Collective Impact on Homelessness Steering Committee Meeting Notes

05.04.16

Steering Committee members or alternates in attendance: Mayor Ben McAdams, Janice Kimball, Anne Burkholder, Jennifer Steele, Kris Mecham, James Morgese, Laura Michalski, Erin Trenbeath-Murray, Mikelle Moore, Josh Romney, Mayor Biskupski, Kathy Bray, Tara Rollins, Mayor Joann Seghini, Matt Minkevitch

Steering Committee Facilitators in attendance: Shaleane Gee

  1. WELCOME & INTRODUCTIONS: Mayor McAdams welcomed the group and introductions were made around the room. Mayor McAdams announced that during this meeting,University of Utah graduate students (Andy Holka, Pat Matheson and Ashley Cleveland) will do presentations on their ideas about what homeless facilities and services can look like. Mayor McAdams addressed the feedback they’ve received since the last meeting. He reminded the group that his door is always open and he values feedback. However, if anyone is uncomfortable speaking directly to him, Shaleane can be a good resource and will bring all concerns to him. Mayor McAdams emphasized that consensus is the only way we will move forward. Our top priority is to prevent fracturing and to continue to move toward our outcomes. There are indicators that the legislature is committed to continue funding over the next two years, but we need to present a united front in order to guarantee continued support. We recognize that everyone here has something significant at stake. Mayor McAdams turned the time over to Shaleane so that she could go over in more detail some of the concerns we have heard.
  1. The number one concern is the city’s cap size on shelters (250 person cap). There is concern about capacity in the system currently: are we able to provide services, are we able to achieve outcomes. People don’t want to have changes in the next year which would cause more individuals to be homeless;
  2. Concerns about political agendas and social agendas;
  3. Concern about siting shelters – focusing on site selection could be a detriment to other more important needs;
  4. Concern that we will bottleneck “one-size-fits-all” services;
  5. Concern about overextending current providers;
  6. How decisions will be made going forward;
  7. Different definitions of homelessness;
  8. Overwhelming feedback that we have a huge opportunity. Everyone is eager to make sure we get it right and make a significant impact on our community, and a system level change.

Shaleane gave a brief overview of the goals for the agenda in this meeting: The student presentation will be a mutual learning opportunity and a different/fresh way of looking at things. The DWS presentation will explain how they have helped support previous efforts and how they can continue to support our efforts. The funding proposal discussion will be underscoring that $27M is a lot of money. We only received $9.2M which is not a lot to work with given what we have promised to do over the 3 year period. Our committee will map out where the funds will be best used. Mayor McAdamsreiterated that Shaleane is a great resource for concerns, and when she’s speaking it’s the direct result of conversations she’s had with him.He reminded the group that the County is the funder and the City is the host of our future sites. Salt Lake City will engage in site selection, Salt Lake County will lead out on the design of the facilities.

