 It looks like we've got everybody here which from our staff staff needs I believe we're all here which is great thank you staff for being available this afternoon and I will go ahead and call the meeting to order good afternoon welcome to our 5 p.m. May 18th special meeting of the city council I have a few announcements and then we will move on to our meeting today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website cityofsatacruse.com all council members are participating in this meeting remotely I want to thank the public for staying home to do today's city council meeting if you wish to comment on today's agenda item call in at the beginning of the item using your screen please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone please note there is a delay in streaming so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device you may miss your opportunity to speak when it is time for public comment line on your phone to raise your hand when it is your time to speak during public comment you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted the timer will then be set to two minutes you may hang up once you have commented on your item of interest and I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll thank you mayor councilmember Watkins Calentary Johnson here Brown here vice mayor Brunner present you have one item and Bonnie I will have to ask you to if you could possibly I did not bring this down with me high reverse order and do the proclamation at the end of the at the end of the meeting Bonnie yeah yeah and I can email it to you please yeah please email that to me thank you did not make it in my briefcase okay we will go ahead and our general business item first tonight and this will be item number two on our agenda and this is a item on Santa Cruz County's housing for a healthy Santa Cruz a fridge strategic framework for dressing homelessness in Santa Cruz County for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you want to comment on now it's the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order will be a presentation of the staff of the item by our staff followed by additional presentation by our county colleagues and then we will have questions from the council we will then take public comment and then return to the council go ahead and turn this over Lee Butler our director of planning and community development on hold on on and homeless response and tonight's discussion and action tonight would be to accept and file the final version of the housing for a healthy Santa Cruz a strategic framework for dressing homelessness in Santa Cruz and I'll turn this over to Lee and I just also want to welcome Randy Morris and Robert Ratner from the county of Santa Cruz and they will be doing the main part of the presentation tonight and I just want to thank the council for being available tonight to share about this important framework that is important for everyone in our community countywide but also important for our planning efforts in our work that are regarding homelessness in the city so we are you thank you mayor Myers and good evening council members I have the pleasure of introducing this evening Randy Morris at the county he is the director of human services and Robert Ratner who is the housing for health director at the county and we've been working with the county very closely for quite some time as they have developed this their three year and three year strategic plan and six month action plan they'll talk to you about how their six month plans will be rotating as they move through the three year strategic plan process and I just want to extend thanks to the to Robert and Randy to the both of them for the coordination that they've had on a regular basis I think Randy's been with the county for a little bit for a year and Robert started about the same time that I started in my role and we have had many many meetings together whether it's with the two by two committees or the homeless action partnership our communities continue to work together to make sure that we have the same team of care or just on a regular basis we are trading emails and jumping on the phone and getting thank you well back at Julie for the partnership it's been great working with you since you were assigned this lovely task by your city to address this a vexing issue that it really is a humanitarian crisis and I want to thank you for your time and thank you to the community like Santa Cruz and many others were cost of living is high and this issue is printed it really challenges the best of us staff myself included in elected officials in city and county to navigate this is an issue that's profound it's large it's big you know and sometimes what we have control over is how we work together and not some of the bigger issues and I just hope we can kind of lean into that and I hope what you hear tonight helps give a frame for you to see how we're trying to maximize working together I want to be humble that I the human services director here for 15 months I started one month BP before pandemic and so my tenure here has been in the pandemic and I'm getting used to these video meetings which is unfortunate I wish we could be in person I'm going to just say a few introductory marks I'm really going to turn it over to Dr. Robert Ratner who was hired and as you all attract Lee started in November and I do want to make sure you're when your constituents listening your other staff on the phone we did really do a community hire and your city manager Martin Bernal is actually on the hiring panel that selected Robert it was very important that we had city and community and county representatives I want to just share a little bit about human services questions come a white county human services if you do not know this there is actually no mandate from the federal state government about what the county is supposed to do around homelessness nor any directive about what county operation is supposed to manage homelessness and that is one issue that confound city is trying to figure out who do I talk to with the county and of counties don't even know and look to the state and said who's supposed to run this thing so this county like many counties and avoided stepping up and taking on responsibility to really lean into this issue until our current CAO Carlos Palacios was appointed this community before Carlos is not the only community where the county shied away from stepping into this rabbit hole because once you get involved you are engaged for the long run so I want to recognize and I appreciate Martin Bernal your manager city manager who's given me a lot of history of what it's been like before Carlos when there was the county not being very responsive and even since Carlos we have a lot of work to do but we're still trying to making up for a lot of years of not being a partner to you all and Robert and I recognize that we've inherited that by just a touch of introduction to county human service three main operating divisions and the fourth which was added to our plate by the decision of our board of supervisors and our county administrator Carlos is what you'll hear from today and that's Robert the director of housing for health division but the other three are the foster care division the employment and benefits divisions programs like workforce development board, Medi-Cal, CalWorks, CalFresh food stamps and also an aging and disability programs like IHSS and APK. I want you to know that those are the programs I run that in partnership with the health office that runs mental health services and environmental health services together we sort of create the safety net in county and that's the reason why our CAO wanted this office to be not in the CAO's office at ministry above but really embedded in where the services get provided county level and that's why the office was transferred to us in November. So now to get ready to go up Robert I want to remind your council I would be very impressed if you remember this with the volume of duties you face that back November 10th and I had to go look at my calendar myself I was in front of your council on zoom with my colleague the assistant county administrator Elisa Benson on November 10th we're in front of you to share what was a draft of what today is a final plan. The very short version of a very long story is when Carlos was appointed CAO created his strategic plan said we need to lean into addressing the issue of homelessness is getting worse and a national consulting forum called Focus Strategies was hired and it was really under my colleague Elisa Benson's leadership in partnerships with cities and counties to lead to that draft plan that was presented to your council on November 10th. We shared with your council then that we'd be back in front of you at a date future which is now today that we would work with your city manager's office. As Lee mentioned in his introduction we're very closely with mayor Myers and vice mayor Bruner and they're coming so we work with you prior to the transition of you from there to work on that draft to make sure that what we put in front of you is really representative of city's interests. I do want to take a minute to share with your council all of you and the public watching what is not being asked of you tonight that's almost more important because every time the topic of homelessness comes in front of a legislative body it brings lots of people concerned about what decisions might get made it is not a question tonight of any city budget priorities proposing any city budget money anywhere any policy priorities picking or choosing one priority over another or any citing issues none of that is part of what we're talking about today rather this is what is often referred to as a collective impact model let's get all the stakeholders who are interested in a vexing complicated issue like this to have one common way to look at the issue to think about the issue to talk about the issue so that we maximize collaboration minimize confusion and finger-pointing so hopefully that makes sense that i think it's called in file mayor Myers so hopefully this is a soft ball which is normally not what you have in front of you when the issue of homelessness in front of you it's really just asking us to use this framework and Robert and I are happy to be back in front of your council when there are decision points that do involve budget and policy where there's partnership between county and city i want to end my comments before turning over Robert to share what in my sort of the end of my career i've been in the field of health and human services for 30 i can't believe it i'm finding there are few and fewer mentors and i'm one of the more seasoned ones so i guess i have to lead into that role i have seen moments like this in my career in health and human services where there is a tremendous amount of human suffering human beings that were responsible to are not getting served well and there's a lot of finger-pointing and frustration and not enough resources to do what we want to do in county government and i believe this is the case for city government when you're dealing with an issue that's this historic this complex that really is a byproduct of decades of public policy at the federal and state level in some local we are in a moment where the city and county to death not call this what we are in a moment is where the federal government and the state government are starting to recognize and if you haven't read the governors may revise that came out there