bus is it's very responsible we're not you know forcing them on the bus and sending them against their will it's it's with the purpose and I think it has a lot of value thank you any other questions Colonel I have a question please we're about 70 30 on that so there are more male beds than than female if we were 50 50 we would not fill all of our women's beds so we don't do that to be mean that's what the population is so that's about 70 30 is a good thing to write down there real quick so you mentioned this but you do not take sex vendors homeless sex offenders into your facility are you aware of anybody that does no nobody in Colombia and some of that's federal guidelines are very strict against sex offenders I understand and would you imagine you say you don't deal with very many of them but perhaps they know they can't get into the facility so they wouldn't interact with you at all perhaps well they come in for the day so we do help them I've had sex offenders walk up to me can can I please have a bed I don't know where I'm going tonight I'm saying well I'm sorry you can't have a bed and then just you know in the entertainment districts one thing we really see is the problematic homeless are very resistant to any kind of housing or any kind of assistance sounds like you have the same issues in your facility with some folks that you have to ban what where do those people go what are the what's the you know if I'm banned from transitions or any other facilities what's my alternative at that point well they're only banned from us and they're not banned from the IWC so in the winter they do have a place to go we ban we ban no one from the IWC we might put a person out for the night but you know unless they threaten to kill a bunch of people then we usually ban we don't ban we do a timeout for one or two days so the IWC is as about as low barrier as you can get um I would where they can go I mean hey they could they could try all over gospel it's easier to get into transitions than all over gospel much easier so I think Travis would not he would agree with that comment um but there are stipulations we could take you know our federal funding is such that the federal government's now trying to reverse its course because they realized from several years ago they were very strict on sex offenders now they realize well they really can't go anywhere so they're changing some of their guidance so they can go somewhere we can get them in last thing I'll keep it very brief I'm sorry if I'm um do you communicate with all over gospel for example about this we have a person who's a problem and do you guys have a any kind of record or database of people are kind of at each place has their own sort of issues but usually Travis calls me directly and just says hey I've got this guy okay our people our troublemakers really don't go to all over gospel it's the other way around their folks will come our way again it's not it's just they're selective and they have they have their mission and they're doing their way and I'm not critical of that but it's it is harder the alcohol screening and such it's much harder to get in there if you blow anything you're not going to get a bed there so I mean that's just you know talk to Travis but we do talk to each other and we have talked about people we've tried to figure out some of the hardest folks we've tried to figure out and help each other on what do we do with this person where can they go come on Laila Anna is a group party up here just he's talking as the colonel as the colonel said we don't work together because we deal with families and I'm laughing going but two weeks ago as we had a situation at one of our shelters it involved a single female who had been at transitions who had been banned due to violent behavior who had children that had been removed from her custody so at the time she fit transitions she then found her way to us because of HMIS after the fact we were able to track the violent behavior and tie it to mental illness at the time because we could go in and make the case notes so our worlds do collide at times and it is it is HMIS that will tie us and the fact that I immediately picked up my phone and called Craig and said what the heck so there's formal and informal relationships at play I have Laila Anna on speed dial so we work through that as a practical matter if you wouldn't explain to everyone here as far as getting a bed how long they can not how long they can stay but are they free to leave once they have a bed do you lock them in for the night how does that work okay so we're not a prison we can't lock anybody anywhere they generally the way you get a bed is you walk in and ask for a bed right at the day center that's the most common people walking off the streets that unsheltered population and partners will also send us an email and Lynn Allen is our intake person who the city helps to fund she knows like almost most of the homeless people in in the city and again she'll work get them in a bed through partners so again we don't necessarily we don't have a wait list per se every day is a decision on okay what's going on we will look at things like how many times they've been there so if they've been there multiple times we might take a person who hasn't been there multiple times because after a while we start to say well you know what's what's your commitment here um and once they get in then you ask for 30 days they can be in the emergency beds if they prove that they want to stay and go up in the program that's great that's where Jennifer gets the 59 day number um but generally you know they go into program and then they kind of they self-fulfill that they want to do well they they stay and it gets better and they go up or they may leave they're free to leave whenever they want we can't stop them I just have two quick comments followed by two questions um I want to echo the support of the bus ticket program that's a program that we um have referred to y'all a lot especially for folks living institutionalized settings a lot of times they will be transported to Columbia for a state hospital or a state um incarceration facility and then that release uh does not include transportation back home wherever that may be um and so we rely on that program a lot to reconnect families after they've um either been released from a hospital or other institutionalized setting so just wanted to echo my support um it's also something that we've used to try and help folks um individually who are on the registry get to a program that will allow for housing there is one in Charleston um but I'm hoping that that bus ticket program comes back I think I think that it not being there is unfortunate and um I also just wanted to to discuss a little bit about how an individual who has been banned from transitions like like you said uh can obviously appeal that or request that their ban be lifted and that's something that we do often if someone's re-engaging in services or there's been a change in circumstances we will ask for that and um transitions is very open to that conversation so just appreciate y'all's transparency and ability to work with us um going into questions I think my two questions are um one would be what if you could talk a little bit about the limitations y'all on have on um providing beds for folks who are leaving institutionalized settings that have been there for more than 90 days and if there's if there's any kind of HUD limitation um on the definition of homelessness for instance if someone's been in jail for more than 90 days why wouldn't they then be able to go directly towards the bed at transitions um that's like you want me to go one by one or let's do that my IQ is not that high so when you deal with the prison system we are not supposed to be their default solution to like okay you've been here for five years and now you're just going to send you to the homeless center so hopefully their preparatory phase to get people housed is much better than that so we're not supposed to coordinate directly