The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-01-07
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (20,426 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
A Portland City Council work session convened on Tuesday, January 7, 2025, at 9:34 a.m., serving as the first in a planned series of informational sessions preceding substantive policy work. The session focused on a presentation from Portland Solutions, an umbrella program formally established six months earlier under the Assistant City Administrator, encompassing City Shelter Services, the Impact Reduction Program, the Public Environment Management Office, and the Street Services Coordination Center. Topics covered included shelter capacity and service delivery models, chronically homeless populations, permanent housing placement rates, campsite reporting and removal processes governed by state law, an online reporting dashboard, storage of belongings including identification documents, funding sources described as largely one-time federal, state, and county dollars, RV towing and disposal costs, workforce development partnerships, and coordination with Multnomah County's Joint Office of Homeless Services. Discussion also addressed the planned closure of the Sunderland shelter site, potential extension costs, differences between city outreach workers and Portland Street Response, a "special cases" enforcement process involving police, and questions about tracking long-term housing stability. Figures presented, including some housing placement and referral statistics, were stated inconsistently. Council members raised topics for future discussion, including community-wide success metrics. No votes were recorded during this session.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
0 All right.
1 Thank you.
2 Dear. Darren, can you hear me? Yes. So thank you very much.
3 Thank you. Everybody out here.
4 We had a lot of tara wasiak, which is like, we need it here. So what about you, dear? Can you hear me? Yeah. Right now. Absolutely. Hello. Thank you. I can take my seat.
5 Absolutely. Though we don't have a name tag for you yet. I know we're tired.
6 Yeah, I can hear you. Keelan. Great. Thanks.
7 Yeah.
8 I still have Dan. And over here. Were you able to log in today?
9 How does that work? Session.
10 We are going to begin the work session this morning. It is Tuesday. It is Tuesday, January 7th at 9:34 a.m. A quick note to the public who are here today or watching online. You are going to see us over the next couple of weeks, have a number of work sessions that are informational to counselors about work that is happening within the city. I know that we have all heard from our constituents about how important it is to get to work quickly, but before we can get to the work that we know we need to do, there's a lot of level setting with common information that needs to happen. So for folks who are watching, you will see us have a number of meetings coming up over the next couple of weeks to level set. With that common information, we will be able to do the work that you are asking us for much more effectively. If we have that that common level of information to begin with. So bear with us while we go through a number of these work sessions over the next few weeks, beginning today with a conversation about Portland solutions led by skyler brock. And I know we're waiting on a few of our colleagues, but if you'd like to get started with introductions, we would love to hear from you all.
11 Absolutely. Thank you. Madam president, councilors. For the record, skyler brucker, director of Portland solutions here with hank Smith, deputy director, Portland solutions. And I'm just going to quickly introduce our team leads from all of our four programs within Portland solutions, because they are all here today. To answer your questions, lucas hillier from the impact reduction program, we have randy westerman, who runs our city shelter services program. We have anne hill, who runs our public environment management office, and nate takara, who runs our street services coordination center. Portland solutions is a compilation of different emergency programs that were part of the previous mayor's administration under mayor wheeler, as well as some ongoing kind of emergency response programs that were created now under one umbrella structure that started on July 1st of this year or this last year. The intention is to meet portland's most urgent challenges and be immediately responsive to the public. As you will hear, just as we go through these programs quickly, we are meeting portland's most urgent challenges. But we could adjust and be flexible and nimble to meet any changing needs that the city might have. Just as some quick overview, we can dive deeper into the budget in questions or in the coming weeks as well. But just so you're aware, the current fiscal year budget is a little over $80 million for this program. However, only 8.8 million of that is ongoing general fund dollars. So 10% of the budget is an ongoing cost because we have gotten a lot of different money from different sources. So federal ARPA dollars, for example, state one time dollars as well as county and just kind of regional dollars. So I just wanted to give you that context. Could we do the slide deck, please?
12 Oh, I didn't know that I was sorry.
13 We're sharing our slide deck.
14 I didn't know that I was doing that. Give me one second. Thanks.
15 I'm going to go into the city shelter services first. Soon you'll see a slide just with some of those numbers. We have currently ten shelters that are under the city shelter services program. Those have been mostly built in the last three years. They consist of 868 total sleeping spaces, so serving more than a thousand people per night. As of today, as mayor wilson announced last week, we have 200 more spaces as a part of that system for overnight shelter beds between two different additional shelters. Within those ten shelters that we currently oversee. Those include the safe rest villages that councilor Ryan created, the temporary alternative shelter sites, as well as one congregate shelter. We have some numbers that will show you just about the number of people served, but over 2000 people have been served in these specific shelters. So these city shelters are in addition to private shelters and Multnomah county shelters throughout the region. So just the city shelter, specifically, 45% of the folks that we have served, of those, over 2000 people were chronically homeless. And we've moved over 500 people into permanent housing as of the inception. So this is coming since July of 2022. A lot of those individuals are kind of the high acuity individuals on the street that need that high service delivery model. So a lot of these shelters have intense wraparound services, case management, and they serve that specific population. For example, we created the mobile medical units in partnership with central city concern, that travel to different shelters and actually provide a psychiatric nurse at different sites that we have within our system. So folks can receive prescription drugs and have their meds kind of adjusted as needed. And that psychiatric nurse will attend once weekly kind of sessions with our clients. We also have medicaid insurers who for the first time are actually present at these shelter sites. That's the first time that's ever happened in the region. And they're able to connect folks with the Oregon health plan and make sure they're on benefits and receive a lot of those services that are desperately needed and that they're entitled to within the region. We also have workforce development programs. So we'll talk a little bit more about how those work with our entire program and system. But we have them specifically at different shelter sites. This is in line with case managers who are at different sites and are able to navigate folks to housing, or to get identification or to different services that they might need. Also connection with family or to different medical needs. Okay. I'm going to pause. Sorry. Just so we can see some of those numbers.
16 Oh my gosh. Yeah, I'm so sorry. I didn't know that I was I was going to be doing that part of it as well.
17 My apologies.
18 At long last.
19 Thank you. All right. So lucas is going to show you the slide that I just went over just so you can briefly see it. It is also on the clerk's website and was posted. So you'll have access to those numbers if you want.
20 Madam president, if I could, since we are going through some slides and we'll have multiple sections, can I ask a question of this section?
21 Absolutely. Let's do that. Skyler, are you okay taking questions as we go?
22 Yeah, I'm just looking at the totals. I see the, the 1012 chronically homeless. Of those 292 moved to housing, but a total out of our 2200 plus the 500 moved to shelter, move to permanent housing. I just want to I guess I'm trying to understand a little bit in terms of how those percentages stack up, if you will, to county programs, to city programs across other communities on the west coast. How we're feeling about those percentages. Okay.
23 Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. So those percentages are actually higher than a lot of the congregate shelter settings, a lot of other programs that are run in the region. And that's due to that high service delivery model. I will also say, I think we can look at the percentages, but it doesn't speak to that high acuity that I mentioned. So while those percentages are higher than other programs, which is great, I think we also are serving a really specific population in a lot of those shelters, folks who, frankly, have been exited from other programs and by other providers. And we are kind of the last vestige for them. They are not able to seek services in any other setting. And so I also, while I'm proud of those percentages as numbers, I also think we need to be proud of the work that's been done to meet the needs of those folks who are most in need in our community. All right. Thank you lucas. We're just going to go to that next slide. So speaking of that model that I was just talking to, and some of these numbers you'll notice are a little lower. It's because they came from two months earlier. So there's been additional data since. This graphic was created except we've mentioned in the works. Oh, sorry. Yeah.
24 Could you define high acuity, please?
25 Oh, yes. Apologies. Thank you, counselor Ryan. So high acuity, meaning folks with co-occurring disorders, for example. So we talk about severe and persistent mental illness, higher rates on the streets. Folks who are chronically homeless have more severe mental illness, traumatic brain injuries, psychosis. Those rates are quite a bit higher than the average population as well as behavioral health issues. So drug use addiction and those can be if co-occurring can exacerbate one another. So we're dealing with a lot of folks with differing needs and who really require a lot of different services. So there's some excellent healthcare data that's out there from healthshare and central city concern that I'm happy to share with you all. That really shows the medicaid reimbursement rates for a lot of the folks that we're seeing on the street. There's a direct overlap with a lot of the folks that we're seeing in our shelter system, especially the city shelter system and the folks who are moving through hospitals and ers regularly to get those medicaid reimbursement dollars for services that they desperately need.
26 Okay. And when we meet with the county this afternoon, we could see if they have that same definition. Yes. Okay. And so the outreach workers would have the same definitions that you just gave, I think.
27 Yes. I think outreach workers would also be probably talk about the behavior that, that they experience kind of on the street. So, you know, just a little more in-your-face kind of example of exactly what they're experiencing with folks who are really having difficulty meeting their day to day needs.
28 I would say that was important to get that level set.
29 Thank you.
30 Any other questions before we have our presenters continue? Just a.
31 Members.
32 There's a welcome box that was showing there.
33 So I think that's.
34 Yeah lucas where it says start rehearsing. Oh guys while we're getting that taken care of, could I ask a question of the folks who have moved into permanent housing? Do you track for a length of time at all? How long people stay in housing and whether they're able to stay housed for six months, a year or two years? After exiting the Portland solutions programs?
35 Yes. So we don't track that once they are in housing. And part of kind of the counties hms system, the homelessness management information system, I think it stands for they track it for up to two years. So especially folks who are receiving those, you know, rental assistance and any kind of assistance dollars, any voucher, they will track that. So we coordinate with them to receive that data from directly from the county.
36 And do we know if the individuals who have come out of the city run programs have the same level, a better level, not as high a level of permanency within housing?
37 Yes. I will defer to brandi westerman on that one. Maybe we can speak to that just after the presentation, and she can give you maybe a quick overview of that. Yes. Thank you.
38 Any other questions while we get the presentation back online?
39 Sorry about technical difficulties.
40 Technical difficulties is the theme so far for our meetings. By the fourth or fifth meeting, we'll have it all worked out.
41 All the kinks. Well, I have one question while we wait for this to get oh, maybe we're there, but how are you guys defining low barrier shelters?
