 Hello, this is In The Studio, and I'm your host today, Martha Teeter. Our topic is Paul's Place at 1111 H Street, and we have some other media that is available to learn about this program that you can see. One is a DCTV show, the Timely Topics program, and the other is a KDRT Davisville show. Both of them can be seen by searching for Paul's Place at davismedia.org. And today my guest is Bill Pride. Hi, Martha. Hi, Bill. And Bill is the executive director of Davis Community Meals and Housing. Yes. Thank you for coming in. You're welcome. Davis is very fortunate as a community to have a lot of volunteers who have cared for those less fortunate, and a number of years ago, 2025, that resulted in the formation of a nonprofit called Davis Community Meals, and they began serving meals at St. Martin. Yes, we started off as an all-volunteer organization back in 1991, where we first served our first meal over at St. Martin's in February of 1991. Wow. And we've evolved from then. We still have a lot of volunteers we get from the community, from different faith groups, from the university, from high school groups, the old scouts, boy scouts, service organizations. We use probably about 1,500-2,000 volunteers a year come to us to help out. And we've evolved from just doing a meal program to having multiple meals during the week and also a whole range of other programs serving low-income and homeless folks. Great. And then I guess that, in a couple of years after the start, resulted in a facility on H Street? Yes. About three years after we first opened our meals program, we worked with the city of Davis to acquire our 1111 H Street property, which we've used as a day shelter resource center and also the transitional housing program for the last 20-something years. Wow. Yeah. And that was purchased then by the non-profit? Yes. With some help? Yeah. The city helped us with financing from some, I think, of housing trust funds. And we used some other funding we had from some other sources to take what was originally two single-family residents on the site and join them and turn it into somewhat what it is today, like I said, the day shelter resource center and transitional housing program. And I guess that would always be used then to serve those who are experiencing homelessness. Yes. That was part of our agreement with the city, which was that they're going to give us the money in return that we're obligated to operate the facility and use the facility to help homeless and low-income folks. Excellent. Good. And that the facility is showing a little wear and is a little under capacity. Well, the facility, like I said, they were actually like single-family residences. Yeah. Yeah, I think we have a picture of that. You know, we took those single-family residents and made it into what it is today. So we house right now up to 12 folks during the day when our resource center is open. We have another 40, 50, 60, sometimes 70 folks come in to see us. Wow. We have a lot of services about people who go take a shower, do laundry, pretty much all different types of services and needs that people may have. But for a two single-family residence, it gets a whole heck of a lot of use from, you know, it's not used to having that many folks come in and use the facility. And we've done a couple of renovations over the years, one in 2001 and one in 2009. But even with those two renovations, it's showing a lot of wear and tear and some of the, it's, it's, there's not enough bathrooms, not enough showers for folks. Yeah, just like one bathroom. We have one bathroom, one shower for the folks coming into the day shelter and when we're only open to the public from 8 to 12 when you have 30, 40, 50, 60 people coming in, it doesn't give a lot of time and a lot of people aren't able to take showers and use the facilities the way they might otherwise. Yeah. Yeah. And I understand you have four to a room for your transitional program. Yes. And the house, like I said, small residential home, the bedrooms are 8 by 10, maybe a little bit larger. But we have four adults living in each room and we have 12 men up to four women and there's two bunk beds in each room and so it's very crowded. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's difficult. Yeah. So, recently another nonprofit that I've been involved with Davis Opportunity Village has been looking at ways to get micro-housing to help house homeless individuals and we've had a lot of difficulty finding land. So the city has connected our two nonprofits and we have an architect on our board, Maria Gridsiak, who sat down with a lot of the people involved in serving those experiencing homelessness with yourself, with the police, with the public housing authority, Yolo County Housing and she has designed a facility that is what we see on the next slide, Paul's Place at 1111 H Street. Yes. It was a very exciting venture. It is very exciting. I mean, I think it combines what we're currently doing on the site, which is the Resource Center Transition Housing Program and marries it with two floors of micro-housing, 18 units of permanent supportive housing for homeless and low-income folks. Wow. And I think it's a great, great project. I mean, it will give us an expanded Resource Center facility so we have more room for folks to use, more bathrooms, more showers, more laundry so it'll be more efficient in serving folks. The second floor with the transitional housing will go from four people to a room to individual bedrooms for 10 and then we will have the two uppers floors with these micro-housing units of approximately 300 square feet apiece and it'll be 18 total units spread out over those two floors. Yeah. Yeah, actually, I think we have a picture of the micro units too, micro-homes. And Maria was saying it's kind of designed like a little urban tiny house village with a common meeting area in the middle and the homes actually about the same dimensions as they would be on a flatbed truck moved around. Yes. Yeah, but there's plenty of room for people with disabilities. It'll be safe and stable housing for those folks who are the most vulnerable in the streets. Yeah. Those folks who are either chronically homeless or some kind of disability. And so I think it's a