Seattle City Council Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies & Investments 8/11/21

[Music] oh okay son thank you so much i'm gonna gamble in this meeting and call to order so it is uh august 11 2021 the special meeting of the select committee on homozoa strategies investments will come to order it is 201 pm i'm andrew lewis chair of the select committee on homelessness strategies and investments um i do want to note at the top council members juarez and sawant have prior engagements and are excused from the special meeting will the committee clerk please call the role noting uh those excused absences council president gonzalez president council member herbal council member morales here council member mosquito present council member peterson council member strauss president chair lewis president i'm sure there are five members present thank you if there is no objection the agenda will be adopted hearing no objection the agenda is adopted uh chairs report um i'm gonna make uh well here i am i'll give just a brief overview i'm gonna have some comments after public comment to queue up the discussion i do uh first one to note councilmember peterson has joined the meeting um and for that to be reflected into the record uh today we're going to be hearing from a panel uh and councilmember herbald has also just joined the meeting um so let the record reflect those those new council members in attendance uh i do just want to give a brief overview of where we're gonna kind of go here with this meeting um after our meeting at the end of july uh there were some comments about the rate at which we're standing up emergency shelter investments that this council has fully funded um in the 2021 budget um one of the hurdles that is regularly mentioned from our partners in the executive branch is provider capacity as a limiting factor and how we can stand up and deploy emergency shelter and housing assets i felt that it warranted a special emergency meeting and i want to give my thanks at the front of this to council president gonzalez for carving out the space for this meeting to really have a conversation before we depart on recess uh so as to maximize uh my time during recess to to run some of this down in anticipation of our budget discussions in the fall to see how we can really get ahead of and address some of the capacity issues for some of these shelter options this is frequently a conversation i have with members of the community who are regularly very helpful in cueing up ideas around potential forms of shelter you know things like um you know tiny house villages or quonset huts or you know someone yesterday talked about maybe a decommissioned cruise ship i think one thing that gets lost in these conversations is that these shelter assets have to be staffed they have to be supported and that means we have to have um capacity from providers to operate the shelter once it has stood up so that is all we're talking about today uh it should be a great discussion and inform some of our policy choices as we go into the fall to really expand uh our work to meet the scale of the challenge that we face so with that i'll have a few more options uh a few more comments to queue up um the discussion after public comment but uh with that i will turn to the public comment um i will moderate the public comment period in the following manner public comment period for this meeting is 20 minutes each speaker will be given two minutes to speak i will call on speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website um once i call a speaker's name staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt if you've been unmuted will be the speaker's queue that it is their turn to speak and then the speaker must press star six to begin speaking uh just a reminder you'll hear a time when 10 seconds are left and once you hear that chime we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comment uh once you've completed your public comment please disconnect from the line and if you plan to continue following this meeting please do so via the schedule channel or the listing options that are listed on the agenda the comment period is now open and we will begin with the first speaker on the list my understanding is our first speaker is theresa so theresa if you are out there do please press star six and when you hear the prompt if you have been unmuted feel free to begin your two-minute testimony good afternoon this is teresa barker i've met many of you and as you know i'm in a community of 200 neighbors around ravenna park who've been working on homelessness for the last four years when i saw this topic agenda topic today i just wanted to give a couple of quick comments um so we know that those living what we've learned in the last four years of those living outdoors need assistance and protection last week we met with lead providers to learn more about their work especially with the just care model which we're very excited about because of the effectiveness and the client first model um we have advocated for the just care model last last i gave public comment last uh at the last meeting of this committee especially the voluntary relocation aspect and the culturally sensitive support that's done for those in need the lead staff when we spoke with them have made it really clear that their capacity the program seems very very effective a very high rate of people accepting services of whatever they need from documents and on forward but the capacity is critically limited they actually couldn't take on more than what they're currently contracted for so i'm i'm just giving public comment today to say we need more support for this model and our community is more than willing to help we actually have a ravenna pop-up kitchen that's been operating just among neighbors on a voluntary basis it has a weekly meal on sundays to anybody who walks up at 65th park and ride they've been doing this for two and a half years they also provide supplies that are donated like towels and so on and they've been working during shutdown on donations from restaurants um we don't want to you know go out and do this ourselves but we have done it um and we just need leadership support for from the city for these to expand these provider capacity for effective and meaningful support for those in need and with that i'll pass thank you so much oh thank you so much teresa um do we have any other public commenters signed up to speak there are no other public comment registrants thank you song and uh son and with that i will uh um end the public comment period uh moving on to items of business we have one item of business today so mr clerk will you please read item one into the record panel discussion on building capacity and workforce stabilization among city contracted homelessness services providers thank you mr clerk i am going to give as i said earlier a little bit of a of a queue up statement on this and then i'm gonna introduce the panelists um who we have here with us today from several of our um uh our premier uh local providers of services but i do just wanna do a little bit of table setting as i indicated i would before the public comment i want to acknowledge at the front of this meeting that we are nearly six years into the declared state of emergency on homelessness this state of emergency is clear and apparent and by far the biggest challenge that the city is facing and i say that knowing that we are currently facing an unprecedented global pandemic that is resurgent under the delta variant i i believe that homelessness is a bigger state of emergency facing our community even then our current struggles that we're facing with covet and we know that while the crisis is multifaceted and that