 Hello, and welcome to Timely Topics with Martha Teeter. Homelessness today is nationwide, particularly in California, and it's increasing. In university towns like Davis, this is particularly important because there's a unique pressure of town-gown relations on affordable and supportive housing. This particularly affects those living homeless. From the beginning of time, it's been important to find reliable shelter. In the beginning, this was a cave. Later, a grass hut or a teepee, a stone, or a wood dwelling. But finding a reliable, safe shelter is a fundamental human need. Some, though, through no fault of their own, often from divorce or illness, from some event beyond their control, abuse or neglect, or losing one's job, some wind up experiencing homelessness. Without shelter, one never knows where one is going to be able to keep their possessions. And so sometimes they carry them around with them. Also, one never knows where it's safe to be day to day. And it's difficult to find a safe place to sleep. The cost of homeless can be insidious. Emergency services are used much more on a routine basis because it's very hard to predict reliable times when you are living on the street. And human lives are wasted. It's been found that lives are shortened by 30 years on average because of having to be on the street. Research shows, however, that housing, those that are most vulnerable, can decrease the cost to a community of emergency services by 50%. And this also may decrease disruptions from those individuals that are housed in terms of the community. But nowhere is finding housing more difficult than in a place like Davis, where the housing vacancy rate is 0.2%, 0.3% down from 0.5% the previous year. And well over half of those experiencing homelessness in Davis are from Davis, either born here or gone to school here or having family here. So our two guests today are going to tell us about an exciting new collaborative project that's come out of listening to the community. These two represent nonprofits. Davis Opportunity Village, Maria Gridziak, represents that group. And that group tries to find housing, micro-housing, build micro-housing to rapidly give housing to homeless individuals. And Davis Community Meals and Housing, represented by Bill Pride, which has been serving those living homeless since the 90s. This collaboration is to build Paul's Place at 1111 H Street to replace existing service center and to add supportive housing to serve Davis's homeless population. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Great to be here. Great. So to start out, maybe Bill, you could tell us a little bit about Davis Community Meals and Housing initially and how it's running and where the pressures are. Well, we've owned the property at 1111 H Street since 1994. We acquired it through the help of the city. And our intention was to operate what's called a shelter and also what's called a resource center there. And we've been operating that as a sheltered transitional housing program since then and also as a resource center Monday to Friday from 8 to noon. And frankly, the property was acquired by us without the city. The buildings there were built. Some of them, I think one of them was built back in the 30s. And the other was probably just a little bit later than that. And we did some extensive work in the buildings when we first acquired them that kind of conjoined them and make it a functional place for us to do both those dual purposes. And as we've seen over the years, for the last almost 23 years, we've been operating it, the age of the buildings has become quite a problem for us. Yeah, I think we have a picture of that, of the building itself. And that's the current facility. We get a resource center alone. We probably get between 40 to about 65, 70 folks there a day. A day. And that's Monday to Friday. And then it operates as a sheltered transitional housing program for most of the time for 16 individuals, four women, 12 men. And for the last year, for 10 men, excuse me, four women and eight men. And so the house gets a tremendous amount of use from both of those populations over the years. Basie was meant as a residential facility. And so it gets a lot of use from the folks going in there from using the bathrooms or taking showers. We offer a whole range of services to individuals and families doing a lot of different things with us. But the basic problems there is that it's a small facility. It's older. We did some extensive work about nine years ago to remodel the bathroom and everything else. But still right now, for the resource center right now, we have one bathroom, a toilet, and a shower for the 40 to 65 people come there every day Monday to Friday. And most of those folks come. That's one of the main purpose of coming there is to take a shower. We also have a laundry facility that we let people use. And there's two washes, two dryers for all the folks who use it, not only the resource center folks, but also the folks who live in the house and even some folks from outside those populations who come in to kind of use the laundry facilities. So the building is clearly showing its age. It needs some major renovations at this point. And certainly we need to have better showers and better bathroom facilities for folks who use our programs. Well, great. Well, that sounds like a good facility, but one that's, I mean, a good mission, but one that's a facility that's in need of some updating. It needs a great amount of updating. Right, right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so Maria, tell us a little bit about Davis Opportunity Village. I guess it's also known as Dove. Yes. Well, Dove consists of members of the Davis community who have been interested in doing something about what we perceive as a problem, an increasing issue in our community. And many of the members are volunteers in some of the programs that already exist. And we came together realizing that we, as a group of community members, could try to do something to make Davis a provide a welcoming and nurturing place for people who find themselves homeless. And we began with the idea of trying to do, trying to build a village somewhere so that the homeless could find a place to come to. And we were unable to find land to build something like that in Davis. So I'm an architect, and architects love to do something meaningful. And the idea came that we were trying to create a sense of place for this kind of project. And the land that became