Welcome to business session.

Our first item is approval of minutes for business session of October 10th or October 21st, 2021.

Is there a motion?

So it's been moved and seconded.

All in favor indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

All opposed.

The motion passes.

We will start with a houselessness plan update.

I believe Ms.

Gilmore.

Good afternoon, Mr.

Mayor and Council Members Kamiko Gilmore City Manager's Office.

I have with me Jennifer Tidwell from our housing director, and also Councilwoman Parkshaw will have a part of this presentation as well.

So we want to start out with some early success.

We want to highlight the success of our 90-day hotel program.

In all, we provided 98 days at the hotels with 12 hotels in the area, and during that time, over 400 people were sheltered.

More than 100 access improved benefits, and two healthy babies were born.

Absolutely.

Is that better?

Perfect.

Thank you.

Yes, I I can hear myself better as well.

So and like I was saying, I I love to say that two healthy babies were born because that probably would not have happened if they were not in the shelter at the time.

Next, we are excited to announce that as of this week, the emergency rental assistance program team has expended 100% of the $14 million received by the housing and community development department for rental assistance.

Through the emergency rental assistance program, 3,098 households that were at risk of homelessness were served at an average of 4,400 per household.

And we will continue to continue the emergency rental assistance program, which will divert individuals and families from becoming homeless and unhoused with the ERAP 2 funds.

Currently, will automatically be entered into the system to receive these funds.

The operations at the emergency rental assistance center were also enhanced by a volunteer force of many women and men from St.

James United Methodist Church led by Yuvette Richards.

And in addition, we'd like to also thank the community organizations that were asked that were tasked to distribute funds as well.

They, as trusted community partners, are an asset to this work.

Earlier this year, the manager introduced a vision for housing.

The goal is to create 10,000 new low-income housing units by 2027.

And this is aggressive but definitely necessary if we are going to provide affordable housing for residents and decrease our incidence of homelessness in our community.

And according to the May 29th report by the U.S.

Interagency Council on Homelessness, when housing costs are more affordable and housing opportunities are more readily available, there is a lower likelihood of households becoming homeless.

And households who do become homeless can exit homelessness more quickly with greater likelihood of sustaining that housing long term.

Director Tidwell.

So this is not an expansive list, and there could be more creative alternatives out there for us to pursue.

However, I do believe that this is a great list to start with, and we will be very aggressive about creating and preserving units throughout the city.

And I do also want to mention there is a mention here about some innovative methods for housing.

We are working with organizations like the KC tenants on housing ideas, so we're hoping to bring some additional ideas forward in the in the future.

And I want to add as well that we'll be working with a lot of our neighborhoods in redevelopment efforts as well.

And so we have lots of thoughts about how to get those units done.

Director Tidwell, this is yours.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

We the council approved two projects just recently for two projects, and it will uh give us 152 units.

These units are 60 percent of median income and less, with half of them being 30 percent of median income.

So we believe that this is a great start uh in trying to create affordable housing.

In addition to that, uh 12.5 million dollars of that was set aside uh under the American Rescue Plan Act.

Uh about four uh million of that will go to those two projects.

However, we are hoping that as we uh move forward, especially in the second tranche of the American Rescue Plan, that we'll get additional funds in order to uh try to put more projects and more units on the street.

Uh the allocation process is under review uh with our housing trust fund ordinance, and we we're hoping that that will uh come to fruition real soon so that we can get working.

Councilwoman Parkshaw, chair of the mayor's houseless task force will provide an update on the work of the task force starting with the recent extreme weather coordination efforts led by our emergency operations center.

Councilwoman.

Thank you very much.

Um, if you'll advance to the next slide.

As we all see the weather is getting colder outside, uh, which brings us more to a sense of urgency for establishing extreme weather plans.

Um, however, we are working very diligently and and with a sense of urgency to establish this plan for cold weather.