April 13, 2023 — City Council Regular Meeting

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[8:16] [Music] foreign further Ado um good evening everybody Welcome to tonight's study session of the booker city council I am council member Matt Benjamin and uh great to have you all with us uh happy Thursday grateful to see an end of these red flag days and certainly welcoming that much needed rain that's coming tomorrow um so to start off with a little left of tea um do you guys want to hear a joke about paper never mind it's terrible all right so we get that off

[9:01] um I know it's all right Tara we got you uh great records management joke though thank you I'm gonna have to steal it Ah that's all yours uh no credit needed either um so we've got a packed agenda tonight um makes me wonder if I drew the Short Straw on it or not um but we're going to have a conversation regarding our homeless strategies and they'll include topics of adult homelessness and uh HSBC our Boulder County Partners family homelessness with Boulder County and our effa partners and the city stamp updates as well so three meaty items I want to recognize uh for the community as a whole that we all appreciate how important the issues are around homelessness and uh to everybody in the city we understand the urgency and the harm to both people experiencing homelessness and the community as a whole uh we and and with that we will not be making any decisions tonight rather we're going to be hearing updates

[10:01] of this important work this study session will tee up more conversations and possible actions by the city in the near future um in our last item for discussion tonight are potential topics of interest for our joint meeting with the County Commissioners which is scheduled for next Tuesday April 18th uh before we go into work items I'd like to outline how this meeting will be conducted each of these topics on its own frankly will warrant a three-hour study session if not more and so we will all want likely want to have a lot to say a lot to ask um but but that we just simply don't have the time tonight to wedge all that in there but know that these topics will come up again and we'll get a chance to really sink our teeth into that in future conversations um and with that said um I'll ask staff and my Council colleagues to kind of limit themselves to just a few questions for each topic and just a few minutes of comments I'd also like to ask that we view these items through the lens of the

[11:00] externalities and the impact that this work is having with regards to resources and Partnerships and how they will improve the work we are doing asking ourselves is it the work of the city and or the county or should we be doing more or less of those things ultimately this will set up a fruitful discussion towards the end of our study session on how we want to shape our discussion with our colleagues at the county next Tuesday we will review staff's presentations for each of the items and then we'll have time for questions um at the end of each of the presentations of each of those three subject matters will be a chance for us to engage in questions um and comments so let's not react to individual slides but wait for each of those topical presentations to finish um and if you have questions you know let's uh let's be patient hold them up and we're going to try to get done at a reasonable time and so let's try to limit to just a few questions and comments um so with that being said any questions about the process tonight before I dot dot dot all right turn it over to our

[12:01] esteem city manager Nuria Rivera vandermein and she will introduce staff and the items for discussion tonight thanks so much councilmember and today we're going to start sort of the part one of our three-part conversation on homelessness I'm gonna try not to give a preamble for each one of them because you don't need to hear from me you need to hear from the people who are actually doing a lot of the work and so I'll ask our director of housing and Human Services Kurt fernhobber um to give a intro or kick us off and certainly introduce our folks that we have I'm here including some of our friends at the county who we do a lot of this work in partnership with right uh thank you and good evening Council Kurt fernhauer director of Housing and Human Services so I'm I'm actually thankful that these topics have come together tonight they certainly intersect and we often get the question of um as Matt just asked you know what is the county or whether part County doing or what what are other partners doing

[13:00] um I must say about five six years ago when I seven years ago when I joined the city I would occasionally have a meeting with the county now I have meetings with the county every week on topics and our staff does as well on multiple things there's four significant areas where we coordinate together on a very regular basis the first is affordable housing the second is adult homelessness the third is family homelessness and other services and the last one is behavioral health and mental health services and tonight you're going to hear some significant accomplishments that have been made through this coordination at the city level and the county level you're going to hear um approaches that we're doing to prevent homelessness both with individuals and Families but you're also going to hear a lot of the challenges that we're having including the the scale of the issue and

[14:01] I should have asked for the presentation to be pulled up as I was talking but if that could be pulled up great thank you thanks Emily and um with that um you can go on to the next slide and so tonight um uh you're going to be hearing about Homeless Solutions for Boulder County um about five and a half almost six years ago the city of Boulder uh endeavored to create a strategy for addressing homelessness that strategy has guided our work um ever since it was a there was a significant Community process in creating that strategy and shortly that thereafter Homeless Solutions for Boulder County was created so tonight you're going to hear from Megan Newton who's the policy advisor for the city of Boulder on homelessness and from Heidi Grove who has a that same position for Boulder County

[15:00] and we're going to be talking about those collaborations and these are the questions that we'll be presenting to you again at the end of the presentation next slide um so briefly I want to highlight a handful of the um the significant accomplishments that are really based on the implementation of that strategy so over 1800 individuals have exited homelessness since 2017 in our community in in many different ways um all going into some sort of shelter or housing some with Services some of the wrap around Services some were independent 473 individuals were served through the covid recovery center over about a two-year period and Boulder County was the first Community uh in the metro area to get the the built for zero scorecard

[16:01] and that is um that is adjudicated by an external party and Boulder County and and Heidi will be able to talk about that further if you have questions as well we have 150 units of permit Supportive Housing that are under construction that are coming online in 2024. 50 of those units are in Boulder and I'm incredibly excited to say that 100 of those units are also in longmonts where we have very close collaborations as well um over 12 million dollars of Grants have been written by our department so far this year to support this type of work um and there's been a real effort over the last year to bring in other landlords into supporting uh individuals that have that are coming out of homelessness and we've got 19 new landlords that have leased up to

[17:00] individuals and there was a specific uh um that was a specific effort by the shelter and actually hiring a staff member to focus on that so with that I'm going to hand it over to uh to Megan Newton who will start off with that strategy that was developed and I must say it's evolved significantly over time in the programs that support it have evolved and you'll hear some of that tonight thank you hi my name is Megan Newton I am the policy advisor on homelessness for the city of Boulder um Kurt referenced oh next slide sorry Kurt referenced the group that came together in late 2016 it's a homelessness working group and they met throughout 2017. um the city brought in the corporation for Supportive Housing which are

[18:00] National experts in this field to work with both the city and county staff as well as Community Partners on developing a strategy and these were the six main strategies that came out of that work and most of our work today is Guided by these strategies reference some of the programming changes to meet best practices but these are the guidance strategies um the first one is to expand access to prevention um as you know this is extremely important as we see inflow numbers that always outmatch the ability we have to house folks um we have to focus on prevention um to be able to even make a dent in this work um the second strategy is to support basic and emergency services this includes things like coordinated entry and Emergency Shelters um the third and often want to talk about the most is to expand access to housing Bluebird project that is in the

[19:00] city of Boulder that will have 40 units comes online early next year and then Kurt referenced one in Longmont but Zenia will have 55 units that will go county-wide and then Mount Calvary will also have 15 units of permanent Supportive Housing so I know we talk about this often but as the solution to homelessness so it is probably the most important in my opinion the fourth is transparency both of the system and the data we have a dashboard that anybody could access that kind of it doesn't it doesn't show live data but probably a few weeks behind that gives shelter CE housing gives all the data of the work being done throughout the county um we support best practices and that is around prevention case management housing housing first all of those things fall under the best practices and then creating safe and welcoming spaces is the final strategy that was

[20:00] identified next Slide the next slide will go to Heidi grow who works for on the solutions for Boulder County good evening Council uh first and foremost thank you for having me I am Heidi Grove I'm the Homeless Solutions for Boulder County systems manager housed in Boulder County Community Services and this slide just reflects the structure of HSBC so the although we have an executive board that is comprised of executive leadership across the county Kirk being one of them County the electives do provide guidance to the directors and then we talk about that guidance and our executive board we have a policy implementation team which is the bees and Megan's of across the county and we have as you can see a wide range of work groups and these work groups are very specific to each topic and are comprised of the individuals that are the experts and service providers in that specific area I know

[21:03] that you will you don't necessarily see a call out of life experience in homelessness a separate working group that is because we've taken an equity lens and integrated folks with lived experience and homelessness into the working groups so that they're not a separate group but they are more of an equitable voice at the table and the most representation we have is actually in our Outreach collaborative next slide so um many people may or may not know that in December of 2022 so just a few months ago the United States interagency Council on homelessness released its new strategic plan on addressing homelessness across the country this is the First Federal full plan we've seen since many moons ago of the 10-year plan to end homelessness and so we have spent

[22:00] a lot of time reviewing that 140 plus page document and just wanted to kind of provide some high-level overview for Council it has comprised of six different pillars and you can see on the bottom of that screen that picture it's though those are the foundational pillars which is equity evidence and collaboration and then it has three additional pillars what they call solution pillars which is housing and Supportive Services homeless response and homeless prevention within each one of those pillars is up to eight sub strategies we've spent some time assessing and comparing where HSBC is in alignment with the strategies we haven't fully sussed out everything but HSBC is very much in alignment with where the United States and the federal agencies are going towards to addressing homelessness unlike the 10-year plan and homelessness their goal is to reduce homelessness by 25 by the end of 2025.

[23:00] we also work in Partnership leveraging these pillars and this Guidance the the Boulder County is actually the chair of the metro area Chamber um metro area County Commissioners group this year and commissioner locheman is the chair of that group and they are leveraging these pillars to actually work across the multiple jurisdictions of County governments in the metro area and really kind of sussing out which pillars they want to focus on right now they're really identifying those foundational pillars to provide us that support across the region to integrate the strategies that we already have in addition we are so me and Megan and many others across the Metro region uh meet once a month so all of us government individuals meet once a month in partnership with metro Denver homeless initiative to do Regional strategic approaches and make sure that

[24:01] we're not impacting negatively our neighbors and vice versa next slide so this slide is just kind of an overview of how we take braided and Blended funding to maximize and stretch our dollars as much as possible and on one side you can see where city of Boulder has had Financial investment and then the county as well and then where you see it where it says basic needs and limited to no funding that really is around clothes and food banks more of the faith-based Community Resources next slide so coordinated entry as many of you know is an assessment to ensure that we are connecting folks that are presenting as homelessness or presenting unhoused and experiencing homelessness in our community to ensure that we match them to the most appropriate resource possible with the most rapid exit to housing in 2022 we had 1

[25:03] 120 unduplicated screens with 85 of those presenting at coordinated entry being new to the system meaning that they had not had a prior assessment all the way back to 2017. 776 of those presented in Boulder proper which is about 69 percent of the entire coordinated entry assessments that were conducted and of those in Boulder 78 percent were HFS or housing Focus shelter referrals next slide so um as we've talked about in the past we are built for zero community and cohort and some of the data modeling um that is in alignment with both National best practices and what we see across the region is what they call an inflow and outflow chart what you will see um and we have it Incorporated this yet is there's also a sub bar a middle bar in the data modeling that talks about

[26:02] inactive and inactive means that the individual has not touched or interacted with system partners for over 180 days mdha just implemented a policy that it's 90 days or more we have not integrated that yet because we have we have some work to do on integrating Outreach data into the data system that we use for coordinated entry and service referrals that being said uh the last time we took a look at our attrition analysis it was showing that on a rolling monthly basis we attrition 30 of those that have done CE access services and we no longer know where they are in the community and most likely they are not in the community I did talk to mdhi yesterday and they said that they are seeing that 30 percent across the region it's a pretty standard attrition rate so all in all we exited 339 individuals

[27:01] from homelessness in 2022 which is an average of 28 individuals per month and that gives us an exit ratio which is the comparison of the inflow entry and the outflow exit of 30 for the year the other thing that I would like to announce that we just found out yesterday is that um we've been doing our work with built for zero and Community Solutions specifically around veteran homelessness as you guys were or were made aware of we were the first in the community and in the region to be certified for Quality data not just for veterans but single adults and we've been continuing to work our by name list in case conferencing which we have many and because of the work that we've done we are now officially deemed in what they call the last mile which is the very last step to functional zero and to get functional zero for built for zero that means that you have three or less individuals on your by name list and based on where we are now there is a

[28:03] projection that we could hit that by the end of this year and with that I will turn it back over to Megan next slide please oh Heidi that's still you I forgot about that one sorry so this uh in addition to all of the work that HSBC does we also have a behavioral health roadmap initiative that is one of the priorities of the County Commissioners the the identified items that you see on the screen are some of the priorities that have been identified by the behavioral health roadmap team and they are anticipating coming up with a draft in some June for moving how we're going to address behavioral health challenges throughout the county moving forward now I hand it over to you Megan thank you um this slide shows our plan for a summer Point time count uh when Kurt and

[29:01] I did our update last September there was a suggestion that we do the point in time count over the summer um traditionally HUD requires that we do the point in time count in January so we just did it a few months back but we decided to do the summer count knowing that I think we've all seen A variation of population between January and summer months um so our plan is to do it at the end of July um and this will will primarily try to focus on the unsheltered population because that seems to be what varies um throughout the year and we will be utilized utilizing volunteers City staff will be leading the count um with all with partners and Outreach workers for the city of Boulder so keep your eyes peeled because we will be request requesting um volunteers so if that's something that would interest you it would be in the evening and we'll go out and do a quick survey with folks who are

[30:00] experiencing homelessness primarily unsheltered next slide please High utilize um we restarted this is an effort that we've done before but we've seen the importance of it um there are individuals in the community who um we call High system utilizers and this is a cross between Justice systems so the jail BPD the Sheriff's Office the D.A muni court as well as Emergency Services like the emergency room and withdrawal management and so high utilizers we Define them as individuals who place the disproportionate strain on organizations put themselves in situations which jeopardize both health and safety and create threats to Public Safety so you'll see on the screen all the different partners who are in the room um different parts of the city different parts of the County as well as individual agencies who do this work in

[31:01] the community we've got both leadership or policy level Group which is the higher ups in all of those organizations and then we also have an operations team which is a lot of us that do direct service or at least are on that level and we're doing both looking at the list to problem solve for the individuals currently on it as well as determine policy suggestions because oftentimes a lot of these folks have been in the community for a long time and may have been high utilizers for a long time and so we've been do we've tried to work with them in the past and they just don't fit um into a lot of our systems and so we're trying to brainstorm to find different suggestions different programming that would work for some of these folks we're currently working on a list with 45 folks and we've had quite I mean limited success in that these folks are very challenging but the

[32:00] collaboration that happens at the table is very impressive um around okay they're in the emergency room and they'll pop up and tell the shelter the shelter will tell us then we'll start looking for them and doing the work to collaborate through all the different providers in the room and so um it's so far it's been great and I think it has a lot of potential going forward slide building home I talked about building home back in September but we got the contract signed last month and so we are off and running um this is a two component program the city is contracted with Focus re-entry who is planning to partner with peakboard to provide the peer support and daytime programming and then we're contracted with Boulder shelter to provide the housing retention team which is a multi-disciplinary team I know there's been some conversations lately around folks who are um with let me back up a little bit with

[33:00] permanent Supportive Housing which is the housing that we typically place people in um is highly successful it's got an 80 success rate that when folks are housed they stay housed um but we do have that 20 that sometimes struggles and so this is an arpa funded project that we put in place to help that 20 um so our hope with these teams is we'll have both peers case managers mental health professionals as well as um medical nurses and um nurse practitioners is that we'd be able to surround them with support improve and improve their housing retention reduce their feelings of isolation for people who have been recently housed build community for people who have formally experienced chronic homelessness we've heard um and we know that folks have a community in both the shelter and on shelter our settings and when we move them into housing there's a very significant feel feeling of isolation

[34:00] and so part of this program is to help connect them to community and help that feeling of isolation and also mobilize resources to address negative and unhealthy behavior before it leads to eviction so we can raise that 80 percent success rate up a little bit higher uh next slide please so these are the four main categories that we've identified currently as being significant challenges um accessible to how accessible housing stock um for individuals who've been able to access housing subsidies is become increasingly harder to identify available units that they are able to lease both older housing partners and Boulder County Housing Authority in one of our housing exit meetings that we had in the last month reported that they had double the number of individuals apply for assistance through their recent lotteries for housing Choice vouchers so the need is growing in the housing stock

