Nov 01, 2021 City Council on 2021-11-01 11:30 AM (WORK SESSION)

Good afternoon and welcome to this meeting of the special call meeting of the Denton City Council. It is 1130. We do have a quorum, so I'll call the meeting to order. Today is November 1st, 2021. So with that, we only have one item. It is, so I'll call that item. It's ID 2118343, Receive Report, Hold Discussion, Give Staff Direction, Regarding an Update on the Denton County Homelessness Leadership Team and other homelessness initiatives. Thank you, Mayor and Council. Danny Shaw, Community Services. Get the presentation going. Just wanted to let you know that at the time when we're ready, we've got some guests in the room as well. Gary Henderson and Alina Lesk with the United Way are joining us. And then Alyssa Howe with the Police Department. And then Sarah Keechler here. So for all the big questions, we've got a good stack group today. All right. So today's presentation, we're going to recap the progress of the city's increasing collaboration and financial investment in homelessness initiatives from 2015 to the present. We're going to highlight the deliberate approach we've taken to building a countywide system collaboration and systems response, and then making key strategic investments to strengthen the system over time. And then we're going to go through our emergency response in 2020, progress that we've accomplished in 2021, and then some of our immediate next steps. So starting in 2015, Mayor Chris Watts convened the Housing and Homeless Task Force. They brought together a group of community partners and stakeholders to look at the issue of homelessness, and then to explore housing solutions for folks who are experiencing homelessness in our community. The task force came up with three findings, two of those in which council adopted later on in the year, a third, which was about increasing transitional housing in the community, which council approved through an agreement with an affordable housing court. The two other items were to look at exploring the collaborative public-private partnership ability for us to work with another group in order to deliver some of our homelessness initiatives, and then also finding a permanent home for Monsignor King Outreach Center. It was serving as an inclement weather shelter, but did not have a permanent address for those services. Council did follow through with those recommendations. So in 2016, in February, we did hire the homeless coordinator in collaboration with the United Way in that public-private partnership, and then council also directed us to enter into agreement with Monsignor King for the use of a city facility. By May, that homelessness leadership team was convened for the first time using the Stanford Social Innovation Collective Impact Model. United Way had already been using this model for the Denton County Behavioral Health Leadership Team, and it was proving to be very successful. So that framework was adopted for the Homelessness Leadership Team as well. In that first few meetings, they worked through adopting the appointees, which is in the AIS. You can kind of see the cross-section of the different people that are involved in this homelessness leadership team, and the importance of this collective impact approach is bringing multiple groups and multiple stakeholders to the conversation when we're looking at solving complex issues like homelessness. And then also looking at the structure, the meeting, and the workgroup format, which is a very important part of this structure, but also having that backbone support, which is the staff person that is funded by the city. The HLT's first really major initiative was adopting coordinated entry in the housing crisis response system for Denton County, and it challenged the workgroups to go through that process of getting a streamlined and effective intake system that everyone was using collaboratively. Almost immediately after the HLT was formed in July of 2016, we learned that the community was going to lose an important grant, the Emergency Solutions Grant. So it was from that conversation with the HLT that the cities came in and provided some stopgap funding to help ensure that we still had funding available in the community for people experiencing homelessness, especially in rental assistance and keeping people housed. By 2017, Denton becomes the first community out of 215 counties to adopt coordinated entry, which is a great success for us. And then in 2017, we make a presentation to city council again where we're talking about some improvements in the system and strengthening our homeless response. And that recommendation at the time was to hire a coordinated entry specialist so to have someone to provide some of that backbone support around the data that we were needing in order to improve our programs and our system performance. And so that was adopted. And the reason why utilizing data is so important and why it was the most important tool in strengthening our system at the time was that it was making sure that all of our partners were reporting into the Homeless Management Information System, sharing that data across agencies and really making sure that every individual is being identified for their unique housing need in the same similar way. Excuse me. So by 2018, we were completing in the Homelessness Leadership Team a strategic plan. And that strategic plan did an evaluation of our system tools, looked at the gaps analysis, which really was the impetus for informing some strategies for new and improved programs. So here you see now we start the Barriers Fund, which was a tool that we learned from another community that's been successful. And as you can see from the slide, as of September 1st of this year, 334 households were assisted with housing intervention at an average cost of $447. So it's a very successful program. It's very cost effective and it helps people either get housed or stay housed. This is also when the case managers start coming together and meeting in a room together once a week so that they are collaboratively seeking solutions to people who have housing barriers by name so that each client in a very client focused way. This is also another presentation that next July, this July, where we're presenting information about some of the next steps in strengthening the system. So it was recommended to hire a housing navigator. Another strategy that we learned from other communities is a successful tool to have someone whose focus is recruiting landlords to open more doors for people experiencing homelessness. So that pilot was approved by council and so for that year, that additional funding led to the hiring of the housing navigator and really the building of the program for the landlord initiative called Doors for Denton County. It went from maybe three landlords through the program up to 40 in the first year. So it was very successful in bringing that navigator on and now United Way funds that program through another grant full time. Also in 2018, this is when Mayor Watts signs on to the mayor's challenge for ending veteran homelessness. So while we weren't successful in ending veteran homelessness by 2020, mostly due to COVID, we were successful in that effort in bringing more resources to bear in the community and that included additional housing bash vouchers for people who are veterans or experiencing homelessness as well as a lot more resources from the VA that were brought to bear for our veterans in our community. This investment in data, so you see also here, the data dashboard was a very integral tool that was added to strengthening our system. So now that anyone can have a view of what's happening in our community through the dashboard, it also really gives a good reflection of what the housing needs are in our community, whether that's just diverting people from their experience of homelessness early, whether it's rental assistance through rapid rehousing or more supportive housing needs for folks who are chronically homeless. It's also where we start to see kind of the data showing us what's happening in the shelter system. And at the request of you all to the homelessness leadership team, we went back and asked them about what information we needed to know about shelter and what was happening. And so they convened a shelter work group to start to look at that and examine that. So by December of that year, they bring back a report to you all regarding what's happening in the shelter environment with some recommendations that we then drafted. So in 2019, based on those recommendations from the shelter work group and the findings, we looked at where we were investing in the system and where we needed to be more balanced in that investment. So you start to see some enhancements in some key component areas that we were expanding our funding into. So diversion, that's where you all allocated additional funding to the Barriers Fund as an annual allocation because that tool is very successful. It's a great support. So $40,000 a year there. Increasing outreach. So one of the system performance goals is to make sure we're reaching out to all the vulnerable populations. And so the outreach is really important. Getting out on the street where people are experiencing homelessness and trying to connect them to the resources and services. So we established a grant this year in 2018 and 2019 for that. The Street Outreach Grant Fund has now funded and it's third year. You guys will approve that next council meeting. Then I'll jump to supportive services. So in supportive housing, there's still a gap because ESG was not funded to our community for long-term. And so the rental assistance was a gap. And so additional funding was allocated for rapid rehousing program through its supportive housing funding. That's $100,000 annually now. And then the biggest piece of it was really about the shelter supportive services. So this is where council allocates $400,000 for us to implement the enhanced shelter model at the end of 2019. And so that grant went to Monsignor King at the time. Now it's Monsignor King and our daily bread. So that brings us to 2020. The very beginning of 2020, we're making a real impact here. The enhanced shelter model gets launched by MKOC. They're full on. We all start looking at the Loop 28 building as a potential expansion for a 24/7 co-located service center. And we do follow through with the purchase, but then COVID hit and becomes a major impact, not just to us, but across the world. And so that really changed what we were looking at and how we were serving. And so then we kind of gear into our emergency response. So initially council takes the first step in allocating $50,000 for eviction prevention in March, before anyone really knew what was happening there. That allowed the United Way to establish the CRF fund at the very beginning. You increase that allocation another $50,000. This point, the county comes in with additional funding and starts funding. And United Way is going to go through a lot of that. So you can kind of see the impact of what we've been able to do in our community as a result of these funds and the result of the infrastructure that you all put in place by investing in early as far back as 2015. We were able to receive the emergency solutions grant early on as well. This was vital to us at the very beginning and would have been almost impossible, but we were very successful in being competitive in that grant. Again, because of the infrastructure we put in place, because we had the data dashboard, we were able to very easily pull information about