Thank you. Let's call this meeting to order.

The Sacramento City Council, Tuesday, April 29th.

Thank you. Councilmember Kaplan, councilmember Dickinson, is expected momentarily. Vice Mayor

Chalamontes, councilmember Plecubon, councilmember Maple, Mayor Pro Temgera, councilmember Jennings,

councilmember Vang, and Mayor McCarty. Here.

Thank you. Councilmember Vang, can you lead us in the land technology?

Yes, please stand as you are able.

To the original people of this land, the Nisanon people, the southern Maidu Valley and Plains

Meawock, Puttwin and Wintoo peoples, and the people of Walton Rancheria, Sacramento's only

federally recognized tribe. May we acknowledge and honor the native people who came before

us and still walk besides us today on this ancestral land by choosing to gather today

in the act of practice of acknowledgment and appreciation for Sacramento indigenous

peoples, history, contributions, and lives. Thank you.

Please remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. Salute.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for

which it stands, one nation under God and the individual living with the freedom of

the land. Thank you.

An assistant city attorney, do you have a report out from closed session?

No. Thank you. No report out from closed session.

So, may I remove two special presentations? We have a donate life month presented by councilmember

Plochibom, councilmember Vang, and councilmember Maple.

All right. Thank you all so much for being here today as we celebrate and recognize national

donate life month. An opportunity to uplift the critical need for organ donors in our

region and remind folks that you too could save a life.

There are well over 100,000 people on the transplant waiting list across the nation,

and every single or every eight minutes on average, someone new is added. We are pleased

to have the team from Sierra donor services here with us today. SDS provides organ,

transplant services across Northern California and was able to coordinate nearly a thousand

transplants just last year. That's incredible.

Joining me today in recognizing these lifesavers are my colleagues, councilmember Vang and

Plochibom, and I will pass the mic over to councilmember Vang. Thank you.

Thank you so much, councilmember Maple. It's an honor to join councilmember Plochibom

and councilmember Maple in recognizing national donate life. It's in April. I think

many of us might know someone whose life was saved or dramatically improved because

of an organ donor. I'm looking at someone in the audience that I know, Chris Matteo

as well. These stories remind us of the really incredible impact that people have, whether

it's a heart donation, a kidney donation, every donation really carries hope and healing

and a renewed chance at life. It's an honor to be presenting this resolution today with

my colleagues to celebrate folks whose lives have been transformed but also those that

have been donors as well. With that, I will hand it over to councilmember Plochibom.

Thank you, councilmember Vang. I think we all know the importance and the life saving

opportunity that organ donation presents. This is just a reminder to everyone who is

so inclined to go beyond the button. Do more than just put that little sticker on your

license. Register with the organ donation website. Let your friends and family know

how important this decision is, not just to you but potentially to them. There are countless

examples of notable people that have benefited from this and even countless more just friends

and family, people in our lives that you may not even realize have benefited from the

altruism of someone that came before them and made this decision and took an extra second

to do the paperwork and go beyond the button, fill out that registration slip. Please let

your friends and family know how important it is that if tragedy befalls you, that it

may be an opportunity to provide a miracle for someone else. Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, would you like to do a presentation?

All right. Maybe we can bring up the, yes, come on up for a photo.

Actually, I'm sorry. And if you'd like to, I apologize, if you'd like to address the

council now is your opportunity and then we'll take a quick photo. Yeah.

Come on up. If I speak first, am I, okay. Hi, good afternoon, esteemed members of the

city council. I think I know some of you and I thank you so much for your support. I want

to just draw your attention. Organ donation saves lives. One person can save up to eight

lives, but I also want to stress that tissue donation can save up to 75 and I have for

you someone whose life was saved because of a heart valve transplant and I just wanted

to give them a moment to share if Diana, his sister could share first.

Go ahead. Hello and thank you all for this opportunity and for recognizing Donate Life

Month. My name is Diana Ferreira and I work for Sierra Donor Services and this is my

little brother, Steven Kellett. You want to say hi? Hello.

So Steven was born with a very severe congenital heart defect and at six months old he needed

an eight hour procedure to fix his heart and something really remarkable about this procedure

that was at Lucille Salter Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford is that his heart was

the size of a walnut, which is a testament to medicine and science and altruism as you

mentioned and just the incredible, incredible work that we all do separately but in tandem.

When he was able to return home from his procedure at six months old, he's really

thrived since then. We were told that part of his procedure would require a donor valve

and it's only since I've been in donation that I fully, and my family fully grasped

what that meant. That meant another tiny baby, another neonate had passed away and their

family made the decision to be selfless and donated the valves, incredibly tiny little

heart valves and that is why Steven is turning 31 years old this year.

Thank you. Steven is just a joy to everyone. He loves to make fun of me with my husband.

He loves Star Wars and Marvel. He lives an incredibly full life. We're currently planning

his first art gallery show. He's an incredible abstract artist and if not for this decision

that his donor family made and his donor, he would literally not be here. So Steven has

something that he would like to say and this is what he would say to his donor and their

family if he was given the chance. You want to get a little close? Okay. Be a little loud,

okay? Oh, it's not on there. That's distracting him. Okay, I'm going to say thank you. Thank

you. All right. I also just wanted to lift up the fact that 80% of California's waiting

list are people of color. So what the room looks like here is what our waiting list looks

like. I'm also a kidney transplant recipient and Alyssa Alamina who I work with. She's

with our iBank. I don't know if we have time. Has a personal story as well. Just do it in

one minute. Yeah. Thank you. My name is Alyssa Hernandez. My maiden name is Alamina. That's

how she knows me from college. But I work for Sierra Dona Services iBank and I'm not

here to represent the iBank today. I'm here to represent my son Noah who's not here with

me. And he's not here with me because he's at school where he should be. But he's a liver

transplant recipient and he received his liver when he was six months old because of a selfless

decision from a donor and the donor family to give him a second chance at life. He lives

a full life as well. He plays soccer and basketball, millions of birthday parties every weekend

and just has so much fun. And we are so thankful to his donor and their family for their decision

to save his life and save the lives of others. And I thank you all for the proclamation today

to help our organization as well as our community to really enhance the lives of others and

to help us raise awareness for organ ion tissue donation. Thank you so much. Thank you.

I hope you can all partner with us. I know many of your communities have lots of communities

of color that have concerns about organ donation. But we hope to come to these different communities

with information and testimony and share just how life saving it can be. So I'm looking

at all of you guys. Thank you so much. Absolutely. So please come forward and I'll take a photo.

I can take photos with phones.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

So, Mayor, we have one more special presentation this afternoon. It's small business week proclamation

and that is going to be presented by you. That's right. Thank you. So this week we wanted

to recognize our small businesses here in Sacramento across the nation. This is small

business week. So we have one more special presentation this afternoon. It's small business

week proclamation and that is going to be presented by you. That's right. Thank you.

Across the nation this is small business week and so our capital region is certainly a place

of small business enterprise. We know in our country we are led by small businesses who

are the backbone of our economy. 99% of all businesses are small businesses representing

two thirds of all jobs created in our country and our state and right here in Sacramento.

