Welcome to business session.

Our first item is approval of minutes from business session of March 5th, 2026.

Is there a motion?

So move.

Second.

The moved and seconded that we approve the minutes for business session of March 5th, 2026.

All in favor indicate by saying aye.

Aye.

All opposed.

Motion passes.

The item for discussion today is the Housing Gateway Program.

I believe we have the housing department and other friends here with us.

We'll hear a presentation.

Hi, good afternoon.

My name is Mary Owens.

I'm the Deputy Director of Housing and Community Development for the City of Kansas City.

And I'm joined by the HM.

My name is Mandy Chapman Simple.

I'm managing partner of Clutch Consulting Group.

And I'm Kevin Barth.

I'm with Commerce Bank here in Kansas City.

And we're here today to uh follow up on the ordinance that was passed on the Housing Gateway program in February.

Um we are going to be providing you some updates uh regarding the housing gateway program.

Um and we have uh Mandy Chapman Simple today to discuss with you uh more details about the program that have been developed uh since the inception of the ordinance.

So the housing gateway program, we have some updates to share with all of you.

Um since February, uh the initial one million dollars that was appropriated to the housing gateway program.

We have uh obtained an additional three million dollars.

Um one million of that was uh through our uh the appropriation that this council passed in our budget process.

Um and we've also identified $2 million in home funds that we plan to use for uh tenant-based rental assistance, um, and that is subject to HUD approval, but that's an additional two million dollars that we plan to put towards the housing gateway program.

In addition to uh funding changes, we have also um through the business community's generosity retained Mandy Chapman Simple uh who is uh a housing expert uh from Houston to advise the city on our homeless strategy and our housing gateway program.

Um, and in addition to that, we've obtained the KC Chamber of Commerce endorsement for the program, which Kevin will be discussing with you momentarily.

Um and we would like to invite all of you uh to our program tomorrow uh where Mandy will be presenting on the Housing Gateway program to members of our business community, foundations, and city leadership.

So that'll be tomorrow um at 8 a.m.

Um very briefly I did want to discuss uh what was in our ordinance regarding um our uh evaluation of the homeless response uh system um as part of the housing gateway program um we are directed uh the housing department is directed to perform an evaluation of our homeless system and make recommendations on how to improve that system.

Um we did want to share with you all that uh there have been uh resignations from the um from the board of directors for the continuum of care.

Uh, the executive committee, the president, vice president, and secretary um have uh resigned from those positions.

Um, we have an upcoming NOFO uh coming on June 1st, which creates some um concerns from from us regarding how the city will be applying for and receiving HUD funding.

Um and we've made um a recommendation to you all that an audit uh will be or should be performed um by the city uh with respect to some of the uh claims that were raised by the executive committee.

Um and upon receipt of an audit report, we will fold that into our systems analysis as part of our housing gateway systems response valuation.

All right, I'm gonna turn it over to Mandy who will walk us through uh the housing gateway program.

Great.

Well, thank you.

It's a pleasure to be here, and I'm uh excited to share with you the work that we've been doing with the city team and uh in partnership with the business community to really uh uh reimagine the way homelessness um is uh responded to in this community, recognizing that there's incredible work that's being done by service providers today, but that some of that work uh is um not necessarily reaching some of all of the individuals that are finding themselves outside.

And so we're excited to really think about how to be strategic partners in this process with the city and with the business community to create a collective impact structure that can really respond and meet the moment of homelessness as it is today.

I'm part of an organization called Clutch Consulting.

We're a small consulting firm based in Houston, and we were really born out of work that was led by the Houston mayor's office that resulted in a 60% reduction in homelessness in Houston in about four years.

And so from that work, we really found ourselves committed to a formula that tackles unsheltered homelessness in a very direct way, and but also required not just planning and consideration, but real support to implement.

And so we formed Clutch Consulting so that we could work from boardrooms to encampments, all the way to stand beside our outreach workers in the field, and help communities respond differently to this issue and get real results in real time.

This new formula, you know, was something born out of Houston, but one that we wanted to test in cities across the country and certainly recognize that there have been shifting conditions around homelessness for some time, especially since that dramatic reduction that we achieved in 2016, almost 10 years ago.

And so this new formula is has been applied in cities across the country, each adapting it to their unique conditions, each contributing to new lessons learned and to a continued evolution.

And you can see that there are new cities joining in this effort each week, working diligently to close encampments and to move communities forward, creating proof that investment in homelessness response can produce real remedy and real relief to the individuals experiencing homelessness, but also to the broader community itself who are experiencing homelessness as it plays out on the streets.

Clutch has worked in more than 12 communities to transform those their street response.

We've closed, you know, hundreds of encampments, we've closed four whole zones, downtown zones in cities across the country, and directly supported the resolution of over 6,000 individuals from unsheltered homelessness.

And looking at the data, understanding what are the drivers of homelessness in your community, what are the conditions around homelessness, what's the current performance, and then creating a more targeted strategy to leverage all of your current capacities and to expand or amplify in a strategic way the ability to address both those pain points that are in front of us but also to prevent those pain points from returning by really anticipating who will be flowing into homelessness in the future and how do we intervene early to avoid some of the long-term complexities that we see playing out on our streets today.

We did that in December and have quickly now moved into galvanizing public and private partnerships so that we can get to ground as quickly as possible.

I just want to appreciate that this is not an elongated planning process, but really a process to get to action as quickly as we can.

So without further ado, and without going into all the details on this slide, I wanted to give you a snapshot of what we learned from that system modeling so that we're all starting from the same place and understanding the issue.

There are about 1,750 single adults that will flow into homelessness each year in the Kansas City region.

What's so interesting is about 87% of those individuals are experiencing new homelessness.

And so that represents a real opportunity to intervene early.