 with this task force. And the task force has been trying to familiarize the community with the un-poused. This is a tendency to not fully understand the people who've lost their housing or what it's like to be un-poused. And so we've done three presentations so far. And so now it's time to take a look at what are the options that are available. So we've invited Susan and Samantha to tell us what Burlington has done in this regard. So now I'll turn it over to them. Great. Hi everyone, good evening. My name is Samantha Dunn. I work for the city of Burlington in the Community and Economic Development Office. And I work in that office with Sarah Russell who is supposed to be here. You see her name up on the slide. She was not able to attend suddenly for a family reason. She was hired by the city of Burlington a year ago as a special assistant to end homelessness. So that is a new decision at the city. And then with my colleague, Sue Cobb, who was a project management consultant on this specific project in Burlington. So helped us actually implement the ideas and get it built. So I have a bunch of slides that I'm gonna walk through to sort of lay out the process that the city went through to develop a new emergency shelter community. I have a, Sarah was gonna talk a little bit more about the shelter has been operating since February 8th. So she's more involved in that in the operations. But I've got the information from her slides and this presentation I can, it is available electronically. I put my email at the end so people can get it and email me questions. You're welcome to interrupt me as I'm going through the slides and ask questions as well. So chow or put your hand up. So what are most people here? Are you familiar with the Elmwood shelter community? Most folks know what it is. This first slide and I'm gonna back up the history a little bit, but this first slide is kind of showing what the entire community is. And you can see this was a city owned parking lot with parking leaders, at least parking spaces in a pretty dense neighborhood in the old North end of Burlington, just a couple of blocks up from the end of the top of Church Street. And the community includes 30 individual shelters. Five of the shelters were manufactured by a local company called Up at This. And 25 of them came from pallet shelters, which you've likely heard of in the news. These are shelters that have been developed by a company out on the West coast in Washington that come flat packed and are erected very quickly. And they have a lot of shelter communities around the country. In addition to the 30 shelters, we have the back house. So this was a modular building. It has six full bathrooms in it, two of them fully accessible. And with solar panels on the roof. And then a community building that has offices for staff and services, laundry, two additional bathrooms, a kitchen, and then in community gathering spaces where all the food is distributed and services happen. And the two community buildings were constructed off-site by a company called KBS Builders in Paris, Maine and trailer to truck to the site. And the idea in the city of Bronton is this is meant to be a temporary solution. We have permits to operate this on site just for three years. So we were really working to put infrastructure just on top and be able to reuse it in other places in the future. Is Samantha, how many residents occupants do you have? There's 35 occupants, so there's 30 shelters. Five of them accommodate two people at their own choice. The pallet shelters are designed so you can add a second bed. We have had higher demand for those double occupancy than we anticipated. And we've looked into adding more doubles, but it requires opening up our zoning permit, which I'll talk about a little bit, but we're not gonna do that. Thank you. I have a question. Yes. Is it going to be at all possible to scale up to the 3,000 plus that you're dealing with? This site cannot scale up. This site is at capacity. Yeah. I mean, how about getting your hands on a FEMA trailer? Is there any left from Katrina? We haven't been, I haven't been looking at that now. So the, what this slide is a 10 point action plan that came out of the mayor's office in December of 2021. A 10 point action plan to ensure housing as a human right in the city of Burlington. And you can see the fifth bullet here was to invest in this kind of new shelter and a new shelter model based on low barrier public health services onsite model. This also action plan included creating the position of Sarah Russell, the special assistant to end homelessness and a wide range of zoning changes that are, we've also been moving through the city to either create more density than exists or to make it possible to build housing in some places where housing was not allowed previously. So those things are coming along a little bit more slowly. Excuse me if I'm not on that. The first bullet talked about some financials. If you go back to the first overview, that 35 occupancy unit, is that a million bucks, two million bucks that you're talking about? I'm gonna get to, I have a detailed budget for you because I know people want to know about this. This is a timeline. So it starts with that 10 point action plan. I was saying in December that announcement it actually really starts a month or two before my first week on the job with the city of Burlington where people might have heard the Sears Lane, which was a encampment that was not organized didn't have public health services was shut down by the city. It was very controversial because people felt like that was a community that they had in a place and as that was shutting, I was saying what are we gonna, what is the alternative that we're going to provide? All of the residents of the Sears Lane encampment because the motel program was still happening and there were lots of resources we were able to, we were able to get them into shelter but then we recognized that there was a need for additional shelter within the city of Burlington. So started a little bit before December, I made my first call to pallet, I think my second week on the job just starting to understand what our options were. And then you can see in February, our city council approved this $3 million investment to address homelessness, which really went to creating that position and staffing the special assistant to end homelessness. This shelter community and some investments in our continuum of care infrastructure and staffing and some money to operate the daytime shelter that operates in Burlington, the community resource center. And then we, I started the process of, of course it's a city, you have to procure everything. So creating RFPs for modular shelters and figuring out where this was gonna be located. I'm gonna talk a little bit about that. The city council approved the site, the parking lot in April, and then we started our permitting process. We needed to get a conditional use approval. So go through the city's DRV and we needed to get a state water wastewater permit. So that whole process, continuing the design, we started site work in August. And you can see that laid it out of getting all these structures on site and we're able to open in early February. It definitely took longer. I had to go to a lot of city council meetings in here. They're like, why isn't it, like there was a lot of concern and then once it was underway, like why isn't it open? Which was understandable. That looks quick actually. Thank you. Yeah. Let's do it. Let's do it. Wow. We just started the process. Congratulations. Absolutely. I was here in this moment. It's hard once it's underway to know that people are waiting to get shelter and they're not, they can't access it. Thank you. So this was our budget for Alma-Chelter. These are the sources of funding. So you can see here, the total project cost was 1.8 million. The majority of the project came from the city's designated ARPA funds. We had investment from Burlington Electric Department. V-Lite, specifically from the solar panels on the roof. We have some petroleum cleanup funding because we