  1. HOMELESS SERVICES CONCEPTUAL DESIGN PRESENTATION: SorenSimonsen, with the University of Utah, began the student presentation.His project started with a conversation about who the “at-risk” populations are, and mapping the services needed by those populations. 6 graduate research students took 6 weeks to figure out where the existing services are and putting them on a map, evidencing that it’s difficult for persons in an emergency situation to find resources in their community. Soren showed the service map of all counties in northern Utah and also showed a chart of individuals entering homeless services throughout the state. Soren then showed a map of all government agencies serving the homeless (Workforce Services, VA, etc.) Shaleane interjected that this material is not in their packets but will be on our website. Next, Soren showed a chart of the WasatchFront regional services as well as a county by county map of all service providers (government and other). Following is a summarization of the student presentations:
  1. Ashley Cleveland: 42% of homeless individuals are families which led her to design a family shelter. Her design focuses on safety, transformation and creating a neighborhood. She selected the Central Warehouse Building which is currently vacant and located at 500 W 200 S. Her design includes remodeling the interior and exterior of the building.The site would include affordable housing at a 30% AMI threshold, daycare, on-site charter school, semi-private dwelling spaces, micro library and/or grocery store.Having these services onsite will allow the neighborhood to utilize the services also. This site provides direct access to free/public transit.
  2. Christian Kirkam: Christian was not able to be present for this meeting, so Ashley presented his design. Christian wanted to focus on affordable housing as prevention. His design provides an open air market, play space for all ages, mix of market rate and affordable housing and potentially permanent supportive housing.
  3. Pat Matheson:Pat focused his design on accessory dwelling units such as granny flats cottages. These types of units allow people to age in place. They are smaller units which are more affordable. A lot of cities are doing this, Santa Cruz is incentivizing this plan by waiving fees associated with constructing a unit as long as you guarantee that you will rent the unit at an affordable rate (60% AMI). These units are flexible so they can be used for a variety of purposes.
  4. Andy Holka:Andy focused on a West Valley City emergency shelter. West Valley City has the largest population of people entering services, but provide the least amount of services. He found a site in downtown West Valley, near police, trax and stores. Andy tried to focus on building a community space. There is an existing library on the site now which he would like to connect to the shelter. The space could be used for men's/women’s shelter and day services.
  5. Kas: Kas was unable to attend the meeting, so Andy presented her design ideas. Kas focused on a Provo permanent supportive housing project which will serve Utah County. The facility is located at500 S 400 W. It is close to other services and transit as well as active lifestyle trails. The location could provide office space, sustainability, urban design elements and activities.
  6. Ian Kilpatrick: Ian was unable to attend the meeting so Pat presented his design ideas. Ian focused on addiction recovery services. He wanted to create a project where people could be removed from places where they would be more likely to participate in addictive behavior, as well as allowing nature to help heal. Ian looked in Logan/Lewiston area. His design ideas would provide employment and life skills training surrounded by nature to heal addictions.

After the student presentations Soren showed a video called Dwelling. The link to this video will be online. Mayor McAdams thanked Soren and the students. He reminded the group that we are not endorsing these exact locations and concepts, but we are looking at them as a model for how we want to design our facilities and services. He reminded group that location is so important and intertwined with how services are provided. At this time he opened the floor to questions.

  1. Did the data you gathered drill down to last fixed address of the individual entering service? If someone is incarcerated and moves to a halfway house, the address will be that of the halfway house or jail. Soren said that the data they used was based on when person first enters services, so he believes for the most part, yes that address is their last fixed address. There may be some gaps and the data isn’t perfect. Patrick stated that the question asked during intakeis “what was your last permanent address?”
  2. Erin asked about drilling down demographics of data – what groups are being addressed in what areas. Shaleane stated that we are proposing that there be a working group of Collective Impact Steering Committee members with overlap on the City’s Site Selection Committee. This will help us to ease site selection, what services we want/need to provide and what types of facilities we would like to see as a concept.
  1. DATA – EMERGENCY SERVICES IN SALT LAKE COUNTY: Tamera Kohlerled this discussion. She advised the committee that data is prescriptive. We need to use care and thought in creating services and intake, we don’t want to complicate intake for staff or individuals needing services. Soren’s group has been working on data from 2013 – 2015 enrollment. It’s important to have context when looking at data. They asked for emergency shelters in Salt Lake to determine where people were coming from. Salt lake shelters do not require clients to provide this information, so some data is not available. Very few came from outside Utah, most were from Salt Lake County.
  1. What level of demographic data are you collecting? Households, families, age, race, ethnicity & gender. An individual is considered a household of one.
  2. Can you talk about diving deeper into data and how these services impact clients down the road? Shaleane said that we can discuss that in another meeting, and it is on track to be completed by October 1.
  1. HB436 SPENDING PROPOSAL & NEXT STEPS: Mayor McAdams emphasized the main concern was how this money was going to be deployed. There are various needs in the system which are compelling and gut wrenching. We made big promises to the legislature, but we didn’t receive enough funding to fulfill all of those promises. We will need to line up the funding we have now, and that which should be forthcoming. Every thing we do with this year’s funding needs to map back to those promises made to the legislature. Shaleane advised the committee that the spending proposal Patrick will go over is slightly revised from what she sent out yesterday. The time was turned over to Patrick Reimherrwho went over the HB436 spending proposal.

