 are y'all good um if you need my check sound good everybody good thumbs up everybody wis everybody looking for a thumbs up y'all good okay thank you well welcome what a monumental day and i really want city staff that are down there to come up here because this day would not have happened but for these folks and when i tell you in a days time two days time like the passion the mission that i have seen in the last few days i cannot express i'm gonna get emotional i'm so grateful so extremely proud of this team some of them are have gone and come back and then we had gray eyes some of you know mr. james sanders in the belvedere community out here doing hot dogs on the grill and chili the day i mean it has just been the epitome of what columbia is coming together making something happen that was just an idea for our community so i'm teresa wilson city manager i'm going to hand off to our mayor daniel rickham in and council woman audity bustles who has chaired our task force to prevent an end homelessness and let them talk about some of the strategies and what has brought us here today but i feel confident in saying from the city's perspective we're looking at a new era to help end homelessness and commute in our community the chronically unsheltered having a new tool in the toolbox if they choose to use it and um have an opportunity for a dignified option for transitional housing it's not meant to be the end all solution but it is another tool and the city can't do it by themselves by ourselves but we are clearly demonstrating through this council uh true investment in human capital because we'll and we'll talk let you talk to our new homeless services director and her team today and we are we have more than double the fiscal investment um by the city in homeless services and so with that we want to show this approach to ask our partners to now step up with us and let's address this even further so with that i'll give it to me or daniel recommend thanks everybody for being here today thank all of council that's here today um councilman mcdowell uh councilman devol councilwoman herbert councilman brennan councilwoman dr bustles excuse me um make sure that i get everybody correct um but y'all this is this is incredible think about this this project in less than 70 days came from an email research to reality less than 70 days not only are we looking at providing opportunity for our unsheltered where we have our deep focus now i'm gonna be very clear this is temporary our long-term goal is to provide a permanent solution with the wraparound services that provide each and every individual who's suffering through homelessness through whatever the circumstance is an opportunity to have a successful life moving forward in a home shelter apartment etc we're going to continue to work together as a community but these folks over here if they're in their uniform or not in their uniform sacrifice their extra time effort to make this happen it was a community bill it was a city project from its inception to now as it's coming out of the ground and you know on behalf of a grateful city on behalf of this city council i want to give y'all a hand and say thank you this is only the beginning and i want to thank all our partners all the people who came and sat down i know miss wilson and her team had extensive meetings to put all the logistics together but we're now taking a step forward we're not going to solve it with this issue but we're going to reduce it and we're going to make sure that people have a dignified place to go and an opportunity to take advantage of all the services all the compassion and everything that this community has to offer if you're in that situation with that i'm going to hand it over to dr bustles thank you everyone for being here today as i reflect on february which feels like a lifetime ago but really wasn't that long ago when the mayor volan told me that i would be chairing the task force i think one thing was very clear with my colleagues and i councilman brennan and councilman mcdowell that the way things are happening was not working and that required us to have some hard conversations uncomfortable conversations we had to really look within our city look at the way things are set up the way we may have been avoiding solving the root causes of issues facing our city and kicking the can down the road for years and really hold people accountable and so today what you see is a combination or a perfect storm of so many wonderful things that the city has to offer our exceptional staff that put this together in 70 days our partners that were willing to pivot and recognize that we have to try things a little bit differently our city manager that was open to a new approach that the city council wanted to take in terms of streamlining and bringing services back into the city in terms of the coordination and understanding where there are gaps and most importantly a community that was very supportive whether it was business owners our state legislators our community partners that recognize that this is not just a that neighborhood or that corner of the city issue this is something that affects everyone no neighbor no citizen should be forced to live on the street and when we take care of our own our city grows it thrives and there's so much potential that we can reach and so this is just one step in our journey to ensuring that Columbia is an exceptional compassionate place that takes care of our citizens and so I wanted to talk a little bit about our short-term and our long-term solutions I'm gonna pause yeah we're working on our quiet zones actually thank you mayor so hopefully that'll resolve some of that we always knew that the task force would immediately be focused on short-term solutions that is for the 250 people that we estimate are chronically unsheltered we knew that by november 1st when typically our temperatures drop we had to do something about that right and in our research and in our conversations with providers and community members we realized that no one was actually focused on this specific population it can be very daunting to think about homelessness when you think about it as an entire issue but when you start to narrow down what the city's lane is what the city's what the city's purview is we began to realize there's really a path to make a difference and so like city manager said the city can't do it all but we can certainly do our part and so as we started to look at the chronically unsheltered we realized that the number one thing we need is