Thank you.

Okay.

So I'm gonna call to order this special meeting of the Berkeley City Council.

Today is Tuesday, September 16th, 2025.

Clerk, can you please take the roll?

Okay, Councilmember Kessarwani.

Is currently absent.

Um Bartlett is currently absent.

Tragum.

Present.

O'Keefe.

Here.

Lackaby.

Here.

Luna Para.

Humbert.

Here.

And Mayor Ishii.

Here.

Okay.

Quorum is present.

Very good.

We're gonna start with the item 1A.

We have two items on our action calendar.

So just that so that folks know, we're going to have a presentation from the city manager's office led by Peter Radu.

And then we will have a presentation from our city auditor.

That will be followed by public comment.

So just so folks kind of know what the flow is if you're here for public comment.

Question, Mark, are you okay?

Okay.

All right, they're gonna get started, and then whenever you're ready, you can go ahead and start.

Okay, thank you, madam mayor and council members.

Uh my name is Peter Radu from our Neighborhood Services Division.

I'm happy to be here with you this uh afternoon to discuss the work that the City of Berkeley does to address homelessness.

With me here to present the details are Josh Jacobs, our homeless services coordinator uh in neighborhood services, and a savory devadiga, our uh housing development specialist in HHCS.

A quick note before we get started, which is that while our presentation today will focus on an overview of our homeless system, the work session report, which we had originally submitted to you back in July and which was resubmitted for this agenda, is more expansive as we took that opportunity to respond to a number of referrals uh from the city council's May 20th, 2025 referral to staff on homelessness, and this includes an overview of our system performance with needs and gaps, a geographic equity map of homeless services and their locations, uh, and an update on the city's fiscal position with respect to homeless funding.

So, for lack of time today, our presentation does not cover all these areas, but we'd be more than happy to answer any questions you may have about them.

Um, so with that, I will start sharing my screen and I will turn things over to Josh Jacobs.

Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council, and the public.

Today's presentation.

Can you hear me?

Today's presentation will focus on how Berkeley is confronting homelessness with both coordination and compassion, balancing the human realities on the ground with the funding strategy and infrastructure needed to respond.

As you all know, homelessness in Berkeley is complex, deeply human, and shaped by broader forces such as regional trends, racial and economic inequalities, and an under-resource safety net.

But through coordination and compassion, Berkeley is actively confronting the challenge.

Today's presentation will walk through what we've accomplished, where we're seeing impact, and what's at risk if key funding expires.

Can I have you just why don't you pull the mic closer to you so you don't have to lean so much?

Adjust it so you can be comfortable.

Thank you.

So what's the problem?

Yeah.

What's the problem?

Berkeley, like every city in the region, continues to face a deeply troubling reality.

Many of our neighbors live outdoors without shelter, safety, or stability.

And while we've made progress, the scale of the challenge remains staggering.

That said, we're seeing real shifts in the right direction.

In the most recent point in time count, more people were sheltered indoors in Berkeley than in any previous year.

At the same time, we saw the fewest number of people staying on the streets.

That's a significant milestone and proof of the impact of our local investments into low barrier, non-congregate interim housing.

But the challenge remains larger than us.

Across the region, for every person who exits homelessness, nearly three others fall into it for the first time.

Until that trend slows, we will continue to see people living on our streets.

And we know who is impacted most.

Close to 60% of Berkeley's homeless population identifies as black, despite black residents making up just 8% of the city overall.

We're also seeing rising rates of residents with acute disabilities, and these residents often wait the longest for supportive housing because of such limited accessible housing stock.

Serving these populations and maintaining the progress we've made requires a coordinated response across multiple systems with sustained local funding.

Otherwise, we risk undoing all the hard-run gains.

The path forward requires a sustained regional response, but also local action, which we'll walk through in the coming slides.

As mentioned, Berkeley is facing a fiscal cliff for several homelessness resources.

Many of the programs responsible for abusing gains, particularly around shelter and interim housing, are reliant on temporary state and federal funds.

If we don't identify new sources of support, Berkeley faces the very real risk of reversing course with many of the people currently sheltered at risk of returning to the streets.

If we don't secure additional funding, long-standing programs will close just as they're reaching stability.

The work ahead will require hard choices, but also creative solutions and continued investments into programs that are proven successful.

And yet, amidst all these challenges, we've made remarkable progress.

Since 2019, Berkeley has seen a 45% drop in unsheltered homelessness.

That's not just the statistic.

It's hundreds of people who are no longer living on the streets.

This outcome didn't happen by accident.

It's the result of coordinated outreach, targeted investments, and partnerships across departments and community providers.

It's a sign that when we invest in housing and services that address the unique needs of our chronically homeless residents and remove the barriers that have caused their chronic status, people will take those opportunities.

When we offer traditional shelters, we see acceptance rate of around 40%.

When we offer low barrier non-congrad shelter, we see that acceptance rate jump to 80%.

However, these are the exact programs that are most at risk of losing funding.

It's a reminder of how fragile this progress is with Alsace support.

Now let's talk about our coordination efforts.

In 2021, Berkeley City Council voted to adopt a three-pronged coordinated strategy outlined in all homes regional action plan.

This strategy has three strategic components.

One, preventing homelessness from happening in the first place, two, increasing interim housing to get folks quickly off the streets, and three, leveraging resources to increase permanent housing and services.

I'm now going to pass it over to Asabri to walk us through some of the interventions in more detail.

Thanks, Josh.

The key to stopping homelessness is preventing it from happening in the first place.

Can I hear you?

Can you hear me now?

I think your mic is on.

I think you'll just have to project a bit more.

Now can you hear me?

Better?

Better?

Okay.

The key to stopping homelessness is preventing it from happening in the first place, and Berkeley has made prevention a priority.

Between 2020 and 2025, Berkeley served more than 940 rental households with emergency rental assistance.

The housing and community services or HCS team has worked with the HUD technical assistance team to review our policies to ensure that we are able to serve as many households as possible.

Fiscal year 21 through fiscal year 24, we relied heavily on the federal COVID funds, which were flexible, higher, and resulted in serving more people.

However, due to its flexibility, local funding is more beneficial for the housing retention program.

In 2022, the city also began a pilot rental assistance program that provides up to $1,800 a month for up to three years to some of our most at-risk residents and some unhoused people who are ineligible for permanent supportive housing.

The pilot has served over 50 households and has helped them remain stably housed.

Although relatively small, the subsidy provides a safety net for those who are most likely to return to our streets, and with additional funding, the program could be expanded in the future.

The program serves highest risk elders, disabled and single households with minor children, those below 50% area median income.

Next slide, please.

This slide shows the eviction filing rates in Alameda County.

We want to impress upon you that through generous funding from our residents, Berkeley managed to prevent homelessness at a greater rate than our neighboring cities.

It's important to note that Berkeley stood out in the county for its strong tenant protections and managed to avoid the wave of evictions we feared after the pandemic era moratoriums were lifted.

In fact, Berkeley had the lowest eviction rate of any city in the county, and that has a lot to do with the extended eviction moratorium passed by the city council.

In 2024, for every 1,000 renter households who faced a court eviction filing in the county, on average, there were about 44 evictions.

And Berkeley's rate was far below the county average at 12 evictions per 1,000 renter households.

Compared to other cities, we are the outlier of success in this category.

Next slide, please.

Another part of our coordinated effort is to getting people off the streets and into safety and services as quickly as possible.

Some of the lessons learned during the pandemic were one, the strong preference that people experiencing homelessness had for non-congregate low barrier shelter with private rooms, and two, the state's incredible successes using motels for housing and shelter through the Roomkey and Home Key efforts.

We committed 37 million dollars in local funding predominantly from measures P and U1 that enabled us to leverage over 45 million dollars in state funding to create 164 units of interim and permanent housing.

The more we invest in permanent supportive housing, the greater the obligation of ongoing operating costs.

These are the most needed of our homeless interventions, but also the most resource-intensive.

For home key projects, our expectation is that developers will pursue other operating funds, including the county measure W, although resources are limited.

These home key projects are permanent housing units with 55 years of affordability restriction.

I'll hand it over to Josh for the next slide on interim housing.

To meet the growing need for shelter beds, Berkeley has moved quickly to expand private interim housing through unit acquisition, leveraging both public funds and private partnerships.

We found that people experiencing homelessness are far more likely to accept our offers of shelter if we could provide them with a privacy in an individual room rather than in a dorm-style congregate shelters.

While many have experienced traumatizing incidents, we are trying to increase these types of interventions as much as possible.

For example, we are actively working on converting the stairs center from congregate to private interim shelter, but the pace of acquisition must match the pace of need.

We're building momentum, but without reliable long-term funding, we won't be able to keep it up.

As more and more people land on our streets amidst the shortage of shelter and affordable housing, many of them wind up in the encampments.

These encampments, while born of necessity when people have nowhere else to go, nonetheless frequently pose very serious health and safety risk, both to the people living in them as well as the surrounding community.

And we know from research that simply living outside increases one's mortality by years.

In 2021, thanks to an annual investment of Measure P, the city created the homeless response team, which brings together nearly all wings of the city government to address and resolve encampments by connecting people to shelter and services, cleaning up the debris and waste they accumulate, providing basic hygiene through porter potties and watch stations, mitigating community impacts and impacts on city operations and infrastructure, and resolving the worst health, safety, and fire hazards.

And unlike many other localities who, in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling on grants pass, have begun running a race to the bottom that pretends jail cells can substitute for permanent housing.

Berkeley remains committed to resolving encampment homelessness at its root cause by bringing people off the street.

That's why 80% of private interim shelter offers we make when coupled with an encampment closure that avoids citation and arrests are accepted, and why two-thirds of the people served by the homeless response team move into permanent or interim housing.

This visual depicts the private impact private shelters are having with encampment residents.

While historically only 25% of our shelter beds were in private rooms, 68% of shelter placements made by the HRT were into private room shelters.

This reflects our intentional strategy to resolve non-congregate beds for people living in encampments and others who have historically declined traditional shelter.

By matching these harder-to-serve individuals with shelter models that better meet their needs, we are successfully engaging people who previously remained unsheltered and have been able to meaningfully change the demographics of street homelessness in Berkeley, resulting in fewer people on the streets and reducing the overall length of time people experience homelessness in Berkeley.

I'm going to pass it back to Asavri to talk through our investments so far.

Thanks again to Berkeley residents and the support of measures O, P, and U1, Berkeley has been able to open new projects, including facilities like the Dorothy Day House's Berkeley Inn program and Inside Housing's Hope Center, which includes transitional housing specifically for our veterans.

Since the inception of measures O, P, and U1, more than 790 interim housing beds and permanent housing units have been funded and leased up and have served over 2100 residents.

The 790 units include permanent supportive housing.

These are not just numbers, but these projects have changed lives.

The impact of these local investments is clear.

More housing, more services, more outcomes.

As state and federal support becomes more uncertain, local funding remains the backbone of our system.

