 You hear me? It is not on this committee. Oh, he wants to come in. Yeah, it wasn't anything, sort of the house for the polka dot. Put a band or like that because it's fun to work. Slamming us would not have proved anything in our modern house. Somebody called me from Shandyns. They thought that was, it's coming on the agenda today. It's on there on Rosewood, of course, the street from Rosewood Elementary. Rosewood Elementary. Not on Rosewood. We got people doing a list yesterday. We got right on the street. The street. Yeah, he's on his way. So, being here, and there she is. How timing is everything? This is our annual update from you, providers of homeless services. And we have sort of, we came up with a simple agenda. Asking each one of you to give us your updates. And we'll have a conversation and probably ask some questions. And Mr. McDowell is here. He's going to kind of pitch in with the conversation that he wants to have with us as a group. Committee members, Mr. of course it isn't divine and myself. Same table. Housing first is first on the agenda. So, I know many of you in the room. My name is Kristen Connors. I'm from the School of Medicine. Recently became part of the Palmetto Health USC Medical Group. And soon to be merged again to become Prisma Health. So, we are proud to have administered the housing first program since 2008. And we've come such a long way. I think that most of us in the room are familiar with the housing first model. So, I'm going to talk mostly today about two important aspects of the program that include the positive outcomes and the cost effectiveness of the housing first model. So, to begin with the positive outcomes, I ran some numbers from July 1st of 2018, which is when the fiscal year began and ran them through March 15th, which was just this last Friday. Since that time, we've housed 47 people. These are one-year numbers? This is from July through March. I just meant, okay. Yeah. There's also a cumulative part of the report, which we'll show later. So, at any given time, we have anywhere between 41 and 43 placements. Those are a mix of individual units. Some are funded by the HAPA program, which is housing opportunities for people with AIDS. And we also have a handful of family units. So, there's two bedrooms and two, three bedrooms. Since July, we've had five new move-ins and five discharges. So, we've stayed pretty steady. But what's important to note is that the average length of stay is 696 days. So, we're looking at about two years. When people come, they stay. So, that is good because that is the idea of permanent housing. I was looking and our longest stay, and these are only people who've been discharged. Our longest stay was like 2200 days, which is six years. So, we've had people actually in the program since 2008 when we began. What we like to do is not move people on or move them out until we know that they're ready and we know that they can be successful. So, for example, Housing Authority had some vouchers become available earlier this year. And we looked at a list of over 40 clients and we thought, well, who could really be successful on their own, meaning they would have the housing subsidy, but they would not have the case management and the mental health support that's provided by our team. And we found one person who we thought would be a good fit to move on. So, it really talks to the model and having the supportive services are so important because a lot of our clients are historically difficult to engage in services and have a lot of challenges maintaining housing on their own. So, having the case management is pretty vital to their success in housing. Going along with that, we've had 146 encounters via outreach services. And so, we open our doors every Monday and Wednesday from 9 to 4 and we do walk-ins. So, anybody who is homeless, maybe they're about to be homeless or just need a change in their living situation, they can come in, meet with an outreach worker and either get referred to our program. So, as you can see, we don't have a lot of vacancies. When we're full, we stay pretty full. But it's a way for us to provide information to the community regarding housing programs that people might be eligible for and then we also keep a list of landlords that are more lenient and might be willing to work with the folks that we see. I know most of us know the Housing First model but just because we've got people watching and everything else, can you just briefly summarize what is the Housing First model? Sure. So, Housing First, as the name suggests, move people very quickly from homelessness into housing. How it works in Columbia, we partner with the Housing Authority. They receive HUD money to have rental and utility subsidies. So, your rent is based on your income. There's no income requirement. And we provide supportive services. So, that includes case management, outreach, medical adherence, and mental health. So, it's two teams that come together. There's a property management and a housing side and then there's a services side. And that's what I was saying before is so important. A lot of the people that are enrolled in Housing First and the people who the model is meant to target would not be successful on their own living independently. So, they need the case management support. So, yes. So, how many referrals do you get? A lot. Yeah. I can. So, this 146, that's from July 1st. Those are unduplicated people who've come through the doors. Some of them come more than once. Some of them come more than five times. And I can look as far as like in a week's time, how many different people. Would that be helpful? Yeah. I can get you that information. And then speaking of outreach, I know Jennifer Moore is going to be up here later with United Way of the Midlands and she's going to talk about the outreach component. I've been really impressed lately with our community and the people who have come to the table who have shown interest in homelessness. We have people from many different offices, many different areas that are really wanting folks to get off the street. And that's really important. We, through Housing First, really target, there's a prioritization list that's done through Mock. And we target folks who are on the prioritization list, but there's also a frequent offender list that is passed around through the outreach meetings. And we are also targeting those folks to make sure when we do have a vacancy, that list is looked at first to make sure that we can fill the units that way. You're going to say something? Frequent offender. How do you, who is that? Offender of the program? Oh, no. Incarcerate. Yeah. Police contacts, I guess, is a fair way. So moving on from the outcomes. In a hospital, did you say? You're going to have to, but I'm going to be a bit of a misunderstanding of what's that reason for all the... Your intake crisis. Yeah. The intake crisis is running in their units for the first time in a long time. So it's done, the beauty of outreach is that it's done in the community. And so, like, there are people who are incarcerated. And so the outreach worker will go to the jails or to the prisons and get the paperwork we need to have eligibility requirements, proof of homelessness, proof of disability. All of our units are for people with disabling conditions. So that can be done in shelters and soup kitchens, in the woods, on the street, in the office, anywhere. So there's a move-in, like, you mean after they move into the unit? Move into the unit. And then each client has an individualized action plan. And they work with a case manager and really encourage people to get hooked up with. So a lot of times people who've been homeless for a number of years have not seen a doctor in a very long time. So we focus on primary care first and then we'll move into specialty care. We try to get people applied for disability benefits. If they don't have their benefits already, we'll get people applied for disability. Or any other income, you know, if they want to work or they're able to work, we'll figure that out as well. Like what happens after depends on the person. Sobriety is another big thing. Mental health treatment. So all of the units are for people with disabilities, so not always. Sometimes. 