So in our capital city we have 22,000 small businesses serving as a foundation for our

local economy. Not only employing countless individuals but providing services to the

community as well. It's certainly something that I've heard loud and clear going around

the city in my first few months on our listening tours. What we can do to help small businesses

cut red tape and thrive here in the city of Sacramento. So essentially we just want to

applaud you and the work that you do in our capital city, our small businesses and recognize

next week May 4th through May 10th as small business week and to show our appreciation

we have a resolution. This is actually the first resolution that I've done as mayor.

So it's to our small businesses. How about that? So we have two representatives from

this year's small business planning committee that we wanted to invite up and say a few words.

We have Heather Letzi, the director of the Sacramento U.S. Small Business Administration

and Sophia Canan, director of women's business center of California capital.

Thank you so much mayor and council members. It's really an honor. Every year since 1963

the United States celebrates small business week celebrating the ingenuity and tenacity

and grit and determination that it takes to become a small business owner. With capital

region small business week we celebrate on a local level as part of national small business

week. And we've done this for about ten years. We're thrilled that this is the first time

that you're giving a proclamation. Mayor McCarty, I think that's pretty special. But

we invite you all to the many events that are going on. The city and county of Sacramento

are putting on BizX, which is going to be fantastic. There is a business exposition

kickoff on Monday in Elk Grove and just plenty of things happening all around. So we're

very, very grateful for the proclamation and I'll turn it over to Sophia.

Thank you Heather.

Hello everyone. Thank you mayor. Thank you everyone for recognizing this week. This is

very exciting. We just had the pleasure of your company at the women's business center

last month. And so I know this is very much in alignment with what you support. And I

have been the director for the women's business center there for almost five years, but I've

been at the women's business center for almost ten. And I've also been on the committee here

and serving as the chair for almost ten years as well. And my commitment to small business

is not just because this is a job, but as you said, they're the backbone. These are

people with families and lives and children and brothers and sisters and parents who they

take care of and support. And it is amazing to get to know them one on one and to see

them start, to see them grow, to see them elevate. And so this week is not just about

talking about small business and highlighting entrepreneurship, it's about honoring them.

And it's about celebrating them and everything that they do and all of the hard work that

they put into their business and into the economy. So thank you so much for this recognition.

It means so much to not just the committee, but all of the Sacramento, all of the businesses

within the capital region, not just within here, but around the surrounding counties

as well and cities. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Well, thank you. So please come up. We'll present this to you. I'm not sure

if there are other small business leaders in the audience. Come on up.

We actually have representatives from SCORE, the Women's Business Center, the Small Business

Development Centers and SMUD, who the Capital Region Small Business Week is powered by SMUD,

so we're very grateful for their support.

I'm just going to say thank you.

Thanks, Member Jennings.

Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to let you know that in 1961 as an eight-year-old kid,

my mother and my father were in small business. And my foundation of my life was made every

day in Jack and Clara's shoe repair and gift shop. And everything that I have become has

come from that foundation. And I can't tell you how much of this helped me to be able

to accomplish the goals for myself and my family. So I applaud each one of you for the

work you put in every single day in your businesses, continue to do so, and I'm there to support

you as this whole council is. So congratulations.

Thank you.

So, Mayor, we now move to the consent calendar. You have items 1 through 24. Are there council

members that have questions, comments? Council Member Kaplan.

Quick comments on six and seven. Council Member Dickinson.

I'd just like to be recorded as a no vote on item 23.

I'll be a no vote on item number two. Mayor Pro Temgata.

Comment on item number 14. Council Member Plochibom.

I recuse on 14. Thank you.

So I've got a no vote. I'd like to comment on seven and eight.

Thank you. So I have a no vote on council member Dickinson on item 23.

Vice Mayor Talamance, no vote on item two. Council Member Plochibom is recusing on item

14. So we'll go back to council member Kaplan on item six and seven.

Thank you, Madame clerk. On item six, I just want to thank staff, you

know, the landscape and maintenance districts are never easy.

And last year I worked closely with staff to address sometimes the fees go up and you

don't see as many, you know, services come through but we have talked to the community

and yes, we know there has to be a slight fee adjustment but I really appreciate city

staff and how hard they're working because in these areas, it tends to be our lowest

income and harder hit areas. So thank you for finding a reasonable adjustment

but still keeping the services twice a month. I hope the rest that we know are coming stay

that same way but I just want to thank staff for that.

And then do you want me to go on to item seven? So on item seven as well, I want to thank

the staff. This is Roseville Road part two. I know it's finding another service provider

for the extra 100 beds coming in and some people may go, well, why didn't you go with

the same one? I actually want to say thank you for finding an alternate provider because

as we're going to go into this workshop and discuss our homeless services, one of the

things I need to see is where's the data? Who is actually getting more people into permanent

housing? Where's the accountability in the dollars of where we're going? And I don't

want to say this is competition but when you are proudly saying we only moved 30 people

out of interim housing into permanent housing last I checked with my kids, that's an F.

And we have to do more than an F in what we're dealing with, the unhoused and I think having

at least two providers in the same area that are doing the same work is going to push both

of them to be better to get our community where they need to be is off the streets and

into more supportive housing. So I just want to say thank you for that.

Thank you, councilmember. And then Mary, you had comments on seven and eight?

Yes, similar to councilmember Kaplan just wanted to thank our city staff for working

on efficiencies for these items and this kind of bleeds into our bigger discussion today

later on about our homelessness programs. And I think it's important to note that we

worked to adjust these contracts not to get rid of services but frankly expand services

and serve more people. So I know there was a misleading context recently that we're

doing this to balance the budget. So make no mistake, we're not doing this to help or

with our woes in our parks or police or fire grant and we do have woes there we need to

address. Every penny we save here is going right back to better serve individuals that

are currently at these sites which some of them aren't working as well as they should

which we'll talk to later but more importantly to serve more people. So I just think it's

important to set that further record and to thank our city staff for doing this and working

on this and full support. Thank you.

And then Mayor Pro Temgata, you had comments on 14?

Yes, thank you Madam Clerk. I will be supporting item 14 but I want to make a couple of comments

on at least where the design is on the helipads. They have moved the helipads further south

away from the community on Elmhurst and we will continue to work with the UC Davis Medical

Center and the flight and the airport, the flight path coordinators to ensure that they

come in through the south as well. But I think one thing that is important to note that while

the flight path will be primarily using the new tower which is further away from the residents,

my understanding of the old helipad is that it is above where pediatrics is so just as

we heard today with essentially two young people who were benefited from the medical

center, we understand that the work that is being done there is to help save lives. With

that, thank you Mayor.

Mayor, I have only one speaker on the consent calendar, Lambert on item 4.

