Working with us so that we can be aware of that.

Um so yeah, that's kind of our parameters for this part.

And I so we have our pilot and tip discussion as well.

So if we could spend about half an hour on this, half an hour on that, and we'll all have a minute to catch a breath before our um before our meeting at 3 30.

Well, thank you.

Thank you for your time.

Um, if if I can just start by taking two minutes to explain why this is so critical, is as I think you all know uh the per capita homeless rates in Chattanooga are really no different than other Metro Tennessee cities.

However, our unsheltered uh rate is significantly higher, approximately 68% uh compared to about 22 to 25 percent in other metro areas, and the reason is there's just simply not enough shelter beds.

Why does that matter?

Um, when somebody is sheltered but homeless, it takes approximately or on average 400 days to get rehoused.

But when somebody becomes unsheltered, that number skyrockets to an average of seven years.

The reason for that is um it's really hard to do the things that you need to do to get rehoused when every moment of your life is faced with survival.

And so a 24-7 low barrier shelter would allow people uh safety, security, and assistance uh to uh work on whatever is necessary to develop an income stream to get benefits to uh to get housed and shorten that amount of time being unhoused.

And so we really believe that uh the absence of uh such a structure in this city exacerbates what is already a really big crisis.

One last thing when uh somebody experiences more than a year uh unsheltered, uh their mortality rate increases three to four times that of somebody that experiences sheltered housing, and so this is not just a problem of what it looks like on the street, this is also a life and death issue.

Uh so in January we we've submitted um three proposals initially to the mayor's office uh about different options.

One was a warehouse that was available uh at 12th and Peebles that uh we felt could be uh restructured for a shelter.

Uh we also considered uh the uh the the lot that was the former sanctioned encampment that's a city owned lot that would be a build to suit kind of structure.

Uh we initially looked at the family promise building, and then um uh Kevin Rogue came back and said, Would you consider building on your own footprint?

We started working with our architect to look at different uh concepts with that.

Um I think the two most viable options really are um the city-owned lot building new construction or uh building it on our footprint.

Um as it's been explained to me.

Um there's probably some political expediency in building it on our site because we're already zoned as being able to have a shelter and have residences there, it's on our property, and there'd be some economies of scale gained and that we could um uh have a somewhat lower cost of operations, being that we currently have 56 people working on our site currently, and some of those could be shifted over to shelter operations.

Um I met with um councilman Harvey and uh and chief of staff rogue about six weeks ago uh talking about this very subject and about what it would take to uh put together a proposal uh a fleshed out proposal for uh building on our site.

And so we are currently in the process of working with our architect to design a facility that would hold approximately 400 to 500 individuals on two floors.

Um interesting, you would not be able to tell any difference looking at our structure from the street because this would be the subterranean basement that we have uh that would be renovated and the back administrative offices.

Um we're also looking to uh redesign the playground into a walled-off courtyard that would allow an outdoor gathering space because I don't think anybody's happy with the amount of gathering that happens on um 11th Street, and so between our community center, our porch, and the back area, I think that would address a lot of concerns.

A lot of cities that build these have a pretty pretty big price tag because they're also building dining facilities, community center facilities, case management facilities, clothing departments, what have you, medical facilities between us and homeless health care, all that exists.

All we need is really to establish the dormitory space.

We're we're really still working through that because my architect and I just got back from uh Colorado Springs in Memphis this weekend uh touring a couple facilities.

Um but I hope to have that, the operational plan and a budget uh into the hands of you in the mayor's office at the very beginning of September.

Initially, we um in the proposal that I submitted, we asked for 2.8 million dollars of uh capital funds because that was what I was aware was was on hand and available for a project such as this.

Um depending on the what the architectural plans look like and what that's going to determine our staffing plans, uh some of our utility costs, and that'll inform our budget.

But when we were doing a similar exercise of determining what our budget would need to be for the converted carta bus barn, uh I believe the annual operating costs were somewhere around, and Casey, do you remember?

Was it was like $930,000 annually?

Do you remember?

I don't remember off the top of my head.

I could go back and look at some of the that's the number that sticks in my head.

We're hoping that we can come in closer to $150,000 if it's on our site.

Um so yeah, those are those are the two options that I think would be uh best.

I really don't like the idea of reconfiguring or converting an aging warehouse uh that was built for tomatoes and not people.

Um the family promise bar uh building would only hold uh approximately 80 individuals, uh, which really wouldn't really make a significant impact given the fact that we're looking at an unsheltered homeless population somewhere around a thousand to twelve hundred people in Chattanooga.

I have reached out to a number of council members from the county uh to let them know that I'm gonna be asking them for some money as far as this is concerned as well.

We're pretty well positioned as far as partners uh in the area for partnering for services, whether it's uh adult education, health services.

We're currently working with uh UTC, Chad State, and uh Southern to provide a lot of those services.

Um I'm pretty fond of partnering with other organizations that are looking to uh to support this effort.

Uh one other thing is we are pleased that this facility would be able to house both um male and female individuals, which is fairly unusual as typically cities will uh have one shelter devoted to one gender, another organization perhaps working with another gender.

So we're looking at a one-third, two-thirds split women to female just because that's the basic makeup of our uh population that we're serving.

Okay.

Yeah, councilwoman burst.

Hi, Baron.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

Um it's good to see a different idea coming to us that feels like it's got some more teeth to it and got at least a plan, concrete plan.

Uh I have some questions about uh I just want to verify that I hear you correctly, $750,000 operating costs.

Is that that's what you're predicting?

But I want to back up because I I for one take for granted all the facilities that you all do have because I think most of the attention ends up on 11th street.

Yes.

So could you provide for me just a high-level picture of the various facilities that you all do have?

Sure.