 Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us for this important update. We're here to give the public and the media an update on the Elmwood emergency shelter community. We're going to talk about the team that we are putting together to successfully manage this new facility and give an update on the timeline. We're going to hear from a number of key partners in us getting to today's announcements. And they are visible there on the screen with me. I want to say thank Kerry. Kit Hoffman, who is from the Agency of Human Services and is representing the commissioner, Jenny Samuelson, has been a key partner providing funding and other support in getting today. And we're also joined by Michael Monde, the executive director of Champlain Housing Trust, the nonprofit that has long been the leading housing partner for the city. Since Champlain Housing Trust was part of the city, a creation of the Community and Economic Development Office decades ago now, we also have a number of members of the CEDO team here, Director Brian Pine and then our special assistant to end homelessness, Sarah Russell, who will close out today with a kind of placing the work at the Elmwood Avenue shelter within the larger context of our efforts to address and end homelessness here in Burlington. And we also hear about the physical progress on the site from Samantha Dunne, who is our assistant CEDO director for Community Works. I'm going to kick things off and hand things over to the team momentarily. The Elmwood Emergency Shelter Community is an initiative that began less than a year ago. Last December, we announced that this was a municipal goal when announcing a 10 point housing action plan. And I think we're trying to bring up the plan here. The creation of the Elmwood Shelter Community was one point of that 10 point plan. To say just a moment about the broader effort, the way I see our housing challenges, the long-seeing our housing challenges is this. If we are going to make good on the promise of housing as a human right, we need to do two big things. We need to build a lot more housing. I think fundamentally our housing affordability and availability challenges are a supply problem. We just haven't built nearly enough housing of all types, permanently affordable housing, as well as units that serve the broader housing market. And we need to bring a special focus to the challenge of homelessness because supply efforts alone there, while very important, will not on their own address the unacceptable level of chronic homelessness that we see in the community. And one thing that that level of chronic homelessness right now is at a very high point for this community. We have gone from a low, this is a metric that we attempt to measure and track very carefully. And we saw that number get down to as low as 35 people in the years preceding, the low point preceding the pandemic. It is now the latest figure I've seen is that there are over 220 people who are chronically homeless in this community. And the Merchant Elmwood Avenue shelter community was envisioned as part of a strategy to really bring down that number of chronically homeless individuals. I want to emphasize that it is just part of the strategy. And if all we were doing was investing in these shelter pods, I think it would not be a successful effort. But what Sarah is going to speak to at the end of this presentation is the way that this fits into a broader effort to redouble our efforts to eliminate homelessness and to make broader investments in the community infrastructure that is going to get us there and that other communities have proven can effectively end homelessness. But what we're going to start with is talking about this specific project, which has been a matter of major public interest since the announcement last December. What we can share today is two big things. One, that we are on track to open this facility and begin to house people in this facility before the winter. And Samantha Dunn will give some details of that on the ground construction progress, because we are in construction on this effort. And when we open, our other major announcement today is that when we open, we will be doing so in partnership with the Champlain Housing Trust, which we have reached an agreement with to serve as the property manager for this critical new facility. It's been a matter of a lot of public discussion that we have been working towards this for some time. There were a lot of critical issues to work through. This is something new. We are trying to create a different kind of shelter. And very, very intentionally so. The belief is that what we will be bringing into being here will address a part of the homelessness challenge, the unhoused challenge, that we have not had the resources to fully address before. It will be a low barrier shelter. It will be a shelter that we hope and believe will allow us to reach a group of people who the existing shelter system and permanent housing system have not been able to effectively support. And it is a facility that is going to have a very high level of supportive services available on the site so that from the time that someone begins to live on a temporary basis in this facility, we are really doing an excellent, coordinated job doing everything we can to help those individuals find permanent housing, find if they need it effective drug or mental health treatment services to link these individuals, in some cases, up with returning to employment. Our shelters in the past have attempted to reach all these goals. We've never been able to mount this kind of coordinated multi-agency effort to focus a great deal of resources on getting people this kind of help. And I'm now going to turn over the presentation to Brian Pine and to Michael Monti, who will say some more about the details of the shelter community. So Brian, why don't you go next? Thank you, Mayor. I want to just say that the place we are today is really a unique response to today's conditions, the fact that we are supposed to be post-pandemic, but we saw the shelter support to those who are experiencing homelessness pretty much shifts from a shelter place-based approach with congregate shelters where people would bunk in shared rooms with lots of other people. During the pandemic, all of that shifted over to a hotel motel program. And with the loss of funding to continue that program, we as a community needed to come up with a very fast, prompt response to what we anticipate is a significant need, which, as we go further into this, others will elaborate on the need and the numbers around the data that shows that the demands for shelter from the unhoused in our community has grown to a pretty significant number. We have essentially brought together, I believe, the supports that this community has available and can offer to people to go from living outside, living perhaps in a tent or somewhere else, perhaps in a doorway, which we can see in our community if we spend any time walking around to some place that offers safety and security and stability in addition to being paired with services that will provide, hopefully, a path forward and a bridge from being unhoused to stabilizing