Recommendation to request that the City Manager's office; Health and Human Services Department; Parks, Recreation, and Marine Department; and/or Public Works Department engage nonprofits regarding the feasibility of establishing a pilot Day Work Program focused on people suffering from homelessness based on successful programs implemented by other cities. The City will look into the fiscal impact of such a program, possible partners, as well as the potential benefits to the efforts being made to help individuals experiencing homelessness, as well as a public education campaign to encourage donations to this program and other opportunities to support addressing homelessness. The intent of this item is to offer new opportunities to those experiencing homelessness not to replace workers already employed by the city. Should include but is not limited to: 1. Community partners to serve as fiscal agents, to provide housing for participants, and to provide other necessary components to success of the program; 2. Various forms of payment and daily wage for participants in the pro
Get us that information so that we could have it. Thank you, sir. Okay. Now, item number six. Communication from Councilman Price Councilmember Super Naa Councilman Andrews Councilman Austin Recommendation to request that the city manager's office engage nonprofits regarding the feasibility of establishing a Pilot Day work program focused on people suffering from homelessness based on successful programs implemented by other cities. Thank you, Councilwoman Price. Thank you. So I know it's very late, but I ask for my colleagues engagement on this one. And this is an item that came back to us from city staff as a result of the May 23rd agenda item that I brought asking for a comprehensive strategy to address homelessness. This was one of the ideas that we had research that had been used in other throughout cities and other parts of the country, and that had worked real effectively in terms of getting homeless individuals into a permanent or more stable work situations. And so I appreciate staff in their December 18th memo to the council highlighting this as an option that would be feasible for the city of Long Beach. A number of cities across the country have developed successful day work programs designed for homeless individuals. Some of these include Albuquerque, New Mexico. Anaheim, California. Bakersfield, California. Denver, Colorado. Hayward, California. Tucson, Arizona. New York. New York. San Francisco, California. San Jose, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz, California. Homelessness continues to be a major problem in Long Beach. I know that my district is not alone. However, in my district it continues to be the number one area where we get residential concerns regarding quality of life issues associated with transient activity and homelessness. And our continuum of care. There is major through our continuum of care, there's major progress being made, and that is all very positive. However, the issue of homelessness is complex and there's no single solution, meaning that it is necessary for us to develop creative approaches and try them even on a small scale or pilot basis, to determine what needs and opportunities exist for different individuals. Providing an opportunity for individuals struggling with homelessness to earn a day's pay could help reach out to those willing to work but unable to find or keep employment due to their homelessness. Efforts like this could also help build trust in the homeless community and encourage more people to accept and seek out services and resources available to help get people off the streets long term with sustained improvements to their lives, with creativity and hard work, Long Beach can do more to help those most in need and suffering from homelessness. This dog work program will become another resource for those who have unfortunately found themselves homeless and in need of income, in need of stability, in need of opportunity, and in need of a hand up, not a handout. Not only would this program be giving work to those most in need, creating a benefit for those individuals. But the work. They would be doing would also be helping the city do more maintenance and beautification, resulting in benefits to all Long Beach residents. This is a project that, when looking at the feasibility staff, recommended partnership with a nonprofit organization, and that's really what this item requests. The item request staff to seek out potential nonprofit partners and develop a potential budget. So when looking at other cities, the budgets were actually not huge to do something like this. And I think given the right nonprofit partner, we could certainly fundraise to raise money to do this program, at least on a pilot basis, to see if it is resulting in actual changes to individuals lives. Our office has already reached out to some nonprofit partners such as the Conservation Corps, who are interested in partnering with us on something like this. But certainly, I'm sure there are other nonprofit organizations who would want to try a day work program like this. It gives an opportunity for individuals who want to work hard but cannot get employed, whether it's because of substance abuse issues, mental health issues, or lack of residents to have the opportunity to earn a meaningful day's of work. So I ask my colleagues to support this, and the item is really asking for a report back on this particular aspect of the more comprehensive report that staff brought forth in December. So thank you very much. Thank you. Councilman Andrews. Yeah. Yes, thank you, Mayor. First of all, I think Council Councilmember Price for bringing this forward and this item allows me to, you know, for bringing me forward to sign on this item. You know, I am very, very supportive of this measure because we really have the ability to help and provide a path to prosperity. And these opportunities should be. Readable and available to motivate individuals because in fact, it's just like she was saying, just because you have these gears, you know, illness out things is happening in your life, it shouldn't stop you from being able to get a job and start working. And I've always said that, remember, I said a job can stop a bullet. And I truly believe this day work program is something we should really explore immediately in Long Beach. And I'm hoping, Mr. West, that we can really get a chance to see all the findings, you know, seeking the findings in this. And thank you again, you know, Councilwoman Mrs. Price with this bringing this to