August 28, 2024 — Housing Advisory Board Regular Meeting

Transcript

[MM:SS] timestamps correspond to the YouTube recording.

[0:00] Pretty much. Good evening. Welcome to the august meeting of the Boulder Housing Advisory Board. We have a very special meeting tonight with a panel presentation. We'll be getting to as quickly as we can. I'm Michael Lucie, the chair, and we'll begin the meeting with Roquel call and the board members. So Karen Clearman here, Danny Theodoro should be joining by zoom Steven Kip Hennessy over here, Philip overin here, Julian Ramsey. I'm not here. I'm here, Hi, guys. Oh, great, wonderful. great to hear you. Okay, we now have a quorum. We have what will be a full house once Danny joins us, and we also have Ml. Robles. our planning board liaison. We we do have one opposite member. I'm sorry, Corinne Hoskin. I think she's on a trip right now. So we'll do a quick agenda review and we'll get into it. We have. We've done roll, call public participation. If anybody is waiting to be heard. We'll get to that next.

[1:14] and then we'll go directly to our panel. We have a wonderful expert panel calling housing solutions for the homelessness for homelessness. Haven't spent a lot of time talking about the homeless issue and researching it in the last few months, and we finally came to the conclusion that we should stick to our knitting and talk about housing solutions, and not all the other very important, very pressing, but not our knitting issues of policing and so forth. So we really want to focus on folks who have been successful in providing all kinds of housing. I think we'll be focusing on transitional housing and permanently supportive housing. Tonight. We have a wonderful panel. We'll basically be giving us case studies. And we'll get to that momentarily. So do we have any members of the public?

[2:03] Okay, you want to review the rules station, Jay, before we get to the hearing from the public. We'll do that right now. Great so participants are. Oh, sorry! That's the end. I should probably start at the beginning. But challenging hold on, stop sharing video transcript. No, distract me, isn't it? Just released? I'm not in the picture. I'll get your words off scoot over sure. Why not 20 h struggle with this. Alright. The city has engaged with community members to co-create a vision for productive, meaningful, and inclusive civil civic engagement.

[3:09] It's designed to support the physical and emotional safety. Pretty much. Everybody question is, can I advance the slides? Now, jeez. yeah. got this? For more information. You can go to our website. The following examples are rules of decorum found in the Boulder Revised Code. This will be upheld during the meeting by our chair. All remarks and testimony shall be limited to matters related to city business. No participant shall make threats or use other forms of intimidation, obscenity, racial appetites, and other speech and behavior that disrupts or otherwise impedes the ability of the meeting. Conduct of the meeting are prohibited.

[4:06] and participants are required to sign up to speak, using their name, commonly known by an individual, must display the whole name before being allowed to speak. Currently, only audio is allowed online. That's it. I believe we have one person so far. Okay. May I pee first.st Yes. Hi, Lynn, yep. You got your 3 min welcome. May IP. First, st PEE. I mean. I go to the bathroom first, st please. Yes or no. I don't think so, Lynn. We have a busy. Yeah, thanks. That's all I needed. Yeah, okay. You want to know about housing in Boulder. Let me tell you about it. It's a saturated market. This airport deal is a complete screwover

[5:04] us. I'm going to promote that. We take the grants that we are entitled to, because who knows if we'll ever get those back in 40 years when this thing goes through. If it ever does this housing, we do not need more housing at the airport. We do not need it at the the planning reserve area 3. We do not need it at J road like this big project last night. That's mostly unaffordable, and and middle income is 1,700 to 2,600 a month. You know what Martha House is now know what it is. It was 900, including food, and that's probably 400 a month food now, it's probably 500 a month. Food, since food has no end site, right? $900 a month at Marpa is now $1,700, without food, and probably without any utilities. Also for one bedroom

[6:04] in that place. What you need for revised housing to accommodate folks in this environment is communal housing options, and you do not provide them, and you do not incent them. And you need to. because that is how people can live reasonably. You know how many people in Gaza have one toilet. 4,000 one toilet. I think there's something a little between that, you know, especially when we've got these monster mansions with, you know, people that don't even use them. They're there half the year. This is outrageous. What's happening here. People are coming from Aspen. They're coming here first, st because it's better for them. It's outrageous what's going on here, and you are fighting an uphill battle. If you think more housing is going to do it. More infill, more density is not.

[7:02] That's just going to make it more expensive, because for every less dense place you get 10 expansive, very expensive places. big, expensive places. Read me. This is what you will find out eventually. But why can't the Housing Advisory Board figure it out like everybody else has. Thank you, Lynn. You're done. No, I'd like this to be interactive, you know, and it never is. And I never hear anything back. It's like talking into an Echo Chamber. and I don't appreciate that. and I want you to know that. Well, time is up you should know that. The airport petition was Oh. Yeah. And and we're not taking the Grant money.

[8:00] Right, so. Horrible! I think. okay, thank you. That brings us to our panel discussion. I'm gonna have Curt and the panelists introduce themselves. Just let you know, this is not anything. We're gonna develop. A recommendation on our job is to make recommendations to the city council and planning board on housing. You know we are in a research mode and a learning mode, and we just want to hear what you have to say and hear your case studies. So there will be no action. Item tonight. We're just here to listen into and to converse. So, Kurt, please take it away. Thank you. So I'm Kurt Fernhauver and I support the department of housing services at the City of Boulder. And I work with all these wonderful people here on the panel. I'll be asking questions of them that were given to me by have prior to this meeting, and I think you considered those questions over the last couple of weeks. We're at your last meeting. I'm not sure but I'll be presenting those and trying to trying to create a discussion out of this. But we're gonna go with a

[9:11] I I think, as you introduce yourself. Each of you, I think, brought slides this evening, so you can introduce yourself. Go straight into your your slides, introducing what you do and how you connect to homelessness, and that work in our city. So I'm gonna start off with Megan Newton. Thank you. My name is Megan Newton. I'm the policy advisor on homelessness, working with her and housing and human services. In my role here tonight is kind of to set the stage to kind of give you an overview of what most of these programs fall under how we address homelessness with housing, and it's not just us in boulder, but more, how HUD at a national level and dohs at a state level. Some of the interventions we use to address homelessness through housing. So typically housing will fall into one of these 3 buckets, either transitional housing, rapid rehousing, or permanent supportive housing. Now there are a lot of different exits from homelessness that may not build on that

[10:15] could be reunification with family. It could be that they get affordable housing outside the system. Housing choice voucher that isn't dedicated to folks who are homelessness perfect, who are homeless. They might need a higher level of care, like a skilled nursing facility or assisted living facility. They might be able to go into market rate rent. So these aren't the only way folks exit homelessness. These are just all the kind of program types that we use to specifically exit folks from homelessness. So transitional housing is a temporary solution to help individuals move towards permanent housing. We see this often in families. We see it often with folks exiting institutional settings or in

[11:01] So we're living facilities, treatment facilities. Those kinds of things are all captured under transitional housing. HUD, who funds a lot of this work does not consider that formally housed, you still hold the definition of homeless when you're in transitional housing, and the goal is to get a sense of stability and then move into some sort of permanent housing. Rapid rehousing is typically used for folks who are new to homelessness. May not have a lot of barriers to getting housed, and so it's intended to be a quick exit from homelessness, with the temporary supports in both rental assistance and supportive services that taper off as they move through the program. And then permanent supportive housing is surely what you guys hear a lot about. And that's long term supportive services for those folks experiencing chronic homelessness. Oftentimes it's used for single adults. There are some families Boulder, I don't believe, has to be family. Psh! Denver has some but it's typically used for single adults.

[12:03] So this kind of breaks breaks it down a little bit further. With the types of different types of permanent supportive housing. So there's project based house housing. So I'll give examples. So you probably would be better. Something like bluebird, right? Something where these units are dedicated to this population. It may be bluebird, or maybe something like Hilltop, where there's certain units, but it's dedicated to this type of housing. Scattered site housing is what is where folks use vouchers. So folks get who were experiencing homelessness may get vouchers dedicated to them, but then they must go into the community and find a landlord that will rent to them. There's pros and cons to both of those we find in project based where you can bring the services to folks. That that's very convenient. But sometimes it's hard. When you get a lot of folks who have similar barriers in one space, and it kind of bounce off each other where the community sometimes it's harder for them to integrate into those services, but also, it gives them the ability to have neighbors that may have not had the same issues. They have

[13:06] and then we locally. And it's I mean, not just locally, but it is fairly unique. Have a little bit of a hybrid where we have partnered with all roads to acquire units, so they are the landlord. So it kind of does that project based piece? But they're out in the community which does the scattered site piece? So we typically use those for individuals who have extensive criminal histories, or just hard to house for one reason or another, where finding a landlord has been difficult exception. and so, as far as the city goes, these are some of the things not all inclusive, but some of the things that we currently support, Rich house ready to work. We fund some rental assistance for folks exiting that for that. Those programs tribe sober living. So we purchased a house for a tribe that does recovery services for folks who are exiting homelessness. We support permanent supportive housing in the project base around supporting Bluebird, supporting hilltop scattered site. We have our own city of boulder vouchers that we we provide to boulder housing partners for folks.

[14:18] This is on top of most vouchers are not locally funded vouchers. Most vouchers go through the State or HUD by far, that is, they're the biggest provider of the actual housing support. But we did create a local program to kind of fill in a niche where those programs might create a gap and then hybrid. We had partnered with both the county and all roads to purchase some of those units. Bell Roads is currently has purchased and has folks in them 12 currently correct and so the county primarily does the rapid rehousing piece, using State funds. So the city doesn't have the direct.

[15:01] direct piece of that. But it is being done here in Boulder. Can I ask you a question? Where is Hilltop? I never Lee Hill, but I don't know. I'm guessing hilltop is. Well, it was, it was kind of as an example of something that's coming online. Yeah, yeah, same as Bluebird. And then Hilltop is coming. But it's what we're calling integrated, permanent supportive housing. So we have 15 units and a 16 property in South Florida, where the Mount Calgary. Thank you. So it's like, I use that example, just to show that there are the 2 that are exclusively psh, but HP. Has some that have some units that are dedicated. Psh! But not all great. Thank you. That's it for me. Okay, Melissa, you're up next great. I'm Melissa Will Green, and I'm with Bridge House. Most people know us as ready to work.

[16:00] We work with adults experiencing homelessness, and I apologize to Jay. He received my Powerpoint literally 10 min before the meeting. So so sorry. I don't know if it's gonna work. But that was your 1st line, right? But there are people. She's no last one. That was our 1st side trip. usually not this challenge with Zoom, but for some reason that's okay. So we are. Colorado's 1st work work, solution to homelessness. So we all are very well versed in housing. 1st we believe that those that came and are willing to go back to work if given the opportunity can and should do so, and then come through our program to to push that. That's right. There we go. Edit. you know, 2 sides. Now.

[17:01] yeah. So work just means we're using work because it works to take people from homelessness into permanent housing and self sustainability. So we are. Colorado's 1st work works nonprofit. But there are other nonprofits doing that same work. So we are modeled after the Dell Fund, which was started in New York. and there are other nonprofits in Georgia, Philadelphia, Texas, doing some of the same work. So at Bridge House we have a basic needs program. Our ready to work program and community table kitchen actually is one of our social enterprises that supports our ready work program. So we are a continuum of programming for adults, experiencing homelessness from low barrier basic needs to innovative ready to work program. Yeah. sorry. So our basic needs program. We actually started 27 years ago. And that was community table. So we had a bunch of volunteers that came together decided that one of the ways that we could help the homeless population was by feeding them dinner

[18:20] so they would make food in their kitchens, and they would go to a park or a church, and that dinner would be served that has now evolved 27 years later to our ready to work program, where we're housing up to 100 folks a night in either our boulder house or a rural house, and we have a 3rd site coming online in early 2025 community table dinner, I'm proud to say, is still happening 5 days a week, Monday, through Friday, at various locations in in Boulder. I'm very proud of that mail service. So ready to work. is a 3 legged stool, so we have work which they come into our program. They join one of the Social Enterprise crews. It could be outdoors crews going to do landscaping or side

[19:07] with that comes housing, they move into one of our congregate living facilities. We have 45 beds in Boulder, 50 in Aurora, and we'll have another 48 coming online in Inglewood that will serve Inglewood, Littleton, and Sheridan. The most unique portion of the 3 legged stool support. So the support is customized to each individual. So when they come into the program, it really helps to remove the barriers that landed them in that homeless situation. In the 1st place. so we do that again through the paid employment, through one of our social enterprises. Housing and congregate living. We do serve both men and women. They have 24 h 24, 7. Access to not only wrap around services, but all of their basic needs are met so they can eat in our facility. Wi-fi laundry, anything they need we will provide, whether in our program. And our program is about 12 months.

[20:03] Looks like so these are 3 facilities over boulder and a picture of fingers crossed what looks like at the beginning of 2025. It is currently under a construction. So right now there's a lot of dumpsters outside and building debris. But fingers crossed. We'll we'll pull it over the the finish line next slide. So we have renovated office buildings. Predominantly. So. The one here in Boulder was a big insurance building. So there was a lot of insurance brokers working out of that. And one of the most surprising things is maybe 3 or 4 years after ready to work had opened, and we've been fully operational. People are still coming in to pay their insurance bills. So I mean, no, and it works really well for us to take an office building and renovate it into congregate living.

[21:07] So there are single rooms here in boulder predominantly. The rooms are 4 or 5 people per room. There are 3 quarter walls. They do have privacy while they're with us. They have other needs are met the fed dresser closets, everything that they need, and when trying to convert commercial office space. Did you experience any push back? We have had some Nimby situations. One very memorable in Aurora where folks were worried about having homeless population coming to one building, thinking it was more of a shelter. We do not operate like a shelter. If you were to drive by our building, you wouldn't know that a ready work program for homeless individuals was operating out of that building. But we do try to get a foot ahead of that by having conversations with our neighbors. educational sessions within the communities that we're going to serve, inviting people into one of the houses that, like right now with Inglewood under construction, or inviting anybody that might have some concern into one of the other 2 buildings, so they can kind of see what it operates as and what it looks like in the community when it's fully operational.