hit an underground storage tank in that whole process. And got a grant from the Community Foundation for some of our placemaking. Any donations? Anything not? Yes, we did receive some donations. We received, Sue and I worked closely with a company called Minitair, which provides mechanical equipment and we convinced them to donate the heating and cooling and ventilation systems of Bath House. And then there was a range of smaller things like the paint for the site and door mats and things like that. Maybe even if you added 200 grand on there, you're talking to a million of them. Much less. I would say donations didn't get a little higher than 10 grand. Okay, that's much lower than I thought. Yeah. Does that include the site cost or is that a... Yes, that includes the site. So I'm going to get into the use, I'm going to get into the uses. These are the sources, yeah. When we locked on that site, we, you know, it was a really poorly maintained. Yeah, it was a parking lot and bad shape. Yeah. And in some ways the tank helped us. And just for people who are worried, there is going to be a table like this. You're going to see all the costs. This is sort of showing you the big buckets of cost and where they are on the site. So doing all that site work and the utilities work was just under $200,000. Then we had to do the remediation for the underground storage tank that we hit that hopefully wouldn't be in anyone else's budget. And then you can see for each of the shelters, accessories, security, and then these modular buildings, the six bathrooms came in at just 170,000, community building at 193, our solar, which was covered by V-Late. And then this construction management, just under half a million dollars, this is just, you know, sort of a short list of everything that this company had to do to kind of make it all work on the site. But that's kind of combined with the site work of bringing it all together. Yeah, but what's the company, is it? The company that did that is called Second Gen Builders. Okay. So you are essentially the developer who covered your costs and Sue, who covered your costs? I'm here, Sue's in here. So if we go to soft costs, so get your salary up there. All right, now you're getting it. So yeah, so my costs are just staff time. The city had to hire someone that had the experience to do this, when it wasn't, this was not in my job description when I got called. Yeah, but it's a real value and in a sense a hidden cost to the product. A hidden cost, yeah, it wasn't full, so it was about a year of my time, you know, maybe 75% to 60%. And this again is just getting you back exactly to that 1.8 million, all of them, sorry. So we're really there. All of the costs, I go into that. You said that this project is permitted for three years and at that point either it'll be all packed back onto pallets and move somewhere else or whatever. Some of these costs, such as the bathrooms and all that, are those things also transportable or moveable to? Yes, and that's why I was saying when I started saying we tried to put everything on top of the site, those modular buildings sit on helical piles so they can be picked up and moved to another location and that was, they were certainly designed with that intention of being able to use them somewhere else in the city. City would like to convert this site, it is not gonna go back to a parking lot, I promise you, I'm not gonna have a lie. But I think the idea is to convert this site to permanent affordable housing and to, you know, I think the hope was like, we're gonna end homelessness, right? Like the very lofty goal was to end homelessness in the city of Burlington over these three years. Right now it's certainly worse than it was when we started and we still have two and a half years to go. I'm sure that there are still people who are gonna require shelter and we, you know, I'm kind of waiting to get through the summer before I ask people to start thinking about what comes next, because it took a lot to get here. Samantha, any of those line items were, became a surprise to you, something that you went in low and like, wow, you weigh under us to make it a cost of this one. I think the site were combined with the construction, you know, like that, yeah, the site with the construction management is higher than I expected. Yeah, I mean, for me, I'm not an expert like you were construction management six out to me like that, just in G.C. you're paying That was, that what he did, but there's a lot of pieces and parts to that. So he built, he built the platforms which this parking lot is, Yeah, I mean, yeah, as long as, you know, it's, yeah, right. Maybe better wording, at least for, you know, when you're looking at it. No, I know. Sounds like you're paying it for someone. But he also, any change, orders that we had on the job came through him, he had to pay for all the, all the, yeah, mechanical, there's a lot, and I can provide more detail, but it'll quite a lot of work ended up flowing through him, partially to get around procurement as well, because he can just buy things, because I had procured him, but every time we needed something as important as the city, I would need to get it. Just your experience alone is like, awesome. Great. You have to take on the HVAC contractor and the plumbers and the waitresses, all that kind of thing. Thank you. And this slide is really just to show that, you know, I think we kind of came out like, oh, it's like a pretty simple project that's going to be on top of the parking lot. There was a lot of people involved, and if you think of again, looking at that project, the construction management, like all of these subcontractors were under him. So I included all of this. He worked all of us, yeah. And he, I would say, donated an awful lot of weekend time because I was with him. Because we were there with him. Yeah. So this gets to the site selection. As I said, I know it's kind of blurred out, but this is Church Street here. This is City Hall, the City Hall Park. I don't know if that helped anyone, but it's just, just remember, it's very much in the downtown. The site was, we evaluated 10 sites. I worked with city staff, like all across departments to kind of score 10 sites based on what do we own that we don't have to buy or lease from someone else. What's the proximity to transportation and other services and amenities, open space and things like that. So this was the site that was selected. It is within a neighborhood. It was quite controversial. We spent a lot of time having community meetings. We had contentious DRV hearings and the amount of time required to sort of get the community comfortable enough not to appeal the permit and just like make people understand or help people understand what it was gonna be like was a very important thing to consider when you're thinking about the site. When Pallet came to install the shelter to this is the best site we've ever seen because it's integrated into the community. You're not putting people out on the edge and making them take a bus or get a taxi or something to go do all the things that they need to do. So this end, we haven't had any issues with the neighbors really since it opened up. So there was a lot of fear about what it was going to be and it's working out quite well. And this just again is more of a reminder of what kind of even though we're doing this temporary thing it all sits on top of the site the required approvals that we had to get at the city of Burlington and the permits and those costs are also included in those in softwares. So you said to have no issues with the neighbors what sort of outreach did you do? No, we had a lot of issues with the neighbors before it was built but I'm saying the site is and as you've seen some pictures that we can talk about more is designed to be a place that people want to be. I think neighbors were very concerned that it was good people were gonna leave it to do some things we weren't allowed on the site or to be noisy and there have been some issues in the neighborhood but it's never the guests of the site. It's people that maybe who are