is more and more recognition that the federal government state and government want to invest money in this because this issue is a national crisis and is particularly pronounced in california and is particularly pronounced where cost of living is high like in places like santa cruz so i have seen this over and over in my career and i just want to share take it or leave it when the federal government state government starts thinking about investing in solutions to issues like homelessness they often choose to pilot money they don't just give the bank out there they want to see and strategically invest and see where things are working and too many times i have seen that the federal government and state government has had to invest pilot money where collaboration is bad so i think we have all in our myopic seat spent a lot of time putting energy into trying to figure out why the other party isn't doing their job or has the money that we don't have and you know what we can go there but what i would really invite us to all think about is does that position us well or poorly for future potential investment opportunities and both county and city have spent time writing editorials writing talking points about why the other is the problem i we could we could go there but i think we should invest more time and energy in talking about where we have common ground which is none of us have the resources none of us have the solutions and let's aim to position ourselves for this new 12 plus billion dollars that the state's putting out and a presidential administration and a federal senate that might want to invest more i think we have the beginnings of a good plan the last many months have been very positive on the heels of a lot of challenges and i hope we can keep that trajectory going and i'm going to end by to see not on video but i'm going to call out your police and fire chief there is also a growing recognition that cities are bearing a profound burden in california because there is a lack of services we can spend time not tonight unless you have questions about why we are not funded appropriately to deliver those services but we share the challenge financial and policy crisis so let's work on it together let's go after funding together and i hope what robert's going to present now will provide a framework that's agreeable to you all and i will stay on board here and robert and i happen to answer any questions of the council and will follow your lead mayor mayors on how you do public comment if we're supposed to respond or not i know difference if you do it differently but well you kind of catch the the vibe of what we're trying to get i hear that word here a lot i'm trying to catch that vibe and i'll turn it over to robert thank you so much randy great opening comments for us all to to think about tonight robert welcome thank you all for having me i'm really looking forward to getting to work with all of you on the issue of making sure everyone has a home which is a fundamental part of our framework working together to build a coalition as randy alluded to to make sure everyone has a home that's safe and healthy to live in i'm going to pull up some slides that will give you all an overview of the framework that is on your agenda today to accept and file and then we want to make sure we have time for questions and discussion with council members in the public so pull up slides for everybody all right and you'll see that okay yeah it's in presentation format robert if you want to switch it once i get still there in presentation mode all right let me uh try to share differently okay we're working over a three-year period uh january 20 21 through january 2024 and we refer to the framework as housing for healthy santa cruz intentionally because our perspective in doing this work is that we need to bring people communities safe and healthy for everyone and housing is really an integral part of that uh randy and i both work in the county human services department and randy spoke to the role of human services in our community but we also work closely with other county department particularly the health department um and profits and interests and stakeholders li alluded to the fact that in our community we have something called the consume of care which is a fairly mandated um entity that is supposed to bring people together to address homelessness and in santa cruz that entity has been called the homeless action partnership so our new division is helping to provide staff support the homeless action part and we'll be doing that in an ongoing way i was going to cover in the um presentation today uh randy alluded to the fact that we presented to uh i wasn't here but elisa benson and randy presented the initial draft of the framework to the city council in november and we collected feedback and made some changes to the original document given over the framework talk about how some of the stories uh that we used to describe the issue of housing and homelessness may impact our ability to make progress and then share some initial analyses around funding gaps if we were to make the investments that this framework calls for where are we in terms of resources to get to the goals then highlight some of the elements of what we're trying to do in this first six month period which is from january through june 30th and uh as lee alluded to the framework calls for us to develop collaborative six month plans um over the three-year period so we're in that first six month period right now so some of the changes we made based on the feedback we received were uh the original document was very text heavy and didn't have a lot of graphics so please make it easier to read and understand we we made some effort that and we shortened it and used a lot more graphics there was a strong feedback that we needed to spend more time talking about the major contributor to homelessness being the gaps between the cost of housing in our community and incomes that people have and then how we work together at a close back gap is going to be really critical to addressing homelessness there was another point that the community members raised is that it's a lot easier to prevent someone from losing their home than to try to help someone get back into housing so we need to figure out how do we shift our efforts and energy to preventing people from losing their homes as part of the overall framework the original drafts and many people's minds didn't speak enough to healthcare issues and how they can contribute many people in the community called out mental health and substance use sometimes behavioral health is the other term that choose issues and how they can contribute to difficulties and people getting and keeping housing so we added some more information about that in the framework and highlight it's really important that we include improvements in how we connect housing with behavioral health services as part of our overall collective impact effort what do we talk about how we're going to address encampments and problems that come up when people are in house and are trying to live in an unchartered situation that's been added into our framework and we certainly have work to do with our city partners and others on on that issue and then another recommendation that really came out is include the voice of people who've lived through or are experiencing homelessness and being part of taking their their perspective into account as we try to address this issue together with them this is the Santa Cruz County point time count of the number of households experiencing homelessness and then the goal and to get to by 2024 we heard feedback that some people in the community felt like our goals were not ambitious enough and some felt like they were not realistic so i think we're in the in the middle space between being uh too ambitious and not ambitious enough so we're aiming for a decrease in the number of unsheltered people and households experiencing homelessness cutting that in half and then cutting by one fourth the number of households and people experiencing homelessness overall in the community and the framework as we do this work together around some guiding principles and they're highlighted here on this slide one that i i continue to forget to change but it says date driven it's also time bound and data driven so using information to make good decisions specific time frames for us to complete activities and document those in a transparent way county wide scope really thinking about this issue across the whole community and making sure we address the differences that are present geographically and with different subgroups but really thinking county wide system making sure that we're coming up with actionable steps and things we can do to make progress focusing on the people who are really impacted by living without homes and incorporating them into the work so having a person-centered approach looking at equity and inclusion as we think about how do we approach this issue if if you look at the data on who's more likely to experience homelessness it's groups that are often overly stigmatized um and who often are impacted by long-term historical discrimination and isolation so we really need to account for that in our work and then the systems approach alludes to the fact that we can't just invest in one area without investing or thinking about how investing that area links with other parts of the overall effort so for example if we just invest in outreach but there's no aware for outreach providers to connect people to we haven't really used a matic approach we haven't been very strategic so we have to really think about investing in ways that help people prevent loss of their homes or if they're currently without a home how do we help them go from an outreach connection to a permanent home so along that path we need to make sure we're investing all those different strategies and interventions which the material in the has recommendations from the framework around some targets for us these targets are based on some analyses that focus strategies this outside consulting group that came to do some work in Santa Cruz they looked at our data from something called the county homeless management information system and if we could move in the direction they recommend they think we can get to those targets that alluded to earlier of reducing the number of people experiencing homelessness by a quarter so it calls for us to increase the number of our temporary housing beds from 440 and this was before the pandemic we've significantly increased our temporary housing which includes shelter and transitional housing as a result of the pandemic but when the pandemic funds are not available anymore we're going to go back to you and maybe even we'll see if we don't invest more in temporary housing we'll see a reduction from that 440 but calls for us to have a goal of 600 temporary housing beds rapid rehousing is a particular strategy that combines services with some funding to help people move into housing and pay rent for a defined period of time not ongoing but it helps people transition back into a home and increase their income to be able to hold on to that housing and then permanent supportive housing is deeply affordable housing typically seniors and people with disabilities coupled with some services to help them move into those housing opportunities but also to support them to maintain that housing over the long run so in addition to building out that capacity the framework calls for us to