the diocese. Thank you. Councilmember Pierce. Thank you. I also want to thank my colleague for bringing this forward. I have a couple. Of. Comments or questions. This is something I definitely support. I think as we're crafting this and working with a nonprofit, I think there's some statements in here that say various help me find it, various forms of payment. And so I just would like. To state that I would hope that we would be paying anybody that's working the same wages, that somebody that would do their job that is housed. I also would like to include in the health department. I know, Kelly, we've had some conversations around the grants that you guys receive that you do work on trauma informed organizational development . Perhaps we could explore if we do take on this, whoever is employing these folks, that there's at least a little bit of training in how to work best with those that are struggling with homelessness, particularly around the trauma informed organizational development. So putting together something that would include that would be really important to me. And then the other question I have is what type of screening process would be included and does that include medical screening, background checks and what the reasoning behind that screening would be? And just making sure that we're not using this as an opportunity to exclude anybody from a job program, but instead connect them to the correct services to ensure that they're successful. So yeah. I with those considerations when it comes back, I definitely supportive of this. So thank you. Thank you, Councilman Austin. Sounds like it's getting expensive. I want to just say that that I agree that that we should be compensating anybody that that we are requesting labor from fairly. But I do think that this is a innovative approach that that deserves our our our consideration. And so I want to thank Councilmember Price for bringing it forward. And I'm happy to sign on to this part. I know there are models and at least there's a couple of models in other cities that that actually are doing this. I know Albuquerque, New Mexico is one. I would love to study that model and understand exactly what they're doing, because apparently it's having some success. But I wouldn't limit it to two that that model or I would challenge our staff to develop our own, if possible. I think homelessness is a issue that that we all should be engaged in and should be a part of the solution. And I think not only nonprofits, but private sector companies as well should should we we should ask them to step up to the plate and help out and be creative in terms of providing a leg up or for those experiencing homelessness. So I'm happy to support and hope that the rest of the council will as well. Thank you, Councilwoman Gonzalez. Best thanks to Councilman Price for bringing this forward. I, I was actually just thinking about what else we need to do with this specific issue over the weekend, as I see an uptick of individuals who are experiencing homelessness in our parks. I think more than ever before and there's, you know, specific demographics that I think we need to to work on. So this is fantastic having nonprofits, partner. Just an idea that I wanted to put out there is maybe creating some sort of apprenticeship type program with our city employees who can become mentors for specific, you know, areas of service like graffiti removal or if it's, you know, picking up trash or what have you. I think that could be a good, you know, synergy between the two. But I think this is a fantastic item. And I'm look for looking forward to seeing more research on this. Thank you. Council member Soprano. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to sign onto this item. I just want to follow up on a couple of points. Here to Councilwoman Pearce's point about, I guess, the H.R. function in hiring these folks. I don't want to get. Too far into the weeds, but. The staff see us going. By the city standard or the. Nonprofit standard. I think we've done a lot of research on this already and we'll be able to report back quickly. Right now, there are certain limitations on what a city can do in hiring these individuals. So that's why you have to partner with with a nonprofit or a partner. And it depends which partner you talk to and what opportunities that they'll have or restrictions that they'll have. And that's that's what Kelly's doing right now. Right. So to that point, we. Would have limited oversight on the. Because we would defer to the nonprofit. It would depend on as we as we do the M.O. and work this out. I mean, certainly the dollars would be a function and who would hire the people would be an issue and it would be liable for their their human resources and things. But certainly we would locate the work and they I'm making this up, but they potentially would work with could work with our clean teams and that kind of stuff is as we go through corridors and stuff. All right, thank you. And then to Councilman Austin's point about with the court this looks like is getting expensive. So item ten is what I ask for, and that is to develop a public information campaign that encourages donations to support this program. And I just happen to believe that's critical to this particular program, that we need everyone to be on board, that this is the direction we're going to try for now and we'll. Take public donations. That's it. Thank you. Got to support it. Thank you. Bye. Sarah Richards. Thank you. And thanks to Councilwoman Price for bringing this forward. So question, councilwoman, is the purpose of this sort of doing business as more of an economic thing to help folks or more of a idle hands or, you know, keep folks busy during the day to be productive in a certain way in order to abate certain activities from happening in the neighborhood. How do you if you were to give me a very simple purpose for this, help me understand how you envision this program to be designed. That purpose. It's designed to provide homeless individuals a path to employment. And so that's been the focus of all the other programs that have been done throughout the country. And they've tracked how many people got to participate in this, how many of them wanted to participate on multiple days, and how many of them ended up finding permanent work after a six month period of time? So, you know, what happens is we have a lot of individuals who have substance abuse problems or other limitations that keep them from getting a job. They might be able to do it for a day. They might have a positive experience for the day, whether