what's happening in our community and then turn that around as a grant application. It was very helpful. At this point, we're also looking at the hotel structure. So in March of 2020, the shelters were looking at a very desperate situation in the congregate settings, needing to reduce beds or close. And so at that point we did provide some funding to open up hotels as an option for emergency shelter during COVID. It's been successful as well. And I'll go through a little bit of that in the next slide just to show you how impactful the hotel program has been thus far. And then again, the United, we'll kind of cover how the other funding that's come in the community has really been beneficial to ensuring that we didn't have a larger number of people experiencing homelessness because of COVID. So to jump into the hotel slide really quickly, again, you guys, you funded it initially just out of the general fund, but then we were able to utilize the county funding to come in and pay for that. So that was city funding from us, from the county. And then we've been able to extend it with the CARES Act funding from CDBG that came to us as well. And then we'll look to extend it all the way through to December of 2020 using the American Rescue Plan Act funding. Here's where it's really important from the program lifetime thus far out of the 316 clients, 265 have exited and that's 51% of the folks have exited to a permanent housing solution. So this is a significant increase over what is benchmark traditionally for shelter, excuse me, just shelter alone. Usually that's 25 or 30% housing solution. So we're seeing a pretty strong housing intervention happening here. And then since February also being counted now, we're looking at some other successful solutions around people obtaining earned income and then non-cash benefits as well that will help them be more stable over time. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Gary Henderson and Alina to talk a little bit about United Way and what they're doing around this space. Thank you, Danny. It's a great opportunity to present to you all. It feels like it's been forever since we've been together. This slide, there's so much I want to unpack for you at one time, but let's start in the upper right hand corner, preventing a pandemic generated spike in homelessness of more than 1000%. The system you all helped build with everything that Danny described really put in place partnerships and system and capacity that was scalable to the point of a pandemic induced opportunity for 1000% increase in homelessness, but we avoided that as a community. We avoided that by providing 18,956 months of assistance since April 2020 to more than 8,300 households. And I want to talk about phasing in how that help has been provided to those households, but let's look at the left-hand side. We've expended the $100,000 in funds that you really started the program with, have to take our hat off to a corporate donation. Packard, Peter Biltz Foundation, parent company, came in with an unsolicited $250,000 grant, COVID relief, and left it to the discretion of our board of directors to serve the community in the best way possible. It's really your funding. City of Louisville followed your lead. Packard Foundation really shot an adrenaline of resources into the program. It laid the foundation for Denton County Judge Andy Eads and the commissioner's court to look at the partnerships we had been building over those years and the success we were having in March, early April. And for him then to use the treasury department funds coming into the county, single source, United Way as backbone support, but to these logos in the middle bottom of the page. So when we talk about the work that was accomplished, we're not talking about just United Way of Denton County. We're talking about you all, the county, city of Louisville, Christian Community Action in Louisville, friends of the family across the county, Giving Hope Incorporated across the county, Grace Like Rain, Interfaith, Metro Crest Services in the Carrollton area, Next Steps in the Colony area, and then Salvation Army in Louisville and Denton. Those organizations created what became a virtual mini front door, multiple front door solutions. And at the top of the page, one website link, one simple online application that could be completed, computer, smartphone. If you needed to call in, we could do that over the phone. But off of our website, Eviction Desk Prevention, we created a single portal. Now, that single portal was worked by all of these organizations. And the work we did was to make sure we're collecting all of the household information, all the documentation required to prove that this is a legitimate COVID-related financial need. We have many households in our community throughout the year pre-COVID that certainly have legitimate financial needs. But the funding you had appropriated and Packer had appropriated was specifically to serve households that were facing COVID impact. And then currently, Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, we followed your lead, always working strategically with Sarah Keakler, Sarah Hensley, Danny Shaw, and deciding who is the strongest application provider, who is the strongest agency, who's the strongest entity to apply for these funds for our community. Should that be the city? Should that be United Way of Denton County? Should that be one of these organizations? And work not competitively, but work cooperatively to put our community in the strongest position to draw funds into the community. You were working City of Denton and Emergency Solutions grant coronavirus one application. It was determined collectively that United Way should apply for coronavirus two application. We were awarded 3.3 million in rapid rehousing and homelessness prevention funding. Now, this is an interesting side point. We look at the multiple streams of funding and we want to modify budgets when possible to make sure that we're leveraging dollars in the most strategic way possible. So with Denton County Judge Andy Eads and the Commissioner's Court bringing in CARES Act funding for eviction prevention and then bringing in Consolidated Appropriations Act, Emergency Rental Assistance one funding, we had an ample supply, have an ample supply of homelessness prevention funding. What we needed more funding for was rapid rehousing programs, meaning the folks that are either literally homeless or are temporary sheltered in motel stays, we need to provide the services to get them to the point where a landlord will execute a lease agreement with them. And a footnote Council, it is virtually impossible to get a landlord to engage into a lease agreement with our clients if they have no form of income whatsoever. So while we're talking about homelessness prevention as a specific topic today, recognize it is in a very real way connected to workforce engagement, it's also connected to child care, it's also connected to mental health services. It's not as singularly simple as just this one topic. But a roof over the household's head opens up a tremendous number of doors going forward. So we secured the ESG CV2 funding from the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, CAA Consolidated Appropriations Act, Emergency Rental Assistance one, we are working with the county on the right strategic use of Consolidated Appropriations Act, Emergency Rental Assistance two, the county has approximately $18 million for that program. All of our discussions leading up to this point with the county, we've been in agreement that CAA ERA two needs to look more like a traditional housing program with case management, wraparound services, so we can move individuals into housing, but also through workforce training that secures employment for them. Whether that's a certificate program, it doesn't matter, but we have to move as a part of the next step of our COVID relief recovery work, we have to move these individuals and I'll show you some data here in just a second. We have to move them through this crisis back to gainful employment. Data, so Danny was telling you several years ago, we had very little data about homelessness in Denton County. One of the things that COVID has provided for us, I would not call it a gift, but has provided for us is really, really rich data. And all of the households that I'll be referring to in the next two slides, we have their contact information, we have their email address, we're messaging them regularly throughout the month to provide opportunities for them to continue to move towards stability. Let's start in the top middle of this slide. So the multiple funding streams, Consolidated Appropriations Act ERA one, the way that column works, I'm so proud of this arrangement, Denton County Commissioner's Court established a working balance of $900,000 and then every week we submit to the Internal Audit Department, to Judge Ede's office and to the County Treasurer the activity for the last five days. And then we submit an invoice with supporting documentation and draw back down the funds that have been expended. So where you see 12.9 million funds raised and expended 12.5 million and $393,000 remaining, that's a weekly point in time. We have $23 million as a community to expend in that first column. So we're just roughly at about the 50% mark. We're on track with Treasury Department's allowance to spend the funds no later than December 2022. I estimate that we'll probably expend these funds in the April, May timeframe, which will put us in a position then to move seamlessly into ERA too. Now we've highlighted for you the Denton row, 1,485 applications processed. An application can be for either rent only or rent and utilities assistance. Those 1,485 households have been approved for 4,208 months of assistance. So your row in the county-wide recap of resources provided, rent and utilities assistance provided, you're 38% of the housing instability, housing insecurity across Denton County. If you go down several rows to Lewisville, they're at 24.9%. And statistically speaking, you at 38% and Lewisville at 25%, that doesn't surprise us. Up in the C's at Carrollton at 18, almost 20%. If you look at Carrollton, Denton and Lewisville, you all make up two-thirds, three-quarters of the county's need in terms of housing instability, housing insecurity. And I think it's important for council to look at this at a county-wide level because it helps to earmark, underwrite if you will, underscore the fact that housing insecurity is mobile between our municipalities and the county. It may not be mobile on a macro US basis, but it's certainly within the county mobile. And a lot of that has to do with landlords that will work with us and where they're located. Apartments, hotels, where they're at and if they'll work with us effectively. So that's kind of a snapshot of where you are at. And that's Consolidated Appropriations Act, Texas Emergency Rental Assistance Program, and COVID funding. And we've talked about the data at the top of the slide. Now let's look at this week-by-week chart. It has been every bit of the roller coaster that it looks like on this slide. And we saw that in 2020 as well. 2020 looked like three distinct tranches of activity for us with the peak tranche coming in the fourth quarter of 2020. In 2021, we bridged over in January, CARES Act funding for the month of January. In February, we went dark as a community for COVID rental relief, but we opened a pre-screening process. And that pre-screening process allowed us to open our CAA ERA1 activity with a backlog of 900 households that met the need for this program. So that's why you see such a high spike in activity in that April timeframe. And we felt over the summer months, like we were coming out of recovery, or we're coming out of COVID moving into recovery. And there's a little bit of noise in that data because there's not total understanding about eviction moratorium, if it's there, if it's not there over the summertime frame. But once the US Supreme Court declared there is no eviction moratorium, then it became abundantly clear to all of our tenants and all of our landlords, all of our renters, all of our property managers, that there is no protection from the government in terms of eviction. And that's when we saw in the July timeframe activity start to pick up. In the last month and a half, we've seen our backlog in this program triple over a six to eight week period. And we think there are several reasons for that. Folks are having a difficult time getting back to work, and I'll talk about why on the next slide. But council just recognized that in terms of eviction prevention relief, or you might think it's a steady downhill slope with employers looking to get people back to work and having so many open positions, we're seeing something to the contrary in the housing domain. Okay, the words at the top, I want you to focus on the 72% of the 3100 households that have been assisted are at the 30% area median income and below. Those are some of the most financially challenged households in our county. 