100%. All of them. Her program is only for people with disabilities. So 100% of them have disabilities, which most of them means they probably are not able to work. But some can do some work. A couple hours, yeah. So like I mentioned, the Housing Authority had vouchers. We went through the list. Who would be successful on their own? One person. And that really speaks for the importance of this program that people need. The people that we work with really need that level of support and would not be successful independently housed without case management support. You do serve veterans. How does that work in here? My first orientation to the program in PR years. And they were especially focusing on the benefits of veterans. Right. They tend to come with, they're sort of easy to qualify for a number of services. That's correct. Benefits. So that's interesting. What we try to do, and back to the vulnerability index and the prioritization list, we try to focus on people who would not be able to go to other programs. So if somebody is eligible for the VA or for a voucher for veterans through the Housing Authority, we'll send them there to open up a slot, so to speak, for folks who would otherwise have no other housing options. But we have had veterans come through before, and an example would be if somebody gets into housing first, they become stabilized, and then they're eligible for a VA voucher or something else, and they could transition that way. Go ahead. That's okay. Why are we here? So how close do you work with the Housing Authority? Like the 41 to 43. So we worked closely with the Housing Authority in the sense that we partner with them. They secure the units. They secure grant funding for the rent and the utilities. And so we have shared clients between those units that I mentioned, but as far as beyond that, is that? Yeah, so you go, I mean, one of your services is you send that service to the Housing Authority residents at the same time? Like all the residents? Yeah. Not yet. That would be an undertaking. But it's certainly worth exploring. To a certain extent, that's duplication of services. I mean, we already have certain folks that have already qualified. I guess the criticism, unfair criticism to in the past, Housing First is that Housing First is a very expensive program. Housing First is an expensive program because of the level of supportive services that go with the clients that they serve. And so in order for them to provide the services for that vulnerable population, it would be diluted if they were given the task of something that was not within the wheelhouse. Just because someone is in the Housing Authority doesn't mean they're... Need that level. Sometimes it's just a housing subsidy and they're able to maintain everything else independently. That's not the group that we're working with. A stable living environment, folks that are already at the housing, they're in a stable living arrangement. Right. So funny that you mentioned it because I would argue that Housing First is actually cost-effective. I agree with that. That's not an unfair criticism. In the past, people looked at the numbers and the number of people that you serve and they don't feel like it is right. It's not just the number of people. It's the support of services and the level of care that they get in order to be in the program. Right. And so for our supportive services, it evens out to about $15 a day per client per day. That doesn't include the housing subsidy. So when it's all said and done, a rough estimate is about $38 a day for housing and services, which is significantly cheaper than being in jail or being in a shelter or being in the hospital, which is a lot of times the alternative to not being in permanent supportive housing. I already mentioned the housing. We do scattered sites. So the units are trickled throughout the city in different districts. We try not to have a concentration of too many clients in one apartment complex, so to speak. However, that has been proven difficult with the lack of availability of one bedroom units that are affordable. But we at least try to focus on that. We also rely solely on donations for furniture. So when somebody moves in, you can imagine they don't have any furniture or any belongings really. And so we rely on donations from other agencies. We've had a lot of success with our neighborhoods. When they're getting rid of a couch or getting rid of a bed, they'll call. We'll pick it up and make sure that somebody can use it. And then the team, I already talked about the mental health and the medical adherence. And then we also have support groups. So the interesting thing about homelessness, while it can be a traumatic experience, it's also a very communal experience. And so I see a lot of times people transition into independent housing and there's an isolation that's involved in that. And so we try to have the support groups so that people can have a healthy social outlet. And it's a way for them to kind of put down roots in their community. Questions on that? It depends. It depends. Maybe. There is a tremendous need. And I say it depends because it's been my experience. I have been a social worker for over 12 years with housing and homelessness. And I have found that there's really not a one size fits all approach to this. I think the best approach so far that I found is a housing first or a permanent supportive housing model because it's very client driven. And it allows the client to decide how he or she can stabilize and move forward. I think that there's a lot of things that go unaddressed, either a history of trauma or mental health concerns, substance abuse. And that's always the focus of a lot of programs. And so sometimes when you tease those out, then you're able to employ somebody. Sometimes people are homeless. It's purely an economic issue. They don't make enough money to have an apartment. Those are folks that an employment program might be most beneficial. So it depends on the client. It's hard to pick a one size fits all answer. Speaking of, there is another program through my office. It's called Hopla Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS. And we do pretty comprehensive case management for people who are living with HIV. We focus on housing. But this year we were able to add an employment case manager. And so this is separate from the Housing First program and she just started last Monday. But we have a lot of good ideas of how to link folks to employment based services. And so there's something called supportive employment. And we're looking at that. We're looking at employment retention because a lot of our clients are able to find jobs. They just struggle to keep those jobs. And then we're looking at focusing on people who might be underemployed. And so how they can earn a few more dollars an hour to help them maintain their housing. And like I said, this just started. And so depending on what we find and how it goes, I'd love to translate it into the Housing First program. Again, everybody in that program is living with some kind of disabling condition. But there's certainly opportunities for employment, even if it's for a few hours a week. So we're looking on getting that employment piece. We're looking to get that employment piece apart of the Housing First team in the next year. We also got a van this year, which is really exciting if you're working with people who have transportation difficulties. We're able to take folks on housing searches. And sometimes it's something as simple as filling out an apartment application is such a barrier because they've got to take a couple buses. And how are they going to pay for it? And so having access to the van for housing purposes, medical purposes has been really helpful for this year. And then I mentioned four clients transitioned using the housing authority vouchers. One of them was from Housing First, and then three were from our HOPPO program. So if there are other housing opportunities available, we will make sure that folks are linked to them. That's it for me. Thank you, Christian. Any other questions? Any other questions? What's the budget? 234,000. And that's it? That's it. What do we get from the city? Oh, that's the city. Overall operating. We only do the services for Housing First. Are you talking about HOPPO as well? No. To your office. First? 234. Down the road, I'd like to learn a little more about the support of the employment program. Sure. That was something I did in my other life. We're working on it. Okay. Thank you very good. Yes, thank you. Not for Housing First. Let me just say you're through the university though. We have other grants like the HOPPO grant. We have three funding sources, three grants that administer three programs. And so I get a portion of my salary. That's right. And Mo was asking that question too. Before Housing First started when Councilman Cormarty was here and he had learned about Housing First and wanted to acquire about doing Housing First. Housing First was not happening in this form. The official Housing First was not happening for the city's desire for it to start. So Mo was just asking me kind of why isn't anybody else helping with Housing First. I don't, it wasn't really anybody else's radar. It was kind of a direct request of the city to have a Housing First program. And from what I remember it started as a pilot and the city actually funded the units as well until the Housing Authority got on board with their grant money for the housing piece and then the city scaled back to just the services. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it. Housing Alliance. Thanks for having me. There are several more people. I'm Craig Curry. I work at Transitions. It's also Midlands Housing Alliance. Some people don't really know that name as well. That is kind of the parent organization. Basically you could say Midlands Housing Alliance doing business at Transitions. Thank you very much. Some quick accomplishments here. 2,260 people put into permanent housing. We live to put people in permanent housing. That is our main focus. We are a shelter by definition, but we are trying to get people into housing as quickly as possible. We touched about 3,700 people last year. That's a working number of what we will touch, not counting the inclement weather center. Those are the folks that we've met. Either they come into the facility or a handful we've met out on the street through outreach efforts. Generally we have about 350 people come into Transitions. We're full pretty much every night, so that's 260 beds. There's about another 90-ish that come into the day users. They'll come into our day center and they'll use the facilities, but they won't have a bed for the evening. They leave many to go to Oliver Gospel, some to be on the street. We've partnered with Salvation Army and Feeding. We fed 251,000 meals last year, so we feed three meals a day nonstop. It's always happening. Christmas, Sundays, Thanksgiving. We serve a lot of food and we're grateful to working with Salvation Army. We cost $22 a day. That's the expense to be at Transitions and get the full services there. We always get asked about people. Here's a demographic breakdown on the next slide of where people are from. We're predominantly from Richland County or most folks, which would include the city of Columbia. You can see Lexington. It's risen a few percentage points over the last year or two to 15%. The other ones have made pretty much the same. Out of state, we always get asked about out of state. That's come up one or two percentage points. It's about 16% of our population. That doesn't mean they don't have connections, because many have come to Columbia to find their grandmother. They grew up in Columbia. They went to New York City. It didn't work out, so they've returned. But the theory on bus loads of people coming from other places just isn't there. Obviously, there are people who are migratory who are transient and move through. But generally, these have held pretty true for transitions since our founding eight years ago. You can see male to female. It's about 70, 30. Our veteran population overall is about 9% of our folks. And you can see the age breakdown. That elderly one has actually creeped up a percentage point. We see that the elderly will be growing into coming years. The services are numerous there. The top left picture there is a veteran stand down that was held at transitions, working with the VA. Three down on the left is the homeless court. The homeless court is not our effort. We're able to host that, but that's a city effort done with lots of folks. I see the solicitors here. The solicitor's office is here. The defense, all kinds of folks come together to make homeless court a reality. That's a good thing for the city. Misdemeanors can get tried quickly. It reduces the docket. It also expunges records and reduces or eliminates fines. So that's been a real success for the last few years. Other facilities, I mean other services are there as well to include a career center that I'll talk to a little bit later. Barriers, Kristen said that everybody's different. You can see there's just a lot of different reasons why people are homeless. I could give you some major, you know, substance or mental health and those tend to be some broad categories. And many people have multiple issues. It's not just one thing. It may be two, three or four that issues that the case managers have to work through. One quick question. Yes, sir. What is the... On the courts. So far, so far I know of none. Hans, you may be able to help me. I don't know of anybody who's gone through the program because they're very selective. You know, you have to be working with a partner. They may be working, they've worked with Housing First. They've worked with Mercy. So clients come forward, they work with transitions. And they have to be working with a provider. And usually when the case is ruled upon, no one has come back to homeless court. So no one has returned. I can't tell you that they went to Arizona and did something, but I mean for the most part here it's gone very well. On the youth program. I'm sorry. The first thing I would say for everybody is that there are clearly people from out of state. So there's no denial here looking at 16% that some people who come to transitions, their last place of residence, which is the question that they're asked, was a zip code beyond the state limits of South Carolina. I mean, there's no question that there are some of those people. Now I don't have data to say that the people who are out of state are more frequent fliers or more misconduct or more mental health than people who are in South Carolina. I would argue probably the opposite, that we have issues in South Carolina and we can't say that all the people downtown causing trouble are from New York or somewhere else. I think that's wrong. I have two slides later that address that if I can get there, but Jennifer will talk some outreach later. I mean, I've got a quick outreach and there are some programs that are helping people go home. So I think that'll get covered too. I probably have a similar question, but I'm going to wait until you finish and then I've got a few questions written down. That'll probably be a question for all of you. I think the presentations are good. I thought the presentations are good. But how we are on time, maybe we should kind of quickly go through the presentations and then actually really delve into a discussion because I think there's some more questions like Ms. Wilson has that we need to put on the table and have a discussion around instead of the nice... The data that you're bringing us, but kind of... We appreciate the data. We do this every year, but I felt like in order to... We do have a career center. We do a lot of jobs efforts that we're doing that piloting that was due for our population about 30% will end up being disabled, 70% need jobs. So jobs are key in the homeless solution. Everybody is not disabled. Everyone will not be on permanent disability. People need jobs and the career centers aimed at that. We're working with due on that. We've established an area and we're trying to work with there. We owe a database. We have a new person who's familiar with the due process and we're trying to get people placed into work. Lots of partners. Some are sitting in the room. Thank you. It is a team effort and you can see a listing here that you have a hard copy. I'd highlight here for our population 45% upon entry say they have mental health conditions. These are serious mental health conditions. And another 50% or different some the same say they have substance issues. So those are clearly issues and barriers for our population that they need to overcome to get into permanent housing. The veteran piece is there again. That ends up being around 300 veterans that will walk into transitions on the outreach piece. So you talked about reaching out in the community. Part of the inclement weather center contract is our person goes out and does outreach and they do that. They go to the United Ways outreach meetings and they do reach for people. It's not a given rule that everybody's going to want to come in the transitions. You build it, they will come. That's not really true all the time. There's clearly some people who are resistant even at the inclement weather center. It's got to get into the 20s low 30s before a certain group of folks really start coming in. Last night we had 92 people. There's more than 92 homeless folks on the streets last night. As we know a week or two earlier when it was colder, we were up in the 160s. So what happened to those 70 people? Well the answer is it's not bad enough to come in. So whether it works, outreach is key. I'll let Jennifer talk to that more. The cost comparisons are there. It saves from hospitals, jail and transitions. There's cost savings. Now this one I wanted to highlight on it. So what do we do? This bus ticket program has been a success. I've highlighted here what one outreach person, the one that you fund, has been doing over a given stretch of time. You can see the dates. That's not important. But you can see most of these people are going home out of state, back to their families somewhere else. And that's a good thing because there was a phone conversation with every one of these families saying hey can you take him back? Can you feed him? Can you help him look for work? And will you house them? The answers were yes. Send Johnny home. So we sent Johnny home. The two in red are particularly interesting to me because these folks were involved in human trafficking. And they were victims of human trafficking. And one of them was a man who was being used as a male prostitute. The other one, a woman who was married and had a daughter and in fact was sent home to her husband. Somehow had gotten here into prostitution. I mean there's two cases for a few thousand dollars that came from United Way through you all. I mean there's two families that were reunited out of human trafficking and we're at 49 people sent home right now. But that's 49 people off the street by this one case manager alone and out of the city of Columbia. So you want to ask for a solution. This is one that you may want to look at because I'm convinced cities are doing this all over America now. And the federal government would have programs to return people to families anyway. So morally it's okay as long as you're not just dumping them on cities without any reason for going there. So I'm not really sure to be honest. I mean it's a mixture of reasons. They ran away maybe from home. I mean at one time home maybe wasn't a good place or maybe they weren't in a good place or maybe there was addiction or maybe they got caught in human trafficking and of course they don't want to stay at home and at that point the traffickers pulled them away and shipped them to where the sex traffic is needed. So sad as that is there's a market there so people get repositioned accordingly. The Inclement Weather Center has been a success. We run that under United Way as contractors. We're at 741 people this year, unique clients. So there's still a need. Homelessness hasn't disappeared. It's less than last year. So that's encouraging. For Mock, Mock did a point in time count and the last one was 1205. So we got a newer one. Did we get the newer data? This program is good. We just died last year outside. This is a good program. Thank you for doing