trying to get in or trying to get on the list or just don't have any other place to go but the folks that are staying there want to be there. Is it near the Unitarian Church? Yes, it is very close to the Unitarian Church. And we have, I mean the church area churches have been involved in. Yeah, bringing food, I think one of the church, I don't know if it's the Unitarian, someone set up like a barbecue and the parking lot one weekend which was great and like serve guests and you know that was for the whole neighborhood and so there's been some great activities. So service providers are coming during business hours during the week? Yes. Is there anybody there in the evening to the weekend? Yes, this site is staffed 24 hours a day. The permit requires two staff on site 24 hours a day. So overnight that's provided by a security company but during the day it's provided by a Champlain Housing Trust staff and CBOEO staff service providers. And there's a wide item in the budget that? That gets into the operating budget which is at the very end. Yeah, this is just the development of the site. I've noticed that there's like a real push towards small freestanding buildings rather than like a duplex or a row house type setup and I'm just concerned about like utilities and building costs and things like that. What's the advantage to having freestanding rather than you know sharing a roof? Yeah, I think the freestanding when you're thinking about this type of shelter it's really an alternative to congregate shelter to people all being in one room. So building something like row houses or town houses or multi-family housing is 10, 50 times more expensive. To build a multi-family housing unit right now is $500,000. Oh no, I'm not talking about multi-family housing units. I just mean like, what's the- Yes, I'm a resident occupancy. Is that what you're talking about? SROs? No, no, okay. It's not gonna be an alternative. Right, no, I just mean what's the advantage to not be sharing any walls? I think it's- Oh my condos. It's like the cost, this is a cost effective way to create new shelter quickly. So I think there have been some motels that have been converted to shelters where certainly people are sharing walls and that works but this was the city found the most cost effective and really quick we were trying to do a rapid response way to be able to create shelter that was not congregate, one big room for people. So it's like structural integrity to keep the buildings separate or instead of like a unit? The reason that their space is for fire co- once you have these individual buildings of their space for fire co-reasons instead of stacking them all next to each other. Let's keep going and we'll connect at the end if we haven't answered it. I'm just wondering if that isn't part of given that this is not permanent and the idea is to be able to move it that it's way easier to move those things than it would be two years at a time that something that had to be deconstructed to take into consideration peace. Yeah, that's definitely pretty constructive. And you just assemble it. Yeah, but you never get double wide and still moving, right? I think there's this no ground. I think what I'm hearing is sort of the small. Yeah. I'm trying to think about it. All right. I just want to add that when I lived in my car privacy was really important. To be able to have your own space. Yeah. One of the two things that would drive any sane person, baddie, if not insane, is never having privacy. I would never actually have the words. And sometimes I lived in the woods by choice of younger, but yeah, privacy is pretty good. And we've heard a lot, that's a lot of the feedback to have a space that's your own. You're all packed into one place. Proximity is the key to getting along. Yes, which is so important even on a site like this, yeah. So this is a drawing of the site plan that got submitted for our permit. And I just wanted to sort of highlight some of the things that went into creating, like how are we going to create this community on this specific site? There was an existing chain link fence around three sides of the site that was left in place. We heard, we went to the community resource center to talk with people experiencing homelessness or with lived experience to ask them about, like what are your thoughts? Like what can we do here? They talked a lot about security, feeling, being able to feel secure when they were on the site. We had this really great comment and this got cut off, but one of the guests said, I think we had shelters, we were showing an example where they were clustered and he said, I like the neighborhoods, but offset the door. Like that, getting to that sense of privacy, offset the doors and he showed us the community resource that was in the FW when he showed us the stars on the flag and you don't see it as much here, but maybe in another drawing. So that, we shifted them all to there. The doors are offset. And zoning requirements required that we put all the utilities underground, all the electrical connections. We had certain setbacks from property lines. We had to screen the trash. And the fire marshal required this 14 foot, this yellow strip and you see it painted in the photos of kind of incorporated it into our site wide mural, emergency access lanes so they could get easily, always know they can get an ambulance into the site quickly. And they also required them to be spaced a certain distance from each other. The other big thing that we focused on and how are we gonna make this feel like a community and not just a bunch of boxes on a parking lot was something we called place making and we worked with the architects at Devin Wisnesky and an artist to kind of come up with a concept for how we could create community on the site and this weaving concept of how you weave this into the community, covering the asphalt, both for visual reasons and for heat effect, heat island effect reasons and making sure we were adding natural materials, community gathering space and custom art. So we have, there's an artist that lives in Burlington that's designed these custom murals that are underway right now. She's starting them and then some of the guests at the site are gonna help finish them. So there's gonna be large panels, art panels that have been created specifically for the site using the same color palette. All right, so I'm gonna now go through the each of the building types and then we'll see a few of the photos. I think a lot of people here are interested in hearing more about the palette shelters. We have 25 of them on the site. The reason for this is why 25 and not 30 is like, coming in I was like, I wanna try, I wanna use this to like, what's better? Like, can we do a better at home? Like, and try multiple. So I wanted to work with a local manufacturer to do something that wasn't flat packed that came from Vermont. So that's where we have two different kinds of shelters. Not sure if I would do that again. There's a lot of work in now on the site that's like, they're not all the same and that creates, that's cool, I'll tease. Um, yeah, we're learning a lot. This is a learning experience. I'm trying to think, so I think most people know about palette shelter, the cost for the shelter, including transportation and their crew coming to erect them on the site was just under $12,000 per shelter. That includes like, we're in the super cold climate package or whatever, extreme cold weather package. And it comes with heat and everything else that you need in it. And we're adding window AC units. And as I mentioned at the beginning, we've ordered five of them to accommodate two people. You could do that with all of them, you know, if you wanted. One of the things I liked when they came was that we had the bases already set. The site was laid out exactly where they were gonna go and they're, the bases we added for two reasons. One, because the parking lot wasn't flat and we didn't wanna mess with, we needed the water to continue to flow to the existing stormwater. But secondly, it, we heard from folks in Wisconsin that were the first people to