 We're going to see a picture now for our special meeting today. I want to thank all of the members of the public who joined us, and especially thank our county partners. This is what the day is all about. It's to meet together everybody who hasn't interested in this community, everybody who can. So, thanks for being here. Before we get started, I just have a couple of things I want to say to you. I will try to speak closer to this. So, two years ago, the county decided to expand the city's response to the homeless issue in our community. From what it essentially been limited to providing shelter beds, we built deeper in providing the social services that so many homeless people need to receive the impact on their people. We doubled the amount of money that the city was spending on homeless services. We did that using general fund dollars, including the proceeds from the real estate transfer tax, which has been subject to a much discussion in the last two years. Last year, we added more money to our budget for homeless services, and this year, before our budget deliberations are done, I expect that that number will go even higher. We've seen some success with these changes. While the total number of homeless people on our streets has not changed a lot in the last two years, we do have fewer families on the street. We have fewer veterans on the street. These are good changes, but we still face significant challenges. Portable housing continues to be a barrier. Unsanctioned encampments have grown in every corner of our city, and homeless individuals have died on our streets, either at the hands of others, or as a consequence of the life spent outdoors. These are tragic circumstances. Also, unfortunately, I and I think others have detected more recently a change in the tone of the public discourse around this issue. The collective homeless, and I put that in quotes, are being blamed for issues and ills that really should be owned by a broader society, but the blame is being placed on people who don't necessarily know what they're having. What all of this indicates to me is that while we're doing good, we can do good better in this community. And that's why we're here today. Over the course of this meeting and a few others, and I've been hearing different numbers from different people, we haven't set the number of meetings. I think it will be no less than few and hopefully there are no less than three and hopefully no more than five. But I think fewer is better if we can get the job done with that. Over the course of these meetings, I hope that we can chart a clear path forward that takes full advantage of all the precious resources that we have in this community that are going to vote for this issue. I hope that we can establish an even stronger collaboration and partnership between the city of San Rosa and the county of Sonoma on this issue. Along with our nonprofit service providers. Ultimately, I hope to join together with our colleagues and board of supervisors so we can all explain to the community how these pieces will fit together and how we can join forces to make that happen. So let's get started with this today. Just a little housekeeping item. We're set up in this room and in this seating pattern because this is intended to be more of a workshop and a study session than a traditional council meeting. We are happy to have the public participation here today. The way that the agenda is set up is that we will hear from the staff and the council will be able to ask questions of staff and we will then take comments from the public. With that, I'm going to hand this over to Kelly McIngall from our department of housing and community services and we'll get started. Everybody hear me okay? So we have to begin. Kelly McIngall with the city's department of housing and community services and I'll be giving a brief presentation on the city's homeless service programs and our active efforts to address homelessness in our community. This slide is an overview of the presentation of our homelessness in Sonoma County to provide our homeless services update, touch on racial overlap, and community issues and close to resources and discussion. So you can go on the slides from our 2016 Sonoma County Homeless Sentences Survey. After going over this, I'll give you some information on the preliminary results of the 2007 public account which were released 50 weeks ago. So we know that there are about 29 persons experiencing homelessness in Sonoma County. Two thirds of them are under shelter. Approximately 1,800 of them are in San Jose. 82% indicated their last permanent residence was in Sonoma County and 76% claimed affordability as the primary obstacle to obtaining housing which is no surprise in our community with a tight housing market. And 52% reported an ensabling health condition. The 2017 criminal criminal that was a preliminary result came out a few weeks ago. We should have those full report in June. Between 2016 and 2017 we saw a 2% decrease in homelessness county-wide. There were 2,835 people counted during the 2017 account. Something noteworthy to point out is we've seen upwards of a 20% decrease in some of our targets of sub-populations. These include families, crimes in homeless persons, veterans, and youth. And while we've only seen a 2% decrease between 2016 and 2017 since 2011 we've seen a decrease of more than 30%. That count was 4,539 people. I thank you back for a couple years years in homeless services in 2015. The city supported three core programs. Our budget will be approximately $700,000 and including the Samuel L. Jones Hall homeless shelter. This shelter is owned by the city and operated by Catholic Charities. Provides a 138 year-round shelter bed plus a 50-bed shelter program that runs between November and March. The family support center is a 138-bed year-round shelter also operated by Catholic Charities and the homeless service center which is a multi-service day center operated by Catholic Charities as well. Homeless services today and once the intervention is made more and disables our resources for this effort we have a current budget of approximately $1,800,000 which supports the core programs that have been over in the previous slide including the winter shelter program and the H&A Family Fund program which is operated by a community action partnership that's known as Young and provides household assistance, financial assistance with rent and mortgage payments and delivery deposits. Both the city and counties support the administration of the program. Funds are provided by a very generous anonymous gentleman and the host program of the outreach services team program operated by Catholic Charities started in 2015. This includes a clean start and mobile bathroom charger rapid rehousing resources canceled and recalled back in February committed an additional $125,000 and the pond is in there are 44 dedicated host units at this problem. I also want to mention a community homeless assistance program which we call CHAC this allows for the provision of services on private property both commercial and legal. Moving forward, in January the council adopted a housing first strategy and we're trying to balance that approach with the immediate need of some people in our streets. The core components of the housing first strategy is collaboration engagement coordinated entry and housing and support services. Also want to make note of the special meetings that this is the first in a series of meetings to dedicate it to the subject of employment. This slide provides you a visual of housing first so housing first equals permanent housing and supportive services. It's an evidence based approach it prioritizes the provision of permanent housing as the primary strategy for ending homelessness and the lines of federalism. Collaboration and new initiatives so the scenario can continue to appear the city called on the board to continue with care which is a regional planning group. I would say now more than ever the city is collaborating with its partners the county and service providers. We recognize that we can't do this alone and this partnership and collaboration is required. A communication plan in partnership with our fabulous community we're developing a communication plan we're trying to be more proactive about messaging our efforts around this issue these include having this meeting a letter that the mayor sent out to the community we've launched a new webpage called Homeless Insolutions which I'll go over in the next slide. I also want to point out the recent housing authority actions our housing authority has embraced the housing first strategy the dedicated vouchers to the household during the homelessness they will be incorporating language into their know-how as well as the funding availability requiring that units be satisfied for household experiencing homelessness and we're reaching out to our borrowers asking them to consider creating a preference on their waiting list for household experience. So I just want to give over a few resources to our homeless services page if you want to learn more about the programs the city is supporting you can check out this page which is there for persons experiencing homelessness in our community and the newly launched Homeless Insolutions page also if you want to make a referral to the host program here is there a response line and there is a picture of our noble back in the shower we're going to call the police start this is run for our host program and this goes to the Secretary of Education thank you we both really like the members of the public to know if we can just go around and introduce ourselves I'm Chris Corsi I'm the mayor Council Member Daisy Gomez Shaw McLean City Manager I'm Mike Kennedy and I'm the Director of April Health Services that's mental health and substance use treatment services as a part they have a code to information of Homeless Community Services Manager for the Community Development Commission David Kwan Director of Housing and Community Services for the City of Santa Rosa Chris Rodgers of the City Council Julie Kulbs that was the City Council please Council Member Staff Member there is a capacity of Mike so when you're not speaking please turn off the mic this will ensure that everybody minds sports thank you and sorry about that Barbara so in wrapping up my presentation I apologize I realized I missed two key points on this slide so I went over to the Housing and Community Action I want to point out that we're in the process of developing a comprehensive plan for encampments Citywide this is a pilot program we're looking at encampments larger channels for more with the greatest health and safety risks and we've been looking at both the risks to the individuals living in these encamps as well as the broader community and also looking at an additional shelter expanding shelter capacity possibly at Sam Jones Hall Sam Jones Hall and that uses our research so with the Council are there any questions for Kelly? Any questions from our County guests to welcome Barbara Van Lee the Executive Director of the No County Community Development Commission Thank you very much Mr. Mayor and members of the Council it's really a great pleasure for me and my County colleagues to be here today to have this conversation with you I think we're all really struggling in the public sector with how do we continue to provide the really good services that we've done for a long time but recognize that in some ways it's not enough and so we very much appreciate the opportunity to have a discussion like this where we can really think deeply about what that's, how can we deepen our collaboration how can we deepen our impact so we look forward to this conversation for any of you on it so mostly I'm going to be a bit of the MC I'll tee us up here and turn it over to my colleagues I think the context for us is recognition that our board adopted some very important and key strategic priorities just last month and directed County departments to work more closely together in pursuit of these four strategic priorities the first one is the one we're going to talk with you about today and it is securing our safety net Marty Brabantson will give you a little bit more information about the context there and the rest of my colleagues will also sort of chime in about it I think that's the focus of the information you want to share today with the Council and the public there is a related but different priority the board has adopted for us which we're calling housing is really more amount of production agenda around affordable both rental and ownership housing we can touch on that if there's time and interest and set of strategies and some goals connected to producing housing while we're also paying attention to the safety net and I think there's very much opportunities for cooperation in that vein as well the other two I won't spend time on rebuilding our infrastructure is an important priority for reasons I think you can understand and then there's this one about helping water sheds which calls on regional parks based districts and the water agency and others to really think about the environment and so those are what the board supervisors have said to us these are key priorities and so that's the context in which we come to you today so securing the safety net I'll turn it over to Barbie Robinson and she can give us this context good evening mayor and council members I'm Barbie Robinson I'm the director of the department of health services and as Margaret mentioned the board approved its strategic priorities on April 4 which is the safety net priority and the vision for that priority is to improve access to safety net services and not only improve access to the services but also move people through the safety net I think if we think about our war on poverty programs we really focus and emphasize on developing a safety net and the next phase of that work is to move people through the safety net to better self-sufficiency and well-being and so our safety net priority focuses on that vision and so some of the goals in terms of what we're trying to work on is improved health outcomes improved well-being and self-sufficiency through referrals and access to services and also increase the number of people that are accessing the safety net while we're reducing the duplication of services and resources Margaret the next slide the county departments that are taking the lead on this priority is my department health services, human services child support services, probation the public defender and the community development our department we've dealt with ourselves the safety net departments we know that we actually are serving the same population we know this individually and so our goal is to really think about how we strategically utilize our resources and coordinate our programs and services to improve outcomes and so I'll just touch on some of the projects and initiatives that are being developed out of this priority there's a project called project 301 for lack of a better name and that project is identified 301 of the most vulnerable individuals and their families within San Mellon County and providing intensive wraparound resources for those individuals we're still in the framework, conceptual framework phase but we know that we're looking at individuals who are homeless and who are also have mental health challenges and so that's one of the projects that we'll be standing up we'll be reaching out to community partners to help engage us and further refine the framework for that program another project that we're undertaking under this priority is the whole person care project and that is actually a grant program that is funded through the California department of health care services and that project again is looking at individuals with serious mental illness who are also homeless and working with our health care partners to coordinate services for those that are high utilizers of multiple systems another project that we're working on is a project called the stepping up initiative and that project is a diversion program where we're trying to identify individuals with serious mental illness or other challenges and diverting them from the jails and getting them into the appropriate community services in terms of developing and strengthening our system of care around behavioral health, my Kennedy is going to talk about the existing programs and some of the programs that we're expanding in response to me as well as to addressing the board's priorities but we also recognize that part of the system of care one of the immediate needs we have is for inpatient psychiatric services so one of the other initiatives that we're engaging in as part of the board's priorities is working with Marin County to develop a regional psychiatric urgent facility where we can actually have access to inpatient psych bays and so with that I will turn it back over to Margaret I wonder if you could stop me there for just a minute I had a question about Project 301 first of all how did you come up with the number 301 so we're actually it's a total type it's a group of concept projects our goal is to identify these 301 most vulnerable individuals and develop interventions and strategies to move them to self-sufficiency and or group well-being and then you know based on this pilot we would then scale it up this would just be the way that the county delivers services and so we've looked at a model for a similar program in San Francisco and they called it Project 500 and because we're so creative we're creating development bureaucrats and we're smaller than San Francisco we named it as a smaller target so really there is no science behind that particular the one actually came up when we were thinking about trying to engage the community and individuals in the program 301 refers to a a code a criminal code 300 sorry 300 refers to a criminal code that we thought would be a detractor from actually engaging families and having them participate or individuals in the program I'm assuming that this program and the other programs that you mentioned are aimed at individuals