every one of our neighbors experiencing homelessness has a different lived experience we have seen this crisis manifest most visibly in a significant number of our neighbors experiencing homelessness who are utilizing an unsanctioned encampment as their primary form of shelter i don't want to imply that the on sanction encampments are our only policy challenge stemming from tackling the multi-faceted issue of homelessness i don't want to imply that once the unsanctioned encampment problem is solved for that homelessness by extension will be solved for we know it won't but i do want to highlight that the unsanctioned encampments currently are presenting the most exigent challenge that the city is facing in a policy area that has many pressing challenges and we know that the problem with addressing beyond sanction encampments isn't outreach we've seen very compelling evidence that the just care model that was discussed in public comments and that we have seen covered in the news on a regular basis that centers the autonomy of our neighbors experiencing homelessness that centers their needs and in so doing centers the needs of the surrounding community uh that centers an approach that that really respects the autonomy of individuals to accept an offer of something better and meeting people where they are we have seen multiple examples through just care's outreach model over the course of this pandemic that proves it is an effective way to um give people an offer to go somewhere better and in so doing remove the necessity of people to live in unsanctioned encampments so we know outreach isn't the problem and there's a way to structure outreach to resolve the encampment problem we know the problem isn't the attractiveness of our enhanced shelter options we know that people like the hotels with supportive services that are operated by just care and the low-income housing institute we know that people like the tiny houses that are operated by the low-income housing institute and catholic community services in our broader community we know that people like the navigation center placements that have been de-intensified during the pandemic and that have given people the supportive help and assistance that they need we know that the fundamental problem is a volume of those placements and that any way that we dress this issue up in terms of tinkering with our outreach increasing the pass through from the shelter to go ultimately to permanent supportive housing which we know is the way that we are going to ultimately solve for homelessness is by expanding permanent supportive housing we know that expanding market rate housing opportunities through density reforms and expanding housing choice in more neighborhoods down the road is going to solve for homelessness but we really need to have this tactical discussion right now as a city family about the situation of giving our neighbors experiencing homelessness a choice to live somewhere that isn't a non-sanctioned encampment because we know from our outreach choices and we know from the the type of shelter we've been able to set up that people want to take those shelter options they will take those shelter options and it will center their well-being the well-being of our small businesses the well-being of our house neighbors on sheltered neighbors everybody by increasing the volume of these placements we heard at the end of our meeting in july that the council has funded 2250 enhanced shelter placements fully for 2021 about 1 650 of those placements in our budget that we approved last november for 2021 and several hundred additional placements in our supplemental american recovery act pass package we know that those 2 250 spaces when fully stood up are going to make a massive visible impact and in some cases are going to mean the difference between life and death for some of our neighbors experiencing homelessness who are currently living in a very precarious state with nowhere else to go but on sanctioning campus it has never been the policy of this council and it will never be the policy of this council to have a policy that condones or expects on sanction encampments to be a significant portion of the shelter portfolio of the city of seattle that is not what this council through its budgets and its rhetoric is advocated for this council has advocated for standing up desirable enhanced shelter that we know people will accept and housing and zoning policies that we know in the long term are going to give everyone a place to live in our community so with that i want to pivot to our panel because we we should have a conversation about how we can develop capacity and resource to staff 2250 fully funded enhanced shelter spaces for 2021 knowing that more investment is likely on the way and that more investment is going to need to be stood up in 2022 to respond to the scale of our crisis um and i would like to um introduce each person individually and then um after i introduce the panel turn it over to folks one by one to give some opening remarks and then have a conversation with council colleagues [Music] to delve into some of these topics so i want to start just by going through everyone who has joined us today we have derek bellgaard from the chief seattle club hello derek welcome uh we have um bill hallerman from catholic community services uh welcome bill uh we have sorry i'm just trying to look through this list on my zoom here uh teresa homan um teresa welcome to the committee uh we have lauren fay from downtown emergency service center and we have degal cooper president with us did i miss anybody can someone just flag if i missed a panelist you can unmute and yell at me if i missed you this is maya with the urban league of metropolitan seattle maya thank you so much and thank you for coming um okay why don't we jump into this uh um derek since i introduced you first why don't you go ahead and kick us off um and then if you wouldn't mind derek sort of passing it off popcorn style if um after your introduction initial remarks um if you wouldn't mind passing it to another one of your fellow providers here um until we have gone through the whole panel and then we can open it up for for questions and further comments so um uh derek take it away yeah thank you councilmember lewis yeah uh derek bellhart executive director chief salt club glad to be here thank you all for allowing the space um yeah i'm really excited about this conversation i i am really thrilled about the uh talking about the the the enhanced shelter idea and also with just cares you know we she felt a partner with just care and we um you know for a little while there we had wildford and it really worked very well but i will say though that that that type of program and outreach wouldn't have done well with the native community with uh the pda not actually intentionally coming out and partnering with the chief style club if that hadn't happened it probably wouldn't work very well at all for the native community so we'll put a plug out there that there has to be a culturally appropriate focus within that and within that model we're really uh excited about some of the potentials of future shelters um we do know that that's obviously not a solution that we do but we do need shelters like right now we have kings in with through the city um it's we have some um issues with it it's it's uh more than just a shelter it's come with a re-upgrade housing focus which is actually causing some problems actually trying to get people housed that aren't you know that have very high needs uh rapidly housing technically really ain't the program program before that type of thing um but what we really need is a shelter to actually do some deep intensive traumatic trauma work