reduce the length of time people are in the different programs above and increase the number of people that were actually able to help program into permanent housing so if we can accomplish all those things we can get to our goals this i do want to say this model that focus strategies came up with is one potential model for getting to those goals i think the core thing that they're trying to get us to do through the recommendations is monitor our progress over time looking at data seeing if we make investments in one area are we getting the kinds of outcomes that we want and if not making adjustments so we can get to the ultimate of helping as many people as possible get back into their own homes some of the key areas for action in the framework alluded to this as collective impact i think of it as building a coalition or developing our community capacity to respond together to this issue so that's one of our our key task in our new division and partnership with the city of Santa Cruz and others preventing homeless increasing connections between people who are those who are able to provide support and connections to resources to get can get people back on a path to permanent housing and thriving again in their lives and then expanding our permanent housing capacity overall the the framework calls for us to get to some of the root causes of and we call out four in particular one is the housing affordability gap that i alluded to the gap between the incomes of people in our community and the cost of housing that's bold faced on the slide because it's a number one issue that was called out in our community information gathering process we really need to lean in and and deal with that issue but another things on here health issues and how they impact people's ability to access and keep housing making sure that people have supportive connections there's a term that's often used called self-sufficiency and i think it's human beings and none of us are fully self-sufficient so we all need some level of supportive connections to stay safe and in home and to thrive so how do we help create positive supportive connections for people that may have lost them and then another contributed to homelessness i think is a sense of loss of hope and purpose both at the kind of collective level as a society and us as leaders elected officials if we don't believe we can make a difference if we don't have a sense of where we're going and sense of purpose we're certainly not going to get there and that can manifest in the experiences of people who are on house if they if they don't have hope and a sense that there's meaning it's much more difficult to get them back on a path to permanent housing so we all need to work on the holding on the hope and a sense of purpose as we tackle this issue together i wanted to share a few slides just to give a more in-depth perspective on the housing affordability gap and this slide comes from a report by the california housing partnership coalition it's a statewide group that occasionally does report cards on housing affordability gaps at different communities in different communities so what this slide shows to me is that in Santa Cruz county and this is data from 2000 low-income renter households that were spending more than 30 of their income on housing costs and there's a national standard promulgated by hug that when you have to spend more than 30 percent of your income on housing you're more at risk of having challenges related to your housing um there's a higher level if you're spending more than 50 percent of your income toward housing that's considered severely housing cost or rent burdened and that's the group that's the most likely to lose their homes from an event that puts stress on the family or the household and that's the group where we want to close that housing affordability gap the most so if we want if we were able to pull out a magic wand and create as much affordable housing as we needed we would need 10,150 new affordable housing units in the county as a whole and you'll see later that our our housing goals are much more modest than that but that that's the dream uh the group of folks who are much more likely to experience homelessness are households that are categorized extremely low income often that's seniors people with disabilities students people working minimum wage jobs that's the group that's most at risk of losing their housing in the high cost market like cruise and that's the group that you can see is the most likely to be severely cost burdened so if we're going to really get to the root causes of homelessness we got to figure out how to close that cost we tell each other in the press and in our presentations and in our private conversations and and the stories often impact how we think about and how we do this work and there were a few a few stories that I've heard in my six months working in the county that I think are worth us reflecting on and maybe changing the narrative or the way we think about it uh one story that I've heard here in other communities we we've got such a long-term housing problem Robert you just said we need 10,000 new affordable housing units there's no way we can get there we need to do shelter now and we'll get to that later to get people into safe shelter as much as possible but we need to do that with the end goal in mind so when we invest in shelter it has to be a smart investment in shelter that's um resource adequately to help people get to permanent housing so we've got to have the investment in shelter along with hopefully get people into permanent housing if we invest in shelter alone we will still have many people experiencing homelessness so for for example in the city of new york where there's a right to shelter they still have one of the highest populations of people experiencing homelessness in the country so shelter alone isn't going to resolve homelessness it's the shelter plus the services and permanent housing resources uh three they come here for the services I've um been involved with trying to address the issue of homelessness in counties in the state of california and I haven't been in a county where I haven't heard the the perception that people come to this community for the services and I think it can't be true that every county has people coming to them for the services um the data statewide and Santa Cruz shows that about three quarters of people who experience homelessness law in the community where they're coming to access services um the state also recently put a web put on their website something called the homelessness data information system so it's a statewide repository of data from every county continuum of care or city continuum of care related to addressing homelessness and they pull all that data together and what it generally shows is that in four to ten percent of people who actually come in for services and touch an agency that puts data in their system have also been in another community so I think the data tells us that the vast majority of people experiencing homelessness are losing their housing where they're coming to ask for support um there are certainly anecdotes and stories of people who've been in another community who've come here but I think we have to step back look at the big picture data to to fully understand um the impact and if we're going to try to prevent people from losing their housing we have to have a better understanding of who are the people in Santa Cruz County who've lost their housing who become homeless and what could we have done to prevent them from losing that housing um and then I think another common perception is that because encampments are so visible and they can be very large that's been the case in the Santa Cruz there's a perception that that's the full story of uh and the breath of people experiencing homelessness and it's um untrue in most communities around the state that the people who are living unhoused in encampments are typically a small fraction of the people experiencing homelessness um most communities it's a quarter or less of people who are living in encampments that are actually in the overall homeless population people in recreational vehicles people not living in encampments people living in abandoned buildings their own cars so I think we need to remember that the the numbers of people experiencing homelessness and the the diverse range of sub-populations is not represented just by the people living in encampments one more slide it's really dense and we'll make it available but one it ties back to housing goals and how the state of the california and we at the local level try to track our housing production goals and Ali is someone who's worked in housing and planning is very familiar with what's called the housing element and regional housing needs allocation so these are goals established in eight-year cycles of how much housing production do we need at the local level for certain income groups and I intentionally highlighted the problem is for households who are living in that very low income how many housing units we're aiming to develop and make available in this community over an eight-year period so remember if we had the the pure goal if we were going to help all the households that were paying more than 30 income toward housing we would have 10,000 new affordable housing units so this eight-year goal is much more conservative of 734 units and this shows that we're close to the end of that eight-year period and for the group that we need the most housing development for we've got 76 of 734 units flying in santa cruz county and you can see how the different jurisdictions in our community are doing relative to the housing goals we've done a much better job in some of our jurisdictions in creating above moderate income housing but we've done a very poor job in creating the kinds of housing they're really going to make a dent and preventing ending homelessness so this is something that the first thing in on how do we get more housing for extremely low income and very low income members of our community I mentioned earlier that we did a preliminary financial analysis looking at how much money is coming into the community as a whole not necessarily just to our division but to the county overall and how much is available different types of interventions related to housing and homelessness doesn't represent all of the places where we spend resources to try to address homelessness but some of the major areas are outreach to connect people temporary housing shelter and transitional housing the rapid rehousing permits for housing and affordable housing and the blue shows the estimate on an annual basis if we were to hit the targets that are listed on the bottom of the graph and the orange shows how much we have available currently and how much of that that money the available money is one time funding so the overall picture here is that if we were to hit the framework goals we would need 65 million dollars a year of 31 million currently and of that 31 million 10 million is one time funding so I think it goes back to what Randy alluded to we have to make some really difficult decisions with limited resources around how do we invest it given the scale of the need and the cost to really hit these targets is much higher than what we have in terms of resource availability the federal government and the state government are ramping up resources and I think we we will have some decisions to make around how do we prioritize among these different needs I do want to say that