have a, you know, these in a winter climate that the people were complaining that the floor was cold. So these have insulation and they get the shelters off the ground. Yes? What's the cost differential between a single and a double unit? Just the, just like getting an extra thrown down bunk, which is like the two out of the bunk. So why are you using all double units? Because most of the population we were serving, most of the people in this shelter is for chronically unhoused folks that are currently unsheltered, you know, usually you think of as individuals, people who wanna be in their own space. The point being, use 30 for individuals and five for couples that have that flexibility. Oh, well you can move them around. They can, you can take them, you can move it around. So easy to convert it from one to two? Easy to convert, I think, I, we only have a permit to house, to shelter 35 people on the site. Which, yes, in hindsight, I probably would have increased that, but it was a little dicey to get the permit, so. Yes. That's an amazingly cheap price for. Yeah. I agree. You can use that, and, what's the amount of insulation are there, and type of insulation used, you know. In the pallet shelters? Yes, and are the walls down in here, is that also part of sound soothing? Yes, so everything is in these panels. I don't have the, in fact, our values with me, it's very, it's like astonishingly low and you would be like, ah! And I had several conversations with them where they finally said to me, the person I work with doing something is better than doing nothing. And that's been like kind of a mantra that, like, as someone that came from building super highly efficient multifamily housing, I was having this like our value heart attack and he was like, that's, you know, people are, people are unsheltered, like something that's better than nothing. And it was a really important moment for to like, keep it moving forward. And we did what we could. I mean, we worked with efficiency, Vermont, building these floors, had a big influence. You saw one of our sources of funding was Burlington Electric Department. They invested in every energy efficiency upgrade we made above and beyond, sort of what the building was. So yeah, these panels have the insulation in them. And I like this, you can see at the top, they just, they backed in a truck. We were required to have a forklift, the specific forklift on the site, but their folks flew in and they unpacked them on these pallets and they set them up in a day and a half. I'd all have, you know, from trucks to them leaving the site. So it really- As part of the 11-8. Yes, as part of the 11-8. I think that all that. You think of water. No, there's no water in these buildings. They have heat and electricity. We have put a mini refrigerator in every unit so that people can store medicine or food. We have food that they have. We, they're not, you're not allowed to have a microwave and set the unit for fire hazard reasons. That's a decision that we have made. And that's why we have the community buildings. You first with the bed or shelves. It comes with, it comes with beds, yep. And we- Part of the 11-8 is a bed? Yes, yes. It's attached to the wall and folds them. Wait, there's more. Folds, folds, right? Is the community building like for my bottom water? It does for my bottle water and there's actually a water bottle filler there. So everyone's, when they arrive in their service part of their checking process, they get a set of clear bins for their belongings that will fit under the beds and they get a water, a reusable water bottle and things like that. But there is a lot of water. There's a lot of good in that. Yeah. There's a lot of resources going through. Any other pallet questions? It says the owner supplied window A-Z units. Yes. How's that working out? Are people able to do that? Are they able to provide them? We, oh, we provide. Yeah, we have to look at it in our budget. So we're just getting those installed now. Okay, I misunderstood. I thought it meant the person living there. No, no, no, no. Yeah, sorry, they're not supplied by pallet. But you, but there's a, you can see this here. That's designed specifically to take an A-Z unit. So that's not in the budget? It is in my big picture budget. It's not in the 11th, it's in the 1-8, but not, yeah. Samantha, are you going to talk about the community buildings in the bathroom, so you shall always install them? I am. Then I won't ask. Any other pallet questions? The other five shelters that are on the site were constructed by a company called Up in This. They're based in Morris, Johnson, Vermont now, but they started at the generator in Burlington as a startup. Company building, modular buildings, and they worked with us to custom design a shelter. And I think they're marketing them on their, it's a unit, you can buy on their website now, not for emergency shelter. And these sort of, we worked with efficiency, Vermont, and Up in This, so these are highly efficient, and they include like an air source heat pump for heating and cooling, because they're efficient, they also require to have a ventilation system. And they're made of much more durable materials, and it's a very different product. You can see it's twice as expensive. And the feedback that we've heard is, they're taller, they're the same footprint on the inside, so they're not bigger, but they look bigger because they're taller. And I think in the beginning, there was a little bit of like, I want one of those, some people then said, oh, I don't let, you know, there's been some moving around, and we worked really hard to design this covered entry, which we were hoping to be able to add to all of the units in some way, but I think it's a really important component. So I think if, you know, if you're doing a smaller project, I mean, it's a money thing. These are more durable. I think the pilot shelters are, they say they're warranty for 10 years. They're not, it's not a, they're not made of plywood, you know, they're a panel. These I can imagine easily, you pick them up and like, I don't know what we're gonna do with them, but they'll be used for a long time. They could be used for shelter or for something else, for a small business on the waterfront, or, you know, for some other use. Does it all have windows at the end of it? So I think these units, 64 square feet of all of the units, yeah. Okay, so community buildings, as we said, there was, there's no running water in those individual shelters. So we added two community buildings. This is the first one, a bath house, as I was saying, has six full baths. So toilet, sink, shower, two of them, ADA, and includes the mechanical room for that, and a utility space. And as I said, they were designed or built by KBS builders, and they came on a truck that was designed specifically, like in Vermont, if you're, I forget the inch, like we were shaving inches off to make sure we could bring it to the site without police escort in Vermont. So that's good to know. These plans, I'm happy to share for anyone that wants to repeat. And some of the work that that construction manager did was this came, I got sat on helical piles, we had to build the deck and the ramps to onsite, to actually access each of the bathrooms, but it's connected to the municipal water and sewer. I'm curious, did you look at other options for bath services? Like I am surprised to see each of them as a full unit. So I'm thinking like, what's in a stadium, you have a bunch of urinals, a bunch of toilets, not everyone's gonna need a shower at the same time. So if someone's in the shower, they're occupying the sink in the toilet, and people are like, come on, finish with the shower. So that's why I was thinking like, have shower facilities separate from the toiletry facilities as an option. Yeah, I think we wanted to, this was the most efficient layout we could get to. We wanted to be able to provide six showers. And we didn't spend a lot of time when we got pulled apart. There are two additional bathrooms in the community building that are just bathrooms. But yeah, then I haven't