with the prison and that sort of causes usually that day of somebody you know who really has no place to go out of jail they kind of wander around and then you know we're like come on you know so yes there is a prohibition and that's from the federal government actually so we can't overcome that we have to adhere to that and that's why we don't work closely with prisons although I've sure talked to prisons a lot but we're not there saying have them here on Thursday that's not what we're supposed to do the prison supposed to do better than that and just talking about not not supposed to work that way do you guys often still sometimes see folks being dropped off expecting a bed because there hasn't been case management prior to their release from either an incarcerated setting or a hospital is that something you still experience well hospitals yeah so yesterday you know one of chief's great majors gets a hospital guy going up 277 in his hospital garb and a walker and he'd been in a car wreck and so he's walking up 277 trying to walk to charleston so you know there's a lot of problems there and major white and I could say his name major white did a great job he got him to transitions with his other officer and and we helped the guy out so I don't know the the preparation for him to leave the hospital he we were looking he was discharged properly not quite sure why he was in the hospital garb but you know he was there so some of that sometimes isn't as good with the hospital the jails yeah we've got folks and I'm not here to badmouth prisons but you know we have there's a lot of ex-offenders at transitions all badmouth the prisons for you it's all right so no but I'm not you know they work hard and they try to do the best they can but they don't always get people housed the day they leave the jail um and then my last just question would be why would why would lifting the limitation on how like having beds first uh folks on the registry be helpful to providing them services that could really could result in housing well I think the problem here is is the one of where do sex offenders go if they're homeless and I I can't answer that but apparently you think there's a place in charleston so next time I'm going to tell that to a person I say you should go to charleston and then I'm just going to look at and maybe I don't know if we can call that place and get a bed for him we'll actually use a bus ticket I guess if it comes back and that might solve the problem that this that seems very cumbersome and not I mean again I can take a murderer but I can't take a sex offender and that sex offender is going to sleep in the neighborhood's backyard and I don't know I'm not sure we're benefiting there I'm as a society I want to help people so that just seems like a hindrance that I I don't know what we're gaining from that to be honest with you. Colonel let me ask you one last question okay you know transition transitions is an important destination for for persons in need and those operations cost money um you as all our wonderful nonprofit partners um work hard for for contributions um as far as county and municipality funding outside of what the city of columbia line items or gives you provides for you what what percentage of other counties municipalities um does your your your total budget come from depending on how you count lexington we get cdbg money from them which is actually federal dollars but they they they have funded us every year out of their cdbg funding oh boy okay so this is going to get I I think it's okay it's about 60 000 I think now it was 50 it might be in the 50s um it's it's in that neighborhood um there's some COVID money that was in there last year they came out of lexington um and then richland county tends to be 200 they cut us 100 this year so I and I'm not happy about that you want to do something go talk to richland county and I don't know I mean we are 54 richland county it's the largest county by far the next county is lexington it's about 15 percent orangeburg is the next county after that so we were talking about folks coming from down south um they're only like one percent but again I mean that that infuriated me and and it was done and you know we're now trying to recover from that cut uh kasey gives us money west columbia gives us money so they're part of of lexington they also count the hospital under lexington kasey in west columbia I'm sorry is the kasey in west columbia allocations fall under that 50-ish thousand no no separate part of money um and then fairfield county gives this money they give us a little bit they don't have a lot of money but I go up there every year and talk to them and that's most of the other I think I've hit most of the other Blythewood Blythewood gives us money so we try we try our best I mean again part of the issue is that transitions is in columbia so I think some of them are like okadoke but they do acknowledge that their folks go to transitions for the business yeah we're helping everybody from all over the place thank you so much okay I think I'm done I didn't hear the beeper so thank you thanks for what you guys do too one last question I'm sorry one last one whoops sorry um just like to start by acknowledging and thanking you and Kristen and Jennifer for joining our coalition of downtown meetings every month I think that's been a real helpful channel of communication to have open given our proximity and so I think the issues and concerns in the neighborhoods are well understood and we found that the the outreach worker that you had in the position was unfortunately lost was very helpful something we started sharing with our neighborhoods you know within the last year because we often found that our neighbors were reluctant to call the police because it wasn't necessarily police matter but they had a concern for an individual or for something going on so I think that's something we would like to see you included somehow so that there is an option to get somebody help you know when it's not necessarily a police matter so in you know short of that one of the questions is you know we see a lot of loitering especially on the edge of the neighborhood what is transitions policy for loitering you know on your immediate property maybe immediately surrounding area and how do you manage that okay good question so we have the police signs up that you're not supposed to loiter we don't want people to loiter at all we want them to come in so unlike other places where we say get out of here our actual answer during the day is to come in at night that's harder when they can't come in because we're full and you know at night we don't take it the day center closes at five o'clock so after that the guards will tell them hey you need to move on we have cameras around the perimeter and the guards doing it and I'm often on the way home I'll calls hey there's a guy hanging out here at the bus stop go tell him that you know I don't he's been there all day so I'm not sure he's getting on the bus or other people are by the gate so the guards on transitions try to tell people to move on I welcome yellow shirt presence police presence we don't want people out there often they're selling drugs I mean they're not they're preying on the homeless people they're not helping the situation so you know they need to go somewhere else I'm with you we try to get them gone and generally we do but you know if you drive by the place and see five people standing somewhere I mean it's a big place it's a big city block thank you all right all right thank you Kristen good afternoon thank you for having us you ready for okay my name is Kristen Connors I'm from USC and Prisma Health Housing First program I am going to start talking about Housing First as a model and a strategy it is permanent supportive housing which means as the name suggests we take people directly from the street people who are experiencing homelessness we take them from the street or from shelters and put them directly into housing we also provide wraparound supportive