on this graph it shows the two places where we have the biggest financial gaps are affordable housing and shelter and transitional housing and so as we're thinking about future investment those are the biggest financial holes based on this initial analysis of what we have in the community and then Leah alluded to what's in this first six month plan and wanted to share some of the highlights one is Randy and I and our whole effort being more transparent about where money is going and what kind of results we're getting we're really focusing in on helping our guests at our COVID-19 shelters to get into permanent housing and not have to return to homelessness so we're investing a lot of one-time federal resources to keep our COVID shelters going as long as we can but also to help people get into permanent housing before we need to close those down focusing on supporting our current temporary housing programs to get better outcomes so increasing the dollars and resources we give to those programs so they can have more positive results for the work that they're doing I wanted to mention that we're in the process of changing the homeless action partnership coalition governance structure. Leah and other the city have been involved with those conversations so we will be coming back to the city council with some recommendations around how do we change the structure and how we govern this work together we've been working with staff in the city on some encampment response protocols trying to clarify city and county roles and responsibilities and I think we're making good progress there there's some additional funding available at the state um $12 billion is proposed and there's a particular category of money called project home key to help us acquire properties and to make them available quickly as either temporary or permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness so there's some real opportunities for us in Santa Cruz to identify some sites before the next funding round becomes available there's a term called getting to zero and their national organization called community solutions that has promoted a data-informed coalition building model for getting the number of people in certain sub-populations experiencing homelessness down to zero so Santa Cruz county has been a part of that effort particularly around veterans and we also are really committed to working to make sure there are no families experiencing homelessness so included that in his proposed budget so there the work groups where people who are working with those sub- populations get together and try to unite our and integrate our efforts to look at the data and make it make it possible for us to get to a place where no one experiences homelessness for more than 30 days and then having more data available so there's the state database our team helps shift some of our data up to the state so people can look at some of that data but we also want to make it available locally for people to see what's happening with our investments uh what's the demographics of homelessness today how are things changing over time so we are working on that as well engage with the city and other partners to develop our priorities for the next six month plan and that is the end of the presentation I want to open it up for questions from the council and obviously a lot of work to do and just want to really recognize I think Randy some of your comments and Robert yours too that this is a humanitarian crisis it's it's bigger than any city or county in six um robert some of the numbers you've shown are pretty pretty sobering um and that you know many of these folks are they are our neighbors and our kids and our moms and dads and other people you know they're they're they're from our community and I think that's really important for people to understand and that um for years we just have not invested in the care piece of it and we also haven't invested in the infrastructure piece you know to distribute that's ability for people to have homes across our community so we're catching up on decades of both of those issues and we're unfortunately living that experience and the folks who are experiencing living that experience as well so I'll go ahead and open up to questions or comments from council and then for those of you who are here tonight from the public we will be having public comment on this and I did receive one request for extra time and we'll grant definitely won't be granting that during uh during the public comment time so for now I'll open up to council and again uh the the uh motion for tonight is is to accept this report uh we're not taking uh you know action on any kind of funding or as you know with the outlined earlier uh this is really a acceptance um of the report and um a chance for council to really check in uh regarding regarding the uh report contents and and uh tonight let me get my list up here councilmember Cummings robert and randy for that presentation um you know like a lot of those data points really highlight some you know important things we need to take into consideration around like what what's going to be needed in order to address this and you know I think mayor you know highlighted you know the fact that a lot of these people are from our community and so you know how many people may think that people are coming from different parts of the country for the services a lot of people accessing these services are people who became homeless in our community have been in our community um one thing that came up the last meeting in covid for example the the um the county was able to put up a website where people could go and find information about how to connect homeless people to resources I was just wondering if you all are going to be if there's a website now up um for you know all this work with more information how people can access services and what services are available um or if that's kind of in the works yeah thank you for that I would say there are websites but it's still in the works it's not to the degree that I would like it to be at um so the homeless action partnership to how to get help and the county human services department also has that same link um one of the the big things I think we're going to focus on x six month plan is what I call the kind of front door services or how we bring services to people and how we make the community aware of what's available so I appreciate you raising it I think we can do better um there's there's a lot of free guys and things out there that we're not keeping up to date so that that's something I think we really need to work on um we have information up there now I think we can learn from the the covid approach that was taken um to build out something that's going to take your question councilmember Cummings Robert's answer to circle back to what we're focused on in the first six months and that's transparency this is a super confusing issue and it's hard to understand where the money is going was one of the things Robert and I about where we're putting our money and I just wanted to use the moment to say it's complicated to figure out whether to take new money invest in administrative infrastructure that's needed to run the backbone of these systems because then that's money not going to direct services and I think Robert and I are much more interested in decision points to elected bodies into the community in full transparency so we can together make those decisions but I just kind of want to take the moment to say Robert and I have had a career we've been in well-resourced infrastructures and poorly resource infrastructures and it's never popular to say please pay for more government people but when you don't have enough people you just sometimes can't get the systems in place to have the data to have interest is just bring back to people when we have money when we're making those choices so people understand why and then people can hold us accountable months ahead to say okay we approved like our board approved the hiring of two analysts we haven't hired them yet but we're going to then deliver to the board when we're back in front of the board when we hired these analysts and this is what they're doing that we couldn't do before so I just want to use that moment to say we have meetings and points and one is better resourcing ourselves to deliver on on this complex program not just everything Robert listed I hope that's helpful but that's something we're grappling with but I wanted to highlight the process we're hoping to go through to be very honest about the process is there any way we can have those sent to us then would we be right to send it to Lee Lee and to Bonnie gets it that way we'll we'll get distributed and for us and thanks for acknowledging too that it that it will take a partnership and that it's more than the city and the county can deal with because I know it's you know not just a state but a national issue um I have a couple questions the first one is uh you said the goal is 600 beds Robert and we're and we're currently at 440 pre-covid what were we at during COVID I know you set up some you know temporary spots with the one-time funding yeah thank you for that um question council member uh and if everything was perfect we could have had a thousand bed but we never got to perfect and of the thousand some of those beds were set aside specifically for people who were exposed to COVID or came into contact so they weren't necessarily for people experiencing homelessness so that the maximum we had that were available for folks experiencing homelessness was essentially double I think we were around 880 beds can imagine that that's a huge reduction um that's going to happen when the COVID funding comes to an end and that's why this first six months we're really focused on what we've been calling the rehousing ways to help as many of those guests as possible get on a path to permanent housing um and overall I think at the end of the pandemic we will see that the overall effort um which we're hoping to get reimbursed by FEMA for is in the neighborhood of $40 and shelter and food so there's this amazing emergency response um that's allowed us to get people indoors but it's one-time emergency only so if we could sustain that level of investment over the long haul we'd really see the results that we need to get to okay so another question um and something else that I totally you know resonates with me is that it's way easier to prevent somebody um from losing their home than to get them back into housing obviously and just knowing that like middle income people like myself typically pay like 50% of our combined salary family income or whatever towards our housing um even if people have become unhoused living in our county is there any our county in other counties because it's really difficult to get back on your feet knowing how expensive it is it is here so like um you know other counties where the cost of living maybe isn't so high where somebody would have an opportunity to rent something that's a little you know less expensive is there any collaboration between counties at the state level yes yeah another another great question I was working in the San Francisco Bay area all home California that's trying to create that county um to county regional collaboration and uh because I'm aware of the leaders they're they're really interested in incorporating Santa Cruz into that we're in between two bays we have some of the Silicon Valley related stuff happening in Santa Cruz but we're also in the moderate