42 What's the criteria for that?
43 Yeah, it's a great question. So and the county has kind of established a clear definition. But how we define it is folks could be actively in addiction using maybe have a pet. We want to allow couples as much as possible. So those are kind of some of our obviously certain folks don't have government identification currently as they enter sites. And we don't look at anybody's criminal history in the criminal justice system.
44 Yeah. Madam president.
45 Go right ahead.
46 So with that, I think I'm hoping you can paint a little bit of a picture for us. Then in terms of the role that our shelters are playing in that. I don't want to use the word continuum. I think we overused that word. But there are different types of shelters across the community. Low barrier, high barrier and everything in between. You're meeting a need, a certain need. And can you just kind of talk about how that how we are navigating that as a funding entity? Because we do have other shelters in the system who have different, higher, lower barriers. Why did we pick up a certain role here? What what did you see in the past that got us into this business?
47 Yeah. Thank you, councilor Zimmerman. So not to go too deep in the weeds, but kind of what I mentioned earlier with the severe and persistent mental illness, co-occurring disorders. We were asked, and under mayor wheeler's office, hank and I were asked to establish some new programs that would meet the needs we were seeing on the ground of folks, like I mentioned, who'd been exited from every service, basically, that we have in our had in our community at the time. So individuals that firefighters, police officers, Portland street response outreach teams, we're seeing again and again on the streets of Portland. We're taking them to hospitals. But then they were getting released. Who had gone in and out of jail? Who really did not have access to any service that was truly helping them. They needed stability. And in order to accomplish that stability, we knew we needed a really high service model. So we established, in conjunction with councilor Ryan, safe rest villages, the temporary alternative shelter sites to really meet that need that we were seeing every day on the ground. And frankly, we were also tasked with meeting a return on investment for what the city was putting in to a lot of these services. So taking a lot of 911 calls, taking a lot of time from our first responders to try to meet the needs of folks on the ground. And we didn't have behavioral health workers or doctors or people who really could address those very specific needs. So we needed to make sure we brought those services to a place where folks could be stabilized. And that's why we've really focused on bringing behavioral, physical, mental health care to a lot of these sites that previously just weren't at shelter sites before. To meet that very specific need of those high acuity individuals, like I was talking about with councilor Ryan, to make sure we are wrapping folks around with all the services that they need to succeed. I will say for a different time, but really interesting the history of our state and kind of the defunding of the mental and behavioral health institutions, because we have seen a lack of people being civilly committed because of state law, and then also folks who are not entering the state mental hospital at the same rates that they were ten years ago. So we're seeing a lot of folks on the street who are chronically homeless, have been for years or decades sometimes, and do not have access to a lot of those really necessary lifesaving services. And in other states and other communities, those are resources that they have. So I know the state is focused this next legislative session on really establishing those services and bringing those back into our communities as a resource. But I know, at least in the last three years, we were tasked with meeting some very intense needs that we were seeing on the street. And we've seen a lot of success with that. And I just frankly, will say that we've saved lives with a lot of those services. Thank you. Okay. I'm going to move on from this slide so hank can speak if we're okay. So next slide please. Thank you.
48 Thanks, skye. Again for the record, hank Smith, deputy director of Portland solutions. So I'll be speaking about the impact reduction program, but I want to kind of frame it as in sort of in relation to what skye just talked about with shelters. So the impact reduction program does a lot. But one of the things that those teams do is they do clean and removals of unsanctioned campsites around the city. So under Portland solutions, I think we're unique, a unique organization that addresses a complex issue from multiple angles. Right. So while we're building shelters for high that really are serving high acuity individuals who may have been on the street for a decade plus. We're engaging with the communities around those shelters to address their concerns. We're also responding to community reports of unsanctioned camping around the city to maintain order and cleanliness in the public right of way. So impact reduction program is the team that manages that effort to do the clean and removals of sites, but they also do a lot more. They have programs that include day storage for homeless individuals, so they have somewhere to store their possessions during the day. They have a laundry facility so folks can wash their clothes. They have workforce development programs that do trash pickup around the city. And in the whole effort to address the community reports and requests for cleaning up the public right of way, they do this in a way that leverages programs that often incorporate folks with experience living unsheltered in the streets as a job opportunity program. So getting into the details, a lot of the work from for the what we'll say impact reduction program, or irp, is driven through community requests. So last year, there were 104,000 community reports of unsanctioned campsites in the public right of way. A lot of those are duplicates. So they are deduplicated and then fed into a process. That process, you can see some of the numbers there resulted in, at its peak, around 700 unsanctioned campsite clean and removals per month. When we say clean and removal of an unsanctioned campsite, it doesn't mean just say one tent or tarp. It could be multiples, just an area that's an increase of hundreds from a few years ago, and it's in direct response to community input. Each campsite removal follows a pretty strict process that's guided by state law, the state law that we operate by codifies some of the logic in the martin v boise decision that many of us are familiar with, but it's intended to humanely address the sites in that public right of way. So what happens is a report comes in and it's deduplicated and an assessment team is instructed to go out and take a look. And while they're there they clean up any obvious removals. We have about 18 of these assessment teams around the city. It's a central city concern clean start program. So a couple folks in a truck, they go, they visit, they clean up what they can and they score the site for community impact. These are things like proximity to school, presence of needles, amount of trash, things like that. And this is all public and posted online as well. After that, the score goes into a system. The high priority sites are then scheduled for a clean and removal, but in accordance with state law, those sites have to be posted clearly about that a clean and removal will take place, and then we have to wait a minimum of 72 hours prior to conducting that clean and removal. It's usually longer than three days. It's it has to be between 3 and 10 days after that posting. And so, so that when the clean and removal crew goes out, they give folks an hour to kind of sit if they're still there to situate themselves and pack up if they need to, and anything they remove anything are clean. And removal teams do remove. And we have about 20 of these clean and removal teams that operate daily. Anything they remove is stored for a minimum of 30 days at a storage location. That's operated by the impact reduction program. That's also in accordance with state law. And so lucas hillier, who runs the impact reduction program, is going to walk through the dashboard. That kind of captures a lot of that process that I just outlined. And this is publicly available. I would note I think it's used daily by constituent service representatives. Write in as folks from the community email and say, hey, what's happening? I reported a campsite. Can you tell me, is it are you aware of it? Is anything happening? Often that information is captured on the dashboard, and it can be very helpful in our relations with constituents. So, lucas, can I pass it to you to kind of do a quick walk through of the dashboard?
49 Can I ask a quick question before we move on? And also, I don't know what our procedure is for asking questions, madam president, maybe you can tell us.
50 So I think we should follow the same procedure we use in council meetings with raising hands. No, that's okay, that's okay. I do think we should because there are a few parts to this. Have pauses for questions between sections of the presentation. Is your question specifically about something that was just said, or should we wait and see the dashboard so that we see this full section of the presentation and then have questions about these pieces after that?
51 It's specifically about this part. But maybe I'm selfish because I looked at the dashboard yesterday.
52 Let's take that question and then let's see the dashboard. And we'll pause after the dashboard for other questions, because I'm guessing we'll have other questions at that point too.
53 I will raise my hand afterwards. Sorry everyone. I was curious what you know, are you guys tracking at all when unhoused people have complaints? As far as I work with unhoused people a lot, and I often hear that they get their ids stolen, they get important documentation or not stolen, but taken mistakenly or thrown away. And that can be a big barrier to them maintaining a job or getting housing in the future. What are you what precautions are we taking to make sure that people are actually getting those materials? It's also my understanding that when sweeps sweeps happen and those materials are taken into storage, that it's the storage facility is pretty far away and difficult to access. It can be like an hour or two hour long bus ride, which would be a barrier to almost anyone. So what what precautions are we taking to ensure that in these situations, a campsite has to be removed, that people are getting their ids and important documentation in order to ensure that they can stay housed, keep their job, etc.
54 That's a good question. Thank you. And I think lucas can maybe dive into some of those details also during the dashboard walkthrough to just describe in detail the process for a campsite removal and storage of especially ids, things like that.
55 So my name is lucas hillier. I use he him pronouns and I manage the city's impact reduction program. Is that right? If I address that question specifically right now, thank you. Thank you for the question. Councilor Morillo. We have an online on the city's website where folks can submit complaint and feedback forms. That was a result of a lawsuit in 2021 and part of our standard operating procedure and city policy for camp removals. I would say that we receive about 3 or 4 of those complaints a month. Our process for dealing with those is to hand them off to the contractor involved and allow them an opportunity to try to resolve the issue. As far as id and other important documentation, we hold on to those items indefinitely. So we put the id into a small plastic bag inside of the larger property bag, and when the larger property bag is ready to be disposed of, we take the ids out and we have a kind of a tote full of ids. And hold on to those indefinitely for folks.
56 And how are these unhoused folks informed about the complaint system so that they can get those, get that addressed?
57 We so we have a Friday morning phone call with all the county's outreach providers. So we have talked about quite a bit, made sure that all the outreach providers working with individuals are aware of this complaint feedback form. We have a navigation team that we work with a little bit more closely that that knows about it. And then when folks come to pick their property up, there is an ipad at the property warehouse. And if there is a problem with any of their process retrieving their items, folks are given an opportunity while they're at the warehouse to fill that out.
58 Thanks for answering my questions. Just to leave a comment. Maybe for my colleagues or anyone watching this, I think the information is kind of anecdotal, because I don't think that a lot of unhoused people know about this complaint form. This is the first time I've heard of it. Most unhoused people I work with don't know about it either. And so but what I have heard anecdotally a lot is that people do lose their important documentation, and that can be a real barrier to getting back on their feet later on. So I would love to see that pushed more and that information pushed out so that people know that they have access to that. And we can actually track how many people are losing their documentation in this process.
59 Thank you for that feedback. And we're committed to constant improvement. So I appreciate that feedback. And we'll we'll work on that.
60 And just quickly I think just one previous question. The storage warehouse is centrally located in the central city. So right on a max line and bus line. So we were pretty intentional about where that storage facility was located for that reason. Thank you. Yeah.