Next slide, please.

On an earlier slide, we talked about Berkeley's coordination strategy, but we cannot execute it without proper resources.

Berkeley residents have provided us with the critical funding needed to address this problem through measures P, U1, and O.

This slide shows that 31% of the total funds that Berkeley put toward programs serving the homeless were generated through Measure P.

It was approved by residents in 2018, and it's truly the lifeline and backbone that funds a city's response to homelessness.

Measure O is a hundred and thirty-five million dollar housing bond also passed in 2018, which has increased permanent affordable housing in Berkeley.

Measure U1, passed in 2016, creates funds for eviction defense to keep our residents housed and contributes to affordable housing production.

Next slide, please.

Berkeley has committed measure O funding to build new units along with Measure U1.

This map shows projects funded by both measures and that were completed, which is showed on the slide in green, and that are in pipeline that are shown in purple.

Permanent housing units include permanent supportive housing or PSH.

For example, Model Miller Sharec community on Adeline and Ashby in South Berkeley is shown in green on this map and has 87 units of which 12 are PSH units.

The upcoming North Berkeley BART project, shown here in purple, includes 85 PSH units.

Next slide, please.

Having more permanent affordable housing is part of our coordinated strategy.

Since 2018, Berkeley has committed measure O funding to build over 1,050 units, of which 327 units plus 44 shelter beds have been constructed.

The remaining units are at various stages of development or are in pipeline as we saw in the last slide.

And they include PSH projects like the North Berkeley BART project and supportive housing in People's Park.

With that, I'll turn it back to Josh.

So here's where the urgency becomes most acute.

Some of our most critical programs, like 24-7 shelter, non-congregate motel sites, and home key housing are all operating on limited-term funding.

These programs currently serve hundreds of people every night.

They've been lifelines for some of our most vulnerable residents, especially seniors, people with disabilities, and those who can't access traditional shelter.

If that funding runs out, the consequences will be immediate and visible.

Preserving these programs is essential to maintaining the progress we've made.

As you can see in the chart, Berkeley faces a significant fiscal cliff over the coming years when it comes to sustaining these success.

First, we face a structural deficit in our general fund on the order of over 20 million annually, which means that sustaining our current level of effort in homeless services will either require new revenues, cuts to other city services, or both.

In particular, Measure P is projected to run a roughly $5.3 million deficit at the end of the fiscal year 27-28 budget cycle.

And of note, staff have not yet been able to quantify the effects of Measure W passed by the voters in November.

In addition, the huge amount of state funding that the city has drawn down over the last three years is set to be expended over the coming years.

And right now, the state budget has no ongoing funding for homelessness starting next fiscal year.

This slide shows just a few of the programs that Berkeley stands to lose or need to significantly reduce in scope over the coming years if present trends continue with no external funding.

Put simply, we need to come up with over 9 million annually just to keep the lights on in these existing programs.

Obviously, this has serious implications for our ability to open and operate new programs, which the council inquired about as part of their May 20th referral to the city manager.

At present, we are not in a position to open any new programs unless significant external funding is identified or current programs are cut to balance a deficit.

Finally, to conclude our overview, I'd like to introduce you to Milton Thomas.

After 10 years of living outside, he now has a place to call home.

The road to permanent housing for Mr.

Thomas was not easy.

He needed to get set up with benefits and medical services.

He needed to reconnect with his family.

He needed the support services provided by the Hope Center.

But he did it.

Mr.

Thomas moved out of the Hope Center into a permanently affordable apartment in the East Bay.

Here he is proudly displaying his keys to his new apartment to quote Mr.

Thomas the staff at the Hope Center did just that they gave me hope after living outside off and on for 10 years I've now got a place of my own that I can call home Mr.

Thomas's story is just one of many and we're proud to hold it up as what's possible with the if we continue with a strategy that's coordinated and compassionate.

What made the difference a consistent compassionate team and a room to move into thank you.

Thank you council that concludes our presentation again happy to answer any questions.

Appreciate the opportunity thank you.

I'm trying to decide if we should take these questions now and or if we should have the other presentation first.

Do folks have any burning questions otherwise I can I think we should do them together.

I have one very and I apologize for arriving late but I arrived during the the segment on permanent support of housing and um if you haven't already covered this I was wondering if you could speak to what makes our hotel um our hotel based shelter programs and our home key program successful.

Well I think with respect to home key that's permanent supportive housing and we've known through just decades of research that that is the most successful way to end homelessness for um you know people who are chronically homeless with disabilities.

So I think we knew going into that intervention that it was set up for success um with respect to the uh non-congregate interim and in other words shelter motels that we've used um I think it really comes down to uh having low barriers yes but adding the additional element of privacy having that dignity and that security of having a closable door and having your own space has been very appealing uh we've found uh to people on the street who may have had bad experiences in congregate type shelter settings and um as Josh mentioned uh the data suggests that folks are voting with their feet even though we're offering both we saw on the slide earlier that two-thirds of the offer two thirds of those enrollments are actually into the non-congregate programs.

Thank you very much.

Just as a very brief follow up um if we were to lose funding and we need to protect these programs you mentioned some of the trade-offs and some of the things you might have to think about cutting and I'm wondering how we might um how we might consider the best way to think about those questions.

That's an excellent question.

You know obviously this is going to be an important discussion uh between staff the council and the public moving forward and so I don't have all the answers right now here today.

But I think there's a number of things that come to mind first and foremost I do want to stress while the fiscal picture that we painted here today is largely not a rosy one we are actively engaged with the county in discussions about Measure W the sales tax funding and how we can be first in line to draw down as much that as possible at the council's direction back in June we submitted a letter to the county that detailed all of our needs and all of our shovel ready projects that are ready to go and city staff including myself and Josh are actively participating in a number of tables with the county on making sure that we're um positioning ourselves well for that funding.

And you know I I just think in terms of uh whether or not that funding can cover everything is going to be an open question.

And if not, then obviously we're gonna have a very difficult um series of choices ahead.

Thank you very much.

And you had another burning question.

Council.

Yes, thank you very much, Madam Mayor.

Thank you very much for your presentation.

I know we we had waited, I think, throughout the whole entire summer recess to to get to hear from you because of our technical difficulties last time.

And I I know I think we'll have time to just thank you, but I I just want to do it early and thank you for all the work that's being done daily to address unsheltered homelessness in our community.

I know it's very hard work, can be thankless at times.

Um I did want to just ask you about costs because that's something I try to convey to members of the community about you know the cost of the motel and the cost of the hope center.

And I I wanted to ask it now because I don't know if you have those numbers handy or if there's things that something you could look up so we could get a sense of you know the cost per room for the home key model, which is the golden bear and roadway motels, and then also the hope center, so people could have a sense of you know to do something like that from scratch to build a new permanent supportive housing building.

What does that look like?

Because we mentioned we're planning to do it at North Berkeley BART and at People's Park.

So I I just wanted people people to get a sense of of the scale of that and why it's so challenging to get those open because of the cost.

So I don't expect you to have it at your fingertips, but if you're able to have it maybe by the end, that could be helpful.

Thank you.

Thanks.

So I'm sorry, I know this is a little complicated logistically, but we're gonna have this presentation from the auditors, and then I think we'll we'll have some probably additional questions.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Okay, can everyone hear me now?

Great.

Um good afternoon, and um thank you so much for having um my team here with me today.

Um I have Aaron Mullen, our um audit manager who was on this project.

Um you've now heard a presentation from the city manager's office on the overview of the city's homeless response.

Um we are going to be providing a uh presentation about our off our audit that was released in July.

So it's been a little bit of time, but hoping to give you a good overview.

So in this presentation, we will look at why we did this audit, our objectives, findings, and recommendations, and management's response.

As you probably know, our office conducts independent analysis of city programs and services and identifies ways to improve them.

We initiated this specific audit because we heard of community concerns over encampments and unsheltered homelessness.

We focused our audit on the HRT because it is an important touch point for encampment residents in Berkeley and a key component of the city's approach to addressing unsheltered homelessness.

Before I get into objectives, I just wanted to take a quick moment and acknowledge that homelessness is a real tragedy and a result of the nationwide national the nationwide affordable housing crisis.

And it will take more than Berkeley to address this.

Regional conditions affect the city's ability to fully address this as many resources are shared regionally and more.

So with that, I wanted to share our objectives.

They were to determine what the role the HRT has in responding to encampments, how the HRT coordinates with other organizations to respond to encampments, and how the HRT uses data to measure progress toward goals and how is this communicated to the public and decision makers?

Um our scope period was between 2022 and 2024.

Um I'm not gonna read everything with our methodology, but we evaluated a lot of different um policies, operations data.

We compared this to other best practices and other organizations and jurisdictions, and we interviewed a variety of folks from city and county officials to outreach providers, homeless advocates, and other stakeholders to understand this issue.

So, what did we find?

So, first, the HRT conducts outreach and enforcement with limited city and county resources.

So, what does that mean?

The HRT works in partnership with other city departments and divisions to respond to encampments operating in both an outreach and enforcement role.

As you can see in this chart, the HRT provides a wide variety of encampment interventions, which range from shelter referrals, public noticing deep cleanings to closures.

The HRT sometimes faces challenges balancing these various interests in the city of Berkeley community, while some advocates have stated that closing encampments can be destabilizing for encampment residents.

Others, such as business groups, have advocated for encampment closures to address health and safety impacts of encampments.

The HRT must navigate a pretty complex regional system to refer people to shelter.

Most housing and resources are overseen by the Alameda County Continuum of Care, or the COC, which is the main planning body in Alameda County that organizes services for homeless residents.

To access resources through the COC, individuals must complete a CO a coordinated entry assessment.

These assessments evaluate factors like age, homelessness, health to develop an assessment score and prioritize resources.

Individuals who meet a certain threshold score can be placed in either the interim housing queue for emergency shelters or transitional housing or the permanent housing queue.

The City of Berkeley's homeless encampment response extends beyond the HRT and other departments supporting their work.

The HRT works alongside other organizations providing outreach and services to encampments, including contracted service providers and additional organizations providing services to encampments that are not funded by the City of Berkeley or the Alameda County COC.

HRT can directly refer people to shelter beds managed by the city, but shelter referrals for county resources must go through the coordinated entry process.

There are limited shelter resources in Berkeley compared to the number of people experiencing homelessness.

Berkeley uses, I think we've heard about the the PIT count or the point in time count to estimate the homeless population, which occurs every two years.

And as you heard previously, Berkeley saw 45% reduction between 2022 and 2024.

Despite that reduction, there are still not enough beds for people who need them.

The 2024 PIT count showed there were 844 people experiencing homelessness in Berkeley on one night in January 2024, and 445 of those people were unsheltered.

In August 2024, there were only 320 shelter beds in Berkeley, meaning there were more than two times as many people experiencing homelessness on any one night as there were shelter beds in Berkeley.

The HRT also does not control referrals for the majority of shelter beds in the system.