[35:02] may not be keeping up and so that has been an increase in struggle also identified as the challenge is the lack of treatment options for individuals with mental health diagnosis diagnosis substance use disorders and then extreme lack for individuals who are have co-occurring disorders so someone might be able to find a bed in a substance use program but because of their mental health they are disqualified or vice versa they might get a bed in a Skilled Nursing Facility but because of their history with substance abuse they won't they won't take them in that bed um obviously not obviously but a lot of the folks that we're working with rely on Medicaid and those Residential Treatment beds are extremely Limited uh inflow into the system as I Heidi showed earlier impact system decisions and the need to continue as a region and a nation to look to for interventions

[36:00] Upstream um once they get to homelessness it's much harder to resolve um and so we continue to look at policies and interventions that might prevent folks from entering homelessness whether that be discharge planning from jails or prisons or hospitals or any of those systems that might be of touch points before they get to homelessness and then the final one we identified was the Acuity of need we continue to see a high number of individuals who who need substantial supports to get and remain housed but we've also started to observe individuals who do not require significant supports stay in the system longer due to the increase in the cost of living so historically folks might enter the shelter and then be able to self-resolve some of those folks are are staying in the system a little bit longer just because of the cost of living next slide please all right so these are some of our next steps

[37:00] um full implementation of the building home program um which I just spoke about acquisition of a property for the day Center which is super exciting um and Kurt we'll be talking about in just a minute um opening of the tribe recovery residence tribe has been providing outpatient services at the county site since the end of last year but we're pretty close to being able to open a house which will open these Services up to folks who are currently experiencing homelessness and give them a place to stay will they access these Services we're also looking into acquiring an HSBC program evaluator which was discussed at The Retreat um a little while back and then placing clients into the larger housing programs that I talked about earlier such as Bluebird and Zenia and Mount Calvary and I think next slide and I think we'll turn it back over to Kurt thank you Megan so um just over a year ago at the city council Retreat one of your priorities

[38:00] that you put forward uh for us to work on was uh creating and implementing a day service center for individuals experiencing homelessness to go during the day to be able to receive a variety of services um an open carrying facility where they can um uh be welcomed and be provided with Alternatives and um and certainly Housing Solutions as well so this is just a summary of where we're at um so um last summer we reached out to the community um and and did engagement with the community when and service providers about criteria for where to place or um such a facility what kind of programs should be there um then in uh late November we released

[39:00] a request for a proposal for a service provider to um to run this service that closed in the first quarter of 2023 we did not receive any applications or replies to that RFP that met the requirements and however the boulder shelter who was going they were going through a a leadership change at that exact same time reached out to us and said that they would like to have conversations with us and discussions about um that that program we are now in weekly conversations with the shelter um uh in in relation to moving that forward we've uh we also put a grant proposal forward uh in February um I think it was 2.5 million dollars

[40:01] that we've requested um to support this uh initiative from the state and um I I'd like to announce tonight to the council and to the public that we've actually locate and um uh it will be at 1844 Folsom Street this is a facility it's a older office building one story and um it had last year it had started to go the initial steps of an entitlement process to develop it into a um a larger scale office building we met with the developers a month or so ago and had a conversation with them and they've now agreed to change directions where that um office existing office building could be open this summer to provide that service and then um it will be redeveloped

[41:03] um in the future um as a um a permanent home for a day service center and and with 50 units of permanent support of housing above it we're excited to have that close link um between the services and the housing in one facility and it will be another opportunity for individuals some of those 20 percent that Megan spoke about that have some challenges in transitioning into housing that could be housed in such a location so you'll you'll hear more about that um and um with that this is our last slide and so if you want to go to the next one it has our the uh the questions um let me uh sorry say one more thing about the the day service center

[42:02] um so um uh like such Investments we as a department are used to making such investments in the community around affordable housing we will be using the affordable housing fund to support those 50 units of of psh um and in the 2024 budget we will be likely requesting from city council an amount somewhere between four and five million dollars of general fund money to support the creation of this new facility for four day Services um and um uh the developer has hired an architect which works with uh trauma-based design for such projects and we're excited to be uh partnering with them to move this initiative forward so I'll stop there and hand it over to

[43:00] you Matt and guide us through the input and questions from Council thank you thanks Kurt and thanks Megan and Heidi for uh teaming up on that presentation a lot of really important information and uh perhaps speaking on behalf of everyone on Council awesome that we have a place for the day service center it was one of our big priorities at our Retreat so it's really great news so we have a location we've got a road map and it's happening this year so just credit to Curtin the team and everybody who sort of joined together to get us to that place because talking about something's great but when you have something tangible a brick and mortar um really sort of uh feels good and feels like we're headed in a good direction so thank you for that um so for my Council colleagues as we look to sort of talk about this for a little bit um there's not really any direction that staff is looking for on this that we'll we'll take a bite at that apple in terms of direction or modifications and maybe of subsequent meeting um down the road but I'd love to just

[44:01] limit us to just two or three questions just to get clarifying and just to maybe dive in a little more and if you have any comments maybe like two minutes just to kind of keep us on task we do have two more presentations to get through and then a larger conversation on the back end so if we can just limit those questions just a couple each person I mean hopefully stay on track um all right I see Bob go for it um I'm sure my colleagues will have questions about the day uh Services Center that I heard just announced so I'm going to yield to them on that but I do have one comment one question um first of a comment uh first thank you so much to staff for um the point in time survey that you're planning this summer I know this is something that many of us have uh suggested uh for um a while and I think it's great I know it's expensive and I know it's time consuming but I think it's going to give us some really important data that's going to be very different from the data that we get at the January survey of homelessness or homeless individuals and I hope that we continue this summer after summer so that we can use this year as a Baseline and then and

[45:01] then see what our Trends are in future years so thank you for that uh a second is a question um Megan you went through very quickly um a whole lot of stuff that's coming up and and I may have missed this but I know that we spoke at a council meeting um oh maybe three or four months ago about an on-street mental health team that was was not going to be uh immediately accompanied by the um by the police department I know we have a CR cirt team that's a cert team that that is um paired with the police but I think we also talked about a homeless team uh assuming a homeless Outreach team that's mental health oriented without police do we um is that still on on the plan and if so when is that going to be launched that one falls under Wendy in the care so I feel like Kurt would be better to answer sure yeah thanks for that question Bob yeah so we're working very closely uh Wendy Schwartz is uh is heading that we're working very closely with PD and fire um we're um in the process now of

[46:03] um moving forward with HR and um figuring out how to staff those uh positions um we're getting ready to advertise for those positions um we're shooting for probably the next uh three months I think to get that launched it will depend of course on our ability to hire um the correct staff to to implement that um behavioral health staff are are few and far between as far as the the need but we are are confident we'll get that going um later this summer thanks Kurt Matt that's all I have for now you mind if I colically real quick there go for it Aaron Bob thanks for asking that question Kurt really looking forward to that coming online but just to clarify that's not necessarily a homeless uh program right like that's for anybody in the community that's experiencing say a behavioral Metro mental health issue that doesn't require

[47:01] police support is that correct that's correct um I mean certainly there's a percentage of individuals experiencing homelessness that will use a program like that but it's really meant to support the The Wider community so so thanks for that Aaron thanks sir yeah I'm sure there will be members of the uh people experiencing homelessness uh that will take advantage of that but or use it but so other need numbers oh thanks thanks for clarifying that Aaron uh I see Tara then Mark so this question is about the building hope program which sounds super exciting and especially the peer support part of that so can you walk um walk us through how it would work let's say right now we combined um affordable housing with uh you know helping people that are mentally that have mental illness or behavioral health issues into our affordable housing program so right now we'll have let's say in an average

[48:01] let's say we have what two to three people that are either have co-occurring disorders or severe mental illness that are placed in these um affordable housing units uh neighborhoods that are really affecting the other people that are trying to have a happy life in there as you know I've been talking a lot about how I'm trying to fix this so tell me how uh building home and peer support is going to affect this and how many times a week do you think people who are experiencing severe mental health will be able to get some help part you want me to or sure go for it Megan okay um thank you uh so this team has met with specifically for the housing retention team is meant for that population those folks who when we place them in permanent Supportive Housing Programs that comes with case management but sometimes that case

[49:01] manager may be working with 30 to 40 other folks and so they don't lay eyes on the person um it might be once every two weeks or once every week this team will not only would they have that caseworker but it would be supplemented by this team so it would be a real group effort in that they would bring a clinician a mental health clinician with them as well if they if they had any medical issues they'd bring nurse practitioner or an RN with them and so the intention of that it would vary by person but no less than once a week but I would think and I think there's a little bit of a when they first get housed it would be multiple times a week and then the stability comes that would lessen um and envisioning that at some point that we would hope that maybe they don't need that level of support and we could take them down to just case management but maybe not like that there is no uh requirement that they only receive like a certain amount of services so yes the

[50:00] whole intention of this team is to address the issues that we've seen in the community with some folks I'm going to Quality on myself first that was Rachel I don't have I'm off screen so you can't hold on just let me ask this quick question Megan what happens if said person who's experiencing behavioral health issues screams let's say multiple times in the middle of the night often what happens in those middle of the night segments what I really like about Bluebird is they have 24 7 you know they have 24 7 help you know somebody living on site which is really needed for some of these folks so um would you say that that those folks that scream let's say they have trouble in the middle of the night they probably won't get the help they need or it's possible they will how are we going to deal with that particular situation yeah this team at this point is not 24 hours so they would not I mean that

[51:02] would end up being I would guess the call to the police but yes you're right in the in the stuff with Bluebird um a lot of the stuff that work that's coming online is site-based and it's specifically for it's all permanent Supportive Housing um so I think you know there's pros and cons to that as well you know when you put everybody with similar issues in one site that some things tend to escalate but um we're a lot of the housing coming online is going to be that way um and so there might need to be some assessment and there typically is already with like Lee hill where when we're placing people we try to folks that might be high needs into those kind of settings if I could just calculate I'm just wondering like how many hours a week are you talking about with uh you know once a week is that once a week for an hour or eight hours or what does that look like I it will depend on the end with the team I'm sure um it would depend on the need right

[52:00] like I I they're not going to be in the residence for eight hours for sure but I assume um depending on the need it maybe an hour um would be my assessment um and then the peer support is in addition to that as well like they're two they're programs that are happening together um but they're separate as well so along with that whole retention team that I just mentioned there's peer support added to that as well so the hope is to really bring a team effort to supporting some of these folks awesome no worries um thanks for that answer Megan uh Mark and then Aaron in deference to our fearless moderator I'll I'm gonna do this as fast as I can um the federal plan to end homelessness new um any of the pillars of that plan actually provide us with financial resources so that's a good question and that was a question that we actually asked the

[53:00] director when he was here in Denver visiting in November he has said that the Biden Administration has committed to investing and we've seen some of that investment with the emergency housing vouchers and Etc what is interesting about paying attention to the pillars and what the strategy is is we will start to see the 19 organizations that comprise of United States intergovernmental agency Council on homelessness they will prioritize their funding their Federal grant funding in alignment with that strategy um next um I I will say that the the section and the presentation which by enlarge I thought was terrific um but the the section on solutions for high utilizers in the short term seemed very very vague to me it did not give me a sense of really concrete actions and in combination with that what percentage of the high utilizers have been

[54:01] successfully housed and treated the operations team has been meeting since um January you want to say so it's only been up to like three or four months um and most of these folks the for folks who've been doing this work have been working with for years so it's not without additional resources um and trying to fit them into the system that as it stands has been challenging um so I believe there's been three that have been housed two of those were um in line to be housed before we started the work but we we have supported them as they've been housed as a group um so as far as treatment I do think there's a night two or three we've done a couple um that we've connected connected One Tribe in their recovery work um we've connected a couple one with uh Fort Lions went down Fort line so there

[55:01] have been a handful that so far but part of the work has also been to create programs specifically for these individuals that don't quite fit in our current system so that's been the work we've been doing as well [Music] um and um my next question actually two questions are for Kurt that's the end of my questions um the um the day shelter um obviously it's reasonably expensive are there going to be any metrics by which we judge its success or failure as I assume the five million dollars is a one-time payment and there will be ongoing expenses as well are we going to have any metrics by which we judge its performance yeah I would say the metrics are going to be related to the programs that are um run through and at that facility so um for example if if a mental health

[56:01] partners is providing uh Services there there would be metrics around that there will certainly be metrics related to people that exit homelessness or have um you know other services there will be metrics related to um you know if if dental aid you know is providing Services there the number of people that are served through dental aid um so it's it's really based on the programs that will be be provided at the facility my and my last very last question is also for you Kurt um we had an update on homelessness back on July 14 2020. um can you tell us what has changed since then um what have we learned what are we doing better where do we do worse um what's been the transformation or evolution of approaches to

[57:01] the the problem of homelessness in your view so I think uh so I would add on to that things that have continued that have been successful um we've been able to continue to successfully house individuals we've continued to bring on affordable housing projects where a portion of the units are targeted for individuals experiencing homelessness um I think one of the improvements that I've seen particularly with our added capacity uh with uh with Megan and and Lynette is um we're able to have more coordination with the the uh the organizations that are doing the work so I think and and part of that is the initiative that Megan just spoke about with the High utilizers that has brought the um organize the uh the programs together

[58:02] in a more intentional way around specific individuals and I think that's been very helpful prior to that for for a long time now we've had those same in same groups working together around getting individuals housed but those are individuals going through sort of the ordinary and standard process um and um and again some of the things that have changed um I I don't think we can underscore what Megan mentioned earlier the the um the vulnerable the the level of vulnerability with individuals that we're seeing that are experiencing homelessness that has certainly increased in our community not just those that are living outside but also those that are staying at shelter um and so that's put a real Challenge on um I think all of our service providers and lastly

[59:00] um and this is I'm using your question get to get a message out there that I was intended to get out there um and and that is that the organizations that do this work the feet forwards the shelter you know the bridge house um uh focused re-entry the organizations that are doing this work um they need funding from our community that is outside and above and beyond but the the city can provide and one of the things that has changed is this work has become more expensive we talk about inflation and how inflation is affecting us but it's also affecting these programs and these organizations that are doing the work and they really need the financial support um of the citizens as well good thank you Kurt thank you Megan and Kurt always happy to be your PR guy thanks thanks Mark um Aaron uh then Lauren then Nicole

[60:00] great well thanks for the thorough presentation and uh very exciting news about the the day Services Center uh that location this great news and also just really impressive to see how many different initiatives are are undergoing and how much progress that we're making on um things like the amount of permanent Supportive Housing so Kudos and huge thanks to everybody working on those things so a couple questions um one was I think as we're all aware that one of the areas of acute need you mentioned acute need in the presentation right it's one of the challenges um a major area for that is substance abuse and um and there's a as I understand a real lack of treatment options so I'm very glad that we're bringing the tribe Recovery Home online here before too long and um I like it's my first little part of my question is confirm that we have a couple more coming as well in collaboration with the county maybe we can talk a little bit about that if I have that right and then what else do we

[61:00] have on the horizon to help with this issue you know it's it's such an enormous problem uh for people experiencing it public health situation right we've seen five overdoses in the last couple of days with what looks like some problematic some even more lethal than usual fentanyl so what are our other options that we're bringing to the table with this very difficult problem um Heidi I don't know if you want to respond to that with some of the steps that the county is taking you mentioned the road map but I think that that sort of feeds into that conversation yes it does um thank you Kurt uh so the behavioral roadmap team is really one of the things that they've done is they've assessed the number of beds that we have available and where the gaps are and that's going to be all part of that plan that they're the draft plan that they're going to be bringing forward in June to really look at how we expand those access points for individuals that are