Yes, item 4 and I hope everybody on the roster pays attention because it was something that

happened Sunday that put the light on. You just got through talking about small business. Well,

let me show, since we can't put it here, I'll put it in front of the public. There's a lot of

people here today to see Titter Bay and back cheesecakes. There's some millennials here I have

to acknowledge them. They came up with this idea of let's get the cheesecakes into the California

bridal and wedding expo. I had no idea that existed. They made it happen and Mr. Dickerson and also

the Mayor and anybody else on the roster, you should be thrilled because this past Sunday,

that's all they kept asking us. Well, where are you from? Because they were from all over

California. California is the fourth largest economy in the world now and that event at

the convention center highlighted it. And so I had to say Sacramento at least 15 times because

they were from all over California, but they kept asking what district? What district? So I said

district two, but I always said Del Paso Heights because that's where I'm from. And I have to

make sure I recognize not only the Del Paso Heights community who are in here. I wanted to thank

them for their support. I want to thank the Davis family who's been here since 1946. For those of

you who don't know and then the millennials. And so I want to end by saying that if you meant what

you said about small businesses and I just heard you talk about small businesses and I don't see

too many people paying attention. I hope they are, but you should be reaching out to us. A

computer cannot make a cheesecake. A crew does and that's what we're going to do. We're going to

hire people. Thank you for your comments. I have no more speakers on the consent calendar. We can

entertain in motion. Do we have a motion? Motion by Gerard second by Maple. All those in favor,

please say aye. Aye. Noes or abstentions noted. Also like to note Madam Clerk, I'd like to have seen

the number 14. Okay. Yes. Let me read those into the record so we have it. That was a motion by

councilmember Gada second by Maple. A no on item 2 for Talamante. No on item 23 for Dickinson.

Abstain on item 14 for Mayor McCarty. And then a recusal from councilmember Plochibom on item 14.

Your motion is. Recusal. Yes. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. The consent calendar passes.

We move on to item discussion calendar. It's item 25, homeless workshop approval of strategies

addressing homelessness in the city of Sacramento. Thank you, Mayor and council.

Brian Pedro, director for department community response. I first want to thank my team. We spent

many, many hours getting ready for this workshop. We spend many, many hours every week working with

our homeless community trying to do the best that we can with what we have currently and we are

constantly trying to figure out ways to improve what we have to offer. I want to thank Yoyin from

who also puts a lot of time in with us. It's nice to have our departments working together.

Housing and homelessness work rather well together. Thank you for the county for being here as well.

And I also wanted to thank the contracts that just were approved for VOA and step up and all of our

providers that have understood our trying funding times right now and working with it to make our

contracts work. That being said, we'll queue up our PowerPoint.

Brian, while this comes up, maybe just some housekeeping issues. Number one, I just want

to announce that item number 26 related to project home key on Rialinda Boulevard is being

continued for two weeks. So if anybody was here for that, that item is not going to be heard today,

but will be continued for two weeks. And then as you're putting this, your PowerPoint up here,

I just wanted to note again, I asked city manager in the city to have us have a sole discussion

on only one item at the workshop in the afternoon on homelessness to talk about where we're at,

kind of the state of where we're at here in Sacramento, what our numbers are, what our

accounts are, what are the services that we provide, and with that evaluation of what's working,

what hasn't worked, what we're doing. But more importantly, we can't go back. We're here today,

we can only go forward. So the last part is what adjustments we'd like to propose and what

we're making to essentially do better and serve more people here in the city of Sacramento.

So that's what I asked for. And that's what you'll be providing us with today. Thank you.

And staff is working on the presentation, they say 10 seconds.

Okay.

All right. All right, we're ready. So on our homeless workshop, what I wanted to start with

is a little background of going back to 2017 and looking at where we started to really see

a takeoff in our point in time count. And as you can see by this slide, we increased our point in

time for overall homelessness to 3,665, but a significant increase in our unsheltered by 2052.

In 2017, we launched our first low barrier shelter that served 200 people nightly.

And then in 2018, the city council unanimously voted to declare an emergency shelter crisis to

help us set up our shelters in a more efficient and expedient way. And then I also wanted to note

on here while I was running through things, I saw a 2019 quote from the sack B back then a wise

councilman Jennings said that he wants a city to push for more housing as it opens additional

shelters so people have places to go after leaving. That is 2019 seems like a minute ago,

but it's actually six years ago already that that was made. And here we are sitting still with that

same dilemma of trying to create more housing or some interim type of housing for people to go to.

In 2020, we started receiving HAP funding. We also had the COVID response and money coming in for the

project room key, which ended up being our city motel program that we still have in place. And

then department of community response was launched. In 22, we did the city county partnership agreement

and coordinated access came online to create a single point of entry to services and shelter.

And then lastly in 2023, the incident management team came up to have the dual mandate of outreach

engagement and then also that compliance and enforcement. And so as we look back, I went back

to 2020 on this because that's when we started receiving our HAP funding. And we know that there's

been a lot of money put towards this and we know where all of our money has gone. And so I wanted

to show what where that money has gone and let everybody see that we know exactly where it's

gone. So we've spent over the last five years, 115 million, 81 million of that was one time funding.

So that was either HAP, ARPA, FEMA grants. And that was directly towards homeless projects or

programs. We spent another 15 million over the past five years removing 15 million pounds of trash.

So it's about a dollar a pound as we clean up our trash throughout the city.

During that time, we were up to 1375 beds. We opened 18 shelters. And through those shelters,

we've served 11,600 people over that time frame. And then lastly, we spent another 65 million

supporting housing projects. And as you can see here, a little over 1,700 affordable housing units

and 487 permanent supportive housing units that we're funding to bring up.

So what's our current system look like? So if we look at our last year, again, we have the

1,375 beds in our shelters that is increasing this year significantly. We have added

300, 400, almost 400 onto this. And we still have some others in our pocket that we'll be bringing

online. And so with that, we served in 2024, 4,240 people. And again, the price tag for that was

$34.5 million. So breakdown of how our shelters are funded and all the different

programs that we have available, as you can see, it's across the spectrum and serves almost

everybody that we have in our homeless community.

There are varying rates of getting a percentage to permanent housing. So our transitional age youth

are our highest to permanent housing. And a couple of reasons there are youth. They're able to bounce

back easier. But that is also our most expensive program, as you can see per person

per month is an expensive program. So it's that balance. Each program is different.

It's tough to compare them. They're not all apples to apples. We have congregate shelter versus

non-congregate. And then we have our remote health program. So it's tough to just go across the board

and say that one's performing better than the other just based on how the service provider is doing

because there's so many other elements involved in this. I wanted to bring forward

this information on looking at, so our arena, which is our regional housing needs allocation

requirements. This is strictly for, so we have it in every category, but we're looking at extremely

low income housing on this graph here. So if we look at the graph, the blue is the needed units.

And this is determined from the state. And they decide what our estimated growth is and how many

housing units we'll need based on income. So it was determined that we needed 581 units every year.

As you can see, we're at about an average of 160 per year.

And so though it looks like, well, we are behind on our build, we are doing much better than most

cities and counties in California. And I think there needs to be a little explanation behind

this because then if you just look at this graph straight up, it's like, well, the city of Sacramento

is not doing their job to build affordable housing. And so to understand how to even build

affordable housing is to understand that these units are cobbled together with

a various funding sources. So we have state funding, federal funding, we have tax credits,

we have grants, we have public funding. And with all this funding comes all the paperwork that's

required for all the various fundings needed, which all the paperwork required slows down the

project even more to even get it in the queue to get it up and running. And so we're really dependent

on a lot of other funding sources. This is not, this is past the control of the city alone to get

these numbers up. So we will continue to build, but the federal funding and state funding that's

looking not as strong as it has been in the past is going to affect our future builds.

And so looking at what we need to catch up, we would need for 2020, for the next five years,

essentially we'd need to build 917 units per year to catch up from where we are behind.