61 All right. Back to it. A lot of these I can go ahead and cross out again. My name is lucas. Congratulations to all of you. I look forward to working with you in the future. It's an exciting time in the city of Portland. I was just going to do kind of a little walkthrough of the dashboard because it can be a lot of information, and it's a little bit confusing if you're not, if you're not familiar with what you're looking at. So when you first open it up, you're going to get a one year view, which is a ton of information and a little bit overwhelming. The way that I would suggest trying to figure out what you're trying to figure out is back that up to a one month view. It consolidates that when you first open it as well. The navigation bar is going to be hidden. So I would pop that down. And then we have the different layers that you can look at individually. So if you're just wanting to look at risk assessments and campsite reports, hank earlier talked a little bit about the de-duplication system that we have an example of that would be right in here you can see the gray dots represent campsite reports and the red dots represent high risk risk assessments. When a report comes in at a location that already has a work order for a risk assessment, it digitally attaches to that work order. If it comes within three 3 to 5 days and 300ft. So it keeps us from having to go back to the same place multiple times a day. Across the city we have ten, we have 14. Sorry, central city concern clean start trucks. We have designated zones split up into ten different zones that folks are able to get to across the city. I feel like this provides for us to be a little bit more equitable in our service delivery. It doesn't matter what part of town. Thank you. It doesn't matter what part of town you're in. We are usually able to perform a risk assessment within three days of receiving a report. So moving on to the next step. So what you're looking at here and what this bar chart represents. And I apologize that it's small. These these are color coded into low medium and high risk encampments. So as you can see back in October we received 2200 low risk risk assessments. We received 739 medium risk and then 1400 high risk. Typically, almost always, it's only the high risk encampments that we move on to the next stage of the process where we would post and remove. So as you can see, about 12 to 15% of the locations that get reported to us actually get posted and removed further on down. So anything else you'd like me to continue to look into the dot to show the before and after? Thank you. Oh, so. If we get on to here, you can start seeing where we have posted and where we have removed. The Green crosses are the posting notifications, and when you click on those, you actually are able to see a before and after photo. So that is the close up posting of that location. Here's the before photo of this removal. The blue dots. There's a little bit of information. How many people were there? Was there property collected from this one? No. That means the person took their property and moved along. Another layer that is on here that you guys might find helpful is the neighborhood. So if you turn that on, you can kind of see neighborhoods are getting the most attention. Thank you.
62 Is this an okay spot to pause to see if there are additional questions?
63 Yes.
64 Councilor. Koyama Lane.
65 Thank you for being here and for the work you're doing. I just want to make sure that I have a the right picture in my mind of what Portland solutions is. And can I just kind of say what I understand and then you can fill in the gaps. You obviously know a lot more. Okay. So it was created about six ish months ago by the former mayor and. You're under the assistant city administrator. And you are do we think of you as an umbrella for city shelter services impact reduction program, those four areas, or is it is it an umbrella? Okay. And then I will also listen to this opb thing I just heard, I found that you did with the director of the joint office of homeless services. I see that you guys collaborate. Are you is there are you the same? Are you totally separate? If you sorry if other people already know this. In my mind, I'm kind of like building the chart and that would be helpful to hear a little bit about. Or maybe it's coming later.
66 Yeah. Yes. Thank you vice president. So yes, we were formed formally under this umbrella structure six months ago, but we were running these programs out of mayor wheeler's office for three years. So we established these programs under some, in some cases, emergency declarations under mayor wheeler. And then we're running them kind of as senior policy advisors. Hank and I were running them out of mayor wheeler's office. So then we formally established six months ago on July 1st, the Portland solutions kind of umbrella program under the assistant city administrator. So we are under annie von berg as well. And then, yes, we will hear this afternoon about the homelessness response system. But I think a great opportunity just to pull apart some of those pieces quickly. So the joint office of homeless services works in conjunction with us. We talk to their staff and their leadership every single day. We work with a lot of teams. We collaborate on providers for certain shelter sites. We have joint contracts. We send money kind of back and forth with a lot of different work that's being done in the community. So the outreach team, navigation team, for example, that lucas mentioned, we send money to the county and the joint office contracts with different nonprofit providers and outreach workers who then work with us on a daily basis. So we're collaborating every day with the joint office, and it can be a little messy. But I think that's just the nature of a large city in a large county working together on a lot of these processes. And the homelessness response system was created under the new intergovernmental agreement between the city and the county that was established last summer as a governance structure. So instead of Portland solutions and the joint office working together and as just individual programs, we wanted to have a more comprehensive system that's established at the county. They will tell you a lot more about it this afternoon, but we work with them as well every single day. And they are they encompass all of the different pieces of that continuum. Sorry, counselor Zimmerman, but that process of the joint office, for example, but also the health department, behavioral health department at the county. Corrections, health, the Portland solutions team, city administrator's office at the city. So a lot of those different pieces are under that umbrella structure that governs both the city and the county, as well as some state agencies and metro and some health care providers as well. So that's just a larger kind of umbrella. So Portland solutions is kind of the small in the city umbrella for a lot of these services. Does that make sense okay. Yes.
67 Great. Yeah.
68 Zimmerman I apologize. We have a few more folks.
69 Sorry. Okay. Yep.
70 The whole host of hands up. So get ready. So first off, I love the clean start program. I've been out there. I've seen what they do. It is a huge. Work program that helps folks who are really just coming out of it. And I just if you haven't spent time with them, I hope you do. I've seen the property recovery warehouse in action. I've seen folks there navigating it. And while it's never fun, I've also seen it be quite successful. So just appreciate that. You know, I heard you, lucas, in terms of 10 to 15% of what gets reported is getting cleaned up, trying to understand the high risk. I think I used to use the terms high impact, but I think we're using high risk. Now. If you score high enough, that makes you in the cleanup category. I'm trying to find a way to articulate this for neighbors to understand. I think a lot of us and I know in my own neighborhood. Right. I'll see. I'll see one rv show up or one tent show up. And I know that in a short couple of days that will then multiply into many, many, many. Right. And then it seems like some attention comes to that camp and they get cleaned up, but it takes a while. On the one hand, I think people generally understand we've got to put our resources at the most impactful camps. On the other hand, in most facets of life, you want to nip a problem quickly when it when it happens. And so I am trying to wrestle with how to describe this for neighbors, right? If you have a problem area that's happening in the neighborhood, is it good to report early and get an early assessment so that folks can start trying to work with people? Because I'm assuming if you get a lower, not a high risk rating, but a lower risk rating, that there are at least some outreach workers get told, like this is happening here, can we spend some resources to maybe defuze this situation before we're abating the camp? Is that an accurate description or is that a false assumption of mine?
71 Thank you for the question. I would say that the beauty in the system that we've created is that folks are going to report things going on, and so a location will get assessed every couple of days. And that allows us to track the progress of something. We could have several weeks where something is, you know, it's a person in a tent on the parking strip down the street, and then all of a sudden something blows up and it turns into a real big problem with the level of resource that we have right now, we're able to jump on those and post them the week that we get those high risk scores. So it really has enabled us to really just focus on on the problematic encampments. I'll also say that during your time here, during the pandemic, we had skewed the risk assessment matrix pretty significantly because of COVID. It was designed to have a score of 50 being the threshold score, excuse me. And during during COVID, we upped that to 75 and then lowered it to 65. And what that did was kind of create a doom loop a little bit for us. So we had all these extremely high risk encampments all over town that took twice the amount of time and material to remove. And so rather than it being one crew taking three hours, it was three crews taking three days. And so we were really having a hard time getting getting caught up to the point we are now. I would say that the system is working far better and as designed so that we are able to intervene quite immediately after it has hit that threshold. And I say, and you probably heard me say this, but the difference of a score. A risk score from a 40 to a 50 out of 100 out of 100 is linear. And then once you get past 50, that's an exponential rise. So it is really important that we're able to get to those right as it hits that 5055 risk risk score.
72 And given those percentages and given the scores, at the end of the day, I think it still remains true in this community that if you are camping on in a tent or in an rv and your impact outside of that area is not littered with trash, has not got, you know, generators and cables going across streets to other other camps, that you're generally going to score very low and never be abated if things are cleaned up, so to speak, in the footprint is very minimal.
73 We have far more serious issues to, to, to try to deal with. And in a situation like that. Okay.
74 I would just add, I think one piece and hank mentioned kind of some of the legal components, but we are under several settlement agreement obligations. One of those would be right of ways. So I think that's true unless you are inhibiting kind of the right of way, for example, or a sidewalk, we are under certain obligations to remove those very quickly.
75 So I'm going to take the answers as it is still appropriate for neighbors to report if they've got a problem in their neighborhood, even if it's not one of those enormous. It looks like, you know, everything went off here. And that that takes time and the impact is assessed and you're just balancing resources in terms of those 20 teams and how that goes on. Correct. But don't wait until it's untenable.
76 And I might add, because that question comes up frequently with in meetings with the community. And just to kind of foot stomp that timeline lucas mentioned, I think it's on the dashboard, but 2.6 days is the average time from a report to a visit from one of the assessment teams. And this clean start program that you mentioned, councilor Zimmerman, is it's not a team that's there to do a tent removal, right? They're there. They do. They will take any trash that's there. They're a friendly word bottle of water. They maintain positive relations. And so in many ways this is sometimes maybe the first time somebody who's living unsheltered on the street is in touch with somebody in the overall service structure. So it's if there's a site that is of concern to a community member, the advice is to always report it as soon as as soon as they can.
77 My last question before an abatement occurs is it what is the percentage? So if rapid response shows up with their truck and that today is the day everything is getting cleared, what is the percentage of those where an outreach worker or team or something related to that has already made contact with the residents of that area prior to that day, and you can ballpark that percentage. I know that's just coming at you.
78 That's a little tricky. So if we're saying within the last three months, I would say the percentage is quite high, 70, 80%. I think if it's within the last week, that's probably falls a little bit 30 to 40%, right.
79 Because within a week could have been when it was posted because you have a three day. Okay. Thanks. That's helpful. That's it. Thank you.
80 Got a couple more for you before we move on. Councilor Novick I apologize I oh, I think I might have been distracted and not heard all councilor Zimmerman's questions.
81 Maybe I already asked this, but when you when you post a site like if you do 100 postings, do you expect x percent of people will leave before the 72 hours and y percent? All of them will stay and z percent some of them will leave and some of them will stay.
82 I mean, ideally everyone would would relocate. You know, that's the point of putting a legal notice up. I'd say that percentage is 15, 15% of folks maybe, maybe relocate before we get there.
83 Councilor Smith.
84 Thank you, madam president. Thank you. Skyler, I have a couple questions for you. I want to go back. So the Portland solutions department or program, it was started six months ago. Correct?