[62:03] experiencing substance misuse disorder and behavioral health challenges so that is on the horizon I don't know the timeline of when the implementation will look like but I do know that they will be working through the draft this summer got it so I guess the current work is on putting together a plan TVD with the interventions would look like um okay and how about that uh the tribe recovery homes did I have that right that we're looking at bringing more online you are correct so the bja the Bureau of Justice assistance grant that we have we've committed to Bringing on three in the three-year time frame we do recognize that we're probably going to need more than three and so that is uh something that we are prioritizing and constantly looking for additional funding sources outside of both County and city government entities okay good apparently finally two just add and this is not for I don't want to end long

[63:00] uh make this conversation longer but maybe I'm putting myself a little note to myself to bring forward a little update we are part of the opioid Regional Council and there are some strategies there um that's led by Boulder County but thinking about what other programs on the horizon that really are thinking about substance abuse and so um I'll make myself a mental note to maybe bring forward an update on where that is and how that's going some of those are going to be longer term but um happy to share that as well in the future excellent thanks Daria and I think this will be a good part of our conversation with the County Commissioners too to get a little bit ahead of myself uh my one other question is okay so we do have so many initiatives underway and so many positive things going on and I think we just said over 100 additional events of permanent supporting absent coming along online before too long but with a um a walk or a bike ride uh through town we know that the the resources and options available are are

[64:00] not uh meeting the need of the unsheltered homelessness in our community right now right um and that's you mentioned there's potentially not adequate resources in the housing area do we have a sense like what for those folks who are out on the streets right now that we don't have housing for today what are we offering as an option like what's out there either now or that we're thinking about adding you know in the next you know six to 12 months to meet that large need out there so Aaron I'll I'll take a a crack at that um so um so I I think you brought a a really important uh topic up and that's sort of the the scale of the challenge that we have so I was looking at some of the numbers uh this afternoon so um I looked at our sheltered data from a year ago up until

[65:02] um last night and um just short of 60 000 bed nights have been provided by the shelter over the last 12 months those are um beds that have been filled by by individuals and shelter if we add on um the lodge and the source to other shelters in our community um you know we're over over 70 000 individuals that have been sheltered in our community in the last 12 months if we look at the coordinated entry data from when we started about five years ago um um it's basically seven thousand Unique Individuals have gone through coordinated entry and we know about 20-year we we don't know we we think about 20 or 25 percent

[66:01] of individuals don't go through coordinated entry who are experiencing homelessness in our community so that's roughly ten thousand nine to ten thousand individuals that have experienced homelessness in our community in the last five years um in the city of Boulder rental housing our affordable rental housing stock we've got about 3 500 units of affordable housing it's about 4 500 if you include the um the ownership units so if we took all of our housing and dedicated it towards individuals experiencing homelessness in our community we would only have half the housing that we need I don't think that any City can actually solve the homelessness challenge um and um

[67:00] sorry let me turn my phone off here and um the uh um it's and that's why we this National strategy is so important Regional strategies are so important and I think that's the the frustration that we have that's the frustration that the community has has that despite the success of getting individuals out of homelessness um we still um we still see these challenges um and and the community doesn't see the success that we have because once someone's house you don't see that um and um so um my answer is is partly going to be we don't we don't have the resources um for all for all those individuals um that are that are in Boulder with experiencing homelessness um and that we need to we need to figure

[68:00] out how you know how to make the the our resources go the furthest to help them the the most number of individuals lastly I'll say we have a diversion program um that is going a little bit better than it was last year um and that's really connecting people with their networks in the community that they came from sometimes that's the local community sometimes it's someplace else um and um that's the area where I think from a programmatic standpoint that needs to significantly grow and then lastly there's there's um there's holes in our in our systems there's areas where we don't have Solutions now particularly as you said around substance use and that's something that we as a state um and County um in in a region really need to tackle thanks thanks for that Kurt um I appreciate that the scope of the need is

[69:00] so great right that that we don't have all the resources as we want Community to to resolve it so that's it for my questions I know you also you had a couple questions for us I'll just hop in with my my one comment in terms of like discounts will support the direction of HSBC focusing on the housing and supportive services and I mean the short answer is yes and then a little bit more is that I do feel like we need additional investment in terms of options for people who are who are still out on the streets that we don't have housing space for so short to medium term you know options for getting people out of the cold and into some kind of Sheltering option or some kind of you know whether it's pallet shelter or safe outdoor space or something like that so we've talked about that at our I think our the last time we were discussing some of these issues that the Council on our Retreat so I just want to reiterate uh the need that I see that for some additional options for those folks who are still stuck out on the streets when we don't have programs the more permanent programs available for them that's what I got thanks very much all right thanks Aaron um Lauren then Nicole

[70:04] thank you Matt um and thank you everyone for that great presentation I was particularly excited to hear that we have a perfect score on the by name list and actually well I think that's a really powerful tool to track progress and get more data on sort of the gaps in the system and most of my questions are going to focus around that um so could you repeat again you were saying that um you had a date that you thought we might be able to achieve functional Zero by and could you also um tell us how many individuals are currently on the by name list or a monthly average so the reason that we're in the what they call the final mile is because our by name list has been decreasing this is for veterans specifically as of yesterday we have 21 and that number is

[71:01] going to drop significantly because the vast majority of those have been managed to housing resources and it's just making sure that they get to lease up um so as long as we continue to decrease our by name list um then that's what kind of tips us over into the final mile and they put you in the final mile cohort when you're about six months out of hitting that three month of that less than three marker and that's why we're in the cohort okay um the Denver metro area is also trying to or sort of the Coalition of cities that are doing this in our area are also trying to address single family uh sorry single adult homelessness um is that correct that is correct so the way that the built for zero um focuses on is they pick a sub population and once you hit functional zero then you move to the next so once

[72:01] we hit functional zero with veterans then we will move into single adults since we've already been certified by Community Solutions as with the quality data and the perfect scorecard okay so then will we go through those processes again um like a new scorecard that's person no okay we'll revisit and double check to make sure that everything is still accurate to work the by name list okay so how many adult individuals do we have on our buy name list that's not the veteran specific list um I will have to pull that up let me just Megan do you have it by chance readily it would be a guess but I believe it's around 350. maybe you could double check me but that's my last recollection

[73:00] I am searching now can I Circle back around yeah that would be great and that's also counting wide I want to throw out there that that work is done folder counts I appreciate the clarification on that um I also thought it was interesting that they keep track of how many cases become inactive in a month do you know about what number we're at on that and also what steps we take to locate people before they become inactive so we actually don't move people into an active until we've exhausted every option and that's why we're pausing before we integrate it into our data modeling because Outreach data is not in Connect yet so when we spend each time we do case conferencing we go through the by name list ask when the last time somebody had a touch point we check all data systems across the board and then make sure that we touch base with every Outreach worker

[74:00] every Veteran Affairs officer we also work with our veteran service officers so we really want to make sure before we move somebody into inactive that they are truly inactive and that's why we do that over that 90-day period instead of just assuming that they haven't they've they have just disappeared and we don't we're not reaching out does that make sense yep thank you thanks Lauren is that it awesome uh Nicole then Bob and uh just for clarity we're kind of getting closer to our time but I know Nicole hasn't gone yet Bob I know you got a question I reserve once what is just as a check we're kind of trying to move along a little bit still so go forward Nicole thanks I'll talk fast we're talking about you know you know the new landlords we have that have leased folks with challenging backgrounds in the past year how many landlords have stopped leasing to folks with challenging backgrounds in the past

[75:00] year like has the total number of landlords who will lease to folks what challenging backgrounds stay the same or changed over time like is it an inflow outflow how does that balance out great do you want me to take that uh that would be great because I don't know the answer so um we don't know if landlords have disengaged unless someone returns to homelessness or we can't find them a new lease up but we do have because of the landlord recruiter position more landlords in our portfolio that are willing to lease to people with challenging backgrounds than we had this time last year and the time before okay thank you um and then the other question that I had was actually um Heidi I think it's probably a question for you it's around HSBC and you know these seven um regions or Seven Counties in the region right that they a lot most of them six out of seven combine their data and the share data and everything like that and my understanding is that HSBC

[76:01] is working on a different data system so we don't we're not really able to track people as they move around the region and at least in my experience talking with folks there are a lot of people who are moving around the region pretty frequently so I'm just wondering you know why why it is that there's a different mechanism for tracking folks um here in Boulder County and you know and then I think a sub part of that question is why is that data set not available to everybody who's working on homelessness here in Boulder County so we actually do enter data into hmis so we do both and the reason that the connect system was designed was the capacity for hmis five years ago was not there and the robust of the data that we needed it just could not be integrated that said we still collect more robust data than anybody else in the metro area and what we are looking at is doing so connect it went from Boulder like BCC

[77:00] which we've all heard that acronym to now just connect and they just finished this huge data migration now that they're buttoning that up we can do data enhancements we can integrate the Outreach data into to get to that inactive component and then we can also add more um service providers that have been waiting I've been I have a bunch of use cases that I've been waiting to integrate they're going to start moving into that so that's going to start being integrated and then the big project that we have and I'm actually meeting with our it team later on this month is an interface between hmis and connect so it's no longer duplicated entry and hmis is also currently assessing how they can crosswalk the robust data that we have and then maybe hopefully enhance that data collection for the rest of the region so that's kind of where our long-term vision is okay so it sounds like some of the folks who are working um in homelessness here

[78:01] in Boulder will be able to have access to the data and there'll be some data sharing going on there um because that kind of ties into um just one of my other questions you know we we know in Boulder County the report had some data on um folks kind of coming to Boulder County or who who are reporting in and checking in for services with less than six months that they've been living here but because there's so much movement around the region right I think it's a um it's a hard thing to know right are they coming from Denver are they coming from New York right and I think mostly it's it's probably folks around the region right but it'll be really nice to have some of that information the most frequent report that we have of folks that are new to the community actually is from Denver and those are also the folks that attrition out most frequently so um so yeah we're excited to do the enhancements that we've been waiting on for the last 18 months and this interface with hmis has been uh three

[79:02] years in the making and now that we're in the place and they are too it's pretty exciting cool thank you so much operating in homelessness strategy senior manager um just to support Heidi in this conversation um you know it is a value add that we have this extra database we we are it's actually seven out of Seven Counties in the region are using it we are one of the seven um and I think it's really another piece to understand and and I know unical will get this very easily is that um the reason it takes so long for data sharing within hmis and amongst Partners there's a whole host of privacy and confidentiality uh pieces that have to really be ironed out and specifically when you start getting into areas of treatment and what that person's disability is and so those are some of the delays and challenges that the region is facing

[80:02] well yeah thank you thank you that's really helpful um and then uh my last question is just around the Belgian home program are all of the housing providers going to be participating in the building home program including the clinical team so for example Mental Health Partners you know they're they're placing a lot of people into homes who have um some challenges and and are their clients going to be part of the building home program too the criteria we put around it was permanent Supportive Housing so they're provided and MHP would be included in that so yes okay cool thank you um Emma I do have some comments but I'll just save until the end and we can move along now did you mean the end like the end end or or once we wrap it after we get through all three they're kind of apply to all of them sounds good we'll be hopefully we'll have some time for that appreciate it uh Bob you're up yeah thanks man I I just wanted to Nicole's questions and Aaron's questions kind of prompted a couple of math questions on my head so I just want to make sure I was following Kurt

[81:00] especially when he was answering uh Aaron so I think I heard you say Kurt that I know this is kind of wide and we have to be careful not to confuse the county in the in the city but um your estimate was about about 10 000 Unique Individuals um uh we're homeless in Boulder County over the last five years as both coordinated entry plus your kind of your Roundup for for those that were outside of coordinated entries that do I get hear that correct ten thousand over the last five years County Wide uh that's that's correct yes so that would seem to come to about an average about two thousand a year 10 000 divided by five but our point in time survey pretty in the county pretty consistently um shows about 600 and I think we all recognize that point in time survey undoubtedly misses a lot of people but but um the ratio of two six hundred to two thousand would be pretty significant about what what one-third so it would seem um tell me if I'm wrong Kurt that there's a fair number of people that are coming and going from the county and

[82:00] this is kind of maybe the point that that um Nicole and Aaron were both making is that a fair assumption you know whether it's three to one or two to one but it seems like there's a lot of people that are only spending a short period of time here in our County and then moving on is that right you're on me you're muted thank you um uh that is correct Bob and um Vicki will correct me uh if I'm wrong um but I believe that um some of those individuals are families as well um so when the when the uh point in time count is created it includes um uh individuals who are homeless but it also includes families um so Vicki any more um Clarity on that I'm not going to correct you you are absolutely correct uh families that number fluctuates year to year but on average about 100 to 200 of those individuals are participants in

[83:00] households that are families um and then we average on the point in time count somewhere between 50 and 100 and 50 it kind of depends on the year and the weather for unsheltered homelessness and then about 75 percent of the numbers count of people counted in the point in time count can be attributed to the city of Boulder and then um you know then we go and add the 20 back up over it thanks for that so Kurt I I dug up the memo that that you provided us two years ago in April 2021 and I think you said in that memo and maybe it's different numbers now than it was two years ago but I think back then you said the four to five individuals enter our community every day individuals in that uh a similar number leave um uh the city this again I'm now down to City level so that's 4 times 365 or about 1400 new unhoused people um in and out per year in Boulder is that still your

[84:00] estimate from two years ago is that still roughly accurate uh yeah I would say that's that's correct and the the uh the CE numbers they go up and down per month but they've lit they've stayed relatively um stable um if I can use that word um over the last few years um and and over the last few months they've actually gone up okay that's fine it's a final question on that line of questions so if we're if we're having 1400 new unhoused people come into Boulder per year which we come pretty consistent with the county numbers you were quoting in 1400 leaving I assume that's not the cohort that 1400 people are kind of coming in spending a few weeks or a few maybe a couple months here and then heading back out I assume that's not the cohort that you're trying to provide housing to is that a fair assumption well um any anyone who comes through coordinated entry they're all going to be provided

[85:02] the same support and encouragement um for services um what we don't control is is if they do leave or how they engage in Services um but you're I think what you're getting at is probably correct I mean the the individuals that are most successful in getting into housing are the ones that stay connected with Services many of them are a high percentage of them are staying at the shelter where they can stay more closely connected to services and stay for a period of time long enough to make the transition into housing and one of the challenges that we've had and one of the approaches that was taken with the strategy the original strategy strategy five or six years ago was to reduce the length of time that people are staying in homelessness and I must say that you know we're not meeting that and

[86:00] we're not meeting that simply because of the scale of the number of individuals in the number of people that end up sort of on a waiting list thanks Kurt and thanks Matt for your Indulgence let me ask you another round of questions all right well you only asked one to start so you had a couple in the bank um well I'm just gonna just for the sake of timing I've got others but but I'm gonna just ask one question and we try to keep moving I think we're a little behind on time uh right now which is all right it's a media subject um my question centers around um Slide Five and it was sort of that bubble chart that showed the entities and the fan really is the family tree of HSBC and something that was quite noticeable is the city Partners were just Longmont and Boulder um and so I'm kind of curious why and or or what are the reasons why our other sister cities um either aren't a partner partner or or aren't a stakeholder or or part of that support network and so I'm wondering I don't know if that's a question for Heidi or Kurt but that just seemed to really it just sort of stuck out um and

[87:01] so I was just wondering if anyone can sort of answer that well I'll give a little bit of input to that um so the one the one thing that I'll state is that both long the city of Longmont and the city of Boulder are the only two municipalities in the county that have sort of a housing and Human Services Department um the other cities they don't have staff um that work on homelessness um and that's where you know it gets into the um sort of the structure of um you know Boulder County represents the work of smaller cities and municipalities and provides a more county-wide support we have the same challenge with affordable housing we have been able to get those same cities probably more involved in Solutions around affordable housing than we have with homelessness