So that would mean we need 4588 units. And so when we look at the cost on that,

this is what we're looking at. Almost 2.3, and this was a conservative figure

on, based on cost per unit, but we need $2.3 billion to get all of our extremely low affordable housing

and our permanent supportive housing, which is also in that same bucket. And this is part of why

we're so far behind on permanent supportive housing and why permanent supportive housing is not going

to help us today to get people off the streets. And so we talk about permanent supportive housing

a lot, and I wanted to explain a little bit about what this is. So it combines affordable housing

with voluntary supportive services to address the needs of chronically homeless.

So it's intended to serve those with higher needs that will succeed in a structured and

supportive environment. And then the tenant pays 30 to 40 percent of their income for rent in these

programs. And so this last piece, well, permanent supportive housing is a cost-effective solution

based on comparing it to all the prices associated with using our hospital system,

using our 911 system, using our jail systems. It's a cost-effective solution if you look at it

in that way. I don't know that $2.3 billion is a cost-effective solution that we're going to solve

quick enough to get people off of our streets and into shelter.

So what are we up against in our current challenges? Well, our HAP-5 funding was reduced

$11 million because we reduced our homeless count. Our emergency shelters are at capacity right now,

and as we saw, operations are costly. This last year, $34.5 million. Permanent supportive housing

way behind what we are going to need. And we don't have an immediate plan in place to get

our unsheltered off the streets. We have emergency shelters and as much service that we can provide,

but there's nothing that's specifically looking at how we can house our unsheltered other than

by emergency sheltering them. So lessons learned from our current system.

Getting people in a safe and stable living environment will reduce many of the mental health and

substance needs that we have. There's the belief that mental health and substance led to homelessness,

and it's quite the contrary into that. Being homeless actually led to the mental health and

substance need for simply putting somebody out on the street and trying to survive would make any of

us have some mental health concerns and lead to numbing ourselves to try and survive in the streets

and use substance to get through our day. We've learned from self-governed safe grounds

that they have been unsuccessful. If we look back to our camp resolution days of self-governed sites,

we had the problem of the contract of maximizing 50 people in a site. By the time we got to the

end, there was 85 people there. We talked about services being provided. They kept us out and

providing services much of the time. This model is obviously not something that

has been successful for us. I think for us, it's been an utter failure.

Lesson three, homeless prevention is an essential tool. It's something that we are shifting some of

our funding for Hab5. We shifted $2 million into prevention. Our SSF, CAS, has prevention in place

right now that they've been very successful at. We'll continue with strategies. I think in providing

prevention, you have to be very strategic on how you use it. Otherwise, it just ends up being a

supplemental. Lastly, one size does not fit all. I use this example in that we can put 20 case workers

on one person, but if we don't have housing to move that person to all the case workers in the

world, it isn't going to make housing happen and get somebody out of our shelters and into housing.

So our proposed strategies.

And before I start on our proposed strategies, I want to talk about this is not just something

that we came up with one day and we were sitting around and came up with a great idea. This is

looking at all the data that we had and we have the benefit of now having enough time under our

belt to actually collect data, have our programs, see what's working, see what's not working, and

essentially do a SWOT analysis on our program. Where are our weaknesses? Where do we need to improve?

And if you look at our numbers in our system in CAS, we have 3,187 adults that are still on

our shelter wait list, 722 families that are still on our shelter wait list. So obviously, we are not

moving people through our shelters onto housing because there is slim housing available.

So what are our proposed strategies?

And this is slowly ramped down and I say slowly ramped down our congregate shelters. I don't

want to alarm anybody that we're shutting shelters down tomorrow. That's not what the plan is. It is

to slowly ramp down our congregate shelters into more of a long-term strategy and looking at interim

housing where we can get small communities with clients paying a nominal program fee and living

in our interim shelters instead of an emergency congregate shelter.

With our recent contract negotiations for maximizing our efficiencies,

the team has been put to the task of looking at all of our programs, looking at our data to see

what's working, what's efficient, what's not. How do we serve more people with the same amount or

less funding and put every dollar that we save back into the system to create more services?

Again, we're going to increase our prevention and diversion funding. We know that

every dollar spent into the prevention side of it saves thousands of dollars trying to pull

somebody back out of homelessness once they are in the streets. Looking at a supportive service

model that's more efficient, uses currently available resources. We're looking at our contracts.

We double pay for stuff. We have stuff that is provided by the county or other organizations,

and then we're paying for the, as an example, paying for substance coordinators in our program.

But yet we have substance help at our core centers. The county has substance programs.

We have outpatient programs. There's a lot of redundancy that has multiple programs paying for

the same service. And then what we haven't really focused on, and I think we really need to start

digging into, is looking at public-private partnerships, looking at our hospitals and

faith-based organizations, not only to help us financially, but also to help us

programmatically and with operations. We have been looking into safe parking.

There has been some history on safe parking in the city, and some versions that we learned

that we don't want to repeat. And there is good data now out on safe parking, where we

don't want just the minimum and have people park somewhere and create a parking lot, essentially,

for forever without monitoring at all. And then there's programs that are cost-prohibitive,

that have so many services in them, that they're essentially the Cadillac of safe parking that

isn't going to work for us others. So we're looking at a middle ground somewhere that we can help.

And we're looking at this because we spend a lot of money on code enforcement, towing vehicles,

and they end up back on the street. And so I think we could spend money, better spent in funding,

on looking at safe parking versus continuously towing. Looking at program fees in our city motel

program, emergency shelter, depending on whose definition you look at, it's anywhere from

30, 60, 90 days. Some programs, they're saying six months. We have individuals in our motel program

that are there upwards of a year, some as long as two years. That, to me, is not emergency shelter

at that point, that is essentially interim housing. You're living there. And like the rest of us,

we need to pay our rent or our mortgage to live where we are. And lastly, we're going to identify

cohorts within the homeless population for long-term interim housing. And that's looking at our

seniors for the program that I would like to bring forward here. This is a picture of what's

we're projecting to bring. They're micro communities looking at our seniors and that we have in our

community. If you look at the center picture here, you just see a white wall with a little wooden door.

So this is the community that is in Santa Barbara. It's downtown. It was brought up by a company

called Dignity Moves. They have a model that's a little different than the model that I want to

bring, but it is similar enough that I can show you some pictures so we can get an idea of what

we're talking about here. But these are small communities, no more than 40. They'd be throughout

the city and city-owned land that we have vacant. And behind the wall and the door is your community

of tiny homes that have en suites attached to them, laundry service. They would have plumbing and

electrical, internet, garbage service, everything that you would need like the rest of us to just

live and survive. And so this proposed strategy falls in our continuum of what we have currently.

Our chap right now has prevention, so we're preventing homelessness. We're looking at that

piece. And then the respond to homelessness, that's essentially our outreach and engagement

and our shelters that are in that response part. And then what we have after that is to resolve

homelessness. So that is your green line there that resolving your homelessness means that we found

permanent housing for you, affordable housing or permanent supportive housing. Since we know that

slim, there is no way to get from shelter to resolving your homelessness. And so my approach

is to put this interim housing in and bridge that gap with micro communities. And if you

never get passed and into permanent housing or permanent supportive housing, at least you have

a place to live. And this interim, there's real no definition on the amount of time that you can

stay at interim housing. So if this is your permanent residence, then so be it.