22 additional percent fall below the 50% AMI. So if you add that 72 and 22, we're looking at 94, 95% of the households who have been helped this year with CAA, ERA, eviction prevention assistance, they're falling at 50% AMI or below. And just a footnote, HUD requires that any household applying for Consolidated Appropriations Act emergency rental assistance be at the 80% AMI level. And the vast majority, as you can see, are at 50% and below. And a pie chart over to the right to see how that break out is 72%, 22%, and then 5.7% falling below the 80%. Lower left-hand corner, let's jump to that bottom left-hand corner. Those nonprofits, the county, yourself, United Way are nonprofits. This is one of the most efficient programs we've seen. Six percent of total cost funding, the overhead support, the personnel support of the nonprofits delivering the work. 74% of the funding going to rent payments. 17% going into hotel. And that is where the challenge comes in. So let's look at the chart in the middle of the page. In March, if you look to the right and focus on the hotel column, in March, that first month, partial month that the program was online, we only put five households into temporary motel stays or scattered shelter stays at the cost of $16,000. And as the program unfolds every month, that column, the number grows up. As of October 13th, which is mid-month, we're at 249,000, we'll eclipse the September 544. So if you look at a fully completed month of September, we placed 177 households, and this is across the county, not just in the city of Denton, we placed 177 households temporarily into motels. Now, why the shift over all these months? Several things have happened. As landlords, number one, have seen their tenants' lease mature, if the tenant has no income, the landlord really is not motivated to enter into a new lease agreement. Even if we can prove we have programmatic nonprofit grant funding, you understand the business of a property manager, to enter into a lease agreement with a household that has no income is problematic. We've seen landlords move towards eviction within days, here in the last 30 days, where over the course of the last year, they were letting tenants fall months behind. So we're seeing a different behavior with the landlord community for sure. We've also seen landlords true up their cost per square foot and their lease cost to what's been happening in the real estate market in North Texas, in Denton County, and here in the city of Denton. It's not unusual for our staff to be looking at a lease renewal for an existing client, and the new lease have an increase of $300 or more. And we're seeing some landlords start to create some administrative fees with the renewal of the lease that have been as much as $600. So financially, for households that do not have a program like this behind them, it is becoming increasingly challenging to move from current maturing lease into the next lease. And then their program to date, $23 million available, $12 million spent to date, we're just over the 50% mark and we're on target to expend the CAA ERA1 funds by the middle of spring. I want to turn this over to Alina. She leads our housing and homelessness initiatives, and she'll talk you through where we go from here and some changes, just the next steps for the Denton County homelessness leadership team. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. This is my first time speaking to you all, so thank you. So my slide is going to be pretty short, but I'll try to make it all make sense in a little bit. So 2021 and beyond for Denton County homelessness leadership team looks like we are currently updating our strategic plan. Our strategic plan was 2018 to 2022, so we're getting a jumpstart, making sure we get all of our updates in before 2022 or in the middle of 2022 so that we have an updated plan moving forward, hopefully out of COVID. Some of the other items we're looking into is an ad hoc committee, which actually just last week I have an update on that, but we had an ad hoc committee that was formed to determine whether or not Denton County should be its own continuum of care. That 215 county radius that Danny talked about earlier, we are part of that 215 counties and we were determining whether or not we should stay in that 215 counties and share that funding and those resources, or we should branch out and be our own continuum of care similar to Dallas and Collin or Collin and Tarrant, sorry Dallas and Collin, Parker and Tarrant. So that committee is currently meeting has just kind of wrapped up and we can give that update and leadership team. We did approve a healthcare collaborative that has not yet formed. The initiatives behind the healthcare collaborative is to make sure that our homelessness initiatives are matching up with healthcare providers so that folks who are exiting emergency shelter have access to emergency rooms, have access to emergency shelter, have access to care after the emergency shelter if they're accessing emergency rooms to be able to do kind of their basic needs with healthcare. So that healthcare collaborative is currently on hold just because our healthcare facilities are kind of at capacity with their current needs. And then Gary kind of touched on our emergency solutions grant funding, but we have our rapid rehousing program that has 2.4 million into rapid rehousing right now. We just submitted a grant extension for that to hopefully be able to procure services from additional agencies through that funding. And then our American rescue plan emergency rental assistance program part two is another 20 plus million dollars or $18 million to our community, which is similar to what we've already talked about for CAA ERA 1, but hopefully to bring on some more initiatives like rapid rehousing and case management to support people moving from those hotels to further assistance. And my slide is very slow. So continued alignment with our collective impacts, making sure that our leadership team homelessness side is working closely with our workforce leadership team so that we're collaborating and making sure that folks get into housing and stay in housing with workforce and housing. Behavioral health leadership team saying kind of initiatives. And that is all I have. Thank you. So just a quick overview of where we are from specific funding for this particular area and the growth that we've seen over time, just to kind of illustrate more intentionally how much investment and especially to highlight how much investment is available as a result of the additional emergency funding. So you see some increasing growth, especially in some new projects that were coming up, like the loop tree building and then the additional grants that are coming out of the ERP funding that will directly impact homelessness initiatives in our community. So in 2021, just a couple of highlights. You know, we're, we're certainly looking at the creation and implementation of new grant funding because of these additional funds. So we have the nonprofit capacity grant coming up. We have the behavioral health grant that's coming up through a RP. The additional grant programs that we added because of ESG CV and T wrap that are all closing out now as we finish the expenditures on those. So most of the work that we've done is to continue to sustain that COVID emergency response. And we've done so with the same level of staffing. So as you see from the funding side, how much, how much more we're investing in staff time in these particular efforts. Uh, another thing that we did in 2021 as we close it out is we did coordinate the help coordinate the emergency response to winter storm. Yuri, especially with our collaborations with our nonprofit partners and making sure there were resources in the community for those folks who were impacted by that winter storm. We did finalize the management services agreements. So our daily bread will be our partner once the loop 28 building does open and we'll be managing that and the operations and services there for us. We finalized the budget and design on the loop 28 center. We've contracted or almost fully contracted with our construction manager at risk. That will be in front of you and next week or so. And then we've finalized the, um, those, those efforts. And I just want to highlight how much, uh, our other departments are bringing into the resources to this effort as well. So in, uh, 2019, the police department assigns two officers as homeless outreach officers, and now they've expanded to develop this crisis, uh, intervention response team, the cert team, and all of these efforts are working together collaboratively in the same things that we were doing with street outreach and supportive of that as well. And so these additional investments have been really helpful in expanding those programs for us locally. And a little bit more on what we're looking at for our next steps. And then we'll, this will finish out our presentation and we'll open it for questions. But our goal right now, given the volume of funding that we are having in the programs that we are working on and developing both new and making sure we're maintaining, is to just make sure that we, we're taking that substantial investment and that we fully leverage and we're managing it and making sure they're implemented successfully. So this is not, it's not easy work, it's not quick work, but that's a definite focus of ours right now. We want to get through the construction and the implementation of the Loop 28 building by December of 2022. We're continuing to look at the affordable housing strategy toolkit because this is an important part of the process. I know Gary alluded to it, but we used to say a while back that if we had all the money in the world, we could get people housed. But we, we neglected to think through the fully what that impact is on the amount of housing that's available for this population. So where we're seeing now is the barriers, not money, the barriers units to get people in them. And then also the capacity of our nonprofit partners to scale up as well and deliver on these services. So that's why you saw the recommendation for a nonprofit capacity grant out of the ARP funds and some things like that. So our goal is to make sure we're fully leveraging and sustaining what we're doing, making sure that everything gets done successfully so that we have those resources in the hands of the people who are doing the work in the field. And that housing, affordable housing toolkit and strategy is going to be an important part of that conversation for us about how we're now helping open more doors or build more doors. And then working, make sure that we're, we're continually out there with our partners and keeping those relationships going, looking at the second installment of ARP as an example. So just put together kind of a graphic and Gary, Gary illustrated this very well and articulated very well, that it's not just eviction prevention, that there are all these other factors in this, this chart that are really necessary to look at how we create stability in housing. And so these are the, these are the things we're thinking through right now about how we create that stability. And a lot of it may come through the benefit of having some of these additional funds, at least to get us started and strengthening that, then we'll look at how we sustain it over time. So with that, I think if we'll just take this down and then open it up for questions. Great. Thank you. Mayor Proctor Meltzer. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Wow, you know, it's really, really something to see the, you know, the arc over, you know, over several years and you've been a part of that. I don't think it's, you know, obvious to the general public that there's, you know, all this machinery going on. I have a couple of questions. One is we've benefited so much, thank goodness, you know, from the federal response that created massive amounts of work in the community to, you know, to fulfill it. But, you know, for once we could say money isn't the obstacle. It's amazing. I never thought I'd ever hear that said. But do we have a sense of what we do when, you know, we're past this moment and it's not emergency funding and, you know, I know a lot of it is kind of putting things in place that, you know, will have a long lifetime. But is there a concern that there's a crisis coming when the crisis money goes away? Yeah, I think that we're all kind of scope locked on what that's going to look like. And I think that's why we're starting to have those really in-depth conversations about all the other resources. So it was really important part of the process and let Gary speak to it about developing that workforce component, initially, because that's sort of the first step there. But there's a lot of other things we're going to be needing to look at to make sure that we can continue to maintain that stability. Yeah, Councilman Meltzer, that's a great question. Back in June we added a question to the CAA/ERA application that asked, are you working? Are you looking for work? And are you able to work? We wanted to be able to tabulate of the households we're assisting, who was looking and not finding work. And it's been about 50 to 51 percent from June to today, individuals, households that claim to be looking for work, and let's take them at face value, looking for work but not finding work. About 25 percent are back to work, 10 percent, 15 percent, full work, full pay, 10 to 15 percent, let's round it up to 30, back to work but not full pay, not full hours. But it's that 50 percent that isn't finding work that is the real challenge. I think in the next 12 to 18 months we have to beef up in the Denton County nonprofit sector, and we need the municipalities' help with this, services, resources, programs that add to the workforce skills of these households. Whether it's a HVAC certificate, welding certificate, healthcare certificate, we see some of the richest certificate-based vocational, technical training programs in our ISDs. Denton ISD, Lewisville ISD have outstanding programs. If you take advantage of those programs before you exit the ISD, a junior at one of these school districts has more access to vocational training than their parents do. And we understand the dynamic of our community college not having the same funding stream that their partners do in Tarrant, Dallas, and Collin County. But with that gap, I think we stand positioned to not be effective at adding to the workforce skills for the individuals who are financially fragile. Long term, their household income has to increase. Now we've been doing work with United Ways of Texas and the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank to look longevity-wise at households who go from $11 an hour to $20 plus dollars an hour. And when you track them with every dollar raised, and you look at earned income that year, and then you look at public benefits that year, SNAP, CHIPS, housing subsidies, childcare subsidies, with every dollar increase, housing ratchets down just a little bit, at $15 an hour, that single mom with two kids loses health insurance for her children. So there's an incentive, a disincentive, to move from $14 an hour to $15 an hour because she loses childcare for her children. To go from $11 an hour to $20 an hour, as those public benefits decrease, total household income only moves by less than $1,000. So the way our households are structured today without additional program supports benefits, there's very little incentive to better yourself from $11 an hour to $20 an hour because what you make up for in wage income, you lose in those other benefits. But ultimately, Councilman Meltzer, we want them to be self-sufficient, independent, and working at a wage that is above their cost to live in our community. That's such a great challenge to think about. Particularly, could all the activity in our community around building housing, which is the critical gap, could some of that somehow be funding the acquisition of skills in the community so that people develop exactly those traits? Certainly on the Luke 288 project, absolutely, we must have workforce services in that building to really complete it up. Food, shelter, absolutely. But if we can bring that last step in and help raise their employability skills, resume, interview skills, certificate programs, then we'll move them through this moment in their life where they've needed help to a place of self-sufficiency. Mayor, may I explore one other topic? Yes. Thanks. The other topic I wanted to explore was about literal homelessness. My first night on council, I thought I was saying something that was clearly true, that there must be a big gap in emergency shelter because, after all, we see so many people living in the woods in completely unsanitary conditions. Just to flash forward, during URI, we had off-duty police finding people in terrible freezing conditions and saying, "We have beds for you in warm places. Can we bring you there?" And they were often met with the response, "That's okay. I'm fine." And beds went unfilled. And so I now have a clear perception that there is a part of the literally homeless population that has no interest in that form of shelter, just not going to be responded to. It's not great for sort of any aspect of the community that continues the way it does. I know this is all leading up to a question. And you both, Danny and Gary, were part of the trip that our city manager sponsored to see that quite impressive community first project outside of Austin. And it seemed to really present a vision of an incredibly optimistic, clean, productive, healthy, engaged approach to a segment of literal homelessness, not a city program. But I wonder what you took away from that in terms of what might a path be to have something like that in Denton? I think it validated the conversation we're having around housing, which is there has to be different types of housing available for different types of people and understanding that some of that might be looking like, even in our affordable housing assessment, what is permanent supportive housing look like? And right now in our community, because we only have apartments, it's tenant-based and we're placing people through programs and different apartment units. But are there other housing options that are available to support this population? Absolutely. And are those things that we need to be looking at? Absolutely, which we will be. Councilman Meltzer, I have repeated this one statement that the founder shared with us at least three dozen times. We cannot work harder than our clients are working. And one of the challenges with the COVID relief funds, the Consolidated Appropriations Act Emergency Rental Assistance I program, is that the bar is relatively low in terms of financial qualification, but there is zero requirement that the household work with us to help move them towards a permanent solution. So we have some dynamics that really are running against all of those great systems that Danny described for you, Housing Priority List and the HMIS system and coordinated entry and case conferencing. And we have a situation that we have to turn around with the IRA too, where we're just simply putting someone in a motel and there's nothing expected of them. And that is, that's the trend that's happening right now. So Councilman Meltzer, what I heard that I loved in Austin, we'll work just as hard for you as you'll work for us, but we can never work harder for you than you're willing to work. And I think it was really clear in Austin, there was dignity and respect that was built into the program. It's certainly in a location of the community that makes a lot of sense. There was workforce opportunity. There was ownership. There's community within. It was, I think one of the more moving moments was when we walked, it was towards the tail end of our site visit and there's the memorial. We know that individuals who have experienced homelessness have a shorter lifespan than those who've had adequate healthcare. And they're the community members that passed. Those were family members for them. And then we left that spot and we went to the food pantry, the store. It was, it went from the very practical to the very mental health, emotionally supportive. It really was very holistic. Okay, Council Member McGuire. Thank you. I wanted to return again to the data that you were showing us from the, why is this not coming up for me, from the hotel program and the very high rate of clients exiting that hotel program to permanent housing. And I was wondering if you could speak to, and I think you mentioned that the typical rate for temporary emergencies shelter is like 25%. So what do you feel accounts for that? I think there are two, and I think that's one of the benefits of the loop 28 is that it's 24/7. So those folks are there. It's easy to make contact with, for them to make contact with supportive services on site, because it's all happening right there. So I think that's really key. And I think the intentional focus of co-locating services, so Our Lady Bread and Monsignor King, which started it, but Our Daily Bread, as their partners now, doesn't just do all of the work. The importance of that is that they're bringing in other partners who do different things to support those folks and then they're there. So it's just that those two benefits are huge, I think, from that particular resource. I just want to add one more thing to that that Danny didn't highlight, but on the slide, you'll see Our Daily Bread has been that main coordinator, the main manager. They have staff on site every single day almost, and volunteers. They've