so yes there are efforts to try to get coordination across counties and the data system that the state pulled together is so that at the state level we can start to look at trends between counties um I think your question also gets to when when you're having a conversation with somebody one on one about um and I can relate to this personally as well about where do you want to live and where are you willing to live there are difficult choices you have to make based on the income that you have at the moment the availability of housing the cost of that housing so I think part of our work to uh help people experiencing homelessness is to have that conversation with them and be realistic about the current housing market and the trade-offs because often if you if you grew up in Santa Cruz families here your roots are here your services are here things that matter to you are here but there isn't a place that you can afford that's the kind of conversation that our frontline staff are having to have with people um and folks make we all make our own choices about what makes the most sense for us at a given time but absolutely that's got to be part of the conversation um trying to help people weigh those trade-offs and you know and you go can you can we help you either through applying for the limited affordable housing or employment or living with others or are there places where you could relocate to be with family or friends or find something more affordable that's all really need to be it all needs to be on the table and um I hope that across the state we can do a better job of hitting arena housing goals because frankly this state also has a website where they're tracking those housing element goals statewide and it doesn't look good but as a state we're not doing a good job of hitting our targets and the group that we're doing the poorest and developing housing for is the group that's the most likely to be homeless so statewide we I mean even though some of our neighboring counties might have some more affordable housing stock it's still quite limited so it's something we really got to push forward on across the state and I don't want to harm the conversation but one final kind of question e-comony thing is that I didn't hear you I didn't hear you say like um you know a little bit about you know we're talking about sorry a lot of parts of my prevention but um I was wondering um I know some other council members and I are really particularly interested in investment in youth and um also some of us are really interested in prevention of substance abuse before it becomes an issue and and also you know destigmatizing mental health um and so just it's more of a thing than something I think that's it. Appreciate that comment and we we could talk a lot but I would say that um what you're bringing up for me with that is that prevention comes in many forms what one way to think about prevention is oh someone can't pay their rent so let's help them pay the rent but actually prevention if you think about it more broadly um how do we reduce stigma um so that young people are willing to go and get mental health services before they're in a situation where they they can't afford the rent how do we do more uh education um the needs of young people who are students um and how to support them so all those things can be considered a kind of broader lens on prevention and I think we have a lot of work to do there but also just um being more targeted with our very limited prevention dollars for people who you know they they can't afford the rent how do we help them address that and help them get the income they need to to keep the place so I'm with you on trying to figure out how to go upstream thank you very much thanks everybody. Mayor Myers you're muted if you call the next. That is uh councilmember Coventry Johnson. Thank you um yes I would also like to thank both of you for this presentation tonight and everyone that you work with at the county at the city for the tremendous amount of effort it takes to just get to where we are right now to have a comprehensive plan that the board of supervisors has agreed to that cities are getting behind so thank you for all the work. I have some questions I'll try to keep them concise so that other council members in the public have some time as well uh you know you mentioned funding that will be coming our way we've heard some pretty big dollar amounts I wonder if you could share your thoughts around how should we how should we be thinking what step should we be taking to make sure that we are ready to receive these funds and we are competitive to receive these funds. Robert can I do a big political cue up and then you do the details. Okay let's stop finger pointing let's stop writing editorials about the other party the problem let's stop creating talking points that the other party's not doing their job so that's been the history and I and I really mean that because that's public information and I worry that the state's going to look at that history and say yes wait till they get their act together a little bit. On the positive think we are well positioned to have this framework to your point thank you for the acknowledgement I want to give credit to Alyssa Benson my colleague who did the heavy lifting and passed this baton nine tenths done to me and Robert so there's a lot of work I think this creates a framework that shows we have a plan and then a process comment I'll turn it over to Robert to details the May revise unveiled a profound investment in the safety net in California profound so it's going to be an unusual process between now and July 1st so the process is you know I think Lee mentioned in his introduction we are on speed dial as staff to staff Robert Lee get most the credit for their collaboration we have the two by two forum represented by your mayor and vice mayor and that's Sonya and Donna now we will be talking a lot to answer your question in detail as this plays out but I'll turn it over to Robert because there are some very very key investments what I think is maybe one of the most vexing and one we're probably we need if it's unincorporated the board if it's a city jurisdiction a city council and that is if some of this money allows us to purchase a site in a city jurisdiction you all as electives know very well Lee as the planning director know very well the challenge that's involved in taking on a location so that might be something we need to really urgently talk about if we have an opportunity that if we don't figure it out and work through the citing issues we might lose the window and we leave money on the table so stay tuned a lot of dialogue between now and July 1st budget passing and I you know and I do want to like not over talk my comments about what not to do but there's so there is too much of that and I just think that's so short-sighted it's not that it's not correct there's been a lot of blame to go around but it's just short-sighted the focus there so I really am talking as leaders elected officials lead staff let's really focus on work looking forward so that we're well positioned and I think we're getting close so Robert you can share more details because there I have a piece of paper in front of me there is a detailed list of all investments the governor's outlining and all of them are strategies we need to position ourselves for for future funding yeah I'm just building on a few other things that Randy mentioned I think number one if you look at the governor's proposal large amount of the $12 billion is for securing properties for permanent housing and temporary housing and that we're to identify locations together and to apply together to make ourselves more competitive I anticipate that the state will roll out the funds by region and not have it entirely competitive but historically the formulas of the funds aren't always tied to the number of people experiencing homelessness or rates of homelessness so that the bigger cities the bigger counties with bigger voices often get more of the resources so I think there's actually an opportunity in the budget trailer legislation to really look at the formulas and raise their voices up and say you know shouldn't these investments be tied to the the need not just who has the biggest megaphone at the state level so that's one thing that I think we can do the second I alluded to is identifying projects physical plants and then figuring out how do we really support them and we have as one of our recommendations a housing and capital project pipeline where we keep track of potential projects that we can work on together to support financially there is specifically called out governor's proposal money to help with addressing encampments so I think to the extent that we can keep doing the work we're doing about clarifying roles and responsibilities and how do we work together we'll be presenting our best face to state officials and we can say this is what the city does this is what the county does here's how we work together and we'll be able to apply for those funds in ways that we wouldn't have been able to in the past so that's another opportunity and the governor specifically called out a desire to end family homelessness so given the grant that our local nonprofit housing matters received from the amazon affiliated foundation and our commitment at the board level to really address homelessness among families I think there's a real opportunity for us to be successful there building on those existing dollars in collaboration and then I think that as we look at healthcare reform I think this is not on the radar I'm a healthcare person by trade and the Medi-Cal system in the state is also simultaneously undergoing a major overhaul and a lot of the resources to serve people who are living on low incomes from a health standpoint are going to be shifting over to our managed care partner the california self um alliance for health central california alliance for health figuring out how do we take our housing and homelessness funding in partnership with managed care to provide the supports that people need around mental health and physical health issues I think it's going to be really important for us to be competitive great so it sounds like we're doing a lot of the things that we should be doing to queue up and we have some more work to do um I have uh great I love the thumbs up um you know you mentioned encampments and the um governor's commitment to addressing encampments and I and I see there's a specific objective in this framework around working with city jurisdictions to address encampments um I'm just wondering if you could comment on how you see and I know you've been working closely with lee and company how you see the city I see the county aligning with what the city is trying to do with say sleeping sites and transitional shelters and managed encampments um how can we work together to make sure these are successful and that they're entered into the the individuals are entered into the community continuum of care yeah good question I I think one of the things that's helpful from the kind of health and human services county perspective is the more consistency and clarity there is around city expectations of people who are unhoused and what what's okay and not okay to do creates opportunities for us as outreach providers and service providers to interface in ways that we haven't been able to do that before so if there are specific areas identified where the sleep we can plan for that we can figure out okay can we bring a mobile