services which include case management mental health counseling and medical adherence as far as Columbia and how it has kind of evolved for our program you'll see the history and summary of services that I submitted back in 2008 it began here as a pilot program it was funded by the city in partnership with supportive housing and the Columbia Housing Authority at that time the city committed to funding both the services and the housing units which included the rent and utilities and I think that meant that we housed 15 clients at that time I don't have that information in front of me but what happens is we start identifying a small group at a time and move them directly from the streets put them into housing in 2012 we had a program expansion that included four family units and then we also included what's called HOPAA units which stands for housing opportunities for people with AIDS which is HUD funding which we also have a HOPAA program in our office as well so we're really trying to diversify the funding which is something that your task force mentions a lot also around 2012 the Columbia Housing Authority received HUD funding to fund their own rental and utility subsidies for the units so that the city general fund dollars were only responsible for the supportive services which is different than how it started so since the program's inception we have housed 157 clients through the housing first program these clients are historically difficult to engage which is something that your task force also talks a lot about they are typically very resistant to services and they are usually chronically homeless all of our clients are living with disabling conditions including mental illness addiction and physical disabilities any questions so far so we also track through our data where our clients are discharged from because it's permanent housing people can technically stay forever obviously but we do like to move people out of the units once they're able to kind of free up spaces for people to move off of the streets we have had 120 discharges since we've started the program and 72 of those have moved on to other permanent housing the most important thing i think for the task force to know is that this approach is extremely cost effective we have provided services for $24 approximately $24 per client per day so housing first is really identified as a best practice because it's cheaper than jails cheaper than shelters cheaper than hospitals which as we've identified are typically where these clients end up i also wanted to mention that the supportive housing office has an outreach worker which the city dollars that come from the general fund we fund part of an outreach worker through this program and that is something that i think all of the responses have identified as a need to really get engagement for the the population that we see on the streets i just left actually a meeting at was it two o'clock right before here and a lot of outreach workers from agencies have come together they share information they identify clients and areas that are very clients that are in need and areas that could use attention and i think that it's a great way for people to work together i don't know necessarily that the task force knows that these conversations are happening and so i did want to make sure that we pointed that out hmis is the database a couple of us have mentioned it so far and the conversations were happening in real time people had like a tablet they were looking up client information they were saying here's the last contact here's the agency who had made the contact there was a member of cpd who was there so it was a very cool experience and i just wanted to point that out as far as challenges in the work i think housing we need housing we need housing here people who we work with have a lot of barriers to housing their history affordability criminal history eviction history their credit history people get vouchers which are supposed to make housing affordable and then the housing is not available so we see that a lot and that's very unfortunate another thing i wanted to mention was i hate it when we identify somebody and they decline services whether it's a shelter bed whether it's case management counseling housing things like that i think that happens all the time i think outreach workers specifically can identify with that and that's discouraging it's concerning um and my response to that would be the people who are experiencing homelessness don't necessarily trust the system they've been disappointed a lot and we have to keep trying that's not necessarily an excuse to say oh they don't want help and then we turn away i think that we just keep trying and we keep attempting to engage and you never know who the right person will be or the right time and you just keep trying is what i would say to that so a lot of my responses which i thought was really interesting mirrored very much what jennifer and craig said and so i think that's a great example of how we do collaborate and we do work together and we are very much on the same page which i think is important did you want to collaborate see you with prisma yes do you collaborate with any other department functions at prisma gathering data from dr for visits to log into the database what what what kind of energy is over there to prisma towards uh looking forward participating in helping us this this group yeah move forward that's a good question we have before there was a study done before research specifically a research study on is er diversion actually so people who were brought into the housing first program this is back when it very first started and it was pre-housing post-housing and was there any difference in the er visits um as far as currently we have access to the electronic medical record so we can look at and see if our clients are in any of the prisma you know systems that way wonderful wonderful i think in general moving forward if we have wonderful health health care in our communities whether it's prisma in u.s.c. yes lexington medicals but yeah it's growing for them to to help us along possibly in revenue participation but also with that data collection yeah yeah and now that everything is all integrated you know prisma has access to other health systems that are merged with our emr as well so thank you other questions regarding housing first uh yeah city manager wilson thank you thank you christin um this question may be more uh best answered by all of our providers a lot of reference continues to be made about the outreach workers and the need for more so what is the going rate for outreach worker oh i don't want to say that publicly is it a secret i'm just curious so that we can contingent on experience okay education and experience i mean right like and then um regarding with some finality clarity and i don't know again i'm not sure if that's for you christin i know you're involved with prisma so that um was why i was asking the question yes ma'am we are currently in the process of um we're in the kind of the licensure phases of it so um d-hick is working with us on the licensure portion of it we had to hire an architect so um they're looking at the facility that we have identified that is going to be off of park lane um and so they're looking at that facility now to kind of make sure it's up to co um but we're working closely to in trying to work as quickly as we can to get it open you explain for the benefit of everyone here what the purpose will be i know that the one has been stood up for a while in the low country yeah seems to be a missing lean here in the midlands yeah so it's for the um rishan and lexington county it's going to be a um unlocked eight-bit unit um for anyone who of course meets the criteria for crisis psychosis suicidal ideation um any you guys get crisis so it'll basically be those folks that come in um will have staff around the clock um again eight beds um they have a maximum of 14 days so they can do a 14-day stay and it will be unlocked if there if