a place where people can have temporary housing that is single occupancy so one of the things that you'll notice in the palette shelters is that people can live alone and with dignity and the second thing is is we gotta have providers meet where meet where people are and when you look at the map of services all across the greater richland area even with a car it's difficult to reach some of the services that are available for the homeless and so we really hope that this is an opportunity to develop that hub that triage point where providers can come and get folks into the services that they need and really make a more effective system that allows those wraparound services to occur this is a short-term solution to a long-term problem and there's much more work to be done that you will be hearing about over the next several months and years to help kind of put those puzzle pieces in place I think I've shared with you all in the past that we've learned that Columbia actually is the only place that has a low barrier shelter like our partners at transitions in fact we serve almost 19 counties just in Columbia and so today I'm asking my regional and state partners to step up and help us because we can't take the social burden and cost of those experiencing homelessness alone for the entire state and we're continuing to work for that regional cooperation that state cooperation to ensure that we're providing services that are done well and are well supported by our partners we've also learned that there continues to be a lack of when we recognize when things aren't working anything is really possible so I want to thank the staff once again for all of their hard work I want to thank the task force for being okay with being uncomfortable having conversations about what needs to happen and I want to thank my colleagues that have worked alongside me to make sure that we get to a place where we can treat our neighbors with dignity so thank you and I'll pass it over to our city manager thank you Dr. Bussles so I would like for Henry Simons our assistant city manager over operations to come up and stand with me as well as Camisha Hepard the new director of homeless services for the city of Columbia between the two of them we can give you a few stats kind of lay out the site for you from a logistical standpoint the infrastructure you see will offer tours when we finish you might start hearing some noise behind me in a little bit because these folks are going to show you how these literally come together and have been constructed in such a short period of time and Camisha will talk about the programming of the site the wraparound services Dr. Bussles mentioned the trauma-informed care that we philosophically hope to ensure is happening here as well as case management so Henry and then Camisha will will speak and I can help fill in any blanks you might have. Good afternoon everybody my name is Henry Simons as Ms. Wilson indicated I'm the assistant city manager for operations for the city of Columbia I'd like to thank Mayor Rickerman our entire city council for their endorsement of the Rapid Shelter Columbia and of course especially our city manager Teresa Wilson for leading this project which we envision will transform lives it is my pleasure this afternoon to provide a brief update on the Rapid Shelter Columbia construction currently going on all around you we are finalizing construction of 54 pallet shelters for our chronically unsheltered homeless population as have been indicated earlier 50 of these shelters are 64 square foot units that will house one person each each unit is equipped with an air conditioning unit heat a fire extinguisher convenience outlets with two USB ports and emergency exit door and one bed the four remaining units are 100 square feet units and we will utilize them for security city staff and provider operations with a unanimous approval by our mayor as well as our our entire council we launched this project in early September as you can see in very in a very short time frame we made significant progress with this work a tremendous amount has been done to keep this project on track from our engineering drawings which includes grading and our drainage plan to dominion energy partners who completed installation of our new service and transformer and are also energized the electrical meters for the pallet shelter themselves there is also installation of sidewalks that have taken place artificial turf fencing as well as fiber installations completed in our overflow buildings what you see to the right of me your left to include communication and camera wiring as well there'll be installation of 29 cameras within and around the shelter to ensure that the campus is secure and safe and we've also incorporated LED lighting as well everyone involved is extremely proud of this effort including our internal departments as miss wilson has discussed earlier who formulated teams to complete this project just an incredible amount of teamwork that has been exhibited and on display even even as of today so i would like to recognize the following departments for their commitment public works our police department engineering our fire department parks and recreation our utilities department all these departments came together absolutely thank you thank you very much came together formulated their teams and it was just amazing how quickly they work so we're grateful for their participation so we're working towards the tentative completion date of november 1st we would like to be ready to receive our first client in and around that time and this pretty much concludes my my update again we are sincerely thankful for the commitment of our external partners as well as our internal partners our city staff for the work that's been done now at this time i'd like to introduce camicia hiphard the director of homeless services for the city of columbia camicia good afternoon everybody thank you for saying hiphard my name correctly i'm i'm privileged to be here today i want to thank um the city council miss wilson um the council i want to thank um mr craig curry from transitions allowing my transition into this position to be easy and smooth um i'm excited about doing something that has never been done before um i'm encouraged because i'm a part of a great community where the resources already exist so it will not be a hard thing in bringing individuals experience and homelessness into these single occupancy pallets um we have hired a great team of individuals that's going to be able to assist