In August 2024, the HRT could only refer individuals to 56 out of the 320 shelter beds.

The other 264 beds were referred directly through the COC resources, there may have been long wait times.

According to estimates, during the audit period, there was an average of a 70-day waiting period to access emergency shelter and nine months to access permanent housing.

Resource constraints within the city also impact HRT's ability to address encampments.

The HRT works with other departments and divisions in the city to respond to encampments, and the availability of resources like staff and equipment can impact the HRT's ability to conduct encampment interventions.

Berkeley does not have staff dedicated to addressing encampments in every department, and staff in other departments and divisions balance encampment work with their regular workloads.

Since equipment is used to address various operational and service needs throughout the city, the availability of equipment, like a backhoe being used for street repair or a vector truck being used for sewer line cleaning, this can impact impact encampment operations.

The rise in encampment-related lawsuits also impact staff time.

The HRT states that staff spend an estimated 10 to 15% of the work week responding to legal issues.

This also impacts staff outside of the HRT.

According to the city attorney's office, their staff spend an average of 10 to 40 hours a week per attorney responding to encampment-related legal issues.

So our second finding is that the HRT paused some coordination meetings that had limited and had limited access to shared information systems.

We observe some gaps in the HRT's coordination with third-party outreach service providers.

The HRT decided to pause weekly case conference meetings with service providers from October 2023 to September 2024 due to legal action surrounding one encampment.

However, data shows encampment intervention took place in other sites during the pause in case conferences.

One medical provider stated they lost track of their clients after the city's encampment actions during the pause in case conferences.

Providers such as street medicine teams or harm reduction workers often have key insights that can improve service connections, and when these providers are not part of the coordination efforts, important information about residents' needs can be missed.

Though the case conference meetings have since resumed, the HRT also did not have written procedures that could ensure continued communication with service providers or any formal coordination structure defining roles and responsibilities.

HRT also had limited access to important shared information systems through the county.

During the audit period, HRT had limited access to the homeless management information system, or HMIS, which is the information system shared by all providers within Alameda County COC and is used to collect client-level data on the provision of housing and services.

The HRT did not gain access to HMIS until December 2022.

HRT instead stored most of their data in Excel sheets, which were not readily accessible to other providers.

We observed some gaps in the internal data they collected on encampments.

Alameda County also did not grant HRT the ability to conduct coordinated entry assessments.

So these are the entry points into the Alameda County services and shelters, and they didn't get access to that until about a year ago in September 2024.

HRT therefore could not take the first step needed to connect individuals to COC services and had to rely on other organizations with coordinated entry access to these assessments.

This could have increased wait times for individuals to receive services.

According to the HRT, their persistent advocacy to Alameda County convinced the county to grant them access to the data systems.

Our third finding is that the HRT can strengthen its approach to using outcomes for measuring progress toward goals as well as keeping the public informed.

During the audit period, the HRT tracked some outcomes related to their goals.

Their three goals were our residents are sheltered, dangerous encampments are not edible, inevitable, and our city is clean.

As you can see in the table, the HRT connected some outcomes to those program goals.

For example, measuring the percentage of people connected to shelter as part of our residents are sheltered, or measuring the number of encampment closures as part of dangerous encampments are not inevitable.

Most of these measures were reported cumulatively over the duration of the program, which made it difficult to evaluate progress toward goals or identify trends over time.

For example, reporting 59 closures over the duration of the program does not provide as much insight into the frequency of the encampment closures.

During the audit period, the HRT did not report on certain outcomes that connected their goal of reducing unsheltered homelessness.

For example, they did not report on outreach outcomes like the number of coordinated entry assessments or the number of outreach providers or outreach encounters.

These outcomes can shed light on the starting point of the process to get people connected to services and shelter.

Additionally, while the HRT reported on the number of shelter offers and septances, they did not report on the number of actual shelter enrollments during the audit period.

In May of 2025, so just a few months ago, the HRT updated their reporting process and did include new outcomes, such as the number of coordinated entry assessments and shelter enrollments.

Going forward, it will be important for the HRT to consistently report on these outcomes to provide more information on the process of initial outreach to ultimately being sheltered.

Other information that could be useful to report consistently to council in going forward include demographic data such as race, gender, health conditions of encampment residents and the reasons why people decline shelter.

We also found that HRT's reports were a little difficult to access on the city's website.

These reports were published in two different places on the website without a central landing page, which made it difficult to access information about their work in encampments.

As a comparison, other jurisdictions provide the public with more accessible information on their efforts to assist encampment residents.

For example, the city and county of San Francisco makes information about coordinated entry accessible to the public through a public-facing dashboard.

Another example is the city of Issaquah, Washington, which also reports outcomes on a dashboard, such as the number of monthly face-to-face interactions with clients.

Without being able to easily access HRT data on a website or dashboard, council and members of the public may not understand the extent to which HRT has been successful in achieving program goals of reducing unsheltered homelessness.

It also becomes difficult for oversight bodies such as the homeless service panel of experts to provide adequate oversight over their activities.

This audit included six recommendations.

And finally, we recommend the HRT assess staffing resources needed to make these improvements.

Do you want to acknowledge the budget challenges that the city is facing, but I wanted to also share that since this report, as this report was being completed, I did want to highlight, you know, in addition to HRT agreeing with our findings and recommendations, and proposed implementation plan for these audit recommendations.

HRT did state that they plan to formalize the coordination structure for encampment-related meetings, formalize internal workflows, workflows for collecting, reviewing, and verifying data related to outreach contacts, shelter offers, encampment activities, begin regularly using a shared mapping tool as part of the HRT case conference process and publish their performance data reports on their web page.

And I also wanted to acknowledge that I see there was an additional position that was allocated to the HRT that council had approved that will hopefully provide some additional assistance to this team.

Just wanted to end with thanking the homeless response team and the city manager's office for their cooperation throughout this audit.

We also want to thank the city attorney's office, HHCS, Public Works, and Community Members for their contributions to this audit.

And finally, to my team, Aaron Mullen, Kendall Coochley, and Pauline Miller were significant contributors to this work.

And I just wanted to ask if the city manager had any comments to add.

Sure.

Thank you.

First of all, I'd just like to thank you, both Auditor Wong and your team for working so closely with us on this audit.

I know we had a lot of back and forth on it, and so we appreciate that.

One thing that we do want to correct is that in our formal recommendation to 3.1, we had written that we would provide quarterly reports, and what we instead need to do is provide biannual reports.

There won't be meaningful changes in a corner for us to actually present things that are going to be uh helpful to look at.

So instead of starting quarterly reports on August 1st of 2025, we'll start biannual reports October 31st, 2025.

But that's it.

Thank you.

Okay.

Paul, thank you all so much.

I feel like I should also.

I yeah, I want to acknowledge that like audits themselves, I think can sometimes feel awkward for the for folks because we're you're taking a look at the work that that's going on and um giving some feedback on things that we can do better.

And I just want to say that I in my position really feel like this is just about making us better, and we all should be supportive of that.

And so um I really want to thank you know all of the teams that your team for doing the audit, but also everyone who was involved in providing information because I know this is all just about making us better and doing a better job of serving our communities.

So thank you all very much.

Really appreciate the city manager and um his response and and Peter and your team too for uh providing feedback on the changes that you're gonna make as well.

Um so there are um what I want to do actually.

Are there any burning questions for our auditors?

Other otherwise, what I want to do is actually do public comment so we can hear from folks, and then we can do our council comments and other questions together.

Yeah, I have questions, but I would not characterize them as a okay, burning question over here.

Sure, Rob I can.

Um, I I did want to say that I am glad to hear that the HRT now has access to the county's coordinated uh coordinated entry system.

Um, and I'm wondering whether that new access will improve the team's capacity to report on the outcomes identified in the audit.

Or admin.

I think that's for yeah, I mean Peter can answer that question with more detail, but the the short answer is yes, it will.

And to what extent depends a little bit on how much data we have access to and how that all unfolds.

But yeah, we are looking forward to doing that.

Okay.

Oh, another burning question from Council Member Trega, and then Councilman Broke.

Uh, this is just a clarification to something you said, Paul.

Um you said uh when you said by annual said twice.

Twice a year.

Yeah, every other year.

Just kidding.

Twice a year.

So every six months instead of quarterly.

Thank you so much.

Um, yeah, thank you.

Um, just a sort of a factful question, I think would be helpful to get out before the public comment is um this is actually for the city manager's team.

Um, the May 20th item um that the presentation was largely responsive to, also included actually, as the central item um a request that the city manager um produce a list of possible uh locations for an alternative alternate shelter site.

And I was just wondering if you could give a brief update on the status of that.

Yes.

So we do have a draft list put together.

Even today we were going back and forth on various aspects of them because we want to provide a list that has uh both private spaces that could be leased as well as public spaces, and then provide a little bit of context on at least the public spaces like what they're being used for now.

And so we're close and anticipate bringing that to you back to you in October.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate that.

Yeah, thank you for asking that.

That's important.

And another burning question.

It's not so experienced, just more of a smoldering question.

But uh that would thank you, uh Madam Otter and City team for your work here.

I just want to give uh give the team time to calculate it to the best you can.

Um I'm looking for the dollar value or maybe percentage value, some value we can think about uh of the federal tax credits that we deploy to to effectuate these goals.

Okay.

Okay, all right.

And with that, I want to open it up for public comment on either presentation.

Um since I imagine there will be a fair amount of comments.

Also, if you feel free if you want to step down, you're welcome to.

It's up to you.

Okay, go ahead, come on up.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

I know there are a lot of folks here, I wasn't sure if you're here to listen or to speak.

So that determines how much time folks get.

So could you just give me a raise your hand?

It's okay if you want to stay seated for a little longer, but maybe raise your hand if you are going to give public comment.

Okay.

Oh, all right.

Well, in that case, we can do two minutes, I think.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Uh, it says one.

Is it one or two?

I think we can give two because I think there's only a handful of folks.

Thank you.

Um, John Canor, CEO of downtown Berkeley Association.

Thank you both for your presentations.

I also really want to thank the city staff and council and mayor for the work in Civic Center Park.

It's made a fundamental difference, and I think we're all really proud the path we're on there.

So thank you.

Uh a couple comments.

I think we really would be helpful to have a dashboard similar to these other cities to show number of beds, number of metrics, etc.

The city does a great job tracking it, but to have that online and available available to the citizenry, I think would be really good.

In the discussion around shelter beds, we talk about concrete and non-concrete.

There, they aren't there are other alternatives.

We we've described this hybrid shelter beds or semi-private um congregate shelters.

I think the horizon transitional village, which provided privacy was extremely successful, and it lended a lend a lot of privacy, and also Dorothy Dayhouse did a great job.

And I think with um the alternative housing options, that's clearly something we should be looking at significantly significantly lower cost.

Also, we cannot afford either uh cost or also our hospitality industry continue to take more motels out of service.

We need an inventory of moderately priced motels for people to visit.