[22:18] So maybe we don't talk about it now, because I don't want to interrupt, and people need to speak, but I would be really curious to know how you've had success in converting office into housing when most people say, or most developers say, that it really isn't viable, or like 20% of the buildings can be converted. And maybe it's because they're thinking about converting into like one and 2 bedroom apartments, and you are converting into more of a congregate care. But so maybe we add that to the to the questions at the end. Thank you. Sorry. That is a great question. And the biggest piece to that really is zoning working with the cities and counties around zoning and how are you zoned

[23:04] we are zoned for congregate living here in boulder. Somebody cannot stay in our building longer than 2 years, because that becomes more permanent housing, but because we're transitional. It's zoned a little bit different versus somebody that might be building a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment. It's a great question next slide. Alright. So for us. We believe, ready to work is a sustainable works, work, business model, and we do break the costly cycle of homelessness, addiction and incarceration. We do have silver living. Congregate facilities. That doesn't mean that if somebody relapses we kick them out. We are not wanted done. So if somebody does have a relapse or has another issue, we do work with them through that issue. So they stay online to graduate and and sustain themselves. Post graduation

[24:01] provides a multi faceted community based solution. We target about a 3rd of adults experiencing homelessness. With the capacity that want to go back to work. So the way we kind of break that down is, there's about a 3rd of folks. That would be better served with housing. Voucher. So those are usually the ones that have a higher level of disability, chronic homelessness, inability to go back to work and work 40 HA week. There's a 3rd of adults that can go back to work, and they're willing to go back to work. And that's our target audience. There's about a 3rd of folks that, quite honestly, are just happy with the way things are, and they're not quite ready to change their circumstance. And that's okay, too. And that's where the community partners come into play. In that we keep offering resources and having positive engagement. And eventually they're going to go to a resource and accept that. I'm sorry, ready to work. Kind of talked a little bit about the support that really is where the magic sauce is. These are some ideas of things that we do within that case. Management team. So we're trauma informed evidence based.

[25:12] We do work with addiction, sobriety support. We have one on one case management. group meetings, career counseling financial management, mentoring and then we follow everybody that graduates our program. 12 months post graduation to make sure that they have the resources that they need to stay housed. I can honestly say that Boulder's been operating. It was 9 years this August. Just not too long ago. And we still have people from our 1st cohort that will come to us and share with us what is happening in their lives, or bring their babies or bring graduation pictures of their adopt children very next slide. So this is kind of the impact of what ready to work had in 2023. So it goes through.

[26:02] the capacity. Our graduation. We graduated 81 folks last year. Graduation to us means that they are full time employed, and that full time employment sustains their housing and basic needs and the other pieces of their lives that they need to have in place. 81 was our highest grade graduation class. So that was very cool. We also just graduated our 500th graduate right after graduation last year. Success rate, we have a right about 75%. We would like to see that increase. But since we started 9 years ago. We've stayed at 74, 75%. So we're doing something very right. But I would still find a way to try to make it better working on it every day. Nights of housing is over 31,000 combined meals provided. Over 97,000 labor hours worked is 62,599. Those are our crews going out and working either at a catering event or landscaping

[27:01] and our social Enterprise revenue was 1.6 million. I'm sorry. How do you define social enterprise revenue? So the Social Enterprise revenue is truly what our crews are earning when they're out working. So we have city contracts, county contracts. We work with. We have a catering company through community table kitchen. our Brownie business. And so we are working very hard to support ourselves. But more importantly, because we are a work works program. We have to have social enterprise for our trainees to go and start learning some skills. Great. Thank you. Next slide. So these are just some some of the type of work that we do in our outdoor landscaping services. I won't. I won't go through those but you can see it's mostly weeding, mulching anything that the city's crews might not have time to do. But they're working on bigger projects. We could take on the smaller projects. Same with the county

[28:03] next slide. So our community table kitchen is our second enterprise. It started with alleviating hunger. Can I share the the community table story? But really, it's to create jobs for our trainees to work in and to create an a pathway to learning, a skill in the culinary service. They are serve safe certified when they leave the program, meaning that they can work in the supervisor level at the back of the house of a restaurant. So that's very cool. Our lines of business. There are mission mills. So we do take food, donated food, make that into mills that go back out to community partners that they can then give to the communities that they are serving catering. Take a baked meals anytime. You don't want to cook you don't want your wives to cook, or your families to cook, or your neighbors to cook. You can call us up. Order a meal, you pick it up, you take it home, you pop it in the oven. It's really good meal. We do have a cafe over near ech, and then our amazing truffle brownies, and I'm sorry I didn't bring some

[29:12] so again we had over 62,000 h worked last year. It is a 1st stepping stone to self sufficiency. After approximately one year trainees graduate to mainstream jobs and permanent housing. And again, our success rate is about 75%. That is rich house. Ask a quick question, how do you get the meals, the take and bake meals. Those are available to the public. So you can go on our website, and there's catering option and then take and bake meals, and the I'm telling you right now. The enchiladas are probably my favorite, but we have chicken pot pie. Really good meals, but they change seasonally, so check back in and so good you can either swing by and pick it up, or we'll deliver in boulder that's on VHR. tw.org.

[30:03] and I'll give you a business credit. Great. Where do you get your funding from? So about 60% is still philanthropic work. So grants foundations, fundraising, and campaigns. In fact, we have. Our our biggest gallery will be on the 19th of September, our farm to table and then the rest is earned through social enterprise. We're working right now to try to identify a 3rd social enterprise, because, as you can imagine, landscaping has ups and downs, and we don't want to have that long. When you say you mean employment contracts with the Government to put people work. Thank you. So, Julie, you're you're up next. Okay? Well, first, st thanks for inviting me. I'm going to talk about family homelessness, which is many people don't aren't aware of it. 1st of all. It's not such a visible pardon. The homelessness problem. The 1st slide, of course, just to intro. I'm the executive director at Efa and next slide.

[31:07] I think most people have heard of fa, but I just wanted to make sure I sort of what we do our mission is to provide stabilizing services. We're one of the main safety nets in boulder innovative programs and transformative advocacy to strengthen families and create a thriving community. F is the family resource center and community based safety net. Been in the community over a hundred years. Deep roots. And we have 5 main program areas. One is our food bank. that's in that building there from Yarmouth, the, we have a basic needs program which includes about 3 million dollars in direct financial assistance every year to help. That's not just for families with kids that's for anyone, to help ends make ends meet. We have housing, and I'll talk a little bit about that next, and that is exclusively for families with kids that are going through homelessness. We have a children, youth and family program as a family resource center, and an economic empowerment program to help people move out of poverty over the longer term. So last year we served about 8,500 people.

[32:19] And most of those are in the city of Boulder. Just give you an idea of the scale of operations. We also have an office up in Netherland, and our housing is throughout Boulder County. So what? But I came here tonight to talk about housing and and family homes. So next slide we have 3 interventions. Around family homelessness. The 1st and most foremost is to prevent it. It is the best investment. It's the it avoids a lot of the impacts that affect kids and and family dynamics. For many years. So, and it's also the cheapest option

[33:00] is to keep people from getting evicted. The, we have a key families housed program. That we partner with the city of Boulder on, and it's 3 months of rental assistance over 12 months. This past year it reached about 750 families with kids. Basic construct of the program is the 1st payment is based on housing. Insecurity can't make ends meet. I'm gonna lose my housing and then the next 2 payments are based on anytime over the 20 months. But there are certain requirements, you know. The kids have to have seen a a doctor and a dentist in the last 12 months. The the parents have to have gone to a free financial counseling service or done a financial literacy class. By the 3rd one, if they're eligible for Medicare Medicaid and snap food benefits that they're enrolled. So just trying to, you know, bring more resources to the housing, to the, to the families as part of the the stabilization in housing. That program is actually quite successful. We've done it since 2016, I believe. Which we

[34:14] piloted with the city. And since that year we did a external impact evaluation that 1st year, but every year since no family that's gotten rentals since that year has lost their housing. And it's not that it's magic. It's just that is the nature of economic instability. People tend to be upside down twice a year. If you can, with just a small injection of money, I think it's well right now. It's $800 maximum payment per month. It was a thousand dollars per month during Covid, but we've had some funding constriction as Covid. Money's gone away, but it doesn't cost much, and it tends to stabilize quite a bit. Also the impacts on kids that have been measured in terms of food security on parents in terms of debt and savings are all quite positive. So we like that program. It's our 1st 1st front line. But people do lose their house

[35:08] and we provide emergency sheltering. We don't have a family shelter in Boulder County. It's not a great environment for kids the level of. and the and the duration of family homelessness, at least up till now has been addressable with hotel stays so many, not only up, but many of the agencies we work together, and we can provide up to like a week or 2 of hotel. Stay. the idea is to get them on into something that you know it's mostly for, like unsafe situations, you know, you're in a car. You're with a small child. It's cold and we do. Probably around 100 families a year will fund short term. Hotel stays with

[36:00] wrap around services and navigation and plotting, plotting what they're gonna do next. And then we are the main provider of actual rooftop housing for families with children that are going through homelessness. It's a type that was mentioned as temporary housing, transitional housing. We have 65 apartments around the county on 8 sites. and in boulder. We have 28 apartments on 4 sites, so they're everything from a triplex to a 14 and seventies apartment building and apartments are better for family life in terms of than a group setting. So we we do prefer that the transitional housing. We have 2. Well, we have 2 types. We call. We call it short term, and it's free furnished for the 1st 4 months. and that is for the highest crisis cases. It's for family homelessness. It's often that.

[37:01] Well, I'll get that next slide. But there's not that much open kind of camping, if you will. Usually coming from a situation. You're couch, couch surfing, and you couldn't do that anymore. You you know you, you lost your lease and you don't know where to go. So you try. Try not to have an unhoused situation for families. But those short terms are kind of units are kind of a high crisis, and then we have units are transitional to 2 years, and that families pay about $500 a month. and all of the both of those are with lots of case management resources, employment supports. We have dedicated children's case managers because the the experience of losing their housing transmits to kids in a way that is heartbreaking. If you look at the the data on it, it drives core outcomes in at school health problems long term prospects for employment, etc, etc. So we really try and focus specific things. Are they signed up for after school programs, are they? We? We fund summer camps so that

[38:16] particularly during the summer. They have a kind of an enrichment, and not just a, you know, shut at home while the parents are out working and so we do a lot of work in the housing sense. The and the outcome that we look at is, did families successfully exit to stable and safe and affordable housing now not affordable at 30% of income, we figure we we do 50% of income as to, but just basically affordable. And about over 80% of our families exit to successful housing. It may not be permanent. The affordable housing. It may be a mobile home if you saved up over 2 years. There are all kinds of different options, but it's not. It's a fairly good success rate given the challenges of housing in the community. So there are 3 things to prevent, to shelter, and then to try and have families that are going through homelessness.

[39:12] Have the appropriate space and time to to figure a next move. So how do the next slide, please? I just wanted to. I'll just back up, I guess, a little bit to say, you know. since we don't hear much about family homelessness, I just wanted to kind of situate it in this discussion. And 1st of all, how is it different from adult homelessness? Once I mentioned, it's less visible. You do not see families with kids out and about camping or and it's it's as all of us would do, about 80% counter. If I lost my housing, I would be hitting up relatives and friends. And where can we get a room? You're you're trying to protect your children in a safe situation.

[40:02] And that is where most of the homeless families are. About 15% are in some kind of program. It could be transitional housing. It could be domestic violence shelters and then, I think, about 5 to 10 are actively unhoused. They're living. There might be an Rv not many are camping. You don't find campsites of families with with kids except in the summer up in there. so they are. And because they're not visible, I think they they receive a lot less public attention. It's not seen as a social problem as much for everyone else living here as it's their individual circumstance that they're they're living through. And another difference is for family homelessness. It is largely driven by economic fast factors. So about 3 quarters of the time, it's because of economic factors. Loss of the job got my hours cut. Had a sudden economic shock to the household like a medical expense. Raised the rent.

[41:08] and I can't afford it anymore. Suddenly my rent went up 40%. You're packing your your bags and trying to figure out where to go next. About a quarter of the time something happened to the family itself. So that's largely domestic. Violence could be divorce. Death of a spouse. You had 2 incomes, you only have one, and you're you're running. You're you're you have to leave where you are. It's also different. Well, someone says, but it's homegrown. These are not families coming to boulder that are unhoused and looking to stay here. the. This is largely the working class. Low income households and a higher proportion are from historically marginalized populations, particularly the Latinx population. I think our our transitional housing which is across the county, is about 70%

[42:03] Spanish speaking households. As I mentioned, the periods of homelessness have lasting effects on on children. And it actually is. A predictor of adult homelessness is whether you had an experience of homelessness of the child. So it has. it's not just solving an issue, for now it's investing in well, how the well-being of our community like over a lifetime or a couple of generations. The other thing about what we're seeing right now is that community conditions are driving unprecedented increases in the number of families with children that are going homeless. The stats are pretty sobering before Covid. There are about 350 kids in Bbsd because they register in the school districts through Mckinney. Vento. If you've lost your housing and are in unstable housing

[43:03] there are about 350 and last school year it was 7 to 807 to 800 children before Covid. So it's more than double if you count little ones that are not in school yet, I think it's a safe assumption. There's every year there's probably 500 children in the city of Boulder that will be considered in a family, and I just don't think that's really in our awareness. that level of what we're seeing. Just to give you another reason of what's driving this in 2,018, a family of 2 adults and 2 kids needed 2 minimum wage jobs to make ends meet in boulder. And by 2022 they needed 4 minimum wage jobs. So it's not getting them to work. It's like they're working 3 or 4 jobs. And and they're not able to to afford housing.

[44:03] So what can the city of Boulder do to address the situation. First.st because of what what we're seeing. And is that the incredible amount of people being evicted running before they're evicted in the sense of it doesn't show up in the eviction statistics, because they don't want on their record. So they just if you can't pay, they just leave. And so it's like, well, there's not much evictions like, no, they're they're they're going to stay with a friend at the Mobile Home Park, or there's 4 families in this apartment. It may not show up in evictions actual evictions. But we need additional resources to meet the needs of temporary housing and expanded eviction prevention. It's the numbers that we have right now, and that's not just efforts across the county and the significant agencies. It's just kind of overwhelming our resources. second to prioritize, or at least consider families with children for affordable housing. It's not something that comes up much in the affordable housing conversations like who those

[45:10] units are actually designed for But families have different housing needs than individuals. They need more bedrooms. and so, even having sounds extravagant. A 3 bedroom place. But that's a family with 2 children of different genders as they grow up. So. There are few larger number of bedroom units in the affordable housing pool, and not only in Boulder but Walmart as well. The numbers are harder to make it work. The cost. The rent that's charged is harder to afford for families. So it's just a it's a challenge. the 3rd point, preserve our market based affordable housing, which is basically our mobile home parks.

