Public Hearing to Consider an Amendment to the Fiscal Year 2019-20 Community Development Block Grant Action Plan and Authorize the City Manager to Negotiate and Execute Related Documents, Agreements and Modifications. (Community Development 236)
All right. And this item is. Being presented by, I think. Is it misfits, Miss Potter together? Yes. So this is going to be and if Mr. Potter is going to start off at the presentation this evening. Thank you. Hands over to her. And and as she's coming up on camera, I hope I want to say that earlier this week. Now, maybe it was last week, man. I can't remember. It's only Tuesday. I sat in on the meeting, a monthly meeting of our Social Service Human Relations Board and got to hear Misfit's awesome presentation. So this is sort of like déja vu all over, over again to me, but it was I commend our Social Service, Human Relations Board and and misfits for Alda and Miss Potter for the awesome work they're doing as a very important topic of our day. So. Ladies, please. The floor is yours. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Members of the city council and staff families are fed up with the Housing Authority. And tonight I'm going to talk about the three programs that are proposed to help provide food and shelter to our needs most impacted by COVID 19. As you know, the city of Alameda receives community development block grant or CDBG funds from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, also known as HUD, and on April 2nd had announced that the city of Alameda would receive an allocation of $683,116 of CDBG funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, also known as the CARES Act. South proposes to amend the current action plan to accept and allocate 100% of the CARES Act funds to public services that provide food and shelter to individuals and families who are vulnerable and in crisis as a result of the coronavirus. Specifically, we are proposing three programs. Emergency food distribution administered by the Army Food Bank in the amount of $50,000 COVID 19 emergency rent relief administered by building futures in the amount of $583,116 and emergency shelter administered by the Family Violence Law Center in the amount of $50,000. Please note that in two weeks I will be back to present the five year consolidated plan to you. At that time, we will recommend an additional $130,000 of CDBG funds from the upcoming fiscal year to be allocated to emergency rent relief as well. So at this time, staff has begun coordinating with city staff to ensure that the CDBG and we need a strong emergency rent relief program. Descriptions, messaging and advertising are consistent and that applicants will be directed to a single website to apply. While the proposed program administrator was evaluated for qualifications and capacity, staff recommends that Council authorize the city manager to enter into a second agreement in the event that demand is overwhelming and with the explicit purpose of getting funds to those who need them expeditiously after complying with CDC requirements. Pending council approval tonight, we will begin the work of engaging the service providers so that the programs can be launched as soon as possible. In summary, the recommendation before you this evening is to amend the current fiscal year 1920 action plan by adding the three proposed programs and authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute related documents . In addition and in the interest of deploying resources as expeditiously as possible. Staff would also like to ask Council to authorize staff to appropriate funds in the current fiscal current 1920 fiscal year so that we can incur costs in the month of June and before the start of the next fiscal year. And that concludes that presentation. Thank you. I would like to just have money. Yes, please. We have our three proposed providers here this evening and they are all here. And the clerk method man, if there are questions of council members or the for our proposed providers. Okay. Thank you. And those would be the Building Futures and the Family Violence Law Center current. And the food bank. And the food bank. Yes. Okay. Okay. Any questions? That's our assistant city attorney, Lisa maxwell. Okay. Councilmember, I mean, Vice Mayor Knox has his hand up. I answer to both. Thank you. Good. Just just a quick question. In the in the determining if somebody meets the average minimum income for the housing grants. Is the what what is it? One assumes that in applying for this, they've already had an impact to their salary. But it's not clear whether the salary that's being used to determine whether they are above or under the hammer is from pre-COVID or after the impacts of COVID. Can we clarify what our intent is there? I just we're that we're clear. We're clear that you have to be up to date on your rent before March 1st. The question is, is your salary before March 1st also the I am I determined nurse post. You know that the. Sorry. You understand what I'm asking? Hopefully. Yes. For CDBG purposes. The income would be at the time of receiving the benefit. So it would be post-COVID. We would be looking at there pre-COVID to verify that there is a significant change or a substantial loss of income. Okay. Thank you very much. And I had a question, see if I can find it. So explain or maybe Miss