I also wanted to speak a little bit on what our differences between our emergency shelters

and our interim housing that we're talking about adjusting to. So an emergency shelter,

no individual household will be denied an emergency shelter. So anybody, anytime,

anywhere, you can go into our shelter. There is a definition, it could be a structure,

it could be a building, including a tent that basically just allows you a place to sleep.

And then there's a variation. You can have minimal supportive services.

We have a little heftier supportive services than ours. And then in this definition, it was a

maximum of six months or less for our emergency shelter. So on an interim housing, it's not a

shelter, but it's not permanent housing. And this is kind of threading the needle of our definitions

of what we have out there right now and trying to take advantage of using our definitions.

Interim housing is a generic term. So these interim housing fall under shelter still in that we get

the advantage of somebody moving into interim housing is still up for permanent supportive

housing. They can still get all the services that are provided to provide homeless services.

So we still have full behavioral health services. We still have all of our services available.

It's the, I call it, it's like an extended stay. You're not in a room for the night. You're more

in an extended stay, but you're not completely in a house. So it's that interim housing, essentially.

The beauty of it is it falls under because it still falls in that emergency shelter bucket,

allows us to build out quickly and fall under that emergency shelter declaration.

And again, there's no universal rule to the length of the time that you can stay in interim housing.

So the micro communities for seniors is what I'm looking at. It's essentially supportive housing,

interim supportive housing for 55 older and on our vacant land. It's much like a permanent supportive

housing. You'd pay 30% of your income like the permanent supportive housing that would go back

into the program to help with operating costs. Again, it's much like permanent supportive housing,

and then it has site management. You have security, you have daily wellness checks,

electrical plumbing, internet laundry, garbage, and also much like permanent supportive housing,

it has voluntary supportive services such as behavioral health, medical health care, etc.

And then we would have outside of your room, you would have storage secured lockers with a defined

amount of storage that you could bring into the site for your belongings. Again, the smaller group

creates a better dynamic, easier integration into not only our communities, but also integration

into the lot size that we have available. It doesn't keep us at 40, it's 40 or less. If we have

smaller lots that would take 20 on 20 homes on it, we'll put 20 on. The savings and economy of

scale of this is not that advantageous to get past, has to be 40 for the numbers to work.

The sites require much less staffing. We would have 24-hour security there. It would be a secured

site. It's a more sustainable model to get people off the streets in a place to live.

And again, it has all the advantages of permanent supportive housing, but literally pennies on a

dollar compared to the number you saw for us to create permanent supportive housing.

Here's an example of a couple of builders that we have. We do have with the state

purchase agreements that have already been vetted out. So the state ran RfPs and got

a handful of builders. We have, I think, five on the state leverage procurement that we can just

use that agreement and purchase the five that are already on there. So they're a bedroom, desk,

you have heating and air conditioning, and then these are ADA models. So you would have the bathroom,

the shower, and the sink. There's also laundry available on site. This is what a laundry building

would look like. And then there would be a communal cooking area. So we would have that out in the

community and again a little example of what these would look like. All right. So why are we looking

at this strategy for seniors? So we looked at our HMIS data and just on a recent look, we had 440 people

between the ages of 55 to 64 and 176 of them are in our shelters right now. And then we had another

120 that were 65 and older, and we have 80 of those individuals in our shelter right now.

So we have 250 sitting in our shelter right now waiting to be housed and nowhere currently available.

So we have about 22% of our homeless population that are 55 and older.

National Alliance to End Homelessness made 2024 article, told us that 50 and older is one of

the fastest growing homeless populations. This is kind of that silver tsunami we're talking about

in our general population. People are getting older and we run parallel. Homeless are getting

older as well and it's our fastest growing. If you're currently a senior on SSI and that's your

only income, it is somewhere between $967 and $1,206 for a single right now. With an average one

bedroom in Sacramento of $13 to $1,500 a month, you can see that that number does not pencil

anywhere close. And if we looked at charging that program fee of 30% of income, it'd be about $290

to $360 in program fees a month to stay in a room with power, electricity, TV, everything that you would need.

Again, looking at our senior community, our seniors are likely not going back into the workforce,

bless you. They're not going to be increasing their income. They're on a fixed income and if you're

sitting in a shelter with fixed income and it's $1,300 a month to get out of a shelter to get into

an apartment, that's never going to happen the way our current system is set up. And again,

the streets, we can't let people languish in our streets while we're waiting for permanent

supportive housing. That's 10 years away. I mean, the best we can keep up for the next five years

we're going to be building and everything we have right now is filled, so we're waiting for this

slow rolling permanent supportive housing to roll out and some people might not even be eligible

for it. So we need to pivot. It falls in line with our regionally coordinated access. If we just get

our seniors off the street, that's 20% of reduction in our unshelters homelessness. And that's what

our goal is with the plan. It's something that we can't accomplish. And so again, it always goes

back to money on this, where are we getting the money from? So we talked about contract negotiations.

We thank you for getting our contracts through today, voting our contracts through.

Again, the renegotiations of the contract is getting rid of some of that duplicative

service that we have and adjusting our, what we think of what we need to have versus what we need

to have. So through those negotiations, looking at some efficiencies that we've done, we're looking at

Cal AIM, hopefully have that wrapped up by June, start creating some revenue sources,

HOP, we're going to be, we'll be applying again for encampment resolution funding,

and then also looking at that private public partnerships. So our first column is our old

contract numbers. The next column is our new contract numbers, our savings on that is almost

$6 million in savings that can go directly into starting with these micro communities.

The cost on these communities is, we ran a quick analysis on this. So we're averaging about $25,000

annually. That's a conservative number per person to be in our shelters. If we look at the first

column to house 40 people in our emergency shelters at $25,000 a year, that gets us a million dollars.

If we mark that out for five years, it's $5 million. Again, conservative number on ongoing

maintenance for our shelters facilities is about $50,000 a year. There's another $500 on that. So

we're at $5.5 million after five years on our emergency shelters. If we look at that figure

that comes out to about $137,500 per person that we've spent over that five years. If we look at

our micro communities for 40 people, the setup on it will be about $2 million. Annual operations are

about $200,000 per year. That gives us a subtotal of $3 million with program fees put back into the

system. And again, conservative numbers from Cal AEM reimbursement. We're looking at revenue offsets

of $1.5 million on this, bringing that number down to $1.5 million total per year for a micro

community to be stood up. And again, as you can see the number 37,500 per person. And I will say,

I ran this with looking, even if we didn't get any of our revenue offset and it costs us the

straight $3 million. That number came out to $75,000 a person. But again, that's way below our

$137,000 and it's permanent. So next steps, looking at standing up three communities. That's what we

have funding for, utilizing our savings. And we're actively seeking the public, private, and hospital

and faith-based opportunities. We are applying again for encampment resolution funding grants

in July. And we will locate out some safe parking sites and start going down that road to see what

options we have available there. And then develop a reasonable fees for our motel program. Again,

looking at options with our motel program fees.

