Recommendation to Receive an Update on a Strategic Plan for Addressing Homelessness in Alameda. (Community Development 267)
Okay. All right. So with that, we will move on to item six C. Recommendation to receive an update on a strategic plan for addressing homelessness in Alameda. And who is presenting that? Oh, look, we got her back. Our wish was granted. All right, whenever you're ready. Go ahead. And Mr. Potter. Okay. So, yes, it is my last meeting. And so I have a really easy job tonight, which is introducing Anna back to us, who is our new development manager in charge of homelessness. And she's going to provide a presentation. And she and I, along with Lois Butler, who is the who will be standing in as the interim committee development director next week, are all available to answer questions. With that, I would ask Ed, we have we have a she has a brief PowerPoint, so hopefully we'll get that set up. Okay. Thanks. Start screen sharing. Looks good. Take it away. Hi, Miss Baptiste. And my bet is you need to unmute. Prager, can you hear me? We have perfectly. Perfect. Okay. Good evening, Madam Mayor. And members of the City Council. It is difficult to follow Ms.. So Gilchrist's poem and her presentation. But I will try. And I really appreciate what she said about Alameda being a community for for everyone, its community together, because addressing homelessness is really about addressing it as a community. Thank you for this opportunity to give you an update on homelessness in Alameda. And on March 28th, 2018, which was my first week as a city employee, council, adopted the first Alameda Strategic Plan, and it's called Alameda Homelessness Report. This was jointly developed by the Social Service Human Relations Board and the Housing Authority. We have been using this report as our strategic plan for homelessness in Alameda. And please move onto the next slide. So you'll see in this report there are four policy recommendations that were presented to address the immediate needs of our unhoused residents, as well as develop long term solutions to end homelessness. Today, the city of Alameda offers 20 different programs, of which 14 were made possible through the $725,000 in Keep or Homeless Emergency Aid Program funds allocated to the city by the state as well. City Council has been funding the public outreach program since 2016 and has dedicated funds for initiatives such as the Parking for the Homeless Parking Meter for the Homeless Program Planning Grant for the Health and Wellness Center on McKay Avenue. And the new program that will be starting in Alameda at the this month called BLOCK by BLOCK. To be able to end homelessness, however, we need housing. Eden Housing 20 unit for low income seniors opened this year. Their next project, a 70 unit housing for low income and homeless families, is opening next year. About 300 new housing units for the homeless and low income are in the pipeline and are expected to become available in 2 to 5 years, including North Housing. The Alameda Health and Wellness Center and the Reshape Project. If we plot these projects along a continuum of care and evaluate how we are doing with the policy recommendations in the homelessness report. This is what it would look like. Next slide, please. As you can see, we have done a great job with policy area number one, which addresses the most immediate health and social service needs of our unhoused residents. However, as the report noted, these services do not end homelessness. For policy area number two, temporary shelters, we have a big gap. We currently have four FEMA trailers that are being used for shelter to shelter elderly and medically vulnerable unhoused individuals during COVID, which will be at our disposal at the end of the pandemic. This could get us started with a temporary housing or community cabin option. The city manager, the mayor and staff visited navigation centers at community cabinets last year to see what might be possible for Alameda. On the other side of the continuum for policy, recommendations to wait for housing is coming, which is the ultimate solution to end homelessness . But these are 2 to 3 years away. So where do we go from here? Next slide, please. Council had a retreat in December and again in July, where you identified homelessness as a priority for your 2020 2021. Under your focus area three. Supporting Enhanced Livability and quality of life. You ask for the development of a long range plan for the homeless. In a sign this test that the Community Development Department staff went to the Social Service Human Relations Board and asked them to help guide the planning process, which they approved last week. We will be seeking a consultant start of work this this coming fall or this fall. We will be soliciting input from community stakeholders and we will be exploring ways to fund projects. This long range plan. Which updates our current strategic plan, we will need to identify three things. Number one, how to sustain the programs beyond the heat funding or the Homeless Emergency Aid Program, which is ending in March 2021, especially the programs and services that are preventing individuals and families from becoming homeless. We need to address the big gap in our homelessness strategy by exploring short term temporary housing options. A 2 to 3 five way, two or three five years of wait for permanent housing is a little bit too long, while our encampments continue to grow during the development of this long range strategic plan. Staff will work with the Social Service Human Relations Board to explore the feasibility of establishing a cabin community or tiny homes. This is an important strategy to move people out of encampments and street