heard that it's been an issue with people waiting. I think it's more in the winter, so you have to travel to it. But it's like, it's a little more like home, like if people feel good. To be in a bathroom, it's like, yeah, it's a very residential-scale bathroom. Yeah. And then in the community building, as I said, there's two offices. This waiting room is where people come into the building and check in with staff. The kitchen's labeled as a break room for COVID reasons. There's two bathrooms, laundry, two sets of washers and dryers that are very heavily utilized. The mechanical room and then this large, open space that I have a picture of, you'll see where people are. There's a pass-through from the kitchen. So people are served food and just have space to hang out. Yeah. One of the sides of the wash is higher. And are they industrial? They're not regular-martialed. They're commercial, but not industrial. And we have the work of the fish is in your pond. So we have one sackable, like, heat source. The site is all electric. There's no fossil fuels on the site. We have one set that's a sackable, like, heat pump, wash iron and dryer. And then a standard, it's the ADA accessible, a commercial wash iron and dryer. Yeah. Is there, like, an oven, stove, hot plate, anything where people can cook? Yes, microwaves. I mean, there is, the kitchen is a full kitchen, partially because I imagine that in the future this might actually become a home, become someone's home. But there's several, it's mostly, you can heat up food in a microwave. Okay, so people aren't allowed to use them? Not to use the kitchen, no. Is that the way? People can't use the kitchen at all? No, not the guests. They can heat up food. So who uses the kitchen? The staff does, passes out food. Being able to have guests use the kitchen besides, like, maintain, like, how you maintain cleanliness and things like that, we would have had to have, like, a whole fire, a really expensive fire suppression system that just couldn't, it didn't make sense in the budget. Operationally, that would have been real. Yeah, I think operationally, given the community, yeah. So is the kitchen sufficient that congregate meals can be served? All the food, the food actually comes from feeding chicken, delivers meals that are ready to be heated up. So they're not cooking on site. So it's not actually a functioning kitchen? It's like, meals on wheels. But it's not actually a functioning commercial kitchen? It's not a commercial kitchen, exactly, because we could not afford a commercial kitchen. So there are meals on either? Yes. Okay, two meals. Are, you know, my kids outdoors possible? Or what? More of a hand. I know, we, I'm working up Mass in the Fire Marshal, but I haven't got one. Not right now. You know another way had a, or maybe still has a functioning kitchen for over 20 years for unhoused people? Or are the clothes just different for Washington County than shit in there? It's possible that it was grandfathered in, I think, this project had so much scrutiny. And yeah, so I think it was probably a combination of things. So that's great, and like, don't tell the clothes. Anybody can. I also think of those that are people who do the cooking here, but I don't think you're wrong. I don't know if anybody goes in here. There's two people. Guests are allowed to cook in our shelters. Yeah. We have two kitchens. Those are the ones that she said? She's saying they had their shelters. Welcome center in Berlin. There are two kitchens, and guests are due their own cooking. Another way has two kitchens. One is a commercial, and then one is for the guest, for the residents, or people who use them, who drop in. I think as I mentioned previously, in terms of making sure, like, trying to keep the community engaged, and it was really about providing information and helping address fear, you had a lot of the farthest column is community meetings we had before the shelter was opened. We also, the city maintained a website that kept information up to date, translated the facts into the top 10 languages. We had community days where we invited folks onto the site to help paint the site wide mural, and there's ongoing monthly meetings that are a community group that is comprised of service providers, guests, and members of the neighboring community to talk about opportunities, challenges, things like that. Are families able to do the many of the boxes? Not for, no, 118. What is that? I think that it's not, it's, we determined that it was really not suitable, this kind of shelter, not suitable for children. 64 square feet. Yeah. That's good enough. Yeah, okay. This is it sort of looking at overview of the first timeline I showed you was kind of from conception to opening. This was the actual construction. And I think the student called this out like, this is just like my angst of like those buildings from KBS like they didn't come when we thought they were going to. And so that delayed us. And here it doesn't look like such a big deal, but it was a long eight weeks. And you can see from the second week of August to the first week of February is what it took to do all that work, including hitting an underground tank and having to rebate soil. And we've been in it for hours. And then we had to rebend it. And now the site doesn't know what it was. So the other ground tank was a surprise. I didn't know it was there. I know. I get it. Yeah. On our last day, connecting the bottom up. It was oil or something. Oil and then it was down. Oh my goodness. It was just a random old oil tank. They're everywhere. Absolutely nowhere. So this was my kind of highlights of lessons learned. I don't know, Sue, if you want to add anything to this. Lessons learned was just having to sit out. All the credit goes to Samantha, because she had the vision and the guts to do this. And to stand up there and talk in front of communities who really were against me. It's a lot. It's a lot. You have to have a lesson. Just some of the lessons for us was thinking, awarding a builder. We ended up working in KBS called the Manson Alumni. So there might be some other local options that might have been quicker at that point. Overall, we should have just think about it. Thinking about how to do that. How do you think of awarding $10 a day at KBS? Well, it's actually quite good. When someone lets you know our value, it's about $10 a day at around an electric resistance heater. That's per shelter. So it's an electric heater. It works. That's what I'll say. I think that my biggest fear was like, is it going to work? And we're certainly the coldest climate that these have been installed in. I had the chance to talk with folks in Madison, Wisconsin, where we're living through it. And we're getting saying, the floor is cold, but people, it's warm enough. It works. So just reiterating, we had very, very cold weather while these were operating in the heater. It works as pallet claims. Yeah? The temperature inside, did you release it from something? No, no. Oh, I mean, it's hot. Oh, you've got the lowest to 80 in the body. Yes, your body puts off heat. I think pallet says they can keep it 90 degrees above the coldest temperature, or 70 degrees. It was warm. It was warm even below zero. Did you have the figures for the five up in this? The operating costs? I don't because I'm curious. We're working actually, I just met Efficiency Vermont on site this week to put some e-gages on the electrical panel and try and dig down into our usage information. I have this number because one of our panels just has pallet shelters on it, so it's very easy to do the math. But the up in this ones are mixed in. But we will have that information well now for the winter, not for another year. Well, I think it's cool with the addition too. Yes, exactly, running those air conditions. And I'm just going to say, please make sure you don't have your sheet and your air conditioner on. So is the heater built into the pallet shelter? It is built into the pallet shelter. So it's not a little box or something? No, no. I mean, it is the same concept, but it's part of the building. Can people