whether they are homeless or housed regardless of their living situation so the Project 301 is the two overarching criteria are individuals who are homeless or at risk of being homeless who also have mental health challenges and we have some more questions here thank you and thank you for the presentation on the program it sounds like there's three or four programs I'm not sure it is there are a number of other projects for example in expanding developing a behavioral health campus I didn't mention all of them in the interest of time but before that you mentioned if they have mental health yes they do okay that's what I wondered and are you using the I think it's called the VI SEDAT for your vulnerability or are you using another we're not at that part we're at the initial planning phases of our project and so we have not got to the actual methodologies we're developing a conceptual framework okay thank you so if I may it will be some more to that which means those are more informal so it will be a criteria whatever we decide to look at at some point I would like to have a conversation about where women and children fall within the VI SEDAT as opposed to currently homeless then and I don't even say in opposition to do in addition to particularly because there are you may find a person who is in a domestic violence situation who doesn't read as highly because they are not exactly currently homeless so we have contemplated that and I have the visual of our conceptual framework in my mind in terms of the matrix of potential demographics and populations who would be eligible for the program and women and children are amongst those that would potentially be involved in the program I'd really be interested in seeing that in the future how you come up with your vulnerability mix absolutely thank you well thank you very much I don't want to derail us too much because I know there's a lot to go in but could you talk a little bit about what the county is doing in preparation for the closure of the developmental center out at SBC because I do know with those dual diagnosis patients that we are working to make sure they have services and places to go in the community can you talk a little bit about that yes it's a priority for us as well we continue to work with the state and our partners to identify solutions for ensuring that there is a system of care in our community many of the residents that are in the developmental center live in other places outside of Central County and we've been working with our clinic partners with the San Jose Community Health Center to develop a primary care clinic that specializes in behavioral need for that particular population we are aware and concerned we want to make sure that we do have a system in place for individuals that live in Sonoma County that will continue to live and reside in our county so we continue to plug away and work with the state to identify solutions I appreciate that I know that there were dollars that were allocated I know the closure is slated for 2018 I don't think they're going to hit that but I know that there were dollars that were slated particularly for finding housing solutions in Sonoma County have we seen any of that housing actually be located or created after this morning we have not seen that I did not thank you one more I recently learned from a study that showed that children that are not securely housed but have to move twice within the course of the year are 60% more likely to be hospitalized in the next year and 50% more likely to show developmental delays is the health services program specifically looking at secure housing as a solution for health issues yes we absolutely see housing as one of the social determinants of health we recognize that housing access to education and income are really the critical factors that different your health and well-being quite honestly if you're accessing health care services we actually miss the mark in terms of having the opportunity to improve health outcomes or to prevent you needing health care services and so that's a priority for our department to address the work collaboratively with our other safety net departments to address housing needs that's why it's a priority for the board of supervisors and the county and our safety network are specific health services funds dedicated to housing I think through this project yes and my community will talk more broadly about the housing that's available to folks that we see in the behavioral health services I'm the mayor and council member my name is Eric B. and I'm the director for human services from the county and I'd like to start our next slide about our broad broad human service program in general a little bit more on the services that are for individuals who are at risk of homelessness and then finally ending with the services that are dedicated specifically to home individuals so human services programs that are shown in front of you here we have four separate but collaborative divisions that work with our clients our adult aging division works with adults who have a variety of services in health supportive services being the primary services there employment and training has this number works program which is the public assistance program providing cash assistance homelessness and housing assistance which I'll mention in a second training dollars services now people become self sufficient and we also have the workforce innovation opportunity act programs which in Sonoma County services through job work in our child welfare division our values in children we have child protective services and other child welfare services adoption, foster care, placement services and we have the values of our children which is the shelter along the way to home and we have our economic assistance division which targets other public assistance programs to help individuals who are low income and that is how fresh we used to be called food scouts and rail days, general assistance and then we also provide eligibility for a Medi-Cal County health services program and UTC which is another Medi-Cal program but let's talk to you a little bit more about services that we provide for those at risk of being homeless so I'm going to start by saying the majority of our program serve clients who are low income and who need the high definition of low income and being risk of homeless however, our programs have a little bit more eligibility requirements in addition I've had guidelines I believe and I can be correct and right now in the annual income of 30% of median family in company area which is about $54,000 in Sonoma County and in the cases percent of the people in San Rosa in CalFresh we have 10,000 cases or 18,000 individuals receiving self-fresh in San Rosa Medi-Cal we have 32,000 cases or almost 60,000 people on Medi-Cal in San Rosa in the city limits in Sonoma works also in CalWars we have about 1,200 cases or almost 3,000 individuals in San Rosa receiving services in general assistance which is our services for most we have almost 300 individuals in the city limits of San Rosa and that's about 300 people also I want to give you information about the total cases of CalFresh and general assistance councils which list their address if you are homeless for CalFresh we have almost 1,700 individuals who stay there homeless receiving CalFresh and or general assistance in San Rosa and for general assistance approximately 90 individuals who stay in their homes in the city of San Rosa so some of the support services that we offer to people who are at risk of homelessness families with children and this can be either single individuals or two current councils families with children can access CalFresh benefits which I mentioned which is through the assistance program child welfare services child support services and through their income and family functions we have madcow as I mentioned and some of the works older adults we have also can link individuals to CalFresh we have a program which I mentioned and I'm going to call it linkages to senior housing home supportive services to be able to bring an individual in someone's home to help care for them and ensure services as well for any adult we have again a number of potential services again CalFresh and general assistance madcow, jobless services and veteran services and for current and former foster youths which are programs targeted mostly to 16 to 24 year olds we have housing programs for after child welfare cases we also have CalFresh benefits for child welfare services and a program for independent living skill services which is aimed at existing transitional age foster youth in those who live independently and again we have madcow now the meat and potatoes for services for homeless are here in front of you today and one of these programs for families with children we have a program called housing assistance and linkages program this is a housing first program that we contract with inter-based shelter network and services include the following we provide intensive case management those on teen living and housing and we also provide direct financial assistance to need it to cover application fees to curate the costs of utility costs to add to our utility arrears and level subsidies we operated this program since January 2016 and to date we have 23 families that have served 46 families are currently participating in those services and 35 families have obtained permanent housing 29 of these families are commonly housed in families where they are recently the county of my family, their basic shelter network were awarded a grant to expand the housing program house 62 additional families that will hold child welfare each year which we are very pleased with with the federal grant we are very happy to get that another program is our child welfare partners with the housing authority here our partners to access approximately 50,000 vouchers through the family unification program 42 families are currently utilizing these vouchers and 31 of those families are currently living in the city of San Jose additionally, while families are seeking housing we are far away from that so we closer to the first program I mentioned to be aligned with the case management and serve families with the goals of obtaining housing with their vouchers and our SonomaWorks program SonomaWorks you have to actually be eligible for SonomaWorks and it's typically you have to have minor children in the home to access SonomaWorks services you have to be eligible so SonomaWorks has two major housing programs the first one is called the housing support program and this is a rapidly housing model provides housing assistance in the form of deposit rental subsidies and rent ready classes through contracts that we have with our partners here at Founder Cain Development Committee from January 2015 when we started this program this program has housed 121 SonomaWorks families including that house 458 adults and 213 children or 300 seven more people together 75 of those 100 SonomaWorks families were housed in San Lorenzo 400 individuals were in the program and those 400 families 243 have been in the city in San Lorenzo so in addition to that housing program we have a temporary and permanent housing assistance SonomaWorks program and this is one where SonomaWorks clients can be eligible for this program once every year and this program which is our temporary assistance provides up to 15 nights in a hotel and can potentially help with rent as well from January 2016 to March 2017 nine families have been housed and four of the nine were in San Lorenzo that's the number one in our adult services through adult protective services we can help almost individuals with shortages to community resources such as homeless shelters we can assist clients with low-accounts and waiting lists sometimes it just takes some of the case management to help them through that process provide out-of-the-seats which includes many housing agencies one-time limited financial assistance for rent, utility and health cleanup and we can also help people with built-paying services through money management our new program that we have that was approved by the board of supervisors recently is called linkages to senior housing program and this initiative helps to seniors to maintain the housing to teach Spanish that the money management since February 2017 when we started we had a story of a 154-year-old woman and her dog were living in her car we were able to place them and we actually we were able to provide two spots for individuals to live in your housing there also, two clients have received a housing voucher and a review of these located from the resident the 70-year-old woman on section 8 received an eviction notice to not have her annual housing inspection because she's a hoarder she received this her housing inspection has been rescheduled we had been able to give her some funds to clean up her property so she can pass her inspection and maintain her housing currently, six of the 16 clients in that program are living in San Rosa we also have veteran services officers which provide an array of services, almost assistance services to veterans we have general assistance for indigenous adults and they provide rental assistance it's not a very big number, $377 per month plus a maximum food and incidental benefit of $148 a month and for current and former foster youth we have programs through voices that we contract with to help foster youth gain skills to lead to live independently we have a contract with the SAY Dream Center to house individuals and we have a transitional housing plus program to provide services for two years to help former foster youth transition to out-of-home placements in the independent living and lastly, we have the Valley of the Moon Children Center which is a shelter where children who are removed because of unsafe conditions can go if there's the ultimate safety net so thank you so before turning it over to Michael Kennedy the division director for our behavioral health division I just wanted to provide some context information that he's going to provide we know that some of the individuals who we label as the chronically homeless who are suffering from mental illness or in need of behavioral health services the programs and the services that Mike is going to discuss are critical and tantamount to being able to move the needle on getting those folks stabilized and able to benefit from being sheltered and moving on to self-sufficiency or improved well-being and so I would hope that you all would keep that in mind as we're going through the list of services and programs that Mike is going to talk about and relating it back to the safety net priorities, our plan in terms of some of the interventions and strategies is for us to expand and strengthen the programming that Mike is going to talk about today before you go there. Is it possible for us again, thank you for your report out is it possible for us to get the data or information that you just told us there was a lot of numbers in that if you could get that to us separately. I'd be very happy to. Thank you. Also you talk about the number of people served could you also provide the number of people who are on the waiting list or if you keep the record of the number of people you had to turn away because you didn't have the resource it would be helpful to have that also at this point we don't have we don't have a way else we have entitlement program so everybody who's eligible receives our services okay so but I can get you the data absolutely thank you that's helpful to know. If I could just really fast make sure that I heard something correctly one of the numbers that you threw out was that you have 1700 individuals in Santa Rosa who are on Cal fresh that are homeless given that our homeless number is 1877 I wanted to make sure I heard you correctly that was that about 90 something percent that are on Cal fresh that's correct and we we have done a lot of outreach to individuals who are homeless to make sure they can get some food and so they do have access to those services Hello test there we go yeah good evening so I before I talk about the homeless service I just want to give a little context and it's really brief and I'm not going to throw out a lot of numbers because I know we're here to talk about homeless population but I also wanted to just I know most people know this but I just want to reinforce this that all mentally ill people aren't homeless right and all homeless people aren't mentally ill okay just wanted to put that out there and for us to think about that as the county mental health plan so part of what we do is through the medical system we're responsible for mental health services specialty mental health services so that's services for the most seriously mentally ill we're responsible for really children adults and older adults who are on medical right so if you're full Kaiser you're going to get your mental health services through Kaiser but if you're a medic Cal client or medical insured in our county which there's about I think 120,000 folks who have have a medical if you have a serious mental illness you're going to get your service through specialty mental health which is what we provide so we see over 10,000 clients so then when we talk about the homeless population when we talk about serious mental illness it's generally about 30% of the homeless population and it's when we talk about the jail even those who have contact with criminal justice it's about 7% so and it's a lot of time shocking to people but I will admit clients that have mental health issues some of our folks that are involved criminal justice system and involved in our homeless people are really aware it's very visual you see them you have contact with them so a lot of times I think people really think there are more than there are so I just want to put that out there and when we look at the data from law enforcement when we work with law enforcement around calls for service actually substance use really is much higher when you're talking about service calls than mental illness we put that context out there