[46:03] It's a deep sink of where families with kids that are on the edge of losing housing live. They're often doubled up and tripled up in those mobile home parks. but it is really where a lot of the families with kids live. and the last is, there's just a whole bunch of land use and zoning issues that I'm not an expert on. But we bump up against but you are about density. About occupancy. Adus, you know, fast tracking, affordable housing to be built. We've built some of our housing, and just the amount of time it takes. And the you see, I have no idea what you're talking, because we're not builders. We're just a you know, nonprofit that provides the services. It's, you know, like there's a number of things on this on the on the land use and zoning side which would help speed up

[47:06] the production of how low, of low income housing or transitional housing, or affordable housing. For families. And then the last thing I would say is, just be careful of policies that inadvertently increase housing costs things like the even in the mobile home parks of policies to kind of upgrade mobile home parks if it if it adds any more cost to the base of that renter, they're gonna not be able to hang on to them. So There's a whole bunch of things you can do and thank you. That's why. Thank you. And that last point, would you be referring to something like energy upgrades or energy efficiency, or well, that might save a renter on their energy bill. but like I I think it depends how it's structured. If it's passed on to the it it could be the sometimes that you own the lot and the

[48:07] unit, and sometimes you rent one or the other. We kind of you have to look into it and see what would actually happen to that. Okay. But certainly the private mobile Home Park management companies are able to pass on cost increases So Mike block is up next. you're, busy yourself, your work, Mike. it's Kurt, well, I've actually given a lot of thoughts. What to say to you all. I think that the project of you're taking on miss. is not unusual for 17 years, and one of all those. I came to, the shelter, cleaned up, the donation shed, and nothing about a pretty big responsibility. So thanks for asking me to be here. But what what you're endeavoring in this sort of this this exploration. Your point is not really unusual, so just wants to say that the lessons that I've learned, have been taught to me over 17 years by thousands of almost individuals, and by making tons and tons of mistakes. And so you know.

[49:15] I have a really really positive message, but I also just want to. really implore you to be really, really mindful that almost kind of homeless individuals died an average age of 56 years old. So decisions that make at the shelter are literally life and death. How we spend resources, how we're trying to organize ourselves and the vision that we have really mindful about that responsibility. Since you want to lend your voice to this, and actually perhaps have an influence on council. I would really just ask you to really. really careful, really mindful. and really feel that responsibility of that really life and death sort of landscape that the people up here are are operating at the day to their credit. I talk about homelessness a little bit differently.

[50:01] Especially when I'm in a setting where I think I'm more talking about homeless systems than just about our organization. But they really sort of the journey of our organization really lines up with the journey of our our overall system and what we tried to build in this community. And so we did start out as an emergency shelter we call the border shelter for the homeless what we were known for. We're over 40 years old. and there was an evolution of us understanding about the limited of efficacy, of reacting on a night to night basis for the congregate setting, and that we tried to convince ourselves that this was the sort of center of home services, and through a process of critical thinking, we really started to question that, and that the promise of shelter beyond providing a night to night service. We had to wrestle with the notion that the promise of transformation that could occur in a shelter by applying certain standards and and addressing people's pathology and all of our best wishes and hopes to change people significantly and reliably.

[51:04] We're really could not be really realized as we started to question what we were doing. And it also dawned on us. By the way, that you know, solid, 30% of the homeless people are suffering homelessness right now. Choose not to stay in concrete settings, and that's not endemic of our, you know. That's not an indictment of our particular shelter. This is a nice sort of a national trend, also. 2 thirds of the chronic homeless. Those who are most in need don't use shelters regularly, those who need us the most, those who are most at risk. Again, that is not indictment of our shelter in particular. This is system wide, and so when you start to see. I take a step back and look at these sort of big statistics and your big learning curves, and really start to criticize and start to think differently about what you're doing. You start to ask a lot of hard questions. And you know honestly, with the help of of the city and with the county and with a lot of sort of other people that challenged us, and and really

[52:06] almost provoked us to take a defensive stance. We really leaned in and tried to figure out what was a better approach than just simply trying to create what we might say is the shelter center or concrete setting response. And so we've really, really sort of good news where we've landed is the concept that 90% of the homeless. Tell us who are in excess want to be housed. I mean that that is really unbelievable, and we should listen to our clients, and we tend to not right, because we retreat to, or we can't house them. So let's do something else. That's what they're telling us. They want study over the summer of the unsheltered, homeless in Boulder County, in Boulder the city of Boulder indicated 90% of these are the most impaired folks. These are encampments. These are the folks you think are the most unreachable, but they're telling us they want. So think of the people who are lower. Need you've only been housed for a few days. What's their response? Near 100. So that's really really powerful news.

[53:06] The second thing is all the data indicates that once you house someone that you get the best results. So what they want the most works the best and further good news. It saves money. It's much cheaper to get someone else really quickly than it is to have them in a in a congregate setting event. The per bed cost knife at our shelter. It's about $35 a night that's very close to the half payment contribution per night. That boulder housing partners pays up to land. So it's no more cost effective to put someone on a shelter than it is put in their house. So we started to ask ourselves this question, so what what now is our role? We start to question 40 years of sheltering history. Where where do we go with this? And how do we leverage this amazing information that what they want? The most works the best. and it saves money.

[54:00] Well, luckily the city was sort of, and the county were sort of taking this sort of similar journey, and asking themselves a similar question, and this sort of the symmetry sort of which there was this alignment and sort of a purpose to try and have a higher aspiration. And the good news is that you know, we really know that we can solve homelessness. and we've been unbelievably successful at solving homelessness for individuals, and we haven't yet solved homelessness for communities simply because the problem is overwhelming. So the success we've had over the last 8 years since we've made this major change in the philosophical approach. It's been amazing. But no one in the community feels that way, because to our eyes and to our heads the problem doesn't seem to be getting better, which probably energizes why you're asking this question of what your role is, to begin with. Right? So. But the really good news is that the system that we've developed and your staff have done all the work. And we've created this sort of this process and starts with the principle, the principles housing 1st and housing 1st is really really simple, right? It's this notion that that whatever we have in our lives, we need the basic things first.st So when I think of my housing, and I think of all the ways that my daughter, myself, and our wellbeing, and all the things that I would give up before housing housing, pretty much less, you know, we give up

[55:18] right? So it makes perfect sense that if you want to restore someone's well being. You would restore the housing first.st Right? I mean, it's the most simple way to think about it, and I don't expect, by the way, housing to solve all of my problems right? I don't have a whole lot of problems, but I will. I will have pathologies. And I'm gonna be really, really happy with my house. And so again, the same principles apply here. If you, if you, if you provide a housing first, st then the notion of building up your well being from a stable foundation of housing is much more attainable than from a congregate setting, for instance. So we really embrace this philosophy, then, okay. So if you embrace this philosophy to accept this notion that every homeless person is really a housing project, you know, so to speak. They tell us that's what they want. So let's join them in this project right now, what systems do you have to build in order to get there?

[56:08] And we? It's really, really simple, actually, right? And so this is what we do with Kurt and his and Megan and their great team and the county every day. This is what we think about. We have to have us. There are really 4 parts of the system. We have a 4 legged stool, a chair, the 1st leg or the 1st wheel of us, as I like to say, if you have to have services and engage with people wherever homeless are, you can be part of a housing, focused engagement system that's bringing knowledge about housing to the clients. right? Bringing that expertise to them. They're not experts on our complicated complicated system. That is all these hoops that you need to jump through. We need to bring engagement right to the ground at shelters and libraries and hospitals. and we need to bring the expertise about the system, the housing system, housing resources to them. Okay, the second wheel of the bus is.

[57:01] you have to have record milk whatever that looks like. Now, when I was young and I didn't have any income, I was living with my parents, and the rent was very affordable. That's affordable rent, right? So relationships can provide affordable rent. Earned income, provide affordable rent. you know. Vouchers can provide affordable rent. But if if the rent's not affordable. You can't. You can't help somebody. The 3rd wheel of the bus is durable assets. They have to have a place to live. Now again that can be reunifying someone that's housing. First, st if we meet someone and they have a mother who wants to take them back in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We confirm this information. We give them a bus ticket, and they go live with their mother. The rents affordable right? We've engaged with them. The rent's affordable. There's a durable asset and their support when they get there. Housing 1st really cheap. It's price of a bus ticket. So. But you, you have to have that 3rd wheel of the bus, the durable asset. So that can be a private landlord that can be a bus ticket to Tulsa that can be dedicated resources for the homeless, like a Lee hill, or a hilltop, or a bluebird, or a new project called Zinnia and Longmont. But you have to have durable assets.

[58:06] and once a person gets to their home, there has to be some sort of resource of support now, depending on the acuity of need of an individual. Maybe they don't need any support. or maybe their community. Still, just it's there to support them. Or maybe we can provide a case manager who gives relatively consistent support and is really focused on their support, higher acuity of need. And so if you apply this principle to anyone who's homeless, you can solve the problem. So our job is really to what parts of the systems need resources, because the more we resource the 4 wheels, the farther the bus is going to roll. So the good news is they've built the bus. and if I can sort of share anything with you about what impact your voice can have to. This is, trust your staff. They're really good at their jobs. They've built a great system. They built the bus

[59:01] and encourage us to resource the bus to give it gas so it can travel really, really far. And that's what I wanted to say to you. I mean, we can have well asked questions, but that's what we're doing. Our vision is to partner with the, with the city and with the county, to to be supportive of that system. We have elements in our programming of all 4 wheels. and the more resources we get. we can effectively move the bus farther, right? So we engage my resources to shelter. We have outreach teams, right? We have partnerships that provide rental assistance. We're working for more and more and more durable assets as best we can, and all sorts of different mechanisms, and we provide tons and tons of services. You know, it's really great news, because in 2,016, I think we housed 38 people right? And as an organization we were, we are a hands on 1,000 of 200 people last year. So this is all the result of this collaboration and really trying to break down what works the best.

[60:03] And how do we create a system that that can, that can sort of power, that power, our our housing efforts and then resourcing it. And so, you know, we've gone from 30,000 bed nights, and we're heading towards 170,000 bed nights by the end of 2,025, by applying this system in a systematic way, and it works for everyone. Virtually so, let's say, 95% of the home city want to be housed. So we can solve it through systems like this. And that's how the Va is making progress. 50% reduction in homelessness in the last 10 years. That's how Houston is reduced. Rate homelessness, 70% in less 7 years. That's how Finland did it. They sold homelessness in Finland very contained sort of subpopulation example. And so, you know, we could talk about the details. And and but yeah, I'm really proud of us. I'm really proud of the shelter. Sorry we just were rebranded. So forgive me. And I'm really proud of the city because they make really tough decisions about resources, because they're really the ones who are in charge of choosing the good from the best. And so last thing I want to leave you with in terms of this journey that I think you're on, because I talked to so many people who are on the same journey is there is something I call the program trap.

[61:15] But this narrative that we're just one program away from making this monumental step. And and we've seen other groups of folks study the problem and and really focus on what programming we can. We can add to make us more robust, or have these major progress. Trust yourself. They're really good at it, and they have the unenviable task in a landscape divided by scarcity, of choosing between what's good and what's this? And so they're really good at that. We we can't do everything. And so when they're examining programming, when I'm examining programming, my, my job is like. what what is the unique data points around a certain program that I'm going to. I'm going to compare those data points against this data point. And this data point because we don't have enough resources to do what's just good. We have to honor the suffering of the people out there by doing the best we can.

[62:06] so I'll leave you with one brief example. So the hospital came to us. They're very concerned about utilization of the emergency room. I almost, and by, I guess by and by proxy. These are the people who are the most right. People are coming to the emergency room over over and over again, and nothing. They did work. They did things. They put case managers out on the street. They did street outreach and street medicine. They did medicine, you know. We've been doing medical provision at our shelter. For a long time nothing worked, and so they said, Well, what do you think we could do? I said, we really have to have a program that that tries to create access, that 1st global bus for for this unique clientele, we have to bring that expertise to your high utilization list. and they said, Great! How do we pay for that? And so I was on a run, and I bumped into a friend of mine, whose grandfather was Oscar Meyer, and she said, Great, let's let's fund that.

[63:00] And so 50,000 h later, we had, you know, about half time, basically 2 3rd time case manager, go into the hospital and bring the expertise about the system to the high utilizer list, and the 1st year he has 15 people. These are the the most impaired. the highest utilizers, the ones facing the greatest challenges, 80 visits a year to the er like tragic tragic stuff. Er utilization went down 83% for those individuals we house. Why wasn't it 20 people? Why wasn't it? 25? Because the system doesn't have enough resources? So that's the message. You know, that's what we're trying to accomplish. We we are absolutely convinced that anybody we meet, if we have the right resources and the right system that we can solve their homelessness really, reliably, reliably, with the best tool against us 3, Mike. So Laura she's going to present from Boulder house and Burgers.

[64:03] Sure. Good evening. I'm Laura Shandam. I am a chief real estate officer for Bhp older housing partners as you may or may have. So it's the housing authority for the city of Boulder. So we're quasi governmental organization. Been around since 1966, and we have 3 parts. Really, we sort of, we develop housing. So that's what I'm gonna talk about tonight. And I have some more good news to kind of partner up with Mike's good news here. We do property management and maintain and own all of our units in perpetuity, and we have a housing choice voucher program as well, so we have quite a bit of activity in the community. We touch a lot of the programs that you guys are running. And I can't say enough about the work that you're doing. It's really powerful and important, and thank you for doing all of that. My job, specifically is to build housing. So when we talk about what

[65:03] is needed, it seems like there's some consensus here that more housing is gonna help in this issue, whether it's housing 1st or just housing in general. I think that there is quite a bit of mobility through the housing spectrum, and if you can just get more housing on the whiteboard in my office. My central goal is more housing period. So whether that is a permanently supported housing unit, or if that is family housing. That is a studio apartment somewhere. That is, our goal is to have more housing, because that choice is gonna provide for a lot of different opportunity to partner and to alleviate some of the suffering that we're seeing associated with affordability in general. So before we get into this, I just again just some stats about the Hpa. And bring them here. I'm sorry. There's probably blanking on the fact that maybe you don't know us. So we we operate in the city exclusively. We have about 1,600 units currently, that we own and manage. We have 233 apartments. At 3 different housing sites under Construction Hotel being one of them that was mentioned earlier. Rally is another one just over where the former rally Sport Health Club was

[66:23] 100 units there and then over by the diagonal plaza. We are got somewhere in there with through the city and part of there with pro residential ones that we've added some construction there. So a lot coming on really soon, we also more good news is that development begets development. So we have a huge pipeline of land that we've been able to over the course of the past several years. So as we get through these projects, we have other ones that are coming right behind us and balsam. That's coming. We have Landers, and there's quite a bit we've got another about 700 units that we have our eyes on to help in this community.