taken a lot of ownership to help those clients to a place of permanent, to get to permanent housing, to get to their housing solution that they need that's unique to them. But not only is Our Daily Bread doing it, there's 20 other partners that are assisting in that effort. So if it's somebody that needs to go to Denton County, Friends of the Family, if it's another agency that's better suited, they're all coming together and they're working around what that client needs. So it really is just incredible what those agencies have done to work together to house people. And it's very positive. We really hope that's what Luke Tradiate Center will be, is that you have that main center where you can come, other agencies can come in, they can provide services, making sure that we get the best outcomes possible and really just a lot of work from all of our partners and our agencies. And kudos to the City of Denton staff. This was a different site visit we took to another community two, three years ago. And it was a Salvation Army solution that really demonstrated to us in a day center that is both the overnight shelter, the day center, the workforce, the mental health, all in the facility where the client lives. You break down the barrier of clients going to the services, but you bundle or braid those services together in the place that the client is at most often and it's where they live. And I'm going to miss one of the P's, Danny's, but it speaks to, unlike sheltering, Councilman Meltzer, where the shelter is a bed tonight and then tomorrow we wake up and it's a new day. In this facility, my possessions? Pets, partners, possessions. Pets, partners, and possessions. It's a home for a period of time and recognizing from that site visit that individuals that are experiencing homelessness build bonds to survive and to try to take one of those partners, friends, colleagues out of homelessness into housing is not going to work. Their loyalty to each other, you bring strategically, let's bring them both into the loop. 288 facility. Let's work their needs, work the resources. And then when it's time to move them into housing with the program like ESG CV two, we move both of them. And ideally we move them into the same complex. So they're still neighbors. They're still friends. It's understanding at that human personal level what a long term solution is going to look like. Thank you for that. I appreciate that additional detail because that just stood out to me as such a, such a wonderful success story there. Yeah. And I think, thank you, Sarah, for mentioning our daily bread because they're taking that on without money. Like we're not funding them to do this work. So they've come into that. They're running three operations now. And so they've, they've done a great job in really building that tool the way we need it to help folks. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I had a couple of questions and first of praise. I think the, I think you're seeing some clear evidence from the coordinated effort and the C kind of approach in general between the different divisions. And so sort of a half question there is, do you have any estimates on what that sort of coordination has enabled in terms of people served in dollars leveraged? We can get that. Yeah. No, I think that's, that's a great point. And we can pull that for you. And we were trying to capture a lot of that in the data dashboard, but we haven't done it from a financial perspective, but you can see the housing interventions over time in that data dashboard. So that's, that's reflective. And you can look at that anytime as updated monthly. In addition to that though, council member Beck, I would point out that one of the things that COVID has gifted to us every Thursday morning and Danny is on the zoom, we zoom with all of the partners in the eviction prevention program. So we've gone from siloed, which you're describing, not working together, not coordinated at all four or five years ago to in the midst of crisis management, pandemic response, we're in a zoom together once a week as if we're all part of one organization. So I think you're smart to point out the synergies and the momentum that's been built, but we'll help with that data. Yeah. I think that it's important to kind of pull it to give you that reflection of it as well. Well, and my, my other half question that goes along with that, that, that data question is, you know, sort of surfing around and trying to figure out for the, for the public or, you know, for the dais, what, what those numbers and kinds of things and trends were, you, you had it sprinkled throughout people's slides and on the presentation, but I was having a difficult time like, okay, what are the trends in homelessness? What are the trends in funding? What are the trends? I couldn't really get a, a feel for this basic question of how much are you succeeding in your leveraging? And then also just in general, it's like, okay, aggregate wise, this is the demand in our County. And this is the service we're in the CE approach in our County, you know, through these various mechanisms. I was not, this isn't a criticism. This is sort of a, as an average opportunity to growth. If, if I can analyze it, then the public can also analyze it. And so I was that. If I could just express a slight challenge in that this isn't a shrinking to zero population. So there's people coming in and out of homelessness at all. So to tell a story linearly is a little bit more difficult, but to show you what's happening with each year, we can, so I can show you that trend analysis and we have that data. But we wouldn't be able to say we've reduced the homeless population by 20% over five years because there's just so much variation. It's very cyclical. So we'll figure out how to give you a better story of that though. I think we can, that's a good challenge for us to have. And that actually, it goes straight into my sort of next question is, is as you've looked at this data and as I was trying to look through your presentation, it seems like there's, there's opportunities. Like you mentioned that your current challenge for traditional diversion and whatnot is the availability of units and coordinating with landlords, and then they're changing behavior recently. But it seemed like an additional one is something that Mayor Pro Tem brought up. It's what are non-traditional opportunities that we're not taking advantage of because we're always seeking to use the traditional sources and mechanisms and funding avenues. And we're leaving a cadre of people who for one reason or the other or not. So I guess let's tackle those two questions. What can we do for traditional housing to get over that barrier, the landlord barrier and unit availability barrier, too many Bs in that. And then the other half of that question is what are we doing to address these sort of non-traditional, you know, sort of transient tiny village community first kind of approaches like Mayor Pro Tem brought up? Yeah. So the first question I think is just scale. I mean, we have, we have the systems in place. We just don't necessarily have the resource to meet the needs. So I think it's just scaling up to meet the need is some of that conversation. And then around the housing conversation, it's just looking at what are the best interventions for our community based on the number of people that are living unsheltered and the number of people are living in shelters to see what options are available to us. I mean, we're looking and exploring those housing options all the time. And I think we'll go through that process even more as we're finishing up the affordable housing assessment to see are there opportunities for tiny homes or cluster housing or something like that that helps with this particular population and then ensuring that we identify appropriate funding sources for it because that's going to be the other challenge. There is a nonprofit that currently does this in this community. So making sure that there is one that exists that has the resources and the stability and the funding to do that and to maintain it because I think to your question earlier too, one of the other things I heard very clearly in our visit to Community First was it can't just be one entity doing that work. We've got to have good partners at the table doing it. It can't just be the city. It's got to be a community effort. And so making sure we're supporting, facilitating and then helping our nonprofits grow to be able to do that work is another challenge for us. I think that's all really wise and I encourage you to do that. Absolutely. I also want to encourage you to and I don't think you're doing this. I'm just sort of saying a comment and that is, don't let the, I say this a lot, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I want to see some progress made even if it's crappy because that will set up the opportunities to dove line and string tail and work out the kinks and get to a place where this is as amazing as some of the other programs. No, and I think Gary can tell this joke better but in 2015 he said how do I encourage a millennial to do something is to tell them they can't do it. So had we been done it Gary's way, we wouldn't have coordinated entry even. So he motivated that. So I think we're not worried about the perfect. We're just, let's get it on the ground. Let's test it out. So from the housing navigator program, everything has been what's the minimum viable product that we can introduce and see if it works, test it out and then expand on it when it's successful. Yeah, we definitely like to pilot something, proof the concept, show the metrics, show the outcomes and expand a little bit of bad news for you. Your nonprofit sector in the midst of COVID coming out of COVID, we're not as strong as we were prior to COVID. So we're going to be, it's going to take us a little while to catch up and be as strong of a partner for you as we were going into COVID. Fundraising for the Denton County nonprofits are down anywhere from 25% to 40%. So while we would never expect a municipality or the government to carry the load for us, it is a time where some of the operational funding at your traditional housing nonprofits, it's sort of the best of times, worst of times, council member Beck, we have these unprecedented rent utility payment dollars in the millions and millions with very little staff dollars to do more than just transactionally pay that bill and keep someone's utilities on. So I just as a, just sort of as a closing comment, I think you could, you could do actually something that Mayor Pro Tem led with, which is I'm not sure the public is aware of what you're doing. And I think, I mean, I would say just me anecdotally, not proper data analytics, but of when people approach me and ask me questions about homelessness, 50% of us, I don't know what the city and the county and the other programs are doing. It feels like we're not doing anything when the reality is you just spent 20 pages of slides telling us that you're doing a bunch of things and you've got a bunch of things on the pipeline. So I think you could, to the extent you have free time, and maybe, you know, if you did a little more public outreach, they might help both your fundraising and this awareness issue. Thank you. - Councilor Archer. - Yes. Several questions. First, in my usual Monday work session, apology for coming in late. I teach until a little before noon. It takes me this long to get over here. So, you know, first I want to ask a question that's kind of picking up on what Gary just mentioned about the, you