this. This meets a human need. The hurricane piece we've gotten involved with that. I know your EOC well, not as well as you all but I have been to... And that's a good thing to work together on the storm and we do that and we're usually out of season. In fact we're always out of season. The staff's never really there so we decide whether it's going to be at transitions or if it's worth trying to open the center without the staff to do that. Questions? United Way present and then we can just kind of... All right, good morning. Jenna, for more United Way, it's a pleasure to be here with you this morning and we have our staff here and our CEO, Sarah Fawcett. So we have lots of help to answer questions. So we're going to talk about two different aspects. So we have two contracts with the city. One is for the direct service of the Inclimate Weather Center. The other one is the systems and service coordination. So I'm going to go through this quickly. I have invite questions so stop me because I know that you do have questions and I hope that we can help answer those. We originally responded to a request from proposals from the city back in 2014 and the original RFP that the city put out was quite broad. So when you see that we are canvassing a lot of different waterfront, that is because we are trying to live up to those measurables. We do want to talk with you. We thought this was an important conversation to have because we do have some recommendations on perhaps narrowing or perhaps adding more focus to that scope of services that we think would address what we're seeing. But wanted to kind of go through this with you today. We have a progress report, a written progress report that has much more detail. So if I can't answer something today, there's lots of detail there. We also provided an updated meal share calendar. So I'll go through that quickly in just a moment. So as Craig talked about the inclement weather center, this is the cold weather shelter, runs for cold weather conditions from November to March. So we are finishing up the current season right now. We work with transitions for day-to-day operations, meal share, meal services from Salvation Army and then private vendors for transportation security. So Craig went through the stats real quick and we're not going to cover these. The one thing I wanted to cover is just the aspect that this is a basic needs-only facility. So case management is not funded there. What we do have is we have seasonal and year-round staff and also private security to provide a safe environment for people to be in. There's a hot meal provided by Salvation Army in the evening and then we provide breakfast. But those are the limitations of the services offered. We do invite service agencies to come in and engage with clients and they frequently do. We have strong support from Mercy from 180 Place and the Public Defender's Office and others that are there. What's 180 Place? They've been in Columbia about three years. They are a very large organization in Charleston. They came here about three years to do veterans services and they've expanded to non-veterans homeless services. It's rapid rehousing and street outreach in case management. Physically they're located down in Landmark Plaza which is right as you get into Forest Acres. So again the basic needs facility we invite providers in. We have special events at the Inclement Weather Center to engage people. So for example we had DHEP come in this year to a Hepatitis A clinic in a flu clinic for us. We know that Hepatitis A is quite a crisis nationwide right now for our homeless populations so we were trying to be attentive to that. I wanted to go through the demographics a little bit of what we're seeing at the Inclement Weather Center and I would kind of focus down here at the bottom. So over half the people that we're seeing have a disabling condition. About 24% are chronically homeless and what that means is people who have been homeless for a very long time so continuously for more than a year or multiple times over a period of years and have a disabling condition. So these are people who are in very challenging situations. We have over half that have no GED or high school diploma and only about a third have any kind of income. Yes. The 50% have a disabling condition. You're considering a mental health as well as physical. Yeah we typically, we go by the HUD definition so it's substance use, physical disability, mental health typically. I'm going to skip. Sure. When we talk about the disabled normally we're talking about people who are physically disabled and what about people with developmental disabilities? Are they counted in the number? They are and we'll also see people including the physical realm of someone who has traumatic brain injury and sometimes that's very difficult to work through because when you have someone who has a traumatic brain injury sometimes that can present a serious persistent illness when it's not and those people can be in very challenging situations. Thank you. I'm going to move on to the regional contracts. I'm thinking that's where you may have more questions. So again we cover a little bit of a waterfront of issues with this. I'm going to pull out a few of these in just a moment to kind of talk about Craig mentioned the travel voucher program and I'll talk about that a little bit more in a second. Outreach coordination. So I think Kristen and Craig both talked about coordinating outreach and so we do work very closely with the city funded and non-city funded outreach workers in the community. So we do convene monthly meetings where we have CPD present, our public defender's office, city center partnership to really look at not only the trends that we're seeing on the streets but the locations, where the campsites are, where we need to be engaging people and then we also coordinate care and housing placement. And I'll talk about the frequent offenders in just a moment but making sure that we are identifying those who need to be triaged for housing and that we're making sure that they're assigned to someone to do that and that we follow up and our staff follows up to make sure those things are happening. The meal share I'll talk about in just a moment as well. Housing placement coordination. So we do work it's a very relationship based process but working with landlords to get them to accept people who normally they would not rent to. So people who have credit or background issues. Most recently we've also been helping with the placement of some of the Allen Benedict families to help them find units that they can rent as well. Youth interventions. Our youth in transition is a fairly large initiative for us at United Way. It's a pretty small part of the city grant itself because we have non-city staff working on this but this is really our attempts to work upstream to look at youth that are 17 to 24 that we can end homelessness for them quickly before we see them as the 50 and 60 year olds of the Inclimate Weather Center on the streets. The employment program a couple things there. Outside of the city work we at United Way partner with Richland Library for an employment and readiness program specifically targeted to people who are homeless and that is to help people work past barriers. We also coordinate several events during the year which are employment fairs comprised of employers who are willing to hire people with some background blemishes. We also have an event coming up at the end of April that is breaking down barriers it's actually doing one-on-one coaching with people talking about soft skills and really helping people understand the barriers they have and how they can overcome them for employment. Frequent offenders I'll talk about in a moment and the Motel Vouchers this was a program that we worked with Homeless No More this past year, the past two years to provide Motel Vouchers specifically to families in unsheltered situations if they were identified by Columbia Police we'll talk a little bit more about the challenges that we saw there the transition part it's more kind of the lines with the federal regulations of how they categorize unaccompanied youth but to also kind of address your point we worked very closely with the school districts to look at families who are in unsheltered situations or identified as McKinney-Vento eligible so we do work the gamut we have that particular focus of youth and transition at United Way but again that's mostly outside the city contract but we just wanted to bring it to your attention another question can you talk about the outreach coordination so if there are a huge concentration do you send out people to go out there to that now do you do that regularly or once will you meet once in a month no we get almost daily requests I'll look over at Kathy who coordinates these for us it's almost daily requests we also do special events so for example back in December when full street the buildings were going to be boarded up we actually worked with the north region with outreach to go in and actually do sweeps at those buildings for anyone who would be sleeping in there because obviously we didn't want them in the buildings when they were going to be boarded up so if you don't get the reports from the police department how does the homeless community know that something they talk about themselves or is it something new yeah absolutely but we have the street outreach workers are actively engaging people in services and then they're entering the information into our homeless management information system that we administer at