available and the connections began to be made and the idea came about that maybe 1111 H Street could be the place to make better use of the land and to build something that would house the programs that Bill runs, but do it better, be able to really give him an upgraded facility and provide a better daily center with more bathrooms, more showers. And the food and kitchen services that he provides. And in addition, because it seemed like the right thing to do and something that we felt Davis urgently needed, we wanted to build something that would also provide other services for the people who find themselves homeless. And so the idea came to propose a project and to see that it would be something that would be provided and built for by the Davis community. So many people in the community came together to support the idea of not only providing the programs that already exist on the site, but to also add to that more transitional housing and permanent affordable housing units. So this was very, very exciting and the amazing thing for me was the enthusiasm and support that came from not only our Dove community, from the people who already are involved in such things, but from people from all over the city and involved in many different ways in the community. So Davis has been a leader in looking at in being very community minded and involved in things and solving problems. And this was yet another opportunity for us to do that. Wonderful, wonderful. Yeah, we wanna hear a little testimonial from Julie Jenkins who we talked to earlier about the importance of having a home, what difference it makes. Well, I participated in New Pathways which brought a 20 year old chronic, the homeless person out of the streets into a home and gave me hope that I could actually become a working part of society again. I wrote that I'd like to pay my taxes and be a part of my community. And I feel I am a part of this community even though I was homeless for 20 years. Okay, being homeless was very difficult, but when you have a roof over your head and people there showing you the way that you can become a part of our world again. Reintegrating the homeless back into our workforce is a very important thing. Wow, yeah. Because we get out there and all we can do is survive. And everybody's kicking you, everybody. And then nobody giving you a shot at anything. I don't care how nice you look, how hard you drive, the minute they find you're homeless they fire you. Just like that. Okay, so being back in the home gave me the hope and the courage to be able to reintegrate back into the world. Still pride in Becky have done wonders. And you know why? Because they treat us like adults. And they trust us. That really makes a difference. And we've never betrayed any problem of that. And reintegrating us back into the workforce is important because everyone should pull the wrong way. Yeah. Working is important. When I work I feel like I'm accomplishing something. Like I have a life. Being homeless I had no life I could only survive. Being an animal on the street. Being treated like an animal on the street. Okay, so it's really important what they're doing. And it does work, it really does. Wow, that was very from the heart. Yeah, about surviving on the street versus having a roof over your head. It's really an amazing, made an amazing transformation in her life. I think you can see that. She did. She's been a great success story for us through our programs into the community to go from being homeless for many years to being now housed for over a year. Wow. It's amazing. And with a job and the pride of reintegrating into the community and wanting to give back to that really impressed me about her words. Yeah, yeah. So Maria, tell me about the key contributors to this project and give us a picture of exactly what it looks like. Well, I guess Yolo County Housing also helped a little bit in a consultation. The amazing thing about this process, the design process was the generosity of all the people who have experience and knowledge about how such a facility might work. And in particular, Yolo County Housing Authority represented by Lisa Baker, who has national experience in different kinds of housing projects that are built in different communities was invaluable in making suggestions about how such a place might work and succeed in Davis. And architects don't often get to sort of develop the ideas for a project from the grassroots and having Bill Pride's expertise and the facility that was there being able to provide input for that. And Lisa Baker from Yolo County Housing to provide expertise on the other elements and also the chief of police providing expertise on how the facility might be better served by how the police might be able to interact better with it and what might work from their perspective and various other people in the community, including some of the people who were homeless. And week by week as the project, as the designs were developed, all this was input into the final design. So I feel that it was really a product of people who knew what Davis needed. And it was great to be able to put that together into one building and create a community from all these different parts. Wow, so let's see this amazing building. So this is the building that grew on the site of 1111 H Street. This is set right in the exact site with the vegetation and street and sky that's there now. And the building is set within the setbacks and heights limitations that are there currently in the zoning. And the project is designed to feel like a warm destination, a welcoming destination with the top two floors accessed by the stairs that go up the front of the building. Oh, actually, I think the next slide is kind of a little blow up. Okay, the idea is that this would feel like lots of little homes. The slide is numbered. So maybe if we start with the number one, which is on the far left, the numbers are to help you understand how the building functions and how people know sort of where their part of the building is. And so the people who go in, it's kind of color coded, which is a happy way to do this. And so along the left of the building is the access to transitional housing. And that would take you to the second floor from the left side there. The transitional housing is designed like a house that has bedrooms and a common kitchen and family room. Then there are all of trees planted in the front. If you look at the number two, sort of symbolic of our region and of providing nourishment