 All right, welcome back. It is just before 2pm on Wednesday, February 3rd. And we are having a meeting this afternoon for about an hour to talk about the continuing the conversation that we've had for some time on the effects of using hotels or motels for mitigating the homelessness after the pandemic started we we were able to get quite a few people off the streets many more than one hour. Many more than we thought existed. And put them into hotels and motels across the state and one of the, and that was done as a public safety and a public health gesture, simply because we felt like they people who are experiencing homelessness were, I believe that was coined last year was hyper vulnerable. And, and yet at the same time we've created some cultures and some of these neighborhoods now in of hotels that are real life issues that I think we need to discuss and and just know have occurred and so I'm just curious to get a point of view from that there was an article in the Times Argus, very Montpelier Times Argus last week that talked about some of the issues here in central Vermont. But they're human issues. And I just wanted to lay them out there and have the committee here, what's been going on. And so with us today is our Tim Bombardier from Barry City, Director of Public Safety, and we have Trisha Tio, who's now the Deputy Director of Economic Services Division at DCF, along with Jeffrey Pippinger, and then we have Rick DeAngels and Barbara Jenny from the Good Samaritan Haven in Barry, which is, which is a shelter, a homeless shelter in downtown Barry City. And Good Sam also was and I'm not sure and we'll get an update from Rick on on the status of that but they were also the de facto leads on utilizing the Econo Lodge in Montpelier, and perhaps the hilltop and in Berlin, as well. So with that, I'll start off we have Chief Bombardier to come up first and Chief, the microphone is yours. Thank you. Thank you for the invite to I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to people. I'm going to warn everybody I'm going to start out with the bad stuff first because I think that the bad stuff needs to be brought to people's attention. But it's not all bad and I think we're going to hear from others that it's not all bad and we have some great opportunities. The hotels a community for a neighborhood to start with and I think that's a good way of looking at what's been created by moving people into these hotels. In the beginning, this started out from all the counts as really a short term solution to the COVID pandemic and addressing how we were going to keep people safe. It's now been 11 months and I've talked to people about long term plans. And as of today's date I'm not aware of a long term plan in place. What's going to happen when this funding drives up. I have some serious concerns about these hotels. And if tomorrow if everybody was just told they don't have a place to stay. What type of impact that would have on our service providers and when I use the term service providers, not just talking about police firing us. I'm talking about folks from the big Sam folks from capstone, our justice center, our judicial system. Unfortunately, there's a more immediate need at the hotels and in our communities. The reports of criminal activity taking place in around in and around these hotels is not acceptable. And neither is the activity that's filling over into other areas of our community. We've changed from minor things like noise complaints and welfare checks to drug sales overdoses assaults, prostitution, domestic violence cases, and the list goes on. This is a missing person case from one of the hotels from back in April of last year, which is probably going to turn up to be a homicide and I've had detectives working on it since April of last year. It's fair to say that this type of criminal conduct adversely affects the good individuals who for no other reason than not having a home or stay also staying in the same hotel. Everyone deserves to enjoy the same peace and tranquility that we all expect when we go home. And just because you're homeless. That should not be taken away from you. I've been told that some of the folks staying in the hotel are afraid to leave their rooms or report incidents to hotel staff or the police. Early on this hampered attempts to get people involved with services. And through the hard work of some of our other service providers I know that Mary from Washington County mental health spoke this morning or the issue was blank. They've done some great outreach and trying to engage people in the, but it hasn't been easy. Some of these people are still living in fear and prior attempts to involve both the security, private security in the sheriff's office that made an impact, but it's really not enough. So you have an idea of the magnitude of the problem in central Vermont. And I've been told by other Jews that they are having similar issues of compiled information regarding the seven hotels here, the activity and the activity around them from the first of March of 2020. And I started this back on January 7, compiling the information so it's going to jump around a little bit. But I first looked at what was going on and bury the involvement in the hotels and more importantly, the people who were using the hotels, has their addresses that had involvement with law enforcement or fire slash EMS and bury that number was 14 people that were using the Halloween. That's just the Halloween as a resident, those 14 people had 33 involvement at the Halloween address, but they had chalked up 130 139 involvement around our community so 33 at where they're living, but another 106 out and about in the community when I say community, I mean all central Vermont. My failure very city very town in Berlin, all share the same record management system. So I'm able to look at their cases and they have permission from the Jews to share that with you. And it's from just the folks from the hollow range from again drugs, but also the seriousness. In addition to drugs arrest on outstanding warrants mess of violence cases. And as I mentioned the one missing person. I also looked at the people who had involvement from the hilltop in Berlin. There were 68 people in Berlin during that same time frame, who had involvement. When we looked at the