85 Formerly, yes, formerly.
86 But it was actually produced out of the mayor's office. And I'm trying to figure out, were you paid for with general fund money or ARPA money?
87 We. So certain programs were established with ARPA money, especially the shelter services group. So a lot of our shelters were paid for initially with those federal dollars. But there's been a lot of different sources of funds.
88 But you said that 90% of the of the funding is ongoing. You know, opposite 10% is ongoing. And the other because it was the ARPA money. And so the intent is going forward that you would probably be looking for ongoing money for this newly formed program, correct?
89 Yes. However, I think these are emergency style programs, so I anticipate we will continue to look for one time dollars, one time only for a lot of it. Yes. Okay. Great. Especially outside sources. So we're talking to the legislature and the county and metro and others.
90 And councilor Zimmerman could, could let me know more about this, but it is my understanding that the county had about 75 to $80 million left over. And since we have this joint partnership with Multnomah county, I'm just wondering why we did not try to access those dollars to pay for Portland solutions and or if we're going forward, if those dollars can be accessed. Because when we originally signed this agreement, when I was at the county, all of those social service types of sheltering that was supposed to be done all under the umbrella of the joint office, and now we have gone out on our own and started a new program that we have to seek one time funding for. So I'm just trying to figure out the strategic plan going forward when we're in such a, you know, we our budgets look pretty slim. And I'm just trying to figure out how we can streamline resources that are already on deck that are slated for this kind of activity, because what you're doing it is amazing and outstanding. And you all jumped right into place to try to help folks and to and to remove the trash and get people into services. So I'm wondering if there could be some sort of collaboration with the joint office so that we could probably move some of those resources that they have been holding on to, to pay for your program?
91 Yes, councilor. You're spot on. So actually, currently working with the county and the joint office under that intergovernmental agreement, part of that agreement, which was signed last summer, was because was to ensure that the county would pay for the sheltering services. So exactly what you're talking about, I will say we are still negotiating because they have been told by metro that the supportive housing services measure will actually be reduced in this fiscal year and next fiscal year. So determining what that level is, I would anticipate we would get county money. The question is how much. So I am lobbying, I promise a very hard to ensure that it's not on the city ledger, so to speak. But yes, that was the intention with that intergovernmental agreement was to make sure that the county, as the health and human services provider, would support these sites, and they have been very supportive. I will say last fiscal year, they sent over at least $30 million for a lot of these services to establish them and to provide operating dollars. So they've been very supportive. Yes.
92 Thank you so much for this very ambitious and effective program in such a short period of time. Thank you so much. Thank you, I appreciate that.
93 Okay. Got one more, one more.
94 And then we're going to let you keep going okay. Councilor Green go ahead.
95 Thank you, madam president. And thank you so much for the presentation today. I see on the slide here a bullet that describes that there are partnerships with ground score association. I'd really love to know a little bit more about that. What is the nature of that partnership. Is it is it one specific thing. Do they offer a suite of services, and is there opportunities to scale? Thank you. Yes, absolutely.
96 So I just had lucas go forward a few slides just so you can see. But we can obviously delve deeply another time to into this program. It's an incredible partnership. But hank mentioned kind of some of these partnerships that we have for workforce development. This is one of them. So you will see the day storage site that was mentioned, that picture that central city concern runs. But you will also see that laundry facility, trash piece, ground score, glitter kind of all part of this nonprofit organization. Run that laundry facility and then you will see glitter staff that are part of those associations picking up trash in that photo. But we work with them heavily on sharps pickup, for example. So they're trained to pick up needles in different neighborhoods, and we can deploy those workers as needed. Sometimes these are the first jobs that these folks have ever had or held. And so it's a really great way to get back into the workforce and give back. A lot of these folks are currently or formerly homeless. So it's a lot of folks with lived experience. And a lot of our contractors are, frankly, second chance employees. So folks who've had lived experience, been in the criminal justice system, experienced homelessness, addiction. So those clean start workers are coming out of addiction into central city concern programs. But ground score and trash and glitter are some really awesome partners that we work with on a daily basis. They also help with sanitation work as well.
97 Thank you, thank you.
98 Sorry. Will you go back?
99 Let's move on to the next part of the presentation. And then as we need to, we'll continue to pause for questions. Thank you.
100 Right. Thank you okay. So we'll get through these pretty quickly. Move on to the next pillar of Portland solutions. But the earp campsite removal policy is posted online. It's worth a read for folks in the community interested in this. Go ahead next slide. And to note this is a report driven process. So sometimes folks in the community say, hey, I did a report online. I don't think anything happened or what happened. And everything is driven through those reports. And that is where the dashboard can be helpful in connecting the dots. For folks here, the report of campsite online form. Personally, I just save it as a, as a as a link on my phone's home screen. So as I'm out and about and I need to report a site, I can do that quickly. It only takes a few minutes to report a site. Some. Yeah. Thank you. Go ahead. Next slide some before and after photos. Yeah. There you go. Before and after photos. These are available on the dashboard as well. Again can be very helpful with constituent relations. When they ask about a particular campsite. And just to note individuals are required to relocate 500ft or more away. So we know this is not a tool to solve homelessness. That's not the intent of the impact reduction program, but it is to meet our responsibility to protect the public right of way and to do it in a humane way. Go ahead. Okay. We talked. Do you want to. Yep. Next. Okay.
101 So we're just going to go through the public environment management office is another pillar of Portland solutions. The intent was to cut through bureaucracy and deliver immediate solutions on livability related issues in the public realm. So what that means is safety by environmental design for lighting, for example, is a huge tool that we use. It's pretty cheap and very effective to create safe spaces. So you've probably seen the bursts in parks or the string lights throughout trees throughout the city of Portland. We also engage in graffiti removal and trash pickup, as well as space activation. So that includes plazas and murals and art installations, and really just making sure people feel comfortable and excited about the spaces around them. It also includes hardening, fencing and any of those kinds of environmental mitigation efforts. They host 16 biweekly problem solver meetings covering every single inch of the city. So I would just note for your constituents, this is a great tool for them to engage with the city of Portland. We want it to be immediately responsive to community needs. It can be as small as this trash can hasn't been serviced in two weeks and I really need someone to get out here. We will send someone immediately. We know exactly how to respond to those immediate needs, and the idea was to help folks navigate kind of what can seem overwhelming in the bureaucracy of the city. And who runs that program, talks about we'll bring it back to the family table. So you give us some feedback on what you need, what you're seeing in your neighborhood, and we will bring it back to the city. Figure out who's the right person to contact. Make sure they address that problem immediately. That's not for you to navigate. We can do that for you. It's been incredibly successful. We also engage in site walks and community conversations about those discrete problems. So police and firefighters and other members of PBOT or the city of Portland will participate in those meetings so that they know exactly where those issues are, and they can address those immediately and talk directly to constituents and community members. Okay, I just had some numbers. I know probably want to leave time for questions, but just so you're aware of those 2400 street trees that were lit and lots of different projects within the community. We also, just for your awareness, are able to dispatch contractors for biohazard removal. So someone has poop on the sidewalk. We can dispatch a contractor to immediately remove that as well as sharps, like I mentioned earlier, and then power washing, which can be helpful for folks. Okay. Next slide please. We just put some of the pictures of those art installations. I mentioned some partnerships that we've engaged in. You'll see the wraps around those boxes kind of in the upper left hand corner around town. You've probably seen these roses. This was a partnership with wieden and kennedy, and they provided that artwork and then those lighting, those lights in the trees and then the art installations as well. Next slide. Then you'll also see some of the murals I mentioned, as well as the near me now clinics that you've maybe seen on the sidewalk. Folks can go to that qr code. It goes right to the travelportland website. And that was a really successful partnership with travelportland that we engaged in. Next slide please. Thank you.
102 Great.
103 Thank you. I will jump into the street services coordination center. So this is a program run by nate takara and really embodies the ethos of Portland solutions, which is to stop the game of saying, I can't help you, not my problem. Right. It's to really tackle the toughest problems. So scott had mentioned, you know, building shelters for high acuity individuals, right. And the street services coordination center really deals with some of the most complex issues playing out on the street. And they do that with a small but but really effective team. So nate takara runs it. And under him is a team of three city outreach workers that may grow to four. These are city directed outreach workers that work closely with other outreach workers in our community, mostly funded via county contracts. So well over 100 of those outreach workers. So but our three are we're able to direct to some of the most complex, high risk areas in the city. And our outreach workers work closely with other partners throughout the city, including the Portland police bureau. So how nate operates an efficient program is by leveraging other elements in the city. And so through three through three weekly meetings, he coordinates with Portland police, parks, building inspectors, and really and county officials are there often and others who may have an issue that's really complex. And instead of just saying that sounds challenging, they start to discuss what is the nature of this issue and what can we do about it, and what resources can we bring to bear. And a lot of these are the complex jurisdictional issues, right? A unsanctioned campsite may be partly on a sidewalk and partly on private property. Right. And then the private property owner is asking, what can they do? And we can help the police work with that private property owner to do a legal trespass of that site. And so there's a lot of examples of just really core problem solving. So pmos problem solving with the wider community about issues playing out in the street. And nate is problem solving internally with the city and sometimes with external partners to problem solve around the complex issues of unsanctioned camping and homeless individuals suffering on the street. He does have access to set aside shelter beds, as well as the ability to refer into our city run shelters. And so the numbers you see there for shelter referrals are referencing the set aside beds. So these would be referrals into congregate style shelter beds. You can see 34% accepted referral. And so that's that's our outreach team being able to offer a bed somewhere prior to a site removal or just through normal outreach. And then we track who accepts it and who doesn't. We post those weekly on the street services coordination center website. The other aspect I want to mention here is the street services coordination center is kind of a landing place for what we what we our innovative programs, right? We want to have an ethos here of not being too bureaucratic. And so sometimes there's good ideas. They come from the community and they say, why can't you do this thing or that thing? And we want to actually try to implement those good ideas to see if there's something there. Right. It's almost a startup mentality that we try to maintain. We try to move fast. If it's working, we'll surround it with more resources. If it's not working, we'll set it aside and try something else. And so couple examples to note. One is the request of street outward outreach worker request program. Can you go one slide ahead I think it's here. So this this program originated from a community member saying, hey, you know, I don't there's a campsite in front of my house. This is a person was really involved in their neighborhood association and engaging with unsheltered folks in their area. And they said, I don't really want to report a campsite for removal. I want but I'm talking to this person and they're saying that they don't have any contacts that are trying to help them from the service structure. How? And I know you have outreach teams. How can I get this person in touch with an outreach worker? And so we heard that and we said, well, let's let's try to build something. And so we worked with 311 and built an online form or somebody anybody can call 311. So a person who is unsheltered can call or go to the form themselves and say, I'd like help. This is my name and here's my location. Or somebody can call on their behalf and it goes on to a list and it gets scheduled for our city outreach team to visit. Given we only have three, we can't. It's not an immediate visit, but they're put on that list. And then from there, once they get in touch now they can start capturing the needs of that individual. They can help them get into a shelter if needed, reconnected to family that has happened, or reconnected to other service workers that that person has been in touch with in the past but lost touch. And so it's been useful. We weren't sure how much it would be used, but we're getting 5 to 700 requests per month coming into this program. We surrounded it with more resources. And, you know, the next phase, we'd like to expand it to some of our community partners and maybe loop in two one, one county outreach workers more. So that's one example. And the other example. Just to note, I don't think we have a slide on it, but is it's an important aspect is our time, place, manner, laws or kind of what we call special cases in the city where these are individuals who may be in violation of city code about the manner in which they're camping, or they may be continuing to camp even after having been offered shelter numerous times. And so in that case, the special cases work group meets discusses this particular individual or individuals and says, hey, should we do more focused outreach? What can we do? But sometimes it results in a referral to police who can go. Then with one of our outreach workers, offer services one more time, but on some occasions that that individual can be arrested for a violation of that portion of city code. Arrests have only happened twice. In that case, some folks have been arrested for existing warrants, but the majority of cases folks have accepted shelter when they've refused in the past. And so we think of it as a firm hand on the back and the helping, you know, pushing towards a helping hand of service. And that's a that's a hard, complex issue. Right. And that's we ask this team in street services coordination center to help us manage that and do it the right way, do it the humane way and do it with the big picture. But what they don't do is they say it's too hard. Somebody else has to deal with it. So that is that's why I say they capture the ethos of what we're trying to achieve here with Portland solutions. Go ahead. Next slide.