and if we look at the homeless population the rates of substance abuse again are higher than the rates for mental illness and many times it's co-occurring issues so that's why it's really hard to get homeless folks who have mental health issues, serious mental illness and substance use off the streets it would make sense it would be really hard to do that so having said that we have other services that we provide for kids and I'm just going to focus on the services that really target the topic tonight so I would start out with and again I said Medi-Cal covers much of our services but Medi-Cal does not cover outreach or engagement in the community so just a plug for the mental health service act and for any folks who make a million dollars or more to contribute to it thank you very much we're really using it to do outreach, engagement this program that I'm going to talk about the community intervention program is fully funded through the mental health service act and it allows us to really target services in the field to homeless folks with serious mental illness so what we do is we're actually in the field we work closely with providers we work closely we're in partnership with Brookwood we have psychiatrists at Brookwood and clinicians and we serve folks through Brookwood and then also in the field we also work with with all the providers here in Santa Rosa to really try to assess and identify those homeless people with serious mental illness so that we can then link them to a higher level of service so you can go to the next slide see what I got here what I'm going to talk about tonight is what we do is screening for mental health services we also do case management we also do linkage and we also work in partnership with everybody here we really work closely with we work closely with CDC we work closely with probation we have to work with everybody because once we get to know individuals they have a lot of overlap with different services and a lot of issues that need to be dealt with we also are the ones if somebody is a danger to self or others we're going to be doing involuntary hospitalizations hospitalizations meaning we work with law enforcement to do the 5150s and bring people in do crisis stabilization and I'll talk later a little bit more about that if we go to the next slide you can see all the partners that we work with the living room we're at Wood Gospel Mission Sam Jones, Catholic Charities all their programs and then in the other parts of the county we work with the homeless providers too we also are in the field a lot of times we'll actually work with the public library we actually have done trainings there too with folks to help folks learn how to deal with individuals with mental illness and we also work with vet connect and if there's a veteran who's in crisis again we would hospitalize them we would then work with the VA and figure out coverage, do they not and then make sure that they get the service we moved to the next slide again this program we implemented through again the mental health service act and I think it's one of our most successful programs it's a partnership started out with just Santa Rosa police department and the sheriff's office where we seven days a week we both agencies have a phone and my clinicians meet them in the field so if they're on scene and there's somebody with serious mental illness or that needs services whether they're homeless or whether just a resident then they call my staff my staff will stage out there and wait until they're given the thumbs up because things are secure and then they'll come in and a lot of times then they'll take over and then we move it into more of a treatment and it allows law enforcement to step back and one of the best programs we have now it's been so successful that we've expanded that also now down to Roner Park and Petaluma and we're looking to try to get it out the next place would be Gardenville again we meet law enforcement in the field and then a lot of times what we would do is if they meet criteria for involuntary hospitalizations over to our new it's been open a year now our new crisis stabilization unit which is over at the lakes right off Sebastopol Road on corporate drive there it's a brand new facility it's got more capacity we like that it's in Santa Rosa because we love Santa Rosa and we love working with Santa Rosa SRPD is really a great partner with us and then also you know this is a place where we can bring people they can stay there for a few days stabilize we can get them on medication and it's a secure unit we didn't have that when we were up on Chinate next slide we just in December opened out by the fairgrounds a second crisis residential house so it's a 10 bed house we already had another one that we've had open for about 6 or 7 years so now we have 20 beds where if somebody comes off the hole then they need another 30 days they can stay at these houses for 30 days until we can stabilize them it's really an excellent program it's a home like environment and then that gives us time to find other options for people to then go to we could probably use another one of these though already just open that one then I wanted to just touch on detox I think you know everybody's aware there's a 15 bed detox program out at the the center on the atomas out off of farmers lane that's where folks are brought for up to a 3 day detox program that program along with substance use treatment in general we're about to expand in the fall we've gotten more we've opted into a new federal medical drug program which is going to give us more funding and more services and at the same time we're going to move the detox program from the orinda center we're going to expand at the 30 beds and we're going to move it to the stabilization unit so it's really going to be nice to have the two programs same site ambulances law enforcement don't have to argue with each program is it mental health is it substance use is it mental health they won't have to do that they can just drive over there and then drop them off to us and then we'll figure it out do you want to talk a little bit about the behavioral health campus it's one of the board's priorities so the other thing is that the first two steps in really us moving all mental health services out to that campus out on spas pool road where we're going to have all our outpatient services really all of our services and we're going to call it a behavioral health wellness campus we're also going to have a health clinic there too so we can do everything at one site and I think it's going to really improve services especially getting out of the facilities up on chanate there what qualify that you mean it'll house all of the services that aren't placed based in other parts of the county that's right yeah so we will still keep open all of our offices that we have and actually we're in the process of expanding some of those pedaluma gerenville cloverdale and insidious enoma all those will continue but we will have all those services that we have centralized here in Santa Rosa and obviously the largest number of folks that we serve are here in in Santa Rosa of course because of the population size we have another it's a really a shelter for mentally ill folks who are homeless it's called opportunity house the community support network runs it we fund it and we also have a house that we run through through SAY for transitional age youth which is called the myo house so we also have a lot of housing for mentally ill folks that we've worked on through the years including apartments subsidized apartments I think the key for us is that when we have this kind of housing you have to have wraparound services provided at the housing for folks that are serious mentally ill you can't just put them in housing and then it's going to be successful we actually have contracted services that are there sometimes 5 days a week to make sure folks are taking meds to make sure folks are are taking care of themselves food those kinds of things so again you know the project that Barbie brought up at the beginning the whole person care project it ties back to the original community intervention program I just talked about because that funding is going to expand that program so we'll be able to have more people in the field and on the ground just focused on serious mentally ill homeless individuals so the work we already do with Catholic Charities in Brookwood we're going to be adding staff more staff to be able to really follow people and really carry what we would consider homeless mental health caseloads but again really target that 30% of folks that we know those folks that you see on the streets that they have psychosis they're really struggling on the street we'll be able to add staffing to support all the services that are being delivered so that concludes the committee's look at behavioral health services do you want to entertain questions before we move on alright very good I'll turn this over to Jenny and I see that we're pressing the time limit so I know she knows how to get through through her presentation quickly a lot of our services mirror what you heard about from Kelly Kaikendall from the city so some of this will be pretty familiar Jenny? Thank you Margaret thank you so this slide that Margaret is showing you right now is it represents the community development commissions investments in homeless services in the city of Santa Rosa overall we fund about $3.5 million throughout the county $2.7 million of it is here in Santa Rosa and there's a listing on the left here of all the different funding sources so we can go into them if there are questions I don't think we really need to spend time on it other than that it's an annual competition that many of the providers who are here participate in and then there has also been more than a million dollars of board designated funding in response to issues that come up so I'll just go on to the next this has been an interesting person for us to take a look at the pie chart on the left is where our homeless count found people in this is in the 2016 count so 64% of the people that we found unsheltered last year were in Santa Rosa which justifies a lot of spending on behalf of the county in the city and then the chart on the right shows you where let's see where the funds are being but please also remember that a lot of the countywide services the 31% of our funding this is in the coming year our projected funding oh so there's some mistakes in the slide I see but in any case the 31% is countywide and much of that based here in Santa Rosa as well this was an exercise I did to see if we were actually reasonably distributing the funds based on need so that's one major portion of what we do is directly funding homeless services in addition we host and staff the continuum of care planning process this is a federally mandated planning process in order for local agencies to access our shares about $3 million annually coming through this collaborative effort 1.4 million of it is spent in Santa Rosa among the many mandates of the continuum of care is a 10 year homeless action plan that we updated last in 2014 and that actually sparked some of the additional work on the building homes toolbox and some of our other housing efforts we conduct the annual homeless count we manage a homeless management information system in our office that all our homeless service providers contribute to matching federal data standards and reporting on federally mandated outcomes including next item there system performance measures there are seven measures that we are required as the continuum of care on behalf of all homeless providers in this county to report on they include things like the number of people but also the number of placements in permanent housing the number of people who have been placed in permanent housing in the last several years who became homeless again so part of what the system performance measures help us do is see how well we're doing actually and all the things that lead to ending homelessness for the people who were serving another requirement which I know this council has heard a lot about is coordinated entry in the last few months HUD published standards and compliance standards that we're working hard to meet by next January so there's just a lot of work related to this and it's certainly been leading HUD from the federal level and also state housing and community development has been leading in this push to transition our entire system to a housing first approach not just because it's evidence based although it is but because as a system it's the best most cost effective way to end homelessness see the continuum of care made myself a little note it has existed since 1997 currently the structure is that it has a 15 member board as Kelly mentioned the cities of Santa Rosa and also Petaluma as well as the commission have standing membership county health and human services have seats and one of the requirements of continuum of care is to have membership of people with lived experience in homelessness so the rest of the membership this is something that's developed historically and was where we were what we were ready to commit to when we developed a charter a couple of years ago to be compliant with the rules it is not the only way to organize ourselves and we're actually currently looking at other ways there are series of working groups just really quite amazing group of people many of them here in this room today who have been working on a number of efforts we hold quarterly membership meetings the third Thursday's this is a welcome to anyone third Thursday's of January April July and October in the afternoon in our offices next so Margaret asked me to speak about the homeless system redesign that we're entering into right now we are basically trying to address three major challenges that we as the CDC are facing and our homeless system of care is facing the first being that there are significant funding losses to our system of care in the last couple of years they have to do with changes regulatory changes at the state level but basically we're operating with about $800,000 less in 2018 than we had this year our committee that has helped with develop you know determining awards is asking for clear priorities in that context and as the entity that is now administering the state dollars that require us to move to a housing fair system we are looking to address programmatic changes so we've just contracted with home base the center for common concern in San Francisco to be our consultant to lead this process will be I'm sure will come to you if you invite us but they will be working on a scope of work that is defined by our needs to redesign our funding process this summer yeah and as it says at the end of that last slide support providers in the transition we know that this is a very big change some of them have been moving along chugging along to get themselves there on their own but it's going to be a big change for a lot of people I was also asked to address what has happened with the state emergency solutions grants this is the funding source that has been so impacted let's see previous to 2015 or until 2015 the state backing up just a bit these points are important emergency solutions grants fund essential emergency shelters and rapid rehousing the county has as a jurisdiction received a small direct allocation from HUD for many years or jurisdictions like the city of Santa Rosa that don't receive an allocation of ESG funds they can go to the State Department of Housing and Community Development which has a balance of state allocation so Santa Rosa and Petaluma based agencies have gone to the state for many years and really sometimes came home with 10% of the statewide part which is kind of unbelievable but in 2015 2016 local agencies had $1.2 million from that source when the state entered into new rules to geographically allocate those funds we end up with an annual allocation of $239,000 so that's the big reduction we're looking at the new rules required the ESG recipients that is the CDC had to be chosen if we were going to hold on to those dollars to administer the state portion last year the Board of Supervisors back filled with a special allocation of $800,000 to keep the providers hold while we figured this out and the state legislature funded a three year program to add funds to the program that brought our allocations this year to just over $400,000 that's helpful but basically the loss is $782,000 and this impacted in our funding process the Family Support Center and I think that's it I'm happy to answer questions thank you for the presentation so for the ESG program are you saying that have they switched to now allocating based on population not necessarily the need in each jurisdiction it's a complicated formula that includes population and includes the number of people who are homeless in the community so it does address some of the things that we would want to have in a formula like that including rent burden but still when you spread that out across the entire state we end up with a very small portion and is your realignment with these funding losses is this taking into account any of the community development block grant conversations that are happening and potential reductions in that as well I think we will talk about it but we can't really say what's going to happen yet you know the proposal that just came out from the White House in the last day or so is simply a proposal I think the congressional delegations have been rushing to say it is just a proposal it's theirs to develop a process and a budget and many of them love CDBG great thank you let me just add to that I think what we want to be able to do is be responsive to a changing environment we don't know what the next several years are going to bring from the federal government to our partners so I think part of what we want to be able to do is be a little bit more nimble and thinking about how we partner with our providers and what goes into those contracts and what goes into our competitions and all of that thank you very much for the