So conclusion and takeaway of what we are trying to solve for. Again, we're not trying to solve

homelessness. This is a lifelong solve. What we're trying to solve for is our unsheltered

homelessness that are out in our streets right now. The 3,000 people that we have in our streets

that are unsheltered. This is a very doable thing that we can get our heads together and solve for.

We're continuing all of our programs. We're continuing our programs more efficiently,

providing some funding for us to add additional programs.

Again, permissportive housing is continuing. It's still going to be built. If we get enough

that we can house everybody in permissportive housing, I will gladly take all of our shelters

that interim housing that we have and sell them to anybody that wants to buy a shelter. I don't

think that will happen anytime soon. Again, if we truly want to get people off the streets,

keep them off the streets. The micro communities, our interim is, I think, personally one of our

only options right now that is a possibility and within the realm of the funding that we have available.

If funding goes away or continues to decrease and we go with these one-time spends,

people will be living in these communities and if funding went away, we still have them.

The way that we're structured now with waiting for half every year to determine if we have the

money to keep our shelters open, it won't go away completely, but as that gets trimmed away,

we will have to start shutting down shelters. We have no option unless we want to start

taking money from somewhere else to keep them alive. This model is a sustainable model that

will keep people housed. I don't think that we can wait for things to be perfect. We're waiting

for the perfect model to appear. This is pretty close to as perfect as we can get with what we

have available to us. The last thing I will say is if we really want this to succeed, our NIMBYs

can't NIMBY. We can't try and help people get housed and get yelled at every day because we have

people in the streets in front of your house, in front of your business, in your alley, but then

when we try and find housing options available, then get yelled at because we don't want them housed

by us. I'll argue on this that I think we've lost sight of these are people.

Society is looking at them like they're someone different. There are people living in the streets

that need a place to live. If anybody has been involved and you've seen someone come off the

street and get into stable housing, how much of that alone stabilizes somebody is just incredible.

For the narrative to be that everybody's in the street, it's out of their mind and on drugs,

it's just wrong. If they are out there in the streets on drugs because they're trying to

survive, we need to work and we can't waver on this. I really feel that this is the next move.

We're at a tipping point on this where we need to start implementing other programs. PSH is not

going to save this. Our funding is starting to slim down and we need a better way to do this.

Thank you for your time.

17 members that spoke up and appreciate your commentary. Just note that this is your chance

to talk to public comment. If you're yelling or speaking from the audience, we will have to

ask you to be removed. Please call the speakers. Thank you, Mayor. I have 17 speakers. The first

is George. I probably said that incorrectly. George was Sacramento Loaves and Fishes.

Then Angela Hassel. Dr. Gina Warren. Then Joseph Gregory. George. Thank you, everybody.

My name is George Cromel. I work for Sacramento Loaves and Fishes but I'm not here on behalf of

Loaves and Fishes. I'm not here on behalf of the community. For 14 years I've been working

direct services with the homeless. What I can say is what's been happening isn't working.

We all know that. The situations are getting a lot worse. The sweeps that are going on here in

Sacramento are just hurting people, displacing the elderly, displacing disabled and taking

everything that they own away from them. What I can tell you is I hold memorial services for

individuals that are on the streets that pass away that I know about. Over the years at least 50 to

75 individuals every year that I hold memorial services for that have not been placed in the

housing or have been on housing lists and they've been displaced or moved and they're not able to

be able to get reached by resource services. I couldn't tell you how many times a day that I have

outside resource services come to my office with names of individuals that they're looking for that

have been in camps and they've been working with these individuals in camps for months on in trying

to get them into housing and now they can't find them. To me that's a waste of money because then

they're having to do the work double up. They're having to do the work twice. They're having to

work twice as hard to locate these people to try to find services for them or to even find them

if they're even alive anymore. But what I can tell you is is what I'm seeing and what we see each

and every day is these sweeps. They're taking people's belongings away from them. That's all

they're doing. They'll walk around the block. The police go away. Forensic Clean goes away.

Department of Community Response goes away. The very next day they're back and they're without

everything. Here they are. It's going to be summertime. I went through this in November.

I watched people freeze in November because all their belongings were taken.

That didn't help anybody. All that did was hurt people. It just moved them away.

Thank you for your comments. Your time is complete. I do want to remind members of the public

so that everyone has the opportunity to address the council. Members of the public are asked to

observe the rules of decorum. The council rules of procedure outlined decorum expected in chambers

and can be found on our website. The copy is in the back of the room and is summarized on the back

of the speaker slip. For instance, use of swear words yelling from the audience, physically

threatening conduct, a disrespected or discouraged, the presiding officer requested a person cease

disruptive conduct and if not immediately stopped, the presiding officer will direct the person to

the room. This meeting is being video streamed and can be viewed live on our city's website.

You will have two minutes to address the council and the timers on the screen behind me. Angela

Hassel. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Angela Hassel and I'm the current executive

director of Sacramento Loves and Fishes. We heard today about some new strategies to

kind of help get some unchildren homeless off of the streets. But anything that you discuss here

or consider today will be an effective while the encampment sweeps continue. My fellow staff

from Loves and Fishes, we see firsthand every day the devastating and catastrophic impacts of

sweeping encampments. We're constantly supplying people with tents and sleeping bags and survival

supplies that are thrown away during these sweeps. In fact, as we left campus today to come and be

here today, the streets right around our campus were being swept by city employees. Folks belongings

were being scooped up by the claw and dumped into a dumpster while they scrambled to gather what they

could to survive tonight. Medications, personal documents, blankets, other survival supplies,

they're stripped of everything they can't carry on their person or gather in time. Imagine having

to live that way day to day. It's impossible and inhumane. And to be clear, these are the

uncheltered homeless reference here today for whom there are no current solutions.

Since the grants passed Supreme Court decision, there's been far too much emphasis on where

people can't be when you start talking about where they can be. Where can they survive? Where can

they go to maintain their personal belongings and stop the blood flow, stop the deep trauma from

coming back and coming back and coming back? Because that's what we're hearing from them.

That's what they're experiencing with this. As the mayor and city council for Sacramento,

you represent them just as much as you represent the top 3,000, 10,000, 5,000 people. However,

whatever the count says, however many there are, there are just as many more people out there.

And they deserve the chance to rebuild their lives. They deserve for these sweeps to stop.

And we need to give them a chance to move forward towards some semblance of safety

and community that most others enjoy without even having to think about it. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Dr. Gina Warren, then Joseph Gregory.

And Dr. Warren, this is your handout, correct? Yes, it is. Thank you. I didn't want to spend

all of our two minutes with the data that you have in front of you. I hope that

you take some time and actually review that. We are actually here for a strategic approach

to addressing our human beings. That I thank you, Brian, for saying that at the end, but this is

something that we need to say at the beginning. We are not a subset of human beings, but they're

just people. And so the one-size-fits-all is something consistent with Harvard University's

one-size-fits-all as it relates to intergenerational mobility.

If I were to look at all of you as a clinician and I would make an assumption to say all of you need

anti-anxiety meds and high blood pressure meds because of the work you do, and I know it very

indirectly, is there's a lot of work that you do behind the scenes. It's not a one-size-fits-all

as it relates to addressing the unhoused and how they need to be supported. I have to add to this

is that when people are out there and our team, and I would love our team to stand up, they are

unmatched. We are in Del Paso Heights, and in Del Paso Heights we are in the gullies. We are down

in the trenches when it's raining. We are walking through human and animal feces when it's sweltering

heat because we are looking for our people to find a way to do some transitional support.