know, lower, even lower than usual budgets of our non-profit partners and how that really hits them and therefore us, especially, you know, at the level of staffing. And, you know, one thing I hear again and again is that both from the non-profit end and also from clients is just the, how there's not enough caseworkers to go around per person. I mean, our caseworkers can be amazing and they are amazing, but they can't clone themselves. They need to sleep. And so, you know, in the past, you know, when I've asked about, you know, trying to fund, you know, use public to fund more caseworkers because this is a public good that they do, you know, I've been told that, you know, well, it's kind of, it's complicated because it can be seen as a gift and, you know, whatnot. I mean, how can, how can we, and maybe, and maybe more question for the city attorney, I don't know if he's participating virtually. Okay, great. Yeah. So, you know, maybe it's more question for the kind of the city attorney, but what can be done for us to fund these positions that can help us, you know, not just put people into permanent housing, but keeping them in there? Because, you know, when I look at this, I mean, on the one hand, it's so great that 53% of guests from the Hilltel voucher program exiting into permanent housing, you know, I also know that there's just not enough people, not enough caseworkers to keep up with everybody. Again, not all caseworkers are amazing. They're doing more than I would imagine that anyone could, that certainly more than I could. But, you know, what, what can we do to help fund those positions? No, I think it's a great question, but you already do. So the grants that you're offering, it's not a public gift. It's the ability for the council to put money into the grant programs and award those out to nonprofits. And then, you know, your direction to prioritize those. But I would tell you, we already do that. So we put the grant applications out there and we don't have a restriction. They could ask for case management funding. We just don't typically see a ton of that within the grants or grant their funding programs, but it's, it's allowed, the United Way allows for administrative and staffing costs. So I think as funders, we make that an opportunity and can do that ongoing. So I don't think there's anything different that needs to be done. Just, do you want to scale it up or not? Yeah. So, yeah. And the, you know, caseworkers are some, not among the first kind of, of what is asked for, cause there's also so much else that is needed, including physical housing, just actual money for vouchers for hotels. Yeah. I think you make a good point too there, because not all the funding sources make that possible. It's like even Gary's reporting six percent in admin costs, cause that's something that's necessary to show. But the reality is that there's a lot of costs that agencies need to fund and where we are a flexible funding source, they ask us for that. So we're covering costs for things that they can't typically get funded through a federal grant or other things too. So it's the agencies themselves are also prioritizing what their greatest needs are when they come and ask us for funding. Yeah. So, so these, so obviously, so these funds that are through the, these ARPA funds, I mean, this could be sustained, right? Even without ARPA funds, we could continue these grants through- Well, I can't guarantee that. I mean, there's a large amount of funding. So we, we're putting $850,000 towards behavioral health and 550 towards non-profit capacity grants. And we may be able to do that with the second round of ARPA funds. But again, when we made those presentations, we made it very clear there's a potential they're not sustainable, right? We don't expect to be funded more, you know, more in the future. So whatever we do provide funding for, we need to make sure we can either sustain it on the other end or it's clear that it's only for a short period of time for some short, some function. So like the Luke 28 building makes sense. So it's just a challenge if we can sustain it or not. And we're sure we're aware of that- On budget, on funds. Correct. Yeah. And it looked like you wanted- Council Member, I would love to. First, just have to applaud the Denton City Council. I've had this conversation with Sarah, Danny, and the city manager a number of times. You have led the way. It's very clear in Denton County as a municipality, you have led the way and you've been a great role model. The problem, if you remember back to the data, looking county-wide at where the need is, you, Lewisville, Carrollton, making up 70 plus percent of the need. It really is a regional, maybe micro-regional issue within the municipalities of Denton County. Anything United Way of Denton County can do to help bring other cities to the table, to leverage your funding, multiply your funding, inter-local agreements, whatever we can do to expand through the Denton County Homelessness Leadership Team, their participation in the great work you've funded and continue to fund. Please call on us. Secondarily, I would say we're all working to, when the time is right, COVID has certainly been a distraction for many of us, work with the county to apply for and receive CDBG funding that would help us work across municipal boundaries. So we appreciate what you can do here in the city of Denton, but that funding comment, Council Member Armatero, is just as relevant outside of Denton through other parts of Denton County. Okay. Council Member Burke. Oh, sorry. I had a couple other questions. Go right ahead. So the second question, which is just related, and probably the answer is probably shorter, but just about departmental budget for homelessness, and in this case, this comes down to community development. I know that we just had a, we just voted on this budget, but I know that we're also very future thinking, and people are already thinking for the next budget, including our affordable housing consultant report, which had a lot of really exciting recommendations, most of which take money to do. Just wondering if you wanted to share anything at this point about how your department is strategizing for budgeting to meet those recommendations and the prioritization plan that you laid out for next year, understanding that, of course, it's council that decides on the budget, right? But it's each department that makes proposals to the city manager, and then that comes before council. So it does at some level, it begins with the department saying, "Here's what we need." Just wondering if you wanted to share- Yeah. Not a lot right now, but in December, we're going to bring to you kind of a prioritization what we think that we can do in house, what we think we need to ask for additional funding for, and then allow you to have that discussion about how you would want to consider funding any of those kinds of strategies that we bring forward. So you'll have that as early as two months from now. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We're very much looking forward to that. At least the initial part of the conversation. It won't be final, but- Oh, of course. I mean, it takes a whole year, but it's ... Yeah. And then my third and final question has to do with House Bill 1925, which, of course, the city council came out in opposition to, but which nonetheless passed and directly affects people experiencing homelessness. This is, of course, the ban on encampments on public property and putting the whole city capital in waste. But anyway, of course, as you also know, there's as terrible as a bill as that is, advocates were able to get in there a, not so much a loophole, but a saving grace of remediation, saying that if cities can remediate and redirect people to housing, don't have to arrest people, we do the remediation first. So I was just wondering if you could speak to, and I know you've already done a staff report, I had asked a number of questions about remediation under House Bill 1925. It wasn't clear to me from that report, if there have been any citations or arrests since House Bill 1925 for people living in encampments, simply for, citations for camping on public property, not for something- - Yeah, we'll get that for you. I'm not aware of any, but we'll check and make sure there hasn't been, and just to be clear, there's no arrest mechanism in House Bill 1925. It's just a, it's just a classy misdemeanor. - Classy misdemeanor. - Citation. - Yeah, so, yeah, hi. - Hi, I'm Sergeant Hall of the Dump Police Department. We haven't had any citations or arrests with that coming into play. And even over the long-term of however many years that I think Clint, Officer Clint Webb and Officer Scott Butler, they were doing outreach before it became official. And during that entire three-year period, I think there was only one arrest that was made. And it was something that had nothing to do with criminal trespass or anything necessarily about camping somewhere. - Well, I am thrilled to hear that. That's what I was hoping. But it's really, it's really good to hear that. And that, you know, as you said, that that was the case before House Bill 1925, and it is after. And again, this, because remediation is in there, and I know that that's what y'all are doing. And so then my second question, so thank you so much for that. - Well, Councilmember Armitage, just a point of time, we're scheduled till, it's a one-hour 30-minute session. You've had the floor for 12 minutes. Others have only had the floor for 10 minutes. So if you could wrap up, we have a couple others that have questions that have not spoken. - Just also about House Bill 1925. Although it prohibits camping on public property, as I understand it, there's nothing prohibited in there prohibiting camping on private property. And I was wondering if in response to 1925, the city has been talking to, you know, non-profit partners about maybe purchasing land, about them purchasing land, helping them to have a place as kind of a waiting room, you know, for people before they get housed to at least be able to legally live under this new state law. - So no, the House Bill is specific to public property. That is accurate. And yes, we have conversations with non-profit, different non-profit partners about different projects that they may have in the community. One of those includes an opportunity for different type of housing. That's correct. - Okay. - So you meant, so I'm sorry, it's a different type of housing. - Right. We have a couple of non-profits that we're talking to in different ways. And one of those is looking at an alternative type of housing on private property. But I don't have the details that I could discuss about. - Okay. Excellent. And I'll just add, you know, this also includes for those who are lucky enough to have cars, you know, people who have to just have a place to legally park their car and sleep in it. I mean, right now we have a city ordinance even before House Bill 1925, as you know, prohibiting sleeping in cars. I don't like that ordinance, as you know. I think it is, I think it criminalizes homelessness. But this is another opportunity, you know, that we have under 1925 that I think people should be open to. - Councilman Burke. - Thank you. Let me get my screen back up here. Kind of want to sleep. Because I had something to ask about... Oh, here it is. I'm looking over here on slide number 17. We've gone through so much today and I've learned so much today. We've talked about workforce. That piqued my interest. You know, being a former educator, I guess I'm an educator for life in