[88:03] um I think it's probably a capacity issue for those communities but lastly I'll say I can't speak for those communities obviously and I think they would have to speak for themselves on on how they would set those priorities thanks Kurt I I appreciate that analysis it and if you know if the county is sort of by proxy you know stepping in to represent those other communities that don't have their own housing and Human Services um I guess my question is how is the county leveraging those relationships or that responsibility to spread those Solutions more broadly around the county um versus maybe that this acute concentration in Boulder and then thus in Longmont so Kurt's correct it is a capacity issue and we do provide those resources in different mechanisms like our

[89:00] county-wide Co response um and engaging in those Services accordingly and the data the numbers um from CE of those that are coming from other municipalities is very small and so I just kind of wanted to flag that so I think it's like less than maybe two percent combined across the entire County of those that are saying that they're coming from these other communities it's predominantly Longmont and Boulder I I appreciate that I just as a follow-up I I recall we were sort of just hearing that those that are coming in here there's a large continuous that are coming from Denver to to Boulder as well um is that is that correct so I'm just wondering if there's not a spider web if they're funneling in here they we can spread those resources and spread the impacts and and create more capacity to perhaps deal with them geographically um and so that's just sort of where I'm that's my question I don't know if there's a great answer to that but that's um what what a concern I have is

[90:01] how do we spread the solutions out accordingly great we can take that to Executive Board tomorrow sure thank you for that and um I think unless I don't think there's any more questions I Just Want to Thank You Heidi for joining us and providing a lot of great feedback and and answers to our to our questions and really thank you for joining us maybe you're joining us for the other two as well but but if you're not and you're exiting I just want to take a moment to recognize uh you being with us and so thank you very much for that and if you're with us then uh you'll get you'll get another round of applause and accolades uh in due time here this evening so uh thank you for joining us thank you and I actually am not going to be a part of the other ones so you guys enjoy the rest of your presentation and have a lovely evening thank you so much Heidi take care all right Nuria um I'll turn it back to to you to move us on to our next top terrific thank you so much and I believe

[91:06] into our Sam's teams on Deck I will say that we will and also this one as we're pressed for time we will try not to shortchange anyone but try to get through um to allow for questions as we can so Elizabeth take it away thank you so much Maria uh and good evening Council uh my name is Elizabeth Crow and I serve as the housing and Human Services director uh sorry housing and Human Services Department not taking Kurt's job deputy director um thank you for so much for making time for this discussion and also just many thanks uh to colleagues Kurt and Megan and Heidi and also Vicki for the presentation discussion and all the support uh we're really pleased this evening as well to have co-presenters Julie van Damelin who's the executive director of the emergency family assistance association or effa and Whitney Wilcox

[92:01] with a family resource network manager for Boulder County HHS they'll both come on when it's when it's their time and we also have here kind of in the wings Gwen Mossman who's the Supportive Housing unit manager for bchhhs and Emma Lyman The mckinney-vento Specialist at Boulder Valley School District um who may be available to join answer questions as necessary and while I mentioned McKinney vento for anyone who's watching this evening who's not familiar with that term McKinney vento homelessness assistance Act is a federal policy that provides Supportive Services for children experiencing homelessness and we will be referencing McKinney vento several times this evening so Emily let me just make sure and check that everything's good with the PowerPoint great thank you

[93:00] so we can jump to the next slide um overview of what we'll be sharing this evening um we're going to obviously be talking about family homelessness in in Boulder um the ways in which it's different then uh the presentation you just heard for people who are single adults experiencing homelessness where and how we collaborate with our partners including non-profit agencies like AFA Boulder County of course there are many others to address this really complex issue and then what strategies that include Direct Services Investments other collaborative approaches that we currently deploy within the city housing and Human Services Department and then of course we'll end with some challenges and opportunities moving forward so with the next slide I'm going to ask Julie vandamalin to pop in and oh sorry questions for Council I'm looking at the my my screen differently uh questions for Council this evening similar to

[94:00] those for adult family single homelessness Are there specific issues regarding family homelessness that Council would like staff to emphasize or prioritize and does council have any input on the city and county response to family homelessness now I will ask Julie van Damelin if you can to come on camera and off mute and provide a little bit of background and overview of who is experiencing homelessness in Boulder thanks Elizabeth um first to start with what causes family homelessness um in the family homes this world the biggest driver can you introduce yourself for everybody please oh yeah I'm Julie Van Damme sorry I'm the executive director at Alpha um so one of the drivers of family homelessness the biggest cause are economic factors um this includes uh

[95:01] just basically being able to make ends meet and it can come about from rising housing costs Rising costs of other basic needs economic shocks to the family which could be loss of a job cutting hours a medical bill um the other significant cause about a quarter of the time is changes in family structure this is largely domestic violence but it's also separation divorce or death of a family member the what we see are also disproportionate impacts on um populations that uh where we see systemic disparities I'll give you one uh figure from at the housing about 75 percent of the families living in our temporary housing are by by popular latinx families it's about evenly split between single parent households and dual parent households

[96:00] um you've just heard a long conversation about individual homelessness adult individual homelessness so I just wanted to highlight some of the Dynamics of family hope this is there that are kind of distinct from um or at least slightly different from the individual homelessness World um first uh family homelessness tend to be episodic and not chronic we talk about episodes of Family homelessness um this is largely homegrown these are um Far and Away people that have already been living in our community they have Roots here jobs here had jobs here have children here um the vast majority of homeless um families work um often at a couple jobs um we see multiple dependents particularly large family sizes complex household situations things like

[97:02] debt and credit issues that make it extremely difficult to lease up again uh there are fewer um uh emergency Sheltering not only options but it's a different situation the um was it like group shelters are not great environments for children so um we don't have a drop-in day shelter or anything for families with with children we tend to want to get them in directly and quickly into housing or into a hotel one of the biggest differences is you just don't see uh homeless families with children so it's less visible they're less oh in the open air and more doubled up couch surfing in temporary situations and so there's less public

[98:00] awareness about this issue okay don't jump back to me for this slide um which is in the memo and we have referenced it as well in some of our guaranteed income pilot project discussions it's from the Colorado Center for Law and policies self-sufficiency standard report using updated numbers uh it was released in 2022 November and it shows why so many families are at risk in the city of Boulder and throughout the county because what it takes really for a family of three comprised as you see on the slide is almost one hundred thousand dollars per month just to meet basic needs so when we talk about self-sustain self-sufficiency that's not going out for pizza ice cream movies that is just meeting basic expenses and some of the bars you see beyond the first one on the the left which is that

[99:01] self-sufficiency standard for one adult one preschool or one school age child is that um the benefits that this that this family might have access to um even that bar kind of second from the right the the third from the right rather the wages for a full-time minimum wage job come nowhere near what a family really does need to survive if not Thrive here and so when we talk about um what's really required for families to stay housed to be stably housed this graphic really helps remind us that we're where the Gap is for families that are on the very very low income rung but even for those as Julie said who are working there's a pretty sizable gap between what those wages are which can also be right around the cliff for eligibility for assistance programs and then what that need is so that's just some of the reasons why um despite as you'll hear many of the

[100:02] interventions that we're making through Direct Services and Investments we're still really experiencing a expanding problem next slide back to Julie um so what are the impacts of these episodes of homelessness on families and children and this is really the why we care about this so much um the impacts on the families are everything from um uh toxic stress anxiety instability um but on children we see specific impacts on um physical health academic achievement Mental Health Developmental delays this is true across the country it's true in the state of Colorado and it's true in our community the um in Colorado you see significant differences in for example uh scores on

[101:00] math and English uh for children that are registered at mckinney-bento program in the school systems as being going through homelessness in our community it's very highly correlated um being out of grade behavioral issues academic performance with going through episodes of Family homelessness it's also leaves its traces and has a long-term impact uh studies show that over the lifetime kids that have gone through experiences of homelessness and have these academic health and other issues end up living shorter having less income over their lifetime and in fact a greater propensity to be homeless as adults so we set the stage um for long-term effects of our in our community

[102:01] next does this mean sorry is this me doing this one oh sorry didn't know um uh so I said there's the family illnesses is a fairly large issue it's just not as well uh understood there's almost 200 000 people will experience homelessness as part of a family nationally um in Colorado in 2022 the estimate was over 2 000 people and families with children experiencing homelessness I can't remember if this is from the point in time I just want to make a little um clarification the point in time takes one night and it tends to be ex not very good at picking up the non-family homelessness numbers we tend to use the mckinney-vento numbers which are where they're registered as homeless through the school districts and that includes

[103:00] people Couchsurfing and doubled up which are not included in the point in time which are about 80 percent of the homeless families with children so some of these numbers are a little bit hard to compare depending on the source um this one I know well are uh in 2022 we had about over 400 families go through our keep families housed uh eviction prevention program through rental assistance that we work on with the city and uh there were 200 survivors of domestic violence um Spann is the main provider in our community of those services um e-wrap is the um Federal rental assistance dollars I don't know how you're up you are in the acronyms of these this world but the federal rental assistance dollars that were um from the coveted relief that came to Boulder County is about 70 million dollars I think in rental assistance that has been instrumental in

[104:03] 2021 and 2022 um serving 882 households and in particular they could they could uh fund larger beers um and then the the city's uh Empress program of eviction prevention had um served over a thousand um uh clients and that's families and individuals um since beginning of 2021 so that's so 20 yeah 2021. so those are some of the the numbers um yeah next here's the is this me too hey I'll just do it um okay um these are the Kenny vento numbers and this is what they wanted to show up

[105:00] until covid we were steadily chipping away at families homelessness in our community we had um uh a trend line going uh lightly down and a lot of this was some from the expansion of rental assistance like key family's house that was preventing homelessness of families with children um 2021 is kind of a year of uh being of the moratorium on addictions Etc so that dropped that year the large increase in 2022 picks up the Marshall fire um families that were displaced by the Marshall fire but what's really concerning is the 2023 today that number of 749 children in the Boulder Valley School District that have experienced homelessness thus far this this Academic Year includes almost no kids from the Marshall fire um so we're seeing just a

[106:03] huge increase in family homelessness uh this year largely inflation driven um so what does the system look like the first and foremost to try and prevent not only because it's the the best in solution in terms of uh economic efficiency it's less expensive to keep someone in their house than the house than to go through the whole eviction and rehousing process it also avoids all those impacts on children that I mentioned um and we have a really robust um set of short-term rental assistance from the city from effa's resources from the county and others that has been helped up until this year had been good at kind of

[107:02] um making significant inroads in preventing homelessness among families with kids so once a family of children become homeless what what services do they have in our community in Boulder we use motel and hotel vouchers for the short-term critical stays of unhoused families and there's also the temporary shelters this is particularly a domestic violence shelter we also have temporary housing with Supportive Services effa is the main provider of rooftops if you will um including our short-term housing and our transitional which is which is three months transitional which is two years there's also a mother house for pregnant women again the domestic violence shelters and some rapid rehousing rental assistance um funded by the county and by other other

[108:00] sources um the exit from homelessness in terms of subsidized Solutions are the housing vouchers and permanently affordable units neither none of which uh prioritize families with children and in fact a lot of the exits is are also to mobile home parks and other um kind of lower cost options in the community next and this is Whitney thank you Julie good evening Council my name is Whitney Wilcox and I'm the Family Resource Network manager with Boulder County Housing and Human Services and I'm here to talk about our collaborative work to support families experiencing housing and stability through the Family Resource Network and the family homelessness subcommittee the Family Resource Network is a county-wide governance structure that

[109:00] brings together more than 30 non-profit school and government agency partners that are working across our local safety nets some of whom are listed here our purpose in collaborating is to leverage our Collective strengths and resources to create better outcomes for Children and Families providing them with access to safe and stable housing Health Care education and other support services that they need by working collaboratively we are able to coordinate and integrate Services across different organizations to ensure that families have access to the supports they need when and where they need them and we can also make sure that our efforts are aligned and that we're not duplicating services next slide please so we recognize that solving complex issues like family homelessness requires a collaborative effort from many different groups and so in 2018 with

[110:02] leadership from effa the Family Resource Network created the family homelessness subcommittee which brings together about a dozen non-profit school and government government partners that are working on preventing and responding to family homelessness the group's work is currently focused across four main priority areas including creating and implementing a shared assessment that establishes a common process to assess each family's situation identifying and aggregating data to determine any gaps and services and measure overall system performance establishing an annual training agenda to ensure that staff have the skills and knowledge they need to effectively support families experiencing homelessness and finally create getting a standardized structure around the coordination of our hoteling response which is Julie mentioned is the intervention that we use locally to house families experiencing homelessness

[111:02] and we do this in lieu of an emergency shelter as it is considered a safer alternative for children and reduces stigma next slide please so by collaboratively identifying system needs gaps and barriers we're able to collectively impact the larger system that we're all working in and I wanted to call out a couple of strategies specifically tonight as examples of that um so through the Family Resource Network we have been working on developing process flow maps to help connect staff and community members to services and we just published housing navigation maps for each region of the county including Boulder that provides a clear visual Pathway to organizations that may be able to help with shelter and rental assistance these Maps can help reduce frustration by users across

[112:01] our system more efficiently connecting staff and community members to the right Services more quickly as well as reducing the workload of volunteers and staff that are fielding and researching questions about where families can go for services uh next slide please uh this is a snapshot of the Family Resource Network's current work plan and outlines just one of our strategies that we're working on to keep families um housed so as you've heard and you all know individual non-profits and city and county organizations are reporting unprecedented demand for rental assistance at a time when pandemic era funding is coming to an end including pandemic funded programs that provided really significant funds to support rental assistance so to help address this we are bringing together Partners including the city of Boulder and atha to jointly monitor the

[113:03] demand for and amount of short-term rental assistance funds available through a shared dashboard that will aggregate all that information by providing a comprehensive view of demand and availability across our partners the dashboard will be able to help organizations to make informed decisions about where to allocate resources and identify what resources are going to be necessary to meet the demand ultimately helping our community to increase housing security for these vulnerable households I'm going to turn over the next section to Elizabeth good all right not the only person struggling was in this evening thank you Whitney so I'll take the next couple of slides or a

[114:00] few slides and just share a little bit again about what we're doing specifically on City Boulder HHS and this uh overview slide just really um aligns with our HHS mission to strive for all people who Thrive this includes really addressing the systemic root causes and disparities that we know are really at the root of family homelessness economic and social disparities in cracks in our system and our strategic framework is really as a department focused on both affordability of many forms and inclusivity and specifically thinking about assisting families at risk of homelessness or already experiencing it as with other low-income community members is really twofold one is increasing the income or access to resources that are available to them so they have what they need in their pockets or at ready access to take care

[115:00] of their needs and then also decreasing or removing barriers to affordability which can be everything from subsidies assistance programs and the like next slide within our department just wanted to bring out a few different examples of very different sorts of how we are currently every day every week every year helping families in need starting on the left for folks who are might not be aware within the city HHS Department we have our family resource schools program through which we actually have Family Outreach coordinators who are situated in a number of bvsd elementary schools and working with families in need these are largely but not certainly not exclusively Latino families and our staff members really work on a variety of different ways to do program

[116:00] referrals help families get access to services that they need but they also provide financial assistance we have a pot of funds within the FRS budget every year and we've been adding to that with arpa funds in the last couple of years that they can draw upon to really help with rental assistance and this is particularly when a family is really in a crisis moment and where a wait time to get an appointment or support for other organizations is just maybe a little bit too long or too slow uh and not conducive to Crisis Intervention and we say that with full acknowledgment that our own staff and and that of our non-profit and County Partners are really moving as quickly as possible in all of these situations and that just given the the large demand for resources it can take time and we have Staffing problems continuing in our community in