O'Connellage, there were 20 people at the O'Connellage. Initially I didn't take the time to go down through and count, because I have to go back. It's not just a couple clicks I have to physically count from the start date their individual involvement. I figured out how to do it differently. But I was thinking that Berlin was Berlin and my period were similar to us with regards and probably that Berlin at the hilltop was worse. I was looking to see how many of these people actually came from central Vermont and had involvement with us and other service providers. And my initial work showed that is about 35% of those individuals weren't from here. And when I see individuals weren't from here I mean the ones that had police involvement, not the whole group of people staying in the hotel. That was the first day I looked at it. The next day I dug a little deeper into the other two hotels, being the O'Connellage and the hilltop. I had a screenshot of what has been going on at the O'Connellage. There were 20 individuals who used the O'Connellage as their residence when being involved with the police during the same time frame. They had a total of 359 involvements with law enforcement or police slash or fire slash EMS. 226 of them had not taken place at the hotel. They had taken place in other areas of central Vermont. There's an overlap with these sometimes two people will be involved in the same case, but still even considering the overlap these numbers are really high. I went to yesterday just to get a quick look at where we are now, and it's been a week. Yesterday there are 254 adults staying in the seven hotels in central Vermont, 62 children in addition to these adults. 138 of these adults have been involved with the police or firing in this or both. And they've been involved in 937 calls for service. It's a very broad overview and as I said there's definitely overlaps of people in incidents, but of those 138 adults, 53 of them have been arrested. The majority of them are from the hilltop, but the O'Connellage, the Halloween, the fall of the end. We added the fall of the end when we started to dig a little deeper and contributed individuals from those areas contributed to those 53 people being arrested. And the number of those that don't appear to be from central Vermont when I look at the big group is roughly 20%. And I know I've talked a lot about the bad things to make my point that things are not good and that they need to change. We need a plan for the future. We law enforcement people in this building, whether it's dispatch my officers, my social worker or mental health clinician, all understand that homeless population will often demand more of our resources. Or that in some cases past legal or mental health or substance abuse issues have led to homelessness in the first place. Law enforcement and service providers are doing the best they can to take care of the needs of this population, especially those living in fear of the other hotel guests and those with children. Dealing with the children initially the children were spaced out in all of these hotels and quite frankly there's a couple of hotels that children should never do. And that was dealt with early on by anything in servicing and Rob Evans who is working with them to get the majority of the children to a safer place being the Halloween that isn't on a main drag and kind of more child friendly with actually grass and a backyard etc. But beyond the calls for service for fights and public disorder. As I mentioned before there's greater challenges. And they're hidden behind the hotel doors they're hidden in the hallway. They're done undercover justice. And those are the drug abuse and drug dealing the domestic abuse and domestic violence cases. We even have reports of human trafficking taking place at one of the hotels and wife and calls for service still go on in our communities outside of these hotels. And while the emerging calls for service are being addressed or hard pressed attack for these greater challenges, working behind the closed doors and just down the hall. We're hoping to address some of these issues. With enhanced enforcement and also enhance outreach involving not only our officers, but as I mentioned before we have police social worker we have a mental health clinician, and we have a good community partners here in central Vermont. In Washington County we've done our preliminary discussion on planning and how to ensure this successful handoff in case management and services with the various housing individuals when this system sunset. I've heard recently as soon as October. And now to ensure that those here temporarily have a plan when they return to their home communities. And I focused on, as I said in beginning some of the bad things to make the point that things are good, but there's also great opportunity here. And having so many members of this vulnerable population, and more or less all in one place. There's an opportunity to get these people to help me and work on a long term plan for housing ability and treatment needs and a better way. And I don't think there's anybody here that would say they don't believe everyone deserves it. And I believe everyone deserves that we need to make that happen. Thank you. Thank you to representative walls. Thank you chief and thanks to the force for all the work you've done. The numbers are staggering and thank you for having those numbers for us. I've got several questions. I'm assuming that many of these people had previous experience with law enforcement before the placement and motels. Do you have a, you have an idea of the scope of that. So let me just pull up a spreadsheet I have here. Excuse me a second. Because I'm assuming these aren't issues that popped up just because they're all in motels. So, no, I, it's fair to say that it's compounded because they're all in motels. And I, unfortunately, my system, when I look at stuff. I'm only dealing with people who have had law enforcement involvement, but I'm just pulling up my spreadsheet on arrest history here. So I can, I can speak of the people arrested. Let me just, but I don't need a hard number chief. I mean, Oh no, most of the people arrested those individuals have had prior law enforcement. I have hard numbers if somebody ever needs them. Most of those people have