their lives and moving into housing, supportive housing, permanent housing is certainly the goal. This community is going to be, as the mayor said, going to be up and running this before winter. We expect sometime in November. As this slide shows, it's 30 climate-controlled modular shelters, individual units, if you will. They're very small, but they will provide what people need in terms of climate control, so adequate heat in the cold weather, adequate cooling in the hot weather for both individuals and five of the shelters will serve two people, couples or someone who has a personal care attendant that needs to be with them. And we'll be providing a bathhouse full service. People will be able to do their own laundry because it'd be laundry facilities on site, offices and sort of guest services, or you might think of it as a community space for accessing services and having meetings with service providers and going over paperwork for benefits and ensuring that someone is staying sort of in the system, if you will, so they can move from being unhoused to being housed. And what we want to point out is that the Community Resource Center was initially intended for co-location with the shelter, but over time, we've really determined that a even better strategy is to expand feeding Chittenden and that that service is being provided to the community now at feeding Chittenden on Northman's Gab and it was going very well, high utilization, it's serving the needs, and rather than co-located on Elmwood, the service center at Elmwood will serve Elmwood residents, so we'll serve guests of the shelter, but it won't be available to the whole community. So that's a change and a pivot. And we responded to somewhat two community concerns, honestly, about that and whether that was the right strategy. And so we looked more carefully, more closely at it, and we worked with CVOEO and CHT on the concept of feeding Chittenden and serving as the host for that. So service coordination, Sarah will talk more about that because that's really a critical piece. It's not just enough to provide a safe, warm or cool space, but it's got to be paired with services and she'll talk about that. But Mayor, am I handing it off to Michael or is that for you to do? Well, I will just, I'll bridge here just to share how excited I am to be able to make this announcement with Michael Monti today, I'm grateful. I am for the partnership from Champlain Housing Trust. Champlain Housing Trust has literally an international reputation for being one of the best housing organizations in the globe. We're very fortunate to have them here, headquartered in Burlington and doing so much of their work in Burlington. They have been so effective that the organization has expanded dramatically and is communities across the state are, look to them to play a role. And we rely on them to be developers and being the main developer of new affordable housing. And we have many other conversations going on with them about other elements of the 10 point plan that we need their partnership as well. They have also though distinguished themselves as one of the most competent property managers, one of the most competent and successful organizations at actually operating, not just affordable housing, but affordable housing that is targeted at housing the formerly homeless. And basically what I am in a long-winded way saying is they are the perfect partner for the city in this effort. It's a partner that we hoped we would be able to join with from the beginning and we very much appreciate that CHD has worked with us to knock down a range of issues so that it was possible to get to this announcement today. Michael, thank you and turn over to you to share anything you'd like about how we're gonna succeed here, if you are muted. Yeah, thank you both. And I appreciate those very kind words. This is where you should, I should wave to you and walk off the stage after those, great comments about our capacity and our ability to do this. I just briefly want to say CHD's mission is to provide permanent affordable housing in Chittenden, Franklin, Granddale County. And we have about 2,500 apartments we manage. We also do home ownership. We also do counseling and education. We also do farm worker loans for housing for farm workers, loans for people to do rehab, the homes. And at this point about 136 people strong. I think doing some great work in the community and through COVID and now with the resources, very busy as an organization and proud of that, feeling good about the work that we are doing and our capacity to sort of do this work. Probably a decade ago, we opened up a first motel to serve folks who are homeless. During COVID, we operated a second motel to provide folks isolation of quarantine who are homeless as well. But throughout the last five so years have assisted steps to end domestic violence for their new shelter, which is much better than what they used to have before, opened up the Bell Air and the Beacon apartments, which has a higher range of services and cooperation with the community health centers in Burlington recently opened up Susan's Place with 76 apartments for folks who are homeless. In Franklin County, this their apartments, 15 spectrums being served there as well as domestic violence folks and as well as the helping out with Tim's Place and the redevelopment of that SRO. Over the next year or so, we have 100 new apartments coming on who will serve folks who are homeless and about 20% as it says of our apartments now are serving folks who are houseless and that's a part of the work that we do. Again, we think of ourselves as homelessness to home ownership and so we provide a range of services. I think going into and thinking about the pods, we feel like based upon that range of experiences, the different types of folks that we have seen knowing the different types of people who are houseless, not everyone. This is not one type of person. There are maybe little groups of types of people but often enough there is a range of services and needs. We look forward to working with CVOA on that on making sure people are served. We have a strong team here in terms of management, strong team in terms of our HR capacity to move people into positions. A little of a hesitancy is the hesitancy of the workforce and we feel like we've been able to overcome some of that and be able to bring that now and the capacity to do the work and we are gonna be hiring a lot of people. So if anybody on this call wants to come and do some work at the pods, let me know. But working through, I think the team at CEDO ensuring that the most important thing is that people have an opportunity to be housed on a temporary basis and that it is safe and secure and supported and that people can move into permanent housing out of the pod shelter and into something that is stable and long-term. And that's really our broad mission and that is how we will try to work through the management issues that we begin to, so that we're still developing and creating and I think pretty close to sort of settling all the different pieces and parts of those things. Again, when we bring on managers and assistant managers, we'll