information that you've brought to us I am very interested in your homeless system redesign and wondering a couple of things first as a city participate in feedback and input and understanding the redesign process and how do members of the general public take part in the redesign process what I can say is that there's a general intent to to solicit very broad input into the process and we're still developing the work plan but let me also underscore that we have been working closely with the staff Dave and Kelly we brought them in early to say this is what we're doing help us make sure we get the scope of work right let's think about creating enough flexibility so that when you're ready to engage right that we can we can make sure that we're not doing it in isolation so that's again it's very much our intent I know as a council member I have a strong interest in following what's going on and how would I access information about where we are where you all are in the process we'll reach out but we'll also think about how we put helpful information on our website for the general public to access we'll be happy to follow up with you any other council member of course ready Mayor Corsi, council members and staff and members of the public happy to be here this evening David Cook, Chief Probation Officer I think it's important as Michael offered earlier to provide some context so the probation department supervises approximately 2,600 adult offenders probably 40 to 50 percent of those are residents of the city of Santa Rosa so somewhere between a thousand to 1,300 our clients that we supervise access services from the health department extensively through behavioral health and also human services and then a variety of community based organizations located throughout the county specifically to homeless we estimate that roughly 8 percent of the total population are homeless or transitory meaning couch surfing don't have permanent housing so around 200 thereabouts as far as what we offer in addition to those services that have been described earlier the probation department funds 30 beds this is transitional housing aimed at 90 days off times those beds are extended people are able to stay longer and those are offered through Interface Shelter Network there's special housing for sex offenders females and then the remainder go to the adult male population beyond that and I want to point out we're very fortunate and we were very intentional about this in embedding behavioral health staff from Mike's office with the probation department and they essentially serve they do the assessments and then they serve as the gatekeepers for our housing resources so they're doing the placement not only in the transitional housing but also into the residential treatment, substance abuse treatment as you can imagine the vast majority of clients under our supervision have substance abuse issues and a high percentage have mental health problems we also work pretty closely with Catholic charities and have a small contract with them to help facilitate placement of individuals and frequently our clients access various shelters Sam Jones, Redwood gospel mission et cetera and the priority for the transitional housing those 30 beds I mentioned are people returning from state prison that we are responsible for and then also people transitioning out of jail so that's the priority population for those transitional housing beds with respect to juveniles there are about 300 kids under supervision in the county and as Mike mentioned the transitional age youth those who are 18 to 24 can find shelter services at Tamayo we also as Karen mentioned have contract with them with human services for the dream center and then also youth access the coffee teen shelter social advocates for youth youth are referred quite often to voices and they assist in housing placements as well for homeless kids the stepping up initiative just what we are looking at in the future Mike alluded to this in addition to the beds that are available currently going after some grant funding to specific sources both through the state and in particular we are targeting a population of defendants who are pretrial in the jail and that means they haven't been convicted and placed on probation and in particular the mentally ill offender population or defendant population and finding ways to divert those individuals from jail when they get into jail they tend to spend an inordinate amount of time in custody quite a number of them are homeless and the need for supportive case managed housing with wraparound services is quite high and if we were successful with some of these grant proposals we'll be able to divert more of these clients from the jail and into those various programs thank you Dave is there any BSCC or a realignment money for this population the entirety of the IFSN contract is from the community corrections partnership the AB109 funding it's all state funding specifically targeted for this population either in housing or rapid rehousing the housing is all coming out of the community corrections partnership it's close to $300,000 $300,000 out of the total what's the total? 11 million thanks finally we're going to just touch briefly on the no place like home new funding source this is happening out of Mike's shop so Mike no place like home so no place like home is a new funding source that's going to focus on housing it's a $200 $2 billion that's partly going to be paid for through mental health service act funding it's going to target mentally ill folks who are homeless and it's targeted towards housing but really bricks and mortar it's focused on creating more capacity and building more housing so about 1.8 billion of it is going to be competitive so we're going to have to apply for it about $200 million is non competitive and I think right now our allocation will be about $4.5 million since we're a mid-sized county and the competitive part of it that could benefit us because in we just went through a competitive it was called SB82 which was for crisis stabilization unit and crisis residential unit and Sonoma County got four out of five awards on that one and they didn't give us the fifth award because they told us we had too much money from the awards so we had the best proposal in the Bay Area too so this competitive thing so we're going to get as much as we can out of this and build as much housing as we can and we are going to part of it is we have to work with the community we've got to involve consumers family members in the planning process we can do multiple projects so that's that's going to be great and again it's got to focus though on that percentage of the homeless that have serious mental illness and part of the requirements for it is you have to build in services you can't do a project without building in the needed services for the folks who are going to live there so I think the first RFP for it will be coming out in December that's the timeline is this coming December so we have a little time to work on planning and talking to folks about different projects and I know there's a lot of ideas out there already that you need to partner with a non-profit developer to do it so Mr. Mayor that concludes the county's presentation and we're happy to take questions thank you I'll start then I really appreciate all the county folks being here and you know it's great to see so many resources in the community that are available but the message that I get from this is that our needs are not decreasing but our resources are which is not a good message but it's the reality of what we have so I appreciate hearing about all the resources and having the expertise that's around the table here and I guess I kind of want to put out a challenge to all the staff here in county to use that expertise and put on your thinking caps and my question is what are some opportunities for all of us to better coordinate and collaborate on the way that we deal with homeless issues in this community as not a county and a city but as government working together to throw that out there so as city manager I think one of the things that is challenging is that we're working while there are similarities and overlap instead of working from a single contractual model a single set of goals we're sending out separate projects and asking for separate RFPs I think some of that is embedded in some of the traditional divisions that have been within the county some rules that were just recently about where investment can go and the desire of the board of supervisors to see some of those rules changed about investment practices that have challenged collaboration but I will say while we're engaged in this and I have a really fabulous team working on it I would say that there is a clear separation between where we have expertise and where county staff has expertise so one of the things that I think the council really needs to strongly consider is how we work together where there is potential for policy setting co-joining on that front and then allowing mechanisms that don't work in competition with each other but support each other to a solution set that's one of the big challenges kind of on parallel tracks but going in alone and I'll just give example of one of these we're struggling with the entire impact of the reduction of funding but right now because we hold all these separate contracts even though with the same contractor if we were to go out as was proposed for additional RFP services I think we'd be back sliding into that conversation where we really need to be co-joining forces jointly managing this and figuring out where the policy check-in happens and the oversight happens from the elected body so right now one of my one of the pain points here is that we're going in alone even though we're maybe having the same structure in the same general approach and so one of my appeals to both bodies how do we figure out that change so that we're not sending out repetitive, redundant and you're spreading your dollars in a way that's most impactful but one of that has to you have to come into agreement as elected bodies what success looks like how we're going to find that success and where the electeds fit in that conversation of the oversight so I'll put that on the table and we can go from there and anyone else have thoughts on this I mean I understand that it's difficult to have these conversations even in a workshop session but we need to break down some of the walls that are just naturally built into the system here and I'd like to hear how elected officials can facilitate some of that Mr. Rogers thank you Mr. Mayor one of the things that struck me listening to all of the different things that the county is doing is that you very much have the apparatus that we're trying to build at the city that this is something that we're grappling with for the first time and the county has been doing this for a long time and just trying to figure out how can we I mean I don't know if it would even be feasible to sit down and have essentially a budget meeting with the board of supervisors and the city council saying we're spending money doing this here's how we overlap and is there a better way that we can align our dollars and our expertise as the city manager was saying because we're trying to recreate the wheel at times I feel like at the city from the county I'm not going to try and speak for my supervisors but what I would say is I'm relatively new to Sonoma County in this position although I've done similar work for many years I would say that at the staff level I feel like there is really good momentum towards collaboration really under Sean's leadership under Dave's leadership I can see that we're deferring to each other we're calling before we take an action you know we're not all the way there yet I do want to assure the council that I think at the staff level there is a very real intent on trying to collaborate in new and better ways so we're all in from the staff level and what that looks like in terms of policy and budget decisions I think remains to be seen and I know you'll have this conversation with the supervisors as well so Mr. Mayor I would echo that too an example would be the system redesign you just heard about the compatibility with the scope of work the solicitation of proposals for these services that Ginny just mentioned that work is in progress right now the whole housing first models driving us whether you know to this collaboration the homeless management information system is the device we all must use to report out our data points and get this federal funding etc so almost by design it's causing that dialogue to occur I would just add that as well thanks Mr. Tibbetts so at first I want to thank everybody for putting this special meeting together you know going forward the one thing I'm really going to be curious about and looking forward to is really identifying ways in which we can align our goals because I think that's going to be the first critical step the second one is about measurement it sounds like we operate under the Via Spedat it sounds like the county is currently in the process of identifying what your vulnerability index is going to look like or am I mistaken there we have been using the Via Spedat we initiated it with the host team and then the city actually added to it and has been using it as well it's one of several tools that measure vulnerability that are in use in this county actually the Via uses a different vulnerability assessment tool so it's something I've recommended for Project 301 to be looking at the different tools different ways to identify vulnerability I was just going to add that I think one of the things that we can bring to the table and want to support is looking at a more holistic approach to how we're doing the work and so making that philosophical shift and thinking in silos and that's kind of what we're doing with our departments within the county but offer that also to the city in terms of thinking about how you approach your work that we're making that philosophical shift and thinking about the whole person's needs and so while that might be one system that we use to identify vulnerability if we're really going to get out of our silos we have to think about how do each of our systems identify vulnerability as that information to come up with a collective approach and that's exactly what I was driving at it's trying to identify that alignment and how we measure vulnerability and what we drive for who are the populations we're targeting here together that way our resources are targeted to the same people and the third thing is obviously money I think going forward is the more the city and county can work together and share financial resources in addressing this problem I think that we're going to have compounding returns and I hope that's something that the two bodies can get to in the future and the last thing I wanted to ask was non-profit service providers so we contract with a number of different non-profit service providers are they going to be at this table with us anytime in the future or will they be providing information to us through staff because I think it might be very important for us to gather their input about what their bandwidth is what their needs are and what capacity do they have to address this problem Mr. Schwedhelm Thank you Mr. Mayor I just wanted to respond to the City Manager's question the challenge for the elected officials it's difficult to have the conversation this is not a criticism but half of the elected body isn't here so regardless of whatever direction we ask you know the county folks and I'm very appreciative of you guys coming here there's five other folks you need to run this by and I would just ask that most of the information maybe not some of the information that Karen was saying the specific numbers all that information is out there the COC's website there's a tremendous amount of information and I would just encourage other electives find out the information don't wait for the folks to come to us and tell us how the system works understanding the system I think helps electives see how we can connect the knots with our other elected peers I know many of you just from our Senate was a homeless collector trying to do that duplicating services it's all out there so I would just really encourage other electives and I've said the same thing to many of those on the Board of Supervisors yeah that's gotta be a thought how do we do this together because you know homelessness does not know the boundaries of the city of Santa Rosa it's a regional effort and so everything we do and with the COC you have three entitled organizations Petaluma should be at the table too because we can't be figuring out what's the Santa Rosa strategy what's the county strategy and Petaluma is going to do another one and then you look at the umbrella of the COC under the same umbrella so again don't I would just encourage don't sit on the sideline get engaged and the other thing and I appreciate Vice Mayor Tibbets talking about the service providers sometimes get out of their way and maybe ask and how can we help because so many times your bureaucracy of government gets in the way of accomplishing tasks but again I think all this stuff is out there and for me since we adopted that housing first approach let's be aggressive with that and actually walk the talk tie our funding into programs and I heard Jenny very politely say some people it's not that easy of a transition if maybe you haven't been there for all those organizations but that's where I think this you know elected officials understanding housing first we've said that's our priority that's going to end homelessness now let's let our funding follow that and people will follow the money will follow that need so that's just what I would encourage in response to what the city manager said thank you thank you anyone else? Mr. Sawyer thank you Mayor something just came up that I'm a little bit curious about and that would be our nonprofits and how they given that they are working directly with the thunder whether it be the county or the