had prior law enforcement involvement. And that's one of the things that I don't think work in the beginning and I'm glad to probably have to go to mention it. I've done very quickly with no betting with local authorities. And don't get me wrong by betting I'm not saying just because of somebody's past. We don't give them a place to stay. I'm saying when we vet people. And we're looking at placing families with children in places with other people who have known involvement with law enforcement history. There's some different decisions on who goes where. Not just there's an empty room at this hotel. So that is something. If I could draw a line in the sand that I would start today. And we've discussed that amongst our group of what that would look like. Okay, well I have two more questions you just partially answered a third one I had. I was tying in with that. I think you just said, there probably should have been more conversation coordination going on at the very beginning that that probably could have headed off some of this at the, if the appropriate services have been there right from the very beginning, and people have been alerted to what potentially they were facing that as a service providers. I think I think you pretty much answered that. I have two more questions. One is, I'm just wondering now, all the expense of this now is the expense being born by the local police department and therefore the municipality. So up until now the answer was yes. Recently I had a conversation with Commissioner Brown. They are providing 20 hours of enhanced police services that we're going to share between four departments, even though Barry town does not have hotels in their community. Chief Dodges intelligent enough to realize that some of this stuff is filling over into this town as well. So we're kind of modeling our enhanced approach from a law enforcement perspective, like we would do with a problem neighborhood, or a problem house here in the state city involving uniform people are street crimes unit and detectives from the four community. We are involving our community outreach specialist or police social worker and our mental health clinician so that when we find somebody in need that it's not just an enforcement action. It's complete services and we're looking at people as individuals and regardless of if you've done something wrong. You might still need help. We're trying to make sure we provide that. I think you're very good at answering questions before I asked them and actually answered my, my last question there was the role you see law enforcement has every as we transition. These folks out of the motels, hopefully we can give them more stable more secure housing. You see a role law enforcement and, and making that happen. You see a role in what with law enforcement in in helping people in general. I mean, it's not uncommon. We have a lot of proactive things for helping people, even when we arrest them. Folks that know me know that since I've been here, I've been an advocate of a police social worker. I've been a mental health clinician for a decade before the timing down. So, this isn't just about enforcement and punishment. This is a well rounded approach to dealing with people, good and bad situations and getting people to help me. Right. Thank you very much, chief. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, chief. And if it's possible to send your aggregate numbers. I would like to have them just for the committee. If you send it around, it would be great for us to understand that, you know, as it added up as you were talking about it. Because in the pandemic, we're in a no eviction. And one of the reasons is that if someone is threatened to someone, you can't kick them out of the hotel. They still have to be housed. Is that correct? And is that part of an issue? Well, or can you move them? If someone, they could be removed from that hotel and maybe swapped out for somebody in another hotel. The problem with the hotels is there's not a lot of incentive to have people follow the rules, particularly with a no eviction thing. There's supposed to be a three strike. And I think Rick may be able to talk about this also, a three strike rule you're out. But where do you go? If you go on the street, that's not helping our situation in the communities, and it's not helping that individual's situation. Yes. All right, thank you. Okay, representative Hango and then we'll move along to Tricia and Jeffrey. Yes, thank you. I want to thank you for bringing up and highlighting the incidences of less than desirable behavior that might be happening as a result of putting many people together of different backgrounds and in one very small place. I know that even though we've done really work in in helping to house so many people who were formerly homeless, this isn't always a seamless transition and I really appreciate your thoughtful thinking ahead of what can be done here and what can be done when we're moving people out of hotels and back into their own homes or new homes. Well, we had an occurrence in one of my towns that I had to mediate between the Department of Children and Families and I really appreciate that Deputy Commissioner Tio in her former role was very helpful between DCF and the legislative body of the town that there was a misunderstanding of actually who was housed in those hotels so I think it's really important to have a conversation about law enforcement and the agency of human services and people who actually live in those towns to facilitate an understanding of who is there why they're there, what's being done about it. And I truly appreciate that you're here telling us the not so pretty details, but actually also offering some assistance and solutions for the future. So this maybe wouldn't happen again in another time. So thank you. I'm really hoping that everybody learns from this. If I were to go back and do one thing over. That I think would have helped from the start it is that conversation and that involvement with local authorities and local service providers within the community. I got caught flat footed very often when I came in on Monday. I think I talked to Rick that day. I got caught flat footed and at the time I made a call to the Deputy Secretary was Kerry sleeper at the time. And I was not a happy