me with making appropriate assessments with clients bringing them in providing the resources that they need um the goal would be to bring them to a point of stabilization whether it's with their mental health or substance use or whatever reason whatever brought them to homelessness bringing them to stabilization and then identifying the appropriate transitional housing for them so housing may look different for each individual um some may need to be in supportive housing where the wraparound services are there and they have a meeting each week and following up with what is necessary um some may be able to use rapid rehousing if you guys are familiar with that what they just need a little bit of help to transition over into housing um and work on their needs in their home i'm just excited for the opportunity i i i came up just open to answer any questions anybody had i apologize a little nervous excuse me all right so i did invite some of our partners and i thank um melanie from salvation army comment and um i already recognized mr curry from transitions just excited to be able to partner with them and i know that we're going to do great things because we have done great things and the questions we know if you all want to get some b-roll shots of the halids i think the air conditions on and some of them so that's pretty neat um any questions i apologize i should have covered that so this is going to be a referral process only i'm working with outreach um individuals from different agencies um there was an ongoing outreach meeting each week and um i met with them last week and we talked about um targeting those individuals experiencing homelessness in the city um location and um they'll complete a referral form send it over to me and my team and we'll make an um a call of where they will be placed at it's possible we don't have any referrals at this point but i believe that by november one we'll have about 10 individuals ready to be placed right that will be um decided on an individual basis so if we get someone that's really struggling with their mental health or substance use employment at that time is not a priority the priority would be stable sir oh so the priority would be the imminent need for the client and so what's going on with them and if it's the mental health then we'll be reaching out to our um partners and i plan to have partners on site so partners will be here on a site on a schedule and so um what the what the client needs will be here no ma'am this is going to be an adult facility only it'll be 18 and older but what we would do is look at our community resources and make appropriate referral right now we are looking at up to 90 days um but because this is something that has never been done before we're not that's not written in stone i would go back thank you uh first of all um unbelievable job miss wilson thanks for your leadership staff has been incredible um safety obviously has been um an important part of the discussion as as this has been imagined and in planned we're working with um a private security firm that will have a 24 7 presence here and um that is a um that's a presence that'll that can escalate in numbers based on the the population that we're serving here the number one priority is um safety of the clients being served and safety of our staff um we've um had lengthy discussions about um the quality of um of security personnel with an emphasis on deescalation conflict resolution um but again number one priority is to keep everybody safe um communications important with uh internally with staff and and um and i and i say internally including the police department um although we are not providing the security here um we are the first line of defense and we'll be in constant communication we are a very big part of the referral process and delivering potential clients here um and of course we work closely with all of our city team um on any kind of security or safety measures and and um that relationship will be strong here as well yes ma'am it will still be available the only thing that changed about that service is the name and going forward forward is called rapid shelter columbia overflow yes they're both open not just one or the other yes ma'am so for rapid shelter columbia we will provide our own transportation and i don't want to get that mixed up with the overflow overflow transportation is provided by comment um rapid shelter columbia we will have our own transportation um providing transportation for clients um to appointments and different things they need to attend to i think this has never been done before with the overflow and the rapid shelter together um and in addition these services are for the city of columbia from the city of columbia it's the individuals um experiencing homelessness that we outreach with in the city yes ma'am as i've been looking for individuals to hire that has been an option i have not had a candidate yet but if you have a candidate that you feel is um come come see me that was a loaded and david there's a gap this place is to fill the gap this is the purpose of reading that as we are the center of trauma for 17 counties we understand that's part of the gap that's why we're here today and we'll be employing trauma informed tactics and especially in terms of intake and some of the work that commision her team will be doing but there are trauma experts out there that also need to come to the table and help provide those intensive services that some of these folks will need um but it was very excited as someone who um has done the work and trauma to have somebody who is trained in that to be leading our work from the city's perspective is your question are there going to be additional programs for clients who are resistant and coming into so when we outreach individuals and they are resistant we'll make the appropriate referrals according to what that person needs there has to be structure though we can't continue to allow folks to endanger themselves wandering around the streets so every program has a set of rules and responsibilities that you got to commit so I mean this is a little bit of tough love but that's going to be part of the program moving forward and that's why the single occupancy component is such a big deal because for many people the traditional shelter model isn't working going back to your question about trauma and so we hope that that helps really um engage some of our hard to reach or resistant uh chronically un-sheltered population all right go take a tour Instruction wise Kelvin