[67:10] So that's really good news, you know. More units, more housing, that's all. Gonna alleviate some of the strain that we're feeling with the issue of homelessness. last year we serve 4,393 individuals. And we served. And you know, if you break that into a household is 2,495 households, which includes both our voucher program and the housing that we own. So we're doing a lot. We're trying to meet some of these very specific needs as well around. Tsh. And so I'm going to talk a little bit case study about legal, which was the 1st permanently supported housing site in boulder, and then some of the other tactics that we're using to specifically work with providing more units to the specific population to help

[68:05] to tonight. Okay, that's fine. Thanks. We've kind of gone through this. We Megan talked a little bit about this at first, st so housing first, st we've heard quite a bit about that, but it's just a way that we can really look to, you know. Get somebody housed with services primarily supported housing. We have a little bit a different spend, not spend that just maybe it's targeted a little bit differently. But generally I think we're all talking about the same thing, which is some sort of permanent housing solution for somebody is what is going to help. And it's what people want. So we're we're meeting them where they are next slide, please. So we have partnerships, and we work with all those quite a bit. And these are some of the sites where we have dedicated units for folks exiting homelessness, holiday established in 2,004. We have 10 units there we have scattered sites that were established in 2,006. Lee Hill was our 1st sort of

[69:06] They're independent living units. 31 departments. And I'll bring some more information about that on some future slides. We have working with the city of Boulder. On these vouchers 30 pearl is integrated permanently supportive housing and housing that is 100% affordable. But we have units that are available only exclusively with vouchers for folks that are facing homelessness. and we consider that sort of integrated from my supportive housing. Our our thought there was that we would if we're building it, instead of going through some of the if if we're building something, we should make sure we're integrating this particular type of housing for this particular population. So for hilltop that's gonna be future income restriction or age restricted. So populations of 62 plus, as Mike mentioned, a lot of folks that are experiencing homelessness or at risk of experiencing homeless are in that sort of older adult age range. And so we have 15 units of 60 that will be dedicated for folks that are either currently homeless or experiencing risk of homelessness.

[70:23] Rally flats, which is where? We're building a hundred units, 10 to 10% of those that will be dedicated again to permanently supportive housing. Then Hawthorne Court, I'm happy to say, is larger size. Units that will be dedicated for family sizes are at risk of experiencing homelessness, so that will have 3, 2 and 3 bedroom units. That will be dedicated for that 50 year. When is it opening? Summer? 2025. So it's drawn up, and if you wanna go but those 3 are all under construction right now and and have different occupancy dates. But

[71:02] this fall over Hilltop rally will be March 2025. It doesn't happen 2020 July, August 2020. So going back to Lee Hill, this is 31 units. It's at the corner of Lee Hill and Broadway. Right by our office, nearby shelter. We have collaborated with all roads open shelves for the homeless on the site. For a long time it's been open for about 10 years. And then just some other requirements. So residents are exiting chronic illnesses residing over slightly. So this is pretty fun, not fun but at the hopeful information is a better word. But I'm just a number of years that people have been able to live with us there, and this should have been labeled. My apologies are years, and along the

[72:06] other access. You've got number of residents, but this is kind of just indicating how many years people have been able to live successfully there. It's just, you know, once they're they're coming in. It's it's been a really successful situation for many, not all, but for me. So next time program exits. So again, you know, just speaking to how successful this is, you know, we have 51 total exits over the course of the existence of the property. 34. Successful, 17. Successful. You can see there successful exit, whether it's moving into a different type of permanent housing or passing away, you might think, why would passing away be successful? Exit. But that person who may have her passed away. you know, passed away house, you know, hidden and safe and secure community. So that is considered successful. I think.

[73:02] So again, you can just see that way. Better. You know we maybe a little bit of a restart. But as years have progressed we've gotten a lot more stable at the location and at Rio, and calls for service. You know. So I think more importantly, 0 neighbor complaints and the calls for service. Or you know, there's a variety of things, that is. you know, there are things that happen. But for the most part we're seeing too many issues at the property that would get the neighbors upset. And this is important. I think one of the questions that came through from her earlier today that this Board had asked about was going to be. And you know this one. This the Lee hillside had a very rocky start, and a big community meeting before it even progressed, and a lot of neighborhood anxiety about this location and and what it's intended use was. And we're really happy to say that we have 0 neighbor complaints now and have very collaborative relationship with the neighborhood. So it's been a really positive over the years. So it started off rough. And as you can see today, we've got 0 neighbor complaints. So that's really good

[74:19] program goals. I'm I'm out of my element here. I'm a i'm a developer, so forgive me for for not being a little bit more articulate about some of the stuff. If little Ellington here, she'd be so much better. But you got me. So you know, residence ability skills and income self-determination. I'm not gonna read that off to you. But the 2023 annual report, and we do sort of get very specific about this one property. Every year we have an annual report for our entire portfolio that

[75:03] it's important. Make sure that the community is understanding that, you know we have a pretty broad, raging age range, but not as low as you might think. So 41 to 83 is sort of the agents there. We do house both men and women. 0. As you said, neighbor complaints. There are some calls for service. We have 8 original residents. We've been housed successfully for 10 years, which is great. have a lot of partners that that work there and work with us, their world, to make sure that all of that is the services are in place to make sure that we are doing what we need to do. I will say, in terms of developing this type of housing. Now, I mean, the resources are important, so I'll save for them. Piggyback, a little bit on, Mike said, is the the resources. They're extensive. In terms of what we need to make this kind of housing move forward. And so, you know, Gap financing the tax credit program, all of those things to

[76:06] fund the 500 to, you know, $700,000 it takes to make these things moving forward. It's critical, and it's I don't wanna say it's not negotiable, but it's just given where we are in our community with the land costs and the construction costs and interest rates and the different factors that go into putting a deal together. It's hard to avoid what that cost is. And I actually haven't found a way, I think, about this stuff all the time. So that's just sort of the reality. It costs a lot of money and the resources that we partner with the city to receive to help gap finance fees plus the tax credit program that we tap to make sure that those resources are coming in are critical. We who was fortunate I don't know. I I'm actually, I'm sure we could not do this today, but we have no debt on this property, so we were able to fund all of the construction through. We had a construction loan, but we're able to then pay that off and utilize tax credit, equity and different other grant funding sources to be able to have a debt free project going forward which enables sort of high cost of service, provision, and things like that to be able to support the residents and

[77:14] and then operating expenses to keep the company running. I'm excited. But yeah, we are building fast and furious. I would say, what can be done to help? I you know I heard a lot of really great suggestions tonight. I think more housing again, regardless of whether it's specific to Ps. H. Or general benefits you restricted affordable housing with a capital. A capital H is I think, critical. There are ways that we can probably streamline that process. It's really hard and entitling anything, building something. finding resources to be able to do. It is you know, it's a game, a twister every single time you do these deals. And you know, pinky on purple, and their elbow back on green and

[78:09] blue, or whatever it is. You contour it to make it make it work, and I think anything that can be done within the city to trust that the folks that are, you know, sort of in the trenches doing the work, whether it's me building something or doing the work that they're doing. Bridge house all around the city. There are really talented people really dedicated people who are doing this, and I can't say enough like, yes, there's probably always a shiny new toy out there, or shiny new something, but we we're doing the work and we're getting there. It just takes money. And when I say resources, I mean, I mean I I there's no way to to get around it. Land is great, but when it comes down to it we need money to stand these buildings up. We need money to provide the services that are helping the people live successfully in the units that we are. So resources are critical.

[79:05] and I'm happy to answer questions. Oh, and I did chat one really good. Let me ask about a success story. This one's awesome. We have a gentleman who's been living like. I'm sure you can speak to this better than that. But he has Parkinson's and a few years ago started doing working with bicycles and because he no longer felt safe driving a car. He started sort of a business around and working on electric and gas engines for motorized bicycles. And as of this report today from Allison who works with him, and his presence and symptoms have started to reverse. So his stable housing, plus work, has created a situation is. and his health is getting better with something that is really, as I think we all know, Parkinson's is not something. So, anyway. I thought somebody asked him. Great sort of very put a point on it

[80:09] is successfully housed, was able to then find meaningful work within his community. So last last summer I was driving through Boulder, and when people visit me from out of town I always give them an affordable housing tour. And half of the half the cranes in our city we're building. And I thought that was pretty amazing. And so I'm I'm lucky enough to interact with these individuals in these organizations on a regular basis. But I'm blown away with these presentations. So thank you. You couldn't do it. So you've answered some of these questions along the way. Luckily it's a cookie alligator. So I'm gonna I'm gonna try to weave through some of the things that

[81:10] we we could still look at. So one of and you, some of you touched on this a little bit. But there was a question here about how organizations that do this work. How do they collaborate? The question assumed that there wasn't collaboration. and so you can maybe talk to how that is or how that isn't Maybe I'll start off with with Mike and Megan. Megan works particularly with adult homelessness. Virtually all the organizations in our city, particularly ones that receive city funding in some way. But maybe you could talk about that or any changes around that you've seen.

[82:03] And then Mike and I've got some other questions that I'll run down the line here. Sure, I think I don't know if you're familiar. But with both the housing authorities, city of Longmont, Tree Boulder, Boulder County. homeless solutions for Boulder County, which is a system, wide strategic effort towards this issue. And so not only do we set strategy around things on things from either services or housing or things we need going forward. But a big piece of it is coordinating the providers. And so there's a number of meetings, and Boulder is always a good time, because it's such a small space. That's oftentimes the same people. So we're you know, we meet at least once or twice a week in different capacity. So it's to coordinate the outreach services, or it's to coordinate who's getting connected to what housing, resource and what housing resources most appropriate. So does this person, epsh? Or does it need? Do they need transitional housing? So those conversations? Absolutely happen regularly? And then, and also what I find doing this work in different communities in Boulder

[83:14] having to really like. Buy me conversations like we are talking about John Smith, and where the group thinks with their input, what they want where we could best help them. So it is a really, I don't think one organization could do it alone. And so it really is a strategic effort that people coordinate, collaborate. Yeah, it's amazing. It's an amazing community this way. I mean, it's they know it's a it's small, I mean, we know everybody. and it would not be the same. It would be so much harder in a in a bigger metropolitan area, like, you know, I could call the police chief and see him tomorrow. like it's just unique. I can call the sheriff. I know my 1st name known for 10 years. Like we can leverage those relationships reduced all the time all the time, just on the phone with the Director of Mental Health partners. Housing

[84:05] like this is happening in informal ways and informal ways all the time. And I think what's really, really exciting is that when, before we had an opportunity to provide sort of the the housing fuel to all of these relationships, it we all knew each other, but we are all still doing our own individual things, because I think we were the product of an environment that really did not really view housing as a a very frequent opportunity. But now, as the system becomes more resourced, we see so many parts of the system adjust their activities to support the housing activity, because they all realize that this is so key to a person's stability. So if you're interested in reentry program, there's a nonprofit that was doing reentry mode mentoring. And in the midst of them, sort of realizing that their mentoring program really very reliable. they became aware of this emerging housing effort. And all of a sudden. They're they're changing everything they do to be part of the housing effort, because they realize that getting a person house 1st when they're reentering from the jail is the best way to stabilize the person that get them to where they need to do be to increase their well being so, not only do we see this sort of collaborative network really

[85:15] functioning and and operate in a very systematic way. As we put more resources, it becomes more effective, right? And so we'll give you the perfect example, I think, as a shelter we'd be housed and in December 2023. We housed, I think, 8 people. So it was pretty pretty light month for us, so our interventions resulted in 8 people. Anything else throughout our system. Fast forward, one month. 60. So again, why same people, same system. same expertise, same dedication, same compassion, same amount of collaboration. All. The only difference was that we opened Uber primarily open for Uber in in January.

[86:03] And so the system is really primed. It sort of shows the efficacy of all this work and all this effort, that when it's it's when you sort of the way to leverage all this, this collaboration, all this effort we've made to get everybody on the same page, and talking and communicating and working off lists and really coordinating our efforts. It really pays off when we leverage that with more housing resources. So yeah, it's it's it works really well, and it's really exciting. Can I add to that? I think I think the one thing that the city has done really well is bringing resources to the table, so that we all know what the other person is doing, what other nonprofits are doing. The path into homelessness is best. Many people end up homeless for many, many different reasons, and it takes more paths out of homeless to get somebody housed. I mean ultimately to end homelessness. Everybody needs to be housed. But how we get them to that housing position looks different for every individual experiencing homelessness.

[87:02] So everybody sitting at the table, and all the hard work that we're doing is only part of the solution. We need, you know, folks at the table for the elderly that are that are getting pushed into homelessness, due to economic reasons. We need people that focus on youth that are timing out of foster care. And I think the the ability for the city to put together all those resources in a kind of one stop shop is hugely important to the success of changing that dial in homelessness. Thank you. so listen, Julie, can you maybe talk about the the funding landscape right now what that looks like, what it's been the the last 2 or 3 years, and what it what it looks like. From your view viewpoint, moving forward around the programs. That you're supporting. And sure first, st either way, we have a budget of about 10 million dollars a year, and

[88:09] we that includes the food that's donated to the food banks and the value that and what we're seeing right now is we had I mean a steep increase in funding in response to Covid. both from public and private. Private. Initially, people stepped up. They wanted to help their neighbors. There was a lot of individual donations, and that is the base of apples funding. We have, about 60% of our money comes from individual donors in our community. And that's a testament that's usual. And it's a testament to the 100 years in this community. So The next phase of funding was kind of all the acronym, the arpa, that is, the cares act. All the covid money came started coming through, and a lot of that was helping with rental assistance,

[89:04] to keep people from being unhoused, and that is now tapering off so just the numbers like we gave out before Covid, about $900,000 a year in in financial systems. That's 90% rent. Let's just call it rent. We do some other utilities and medical, but So we, a little under a million Pre Covid went up to about 3.5 million at the peak of Covid and last year it was 3.2, and this year it'll be 2.5,000,002.7 million. So it took half a million dollars out of our rental assistance budget which is painful. We took maximum amounts from 1,000 to 800. So we see a contraction that is resetting at a higher level than prior to the pandemic. But it's certainly not enough to meet the need of the inflation period that we're living through.