fine-tune those things and we hope to be able to be up and running before the holidays. How's that? So that's our goal and thank you, mayor and team. I think with that, I can stop. Great, thank you, Michael. One thing I do want to note that is an important part of the conversation that we've been having with CHD which is some of the more work is coming on this, but both the city and Champlain Housing Trust are committed to the idea that this is, as Brian mentioned, this is a facility that we need right now given the acute pressures that we are facing right now. We are seeing greater levels of product homelessness, greater levels of people sleeping outside than we have ever seen before. And we have a tough road ahead as we know that the state is likely to continue to cut back from the hotel and motel programs that were set up during the pandemic and that that may put new pressures on the housing and the shelter system that we have in place. So this is a facility we need now but we do not intend this to be a permanent facility and we've been clear about that from the start. The city and CHD are in conversations and expect you negotiate, develop an agreement over the coming months that would formalize the idea that ultimately, approximately three years from now that this site would change from being a emergency shelter to part of the permanent housing solution and that CHD would develop permanent affordable housing on this site with the city's support. We are in the early stages of that conversation. There's a lot of details to work out there. This is a property that the Public Works Commission has a formal statutory role and there are parking issues in this part of the city that would have to be thought through and considered before you could have that kind of permanent change in use. There are all sorts of questions about what a project on this site would look like. And I know when you start talking about projects that immediately raises concerns and questions at least in the minds of neighbors. And I want those neighbors to hear that we're gonna be talking to you as we start to, we're at the beginning of this process and as we start to develop that long-term plan for the property, there's gonna be a lot more community conversation about it. But I do at the same time, didn't wanna at the start of the public start of this partnership on this property thought it was important to share that news as well. With that, I think next let's go to Samantha Dunn. Again, our Assistant Director for Community Works, which means she is basically the city's real estate developer in some ways. She says the projects that the city is responsible for getting built itself. She is the lead on, she's a part of a new member of the team still been with us less than a year and is the lead on getting this community constructed, which is not as complicated as building a whole building, but at the same time, there's a lot to it. So Samantha, what can you tell us about where we stand with the construction project? Sure, I think as anyone who's driven by, I'm gonna have can see that the site is under construction, which is very exciting. And for some of us that work on this every day, it maybe has felt like a long time, but this timeline is a little bit just to remind us that the mayor announced this concept late in or in the middle of December. It was in March that a site was selected and approved by the city council. We then went in for a conditional use of permit from the design review board, got that permit, went through the appeal period and started construction all in about five months. So while it is a temporary facility, it required sort of all the permitting of a permanent facility. That's the process, because we are city didn't have zoning for a temporary facility. So as someone who's worked with Michael in the past on developing the permanent affordable housing, this is a very fast timeline and really exciting to see work happening on the site. So it started last month, we're making new water and sewer line connections that will hopefully serve whatever happens on the site in the future. Just this morning, we were able to remove an unknown fuel tank from the city through the fast work of great team members on our construction team and at the state. So those kinds of things are ongoing. The site underground work, all the conduit being run for the shelters is all happening all underground is will be complete next week. We're gonna get a new code of asphalt and then be ready to start, everything we're bringing on the site sits on top of it. So we'll be ready to start that work. We've got 25 of the pallet shelters that are scheduled to arrive on the site on October 10th. There's a crew coming with them that will assemble them in a couple of days. We'll be those community structures arriving, hopefully early in November and then our final five shelters. But sometime before the end of the year, as Michael said, I think before the holidays is our goal. Would we have liked to open sooner? Yeah, like we wanted to open in July, but I think when you look at everything that needed to be accomplished, we're moving still at a very quick pace and so excited to have CHT as a partner as we put the site together to make sure that it is gonna work well for them, work well for the residents and work well for the neighbors. So I think with that, we can maybe go to the site plan. And so this is a nice rendered site plan and I'll talk a little bit about the colors that the first thing on the right side of the image is Elmwood Ave. The large rectangle on the upper right is going to be the community space. You'll see there's solar panels on the roof. We were successful in securing funding from V-Lite for those solar panels on both the community center and the bath house, which is the other larger rectangle. Both of those buildings have been designed and will basically operate as net zero. There's no fossil fuels on the site. We've been working closely with the Fish and Sea Vermont and BED to bring these kinds of things even to a temporary project. So those are the larger squares, the dark line that runs sort of to the right of the bath house and up into the community center is the new fence that will be added. We've heard talking with other communities who have successfully implemented these types of shelters that having the site be fully secure. So the staff is able to monitor exactly who is coming in and out was very important. So that's where that new fence will happen. And then the white boxes that you see are the 30 shelters that will be on the site. The color is the actual color. We're working closely with Duncan Wisnesky and some artists to start to realize place making on the site. There's a special product design specifically for going down on asphalt. And so this is the concept for bringing color, creating some neighborhoods and pedestrian streets on the site. And I'll talk a little bit more about how people can help with that. I think next, yeah, we have just some, these are the... Before you go off the site plan, can it just, because I know there's some lingering questions about this and the decision that has been made hasn't reached everybody. One