Aloha, good afternoon, everyone.

It is once again Wednesday, March 11th, twenty twenty-six.

The time is one thirty-nine PM with the committee on budget, please come back to order.

Next, in our lineup of departments, we do have with us the Department of Community Services for your information.

For the record, Anton Cruckey, Director of Department of Community Services, and our Deputy Director Edward Los Bonos.

And I like to walk through those today.

But you know, the overall city budget is really fiscally prudent this year.

And so we want to make sure that our most needy, whether it be from Cakey to Kapuna, you know, they're not bearing the brunt of a of a of a budget, but at the same time, we're delivering service to them.

And we keep our eye on that.

I'm very proud, and we all came because we wanted to honor the work that you're doing to help complete the budget.

But the administration, uh my partner Lee Wang and I, we run the administration department, she's our ASO.

Office of Grants Management, I have Shane Akaji, and I also have uh Jordana Fiera, who's our child care coordinator, and that resides in that office.

From our community assistance division today, we have Carrie Kanashiro.

From our Work Hawaii Division, we have Le Naala, Nakamura.

And from our elderly affairs division, we have Derek Arioshi.

From our community-based development division, we had Ted Hayden.

And just joining us this year, our new uh public information officer, Amanda Stevens.

Uh also in administration, I I I misspoke there.

We also have the homeless solutions office is in that department, and Roy Miahira is here today.

Thank you.

Okay, so our sets of funds mostly come from federal government and state government.

And in fact, 80% of our funds come from outside of the city.

And even if you look at that of the 40 million of the city funds, 10 million of that is in charter in the grants and aid.

So we, as a department, we really leverage the outside funds coming into the city.

But you know, we're also living in a in an environment where the uh federal landscape changes like on a weekly basis.

And so we keep tabs on that, and what that causes is there are things that that happen that shifts, and also things like the government shutdown that we've experienced.

And so we keep our eye on that, and then there are moves that we make as we do that where we pivot and provide services even in the face of that.

Also, the HUD Regional Nine Regional Administrator has visited twice, and we keep pretty close to him, uh, William Spencer on what's happening in the HUD community.

And throughout the presentation, I'll talk a little bit about some of those pivots.

So, as I go through each of our different divisions, the DCS administration, like I mentioned before, also houses the uh homeless solutions office.

And so we have through this administration, I have a chart up there that really demonstrates in really focused, laser-focused activities in providing new beds for our homeless.

Now, when we analyze problems, we really try to understand what pieces in there are really have moves that we can make.

And I know when I first came into this position, the HUD philosophy was you put somebody in a room, you surround them with services, and you'll end homelessness.

Well, that will work for some people, but it doesn't work for all the people.

We have people that have different issues that that won't address it.

And we also find that those aren't successful beddings.

They go into those beds and then they leave.

And so we worked hard on looking at how we could develop what I've kind of labeled beds of many flavors.

And you can see by this chart the amount of beds that we put into pit into play since 2022.

And these beds turn over uh periodically, and so they actually represent more than those numbers.

And I think when you hear the the mayor's state of the city address, he'll talk about some of the numbers he promised and some of the numbers he achieved via these new beds that we've installed.

We also in this in this uh department in this division, we have the Kakua Command Center.

And this is a new piece of of work that we're doing in our solutions for homeless.

So what we'll be doing in the command center is we'll be doing, we'll really be looking for data that will help us make better decisions and then track our decisions and keep ourselves accountable for them.

Examples of things we would do in the command center would be um shelter availability beds so that we can we can triage people to beds.

We'll be tracking diverted phone calls from 911 and the savings that we create to the city for those diverted phone calls.

We'll also be tracking some of the new processes we have, like the MH3 that I think Dr.

Ireland talked about with you, where we can track when we pick someone up, go to a hospital, track when they're gonna leave the hospital so they don't come to the street, and we can get them right to another bed.

The challenge in this in this area though, of course, is enough enough people and enough enough places and people to run them so that you can get complete flow.

Uh sometimes I'm known for saying sometimes when the music stops, we don't have enough beds, but we have a lot more than we used to have.

The Office of Grants Management uh will be coming in front of you uh this spring with with the grants and aid proposals that we've done.

So we scored those proposals from the commission, and uh we're being putting those together and be presenting that to you.

Over 10 million dollars were was awarded uh to the community, and we look for the similar amount uh this coming year.

Also in this uh group is the child care coordinator's office, and she published this year for the city, first time in a in that that I know of, really, with the child care action plan that we can work on.

Child care is a huge economic difference maker uh in our economy for people to work, people have access, you know, they need access and they need affordability.

The community assistance division really represents the largest um funding uh division that we have in the department.

And this really uh the the main part of that is the section eight.

But in addition to that, they they the public housing authority does home loans, home improvement loans, and other activities.

And you can see that the amount of money that they put in and how many households they serve.

But you know, we this has been an area since it's so large, was so subject to things that happened in the federal government.