there was the um capacity to do more beds with partnerships with funding that the city might have or other entities for non-congregate housing is that something where the center could be expanded upon so that it's more than eight beds um i think well i'll say this i will say location and finding an appropriate facility has been a barrier um and so in trying to find the appropriate facility right now eight beds is where we are thank you doctor question yes so the cost data was really helpful and interesting to see it's been a while since i've read some national studies about housing first uh but it's similar in other cities do you know how many housing first programs are in the u.s right now u.s no do you know last i checked it was over a hundred but it's also yeah it's replicated nationally it's replicated internationally as well the european union has a large study related to it but when you say it's evidence-based practice you're referring to the success of many different cities and the cost effectiveness of being replicated in many different cities yes i can find out and get back to you thanks um and just kind of bouncing off of that cost effectiveness i think um just to to compare you stated that it was more cost effective than jail and i believe that it's about 91 or 92 dollars a day per person for for the jail funding um so just comparing that to year around 25 um my backup question or the question that i had is is my understanding is right now housing is particularly difficult particularly yes would you be able to kind of highlight the specific difficulties that we're facing like what is it right now that could be contributing to these this perception of increased numbers and what about that is specific to the housing issues like why is housing so difficult to obtain for our program specifically either that or specifically right now like what about the housing environment is making it is it different rents are going up than it has been rents are going up yes we used to have what i would consider good relationships with entire apartment complexes right or private landlords and the whole complex is being bought by what seems like out of state companies and so what we used to have like a personal relationship like oh hey joe can we have three units sure no problem the end it was a personal attachment a personal relationship they were committed to our cause no now call somebody you know way across the country and they stopped accepting HUD vouchers they stopped being lenient with background checks things like that and so there went three or six or ten units that we used to have access to times for apartment complexes so we're just having a very hard time that's just our program then we have other clients and other programs who are getting vouchers that they're not able to use then we're just having other clients without vouchers who can't find any housing whatsoever so the housing market's hard right now which causes more people to experience potentially homelessness thank you we appreciate it so now we'll move into hearing from our two community development or you hear the term cdbg a lot i know there's a lot of acronyms and i want to make it accessible to for everyone and that is homeless no more and mercy and so i'll have maybe i'm homeless no more liana come up first and then we'll have mercy close us out again these are folks that are working with our community development funds good evening good afternoon i was joking if craig gets called colonel i get called doctor fyi i am lala anna solz and i am president ceo of homeless no more and i am probably the only service provider here who does not work with chronic men and women so heads up on that um erica how do you want to work the powerpoint okay so my apologies but yeah okay all right so just so you have an overview of what we do we are a system of care for homeless families and that is to find as parents grandparents single father single mother with a child 17 or under in their custody so it can be multi-generational it can be a father with three children it can be a grandparent an adult child and children in their custody we have four primary programs family shelter which is emergency services that is a campus 30 days st laurence place another campus that is transitional housing that is up to two years with intensive case management and life skill programming live oak place which is straight landlord tenant affordable housing and then our fourth pillar as we call it is advocacy you're going to hear us talk a lot about systems and the fact that we can proactively change a lot in our community and in our state if we attack those systems first just some figures for you last year we served 900 parents and children 96 of our families when given support services and programs exited to permanent housing additionally of the families that we did not serve we were able to refer so about 500 calls you will hear me talk about hms over and over and over we track everything in hms when someone calls our front office we put you into hms so at any time any funder can ask me for data i can pull it um we are the only shelter system that serves fathers and boys over the age of 12 any questions on our system of care okay i'm going to jump into your four questions if i can get them else to work uh-huh question one what are your recommendations for addressing the growing number of unsheltered homeless on the street i'm going to be the only person here today who's going to say i don't know because i don't work with this population and you know skip and i go back and forth because we've been partners in crime forever about this um here's here's who i can tell you we do work with the families that city police officers find in the walmart parking lot in a car um our families are the hidden homeless they're not going to show up on main street they're not going to show up in an entertainment district um primarily because they are scared of losing their children um we talk about a data disconnect any of the counts you see i often laugh and i'll say oh there's this great point in time count that says there's 160 families in x number of counties that's great but on any one given night i have 65 in my care or richland one and richland two have 1100 homeless children do the math there's a data connect when it comes to families um again our focus is taking care of that population and here's how we do it our system of care is designed to meet them where they are so if they're coming in from a car and they don't have copies of their id which means they can't get a job and their kids can't go to school yesterday which was the first day of school our job is making sure that's what we do in those first 30 days um then we work on how much are they making then we work on do they know how to budget then we work on do they have abc vouchers for child care we have to meet those families where they are again the referral center is huge um as i called craig out about how often we're calling each other at night even um we run wide not deep if we see mental illness we're going to call mercy if we see domestic violence we're going to call sister care we have a professional team of social workers but they are resource connectors so we will very quickly outsource to other agencies that run deep and i may have just gone backwards erica you know me better than this all right so the question number two lack of coordination and services after five what would you suggest we how we should address this skip i'm just going to keep calling you out um so this came into play with us five years ago and it came into play as the police officers were basically finding families in the walmart parking lot and we're putting them up in motels out of their own pocket i just embedded this um so what we did is we created a temporary motel voucher program so and the inherent challenges at that time we received seven thousand dollars it was a pass-through grant through the united way i believe jennifer um and it came from the city and it worked that if a city police