and symbolizing where we are in the central valley. And the front is designed as a welcoming garden with benches and a place to just come and stop. Whereas many of the people right now who are homeless find themselves in places outside where they would like to stop and be, but they don't feel welcome. So this is a place where they know they can come. And then the main entrance there or the central entrance is a red H, which stands for home. It stands for H Street. It stands for Hope. It's also designed as GoPost. So you can feel as though you can win here. The entrance takes you to the part of the facility that is echoing and reflective of what's there now. So it houses that first floor, houses a resource center and place where people can come for showers and daily help. Then the third and fourth floors are accessed by the front stair and are the permanent affordable housing. And I think of it as they're micro dwellings and the access is like a hill town. It's really like a community and like a place with many parts, but everybody's coming together into one place. Anyway, that's the facility. Great, great. So there are roughly 300 square feet complete apartments. The micro dwellings are 300 square feet each. And they're 18 of them. And they're designed around a very wide, a 16 foot wide. I don't wanna call it a hallway, but it's a sort of an access space. So there's space up there where if you wanted to think of the micro dwellings having a little community place between them. Community gathering. Yes, there's enough room for that where people can come together and do things together. And it's also open at the end of this little mini street to the outdoors and to a balcony. So it's much more than, the spirit of it is much more than just the standard place with just the hallway and places to go. Great. It's a gathering place. That's great. And Bill, maybe you could just tell us a little bit about the flow on the first floor. I think we have a plan of the first floor. Well, on the, in the resource center, you know, our current facility allows us to have, we have one bathroom, one shower for all those 40 to 60, 70 folks who come to visit us every day. We have limited space. We have limited office space for all of our staff. And the new floor plan will allow us to have more bathrooms, more shower facilities, more laundry facilities for everybody, a better and bigger place for folks to get food and eat and better offices for my staff to provide the services to the folks who come to visit us. I mean, the XT area has some seating areas, some places for folks to do gardens. There is also some parking for staff which gets tucked underneath the building and off the street and thereby freeze up some space in the front for folks to gather at the tables and other things that are gonna be out there and other amenities we're gonna have out there for the homeless folks who come to visit us. The second floor, the transitional housing, that's kind of the exciting part to me, which is that we're gonna go from our current situation, which is four people per bedroom to each person having their own bedroom and their own little room in the transitional housing program. And I think that'll lead to much better results and allow us to serve a more diverse population that we currently are able to do. And of course, the micro-housing on the third and fourth floor is gonna be a great addition. We have experienced providing permits of water housing already at Cesar Chavez Plaza, and this will allow us to expand and provide more housing to more folks. I think I just want to mention there was one other person that didn't get mentioned by Marie as part of, is a business person in town, Reed Humans, who is instrumental in kind of getting some of the conversation going about remodeling our current facility at 1111 H Street. Yes, great, great. And he's talking with the business community about support. About support and fundraising and coming up with the dollars and everything else from the community to actually build the facility. So what this is going to do for the community then is give them a better resource center for homeless, really able to serve, as you said, more diverse population and add housing for 18 people that are now on the street. And that's really remarkable. I think the exciting thing about that is housing is certainly our biggest barrier right now from getting folks who are homeless to being housed again. Because the vacancy rate in Davis is shockingly low and the amount of affordable housing out there is so low it's almost impossible to find housing for folks who are able to move off the streets. Right, and I understand that for funding this, it's going to be funded entirely by private donations. I think that's the goal. And this would make it a truly a Davis community project. Yes, I think it would, the idea is to make it really be something that we do together. And that is something that Davis, actually as I talk about this project to other people in California, I think all the cities would love to do something like this. I think this can really be wonderful for Davis and show the world what we're about. We really do care. Right, that's fantastic, yeah. So we've got individuals, businessmen, I think local churches have interests, non-profits and healthcare providers also, I think are very interested in contributing to this. And we wanna invite everyone in the listening audience to learn more about it. There's a website, paulsplacedavis.org where you can learn more about the project, be kept up to date on things. I think you'll be hearing a lot more about this in the coming months and there'll be opportunities to donate directly there. Yeah, well, I wanna thank you so much. This is really a very exciting project. I'm delighted to have you tell us about it and to give the opportunity to those listening to participate in it because I think this is, I mean, I sense a chance for Davis to in another way be a world-class type advancing a cause in a unique way. Advancing with a leaps and bounds, I think, a community center to serve homeless. So this is an incredible opportunity and we think that I'm sure we'll be hearing more of this as I said before and I want you to know I appreciate your interest in this project and there will be more information on this even from Davis Media Access in the coming months. And I wanna thank my guests very much for coming here to tell us about it and I wanna thank you for listening. Great. Thank you. Thank you.