homeless persons health project clinic service there can we bring some of our outreach workers there to connect them into services um we also can get a better understanding of the people who are living in these encampments if we're coordinating more and what their needs are and how to more effectively meet those needs so I think clarity and consistency around the kind of city's approach can really help us on the county side and also for us I think being clear about roles and responsibilities you know what does the city take on what does the county take on how do we refer people back and forth and how do we coordinate and have regular conversations we're starting to do that work more than I think we have in the past and I think those are all things that are going to be helpful I know they're really difficult decisions and there's lots of community the issue of how do we help unhoused people and also make the community safe for housed and unhoused people so I don't envy the task that you all have but I think that the sooner you can reach some collective decisions on you know what the rules of the road are it's easier for us in health and human services to say okay now we really know how to partner with the city this is what they're doing this is how we can fit our resources in to those plans great I'd like to jump in and say something in recognition for Lee and your police and fire chief that I might get to surface on video but if you don't I'm still just going to speak about appreciating your challenge this field of work homelessness with any other vexing issue often these conversations that lead to whose role and responsibility is what when you're in the hypothetical the conversation is easier but if you are somebody who overseas like your police chief your fire chief Lee but when the rubber hits the road if I sign off on this document that says I'm responsible for this I don't got the money so I just really want to highlight neither county health and human services nor anything under your city's oversight unless I've missed something Lee or your police and fire chief are hiding something none of us have the resources but to your question as much before Robert and it was a mess trying to have a conversation about roles and responsibilities I think today and thank you to your staff and to elected to help us get to a place we are 90 there but I just want to underline that does not mean if the city says yes we signed a document or responsible that we think you have the resources because we don't either but back to your question I think it positions us better to go after funding to say we have a framework we know who's responsible for what but both of us counting city need a lot more money to deliver on those roles and responsibilities so I just want to say that to recognize and I think the mayors have been pushing very hard in California to demand money to reimburse for the costs that are being borne by cities and there's not a lot of recognition of that so please hear as county partners we recognize you don't have the resources even if you ultimately sign off on a roles and responsibilities document but it positions us to go for the money together I hope that's helpful but I think it's worth naming to recognize the hard work of your city staff and our colleagues very helpful and I appreciate you calling that out and recognizing and I'll just make one quick and won't take up more time but I want to acknowledge council member golder's comment about upstream and prevention and working with a youth population and just a shout out to the youth homeless demonstration program that is now being overseen by your department and the great work that they have done in a short amount of time on addressing transition age youth homelessness I just wanted to call that out because we didn't have a concerted effort prior to three or four years ago and and a lot of work has gone into that so there's there are some efforts happening in the county thank you so much thank you council member next is council member walkhands and then followed by council member brown will offer my appreciation for your time this evening and for the important overview I think you really did hit on truly what we're up against but just just this really massive human humane issue with varying different populations impacted and you mentioned that we've had success specifically thinking about our veteran population and I just want to speak to that because I feel that we really need to be aware that varying populations have varying needs and not everybody is the same and people are complicated and the issue is complicated so we need to approach it in that way whether it be uh living escaping domestic violence or whatever the situation might be for the individual experiencing homelessness I think needs to be addressed in that sense so an influx of case management although I know you mentioned that challenge with hiring staff I think will be really helpful um you know I am heartened that the governor is in the process of wanting to really prioritize this in the budget I think that cities spend an exorbitant amount of play large you know mainly have often the county seat or have the the biggest impact that's been there in their jurisdiction spend a significant amount of time and funding on this issue and we need state intervention we need state support and as the arm of the state we appreciate the county being being our partner in this um I guess I'll just make a few comments and then I just have a um maybe one quick question is I think that one of the things we hear a lot about is the mental health and substance abuse and the in the lack of services in those in those particular areas and wanting to see how you know our need for more services are really connected to individual success as well as how it's integrated into our court system and and kind of just the overall failure along the way that doesn't necessarily lead to a lot of success for for individuals so how to have um that prioritized or where that fits in terms of resources um you know just speaking really briefly on the comments that were made about upstream investments you know I think the social the issue of social mobility affordability the shrinking middle class this this larger sort of national issue um how are we thinking about interrupting the cycle of poverty how are we thinking about supporting youth supporting children having them with the best start in in life to to find success um so those are the types of investments I too would like to see as part of the conversation and we also know that upstream investments um really yield a great benefit as opposed with the problem once it's already manifested itself so how we kind of continue to have that as part of the conversation I think that when I you know um here sort of this conversation around the structure in the city and the role of the county I I guess one question would be is how are other cities and jurisdictions integrated into this conversation as you mentioned this is the countywide issue this is the national state issue but um this the city of Santa Cruz isn't alone or shouldn't be alone as the one city to to really be working with the county on this issue although I feel we have a disproportionate amount particularly of the most visible homeless in our community I know that that population um kind of working with in education is different down in South County where you have double up families and a different level of kind of need or you know not isolated but but more prevalent in certain areas so um so I guess yeah how are we engaging other cities and um and other sort of districts if you will in terms of really holistically looking at what roles we all play in the solution and I guess to to that additional end is how do we engage the community in the private sector because we have people say to us on a regular basis what can I do how can I help what does that look like and do I don't have strategic asks for them um you know volunteering supports etc but really strategic asks of our industry our private sector and our community members who also want to part of the solution I think it's a really complicated issue I think you could probably talk about it for hours as we as we do regularly but I'll go ahead and just respect all time and and leave it at that thank you council member I don't know if if Randy or Robert have you know maybe a little bit of a response about other jurisdictions I you know obviously all of your materials really refer to the entirety of the county and if Randy if you want to chime in for a little bit here I'll keep a brief that wow you said a lot and there's a lot to respond to I know you named it as one question but there's so many things I'm interested in engaging in but I I want to go back to something I said at the introduction which maybe in California counties and cities appreciate the flexibility sometimes but for this particular issue I think it ends up being headache as a indirect answer to your question in counties all over california some counties are doing nothing like Santa Cruz county did five plus years ago before Carlos which is to the vein of city's frustration um and when counties step in the office is sometimes in a planning department sometimes it's in the health office sometimes it's centralized in the CAO's office sometimes so that just gives you a window to say there's no direction about how a county should even engage in this and then we know the city dynamics so yes we talk regularly in regional and state coalitions and I think and I'll turn over Robert if you have any examples I when Robert started I said is there an example in California we can turn to where the relationship is great between the city and county it's usually a place where there's not a big homeless issue it is a dilemma where there's no good answers if there are many many many jurisdictions starting to do like what we're doing creating frameworks and many many many trying to create roles and responsibilities documents the fact that we can't find something that's been vetted and agreed and approved and city and county legal councils have approved it tells you we're a work in progress so yes we look I don't think we have a gold standard and let's try to be that but Robert do you have any specifics because I know you've mentioned some other states that have some better models in california but you're more plugged in if there's a good model in california than I am for this particular issue um well I think that I alluded to this earlier the community solutions group that's promoting the kind of getting to zero what one that I'm fond of is going to find out where people are getting results and so there's a county in new jersey that has gotten to zero around veterans homelessness and homelessness among people with disabilities and a lot of things we're trying to do here are what made them successful but every state is different and Randy alluded to this in terms of how much state control they have of certain types ms versus delegating to the county in the city level california is unique and that it delegates a fair amount of health and human service responsibility to the county level and other states don't necessarily take that approach new jersey is one where there there is a lot of support but what they did is they created an office of health housing and human services to kind of bring all the resources together they also created some clear places where people who are experiencing homelessness the front door back to member Cummings the front