officer found a family in immediate need in that park car they knew the motels they put the family in that motel we sent a social worker out the next day who worked with that family to then come into the shelter system seven thousand dollars lasted about six weeks and once word got out what we found was families were actually looking to be placed into the motels we ran out of seven thousand covid hit we went back to the city and emergency funding we got ten thousand we used it for overflow with family shelter so again we were running at capacity at family shelter we weren't going to have anyone graduate from the program onto the streets so we used it for the families that were now being displaced because of covid we found they didn't want to come into the shelter once we would have a vacancy open up hms were tracking the data we ran through the ten thousand fast forward rental moratorium was lifted and we did not call it a wave of evictions we called it a tsunami so this past fall we applied and received seventy five thousand an emergency motel funding same thing we would put the families in motels they would not come into the shelters so we started crunching the numbers and we realized that you could put a family in a hotel for two nights after two nights they would no longer come into what we call the system at that point they had grown accustomed to a no barrier no rule lifestyle and they would decline services or they would go to another agency that was also doing the same motel voucher program internally we decided we were going to limit ourselves to 48 hours we did 89 of those families now come into the shelter system two nights um in addition to that that is what our cdbg funding goes towards we received 25 000 dollars from the city of columbia and it is specifically for a motel voucher program we estimate we can serve 20 families we have contracts with six motels located throughout the city because our goal is to keep the families close to where the children are in school our second recommendation the small city outreach team that can assess and refer quickly but i take it a step farther it's not just outreach it's social workers so these are two terms and they are not interchangeable street outreach is the team that is working with the homeless who are on the street you heard craig talk about at midnight versus during the day a social worker is the person who follows them you need both and i know this because we don't have outreach workers we only have social workers and i put the success of our programs on the social workers the last one is continued use of hms and data tracking you have heard us use hms over and over and over every organization that receives federal funding is using hms we have staff who has to use it they're trained in it we can pull any data point that you need biggest challenges at the work you cannot have this conversation without talking about the need for affordable housing in this city average market rent is $1,100 self-sustainability index shows that a family with two children has to make $60,000 to keep their head above water if they have children in daycare that is data my families chronically homeless men and women who are coming out of transitions are not making that we need to develop affordable housing at 30 to 50 percent average market income which means it's landlord tenant they're paying rent and you can have supportive services included jennifer talks about the mckinsey scott money our third pillar with live oak place will have 200 units within the next 12 months it is we're watching it work with the families but their number one life skill that's lacking is budgeting so even if they're securing a landlord tenant lease because of the moratorium because of where we've been for the past three years they're still having issues with paying that rent and we just kind of had the best of both worlds because we know the the programs and the services and our third right now it's the changing post-covid environment dr klutz and i were having this conversation this is not specific to the homeless population um the families we're serving are more transient they do not want rules and they are more willing to walk out because of rules now we are a place of rules we have always been a place of rules but that means i think someone asked earlier so where do they go that's a really good question but if the the person who held me hostage for 45 minutes until i got to a phone and texted my friend at the police department um like comes back she's not going to have housing with me where do they go because right now they are not looking for rules um but i would offer that's not specific to the homeless population i think right now society in general is trying to deal with this post-covid environment for coordination of services um when craig jokes about having me on speed dial we're really on speed dial for each other um i actually texted mac with mercy before i texted melron that day um we meet through the mock um formally we have hms we have the round table at homeless no more um where we pull about a hundred total service providers together over the past couple of years and it ranges from the nonprofits to the school districts to the church groups and we talk about what's affecting the families we serve so it could be education it could be transportation it could be childcare um the one thing we do not talk about is funding and we call it the round table after king arthur because no one's in charge we call the meeting and we remind everybody at the beginning of every meeting we're not going to talk about money because that tends to put you in a competitive mindset um and what we find is that it's a safe space to talk about the issues those we serve are facing the biggest challenge we never went home i don't know about y'all we were essential employees i have five children they homeschooled themselves they fed themselves we never expelled the first family right now i have people ghosting me for interviews we never went home so when you ask the number one challenge for the service providers is doing more just like you with less with teams that are mentally fried we're tired but here's the deal we're not going home there's work to be done and we're going to keep doing it but there's only one way to keep doing the work it's to have us as part of the conversation because there are not 100 organizations i'm listed four times and live oak place is not transitional housing and no one asked me we're a best practice we present internationally at some point you have to start listening to those of us on the ground about this because we will help you solve this i promise because we want to go home y'all any questions did i miss anything skip since you and i have been having this conversation in parking lots for six years we're staff 24-7 we bring security in at eight so so for my organization so our campuses are different family shelter because we allow men and boys over 12 we have security and we have cameras everywhere because we're a dorm style so security comes in at seven my staff leaves at seven we have full-time positions for weekend staff members we can't fill them right now um so if you call the number you will get a security guard but we run at capacity so if you were to call on a saturday they're going to tell you we're full which was why we created the motel vouchers and i get that phone call and you said that there are some families they do their two days and they're out because they're not willing to come in based off of the information you're saying that it's a trust issue so what is your group doing to try to gain this trust because that's a lot of money to put into a hotel for two days just to get them off the street only for them to go right back to so right now it's incredibly interesting um there are a lot of Oscar nominated documentaries on this subculture um there are a lot of organizations who do not use HMIS we tried pull again pulling them into shelters well we try pulling them into this mindset of data collection