living into a housing option that can bridge and ease their transition into permanent housing. In January of next year, we will come back to Presents the Council with a plan that includes how the project will be funded for a community cabin option or some kind of a shelter. Finally, we need to look at our housing policies to prioritize our most vulnerable residents. The homeless is a population that face enormous barriers that make them ineligible, not prioritized or not ideal for housing as tenants in this long range strategic plan. We will look at other cities for models through ordinances, resolutions and partnerships, such as working with the housing authority to break down these barriers. In late spring or early summer, staff will be presenting council with the final plan, which updates our strategic plan that includes strategies to sustain our supportive services, establish temporary and transitional housing, and explore housing policies that prioritize the homeless population. We will be seeking your approval to adopt the plant at that point. Thank you again for this opportunity to provide you with a status on homelessness in our Altadena community. And at this point, we welcome your questions and comments. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Practice, do we have any clarifying questions from the City Council before we go to any public comment? I guess I should ask the city clerk, do we have public comment? So far we have one speaker. Okay. So any clarifying questions? Councilmember Otis, your head's up. Sure. Thank you. Thanks for that presentation. Just a couple quick questions. So I know we you mentioned Project ROOMKEY and the staff report related to the FEMA trailers. Is there any other effort in Alameda to participate in Project ROOMKEY? I know there was some discussion about one of the hotels. I'm Marina by Marina Square. Correct. And Marina village in is still part of the project Roomkey and that there was a an intent to purchase that property so that we could turn it into our we believe the county could turn it into permanent supportive housing after the pandemic. The county applied for funding to purchase the property and unfortunately during this first round of funding, the project did not get approved. However, the county is still optimistic that there may be some funding available to move forward with that purchase. But right now, it's it's uncertain. Okay. And then my second question, I think you mentioned it also in the staff report about the warming shelters, which are opened in November. And I recall two years ago when we had the fires, there was a lot of issue regarding homeless being exposed to the to the smoke and the warming shelters hadn't opened yet. And now this year we have the fires in September and October. So can you maybe share what we're doing to help some of the. Vulnerable unhoused neighbors. And you kind of get into some place where they can breathe during during these times. Yes, yes, yes. Fires have been really devastating this this year at two things. We are very fortunate that that the day center is now open. So during the day, folks have been going to the day center to take refuge and the out of the smoke. And also what we've had heat waves. The day center is actually a good place to be because they have air conditioning, which is pretty rare in Alameda. The other option that we are considering actually for the warming shelter and we have some funding for CARES Act as well as through help. The Homeless Emergency Aid Program is issuing some emergency motel vouchers. We have been in conversation with Building Futures, which operates the warming shelter about how to make sure that there's a safe distancing at the warming shelter, because last year there were times when we really had too many people, and this is before COVID. Now that we have COVID, we are looking at how to contain the number of people at the warm shelter and that what do we do with the rest of the folks who we know will be in shelters? So that's still a conversation. And we are working as well with Christ Church where this program is hosted and how to maintain safe distancing, maintain the number of contain the number of people to make it safe at that and then other options that we could offer for folks who are not able to be at the shelter that evening. Okay. And, you know, you know that homeless people were identified in our Karp as, you know, most vulnerable to, you know, things like climate action, climate emergencies. And then the last question, you mentioned the Boise case in the staff report also. I mean, can you tell us a little bit about, you know, what what boundaries that establishes and then how we're trying to get people services and temporary housing within the constraints of the Boise case? Yeah. Yeah. So the Boise, as many of you know, is what constraints such as to get some of the folks out of encampments because you have to have an option to offer as an alternative to where they're living right now, which are encampments set up on the streets. So with establishing a tiny cabin community or or some kind of a temporary shelter there, those options will be offered to folks at the encampments and other streets. And the initial sort of conversation we had about about these kinds of temporary housing options is that we can have up to we can house up to 20 individuals using tiny cabins or community cabins, and that's housing on site for staff. So when we have these kinds of options to offer, then we can present to our how to our unhoused population. Moving them into one of these units that are available. And if they decline, then we need to make sure that, you know, that that's documented. Because at that point, since we have housing available and if the idea is to abate at the encampment, then we will continue with the abatement. Of course, we will follow the rule of the rules and the law regarding those kinds of action. And we will be working with the city attorney's office and Alameda Police Department in moving forward with that kind of action. Okay. Um, I had another one, but I'll save it for later. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, everybody. Does anyone any other clarifying questions from the council? I have a couple on the staff report. Um, my temperamental iPad will let me in. Okay. Um, so thank you for the presentation, Ms.. Badges. This is a very important and complex and not easily understood topic, so I want to direct your attention to the staff report. Page three And there is just the reference and you're the bullet point trying to talk about the other funded initiatives include the next paragraph talks about the city council approves the parking meter donation collection program coming soon. And I would just comment that whenever it comes, I don't think it's going to raise a huge amount of money. So I know we've waited a while, we can wait a little longer. But what I was really interested in within the last line of that paragraph where it said partnership with the county's health care for the Homeless has also brought the mobile health clinic, which I'm well aware of, which is wonderful. They come out when they do the dining connect events and they it's it's an amazing mobile clinic that provides all kinds of services and street health program. Where and in what capacity are we seeing the street health program operating in Alameda? Yeah. So that street health is another, as you mentioned, another program of the county's health care for the homeless. And it is a medical based model kind of similar to the mobile, but they actually are not on wheels. They actually got flipped out of the encampment. Yes. Yeah. They go to the encampments. They go to wherever the homeless folks are located and they're working this team is working side by side with our existing outreach team here in Alameda so that they can show up and introduce them to the unhoused population and start building that trust so that we can connect or they can connect the our house population to primary care, mental health services, dentistry, you know, those kinds of services that we've not had before here in Alameda. So we've been really fortunate to bring that for a group here. And when did we first bring that here? This is like I would say three weeks ago. And they started at at the day center, actually, they had two nurse practitioners that met with folks there, and they set up a small room for consultation at the day center. And do they have a regular schedule of, you know, certain days of the day center, certain days out in the field or had a heads up? Yeah. So we clarified that with the street team this week because we we thought that they will be at the day center on a regular basis, like a regular schedule. And they said no because their intent is to really be out there in the community and mostly around encampment. So they're working with Operation Dignity. I know they're scheduling some visits at these account beds and then at some point that, you know, once they establish a routine and they have established some relationships with folks, they will go up their own to this account. Okay. But on a regular basis. On a regular basis, exactly. Like a few times a week. At least once a week. Okay. Okay. And. Well, that's good to know. They it's one of these programs that has an impressive track record where it does operate. And then my other question about the staff report comes from page six, note five, where the first full paragraph of page five talks about as part of this process, staff work with the Social Service Human Relations Board to develop a transitional housing option. I think this is talking about the possibility of tiny homes or community cabins such as tiny homes, community cabins which could be implemented ahead of and separate from the strategic plan that the residents could live in the community for up to six months while working on securing permanent housing . And my question is, what happens if it takes more than six months for someone to secure a permanent housing? Is this is this following the model of the the navigation centers that I guess, if I recall correctly, do set a timeframe? But if you could just back. This short clarify that. Yeah. So it is sort of following the model of the navigation center and also community cabin that are in Oakland, mostly the ones that we have visited, operated by Operation Dignity. And they do set a time limit. However, it's not a fixed time limit because there are some situations where folks would need more than six months. I think the the the the the most important part about the putting a timeline is that they need to be able to see progress. And also it gives incentive to the clients to really work on and be engaged in ending their homelessness. So there's a timeline that kind of gives them that sense of urgency and to really, you know, work with with the staff. However, you know, we will we will, you know, it's up to the discretion of the provider to look at the situation and review on a case by case basis and extend that as long as they're continuing to work and be engaged in the process. And you're right, that is following the model of the navigation centers that we visited and the idea being there would be really intensive outreach and work with these individuals while they are in these transitional housing, supportive housing. And so they have work with caseworkers helping them to find