door was really clear um and then they uh to your point council member Watkins they actually were we're tracking subpopulations and bringing all the different provider groups and agencies together uh and looking at the data um to see if they're making progress so that formula for success is there randy's writes that the the ways in which people bring groups together to to govern and think about how do we dress this issue that they're all over the map from led by nonprofits to county staff to joint power authorities um i did want to say that this presentation is when they were giving to all the cities um and asking for all of them to accept and file and join us in the framework and all of the cities contributing to the homeless action partnership um currently and i hope we all kind of lean in on those housing goals because each jurisdiction has some housing goals so i think one way for each jurisdiction to show how they're contributing is let's get to the 734 units um as quickly as each have targets so those are some examples um you i did want to say a little thing about behavioral health and we could talk more about that but i alluded to medical reform i think most people are not aware that the state medical reform is essentially proposing some significant cuts to behavioral health funding so at the same time we're increasing funding to address the problem of homelessness we're cutting funding in an area where those services and critical to preventing and keeping people housed so it doesn't make sense to reduce investments in a critical area at a time when you're trying to elevate this issue so i i think we all need to speak to that um in the reform effort um and uh i would also say on the behavioral health care front that we're living in the legacy of uh a decision in the 70s and 80s california was kind of a leading edge of institutions were inhumane places for people struggling with severe brain problems to be living so we needed to help them get out into the community but what we failed to do is to bring the resources that were in those institutions out into the community and we're still stuck we're still fighting um i often give it a i have a graph which i could bring another time it shows how we approached um de institutionalizing children and adults living with developmental disabilities another neurological issue and it shows that we gradually reduced the number of uh young people living in institutions and increase the and we see far less people with developmental disabilities homeless that's the recipe that we never followed for people with serious behavioral health issues um so i think we have to elevate that as an important funding issue as part of this overall effort to address homelessness so thank you for raising it and hopefully we can all call our state folks and really push to not cut behavioral health care funding the time we're trying to address homelessness thank you thank you robert and we uh yeah we discussed that in the two by two of i think was uh either the meeting before or our previous meeting so please let us know how we can weigh in on that legislation in those efforts because we certainly will will weigh in for sure uh i have councilmember brown and then councilmember coming if it's okay i'd like to go to vice mayor bruner she hasn't spoken yet okay if it's possible i'd like to get out to the public because we aren't certain to get into a lot of time um great conversation um councilmember brown thanks uh so many of the questions that i had have been discussed already so thank you to my colleagues for bringing them up and thank you for your responses i really really appreciate as we all your presentation your efforts you know i think that you know so many of the things you've said uh this evening really give me uh hope that we are moving in the right direction despite the really formidable challenges and resource questions and i want to um mr ratner i want to really thank you for for calling out this um your your thoughts on the the magnet which you know seems to really pervade uh the narrative and i think is really debilitating um and you know so so for me it was just really nice to hear that come from somebody who works you know so closely on these issues and has this experience from different parts of the state um i also really want to appreciate the comments randy that you started with and i think the tenor of this meeting about um transparency and collaboration and you know not blame gaming i i sort of i call it externalizing risk everybody tries to externalize the risk of you know this and and and not to externalize the responsibility and so um kind of just bringing that to the forefront is is great to hear as well you know conceptually and and principle wise um i do i so the question that i want to ask that i think is not been um is uh around this this data informed coalition building and governance structure i mean yes we have been kind of lamenting the hap the accountability gap with the hap for quite some time now you know there's like a lot of um questions that people have and and it's hard to answer them when constituent ask so i i'm really appreciative of the effort to restructure that and i wanted to just ask if you could talk a little about that process um in terms of who you know who you see who is going to be at the table i see i read through the board of supervisors uh agenda packet for back from march and there's a kind of a timeline laid out there in the different categories and coalition structure you're kind of set to be you know have developed that by next month by june and so i'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about that um you know affecting our decision making and just understanding in general what's going on for the public i'm going to say something to start and turn it over to robert i i will defer to you as your legislative body how far to go on this because we are going to be back in front of you and li has been very involved and has all this information everything we're doing is in partnership with li um i want to just invite um like robert said these narratives and the end result of the hap system is what you said it does not seem transparent it seems unaccountable and it seems to be a black box of mistress money now that i've been here here and i've looked at it and when i heard that i thought what's going on here i want to just add to this something i said in response to councilmember coming's comment about lack of staff time and staff resources to actually produce what i well know was the desire of the county back out here they did not have the time to get the materials together to the hap to create minutes to produce minutes not to mention to put materials up to the community so i just want to invite there's two parts to this story one is the governance structure how many seats do different jurisdictions have how do they appointed but the others we which is now me and robert we have to resource the well enough that we can deliver on accountability and that's that time getting materials in place putting them place having a website putting it out there because i went out of the middle of being a participant of black box where the community's like what's going on with that money there are answers to that question but my predecessors didn't have the time to answer those questions not to mention get ahead of the understandable frustration from community it seems like a ton of money the county got five million dollars answer to that they didn't have time to not to mention get it boarded in the contracts out there just wasn't resources to explain what we're doing so that's a big piece of what we're working on and then i'll let robert share to touch about the actual decision points that are going to be in front of you soon but i please know we're working closely with your staff so nothing will be a surprise to you but robert anything you want to add yeah i think that's absolutely right any of that bringing people together on such a complex issue and being transparent and clear about what's happening with resources requires human human energy and time that didn't exist before and i feel like we are on a better pathway to deliver more than we have in the past and i'd love that you read six months plan so thank you we actually the way that the consume of care has been structured here in santa cruz county the homeless action partnership actually asked to agree to really dissolve itself and adopt a new structure so this week li is a participant in the meeting we have a new governance charter proposed for the existing board that they're going to review and make comments on and maybe adopt and it does include asking the different jurisdictions to nominate people to sit on the new governing board so randy alluded to this we'll be coming back um with in partnership with the right time like we want the city council to nominate people to be whether it's an elected official or someone else who pertains to the table to sit on that governing board i think it's going to take us a few months to to go through those steps of the new charter established and then we've got to establish the new board and i gather some operational committees i alluded to the happening in capital pipeline which is a place where it'd be great to have city involvement we're looking to raise the voices that people have lived experience with two advisory boards the youth advisory board that already exists thanks to work of some of the council members here and a new advisory board for people who live through life without a home to have their voices and then we're also looking for some key stakeholders in education healthcare and lock-in business and private sector so we actually want to have a seat on the board for someone from a foundation or business private sector person to contribute to the issue so if if you have suggestions please let us know thanks i'll leave it there for now in the interest of time okay thank you council member brown next up is vice mayor bruner i wanted to allow the other council members to ask their questions questions that actually came up have been answered um and i'm familiar with a lot of what you have presented just through meetings together which have been so enlightening and informative um i just want to thank you uh randy morris and robert ratner for the work for the framework the overview the background the mission and really talking about the housing affordability gap the lack of supportive connections and various health issues i'm hopeful that was the vision of what you call the actionable person centered including um equity and inclusion data driven the county white scope that this framework addresses is so key and get to the is everything um and my question originally was regarding that housing graph that you showed of the different cities in the county and and the gaps is how how the other cities in the county will engage in this framework um and um will you be presenting to the framework to each city in santa cruz county so that we can work collaboratively not just the city of santa cruz uh and the county but all the cities with the county in the county um so i believe that question was asked already and and answered if there was anything else you want to add to that um would we thank you for your comments and i i consider that a vote of hope that we're going in the right direction meaningful as the vice mayor to hear you say that and yes is the short answer we have already presented to the city of watsonville we present scott's valley tomorrow evening and