city they would be very very well versed on what they are doing that may be a duplication in both the city and the county and I'm wondering if there is a way to a vehicle to analyze where there is duplication and where the gaps are they of all people other than those services directly provided by the city and the county and I know with the city that is really most of the services we provide other than Sam Jones Hall I believe are through our nonprofits and our contractors having them in one room looking at their duties and what they are contracted to do might be a little intimidating actually because do all the nonprofits know what the other nonprofits are getting as far as funding how protective might they be how might they be uncomfortable in sharing that information and how can we make them more comfortable about that so that we can start to identify those gaps and gaps or duplications I'm not sure how that might work but I think if any way that we can open those doors and make them feel more comfortable about that kind of sharing I think would be valuable. Thank you. I want to agree with my colleague that bringing all of the municipalities to one table sounds like a very good idea to me Petaluma but also the smaller cities may need to be here it sounds a little bit like we're talking about some kind of a joint powers entity I'm not specifying that I'm just saying it sort of sounds like we're talking about something where electeds can sit together and make some decisions about how we move forward and how much special or individualized services we need within our city balancing that with the overall needs of the entire community including within the county I am always concerned when programs come from the county that have carved out the municipalities that are for example only serving the unincorporated areas and wondering what the source of funds is anticipated to cover the gap within the city we have predominantly general funds you know we're a very sales tax dependent city so the federal funding seems to come predominantly federal and state funding to the county so trying to figure out how that how the funding sources work how the funding is allocated you know what kind of say we have in how those funding mechanisms serve our residents in addition to residents in the unincorporated area I'm aware of sometimes this works well and sometimes they're stumbling in making sure that the services provided on one side of the municipalities line match the services provided on the other and it goes both ways so I think it's really important that we have a kind of unified services throughout the county including the incorporated areas recognizing that within the city we obviously have 64% of the homeless population we're going to need help with that large number so I'm looking for how we can work together and work out what the what are we asking for together from the nonprofits work out together what the nonprofits want from us work out what the residents need I'm I appreciate that there's a lot of data really out there but I've been trying just to count things like how many beds serve women with children particularly women who have children over the age of 12 and I'm finding it actually very difficult to find exactly how many beds are there and how much the need is for additional beds in that area so just taking very basic simple data how many are out there what exactly are is the count for what those needs are doing that what I'm hearing is that we're serving the 7% of the population that has jail 7 to 8% that has jail I heard a lot of presentation on the 30% that have mental health issues and I know the governor has recently funded mental health issues but I'm thinking that leaves a lot of folks who we haven't specifically targeted and that they have considerable need as well so I'm really happy we're doing this and really looking forward to sort of how do we get on the same page for those services and I understand you presented the sampling I would just like to share then that yes our continuum of care wiki has a ton of information but in specific my team is required as part of our continuum of care reporting to collect information about the housing inventory every single year and we can probably answer your questions I couldn't do it off the top of my head I will say first that families with children although there are a lot of panicked families calling in for services through coordinated intake before they have actually become homeless out of the total homeless population there are about one in eight people and the shelter beds associated or serving families are something like 40% of our shelter beds there's been a consistent effort for many years to ensure that there was a place for families on the other hand shelter isn't the solution and the rapid rehousing kinds of programs that Karen mentioned out of the human services department and our other rapid rehousing programs are basically understood to be the best practice, the national best practice in addressing homelessness for families and I would say that the combination of having a pilot project that addressed homelessness among families with children and attempted to match people up with permanent housing as quickly as possible and the breadth of the services that we have in rapid rehousing for families meaning rapidly moving them from homelessness into permanent housing that best practice is what led to a significant decline this year just since last year in the number of homeless families that we found and just to clarify my perspective a little bit and I'm sure most of us at this table have had similar experiences that I've had I have a list of about five people and I'm trying to get them into housing services and my experience has been that it is incredibly difficult to get folks into housing services to get them into a shelter particularly if it occurs on a Friday over a weekend finding hotel fund vouchers is actually very difficult so just in terms of personally trying to work through the system among I'm not a homeless person and I have access to a phone in a car and all of the resources and yet and maybe even some chips to pull to cash in to say come on give me a hand with this and yet having tremendous difficulty a disabled man with a family a variety of situations domestic violence severely other severe health issues it's just really difficult when you're right there trying to get a service for somebody it's not like parking where you can go a little further out and find a space so I'm just trying to figure out what we can do so that when I get a phone call when we see somebody who's homeless we've got a place for them to go that's kind of where I am right now and I'm really happy to have the conversations and to figure out how to most efficiently spend our resources to do that so I do not have an answer for the conundrum you just gave voice to and I think we do very much appreciate I want to go back to the question about county city collaboration and deepening that what I would observe is that we are not the only set of jurisdictions in the country who struggle with this problem and sometimes it's helpful to lift our head up and look at what other folks are doing who have maybe broken through this kind of a problem and I'm familiar with a couple of city county pairings who have taken some pretty innovative steps in thinking differently about where they draw the boundaries and who does what and who's responsible for what population and I think there are probably models out there that we could draw on to kind of give us some ideas to play with our hope is that this redesign we've pinned a lot of hopes on this redesign effort so I may have my hopes I may be disappointed but my hope is that some of these very questions we'll get some help from somebody who's not from here but who has deep experience in helping jurisdictions wrestle through some of this and absolutely our intent is to have your staff at the table and the electives it would be helpful so be more specific about with the redesign we don't have specifics yet we have a scope of work which we have worked on jointly with Dave and Kelly but they're going to look at kind of contract deliverables they're going to look at the method by which we put forward criteria what we ask for when we do an RFP what we put in our contracts and how we hold them accountable is a very tangible work that we do in partnership with you so that we're not asking for different deliverables from the same nonprofits so that's a good place to start that sounds like a great place to start thank you I'm going to go to public comment here invite the rest of the folks in the room to join the conversation we are aiming at getting out of here at seven o'clock and I want the the group at the table to have time to wrap up things at the end to talk about next steps and to answer any questions if we need to so I've got if we have three minute comments we're going to go for an hour and a half so I'm going to limit comments to two minutes so we can try and get through this in about an hour and we will start do we just have one microphone for comment? so you can come over here please be ready if you're the next person we're starting with Lisa Landres followed by David Prentice is Lisa Landres here? David Prentice David will be followed by Madeleine Brasher addiction issues are not just a genetic predisposition they are often driven by issues I've had guys in my office who were doing dope when they were six alcoholics by 13 sticking needles in their arms with mommy at 15 years old being beat up with two by fours what covers the gamut? we heard today also that 30% of the people on the streets have mental illness and in California one of the biggest things we were challenged with is the severe lack of abilities of the state to be able to help us in these areas because they're underfunded now the reality of the situation simply becomes this we can give these guys a roof over their head but their issues are going to go in the room with them and so if you do not begin to come up with a strategy with how we address their issues then we're not really solving the problem what I've discovered in my time is that faith based communities are really good at helping in these areas and perhaps what we ought to be trying to do is to figure out ways to open doors for them to be of more service just because somebody does not have a college degree does not mean that they are not qualified to help the hurting if that was the case then we would not have sponsors in alcoholics anonymous so I want to encourage you to get this on the docket also try to figure out how we can make faith based communities more inclusive they want to help by their faith it's dictated that we help the hurting the lost the addicted the homeless but we need to be allowed to help and the more you can figure out well how can we bring you in the more you're going to get from us you have over 80 churches in Santa Rosa average church is 100 that's 8,000 people in this community that want to help give them a chance at all thank you the tone from the the iPhone will let you know when your time is up Madeline Brasher I am a Santa Rosa native and a business owner on Ford Street and I am now making faith dealing with I was asked for Miss LaMette the other day 33 year old I also have to deal with my clientele or young women that don't want to go to my building when these said addicts are sitting outside of my door begging or cat-falling or making advances so I felt most of the people that I know around my age we don't even want to frequent downtown because of the homeless population or I say homeless in quotes as well there's also a parking lot I believe by the county building I have a sheriff client that said it's open for them to camp out but they don't choose to use it they choose to use the park downtown on Sonoma Avenue that connects to Henley Street the square as well is in my opinion $10 million worth of money we could have put to other services that Santa Rosa needs much more than a square of cement I mean the roads are terrible we have feces everywhere the same homeless man that asked me for crystal meth I've seen him peeing on a business on Mendocino and forth on Sunday at 1.30 in the middle of the day Sunday is a family day these are the people that I want to see off of the street and to stop harassing me and my clientele and it mostly is the drug addiction problem that I'm experiencing so that's what I would like to see being removed from the street and out of our business doorways thank you thank you ISP Brusher followed by Patricia Hunstock Mr. or Ms. Brusher here Patricia Hunstock she'll be followed by Debbie McKay thank you for this opportunity to talk with Patricia Hunstock and I live in the Bennett Valley area but I also look at the now I know why I pay high taxes California is very very high taxing and I have friends that cannot that are moving out of California to live other places because it's such a high not the rents but everything is very high so I think we have to be very careful about raising any kind of taxes with the first two speakers completely but I really came here to talk about the homeless camp encampment off a farmer's lane every single day I have to drive there and I see somebody walking they don't use the sidewalks but anyway I think that you really need to and I think it's a poor use to go out there every day to clean up and do whatever they do that is really a poor use of our services to have them do that that needs to be cleaned up it's a disgrace you can see the blue stuff I feel sorry for the Jewish synagogue there they're right there above that so I don't know if my two minutes are up but I really think that those encampments have to be cleaned up they need to be out of there thank you Debbie McKay yes I'm Debbie McKay I'm a lifelong resident in Sonoma County in probably 30 plus years in Santa Rosa I've been studying this issue as well and I commend what you're doing I commend that you're getting together and I would encourage you to include Petaluma and I would encourage you to take the best ideas from all of your cities and I want to give you just a couple of examples Petaluma has worked very hard on a program called Share for Seniors and this is a way to use existing housing to house more people and so I would encourage you to really look into what the City of Petaluma is doing partnering with one of their nonprofits to get people who have a house that's more than they need to share with another person and they do a very extensive process to match people up and I would encourage you to look at what Petaluma has done on their grantee unit fees I know you're in the process of adopting your own grantee unit policies I don't know how they did it but they were able to get their fees down to only 25% of the fees they would charge for a normal regular development so I think it's really worth looking at that and if there's a way to make that really affordable because I know you're dealing with urban growth boundaries you're not going to have to deal with endangered species act and a lot of the other things that prohibit you from doing housing and I noticed that the junior college is offering a course for homeowners on how they can do grantee units I think this pertains to the whole county but it might be worthwhile the city looking at doing a similar kind of workshop periodically maybe once a quarter where you would have your city staff walk the residents who want to do these grantee units kind of through the process and what's involved so that people can take that step or decide whether that step works for them I'd also encourage you you're going to soon have all the controversy of the chenate development in your in your laps and one of the things that exists up there is a shelter for women and children and I would encourage you to try to preserve that if at all possible rather than that going away because that's a really important resource thank you Miss Lee your two minutes are well up thank you though Ronit Rubinoff followed by George Uberti give me any warning Chris go ahead tip that up my name is Ronit Rubinoff I'm the executive director for illegal aid of Sonoma County and I just want to say I'm proud to say that we are a partner with both the county in providing services that are upstream and actually help prevent this problem from occurring legal aid services help families who are at risk of homelessness avoid that by having time and resources to locate alternative housing we also help people keep their section 8 benefits which is another thing we haven't talked about today but is very helpful in preventing people from ending up on the street and the county and city are both working on that and we also help people in the county and city preserve the quality of our existing housing stock and that's another issue we are facing in this county when we're looking at this idea of our depleted housing stock we do that by making sure that habitability laws are enforced and that housing conditions don't deteriorate further just a quick example we have two cases right around this area where there are serious mold and leakage issues and the tenants low income Hispanic complained and the landlord tried to retaliate and evict them and we were able to stop the eviction get the repairs made and make sure that the tenants weren't out of pocket so they could still afford their housing so these are very real solutions and we're part of this solution and we really appreciate the support and ability to work with you all, thank you thank you George and you Mr. Birdie will be followed by James Klein how are you you know I heard you all talk about the point in time survey in 2017 something that's required by Housing and Urban Development required every two years and it's required so you can get Housing and Urban Development funds I was very curious while I was up here that nobody mentioned the 2015-2016 national audit that was done of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in which 500 billion dollars was missing 500 billion I thought that sounded big I looked it up and a lot of sites said it was fake news