[90:01] so we get a lot of money from the city. Hate to even add it up and tell you. But we we get. I don't know. Maybe like a little under a million dollars, maybe. All right. Yeah, but that includes things like the Health Equity Fund, where we purchase meals from Bridge House to the frozen meals that we distribute in the food banks. We have a great partnership. With them. With community table. So and hopefully, that is stable. And and it's it's been increased. The rental keep Ellie's house increased last year. so that's a that's a very core kind of funding to stabilize those programs. And I agree with Julie during covid private and cities and counties States. The funding increased pretty drastically. There was ways to protect your payroll and you know that funding was amazing and and did well, due to Covid when really business was, everyone's really worried you didn't. We didn't really know what was going to happen with the economy. We are seeing a lot of that support taper off.

[91:16] But I think and this goes with foundations and and different granting opportunities. Some of that covid funding is drying out, and then there's time. So if you receive some funding, you have to use it all up by middle of 2025, and it's 2026 depending on what grants you received. But I think the exciting piece is that the Federal Government in the States cities counties are identifying homelessness as a a place to put resources. So we are seeing some increase in resources for homeless services. People coming out of Doc. Addiction, mental health. There are more resources put in place there, but there are a lot more nonprofits that are asking for that funding. So funding is very scarce. So for us, we're unique in that. We can try to earn some of our funding and finding different contracts and

[92:10] you know different ways. To earn that money is is crucial, but also difficult, because cities have budget cuts as well. Economy is, you know, inflation is through the roof. It's cost more to even operate. So for catering the cost of goods has gone up so funding, I think I think every nonprofit can honestly say, if you're gonna ask me what what makes me lose sleep at night? It's funding to make sure that we can keep our doors open and make sure that we are offering. You know the program that we're able to offer. But we're working hard on the side of working with stakeholders to put more resources into the bucket, so that more nonprofits can can pull from those resources to to help sustain operations. But funding is is very tricky to this age. Can I said 2 things, listen to one is for family. Homeless is a little different, because HUD doesn't consider a family with children that are couch surfing homeless. And so a lot of the resources that come through the big HUD pipes are are

[93:20] oriented exclusively to either vets or adult individuals. It's not quite the same funding landscape. and then another thing. I'll mention that people don't often realize of the to say 3 million dollars in rental assistance we give a year. Think about 500,000 goes to older housing partners to keep people from losing your affordable housing. So we're always trying to prevent that. And so I think sometimes we think, oh, you build it. And you're just done. If they're going to be fine, they're okay, and it's quite expensive to keep people in affordable housing because they have a shock. They have a cut in hours. They have a something happens, and they still have to pay a percentage. And

[94:03] and I don't think people realize that. That's a big chunk of and just yeah, I mean for sure. So I just want to also be clear like HP, while we have like grant resources that come in to support the construction that we do. We are self sufficient in terms of the rent that we charge. So we're just like a private landlord that has to keep the lights on, who has to pay the maintenance guy who has to turn a unit. All those types of property management functions. And so that is, there's no subsidy that comes in from the Federal Government for the city. So that is all. We buy down our rents by putting equity in at the front end of our development cycle. And then, when we have a property, we have a lower rent to charge. But we need that rent, so we can't afford as a landlord it. It rocks the entire system, so to speak, of affordable housing, you know, to to be there for everybody if we don't get the rent and to support the debt payments that we need to make on that problem. So I I yeah.

[95:15] Julie, I don't know if we've met before. I'm I do eviction defense work at the Justice Center program. I'm sure I feel like I've seen you before. But you know, boulder housing partners is, I believe, the largest landlord in Boulder. Is that right? And it's, you know, they lease to low income people. So it's it's not surprising that it's probably one of the biggest landlords that evicts people in Boulder, too. And that's as you're explaining. That's just the reality. If you're a public housing authority. Never evict anyone. Then you're gonna have no money to keep doing what you do. But I do wonder does boulder housing partners put people in touch with community resources before it actually starts the eviction process. You said something to me. It's very interesting, which is that a lot of people don't like get captured in the statistics because they become homeless. But the evictions never actually filed.

[96:20] And the reason for that is the procedure to evict. Someone typically involves the landlord posting a demand on the door, saying, You have 10 days in the case of a property that's received some sort of HUD, financing 30 days to pay or move out. and that's just a piece of paper. It doesn't get filed with the court. If the tenant doesn't comply with that the next step. And again, this is the typical process. There's plenty of exceptions. The next step after that is for the landlord to file the eviction with court that allows it to get captured by the court system. We have people in the city of Boulder who review the court dockets reach out to those people with resources. But the way I view it, you know, working with a lot of people in court is, you know, only half of people get served with an eviction summons typically that show up.

[97:08] And I know there must be so many people who get a demand on their door, who, just it says literally, you shall pay or move out by the State. Some just move out, and they never get even picked up by the eviction process. and I do wonder, how do we? How do we help those people? Because I always think of you know the immigrant family, or whatever from Central America, who's not familiar with our legal system, they may be terrified to show up at a court thinking something horrible could happen to them. No one goes to jail for being evicted. But people don't always recognize that or appreciate that. And if they get a legal demand on their door, maybe they think I have to go live on the streets now. and they're not captured by the social services that our community provides to people who go through the eviction process. So you know, I'm just curious. What do you guys do to sort of reach out to those people? Sounds like Bhp government org works with you, but not all landlords, too, because they'll say, Go get paid. They they would like that and we sit on various coordinating bodies. I think we're pretty well known particularly of the Mobile Home Park management. Agencies, and

[98:23] if if you have a 10 day notice, so you're not at court yet. Right? You call Alpha, and you'll get the quickest appointment. But most of our, I think it's about 80% of our appointments are not those emergency. So it's almost like I am not going to be able to make rent this month. They'll call. They'll say, Okay, my friends, due in 3 weeks. Try and get in. We have a long. We're trying to process people as fast as possible. But if there is to keep you them from going to court you can get an emergency appointment. So what? And we also work with the city on, in ever on Empress before the court. So the funding that we work with the city is to keep that court date from happening.

[99:11] And that maybe what you're seeing is at the court, or or when they're well right. He's the thought I have is once the eviction. Complaint is filed and the summons is served. The landlord starts incurring attorney fees, and I sort of think of it, and then they get matched with funding. But the landlord, you know the case. Php. Is already spending money on lawyers, and it's like, could we have done this in a more efficient way also, could we have connected the tenant with resources? Well, before a big balance grows? You know an unmanageable balance. You know. It's just one month's rent, and they can get help with that, and then they get their job, and it's good. There's more money in the pot to help other people. So under our State law, when an eviction summons is served again, this is when the complaints been filed, lawyers have been hired. They have to. A landlord has to include resources, and F is one of the ones listed.

[100:02] That's not a requirement, for when the initial demand is posted, and you know you said landlords know about you. Well, I hope I mean, even like I hope, that people know enough about. I mean, we do a lot of outreach, and there's a lot of outreach. But that could be a fix to state law, which is that that resource page that goes in step 2 should just be attached to the initial demand that here's all the resources you can get. I don't think the city has the power to regulate that. That's by State law. I don't know if there'd really be opposition to that, because the landlords would like if people got connected with resources earlier, too. But I do think the city could make effort. Do that, or ask their lawyers to do or excuse me. Bhp, which is, can you? And when you post an eviction demand on the door? Can you also include with it, or on the back of it all of the resources that are available to the tenant they now have this 30 day period or 10 day period before an evictions even filed against them.

[101:04] We're saying you gotta pay or move out. Here's a list of resources, you know, F. Or what have you? Cdp, that they can talk to? So I don't know. That was just the thought. I always wonder. You know I'm dealing with it once we're in court and that ship is sailed. But you know what what efforts can be done to educate people on the front end, because the way I view it is when someone is facing eviction. That's sort of the last part. I don't work with many people who are homeless. I work with a lot of people, though, who are unfortunately are about to be homeless, and I think, like you said Housing. If we can house them. That's that that stops things before a lot of problems, right? Because when we're talking about engagement services, making them providing durable assets and support 10 support services. What you're really talking about is this 4th wheel of us ton of supportive services. So Bhp, actually does a really good job of building, trying to build robust kind of supportive services. They're hampered by lack of resources. They have a ton of support

[102:07] team. It's called resident services, but their job is to engage with people who are having trouble history of not paying rent behavioral issues can get in front of that whole eviction process. So we just wanna relate your your very astute observation about how it fits into the system that we're trying to build more robustly so that those services are available to people in all sorts of forms. But most importantly, someone who's there to knock on their door to say. you know. well, we're here to help, sort of, you know, catchphrase, but I think you know what I mean. Also, as it relates to Laura's, suggested that they can provide the the asset, but they don't always have the resources to provide the rent, affordability and rent stability. So again, how do we look at that? As a system? Well, we have to have robust resources, whether that's 1 or 2 time interventions a year, whether that's a voucher for people to keep them rent stable again, I just wanted to point out that as we talk about these systems and the and the gaps in them, they can. We could relate to them within this framework of the system that we're trying to sort of build together. So one of the earlier questions was about collaboration.

[103:13] So I think you all answered it in different ways. So so thank you. I'll just also add on that. the city and all roads started a program. I think a year year and a half ago. And it's it's a as a housing retention team. So working with individuals that we know are at risk assigning them. You know. Case management help with you know medical concerns. You know someone who's a hoarder helping them, you know, with that helping them maintain release, understanding what they need to do to be successful as a tenant, but it also has a peer support aspect to it.

[104:04] so connecting them with other individuals who have gotten through homelessness successfully and helping them build positive networks and relationships that that help them in that transition to housing. So there's a lot of coordination on getting into housing and a lot of coordination. Once they're house as well. And I think we have a 95% retention rate with the housing retention team over the last 18 months, and those are the most difficult individuals. I think we're gonna try to wrap up my set of the questions I was gonna say, is this a good time for the board to start jumping in with more questions? Absolutely. I gotta say your presentations were wonderful, and the slides were extremely well presented, and I scribbled tons of notes.

[105:03] But, the focus. And the reason we asked you to come primarily is to figure out how to make some of the solutions more affordable. Now. We'd hope to have Catherine Bean from element here tonight. We have a nice representation of different organizations, government and non government. But I think one of the lessons learned is that any kind of organization can do this, even including a nonprofit developer. So how can we help more? It happen now, I'm gonna quote a couple of things from this article about Bluebird that ran in the boulder housing network. It's a 20 million dollar project. You know. The the capital stack was really impressive. The city of Boulder contributed 3 million to buy the land boulder County contributed 500,000 construction costs. There were Federal low income tax credits. our State affordable housing, tax credits, capital private Activity Bonds and Colorado division of housing funds with all that, it's a 20 million dollar project providing a 40 apartments. And this Karen clemen my vice chair. Gears keep something on. That's $500,000 a door, and that's an expensive housing solution.

[106:14] When we in part of our research was involved touring the Veterans community project last month. And it's 26 transitional homes being built in Long Island fiber built so far they do provide services as well, but the cost per dwelling is about $60,000. That was pretty impressive. They were nice units. We saw them. So getting to the questions this is for Julie. Does Etha own any of the apartments that you mentioned? And can you talk a little bit about how financially you were able to make that happen. So we own all of them, and they're all debt free. And it's been a since 1970. So it's been a while. But it's been a combination of things

[107:02] we were given a building in June by the city. They? We've been operating it for many, many years and renting it for a dollar. So they stay transferred the title, thank you. Up on echo houses up on the hill on Marine Street is our 1st housing. But we gotten funding through capital campaigns some grants over the years we worked with homemade when we built a 5 unit site up on in North Boulder that they bring in donations from the building trades, including, like the contractor and main it. It was about 30% of the cost was donated so we we've gotten all we all kinds of things. We bought a building up in Netherland with cash because the couple was retiring and they wanted to make sure their old hotel up there remained for social housing, and they gave us their price. And

[108:02] we have no cash. That's a very active role. Yeah, so, but we don't have any data on our building. Right. That's great. For Mike Block, Michael. So Paul Rose is involved in managing the peruver housing at Blueberg, and legal correct. Are there any plans as you move forward towards this new model to become housing developers, operators in your own right. You know. I think, that you know our our initial or instinct is to do this to collaboration partnership with it's worked in the past, I mean. So whether it's with the HP. Or whether it's it's with all the properties. And so, you know, for us to be able to develop open time to develop development expertise would be, you know, significantly out of our lane when that expertise exists in the community already.

[109:04] You know, we're wrestling right now whether we want to have a stake. And in those developments. And we're being challenged to sort of wrestle with that suggestion. But I wouldn't say that as a unique developer to try and take on the skill sets that, for instance, that doorman just like that, that would be a a big journey for us, and the departure from from you know, I think you know, if if those, if those resources exist in the community effectively through collaboration, it doesn't inspire me to use limited resources that we have in a particular, but it could be expanded partnership role from what we want to do, more extrapolate those types of projects for sure. And and you know we wrestle with this notion of of of the per door cost right? Because there's a there's an aggregate per per door cost. But what's the local investment? And this is one of the most. you know, exciting things about looking at expanding our impact through housing.

[110:02] do housing, development partnering on housing developments is. you know, the net contribution from the city was 2 million dollars, right? Because the the project had to pay a million dollars in fees back to the city. So that's $50,000 a door of investment like I. I don't know how you could do it cheaper. So the cost is $500,000 a unit, 40 units, 20 million dollars. But the the leverage that we're able to generate at $50,000 a door is unmatched. right? And I can't create that sort of leverage in any other program that we run right? So and to give that some context 3 million dollars approximately to run our overnight shelter. It's an emergency room of the homeless service system. It's unbelievably important. I would never suggest we don't have emergency rooms right? But I can't leverage that money. right? It's 1 to one. But I can leverage to a factor of 50,000, to to 510 times local investment dollars. And that's powerful.