The non new hotel is nice, but we've got to provide a motel capability.

Homeless count.

I talked to our prior mayor and our prior council member, measure P.

Please please put some money in there for homeless camps.

As many of you know, we do a homeless count twice a month.

It takes us about two hours to cover the entire downtown.

To do it citywide, with if you did it in commercial districts with 10 districts, it's probably 20 to 25 person hours.

To be doing homeless counts only once every two years, it does not make sense.

A lot of cities and counties do it more than once every two years.

So please consider that.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, you're you're out of time.

No, no, John.

And then look at regional solutions like the Medicare's camp.

Thank you so much.

Hi.

First, I would like to thank Ginny Wong for putting together this report.

I have the utmost respect for her work, and this subject hits close to home for me, no pun intended.

After living on the streets of Berkeley and Albany for nearly three decades, you might think I would have been offered shelter more than four times.

I accepted all four, yet, through no fault of my own, I've spent most of the last 28 years homeless.

When I left the Grayson lot, I moved with my neighbors to Dwight Way, where we've been for over two and a half years.

Until about a month ago, when options were sent down to where we live by Carol Morasovic, none of us received anything even resembling an operative shelter since the lot closed.

This audit explains why.

There are more than twice as many unhoused people here as there are beds, and the HRT only controls a handful of those.

Yet people like me get labeled service resistant despite never refusing shelter.

The truth is it's the system that's resistant to letting us in.

Sanctioned encampments and safe RV parking lots should be your priority.

It is the safest and most cost-effective solution and will require the least effort from the HRT.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate your comments.

Afternoon, everyone.

Happy to have this opportunity.

One of the things that was striking to me in the report was uh that uh while uh two thirds of the uh people that were engaged in the uh compassionate interventions by the HRT uh responded well, one that means one-third of them did not.

And obviously, in many cases, uh, that is caused by behavioral health issues that are caused by mental health challenges.

Um the workers that we represent at uh Alta Bates Summit and the rest of the center system uh throughout Northern California are distressed by Sutter Health's slow, steady deterioration of its commitment to behavioral health issues.

Uh, amongst the ways that's been uh visited uh among Albina County is the facility that I used to work at, Eden Medical Center for 25 years.

We used to have a 20-bed inpatient psych unit there that provided health care services that are unique, right?

When we were talking about inpatient behavioral health in an acute care setting, uh, this is something that's different from the sort of behavioral health care that's being done at lifelong and other types of facilities.

So that was a real loss when Sutter Health decided to uh close that 20-bed inpatient psych unit, and uh the workers that we represent at the inpatient psych unit on uh Dwight Way right now are reporting that uh the future of services there is very uncertain.

We know that the sub the substantial portion of uh of uh acute care services at the Ashby campus are gonna be going away in 2030, and we were placed in Emoryville.

Uh, but uh things are very uncertain also at Dwight Way.

So it's gonna be really important to follow that, and we're gonna continue to engage with the City Council and anyone else who will listen about the importance of maintaining these sorts of safety net services.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Hi, um the uh Berkeley um behavioral health commission, as it is now called, and a couple of things have uh occurred to me.

I was wondering, um, somebody said that they'd heard that a lot of this uh, you know, I was wondering about the presence of uh social workers and people on the outreach team.

Uh most in the past outreach teams have had that.

The outreach team used to be part of the mental health department, and then when staffing became so difficult for I think that department, the city took that over and it became the CRT.

And it feels like there's been a lack of contact and connection with the mental health facilities.

I know that Bonita House was uh doing working on the um SCU specialized care unit.

That was an important project that ran out after the pilot.

And so now that all that equipment, cars, and vehicles have gone to Alameda County.

So I'm, you know, thinking that Berkeley has sort of given away stuff to Alameda County.

We have no Amber House like Alameda County has.

Another question is the story is that there is supportive housing plan for the People's Park area, and apparently that contract has disappeared.

Frankly, I wonder who are the supportive service providers.

That's a big question in my mind.

They don't get much help from the city.

They say, Oh, well, look to boss, look to uh you know, lifelong, and but that's not really the real supportive services that many of these mentally ill people who end up in this housing need.

Thank you.

Thanks so much.

I will ask some of those questions, so appreciate it.

Stephen Most, uh Friends of Aloney Park.

Uh, during the encampment in a Loney Park, it would have been very helpful to have had a facility like the Grayson Street uh temporary shelter, which uh by all accounts was a great success.

And I know the city is engaged in finding other sites thanks to a council resolution and work by the city manager's office.

Uh, but why can find this to Berkeley?

There are many places in the county that might be much more readily and affordably available.

And I'm wondering if the city is engaging with the county to identify sites like that.

Also, in view of the uh city's deficit and the lack of funding from federal and state uh sources that the homeless uh response by the city has relied on.

Where is the status of the city's negotiation to get a fair share of the measure W funding?

That's going to be very important.

I want to know how much the city can get, and what how it would be allocated, and also I would ask that um recently Friends of Looney Park had a meeting with uh council member Rashuani and Tregu, and we were urged to write the county um board of supervisors to uh raise the issue about uh a good share uh of funding for the city of Berkeley, and I think on this occasion I would like uh the council to speak to this audience about how to address the county on that issue.

Thank you.

Thank you again, everyone up here and in the audience and the reporters.

I really want to second uh the comment on more point in time counts for those of us that have either been on the street or tending people on the street, it really vacillates and fluctuates, and people need to pay attention to that, in addition to which I really would like to explore more non police interventions.

I am constantly because I am out and about roaming everywhere that I know people are.

Um, you know, I get I run into plenty of people that could use some assistance, and that's the other point.

You put people in shelters, they still need care.

I have a number of people in the residence where I live that are not getting the care and they can't function.

So they need more supportive care.

And when it comes to congregate shelters that some of us don't want, I really want you to know it isn't about, oh, I want to be fancy and have my own private boudoir.

It's that some of us, like women and elders and disabled people, especially, have been violently and emotionally abused.

And I physically would not survive in a setting like that because just one turn with somebody's backpack and I'm on the ground.

It's you know, so I have as Amber mentioned, I have not refused, but I'm not gonna go somewhere so I can sleep, it's gonna kill me.

That's very impractical.

And then I really really want to emphasize that we have a lot more resources in the community than chasing after money that might come someday.

We have a lot more capacity to create our own space if we could find it, and join together with the resources that we have because we care and we share.

Thank you.

Thanks, Maria.

I really try.

Yeah, you get you got it.

You're good.

Thank you.

One really big gaping hole in all of these uh suggestions, reports, programs, etc., is lack of involvement with the unhoused themselves.

I don't see how much it really gets done without involving in some kind of decision-making capacity with the unhoused themselves.

Thank you.

I couldn't agree more.

And I figure you all need a break to wake up.

I can't tell what you're all thinking, but I brought this bandana that says, solo el pueblo salva el pueblo, only the people can save the people.

And like this gentleman was just saying, I'm wondering where the voices of the unhoused people in this report.

I don't see that, and I'm actually feeling quite pessimistic about this audit, given the response that this body, this city council has had, not just to the people in Berkeley, but to the people around the world and in Gaza.

This audit does little to capture the voices of our unhoused neighbors.

If the council truly wants to make change, it will listen to the voices of the people most impacted.

Peoples whose lives hang in the balance every time a sweep, an eviction notice are given.

Every time the police drive down the street, ride their bicycles, and especially when the homeless response team arrives in an encampment or tent, the very people meant to quote assist have become an arm of the police.

The team creates trauma and perpetuates trauma.

If the council truly wants to make change, they will listen to the people most impacted with dignity, listen to their boundaries, follow up with a request, provide bathrooms, and repeated requests for trash pickups.

I know countless people who have made phone calls, and you go down to Athan Harrison, there's no dumpster there.

People in the community, contractors, go dump their trash there.

My time is limited, but I know what I'm not seeing is what is not in this report.

Thank you.

I appreciate your comments.

Folks, so I Mark, this is actually more people than I was expecting.

And I think there are other folks online.

How many folks are online?

Because I think we might need to move to one minute.

I'm sorry, George.

Okay.

I that's why I asked folks to stand up, because I I wanted to have a sense of how many people are coming.

Six hands raised.

Yeah, I'm sorry, we need to go back to one minute.

Okay.

Sorry, George.

George Littman, I'm a member of Human welfare and community action commission, speaking only for myself.

Yes, listen to the voices of people most impacted.

Let's find a way to make that happen.

Uh I'm we're standing here, it's summer, it's waning, but it's summer, it's really nice, but winter is coming.

So I want to raise what I understand is going on, which could create a vast emergency very soon.

Closure of the winter shelter due to um retrofitting.

Understandable at Old City Hall, as I understand it.

I hope this is wrong.

The replacement for this year is not in Berkeley.

It's some other city.

That's a recipe for disaster.

Um to expect people to get there on their own is um unrealistic.

And I think if we're auditing things and we're counting things, we should count the number of deaths that are going to come because every year that we don't have sufficient health or skelter, what is it called?

Shelter, people die.

Please keep that in mind.

Let's find a better plan.

Thanks, George.

Within the next two months.

Thank you.

First, uh, the city has done an exceptional job of uh applying for grants and looking for money, something that's that's badly needed.

Uh the motel conversions have been extremely successful.

Uh we are in a financial crisis, and hopefully the can continue horizon was incredibly successful in part because it did respect privacy and the way it was constructed and it respected the clients' uh rights.

Um, different community members have been contacting me regularly with various referrals with client referrals.

They've been contacting me as a person with absolutely no authority.

I'm also frequently contacted to resp uh with inquiries as to how the homeless system works in our city.

Um I have found the options encampment uh mobile wildness team to be the most responsive of all.

They're funded through the NHSA for four years.

Um they respond to the client cases that are that I'm receiving frequently.

Sorry, thanks, Carol.

So I actually had a question over a comment.

Um, the HRT reported on the number of encampments closed, but where are the numbers of what that costs?

So, how much does it cost to close each encampment for the cops and the equipment?

How much did the city spend on smoke bombs on unhoused community members at Aethan Harrison?

That's what I want to know.

Where's that audit?

Where's the receipts of what they're spending?

We see a lot of like charts and things, but I'd like to see some receipts on where they're spending all this money.

How much is that costing?

Thank you.

Thanks for your question.

Okay, let's move to the folks online.

All right.

First speaker online is Jessica Prado.

You have one minute.

Hi, I'm Yesika Prado, representative of the Berkeley Homeless Union.

I want to say that I found the audit very questionable and not transparent.

The city utters found out information that is not reflected on the audit, such as interviews with outreach workers.

For instance, one lifelong outreach worker said that they send us a letter to the city to share what the clinical impact of fees are.

This staff member wishes there was more communication or questions from the city about health-related matters.

For example, if anyone is actively dying, how many pregnant people are in the encampment?

How many people on opio use disorder treatment?

And if HRT does sweep, we'll end up back on fentanyl and will cost their life.

