A resolution approving a proposed Agreement between the City and County of Denver and The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless to provide rental assistance and support services to the homeless. Approves a contract with the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless in the amount of $2,497,840 and contract term through 3-31-18 for rental assistance of 240 units of housing for chronically homeless individuals living with disabilities using funds through the Continuum of Care Housing First grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 6-5-17. The Committee approved filing this resolution by consent on 3-22-17.
I think I believe, Councilwoman Sussman, he's a constituent in your district and maybe you know him as well. And so they will proceed with now with the work of the committee. Thank you. That's all. All right. Councilman Lopez, did you want to. Yeah. Just got a great last name. Okay, that's. That's beautiful. Okay. Madam Secretary, can you please bring up Council Bill 328? Councilman Lopez? Yes. Thank you, Mr. President. So on 320, I just wanted to make this comment. For the past couple of years, the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless Association has wanted to receive funding directly from the funder as a grant moneys instead of through Denver Human Services. So DHS has decided to permit the entire funding amount of the grant to go directly to state CCH instead of DHS keeping 2% of the grant funding for administration and processing. So this amount must now be used by CCH for direct client services. The $35,170 increase in the contract is the 2% difference that CCH will now receive for direct client services. So, you know, I wanted to I mean, because there is that difference in that question had had popped up earlier today. I just wanted to clarify it and go on the record of doing that. DHS will remain the recipient of the grant, but will pass through the entire amount of the grant to CCH. Okay. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Councilman Flynn, were you up next or can each. I will. Thank you, Mr. President. This raises a couple of questions in my mind, because when this went through committee, I believe it was about consent. Chairman Mr. Chairman. I believe so strongly. So usually when the amount of the contract changes, there has to be a new filing number and we have to do an amendment. But the way I understand this, we didn't actually change the amount in the contract. It was just incorrect in the description we were given. And, Mr. President, it's a problem for me when we when we're looking at things on consent and looking at the descriptions and we don't have the full body of the contract yet to understand that that's not the amount of money that we approved. So I do have a couple of questions on this, but I don't know if anybody is here from Human Services who can. Oh, yeah. We have Ron here. Hello. Way in the back. Good evening. I'm Ron Mitchell with Human Services. Hi, Ron. Why why are we changing the policy and how how long is that 2% been in place? Well, that 2% has been in place for quite some time. I don't have the exact number of years, but traditionally we have taken about 2% out. It's often been a little bit less than that to administer that the grant and that means the processing of it as well as the monitoring of it that we do that the time that it went to Mayor Council, there were negotiations essentially underway to make a determination of what we should do with the Housing First grant should it go entirely to the vendor who has been receiving the vast majority of it, which is Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, or should the city retain it? And the decision ultimately was made that the city would retain that. So the question I have is why then was it a mayor council if we were still negotiating it, why we put the cart before the horse? Well, part of that. Would have been nice if we had known this. Yes, Councilman, part of that is that there have been sometimes delays and being able to reimburse some of our vendors with these federal contracts or the federal grants, rather, the federal grants do allow backdating so that we can catch up. And so they actually because they are really inconsistent about delivering the funds. And so part of that was that the contract administrator wanted to try to move that through. What I had failed to do as one set negotiation had terminated was to update you all with the changes that were were made this afternoon. Yes. The contract administrator noticed that the amount was different than what was in the contract. Okay, I'm glad you caught it right before our meeting. But who is going to pay the processing fees and administration now? Are they not do we not have costs on this contract or are we going to have to cover that elsewhere? Otherwise we do have to cover it. Essentially, we are going to have expenses associated with the contract, obviously with processing it and monitoring it. But the decision was made that to pass those funds through so that there was more service dollars available in the contract to the vendor. So are we changing this for all such contracts now? Not at this point. Why this one? This one came to the attention of, I believe, council some of the council members that were approached by Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. And they had they had been advocating for at least a couple of years to receive the grant directly. And my understanding is that it was basically a negotiation that that did allow the city to retain the grant so that we can ensure that those funds are directed how we want them directed in line with our goals around Denver's Road Home and the Office of Hope. Mm hmm. And did we also change the scope of services? Did we add to the scope? Only in as much as the 2% was now passed through directly to them with again, not having them use those funds for administration of of the grant of the funds. But but to go to direct services. So that was the in negotiation. So is this a one time decision. For this for this grant? This is expected to be ongoing. For this grant. Right. But for other providers, will we be doing the same thing? Not that I'm aware of at this point. I have a feeling Councilwoman Canisius buzzed in after me. And I have a feeling if she had gone first, I could have taken less time. So let me let me pass. Mr. President, I. Think that is wise counsel and can each. Know no expectations. Right. Well, thank you, Mr. President. And, you know, thank you to the department. I did want to chime in, because this is a contract that I did ask some questions about. And I think that like many contracts, it's not I mean, I don't want to throw the administration under the bus, but they often file audience requests while they're still finishing the text of the contract. It happens all the time. So that's actually not unique to this contract. We can debate another day whether that's a good or bad practice, but the goal is to keep things moving often so that either services continue occurring without interruption in work so that small businesses, nonprofits aren't expected to operate without being paid. So those are the the trade offs that we have. And, you know, I, for one, understand that there's a public interest in keeping things moving and not waiting until all of the ink is dry and every provision to file. But but I hear the concerns about this coming down to the wire. So the two things I guess I want to add is I think this this grant is a little different. You mentioned that they get the vast majority of the funds, but there are no other subcontractors