thinking about how young we can go in getting folks prepared for the future. So I'm really looking forward to some discussion with the ISD, the universities. I like the... We'll be speaking on that education. There we go. But transportation. That's my thing right now. How are we doing on transporting people? I know we got this whole big DCTA issue that we were going to have to work through. If we're going to move folks out on 288, I still haven't heard of any kind of discussion in regards to getting people transported there from wherever they're getting, wherever they're coming from right now. I know they're Muncie v. King, Daily Bridge. They're just around. And they're, you know, walkable. As much as we talk about walkable, bikeable places, we've got to be a truly walkable city because, you know, these folks are walking and getting to where they need to go. But when they get over there to 288, that facility there, looks like we'll have some time to think on it. How are we going to be transporting and the funding associated with that, if you all haven't thought about that yet, adding that to the mix of conversation? Yeah, transportation is a key factor in the discussions we're having around all of the services that are being provided in the community. So we continue to have a dialogue with DCTA. They're providing vouchers and other assistance to the nonprofits who are providing transportation. So we'll watch and make sure that we'll continue to have that conversation with them to make sure that sustains no matter what transportation looks like in the future. And we also have the collaboration with Served It and Down the Street. So there'll be some conversations about how that might happen from a public transportation. And then we'll just look at, you know, different opportunities through the mobility plan too for the city. But from the perspective of transportation, just coordinating with our nonprofit partners to make sure they have the transportation resources for their clients, whatever that might be. Okay. That looks like Alina has something to share. Okay. Just as an added note, United Way has been asked by DCTA to kind of look at all the nonprofits in the area, look at where folks who are experiencing homelessness most frequently stay, and look at their routes to see if they're missing any routes or any routes need to extend past that kind of cutoff that they were going to do with GoZone. So we are in the works of kind of figuring out a heat map so that they can have kind of a full picture of what their transportation should look like for Homelessness Services. Is that funding, is that like some grant funding that's going to take care of those folks, or are we going to, is the city going to be budgeting in to make sure that they get their transportation that they need? And let me, Mac, if you could help me make sure we stay on course here. So I'll just open the door for you to chime in if we get off. Sorry, I just, we're, so are you tracking with us, Mac? I am, yes. Okay. So just let me know if we get off pace as we go down transportation, I just want to make sure we're good. Yeah, I'm here right now, but I appreciate it. I'll stay on. Okay, great. Sorry, thank you. So those will probably be a part of the discussion, any kind of funding would be, you know, any discussion we would be having. Okay. Child care. I am very much interested in child care. I've attached myself to the child care issue there. I had an opportunity to meet with the young lady the other day so we can strategize on what we're going to do in regards to child care. Tell me, talk to me a little bit more about child care and how it is affecting our ability to get folks back to work. Yeah. Council member Byrd, Texas Workforce Commission reports at a state level, 51% of Texas child care businesses closed during COVID-19 and did not reopen. So child care access to child care has become a bigger issue coming out of the pandemic than it was before. Cost of child care was always an issue going into the pandemic for Alice households, asset limited, income constrained and employed some of our more financially fragile households. So we have kind of a two pronged problem that we didn't have before. One is child care available near my employer or near my home. So I have a place to put my child. And the second being county afforded. And if I'm going back to work and I'm looking at $13, $1400 for one child in child care and I'm going to an employer where my starting wage is $12 an hour, I'm looking at the first week, week and a half alone is just paying for child care. So I think we have households that are having to make tough financial decisions. Does it make sense for me to go to work when I consider all the costs associated with being at work, child care, transportation? >> All right. Councilmember McGuire, I'm going to skip you, go to councilmember Davis because you've spoken. I want to make sure I get everyone a first shot and try to get us out on time. Councilmember Davis. >> Thank you, mayor. Echoing some others, I really appreciate the comprehensive view over where we've been and where we're at. I think especially when people are newer to the community and they see an issue, we have a tendency to think we're the first ones who have spotted it. The community has been hard at work on this particular issue and in this space for a long time now and has learned some important lessons along the way and built some really important partnerships. And that's kind of where I'm going with my question. Can you speak to something we kind of take for granted in this space right now and that is the coordinated entry and the coordination between agencies and how that has strengthened our programs, how that's leveraged? I mean, sure, there's plenty of money, but if you don't know how to spend it or you don't know who needs it, what do you do with it? How has that allowed us using that coordinated entry to really serve people the best and why is it so important for new partners to be a part of the coordinated entry program? Thanks for that question to give a little bit more information about coordinated entry. If you imagine a time before we were working on the system approach, each individual agency had its own intake and its own system of collecting information about a client. And if a client went to a different agency, they'd have to go through that process over again. And then that information that was being collected on that client's need was not being shared across the agency. So what coordinated entry did was to streamline that process. So now, no matter where a client goes, they do the intake. Once they've done it once, it's shared across all the other agencies so that when they go receive services at another agency, they can see that client's specific needs. And then that then built an ability for us to look at what those housing intervention needs are very specifically. So when you go into the data dashboard, we could give you a real dollar amount of what that would take to house all of those people and then what resources we need to get them housed now that we didn't have before. So from a data perspective as well, it's just giving us a really good view of what the gap is in our community around housing funding. And then I talked about it a little bit more, but those case managers are in a room once a week solving a barrier for an individual client on the housing priority list. So that means every person who's entered in their housing need, they are placed on a list and then the next person up for the next housing unit available, they are working to solve problems for that person to get them housed immediately. So from a systems perspective, it's amazing to see that in action in a room. And it's messy looking, but it is exactly what needs to happen because it's client focused. And I think that's really been the benefit and the fact that all those partners are in a room together once a week talking just like Gary talked about in other ways is so key to understanding all of the things that are still missing in the community as well. So it's just keeping us informed on a regular basis. Council member Davis, I think also adjacent to coordinated entry on the front end, one of the processes we've implemented during the pandemic is centralizing all of the processes producing of check payments, check requests, check vouchers, obtaining W-9s, producing the check and getting them out to the landlords with a landlord liability release, payment release. We started the pandemic where every nonprofit was having to do that redundant back office work. We'll give credit where credit's due was the attorneys of Denton County Commissioner's Court who really said, we want to see the funds flow from treasury to county to one nonprofit and then directly to the payee, either being a utility company or a landlord. So on the front end, coordinated entry has been strengthened with the collaborative work every Thursday with agencies talking to each other. But on the back end, we've centralized the administrative part of paying utilities into one nonprofit. It could have been any one nonprofit. As long as it went into one nonprofit, we eliminated the redundant activities and it gave us the ability to help catch the opportunity for duplicate payments. Note, we also coordinate on a real-time basis with Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, Texas Rental Relief Program so that if a household is asking for payment from the state and locally a nonprofit, we can catch the duplicate first here and make sure we're not the party that has to claw back the funds. And then just from that emergency view perspective, our community was able to start this work April of 2020. Some communities are just now starting. So I think that's sort of the key of how this infrastructure helped us now solve problems for future issues that are going to come in play as well. - Councilmember McGuire. - Thank you. My apologies for not asking this earlier. So I'm thinking about Mr. Henderson's comments regarding individuals receiving services who are looking for work versus individuals who are unable to work. And I'm looking at the metrics around permanent supportive housing as well. Would you say that individuals receiving those permanent supportive housing services are generally individuals who are unable to work? And what types of services are they receiving? - Okay. So if you are in a permanent supportive housing program, you have to have co-occurring disorder, which means you have to have some sort of physical or chronic illness, and then you're dealing with chronic homelessness as well. So yes, they are folks who generally are not going to be income earners or they have the ability to earn incomes that will give them the ability to pay rent. And then the supportive services through the PSH program that comes in around them means they get case management that's helping them with whatever their specific needs are. So it might be substance abuse, it might be workforce, it might be disabilities, and it just depends on the need of the individual client as to how that case manager is working with them. But there are a lot of wraparound services that are available in those cases. - Are individuals receiving those services generally living independently? Are some of them living in group home settings? - We don't have group home settings. So in our case, they're tenant-based living independently with the support of a case manager. - Okay. Is there any type of recourse for an individual who perhaps doesn't have family support, who is living on the streets and needs a group home