Joseph, we were working with and we found him in 2023, and he's standing here today because of our

partnership and collaborative efforts with the VOA and with DCR. We need to be in that strategic

plan. As the people in the neighbourhood who are serving the neighbourhood needs to be part of that

strategic plan as it relates to understanding why people are where they are because in a generational

trauma, poverty, domestic violence, all of those things are why people are out on the street. It's

not because they have a mental health issue, it's because they've experienced those things and now

they're there and have no other resources to get out. So I want to introduce Joseph and let you

know that it takes time and effort. Thank you for your comments, Joseph.

Joseph Gregory is our next speaker. Then Muriel Strand. How are you doing? My name is Joseph Berry.

I just want you guys, this is an incredible man. Dr. Warren, your time is complete.

Yes, and so I'm just here to support him. Thank you, Joseph. This is what the challenges are.

He wants to speak and he's nervous.

Thank you. I've been out here for a very long time, homeless, and I don't know.

I really don't want to be out here no more. I just don't know. I think

more people like me out here need more help with resources and stuff. I don't know. I've just been

at it for a very long time and I feel like I should be indoors somewhere.

That's what I have to say. Thank you.

Next speaker is Muriel Strand. Then Lambert. Then Devin Strecker.

Hi, I'm Muriel Strand. I live in the City Farm's neighborhood.

And so I'm here to express my concern about our homeless citizens. We don't have to criminalize

homelessness. It's not working as we just heard. The causes for all of this are systemic. They are

long-term. This workshop, so yes, we should keep trying to do as best we can what DCR just talked

about is encouraging, but incomplete. This workshop, this should be the beginning of workshops in the

neighborhoods, with the neighborhood associations all over the city,

introducing the sheltered people and the unsheltered people to each other.

This is about public health. Where's Dr. Flo? What would she do?

I've heard that the City County and Sacs of Swords are working together,

but it doesn't seem to be making any difference on the street.

We need to redo the camping ordinance from the ground up, get rid of the existing one,

and start from scratch with neighborhood workshops. People need stability. We all need stability.

Personally, I'd rather have stability in a tent than in a shelter where I just don't know what's

going to happen. A few years ago, I took California's basic real estate courses at

Sac City College, and one of the instructors told us point blank that the highest and best use of

any piece of property was defined as whatever makes the most money. That is a recipe for unaffordable

housing. Bring back inclusionary zoning. Charge the developers, not just charge them a fee,

make them build affordable housing. Well, thank you for your comments. Your time is complete.

I want to remind members of the public that you have two minutes to address the council,

and the timer is on this behind you. Thank you for your comments. Please take your seat. Your

time is complete. Lambert, then Devin Strecker, then Greta Lason. Lachin.

Okay, homelessness. This is a very, it shouldn't be confusing to City Hall. You actually have a

department that's called homelessness. So to me, based upon what I saw up there, and I'm a

stickler for detail, I was looking at graphs. You know, graphs and surveys can be skewered

for a hidden agenda. Now, what do I mean by that? Before there was measure you money, before, I believe,

and now you have half. Now you have half, you have measure you, which is combined now

with the general fund, and you have all of this money coming into the coffers,

especially during the pandemic. And now there's graphs talking about six figures to house one

person. I personally think that there should be a federal audit, not a state, not a city,

but a federal audit on where that federal funding funding went. Because it's obvious it didn't put

people in beds. It just made it expensive to put them in beds. And I think people should be held

accountable for that. Because just think where this city would be if there was no measure you money.

So shout out to Mayor Steinberg for that, because I went to a lot of measure you meetings.

And it was supposed to, I don't remember measure you being for homeless. It was supposed to serve

the underserved community. And when they mixed them with the general fund, then that meant

they could just reach in and take out whatever they have. I think if the audit goes over to

the contractors, you'll find out where that abuse was. Thank you for your comments.

Devon Strecker, then Greta Lachin. Good afternoon. I'm Devon Strecker, Executive Director of River

resident of the River District. The River District has been ground zero for the unhoused

population for decades, exponentially increasing since the 1980s. After California State mental

hospitals were closed and federal funding for mental health institutions was eliminated. Add to

that a lack of housing in general and affordable housing specifically. And we're now at the

center of a crisis. Those exacerbated by prop 47 in 2014 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

At this point, no city has the funding expertise or authority to solve homelessness. A city has a

responsibility to keep its sidewalks and streets safe for residents, businesses and visitors.

We thank the city for its efforts to provide services and housing to those who are in need

and for remarkable strides made in cleaning up our city. I'm very encouraged by the plans shared by

Mr. Pedro today. However, the River District has not benefited from a lot of these efforts in the

past and in fact has suffered the consequences of multiple jurisdictions squeezing the most

vulnerable among us out of their neighborhoods and into ours. An unhoused individual in most cases is

required to utilize 211 to enter the coordinated access system which can be done from anywhere.

Please stop using the River District's abundance of service providers as an excuse to allow an

over concentration of encampments in our neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you for your comments.

Greta Lachin, Megan Marshall, Josh Daniels. I'm Greta Lachin, a River District Board member.

At our annual River District event about a week ago, we had our mayor, our city council member and

the supervisor on stage together. We showed them a video done just two days before of what our

overflowing campsites look like on our streets and we heard about everyday challenges of surviving

the obvious neglect. First, it's clear that the 311 system doesn't work for businesses and here's why.

Pipeworks, the climbing gym on North 16th Street is constantly surrounded on three sides by campsites.

The managers of Pipeworks makes frequent calls herself to 311 but she told us that all she can

do when the rock climbing customers complain about the smell of urine coming through the

walls of their gym is ask them to call 311. She calls and that's one call. It's a huge ask to

say to customers make a 311 call. Is this the way the city wants to treat the most outstanding gym

in amazing rock climbing gym on the west coast? Likewise, the owner of May Lee runs a photo business

on North C Street and she makes 311 calls constantly but she's one person. Her customers who they may

run a gauntlet of homeless camps on Ahearn Street but get real, they aren't going to call 311. So we

need to make a different metric for businesses because the effect on their customers doesn't

register in our system now. What we need in the River District is a concentrated and ongoing

effort of cleanup and enforcement. We know that every level from the PD to the incident management

team that our streets and sidewalks are constantly blocked by camps that spill out into our streets.

We can't pretend it doesn't exist because it doesn't track through 311. We can see what kind of

damage. Thank you for your comments. Your time is complete. Our next speaker is Megan Marshall,

Josh Daniels, James Allison. Thank you for your comments. Your time is complete.