camper. Like a lot of people in the community work. If that could ever be avoided in the future. But the number one things that needs to be avoided is catching people flat footed with no idea what's going on. Well, I think we can say we were all in that boat a year ago. And it was not unlike we deal with when well it's quite unlike anything we've ever dealt with period, but the idea that the idea that's something that this series could be happening and happening as quickly as it was I mean a year ago on the Wednesday before we were done in the state house we were still trying to figure out how we were going to get things across the line for crossover day and then by you know within 24 hours we were starting to consider what it was going to be like. Having to do legislation in 24 hours before we left the building for, I don't know, 10 and a half months now. So, and then having to figure this out so I think I as flat footed as you may have been caught chief. I, you know, we appreciate that everyone really put on their typical Vermonter hat and said what are we going to what's the next great thing to do. And one of the first great things was to get people off the streets. And then we're going to hopefully look at this and, and yes maybe next time we'll have a protocol. And hopefully the next time isn't for another 100 years. So thank you for your please please stick around I think it will probably have some some roundup questions later but Trisha and Jeffrey welcome, the microphone is yours. I'd like to just get I know that Trisha you provided some information some updated information and that you might want to share and again, welcome. Thank you representative I appreciate that. And I, I'm going to try to share my screen so you tell me if you can see it okay here in a minute. All right. There you go. There we go. All right. So nine slides this won't take take long so let me start with a little bit of a timeline so the security and the services and motels has evolved over time. It's really part of the larger strategy of support and services that we, we put in place to address the non congregate of people experiencing homelessness. So, you know, we really when the pandemic pandemic began the first thing that we did was some shelters could not remain open because of they were congregate shelters and they could not meet the public health needs of those of the people living there so they had to close down so that was the first thing that happened and we moved people out of certain shelters and Good Samaritan was one of them. That wholesale went into hotels. So, these are the people that moved were people from the, the communities. From in, in this instance central Vermont's community that went to the economy lodge. It was after we realized the need for this, the other duration of the situation and the continued waving of rules and more and more people that things started we realized we needed to start putting more services in place and security so this is where the timeline starts. So, between March and June, really was the end of the normal hop housing opportunity program grants through OEO. That was the normal end of those services so the shelters that we're talking about and housing agencies all had those grants in place. So, the supplemental phase one grants issued to assist to them to quickly try to gear up for PPE and different things to for if they could remain open but also to shift people to the hotels and assist with on site services from those partners and I'm sure Rick and Barbara can speak more about that soon. So, the phase one awards happened between then April in April, we contracted with Rob Evans, who was for security coordination. So, former Vermont State trooper and the chief spoke about him at the time we also began in April the mass feeding project for those experiencing homelessness that were in the hotels. And in June, the already existing sheriff's contracts expanded to start roving patrols in many of the hotels, most of them at that point and Chittenden County, because of the volume of need there. There are some of them, the Lamoille County Sheriff's Caledonia County Sheriff's there are a few Bennington County and several others that I'll talk about soon. Then in July, while the end of June and July, another round of supplemental awards were issued through OEO to service providers to provide more supports to the hotels, realizing how long this was going on. However, we started a private contract with Colchester PD for two of the hotels in Colchester, after hearing about some incidences involving St. Mike's College and some other problems in that area. Representative Hango talked about some concerns in the Richmond community so yes we were at that point talking about what the needs were there with small communities it really has had a big impact. When people started moving to hotels in that area. December, we started private security contract with Green Mountain Concert Services. So that was for 11 hotels, three of them in the central Vermont area. We spoke of that as well so those services were from 70s a week from 5pm to 1am. So it's hard to tell how much that presence may have helped to deter some things but you know private security isn't law enforcement as well so sometimes the there is the need for something different but that was a help at the time. And then December, we issued yet another round of awards to 14 entities for these are called non congregate shelter service contracts so this was $2.9 million and this was specifically FEMA funded and this is not for case management type services or counseling. This was specifically for the safety and security at hotels for providers to be on site and provide additional supports. So again, this is introducing Rob Evans who helped with our security contracts and also the community outreach with local law enforcement agencies he's been instrumental in really working with the different departments to be a liaison. Things were happening very fast in the beginning of this as representative Stevens said we were all moving as quick as our feet would allow to get things in place. So Rob was very helpful and you know working with hotel owners even to remind them at the beginning as you remember hotels were closed to the public for the most part so we were the only customers in some places of