[111:02] And so yeah, the the cost. Ultimately, if you look at it from a per door, it's heartbreaking, and I would love to challenge us in the headwinds that $500,000 creates. Because if it was, you know, if it's $200,000 we could do a lot more for sure. But let's just also remember that the cost per door is $50,000 a blooper, and so super exciting and lower, and Longmont, because the land was free. right? And so, you know, it's, you know that to us is the future and how we can have an impact. We're serving the highest need. Folks who are the most at risk of dying with the most serious impairments and the worst luck. And we're we're we're doing the best we can do for them by the data. The most reliable thing we can do, the biggest impact on the community. Their their Munich charges dropped by 90%. Once they're housed right? So the impact on the community is unbelievable. The best way to solve camping is to give person a house. All of these impacts are best addressed by housing $50,000 a door. So we think that's really exciting. If I could just add on one item to that as well, I'm sort of connecting it to your the tiny homes. So I noticed in your comparison, you're actually not comparing apples to apple, I know absolutely not. And so we we looked at tiny homes in boulder, and, so, generically speaking, and I, I like the leveraging analogy. But

[112:21] so land in boulder to create affordable housing, let's say, is a hundred $1,000. A door. Just the land just the land not developed. No infrastructure not entitled. Also, if you're doing tiny homes. You're probably doing a 3rd of the density. So the land cost is now $300,000 a door to do tiny homes in boulder. Then you put the infrastructure on top of that. Let's say, $50,000 the door. 70 entitlements gets you up to 400.

[113:00] You put a $70,000 unit on it. Now you're a quarter $470,000 in that I'll build a nice apartment building with more debt, with more units, with 3 times more units. So those those are the things that we've been sort of struggling with. And I think one of the challenges we have is there's there's solutions in different cities and different communities that work really well. Some of them work in boulder, and some of them don't but the other difference is where the money comes from to build a tiny home to pay for the land. None of that's gonna be leveraged with the with the tax, like the tax credits are. Hmm! Great. Thank you. I couple of more good questions and we'll open it up to anyone else, Melissa. But what about the cost of what you're doing in your 3 buildings? I mean, how do you measure that by the bed, or what is the overall cost of the at the building? Or so we we were. We base our success off of the graduates that we're putting back out into the community. So we know you know the cost of homelessness is expensive to to the community. Whether they're going to the courts, to the Ers through police fire. Ems. All of the resources that it takes to to deal with somebody that's on the street that's in an encampment. And you know Mike works with

[114:22] those folks that are highly disabled, very vulnerable. They! They're eligible for a voucher. The folks that we work with are not eligible for housing 1st vouchers. They're just not and it's unfortunate because the resources then for them kind of tank. So for us, when we look at the success of the program it really is. What do they monetarily put back into the community once they've gone through our program? So the cost for a single training to go through the program is about $47,000 cost us to put somebody through. But when they graduate and they're out and they're paying taxes, and they're going shopping and working, and they're doing all the things that we do on a regular basis.

[115:07] You times that times, let's say, 36 people that would graduate one house. You're looking at about a million dollars that they're putting back into the community. So for us, the monetary value of them going through the program is outweighed by what they're able to put back into society, into their community where they decide to live. That is to us how we kind of judge the door. Now, to build a facility right now we're building Inglewood. it'd be it's about a 5 million dollar project. So it is expensive to take these buildings, take them down to the studs, renovate and put them back into use in a congregate living style. But if we base that over years, monetary value that they're putting back into the community is substantial. The flip side to that, that we've not really talked about is when somebody is housed and they've reengaged with their family, and they're reengaged with their children, or they're going back to school, or they're working is that ripple effect.

[116:09] So when somebody is able to stabilize going into housing. they have a better relationship with their families and their children, and they're breaking cycles. So they're breaking some of the cycles of addiction and chronic homelessness, and that, too, has a monetary value that we're unable to really put a bill on so really for us, it's about the sustainment of what they're able to do when they graduate right? It's more of an investment model you're talking about. It's not just cost. which is great and building in England, I mean, you couldn't build it for 5 million dollars right? But if you had to go ground up. Yeah, I mean, it's Pricey. I think everybody that has been as much as a brand new thing. You're you're adapting a building exactly. And you know, I think anybody that right now is trying to build, and I'm sure you're going through this with your project supply and demand.

[117:01] Some of the new regulations that have come out, especially house how you're funding your projects. Puts different compliance pieces in there. So it really is becoming more and more expensive to build the housing, whether it be permanent housing or transitional housing or shelter. Is so much more expensive, and I think that is one area where people on on this panel on this board, and people that might be listening talk to your stakeholders about lowering the ability to build some of these. These facilities, the zoning laws, the permits. All the pieces that go into building a a facility is just difficult, but it's necessary, you know, back to Mike's Point. The one way we end homelessness is to have enough affordable housing. And right now we just don't. Can I jump in here. Absolutely. I'm done a question I want to ask you on that. I mean, obviously, money to fund your guys programs would be awesome. Money is also hard to come by when it comes to politics, as I'm sure you all know.

[118:08] setting aside more money, what change in the law would you ask for to improve the services you provide. And I know that's a hard question, because minimum wage. it's the other side of affordability. That's what we're seeing. But if we raise minimum wage, which is great, we need to have better wages on the flip side. We have to fix the resources that are attached to that. So when we raise minimum wage, we often don't think about raising the threshold for snap or housing vouchers or medicaid, so we've seen some areas where people are offered a raise, and I have to do the math. If I take this dollar an hour raise, I lose my Medicaid and my my food stamps or my food card my ebt card. So if they take the dollar amount and that dollar raise, they're actually taking

[119:09] a decrease in our paycheck. So when we talk about minimum wage, we have to change the other side so laws that can help are making sure that those are are staying level so that we can honestly give people a chance to get a savings account and take that next step and actually grow with their raises. Well, that's a really interesting point. Because isn't eligibility for a lot of those programs like it's the same statewide. It's a Federal or Federal. And when you have Boulder County saying we're going to raise minimum wage to 25. Does that effectively kick a lot of people off of Medicaid? Well, just $25. Yes, but to from going to $14, from 42 cents right now to $15. Very. A few people are at that. You have to be at the right. And, in fact, in the city, I think it's the city of Boulder, the. Usually it's the poverty line for a lot of the programs. And the average gap between

[120:09] being in poverty and being in poverty line is $8,000 in the city of Boulder. So you've got a lot of headroom, unfortunately, so it will affect some people, and we work all day long with getting people through those they can still get food assistance. They can. Still, you know, they can supplement. It's a strategy to get you to through that cliff effect for those that are affected. We also see that people well for families and kids like oh, I don't have to work the night shift, both of us, you know, like it may work less because it's that 4th minimum wage job may not be as necessary. So I think it's sometimes characterizes like that. That's everyone. And that's but it's not it's very your case specific. So minimum wage is one. Does anyone else have ideas? Well. I'm not. I'm not a housing barriers expert. I think that's probably more.

[121:00] Whereas Perio or Catherine was here, and they could speak to specific laws that maybe could make an impact to curb, I'm sure has a lot of expertise in this as well. I I would just point out that we have a 6 million unit deficit of affordable housing in this country right now, and we're our housing starts about the same as they were in 1,950. And so that's the problem, right? So I I to me, it's a musical chair. Analogy. Right? You have 10 people that are looking for 9 chairs. and no matter what you do to those 10 people, we're missing a chair. If they're all have mental health issues or missing a chair. If they all are cured of their pathology, they're missing a chair. If they all have addiction issues. They they were missing a chair. If they all go to treatment and and and find recovery, that we're missing a chair, and if we can raise the minimum wage, which I'm a big supporter of it, a signer of the recent letter to the Council. We we're still missing a chair, and so I I would. I love the question, and I think that focusing specifically on the barriers, the legal barriers that prevent us from having more robust housing development. Lowering these costs of $500,000 to door to Houston's 200,000, or trying to at least incrementally make progress towards that is, is part of it locally, for sure. So I'm really interested in the experts in that and that sort of legal realms. What might be helpful.

[122:20] I mean, yeah, I do think that there's a number of things that really add to that $500,000 cost. When you work to leverage the tax credit equity that comes in, there's certain soft costs that you can't avoid. But a lot of those soft costs, a lot of we we see are things that we pay to the city of Boulder, or pay a consultant to allow us to get through a city of boulder process to that enables that housing. And so our. if there's a way to streamline for any housing. I mean, I I think the analogy of you know the 9 chairs for 10 people is great, you know. If we could

[123:00] figure out a way for any developer. I mean, it would be great if it was for affordable housing. And this particular bit of any developer who just get through the process a little bit more quickly. It would really enable us to streamline costs. I mean, we see incredible cost to entitlements. Community see incredible cost to pay utility. Infrastructure costs that the city wants. Sorry. This is my need. Those improvements that they they piggyback on development work to make sure that the stormwater is ready, or this is right, and it doesn't come. It comes from Kurt's budget. Really, you know, because we're having a gap finance. And so we're looking under the city, other city, our friends of the city here that can help us. Not that there are other people. So so I think you know, fee waivers looking to streamline or fast track entitlements for affordable housing, and 1, 2, 3. We haven't really seen that happen, and you know

[124:07] reality of what I'm doing, anyway. If we could see the city relax on for affordable housing, anyway, if they want infrastructure improvements in the land that we're developing. They can come in and pay for it, you know. I mean, there's certain stormwater costs for for a you know, we had a $500,000 cost at the hilltop. That was because one planner said one thing and didn't like the velocity for water, and you know it would. has been problematic for our budget, you know. So those are the types of things that have housing, authority, housing Advisory Board could advocate for streamlining or for finding budget. And you know, if that comes to a money thing right? So we understand that the city needs to be done. But but there's efficiency cost loss. When you're paying consultants and lawyers to fight with the city that money's evaporating as opposed to actually being used.

[125:12] I miss every night. I can hide construction costs is probably more than that. You know 350 to $425,000, and I think the city can also relax some of the permit fees because I have a question. so my impression is that Boulder is a very generous community, and all of you are evidence that we have a lot of expertise and a lot of compassion. But the problem isn't just boulder. Right? Like this is a regional problem. This is a national problem, and part of the 5 to $700,000 a door cost could be mitigated if we went to less expensive communities and and created that 10th chair. So my question is, to what extent is there efforts to create regional solutions where maybe some of your expertise is is

[126:19] is shared in less expensive communities. Because you know, the magnet effect of people coming to Boulder because we have these services. boulder can't solve all the problems. So how about regional solutions? I guess if if I could mention thing that's current right now, and that's the the one b funding that passed last fall. That will come into place. At the beginning of 2025. It's between. It's about 17 to 18 million dollars a year that's dedicated for it's affordable housing.

[127:00] The Commissioners have had a couple of well, they had a a meeting, and couple of months ago actually focused on homelessness. And it was with different elected officials trying to figure out how we can do this sort of, you know, work on these solutions throughout all of the between, you know, providing housing in the services around around this it would certainly be my goal, or if I could wave a magic wand that superior Lewisville, Lafayette, Erie, would all have a permanent supportive housing development done in the next 5 years. you know, in part through one b funding in one b funding will have funding for housing development as well as supportive services.

[128:02] And I. That's an opportunity that I I hope we as a larger community, don't miss because homeless. I'm sorry. Yeah, I think the challenge and is that individuals who become homeless come from every community. They don't come from simply boulder and I was looking at the data this morning. I think about it's a little over 20% of the homeless. Now in our community. Have been here. For more than a year. That's in part because we've housed so many individuals. But we need a a regional approach that's going to address this. We we, as a city of boulder, cannot create enough housing to solve this, but I think I'm sorry, but I think the good news is is there that is happening? There are other communities that are building navigation centers. You know. We operate in Navigation Center

[129:08] here in Boulder Covid, and we're going back into navigation for our Inglewood location. But you have very robust navigation systems going into Denver Colorado Springs into Jefferson counties looking into one. So I think your idea of more regional approaches to, you know conquering homelessness is is in play. and I think that is because there's so much focus on housing, market and homeless population and all of the vast people that are in the sub categories. So I do think that that is is the right way forward is to have these, you know, navigation systems that have other resources. So folks can go in to to find the right door to go through for whatever resources gonna be their best need. So to your point, I think that is happening. But I don't really think that it's a

[130:01] if we, if we build it, they will come from. This population is in all of our communities. It's a problem that we're all facing. And we see it every day. And we just have to treat the folks that are in our community with the resources and hope that we can find the appropriate housing. and it's open. That family home is aside to that. So we have housing sites in Longmont, Lafayette, Louisville, Boulder, and network, and we use it as a system. So if you're in Longmont, you may do intake through the our center in in Lafayette, through sister Carmen through the county all over the county. So it is a we move people between those communities. So there, I think there is a lot of good coordination. On that side, and the idea that people are coming here because they have those resources, we see the opposite. If you look at the population statistics for families with children in Boulder County, which is an issue. We're losing our families which are leaving because it's no longer affordable.

[131:05] raise a family. and that's a concern for every community in the county. It's concerned to the school districts that are looking at planning enrollment. So I don't see that yet. The drawing, because there's a lot of resource for families. I see the opposite. They're fleeing to low cost community lower cost so dirk to your point. element is doing another version of Bluebird and Longmont correct? Do you know of other communities in Boulder County that are building 1137. Lee Hill Bluebird. Not happening yet. Not at this time. We're we're looking at as a city trying to tackle another one in the next couple of years. But I don't know of any others in Boulder County. Do you feel like that? One B will give them an incentive to start moving in that direction. Or is it?

[132:01] I hope so. But that's again, that's only one component of the housing. That's important, right? We we need more. We need a whole variety of housing types. And we need more. You know, family, poor family housing in all those communities. Well. and you know, both rental and ownership. The the the last thing I'll say is, when the region housing partnership with their strategy together in 2017. He said that we needed an additional 25 million dollars a year as a boulder county community, 3,000 goals. That have been set and now we're. you know, 7 years later. and we've got 15 the costs have gone up. We need 30 million a year. and so there's still a a considerable gap in the resources.