united way and that's how we coordinate here across agencies we know who's working with who what status that they're in if they've been screened for housing where they're on the wait list and things like that you know I think Kristin said this each situation is a little bit different and we'll I do have a couple case studies for you for our frequent offenders in just a moment but I think the key with outreach and what I say about outreach workers they are the most patient gardeners in the world I have a garden but I'm not a great gardener an outreach worker sows a seed with a client and maybe it's a conversation and then you have another conversation the next day maybe the next week and keep in mind a lot of these folks are highly resistant to services and it's the care in coming back to that seed and nurturing it that you grow the relationship that they're willing to accept services from you that may be housing that may be helping them find a job it's that relationship based work of social work that is outreach that's exactly why at united way we work with richland library so the program we fund united way so again it's outside the city service contract the program we fund is job readiness and it's job placement so it is working with people to find out what background issues they have so a lot of people from the streets even if they want to work they can't because they have criminal issues they have background issues or they just don't have housing it's really hard to get and maintain a job when you have nowhere to sleep at night you have nowhere to shower you have nowhere to care for yourself and be presentable for work so that's what we do with the richland library specifically and frankly the reason it's based at the main library location why we work with their job coaching staff there as well as a social worker specifically designed to work with homeless people is because that's where we know homeless people congregate as the library so that's one thing that we do specifically we've been funding that program for about 18 months now to specifically respond to that need that you're talking about I say about the the officials in this area and they're going to go get a lawyer there's clearly people who did a job if the issue is that we fight people and we find in place there is a percentage that you have to be paid for but there's a lot of things there but sometimes it's just better hey let's go get this guy a job and walk that out and maybe their only part I think that is a loaded question I would suggest that we maybe come back and we visit that or as we continue to dialogue provider to partner we get a lot of news to be mentioned but I don't think we're going to talk about it this morning it's very important that we should be able to really answer some of the issues that you give an anecdote with your family and your friends and your family the other things that the rest of you take out of the box and jump into the box that's going to be somewhere I read and it's very contextual the poor and the homeless don't always be with us in this that's a proof which is not some created I think that Jennifer's next slide talked about the prequel fires addressed it a little bit can we finish the presentation and have the discussion because we're going on like 10-20 and I may have to leave you my questions because I'm speaking at the state house at 11 so I've got to go but I think all this is good discussion but we need to get through the presentation and be able to okay so a couple things real quick on meal share so this was from the very beginning of the city contracts so you have an updated map one side is your finley park meals the other side is your non-finley park meals your finley park meals look very different we worked with parks and rec to do meal time slots so you have four consistent meals in finley right now with two rotating the ones that are yellow are the rotating meals what I would say is that we still have issues with pop-ups and we call them pop-ups and that is meal share providers that come in that are not permitted and we would request continued support from the park rangers to address those issues when people are not permitted they need to be informed of the permitting process if they're resistant then I feel that escalates to a law enforcement perspective because we've worked very diligently with the meal share providers to have standards everyone before they are allowed to go to the city for a permit they're actually sent back to us for an orientation with our staff to talk about cleanliness and safety and pick up and coordination and things like that so we have reduced duplication of meals and improved coordination and then of our non-finley meal providers we've actually had our lunchtime meals synchronize their time so Washington street was doing a much earlier meal they moved that meal by an hour so that it could be at the same time as transitions and rice central up in North Maine so that reduced opportunities to visit multiple meals during the day for lunchtime Travel Vouchers Craig talked about this so we work with transitions on this we have had 36 go out of state nine within state and we've had three return to the midlands since they received the Travel Voucher so I'm happy to answer questions there but we'll move on to the frequent offenders so we started working on the frequent offenders initiative in the fall of 2017 and we worked with the CPD with the north and the metro regions with the solicitors office with city center partnership and the public defender's office really what we were seeing is people who were cycling in and out being arrested multiple times and we were identifying those folks as being homeless so we started with an original list of 74 individuals and a big thanks to the solicitors office because we do get this information from the solicitors office most directly since it's public information that's information that we can share with the providers through our federally mandated HMIS system but we started with 74 individuals and the first thing we did is we worked to prioritize those individuals and so we have our folks that are at the top of the list that we know have very frequent interactions so these are folks that you would likely know by name of people on Main Street since we've been doing this what we've done is really work very closely with our outreach through those monthly meetings and through direct contact so we have updates that we do on this list literally twice a week at a staff level that make sure that we are screening every one of them for services doing that triage that you were speaking of Mr. McDowell to figure out what exactly is going on with that person we've been able to house 12 with two returning to homelessness we have 42 right now screen for housing what I would say kind of about the screening itself is without housing it's what are you screening to so it's kind of like you have an ER an emergency room but there's no hospital attached to it so think about that for a second so you're screening people who have very challenging situations who are service resistant people who say yes I want to go into housing people who have refused services for years but there is no housing to put them into Kristen's program I think had five vacancies all of last year so you think about that in the context of the very limited number of permanent housing vouchers that we have in the community and so that's the issue that we have so I think Kristen talked about this a little bit when we work with our housing providers we are looking at the people who have those most challenging situations when the housing vacancies come up we are prioritizing our frequent offenders for those because we know they will be placed into a housing situation with services to keep them stable over time other three we've had three that were reunited with family out of the area which we think is very positive because again these are very challenging individuals we've had one person pass away and one person that is currently in long term care so Jennifer to that point at the 42 so what happened at the 42 waiting for housing so where are they waiting on the street on the street IWC maybe in places like transitions to the 12 that were housed are not included in the 42 they're separate I want to give you just a couple that was one of my that's one of my questions I'm seeing a lot more of my clients when I go to the hospitals that becomes a barrier the hospital I'll give that I can tell y'all stay on track I've got my list I want to give you two quick case studies of the frequent offender list we have African-American male the two I'm going to give you are both from Richland County little known relatives no ID on the streets slept on the streets and the IWC for known 10 years plus this gentleman was a W amputee substance abuse issues was not able to care for himself and what I mean by that is not able to care for his daily basic bodily functions so he would be on the streets we would get calls I know CPD would get calls would get uncomfortable in his wheelchair would sit on the curb and people were the general citizens were afraid for his safety because they thought that he had fallen or he was injured and so this was just a very very challenging situation he was frequently robbed he would get his disability checked and it would be robbed almost immediately his wheelchair was stolen multiple times multiple reports were made to adult protective services and I'm sure you're familiar with that but APS basically is a wing Department of Social Services that is to report