i forget the date but it's early june we're presenting to capitolah like you where we presented the draft in november we presented the draft all over those four city councils so we will be back in front of all of them and we you know we want to be as available as makes sense on a periodic basis to keep people updated this is complex work in this we're kind of in the crawl space getting the foundation strong so we can build some more floors and porches the crawl space still has some structural engineer problems we're working on if you allow me the housing analogy so it's not visible some of this foundation work we're working on which we hope is then something that becomes more visible as we have that for structure in place so we look forward to more conversations i appreciate it and one of the things that i've found really important to continue working on and i see elizabeth smith here who's our communications person of the city is for all of us to keep communication and information helpful members for our constituents and the community and for you know we have a big community that is engaged and and it's a great thing i think um it's also a lot and and how do we stay on top of all of that communication and education piece so moments like this this more of this i think will be so helpful moving forward as we you know go through this framework as as you are presenting to all the cities where that consistency is there and everyone understands the whole picture and all the pieces within that whole picture so thank you thank you guys they're going to check our folks in the audience that um folks that were going to attend tonight so that would like to speak um councilmember coming did you have additional questions i'll be brief i just had a couple really brief comments one possible and this thing about is that um you know there are oftentimes people asking us about you know why don't we have more beds for certain things and this you know that and others have some policies that keep us from creating more beds so the cold disease exclusion for example you know only allows for 16 beds that could you know for people to receive so i wondered too um you know when some of these questions come up it would be great if there's a you potentially even a page or some information that that people can access where they can better understand the reasons why we don't have more under certain circumstances and um and i know for example people have been discussing like is there you know homeless people in the sense of when you come in contact with someone the you know county being able to take down their information and share that with you know law enforcement or first responders so if they come in contact with that person again um you know they can say oh this person's in our system we know that they um suffer from you know schizophrenia or what have you or that they've been connected with these people and i think that to the extent that we can you know if that's possible but if there's reasons why we can't do certain things i think also it might be worth having information on on what policies constrain us and i think that also helps elected because then that allows us state or federal electives to say hey you know we'd really like to have more of these services or beds and is there a way for you to advocate on behalf of us so you can change some policies so uh i'll leave it there but that's that's just something that came up earlier throughout this discussion thought might be helpful to share and and to take into consideration and if we get to a place where we have information that's out there that everyone understands that harnesses the and i think vice mayor bruner speaking to this you have a lot of energy amongst your constituents which is a great thing if harness in the right direction but when it's not even clear the constituents or you as elected who has authority and where the rule was created that creates a problem nobody knows where to argue so they seem to come to you as city council so yes we have a common interest in just better educating everybody and i'm learning too robert's been in the field for 20 plus years um i've been in the field of human services for 30 but directly over a homeless for this last year it's complex so yes we want to help get information out so people know what the federal issue a state issue a county will own with us and where we're falling short so you can push on us and we'll talk about it and city but we're not there yet so that is a goal we share with you and we have some work to do stepping up sanikers i support the strategic framework and appreciate that it's focused on outcomes as we heard from our county partners the federal government hud is low to investing communities where collaboration between cities and counties is bad i think we have to admit that we have a logical disconnect in our city's discussions of homelessness and how we are partnering with the county i acknowledge new services we in the city are looking to offer but as we criminalize people being homeless if they refuse to go to available shelter the framework sets out a plan of working to include people experiencing homelessness in the solution we in the city need to admit that we're making the work more difficult by criminalizing and alienating those we are trying to serve as dr ratner went over in the framework that some of the net causes our lack of connections and loss of hope and purpose throughout the framework the people experiencing homelessness are part of the solution and their voices are included in workable solutions building a coalition for the key objective authentically and meaningfully involved people with lived experience in system design and oversight increase connections had insured shelters or commentary johnson referred to the six month work plan includes creating a county-wide response to managing encampments this was actually in the last six month work plan and it started in march but instead of collaborating we in the city quickly pushed through an ordinance to manage encampments without community input we also a collaboration called for in this framework which we say we are we are supporting i appreciate the framework and i asked that our city gets beyond the politics and the finger pointing and starts to work towards a solution with the county thank you and in the interest of time and robert i you know this was going to be an ongoing conversation so i don't think usually we look we do not respond to public comment at our at our meeting so i'm going to go ahead and hold with that tradition evening because it is getting late and um so i will look to the next any council members um thank you and robert for that presentation it's really informative i appreciate it a lot so now knowing that 75 percent of homeless individuals were housed within the county prior to experiencing homelessness does that mean that the city that most people experiencing homelessness are actually your residents consumers taxpayers and voting constituents and not out of towners trying to game the system um in addition section eight of your conflict of interest code says no designated employees shall participate in making any governmental decision which she knows will have a reasonably foreseeable material financial effects visible from its effects on the public generally on any real property and any source of income and just because you remove the map uh doesn't make it any less obvious to me that landowners landlord and the downtown business association stand to gain a hefty profit if the city council effectively bans the erection of tents within the city limits so once again i asked golder watkins mires calentari johnson and bruner to recuse themselves from further voting and discussion on the camping services and standards ordinance their actions have violated the city's conflict of interest code and endangered the constitutional rights of santa cruz residents i asked council members brown and coming to render the css decision void they being the only remaining council members on this body who have no disclosed conflicts matter thank you one eight one zero yeah this is good uh i don't believe the presenter for one second that homeless people don't end up where the services are to be just here in record numbers maybe on a county basis they did have housing at some point but they either go to or they sure stay anyway in the cities with homeless services like santa cruz and somewhat like what's in bill and virtually nowhere else in the county as they lack services check the homeless data by city you will see that is correct and at cesspool of government dependence we would put lots and lots of homeless and supportive services this city alone it has many times more services per population than a state already and the corresponding correlating are insane why this seems a very one-sided finger pointing to afford there are many more reasons there are a great many cheap places to live elsewhere also freedom is lost if you enable poverty you get more poverty if you enable homelessness there will be more i'm sure the communists who seem to come out of hibernation and force when homelessness are discussed will drone on but that ideology is evil otherwise it's a difficult issue that deserves action i don't hear any specific actions mentioned here tonight but since gavin's trying to throw money around to avoid in the audience i'll go ahead and take this back to council for night again we are looking for a housing for healthy santa cruz a strategic framework for just homelessness in santa cruz and i do see council member and then council member of lockins yeah i'm happy to move the recommendation to accept the county's strategic housing framework report member walkins so we have a motion by council member council member walkins to accept and file the final version of the housing for a healthy santa cruz uh the county strategic framework for dressing homelessness and why could we do a roll call vote please yes thank you mayor council member um what can calentary johnson here's in this plan but obviously also long term i think we all know um we won't get there in three years but we hope to make great improvement by then for your leadership in a county to put together a road map for us all to fall so really appreciate your time for expertise tonight um so thanks so much for coming proclamation and mayoral proclamation we issued this month um recognizing uh hawaiian pacific islander heritage hawaiian pacific islander heritage month pays tribute to the rich culture traditions and history of the asian america and pacific islander community made of hawaiian pacific islander heritage month a these come together to promote cultural appreciation and to share their diverse traditions through appropriate programs ceremonies and activities and although it should be greatly to our nation state and city we unfortunately continue to see heightened races crimes and violence a a n h p i and on april 7th the city of santa cruz passed a resolution denouncing hate crimes hateful rhetoric and hateful acts against asian americans and pacific islanders in all firms uh i hear by the city of uh i hear by as donna mires mayor of the city of santa cruz do hear by proclaim the month 21 as asian american and native wine pacific islander heritage month in the city of santa cruz in honor of a a n h p i and their contributions that have enriched our country and our city so for your participation tonight and for the public for being here tonight and we are adjourned thank you everyone tonight