but it turns out you can download the audit yourself and there are 500 billion dollars missing my thinking is that one person does not steal 500 billion dollars but that probably a lot of different things were going on and in fact I was encouraged when I saw it because I had been looking through our local HUD numbers and they didn't look very good right now what I've got is it's the annual financial report for the city of Santa Rosa Housing Authority and it appears to have an audit at the beginning if you look at the beginning it says this is an audit but it turns out it's not actually an audit it's a discreetly presented component unit I thought that was lovely how they did that so we're getting a lot of funds from HUD and if you get past it and you get down here it says we do not express an opinion or provide any assurance on the information because the limited procedures do not provide us with sufficient evidence to express an opinion or provide any assurance it also says that the introductory section is the introductory section has not been subjected to the auditing procedures applied in the audit of the basic financial statements and accordingly we do not express an opinion or provide any assurance on it so the part of it that looks really great we can't say whether or not that's true and in fact as you get into the actual management discussion and analysis of the financial statements unaudited so and by the way you don't have to be an accountant to look through these accounts you just have to know how math works because I understand what numbers are and this is not right before we look at new things to do and working together maybe we should check and balance a little bit and take a look at some of the audits some of the things we already have in place that aren't working because somebody is stealing that money James Klein James Klein will be followed by Steve Burtlow thank you I'm thankful to the council for being here and the county service staff especially our police department I think everybody should give them a big hand they do more work than anybody else on this problem and I know they do a lot of calls I happen to live over on Sebastopol Road at a community behind food max you know last year I got with the city council on the problem over there I don't see Sonoma County parks here today they've been a great resource for helping keep the trail clear but the one big problem is there's no place for the homeless to go you know I move them next door then the police officer comes and moves them down another house and another house they don't have anywhere to go let's get some land and make a camping area for them let's do that how much money is going to take to turn a vacant lot into a housing area for our homeless and they're all our permanent you know residents let's do something for them besides giving them tickets and harassing them thank you thank you Mr. Burtlebaugh Steve will be followed by Edward Meese thank you mayor of course and members Steve Burtlebaugh I've been co-chair of Friends of the Homeless and we've heard providers come and talk to us month after month I'm really glad to see that we're now talking about housing first and I'm really glad to see all the county people with all the city people that are working on this issue in one room as has been pointed out we're missing some key county people there needs to be a combination of county and city effort on this if we're going to build $160 million worth of housing for the mentally ill homeless and then probably five times that much housing for the the rest of the homeless so let's look at what we do when we need to have a really strong staff and support for a city county operation we have the Sonoma county transportation authority that takes care of our roads we have the waste management organization that takes care of our landfill these are organizations that are probably the result of a JPA and they're able to hire very well qualified staff that work closely with the staff for all of the cities and the county and they seem to be able to avoid the problems that we've experienced with people not knowing what the right hand not knowing what the right hand is doing and dealing with the situation that crosses boundaries so as we look to a bond act for the county to take care of our housing problem let's fix the leadership issue by creating something like SCTA or the Waste Management Authority thank you Edward Mies followed by Terry Mitchell I've heard some encouraging words about a good idea and I am hoping that they will be secure and sanitary those are two things I wanted to get in about that and also I love the idea about working with non-profits because non-profits are about the task at hand and for profits are about making a profit and it's two different things the one thing I would like to say about non-profits is that you want to make sure that it is not one of those non-profits that is a small but pays their executives exorbitant amounts of money the other thing I wanted to talk about is that I have is money I never saw a homeless person growing up there are some people as old as me in here I think that also didn't big tax cuts in the late 70s and 80s at the federal level and at the state level and the state level is the only one we can do anything about Proposition 13 I want to touch with Mr. Levine and Mr. McGuire about repealing it with three exemptions first a person's primary residence and that doesn't mean a castle it means a primary residence second a small california based business would be able to exempt one property and that also needs to be defined what a small california based business actually is Oliver's fits Foodmax might safe way properly and the third thing is anybody who rents their rentals below market rate gets a proportional cut in their taxes their property taxes and what I'm hoping I can get both the city council and the county supervisors to do is now that we have a two thirds democratic majority in both houses and a democratic governor we might be able to start lobbying together the state government to make this kind of a repeal of Proposition 13 that would bring in a lot more money just in time thank you Terry Mitchell followed by Joanna James first of all thank you everyone for your hard work on this issue I know it's not an easy issue I think a lot of organizations do a great job at helping the homeless people move into transitional housing and permanent housing so my question is if we had houses for all of them would they use them would they live in them I don't know about that and how many of the homeless use the services that are offered to them other than the food do they seek the mental the health services and the addiction services I don't know how you lead a horse to water so I think we need to look at how we do that most of the people I see on the Bennett Valley encampment because I drive by it every day don't appear to be mentally ill they appear to be camping there and maybe I'm wrong but they're taking in furniture they're taking in things to make fires they're taking in propane tanks so I don't think those are the mentally ill people so my question would be is there buy in for them to obtain services and housing if we provide them all housing with services I understand they need them is there something that they provide or they give back to that community so that they have a buy in into the process that would be one of my questions the second one is looking at existing housing stock I don't know what's happening with the Shanae but there's Shanae there's St. Rose Church which I think there's one priest that lives in that complex there's Holy Spirit Church there's a big complex out there the county that they're closing down the facility in Sonoma I mean can we look at leasing some of those facilities as opposed to trying to build brand new housing stock thank you thank you Johanna James followed by Prudence Alasha thank you and thank you for having this meeting I think it's obvious from all of the services that you're talking about that a great deal of coordination and collaboration is needed here and I certainly subscribe to the idea that housing first is essential but I'd like us not to lose sight of some more basic and immediate needs one of which is access to toilet facilities I just had the privilege of stepping out for a moment and going to a nice bathroom that wasn't even locked as an aging female I'm rapidly becoming an expert in the location of every toilet in Santa Rosa but I'm up all to find how many of them are locked and all I have to do to get in is go ask for a key somebody will very gladly give me a key or tell me the code for the keypad and almost always with this funny look on their face there's somewhere between a grimace and a smile and a shrug as they say sorry it's locked, you know the homeless and it puts me in mind of my childhood in the south where there were separate toilets that were labeled for so called colored and so we had these you know second rate inferior facilities that were set aside for colored we don't even manage that here for homeless people Prudence Prudence Alashad followed by Adrian Lobby Prudence here Adrian Adrian will be followed by June Michaels is Adrian Adrian here thank you we lost a homeless person this week Sandra Talbott Marsden there's going to be a memorial for her February 20, no I'm sorry June 7th Wednesday June 7th at the Living Room at 230 and there's been some definite different some stuff putting around about it but she did die of natural causes and she died outside which is a shame it's a shame on all of us really I would like to thank all the homeless people who are in the room and the people who are here who work directly with homeless people day after day I see a lot of people and I really appreciate that you're here and if you aren't already planning to speak I hope you will because I think we hear what's available and it sounds wonderful and it sounds like there's so much I know that for homeless people it's very very hard to get what you need and there are waiting lists for so much as Miss Combs mentioned the problems are massive we're not going to fix it overnight I'm really glad to see you collaborating I think having some bond measures to build housing is in our sites and I hope that that continues we have 40 encampments in the city that have been identified I think that we should call those temporary housing and we should thank the homeless people who build them and we should provide them with porta-potties and trash cans and the things they need to make it a decent place to be and then I think we should really in the next week or two find some city land find some county land where people can go because we now have a plan we're going to have a presentation about this to make infractions into misdemeanors that will be discriminatory against homeless people we're going to put them in jail and jail is a lot more expensive than any other kind of shelter we have people saying clean out homeless hill well they're just going to go to another place so let's set this up let's do it right and let's save parking please Ms. Michaels will be followed by Mandy Mars I want to say thank you to everyone who's participating I have a question I'm old enough to remember the Reagan days and how he closed a lot of outpatient mental services does anyone city council or with the county remember the services that were provided before Reagan closed them I don't know does that mean no one does we can't do it back and forth I'm sorry I just want to suggest I don't remember like someone else mentioned there were not a lot of homeless before Reagan closed the outpatient mental services perhaps we could look at what was established before what was successful before because we don't have it since then also I think bathrooms are a dignity it's a right to have a bathroom I highly suggest as was mentioned before putting bathrooms out it could be around 4th street as well could have certain ones that don't have to be port-a-potties empty buildings we have those that could be transformed versus building new into housing and regarding the police or the homeless I think there's better things that you can do besides shuffling them around thank you Mandy Mars should be followed by Leslie Allen is Mandy here Leslie Allen Leslie here Leslie will be followed by Sandy Shotwell I don't speak nearly as poignantly as everybody else and I feel it will be prepared actually but I'm here because I met Sandra Shotwell a year and a half ago leaving my business about 11 o'clock at night on Farmer's Lane it was January and I looked down the breezeway and I saw a person line on their back on the concrete with their legs crossed and their hands on their chest and that was Sandy it's not sand she goes by sand and I just couldn't walk away I knew I could call the police and somebody come and push her along or something but I did do my best to provide shelter for her for about a year and I wasn't able to any longer so that came to an end so I've had to basically put her back out on the street but I've tried to maintain a relationship with her and I guess some of the things I've asked her about I asked her to come to this meeting today and I said you know what are some of the things you could use right now I mean we obviously can't get everybody into a house right now some of the things she really struggles with I mean at one point I actually said something about you know can't you just work at Taco Bell you like to go to Taco Bell they were hiring and she didn't say anything at that time but just the other day she said I'll possibly work at Taco Bell it's so traumatic trying to deal with the public dealing with employees dealing with a supervisor it would be very she's so traumatized from being on the street for four years she flew her flag she flew her sign on a corner out there to get money to buy a cart for a bicycle so she would have some secure place to put what little things she has a clean set of clothes to clean things and that cart was recently stolen from her bike and it is difficult for her to make reports to the police I'm sure they're trying but some of them are very rude and very unkind and I'm sorry to say that but I believe it I've been treated that way myself but I know she needs places to access the shower more easily and regularly where she's not going to be hassled at the J.C. for taking a shower thank you thank you Ms. Allen Ms. Shotwell I'm a native to the Bay Area I was born in Marin I've lived in the Santa Rosa for 39 years I'm going on four years being homeless the cell phone has revolutionized homelessness but it does need to be charged it takes at least a couple hours to charge a phone and a charge doesn't last a whole day so now when you go home you plug your phone in charge it it's charging while you're doing other stuff I can't do that I have to guard the phone because the number one difficult thing about being homeless is being ripped off by the homeless people by far and away it's so traumatizing that because of that and because so many homeless people are mentally ill and I have compassion for the mentally ill I have compassion for the drug addicted but such a large percentage of the homeless population is mentally ill that I no longer access the services available to me because it's just too traumatic to go to these breakfasts and dinners and the staff is overwhelmed and they're not really qualified to deal with people that are mentally ill and drug addicted so now I just don't even bother some suggestions like what I would do to get out of the cold you can go to like before FedEx it's no longer 24 hours but Kinko's FedEx used to be 24 hours or you could go to the Jack in the Box diner that's 24 hours or you could go to you could join the 24 hour gym that's 24 hours but don't fall asleep sleeping is what makes being homeless a crime it's not a crime to walk the streets you can walk the streets all night long but don't fall asleep because that's where the crime is why can't you have a place that's like a combination of FedEx with little computer cubicles like Starbucks with seats to charge your phone like a 24 hour gym but you're allowed to nod off without being asked to leave stealing a bike is a misdemeanor if someone breaks into your garage to steal your $300 bike then that's breaking and entering but if you're homeless they don't have to break and enter I've had seven bikes stolen in three years and now just the bike trailer was stolen and before it was stolen the bike end trailer was stolen twice and twice in a month and twice I got it back but now the bike trailer is gone stealing from a homeless person should be a felony stealing a bike from a homeless person should be a felony but the bike trailer isn't my strong suit so my two minutes about it we'll need to wrap up if you can do it thank you for telling us all your story Victoria Fleming followed by Susan Chunko Susan Chunko Susan here she'll be followed by Michael O'Toole first I wanted to thank Julie for addressing the difficulties one can have in accessing available services I work at Remembrance Village which is more commonly known as Camp Makayla we have our ups and downs we also have water some electricity port-a-potties it makes a huge difference for homeless people to have a safe place where they can access services that other people take for granted I mean toilets water electricity it's we need more interim camps because we all know that housing first is at least a year or two in the future we need something now and we need sanctioned densities thank you I hope you'll be followed by Mandy P good evening Michael O'Toole 107 days from now Camp Makayla also known as Remembrance Village will be in existence for two years we have done amazing things with Makayla we currently have seven people who are employed living there I personally worked with two people yesterday to get them connected with mental health services we do what other people should be doing we're not asking for anything for doing that we do it because it's the human thing to do what I would ask is after two years of existence as Susan said we've had our ups and downs we