[117:00] government and at the nonprofit sector the FRS staff can also actually provide utility assistance food assistance and hotel vouchers so as Whitney was talking about and and and Julie as well the the multiple Pathways that families can get to support to get the support they need our FRS program is one of them uh another program that's much more recent and you're familiar with is the empress program or the eviction prevention rental assistance services that also provides not just that legal guidance to help families who are already at the point of eviction court but also rental assistance to make sure they have what they need to to avoid eviction altogether and one thing I once wanted to note here if you recall back to the um the retreat back in February Kurt in his address kind of update from HHS mentioned at

[118:00] that time that we were going through our apparatus rental assistance funds at a very rapid Pace just since we issued the memo to council for this study session we were had about a quarter of our budgeted funds for 2023 left in the pot for rental assistance and as of April 13th we're nearly out so we do have another amount of money that we provide to effa through Empress funds for rental assistance and and they've got that we haven't completely run out of those funds but that is to make the point that um Julie and Whitney already have as well um is that the the demand for resources and preventing families from being homeless is is is vastly outpacing the resources that we have available so that's something we're really concerned about and then on the right just to mention um although this food tax rebate and

[119:00] other programs like it are obviously not designed to as family homelessness prevention um but um are nonetheless a really great resource and just one example of many of them that are available that where we provide funding um to community members to to tend to their basic needs and wherever we can do that whether it's utility assistance food Health Care Etc just helps offset the other expenses that family may have need and for rent next slide please in addition I'll go through this very quickly the city also makes um millions of dollars in Investments every year to support families in need some of these funds are directly related to family homelessness prevention like our non-competitive annual Grant to Alpha for keep families housed we also in 2022 for that the end of the that year and through 2023 provided

[120:02] funding to effa and span Safe House Progressive Alliance for non-violence or domestic violence shelter for hoteling for families and that came from a collaborative requests that came from the Family Resource Network family homelessness subcommittee we also do provide funding through Human Services fund Health Equity Fund again for to address food security Health Care Health Care access other forms of support that families can use in order to make the other funds income that they have stretched further we also of course have funds from arpa that we're using trying to use a strategic strategically as possible to supplement basic needs some of that has already been used for Empress it's already been used to add to the FRS or Family Resource schools Older Adult Services buckets to help families

[121:00] if they go there and also for things like utility assistance again the help offset those costs and lastly with programs like guaranteed income the Left Behind workers fund that we funded through arpa we're hoping to continue to try some different Innovative approaches to take off those restrictions for the support that families get and hope that helps as well next slide please and you can feel free to just click through these um Emily thank you um so the question of are the city and the county and our non-profit Partners contributing funds literally to helps with this problem the answer of course is yes and this slide just gives a snapshot of funding ranging from one annual year for f as 1.5 million and private funds 900 000 in rental assistance from government sources the e-wrap program which Julie and Whitney both reference the emergency rental

[122:01] assistance program was 2020 through 2022 that just ended so again we're experiencing some impact um likely from the unwind and close down of that program maybe felt otherwise other places and that's why we're seeing a spike in need from from other organizations and then other Investments at Boulder County makes in housing and of course the vast number We Believe of dollars that are coming from our community members to organizations like Alpha like span like mother house other groups that are helping families in need every day and we really to to tag on to Kurt's comment earlier always encourage our community members to please support our non-profit agencies they're they're really critical part of the solutions next slide so just to summarize some of the challenges and opportunities for the next steps of course you have heard the

[123:00] problem of family homelessness has been with us for many years but it's really getting far worse very quickly and one of the challenges we're facing is that because of the coveted years and the kind of impacts that we have now of several support programs that are in unwind including the e-wrap program including SNAP benefits including Medicare including the time frame in which moratorium evictions was lifted we really don't know what normal is anymore and it's really difficult for us to gauge whether this pretty dramatic spike in need is is temporary or whether this is a new normal and I think one of the challenges again that we're facing right now when we have a meeting tomorrow among several agencies is how to address the the crisis that we're facing because resources that we had budgeted for this whole year are really Vanishing very quickly we're exploring additional funding options and are also planning to

[124:01] adjust programs as necessary to make sure that what we do have will stretch as far as possible and we intend to continue of course working collaboratively with our partner agencies again including many organizations who've not been named but are nonetheless a critical part of this strategy and then also um just noting that we also need to continue to Monitor and to [Music] um explore different policy initiatives at all levels of government just as Kurt said earlier this is really a national problem it's not just on any one city or county to address it the same certainly is the case here repairing again some of these deep cracks in our economic and social system we're not necessarily of our making here in Boulder but yet the the local this is our local challenge to serve the families that are living here and trying to stay here

[125:01] and just to close on an upswing I really truly believe that there is no better team to continue these steps than the one that we have in HHS just exceedingly brilliant and compassionate people who are feeling the trauma and the and the the pain of families experiencing homelessness or right on that edge every day and again that extends out to our non-profit and County Partners in in much broader throughout the region so from there um next slide we'll just end with another thanks for your attention and giving time to this issue that as Julie mentioned is often quite invisible to community members and and perhaps to our elected local elected officials as well so with that I'm just reposing the questions and happy to answer answer yours um is Are there specific issues regarding family homelessness that you would like City staff to emphasize or priorities and do you have any other

[126:00] input on how we collectively respond with the county to this problem thank you thank you Elizabeth and thanks Whitney thanks Julie um for your presentation and thanks for providing that guidance and certainly expertise as we navigate an extremely difficult uh situation in our community because of the impact that certainly when kids are experiencing homelessness that the risk factors go so high with them to experience it then themselves later on in life so um thank you for that um we are as we're moving through them and just keeping track of time we're we're quite behind the eight ball at this point um so I'm going to ask my Council colleagues one or two questions um and and try to be brief because we still got to get through samps and we still got to have our County conversation and I'd love for us to not be just sort of melted uh Jello by the time we get to our County conversation so if we can sort of keep that short if you do have other questions we certainly have ways to follow up but but I just ask that we keep them a little quick so we can keep that ball rolling with some of the work that we have to go on uh

[127:00] down the road here I see Tara Aaron then Mark real quick question for Julie Julie is good to see you again I remember when I came down to visit you mentioned that there were not enough three bedroom affordable housing units that you and you really need those for families health and well-being when I ask some of our housing people if we had enough they said we did so I thought what I know right so I said what better time to ask that question than right here now and everybody's here do we or do we not need more three bedroom housing for some of our families that are in need of affordable housing um I would say yes I would continue to say yes and partly because in the affordable housing World um it's you see very few of the larger bedroom

[128:00] units built for the numbers and the tax credits and whatever it's uh um and I know that in our own houses we only we have like four three bedroom units across the county um and three bedroom sounds extravagant but actually if you have two children of different genders you you need three bedrooms so um I would disagree with that I don't think we have enough and I think it's hard to prioritize that within um both uh affordable housing programs as well as kind of voucher area and landlords tend to not like to rent to big families as well so it's much harder to find the the permanent affordable okay listen to Julie I'm going to call you all after this meeting and discuss it can I call a queen on that one yeah go Portland

[129:00] um so one of the things that I've heard is that you know I think BHP says that those rentals are slowest to rent um the three and four unit one so is that and maybe this is something that hurt you could help us out with or Elizabeth um just in terms of the cost of those units and whether that might be the barrier or what could you just provide maybe a little bit more information about where this disconnect might be happening or anything perfect that's a great question Lauren in in Tara um I think what we've seen over the last few years is that the three bedrooms the affordable three bedrooms rent up at a slower rate and there seems to be sort of a higher waiting list of individuals for the the one and two bedroom units or even the efficiency units um the other thing we started looking at

[130:00] um last year though was um the affordable rental rates for the three-bedroom units and as they're targeted you know related to Amis and that sort of thing it seems like they're probably too high as well and that could have a an impact on that sort of equation so um we've been discussing this with BHP as well and looking at if there's ways in the financial models to lower the the affordable rents of the three-bedroom units and I think that would certainly make a difference I would note that we're still developing three bedroom units though the Rally Sport property that's uh going to be breaking ground very soon has a number of three bedroom units in it as well thanks Kurt um and thanks for that call if we learned Tara is that is that it for you

[131:00] awesome thank you Aaron Mark then Lauren right I don't have a question but just want to make a quick comment um so Julie really appreciate you being here and sharing with us all the amazing work that you all are doing that was such an extraordinary partner for the city and just incredibly grateful for everything you do uh for the city as a whole and for our neighborhood I can actually see your offices outside by window right here as well as a number of units of your transitional housing but just one thing I know in your Communications with us in the past that you've emphasized is the need on the other side of the equation of higher wages for families for people in families and if we had more time I'd get a comprehensive update on our minimum wage effort but since we're low on time I'll just make the point that we are working on it Lauren is our Point person the efforts to increase the minimum wage here in Boulder and in our region are underway and we'll we'll get you an update on that before too long because I know how important that is for our Working Families

[132:00] that's it cool no question awesome all right um Mark Lauren then Nicole uh thank you guys for that presentation it was truly excellent very quickly do we know what percentage of shelter versus unsheltered uh homelessness occurs within families I'm sorry yes yeah okay if you got an answer go ahead Julie um yeah we do from the McKinney Bento data and it's usually around 85 is um what's considered doubled up Couchsurfing um you know two or three families in a in an apartment um uh the unhoused the rest are the next biggest chunk is in temporary shelters like domestic violence shelters like our housing the and then probably five percent that is unhoused or unsafely

[133:01] housed typically in RVs um and cars you don't see a whole lot kind of camping out in the um open air when we engage with unhoused families do we have a sense of what percentage successfully emerge from homelessness however it's characterized um this one for me I can give you Arc yeah I mean we follow this we have um um our goal for families that go through our our temporary housing um is to exit this safe adequate and affordable housing we consider affordable at 50 of income um and we target our goal is about 80 we've had 80 85 success rates over the years currently it's about across the county it's about 66 percent um uh it shows you how much harder it is

[134:02] to get uh that's a solution on the back end um it's a little bit higher in our housing in Boulder and I put that stat in the memo I sent out uh we also can report that from the hoteling which is the most um kind of unstable uh families we're seeing right now of the 15 to 20 families that we support in hotels in a given week about 60 percent are finding a housing solution okay those are great numbers that's all I've got in the interest of time next thanks Mark go ahead Lauren then Nicole thank you um I was wondering why don't we prioritize families in our affordable housing in our permanently affordable housing and um like what trade-offs are we

[135:01] are you considering in that and how hard would it be to to think about trying to make a prioritization there or do you want to take that one uh yes thanks Lauren um I'm gonna I'm gonna request that we come back to you on that one I want to make sure we have a we sort of um that's a question I haven't had yet um it's a very good one and I appreciate that um that was brought up this evening and um I think we should come back to you on that after Consulting our um our affordable housing providers that sounds great thank you please learn Nicole you're up thank you um I don't have any questions

[136:01] on this one but I did just kind of want to offer some comments about an issue I think we're going to be needing to really think hard about uh in the next few years but first I just want to thank everybody in the county the city all the non-profits who are working so hard to help everybody in our community I really do appreciate all that you're doing to help folks out for me reading this packet was incredibly devastating we are doing so much but there are still so many people who are experiencing homelessness and living on the edge and all that we're doing is still not sufficient to address the underlying issues that are increasing and perpetuating almost as um and I heard a couple of folks say you know before that we don't have the resources um to to do anything and and I just want to disagree with that I really disagree with the idea that we don't have the resources that we need to solve the homelessness and poverty challenges that we're facing because we have so much wealth in our community

[137:01] alongside all of this poverty just on this Council just in the values of people's primary homes who are homeowners we're sitting on over 14 million dollars but last year the McKinney vento numbers show up at 300 300 students just in Boulder schools experienced homelessness and I know that's an overly simplistic example and there are banks involved in mortgages and things like that but I use it just to really note that it's a choice we're making as a community to not invest some of our immense wealth into helping people prevent and Escape homelessness and to expect underfunded non-profits to pick up some of the slack of what are massive failures in our social systems and I think as we move forward over the next few years especially in thinking about a financial strategic plan and things like that we really need to be clear on what are we willing to do and what are

[138:00] we willing to not do and if their things we're willing we're not willing to do just to acknowledge that that we're either bringing in more money and changing policies that meet people's basic needs or we're cutting back in other areas or we're deciding that we're okay having a significant chunk of our community living in poverty but we have the wealth we have we have the ability to do better and I think those are just some hard conversations we're going to have to have as a community is what are our financial priorities and how are we moving forward thank you thank you for that Nicole um and once again I just want to thank um Elizabeth and Julie at effa and Whitney um for bringing this up and giving us an update on this we'll certainly be circling back to this conversation um and we've got a lot a lot of work to still do but it is worth taking credit for the immense and incredible work that's happening um and it's okay to acknowledge that there's still more to do

[139:00] um and and recognize the good work at the same time um so thank you for that I'm going to turn it over to Nuria to introduce our third topic and uh then we will go to another presentation and rinse and repeat as we've done before and continue on great thank you mad as as I do I'll ask Emily to bring up our slideshow and we will try to um go through this uh with as much detail as we can but also quickly because I know many of you know this and I'll go to the next slide um as I start to think about and this one I'll frame a little bit more than the rest um we have been talking about this a lot of uh we've been talking a lot tonight about homelessness and what the city is doing perhaps to think about that Upstream prevention strategies housing strategies what we're doing with family uh homelessness um and there's a lot more to be done this conversation tracks a little bit aligned with that this is not critically important we have said this before the

[140:01] work that we do for safe and manage public spaces is not uh homeless is not a strategy to resolve or to um so the underlying issue of homelessness it is really focused on what we're seeing as a symptom or the impact of homelessness in our community and really addressing how do we make sure that all of our public spaces are accessed by all while making sure that we are thoughtful and balancing um compassionate um compassionate Outreach and helping folks make sure they're connected to really much needed Services as we're talking about it um we've also been doing a lot and you've heard a lot about some recent changes and I want to say that as we'll talk and I know Joe will talk about this more but the whole team has been thinking about our abatement protocols we started those we started the stamps

[141:00] team uh in the fall of 2021 um which is multi-disciplinary and I'll talk about that in a minute but really started thinking we really needed a way to be consistent about what our approach is as we move forward and we devise some initial abatement protocols those protocols last year we were at one year in looking at what does that look like is it meeting our needs and expectations what do we have to think about what are the gaps as we move forward and uh late last fall we're already thinking about what are the changes we wanted to make um and although this was a big team effort I want to thank our City attorney and our utilities director in particular they really LED this but again you'll see that this is a multi-disciplinary team that really shared in their insight as we move forward and then lastly I'd be remiss to saying that this work is without any challenges that is not the case there is a lot more to be done and as we go to the next slide I'll say that

[142:00] you'll hear some of that as we're moving on some of those uh challenges and learnings um in the future next slide Emily if you will so I mentioned a little bit about multi-departmental uh a lot of I know we often talk about PD in this work we often see our wonderful uh public spaces team that lives in utility but that work but there are other folks involved in this we have our Urban Park Rangers that you'll hear a little bit more and frankly you're going to hear a little bit in the budget presentations in the future we have our downtown ambassadors which is a partnership with our um with our downtown Boulder partner group we really have tremendous success there and that is expanding up on the hill as well are be their Outreach team has been a tremendous partner if you think about what resources can we offer prior to these large encampment cleanups and then really I'll say that we're trying to underpin all of this with a

[143:00] foundation of data and making sure quite frankly that we are not running a foul of any legal constraints this work is complex it is um difficult it is uh work that has gotten many a city into a legal consternation and we really thank our I.T and our city attorneys Partners who really help us navigate some of that and I certainly would be remiss if I didn't mention our Communications team a lot goes into making sure that we're sharing the right information that we're sharing out on multiple platforms that we're thinking about how does that reach those that need it the most and so our comms team is very much part of this effort and my last final note before I turn it over to Ali is that we have uh thanks to the budget that you gave us last year we have added a second operations and cleanup team that is fully complete as of as of last month or early this month as we work on that and I hope that you're