theirs. So we were reminding them of their responsibility and ability to not house people for violating hotel rules of disturbing others and criminal acts, so that they, they could remove people from their hotels a lot of times we would hear about things after the fact that had been going on and disturbing in the hotels. Our staff also provided outreach and support for local housing and shelter providers to facilitate information sharing so that we could problem solve. And to date, the contracts for those security, the security with the sheriffs alone was is $1.1 million. And then we have additional invoices we're expecting from Green Mountain and concert services and Colchester PD that have not arrived yet. So just a piece of what it costs. This is the supplemental awards that were issued considered phase two through OEO July 2020 through December this was CRF money. If people remember, this was that additional push. So these are some of the award amounts and the agencies that received those awards. And it was a total between phase one and phase two of 5.2 million. So for central Vermont capstone is listed there. And then that that was the total for the entire state. So then we move to these are the awards that were just issued in December. So non congregate shelter service contracts do not support the case management or mental health or housing services. These are the ones that were that are FEMA eligible. So these are the current ones that are in place. So for additional assistance. This is a visual a graph of the entire GA motel utilization since the beginning. It's been people have wanted to see it's a pretty powerful graph right today we're at 890 1890 hotel rooms. These are just the hotel rooms and this chart does not include the holiday in, which is a very large hotel in Chittenden County. I think we have 123 people there so just over 100 hotel rooms. And you can see how quickly it escalated in March, April and May. And got to almost a peak and then some the dip that you see through the summer. Some of the rules that were put in place for the GA program around different things like the period of ineligibility so if people are removed from a hotel. They receive a notification or criminal activity or things like that they receive a notice to vacate, and they're put on a period of ineligibility for either 15 or 30 days at the moment so they're ineligible for further services. So it was really important to work with the hotels to make sure that they issued the notice to vacate so that because of course people have due process rights and rights to fair hearings. We made a wrong call about having them exit a hotel. There were also self pay requirements in place through the summer and then those restrictions were lifted when during the cold weather, once things started in November. So you can see we start to climb again. So self pay rules are really people who have income or resources must pay a portion of their hotel mates before we would pay for them again. It's 30% of a certain amount. This is the GA Motel summary as of yesterday so this is the number of people can see a number of rooms and holiday and it was 124 sorry. So this will show you each district and the number of adults and children that are housed. And then last is the map. This is just a dashboard that we put together for the mass feeding project, which has been an enormous help of course in allowing people to not have to during, you know, when the numbers are very high for public health emergency. The food was really was brought to them in their rooms so as of now, 5.2 million dollars has been spent on the mass feeding project. And that's what I have for us. All right. Questions representative representative. First before questions. Oh, no, sure. Go ahead, Jeffrey. That would be great. Thank you. Thank you, Tricia. I just had a few things that I wanted to, to touch on really quickly. The number one is that something that we that we don't often mention was that back in April. Which seems like a lifetime ago. We had reached out to our colleagues at the Department of Corrections and the restorative justice arena. We engaged the CJC's justice centers around the state. And kind of an ad hoc manner to try and bring folks together to see whether or not there were other alternatives to addressing various challenges in the motels and with clients. And that was sort of a restorative justice process. And whether or not there was a place for that in the setting, the new recreated settings as a result of the pandemic. And I do think that that was a really interesting conversations about the ways in which there might be opportunities to engage clients and engage motel owners and staff in a different way, rather than calling law enforcement needed, or if it was not needed in that case. So there were different, there were efforts at varying sorts of varying degrees around the state at that time around those community justice centers. I would be happy if the committee wanted to get more information from Derek Miodovnik over in corrections about what sorts of long term impacts or effects that might have had. And for the record, I'm sorry, my name is Jeffrey Peppinger, I'm the Senior Advisor for the Commission for the Department for Children and Families. So that was the first point I wanted to take is that there were, there have been some attempts, some ongoing efforts locally that involve other alternative means of resolving conflict. Number two, is that I think something that I continually try to remind myself of and remind others of is that we really have, I mean, the amount of ambiguity that we're dealing with in terms of the pandemic is really just, it's something that's hard to wrap your head around. And to the question of short versus long term, back in March, I don't think any of us would have known that here we are 11 months later, and the pandemic isn't over. So, whether it's short or long term, it's what we're having to do now to deal with an ongoing public health crisis. And I think many folks are. We're tired, right, people are tired, and they're tired of the pandemic. And yet we still have to continue to respond and we still have to continue to stay responsive to the ways in which that affects folks in our communities and folks in need of services. And I mentioned that, you know, not