need some assistance now we're not talking about financial assistance we need minimal sanctioning we're not asking for 100% sanctioning what we're asking for is for people to help us make this what it can be it has been an amazing thing numerous times it can be amazing again we have problems but it's hard I work I'm 60 years old I'm doing everything I can Susan she works she's doing everything she can these people need this space to get their lives back together we have people there that really care we have two people that work at grocery outlet we have one person that works at Hyatt another person that works at another really expensive hotel chain we have people that are really doing things they're changing their lives I'm helping a lady get SSI now I'm plugging a person into the JC so she can go back to the JC and get an education and do what she wants to do it's not that easy it takes a toll on a person and I do it because I'm compassionate Susan does it because she's compassionate Adrian Lobby does it because she's compassionate we do this because it's compassionate not because we're looking at the bottom line dollar we're getting so please help us come to engage us talk to us please thank you Mandy P Mandy will be followed by Sarah Hilton I also live at the remembrance village I'm kind of a new addition to it like Mike said and Susan we do have we Mandy don't wander too far there from the microphone we do have water access to water we do have porta potties we also have our own security so as a way to maintain everybody pretty much stays it's drug and alcohol free nobody has allowed to use or be addicted to that the other thing is that we have our own council like you all where we have our set of rules there's the it's chores there's stuff we're all expected to do something every day and not become a nuisance the main thing is that it is a safe place where we can leave there to go do whatever we need to do during a daytime whether it be a look for a job a place to stay that but we know we can walk away from those gates and we'll come back and everything to be there that's very hard I personally have had stuff taken from me I've been hopping on the streets over quite a few years actually it's been a challenge I've battled depression but every day I wake up knowing not really knowing what the day's going to entail it's definitely an adventure and it's one that I hope that y'all will realize a lot of us take a lot of things for granted like electricity you know your email being able to email somebody being able to pick up the phone and call somebody you know you don't know what you've got until it's gone you know I used to look at oh god I gotta go home now when you don't have a home it hits hard thank you Mandy Sarah Hilton followed by Kevin Conway is Sarah here Kevin Conway you'll be followed by Michelle Barron's thank you everybody I'm Kevin Conway I don't think my remarks represent duplication of effort I hope not but back in about 1990 there was a program called the Family Connection and it was run by what I would call St. Cida who was with the Catholic Charities but the idea was that community volunteers were placing groups of about four or five and these groups then received training sessions at night about five sessions about the goals of the program and they were taught techniques for supporting a homeless family then the exciting thing was that each of these groups was assigned to a homeless family or a homeless person we learned their history and their background and then we got to meet them and each of us took a very personal interest in this family we did the kinds of things that Michael O'Toole referred to helping them the kids with their homework or driving people to medical appointments helping them fill out forms and job applications coaching them on being effective in a job interview that sort of thing and this was great because a concerned citizen could get involved in a very hands-on way as opposed to just giving money to very busy overworked and underfunded agencies I don't know the statistic but every day a significant number of us baby boomers turn 65 which means that they may be in a position if they're retiring excuse me to do this kind of service there might be people in this room would be interested in doing that kind of service to help out so the template does exist for this kind of a program to get up and running and I'd love to see that happen thank you can you repeat the name of the program one more time it was called the family connection it was done about 1990-92 somewhere in that area was sister Teresita was the woman that the nun that ran that great thank you Michelle Barron's she'll be followed by Georgia Berlin is Michelle here Georgia Berlin and Georgia will be followed by Lee Marks Leah Marks I really appreciate your focusing on this subject as hard and long as you have and doing it collaboratively with other jurisdictions and the public and with homeless people themselves so thank you for that and I hope the collaboration will continue to expand and include other cities as well I think that was a very important suggestion I want to just remind the council about some programs that are sponsored by much smaller organizations and some of the large public entities and large non-profits that are extremely significant in terms of helping people get out of homelessness and having an impact on that two of these the two that I'm involved with are first sober Sonoma and that is one where we're reaching out to people who have been addicted on the streets for many years and moving those people into treatment and someone earlier asked do these people really want this kind of help we were amazed at how many people are just coming to us and saying please can we get into your program bringing other homeless people saying this person's drinking too much can you help him we're only limited by the bed space that we have and the funding that we have the people are really wanting this kind of service and are engaging with us to get it the second program and I want to say this program is fully funded through February at least of next year and will probably be refunded based on costs from the hospitals and other organizations that serve these people the second program is homeless court which proves to be extremely effective in getting people out of homelessness we've resolved 188 cases in the first four sessions of that court and helped 64 people resolve infractions fines they've been carrying for things like illegal camping or a lost driver's license that has kept them from work and kept them from housing and now they're able to access housing and many of them are in fact now housed so that program is still seeking funding for next year it's a tiny amount of money we're talking about between 25 and 30,000 to serve many many people and really end their homelessness so we're hoping that we can gather the support that we need to keep that going but we thank you for all the work that all of you are doing to end homelessness thanks thank you Georgia Leah Marks and Ms. Marks will be followed by Nicolette LaFrankie good evening thank you for taking all your time so I'm here today to speak on behalf of all the parents and children with regard to some of the proposed tent encampments typically these are on church-owned property I've taken the time to read many of the reports both here that have been presented by like official reports for similar programs that were run here in California or other states and one thing was residingly true for all of them and that was that none of these were located none of the encampments were located regardless of the results next to a school and the proposed encampment on the lot on the corner the empty lot on the corner of Giffin and stony point road is literally across the street from a K-6 elementary school and they're there for school and aftercare programs and it just is a grave concern of mine that that's never been done before on a national scale and we are considering testing it out in our community and aside from that I also my brother's a police officer and I've spoken to some other officers about their experience with 10 encampments and what they see and I know you guys are well aware about the policing and self-regulation and they found that typically because there's a zero tolerance policy as far as drugs and alcohol are concerned the people who have these problems which is you know that's a whole other issue they will just leave off campus or the encampment and they'll go to the closest site that's available to them that's you know not somebody's driveway or whatever and it will be that school and they'll do their drugs there and just some food for thought my daughter did a city sponsored walking field trip today to clean up the creek and in 15 minutes they found two hypodermic needles and like three condoms it's in the creek and having that be the place where people can just go and enjoy their time is really a grave concern thank you Nicolette the Frankie followed by Peter Chernef hello thank you for having this meeting this is a question more for the I guess human health and services with probation and the no place like home initiative that you're going to take with these housing services for the mentally ill I know that there must be standards that they must abide by to be eligible for the housing but as you know there is a large addiction problem with the mentally ill so is there a way to allow them in the housing while addressing their addiction problems and if that's something that they can coordinate with probation as well thank you thank you we don't do it back and forth during this period of time but we may be able to answer some questions after the public comment okay thank you Peter Chernef followed by Dorothy Fryberg what a wonderful crowd good evening back in the 90s I was on the streets with a homeless mentor program with two homeless Navy vets and the idea was to place them somewhere make a deal with the hotels that are half empty something but the big deal was is they would be doing a minimum of 20 hours a week doing something beneficial to the city like gardens or taking care of senior homes and cleaning things up simple things that we could all utilize yeah and then Martin Luther King said all the promised land which means technically we're all homeless and he said if one man is wrongfully incarcerated so are we all so we're all in prison and and the boss carpenter said as you do unto the least of me which is the animals you do unto me and yourselves which explains our hapless mental illness that is so deep that you can't even acknowledge it but maybe we're just waiting around for Jerry Brown's two billion dollars to kick in for the mentally homeless and they get their train ticket to FEMA camps because that's already begun let's see let's see oh but for those that are homeless like all of us better still this bitter pill sign up today for the homeless to the promised land jamboree on June 9th we're going to shut down the west coast for the prophetic 40 day strike it is going to happen and I'll finish by saying that in this room there's such quiet such stillness in this room truly filled with mental illness in this world that forever having sought to heist the power of the truth and authority of Christ serving two masters be escalating all disasters June 9th I'm here to report begins the prophetic strike at the Oakland port ceasing the realm of Mammon so too Sataniel's backgammon as we economically free-shraying the entire west coast till all DC's corruptions be dispatched as burnt toast opening doors to the promised land for the true hearts the true hearted are the warriors and the time be at hand and I have some information here regarding that so thank you very much mayor Dorothy Fryberg followed by Pamela Marks good evening thank you for this this is the second homeless summit I've been to and I don't really see a lot coming out of them myself I have been homeless off and on for 40 years I raised my son on dirt it took him 20 years but he just graduated from Cal Poly and he got a job in Santa Rosa for $55,000 starting salary go loose okay one of our favorite sons Jack London was a homeless man in Oakland California he hung out in the library and wrote and so don't throw us all away these are just kind of scattered thoughts it is not okay to bulldoze homeless encampments it is not okay that people have a right to be secure in their homes their families and their persons and their possessions and it is not okay to take that stuff away from people I had a raccoon raid me and the only thing he could find to eat was the wax the hearing aid ear whatever these are but I patched him together for this hearing okay I want to thank the YWCA for housing abused women families the Redwood gospel mission for their massive work and the Salvation Army for George's living room or whatever drop-in center already already thank you Ms. Piper Pamela Marks Pamela Marks here Cecile Kirubin I want to thank everybody who's here too I am currently a proud resident of Santa Rosa and of Sonoma County I came from New York City where I lived most of my life and in fact I was a renter there so one of the reasons I got involved was because I'm still a renter I saved my money other ways but now as I'm aging it's scaring me a little bit about where I'm going to end up so I decided I'd do something about it I'm a CAB member of the city of Santa Rosa I'm on the Housing for All I'm the chair and I also am part of a project called Homeless Talk and I'm on the steering committee and we held a series of 19 conversations about homelessness and I hear people saying like stop talking we've done all this talking but I think it needs to happen all the time and I think as a CAB member the most well I'll just tell you some of the themes that we're seeing because we're doing our report and at any one time there were two to six steering committee members so we operated on self-funding some of the themes that we're hearing tonight are the themes that we're seeing like the stigma and the biases and beliefs around homelessness that are just not true but we don't have the proper information about it systemic issues that cause it sorry other models we heard a lot of people talking about other models that happen things that happen in other cities mental illness and addiction and we talked to a lot of people who are grappling with that and we have a lot of solutions that came out of it and some of them are maybe just ideas that will spark other people to think of better ideas so I guess what I'm here to say is that we need to keep talking all the time and I guess I'll stop but we would like to present our report at some time to the collaborative group right here thank you Cecile Thomas Ells followed by Cynthia Rowe well first I want to say thank you for having this event really this is an interesting thing and thank you for everyone for staying this is a ray of hope and I want to offer back and reflect that hope Supervisor Shirley Zane yesterday called for inclusionary zoning this is a new thing and in respect to the general plan the general plan update the county is the lead agency for the general plan like as for an EIR under CEQA and it's a very important role under that currently the ABAC requirements for the 2015-2023 affordable component for the county is only 940 homes for that 8 year period they're only supposed to have a 900 approximately 940 homes and it was previously 6000 homes so most of the housing in the future is going to be in the cities that's just what we've done with the open space and everything ABAC's 2040 requirements approximately 33,000 homes for the county this is going to require coordination of the general plan and requires a significant coordination of the cities but this requires the city to ask because they're not going to come and tell you because of jurisdictional aspects they could, they should it's definitely required under the CEQA aspects of the general plan aspect we need to coordinate this with the JC I've said this community is a college town our housing and rents are significantly impacted by students we need to have a study of how many students are living in houses not of their families with inclusionary zoning we need housing which satisfies the state's planning code to provide housing for every economic demographic in the community so instead of 20% or something like that we need a little more this is not that difficult for a few houses, small members but the tens of thousands the 33,000 that's going to not be that easy to do but it's easy to do affordable housing for small members thank you Thomas Cynthia Rowe followed by Josh Silvers Hello, my name is Cynthia Rowe I am a resident of the Southwest community and I would like to talk about the CHAP program I understand that that is a program to teach your encampments that the council would like to place around the county and before you put this into place I would hope that you would look at some of the issues that could arise from this program one would be affecting the property owners the second one is a resident and the third are the homeless that we are trying to help in the first place in reading the CHAP program I understand that there are certain things that the property owner is responsible for and that is the hours of operation for that facility another thing that the property owners are responsible for is loitering what to do if loitering should occur I have reached out on a number of occasions to the facility that is looking at my neighborhood to put one of the pilot encampments in and I have never received a response as to how they are going to deal with the issues as a resident and listening to the homeless people up here speaking we have the same concerns they want to be kept in a safe environment as a resident and a homeowner I want to be in a safe environment so I would hope that the council and the county when you put out these programs that you would have a single person in charge of the CHAP program who the property owners are accountable to so that if there is an issue that somebody in charge of the CHAP program can say you are