wonderful project to help get a number of folks off the streets of Davis. Excellent. Excellent. And I think that in developing the program, one of the people on Yolo County Housing pointed out that it's a kind of model having the multifunctional housing, the permanent supportive transitional and it will also have I guess some an emergency housing too. The emergency shelter beds in the first floor that we're going to work with the different agencies to have access to folks who need that emergency shelter throughout the year. So combining that with a resource center is something that many communities might be interested in replicating. Not many communities have resource centers. Not yet. Unfortunately because not yet, but I mean that's been I think a lot of resource centers have not survived the economic downturn and cutbacks in funding from several places. So you know we're one of the last standing I think doing that type of service frankly. But I think it's an ideal way to kind of marry different programs into one building and you know provide kind of more services for the folks in Davis who are living with our housing. Wow. Excellent. Well it sounds very exciting. I guess the people who are the most vulnerable are the ones that are the intended people to go in the permanent supportive housing. So there won't be barriers, it will be housing first type of model. It's a model that's going to allow folks with serious mental health issues, some abuse issues and those physical disabilities is a combination thereof to give them a safe and stable home. That's great. That's great. And this is something I think that you've been involved with in the community of different kind of housing. What tell me about that? We've had we've operated premise for housing for the last ten years over at Cesar Chavez Plaza on Olive Drive. Okay. And we've been doing that successfully for the last ten years. I mean we have staff on site and you know the prime function to me is when people move in is to make sure they stay. So that means doing a whole lots of different things for lots of different folks depending upon their needs and their ability to kind of stay housed. But I mean we just, our function I think is the primary function is just keeping people housed. And we also have another you know, permanent supportive housing program that we're going to be developing over the next year or two Creekside Courts which hopefully will be it's already received city council approval. Hopefully we'll have a groundbreaking this year and hopefully open sometime towards the end of 2019. That's great. And so this project, paulsplacedavis.org is where it's oriented and you can see on the map some of those different places that serve homeless individuals that's not concentrated in one place the housing is spread around Davis. Yeah I think you know we have programs pretty much all over Davis at this point in time from South Davis to Olive Drive to, there's other programs run by the Empower Yield, the Delegates of Violence Shelter in Davis. So services are spread pretty much throughout the Davis community and I know the map doesn't show up but there's also lots of different affordable housing options for folks whether it's for seniors or for a general population and pretty much anywhere in Davis from east to west north to south as those projects are located. Yeah that's great so yeah completely spread all over Davis. And the site where 1111 H Street is, that's by the railroad tracks is it? It's by the railroad tracks on H Street which runs parallel to the railroad tracks up towards the little link field, the back of the little link fields. And as I remember it's screened from the neighborhood where the. Lots of trees are on a property and also on neighborhood properties. There's also to the north an apartment complex, a two-story apartment complex and also to the west another apartment complex about in the back of the property and at the corner next to us is a duplex. So it fits right in with the apartments and the neighborhood in that regard yeah. It's not going to really change I use there all that much frankly because I don't really expect that we're going to see. It's going to be a bigger facility I just don't think it's going to you know we have a street and homeless population Davis it's been you know rather static for a number of years it's increased a little bit the last couple but I don't necessarily think it's going to have many more folks here than currently go there now. Yeah so it's you've you've the model redesigns the and improves in a sense the resource centers. It improves it makes improvements to what we're able to do now. But I don't necessarily think it's it's not anywhere that's going to you know it's not ready for a hundred people either right you know it's pretty much it's pretty much made this year of the population currently serve in a more efficient manner. That's excellent that's really great yeah to make that better yeah I think this is a real community asset I think this is something a lot of people will get excited about because it can really improve our community. I think I've seen they can't they that property values actually can increase in the neighborhood of a good housing project like this not go down as many think they do and also that the cost to the community of public services emergency services decreases by fifty percent at least. I think folks who are actually moving into housing they're getting the needs and medical needs or those needs met differently than they're being out in the streets. So it certainly results in them being a less costly or Twitter that are being on the streets where they don't really have access to any services. Right right right and it improves the whole neighborhood in fact the whole community that way yeah yeah well I think we can find out more about this at the Pulse Place davis.org website or you can email directly bill pride that information is up on your screen and I want to thank you so much for joining us today this is a really exciting a fascinating program I think it's going to be a real boon to Davis and put Davis on the map let's say about addressing homelessness. So I want to thank you so much for joining us today and in the studio thank you.