housing, connect them with medical, mental health services, substance abuse , whatever they need. And the idea is that they need to see progress because after all, there's a whole other cohort of sheltered individuals waiting to be able to be assisted by a program like this. So thank you for that clarification. So any counsel clarification questions before I open this up to public speakers? Okay, madam, let's have our public speakers, please. James Downey. Downey Fox. Thanks for having me on again. I have two clarifying questions. I'll ask them both and then I'll step back for comment. One would be, what does the budget decision or how does the Boise decision prevent us from cleaning up waste? Just garbage, just the waste that accompanies being unhoused? And secondly, I often hear us conflate the issue of homelessness, drug addiction and mental illness as backed up. By your own admission, some of these folks have told you or our teams they don't want to go into housing. Have we considered re allocating funds to focus more on the mental illness and more excuse me, mental health and on the drug addiction issues versus building homes? Because I fear we could have all the homes in the world and there still will be a subset of folks who, due to their condition, you know, I use to defeat my mental illness. I have mental illness, so I use it. There will always they will always be there. And I think we could reallocate somewhere, often funds towards those services. What have we considered in regards to doing just that? Reallocating funds from homes to mental health and drug addiction. Thank you. And Mr. Downey, just for clarification, for other public speakers, this is public comment. It is not Q&A, but thank you for posing those questions that our staff definitely works on and could be answered in a different venue. Perhaps the communication with the city manager. Do we have another public speaker this way? No, that was our only public speaker. All right. So then at this point, this is not an action item so much as a minimum. We had another speaker put their hand up right as the city clerk was saying there was nobody else. Well, then we will reopen public comment. Tamika Perkins. Hi. Good evening. Good evening, Mr. Ricketts. Good evening. Councilmembers Mayor Ashcraft and Debbie. I worked to Debbie and she will surely be missed. And I just want to make a comment. I am with Operation Dignity, and I just wanted to make sure everyone knew that there are no quick fixes when it comes to homelessness and we have to start somewhere. So I know that issue is on the table about community champions and it is a way to stabilize folks who are in the. Process of. Getting their lives together. It allows the Operation Dignity Team as well as other providers to address folks immediate needs. Right. So before we can deal with the bigger issue, we have to deal with the immediate needs. And that oftentimes is getting them document ready, getting them connected to mental health and substance abuse programs. Right. And getting them family reunification. So all of these things kind of takes place and the community cabins offer an opportunity to do that without being moved around from place to place. When you're in an encampment, right, or having their items stolen, they're able to kind of go in somewhere where they can lock the door and have a key. And also the other thing I wanted to mention was I would say, as we look to programs for housing, the unsheltered, that we'd be mindful that we don't unintentionally exclude them by placing additional barriers on them when it comes to low income and affordable housing for most, low income, affordable housing that I've seen is not very affordable and that very low income and especially with dealing with our particular population, right? So working with our policymakers and our housing authorities on relaxing some of those rules when it comes to criminal background, income eligibility and rental evictions. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Perkins, and thank you for all the good work that Operation Dignity does. You're a valuable partner to the city of Alameda. Miss Potter, please. So I thought I would just quickly follow up on some of the points that Ms.. Perkins made. I think it's considered in kind of the industry that the Housing First model is a best practice. And the emphasis on Housing First is to make a point that the key is to stabilize folks. When you get people stabilized in transitional or permanent housing, then you tackle the drug addiction, then you tackle the mental illness. Back in the day, the model was clean and sober, right? That you had to be clean and sober before you got into housing. And I think that that model has really been replaced with the best practice, which is called the Housing First model. And that is why what you see being reflected in our recommendations in this strategic plan is the emphasis on permanent supportive housing, and that is consistent with the work that the county does with the everyone home, the plan that everyone at home does. So I just want to underscore that point about the importance of that best practice of the Housing First model. Thank you, Miss Potter. Very true. Do we have any more public speakers in this part of. We have no more. So what is public comment at this time then in I'm going to lead off just because housing is an issue that is so near and dear to my heart. I want to just give you a couple of examples of real life examples and I'll just preface surprising. Homelessness is a complicated issue, and I think there is more I know there's more homelessness in our city of Alameda even than is apparent to the naked eye. And it is not just the encampments