104 Is this still within the street services coordination section or should we stop for questions on that section.
105 This is actually our last slide. Just kind of for future opportunities or challenges. So either way let's hear this one.
106 And then we'll take questions.
107 So just quickly we wanted to outline just some challenges and opportunities. We've touched on a couple of those today already with some questions. But obviously a city transition. This is a new program that was initially kind of born out of the mayor's office and now is in the assistant city administrator's office. We will obviously work closely with the mayor and his team, as we have already, with establishing new shelter sites as well as some other programs. But we want to make sure we are responsive to all of you. And so that's just part of our work going forward is kind of the best way to interact with all of the councilors and your staffs to make sure that you understand the different pieces of these programs. Budget considerations. We also touched on a lot of one time money that was funding these programs. I promise we are hustling and looking for funding elsewhere, but it will be an important part of your decision making process with the budget. And I know you all have a lot of other decisions that you're weighing as well, and we're happy to dive into those numbers at any point. We have a great finance team who's been working on all those programs. Shelter obviously, is a huge part of what we're doing, so adding more shelter and really being responsive to the mayor's plan and making sure that we can find sites and providers and sufficient funding for all of those different pieces, because we want to make sure there are as many beds as possible in our community for folks, as well as partnering with the county on a lot of these different issues. And you'll hear that this afternoon.
108 Yeah. And for the last two bullet points, vehicle camping rv policy is a real complex issue. It involves title 16 parking regulations, but also obviously some considerations about folks living in their vehicles and their needs. So some of the homeless issues apply to. And the law is not always exactly super specific or clear around those issues. Last year, our PBOT team Portland bureau of transportation team that addresses rvs in the city. It's about eight people. They their efforts resulted in 51 rvs on average per month getting towed to our city storage lot, the vast majority of which went unclaimed and then were eventually destroyed at a cost of around 3000 per rv. Despite those efforts, there still remains, and we know it through the reports and just we all see it, right? A lot of folks living in rvs on the street. And so we're looking to iterate that policy, working with PBOT on that policy, and also thinking about the funding for that, because the truth is, if an an rv may arrive new to Portland and if it gets towed, it's the city's responsibility to manage that and then ultimately pay for its appropriate destruction, recycling, etc. And so that can get expensive. We're looking to work with state legislators, partners to find new avenues of funding for an issue that really spans municipal boundaries, but is often the load is carried by municipalities to deal with the, I would say, the end of a of an rv's life. And so the other bullet here technology and outreach again that's speaking to our our desire to be innovative. And we work closely with the county on some of their efforts. So they're they're undergoing a whole holistic look into outreach in our community and looking to build tools to help outreach workers collaborate better and integrate with miss system. And so we're a part of those discussions, and we're also a part of wider discussions to really bring real time availability of service information to the community. Right. So instead of if somebody needs a shelter, instead of just getting a list of shelters, they would be able to see what shelters have availability and then see how they can get into those shelters. And so again, we're in close agreement with the our county partners about that topic. And a part of those discussions and looking to bring that technology to the community. Thank you.
109 Okay. We have a number of questions lining up. Councilor Morillo.
110 Thank you. I was curious if you could clarify two questions for me. Can you clarify the time, place, manner, enforcement requirements that are currently set, and do we track why people are turning down shelter options? I'm sure that, you know, a lot of people maybe don't want to answer, but I'm just curious, as we are developing more shelter systems, that feedback from unhoused people about why they don't want to go into our shelters would be really helpful.
111 Yes. So we for the time, place, manner, ordinance, it's very legally specific and prescriptive. So that's also on our website, which I would encourage everybody to just take a look at for some of those elements. But I'll just quickly it relates a lot to the manner in which you're camping. So hank mentioned it's really either if folks have declined a shelter offer or if they are camping in a manner that is not allowed under city code in most instances, at every instance that we've had thus far since its passage, it's both of those things. So they've been offered shelter multiple times and refused. And they are also camping in a manner that is not conducive under the city code for why folks are refusing shelter. I think a very complicated answer, but one of the reasons we've built these emergency programs was a lot of initial two and a half years ago. We conducted a lot of different interview processes over a course of many months to just engage with folks on the street and ask, what would you actually take as a service? What if you're saying no to this shelter bed? Why? What could we offer you? That would be something that you would be interested in. It's one of the reasons that we developed the temporary alternative shelter sites. And I know councilor Ryan for the safe rest villages folks really appreciate that location with a locked door where they know their belongings are safe, where they have kind of an individual space. It's also very expensive, as you've seen. And so I think we developed that with that one time money. We had to kind of test that to see how could we best serve the community. And a lot of the things they were saying had to do with why we established those. I will also say the shelter system as a whole has been really responsive to those pieces. So, for example, making sure that a lot of options are low barrier folks can bring their pets, which was always a piece that was really important. Belongings is also something we always hear. So storage capacity just in general is a really big part of that process, making sure that folks can bring those might be everything they have in the world with them. They're not going to want to leave those things. Making sure folks have access to different hygiene services, food and medical care. Those are just some other pieces. I think there's a long and lucas can speak more to this. He's been in this work a lot longer than I have, but there's been a history of not having those services or not allowing those pieces at different shelter sites. So folks also have a history of trauma at different shelter sites, and they really are not interested sometimes in going back to those sites. But a lot of the work we do in hank mentioned this is such is so person specific. So these are human problems. These are not it's difficult to aggregate and say, okay, this is important to a majority of people and that's why we need to do this. And we've tried to do that with a lot of the services we offer. But I think it speaks to the importance of having all those different pieces of the system and all those different options for folks, because, for example, I know of some older women who are at the Gresham women's shelter who do not want to leave that setting because they've built a community and a family there. So they have access to apartments and other housing options, and they really appreciate that congregate style shelter setting. And then others who would not go to a congregate shelter and really want to have that individual option of closing a door and locking their belongings in a pod or a tiny home, for example. So it's a lot of different reasons, but we try to address all those different pieces and then learn continuously with the services that we're providing.
112 Thank you. I appreciate that so much. And quick follow up question and then I'll be done. How many folks did you guys do outreach with to get that kind of it sounds like you guys did some specific outreach to ask people what their needs were around shelter spaces. How many folks did you talk to from what parts of the city, etc?
113 Yes. So the specific one that I'm referring to was over 600 across the city. But frankly, we work with so our outreach team, the street services coordination center, they've been working with folks for decades in Portland and in other communities. So it really is thousands of individuals. But I can point you to specific data from those over 600 individuals if you want.
114 I would love that personally.
115 Thank you. Yeah, absolutely.
116 And skyler, I see that you have a number of folks you've brought up with you to answer questions, and I know you introduced them before they came up, but if you all can, just make sure to introduce yourselves so we know who you are as you're answering questions. That would be great. I think our next question is from councilor Zimmerman.
117 Thank you. This is just a little bit in terms of the program overall, right? A few years ago when we set up each of these as standalone programs, right. The previous mayor, in order to get around our old former government, basically gave us emergency ordinance or emergency declaration, whatever the right term would be, so that you can work across bureaus. And that was one of the important connective tissue things that, frankly, made everything that's on this, this dais today work so that you didn't have to play turf wars with bureaus previously in this new form. And I know the mayor just stepped out, but I'm kind of curious, like, is that a moot point now? Do you have the same authority to work across bureaus? Across? Different public realms that doesn't require the emergency declarations that had been in the previous era?
118 Yes. Great question. So I mentioned briefly, but my first task when I took the job as a senior policy advisor for the previous mayor, was to write emergency declarations with the city attorney's office. So we were the intention was to move outside of the bureaucracy, cut red tape, see what we could do immediately, act really quickly, learn. So, as councilor Zimmerman mentioned, we were under those emergency declarations as part of an authority structure now and part of that transition that I was talking about earlier is we are under the city administrator and the city administrator and the mayor have a lot of those powers embedded in their authority. So we no longer need to pass emergency declarations in the same way we did before with the old form of government. So we are working through that in real time with the city attorney's office and just ensuring that the mayor and the city administrator approve of these different processes that can be procurement, fast tracking or getting outside of some of the constraints that can lead to months long delays on some of these projects, for example, when we're being responsive to community. So we no longer have some of those constraints, I will say part of this transition will be to integrate the bureaus under that executive structure that were previously under this kind of more siloed work. So we're actively working to bring all the pieces of the bureaucracy to the table. We have a command structure that we'd like to set up under the mayor and the city administrator to make sure that we're following kind of that immediate emergency response process. So I think in the future it'll be even better and more integrated. But it is a process to get there.