not adhering to the rules and regulations that we have as well as making sure that the CHAP program is not across the street from schools thank you thank you Josh Schilvers followed by Celeste Austin good evening everybody thank you for having this forum I really appreciate it I'm a small business owner in railroad square I've been there since 1999 and honestly I've never seen it as bad as it is and Chris you and I talked about the numbers went down but in our area we have a lot of homeless services but I've never seen camps under the like actual tents under the freeways and the police bless their heart they're trying I mean I know that I talk to them and they amazingly won't go out there until they make sure they secure services to offer to the people they went out there there was 22 people in there four of them were not eligible for services for having had issues because people have issues I understand that so that left 18 people and out of all that 6 people wanted services and they had 10 beds so I love the fact that we spend a fortune trying to get all this together but it's not working I mean I would encourage like to think about the program at the Palms I think it's an amazing program I donated a bunch of stuff there it's a county city state federal all got together and really did something wonderful out there I don't know if encampments are the thing but something like that really seemed to work out well and I would just also say that the encampments under the freeways as a business owner it's really difficult for us I got young girls who went out and they get hassled and it's really an issue I know there's not a lot you can do because it's a multifaceted solution I know the police are really trying I know you guys are trying and there's a lot of issues to go with it but programs that actually put people in rooms seem to be helpful I'm done thank you thank you Josh Celeste Austin last night the living room program was invited to the human rights commission and we presented there for the commissioners and talked about our program as well as housing as a basic right and a basic need for all other basic needs and survival needs that you've heard individuals who are living with this challenge being homeless of some of the things that are just necessary to survive I applaud everyone who is here at 10 minutes to 7 who is concerned and working on this issue it's multifaceted it's complicated there are many moving parts and as a service provider I get to do service and work with people directly to try to make a small difference in their lives the living room program our executive director was here our president of the board was here because we want to show up and let you know that we do care and that we're doing things to ease the adversity of homelessness whenever we can collaborate it's always I think useful and helpful because we need each and every one of us to come together at different tables and talk about solutions that are going to be beneficial to the individuals who are experienced homelessness as well as to members of our community thank you thank you Ms. Austin Xavier Nazario good evening I am on the community advisory board for the city of Santa Rosa and I felt compelled to speak up today and I want to thank everyone who hung in there to the very end what I would like to make is just the recommendation I'd love to see some public comment at the beginning of these meetings instead of the very end we had a lot of interested people here that wanted to speak and I think they for whatever reasons had to leave before they had an opportunity to speak the one idea I don't have all the answers I wish I did but the one solution that I have and I've mentioned it before is every day I walk down Mendocino I walk down College Avenue and I pass these huge houses with one or two people working in them whether they are law firms or other services accountants and they are these massive pieces of property with just a couple people working in them and I'd love to see an initiative where we get those people into the vacant businesses that are in our business core and move families or subdivide properties into homes to make it more affordable for people to live here I'd like to leave with that comment thank you that's all the speaker cards I have council are there any questions or comments at this point okay so a couple of things have been mentioned tonight that I hope we as a council can agree to pursue in the coming meetings and I'd like to ask the council first of all to support me in inviting the Board of Supervisors at some point I don't know whether it's the next meeting or a future meeting but the Board of Supervisors to join us around this table or another table maybe bigger than this can we agree on that I see nodding heads thank you do you need a motion I don't think so but thanks for asking so I appreciate a lot of the comments that we've heard tonight and obviously there are a lot of various interests some of those are competing interests some of those are seeking the same outcome but have different ways of getting there it is a multifaceted problem that's going to take multifaceted solutions and I think I heard both of those those phrases used tonight we obviously have a ways to go we haven't solved this problem I'm not sure that there's a community that has but we are working hard on it and with that I'm going to ask for some suggestions for next steps and what our next meeting ought to be I think that what I would encourage both of our staffs to do is to think about that question about how can we better collaborate what do we need to do to that we're not already doing to create that collaboration how can elected officials facilitate that and whether that's coming together as elected officials or getting out of the way I'm not sure what the answer is there but I would like to have some feedback from the staff at the next meeting and I'm open to suggestions on what else we can be talking about at that point what are some reasonable goals I'm not sure if at that meeting or at a subsequent meeting but from the comments that I've heard from the public both tonight and prior I think that it would be prudent for the council to have a conversation explicitly outlining what exactly is happening with encampments what are the rules or regulations that are out there right now what potential future direction is there and give some clarity both to the misconceptions and the proper understanding of what is happening with encampments around the city and I'm not sure what the county is doing as well could be beneficial for us to listen to that as well Miss Combson I'm open to any conversation that talks about how it is that we come together and work together as municipalities and how we effectively use the resources we have without duplication of services how we make sure that the funding stream is going where we need it to go I'm a strong advocate of the housing first model as I know my colleagues are and I am really looking forward to how we do that with attention to the low barrier shelter concerns what are we doing for people who have partners, property and three piece possessions, partners and property for making sure that those folks have available shelter sites so how we come together around doing housing first like housing first is intended I also have some concerns about how we are doing maintenance of persons who are homeless until they can be sheltered and that may be the encampment of conversation but we clearly have maintenance issues with people who are not yet sheltered and for who may bed is not yet available and the list that I heard as people were talking were bathrooms, storage charging a phone and a safe place to sleep until there is a shelter bed available or something available so how we are going to do that whether again it's CHAP or something else I think we need to have that conversation I have some concern about some legal issues I've been looking at Boise I've been looking at Jones I've been looking at the number of the legal issues around homelessness I think that we need to inform the community as well regarding some of the legal issues so I think it would be helpful to have some conversation around the legal issues and again we're as a city coming up on our funding cycle I am hesitant to delay moving forward until after our funding cycle is over so I'm looking for how we can piggyback some of the programs that we're funding with the county how we can get some of our RFPs out in time to get the funding that we need for a variety of programs that are not for profits in time to include them in the current year's funding cycle that's my list thank you Mr. Mayor mine's more I was hoping for more information and it might be what was discussed prior to me getting this meeting but the shortfall in the ESG funding do we have a dollar figure for that I thought the gap is not $782,000 like the presentation Mr. City Manager from Director Gwine that is the number with the City of Santa Rosa we need to come up with $782,000 to cover the shortfall of ESG not to the city specifically so that's what I would like to know let me know what that figure is how big is the net that we have to crack and if we don't what are the consequences to the services that we are currently providing so that'd be one of the second one I brought this one up to the expansion of a shelter capacity a housing focus shelter including what are the costs for housing navigators and for diversion programs those are some concrete things that we say if we want this there's this price tag attached to it and regarding no place like home I would like to know for the City of Santa Rosa if we're looking for shovel ready projects and I'm looking towards you Mike what can we do as elected do we need to locate projects what can we actively do versus being said the issues are being looked at that we could potentially be doing right now if I heard December of 2017 there'll be a little bit more concrete I've gone to two of Senator McGuire's presentations on this so I have the concept but again working together specific concrete things what can we do to help that effort and the last one is the single resident occupancies similar to the Palms because I know that's one of our housing action plans what can we specifically be doing now is looking at council electives looking at other locations similar to the Palms to convert to SROs because I know it's on our housing action plan but does our staff have enough resources are the things the electives can be doing with our resources to try to identify those locations to get the funding towards permanent supportive housing thank you for those ideas any other comments questions the subject of encampments has been brought up several times tonight and we have no sanctioned encampments that I know of in the city of Santa Rosa we do have 40 some unsanctioned encampments that have been identified and the council's been talking about these the community has been talking about these for quite a while and I know that we are looking at dealing with some of those and I'd like to ask staff to talk about what those plans are at this point briefly the intention of a strategic plan to address the health and well-being of those experiencing homelessness as well as the neighborhood that the unsanctioned encampments reside is a program where we're trying to model what we do with the rail line and with the creeks and waterways and that is in cooperation with the homeless outreach service team host Santa Rosa police department other professionals is to actively engage those in those locations that we've identified as encampments that have 10 or more we think there's at least 13 of those in the city of Santa Rosa and invite folks into service the skill set is a diversion specialist it's a person on the Catholic Charity staff that has a very intimate conversation with the person who is experiencing homelessness might we reconnect them to the support network is that a family is that a friend is that even a friend who has a bacon couch might we provide them with a hotel voucher just to secure them get them used to perhaps enjoying a space around them and intensively engage them during that period of time and then as well as the consideration of expanding our shelter network of the notion we have the staff is city council counties currently support a 50 bed winter shelter we could consider making that a year round shelter and look at how we staff it and ramp up for a housing first engagement tool there and then address the health and safety issues the fire risk if there's high weeds if there's sanitation issues things of that nature and so of the 13 encampments we've identified that have ten or more residents currently we're looking at addressing the first two which the highest risk was on the spreadsheet we shared with the council and that is the farmers lane extension and the underpasses of the 101 freeway so that's a very brief overview of the pilot program we're suggesting we take some initial steps with thank you any questions on that council miss combs I just wondered if you could clarify the document that we got said secure the location and then it mentioned as you have just mentioned sanitation health fire safety issues what is the proposed plan for how you're going to do those things if you could just clarify what does it what do those things mean the secure the location means to address the fire and health risk and so for example the farmers lane extension it's been a very wet winter the grasses are very high they'll be turning brown soon we just heard from speakers tonight and we've observed that folks are making campfires up there they're had propane cooking and so addressing the fire hazard by abating weeds clearing some brush up to six feet for example that would be an example of secure thank you and for the sanitation issues right so the we've been invited our partners to do an environmental health risk and so depending on that risk we would work with them to determine how we address that whether it's removing trash debris things of that nature so all of this if I may we want to address all of those also we have been notified of some of the serious safety concerns again both for the residents and for the surrounding neighborhood and so we do have liability concerns and so we do want to move forward to address some of those critical safety concerns is the plan to remove people and is the or is the plan to provide safe temporary shelter at that location or is the plan to I mean I heard something about a hotel voucher but previously we've had the number at that location down to seven so how are you planning if the plan is to remove people what is the plan to enforce what the limit on the number of people who can be there is so again we're going through a pilot program some of this is going to be discovered as we go through the farmers lane extension as was mentioned by the city attorney has a whole slew of liability issues for the city including the location and the safety of folks crossing to get to that location our desire would no longer to see that particular space occupied by anybody but again we weren't in a strategic process around that last year we got down to seven and all of a sudden the population went up so again I think what we're approaches the housing first model but there are significant issues to that site that continue and especially the location and that's why it rose to the top we were looking at the vulnerability index for the folks in the location as well as to the surrounding community is there a plan to find a city location that is an acceptable camping location while folks wait for housing as the mayor said that currently there is not sanctioned encampment there is not an attempt to pursue encampment areas in the city I heard you say there wasn't one and then I heard you say there's not an interest or an intent to pursue that is against city ordinance as it stands right now and then you know you obviously have asked for that conversation to move forward but currently we would be then condoning breaking that particular ordinance so if council wants to take action at a future meeting to give a different direction to staff that's a different conversation but right now staff is not in the business of breaking ordinances without that direction without council guidance so one of the things I'd like to add to our future conversation list is recognizing an opportunity site so that if we have to relocate people because it's an unsafe setting and we don't have and there's an and and we don't have beds for people to go to a place where we can direct people and I believe and correct me if I'm wrong but the idea here is to offer an alternative to people living in these unsanctioned encampments and those alternatives would range from as Mr. Gwine said a friend's couch to shelter beds at Sam Jones that have been expanded on a very round basis you know all of this is being done with the idea of the housing first model but we're also talking about some serious short calls financially at the same time so obviously we have challenges ahead but in addition to talking we are taking some steps here to try and address the issues come up and we're able to meet here again so the council is going to be needing to deal with that in the coming weeks the Board of Supervisors is too so I want to talk about a next meeting and we've actually got a date that the council has agreed on that we all figured we could do which is July 31st that's after our budget process and a lot will happen between now and then really appreciate the participation of county staff here and I hope that you will be here again the next time we meet I don't want to do that just to meet them if we need an interim meeting between now and when we get together with the Board of Supervisors let's have that meeting if we don't let's not the next meeting could be with the Board of Supervisors plural to get together and figure out whether one or the other of those is the best way to proceed and if the council has any better ideas I'm open to suggestions alright with that thank you everyone again and we'll see you soon