that are so visible on the approach to the tubes, it is those families living in their cars. And we do now we've opened our safe parking at Alameda Point and I saw the statistics for August, which is the first month of statistics, and we're off to a good start in just giving people a secure place to live while they work to find housing. And we need more housing. We just need more housing so badly. And it's hard to see measurable success. I mean, the people from Operation Dignity and Building Futures who work with these folks are certainly seeing it case by case. So the examples I want to tell you about are the Marina Village in and I've got my fingers crossed that some funding is going to be found to to keep that is permanent supportive housing because right now I think the council knows there are both residents from our Midway Shelter, domestic violence victims and their children, and also women from some of the encampments who would have been very vulnerable had they gotten COVID 19. And they're living there. And at first, we had a little bit of pushback from the neighbors. Why don't we talk about this? What this trash is this? So our supervisor, county supervisor, Wilmot Chan, convened a town hall and she asked me to be their city manager. Was there like this on Zoom? And I was just ready to hear all the different complaints, the neighbors. And they almost moved me to tears because. But the outreach, I give huge credit to Anabaptist, Kerri Abbott from the counties, she's the county's homelessness person and Alice Varella from Billy Futures, who had gone out and done the outreach, met with the neighbors, found it with the problems, were met with the residential manager, got them address to the point that these residents to a person and the manager of the Oakland Yacht Club which is a neighboring property all spoke up and said, wow, this is so well managed. We just heard that they didn't get the funding. What's going to happen to these people and how can we help? How can we help these children? Can we can we do school supplies, we do tutoring? And then Luis Varela told me the next day that they reached out to her and said, we want to do a holiday drive for these residents. So, you know, kudos to all of you for stepping in. And it's not easy to just put people in a place and walk away. And then a year or so ago, the assistant city manager, Jerry Bowden, and I had a chance to visit a community cabin in Oakland down near the the Civic Auditorium, used to be called anyway. And Mayor Libby Schaaf was telling us that the first thing for and they're just they're very rudimentary. But you get a key and you there's cots and you go in, you can have pets. And she said the first thing people do when you give them their key and they just walk in and realize it's quiet, it's safe, I can lock the door. I'm safe if they burst into tears. And the second thing they do, she said, is they lay down in the car and they sleep for 48 hours because they have not had a night's sleep where they weren't sleeping with one eye open. They're going to be attacked. Everything's going to be stolen. Am I safe? And so these are the things we need to do. It's not easy, it's not pretty. But these are human lives and it is possible to make things better and we've all got to work hard together. So for me, let's hear from the others in the council. Can't Somerville. I said your handout. This is my colleague on the Housing Committee, Economic Development Committee of the League of California Cities. Councilmember Avella. Yes. And also your, your partner, when we were going to do the homeless count this past year. And, you know, I think many of us on the council have participated in the the count of where we go out. And we we actually tried to countywide count all of the unhoused individuals. And I want to talk about trauma for a second because I think that that's inherently part of this in. Our conversation. And I heard a speaker say, well, you're conflating homelessness with mental health issues and drug abuse. And the reality is, is that there is trauma experienced by anybody who is having to experience life in an unstable or insecure way. And I think a lot of the conversation around either the cottages or the cabins is is really around creating a sense of stability and a foundation for that to actually address the trauma that occurs . Not everybody who becomes unhoused has mental health issues or drug issues at the start, but they certainly lose their sense of security and safety. And I think that that's been a big part of what we've been discussing, whether it's around reimagining policing or the services that we want to provide. And it's certainly part of this conversation. I think it's inherent in this part of this conversation when we talk about the unsheltered population and the vulnerable population in our own community. So I just I want to make sure that when we when we talk about that, that's really what we're getting at. And we hear the conversation about the different services. That's really what it's geared, geared towards. And there are a number of individuals who I've spoken with. I've had students who were unhoused or unsheltered. It's all walks of life, and there is a complete loss of security and safety. And the point gets brought up all the time, the sense of being able, even with our secure with our trailers and your parking overnight and the sense of security that people get because they know nobody's going to come and attack them or take their things or hassle them in the middle of the night. And that's something that many of us take for granted. And I certainly hope that that remains a focus of our community. I've seen in our community exercise compassion and