so they don't track the data and what we have found is is that this subculture of motel families know how to go from organization to organization and they sustained this lifestyle i was speaking at a conference talking about it and somebody threw up their hand in the back and said i did it for a year um and it's in their mind they just know where to go whereas with HMIS i call it a sandbox you can kind of see the footprints because ultimately what we want to do is like with the the person that we were talking about um it's not funny anymore um the person that had been banned at transitions we could tell by the third time she needed mental health counseling so if we could track those families we could see the services they needed but because they're going to organizations that don't participate in HMIS or we call it flying under the radar we never can see what services they're getting because at some point we're going to say you need st laurence place where you get intensive case management you need more than temporary help we have social workers are these social workers trained enough to see this when they speak to a person my social workers are licensed my social workers have backgrounds from everywhere from dss to school districts they they run the the gamut um the our social workers um come from i mean they're all trained in in interviewing they're they're trained in trauma informed care we're very big on meeting families where they are um because most of the time there's trauma or what they call aces so you have an ace score and that that is in direct relation to how you deal with everything um resiliency so there when you were asking miss wilson how much an outreach worker cost you get what you pay for um i i have a professional team for that very reason so that outreach team is your team no my i do not have an outreach team i have social workers okay so you have the social workers who has the outreach team our programs look differently so in the interest of time really quickly because we have one more group that wants to present i'd like to ask the task force because we started about seven minutes late would you all be okay with hanging on seven minutes seven to ten minutes so that mercy gets enough time because i know that this is a really rich discussion and would that be okay with you all i'm sorry that we're falling we're we're a little behind okay um does does that make sense so different programs call for different outside of me yeah and i think it kind of goes to what craig was saying about you know waking somebody up in the middle of the night it's not the time to have a conversation our families we our families look act feel different than the chronic male or female on main street they present differently even the ones you find in the cars at walmart when we send the social workers once a city police officer puts them in the motel it's it looks and feels differently john did you have a question yeah what is the um i don't know if this is the same terminology you use but what is the conversion rate between the phases of your program it's that's a good question um it's actually not very high because you can stay at family shelter for 30 days and you can stay at st. laurence place for two years so turnover is not as high at st. laurence place our goal at family shelter is to reunify with family um get them stable again the national average is about 48 percent ours is about 58 percent um our goal is to to stabilize um st. laurence place is where we dig deep with the life skills um average length of stay prior to covid was 13 months um and we do have the wraparound services we have a full after-school program we have summer camp programming we have education liaisons um our goal is once those families graduate from st. laurence place they they don't need us anymore they know how to maneuver an iep last question a quick question how much of your budget is not city funds or cdbg funds my budget is 1.8 million dollars and i get 25 000 dollars from the city of columbia um i get just so you know 50 000 cdbg richland county and up until recently i received an additional 25 discretionary from richland county and we actually receive um because of arpa funding more from lexington county than both combined um i also pull up this data 98 percent of our families come from richland county because we can track within hms so the money from lexington county was to begin a pilot program in lexington county so we have not actually started pulling numbers for lexington yet so um and we have a six percent rate of return so chronic for families we i don't hate the the reciprocism um six percent will remain homeless after 18 months thank you very much well we will move on to mercy and in terms of time we will adjourn around 6 15 so to give them the full 10 minutes and any questions that may arise and again mercy is funded through our community development funds and so their scope and their their population may be a little bit different than some of the focus of this task force but we're excited to have them here thank you as councillor bustles has said mercy's funds from the city do come their federal funds through cdbg um in 2020 to 2021 we received 45 000 21 to 22 40 000 and we recently received award notification for this year of 75 000 those funds all go to support our youth that are exiting or at risk of homelessness um we operate a home for males 17 to 22 that um are either coming straight out of homelessness or they've been identified by the school system by the McKinney-Bento councillors and the schools as being at risk and typically like sleeping on friends sofas and don't have a real good chance of graduating without some stable housing and supports and then we also have youth that are in our housing first that's funded through HUD since we started housing youth in late 2018 we've housed 84 youth um there are a lot of other things that mercy does and at the very end i'll say what those are i think that was the final question where do we see mercy's role so i just want to go ahead and jump into recommendations and answers to the four questions so for addressing the growing number of unsheltered homeless i was glad to hear Councillor Brennan mention the other counties and municipalities i've had that conversation repeatedly i think in the last two years with folks at both richland county lexington county city of colombia and other municipalities and i really think we we have to have a regional approach this is not just city of colombia um we've got to have and not just the counties i mean we've got kasey west colombia ermo forest acres um blithe wood i mean it goes on and on it can't just be something that one group is um trying to handle on their own we have been recommending um and when i say we i mean as a group of providers that would include Anita Floyd who's now mercy's chief operating officer but used to be at the women's shelter and at united way addressing these same things we've been saying for 20 years we need single room occupancy if you go to cities that are doing a better job than we are you're going to find that they have single room occupancy so that the folks that are unsheltered here on the street that aren't going to be able to make it until they address their addictions their mental health issues and other problems they're not going to make it in an apartment but a single room occupancy is a safe place for them to sleep it has own site facilities they have bathrooms they have shared eating space most have space own site for security all have security most have space own site to include behavioral health care basic physical health care um you know case management services so that we can link people to what they need it's not just putting them in a shelter bed for you know 12 hours a night we've got to do better at that um and i would say and the behavioral health care um it's no secret to any of us here that our system in south carolina is stretched beyond its means it has been for decades and covid has only made it worse um you know