Even more explicitly, the interview stays sometimes.

HRT activities directly impact people's abilities to get house.

There is also confusion among providers about how the cities decided who took place in city-run housing shelters.

Life Long says they are not consulted about who may be needing shelter the most.

And often our union members report to you to us that HRT workers, OKA Bance, and Epsilon Galloway pull strings to get them into shelter.

It seems that allocation of shelter is actually based on favoritism.

Please review records request 25-7.

Thanks for your comment.

Next is Kelly Hammergren.

Okay.

In going through the report, I see lots of statistics, but I didn't see what the average income is for the homeless person or the long-term success rate of how long house people housed stay housed.

And the reason I ask is years ago in a report to council uh regarding subsidized housing with a gradual withdrawal over what I believe was three years that the average income was $900 per month.

I'm not making a judgment about whether someone must be working to receive help, but I would like to know what percentage of our homeless are working poor who will never be able to afford housing and daily living expenses like food.

Um so those are really my questions and um I think I covered it in less than oh, I've got 11 seconds left.

So please, income would be very helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kelly.

Okay.

Next is Erica Shore.

Thank you.

Um I am part of the Friends of Aloney Park, and I wanted to thank the city very much for the efforts that I know were very difficult in the clearing of the encampment in Aloney Park.

Um I understand that the baseline question of where are we to go is still unanswered.

And I do really urge that there be a solution in terms of a sanctioned campground.

As Steve Most mentioned earlier, I my question is what would the council like city residents to do to assist in the advocacy for more access to the coordinated entry system.

Uh we have been told that this is a huge bottleneck.

Um, in addition to the fact that it sounds like you need $9 million just to keep running what is currently open, let alone expansion.

So what what can citizens do that would be helpful and supportive of these efforts?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, next is Rains or Betsy.

Rains or Betsy, you should be able to unmute.

There we go.

Sorry.

I'm on a phone outside.

Um thank you all.

Uh Betsy Morris, um, uh part of several working groups, um, and also co-convener of the Grey Panthers here in the East Bay.

I wanted to bring up first thank you for these reports.

Thank you for making it available to us all to hear.

Um, first, I I wanna we'll follow up on these points.

I'll follow up.

But one, we don't we still don't really have a good model for understanding how many homeless people will be oops.

Uh will be coming online.

You know, and and the the the best data I know of that that I've heard of is to understand the root causes of homelessness.

Uh a short seven-minute video from King County in Washington.

I recommend people Google that.

Two, uh we can't really plan without knowing what what the pipeline looks like.

Um, second, I really would like to suggest we look more carefully.

Oh, follow up in writing.

Please follow up.

Next is Beth Rossner.

Yes, hello, Mayor and Council Beth Rossner, Berkeley Chamber of Commerce.

Uh, I just want to emphasize four priorities for homelessness response.

First, Alameda County should develop a large-scale regional solution like Reno's Nevada Care's campus that provides high-quality shelter services and transitional housing.

Second, as nearly $1 billion dollars in Measure W funds accumulate, Berkeley deserves its fair share to address local needs.

Third, we need firm, consistent enforcement of our sidewalk ordinances.

Our sidewalks must remain safe and accessible for everyone.

And fourth, with more frequent citywide homeless counts, even quarterly or monthly, we could likely respond to problems before they become overwhelming for city staff.

We urge you to push the county for bold regional action, fair funding, consistent enforcement, and quality data to guide solutions.

Thank you so much to HRT for the work you do.

Thank you.

Thanks, Beth.

Okay.

Uh there's two more uh speakers.

Next is uh Barbara uh Ridlander.

Oh yeah.

Hi.

Um I'm a long-term Berkeley resident and now a proud homeowner.

I'm living down close to the Virginia homeless encampment.

I would like to have a response to the fact that I'd missed the first part of your meeting.

I'm sorry, but uh maybe the mayor can answer this or the city manager.

Uh given our deficit, what are the chances that there will be a parcel tax increase for our taxes in the next year or two?

I have to plan ahead.

I'm on fixed income here, and I've got to know as a senior citizen, am I gonna have to pay another $500 a year for these services?

Please advise me.

I'm really worried about this.

I feel compassion.

I applaud the efforts that you're making, but it just seems like an overwhelming task.

And as a homeowner, I feel really afraid that I may be in the same boat if my taxes go up much more.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, Les last speaker is Jeff Lomax.

Uh good afternoon, council.

I'd just like to um comment that I commend the auditor on a really good face, good faith effort to try to unpack a really challenging situation.

But as multiple commenters have already noted, there really needs to be a data collection strategy for a number of these issues, including um unhoused and how our dollars are where they're going.

We really just can't compare data over time.

And with the change of the city's website, we've lost a lot of data.

So I think a really honest conversation about what a dashboards look like and how do we sustain consistent measures over time is going to be critical to know if we're accomplishing anything.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

That's our final, uh, that's our final public comment.

So thank you folks for your comments.

I really appreciate it.

There were a lot of questions that I wrote down that I'm sure some of them will get answered.

And um, if not, I will try to answer them during my time.

Um, we're gonna start with Councilmember Taplin.

So, this is by the way, questions, comments, yeah, yeah.

We're moving it together because we don't have action in this meeting.

Wonderful, thank you so much, Madam Mayor.

Good evening, everyone, and thank you to the the Madam Auditor and the HRT.

Um, I have four questions.

Some of them I got from the audience, so I'll do my best to represent them.

I did want to ask about Measure P.

Um, to what extent have Measure P dollars been available to andor utilized by organizations and providers serving women, single parents, and families with children.

I am thinking specifically of Burger House and the Women's ATM Drop in Center and comparable programs.

So, sorry, uh Women's A10 Drop in Center and Bridget House were both funded as part of the Nexus funding.

Um, which we took some of uh Measure P funding to pay for programs that historically been uh homeless programming.

That is no longer the case.

Um, but we are still using Measure P funding for other projects.

I'm not sure.

Can you parse out the question a little bit more?

I'm not sure I understand if there's are you looking for the between families and single adults?

Yeah, it's kind of one of the demographic adjacent questions of like how are we able to assess um the populations, the particular populations that are being served in and um how we might balance the various needs of the unhoused populations.

Yeah, the for Measure P, the majority are single adult projects.

Um, and so we're not serving many programs that have any family funding.

I can't think of any projects that are.

Go ahead.

I just want to say the reason for that is the majority of our homeless population as demonstrated consistently in the point and time counts are single adults without minor children.

Um and definitely the um uh the the traumas and the very real violence that women on the streets experience are real.

Um and as Josh mentioned, we use general fund to support agencies like women's time drop-in center to to make sure that those are addressed specifically, um, but uh you know two thirds of the homeless population identifies as male um consistently, um, and so not to minimize the importance of that, but just to give you a sense of the scale.

Um, so you said general funds for women's data and drop-in center.

Yes, it's part of the community agency funding.

Wonderful, that's definitely a priority of mine.

Um, can we look at the acquisition slide, the site acquisition slide?

Yes, excuse me one second.

And um the reason why I'm curious in this slide in particular is because um we heard in the auditors' report um the re about the regional nature of homelessness, and we also heard from the HRT presentation that the city lacks the resources to establish a completely new program without making cuts.

So given that we are um operating and partnering to run a number of alternative housing sites, leveraging a number of funds that we're using to acquire units.

I do want to applaud the city for acquiring these units.

Um my question in light of the slide is to what extent would it be possible to pursue interjurisdictional partnerships to establish larger scale programs such as a regional or regional safe parking program where something like Novoti cares, um, instead of us trying to just do everything on our own, considering the large number of things we are doing and um how vulnerable these existing programs are to potential funding loss.

Um thank you very much.

And I do want to um really highlight this list, and I want to applaud uh the work that Council Professor Wani has done and the city manager and everyone here, Peter, everybody, to uh get these things online.

Um, I I want there to be no mystery around how heavy of a list it is to stand these programs up.

Uh so thank you, council member.

I appreciate that.

With respect to the regional question, um, I want to acknowledge that that's a question that's been formally referred to us as part of the May 20th um referral from council.

Um, and so um we're actively working on kind of strategies and responses to that.

Um, respectfully, I'm not quite prepared to to speak to that, but as the city manager mentioned, we'll be returning back to council in October with a response to that portion of the referral.

Um, and you can expect some treatment of that question at that time.

Thank you very much.

My next question is for the CEO manager, um, and this is in light of the audio recommendations.

Um, I mean, to the extent that you're able to, I wonder if we can get a forecast of what additional resources might be needed to implement the audit's recommendations.

Well, as I said, we said we had a lot of conversation with the auditor about these, and I think that we're we're prepared to move forward with these recommendations with the existing resources that we have.

Um, we're not anticipating needing additional resources for these specific recommendations as we go into like your previous question or other questions as relates to expanding the services that are available.

Obviously, that would need a lot more resources, and that is what we're actively working with the county on.

Thank you very much.

Um, and then I was interested to hear about the options account and mobile wellness team.

And I'm wondering to what extent the city coordinates with entities such as that.

Well, I uh I want to acknowledge that we've got representatives from our health housing community services department here, and they formally manage that contract.

Um so I can only speak with respect to the homeless response team.

Um, but I can tell you that they've been absolutely wonderful and critical partners.

We partner with them literally on a daily basis at Priority Encampments to connect with people, offer them resources, and just make sure that we're coordinating and collaborating.

Um so if there's any more specific questions about about that, I'm happy to um defer over to Director Gilman and his team.

Thank you.

I think uh I'll take them offline, but I'm happy to hear about.

Um, and in closing, I did want to respond to something I heard during the comment period, and respectfully I am a little surprised to hear from some of our companions in the business community, um, to hear them speak so disparingly, disparagingly of our hotel leases considering what is hitherto hitherto for.

What has up till now been such vociferous and consistent support of the city's interim housing efforts, and as a person representing the district hosting the Horizons Revisible Village, these programs as we know are effective until the lease runs out, and with our structural deficit, we must leverage every local dollar with outside sources, which is exactly what we've done with HomeKey.

So I did want to share that.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you for your comments.

Um moving on to Councilmember Traega.

I know you have a number of questions.

Oh, yeah, no, I thank you, madam mayor.

I I did provide advanced warning.

Uh I do, but uh first, I wanted to also express my profound gratitude to both the auditor and uh city staff.

I still believe that on a per capita basis, Barkley punches far and away above its weight when conducting homeless response efforts.

These challenges, as has been mentioned before, are on a macro scale and are worsening.

And I just wanted to share um one just of several personal experiences that I have had um being contacted by someone who was a single mother with a with a young child with several young children escaping uh a bad situation from outside of Barkley, found herself in Barkley, and um need to realize of the significant backlog of resources, um, and um thankfully it appears she was able to um get into um a shelter somewhere else, but that effort took weeks, if not months.

Um you know, interfacing with both um city staff and um our nonprofits, um, who despite being completely overwhelmed, uh, provided the best of um care and support as best they could to this one individual.