with our relatives to get them into that next stage to get them into that permanent supportive housing um permanent solution um without that pressure of just trying to get people uh rapidly rehoused because it ain't really working it the concept's just not very well thought out um but that's the one problem but the shelter itself we filled it with you know 69 natives in a matter of days no shelter's ever been able to do that and have they have any native representation but we do it we could fill another kings in the same size probably with the same amount of natives tomorrow um but so the shelter i did really is working and helping get our people off the streets but we need to be able to do some trauma work with them so i think some sort of healing component with that also um staff retention i'm sure everybody's going to talk about today you know that's doing this work um we need to get more competitive pay pay increases pay our staff well enough to actually stay in the field um it's very hard work um especially you know social work has got us through this pandemic and it doesn't seem like it's very valued as a society we need to actually start increasing that and pay people their value and their worth and what they contribute to our society and um so social workers need to get paid and actually retain them and get and keep following workers we need to actually invest more into that beyond just expanding the capacity and more employees we need to be able to actually pay everybody what they're truly worth in this society so yeah i guess i'll just wait pass it on i don't take up too much time uh bill hollerman i see your name on here thanks derek um bill hellermann with catholic community services i want to just echo a couple things that um derek shared so i've been doing this for 26 years here and i think it's the hardest time that i've seen in terms of retaining and hiring staff to do this work i want to and a piece of that is the context where we are for those folks that have been providing services in the last 16 months of the pandemic in addition to walking through that with with so many folks a number of us converted nighttime only shelters and churches to 24 7 low barrier enhanced shelter which is the right thing to do because it enables us to work with folks in a really focused way doing that has meant adding a whole bunch of staff just to make that transition so a number of us providers here have done that have added capacity over the last 16 to 17 months even though it's been difficult to hire folks to do that i would echo what derek said we have to do something about salary for the folks that are doing this work for uh the folks that are the our line staff at our shelters start at like 18 an hour our case managers at 21 an hour um and that's not because we don't want to pay them more that's because the contracts that we have with government and the dollars we're able to raise that's all we can afford to pay them um and that's that's really sinful uh i would say so there's no way to address the capacity when when you and other government folks come and say can you do this could you guys expand can you do more can you do more my biggest fear is i won't be able to hire people to follow through on that so i think that's the biggest challenge that's in front of us i'm glad we've moved to low barrier um 24 7 shelter it is necessary and we're getting better outcomes with folks for it the only hope the one hopeful thing i'd share before i pass it would be we're doing a whole lot and other providers are too on hiring folks with lived experience more and more in our our shelters in housing and what we're we're drawing from people that have stabilized in housing that a few years ago you know might have been in the shelter system but have gotten stable with the focus of housing that we've all had on permanent housing with so many of the folks coming through the system many of them stabilized and we're hiring more and more of those folks in fact we have a um we have a program that kind of does a special training with folks who've previously been homeless in order to get them into the workforce in a good way and those folks are are they have a special gift uh i think and as a special um a special way of approaching the work that's really wonderful and really good so that is that's a hopeful thing we need to do more to support those folks in their stability and they're continuing to work for us and taking more and more of that leadership with us but um we've got to pay him a just wage in the meantime okay so i would say i pass it to lauren okay from the esc thank you so much um thanks bill and thank you everyone for the invitation to speak today um my name is lauren say i'm the senior business manager at desc where i've worked for the past 13 years in a variety of roles um as many of you probably know dsc started off as an emergency shelter but we do a lot a lot more than that today and we do enhance shelter build and operate permanent supportive housing we're a licensed behavioral healthcare provider we do mobile crisis work and so on um you know and we really specialize in serving folks who have long term experiences of homelessness in our community and who are living with severe substance use disorders co-occurring disorders poly substance use mental health issues and just other pervasive disabling conditions um right now so we have a wide range of jobs at desc with all that that i've just mentioned that we do starting from a shelter and now um with all these different programs and locations we currently have uh 839 different jobs at desc full-time employees at desc and we have well over 100 vacant positions right now like well over i'd say closer to 150. i've been involved in staffing work and workforce issues for a long time at desc and i'm not exaggerating when i say this is this is the most challenging time that we've experienced um you know it's definitely echoing what bill was just mentioning with all of his years of experience as well um you know of course there have been other blips in the labor market before um but this time in particular it is so difficult to recruit and rent and retain our staff and i really think this has been compounded by the new stressors of doing this work during a pandemic our clients are struggling more than we have seen before and our staff are struggling more in their personal lives than we've seen before um you know i think as you as you start thinking about the 2022 budget process there's a few key things that i think will be important to keep in mind one is to help all of us providers keep pace with the rate of inflation um right now cpiw is tracking at 6.3 percent um and so for us to maintain even some of the ground that we have over the past few years to try to get our our wages even close to market median which we are not at uniformly across the board yet um we would need a a cola of 6.3 for for our staff so that they have you know that purchasing power um here in our community another thing to consider is um you know we are going to i think continue to struggle getting out of this hole that we are in with recruitment um and retention because we we can't compete with um a work market where there's such broad choice in the community right now people um are seeing the opportunity to try out a variety of jobs and um and we in particular just can't compete with the wages that similar work are able uh similar positions are able to pay in other kind of public sector settings so for example um one real quick example would be like para professionals for the seattle school district on average you know start at a midpoint of around 24 an hour where our staffing equivalent is about 19 an hour um and so those kinds of disparities