[144:00] starting to see some of those interventions work and those interventions I'll say aren't just about the cleanup but really if you've gone out there and um and I think many of you have with our cleanup team you can see the very compassionate approach both they and PB chair as they're doing that so I just can't appreciate the team enough this is really hard taxing um work that requires a compassionate eye and really think that we have an amazing crew that is doing um a tremendous public service and there is more to be done as we continue in the future so with that I'll turn it over to Ali I believe thanks so much Nuria good evening I am Ali Rhodes I'm the director of Parks and Recreation and as Nuria mentioned really several of us are here but we're representing the work of colleagues across the organization what you'll hear tonight is a people and data centered approach that is really delivered in a multi-discipline and holistic manner as

[145:01] we do every time we talk about the work of safe and managed public spaces I do want to just highlight that we recognize we haven't solved this issue there is a lot um of work to be done but there's also a lot of work to recognize uh so and I also want to call out as we do every time as we did with Nuria that we as we do this work we are doing it in balance with what you've been talking about for the first two thirds of your evening that of course as we work to solve homelessness we also want to be working to address the symptoms of it so that our public spaces are safe and welcoming for all so this the memo that you got for tonight and our presentation really just highlights some of the some of the progress but also some of the challenges I'll remind folks listening in Council that the coordinated work of the safe and managed public spaces team are Sams it really began in Earnest in 2021 and as we've talked to city council about this work one of your key questions has been how will we know this investment in the internal cleanup team in our park rangers is worth it and what a success look like and so in acknowledging that

[146:01] our work cannot solve a nationwide housing crisis or many of the other challenges you've talked about tonight I want to just highlight we've done really careful work to map out the Sam's program goals strategies to achieve them and then out comes to measure progress some of the outputs are shared here on this slide as you can see we're tracking a lot of data and doing a lot of work to keep our public spaces safe and clean recognizing the time as we move into the next slides we're just going to highlight some of those for you tonight so if you move to the next slide this highlights the eight program goals that we have outlined for our Sam's work and as Nuria mentioned while Sam's does not try to solve homelessness there is overlap with the work that we do and we try to connect individuals experiencing homelessness and living outside in public spaces to coordinated entry you'll hear more about the approach and the protocols from our colleague Joe tariuchi in a moment these program goals and the 2023 action plan to achieve them

[147:00] are attached to your memo and available online and the next slide just highlights that we do have a 23 action plan at outline specific strategies for all eight program goals and I hope folks had a chance to review it and see the thoughtful and strategic work that was done by again colleagues across the city with partnership from the real experts in logic models and data in our Innovation and technology department so if you go to slide six just quickly for that nice graphic and then we can move on to slide seven and thank you so much for the folks behind the scenes who get to advance slides for multiple speakers we really appreciate it um so this is just showing you this and again we wanted to make sure you know that this was an attachment in your memo if you go to the next slide this is just the Data Tracking of encampment reports and cleanups uh note that just the number of encampment reports Rose by nearly 140 percent year over year from April to March part of this chart reflects more consistent and regular

[148:01] reporting by both staff and the community as folks have become aware of the tools that we have available for reporting and then um I'll just note that the operation team's output which is the the cleanups reported in the bar graph here it does vary throughout the year it can be impacted by factors such as weather size of encampments Staffing there are weeks where we have folks in training and we have less capacity one of the key outcomes of having an in-house create crew I want to highlight that this isn't measured here or really anywhere is that other maintenance staff have the ability to focus on their assigned and really core duties of maintaining our waterways our parks and our transportation corridors and then my colleague Kurt is going to cover this next slide uh thank you Ali so the one of the first steps in one of our first goals is really around Outreach and ensuring that individuals are touched multiple times

[149:02] um and understand the services that are available to them um over the last um uh 10 months there's been 1300 interactions with individuals through the be there program but the Mark Mark Wallach asked in the first presentation what has changed I want to highlight this as well so the be there program changed to a service provider from to this shelter and one of the things that they've introduced is bringing Services directly to individuals so they're working directly with individuals sleeping outside with ID document Assistance or having their going through the vulnerability uh index uh to get them out of housing lists and services signing them up for benefits um so by and large it's very difficult work with this Outreach and we've also if you look at the map below you'll see

[150:01] that it's throughout the city uh predominantly along Boulder and Goose Creek but throughout the city where these Outreach is occurring and there's a range of depending on the weather and the season there's a range of the number of individuals who are sleeping outside and we've according to our data it ranges anywhere from 74 individuals on a night to 268. and the thing I would like to highlight uh very importantly before I move on is the homeless Outreach team which you know it is hot they're peace officers that work with the the uh the homeless on a daily basis also work connecting people with Services driving them to appointments and really creating those relationships that go over many months and even years

[151:02] in assisting individuals and with that I will hand it off thank you thanks Kurt so with this next slide we're just showing uh the way we track data on three this is that we are um making sure that access to public spaces and infrastructure is clear what this chart shows is that about 10 on average of the campsites that we see are in fact um blocking a pathway blocking access to a facility and so where we see just as what Joe shared those campsites causing access are primary access issues are primarily concentrated near downtown and along Boulder Creek and then if you go to the next slide this is tracking just some of the hazardous materials and biohazards that are found in encampments this is one of the key reasons that City staff have advocated for additional resources we'll slow down a minute wait for that

[152:00] slide to change I wanted to call out this this number of needles is found this this does not include those that have been collected in the two public ski kiosks that have been piloted downtown and in partnership with Boulder County since May of 2020 22 when they were installed we've we've gathered over 689 pounds between those two kiosks one of which has only been in place for about three months um based upon weight of a syringe we think that's about 62 000 needles in addition to that quantitative data qualitatively our operation staff are reporting finding fewer abandoned syringes in nearby public spaces since installation so um we're grateful for the partnership of the county and nhhs to to have those in public spaces next slide this one highlights some of the outcomes of the downtown ambassador program as a reminder this is a partnership between Community Vitality department and the downtown Boulder partnership

[153:00] in addition to the data highlighted here and in your memo we wanted to note that it is beginning this month that sea or Boulder is contributing to this program for a pilot to augment the Ambassador presidents in the University Hill commercial distance so we're excited to see how that helps this graph demonstrates the quantity and distribution of Ambassador contacts 75 percent of which are Hospitality contacts if you go to the next slide we're talking about goal seven one of the goals of this work is to reduce the environmental impact of encampments including that we ensure our waterways are free of contamination operations crews are encountering about 50 encampments per month on average that are near waterways and have trash or biohazards present again you'll hear from Joe how we're standing up the second team and we hope to be able to address those more quickly next chief Harold is going to talk about one of our goals which is specific to reducing crime and disorder in these areas of emphasis

[154:11] thanks director Rhodes my name is Maris Harold I'm your police chief on this slide we're reviewing two years worth of crime data on this slide as you can see there's definitely a seasonality to the crime and the identified encampment micro hot spots especially during the summer months in the last two years crime has been relatively stable we have not seen significant increases or decreases in crime in the adjacent or in the encampments themselves of interest is that micro hot spots comprise about 10 percent of the city's geography but contain 30 percent of the city's crime this crime includes part one crimes such as aggravated assaults and robberies and part two crimes such as simple assaults menacing theft and harassment the stata does not include Colorado University's

[155:00] Police Department's data next slide again looking at the same two years focusing on month to month now with exact crime counts what's interesting in these small identified areas 50 percent of all warrants in the city including Municipal fugitive apprehension warrants in state warrants are contained within these micro hot spots most of these warrants were signed by a judge after an individual fails to appear in court of interest is 73 percent of the individuals have been identified as unhoused community members next slide this slide represents five years worth of data as you can see when we look at five years worth of data crime data you can see crime has trended downward over the five years with a slight uptick in 2022. the downward trend is due probably to several reasons but some of that is people returning to work after the

[156:01] pandemic intensive city services that are being offered in these micro hot spots obviously High police officer visibility in these identified micro hot spots despite these downward Trends crime is still heavily concentrated in these areas next slide um I just want to give a quick overview of what the police department provides for the unhoused community and these micro uh hot spots and the department responds to these complex issues identified in these encampment clusters in several ways first is service we have assigned a sergeant and two homeless Outreach officers who mostly are non-enforcement in their capacity they've provided over 300 courtesy transports for our on-house community members to such Services as Court drug treatment Medical Services dentist appointments Detox Services and Housing Services connections the work

[157:02] they do is critical and the trust that they've built with our own house Community is is unbelievable to watch their work is truly remarkable the Boulder Police Department has also invested in an encampment team that has an assigned sergeant and five officers they are primarily responsible for conducting camping ban notifications insurance safety throughout the cleanup process and facilitating Outreach efforts may also handle enforcement when we cannot gain compliance and they also do a wonderful job with Community Education and lastly I'm proud that we have a robust research and assessment team working with the Boulder Police Department and other City departments on this very complex issue if I can take a couple minutes just to talk about the Boulder Police Department's Bureau of Justice Administration smart policing initiative Grant which was authored by BPD and we received that last year but

[158:01] BPD is working with Dr Natalie hippel she is a national research expert from Indiana University Boulder Police Department Dr hipple are working to understand the harms Associated by living in encampments information sharing between social service agencies and lastly understanding how our unhouse community members are socially and spatially connected all of these hopefully in the future will provide really solid intervention points next slide please on this slide we are looking at a pretty typical J curve trend line which shows that 88 people or 20 percent of the individuals that received citations campaign citations account for approximately 60 of all camping tickets in the last three years these same 88 individuals were also responsible for 967 crimes excluding camping citations in other words camping citations are

[159:01] highly concentrated to a small number of unhoused individuals and if you take this trend line all the way out you'll see that most of our in-house community members receive one or less camping citations and I think I'm going to turn it over to the next presenter thank you good evening mayor and members of council I'm Joe tabiucci I'm the director of utilities and I know there's been a lot of community concern in recent months about the condition of our public spaces and I'm going to talk about our operations a bit here and what we've been doing to address those concerns if we can go to the next slide we've got a couple here that I'll go through quickly just in general this is a process map and the point of this slide is that there are procedures that we follow and there's more to it than just the visible cleanup work that people see with our

[160:02] teams out in the Parks a lot one thing I'd like to note is the notification step and that is one of the areas where the people focus comes in and so in addition to letting people know that they have to vacate we also let them know what their options are for plugging into services including shelter and we have an external service provider that's present with us on on the days we provide notice next slide we sometimes get questions about how we decide where to focus our cleanup efforts and we do have a prioritization formula that considers a number of factors for each of the known camping locations and our team processes that information each week and they decide where to go and the the factors are shown on this slide certain factors are are weighted more highly and and we add up everything and

[161:01] assign a score to the campsites and I know there's been a lot of community interest in the areas around school and we'll just note that the camps that are uh in close proximity to schools that's currently one of the highest weighted sectors next slide so um now I'd like to talk more specifically about the circumstances that we've been experiencing in recent months in the understandable Community concerns these photos that are on this slide represent some of the more notable situations we've experienced in 2023 early in earlier in the year people may remember we had a lot of camping and activity around the Bandshell a few weeks ago when the weather was a lot colder than it is now we were experiencing a lot of fires at campsites

[162:02] and we also had some recent notable activity at the Pearl Street Mall and so these photos are are a few of the more notable situations but for our for those of us that are close to the work and the team that's doing the workout in the field we have definitely seen a change in the last four to six months and from the time we've implemented our our cleanup program until I would say about the end of 2022 we relied heavily on a voluntary compliance model and work closely with the own house community and and encourage people to move on their own and we were having success with that but something has has definitely changed in 2023 and that hasn't been as effective so the next slide

[163:00] it in response to the the conditions that we've been experiencing we've revised our operating procedures and across across the organization we have a lot of standard operating procedure documents that inform the work that we do and I shared the document update with the city council members about a week ago and the highlights of our updates and it really takes into account what we've learned in the first couple years of this program and so we were due for an update just based on what we learned and as well uh with the experience we've had uh with uh changing conditions I'll just highlight a few of the updates and one of the things was clarifying for our teams the the tent and propane ordinances and and where and how those apply um in the introduction Maria showed that the large cross-departmental team so

[164:00] just making sure that everyone's in the know on on these things and then providing notice to the people who are camping in 72 hours notice has been a standard of our protocol since we developed the procedures but then in this recent update we identified some situations that are exceptions need to be exceptions to a 72-hour notice and the last time we checked in with Council back in August of 2022 there was a lot of discussion about the multi-use paths uh path underpasses and people that were setting up tents and and creating obstructions and so we've identified situations like that where the team can go out without notice and and create a safer situation for everyone involved including those who are camping and we've been able to implement that here recently another thing that we've experienced in

[165:01] the first few years of doing this and it's been more prominent in 2023 is where the team comes through and the people who are camping just move a few hundred feet away in the noticed area maybe after the team leaves for the day and that's not really the intent of the policy so we've we've updated our procedures to address that and um we're a few weeks into implementing these new procedures at the end of this week it'll be our third week a big part of it has been providing advanced notice to the people who are camping and letting them know our intentions that things things would change and that they can't just move a few feet away like I just mentioned and and so we're starting to have more success with that and getting voluntary compliance again so the communication and The Upfront part is is really important it's

[166:00] so we're seeing a positive effect so far we're only a few weeks in in addressing some of the concerning situations that I showed in the photos a few slides ago and have been starting to receive some feedback from the public um that they're noticing and that the creek holder Corridor the Boulder Creek Corridor has felt safer and and more available for everything for everyone to enjoy one thing that has not changed in our procedures and the way we do the work is is really the tone that the team sets in the way they do the work and I've spent a fair amount of time out with the team in recent work weeks and was able to observe our utilities crew and a lot of the new team members that are that are joining and getting up to speed and watch them help as somebody pack up their belongings and just really made and impre continues to make an impression on me the respect that they show and the way they treat people with

[167:01] dignity and the same is is really true of our police officers and of anybody who is involved in the cross-departmental team I would say the officers are in the most difficult position of those doing the public spaces work and they deserve a lot of credit and they continue to amaze me with the skill they show in in keeping things calm and in de-escalation was doing a tour with community members just yesterday and and there was a situation where a flight was breaking out uh between two of our on-house community members and and it was starting to escalate and the officers who do this work every day um engaged and within a minute one of the people was calm and sitting down and I just watched the energy drop and and it was really impressive to see uh firsthand so I'm really proud of the way that our

[168:02] team does the work in the field and and how they represent our our city values if we can go to the next slide and I'm wrapping up here shortly so we've also checked in with Council and and let you know that we've updated our signage notice is a critical part of our public spaces program and the signs are a permanent form of notice and provide Clarity of what the rules are around camping tents and propane we have a QR code on the signs that if people make use of that we'll take them to a a website that has available services and so we have about 50 signs ordered and they'll be placed initially along the Boulder Creek Corridor in the downtown area and around Boulder High School as well as Sinton park near the Dairy Center and along Goose Creek where we see a lot of the most active camping

[169:02] occur so next slide so just want to close by looking forward and talking about some of the challenges we I thought we outlined them pretty well in the in the memo and I'm not going to talk about all of them and others may have mentioned it before me here but the I think Ali showed a slide and talked about the number of needles that are collected and addiction is a really big Challenge and other than collecting the needles it's not really something the public spaces can address but for those who are out doing the work day to day and and those of us who spend time with the team and see it more firsthand it's one of the primary reasons that I think people get stuck in the camping situation of course that doesn't apply to everybody but it's a big challenge another big challenge for our work and just being really candid here we have

