It is two o'clock and we do have a quorum and lots of guests, so we'll go ahead and get started here.

Uh kind of motion on the minutes.

All right.

So without further ado, I'd like to introduce David and Lauren who are here to talk to us about the Provenent Place project.

We've had a long day as we were kind of discussing, and there were some discussions.

We can just move right to the boat now.

There's discussion of whether to postpone this presentation or not, and I said this is an exciting project.

We need to hear about it.

Well, thank you for that.

So take it away.

Well, great, Mr.

Chairman, thank you, members of the councils.

Good to be with you.

I'm David Denmark with the McClellan Foundation.

My colleague here is Lauren Hall with First Things First.

And we're grateful for the opportunity to present a plan to address homelessness in our community.

It's called Provident Place.

You can see an image of it up there on the screen.

And in the next 15 minutes, you're going to hear a lot of facts and figures.

But there's one thread that pulls through them all, and that is children.

Everything we talk about today is about children experiencing homelessness with their families.

We're gonna be moving fairly quickly through the slides just so we can leave ample time for your questions at the end.

But on any slide that you need any clarification clarification, is please interrupt us.

And we just want to do anything we can to get there.

So please interrupt us if you need to, or you can hold your questions and we'll come back to them at the end.

First to start us off, I'd like to calibrate us around some definitions.

And according to these five categories, there's over 1,40 children in Hamilton County today experiencing homelessness.

Today we have 124 beds spread across those four providers here in town.

The average cost per bed is just under $17,000 per year.

And the coalition estimates that we need 30 uh 385 beds to meet the present need, which leaves us with 261 of a shortfall.

And that would also be 43% of the estimated citywide need for homeless families and their children.

They will not be for families.

So we pulled them out.

They're not in any of the tallies that you see.

But Baron King wanted to make sure that I mentioned that they do intend to use those to continue addressing homelessness in our community.

What we're asking for the city today is for you to donate the airport in to a charity that we created in 2013 to fund the operations of the family shelter.

There will be a 12-member board governing the work.

And the donated property will be used exclusively to address two serious challenges facing our community.

That is the emergency shelter for homeless children and their families or their guardians, and the creation of new affordable housing units.

During our QA time, I have a couple of slides or diagrams over here.

I can show you how we plan to lay out the property between the two emergency shelter and the affordable affordable units.

And if there are any point in the future that the airport in or the provident place is not used exclusively for those two purposes, there is a clause in the D that will revert back to the city and in a lot better shape than you will have been given it to you.

And given the day that you've had, I hope this is the best news you want to hear.

We are not asking for any new monies out of the city budget for this project.

Oh, thank you.

So while we're not asking for any new money, we are able to provide some savings and benefits.

As you probably know, $90,000 is the current budget line item for the carrying cost of Airport Inn, and that does not include staffing costs.

On top of that, we will have an operating budget with services that equal 1.45 million dollars that will be provided without city contribution.

Long-term community benefits.

There are several longitudinal studies that show how family-centered shelters provide benefits for communities.

And I've listed some sources there, and you have it in the slide for you.

If you want me to send those to you, feel free to ask, and I will send the research.

But ultimately, they all say that family-centered shelters reduce repeat homelessness, child welfare involvement, and crisis system costs for communities.

Plus, children gain stability, safety, and support that is linked to long-term improved mental health outcomes, stronger educational outcomes, and stronger financial outcomes.

And we all know when children have those things, it reduces the risk that they will be part of the justice system later on and all of the costs involved with that.

So here's the plan.

Phase one, when we get the green light, we would start to bring the entire building up to City Code, renovating those 25 rooms, 134 beds total, including cribs for families with children.

And we would also build out a micro child care center as part of this plan.

Phase two, which would be estimated to start in winter of 2027, is to do the affordable housing units that David mentioned.

And safety and security, we are taking this very seriously.