[133:00] Oh, you got a question. Yeah. So this is one of my comments. Slash questions. But I was listening to the Ezra Klein show. Recently we had on this Congressman from Hawaii, and they were talking about why, cities run by liberal, progressive governments are really struggling to like meet services. And and you know what's going on there. And and you know there's kind of a mismatch between. The willingness of people to kind of say things. They want to do things on paper and the ability, the capacity of the community to actually go ahead and do those things. And one of the things he described in that interview was was something he called checkism, which is You you sign some sort of legislation that involves writing a large check and you display. Then you have a ceremony. And you, you say, here's this large check. Well, that doesn't necessarily translate into

[134:01] actually, you know, moving all the things that need to get moved. And that's that was kind of my mindset about how to think about this problem. It's like you can't. You can't just write a big enough check to to solve it. But you actually kind of flipped the script on on that, you you were kind of saying like, we have a lot of solutions, and really like what we need is more funding. And if that's the. If that's the case, I feel like that's like the easiest solution you can get is when you have all the capacity that you need, and within the kind of right solutions in place. And you just need more funding. And so is that what you were saying? And can we just can we just write bigger checks. And and this problem will be solved. So I think that maybe a good way to sort of contextualize this is, why does the Va. See success. And, as opposed to, you know, reducing homelessness nationwide. That's some population by 50% over 10 years, and holders not seeing that same success. I think, when you localize the impact of a very large system that is, really has a very high housing costs and very low vacancy rates, but with extremely limited amount of land that those you know, those restrictions right, are going to prevent, you know.

[135:18] progress. That's a headwind, right? But I think that from the sort of system point of view, and my optimism that we can in fact, solve. This is more of a larger system lens right? I mean, so The reason why their success at the Va. Is because they have a good structure is a good system in place, but they're also applying it nationwide, which is a much less of a headwind. Right? And they have an existing healthcare structure. They have to structure in place that they can actually place their systems into really peacefully. And so of course, it's a much smaller population. And so I think that Ezra Klein is right. And I think I listen to that episode. He's he's very excited about the recent

[136:00] convention, how much they're talking about housing and numbism, and all this and so he, I think he makes some good points, I think, in places where you have a lot of headwinds like the San Francisco wants to write a big check that's surrounded by water it. It's sort of even the geographic reasons why writing a too big check just isn't enough. And so we can make a bigger impact in in boulder, because we have the right systems in place. And we can, if we have more funding, we will make a bigger impact. We'll have better results. We have better results becoming going from a 2 million dollar organization to a 12 million dollar organization. And the impact is, you know, enormous for individuals. And and we're doing much better work as a result of funding and developing a system. but I you know I don't know if we can solve it for a community until we recognize that the system has inputs and the system has exits. And until it exits, see the inputs that that's the math, right? And so that might that mathematic, we don't control the number of inputs. Right? That's really big economic. That's big system sorts of stuff. We have a system that's literally producing homelessness. Right? We're trying to keep up downstream to a system that's producing a lot lots of homelessness around around a lot of stuff that we don't control. So whether or not we can tip the balance

[137:24] is unclear to me right, no matter how big the check. I I don't. Yeah, I just don't. I don't know the answer to that right, but I know that I know that we can get closer to that balance. I know that we're going to make a lot more progress. If there's more resources, we're certainly not going to do it without resources. Right? So if the status quo is good enough for us, then status quo is good enough, but the only way to get better results from a system that we that I trust is to give more resources. That's the main barrier. I mean, I talked about the 4 wheels. Right? Let's talk about what's under funded, you know, because we're a little out of balance. Everybody thinks that if you hire case managers, you end homelessness, it's like sending a carpenter to a job set without any wood. They're not going to build anything right? So the wood is the rental assistance, durable assets and supportive services. That's what the hardest to raise money for. And so if we if we if we do a better job and those will get better results. But what will we tip the balance? Will we actually exceed our inputs?

[138:20] Okay. But I guess my question is actually, really like, is the biggest focus, like in terms of advocacy and helping push the you know, move the needle, isn't it? About just improving access to funding? Yes, yes. So that feels very. That feels like a simple, I mean, I I can tell you from my work like there was a lot of Covid money that was being put into rental assistance. That's trying up. We're gonna see more people actually get evicted. It's 1 thing when they come to eviction courts, and we can connect them with, or whoever see Boulder people their staff in place to connect them with money. We have the infrastructure in place to connect them with things, but there's no money left to connect them with. And that's gonna be a big problem for us moving forward. I have a wonderful story to share. If you want to. Funny about this very subject, because all homelessness to be very subject my 1st year as program director at the shelter, I was at a

[139:23] really couple cutting for half of 2,011. Terry Bedgen, a great guy, was, you know. predecessor of Julie's, and and he was sort of a famous homeless figure, you know, and and I went up to him, and and whoever the governor was at the time. And now did this big homeless. We're gonna get this homeless committee together, and we're gonna really be innovative. And and there was a lot of energy around it, and I went up to Terry. You know, Terry, you know. What? What do you think about this? The Governor's announcement about this. You know this, this homeless committee. And and we're you know, they're gonna make all this progress, Mike.

[140:00] I was on Governor Lamb's 1st committee, and I've been on every committee since. and if I hear one more person tell me, all we have to do is collaborate, communicate, and have one more program that's going to solve homelessness. I'm going to quit. What I need is more resources. And so I'll never forget it. That we talk so much about these things have marginal impacts. And we don't talk about about about resources we talk about. We're one data system and away from solving. Oh, my God, if someone's if I hear another person say that I'm gonna I'm gonna quit right? We're with one more program, one more innovative idea away from solving policies again. It's just really, really frustrating. Oh, if we only collaborate better. The problem is that we have all the resources in the world. But we don't talk to each other. you know. I'll quit if I hear that one more time. It's I think it's what everybody here says. It's so. It sounds like it's more more money and then reducing construction costs. So I think the the other thing is.

[141:07] city boulder is a constrained community, restrained, going out up down every which direction, right. We have limited and and one of my goals is for the highest percentage of housing that gets developed in our city to be permanently affordable. And I think it's about 35% we need to get all the other community. We have the solutions. We have the coordination. It's actually working. This needs to happen in all the other communities, because it's a national challenge. We're not going to solve a national challenge in Boulder. It's it's gonna take. You know, Federal coordination is gonna take a State. But every local community has to lean in to this type of work. Kirk, can I get you to clarify something. Did I hear you say that 30% of all the housing being built in boulder is affordable housing. So 35%. So a hundred units of housing is built in our city.

[142:09] Over a period of time. Trying to pull the numbers now. But about 19. What's that? 19 is new construction. Okay? And then balances acquisition of existing housing and converting it to. Yeah, no. But I'm just saying all housing built of all housing being built in our city. Yes, 30% is affordable. 35, 35. I keep saying 30. Sorry. That's huge. It's a weird number because it's not 35% of 100, because the preservation units are already existing units. So over time we've had and a lot through Bhp purchasing, purchasing, existing market rate housing, turning that into affordable housing. So that's part of the housing stock, not new new housing. It's housing coming on the market. Yeah. So, as Jay said, 19 of the 100 units will be

[143:01] new units for new construction. What it is. 19% of new construction or in Jay's team. He has folks who go out and they bought. They buy condos we turn those into permanently affordable units as well. In our city. So there's there's different approaches to this. I guess one balance area would be like for homelessness solutions. We're looking at rental units, you know. We're not taking a homeless person and putting them in permanently affordable homeownership overnight. It's just not how it works, so I guess there is some competition there between when new units are going on. You know the market? Is this going to be a rental, or is this going to be an owner unit? And the permanently affordable is in either category? Yes. Well, when we say permanently affordable, there's deed restricted home ownership. And then there's also subsidized rental houses. Most of it subsidized rental house.

[144:03] So when we say, 19% of units being built. Is that just rentals? Or does that include the home ownership as well? Yeah, 1,900 new units are built in our city. Yeah, 19 of those new ones will be permanently affordable rentals. Well, they may be rental, but we're looking at all like, but I I guess the point is like, there, you know, the people who are buying the permanently affordable homes. Those people are not homeless. So there is when we, when the city gets involved in new housing stock we're acquiring, existing. It makes a decision saying, Will this go as a cheap rental? Or will this go? As a. you know, a subsidized ownership opportunity, what is sort of benefiting different demographics in our community. And I guess when we think about homelessness, and then, you know home ownership. Those are 2 competing demographics when we have a limited stock of affordable housing. So I guess that is something, you know, for democratic democratic system we kind of have to weigh is

[145:10] with this stock of government subsidized housing. Who do we want it to go to? And and currently, it's very much leaning towards those who are most in need. I mean, that question is, a is born out of scarcity, but we wouldn't have to make these tough choices. If right, it's it's we have to prioritize it, a need, because there's a scarcity. That's what creates that that competition which is really really sad, putting needs against each other. Yeah. But when we talk about building 3 bedroom affordable townhouses that could also be 3 apartments. you know, in theory, 3, 1 bedroom apartments that you could stick a family of 4. That's homeless, and I mean, that's not the best situation. But you understand what I'm saying. There like. It's there is a scarcity issue there, and it seems like as a city we do have. There is something to debate there, you know, we are building

[146:12] government subsidized housing. It's what kind do we build the permanently affordable for the family that can afford a $3,000 a month mortgage? Or do we turn that into 3 apartments for people who can only pay 400 bucks a month rent great. Well, I think that's a great question for another day, because I wanna want to respect the time of our panelists who've done such a great job and curti you good with wrapping up. Do we need to take one more question. What do you? How do you feel about it? Well, I I think this is probably the best panel I've been on around homelessness. In a long time and appreciate the questions, and I hope that a lot of people will listen to these wise individuals up here. Great! I'll do a little minutes right up, and you can all review it, and we should give our panel a nice hand.

[147:08] and you can go home. Now take a cookie with you. Everyone actually qualified for the cookie. We have a couple of thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Everyone. This was very educational. So before we get to the minutes, just a couple of things. I heard from a few people that September 11th

[148:08] was a good day for that since we're all here, maybe you can weigh in. We can schedule that. I could do it sort of mid afternoon. I think it's wonderful. It's it's really wonderful. I will not be here. September 11.th Something else. We could look into that because I I'm available most of the day, she she phoned. When you're looking at that.

[149:02] it didn't. You may not have noticed. Maybe you did. In our packet from Tiffany we had a response from City Council to our letter that we sent before the retreat back in April. It mentioned the Comp plan updates and the schedule for that. And we, I think we've already heard they're trying to speed up that process and finish it in 2026 And then there was also an item about homeless strategy to find that and think it said that they were gonna hire a consultant to take a look at that. Maybe you know more about. I should ask that. Well, that would have been a great question for them. Sorry about that. It is specific to Hsbc. The housing solutions for Boulder County and evaluating that framework and process. It's not specific to the city of Boulder. I see Michael to answer your question on the Bluebird tour. I'm gonna be out of the country, the 11th through the 19th

[150:04] so, and Friday the 6th does not work, so the 4th is the only date I can do. But if I can't pretend that's Anybody who's here know if you're available on the 4th checking myself, are we talking October or September? I do. I can. Okay, Karen suggest times. It says one Pm. To 4 Pm. On the 4.th I can't imagine it would be a 3 h tour, so I would. I think 3 o'clock later would be better. 3 would work for me. 3 work for me if it's an hour, if it's 3 h. Yeah, I don't think I think we should do an hour tour.

[151:01] 4th Wednesday, the 4.th Wednesday, the 4.th Yes. And is Julian, are you still with us? No. She jumped up. Okay. well, let's do that. We'll just do it next week, and you know. good touch. Anybody have anything else before we go to the minutes. Any open discussion? I have something great. Go for it. So I was walking my dog along the creek path on Monday night, late at night, and I walked under the library, and there's a group group of people hanging out by some tents, and they invited me to eat some food with them. I have my dog with me, so that's a very bad idea. So I respectfully declined. And then I thought about it, and I was thinking. should I invite them to comment on our homelessness meeting? But I realize. I don't think that would work like they can't zoom in, probably. And you know, here we are. What was that? Most of them have smartphones? They might. I don't know. I just I was walking my dog. It's something I sort of thought about after the fact.

[152:15] And then it is just like the Rosewood tunnel. This is where the library goes over the creek. Wait down here up in North Boulder, South, in Central Boulder, right on Boulder Creek, so I don't know I was. I was just thinking, and like I feel like since I've been on this board, which is less time than everyone else. We've had so many great speakers, and we've had so many good policy focused conversations. But I don't think we do a very good job at public and community engagement. And specifically, the public comment portion of our meetings usually feels like it's maybe one person who comments. And tonight that person said she feels like she's talking into a black fox, and then we just sort of moved on. And I don't know my takeaway from all this is, we're not doing a good job of facilitating constructive public comment with our community, and I do think that part of

[153:15] what these advisory boards in Boulder are supposed to do is be somewhere where the people in theory can go, and then we can communicate things to council. And you know we're the Housing Advisory Board. We're not like the Liquor registration board. So I do think you know, among all the boards public engagement for us, and what we do is very important. So I put together a motion. And basically, what I'd like to see is us being a forum where people can attend in person and engage in public comment.

[154:03] And we'll see if it works if people come and participate. But I think it's something that we should try. So, Danny, I know you're virtual, so you'll just have to listen to me. Talk. Pursuant to Boulder. Revised Code section 2,324 d. The city of Boulder Housing Advisory Board's responsibility is to advise the city council and city manager on housing issues, strategies, goals and policies and to develop and recommend with community input innovative approaches to accomplish the city's goals before the COVID-19 pandemic. The Housing Advisory Board met in City Council chambers at 1 7 7 Broadway, where the public could attend meetings in person, according to the February 26, th 2020, meeting, agenda, board, members and staff would join the public in a circle of chairs to engage in public dialogue. Oh, I'm sorry, Jeff, I dropped, but sure I think this is really great. I'd really like to

[155:04] everyone digest it and vote on it next month, and if you'd like to table it, I'd be happy to do that. Yeah, I'd like to have a question like, was, Is there a reason why we're not more public or in the like in the Chambers open to the public, like my guess is, there was some thought and deliberation to come up with this policy. So can you remind us what the justification was? I don't know who presented policy. I just know that we, as sport secretaries have been designated to these spaces. At 1st it was technology and security, because of the big open building having

[156:01] just a board and having just us to clear the the building after small board meetings versus the larger council meetings, when there was more staff present. So there was a security concern. That is where it was left. They told us couple of months ago that they were redoing the technology in the council chambers, and then we haven't received any training on any of that updated. So do any other boards. Are they any of the other boards open to the public? What's the planning board doing now? We're at Council Chambers. We're we're hybrid like this hybrid like people zoom in if they want to zoom, and they can come to the Council chambers as well, because we're at the Council, so we can. We can wait on voting on this. I would like to read it, you know, into the I really appreciate it working. I think it's a little laborious. And if we have a month to read it and do a reading at the beginning. Well, let me just jump to the end. What I'm proposing, which is that? Look like I'll just summarize it, the city says over and over again, let's embrace diversity, equity, and inclusiveness. In 2,019 the City Council resolved

[157:20] that city council recognizes the need to examine seemingly neutral policies and practices to determine whether they're contributing to racial inequity and where needed change or eliminate the policy or practice. As the city has a long history of decision and policymaking that has resulted in classist and racist outcomes. I mean, we hear this all the time in Boulder. The reality is only certain. Types of people attend meetings via zoom. There's certain people, for example, homeless people who may not have the resources or the technological sophistication to do so, and I think we owe it to our community to have a forum that all people can attend. I think ideally, that means some people can zoom in, because maybe they have mobility issues. But then there's other people who maybe live along the creek path and don't have a phone, and they need to come in person. I think we should do a better job in constructively facilitating public dialogue

[158:15] with that being said, I also recognize that we don't really have the power to do anything other than advise. So the motion that I am proposing is that the city of Boulder Housing Advisory Board devises this. that we pass a formal resolution of the Board that the city of Boulder Housing Advisory Board advises city council, and city manager to properly take all actions to reasonably practicable, to ensure that all members of the public can participate in housing advisory board meetings both in person and virtually I really agree with this. And again, it's great work. I I would I do plan on making a motion to table it and vote on it as maybe agenda item number one

[159:03] next month, so so we can do it a little bit. And that's that's fine. I know. It may also be technical issues around meeting in person like where we go. Can we do that, we need security. Yeah. And that's why I don't want to put a burden on Tiffany and Jay, like, I realize you guys have finite resources. You shouldn't be tripling as our security detail and all of that. But that's why this goes to the manager and the council, which is. if we need to have meetings, and that requires security. Then let's make it happen. So people are safe, and that there's an environment where we can have public dialogue, not just Tiffany, doing everything and being stretched. But there's always been kind of my expectation is we would always return back to in person. and have the added benefit of zoom. Because Zoom actually got more people participating. Once we have that capability because you're right, it's more.