119 I see city administrator behind you, and I fully expect and support that movement. So to fully enable a couple more things here in terms of, I want to talk a little bit about the rv disposal and costs of that nature. So can you ballpark the cost? And I'm assuming we're taking it to like metro's dump when we're disposing of a of an rv or something similar.
120 Something similar. We actually dismantled at a facility, contracted facility that I think is run by rapid rapid response. Yeah. And they're able to recycle the various parts that they can. And then it's disposed of it at, at whatever disposal facility is available. The ballpark cost would you say it's about 3000. It's $87 per linear foot. Right. But some are more expensive if they're really if they have hazardous materials. And that that fee does not include the towing. So you'd have to add a few hundred for the towing.
121 You also have to leave it at the tow yard for 30 days per state law. So that is a cost per day and very few get claimed.
122 Right. So we recognize that a lot of folks have expensive rvs, and rvs are one of the greatest depreciating assets in the world that they become leaky. And a great way to get rid of them is to leave them unlocked somewhere on a Portland street. And then the city now is owning that cost, right? I think that's the recognition I'm hoping to understand. I think there are conversations going around with respect to fee recovery at the purchase level that are important, and I hope that as you have insight into that, that you'll share that with us so that we can help. I saw some of our government relations in the room earlier. I think we need to put that on our list as well. I want to you know, I was around when we made the decision to hire city outreach workers, right? That's not a line of business that we've been in for a very long time. And in large part, we were doing that because we were not getting the level of service we wanted, either from county outreach workers or contracted county outreach workers. And we've also come a really long way. We have a new hires agreement, and I'm curious if our city outreach workers will remain something that we need because our need is not being met by the county whose role it is. And I and I and I know they're doing a great job. Or is it time to, like, integrate them into a county provider or county workforce so that they we get back to true, if you will?
123 Yeah, I'll give some context. And then I'd love nate to talk a little bit about that. And this is my personal view, but worked deeply in this work and with a lot of the amazing county outreach from provider outreach workers in the county and the city, I think the function of the street services coordination center is wholly different from the function of a county outreach worker from a provider. Our outreach workers are willing to work with police and park rangers and firefighters in a different way. And our city employees, which I think comes with a different level of security and assurance, and they will work at our direction in a very different way than us coordinating, I think, with a different provider. As lucas mentioned, we do coordinate directly with county outreach workers, and we really have built great relationships with different nonprofit providers. And I think that's a very important part of the system. It is not the same part of the system as the city outreach team, and I feel very strongly that they are, to hank's point, solving problems every single day. Nate calls us, I would say at least once a day with a problem that they have solved. So they found a family in a car and he's gotten shelter for them that day. He had there was an rv explosion, and they are trying to make sure no one else was hurt in the vicinity, and that no one gets hurt by a fire that it's created. There's just different issues that I think other outreach teams are not equipped to solve, that our team is equipped to solve. Those three outreach workers were hired very intentionally. They have decades of experience, including in behavioral and mental health. Are kim james, our outreach director. She can issue civil commitments. She works directly with hospitals. She worked for cascadia behavioral health for years, and she really knows the names and stories of a lot of those people on the street. So that's not to say other outreach workers don't, but they bring a wealth of experience and ability that I think you're not seeing across the spectrum of services.
124 I would agree. Right. I think it I appreciate the way that you've highlighted this. The idea to me that a, a service provider who's being paid by the city and county or through the joint office, refuses to do work for us in the way that we are the customers. And what we direct is incredibly alarming. I think that this is a highlighted point where the tail wagging the dog is not a model that has worked, and we've had to create a new model here so that nate and his team can get the results you just noted. I want you to continue to highlight that for us. Right. As we as we look at how this new year of contracting and joint office relationships go forward, this is something that I'm very interested in because of this idea that legacy providers were going to tell the city and county only what they would do, because we have other providers who seem to be willing to be flexible and adjust to the needs of the day. Right. And so I appreciate that, nate, and what you've done. And so I do hope we keep them on as long as that service isn't being met somewhere else. So thank you. Another question. Excuse me another. Comment. The I hope that we are are centering and putting forth the highest priority on on a by name list and also on the shelter availability tool. Right. And in the moment shelter availability tool should be something we've had decades ago. Frankly, I've had an iphone now longer than I've had a regular cell phone. So come on. Right. So you have my full support there and I appreciate it. And I am cognizant of the stress that has put you through in the other side of the river. And then I just want to my comments about pmo. And frankly, this applies to Portland solutions. Overall. There is not a city office city bureau that I've seen more. That is the connective tissue for the things that are meeting the needs of portlanders in this last several years. And while miss brock, which is the first time I've ever called you that, while you've presented these things as as individual items in the Portland solutions bucket, your team is the example of not having silos, right? And what I know is that lucas's work is related to anne's work, which is related to nate's work, and that can't be overstated. It is. It is, in my opinion, the direct service for municipal services that the Portland public has been waiting for a long time. And it's an area where neighborhood associations are able to get a whole heck of a lot of stuff accomplished on the ground. That's really annoying. You don't know why it doesn't get done, and it's anne's team that helps get it done. So I just want to. You guys are important to me and to my constituents, and I really, really appreciate the work that you're doing one time only or ongoing. As far as I'm concerned, you're an ongoing program and you should work yourselves out of existence, right? I hope so, yeah, that's what we are aiming for. So thanks for everybody.
125 Thank you.
126 I just want to check in quickly because I'm keeping track of the time. Do you all have additional presentation or can we fill the last hour with questions.
127 Questions okay.
128 Perfect. Because we've got a lot of folks signed up. I figured councilor Ryan, go right ahead.
129 Sure. Thank you, madam president. Good to see everyone. Nate, I was thinking about it was in 2021, in the fall bump where we built the ssc and you and lucas were a big part of that. And our office led that with former mayor and former chair. So it's great to see how it's evolved. And we'll have longer conversations about how this is evolving, where the efficiencies are. I'm sure you're all dealing with that on a daily basis. I think it's not going to happen today, perhaps because we would be here much longer, madam president. But I think in our early days we should have a more casual and spirited conversation about what the definition of success is at this issue. I think we could hear various takes on that, which is fine. But I think one thing that I've struggled with in this role of being tossed into the deep end in 2020 and in the fall, was how each elected official had a different definition. And we know when you're doing continuous improvement work, you've got to figure out how to have an eye on some goal, and then maybe you can paddle in the same direction. So there are times where we've seen the public's definitely seen it, where the city and county sometimes seem to be paddling in circles because of that. So I have a very clear definition. It's not ending homelessness by some date. I've been around long enough to not really jump up and down for such grandiose definitions. Like everyone will graduate on time 100%. It's more like continuous improvement for me. And I'll just say my personal one is going from dependance to independence, and that means that you need to really look at that in a very micro way. I've known a lot of people who have been homeless, two in my family, they didn't want to be there, but they didn't know how to get out of it. And there were no systems to hook into to really help them get out of it. And so they really would have loved to have moved from the dependance on government and for both of them, on drugs and alcohol daily to being independent from drugs and alcohol, being back in the workforce, being connected with their family and having a life that's much more happy, joyous and free than the calamity that they experience on the streets. I think that's a fair statement, but I don't always know if we're working our government systems to actually allow that to occur. So that's always been my voice on this one, and I hope that we can have a more spirited conversation about this. It should be messy. It should be real, it should be authentic, and it should be sooner than later. The second one I'm going to go to now, diving into the more micro it's been in the news, I got to say I was on a treadmill. Thank god I finally got on one right before the holidays and I saw this article about sunderland site closing. And of course, being in a gazillion meetings on this topic, having some spirited dialog with the county. Even tried to move this to try to get them to accept salvation army for about eight months, it seems, just to allow them to be the provider. It's a little disheartening to hear about it from one of our local news outlets at the beginning of the holidays. Now, I know that it was supposed to be temporary. I was involved in all of those conversations. It was mostly a negotiation between PBOT and port. So let me just ask this question. I'm not going to sit down on this one and think that that we can't have a relook. But in what I knew back then, it was, I think they call it the monster in PBOT. It's a big, big machine that grinds up the leaves. So we have mulch for portlanders. Very good thing. But am I led to believe then that it's that monster that's then going to move from the port site, which they temporarily loaned to PBOT to move that back to the sunderland site. And so that's why we're closing it.
130 Yes, I will let brandi speak a little bit more to the details, but just for some overall context, I think this was as you were in those conversations early on, councilor, but it was also kind of on our website as the lease agreement for three years. It was always set to expire at the end of the fiscal year in 2025. That was an agreement made by the port and PBOT for that purpose. They needed to use that space for gravel cleaning and mulch creation. Now, the port and PBOT have both expressed that they are open to extending that. They previously were not open to extending those lease agreements. However, we budgeted based on that lease agreement. So the operations costs are not accounted for in the budget going forward. I think we would be open to extending. I'll let brandi talk a little bit more about specifics, but I think, folks, we were always aware that that was going to end and we were in those agreements. All of our shelter sites have different agreements and different lengths of time in all those conversations.
131 Right? Yeah, yeah. And but we also thought that we were buying some time and it's hard to sit here and think we're choosing a monster mulcher over saving some lives of portlanders.
132 Yes.
133 And I think, I don't think when the new mayor comes in with a very ambitious, passionate plea that everyone is behind to shelter people. So how could we close something like that at this time?
134 Yes, and I think we are very I don't think it's acceptable. We are open to extending that. We did just open the north Portland road location that does have even more rv spaces than the sunderland site, and salvation army is working very hard to connect folks with temporary or permanent housing, or if they are unable to connect them in time, they could move to this north Portland road location for this other shelter site that we have rv spaces at. But is there anything else that you want to offer?
135 I think I brandy the record, brandi westerman I'm the emergency humanitarian operations director and I oversee the shelter services program.