and knowing how many open positions there are in our community really means that we can't compete um if you are qualified for both um which in many of these cases um the the folks that we're seeing are they're going to opt for the the higher pay obviously um in addition to this uh we also need to be thinking about how our landscape and human services and social services has changed due to the pandemic we need um to kind of rethink how we are providing our services moving into what will hopefully be a post-pandemic state at some point in the near future um but we what we're seeing is the trauma that has been caused by this pandemic you know piling on top of all the other traumas that the folks that we're serving already experienced being disproportionately marginalized oppressed um you know having uh ish serious issues with income inequality and so on now adding in these stressors of kovid um similar to what bill was saying we really have seen it be to be crucial for there to be folks um with lived experience in our workforce so thinking about how we can get new um new kinds of positions funded that really um can kind of bridge that those gaps of our traditional positions um you know overall i would just say covid it's it's having lasting impacts morale is really low unfortunately um and our workers are being significantly impacted by this um yeah just thank you so much for the opportunity to speak on this i'm really eager to work with you all further if given the opportunity um we have we have a lot of work to do thank you so much oh and i'll pass it over to i'm so sorry uh let's see here who are our options oh so sharon sharon yeah sharon go for it okay well thanks thanks so much i'm sharon lee i'm executive director lehigh low income housing institute i also have um teresa holman from me with me i'm here and i wanted to talk about capacity so right now we operate eight tiny house villages in seattle and we operate the executive pacific hotel and lakefront and then we also operate other tiny house villages in olympia tacoma and we're opening up one in bellingham and so we in the seattle area and also we have one in skyway a tiny house village so we're housing 800 over 800 homeless men women children people with pets veterans seniors in our what's called enhanced 24 7 enhanced shelters and we have been eagerly eagerly awaiting opening three more villages i know that the council i want to thank the council for funding three new villages and then three new villages and we have not experienced the same level of concern around hiring most recently we have 32 case managers position that are placed in our housing or placed in our tiny house villages and we only have one vacancy so we have been able to hire case managers and we offer the case managers and the village organizers the people who are you know around the clock um providing assistance and security they have union wage jobs and um union um you know benefits um and so we have a package we believe um like we pay a hundred percent of the um health care um there's no cost share um we have lots of vacation um so that's not to say that you know we couldn't do better but um i'll tell you where we're being squeezed um we're being squeezed because some of the contracts from the human services department are sort of um in some ways um so budget conscious that there's very little money for training um there's very little money for security and it's and there's very little money for um you know behavioral health or for doing the pandemics you know we needed extra money for food as an example we're trying to open up rosie's village in the u district and in friendship heights which is 125th in aurora and we are asking hsb please give us a second person a second staff person to be um in the evenings at night on weekends right because these are you know these are neighborhoods that have um you know um seen a lot of drug activity um you know um issues that we need two people awake right and so we still have this um proposal before the human service department to please give us adequate funding so we can really do a terrific job managing the village and keeping everybody safe and being a good neighbor so we feel that the capacity issues we have are par are you know largely constrained by the contracts that are sort of underfunded if that makes any sense i know that um the council and thank you you you provided um 4.6 million for three new villages and all those villages the three are delayed in terms of being open so there is actually money for us to um staff adequately um so the other thing is um you should know that um i think we're like the third largest um provider with hsd around some of the um you know the number of homeless beds we also have about 700 units of permanent supportive housing and homeless housing so as a housing organization we can get people from a tiny house into long-term housing because we prioritize them into lehigh housing we have housing all over king county seattle we have housing in snohomish counties olympia and so we want to focus on um you know on the ground case managers and then a quickly as quickly as possible moving people into our housing section 8 housing other subsidized housing so we have asked the human service department for more case management help and we've also asked them for access to referee housing and access to emergency housing vouchers and we're still waiting to hear um but as you know because of the moratorium um on eviction um you know we can't be like you know force i mean everyone's you know staying put right so there's actually fewer units available for people who are leaving a tiny house or leaving a shelter but we do want to make sure that there is a quick and extremely supportive pathway into permanent housing now during covet we did not have to pivot very much because the tiny houses are actually very safe during cobit and even now because people have fresh air they are not you know sharing a hallway they're not sharing a dorm room they can close the door they can open the door and get fresh air and so um teresa maybe if you could stay a little more about um how effective um we've been doing covet yes yeah definitely thank you sharon um so we have been extraordinarily mindful about the importance of following all the guidelines and ensuring that the village is sanitized every two hours that temperatures are taken of every person stepping into the village that we're that we're monitoring how much people are social distancing when we see too many people congregating in the kitchen we go ask them to take turns and just have two in there at a time so that has been quite effective um i've been with the tiny house village program now for about two years i'm the program manager of the of the tiny house villages and i have to say i was in permanent support of housing with plymouth and catholic housing um for approximately 10 years um and i the the thing the reason i'm so um sold on the idea of tiny house villages is because they seem to me to be the perfect stepping stone to housing a safe um a safe place to wait it out um i i would think that we have not measured this but i'm going to i i'm i'm believing that having been a building manager if you come through a tiny house village you're getting over the three sort of learning curves to be successful in permanent housing and that would be living again within community living again within walls and living again within a system of rules and as people sort of move through those um those things and get better at them and get more comfortable with them to then move them into permanent supportive housing i'm positive that they're that their success rate is higher than those who have just come right off the street into