setting? - I'm not sure. I'd want to think through that before I answer that. Yeah, I think there's a case to be made for all different types of interventions in our community on a scale. - Right, right, of course. Yeah, and I wouldn't advocate for it. - And I think there are other areas where it's more successful too, like with substance abuse. So there is an organization in a community that does that kind of group home living specific to treatment for substance abuse. So there's an example of where it is working. And AMHMR also has group homes. So I'm sorry, I missed a couple of those where it's actually happening in very specialized populations. - Okay. All right. Thank you so much. - Sure. - So I'll just give you some notes. We don't have time for answers here, but I do want to note these things and you can just follow up with me. It's fine. So first note, you mentioned the housing, the permanent housing. And so I just want to understand kind of who's helping in that. I think that's important, right? And so who's kind of stepping up more often than not? I don't know if that's an external document, but just an opportunity to kind of maybe shape that to so that people have a point of reference so that we can- - Which agencies are providing those? - Yeah. - Okay, sure. - Yeah. So I don't know if there's one particular property owner that's stepping up more often. - Oh, you'd like to see it from a landlord perspective? - Yes. Just from, so for example, if it's Bob's Real Estate that's stepping up 40% of the time, let's highlight that, right? And then try to get other realtors or other property owners to be at ease with, hey, the system works. We're keeping an eye on things we do, we say we're going to do. I know there's a lot that goes on that is mitigating property damages, that sort of thing that we do. And I know that's a concern. So the more we have people that have benefited from our management, maybe the more people that will step up and get comfortable. And then I also, if you can tell me where the, send me a link to where we, the easiest way to track how many people we have, how's kind of, and where that's updated so that when I'm doing community talks, I can kind of point them to that. I have a presentation that I've built in those links and so people can track that on their own. - You got it. - Then I want to thank you, just put it on the record. I thank you for mentioning PACR, PETA built and their contribution and them stepping up because I think that's just important, right? There's all kinds of things out there. So it's important to give credit where credit to do. And then when we talk about the lack of, the hiring, so the entry level job kind of market is where need, I think Domino needs, Domino's Pizza, for example, is hiring 16,000 people, you know, that sort of thing. That's not our audience, but I'm saying if there's an opportunity for the city of Denton to have a program or United Way to have a program that helps people take those entry level positions, kind of fill that need, I think we're a victim to the gig economy, right? The gig economy is taking away those people that would normally take that job. So if we can backfill that with people that have gone through programs and are able to step up and fill those, the Walmart jobs, that sort of thing, especially as they're paying more, you know, Starbucks is paying more, Walmart's paying more for those entry level positions, if there's a program that kind of helps us backfill that or help people hiring at restaurant workers, those sort of things, kind of say, hey, reach out to United Way and ask about this program and how we can kind of support that from a policy or budget perspective. I'd love to hear about that because I think that's an immediate need that retailers would step up to. And akin to that conversation, Gary, I'd ask for your help from a retailer standpoint as we have as the, I think as I see it, the shelter comes online and we're getting people in wraparound programs and services and we're getting them plugged in, much like Dallas is doing where, hey, call if someone's panhandling, get them plugged into services. You're seeing that. I think it's important for us to work with our retailers and say, people are panhandling on private property, right, and that's not a city thing, but we still get those phone calls. So a way to kind of build those retail relationships at those key corners and say, hey, we have services, let us know, and then we can kind of get that, those work together, right? And I think the goal, just as you see in Dallas, is to get people plugged into services and help them get sufficient, self-sufficient, and so whatever we can do around that. And I just want to shift the conversation from, if you're willing, shift the conversation or at least look at the situation from a housing almost cost to a land value because that's what's, as I learn more, I think that's really the key, and that's the key sign, right? Once the land value goes up, the rent value goes up, and then what's on the property becomes negotiable, right? It's like, okay, well, this house, I can continue to fix it or I can tear it down, rezone it, and do something more profitable because the land underneath it is more profitable than the rents I'm getting. So that would be my concern is just kind of making sure we're looking not only at properties and those sort of things, but watch the land trends, especially in Southeast Denton. It's no secret. It's the lowest property out there, and so it's getting monopolized. It's like people are like, "Hey, I can go over here and buy this per foot versus that per foot." And so just watching those trends would be important to me to make sure we protect our neighborhoods from that kind of turnover, if you will. Especially it's a higher rent population and the land value is attractive. And then from a police officer standpoint, I went to Grace Like Rain's banquet, and it was really neat to see that testimonial where the, if we have a repeat offender kind of thing, and they would continue to get bonded out, right? And so it's like they had a problem, continue to get bond out, continue to go back to that problem. If there's a way to kind of identify those, if there's anyone falling through the cracks that way that may be willing to accept services, I'd love to know that or at least have those synergies to talk and say, "Hey, this person's, you know, whatever, it could be theft." Theft, you know, bonding out, no problem. But if we can say, "Hey, this has happened 20 times in the last month. Let's see if we can reach out." I don't know what those rules are and how those entities work together, but that was just, that's kind of what was impressed upon me from that testimony at that banquet, that there's, we may be doing people a disservice by just bonding them out, giving them a, getting them out to go do the same thing versus maybe an opportunity to interact with them in a different way. So that would be, I'd be curious if there's anyone there. Then, Gary, you mentioned TWC and kind of all they're doing, so I'll continue to take your lead on what we can do. I know they've just got, they allow a lot more budget for their childcare. So whatever we can do to kind of plug into that or share whatever information, please let us know. And Gary, I'd love to hear from you at some point on what your look on Louisville now versus Louisville once Castle Hill folds in, right? Because they're the same size as Denton at that point. And so there's some, there's obviously some changes, some, some, just, I don't know what to expect there. I just want to, I want to hear from your perspective how, I mean, because there, you know, right now it's the 30,000 citizens less than us, but that changes. And so it's kind of how that looks from an agency perspective, kind of shared responsibility, all those things, you know, just if there are any changes. And then I'll just say this, that I think it's important and I assume that when you talk about transportation, a key component of that would be served in, and Pat Smith as an excellent resource for those kinds of transportation needs, right? Because he has that expertise. And I'll say that I hope that it's not dependent on walkability. And here's why, because you have a neighborhood that is already a little on edge, right? To the West, that we have to be mindful of and we have an agreement in place with them. Then you have senior housing that'll go into the North that they're building right now. And so it's really going to be important that we're good neighbors. And I think with the, with the on-demand service and bus routes that hit the key components, I think we can get people where they need to go without making them, and forcing people to walk and keeping them safe around loop 28, those sorts of things. So I think there's a, there's a transportation, but I would defer to Pat and serve Denton and what they're seeing, you know, and their expertise and that they deal with it every day. And so those are the things I just, there's a couple of things there to my thoughts and then other things that I just kind of want to hear from you on, you know, how those things come together. So anything else, Danny, you want to close us out with? No, sir. We'll put all that together for you. Okay. Ms. City Manager. I just, I want to recognize staff again in our work and our partnership with United Way and the other nonprofits. I spent 14 and a half years working in the city of Austin. And the last two years of that was working directly with the nonprofit partners in dealing with how to get people off the street and, and how to get them in the different types of services. If you've heard today, after two years, two and a half years of doing that, I will tell you that this city is further along than, than where we were in Austin. Obviously, it's a bigger city, a lot of more politics, but there were a lot more nonprofits there. And the faith community was a major player in dealing with the people experiencing homelessness. So our next step, and then we talked about it just not too long ago, dealing with homelessness, people experiencing homelessness, it's a continuum of care. It is a constant dealing with problems all the way along the scale. But one of the things we have to really work on now is work programs and how to get people back to work, taking them and teaching them skills. We have one, one lady that is interested in maybe possibly doing a project, a work project with us, but literally getting people to go back into work. And whether it's a sous chef, whether it's doing maintenance work, whatever the case may be, but getting them skilled, so that when they get into housing, they have a job and are able to get back into the community and be, be ready to go. So, but you couldn't we couldn't ask for a better person to lead this than Danny and Sarah's work with it. But we couldn't have done this. There's no way we could have done this without our nonprofit partners and our friends at United Way. So my just I just wanted to say thank you and I look forward to where we are headed in the future. Our, our efforts with the police department is second to none. And the what we're looking to do and adding a paramedic that would literally go out with the team to, to help. So we are dealing with people right there on real time. These are the things that make a huge difference in a community when you're dealing with our population that we have. So thank you. Very good. Well, yes, thank you very much. And at 109 p.m. we'll conclude this meeting. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]