Patrick advised the committee that we need to be fiscally responsible, we need to meet the intended purpose of the funding, and we need to be flexible due to not receiving the full amount we asked for. TANF will be part of this funding venture for next three years. TANF funding is more restrictive in what it can be used for. For example,TANF cannot be used for capital building projects. We intend to use $3M for the Midvale facility. We don’t want an asset to be underutilized, so we are looking to support those services in Midvale. They were very supportive during the legislative session, and we would like to recognize that. There is a significant need in the current facilities, so we set aside $800K to help with those needs;$500K for statewide homelessness prevention/diversion program;$100K for site selection;$100K for facility design. Shaleane mentioned that facility design and community engagement are intertwined in order to educate ourselves and our communities. This plan allows us to save $3.5M for next year. Mayor McAdams interjected that there are still some details to be worked out. He reminded the committee that these are not our funds. They will be deposited in the Pamela Atkinson Trust Fund. There is a process to go through in order to have funds distributed. As we mapped the spending of these funds we realized we need to protect the ongoing funding as that will be very necessary in a few years. We intend to use the ongoing funds for one-time needs,so that they are available next year. If you have any questions, please let us know. We will fine tune this as we continue to move forward.

  1. SUMMARY, NEXT STEPS & CLOSING REMARKS: Matt Minkevitchstated that keeping the Midvale facility open year round has been a great feat, with help from a variety of people, and he wanted to thank the County for theirassistance on that. Shaleane spoke to the fact that there will be a funds match from Salt Lake County and other organizations. We would like to have some times where individuals can come in and discuss one-on-one with Shaleane and David Litvack. Mayor McAdams reiterated that we want to transfer our desired outcomes and measures to the shelters. What benchmarks do we want our shelters to hit? There will be a private sector fund raiser to help supplement these funds. We may ask for carry over to be released sooner for architectural design, land acquisition, etc. Mayor McAdams wants to go into the legislative session next year with sites selected, pictures of what the facilities will look like, etc. Shaleane asked the committee and the public in attendance that they please continue to promote and explain this process in their communities. David Litvack stated that the next meeting of the site selection commission will be on June 22nd from 1 – 3 pm at the Salt Lake CityLibrary. Between now and then we will be holding several group meeting with Palmer DePaulis and Gail Miller. During the week of June 6 – 10thand 13 – 17thSalt Lake City will be holding public engagement workshops to get feedback from the community on criteria for conceptual designs. At this time the floor was opened for questions.
  1. John Hardy spoke about the administrative procedures on how funding works. There are only two awards which will be designated out of the May 11th meeting. They will be the two $100K disbursements. There are some set asides up to $500K for site block improvement,as well as funding for peace officers.
  2. Glenn Bailey asked what facilities conceptual design means. Shaleane said we will bring in expertise and materials to help our Collective Impact working group look at conceptual designs for the facility we want to create, as well as other facilities we might want to see. These designers will also help us think about capacity issues.
  3. Glenn Bailey asked David Litvack what the city’s plans are for their $100K. David said they will coordinate with a working group and walk away with next steps on how to create a working system. Salt Lake City will also coordinate the public engagement process which was already mentioned, as well as others in August. Shaleane said that they would like to get information and input from the public engagement. Shaleane also mentioned that we will be undertaking our ongoing work looking at existing housing and additional housing. Service oriented facilities, outcome oriented facilities and Housing based solutions.

Meeting adjourned 10:12 am.