Yes, Madam Chair, you do not see.

Go ahead and read the um and upon activation of the emergency alarm signal, all persons should immediately exit the building.

Please use the exits to the left or right front of the council chamber or the east or west day.

Well outside the rear doors of the chamber.

Do not use elevators or escalators.

After exiting the building, proceed down 9th Street and into the assembly area located in the former public safety building parking lot.

Able persons should assist visually and hearing impaired visitors with exiting the building.

Public speaker guidelines.

Individuals wishing to speak during the public hearings and the public comment period, generally allow three minutes to speak.

Persons appearing before the committee are not allowed to campaign for public office, promote private business ventures, use language of a personal nature, which insults or demeans any person, including comments directed at public officials or staff members that are not related to the official duties or address a question staff members directly.

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Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Is there anyone here for our public comment period?

Public comment is now open.

Is there anyone present who wishes to address this committee regarding items not on today's agenda?

Madam Chair, seeing none and no one signed up to speak virtually before the 10 a.m.

deadline.

The public comment period is now closed and back to the committee.

Members, we have our first presentation from Paulson Sailors who's a steam colleague from uh from our health and human services department.

She's gonna join us and give us our annual report.

We usually always hear at the end of the season from our inclement weather uh shelter stakeholders and kind of get some metrics and outcomes on how that shelter was run this year.

So without further ado, I'll say welcome.

Thank you, Chair Lynch, and hello, council members.

My name is Allison Saylors.

I'm the manager of the Office of Homeless Services.

And like Chair Lynn said, I'll be giving you an overview of this year's inclement weather shelter.

Brief agenda, um, we'll talk about kind of the data for individuals and families from this past inclement weather season.

We'll go over the budget and the sheltering budget specifically for homeless services from this past fiscal year.

Um, we'll give an update on successes and opportunities uh for the future, and we'll also talk a bit about um we all remember winter storms, Fern and Giana and the special efforts that went there to keep people sheltered and safe.

Just as a refresher, um, Inkling Weather Shelter is operated nightly by Salvation Army at 1900 Chamberlain Avenue.

Uh we have actually folks from Inklet Weather Shelter and Surge here in the office or in the room.

So I do want to give them a shout out.

Octavia, Emily, and Matthew are here representing the awesome work that they did this past winter as Inklet Weather Shelter and SERD shelter operators.

Um weather shelter runs November 15th through April 15th, has 106 beds total, 66 men's and 40 women's.

Typical operating hours are 5 p.m.

to 8 a.m.

Um, with an extended hours based on temperature.

Surge operates or is eligible for activation December 1st through March 31st.

And that activation is based on the weather being 40 degrees or below for at least two hours, and inclined weather shelter having reached capacity.

That contract this year was for 60 beds, when those typical operating hours are the same as inclement weather shelter again with the option to extend based on temperature.

Uh, and just noting that um on nights when surge is activated, transportation is provided to surge from Inklet Weather Shelter via our partners at GRTC.

So this graph here just gives you an overview of the average number of guests at Inkland Weather Shelter and surge shelters each month, as well as the total uh number of surge activations.

Um, first thing I'll point out is that surge was activated eighty-seven nights this winter.

We uh initially contracted surge should be open for 30 nights, so we ended up needing it nearly triple the amount of times that we anticipated based on capacity and based on weather.

Um the other thing I'll point out um is in January and February, looking at the average number of guests in Inkling weather shelter and Surge.

Um, you'll see that they very nearly reach capacity or over capacity.

Um, so again, just want to highlight the dedication of the providers here to keep people safe, especially um, you know, when the weather got really dangerous and scary there for a little bit.

And then you can also see the average number of total guests spiked in January and February because of that severe weather that we saw those months.

Now we'll talk about families during influence weather season.

My office provided emergency hotel placements for 47 unhoused or at risk households with minor children.

Key components of this program, we were prevention first.

We're luckily a referral source for the family crisis fund.

So families that came in that were not yet homeless but on the verge of it.

We were able to prevent that a lot through the use of those funds to keep people housed, pay off rental arrears, et cetera.

We were very diversion focused.

So every family that was placed in a hotel room first had to go through a pretty lengthy assessment process to determine did they have any resources in their own kind of their networks, natural supports that could help deter them away from the shelter system, so that we were, you know, only helping people that really had no other option.

And then for folks that were placed in a permanent or folks that were placed into hotels, we made sure to connect them with us, you know, the right rapid rehousing or other housing options through our partners at the GRCOC.

And we had a lot of partners in this effort.

Most of them are listed there below.