And myself, Councilmember Tui.

Tonight we have one main issue on our agenda, which is homelessness response update from staff.

So we'll dive right into that.

And I believe Julie and Ben are here to present.

Thank you and welcome.

Thank you, Councilmember Toy.

Good afternoon.

I'm very happy to be here.

You might recall several months ago we were here and we shared with you our opioid response plan.

It gave us some guidance, gave you some information.

It gave the community clarity of what we're doing or where we're headed.

And it sparked that idea of this this is something similar that we want to do with homeless response.

And we hope to come back in the future and bring our care team to you as well to make sure that you have an update on that program.

In addition, the community development team is working on a number of data sets so that you'll have ready access data around all of the different work that we do within our department.

We've been around since 2019, but we've never really formalized kind of the open data portal and how to use the dashboards and the great resources we have within our own IT department.

So that's kind of been a fun uh opportunity.

We used our summer interns this year, and they were spectacular in really diving into the different data sets that the community might want to have available to them.

And then they even created the Excel spreadsheets that then can go into the data portals that the IT department will help us to orchestrate.

So that's the future work, uh, some of the future work just to kind of help um everybody understand what's going on or try to help better tell the story of the work that we're doing.

And certainly the work that we're doing regarding uh the homeless population, oftentimes, you know, it's not just that easy.

A homeless population isn't just people who are are on the streets that we see that are visible to, you know, or concerning, maybe unwell.

Some of those people are housed.

Some of the people that are unhoused are employed or parents, you know.

So it's a very complicated and nuanced um system.

So everything that we're sharing with you today is kind of broad with some details, but it really is the best part of our work is that we've been able to continue to grow and be amenable to the population and certainly by adding alternative response, adding uh medication on the streets with our street medicine program is really also helping this population as well as the population who are unwell who are housed.

So Ben Breden is here.

He is our homeless response coordinator.

He's been doing this work since 2021.

Uh, you may remember 2021 was a time when our downtown core uh was struggling with um a lot of individuals that were living unhoused.

Uh it was after COVID, so many things that are during COVID and so many things had shut down.

So Ben came on board to really help us to continue to have our balanced approach where we ensure that we have services and resources, but also that we address the impacts that businesses and residents are experiencing related to safety and all the other things that might go along with some of that negativity.

So I'm going to pass it on to him.

He'll share a kind of continued balanced approach.

Um, and we'll be here to answer questions.

Great.

Thank you so much for allowing me to be here.

Um, did you all get the printouts that I provided already?

Great.

So wonderful.

Uh, thanks so much.

Uh it's it's a real privilege to be here sharing with you.

Um excited to to talk about the good work.

I'm I feel very grateful to be part of the community development department.

Um, this evening I'm going to share some of the areas of focus that community development is working on regarding homelessness.

Uh, and I really hope that you'll hear that we are emphasizing safety and security and also services, resources, support.

Um I believe that we're developing a balanced approach that has compassion and accountability.

Um, and that really can reduce homelessness and improve the quality of life for all of our residents.

So I'm going to share five areas of focus that that I've been working on services and support, um, housing and shelter, safety, internal collaboration and engagement and outreach.

So I've provided the slides for you, but also the one page are here.

This is available on our community development webpage.

Uh that'll kind of be the roadmap for what I'm sharing about this evening.

Feel free to interrupt and ask any other any questions.

Otherwise, I'll just kind of run through this and we could do questions at the end as well.

Uh, so the first focus that I'd like to share about is services and support.

Uh, one thing that I believe is really important in having a robust um strategy to addressing homelessness is developing strong partnerships with nonprofit organizations, with faith communities, and other individuals and agencies who are invested in our community.

So I believe that we do what we can and should do, and we support those nonprofits, faith communities, agencies in doing what they can and should do.

So groups like Emote, uh, which came out of the mayor's drug task force as a recommendation, Courage to Change, um, Everett Faith in Action, the Hot Meals Coalition, just to name a handful, they do incredible work in our city, and they provide transportation to and from uh treatment centers.

They have peer support, uh, health management, other basic needs that are so needed in Everett.

And our partnership with agencies like this offers as often as possible fiscal support, but really also work to encourage best practices with their programs.

I do want to highlight a few of these.