we our governor has even put out an executive order to examine that system health and human services is um looking now at the possibilities of whether it would be privatized y'all have seen it all whether we combine some type of mental health substance use and de-hack together so our system for mental health has got to be addressed there um for improving the coordination of services um after five there again i think it's that single room occupancy then like like mac was matt was saying earlier during the winter months you don't see as many people in the hospitality districts own the street well if they had that single room occupancy year around with services on site that would address a large part of it um again the you know just to reiterate the public restrooms um hospitality staff i just kudos to the yellow shirts my outreach workers um love having access and um and working with the hospitality workers throughout the um entertainment districts and i'm sorry i forgot this whole thing i'm just talking and say um biggest challenges um that i would see again just to reiterate what everyone's already said we have a lack of affordable housing um we have over 5000 people on a closed waiting list at columbia housing authority um so just wrap your head around that over 5000 and the list is closed you can't sign somebody up right now so we've got a huge lack of affordable housing um shelter beds the single room occupancy funding is a big big issue there are a few people here today that i think participated back when we were putting together transitions the model for transitions which came to be through a partnership of the business community through the chamber and the nonprofits that were providing services the night foundation funded a large part of that development and sent us all several times to miami to view the program the Chapman Center that was operated there we came back and implemented some of those things but we didn't do the thing that made the biggest difference in miami date and that was include a percent in hospitality tax to fund the services so we can go look at their great model but if we don't pay attention how they fund it you know we're skipping a step there that probably would help us get to success um i think there's also a need for incentives to develop affordable housing you know good lord if we had the kind of incentives for affordable housing that we've had for student housing developments in this area we probably wouldn't have this task force right now but that's definitely a need to move then to how to streamline the hundred plus services i just need to say that i think the list of services is somewhat being taken out of context it's not quite an accurate portrayal we're in there mercies in their numerous times but we're one agency um in going through that there were three permanent supportive housing programs out of i think it's actually 102 that were in there um 60 of the services that were listed were food pantries hygiene products nice things great things i mean it's wonderful that we have churches that have the food pantry that's open for two hours one saturday a month that's great but that's not a service that's getting somebody out of housing chances are somebody that's home i mean out of homelessness into housing chances are homeless individuals have no idea which saturday of the month and which two hours they can go get food and they're typically not getting food from pantries because they don't have anywhere to store it so then to to determine what our role is mercies mission is to provide behavioral health care outreach services and affordable housing options but it's for people who are vulnerable to the adverse consequences of mental illness it's not the whole population it's very specific to mental illness we do i mean we go out of our way i hate that my good friend judge amy's not here today because i'll tell you i've heard mental health come up numerous times and chief holbrook i'm sure your officers are well aware of it we we send the same people there aren't hospital beds there are not acute or long-term hospital beds for people with mental illness it took me councilwoman divine and judge amy to get one person off the street you know who i'm talking about he became my eldest child i actually took guardianship of somebody that was in the er 18 times in 20 days in november but he's now living in a nursing home but every time he would go he couldn't be kept more than a couple days he'd get sobered up and that'd be it but now he has the right medications he's doing great the staff at the nursing home loving um they call me with updates he has a guardian angel there and they call me weekly with updates on him but it took a council counselor our chief probate judge and the director of an agency to get him off the street so we've got to have better hospital access um where i see our role is we'll continue to outrage but it's not going to be at 10 o'clock at night um i mean i got a nurse practitioner that's out there screening people i've got nurses going and giving shots i've got licensed clinicians that are going out and screening but there is nothing good that's going to come out of a mental health screening at 10 o'clock at night on the street it's just not the best time is during the day um so we do outreach essential services community-based mental health care and supportive housing and that's our role and our budget's right at seven million can i can i ask you this uh professional opinion and this is a question because we keep coming back to this and and um i certainly respect the y'all as a subject matter experts on when somebody's most receptive to um you know assistance um you know certainly not when they're maybe maybe in crisis or late at night but to use that example like you just mentioned what so what ends up happening is and this then this goes to you know the issue you take issue with is we have that after hours encounter with somebody that's in crisis um yet there's um it's not the best time to engage and there may not be a bed so the default is they go to jail for we need an sro that's where they would go right so and you would have inside security yeah so we and typically or they go to the hospital and if they go to the hospital it's usually just a pit stop and usually pushed out the door and and then they close the door and then they call the police and then they go go to jail so obviously that's not where they they need to be so that it kind of brings me back to my point we got to figure out this intermediate stop someplace um because we're spending a lot of wheels and it seems to be the the the conversation is always you know after hours and in hours it's not initially three in the morning sometimes it's at seven thirty at night it's just you know after business hours and and I know in our business community especially I think they they feel that a lot a lot too and and then the example you used of the individual that we had the repeated contacts um you know that was frustrating for everybody service providers police um everything but that the impediment there was having a place to to put this individual to provide the you know until we had him declared incompetent nobody could make him stay there he had to be declared and I had to take guardianship yeah and it shouldn't be that hard I mean you know it was very difficult I mean and thank you for doing it but Kylie could address that better than I we can't just keep somebody you know we can't just say because you have a mental illness you have you cannot leave this community care home it's a very serious thing to declare somebody incompetent and appoint a guardian overall yeah but but and there should be it should be a high bar no question about it but but um one of the problems in that case was everything that everybody went through before we got him declared you know and where he needed to be for for proper care um that's I mean to me that's where the the gap allows well and I can speak to that a little bit because this particular individual had