[170:01] divided Community views on this work and and deeply held perspectives on different sides of the issues and our team was is caught in the middle of that and and honestly our police officers bear the brunt of that as I mentioned they're in the the trickiest spot and I think there's really well-intended efforts on all sides of the issues but at times we're working against each other so if we could ever figure out a way to align those efforts it it would be huge and it's something that the four of us directors are thinking about and talking about as well with the city manager and City attorney if we can go to the next slide in in terms of next steps and I'll I'm sure it'll catch up here but I'll just keep going um we'll continue to implement our 2023 action plan that was mentioned earlier a big part of that is implementing our

[171:01] updated abatement uh procedures I still have a lot of opportunity to get the new crew members up to speed and to streamline that work and um we'll also work on our communication uh with both internally and with the public and and prioritize training for our team members and so if we can go to the last slide I'll just um end with a note on this photo and open it up then to questions and this photo really brings it back to utilities and and why the the crew is housed in our department and one of the reasons we have a public spaces program we just can't this is the Goose Creek path and we just cannot have people sleeping in our flood ways we're heading into thunderstorm season and flash floods can happen at any time so yeah there there's important work to to be done to keep

[172:02] everybody safe and so that's our pres that's our prepared presentation and and we'd be happy to take questions that council members and I have foreign thank you Joe and thanks uh to the Chief and Ally um and really to this multi-departmental work that's being done um we recognize how difficult it is and certainly um that that there's a long road ahead of us um and it can seem like there's futility in the work but um but but know that that there's you know some outcomes here that the community does have challenges in on both sides of that issue and I appreciate Joe you bringing up that sometimes if we're working against each other but but if we can find ways to work towards similar Solutions um that that would be welcomed in terms of a common outcome so appreciate that and thanks because I know that was kind of an Abridged presentation to help us get back on time so thank you guys for uh your your very precise execution of uh that presentation so I greatly

[173:01] appreciate it um we're going to move into questions um checking in we're at we're at 8 50 so we're um getting kind of close to our allotted time I know we'll we'll likely uh leak over which is fine and so let's just maybe you know do one or two questions um if you got some comments that's fine too we'll do one or two questions in the first round if you got comments why don't we reserve those for the back end and then we'll get sort of teed up and transition to our conversation about the county um so I see Bob's hand up and we'll start with Bob thanks man uh thanks for all the presenters that was a great presentation and it was abbreviated and we should probably have a link to your conversation about well everything we talked about tonight each one of these is probably as Matt said at the beginning deserving of a full study session I I just have one question for Joe and maybe uh one question for for the Chief Joe um thanks for for sharing with us your your um revised protocols it sounds like you're about a third of the way into a 45-day plan to uh to test how those are going can you maybe just share with us very briefly um

[174:01] your measures of success and whether this 45-day plan um is is working and and will you be kind of checking with us maybe in the I don't know June or July time frame when that 45 days is up to let us know how things are going yeah sure and and um I think Ali covered the the goals slide and we have measurement um elements of all of the goals including the camping so that'll be the primary way that we would measure success but I think the the four of us directors that are involved in the work are also paying really close attention and working closely with our team and we were starting to see in 2023 things changing and the team would come through and there let's say there were 10 10 tents in an area that we had noticed and after their they leave you know in 2022 the the place would clear for a while and people would move to other areas and we were seeing people more quickly established so

[175:01] in the first few weeks here where we focused on the Boulder Creek Corridor I think it's been a dramatic change and it's been much more clear of tense so I think in addition to our measurement measures we're just going to be seeing can we sustain that and are there potentially some unintended consequences of moving people into they go to other areas so um I think we'll be looking at those things thanks Joe we look forward to those outcomes and that report maybe in the summertime um Chief um we kind of first of all the the numbers you shared with us tonight were absolutely mind-boggling as far as the concentration on campaign violations and other violations so thank you for that data I know we kind of put you and Daniel on the spot a couple weeks ago so I wanted to give you a little bit of time to to go back and and reflect on some of the numbers or the questions have the numbers reflect on the the questions that we asked you a couple weeks ago probably unfairly do you have uh you you gave us some really uh

[176:01] interesting numbers on on uh citations for camping and tent possession uh tonight do you have um kind of conviction I'm kind of curious what the conviction rate is for camping bands versus other Municipal crimes uh I mean obviously there's a lot of a lot of crimes that can be committed but if you were able to segregate those from camping you know and intent possession from everything else like traffic and all the other Municipal crimes is there a discernible difference between the the conviction rate of one versus versus the other well uh thanks for the question and I know Dr reinhardt's with us he's been been tracking this data um you know I would I would say and Daniel probably has specific dispositions but I would say the vast majority of camping citations intense citations are dismissed at some point um out of the municipal court and that dismissal process could involve a lot of

[177:02] uh interventions but unlike traffic citations where there's fines Associated or other other um other consequences associated with that I would say the vast majority are dismissed and they have a they have a list of reasons that tickets are dismissed and I don't feel comfortable getting into that but that's my understanding Dr Reinhardt are you on can you give any other guidance on this yeah yeah my name is Dr Reinhard I'm the chief data analyst for the Boulder Police Department Everything Chief Farrell that you said I would I would Echo um when we look at case dispositions um it seems to be that a large proportion of The martist Mists but they're dismissed under circumstances like for alternative sentencing options um to connect folks to services and so there are differences between um dismissals for different kinds of cases but those are examples of things

[178:01] that we see thanks thanks Daniel we can probably drill into that at another time at the high level Bob I see I see Bob I see Sanders uh hand up so I don't know if she's got some feedback or commentary on that point yeah thank you Matt and and I appreciate the question as well Bob and just to provide some additional background um so many of the cases uh related to Camping are handled throughout the municipal Court's Community Court program which is intended to provide connections for folks to services but primarily to get them into housing and so if someone takes a significant step towards that whether that's getting an ID or um whatever the circumstance may be if they do that then their case does get dismissed and that's a way for the court to create that connection to hopefully ultimately get them into housing so I

[179:01] just wanted to explain that a little bit more great great thanks Andrew and then uh my final question I appreciate that all um my final question really kind of relates to something that that Joe said about um the new protocols and and and and trying to avoid the situation where someone is is moved and then they just move you know a few hundred yards down the down the road is it possible maybe this is more of a question for you Sandra um is it possible to have the three-day rule waive for somebody who's kind of repeat repeating the camp in the same area or or is there a is there no trespass uh you know injunction that can be put in place where we have somebody you know the chief showed a lot of a small number of people that seem to be responsible for the large a large number of violations the zero mechanism legal mechanism to to either eliminate the three-day rule with respect to those people who are just you know moving down down the uh down the hill or or to kind of have a whole Zone that they're kind of banned from for a period of time is that in the realm of possible um so you've asked a very complicated

[180:00] question and an attempt to briefly answer it um so the the the notice rule has to do with providing people with an opportunity to gather their things so that they are not deprived of their property by the government and so it's really not about the number of uh the type of offense or the the violation it's it's providing that person with that opportunity in the case where somebody just moves a couple of feet we don't provide additional notice on those cases okay um and I think there was a second part to your question I don't remember it's kind of related to that Sandra I think that was very helpful if someone is um repeatedly camping in an area a Zone um and we give a three-day notice and they move a few feet and give it another notice is there a point where they're kind of such a repeat offender we or the judge could just say Hey listen you just can't like you can't be in this place for a period of time it's just like a

[181:00] timeout you can't be in this zone or in this park or this area is that is that legally permissible we are looking into the use of exclusion orders so that is something that we are definitely working with before possibly pursuing so yes um the other issue uh related to this though is has to do with the fact that the court cannot hold folks on uh on a regular Bond it's they're all PR bonds with these types of offenses and so you know it there's not an opportunity to to provide any of that as well so I just wanted to add that as well too real quick yeah I'm done yeah go for it Lauren and and I just make positive there's some real big depth here and I'm just if we get going a bit we might want to hold or pause these for that larger bigger discussion down the road a little bit but but just but go ahead Lauren but I just want to catch that we're on to some big threads here

[182:01] I only have two questions this is one of them and it just relates um so in the notice to this note this notice to vacate is in effect for 14 days from the date of a notification you must not reoccupy this area during this time what what do we mean by this area like it could is there more concrete language or do we have a strong idea of what that means like is that within a block so it's the area that's noticed and it's we uh help to provide reasonable notice and so many times the actual intents are um are noticed but there's also the opportunity for us to notice an area so um and perhaps someone else can talk to the practicality of what that looks like but

[183:00] it really we're only required to provide reasonableness in terms of the notice requirement I can add to what you were saying Sandra and each week when we do the notice and I talked about the signs which are kind of a permanent form but we make every effort to tag the tents that are out there with uh with a piece of paper and on it are our latest forms of notice also describe a specific area it might be from 9th Street to 17th and between [Music] um Canyon and Arapahoe or some descriptor like that so that's how we we do try to Define specifically the area where we're going to clean up thank you oh thanks Lauren I saw Juni also had a follow-up as well um but I just wanted to recognize her as well for that one so Judy did you have a colaqui on the colloqui thank you so

[184:01] much I just have a quick question and thank you for the presentation I really appreciate the slides as well I based on what I hear I'm just a bit confused and I wanted some clarity around the idea of um I understand the notice to vacate if someone is their pitch attempt and they're living in the area and then there are cleanups I understand all that aspect but my question is these parks are public spaces and I'm wondering if we're running into any type of constitutional issue can we Bend Community members from public spaces that are open to the public so I'm just a little bit I just thought I needed some clarity around that because I understand private property we can't I mean people can be trespassed from private property because it's private but a public space

[185:02] I understand you can ask them not to not to conduct the activity that they are conducting because maybe the area is not um is not good for that particular activity but to bend the person physically from that area especially knowing it's a public right away I I'm just not sure how is that are there any precedence for that so how how did we come to that I can try and address your question Judy and without getting into legal advice I would say that you know we have a camping law and um it's been passed legislatively and um we believe that it is constitutional and that's been our position okay everybody do you mind if I call it yeah but I just wanted to we're going down a big threat here and maybe could we perhaps maybe table this question for

[186:01] perhaps a memo from CAO or at least for a larger discussion because we're going down a big rabbit hole on this one particular thread versus sort of staying a little bit higher level we want to get to some other questions so I just noticed we kind of dropped right down this one so um Aaron if you got it if it's really cute great but otherwise we want to kind of end this one and move on no I want to be real quick but I just I think there was a maybe a bit of a misunderstanding because I think I heard Ginny saying how could we prevent a person from being in a park and I don't think we're doing that I think we're what we're the the prohibition is about camping in a park not about being in a park so Sandra I think in your answer you were dressing camping but Junior's questions about whether you can just exist in a park and we're not telling anybody that they can't just sit in a park is that correct that's correct thank you for that clarification thank you so much I appreciate it thanks Aaron and there's probably more to discuss on this I I've made a note that that'll be something to Circle back

[187:00] to I've got an idea for us here in a minute but um let's move to Tara I know Aaron's got his questions then Lauren um and we'll keep on moving on but I appreciate it two rabbit holes I'd like to address tonight the first one the first one is propane tanks so um I guess I want to I think the a good portion of the people in the community are probably stressed because of the fire safety issues with propane tanks can you remind me of what happens to somebody who has a propane tank in um and in a park or in a shared space and also uh Joe do you remember when I saw you on that hike down the so let's say I this did happen I I was walking down the creek doing a nice little walk walkabout and I saw right attached to the library meaning like a foot away a

[188:01] beautiful North Face tent and inside that tent was a very large propane tank so in that case when of course I would be visualizing if that thing blew up it would be terrible for the library that was my first reaction so tell me are we allowed to confiscate those if they're inside a tent but we see them and how should the community members deal with that particular thing since a lot of people are worried about that and then I do have one plea and that is can you tell me where people you think people are getting these propane tanks are they getting them from are they given out on our locations or in parks are they buying them are they being take where do you do you have any data on where these propane tanks are coming from so this is basically your propane tank rabbit hole that I'm wishing to take a little the trip down

[189:01] uh I can I can start that and I'm going to have Daniel probably give you some quick stats on that uh councilmember weiner um yes we confiscate them when we see them as quickly as possible because they're so dangerous we do have intelligence that community members are providing the smaller uh like the grilling the very small propane tanks out um and I think Dr Reinhardt has some crimes crime report stats on propane tanks at least it gives us we know this is so underreported but at least it gives us some you know information on who's reporting these things stolen Dr Reinhardt can you help me out here yeah absolutely Chief um so so very high level overview to be brief so this year we've had about 25 or so reports like documented Boulder Police Department reports involving propane tanks and the circumstances that involve them are are varied and so we

[190:01] have some examples of burglaries of businesses that that have propane tanks we also have reports involving obviously tent fires unattended property and so just observing a propane tank without anyone around like on a sidewalk um and those are going to be different obviously from like attempted thefts of propane tanks um so we have about 25 or so reports this year and that's that's more than we've had in previous years up to um early April that's there's sort of more of a rabbit hole there that um maybe couched for a larger discussion I should clarify that that um that obviously we can't confiscate something that's inside a tent without getting a search warrant but if they're out and we try to get somebody to say it's theirs most the time people say we don't know whose it is and we just confiscate it and tag it and put it into evidence Terry you're muted um

[191:02] good all right second rabbit hole well actually before I finish all right all right Alice let me just finish the first rabbit hole if this is a plea to community members who are giving away propane tanks I would think because they want people they they're doing it for what they think is good I am not understanding why that would be a good thing in light of our wins and our fire situation so I invite you to please call me up and sit down with me I beg you and just tell me where you're what you're thinking and maybe we could talk about this I know that sounds crazy but you know I have a reputation for talking to anybody and listening to what anybody has to say so I invite you to do that okay next I'm moving on to the second rapid hole of drug overdoses so I have a question for you we found we we heard about the people that almost died of drug overdoses and thanks to everybody who saved them I appreciate that I

[192:02] wonder then what happened to the people after they were saved were they left out there in the you know in the Central Park area where the do we are we do we have places where we can take them like detox centers that we are not implementing that we can perhaps Implement what's happening in that whole world the world of drug overdoses thanks for the question um I'm gonna let deputy chief Redfern because he's been out on these and he's been working with the county and public health officials on this and he's been tracking this since this unfortunate incident that occurred so Steve you mind helping me out here not at all Chief and good evening uh mayor and Council Steve Redford Deputy police chief councilmember weiner it's a great question so some of the issues we're seeing is we will give someone Narcan in the field

[193:00] and it is a temporary reversal of the overdose and so ultimately the person needs to go to the hospital and a medical professional needs to be the one saying yes they're safe however sometimes they refuse and walk away and and the ambulance crew is not going to restrain them we're not going to restrain them we have had people overdose one day go back on them the very next day overdosing because um there is it's very difficult and we don't have the ability most of the time to force someone to go into a hospital typically they'll be released after their deemed stable in the ER and they can you know end up right back out on the street and so that's kind of the scenario we've been dealing with it tends to be some of the same individuals typically but a lot of people are carrying Narcan themselves and so that's the other piece of this is there are a lot of overdoses we may not be getting notified about because they don't need to call 9-1-1 because they've revived themselves sometimes that's not enough and we'll have to give multiple doses of

[194:00] Narcan and so we do encourage people to call there are legal protections for people to report an overdose ultimately they need to go go to a hospital and be evaluated to really be deemed safe next steps down the road when it comes to mandatory treatment I think is a bigger conversation but most of the time that's not something that we have the ability to do so what about these detox centers that I've heard of from some people are they not used that much are they not allowed to be used so our officers take people to our addiction recovery center or the arc here in Boulder on a daily basis uh alcohol if we arrested DUI and they're they're intoxicated we'll take them there until they're sober but we will take people there for other substance abuse as well a lot of times though when someone is given Narcan um and it's reversed they're not exhibiting the signs that they're so intoxicated that they're not able to care for themselves so typically when we take someone to detox we have to meet that legal threshold that they're not capable of caring for themselves and so