Just shows me the incredible heart um this community.

I wanted I did have a few questions.

Um I will ask them in rapid fire to try to save time.

Um our office, along with the rest of the council, has taken um a deep and consorted effort to ensure that to the extent that there are gaps between city and county interfaces, that those are quickly resolved, and that the city um receives its fair share of the funding that it deserves and that we're all paying into.

To that end, um, one question I had was um that that gap where the city if there is an even an infinitesimal amount of funding that it provides to projects, such as step up housing that the county decides who is on that list, what if anything has been and can be done to ensure that the city is in a position to prioritize housing for those who have been displaced out of Berkeley or find themselves in Berkeley for an extended period of time.

I wanted to understand the staffing numbers for the homeless response team.

I believe the audit mentioned that there was one retirement.

How many FTEs are right now paid for?

Are there any hiring actions to the extent that there are gaps in currently?

I will just highlight from the report.

Um the city's legal department spends 10 to 40 hours per week per attorney right now, based on the um slew of legal actions that are being, you know, that are in process against or where the city is the defendant.

I want to know what percentage of time HRT staff spends sitting for depositions doing other things that are related to litigation, that they're not able to spend actively servicing the community and ensuring that resources are being provided.

Was that your final question?

It is not.

How many questions do you have left?

Because your time is up, and I want to be respectful of fact.

We're it's already 5 34, and we've got the rest of the council members.

Okay, I will give you some of my time.

Go ahead.

Thank you, that's very kind.

Um I noticed that um there is a 1.43 million dollar backfill that is needed to make up for the HAP gap.

Um, I was curious if um anything uh, well, just if staff could update us on recent actions again with the county to ensure um that we get our fair share of measure W funding um and for the benefit of the community, um, what can they do to um you know let the county board um know uh the importance of ensuring uh Berkeley and other cities with the highest need getting their fair share.

Um I also um and I will close here.

Um I think the um home the point in time counts provided by the downtown Barkley Association twice a month.

Uh, they go to my office, they have been very useful in tracking and trending the need.

Um, I was curious if the city would be open to leveraging such existing efforts to do homelessness counts that are at a greater frequency that what staff is able to commit to right now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I will have three minutes and 30 seconds for my time.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Um I will attempt to answer in rapid fire and obviously happy to discuss more offline um if you have any follow-ups.

So, with respect to the question about um referrals and permanent housing commensurate with the level of funding, um, that's a active policy question we're working with the county on.

I know that the councils um has expressed their support for that policy position, and back in, I believe Mayor June, the city manager sent a letter on behalf of the council to the to the county, expressing that that was our position.

And so we're continuing to engage with them in that discussion.

Right now, the Measure W funding is um and how we roll that out, is kind of taking precedence.

Obviously, we want to get that funding out the door quickly.

But we are continuing to bang that drum with our partners at the county.

I could add really quickly on that also is that the city managers that represent all the different cities in Alamanti County sent a similar letter expressing the same concern, so just so that you know that.

Um so with respect to how many FTE are in the homeless response team.

Currently, there are um three authorized FTE two filled.

So that's one supervisor and two outreach workers.

The council back in June with the adoption of the um of this year's this fiscal year's budget uh created a third um social service specialist outreach worker.

The city is in the process of conducting interviews and hiring for that both of those positions.

Um we just completed our first round.

We have our second round of interviews, I believe, next week, next Friday, and so um that that process of acquiring those new staff is actively underway.

Um what percentage of time the HRT staff kind of sits for legal stuff and prepares for legal stuff.

Um, I'll just second the auditors' finding that um we estimated at roughly 10 percent um of our of our weekly time.

Um with respect to updates to measure w funding, you know, um just respectfully to the county.

I think the Board of Supervisors only very recently took that big vote um on Measure W, and that was back in July.

Um, and so um, you know, we are continuing to work and have already had several city-county meetings to discuss kind of the framework for rolling that out.

I don't have unfortunately any updates beyond that.

I can tell you that the one um RFP that the county has already released for Measure W funding was to create um more interim units uh to respond to encampments to be responsive to encampments.

Um, and we sponsored an application um and uh, you know, we're submitted that, and so we're jumping on every opportunity.

Um, and with respect to point-in-time counts, I think this merits a bigger discussion.

Um it is uh with respect to the amount of work that you know DBA does, and and that's a very helpful count for us to receive as well.

I do want to acknowledge that.

It's one thing to take on a few blocks in the downtown, it's another thing to take on every nook and cranny of the city, um, and to do that uh frequently is uh is a bigger lift than it may seem.

Um, number one, and then number two, I think we need to think very carefully about uh how we the usefulness of doing our own count in addition to the biannual counts that happen at the county level, uh, because one of the points of these counts is to be able to not just look at a point in time but to also examine trends over time, and if we don't have the same methodologies, uh then you know it's questionable the extent to which we can compare those trends um over time with what we see at the county level.

But I do want to acknowledge that that question is uh a legitimate one, and and you know, we'd be happy to engage in further discussion.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

That was very efficient answering.

Um so just I know there are some folks that are bringing their kids because we also have a kid bring your kids to council day.

So just for folks who are have just arrived, we are having a meeting, a special meeting on homelessness.

We heard a presentation from um our homeless response team, and we also heard one from our city auditor, and so now our council members are um asking some questions and also making some comments about those reports.

So that is some context for what's going on.

Okay, so moving on, council member Blackabee.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, um, and thanks to the staff for being here, the homeless response team, city auditor's office.

Um, it was a really useful um update, and I appreciate the time.

Um, as the city auditor knows, I'm a big fan of metrics and goals and outcomes.

We've had conversations about that, so I appreciated um her attention to that and the audit, um, and look forward to kind of thinking about how we can apply some of that, obviously, to this particular problem, but also um thinking about it citywide and a lot of the work that we're doing.

That's something, again, that's uh an interest of mine, um, but I think will help with transparency across the board.

Um, so to that end, um, one of the things, you know, when we think about this particular issue, how big, how thorny, how complicated it is.

Um, Councilmember Taplin may appreciate the idea of a Gordian knot from mythology, but just something that you know it's so difficult to think about how do we solve?

Where do we start?

Um, at least for me, kind of thinking about the framework and some of the goals that help us break down the problem into bite sizes that help us think about how to do it is useful.

So one thing I was kind of reflecting on tonight is if you break down the whole problem into maybe three pieces, and this may not be the right framework, but curious to work with you over time as to what that might be.

Um but you know, one goal at a minimum is just if you look at the data, um, to make sure that everyone who is homeless has some sort of form of shelter.

Right now we're at 47% sheltered and 844 people are unhoused.

Um, so you know, how much of what we're doing can we drive that number from 40% sheltered to as close to 100% we can get at a minimum, just to provide some sort of uh a floor for the problem, and what are the initiatives that we're doing there?

You know, maybe a second goal, again, for sake of argument is driving the total number, right, of our unhoused population as close to zero as we can.

I know that's impossible to get to zero.

Um, but if you you think about we want to get everybody in shelter at a minimum, at two, we want to, you know, slim the entire population down to as slow to as low, if not zero as possible.

What are the things that we're doing to address that?

And then three, it's the whole um, you know, once you plug the bucket, make sure we're not adding more to the bucket.

But how do we um prevent homelessness in the first place?

And I know there's a lot of investment you guys are doing, and and also with the housing team in thinking how do we keep people who are on the margin from dropping into hopeless homelessness in the first place.

So, at least in my mind, taking the big problem and breaking it down into, I'm not saying those are the right three pieces, but for me that's a useful way as we go forward, would be helpful, especially if we have to make some tough decisions in the months ahead and making trade-offs, understanding if we're putting more in one bucket than the other, that's that's the trade-off.

But at least for me, that helps me break that problem down and uh would you know as we go forward would love to kind of unpack it in a way like that, at least a little bit help me from a problem solving perspective.

Um then on the report itself, which I again uh thank you for the memo.

One um just comment was looking at the FY25 spending versus FY26.

And I know we spent about 25 million in FY25, and you mentioned that in FY26 we're poised to spend about 19.

Um, so even without the future kind of fiscal cliff that we're thinking about, it looks to me like we're already seeing some pretty big cuts, and just is that accurate and do you have a perspective on what that's gonna mean for services in the coming year just with those numbers?

So I think one of the um impacts that we had to really start making hard decisions around was that Measure P uh wasn't pulling in the same revenue that we were seeing previously, and so we had to make some decisions on we definitely couldn't fund new programming.

Um, and then we also had to start looking at what we could um cut.

I mean, to make some cuts.

Um so that just the nature of measure P because it's a um attacks and it's a little bit volatile and it's not predictable based on like who makes those purchases of property that year.

Yeah, um, it's hard to know.

Sorry.

No, you go, just an ad too, because um, you know, one of the things that Josh mentioned in the presentation was um the one-time nature of the lot of the funding that we're getting from the state, yeah.

Um those are coming in block grants that are you know five million at a time through the ERF that we've been getting.

Um and as we spend those down, those will kind of disappear from our balance sheet, if you will.

And so the fluctuation year in, year out, um, I think is maybe partially attributable to just the shifting funding sources.

Got it.

So one other way, I guess, of thinking about it is is there a part of that 25 million budget that was more like capital investment on things that are long term, like permanent supportive housing versus operational, just kind of keeping things running.

Um, and uh, if if part of it is, hey, we're we're we don't have as much money to invest in big new projects from year to year, that's that's one thing.

It may just suggest that we're not adding as many units, but if we're actually losing operational funding, then that might suggest we're actually gonna be able to house fewer people that are currently so that makes sense.

That's what that's what I'm trying to unwrap a little bit.

What does that mean that that delta of a seven million dollar loss and expected spending?

Uh I will say it means the latter, those are dollars that keep the lights on at these programs.

Okay, all right.

Um last question.

Um, on the you're talking about the pipeline and the 1200 new affordable housing units in the pipeline.

Um, what does it mean for those units to be in the pipeline and what kind of investment is still required to get, you know, to move things from the pipeline to actually get them into operation.

So thanks for that question.

I'm gonna defer to um Margot Ernst, our manager of housing community services for that one.

Thank you.

Sure.

Yeah, typically, if we refer to it being as being in the pipeline, it hasn't yet been fully constructed.

So some of those projects might be under construction and already have their financing.

Um, and so then there is nothing needed, just the time that it takes to finish the project.

Ones that are earlier in the process and have like a city commitment but are still assembling their financing, and we do have a lot of projects that are in that situation, like the projects we've approved at North Berkeley BART that have gotten entitled and have city funding, but they're still working to assemble their the rest of their financing.

Um so that's the main thing is is for those, it's the time and going through the rounds with the state.

Um they do sometimes come back to us at the end to get additional funding to fill the gap.

So there might be an ask of us at that point, and then ones that are even earlier in the process that maybe aren't even entitled, um, they still have to go through our entitlement process, but and get their financing.