Potter. So I, I heard you mentioned the community fund that we're starting, as is Alameda Strong. So how does how do these city city TB funds work with the funds that are being raised and allocated to the Alameda Strong Community Fund for Rent Relief. It is for anyone listening. We have a certain amount of monthly rent, one month's rent up to, I want to say 30 $500 that a person could be eligible for that rent money if they're shown to qualify as paid directly to the landlord. So this is also helping landlords, especially some of our smaller mom and pop landlords. But how does people just explain how are these parallel programs are all one or how does it work? Sure. I had a good conversation with both Louis Butler and Eric Thompson today, and the thinking is that rather than advertising two separate programs, let's have consistent messaging for a single program, have a single portal, have a single application, and then on the back end the processing. So for applicants who wouldn't necessarily qualify under the CDBG program, because the guidelines are a little bit stricter because they'd basically be referred to or paid by the Alameda Strong program, that ultimately for the applicant , it's hopefully going to be seamless. So because the end goal is to make sure that the tenant gets arrested. Right. And but there wouldn't be there wouldn't be duplication. So you would get your one month of rent relief from either of the two sources. Exactly. And that was another motivation. Okay. That's good to know. And then if I think people probably saw this in the in the they sent the staff report, but this is something that came up at the Shrub, the Social Service Human Relations Board meeting last week. That and I think it might have been reported here in this forum before, but in the month of April, because I don't think we've seen the police department's statistics for the month of May yet, but for the month of April 2020, the number of domestic violence calls that the police department received had increased 41.5% over April of 2019. So April a year ago. And it is upsetting when you read in the in the the staff report that due to the shelter in place order and Judicial Council's order to release offenders from jail, sometimes someone who has been arrested for domestic violence is taken, booked and sent back to the same residence in the same night . So that's where this emergency shelter program is so important because it provides funding for that battered spouse or partner or whomever to find a safe place to stay. So it's important program. Any said thank you very much great staff report and thank you for the input to Ms.. Potter. Any further questions I should ask? Sorry. Ms.. Quick. Do we have any public speakers? So we just need to ask anybody participating on the zoom if they would like to speak on this community development block grant hearing to please raise their hand right now. And we have nobody raising their hand. So we're good and we don't have any other comment to read into the record. Okay. So with that, do I have a motion to approve this proposed amendment to fiscal year 2019 2020 CDBG Action Plan and authorize city manager to negotiate and execute related documents, agreements and modifications to implement the program described above. And I would also like to make sure the in the motion includes our request that the Council also appropriate these funds for the fiscal 1922 years so we can start spending money this month. Okay. All right. So do I have a motion to cover that? Is that you, Councilmember Odie? Yes, Madam Mayor. I will make that motion and just quickly comment. I appreciate your your words about the family violence center. I know you've been outspoken on this issue. And Councilmember Bell and I had a town hall on this issue. And I think it's one of the silent issues that people are facing in this crisis. So I'm glad that we're doing something about it. So I'll move approval of the item with the appropriation of the money in fiscal year 1920. I get that right, Miss Potter. Yeah. 19 Dash 2019 Dash 20. Yet we're not retroactive. Sorry, it's getting late here. Vice Mayor Knox. Right. Seconds. Right. Any discussion? Hearing, then may we have a roll call vote with council members? Decide this next fight. With great appreciation for misfits in our Social Service Human Relations Board. I Odie. I of course. And I believe council members Vella is having a problem with her iPad, so she I think, is not able to vote at the present moment. So we. Well, I guess she's absent so. And then Mayor, as the Ashcraft. Say again, if I could cast her vote, I know she'd be right on board with me. But yes, thank you. Thank you. All right. So that motion passes with four, four councilmembers present and one missing. Okay. All right. I'm sorry about that. Do we see anything we can do to assist? Anyway, thank you very much. Misfits and Miss Potter and Miss Maxwell. Thank you. Good work. There she is. Uh, Councilmember Vela, do you want to. You want to hear it's not too late for a roll call? You want to be on record? Yes. Yes, I was listening. I just was on a different device. Sorry. And we were doing a roll call vote. Would you like to vote? I yes. It's unanimous. Right. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. I love I love a happy ending. Okay. With that, we move on to item six B.