it's the economic benefit or the fellowship or whatever, or if they learn a new skill and then they'll want to come back a second day, maybe not the next day, but a couple of days later. And it kind of that's there's all this research that says when we're talking about long term life changes, sustainable life changes, starting off with kind of a low commitment type employment opportunity is a good way to get folks introduced to the idea of employment. So so I would so I would add this then I would offer this, you know, sometimes. So there's a nonprofit called Rap Rap The Kids. It's a nonprofit made by and fully all the membership is made up of active homeless folks. And these people give back, they make quilts, give them the kids, they volunteer in community service projects. And in their perspective, sometimes it's not about necessarily, you know, the the money that they make, but rather finding the opportunities to be be busy and give back and serve. What I like what I like to say is I know that there some there I've spoken with, you know, staff and stuff about like the challenges with these programs. And a lot of times it's just finance. It just comes down to finances because as you say, we you know, we may say let's give it to a nonprofit , but a nonprofit has to be paid or identify grants or whatever. So we shouldn't limit it to day work, like for pay, but also volunteer opportunities, ways to serve to get back to clean up. Because we will get, you know, if the spectrum is, say, over 100 homeless homeless individuals, let's say ten, 15% participate in a day work program, you might be able to expand it expanded by, you know, 5% or 10% and get that many more people engaged if we don't limit it to they work. So just that would be what I would I would offer in terms of program designing. You. Councilman Price. Thank you. I think that's an excellent point. Vice Mayor Richardson, I agree with you. I mean, what I was envisioning I know the feasibility of doing this city wide is very challenging. So maybe if we did a pilot, maybe we have different nonprofits throughout the city and they can offer different opportunities and some could be volunteer based , some could be economic assistance based. But I'm open to all of that. I think just just getting people doing activities that are resulting in positive, positive experiences that might result in meaningful changes, I think that would be great. Like in Denver, for example, they had a $50,000 budget, they had 109 people work and get paid. And more than 49 of those participants found permanent work as a result of that effort. So I think, you know, depending on what what staff comes back with, I mean, I am committed to working with my community. And I know we have one of our neighborhood association presidents here and several others expressed support for this. I'm committed to working with my community to raise the money that we would need for a pilot just to see how this works. I think we could easily raise 40 or $50,000 to at least try it. Thank you, Councilwoman Mingo. Thank you. I am excited to support this item. I think that it's a great opportunity for us to take a step forward and support a population that really needs our help. And great work, everyone. Thank you. Yeah, I'm very supportive of this. I think it's great. Councilwoman and the other signers as well, just the city staff. I know that we've been working on a a similar effort. I know we've been working kind of we look we look at the model of doing kind of a clean team dedicated just to this work . I know that Mr. Back Commissioner Craig, she has been working on this with them, teaming up with some nonprofits. I just want to make sure that as this moves forward, we had had approached the county about possibly funding one of these clean teams for us as a pilot project as well. I've made up of homeless individuals. I want to should we just marry these two? And so as the report comes back, I just want to have two separate efforts. But if we can, whatever we are working on, on the public work side, we can just add to this that Councilman Price is presenting. I think that would be great. Craig and Kelly been working on this together, so I think it's already married, but I'll make sure that Craig's working on that. Whatever the county's got up their sleeve. Excellent. Excellent. Good public comment, please. Mr. Mayor, members of the city council will be happy to participate in this conversation. Right now, the downtown lobby associates are extremely alliance. Has clean team and safe team. Workers who are. Interned by MHRA. Patients. And so we use them to do volunteer work in our downtown and we have an Ally Buster program that we've initiated with MHRA. It's worked out very, very successful. And then we look forward to leading them towards the vendors that provide the services and then that goes towards obviously full time employment. So we'll be. We'll be happy to look at that and certainly look at the opportunities that we just gone out to an RFP for both the clean and safe contracts for the downtown. And we could certainly look at establishing this program into our scope of service with those vendors as well. So it's certainly a good it could be a good match at a good time. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for the public comment. Good evening. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and council members. I'm Gary Morrison. 385 Flint Alameda Heights Improvement Association President. And I'm grateful for Councilwoman Price for providing this conversation along. I think the key here is when we talking about hand out and hand up, that the hand that hands up is one that makes contact with people on the streets and people who are in need and people who are shelter lists. And hopefully we can bring them into the community and get them employed and get them a better life situation. So my constituents are very concerned about the population and the transient population in our neighborhood, the iron triangle, the panhandlers, the people who with shopping carts and and it would be really nice if we could have a program that would work that's like this, that's out of the box that can stimulate people who need to be connected to our society to get them connected. So. Thank you, Councilwoman, and thank you, everyone else for considering this measure. Thank you. See no other public comment. Let's go and vote. Okay. Price. Motion carries. Excellent. Thank you. Very nice and thank you, of course, everyone that staying late for these items. We appreciate that. We're moving on to item ten, please.