control the heat? Yes. That's great. I can't do that in my apartment. There are pets, which I think we get. So this was the part that Sarah Russell was going to do. I do not have a background in homelessness or social work or services, so definitely not my area of expertise. But I'm going to do my best. She and I sit very close to each other. I know pretty much everything that's happening. This is the inside of the community. This photo is from the inside of the community building, sort of looking out from the kitchen out into the open space. So you can see there's lots. There's always food available. You can see the microwaves over in the corner for heating up meals. There's always coffee available. And this space is open from 8 AM till 10 PM. And then it does, when it's just security on site and not staff, this space is not open. But the waiting room is open. The waiting room is open, and there's a microwave that gets set up in the waiting room. So you keep track of how many people are in there, or they can only have a certain amount? No, everyone can. There's enough space for everyone to be in here. At the same time? Yes. Yeah. It's a pretty big space. So there's security. So you have a buzzing to get into the site. The site is a fully secured site. So we didn't talk a lot about that. But at the beginning, I said there was a chain link fence that already secured three sides. And then across the front, I don't want to go all the way back, but we can. There's a new cedar fence that was put up that creates privacy within the site. And it has gates for emergency access. And then it has a pedestrian gate that's locked. And so you have a camera on it. So anytime someone enters the site, you have to hit a doorbell. And the staff looks to see who it is. And that's for the security of the staff. It's for security of guests on site. And they're keeping track of, and you have to hit a doorbell to leave as well. So they are keeping track for safety reasons also to know who's on the site. And only guests are allowed inside the site. They can have guests in the community space, but not inside the site. And that's for the security of the other. So the operations team, the city hired Shifling Housing Trust, has lots of experience. So we're very lucky to operate the site. And community service coordinators come through from Shifling Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, so social workers, case workers, on site every day, seven days a week. And then through memorandums of understanding, these are the other service providers that are on the site on a regular basis during the week. And we've heard a lot when we were designing this and sort of moving towards this that a lot of this population is service resistant. There's not a requirement to accept services or work with service providers. But we heard from folks who have been offering similar style shelter communities that after seeing the same people for two, three, maybe four weeks and feelings realizing that you were safe, people started to be open to connecting with service providers. And that has started when you started to have them here. Is the V&A in there at all? We don't have the V&A. We have the Community Health Services of Burlington comes on site. So what happens if somebody gets sick? Do they just leave? It depends. So we have nursing staff that comes on site from Community Health Services of Burlington and the Community Health Center. Or people couldn't go to the emergency room or the doctor. So this is the annual operating budget that we just submitted to the state. The majority, I don't have a sources about the majority of the operating funds do come from the state hop. I don't even know what hop stay in services is in. Thank you. This has not been funded yet. We do have in that original $3 million of ARFA that the city designated. Some of that is to help support the operations of the site. It's much more expensive than we were anticipating because when Shampoong Housing Trust got involved, they said that we need more robust staff than you were anticipating. So it is costing just about $1.3 million a year to operate this site. That includes utilities. Yes. So I'm looking at the number for staffing. And I see the number of people that's broken out. And then I'm looking at security. And we're seeing two positions. Does that represent just a hugely different rate for those people? Or is it the number of hours? It's a combination of things. So the security is overnight. I think they start at. Is that a private firm? Yes. That can be contacted. Yep. And Shemalina Housing Trust did not want to provide overnight staff. So it's contracted with a private firm. They're the only ones that are on site overnight? Yes. There's no other staff? No, the staff from Shemalina Housing there is always a staff person on call. And yeah, that they get called. How has that been working for the people who live there? That's a good question. I have not had a chance to ask the folks who live there. The site has been operating pretty smoothly. So I think it's working. I think the city's preference would be that there was overnight staff. But our preference was also to have Shemalina Housing Trust operate the site. So this was a good intake. So the operating clause for the FTEs, it's all outsourced. There's no city. There's this is no city staff here. Yes. So these are, this is actually the custodial support is someone that was hired to the parks department that manages all the facilities at the city. But all of these positions are Shemalina Housing Trust staff. Yeah. So looking at the budget, the security is probably two shifts plus weekends, right? Yeah, it's seven days a week. So the security, the only staff there all day and night on the weekends? No, it's just overnight. There's always CHT staff there in the day. The 30 castes for cleaning, that's not for staffing for a cleaner. What does that cover? This is not my budget. So I don't know the details. I think a lot of cleaning, no trash is its own line item. I think what this includes that hasn't happened yet is to get cleaning to happen on the weekend because this staff person, so this is our budget, this is our FY24 budget, is to be able to pay someone to come in on the weekend because the bathroom's right now don't get clean on the weekend. And just it also includes all of the toilet paper and soap dispensers and all of the kind of materials that are used. Yeah, OK. It's a good question, that's a high number, I'll ask. Or what is the managing partner? Champlain Housing Trust. So that's their overhead administrative cost, the $87,000. Oh, sorry, no, that's us, that's the city. That's our overhead cost. So that we have two set people, Sarah Russell and Marcel again, another person who are sort of managing all of these pieces. And all of this money has to flow through our office. I'm just noticing in the background, the raised bed there, is that just for landscape? Or is there actually some kind of community gardens? There's community gardens. Yes, they're happening. I know. I'm going to buy the plants tomorrow. They are filled now. They have dirt in them. I know, it's been a process. Are people excited to do that? You know what? The city manager was trying to put up, she put up a sign to a starting garden club. She said, no one came. But when I was on site, I went on site and I had to line all these things with fabric. Now we move the dirt. I think people will leave. We just need to get the stuff there. I'm sorry, that just brings up another question. How long is there a time limit for people to be able to stay? So our zoning requirements for emergency shelter limit a stay to 180 days with an option to extend for 90 days. We think, because these are all individual shelters, just moving maybe from one shelter to another if someone needs to stay longer. It's going to take a long time to do that. This is how it is being gathered. No one's watching. Yeah, too important. Sorry. Have you had turnover or have you had people move on? Yes. I'm getting to that. I wanted, there were other questions. I wanted to move off the budget. Yes. So I just figured, there's a figuring and that comes out to about $27,000 per person. Well it's not per person, maybe per shelter. Per shelter, well if you have 30 shelters. Yeah. We have 25 shelters. 