just to frame the fact that the pandemic of course is still going on right now, there are still challenges in that area, but also to note that that has an enormous impact on our communities and the folks in motels, and just like it impacts everyone else, right, 11 months of isolation of displacement of uncertainty, and these are layers of trauma and vicarious trauma on top of trauma. So I just I wanted to I wanted to make sure that we didn't leave this conversation without noting that. What I wanted to mention was that one of the incredibly valuable opportunities that we've seen come out of the pandemic response is the work of our community partners in a collaboration across different lanes across different sectors to do what we can to help people and to help keep people safe during the pandemic. If you ask, we had had a statewide summit back in November and that was the one of the biggest themes that emerged from that conversation. The ways in which collaborative partnerships have been critical in our response. And I really think that that's a source of optimism and the source for hope going forward. There have been relationships that have been rekindled locally. There have been new relationships formed. There are ongoing partnerships across the government between state government and community partners and I think that those pieces that collaboration to provide the necessary supports and services to folks who need. assistance or experience in homelessness or housing insecurity is crucial. And that's that that's in part why going forward. We really feel it's imperative to build upon and to expand those relationships and those collaborative efforts, because taking a multi faceted approach to helping folks is a lot more effective than chopping it up into little pieces and having a really disconnected system of service, which leads me to the last thing I wanted to mention, which is that we are indeed looking forward. We are looking forward to what happens after the pandemic subsides. We're looking forward to what happens with the GM hotel voucher program going forward and the department's emergency housing initiative, which the intent is to shift from the historic system of care with the GM hotel voucher program through community based model of addressing housing crisis. As a part of that initiative. Next Tuesday, Sarah Phillips of the Office of Economic Opportunities hosting a webinar regarding the department's emergency housing initiative, and that that's a statewide public conversation to hear what the proposal is and also walk through some of the mechanics that we have laid out at this point. So we welcome folks to join that from all sectors of our state. The other. In addition to that, there were having local conversations, conversations with the local continuum of care and other service providers to talk through. What does that mean what does it look like to have a community based model of emergency housing response and I think that that's a really important place we welcome public safety folks to be involved in that as well as people from our health providers. I think that those are the services agencies with lived experience and those are the tables in which there can be a local conversations around what this, how we collaborate, how we continue to collaborate and how we build upon the successes and the challenges with that I'll leave it there. Thank you. John question before we get to Rick de Angelis and Barbara. I was wondering if you the, those that broke the rules and had to be moved out of the hotels. And you said, did you say that they had to be out of the city of the hotels for at least 15 days before they could consider coming back in that correct. That's right. If they're working with a case manager and it's a first offense, if you will, they could come back within seven days and they, we can rehouse them pending a fair hearing if they are asking for a fair hearing with a human support to review that period, or that event that caused. And do, do we have our hands arms around how many people this had to be evicted over this. It's an ongoing. It's an ongoing list. So it's current as people age off if you will their 30 days or 15 days expires they're eligible again for housing so at any given time. We have approximately 50 individuals on that list and we just changed the rules so that the period of eligibility does not does not apply to adults with children, so families. Okay, and they can then be relocated to shelters or is that their responsibility to find their own way or what happens if if I'm told I had to leave the hotel. They would not be eligible for emergency housing through economic services for the period of ineligibility. So if there were a shelter bed open they would have been referred to there in the beginning when we authorized them because we're a shelter first program anyway so most of the time they would have to self pay, or find alternative housing during that period. Great. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Trisha. Thank you, Jeffrey. We moved out to Rick de Angelis and Barbara Jenny from the Good Samaritan Haven in very city. Welcome Rick. Good to see you. Great to see you while I'm so delighted that you're you've focused on this topic. It's been a hell of a year for all of us for sure. And for our program, it has really been a hell of a year. And much of it has been centered around the motels in Washington County. And my remarks are going to pretty much follow what I submitted to you but I want to chime in on that last question about what happens to people if they're ineligible. And that occasionally we are still operating two shelters right now, and it does happen that we have beds available from time to time. And we do all that we can to if we feel that somebody can be safely house at our shelter to get them into the shelter. And we also have a street outreach program that we operate. And if there is nothing else available, we will provide equipment and some very, very basic support to, you know, to protect life. So I just wanted to help address that question. So good to be here. Good Samaritan Haven has been providing shelter for 35 years. And our main facility throughout most of those years is a very modest single family house in Barry. Last year in March, end of March, I will never forget