and there haven't been any subcontractors for many years. Right now, this is an example of where in the past it's my understanding that this grant had to go to local government. It couldn't go to nonprofits. Is that is that accurate? So but the federal government changed that rule. So here's the question. What if. You know, we we talk a lot about efficiency in our city, you know, so sometimes we have to accept money from the government and pass it on to providers, because that's the rule in this case. There is a very clear set of criteria for this grant. There is one applicant who does who does that work, who manages these tenant vouchers. It has been the same contractor for many years, and they could, in theory, get this directly. They could, yes. So the question becomes, how do we justify to the public that it's running through us and that we're taking money off the top that isn't going to rental vouchers? So that's that's one compelling public interest question, right. In terms of the substance of the change. The second thing I would say in terms of why I think it you know, I support the administration's decision to proceed rather than killing the bill and starting over is because it's my understanding we've had some concerns with timeliness of our own processing of payments. It hasn't just been federal payments. That's correct. Okay. And so when that happens, we have a nonprofit who's left trying to cover the costs. And in perhaps cases, we might be in violation of some federal standards. Yes, we when these grants come in again, they often, especially in the last 5 to 7 years, have become and very inconsistently ever since the Great Recession. And what we're able to do is, is we have some funds that the city council has approved of that allows us to cover those costs for vendors and to pay their invoices prior to actually receiving the federal funds this year, the grant came in more timely than before, but that that has been an issue for many of our nonprofits. And so with City Council's permission, we've been able to keep those services flowing, as you had mentioned, without interruption, by having a special fund that covers those costs until the federal funding comes in. Yeah, and I don't want to call the vendor out because again, I think this is one of those sensitive topics, but I think that the vendor would state that they are still not receiving timely payments in many cases. So there is there is a genuine dispute here between parties and I think so. So I guess to just narrow it down, this is more my comment than my question, which is that two things. One, where there is no argument as to the fact that this is the sole provider of these services, it's not appropriate for us to carve money off the top just for it to flow through us. The money should go to the folks who need it, which in this case are homeless individuals who need rental vouchers. And so to the extent that we may incur some administrative costs in passing that money through, I think that that's a fair trade for the fact that we've had some timeliness of payment issues, which I'm sure has cost the vendor on the other side. So if you consider that any good contract involves, you know, something on each side, we may be eating a few administrative costs for passing through, but they've been eating costs for our delays. So in the in this case, I will just close by saying this. I'm going to support this contract this year. At this time, I think it's a you know, it's a tough confluence of factors. But I think it's important that we look at, again, what the compelling policy cases for not just allowing this grant to flow directly . It is a very defined scope of services. We couldn't use these funds to build housing. We couldn't use these funds to do other things. So there's a very limited scope the federal government provides. And so the case that we have to pass through them, I think bears more discussion. And I hope that I hope that the city and the department and the and the partners. I can talk more about that so that next year you can kind of make a good case to us. If it's this narrow scope and we don't really have any say over how it's done, what's the justification for for all of this? Because it does cause delays in terms of clients getting their their services. So with that, I'll be supporting it today. Thanks. Councilman Flint. You wanna. Thank you? Yes, my friend. Just a quick follow up, then. Councilwoman, are there other raises the question this this contract went through on consent eight weeks ago. And so there's been a lot of time elapsed. And to have a change like this on the floor or actually about an hour before is disconcerting. So I'm wondering if it might be time to sit down, maybe in council and Chair Lopez's committee in Safety and housing. And homelessness prevention to discuss the process and try to keep it more linear. Instead of reaching back and making changes and and telling us about them here, it might work out a little better. So. So, Councilman Flynn, are you proposing that we pass this bill and we for it and we go back and we have a conversation about future bills? Yes, I do. I have no I have no desire to hold it up. Yeah. Today, I'm just trying to understand when. When I'm. In last. Minute pitches come at. Us. Yeah, I'm in favor of that. I think the public it's important. The public should know this is for 240 units. Right. Rental assistance for homeless individuals. So we want to get this money on the street as soon as possible. So I'm glad I'm in favor of that. Councilwoman. I just want to say I support the bill, but I also support the conversation about the fact that we really do need to have a broader conversation, not just on human services, but on contracts in general, because all too often we don't get complete information. And, you know, when we look at the the documents that are filed there, the contracts aren't there. We don't see the level of detail that we get only when we ask questions. And so I think it's important for us and in I'll remind you that our procedures were changed that basically removed one week out of our process to be able to review documents. So we moved contracts now to two resolutions where we get to see them just one time. And so the fact that we're not getting complete information at the last minute, we're having to make scrambled phone calls to agency staff. I think it's a bigger conversation that we need to have. I would suggest maybe we do it in an operations meeting to figure out what, you know, where do we want to go with that? Yeah, it sounds like two different issues. This this contract in particular in the future, which Councilman Lopez, I'm sure you're okay to bring in your committee and then operations. We can have a conversation around in general the information that we're receiving in all these contracts. All right. Okay. Councilman Espinosa. Yeah, I just want to sort of chime in. Wherever that ends up the subsequent conversation, I don't I think that whether the money can go or he can or cannot, I mean, it can go directly, but there's always an avenue for government oversight or something. I mean, again, we're not talking specifically to that fund. I don't think in general we should be afraid of taking on some level of responsibility, considering how many funds go to this particular provider and all of our providers. I mean, Human Services has a role to play in the administration because we have seen previously in this council what happens when when we just defer that responsibility to the providers. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Ron. Okay. We're going to move on to Resolution 500.