permanent housing i know that i would have asked fewer people to leave if they had come through tiny house villages and had that space to sort of acclimate um i also want to say uh you know a lot of what people are saying uh rings true however i feel like at in lehigh we have been we have been lucky slash successful in attracting people and i'll tell you our wages aren't that different um so uh it is true that we have very few just the one case manager um position open our case managers are extraordinarily competent in what they do in that they are hitting 50 moving into permanent housing from our tiny house villages that's for last year so we had 162 people exit 81 that's 50 into into permanent housing and about 10 more into transitional housing um and so you know so we we feel that not only is the tiny house village model good in terms of moving people forward into permanent housing but it does provide immediate and i mean immediate we can build them in three weeks immediate safety immediate safety from um you know with a locking door no more threat of of somebody coming in no more threat of rats getting in um safety in in terms of a space to grieve and think and heal and move forward and start to dream our case managers and we we stretch those training dollars that were we're hoping can increase in the future but we stretch them so that everybody does get you know as much training as possible on who it is we are working with who is our community that we're serving and helping heal um and how do we best do that and that's it and that's you know there's training on everything motivational interviewing de-escalation hoarding you know uh um i i mean there's a whole list right there's like 89 trainings our teams do um but our constraints are around the funding and if and to me you know to me it just feels like if we can if we can just release some dollars to two more tiny house villages being funded for all then then that will that will solve some of the problems we're having with the um with the community that that it feels like we're being overrun by people who are on house because we are um it is it is a short-term solution nobody thinks this is you know the way to go permanently but man in the short term that i can't i can't imagine a better setup so um so thank you thank you theresa um let's move to maya next uh maya thank you hi um like i said earlier i'm with the urban league of metropolitan seattle um and what i would add that is unique at the urban league compared to what others have said today is that we do not only help with those who are expansion homelessness locate housing but also locate employment i mean so i would say that there has been an issue finding adequate employment adequate wages for um anyone i would say um not only for us at the urban league to um have jobs for um for people to work at our shelters or what have you but also finding jobs for those who are participants in our programs and so if there was um adequate or direct funding for um you know organizations like the urban league to be able to provide different different certifications or different employment programs very similar to our signature career bridge program i think will be very beneficial because not only do does the participants in our programs need stable housing but they need stable employment as well um and so um we have been able to have shelters as well as help support those who are currently in hotels and so having the dual model of not only trying to find them stable housing but stable employment at the same time have been very beneficial finding housing is the first step of course so they can have that stability of being able to have a place to go home each night so they can be able to go to work each day as well as have um opportunities to get shower unwind and etc like they do in the hotels but specifically in terms of um in what we have seen come also what everybody has also said we have seen as well but something that's different would be um finding adequate employment for those who are experiencing homelessness in our programs um as well as um um as we are expanding our youth in young adult shelter at the urban league being able to adequately find youth that needs a service because we know that they need the service being able to have some sort of resource whether it be i know that there are some resources in community colleges as well as high schools but increasing the support for having access for those who need help finding resources to be able to find them if they're in school or um within community um so that's the two compared to what everyone else was saying the two things that i would also add in terms of what is needed in terms of supporting our staff with those who are experiencing homelessness um thank you so much great uh so sorry who hasn't gone yet i think that there's at least one panelist who hasn't presented yet good afternoon hello my name is degal cooper i am the chief program and impact officer at youth care i'm also here with my colleague christopher hanson who also was going to be speaking with me today thank you for the opportunity to be here council member lewis at what i wanted to kind of focus on is uh provider capacity especially in regard to youth serving organizations and you know one of the things that we're always hearing about is uh what the needs are for the adult homeless population but there are some very very specific needs for young people between the ages of 18 up to 25 26 uh for for a lot of our programs and um at youth care you know we try to couple our services not only with providing housing but also providing you know workforce development support uh for young people as well as focusing on um you know connecting them to the mental health and substance use resources that they need and so what we would really uh be asking for is that more dollars need to be focused on providing adequate skilled and qualified um mental health services and substance use services uh for the young adult population uh that organizations like youth care have uh access to those resources and um that we are able to make sure that young people are not going um unserved in these areas uh the other piece that i would like to kind of focus on too is just around i've heard a lot of people talk about the the need for staff you know i totally appreciate everyone's concern around being able to paid staff adequate wages but the other part that we need for the young adult population is more qualified staff staff who come with not just that experience but the expertise in serving and so therefore we need to be able to pay them higher wages in order to meet the needs for young people another area that is i think critical for young people especially uh that we don't often talk about is the cultural issues and housing policies uh that are in place and oftentimes young people who are you know not part of the you know dominant culture of young people that are out there who have specialized needs whether they are lgbtq young people or young people uh from bypak communities there are some very specific needs that they have and so you know we are trying to focus our hiring processes on uh hiring staff who better reflect the the young people that are in our programs and receiving our services and oftentimes in order to um keep those professionals uh at agencies like youth care we also need to be able to pay them more but we also need to be able to attract them to an organization like ours and the way to do that is is that we have um more opportunities we have higher wages but we also have um policies and and practices across our network of serving uh homeless individuals that um you know honor the work uh of bipod communities and you know that that's a cultural