that morning getting a call at four o'clock in the morning. We moved over 60 of our guests into area motels in Washington County. And since that time we've had staff at the O'Connell Lodge onsite staff. And at the hilltop. Now we are just solely site based. We have an office at the hilltop which is the largest hotel and motel in Washington County. And we are providing outreach to all the all of the SD motels. So it's right now it's it's well over 300 people that we're trying to provide some very, very basic supports to. And if we have time during the Q&A. It was very interesting when we started at the O'Connell Lodge because there was a different model use there. The state was actually leasing the O'Connell Lodge. And I actually thought that that was the most effective setup that we had but that is not the main thrust of my remarks. So I do want to point out that we are part of a team. This is all about teams. And we call ourselves the Washington County homelessness action team. And I know that last week you heard from two of our very excellent leaders, Eileen Peltier and Sue Minter. So we're part of that effort. So I am going to make three pretty high level points about what I think are the key ingredients or takeaways from this situation. And I like to think of it not as security I like to think of it as safety is a little bit broader. Yeah, you know gee whiz. I thought Jeffrey really hit the nail on the head. He said, this has been such a difficult ambiguous situation. We don't know what's around the corner. And we're in difficult settings these motel rooms were not motels were not made for this kind of long term residency, and so many people, you know have experienced trauma in their life. So obviously a very challenging situation. So it's no secret you have to have a very broad and coordinated effort to try to respond and support people. And with a whole host of social service agencies, local officials Montpelier Berlin and Barry. Also the emergency fire safety folks as well ambulance, they are a big part of the team. And, you know, the state of Vermont agencies that come into play around this issue. So talking to the motel owners there obviously quite important, and we should not forget the guests themselves. They are part of the solution here to make these places as safe as possible. And that's an important part of what we do is connect with them. It's obviously it's no small order to coordinate all these different parties and players. And, in fact, it's extremely difficult. And we've built what we have right now, over time and incrementally. It's been perfect. But I actually feel pretty good about where we are in Washington County right now with the array of coordination. And I do want to thank DCF. I think overall they have done a very good job. They have supported us as best they can I mean it's uncertain for them as well. And we put out a lot of requests and overall I found them very very responsive. So it's key that that responsiveness and the communication continues. And I have to say again on the ambiguity theme. I mean my biggest fear right now is when are we going to reach the cliff here. What's going to happen when there's no longer any funding for our staffing or we're facing out the the ESD vouchers for these folks. That is a real fear and please Jeffrey and Trisha and your team do everything that you can to keep us in the loop on this early early on because we're a small program. So hiring you know hiring bringing on staff is very very challenging. And so that's my number one point. Number two I you know we have focused a lot about criminal misbehavior and and appropriately so and we very much appreciate the involvement of the local police community. And it already is important to a place a role and we've also had the sheriffs involved with our motels. That's all good. Those are not the only safety issues. There's a big element of self harm here. You know, many people are struggling. And a lot of those calls that the chief mentioned have to do with self harm people, you know, harming themselves or drug overdoses or whatever. So that is a huge part of this mental health and outreach person to person outreach is so essential. And lastly, this is something that has not been talked about but yet I think it's quite important. There are some not good conditions in some of these motels. They were not meant for this kind of habitation for such a long period of time. The hygiene is terrible in some places. They you know the motel owners and I in a sense I don't blame them they are not consistently cleaning these rooms. We've had issues with black mold sewage, all kinds of things. And the only remedy right now is a complaint based system. And we do complain sometimes I mean we try to work with the owners, but if necessary, we will call up the appropriate officials. That is not a great system. And maybe I think we should explore if there are some other ways to get at this. My last point and others have alluded to this. We all know this is a stop stop gap measure. It was the right thing to do. There's no question about that. But we have to be looking ahead. And I'm going to speak for Washington County right now. We have the second highest numbers in the state. And yet our infrastructure or emergency housing infrastructure is inadequate. I can't believe it. And that throughout this whole thing. I have been trying to work on that a that part of it too. So we are going to be looking to you for your support for capital and for operating funds so that we can, you know, have a better alternative to this. These folks are not all going to get into affordable housing in the short term, it is going to take a while. And I have one more thing I'd like to say. You know, I did the talking today but the real champion here today is Barbara Jenny for my staff. I'm getting choked up. This is one of the heroes from the pandemic. This woman has been there. She has been doing it from day one. She has given up herself, selflessly to help people to be there for him for them. And it is not easy to just last week she had somebody threaten her life in, in the motel so, but she handled it as best she could, and appropriately and gracefully so I just want to. I'm just so proud of my staff. So, so I just want to recognize Barbara is part of my remarks today. Thank