[195:01] that's also something that we have to evaluate on the street and there are restrictions if someone is being violent if someone is causing problems that detox centers not going to take them typically the jail may not be either and so we end up in a in a little bit of a conundrum there at times so then what do you do uh good question typically we'll try to find uh somewhere to take them a responsible friend a family member things like that ultimately the jail will work with us in extreme cases it involves a lot of problem solving to to figure out a a place where they're safe we definitely don't just put them right back out on the street thank you so much for that Jerry are you good oh all right she moved your hand over let me just before before it goes I just want to pause to say um this is a really uh I mean this is a new protocol and I think we're we're a little bit into the 45-day implementation window there Joe I I just wanted to ask my Council colleagues do we feel it would be appropriate to

[196:01] Circle back to this subject not to foreclose questions now but just to know that we can dive deeper maybe at the end of that 45-day window and so maybe I Look to Nuria and Joe just to see because I I get a sense we want to really dive into this here and I don't know if this is the right spot versus maybe letting that 45 days go and then we can take a bigger bite out of that so I just wanted to pause uh before going to Aaron just to see if that's a good outlet for people to know that they've got a second chance to dive deeper if they so choose we'd be happy to bring that to CAC for scheduling in the future and if folks have additional questions that go unanswered tonight please feel free to forward them and we can be thinking about that future presentation um in as we schedule that at some other point all right appreciate that I don't know if that'll uh help help get uh with people on questions but I saw Aaron's hand up and then his hand down but I still want to defer to Aaron on this one so go for it it was uh my question was around propane tanks and I had a slightly different take on it but uh since we're getting late I'll just let

[197:01] Tara's questions rest and thanks for bringing this up Tara and I'm good all right Lauren you're up thanks it's a quick one um so in the prioritization formula I saw that impact on neighborhood livability was one of the items and I was just wondering how we quantify that when we're making that assessment what does that mean yeah I don't I don't have that right in front of me right now but uh was looking at that the other day and it's just quantifying if there's trash and stuff like that that is kind of spilling into a neighborhood and um then it becomes a factor in that prioritization score thank you thanks Lauren uh Nicole you're up yep and I got can we do comments if I don't have questions

[198:01] relatively quick sure okay thanks um I just wanted to acknowledge also just the challenge to staff uh with especially the recent increases and overdoses that everybody's been dealing with um no one should have to live outside nobody should have to do what we're asking you to do either um so I'm really hopeful that we can find some better Solutions but I know it's it's hard to witness this um I just saw one the other day and it's it's challenging so thank you to staff for um for working on that I was really curious just looking at those uh be there impact numbers um whether that model of going out to people is the most effective use of what are pretty limited resources on our part um just as an example you know with I everybody I think knows about feed forward and has been out there at least once or twice now um with their model they're attracting people to a single location just for one hour one day each week but their numbers are a lot better than ours in terms of how many folks they're reaching I asked

[199:01] about their impact numbers um and it's really pretty impressive last year they served 719 Unique Individuals um and they had an average of about 104 people each hour that they were there 77 of the people they served returned at least twice in a month with an average of 74 service connections each week 75 of the individuals there are actually traveling to feet forward every week from other other spaces or places where they are they don't have to go you know spend the time going out looking for folks and last year they supported 64 individuals experiencing homelessness into active housing plans with 31 exits from home homelessness so 24 of those people are engaged in ongoing peer support so those are pretty good numbers and attracting people to a place and um I know I'm biased because I volunteer there but the numbers are unbiased um and I am just really thinking if we want

[200:00] to be successful with our day Center and trying to get people there I really hope we can make use of other groups in the community that are having a lot of success already in this model of bringing people to a place and connecting them with services and also just on the topic of the propane tanks this may be a late nine o'clock uh crazy idea but we have so many brilliant high school students in our community and college students as well I was wondering can we be Innovative and give them a design challenge to create an alternative to a propane tank so something cheap safe easy to make that can kind of keep people warm and I can not you know fall over um and and not explode those kinds of things it seems like something where we could just offer you know uh whoever can can to kind of do that the most safely cheaply efficiently they get a prize um and it seems like we could work on giving people an alternative to propane tanks and and try to minimize the use of

[201:01] that so anyway just trying to think a little bit outside of the box to make make use of the expertise and creativity that we have in our community thanks everyone thanks Nicole um I I have sort of one like a one slash a question um and I don't know if we've surveyed this but it's a question about you know of the people that that our teams are interacting with do we have any sense of of how many or in terms of a percentage of them that would you know accept um being you know provided or or directed to a a safe outdoor Space versus being on the creek or or by the Bandshell do we have any sense of what that conversion rate would be and then maybe similarly uh to Kurt of of those that were obviously you know interacting with um on this with Sams do we have any idea of how many of them are maybe with a voucher in hand or or ready to go housing and yet just can't because there's not inventory so they're kind of

[202:00] waiting and and waiting for inventory to be available for them to sort of move on through the trajectory so kind of two-part question but I'm kind of curious uh if we have that information and if so what it is if not how do we get it oh thank you I'll try to address both of those um so yes there are individuals um that go straight from living outside into housing it's not a big number um and um uh uh you know judge cook obviously has a um interaction with some of those individuals the hot team also helps um with that and um and be there has also assisted people in that way but also through diversion which we're now providing um sort of out in the field um I I would say that we we probably

[203:01] shouldn't be too simplistic about the process of housing um typically um transitioning individuals into housing and particularly those who are living outside it takes a whole team effort there's um uh regular collaborations with all the partners who are doing this to work on individuals and connecting them to the housing and um it's uh it's a huge effort and except for those who go through more of a traditional process through the shelter it's uh it's complicated and um uh also you know highlighting thank you for highlighting the work of of feet forward they play a role in that as well and I am certainly hopeful that some of

[204:00] that same as you talked about bringing people together I'm hoping that the services they provide can be provided at the day service center as well and it can be the day service center can be sort of an instrument for those types of approaches as well I'll also mention that there's eight other programs or organizations that do Outreach besides be there well I'll say seven besides be there and and feed forward so there's many organizations that are working on this and it takes different approaches for different individuals I appreciate that Kurt um any other questions or comments being none um all right well big again thanks to uh Ali Joe Chief um and officer Redfern as well for contributing to that conversation and um

[205:00] you know we'll see if that's something that CAC wants to take up um to sort of circle back at the end of 45 days so we can sort of see where things are at see where we need to be um and if there's any follow-up questions but I'll leave that to our three y CAC members of council and staff to decide that um all right um moving on at Nuria anything else from staff before we move on to our final topic on preparation for our County conversation no just it really does take a village and there are a lot of people in that Sam's team so appreciated and we will work with CAC on if there is um a desire to have more conversation on this which I'm assuming there is so awesome thank you Maria um so as we move into our last topic of the night and hopefully those conversations and presentations we had helped maybe shape some of the things that we're going to look at with regards to our conversation with the county um I wanted to start by acknowledging the email we received from staff that relayed some potential subjects from

[206:00] which we would or could discuss next week at our dinner with the County Commissioners as a reminder they are homelessness Regional Transportation racial equity and Wildfire mitigation um and clearly you know um I'd like to just offer a potential solution that we're not you know having to straw pull every single issue um to figure out how we want to weight them and go down that path otherwise I would be using uh ranked Choice voting and you all would love to dive into that ahead of the 2023 election um but let me just uh pose an idea here see if you guys go with it and that may open us up for spending either more time to discuss or we take that take that uh and then you know end the night so um with that I'd like to offer maybe an amendment to those recommendations um and I think it's really based on starting what our main focus for asking for this meeting with the County Commissioners is which was to discuss homelessness and so I think we still I'd like to see if we could still be true to that um and so perhaps maybe what we would respond with is maybe spending about an

[207:00] hour still at homelessness be the main subject and spending about an hour or so on the subject of homelessness but not forgetting those other issues and maybe um asking and having a five minute uh update you know with regards to you know Regional Transportation and racial Equity work and Wildfire mitigation but still allowing us to take the bulk of the time to discuss the main issue at hand which is sort of that that collaborative and partnership between the county and the city and really figuring out where those gaps are and and where we can really divide and conquer and see what that strategy can and should be going forward we're not going to solve it obviously at the dinner but it might set up that conversation for maybe quarterly conversations or more updates down the road from which we can really try to develop a cohesive strategy between our two entities so that's my idea versus nitpicking on which one it was I just want to throw that out to Verity guys and see if you're interested in sort of having that division of subject matter um at our dinner so I just throw that out there

[208:00] Tara I just saw your hand up first in the cube so either way okay I I first want to say that there's no such thing as talking about something for five minutes so forget that but I want to say that heavily I'm guessing I know this is for me heavily on my mind right now is um mental health behavioral health drug addiction and you know homelessness housing we are at such a crisis I realize that Wildfire mitigation is also a crisis but right now for me you know talking about those other subjects and how we can figure out how to solve some of these problems with their help and who pays for what is really important and to me the most important thing by far is those three things mental health drug addiction and

[209:02] housing and homelessness so I think we I don't know that we have time for the others and if we do it quarterly maybe we can put the others then but to me this seems to me the immediate I don't know if my colleagues agree thank you for that Tara I I share that prioritization as well thank you for that um Nicole Lynn Lauren yeah I just um I just wanted to offer I mean this topic of homelessness as we've seen tonight is huge right there's so many different things there and so I just wanted to ask you know as we're kind of passing things on to the Commissioners we're noting some of those other things that are involved so you know for me it's eviction prevention it's you know as as Tara just mentioned addiction mental health kinds of things affordable housing right all of that is under that term of homelessness so because it's such a big term I'm just hoping we can give some clarity to um to the county on what what we're looking for there because I don't I

[210:00] don't think it's just you know single adult homelessness for example but this broader umbrella of topics so I'm just seconding uh some of the Steph Tara said and and I think it all still touches on the same issue but we're being more clear about the kinds of things we're looking for example uh Lauren then Aaron yeah I agree with what Nicole and Tara just said and I think part of it too is you know transportation we have Dr Cog I believe we have Wildfire on our agenda for the Consortium of cities um so particularly where we have other venues you know if there's something specific that the Commissioners want to bring forward to us or make us aware of that um you know and I don't know what that is but but you know I want to be open to that but I agree that I would like to see um time spent on what Nicole and Tara

[211:00] brought up also for me um I would like to hear more about the shelter and if it could be open you know for 24 hours or provide gay services or what kind of like how that space is going to be evolving too appreciate that Lauren Aaron yeah I agree with other folks that that the issues that have been mentioned you need a lot of time right because it's not just about homelessness and some that maybe it can be we can come back to them say about homelessness housing and Human Services and now that's even bigger but I think that the conversation that we want to have is relatively wide-ranging in terms of Matt's idea about the five-minute thing I so you know we're going to be settling in and you know eating some dinner and such and so I I think that I've heard from a couple of County Commissioners that they're interested in sharing with us some of the other stuff where we have

[212:00] areas of common interest so I wonder if rather than a conversation if we could say hey like wildfire mitigation for example they just passed that tax if they could give us a five-minute update as we're you know getting settled and starting to eat about their plans for the implementation of that tax I mean I think that could be valuable for us and I think they'd like to share that with us so if we maybe have just not conversations but one or two additional items that they just give us an update on as we're getting settled and then for the meat of our discussion or the vegetables depending on what you're eating that we we can talk about this this whole set of other issues that people have mentioned I appreciate that Aaron um and you know in terms of where that list is of things right I mean this is a map of thing we're not going to solve it all um you know one of the things that some of the themes that I heard from tonight is everyone sort of brought up comments and from staff um you know certainly with single homelessness was clearly that there was acute needs um and there was um a slide I believe it was slide seven in

[213:01] that initial presentation that showed a bunch of check marks City Boulder and County well there's a lot of them that were the thing and so who who's leading that who's who's who's supporting who's leading and then there's some where one's only doing it and the other not so any Clarity on that covered a lot of those issues so I think um that's what a theme I heard um housing uh transitional housing was a theme that we also heard so um I think as I'm just repeating those that maybe that's where those concentrated conversation points go because that's where I think we were cons we were very interested in and there was seemingly some some uh pinch points with regards to who was doing what in that capacity um there was data collection and sharing that was another theme and then also sort of where's the sister city integration into this whole plan as well beyond just Longmont and Boulder um yeah another theme uh was certainly with regards continued to housing um you know uh rents and and helping rent with family homelessness as well as housing inventory with terms of three bedroom in those larger bedrooms that can support

[214:01] families so those are some of those common themes I think we heard that I think are great questions for for the county um and so hopefully those maybe allow us to have a little bit more of a concentrated discussion on those parts um going forward versus uh you know just a riffing scatter shot for for a bunch of times so um hopefully that'll bring did I did I miss anything critical I just want to in terms of reviewing some of those main themes that was clear overlaps or connections with the county I want to make sure that I sort of hit those and then maybe something that staff can help synthesize down um or we can prepare for for our conversation on Tuesday so just check in with you all to make sure we got that kind of mostly succinctly or tightly wrapped up I see half nods can't tell if two people are asleep all right a thumbs up all right that's good enough for me a couple smiles all right it's delirium setting in oh I see uh I see noria yep sorry I

[215:02] I will Circle back with our company partners and again there um they were very open to paring down or changing the subject so I appreciate your input um as they just wanted to share with you what was on their mind but I am hearing um housing housing inventory sort of Upstream to that looks to prevent homelessness there is a tie-in as we think about that I am hearing perhaps some mental health supports and what is being done in that Arena and that I think ties really well with what we heard of today with um that behavioral um report that is coming out and then I also heard about drug addiction or substance abuse programs and what's happening there that certainly has some overlap uh in homelessness but it actually is much broader in our community that really talks about um how are we supporting people so hopefully they do not fall into homelessness so am I getting that correct with perhaps sorry Aaron with perhaps an

[216:02] initial sort of tell us what is happening on um with the Wildfire tax that was recently passed so if we want to get to homelessness I suggest you eat quickly um anyway um Marie you said it more succinctly than I thank you so much um any uh any other items things anybody wants to bring up or discuss Nicole I see your hand go for it I just wanted to apologize to everybody for making some of this discussion personal by bringing up our Collective home values as an example of the wealth in our community these are really hard topics to discuss and to hold and I don't really feel like I handled my sadness well in that moment so I could have just pointed out the average home value in our city is over a million dollars and left it at that so I really apologize um I for not doing better tonight and please let me know reach out individually if there's any repair I can

[217:00] do there thank you for that Nicole I really appreciate that um anything else before we uh close out our evening yes go for it one clarification I presume in in the past and and you forgive me because I have not been a part of these this has really just been a dialogue amongst our elected officials um curious if there is um some amount or what level of Staff involvement you would like in these conversations as we move forward I think these are great conversations I think frankly tonight uh was uh gave you a lot of valuable information and the presentations you have at hand um May mean that you need less from us but I wanted to just note that and see if there's um some staff involvement that you would like we could use all the support we could get I I mean I'll just speak for my personal perspectives see colleagues agree

[218:00] um yeah I mean there certainly are high level the directors and and certainly those that are that are doing the work would be just great support to make sure we have our facts right and that we're sort of focused on directly those issues I think that would be a great service to us I don't know if that if everyone shares that but but I I don't think we need the whole team's top down but but a handful of those core folks would be very useful and helpful to keep us on the on the right path all right sounds good we will not be preparing anything but certainly we will be there to support all right thank you Nuria thank you to staff thank you to our um the the guests that joined us tonight to present and and support this work and and help us learn more um we are a 35 minute past our slot I did not stay true to my commitment to run that tight of a ship so my apologies I will do better next time and uh thank you all so much for a great night

[219:00] um have a good weekend and we'll be reconvening next week um good night y'all thank you Matt thanks man great job thanks everyone take care everybody [Music]