piece that maybe does not necessarily require any uh additional funding from the council but it does require our attention uh to this particular kind of need uh christopher would you like to add other um sources or resources that we're looking at thanks to gail my internet's a bit shoddy folks so um my apologies um but actually to that point i don't think i have too much more to add i think one of our other colleagues mentioned that you know we we've heard from everyone the um the advocacy for increased wages for staff um our workers have been the folks that have shown up every day throughout this pandemic to keep our own house neighbors adults and youth and adults and families um safe throughout the entire pandemic um it's uh you know an ethical mandate for us to pay them a living wage um and not just to survive but to thrive they're doing life-saving work um but also um our our our other costs have um uh also continue to go up as well um and uh and so it's a um we need we need a holistic look about what is actually sustainable for um an increase of a contract year after year looking at the rate of um of inflation in our in our area um and then um the last thing i that i want to underscore is echo what um what degale shared around um the acknowledgement of systemic racism as a main driving factor in homelessness and that we need real attention and resources and the the resources to that are specifically um for bringing agencies and community and people um who are experiencing homelessness and racism to um uh for like real healing solutions and um that's work that um other smaller community-based organizations um are um are already doing it's work that you know other agencies on this call are doing but we're doing it um under resourced um and so we need that to be something that is um that is looked at when um uh when we're when we're advocating for dollars thank you so much guys um and and very very much appreciate uh all of the um comments here to queue up this conversation from this this distinguished panel that we've assembled i want to go and uh back and ask a few just quick clarifying things then i want to open it up to my colleagues on the committee um lauren uh going back to something you said that i want to drill into just a little bit of a lot of the current posted vacancies the desc has is there a particular theme to those vacancies are there particular competencies that desc is having a hard time filling uh or is it a little all over the place i'm just kind of curious uh to hear about that that vacancy issue and and if there's a particular subject area that's particularly hard to fill right now yeah thank you um thank you for that uh the it is a little bit all over the board but i can say that um in particular we are struggling with our master's level positions that require like um mental health professionals social work type degrees um those ones we are really struggling to to recruit and retain for um and i believe i have the numbers here real quick um i believe right now what we're looking at is a is a discrepancy in pay of um about 39 of what so what we can offer is uh we would need about a 39 increase to our wages for those positions to be on par with similar positions at you know at the county at other public sector settings hospitals and so on um but in general the it is a vast array of positions entry-level managerial um a lot of them though do require experience in the in behavioral health type field or some experience working with our population and so we are seeing also issues there with the pipeline of folks who have even just a small amount of experience of human service work great thank you for providing that clarification i have a couple of additional questions but i want to open it up to my colleagues here if there are things that uh folks want to ask to kind of get the conversation going councilmember mesqueda thank you very much mr chair and thanks to the entire panel here today with us um i know that what you have raised today is not new uh in fact many of us on council had the opportunity to stand with you and to demand a cost of living increase that had been for 10 years not allocated by the city's departments and when we passed the cost of living increase we were scolded we were slapped on the hand we were patted on the head we were told that it wasn't necessary and your voice and your experience and your repeated calls for equity especially in this area prevailed and they prevailed because of counsel they prevailed because council heard finally um the opportunity to advance at least giving a cosplay increase out there and i think that what you're raising is the underbelly of the issue that's been long pervasive which is the historic underpayment in this sector but i raised that to note how important it's been for you to be on the front lines providing this work and um i assume how demoralizing it must have been to even be asking for a cost of living increase and to have been told via the accusations passed on to council on us for even just trying to give you a cost of living increase which at the time would have been um still allowing for seven new police officers to go to the navigation team and instead of nine new we were suggesting seven news so that there could at least be that cost of living increase i'm really proud that the council at the time passed that cost of living increase i know how important it was more symbolically for some of the members and i think that there's unified interest especially because of this hearing and all that we've been working on together to address the underpayment i think one of the things that i'd love to know a little bit more about is sort of where that bottleneck occurs because as we heard in council member lewis's committee meeting last time this council over the last 12 months or so both through federal arpa dollars through the last budget through the effort that council member lewis and others had been champion early championing earlier this year we as the council have allocated about 45 million dollars directly into addressing the issues of homelessness services and creating additional shelter so my first question and i'll have another one um councilmember lewis my first question is really of that 45 million dollars and perhaps central staff you can help us with this uh answer is do we have any sense of whether or not all of that money has been allocated has that been given to the very entities who we are asking to help respond to this crisis and now we are being told what the council has known for a long time which is that those contracts are woefully inadequate to serve the high needs population so the first question is do we know of the 45 million that the council has allocated how much of that 45 million is still sitting unspent in the department um chair i can answer that or take a swing at that um we know that so that's difficult to break down because in some cases uh for example ms lee from lehigh can speak to how there are some beds that are not yet operational for tiny home villages um though one of those villages as of this week an action taken by the council will begin moving towards that uh and really actually opening up uh beds soon uh that doesn't mean that funds haven't necessarily been provided so there have been there i believe they might have been encumbered and not yet expended or they may have been spent to some degree but not fully they might be in the process but we do know that uh only 280 of the 675 shelter beds whether that's tiny homes or a shelter or a tiny or a hotel have actually come online and started accepting people that are um that have been experiencing homelessness and uh in addition until uh until the last committee uh there had been nine