abuse or neglect of elderly people like you would have a report for a child in abuse of neglected situations you can report people for self-neglect that was done multiple times with him and he was denied because it was deemed that he could make a choice for himself so we worked very intensely with the public defender's office manager at the hospital which was Prisma three homeless providers which was Austin Wilkes USC and Mercy to eventually get him successfully housed in a special care facility that would accommodate his very special physical needs this took about nine months recon offender case study two this is one we are working on right now so this is occasioned female limited contact with family she was a nurse for 18 years before she became homeless she was someone who was a very high priority for Main Street I could give you the name and you would know exactly who I'm talking about issues with disruptive behavior in local businesses local hotels no income no phone very very reluctant substance abuse impossible serious and persistent mental illness issues that were going untreated we worked with the public defender's office and two homeless service providers and very intensively with our staff to get her into a specialized treatment program she's moved on from that successfully to another treatment program and now we're working on a long term housing placement for her this one took about eight months as well Jennifer do you know not him maybe her was there interaction interaction with mental health court or probate court commitment highly resistant and sometimes if substance abuse is an issue sometimes that has to be resolved before you can determine if it is a mental illness or not because sometimes it masks symptoms real quick on the funding we work very and we agree we totally agree and it's not but that's why I was asking that because I know I have been successful some of my frequent fires in the mental health court sometimes especially if judge McCullough has seen them over and over and she orders them into treatment and then once they get cleaned then you can deal with whatever the substance issues then the other issue becomes again the lack of state funding for mental health so there's really a there's not a lot of there's very few long term beds and even the short term beds as soon as you've gotten to some kind of baseline to get you out and even getting into substance use treatment programs there's a wait list for those and sometimes it's a very delicate balance when someone finally agrees to go into treatment and then they have to wait to get into that and then say okay well I can get you in in three weeks you know keep calling me and keeping contact with me and that's what our outreach staff and that's what our staff does and then what happens is if they're out then they don't get in if they're in jail then they get a bed like at Morrisville but if they've agreed then why do you come in it's a cycle follow up question so if they're homeless and they don't work and they have no money to share no there's sex there's feeling there's I mean there's lots of issues there's lots of things I'll go through this quickly so basically Inclement Weather Center we coordinate with the four subcontractors and then the regional coordination we have city funding but then we also have non-city-funded positions that are funded by other sources as well as federal grants so I won't go through that for the interest of time I wanted to give you the results since the beginning of the partnership with the city so that one day snapshot that we talked about Mr. McDowell that we do every year we've had a 40% decrease in overall homelessness we specifically also track homelessness among veterans and that's down 37% we know that we have issues with people who are in very challenging situations and that's why we worked on the frequent offenders initiative but the overall numbers are down some of the ways that we've been able to do that is new units of permanent supportive housing with case management attached to it and that is through the federal funding that we coordinated United Way which is about 3.3 million dollars a year as well as the veterans vouchers that work through the VA and the Housing Authority we have new units specifically of youth sheltering and now we have youth specific street outreach for age young people again we're trying to go upstream other things are improved coordination of meals services and outreach I would say five years ago the level of coordination that we have across our providers knowing who's working on who's taking the point on this client where are they getting referred that wasn't here five years ago when we started and then we have new initiatives around the frequent offenders travel vouchers I want to talk real quickly a couple of recommendations obviously we wanted to have this conversation to get more direction from the city but from our perspective the inclement weather center first thing is we want to change the name of it to the cold weather shelter I think it is a little confusing since we've done the expanded opening since 2015 with the hurricanes folks don't quite understand sometimes with the name of the facility being the inclement weather center that it's not just meant for rain or bad storms so the cold weather shelter we think would be more satisfactory and I think that's a easy recommendation for us we started initial conversations with the comment to help us with the transportation services so we use a private vendor now who does a very good job not to discount their work at all but with the comment I think we might have the opportunity to think about more security at the pickup location and I think there's some definite advantages there and then we do want to continue with the current vendors, Salvation Army Transitions and the security firm for the regional contract a couple things here again we want to have this conversation but we are actively looking at ways that we can try to reduce our regional budget so that we can focus in a little bit more intentional ways when we originally applied for this with the city it was a very very broad scope of services that we were asked to address and I hope you feel that we've done a very good job covering that waterfront what we would like to do is become more intentional and more focused to focus on those frequent offenders that we see to really look at our system so how people are cycling in and out of Alvin Eskalin and other facilities so that we can really improve the coordination of those services we would recommend continuing with the travel vouchers we think that's been very successful and it's well run by our partners at Transitions we would like to continue with the outreach coordination our upstream work working with the youth homelessness and the meal share with the meal share specifically we really would like to understand how we can support the city because we know the city has very ambitious plans to do some I think really amazing things with them apart from what I've seen and we would really love to figure out how we can be a support in that conversation a couple other things quick we've been able to bring on an AmeriCorps position in the United Way and we would work to transition maybe that employment work over specifically to her we think that would open our staff to focus on the frequent offenders and then finally we would recommend discontinuing the Motel Voucher Program we've talked with our partners over at Homeless No More and the resources that we have for the case management attached to that really just do not need the clients so we would need to invest more not only in the case management but the long-term housing aspects so that's a whole other conversation about our families when you look here alright so if y'all can indulge me I got several so I want to kind of go through all mine and if we don't get all the answers y'all know how to get me to have this discussion so my first one was actually your last point I've actually had conversations with Homeless No More and I understand the recommendation and Laila and I've talked about this extensively I am very concerned I understand the recommendation and I know that we have to be good stewards of our money and not continue to fund something if it's not getting the desired result but the invisible base of homelessness in this city our families there are a lot of families who are still living in cars who have huge issues and I think the whole situation with Alamond Court just highlighted the lack of affordable housing in our community at an amazing level and so I just don't want us to worry so much about frequent fliers and the veterans and other folks which are all needs forget the fact that we have families that are homeless and so I don't know the answer but I think we need to look at if we're going to repurpose that money making sure that we're still coming up with something that helps with those short-term needs of families who are falling on hard times yeah and I couldn't agree more and I wouldn't love for us to have this conversation about affordable housing especially rental housing again what we've seen with Alamond Benedict and I think you all know that we have an assistance fund that we're working with the library and Salvation Army to help with those unmet relocation gaps and what we're seeing there is people who are really struggling to find units the Motel Vouchers I'll go back to a second so yeah I talked with Laila Ann and we're very much on the same page about addressing the family homeless continuum of care so