of the, there's a lot of community discussions during the permitting process in the lead up to the start of construction about this plan. And one of the consistent messages that we heard was concern about co-locating the shelter community with what we call the Community Resource Center, which was a facility that's open during the daytime that is intended to support people who are unhoused and provide a range of services for them there. The original plan was to have both the shelter and the Community Resource Center co-located on this site. There was a lot of community concern raised about that and whether that would contribute to magnify, create challenges with the surrounding community. And we heard that in what we are still keeping a common building, but that building will only be accessible, usable by people who are living on the site as well as the staff and the various social services that are helping to provide supports, much of which will happen in that building. So the purpose, there's still a need for the structure itself and it remains, but that function is going to stay in its current location where it's working successfully farther east at the Feeding, Chittenden facility. Yes, yep, that's right. So this community building, as the mayor mentioned, is really to serve the community of the site as well as all of the service providers. There'll be food delivered through this site, washing ability to meet with medical professionals, all types of service providers. It does also have space to, and we'll talk a little bit maybe with Sarah about this, but the intention of the site is to run along with the community. So there's space here for members of the community to meet with staff, members of the neighboring community to meet with staff and members of this Elmwood shelter community to meet together. So there's space for that to happen in that building as well. So the other smaller common building just has six full bathrooms in it. Yeah, thanks, thanks, Samantha. So these are the shelters that are being designed specifically for this project and built for the project by a local business called Up and This. They got their start at Generator. We're building down on Pine Street and recently opened a new factory in Johnson as they've expanded. It's a really great opportunity to partner with a local business and think about how these structures can be used both to serve us in this current crisis of unhoused, but into the future. And these have been designed with that in mind that they may continue to serve the city in a different capacity. These are adaptable and could be a pop-up cafe or some kind of small business somewhere in a park. So that's a very exciting collaboration. The majority of the shelters, if you go to the next slide, Samantha are from Pallet. This is a company based on the West Coast that patented this design of shelters really to respond to emergencies. They have definitely a company worth checking out of amazing models about who they employ and how they do the work and how they've designed these shelters. They're meant to, they can be erected, they pop flat, they're gonna all come on a truck. And then one shelter can be erected in about four hours. It just needs a power connection that provides that heating, cooling and lighting. There's some great stories. We've been able to see these in operation here from people who were able to access them and how life changing this access to this kind of shelter has been. So very excited to have these. And we just found out this week, something else exciting that Pallet just finished testing and final design on a more climate friendly version for the Northeast. We knew these could operate in our climate to spend a lot of time talking to folks in Madison, Wisconsin that had these up operating last winter. But they've just finished a design that will have substantially more installation in them. And so Burlington will be the first place that those get installed working with efficiency Vermont. We were doing some quick math and that added installation will save us about $600 a year per shelter. So very exciting and excited to be in partnership with Burlington Electric Department to help fund the additional costs of that. So that had to add that in that just happened in the last 24 hours. Community engagement on this project has been intense. It's been important as soon as we got approval from city council to use the Elmwood site, we began reaching out to neighbors, had quite a number of community meetings open to neighbors to answer questions and address concerns through April, May and June. Met with the NPA a couple of times. Those were challenging meetings that just I'll say to be honest for anyone who attended them, I think they were very useful. We were able to hear concerns and respond to them. And that feels really good. I know there are still concerns and not everybody is happy but really exciting to have been able to hear those and respond. As we move forward with CHT as a partner, there'll be a new committee forming that will include staff and residents and members, neighbors and other members of the community that will be engaged around making this successful, being good neighbors. How can we work together to make this a successful site? Before that, we will have an opportunity to bring volunteers, people who are interested onto the site to start to implement some of those colors that you saw, getting color down onto the pavement. We've got design work happening for the fence, getting color on the shelters was something important that we heard from folks with lived experience about the site. So if you're interested in any of the opportunities to engage either on that committee or as a volunteer, you can reach out to CEDA. We've got a list of folks already and would love to have you included. I think with that, I'm passing it to Carrie unless Mary you want to talk any more about development. Well, I just want to say thank you, Samantha, great work. You were right to, I can't think of a Vermont project that involves permitting and new construction that I've ever been involved in that gets built and not open in less than a year from the time of conception. And it's, I saw some reference to there being like lots of delays. This is like the least delayed project that Vermont's ever seen in some ways. So great work. The next, next I do want to, we would not be moving forward and able to execute on this kind of timeline without the help of the agency of human services. This project has been of, has had the interest of the secretary herself, Jenny Samuelson, who's been a great partner to Burlington on so many fronts. Really, I got to know Jenny and start to work with her during the pandemic in our COVID response. And that kind of partnership has carried right into her promotion to be the head of the agency, this huge agency, the state's by far the largest agency. And we appreciate the funding support as well as just the commitment to an understanding that this is a critical community resource. And I really appreciate having a member of the administration and the agency here so that we can say that thank you publicly. And I will turn it over to Carrie to