million dollar nine actually nine point eight million dollars for additional sheltering uh through either supplemental actions from the council or eight hundred thousand dollars that was provided for self-managed encampments that had not been expended uh i believe now um just in the last week or so just care and the public defender association has been contracted with to spend a portion of that um probably around five and a half million but i don't actually have that contract number um but there is still um so obviously there's still a substantial amount there and then if you think about the american rescue plan or the seattle rescue plan uh funding that's been provided that's about 45 million dollars and while some acquisition is underway so i can't necessarily speak to um the amount of housing for example that's being acquired you're hearing about progress being moving moving there overall none of the the shelter beds or uh for example like the the safe lot program none of those uh programs are currently operational uh though i wanna also um recognize that those were only passed about a little bit more than a month ago now um so there's a lot of processes that uh could be in underway with the the arpa or the seattle rescue plan funds does that answer questions member can i say something about this um because um we were um really delighted sharon just one moment sorry um just first i want to make sure councilmember misguided did jeff answer um the the questions you were seeking clarification on yes and i i'm sorry sharing that energy as well um i i uh i i do appreciate that answer jeff and i think that my interest is making sure that every dollar that the council has allocated is actually getting out the door in 2021 i think i like everyone on this council like every one of the human service providers like every resident and constituent that we hear from we all understand that our community members who are living on houzz want to be in a better place they need to be in places that are safer than living out in the elements we all walk around the city and we see the same thing we need to be putting politics aside and putting those dollars to use and making sure that folks have a safe place to live and so my real emphasis is trying to make sure that the dollars are not sitting there waiting for um you know reinvention of best practices that we've already deployed here in the city and i look forward to making sure that all of those dollars are put out there and um i will just maybe mr chair since my mic is on ask my second question and then i would love to hear more from sharon as well if you had other thoughts on that first one well is it a um is it a change in subject i'll hold it mr chair oh okay yeah if it's a change in subject um let's let because i think sharon has something jermaine to the to jeff's statement here so um sharon why don't you go ahead and then we'll we'll do councilmember mesquita's next question well thank you sorry um about that but i think um we were um really thrilled with the council in november voting for three additional tiny house villages and then of course the arpa budget and um frank chop set aside to 2 million for tiny homes as an earmark we were also very excited about that and we were told um right away um earlier um this year that there would be an rfp um to identify the um the three new villages right and then all of a sudden everything came to a grinding halt um and so even though we're staffed up and we are working with other providers that are interested in running the tiny house villages or providing services we don't have an opportunity to apply for the rfp or none of us have the opportunity to apply for the rfp because hsd told us there would be an rfp and it has not been released and my sentence i don't want to be you know fatalistic but my sense is that um maybe because um you know um you know we think the mayor's office is i'm supportive but we don't think that human service staff wants to do it so they're just dragging it out dragging it out and then when when i wrote um tiffany washington could you please ask you know what what's going on with the rfp she said well um you know i got to talk to mark domes i mean it's like it's almost like in limbo land like everything is um like what was promised isn't happening and i feel really bad because we were hoping to stand up these three new villages before winter especially since um council has you know appropriated the funds and so i think there's some bureaucratic um um glitch happening where um people are sort of shifting like you know isn't hsd still in charge until next year next year is when the contracts move over so why aren't we having hsd go ahead if hsd doesn't want to go ahead then why isn't the authority going ahead if the homeless authority doesn't want to go ahead then we should make some other provision because the council did allocate those funds so i think we need some help here because we're in this um bureaucratic um log jam so yeah and sharon i do appreciate those comments as i said in briefing this week we we have received a commitment from the executive to submit rfqs and do the pre-development work on those villages we can definitely talk more offline about that and and connect with with folks from the executive branch on it but i appreciate you raising some of those comments that you know that that are somewhat related to the capacity issue right like submitting the rfqs is essential to determine if there is capacity out there to respond to the rfq uh but in any event um thank you councilmember moscata uh your next question thank you so much and um i i do want to say i i know that there are folks within hsd and hsi who've been really desperate to try to get information out to get the the contracts out but i think that this is this this goes upwards this needs to fall upwards to management to the mayor's office and we need to have a joint understanding that the legislation that we pass and sign into law these dollars are available they need to get out now so i do look forward to continuing to work council member council members here in the chair to make sure that those dollars are getting stood up and that hopefully as you said that we can stand up these villages even later this year before winter comes um the second thing i wanted to say is i think it takes a lot of courage to be here i've heard from some in the past that um there was hesitation to speak out about some of the concerns or the process issues maybe for fear of retaliation for your existing contracts and i want to say thank you for sharing this information i also you know i i know that there has been some pressure over the last year to have a downward pressure on even the wages offered to some of your um uh employees via the contracts that have been offered and i wondered if folks might be willing to speak about some of the experiences that you had for example when the seattle center's shelter was closed and we were supposed to be opening up the additional hotel i see lauren smiling um there was a lot of downward pressure on how much the city was going to be willing to offer we've heard this repeatedly from folks who came from just cares and you know we understand that there was already an existing underpayment of these contracts to then be in the midst of a pandemic when people's lives are literally at risk both the providers and those who are living unsheltered and be told we're not going to pay you more than x really i think creates downward pressure and probably has contributed to this workforce shortage and if anybody would be willing to elaborate a little bit more on that so we could weave together more of that narrative because i've heard bits and pieces i think that would