emergency crisis assistance there's a huge gap in these there's just not enough beds for crisis assistance and then also housing the thing that we saw with the Motel Vouchers is that we restricted it strictly to City of Columbia Police because that was our funding source and once word got out we had a jurisdiction nearby who said well you can tell people just going over to the border of city and find a police officer and that was not the intended consequence that was not what we intended with the program we intended the program to be a gap to meet a specific need that if an officer of CBD found a family in a situation they wouldn't have to make that decision about calling DSS potentially with children involved in an uncheltered situation versus having no resources so we would like to go back and think about that and obviously work with Laila Ann on that but the entire continuum for families really we need to address from the crisis side all the way to affordable rental housing I'd love to kind of help you know at least be liaison and talk to you guys about that so kind of piggyback on what Skip raised the Chief raised earlier what I am finding in the last year I'm getting a lot more of my just for everybody and particularly for my colleagues know I talk about what I do I don't know if y'all know exactly what I do I get court appointed to represent folks who are in the hospital under any kind of mental health or substance abuse commitment papers and I help them with understanding the process particularly about discharge so in the last year I've had more clients who are at baseline able to be discharged and the issue is no placement more and more I'm getting Craig their ban from transitions likely because of the issues that they've had with mental health and other stuff and I understand the safety of transitions clients you need to have those bans but and I don't know if there's a good answer but it becomes what the Chief talked about they become a law enforcement issue and once they get discharged the hospital kicks them out they're on the street basically they get kicked out to the street and we know they have mental health issues so we're basically saying we are going to put people with mental health issues that although they are medicated now because they've been in the hospital for three weeks as soon as they get discharged they're going to stop taking their meds they're going to do something so there is a huge gap there is no answer I don't know even where to start to find an answer but I'm getting increasingly concerned of how the system is not just filling the clients but it's filling the community because you know there are going to be some issues so I don't know if there becomes an issue I've had a couple that have been banned from transitions then we've worked with Mercy and been able to get them in a bed or something but I don't know I think we need to figure out where is that where is that gap or that catch all when someone has acted out and legitimately can't come back transitions but where do we what happens and so that needs to be part of this discussion because it's costing us money and safety of our residents of being able to not have a place for folks who have already shown that they can't all the rules are transitions but we're saying okay well then they can stay on the street no I agree and the frequent offenders those 42 that we've screened for housing that are waiting for housing those are very challenging people when I say challenging these are people who in process for screening for serious and persistent illness or have beliefs substance use issues things like that so that is exactly the population that we're talking about the same population again to to where we would like to focus is obviously triaging those people making sure that we're prioritizing this for people first for the housing when it comes available the housing is so limited again if you have an ER that people are walking into but there's no hospital attached to it where do the people go we can triage people we can screen them for housing if there is nowhere for them to go that's the problem we're stuck in right this moment we are in a position to advocate I mean I guess I totally agree with you I think the council totally agrees with you but for that population of 42 that are in that cycle what are some tangible things that we can show as a city with you about partner with others working with people that just don't make the issue more known that or take measures or no cases for these individuals to go is it I know we need to talk about judges I mean that's part of the product for you as far as the system of when they do their job and then they're getting in and out of the court system for these people I guess what we talk about as far as the bullet on the recommendations and the standard what is that what does that really mean for that particular group that we can we've had initial conversations a couple of times with Alvin S. Glenn to really improve the screening and I know Mercy's had good success working with their correct care staff so we had very candid conversations with them you have officers bringing people here the people are cycling back out before anyone can triage or do anything at the jail hospitals doing that as well law enforcement will take you to the emergency room the emergency room will see them and the doctors will release them so that's the next step we've had some very preliminary conversations with Prisma and trying to figure out how we can appropriately share data so there's federal data issues and things that go around that so that's one thing we need to work through but it's really our systems and then I do go back that we would really want to join that conversation about housing we have a gentleman right now who is on our frequent offenders list if I gave his name to those two gentlemen over there they would know who I'm talking about who is qualified for housing who's working with the outreach person on the desk of the housing authority the public offender has gotten a conditional release approved for him if he can get into housing there is no housing unit for him so he is sitting in jail right now and this is someone who had been on the street for a very long time very difficult to interact with and agreed to go into housing and now we're sitting here waiting so those are the issues so we would like to be intentional about how we expand and look at our systems work and how we advance this conversation on affordable rental housing I think along those lines I don't think it would hurt if paint the picture of the specialized housing because we also have some people who are duly diagnosed then you've got the family that is that is a focus that's going to cost more money but it's needed and there's two more things that I've got to go we can just lay these here and just for thought and we can talk about it at another time to follow up with Councilman McDowell said I know you guys not handling things here but you are part of a national network and so Justice Jennifer has given some suggestions I mean I think that we need to get to the point where you know we're not doing our job we're coming to report we're getting money doing a job this cycle we need to have some kind of work sessions where we're what are best practices who's doing this who's doing that and so for you guys not just say okay this is city we're going to take the money and this is what we're going to do but figure out from best practices within the field what are some suggestions this is working whether it's expanding or doing some other things we would like to hear that so I would love to hear from you guys best practices and then lastly and I'm not saying this to appear critical but acknowledging a reality a lot of times perception is reality and you know we're Craig mentioned we're eight years in transitions you know transitions MHA came because there were business leaders who felt the city wasn't doing what they needed to do they went somewhere did their little research that this is what's going to work here they came back you know got it funded and you know and now we have transitions some of those partners may still be at the table some you know like Ms. Novinger are no longer here and I think we've lost some great advocates as far as you know the work that is happening so now you know and people don't necessarily remember where things are eight years ago so they're just looking at what's happening now and saying okay it's not working and so I've you know CC the manager and chief on emails I've had with some citizens who you know want to blame everything on the city and say we're not you know we're not doing anything but what they're also saying is that you know we recognize transitions isn't working what are y'all going to do now so we're in this together I think we have to acknowledge the perception that all the good that transitions and inclement weather shelter and everything is doing people are not seeing what's happening that's good they're seeing what's not working and that they feel like there's it's not being addressed I believe that we have to acknowledge the things that the perception that we're not doing enough and not be defensive about it but say okay we understand that there are more there's more that we can be doing and these are some of the things that we're trying to address and so I say that to say I'm getting just to the point where I'm hearing more negatives than positives about the coalition and what we're doing and so I think that we have to be mindful of the perception that