30 shelters. Okay, per shelter. I can tell you, again, I'm sorry, Sarah's nagging. It's very, it's basically equivalent to a motel night. The cost per person is equivalent to a motel night, but it includes all of these services on site and all of the food and things like that. Cost equivalent for a hotel night, for what the state pays themselves or. The state, the state. The $150. Up to $8,000 a month, not that number. Well it's about $150 a night, I think. Again, this is not, I'm outside my expertise zone, but I think it's about $150 a night and this is pretty, it's close. Yes. I'm just learning about this. So if there, it's not like it's the fourth day, 118 days, with the possibility, I don't know, I'm not doing the math in my head. Yep. You're doing a wonderful job. Thank you. Great. I would say it is possible for the people who stay there to become part of the community group of the bathroom today on the weekend. Yeah, I think we're, that question is being considered. I think it's been a, it was a huge deal to get it open. The biggest thing that people are focused on is safety of staff and of guests and like those kinds of things are evolving. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Was there another budget question before that I can't really answer? So this is very early data. The data we have is just for this, you know, the first quarter of the year. So just through March 31st, so the first 51 days of the shelter operated. The total number of people that were sheltered in that 51 days was 37. It was a staggered start. So CHT the first week, there were five guests. The first, you know, they did, they welcomed five guests at a time because that staff literally like we were like, they couldn't get in because we were still paging and stuff. And then once we could it was February, we needed to start letting people shelter. So they did a staggered start of five people every two to three days. So 37 people were there in those 51 days. You can see 28 of those folks chose to connect with case management. There were two referrals to specific mental health services, two referrals to substance abuse disorder treatment or three, one referral to Vermont chronic care initiative, referral to legal services and three referrals for employment education and training. So those are people, that's what those folks were. Once they connected with the case manager, those were the kinds of services that they were looking to be connected with. In those first 51 days, we had two people exit to permanent housing, which is amazing. This is chronically homeless population, people who have been living outside. So that was really exciting. One person exited to substance abuse treatment facility. Three people just left because the environment didn't work for them. And then there were eight involuntary exits. So this is a low barrier shelter, which we're gonna get to on the next slide. Talk a little bit more about that, but there are some rules, again, about that safety issue. So if there's violence, then you have an involuntary exit. And then that wait list. This was the wait list yesterday, 136 people actively trying to access the shelter. What's your term rate, roughly? Well, you can see here, in the first 51 days, 10 people exited. I don't know, can we see in that? 10 people exited. But then immediately filled up. Oh yeah, because there's acquaintance. So that's like 20 or something. I might just not be understanding that, but if 10 people left, and there's 30. Well, I was at only 37. Yeah. It was that staggered start. So I think because this is just a super, the second quarter data will be like, it started at 30, there were 35 people there when it started and 35 people when it ended. But because it's like, so the first week there was only five people there and the second week there were 10. So that's good catch. Another question. Were all the people, Burlington residents? Before? Or were there people from out of the city, out of the state? No, I think so. The referral team, I'm hoping it's on these slides. I haven't even looked at these because Sarah was gonna do them, but there's a referral team made up of service providers and street outreach workers and Sarah. So yeah, it's all people who are currently within sheltering within city limits or on shelter within city limits. So there's not people on the wait list from Montpelier. It's all folks that are in Burlington. Okay, so these are Sarah's lessons learned. And I think really important, the low barrier model to ensure like why even with the motel system open and all these other things, why are people still on sheltered? So assessing why they haven't accessed emergency shelter and figuring out how to make it work for them, allowing couples to stay in one shelter has been important. 24 seven access, you get your shelter, you get a key, you put your stuff in there and you come and go whenever you want. That's very unusual in a lot of the shelter setups. There are pets allowed on site. There's a few small dogs. They don't, there's not like a bag check. Services are encouraged but not required. Person center approach to behavioral guidelines and challenges and embracing a restorative approach. This staff works very closely with the Community Justice Center in Burlington to use a restored approach when possible and prioritizing access for folks who are currently on shelter. She had a second one. And this first bullet is what I was referring to, that there's a community-based referral team. So from the Continuous Care and the Chinook County Homeless Alliance, those folks are all working together to create the list of and prioritization. We have continuous communication many, many times a day with on-site management. Being ready to change. This was true in the development process and it's true in the operations. Like we are figuring it or we're building the airplane as we're flying. No one has done this before with the people that are working on it. So being able to change is really important. Engaging people with lived experience and the neighborhood and planning discussions and then formalizing the partnerships with all the services and resources that are available on-site and making sure people can get what they need on-site so they don't have to leave the family. Yes. Did you have people lived experience-involved at every step in the process in terms of the design, the policy-making, the decision? Yes, yeah. And developing the policy, the operations policy. Absolutely. No, but I'm talking about the whole process. I would say not until, no, not until. I mean, certainly in our site design we did and then in all of the operation policies, yeah. It seems like it's pretty critical to have somebody who's focused 100% on this at the city level. I think, yeah, different communities have done different things. I think, as I said, it was a little bit of luck that I was hired, I didn't, my workload hadn't been determined and I had development experience in terms of getting it set up. I think you could hire a consultant but someone has to be, someone's really gotta drive it. It's not gonna build itself and continuing to have a point person at the city. If you're using, especially if you're using city, for us, when you're using city resources, when we, as an employee of the city, every citizen of the growing town is my boss and I am required to answer any question that they ask, really. That's part of, you know, I'm a public servant. So when you're using city resources, it requires a different level of engagement. If you're not using city resources, I would say you wouldn't, you don't have to do like that, yeah. So I think you may have mentioned it upfront about the temporary age of this and throughout the program you're saying about how we could repurpose these later on. So what's the life span of this project that you did? So this project right now has a three-year lifespan. Okay. And I don't know yet. Does