Because what's appealing to me again is putting the numbers together that there's potentially 1200 new affordable units in pipeline.

We have an 844 unhoused population at last.

Like, is this actually gonna help us clean what or close the gap that we currently observe?

I mean, is that realistic to think about?

Yes, I don't, I don't think the 1200 is referring to permanent supportive housing.

220 permanent supportive and then 1200 otherwise, but yeah, so you know, we we do um it would if we you know the permanent supportive housing units are gonna be the best um entry point for people who are transitioning from being unhoused into being housed.

Um it's still quite a ways away for a lot of those units to actually be constructed and then leased up.

Yeah.

Um, and you know, we do have our preference policy that we apply, but outside of that, it there isn't a guarantee that it's gonna go to uh specifically to a unhoused Berkeley household.

Got it, okay.

Great.

My time's up.

Uh but again, thank everyone for their work.

But this is the kind of thing if we can if we take take the problem to the component parts, look at the pieces that we're adding, and just try and make them look at the math and understand how is this all fit in context would really help me as a policymaker.

So thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thanks to the staff.

Thank you very much.

Okay, um, council member O'Keefe.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I have two questions for Peter.

Oh, thank you for joining us again.

Um, I was really glad to hear in a previous answer that you're um not only filling the new position but also backfilling.

So you're getting two new staffers, is that correct?

Correct, yeah, those efforts are underway.

That was great.

That's great news.

Um, and I was curious like to what extent has the lack of staff resources been a bottleneck for you to achieve your work?

I know there's a lot of constraints, and most of them don't have to do with staffing.

And I'm wondering, um, yeah, what to what extent has it been a bottleneck, and what changes do you expect uh once the two staff are fully onboarded?

I coughed at a very inopportune time.

What type of resources did you staff resources?

Staff resources.

Yeah, with two new staffers, what can you do?

How will that change your life?

Um, thank you.

I appreciate that question.

It will absolutely help us be more responsive to the encampments that are out on the street in terms of engaging with people, offering housing assessments, making shelter offers wherever beds are available, and doing what we can to connect people to resources and services.

Um it won't help with uh the other aspect of the HRT's work, which is kind of managing uh cleanups.

Um we rely heavily on staff from the um public works and and parks department and their equipment, you know, police when necessary for worker safety and and things of that nature.

And so I wouldn't anticipate that having more having more staff in neighborhood services outreach will help the pace with that because it won't.

However, you know, our goal is to try to just be more responsive to uh connect people to resources so that we don't have to do as many of those operations.

Good answer.

Thank you so much.

And I just want uh comment.

Um I just just going back to the beginning.

I really just want to thank all of you for the really informative presentation.

Um, but I I also want to just really thank you, specifically the HRT team.

Um, I really want to thank you for the work that you do.

Um council member Casarwani already acknowledged this earlier, but it's it's got to be really thankless sometimes, and it's hard work, and I it's also like some of the most important work we do in the city from a moral perspective.

And I just want you guys to know that we see that.

I see that, I think we all do, and I just wanted to highlight that.

It's really really important work and it's hard, and thank you so much for doing it.

Thank you.

Thanks, Councilmember.

Uh Councilmember Humbert.

Thank you, Madam Mayor, and I've cut down my number of questions, and I think I will articulate them in a series, kind of a gestalt.

They're all pretty related, the ones that I that I have left.

Um, and let whoever might want to answer them answer.

But first, I want to thank Peter, you Peter Radu, everyone on the homeless response team, Auditor Wong and her staff.

I truly appreciate all the work done by the homeless response team.

As council member O'Keefe said, you have a really difficult job, and it's made all the more frustrating by a lack of resources.

Your job could be described as Sisophean.

Um, I think it is, and we could not, but we could not have made the progress on homelessness that we've made without you, and it's progress that we, you know, that compares favorably to any other city around here.

And to Auditor Wong and her team, I'm really grateful that we have a nationally awarded and deeply dedicated auditor's office.

In many ways, you you are the council's eyes and ears for issues that we might not otherwise be aware of or have the bandwidth to dive into.

So here are my questions, and they all really relate to the kind of the interface, the connections that we have between the city and the county and in providing um homelessness services.

Um, first, and I'll spit them out and let you kind of respond to them globally.

I want to understand what shelters services and resources the city is putting money into that are ultimately controlled by the county, how the county's control, how does it affect our ability to focus our local shelters and resources on those who are unhoused in our own city?

Um what mechanisms do we have to influence county decisions or other otherwise exercise more local control to ensure that the resources are being directed in a manner can mentor it with our high level of investment, then the significant proportion of unhoused people coming from outside the city.

Um we have established processes or procedures for for when a city department finds they're facing a roadblock with county government.

Is there a clear line of communication from department heads or the city manager's office?

It might be for Paul to county level staff, and is there a protocol for when council members or state reps get involved to try to move things along?

I guess there are two really real clusters there, one maybe for Peter primarily, and the other for our city manager, and that's what I have.

Thanks, Councilmember.

So, with respect to your first question about um shelter, I think specifically that's controlled by the county.

Um, I I want to maybe change the terminology a little bit.

I wouldn't say so much controlled by the county, as you know the the referrals into that are sort of uh channeled through the coordinated entry process, insofar as we've got to make sure that those beds are available for anybody that's trying to get a bed through that to that coordinated entry process.

So the distinction is probably more about um just directness of referrals.

So for the non-congregate beds and those beds that are that are fully funded by the city where we don't draw down any county funding or county pass-through funding, we directly control those referrals, and so the homeless response team isn't sort of I don't want to use the word competing, but for lack of a better word, competing with other referrals into that vacant bed.

That's not the case for the vast majority of beds that were pointed out in that graph in um in the auditor's report.

Um and so it's not to say that they're not available to us, they're just not guaranteed, and so it that makes it challenging to match um those shelter resources to people when we engage with encampments over the course of you know days, weeks or months, because at any given time those beds can come and go, and it's very high hard to sort of line up those vacancies to be able to do that outreach.

Um, and so um I think that's responsive to your question about kind of how that impacts our ability to provide shelter for people with respect to the mechanisms for kind of the city-county interface on changing that policy.

Um you know, I think the the bigger policy question at this time that we're really trying to engage with the county on is the one about permanent housing and making sure that referrals are commensurate with um with the level of funding that we provide or level of local effort.

Um, and so that's kind of the question of the day that we're engaging with the county on.

Um, with with respect to the shelter referral piece, I would just stress that the majority of the beds that are subject to this coordinated entry process are congregate beds, and I think the bigger factor in the equation here is the one that Josh pointed out in his um in the presentation is that those beds just aren't as useful in terms of moving people inside.

Folks are not accepting those at the same rate and moving into those at the same rate.

Um, and so I think our effort right now is to make sure that with the county we are um you know doing whatever we can to make sure that the dollars that we put in are helping drive down our local homeless population for permanent housing, and then also trying to do whatever we can to draw down more resources, like that um recent measure WRFP that I that I mentioned earlier to try to bring on more of these non-congregate beds that we can directly sort of control referrals into, and I hope that makes sense.

And I I think there may have been a question for the city manager as well.

I can I can tag on briefly to what Peter just said in terms of uh if things get stuck with the county or we're trying to figure something out with them.

You know, the county, it's a huge bureaucracy, obviously.

Um the homeless services uh both policies and funding flows through the health department, um, and you know, both Peter and I have good relationships with the staff of the health department.

I talked, in fact, I was texting with the health department director from the county today about some things, and and Peter knows the staff there is also very well.

So it's easy for us to be in conversation with them, and but knowing that they're only a part of this whole big um system that governs how the money gets spent and the and the policies get put forward, and also I'd say you know, I know many of you and I as well have good relationships with some of the supervisors there, so that's also helpful.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

That's all I have.

Thank you so much.

Um, so just so I know we had a lot of folks just enter expecting the six o'clock meeting to start, and we are running late.

So I just want to give folks a heads up on that.

Um, we still have one, two, three, four folks to who have comments to make or questions, and um, so we will do that to complete our homelessness um special meeting.

So just so folks have a heads up.

I know we had a big group of folks just walk in.

So go ahead, Councilmember Cassarani.

Thank you very much, Madam Mayor, and so thank you again to um uh the homeless response team and the auditor's office for the the presentations, and um I know I already thanked you before for the incredible work that's being done every day in our community to address encampments.

Um, and and I had asked early about costs, and I think there was a slide shown.

So I just wanted to circle back that um the the cost of the motels, it's on the order of millions, typically five to ten million for several years, and we saw that graph of how our funding sources are going to drop off, so we have to plan ahead for how we can use resources like the Measure W County funds to backfill that loss of funding that we haven't planned for necessarily to keep these resources open and and available for folks who need them.

I did just want to ask you, I think Council Member Humbert touched on this issue of the coordinated entry placements, but can you just clarify, Mr.

Radu, you know, when we have permanent supportive housing, you know, I I want the public to understand, you know, how are placements made into that.

And if you can clarify, I think you talked about, you know, how we place into the transitional motels, but how does it differ with permanent supportive housing in terms of placements?

Thanks, Councilman.

Good question.

So I think I I want to clarify that permanent supportive housing is actually kind of a unique intervention from the federal government perspective because it has some very specific specific HUD requirements that are attached to it.

And then HUD also, the Department of Housing and Urban Development also kind of delegates down to the level of the continuum of care in Alameda County, that's kind of the county level on making other decisions.

So what is not up for discussion locally is the fact that permanent supportive housing by federal regulation has to be prioritized to people who are chronically homeless and highly vulnerable.

And the federal government defines chronic homelessness and it also gives some guidelines for for continuums of care on things that can be considered when defining vulnerability locally.

We have a housing assessment where because we don't have enough of this resource to go to everybody who may potentially need it, we want to make sure that permanent supportive housing, which is the most intensive resource, is going to the people who need it the most, and the way we do that is through a prioritization process.

We ask a series of questions that the to the best we can quantify kind of how needy are you, um, and then the county has a process that identifies people who are in a priority pool and is and and permanent supportive housing is matched from that pool.

It's very wonky, and I'm happy to you know discuss more if you have any questions, but that gives you a high-level overview.

It's it's prioritized and and rationed in a way because um demand is far exceeding supply.

Not on.

So thank you, Mr.

Radu, for your um answer there.

And and and what I I think a key takeaway here is the county is making those placements, and so people who are unsheltered who meet a high level of priority for permanent supportive housing, um, if they are unsheltered in Berkeley, they may be placed in Berkeley or elsewhere in the county, and similarly uh people who are unsheltered in other parts of the county, if they are meeting a high level of priority, they may be placed in Berkeley.

So I think that's the challenge with when we look at our count and the number of units in the pipeline that may be permanent supportive housing, we don't have direct control over who is placed there.

I still think we should be championing permanent supportive housing because we know that is it is the evidence-based solution, uh, but it also means I think that regional work is very important because we want to make sure other jurisdictions are making similar commitments, knowing that we're all gonna benefit from it.