transitions is not working and address that in a way that shows people why it is working but what we will continue to do every year to grow upon our successes address what's not working in the board that is probably not a question it's a statement and I say that because you guys know I support what you do and I support transitions but we have to do something to help with the perception that the city is continuing to spend money on something that's not working and with that said I've got to go congratulations Anita it was good to see you I didn't expect to see you today I'll be back I'd like to just close that point what I was about to say when we start to talk about specialized housing I'm still interested in what some other states are doing because there's competition for housing that do become available families that are intact and the real family then you've got the folks that we're serving that have special needs also and I've seen the state do it again houses that are targeted for people with special needs not just physical and mental but the dollars need to follow the folks also wherever they go the dollars follow them and how much we're doing with our state representatives they need to be a part of it they have the voice of the state house they need the budget so anything we can do moving forward I think we're all committing that we're going to do it but I kind of agree with my colleague we just need to decide and determine exactly what needs to be done in our experience at this point that's the only way we can do it but still appreciate what everybody's doing but we just need to also I think accept some of the realities of where we are and how we got here what we look like at this point at the poster where we really want to be and should be a couple of things more like a question maybe from information data I'm interested to know where are the location the actual physical location of the services that we offer for the homeless community I mean I think a little thought somewhere on the map would be great so I can understand where they are located we have a brochure we can send you specific to the city and services Kristen's office is on oral street right here so it's all very close I'm just trying to wrap this up so I'd love to have that on a map we can do that for you the other thing is to follow up with the workforce and this is something that I've seen and I've read personally on how other emissibility is going on other programs to provide work for the homeless for example the yellow shirt community maybe develop a program that you can assign 20 people that can go to work me as a businessman the liability issue whether they can work I don't know that something maybe you can come up with put your thinking hats maybe that's something that you can do with and the first example is a program that they had I had the restaurant we used to use them because it was an available workforce that we can call in and I'm not saying this is what you need to do I'm just saying this is something we want to work on and then on the mental illness patients that we have in the city we obviously the majority of the homeless and mental illness is there any way that we can go back or calculate or figure out a way to provide a location to I really don't want to say institution but it's something that we can provide services for those exact mental illness patients in a certain area somewhere that we can access them all the time and I'm not sure if a mental mental institution is the answer but maybe something similar to that that we can go after because and then the last thing that I'm going to say this is probably hard to get information on we started this homeless committee or the conversation about it because we were getting updates on the economic development so what are the money that is costing the city and comes to the economic that is constantly changing is that something that we can come up with about a number that we can I don't know but I'm sure our talented staff that's a good one maybe we can because it affects everything it affects development downtown it affects the growth downtown or anywhere in the city it affects hospitality and visitors coming in it affects us as a city and if we really want to address that when it comes to economic development let's look at see if we can find some numbers and what it costs us as a city not the check that we write you for all the services that we provide and I'm very supportive of what you all do it's what else what else we're not seeing on the table that really affects the city in the long term is that Mr. is that Mr. Coleman, Ryan Coleman I was part of the the institutionalization against the fourth year of getting people out of the actual type environment but the dollar has not really followed why I'm saying our representatives downtown organization and the dollar those kind of money ticker down it's a service not necessarily to a person it's a service that they need but obviously we can't we can't do it with each city and all of the other partners but I just think mental health and those are the most conversation about that I don't think it was a legacy of point I think when you start talking about advocating where am I we've got to all be on the same page about what our numbers actually I mean I see the percentages I see the work which I would do when we say 40% decrease in overall homelessness but then we keep saying I think I heard you say that we've leveled off from 17 to 18 and then we have very preliminary numbers for 19 that I can share with you probably a few days from now but we have leveled off for 17 and 18 so we were here coming down here 40% and we've been unchanged the last two years possibly three I don't know though Jennifer that if we were to move forward and I think the recommendations to kind of wrap this all up that you all have given that a lot of them present us a budget that shows more of an impact area with the recon offenders initiative the travel fund the outreach the meal share getting more specific and on the standards of the things we now know because as much as we want to say what the decrease numbers are if there's no data or information to support though that there's still a big issue of mental health a big issue of homelessness it's just saying there's no decrease and we don't want to go to the state house with data so we have to frame it in a way that it's meaningful and almost alarming at times to make the impact of the homelessness but also for this council to be able to know how to redirect funding to the areas where we need to move I think we all say in the same thing but I think we need to now get more tangible of this budget request as far as what this council needs to approve and how we can really move it forward we can do that the other thing is the frequent offenders list and then we have a separate prioritization list of people prioritized for housing data as well through the database and see what we can find as far as data for you I don't dispute the revolving door and that's why we started the frequent offenders initiative because we saw the people cycling but the quick example I would give though is there is a veterans housing facility located off of Gibson Road in Lexington and so that's out past the jail and I don't think there is a veteran's housing facility located off of Gibson Road in Lexington past the jail it is federally funded with VA dollars for homeless veterans. They have a heart challenging time keeping those beds full in fact the VA has to decrease the number of beds and decrease the funding for that facility because there is no way to get there and they are solely reliant on the van transportation of that facility to get the people to where they need so I'm not arguing at all I'm not because I absolutely see the point of the concentration of services but Sarah's point I think being thoughtful about how we triage people and get them to places we just don't want to have unintended consequences this is a law of course in fact we don't want to lose in terms of that in 18 in 18 so I think just having these coming together is definitely effective on the criminal side those are people that are very prejudiced they're talking they're telling that's pretty easy well I think that's a good example though of us having to have in this room we had a very hard conversation about moving the movement and this is now the result of continuing to acknowledge where the emphasis where we need to continue to place emphasis and continue to do all the other great things y'all are doing for the people who do want the help and do want the services and are trained in their lives willingly but I think what continues to happen to Mr. Bynes is because as with everything that local minority which in this instance is that most 42 individuals who sometimes create the most worry and the most wave and the most issues every day that's what people see so I'm just saying we need to do everything that can be done with maybe some other strategies to try to continue to follow a strategy because I think it's getting a lot more attention versus all the other great programs yeah correct that exactly I don't think we're saying we keep doing that but we just I mean I don't know that that's as much your issue as some of the other now at the point we're going to close out with you we have we'll end on that appreciate everybody's thank you to council thank you to staff the recommendations look good I think you probably got to review the motel vouchers and I don't know that I'm sold on the name change okay thank you thank y'all very much