that mean it's funded for three years and it gets up for, The operating funding is annual. So, I mean, if we, So the three years are determined based on what? It was based on the mayor's desire to end homelessness in three years. And it was part of a permitting strategy, quite honestly. So it was based on, it was political. I think you said you're struggling to get the permit in three years was about it. Well, that, I mean, I don't know that, I think, I don't know the temp, I was the temporary and I had anything to do with it, but just like how much work we had to do. I was like, this is a temporary facility where this is going to be there forever. The three years are part of that and it ain't it. Yeah, I'll come back next year and I'll tell you what's going to happen. Sorry, hold it for me. I wanted to go over the back for us because you're being nice and quiet. Has there been any effort to ensure any private funding given that fast wealth that's in shape and quality right now? I mean, a million dollars is, some change to some people, let's face it. That's true. We haven't had to do that yet. I mean, I think we, you know, we have used ARPA funding and the state has shelter funding available on that, that's working right now. Yeah. What's the total square footage of the? Of the site? The footprint of the site. I'm going to go all the way back. 0.6 of an acre? Like about half a little over half an acre, yeah. Someone was really paying attention. 0.5, yeah, 0.5 for acres. Which is indeed for those of us who, I think it's like 100 by 250 or something. That's like 100 by 250 or something. It's like a really big basketball court. And this is Elm Street, Elmwood Avenue. Elmwood Avenue, it's, yeah, you're sort of standing in Elmwood Avenue, yeah. Given the crisis, I guess I can use that word that, you know, with that end of the hotel program, do you think that there's any interest, will, or possibility of creating more sites like this within Chippinman County or? I haven't heard any. The Bryantons proposal is sort of on the request of the state is for congregate shelter for individuals. And there's a different plan for the vulnerable population, but not more of us. Did I have a comment related to your question? We operate three shelters. One of our shelters is, they're doubles. They're larger than these units, and they are connected. Like they're in a one building? Two buildings. Two buildings, yeah. Yeah. And there are refrigerators, and then there's a common kitchen and lounge area and so forth. The state is paying us, well, while our operating costs is $60. 10 minutes, okay. It is $60 a night. Okay. And our shelters range between about 60 and 70 per bed per night. And they are pushing back on us. Push back on them. Well, we're trying to, I think this is great. I think this is fantastic, but I look at, and they should be giving this project that much money, but I wonder if there is enough commitment to do this at this level in other locations. Because our experience is, they're not even giving us enough money to run it. As it is. At $70 a night. I think some of us, honestly, I don't know if people were following it, but the city had a very challenging time trying to get someone to operate the site, and there was a very uncomfortable meeting between the city and the state, and Champlain Hasentress and other providers in Chittenden County that there was a lot of pressure put on Champlain Hasentress to step into this role. And they have kind of said, this is what it costs for us to do it, and they're doing a phenomenal job, and this is what it costs for them, this is sort of what it costs for them to do it. So I think it's a very specific situation. The state really wanted to see how does this model work? And this public health model with all the services, is it working? Unfortunately, I didn't have, there's been a lot of successes that didn't show up in that data, even in the last couple of months. Like Johnsburg, I think, looked at this and has backed away for now, and Upper Valley will ultimately be looking at this down the road. So I know we now have eight minutes. We need to let the library close. I'm gonna go back to this last slide so people can write down my email. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Well done. S-Done at Burlington, VT.gov. Did it shut? Is it because the library is closing? I think they kicked us out. All right, just over to the, oh my gosh. S-Done. So what was it? S-Done. S-D-U-N-N. At Burlington, VT.gov. And I am happy to answer questions over email. If you email me, I can send you this presentation as a PDF. Sue and I put a lot into figuring this out and would want to make sure that we share, share any information that we can and help other people try it. It's worth it. You did a great job. Thank you. But being on the site, just as I'm often on the site, just dealing with something that's not working or where the fish and the Vermont or the burden beds still, but to get to be there with people who've really been un-cheltered for very, many, for a very long time to see them, this is their place that are there with their dog, that I see them, they're knocking on it, they're walking across it, knocking on the front door, and it's creating community and security and dignity that everyone deserves to have. So it's absolutely worth all the hard work. One of the guys, just my neighbor, he was working to the site, he said, I saw Mike, the other day, and he went crazy, he's been sleeping, and he's not sleeping with one eye, basically. I mean, it's just like, ooh, I just realized. Samantha, do you have an idea when the next round of data will be available? Because I would imagine that's gonna be quite revealing. Yeah, it's quarterly data, so June, at the end of June, so maybe July, probably, yeah, we'll have it available. I first learned about this company about 2019, and I did write the governor about it at some point. And also a good thing about this company is, of the pallet, I don't know about the other one that is, I think that at the Washington factory, they have a lot of people who are homeless. Absolutely. And it's part of their, it's integral to what they're doing. It's a group of, and I really believe in that, and I've been trying to have a lot of news around here. Yeah. That's a great thing. And I'm really interested in any follow-up that comes down from people who have been there, they feel about it, and I think it's a great thing, because for what you're getting with all that services that they can get and start moving on and feel better. Yeah, and it's not gonna be a success story for everyone that goes in there, but there's a lot of success. And to me, if you have a one person who's able to get what they need, it's worth it. Yeah, we're seeing that over and over. No, just let them get their first job, right? Yes. They got hired while they were at the shelter and for a while the employer was picking them up, and then they got enough money and they got an apartment they're actually living in Montpelier where their child is living. And so, yeah, they just needed stability. Yeah. And the three years that like gets you out the door that he can show that it's being successful is not like you absolutely have to be out in three years, right? That's good. Really pick it up and move it to a new location. Do they have a mailing address? They do have a mailing address. We have a lot of parking lots available here in Montpelier, so if you're looking for a parking lot to pay. I'm not looking for anything. I really want to be able to pay for that. There are a lot of parking lots in Montpelier, but most of them are not available at this time. They're two different issues. Yeah, I know. Let's not go there. I really appreciate every time you guys have me there. The library is that time, so I've heard that. We have to go to Rome. I'm going to be standing by the Rome. A sign-up sheet, if anybody wants to come on here. Do we need to put the chairs away or do we need to stack the chairs? I think, yeah, if you want to go back, no. But if people want to sign up, you have to go to the side of the chair.