And and of course, our our transitional motels, that is, I think very important for us to keep funding because it's a tool that we do have direct control over the placements, and we can we have used those.

I want the public to know, you know, 2nd Street.

When you are going down Cedar to get on the freeway on Gilman on our beautiful new roundabouts.

If you look down 2nd Street, in the past, you would have seen, you know, broken down RVs and tents, and and people who are unsheltered in that area, and we were able to offer motel rooms.

I believe it's a capri motel to everybody who was there.

Um and we did RV buyback um in that area too.

So people were compensated for giving up their RV, and I think this model has been proven very successful.

People are still indoors, that street has been cleared, and um, and it hasn't been um sort of um repopulated.

So, so but it's all a matter of resources.

You know, the motel room, the motel is multi-million dollar investment, the RV buyback, you know, that I think that was a was it 175 dollars per linear foot?

Correct.

So that's and that's a that's you know roughly 5,000 or so per RV, um, but that is what we found was effective in getting people to relinquish the broken down inoperable vehicle and come indoors.

And I want to acknowledge we have RVs in other parts of West Berkeley, and I hope we can use that model.

Uh it's a it's a resource question for us, and we're advocating very strongly um with the county um to receive measure W funds so that we can do more of what we know works.

Um so thank you again for all of the work.

Thank you to for the audit and um you know look forward to our continued progress in this area.

Thank you.

Um again, I know we had a lot more folks just walk in.

We are running late from our previous meeting.

That's sorry, I have four.

If you are here for bring your kids to council day, we are wrapping up our homelessness uh special meeting, which we had a presentation earlier, and now we're taking questions and comments from our council members.

I think we just have three folks left.

So, Councilmember Lunapara.

Thank you.

I'll be brief.

Um, I really just want to thank the HRT team for all of your work.

I know this is extremely difficult, and I know that your team is wholeheartedly committed to it.

So thank you so much.

Um, and I also want to thank Auditor Jenny Wong and her staff's dedicated and thorough work.

Thank you so much.

This is really important as well.

Um I have one question that I know can't be answered right now, so it kind of is just um something that I that I would be interested to see in the future.

Um that some community members brought up um about the cost of um encampment closures and and encampment sweeps um and how many resources that utilizes every time that we conduct one.

Um but yeah, I know that's not possible to answer right now, so thank you so much for the presentations.

Okay.

Uh thank you, Councilmember Bartlett.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you.

And uh I want to thank, of course, the um the city team, Mr.

Rodeo and the gang, great work and the homeless response team.

It's uh tough job.

You signed up for, but the best you can, thank you.

And of course, Auditor Wong, another penetrating report, as always.

Thank you.

Uh I have a couple questions, and I'll just, you know, give my my uh point of view here.

Um so one I asked before we left, I'm trying to get at the the cost basis here and the what's what's happening.

Uh I know I've read and report it said we're federal funding uh is just under 30 percent of the dollars we use here, apparently.

And so adding in or looking at the federal tax credits that provide the financing for the many of the buildings you mentioned in your in your report, like the model shared building, the affordable housing units on the pipeline.

What would you say the federal tax component is that?

I think uh HTS Director Margot is probably the best position to talk about uh federal tax credits on affordable housing and the impacts that they could have, and especially also in light with the way that they were recently changed.

Sorry, I just there's a lot of folks standing.

So if you're if you've got seats near you and you can move in towards the middle more so that folks can sit down if they want to, I just want to make sure we're letting people sit.

Especially the little kids, the little kids out there.

Right, the little kids, right?

All right.

His little kids here, that's why he's saying that.

Okay.

Sorry, go ahead.

So I'll there we go.

Okay, thank you.

Um, I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?

Uh yeah, the trying to look at the I guess the impact um of federal tax credits and our sort of panopoly of solutions.

We mentioned earlier in the report, uh, the buildings coming up, which we've built, future ones, and the impact homelessness.

And so, trying to understand the change in tax credits or potential loss of them, what that means.

Yeah, so we certainly are affordable projects do take advantage of the low-income housing tax credit program.

Um, that's that comes from the through the federal government through the states, and we our local funds leverage about four to one, and that includes tax credits and other state dollars, so it's not just tax credits.

The one example that I have available right now is the most recent project that we finished, and I think that was about 45% financed with the low income housing tax credits.

I don't actually think there is a reduction on the horizon for those.

Um, from what I understand, I think that's actually one of the the few programs that is recommended for an increase through the through the federal government.

So I don't see that being reduced in the you know on the horizon.

I think some of the other programs that we benefit through HUD um are more at risk.

That's great.

But yeah, they do not every project uses them, but a lot of projects do.

Great, thank you.

And then I guess um for the team as well.

Um are we still required to implement the housing first model when you use these uh these other dollars?

Uh so housing first is currently stable on California and um policy in our contracts, yes, council member.

Okay, because I do hear I do hear that that that is sometimes uh a barrier to successful um recuperation and getting getting back on your feet because we're living people who are trying to get clean and others are not.

Um now essentially, and I'm gonna thank you for this is my quick all my all my questions.

I want to just help frame the best I can after years of working on this.

Um, you know, it's important to remember that 50 years ago, for some reason the state stopped building housing and stopped building supportive housing, mental health facilities, uh and nationwide it happened too.

So I don't know what's going on here with the older generation, but now we're we're down the the street we're downstream uh from the lack of investment.

Um and nationwide it's the homeless is up 18%, it's not just here.

So, but despite all this, Berkeley has invested time, energy, and resources, and we've achieved great results.

We have a 45% reduction, homelessness, the best decrease in the county.

We have the lowest eviction rate in the county, um, and uh we have over a thousand and something units in the pipeline.

So um here's the question though, and we get into the cost now.

So the home seek, the home key sites, uh, according to my calculations are about thirteen hundred dollars a room per month.

That seems reasonable, that seems like a reasonable number, but then the motel-based shelter, the non-congrate motel shelters uh are nearly $8,000 per room per month.

And I'm just you know, numbers like that uh make me want to question what's happening here and if we can really succeed.

Uh the all-home plan, which we talk about in the presentation, um, says in order for us to house 600 people and reduce our homelessness by 75 percent over five years, would take nearly 300 million dollars.

Um, you know, these numbers don't make sense really.

I understand I went through this with um our recent project step of housing, very proud of it.

Um, we achieved great savings on the the physical infrastructure, but the service piece uh remained an intractable cost, and so you know I think we need to really accept the status quo will not allow us to meet our goals.

Uh the dollars just don't add up.

So, you know, looking at new models of service delivery outside the box.

I think it's necessary to get these people off the street.

Otherwise, we'll be back here in a year having the same conversation.

Those are my thoughts.

Thank you so much.

Okay, another group of folks have just come in.

So just so you know, we're wrapping up our previous meeting still.

So what that means, and I'm about to make some comments, and then what that means is we're gonna have a break.

So um during that break, our council members are gonna go back there, we're gonna have a minute because we've been here for two hours, and then we're gonna come back and we'll do our actual meeting.

I know we have a number of um ceremonial items for folks that are here for bring your kid to council.

Um I'm gonna run back real quick and then I'm gonna come back out and talk to you.

So if you're here for bring your kid to council, you can bring your kid up to the front after we take our break or while we're taking our break.

Okay, so real quick, there were some comments or some questions that came up that I want to make sure we address quickly.

Could you uh city manager just give us a quick update on SEU and what happened with any cars or tools?

That was brought up as a question.

Uh, so the SEU program uh was transferred from the city to the to Alameda County to be rolled into a broader program that they have.

Um, and not to be Berkeley specific, they will respond to Berkeley Berkeley specific calls, uh, but they will also have uh uh greater number of staff who actually will be more available to calls than we did with just a single specific program.

Um also the cost of that program is no longer on the city's books, so that's another important consideration.

Thank you.

And then just for folks who are asking about the permanent supportive housing at People's Park, I wanted to let you know that I heard from UC Berkeley that they will have an announcement to make soon about the developer for that site.

So I just want to let folks know that is really exciting.

So we'll hopefully have some news very soon.

Um, I've been following that very closely.

Um I wanna there was a question about income info and success data.

I just want to say would would be great to see that, and I definitely support us having some more metrics that are available so we can be more transparent with the work that we're doing.

Um, there was a question about how can our residents like what can our residents do to advocate for more resources and for coordinated entry for our city.

I know you addressed that.

Is there anything our residents can do to support the work you're doing there?

Uh I would say engage in the county board of supervisors and those meetings just as they engage with the city council.

I think the county is a critical partner in this effort, and and so um engaging in that public process.

That's great, thank you very much.

And then someone else asked about a parcel tax increase.

We we haven't had a conversation about a parcel tax increase for homeless services, so I just wanted to let that person know.

Um, and then I'm also interested in getting information about the cost of encampment closures because I think that that is important to understand as we're we're working through this.

Okay, so I have some very brief comments.

Um, I want to say first of all, don't let this data discourage you.

I hope that this data is actually quite encouraging that we are doing a lot of work, that we're headed on the right direction.

I know we need funding, but we are doing uh a lot of work to make sure that we're advocating for funding.

Um, if you are interested in learning more about measures O and P and how that funding has gone to such great use, I really hope folks you can literally just Google measure O, City of Berkeley, Measure P, City of Berkeley, and you can read all about the funding and where that's going to.

I think that that piece is very important for transparency's sake.

And for the county measure W funding, um, I want folks to know that I am now actually chairing our working group, our homelessness working group at the Alameda County Conference of Mayors.

So I am working on this issue regionally, working with mayors across the county, and it's very exciting to be able to chair that.

And so I'd be happy to bring some reports back.

I feel like that needs to happen in a more public way.

And then I just want to also say that I am very concerned about the federal cuts that have been made to food services, to health care, to housing, that that is going to greatly impact our unhoused population.

And I want folks to know that that will mean we will have more unhoused people in our city, period.

Um, so that is something we need to keep in mind, and that's in the it's in the future.

Um, and I really want to also highlight something that folks have said, it doesn't matter how you feel about the issue of homelessness.

You know, what is really important, I think what we can all agree on is that we need places for people to go.

So I am advocating very strongly for those resources and uh for places for people to go.

And I know our city manager and our city staff and our city council is is also working hard on that as well.

So thank you both.

I'll thank you all for your presentations.

Um, thank you all for your really great questions and for your comments this evening and um and since there's no action for this I'll just say thank you we we're accepting your information yes okay I'll move the recommendation by the city auditor second we do need action all right and are there is there anyone opposed okay then we will pass the with just as I can add with the with the one amendment that I made as well sorry say again with the amendment from the city manager's uh comments earlier yes yes okay and the person that our seconder is okay with that as well who was our seconder yes okay very good all right so there is no uh opposition so that motion passes we accept the report thank you very much and is there a motion to adjourn second okay any uh opposition to um adjourning okay then the meeting is adjourned thank you