136 So just to bring us all onto the same page, the sunderland site was opened just over a year and a half ago. It has capacity to host about 55 lived in rvs and their adult occupants currently, or at least as of about last week, we had about 69 people on site with 51 rvs. So as skyler mentioned, the closure was the originally planned closure. At this point, it does appear that there are options in terms of moving forward with the property and the need for a location for pbot's operation. However, the funding question is, is a part of that and something that we would need to solve for that site has provided shelter and services for folks, about 50% of whom are chronically homeless, and meet that definition of being chronically homeless. Several in recent months have found permanent housing solutions. And so we're seeing increasing numbers of success coming out of that site for people to move into housing options. We just opened the north Portland site that accommodates about 70 rvs, as well as 90 sort of lived in tiny home shelter pods. So that is our other location for rvs. The sunderland site was the first rv site. Thank you, councilor Ryan for your support in getting that open. And there's been a lot of learning from that site, and I think we've refined kind of what it means to support folks who are moving from the streets and into a more structured environment where they're connected to services through the operation of that site. So thank you for bringing that up.
137 Yeah. And I always want to tip the hat to PBOT, who's been so instrumental in doing outreach work. And when I would talk to people directly with that, they said it was wonderful to finally have a place to take them, as opposed to just moving them a certain amount of like a half a mile or a mile, whatever the current policy is. So as we get excited about opening up the new one, maybe that's what we'll say two steps forward. Let's not take one major step back, because we know the need is much bigger than the two steps we took forward. Just want to make sure I had a timely little plug about sunderland, since I read about it and heard about it in the news, which came to surprise, I thought we would be more adaptive in our leadership at this time, at this, with this crisis. My other question is really to have some distinction between the street outreach workers and the good people there and the good people at Portland street response. What's the distinction between their roles? Because when Portland street response was designed and built and promoted, it was outreach for those who are unhoused and a more humanitarian way to connect with them, is what I heard as part of it. Are they communicating with each other? What's that system like, and how has that been built?
138 Yeah, I can give some context and then nate can jump in just on the day to day. But yes, they are deeply connected and know each other very well. Portland street response is housed under fire, and two of our street services coordination center workers are former firefighters. So some of them already knew each other and have worked together in similar systems. I would say, just for context, the Portland street response folks are immediately responsive to calls that come in to our dispatch system. That street services coordination center is not. So we are able to deploy from Portland solutions, our street services coordination center team out into the community to solve various problems, but they are not being responsive to a 911 call that somebody might have. For someone in a behavioral health crisis, they could coordinate with the psr offer in the future. Do proactive outreach to those different individuals. But currently that's not their model.
139 Well, currently you have the meeting right now and so is Portland street response there with park rangers. Because you mentioned parks. I know park rangers are involved with that. Could you just say the composite of that meeting again? Right.
140 So the meeting we meet three times a week. We have police, fire, park rangers, parking enforcement and lucas's team policy response is not part of the.
141 Thanks.
142 Yeah, policy response is not part of the meeting. However we do when we need support from them, we do communicate on a regular basis with them. Our street response, our outreach teams. Basically, they try to respond to what's more internal like. So when we meet with police, parking enforcement, the vit team, with lucas's team, we can identify specific individuals, that of high acuity. That's very complex. And we're having specific problems with and those are the ones that we try to direct our outreach teams to. So it's very specific, much more internal than a 911 call or what partnership response would respond on.
143 So explain again why they're not at that meeting.
144 Portland street response I just think like it's we have they're more at the 911 generated calls.
145 Also our police and fire that that are at the meeting.
146 Yes. But the neighborhood response teams are much more we work closely together with them. I'm not quite sure what the relationship between Portland response and say. Portland police's neighborhood response teams, but we work closely with those teams when we do camp removals. We work closely with parking enforcement. These the meetings are based with the folks that we work closely with on camp removals. Portland street response does not participate or does not support our camp removals. It's basically our outreach teams are there when we do camp removals prior to any type of removals with lucas's team, if there's a complex individual or a high need, high acuity individual, then we would send our outreach team directly to try and provide services, support them as much as we can.
147 Okay. Thank you. I'll just end with another big picture comment. And that is I look forward to us also having a really good spirited conversation about what are the 10 to 12 community wide metrics that we're going to measure in in terms of our number one issue facing our community? And I think it's been really hard for the city and the county to come to agreement on that. I'm hoping with mayor wilson and chair peterson and the two bodies, that we get more clarity on that. And of course, there'll be subindicators for each one where the real continuous improvement takes place. It's like watching paint dry to do that with the big ones. But it's important that we finally get this established. And there was something else I wanted to say, but I can't remember what it is. So you're all safe from that? Thanks.
148 Hi, councilor Alvarez.
149 Oh, can I can't say it really quick. I'll just say it really quick. It's so much easier to find a place for this monster mulcher than it is for another rv site. I get to say that since I've tried to find these sites and experience that. Thanks.
150 I think that was an important comment to add.
151 Thank you, councilor Ryan.
152 Councilor Avalos all right, thanks again for being here and for all the information. I want to go back a little bit and apologies. I should have raised my hand earlier, but you talked a bit about a point where a police officer accompanies a street worker, an outreach worker, due to a city code violation. I kind of just wanted to understand the chain of events that leads to that. And who makes the ultimate call to decide that an officer needs to come and join them? Like how are they entering the equation?
153 Thank you for that question, councilor Avalos. So that's what I refer to as a special cases work group, which we have housed under the street services coordination center. So essentially we track the reports with the highest impact scores. Right. So the highest the 50 plus scores or 6070 plus scores, we're able to see where those are. But also just through the course of our normal outreach, we're able to identify some really particularly challenging cases. And also anybody in the city can nominate a case for the special cases work group. So often it might it could be a police neighborhood response team saying, hey, we've engaged with this individual multiple times. What whatever we are all doing here is not really working. The individual is still on the street suffering clear, clearly has, you know, various issues, etc. So we need to take that next step. So it goes to the special cases work group where we speak with county colleagues, county and the colleagues in the criminal justice system, police are often present. Our city outreach team is there. Nate guides the conversation, and we log everything in a system that converts into an internal dashboard. And then the decision is, do we refer this to police, which would be to the neighborhood response team. So they would get that referral from us, which is just an email. But again, it's logged in the system and then we schedule a time to approach that individual. And it's with our city outreach team and with the neighborhood response team. And ultimately it's at the police officer's discretion to enforce that title 14 code about camping in public rights of ways. But, you know, we've done about 40 of these, and the attempt is always to get somebody into shelter. That's and thus far, we've always had shelter to offer. Obviously, we employ this very carefully. But in the moment the police officer has that discretion to say, okay, I can cite you for a violation of this title 14 camping ordinance, or I can arrest you for a violation of it. The and nate could speak in more detail about the two cases where arrests were made, but one was our very first one. It was in the news where the person said, arrest me. You know, I'm not going to shelter. And then the second one, something similar happened. It was a couple, but that is that's kind of how the process plays out. Let me pass to nate if there's anything to add and then any clarifying questions or any clarifying points we can make. Right.
154 And so what we found is when we have our outreach team and police together, at times we have fire there also. I mean, it's I guess this collaboration, it's very effective. The individuals there are some that refused for years services when the two approached them. It's there's no threats. It's about hey, this is this is what we have to offer police is there to encourage them to try it. And you know, whoever gets the better of the two, the relationship with with the individual that's camping at the site. We've been very fortunate. You know, like I said, majority of the folks that makes it to the time, place, manner, enforcement are those that's been houses for years and they've they've chosen that right. Our outreach team have gone out many times trying to encourage them to go to shelters. And when police shows up with them and they go together, you know, about a third of them accepted shelter, which is I feel is highly successful right from the from the past to what we've experiencing now. So I'm sorry. So what I'm saying is like, so when we have both police and our outreach team working together, we've had very good success of getting people to go to shelter.
155 I'll leave it at that for now. Thank you.
156 Councilor Green.
157 Thank you, madam president. Also. Thank you, councilor Ryan. You anticipated my question. So you've already answered the question that I was interested in, which is the sunderland issue. But I just want to use this as an opportunity to kind of make a few points on that. On that subject. I think that when we think about the scale of this problem being holistic, you've used that word a couple of times is going to help us be efficient. And, you know, thank you for highlighting the fact that it is easier to move that one piece of infrastructure than it is to deal with changing the location of, of kind of a settled place for people to, to dwell. Right. And then going back to this question of putting it to council to think about what are the metrics of success that we want to see in all of this? For me, it looks like minimizing the trauma involved with getting people out of sort of an unsheltered situation and then into kind of eventually long term housing. And I think that we really want to think about prioritizing that, that trauma minimization. And so I really would support thinking about keeping keeping sunderland in place for as long as it needs to stay in place. And I would welcome any kind of a budget analysis that says this is what it's going to cost, because this is about an opportunity cost question about trade offs that we make and what are the sort of costs of every choice we make has a cost on the other side, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And so let's bring that forward. And thank you for bringing that up, councilor Ryan.
158 Councilor Clark, or did you have a response to that?
159 I have a brief response. So thank you for that, councilor Green. And given the interest in sunderland, I just want to share with you that we have done some analysis of what it would cost to continue operations through the next fiscal year, the 2526 fiscal year. We estimate that it would cost approximately 2.6 million to operate sunderland site during that next fiscal year. Thank you.
160 Thank you, thank you, thank you very much for today's presentation. I've learned a lot. I am not very familiar with this whole area, so it's been really great information. I hope I can absorb it all. I'll probably need to hear it about three more times and it would be helpful. Based on councilor. Koyama Lane observation is to have a chart that I mean, you've given us one chart of pmo, but there are so many different outreach teams and different groups working on this and that that you've talked about today would be helpful to see a chart that outlines all of that. So down to the micro, you talked about all the different forms that people can use. And I just wondered for the neighborhood associations how you communicate this with them. The new district coalitions, and what do you recommend is the best way for someone to file a report? Is it 311 or is it the form on your website? And I have a couple more questions.