cut up and to share anything you'd like to about this announcement, today's announcements. Hi, thank you so much. And I agree that this project has been a key interest of Secretary Samuelson's and she's extremely excited to see it go forward. I would just like to, on behalf of the agency, think that providers and the city for the work that's happened to come together around this tough endemic problem, that creativity, collaboration and perseverance is deeply appreciated. As we all know, housing has been a problem in Vermont for decades, but the pandemic has really highlighted how both, we have this amazing ability to adapt, which we're seeing in this project. And we have such a need in our community. There's not enough housing. Housing is too expensive across the income spectrums, but especially this is the case for lower income from honors. And as we know, housing for those who have multiple barriers to social determinants of health becomes almost impossible to find and sustain. This project is a creative endeavor that responds both to best practices around housing and health in the country and to the learning that the city did over the course of the pandemic. The agency of human services is committed to working with providers to make us a sustainable plan to house the most vulnerable for Vermonters going forward. We know that this will look different than the transitional housing program that we currently have. And we look forward to partnering in more creative ways to figure out what our path forward looks like and appreciate this piece of the equation. And I think I'm passing it along to the tireless efforts of Sarah Russell next. On the way, I'll just intercept to say thank you again. We look forward to those continued conversations and partnership as well. And we will have kind of Sarah sort of closing us out here. I really think it's important to get Sarah's broader update and to understand the larger context that this and the larger work that this shelter community is one piece of, you know, if all we were doing was building this, it would be significant. We have by our best estimates approximately 60, 70 people sleeping outside right now on any given night. This has the potential to cut that number, really tragic problematic number in half on its own. But really, I understand the comments I've heard some wondering, you know, what kind of impact this is gonna have and whether it's really gonna make a positive difference. If you just look at it in isolation, if this is all we were doing, you could imagine how these beds would quickly become full. And, you know, what have we, other than the helping those specific people have we really created systemic change? And that's fair. We need to do much more than this. We do need to create systemic change. We need our housing system. We need a lot more, a lot more housing. I do, at every opportunity, think we need to communicate and understand that the housing challenges, the very high and increasing cost of housing that remoders are facing is a supply problem. We have made it too hard to build housing. And there is not just supply that results in people being homeless and staying homeless. There are other issues that need to be worked through and you really need a community effort of many stakeholders working, understanding and really developing solutions on a person-by-person basis to really, in a sustained way, get everyone the help that is needed and bring down the number of chronically homeless people we have living in this community to effectively end homelessness. And that is our goal. It's a very ambitious goal. I know it's a lot of people think is sort of, you know, overly optimistic and question whether we should really set the goal there. I think it's the right moral goal. I think it's the goal the community expects from us. I tell you, I haven't been in this job for a decade, whether I'm talking to kids or older people homeless. There's an enormous community discomfort with anybody being homeless in this community. There's an expectation that the city and the state work together, federal government and make change here. And you know, this is not a problem that we always had. Homelessness is somewhat a modern phenomenon. It's a result of policy creations over recent decades and it's something that we can and need to reverse it. And we've given that modest job to Sarah Russell as our special assistant to end homelessness to really be thinking at that systemic level and helping the city lead the effort that's gonna involve so many organizations but which I do firmly believe the city must lead to bring about that change. So with that Sarah, thank you for being willing to step into this role at this critical time. And you know, this is really one of the first opportunities we've had to kind of give the broader public an opportunity, you know, a briefing and update on how you see this work and how it's going. And so I'll turn it over to you to share some more. Thank you, Mayor. And thanks to everyone else who's contributed to this announcement today. As we think about homelessness, we have some current data up here on the slide that indicates roughly 620 folks who are homeless. And then we break groups of people who are unhoused down into subpopulation so that we can ensure we're not driving toward a one-size-fits-all housing solution for everyone who is experiencing homelessness. I will note something that's not on here that I know that's been publicized. We do participate in a point in time count each year in January. It's one day for the whole year where work stops and service providers in the community count the number of people that they interact with on that given day to give us a point in time count of the number of people who are experiencing homelessness. From January 2020 to January 22, we saw that number increase threefold, which is really interesting, right? So that's during the pandemic. We had an eviction moratorium. So there were not a great number of people who were entering homelessness. However, what the pandemic allowed us to see is allowed us to do is to relax our eligibility guidelines and not take such a narrow view of the state of homelessness and the state of housing insecurity for Vermonters, which we have historically done. So we had an opportunity during the last two years to for the very first time get a clear picture of the magnitude of need there is around homelessness and housing insecurity in the state. So we believe that's why that number increased is that we always knew that it was not a perfect measure, but I think for the first time we have that now, which feeds into the goal of ending homelessness. And I think that some may argue, as the mayor said, it is a really ambitious goal. However, I think it's better to have a goal and work really hard to achieve it than to throw your hands up and admit defeat. So I'm lucky to be part of and grateful to be part of the Chittin County Homeless Alliance, which is a group of invested stakeholders and community members that comes together on a monthly basis. And in many cases, our subcommittee work, those folks are coming together on a weekly basis to identify creative solutions. And that's