empathy, and this is all part of that conversation. So I appreciate all of the work that's gone into this report. I think that that this is tremendous progress from from what we had a few years ago. And I also want to thank our staff. I was on Webster today talking with some of the business owners, and they said, you know, Anna and Debbie and Lois, they were all out here handing out these cards, letting us know about these programs. And I want to thank our business community, because it's not a sense of we need to get these people out of here so much as we want to make sure everybody's taken care of and has a place to go. And on these bad air quality days and with with the different weather, that they have a place to go. And I hear that a lot from our business owners. And again, that's that sense of compassion and empathy and wanting to find a place for people. But it also takes our staff who we don't have a lot of going out there and making sure that the resources that we're funding as a council are actually being used. So I want to acknowledge that work that's being done and just let the public know that that our staff is literally the boots on the ground getting the word out about the different services that they discuss in this report. And they've been very much a part of the solutions. I want to I want to acknowledge that work as well. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Bella Council Brody. Thank you. I want to thank our staff. I think you mentioned how complex this issue is. And I appreciate all the work and I and Lois and Debbie have put into this. I think my colleague, Ms.. Vella hit the needle on the head when she talked about these being compassionate solutions. And, you know, our community stepped up and was compassionate when we approved the respite center last year. So I know we have it in ourselves to help those that are less fortunate. And I appreciate the the kind of the emphasis, Ms.. Potter on Housing First. I mean, people can be many different things, but, you know, if your first title is unhoused or homeless, it basically indicates one thing, right? You know, you don't have housing and, you know, whether it's through, you know, mental health issues or addiction or, you know, loss of income or, you know, your rent got raised too high. You know, there's a lot of reasons. A lot of people are unsheltered. So I appreciate the focus on housing. That's why it's kind of interesting know I know we're wrapping up as best we can. You know, the first part and the third part I always thought was the hardest permanent housing. But I'm glad that we got things in the works, like the 90 units over over at North Housing. But the temporary thing, I mean, just a couple Q&A. I mean, do we have a timeframe on when we might be able to see some additional temporary housing services provided? Or do we not? Do we know or. I think that part of our planning process to identify timeline, of course, we will have to identify a location which will be, I think, one of the challenges in undertaking such a project. And then we will have to go through stakeholder input process and all of that. So but the plan right now is to come back to you in January with an actual plan. Okay. You will debt review and approve. Okay. I mean, because as you said, you know, we can't move people into a shelter until we have shelter. And I know there's many people that are concerned for whatever reason they're concerned about. But, you know, we need to get those temporary units up. And then the other thing, I hope that our community can be compassionate as you make those recommendations, because it's going to be critical that we provide them. Now, I recall six years ago, I started this job and I think we had 34 homeless in our in our count. And that could have been because we weren't counting everywhere. But, you know, last it was over 200. So, you know, it's definitely been an issue. But I remember that there was just a statistic that, you know, the large majority of people that were counted in the census actually are alamitos. I mean, is that still pretty much the the truth or the fact? That is still the truth. And the county, Alameda County appointed time count for 2019, which is the most current one. In that report, they found that majority all over Alameda County are from this county. Something like three quarters of the population who are homeless are from the town or city or where they're living right now as homeless individuals. Okay. So what I think it's important there is. Now, these are our neighbors. Yep. So in a way, we're trying to find solutions for our neighbors. And I don't think there's going to be an influx of people coming from other cities to take advantage of our services. And if they are great because we're providing shelter. But let's let's make sure people understand, you know, we're trying to help our neighbors. And these are solutions for Alameda. And then I know there's been some issues with these these cabins with safety. So I hope when you put them together and I know there's some places in Oakland where they're women only so they can be, you know, protected from being sexually assaulted and things like that. So. And then I understand the question from the the public about trash. Maybe you can just touch a little on this because you know what? Someone may look as trash when you're driving by is actually someone's belongings. I know there's issues with liability about just removing things. Can you kind of talk a little bit about what we're doing, you know, for legitimate refuse and, you know, maybe sanitation versus, you know, what we have to do to respect people's personal property? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're absolutely right. What might look like trash to some of us are actually belongings and property and probably the only property that folks have. So what we do is we work very closely, for instance, in the at the positive, which is that property is owned by Caltrans. We work very closely with our outreach and our outreach team, your locally to inform folks way ahead of time. And we and I just want to also announce that we have a cleanup scheduled with Caltrans on October 15th. So that's our next clean up scheduled. We work very closely with our outreach team to inform folks way ahead of time about where the trash needs to be placed so that the day of the pickup, the the the folks know exactly what to pick up and what to leave up and for properties that are left behind. And it looks like just things that have not been touched in quite a while. But somebody left, you know, lived there at one point. We will put a notice of that property and do some more outreach, you know, to see who might who the property might have belong to at some point. And and we kind of know our outreach team kind of know where they're located, even though they do look around and try to talk to those individuals to see if they are things that they want to get rid of or if those things are really just for trash, that we will do our best to put them in the proper place so that when the pickup happens, we know those are trash and not property. Okay. And then I think the mayor kind of raised this point. You know, being homeless manifests itself in different ways, whether it's, you know, in a shelter or whether it's in encampment or whether it's in your car or we also have folks living out of our bodies and such. And, you know, my understanding is if you have an RV, you can't go to the day parking. So. Can you maybe talk about what services we may have for folks who are living out of our RVs or campers? Because I know there's, you know, a few of them, quite a few of them past the ferry station, you know, out to the entrance of the base. Yeah. Correct. So are these are not included in the Safe Parking program. However, we do continue to work with everyone who's homeless, including the ones who are living. There are these with outreach services, harm reduction programs. If they need anything, it could be what they call this, a voucher for a motel. If they're if they really need some kind of a shelter besides where they're living now, we also provide them with food. If they need food, you know, whatever it is that that that we could provide through our outreach team, we we do provide that and as well, you know, we encourage them if they if we think that they need medical assistance, we encourage them to get in touch now that we have the street team to get in touch with those folks, the nurse practitioner. And if we need to connect them to primary care or doctors and what have you, we would try to make those connections as well. So. Okay. Well, thank you again. I want to thank you all for your hard work on this. And the mayor, who's a leader in the state on this, and Councilman Avella also with the League of Cities. And I would plead with our residents to show some compassion to our unhoused neighbors as we try to resolve this issue . And, you know, by compassion, you know, I mean, you know, let's not have a battle like we had over the respite center, right, you know, where people were saying, I don't want this in my backyard. You know, we're going to have to provide some temporary shelter and, you know, and compassion when it is to, you know, finding people services and getting people shelter and, you know, putting them in proper shelter. So I hope that, you know, in the next two or three months, as the time it takes to get to the point where we can provide adequate temporary housing, that that our community continues to show compassion like we have for many years for our unhoused neighbors. And I also thank you for all for working on this. And, you know, I think together we'll get through it. But, you know, it's it's very it's very sad to see, you know, what's happening, but it's very heartening to see, you know, the commitment that everyone on our city staff from the city manager on down and everyone on council has to, you know, finding compassionate solutions for this, for our neighbors. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Brody. Anyone else? Right. Fair enough. Right. So I'm learning to at least look like I'm fine in the movie, but you can tell. Thank you. So I want to thank I'm going to say in first off, every time I see him aspect is to do a presentation on these issues. I'm just constantly impressed and I feel very lucky to know that we have somebody with so much knowledge and understanding about this issue, not just, you know, specific programs, but actually understands the kind of holistic, comprehensive program and how everything fits together. So I just want to thank you for that. I want to thank everybody one last time as as this is your last item. Yeah. And I also do priority because Lois has been sitting on my screen for service. Butler has been sitting right here for so long. I just want to also acknowledge now is as you're stepping into the interim acting position, thank you for all the work you're doing on this as well, because right. Now you're the silent partner. Because you're somewhere in between there, whatever. But I know you've been very involved in a lot of these conversations because they really are. This is so thank you for that. I just also wanted to kind of touching on the housing issue again, because housing first as a as a as a solution tried to helping and aiding those who are unhoused is really important. But what we also know is that most