161 Yeah, I can quickly and then I think ann or hank jump in. So yes 311 will basically file the same form for you as you call them. So it's just if somebody's not familiar with the form or not comfortable filing a form online, you can call them and they will walk through that process with you. But it's the same form. So kind of whatever's easier for you, I would say for the individual, we definitely deal with some folks who don't have access to internet or aren't comfortable using a computer, and they can call 311 and they will file that form for you quickly. I will just also say hank mentioned a couple of these pieces, but there are a lot of ways to report different things into Portland. So there is that like reporting page that's kind of a master list of all the different mechanisms and things you can report in the city. And then hank has also been instrumental in creating kind of a first iteration of a shelter availability tool and a detox availability tool. And using his technological skills with some city folks to create some of those pieces. But we hope to create further iterations of those that are used by the county as a whole and hopefully somewhat housed within the county. So like a shelter availability tool might make more sense housed under a county government, but ann might have more to speak to.
162 My name is ann hill. Thank you. Director of pmo councilor Clark. I would say that we have at our problem solver meetings, which are every two weeks, they're run like incident command meetings. They're 30 minutes, except for the ones downtown. They are focused on the central corridors in our neighborhoods. Right. Because if we think about our local streets, most of us walk out our front doors and we don't see impacts. But when you walk to take the bus or you go down towards school, you might be running into everything from maybe a camp. But a lot of what I deal with is just drug use or loitering nuisance behavior. So what we do is in the problem solver meetings, we do we do provide in every meeting we have a resource list. We train people on how like here, go to pdx reporter or here is the link for you to fill out. Sometimes we fill them out for them. A lot of times they'll send them in to u, and if they don't file, we'll file them so that nate and his team or lucas can see those items. A lot of times they're also filing about things that aren't necessarily camp, but a nuisance. And so again, taking it to the family table as sky reference, I just say send it in to us and we'll figure out where it goes. Right. So the neighborhoods see us as a one stop shop. The businesses also see us as a one stop shop. I will just say anecdotally, one of the things I've learned in the last three years running this is that if you think about many of our corridors, broadway, sandy, 122nd, 82nd, those corridors run through sometimes up to eight, nine, ten different neighborhood associations. And that is the boundary. And it's no man's land. No one's paying attention to those corridors. Which is why a lot of times those corridors are in the stages they're in. So we've really taken those on as a way to adopt those areas through our problem solver areas, to actually look at what will happen. Working with the police, with the neighborhoods, etc, to support those.
163 Just a couple of follow ups. We had a person testify before us the other day, I think our first day from the stadium hood neighborhood. Is that on your problem solver list?
164 Yes, I just had that problem solver meeting yesterday. Okay, yeah. So we actually have two meetings downtown that are actually an hour long because there's just so many participants. So we've split the sort of one side of Burnside, the other side of Burnside into two. But what we did for the stadium, so on the other side of the 405, they don't have any esds, they don't have any basic, they don't have the pearl sort of enhanced services that the pearl provides. So we have our own subdistrict meeting there so that we can really focus on their issues.
165 And is the north side of Burnside. That's the couch park.
166 Yes, but we go all the way across to like, goose hollow too. So we kind of encapsulate all of that in one meeting. Yep.
167 Great, great. Thank you. I'm really happy to learn about this. I'd like to know more as well. And just a quick comment. I appreciate learning about the rvs because I've watched I've worked with the sheriff's department on the abandoned boats, and I know how expensive it is to remove the boats that have been abandoned, same as the rvs. So I appreciate that. But thank you so much.
168 Thank you for that. And on the boats, the abandoned and derelict vessels, another complicated issue that operated through department of state lands and with the county. Et cetera. But it's the kind of issue that I think can be housed under Portland solutions. Right. That's where it's where given resources, it's been a, you know, a request of mine. Can we find a person whose full time job is to operate in this complex, on this complex issue with all the partners, so that we can tackle that issue of the abandoned and derelict vessels on the Willamette river and columbia river. And if I could real quick, just to give credit where it's due on, because I know the shelter availability tools of high interest to everybody for good reason, there is a tool that the county has built and it's an app that is connected to hms. It's through the hms vendor wellsky, and it's in phase one of rollout, and nate's team is actually the test group for that app. So it's not every shelter in the city in some ways. If you think shelter availability tool, it makes most sense for those congregate style beds versus the pods. We typically don't have pods coming available every day, but the congregate style beds are more like, where is there a bed tonight that I can go to? And I think that really aligns with mayor wilson's vision for emergency overnight shelters. But the county does have a tool. It's just in the very early stages. I'm optimistic it can be built out to serve the need that we all want.
169 Thank you for adding that. Councilor Novick.
170 First, I have a not really a question, but sort of an observation for the mayor when the mayor gives his presentation on his $25 million one year plan, which is that the figure that only 34% of people initially accept shelter is striking. But then you've also said that when people are given repeated invitations and perhaps more forceful invitations for shelter, most of them accept it. So I imagine that when the mayor gives his presentation, he will talk about that and talk about what resources it takes to bring 34% up to 100%. If what we need is a police officer going with an outreach worker to each person, does that mean we need to hire a whole bunch more police officers? Et cetera. The question I had for skyler and her team is, I know that the tiny house sites have been really expensive because you've been using them for really high needs people, and they're getting a whole mess of services. But it does seem sort of intuitively logical. And I think you sort of suggested this, skyler, that there's a bunch of people who would go to a place where they have a door to close, even if there aren't a mass of services attached. And so I was wondering, have you thought in terms of like, what the cost would be for a tiny house shelter with sort of a bare bones of you have showers, you have electricity, you have a toilet, you have laundry, but you don't have a whole mess of services attached.
171 Yes. Councilor Novick. And I'll let brandi also speak to this, but we have looked at that. I would say one of the main reasons those sites are so expensive are the client to staff ratios. So the staffing models, the services are largely partnerships. So not we don't necessarily contract for those services. They're usually nonprofit providers or medicaid insurers who have chosen to partner with us and come to those sites. So we aren't paying necessarily for all of those services. We do pay for case managers and a lot of staff to make sure they're managing those sites effectively, and that is a large part of the cost. I think there is a world in which we pare down, maybe some of that case management and some of that staffing if it's not as necessary, and that cost would decrease. However, those sites to develop are expensive. And so I just want to also name that there's a capital cost to it as well, is there.
172 Yeah.
173 Thank you for that question. And I agree with everything I just heard from skyler. I do want to just add that the tiny home villages are very much meant to be transitional spaces. So the focus on how they're designed is to provide robust wraparound services, case management and support to help individuals move forward on their journey, overcome barriers to housing, housing so that they can eventually move into a housing space. The. The largest cost is staffing. The staffing of our site operation providers. There are ongoing costs, of course, related to utilities, repairs, maintenance, all of those things. But but staffing is the largest expense. And as we look at the evidence of success and begin to get to a point in the life cycle of this program where we can really evaluate what's working and look at where we may be able to have some cost savings in that area. I just want to kind of maintain that emphasis that that that transition is dependent on being able to work in a robust way with highly qualified staff who can help people on their journeys.
174 I just want to respond to that with my pessimistic thought that as long as we have a huge housing shortage, my assumption is that we are going to have a certain homeless population. And unless we can resolve the housing shortage pretty quickly, I would think there might be a need for tiny house villages for people, even if there is no immediate prospect of their moving into permanent housing.
175 Yeah, and I would say there are several independent style villages that are smaller than what we operate, where they don't have kind of on site staff. So they're they're operating pretty cheaply, frankly, some of which are on city properties that have been partnerships over the last decade and a half. And so I think that is one piece of the puzzle and definitely something that works for a certain population of individuals. To your point, I also think motel shelters are a piece that the county definitely invests in and kind of offer a similar closed door lock space for yourself and your belongings that folks tend to appreciate and might not always have the level of service delivery on site that we have at some of our sites.
176 Councilor Ryan. Yeah.
177 Thank you. Yeah, it's really connected to what councilor Novick just said. It's I don't think we'll ever know until we have longitudinal data that looks out three years. So those that came from a village with services where we did an analysis that they are pretty stable, they're seen service providers, they're hooked into mental health, behavioral health services for example. They're employed. So they're in the workforce again. And the hunch of course, is three years later they would be stable in housing. We didn't track this data, but we heard a lot of information about people being put into the housing. And they would be out of that housing complex within a year or two back on the streets. So until we get more clarity in our data about the longitudinal data three years later, that's when we will know the actual value. And it it could be that the expense on the front end would save us much money in the long term. And maybe it's not. But that was the hunch when we were building these, because we kept hearing from providers how many people were going into permanent housing and how they were going out pretty quickly because they didn't have that resilience built up before they went in there. And when my experience with people on the streets who are chronic, it's a big shift to go into a permanent housing with the door locked by yourself and with addicts that are trying to not use on a daily basis. They're really looking for connection. It's from going from isolation to connection. And the villages are also built to provide that community and that connection, so you can lift up together. I hope that helped.
178 I've not seen other hands in the queue. I do want to point out that I've heard the call from a few folks to have more discussion about this, and to have discussion about metrics. We have a lot on our calendar coming up over the next month, but I'll check in with everybody about finding time for that. When we have that conversation. I hope we can unpack some tensions that we heard today. I heard some folks point out the trauma that can be caused as we move people from the streets into housing. I heard from our Portland solutions team that police show up without force, and I know that I've heard from some of my colleagues before the opinion that police always imply force, and I've heard from colleagues today that we may need more police to help with this. So there are some tensions here that I think we need to work through. As we talk about what metrics are and what the council's expectations are for some of these programs. So I just want to note that thank you all for being here today. We really appreciate the time. I know it was a lot of questions throughout the presentation, but there's a lot that you all are doing for our city that we need to better understand and make sure that we're partnering with the mayor to, to make sure that our policy direction and then the direction that you all are, are given in the work that you do are lining up, and we're all reaching toward the same goals. So thank you for taking the time this morning. And, mr. Mayor, I was remiss I should have welcomed you at the beginning of our work session. I believe this is your first time up here with us. So thank you for being here. Thank you for being part of the work that we're doing together. And thank you for lending us a number of folks from your team for a couple of hours this morning. We appreciate it.
179 Unless there I would just say thank you.
180 We have a lot of information on our website. The annual report I posted with some of the powerpoint slides, and then we're always a resource. So if you have further questions, I'm happy to walk folks through some of the pieces and the process, and I will develop charts. And we've taken notes on every question. So I promise we'll get back to you with some of those follow ups.
181 Thank you. Thank you all for being here. We have another work session this afternoon at 2 p.m, so I will recess us or actually closing. It's a new one, right? Okay. I will end this work session at 1133 and see everybody in a few hours. Thank you all. I love it.