what I think that the Elmwood Emergency Shelter community really is, is innovation. What we saw through the pandemic is, that not everybody could, we could house people in motels for a period of time, but that wasn't a great fit for folks. People could be successful in congregate shelter, but for a lot of people, that wasn't a good fit either. And this is our opportunity to really critically look at what we've done in the past and implement a new solution around emergency housing. Now to be clear, emergency shelter is not the answer to homelessness. It is a safe and respectful environment where someone can feel safe while they wait for permanent housing. As the mayor talked about, we do have a housing supply challenge. I would argue that I think that housing supply is part of, is the third leg on that stool that is our answer in addition to subsidy and in addition to services that people need to remain in housing. While we need to of course focus on the folks who are already unhoused, we also need to critically look at the reasons why they fell into that situation and be able to proactively address not only that inflow into homelessness, but the outflow to permanent housing. So those are some of the key pieces that the Chittany County Homeless Alliance is working tirelessly around a lot of really invested and engaged community members and people with lived experience also participate in that group and provide feedback to policy and procedures and initiatives such as this project as well. We sought the feedback from visitors to the community resource center around what this concept feels like for them. Is this something that might be helpful? Is this another tool in our box to be able to ensure that people are not unsheltered? And a lot of elements in this project were really pulled from those conversations that we had with people who have lived experience of homelessness. The city has also, and it's from a systems level made an investment in the coordinated entry system. And we have increased staffing for that system. There was one person who was in charge of coordinated entry for our entire county up until this investment. And now we have 2.5 full-time positions based out of our wonderful partners of CVOEO. It has yielded roughly connecting an additional 100 households to the coordinated entry system since that investment was made. If we want to speak specifically, I'll go back to touching on the Elmwood shelter. We don't have to go back to the previous slide, but I think that one of the things that we heard around from the community and from our partners in this work is that ensuring that there is appropriate staffing and services and support available on site is really the key to finding success. Both success within the shelter and ensuring that people move into permanent housing, but also success in being good neighbors within the neighborhood. With that being said, in addition to partnering with CHT, amazing partners who are wonderful with property management and also have a really robust and intentional resident services component to their program as well. We will be partnering and actually have agreements in place to have on-site recovery meetings and support from Turning Point of Chittenden County. We also will have daily visits from the CVOEO's CORA outreach team that will be providing food, basic necessities and connections to low barrier resources for folks. CVOEO will also be providing the on-site case management to ensure that there are dedicated staff at this site to coordinate services, specifically for the resident or guests, excuse me, at this location to be connected to permanent housing. Additionally, we have an agreement in place with the community health centers of Burlington and their mobile medical and mental health outreach team will be visiting the site to provide low barrier connections to folks around medical and mental health needs right on-site. And as you've heard a couple of times, there are offices for confidential meeting space located right within the gathering space as well. With that being said, I think that I'll end with the one bullet that I didn't address on this slide is that in the last three and a three month time period, we saw 49 households permanently housed in Chittenden County, which feels like something to really be celebrated in a time where we have an extremely low record low vacancy rate and we have a completely maxed out social services system. This cannot be possible without the work of the Chittenden County Homeless Alliances Community Housing Review Team. And I think while they're often overlooked, the just phenomenal work of the direct service providers who are breathing this every day. And I think we sometimes sit in offices and have these conversations around systems, which are so, so crucial. But I think that it's important to recognize the direct service staff that are breathing this, living this right alongside the folks that they're engaged with. So I think that's all I have to share today. Thanks for the introduction, Mayor. Great, Sarah, thank you. So speaking of one of those heroic front line workers, he's actually doing the hard work in the field. At one point, we will do the organizing out loud here. At one point, we're going to hear from Lacey Ann Smith, but is Lacey, are we able to hear from Lacey? Smith, are you not seeing her on the line? No, Lacey is not on. OK, great. So that means we are at the end of the program. Lacey is the head of our CSL program and it's doing a lot of that work from the city team. And I did, we had her on the agenda at one point as we're putting this together, because I want people to know that this new city invest that this new investment is going to work hand in hand with the new investment in community service liaison. These social workers now working for the city and helping to serve people who are unsheltered and sleeping outside overnight. That team is going to be very much integrated into the work with all these other services. That seems to be very much integrated into this facility as well. So with that, we've been talking for quite a long time. A lot to say. Thank you to my colleagues here for sharing all that. And we'll finally now open this up to questions members of the media authority. So folks who are a member of the media, you can raise your hand as Pat Bradley just did. You can also send me a text message or an email to get yourselves in the queue. I'll call on each one at a time and enable your microphone. So Pat Bradley, I didn't enable your microphone. You can unmute yourself and go ahead. Hi, can you guys hear me OK? Yes, go ahead. OK. Hi, Mayor. Thank you. See you virtually, at least. I'm curious if there's an application process for potential residents, how they're chosen and if they can apply yet. There is there is not a process yet for that. There will be we're developing that. And that is probably a key part of what we have to do is work with the various organizations that are in contact with folks who are houseless and make sure we have a process of bringing people in in a good way. You know, it's we really are even as we wait here, it's still two months, two and a half months away. We hope