[160:00] it's easier, more flexible. Particularly for folks to tune in from home, and that's how like county court in boulder like they have the option to. You can show up to court virtually or in person. And it's always hybrid. But this is basically virtual only for the public. And we get minimal participation. So I think we do need to consider. How do we have that dialogue? I just want to say thank you to Karen and thank you to Michael, for. like putting homelessness on the agenda like this is something that I know I've been pushing for, and sort of my motion kind of goes consistent with that which is, we had great panelists tonight. I mean, this was excellent. I don't think there were any homeless people here. And that's, you know, understandable. But this would have been the sort of meeting that it would be great if maybe more members of the public could attend. So you know, I think we should consider, how can we make these meetings more accessible. And how can we sort of

[161:03] engage public dialogue and transmit that into policy recommendations for council? I think we're doing a great job listening to subject matter experts, but I think we should try to engage the community as well. Great points and I also have to thank Jay and staff for helping to organize this panel. I I felt like they were really engaged. Kurt said so. So I'm I'm pleased, and we all learned something, and we can translate this into action, I'm sure. And I really like the fact that you know, the goal of this panel was to focus on housing solutions related to homelessness. And so we didn't. We didn't get sidetracked in terms of all the other contributing factors and all the other programs. It really was very much housing focus, which is sort of as a mission accomplished in this discussion, and I heard Megan talking about this in the chamber. Is

[162:00] For all this progress we're not keeping up. And it's gonna get worse, because there's going to be more evictions and all probability so moving towards solutions is really important. I forget. If I'm allowed to make a motion or not. Chair. I make a motion, of course. Okay. Motion that we table? The resolution presented by Stephen Hennessy, and credit against one of the top agenda items for next month before I need to be scheduled as a action voting. I second, I'll second that all in favor. I. Okay, resolution passes unanimously by those present. Thank you for bringing this up, please. I was brought up again. But you're way ahead of me any other agenda items first, st yeah, yeah, just one. Just something. Danny and I talked about a little bit yesterday was, I'll find Balson and you know, I think it would be useful for us to get a progress report what's happening. I think Jay's willing to do that at our next meeting, and it's also on the planning boards agenda for September 24, th I believe. And that's that's a site review

[163:14] it's a voting item. No, it's it's going to form based code. And so I think it's just informational for us. I don't think we're having any really specific to the parking structure. But you're gonna get an overview of the larger project right? And what's going on so Bhp will be there to talk about the housing component? So I talked to the the team, the facilities and Bhp team about this. Our meeting is the day after planning board the evening after planning board. Yeah, so their preference would be to come in like October. Oh, okay.

[164:00] okay. When were we thinking of touring your facility? Yes. So that's October 23rd but we could do a specific tour. It's also the same night as the as our meeting. So we talked. We can't have a formal meeting there. Because we don't have the the zoom capability. That's the challenge. That's why we're in this room and not in council chambers. but That's an option. I mean, we could. Instead of the October meeting, we could just have a tour of the factory. So so I don't know how much is the questions of my eyes are. We keep on hearing. It's an expensive project to move forward for underlying infrastructure. What? What does that really look like? Can we get kind of an overview of that? What might happen first, st and one of the prospects for actually seeing housing rising out of the ground? And what kind of a timetable, so that

[165:03] those are my general questions. I'm sure this will come up when we discussed it in the meeting. That sound like a good plan for everybody next? Actually. So we still need more. So we could do a tour and then come here and have a meeting right of the factory. Yeah. No. I have the grand. We have the grand opening. Oh, okay. So we just show up for that. Well, I mean, we can do something special for her. You can get there especially because you know the Project manager. Do you think we should do the your tour in November instead of October, because you already have something on October that flicks with this potentially, I'm throwing that out there. I mean, I'm just saying we need more agenda items. And I'm just opening it up to the group. and then the chairs, and I can figure out how to schedule everything. I felt like what you were asking about September.

[166:03] So September, I guess we could probably use a general answer that right? Yeah. And would that be the no? Well, we're gonna vote on your resolution. That's a big one right there. So one of the topics that I'm interested in is, how can we create housing for firemen, policemen, teachers, nurses without violating fair housing acts like, and I know that I've been trying to coordinate with Danny because he's been able to do that within some of the mountain communities. But you know, I think, about boulders housing like ideally. It should be a bell curve where, like. you know, there's fewer of of inexpensive units and fewer, very expensive units, and the bulk is in the middle, right. But Boulder isn't like that. Boulder is more like a flagpole. We're like, we have a base of very affordable. You have, like, essentially no missing middle income housing. And then there's a big amount of very expensive house. So if the city wanted to sort of

[167:15] engineer what our bases like, and make sure that there was a subset of our service providers that could live locally and raise their family. Is there ways that this, that the community can dedicate housing to the fire department, and then they do a lottery, and the police department, and they do a lottery, so that we ensure that our service provider that some of our service providers can live in the community, and they would choose to forego. You know their housing appreciation potentially for the opportunity to raise a family book. So that's a topic I'm interested in. Maybe the answer is, how do we facilitate employer provided housing like? If maybe that involves Php out to the fire department, and then they sublet it to their employees.

[168:08] That's exactly what the answer is. It's employees, employer generated housing so it could be the school district. It could be the fire district. It could even be the city and and there's certainly a lot of models that you can work off off of those. But that's the whole notion of, you know, having the employers, particularly large employers, and particularly large employers of civil servants or other people who are, classically, you know, underpaid and under appreciated but having those entities either partner with the city, do it independently, whatever it may be, but to be stakeholders in the whole employee housing effort, and and it can be done. And it's done quite frequently throughout the mountains and a lot of other communities, even on the front range. And so I think it's definitely merits some conversation, something that we could kinda talk about. I know that we've had it before in our letters to the Council. It's been a thing that I've kind of harped on for years. And I I just think, really, you know, that's an important part of this right? So, like the school district, is probably the best example, where

[169:13] I mean they have more skin in the game than anybody, and the whole notion of being able to house teachers who have such an incredible challenge of being able to live here in the community where they serve They also have a ton of land. But it's hung away, I think. Developed and got shot down in. Maybe. Right. For administrative purposes? The answer is, maybe we want to hear from someone at Boulder Valley School, District Fire Department. What have you? What? What issues are your your people facing when it comes to housing. is we? It sounds like we kind of know, you know. Maybe that's what we want to hear from. I I think I don't think the issue is. Why can't they live here? I think I'd be more interested in Danny coming up with a couple of potential panelists who could talk about

[170:02] what? What's been done successfully in other communities and figure out if we can replicate it? Well, the only thing I want to put on the table is that we are starting the Boulder Valley Comp plan update. and one of the focuses is the missing Middle House, which is exactly this. So the conversations and it's going to be a pretty robust community engagement conversation. How do we put? How do we pair policy with our visions and goals to create more missing middle. That is one of the things that we're gonna focus on. So we're gonna try to start putting things into our zoning, into our our land use process that will create avenues. And I think if if this had puts together something that says, here's the pathway that the mountain towns have used to do that

[171:04] perhaps it can inform the policy and the strategy. So what do we need to put in place to to make that happen right now we're seeing the things happening that we're seeing happen. And you know, it's we're not getting. We're getting what? 11? 0, what percent! I can't remember what the percent was. If we look at the real numbers. Of of all that, even the rehab but 1111 and 111% is being built is is in that something has got to change. And we got our eyes on the belly Comp plan start putting pathways in, because right now they aren't there. Well, and I think this is actually a really important point based on new change to state law that I don't think everyone's I digested. But basically the law has changed in Colorado. It says that if you have a tenant who's lived there for a year you have to renew their lease on reasonable terms unless you have cause not to. And then there's a whole list of cause

[172:08] cause could include. You want to demolish place and rebuild it, or you want to move in there, you own it. But this could be a serious problem, for, like housing authorities like, if they're trying to create housing for, let's say, firefighters or teachers. And let's say someone gets a job as a teacher. But there's nothing it's not employer provided housing. They're no longer a teacher after a year, but they're occupying that space that was intended for teachers. you know. I was even thinking when they're talking about the transitional housing. I'm like, under current law. I don't know if you can really have transitional housing. I think they might have a right to stay there. And again, this is a new law, so I don't think we've totally digested it. But employer, provided housing is treated very differently, and employer, provided housing exists. For example, ski resorts need people to work at the resort, so they provide the housing. When someone stops working there they can get rid of them a lot easier than you know a traditional type housing. And if we want to have housing for

[173:10] low income, civil servants. we may have to look at a different approach than just saying, Apply through Php. If we want to serve the purpose of making sure there's housing for teachers and for firefighters and that sort of thing, and then either. That's the whole notion of having the employers themselves have have a skin in the game. and you know, so I represent Copper mountain. Probably one of my biggest clients we have. We house over 1,000 employees or something like that. your housing is part of your employee benefit package. Essentially right? So when you're done, that's done. So, there are ways that you can do it as an employer. even with the new statutes that are in place. But you know, I think again, the whole notion here is employers who have a lot to gain or lose from the whole system. You know, having that skin in the game and and trying to, you know, take the steps to

[174:10] actually be part of the solution for the housing for their own staff. Which is a huge issue for most of them, because of, you know, concerns over retention, affordability, you know, insane commutes, etc. So. So, hey? Instead of us hashing this out tonight? I I can. We just propose that this would be a topic, maybe for September, and then identify whether we're just gonna talk about it as a group, or whether we want to bring in some speakers or panelists, or whatever cause. It certainly sounds like there's some great ideas here. There's some curiosity, and that it would create a topic that we could then actually present to city council as a recommendation. So I think that's a great idea. I think if we're going to hear from anyone like, I think Danny

[175:02] can talk a lot about the legal mechanics of all of it, I think more. Do we want to hear from employers who are actually faced to say, Hey, this is actually a problem. What is it that the School Board wants when it comes to housing? See, I'm less interested in what they want, because I think I we know what they want. I'd be more curious to know in what has been successfully done. What has been done. I agree with that. But I think, yeah, we're not gonna solve anything now. At 9 55. No, but I think they need to be involved in the conversation. If well, I think Karen's point we talk about as a group and plan a session around this, with maybe Danny provides some ideas of a speaker or more than one speaker, and then we figure out how to translate like Copper Mountain into see you or Google, or whatever. I don't think we need to help Google. They take well, you know, they seem to do okay. No, I know if we're talking about

[176:02] like who are the big employers in Boulder, and what would be their incentive to participate in such a program with the the topic as a wherewithal to do it. To to clarify. And this is one of the things. And this is why, you know, we can have a lot of conversation on this. Maybe Michael and Karen, you guys do the the chairs conference. I'll pop in and we can chat about. You know who we might be able to pull into that and stuff. But the this, like they are resorts. wouldn't do a single thing volitionally, they're required to have that housing right. So that's part of it, too. It's not like that, you know. All these employers are doing this volitionally. The whole notion is, you know, what's your responsibility here to help be part of the part of the solution. Right? And that's with private employers. I mean, they would deal with public employers. There's, you know there's a lot of different issues. But the but the point of the matter is. you know, this is much more complex, but it's also much more promising, and you've seen it in a lot of places, because now, especially in the mountains

[177:03] private employers are doing it left and right, because it's the only way that they can get and equality employees to stay right. So. Fires and fire departments! Who do it? The boulder. Law enforcement is doing it, etc. And so from that perspective, I think you know, it certainly merits further conversation. Okay, why don't we talk about a terrorist meeting and put it on the agenda for further board discussion, and we'll figure out how to build an informational program on that. With an eye on like we could, we're actually gonna make a recommendation on this and one more possible agenda item in it. That's probably doesn't be in September. But what are they calling? Zoning for? Affordable housing now, Jay, I haven't written down here. Family friendly, vibrant neighborhood was this. This is what used to be called zoning for affordable housing, and it's something that council has passed, but now they have to extrude it and turn it into an actual policy about oversimplifying that. There are good friends, that.

[178:14] but the boulder and boulder housing that we're actually doing some good analysis on this, and coming up with detailed policy recommendations of our own. I wonder if that would be, you know, if we get a representative from each of that group to come here and talk with us about what they may put into, that it might inspire us to make our own recommendation. When is that coming to planning board? Jay, do you see it on your? I think it's later this year? It's been delayed. Oh, so it's probably not gonna be till November or December. Okay. so give that some thought. I am. Gonna make a motion to adopt our minutes from June. and then to adjourn. But that'll be a separate motion. So do. I have a second on a motion to adopt our business. Second.

[179:05] all in favor. Aye. right, it passes 5 0 motion to adjourn. Second. all in favor. Aye. Hi. 8 59. Sweet. Take care, everybody! Great meeting. There guys.