you. Thank you, Rick. And thank you Barbara Barbara do you want to do you want to embarrass your boss any further. I couldn't do my job without Rick support. Rick has been I can call him on Sunday night at eight o'clock at night and, and we talked things over. I can call him at six o'clock in the morning he's there. So I couldn't do this job without Rick, without Rick support, because he backs me 100% so thank you Rick. No, thank you. Thank you, Rick. I think. I think this conversation really shows the gamut right of what we're talking about when we talk about homelessness and it's not even the full gamut. I think it's hard to think about the difficult situations as as illustrated by by tempo party, you know, to the, to the human issues that we just heard from from both Jeffrey and Rick and Barbara just the idea and just the idea of poverty. Isn't the crime here. Representative I would, I would just add that this is a population that is so preyed upon that some of the survival instincts and some of the choices they have to make are not choices we would make. They're not mainstream. They're a very vulnerable population and we did do the right thing and we'll continue I think to work forward to make sure that there are more ricks and Jenny's there, Barbara's to help people through this next phase. And to honor and to honor the public safety aspect of it from, you know, from, from their point of view to I mean that's the, you know, this pandemic still exposes everything about everything. And it really shows us that we don't know everything we thought we knew once upon a time. So, you had your hand up are you good. Yes, I'm good I just want to I guess one of the comments I would make is that in Trisha's presentation, the amount of effort that went into this, these concerns, really early on, I mean, last year we did hear about issues surrounding there in the motel and I guess the hilltop is what sticks in my mind. As far as what we had heard about issues there but you know, the expediency in which people were placed in these motels and food was ordered up and they were fed and you know it just doesn't surprise me that the chief got caught flatfooted here. And you know it just occurs to me. Can we expect behavior changes when people are all now under incredible stress and living so close together. I guess that's the question that remains in my mind. When we do it, is it possible. And that I think that's where the problem lies at this point. So, you know kudos to everyone who has worked on this, and now it's just great to hear everyone's presentation. Thank you. Thank you all representative Kalecki. Thank you. I, I live in South Burlington so you know I see that in my county and in your county there's, there's, there is coordination of services because of organizations like yours and all of the people and I heard very clearly about the need for infrastructure. And so you know, next week as we, we learned from when Jeffrey and Trisha talked about the webinar about this transition community based model it's going to be an interesting move for us in our state to do that I mean, you've, you've shown us the greatness of it. Yes, I wonder about. And you may not have an answer for this but how about the, the more rural parts of our state that are don't have these kind of networks of support. What's, what's the stories you've heard from those little towns that don't have the you and the barbers and the, you know, cornerstone and I mean what's happening in our state. Well, we're pretty small to we're not giant but you know I, I keep in touch with my colleagues around the state that are providing these services and to illustrate I mean it's the the some of these organizations are. They are. I'm trying to put this carefully, they're pretty fragile organizations because they they have the challenge of working in lower densities. They're not they don't have as many people as they're serving they can't afford as many staff and services. You know the funding piece is very challenging for a homeless organization. I have to raise over a third of my budget through private fundraising. And for us that's about, you know $400,000 a year. And that is, it's a lot of work and and some, you know some groups can do it and and but it's it's challenging especially for that I think for the rural areas and the smaller organizations. Okay, well thank you and it just seems everyone is so afraid right now from all the heroic work you've all done it's it's pretty profound. So, bless you all for the work. Thank you. Jeffrey. Thank you. Representative clack you something I might offer is that the summit that I referenced from November. We had over 100 people on from around the state on Microsoft Teams meeting. And that we recorded that and that is at the department's YouTube channel. So, and the first part of I mentioned it because the first part of it was a report out from each community around the state on their experiences and their takeaways. I think that might answer a sliver of your question, or at least give a broader overview so I encourage you to perhaps check that out as well. Thank you. All right, I think I want to end it here by thanking each of you. Thank you, Rick. And thank you Barbara for the work that you do at good Sam. And it is really, you know, that there are no good times for homelessness so, you know, this is a, you know this period of time I think as, as, as Rick you mentioned it's like this is what we're doing today. And it doesn't address what should be done or what could be done or what we've been what we have discussed over the past decades of dealing with the core issues of homelessness but this is the reaction to what was in front of us. And I think that I think that, you know, to to Chief Bombardier's concerns at, yeah, getting caught flat footed I mean I know that your work in Berry City is is very inclusive and that you reach out to all of these different populations and service providers to keep a finger on it and to not criminalize behavior of people who are not as fortunate as as we are. And, and Jeffrey the work that DCF is doing is really, it's just been, you've had your fingers on the pulse and in a ways that I think you should recognize as being top notch and, and really serves us all incredibly well. Committee we're going to take a break till 315.