that other people have other opportunities in the meantime. But, you know, so we're going to do the best we can to hurry up with that. But we really have to develop that process a little bit further. Do you have an idea of what kind of priorities you're going to set for accepting people into this community? We have had some discussions about it. I think we've been fairly broad about those things. You know, we want to make sure that people who come into the community can exhibit a certain level of their own self safety and security as well. That's a key part. So, you know, there are times when the folks who might come in, who we say, you know, you really kind of need a higher level of service than the pods might be able to provide. But certainly we don't want to create barriers as well for folks to get in. So, you know, I can't tell you I can't say very specifically. I know we've had these discussions. I would I would hate to tell you something that I can't that won't happen and after we get through this in the next few weeks, I'd rather be able to sort of communicate that to the coordinated entry and other members about how we're going to approach bringing people in. OK, thanks. Juliette, you can go ahead and unmute yourself and ask your question. Hi there. Thank you so much for going through all this. So I know in the past, the Champlain housing trust was approached to be in the management position. But I think for one reason or another, it didn't work out. So I'm wondering what has changed and that has allowed you all to accept this this position as a management. That's a great question. So a few things. One, we as well as other members of the community thought that the co-location of the Community Service Center on site was not a good idea. We expressed that to the city as part of a reason why well, we would rather that be separated and not part of this. And let me just say that we are working with the food shelf and creation of a great facility at that location so that they can really work. Well, that's as another group of folks who do real estate development who are right now doing first phase of improvements in that property and second phase to expand that property to make sure that that really works as a great facility. The feedback from the food shelf was it's working really well there, but they need some more room. And so that's that's why that was a part of can we do that? It does that work. We want to get clarity about that, right? That's one, two. Although we feel we can staff up, we have been challenged a bit on a maintenance side of things. And so part of our conversations with the city was that we really couldn't dedicate a whole maintenance to this activity. And so that was a second issue that we had in terms of the site. Those really in the third probably just in terms of changing environment, we're seeing sort of an uptick in people who need work, which is a good thing, people who want to work with us. That's still a challenge in many ways. It's not easy. We all know that we've seen reports on how difficult it is for many agencies to hire folks, our sister agencies like Cots and others who are struggling. But nevertheless, we felt like there was a level of confidence that we had that we can't step up and do this. So that change between the conversation first starting back in the winter to now and that has been a sort of like just a transition for us. We didn't want to be able to say, we could do this when we thought it was going to be nearly impossible to really manage it. Part of that was that we do have a lot of things. We've got a lot of things cooking. We have lots of projects that are in the works, both affordable housing, permanent forward housing, community facilities and a whole range of another hundred units as I indicated for homeless folks. And so there was a lot of conversation here about can we take something else on as well, and we just need to get get comfortable and balance that out. So those are the answers made sense and reason why we're able to step up now. You follow up to the. Yeah, can you hear me? Yes. OK, great. I'm also wondering if you all could provide a number in terms of how much you are being paid to manage the pod site. I thought somebody was going to answer that question. I don't have the answer. What I could tell you is that we're we're simply asking the city to support us with a number of staff that we need. And, you know, what we are trying to pay people a little bit more because it is challenging work. But nobody's going to get rich on this one, not even close. There's a lot of time that's going in from CHT that is not not being paid. And really, it's just about the staffing security, the cost of the facility that are being paid for part of the funds. We're going to get part of the funds that go to other organizations to make us work. And I think maybe Sarah could help me answer this question a little bit better or or Brian or Samantha. Yeah, I was going to ask Sarah to speak to that and perhaps cast it into comparison to what it costs currently under the state, roughly what the state spends on hotel, motel services, which doesn't come with the services. So if you could just touch on that. Sure, Brian, I think that where we are still in the process of honing budget, we are in the final, you know, sort of negotiations around that. CHT has been a great partner in helping us to determine adequate staffing and scheduling the scheduling matrix that they've come up with is is a work of art really. So we've been really grateful for their insight and expertise around developing that. I think that where we landed is that the emergency shelter will will roughly cost around one hundred and twenty four dollars a night per person. And in comparison, that that would include the, you know, the site, all of the services, all of the staffing and comparison. We're seeing that as as significantly less than the state's transitional housing program that is capping their motel nightly motel fees around. I think it's one hundred and seventy five dollars. Thanks, Kerry. So we are seeing we will see, you know, that it is expensive to provide this level of support and security in addition to the case management services on site to help folks move into permanent housing. So this is not just, you know, the the sites are, you know, the site and the management. It also includes services that will be on site and the dedicated service coordination and case management to the location as well. OK, so is there so just so I'm making sure I'm understanding this correctly. There hasn't been a number for them out that see it. CHT is being paid to manage the site. I think there is. I just don't have it right out there. Yeah, we can we can follow up with that. I mean, we're we're we are still fine tuning, as Sarah said, making sure we have both the right amount, but not too much. And I'll just be a bureaucrat for a minute and say, CHT will be submitting invoices to us with documentation. So it's not just like here's your check. Good luck. We'll talk to you later. But it's really a, you know, it's truly a documentation driven system of your cost this month, we're requesting reimbursement. So that's how