of the unhoused in our area started off as housed. And we know that the reason they are unhoused now is because they got pushed out of the housing that they had and many of them were pushed out of that housing with with your not necessarily, you know, drug addiction and mental health issues, but that they may for all sorts of reasons that those get exasperated when you're living on the street. And so, you know, this is a great solution for addressing the issue that exists on our streets. But we also need to be, you know, kind of to Mr. Downey's point a little bit, we need to be making sure, you know, I would say action to the opposite of his point a little bit, but not argument. Argumentative. I appreciate the comment. We need to be making sure that people are not getting pushed out of their homes so that we have this problem that we have to deal with very much. I am ready and I know Councilmember Isaak has comments but I'm ready to support the staff recommendation. I really appreciate it. I remember speaking with Inspector Simmons. Potter I'm going to go with July kind of as we before we went on the August break, kind of about this issue and my hopes that we could be kind of talking about some real solutions here in October. And I was very pleased when I talked to the city manager and to hear that that was staff's staff's goal. And here we are. So I really want to thank you for that. I really want to encourage us to make sure that this strategic planning process, as we go forward, that we are communicating out very clearly to the to the council, and also that we are very clear with our timelines and our dates so that we know we have a lot more planning to do. I think if we can get these community cabins in and whatnot, we're going to end up back in here. Okay. Now what next? And I think that the more that we can be thinking about as we're doing that planning, what are the other things that we can also be looking to reach out and instill in the community? I just want to encourage staff to make sure that they're there. You know, if they're off agenda items and we're not just keeping us in the loop so that we can be supportive and help leverage our voices or help make decisions when the when there are decisions to be made that will help move us forward. But thank you. This is again, great work. I really appreciate it. We're lucky to have a county with a really good plan. We're a city with a really good plan and it's really good to see a lot of these things moving forward. Thank you. Behavior Council member Jason. Great. Well, thank you very much for your presentation this evening. And I especially liked the discussion regarding, you know, trying to put more emphasis on temporary shelter, whether there are the FEMA trailers or whether they are the cabins. I think that kind of temporary shelter is especially important when it comes to assisting those who are in the encampments around around Posey Tube. But I think the other great part about tonight's discussion was the range of carrots that have been discussed in terms of outreach, medical assistance, things like that. So I think we're we're moving in the right direction with regard to generally dealing with the matter of of homelessness. But obviously, you know, specifically, let's not kid ourselves putting in the strategies to deal with the situation right outside of the Posey to be encampments there and with things like the temporary shelters in the form of FEMA trailers or or the cabins that were discussed. If we do put more emphasis onto that, I think we can definitely begin to deal with the campaign issue in a very compassionate issue. By the same token, it seems to me that I also heard that we are carefully working within the framework of of Boise, of the Boise decision . And to me that that's important because it shows that, yes, we are putting a lot of carrots out there. But, you know, Boise clearly says that if you do have shelter available, then a city can work to do to exercise what it considers to be public safety concerns. And this might be an issue certainly outside of of those tube. But I think the range of carrots that were discussed tonight, I think, should really hearten a lot of people that we are beginning to move forward, especially on the encampment issue. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. They said, okay, by my calculation, all the council members have spoken, so we are being asked to receive an update. So we received an update and and staff you've heard our comments and our praise and our thanks for your hard work. So please continue to do what you're doing and we look forward to hearing back from you about your progress. All right. Thank you. So with that, we are going to close item 60. Okay, Council amendment of decision with 9:00. Now, we started at seven, although we really started at 530. Do you all want a five minute break from that five minute break? Five minute break. Okay, so everyone, we will be back in 5 minutes. Council, I recommend you put your microphone on mute and you can do whatever you want with your camera. Okay, 5 minutes. We'll be back. Thanks. Everyone. Let's see. Lara, are you there? Yes, I am here. I'm ready. You ready for us? Yes. All right, then. Everybody ready to go? You're back. Okay. So with that, we are back from our break and we have item six D. Recommendation to authorize the city manager or designated negotiate and execute rent relief agreements with commercial tenants and city owned Alameda Point properties via a $1.5 million loan conversion assistance program and implement an Alameda Point nonprofit and Spirit's Alley Business Rent Relief Program in response to the COVID 19 pandemic and adoption of related resolution.