Okay, so I'd like to call the health committee to order 1006.

Clerk take the roll.

Supervisor Town.

Present.

Supervisor Marley.

Present.

Any instructions.

For in-person participation, the meeting site is open to the public.

If you'd like to speak on an item, fill out a speaker's card in the front of the room and hand it to the clerk for online participation.

Follow the teleconferencing guidelines posted at www.acgov.org and use the raise your hand function when it's time to speak.

Right.

So I apologize for starting um late.

Apparently there were some difficulties with the technology.

Technology had been changed up and enhanced.

So apologize about that to the public, anyone who's listening online or who will hear this recording.

So please accept our apology.

And hopefully information technology.

I'll emphasize that.

Hopefully, information technology.

I'll say it again.

I hope information technology gets these glitches handled because it's an embarrassment.

That's all I need to say.

All right.

So let's go with information.

We have one item this morning.

Update on a new vendor pool for housing and homeless services.

Good morning, Supervisors.

Anika Chowdery, interim director for Alameda County Health.

And for this informational item, we also have Jonathan Russell, Director of Housing and Homelessness available online, as well as Mona Palacios if you have additional questions.

So just wait for the slides real quick.

So while we wait for the slides, I'll start with a little bit of background on the housing solutions for health vendor pool.

This was uh implemented in 2019, where our agency uh uh got approval from your board for an expedited ongoing procurement and contracting process that would allow for um homelessness services, uh and this is called the housing solutions for health vendor pool.

Um the idea is to create a pool of qualified vendors who would be available to uh provide services to people currently formerly or at risk of experiencing homelessness in the categories of outreach engagement and benefits enrollment, health and supportive services, housing and property related services.

Um those are the three main categories, and then there's also four service types, which are uh direct services, uh program startup, capacity building and technical assistance, and then innovation.

Um so in terms of how uh vendors qualify for the vendor pool, uh there are uh bitter minimum qualifications that uh the vendors must meet.

The bids are accepted monthly at this point.

Um, and since 2019, we have 93 approved vendors uh who've joined uh who've been approved into the pool as of January 2026.

Um those vendors are available for contracting as programming and needs and uh funding sources are identified by our agency.

Uh this pool is also open to other county agencies.

So for example, I know the Social Services Agency has used it.

Um the term of the current vendor pool is uh up in June 30th of 2027.

Um, and just you know, according to procurement best practices is why we're uh going out for an RFP.

Um sorry, uh we're issuing the procurement again.

It is not an RFP.

Um so awarded in uh over the last five or six years, we've awarded more than uh 299 million dollars in contracts across 10 master contracts.

And um, in general, this is one of the ways that we've been able to expedite getting funding out the door because uh our standard procurement uh timelines can run nine to twelve months, whereas with the vendor pool, uh we can cut that down to about five to six months.

Thank you, Tisa.

Next slide, please.

So now I'll transition a little bit to providing an overview of the new uh procurement that was recently posted on uh March 10th uh to replace the existing housing solutions for health vendor pool.

Um so the new procurement, as I just mentioned, the the vendor pool term currently will end at the end of this upcoming fiscal year.

And just for it's time for us to refresh and renew it, also because we've had Measure W come in, and so we want to update how we use the vendor pool for that.

The scope of work changes over time, as you know.

So we may be doing things now that we weren't doing when we contemplated that first vendor pool.

And I'll just a reminder again that this vendor pool mechanism continues to align with your board's adopted statewide state of emergency for homelessness.

And this was explicitly an efficiency recommendation that our team has put forward in our presentation to you earlier this year.

Next slide, please.

So on March 10th, our procurement team released a new ongoing procurement for homelessness services for housing and homeless services vendor pool.

And this new RFQ is similar to the previous procurement.

However, you'll note that the service categories have been updated to reflect our current scope of work.

So housing community supports, this is the same as we had before, but this sorry, I apologize, that is not the same as before.