that's logic how these programs go. And I think we respond that our budget is a response to sort of the both the zoning permit and the needs of the community in terms of managing it so that this is we simply just created the sort of the response to what it was. And again, Juliet, there's what there's no there's no new boats being bought for staff here as a result of some of this activity. It's going to be paid for the cost of the and the expense that we have. Got it. And one other questions, if I can ask, do you all anticipate any specific challenges as you move forward? Well, you know, let me just say that we have operated a motel, two motels. We have plenty of housing that are transitional nature. We've housed chronically homeless people and just like the world around us, there are issues that arise. No different, I don't think, than broadly the general community, a little intensive, a little bit more intensive, of course, folks who are homeless are more challenged by a range of issues. And so, yeah, we expect that individuals will will have great needs at different times. We we hope that there's a system in place. We have our intent is to have a system in place to respond to those needs and to have that kind of like intervention. If there are issues that arise, we're not we're not Pollyanna's. We don't think people are going to come in here and suddenly, you know, hang, hang flags out and put flower pots out and start growing food and feeling, you know, really great about everything around them in the world. So we do know that this work to be done, it's working on a mental health basis to work on on a range of issues for folks. So those are those are real challenges. People who are homeless and that are sometimes economically homeless, but also the homeless for a range of other reasons. It's not one type. Usually there are groupings, but there are issues to resolve for individuals to work through. When we've watched in our other properties, small miracles, 90 percent of the time, 95 percent of time and every once in a while where people are not a failure and that creates conditions and issues. That we have to sort of respond to. So, you know, that's that's what we're always wide open about this. We get clarity. We have clarity of an history of some of the experience. And know that when we go into it, we're going to do the work we can best we can to make sure people can be safe and secure and successful. I'll add to that. You know, the city's made it clear that this is not CCC's work to do alone. The city will when they're you know, we've had real successes with downtown shelters. They there's the fears about the kind of community issues they're going to be created, create our often much greater before we've opened facilities than when they're actually operating. That said, we know that we are going to be working with folks at the site who are having real challenges. And we like we are not Polly Annish either. We I'm sure we will face certain challenges. And when that happens, the city is going to be there to work with CHT and provide the support that's necessary to address them. But for CCC's benefit, the benefit of the residents and the people living on the site and in the neighbors, who we've really made a commitment to that this this new facility is not going to create major problems in their community. So we know there's work ahead there and we're all committed to doing it. Mary, this is another opportunity as well to highlight the community support liaison and the work of Lazy's team, ensuring that they are embedded in the police department, that they come with a social work, social service background and their focus is to provide wraparound support for folks. So that will be an important component to be proactive, to identify issues before they become real big problems. And prevent people from some of those issues escalating to the point where they need to be for discharge from the site. We're trying to avoid that, but got it. Thank you. Thanks. And last week, we have got two more. OK, Sam, I'm having trouble enabling your microphone because of the your computer. So I'm going to work on that. And Sasha, you can go ahead with your question. Hey, thanks so much. Appreciate it. Just a quick question on the buildings that are on site, aside from the the pod buildings themselves, these community buildings, obviously the bathroom and this other building. Do you anticipate having certain hours that that community building is open? Would it be open 24 hours a day? I imagine the bathroom, obviously, would be a 24 hour per day facility. But what about the other building on site? I don't I don't anticipate the building being open 24 hours a day. There will be staffing there and security 24 hours a day. So they'll be in the building most of the time, I expect. But I don't think there's going to be a need for folks to come and use the building after a certain hours. We'll establish some hours. We haven't done that yet. We will do that soon. And basically said, you know, building is going to close at eight o'clock, nine o'clock or something like that. When staffing, I think leaves and we bring in some support for security. I mean, otherwise. So that is typically how we run things. Any kind of public public facility that some of our properties simply shuts down and says time to go. So thanks, Michael. Thanks, Sasha. Sam, I'm sorry, but I'm unable to enable your microphone. You can type your question in the chat and please include who your question is addressed to. If that doesn't work for you, you can also try calling in from a cell phone or landline. Um, so I'll give you a minute to put your question in the chat. I'll also put my email in the chat and you can email any questions that you have there. If I could just take a minute while we're waiting for Sam. I just want to note that the city council has supported every step of the way, every thing we propose to this project. They've asked a lot of tough questions. They've asked us, I think, to ensure we're we're coming up with a plan that is both achievable and cost effective, but also responding to the needs. I just want to acknowledge the council, but also carries carries. The department has provided funding to the operations. So AHS has been not just there to support us, but with actual operations, something which is critical. Thank you for whilst on both points, Brian, I think absolutely. This has been, I think the votes to move forward with this project have all been unanimous at the city council level. And we appreciate that partnership on this. So I think if we have not heard from Sam through the other routes that has been offered, I think we should pull us to conclusion here. We've been going for well over an hour. Thank you, everyone who has helped lay this out, who has helped in part of today's very positive news and who has been doing the work to get us to today's announcements. Look forward to further updates and news as we move towards the opening of this important new facility to address Burlington and Chittenden County's housing challenges in the weeks and months ahead. So thank you, everyone, for tuning in today. We'll be in touch again soon. Thank you.