be very illuminating so we can avoid that in the future yeah thank you councilmember mosquito i'm happy to speak to that um so again i'm lauren from desc um much of what you said is all of what you said is is how we have experienced the situation and particularly with our loss of shelter bed capacity in the city um you know we we really were intending to do whatever we could do to maintain those um those beds that we had at um exhibition hall not necessarily in that space but wherever we could create the space to do so we did not want to lose that shelter capacity and it did feel like we didn't have the um the ability to really have that real conversation in negotiation with our partners at the city about what it would take to operationalize those units or those bed spaces elsewhere um and so it was disappointing i think um you know i think times are stretched and our staff feel it on the ground especially in our shelter settings um exhibition hall for example was still a congregate setting though it was you know very well distanced and we had um we had a wonderful team working there um it was an incredibly stressful place to be and we knew what it was going to take to be able to provide the right level of stuffing um you know the wages that um we are contracted to pay um we are you know um we are a union employer um and and that we weren't able to have those negotiations and conversations um to keep that capacity in our system at a time when we see so many of our neighbors living outdoors is really unfortunate um i think yeah we're just we're very um just disappointed that that that opportunity has been lost and i think we at dsc in particular remain incredibly concerned for our unsheltered folks that we're serving um and the bed capacity that's available to them you know there are there's a lot of great ideas and models out there for different ways that we can bring people indoors but um we know that some situations work better than others for our highly acute population of folks really struggling with complex behavioral health conditions and for in our experience the enhanced shelter model when there isn't enough housing is is kind of where we need to be and in particularly enhanced to non-congregate settings um in hotels providing you know those round-the-clock wrap-around services for folks um we've been really successful at that through this pandemic and like the opportunity to continue that lauren can i ask a follow-up question on that real quick and and you know i don't want to interrupt councilmember mesquita's line of questioning so i mean i'll hand it back over when i'm done with this but i just want to drill into that a little bit more so how many units was desc operating at exposition hall do you recall yeah i want to say it was through 100 or 130. i would need to double check but i

think it was a hundred so did does desc or did the esc have the have the staffing available i'm trying to think of the best way to phrase this like yes if you intimated earlier that that there might have been a way to solve for maintaining that capacity my understanding is that capacity no longer exists that the desc is no longer operating those spaces i guess my question is this because we're repeatedly told the provider capacity is a big barrier here right um did desc have the capacity to continue to operate those spaces and if there was an rfq rfp whatever that was that was kind of went out in the world today would desc have the ability to bid to try to bring that capacity back i think where the issue was is that we had capacity to have the staffing model that we had in that one singular location but i think the idea had been to piecemeal it into a bunch of different locations which means that we need more more stuff and so um with the current staffing makeup that we had um to ensure proper you know round-the-clock coverage um it would have been possible if it was a you know a similarly sized program um just pick it up and pluck you know all those stuff over into the new location um but i don't believe that that opportunity had presented itself to us um as an option it was it was more like um i think we and i think we also felt that because we've seen such success with really um decongesting our shelter spaces splitting it up is actually kind of preferred at this point so it would have been the necessity to like replicate into two different teams instead of just one team um not sure if that fully answers your question but i can certainly dig more into these um these details with our um housing director well i'm just trying to determine if there was and still is potentially capacity from desc to expand um these services yeah well i think i think at this point all of those staff who have been operating that shelter have been absorbed into other programs and other vacancies within the organization so um we would be i'm guessing in the same um you know in this situation that we're in currently where we would be needing to hire a fresh group of folks to come in and run something and because we were very committed to making sure nobody was going to lose their employment as a result of that shelter not continuing okay well i mean it sounds like we kind of missed an opportunity there as a as a city family which is unfortunate um given the character of the people that were on that caseload um you know are certainly folks that are in need of that kind of support can i also just ask uh um real quickly here uh in terms of of moving forward with the next steps like if you had to bring on a new team to kind of bid for a new opportunity like that uh is that sort of getting into talking about this the the vacancy backlog that you guys have and kind of the issues with with hiring so those issues would probably present if we had to scale up some new capacity i would imagine yeah i yes i would imagine so i mean i do think we are we have ideas for ways that some of these issues can be solved for um but of course they're kind of longer term solutions it's not just like wage increases it would also be um you know our training capacity i know other folks have mentioned that before um particularly amongst our supervisor and managerial group um you know we are we're very big at hiring from within so you know we are promoting folks left and right who are wonderful case managers but need a lot of that kind of development and skill growth to be great supervisors and organizational leaders and that sort of thing um that's a huge area of struggle for us so i do think i think there's ways other than just wages that we could see some improvements hopefully in the near future but um but i agree with your assessment that we are we're pretty topped out in the labor market right now um and we've kind of pulled every lever we know how to pull in terms of you know advertising and and all of that we're um we're we really you know i've been here 13 years we really are a good employer um we have wonderful benefits wonderful health care all of that and and those um traditional things that we've leaned on you know six weeks of paid time off and all that it's just it's no longer at a place where um it's it's working anymore thank you jump in oh go ahead yeah i think the pressure that's on us is that every dollar we would we would need to raise salaries uh you know for the staff that are here is is in conflict almost with a new dollar for us to address kind of the the the numbers of folks that are on our streets it's kind of an unprecedented time there's there is new dollars and new energy about solving homelessness that some of us have advocated for 25 years for and been pushing for finally there is some new dollars to to invest in those and to get more folks off the street

2021-08-15 04:05

Other news