a pending competency evaluation request for years that was never acted upon and the only reason that we were able to get to this point is that because we were finally able to work with the city to do a direct probate petition after a competency evaluation happened in general sessions so this is this individual is a perfect example of what happens when you have individuals who aren't able to engage in services because of this competency issue and rather than taking action and doing that evaluation um we essentially waited for that yeah but you're but you're attaching competency issue to an arrest well the competency standard is the is the ability to be tried which comes from a criminal charge I understand that but it shouldn't be a criminal charge to begin with theoretically these persons in mental health crisis and there is a probate petition process that doesn't require a charge right and that's a process that doesn't work very well that's my point he didn't have a charge for me to become his guardian right that was we did the probate petition outside of the criminal proceedings because we didn't have that mechanism in the court and that's the one person that it's been that we that we have gone outside of that proceeding on um and so it is an example of what can happen rather than waiting for that proceeding to take place yeah and not to dwell on this particular situation because I'm very aware of that and you know you I'm so glad to hear that the resolution is is positive but the reason wasn't because a city council person and and everybody got involved it was because citizens in five points business owners saw this man dying in public I mean we literally I did and I'm so glad it makes my day to hear this but the problem I think is this is just one person that may have had a mental health issue but it could be addiction it could be anything and I hear you know we talk about the problem homeless that are resistant to care and resist they don't want to go into the program that's what we deal with in the business districts it's just my particular um you know point for being here and you know I asked earlier you know where do they go I mean that was a rhetorical question I know where they go they go into the neighborhoods and they come into the business district and they make it hard for people to do business in columbia and make it hard to have a safe neighborhood in some circumstances and that's what I haven't heard anyone address um is how do we get out there and get to these people and get them the help that they may not even really want and I know if anybody had that answer by the way they would stand up and say it because I don't think we're to that point so the work you do is obviously great and that circumstance it was just amazing to get that that gentleman the help that he needed it is not compassionate to allow somebody to live on the street and I saw every day that you know he was he was eating just fine sitting there but then he wandered off to the park and slept in his unfiltered every night that's something we should not as society kind of encourage and I think some you know some kind of engagement of those folks has to happen you know and I'm not by the way the work you guys do is great I'm but that's what's got to happen it's an extreme there are others we've worked with cpb on getting off the street one of them I saw him this morning making his appointment with his psychiatrist um but that's where honestly a single room occupancy can help because then when the police picks somebody up you've got security on site you can drop them off as long as you know if you have a hundred and thirty bed old hotel that you take and renovate I mean that's what we saw when when we all went you know from this with um the Nord Family Foundation and United Way of the Midlands in 2015 to Salt Lake man they had numerous hotels set up like that with the services on site and then when they wake up the next morning chances are they're going to be a little more inclined after a few days it's not going to happen overnight you know this doesn't start overnight and it's not going to get fixed overnight but they'll start taking building some trust they get coffee they get some breakfast with you then you say hey I've got this person over here that might could help you with your substance issue if you're interested in talking about it you know and but they're not seeing you as a threat then so that's a huge part tremendous amount of engagement that you have to do that's tremendous I have to say I mean I live in a downtown neighborhood and occasionally I do come across homeless individuals sleeping in my in the parks but I've only had to call CPD when I've had drunk college students trying to break into my house when five points closes it too so part of it I just have to say is the general public's uncomfortableness with somebody who's experiencing homelessness because people react different to somebody that's homeless than they do the drunk college kid concerning um each person having their own individual place I think that will solve a lot of these problems where we would have facilities where all the people um all the resources would be there for them because if you put them in a motel they don't necessarily have to come out of those places do they no I mean I think you heard Liliana address that earlier that for people that are just in a hotel without rules without expectations then it's hard to get people out of it and this way they would have rules and regulations and they will be able to um participate in the uh things going on in a facility like cleaning and things like that you know would teach them some responsibilities are there other questions that there might be for me just a quick question did you say seven million was your budget yeah our budget is seven million and we actually house about 335 people at any given time but the only part we do with the city which is why I didn't concentrate on our stuff and our results um in 21 our data analysis we save the hospital systems here seven million dollars in emergency room visits and hospitalizations in 22 our data analysis came in at 5.7 we had a huge uptick in physical health mainly related to covid it was respiratory cardiac and diabetes admissions but it was still 5.7 million yet we have had a partnership with the department of revenue and physical failures since 2010 I believe and so everybody that is in our housing and services um we actually anybody that's been in for at least a year we're able to send their information um annually and rfa pulls the cost of hospitalization and emergency room visits that each person experienced in the year prior to coming into services with mercy and the year post coming into services and housing with mercy and then um so we've we've got over a decade of that we have a retired statistician from rfa that does our analysis each year makes sense nope Jennifer do you want to jump in real quick thank you all for your thank you appreciate it thank you I I know we need to adjourn so just a very quick comment we have excellent outreach very high skilled outreach across a couple several different agencies in the columbia area um and that's important for engagement to get people who are very hard to serve but if you don't have housing if you don't have the appropriate range of housing what you have is you have an ambulance that has no hospital to go to so thank you for your work so we have a lot to think about over the next several weeks as we prepare for our next meeting I want to thank the providers for taking the time again to be so thoughtful in their responses and really share some strategies that we can all start thinking about this is just the beginning in terms of our continued discussions I appreciate you all staying late and I know if you have any follow-up questions hopefully people will be able to hang out for a couple of minutes but I will take a motion to adjourn this task force meeting all in favor say aye all opposed all right this meeting is adjourned thank you