Thank you. Next speaker please. Megan Marshall. Two minutes everybody. Thank you.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, Council members. I'm Megan Marshall. I'm the executive officer

for the California Interagency Council on Homelessness under the state's Business Consumer

Services and Housing Agency. First I want to acknowledge the seriousness of the city's budget

deficit. These are very hard decisions for us all. We recognize and appreciate the strain that

everyone is under. That being said, the City of Sacramento has made strong choices in recent

years preserving shelter capacity, expanding outreach, and aligning with your regional plan

to address homelessness. We urge you not to reverse that process, that progress. The Sacramento

be reported on a fee for service conversation from a March Council meeting and I'm deeply concerned by

what a reasonable person would consider to be support for that model from the Council. Homelessness

services are not a revenue stream. They are a public safety net. Introducing fees, even small ones,

creates barriers for anything outside of housing and there are multiple options for housing,

permanent support of being one. It discourages people from seeking help, risks more encampments,

and drives up long-term costs for policing, healthcare, and emergency services. Every dollar

spent removing barriers is more effective and more cost efficient than a dollar spent responding to

the fallout of unsheltered homelessness. On the note of cost efficiencies, the administrative

infrastructure and fiscal controls that would need to be in place for the city or its contractors

to exchange money, paper, or electronic with people experiencing homelessness would outweigh

any perceived benefit. In closing, I'll just say that KALACH as well as our agency and council

member departments are closely monitoring local decisions that impact our statewide progress.

And we're here as a thought partner if you're interested in exploring alternatives that center

equity, housing outcomes, and fiscal responsibility. Thank you all for the time.

Thank you for your comments. Josh Daniels, James Allison, Mark Casso, Nikki, and then David Jones.

Hi, my name is Josh Daniels. I have had a small business in Sacramento since 2003,

different areas. Currently, I am in the River District and I live just down the street off of

in the Creamery, which is just off of 10th and 11th C and E somewhere in there.

I've never seen what I'm seeing these days in any of the places I've had my business. It is

abhorred what's going on right now with the homeless situation. Just how it's how

and there have to be better solutions than what have been provided and proposed at this point.

Because we're living in squalor, our businesses in squalor. I don't blame the homeless for that.

I blame the suit. I blame what isn't happening. All the promises, all the hollow promises that

happen. I heard some I heard you say that the safe ground is an ineffective project. I live a block

away from one of those programs. We don't hear a peep out of that group. We don't have any problems

with them. They are it's quiet, it's clean, it's successful. And yet why? Why isn't there more of

that? Why aren't there more opportunities for that? I don't think that it's not a lack of people

wanting it and trying it. I think they're getting a lot of resistance from the city.

And that's not good. There's no solution for us, for anyone, buddy, if there aren't places that

people can go that they have a space. And there's too much resistance from the city for that. Thank

you. Thank you for your comments. James Allison. Good evening or afternoon, I guess.

Mayor, council members and staff, my name is James Allison, the executive director of the

power and alliance or property business improvement district that represents Sacramento's manufacturing

industrial core as well as the 30,000 jobs that you can find within it. First, I'd like to thank

city staff. We truly appreciate the continued work that is being done. We know that despite our

shared frustrations, it is a group of folks who are truly trying to do the most with so little.

So I would like to offer that as a huge thank you. Secondarily, I don't want what I say today to

conflate our crime issue with our homelessness issue. They're not the same issue. Ultimately,

however, as the county increases its enforcement efforts, we are going to see an exacerbated issue

here within the city limits of Sacramento. For every additional broken window or active vandalism,

theft or property destruction, we know that truly the folks within our on-house community have that

problem exponentially worse because of the folks who prey on those who are housed or unhoused.

Ultimately, what I want to speak to is the importance of finding appropriate shelter

and place for people to go. While we are in power in, truly what you might observe is that as far

as residents go, our most popular resident makeup might be unhoused individuals. That is for a reason.

Powering is not a place where people should be living by and large. It's not a place where people

should be. It's dangerous. It's a heavy industrial area. We have folks who are camping next to

chemical plants. We have folks who are burning tires or whatever else they need to stay warm

outside of food production facilities. We have heavy equipment that is moving and creating a very

real risk for individuals who are camping in those places. Unfortunately, there simply is no other

place for them to go. They're at their wit's end. They're at the furthest edge of the city. And

unfortunately, despite the frustrations of folks, this isn't a matter of inconvenience or obtrusivity

to a view. It's purely a matter of safety. So please act with urgency and we truly support what

we're hearing today. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Mark Caso, then Nikki.

Good afternoon. My name is Mark Caso and I am a property owner in Sacramento. We've got property

from Midtown, East Sacramento, and Power Inn District. I personally daily have to deal with

homeless encampments on our properties. We have businesses that are thriving. We have

vacant buildings and we have land that we're trying to develop. And it's very difficult for me

as a land owner, property owner, to engage with clients when there's a homeless encampment in

front of the building or we're looking at developing a piece of property and they do their due diligence.

And at nighttime, they come by and they see fires in the back of the building or something

like that. It's very frustrating. I feel guilty for being angry at the homeless, but the amount of

property damage that occurs from the homeless encampments on our properties is significant.

We've lost two buildings to homeless encampments, stripping copper from inside the buildings,

plumbing inside the buildings, fires inside the buildings. We've had to tear two buildings down

and we're in the process right now of raising a third building because of a homeless problem.

Insurance won't cover those buildings because of the property damage that has occurred,

so we're only covered for liability. So it's a huge loss for us to have to tear a building down,

not only for the loss of the building, but also the cost for demolition and cleanup.

I am constantly cleaning up our properties daily. We have a huge problem out in the power-in district.

We've got an aunt that lives across the street from Granite Park. She's 97 years old and at three

o'clock in the morning, the amount of noise that comes out of that property is just amazing. It's

like Mad Max out there. Something has to be done and I feel bad for the homeless people, but it's

not their fault that they're out there on the streets. We need to do better. Thank you for

your comments. Our next speaker is Nikki, then David Jones.

And Nikki, before you start, I do want to remind you that please do not disrupt the orderly conduct

of these proceedings by continuing to speak out from the audience. You are in violation of chapter

five of the City Council rules of procedure and if you continue speaking out from the audience,

you'll be directed to leave the meeting. Thank you. You have two minutes.

Housing is a human right. You have a special responsibility and policy-making power to make

that true for sacramentans. When I first started as a youth street outreach worker over 10 years ago,

we decided to start tracking how many calls for shelter we had to answer with there is nowhere

to go tonight. A heartbreaking sentence to deliver over and over again daily. Shout out to the two

one workers who now know what I'm talking about. During that time, we also rolled out

Sacramento's first youth, TAY, Transition Age Youth Shelter and Permanent Support of Housing

Programs. It wasn't enough. We had to continue to say there's nowhere to go day after day. I watched

some sacrament, some of Sacramento's brightest, most loving, beautiful minds succumb to the days,

months and years on the street. The scorched earth policy of no encampments has only made this

worse. It all remains not enough. 13% of voluntary shelter demand, meeting voluntary shelter demand,

10 days to actually get it for those. You know, I've lost dozens, dozens of loved ones on the

streets. We can talk about property loss. I've lost lives. For those lucky 13%, God bless them.

What I can say is all those years, if we had just had a place to be, a safe place, inside or outside,

a safe place, it would have all been very different for the last over decade and a half.

We need transformative change to the way that we think about housing, who controls it, who

deserves it, how it's funded, everything, not tinkering around the edges of a devastating model.

This is a public health crisis unfolding every day. The emergency homeless response system has

never been funded to the crisis, to the scale. Nor has it tackled the root causes of homelessness,

namely racism, sexism, classism, ableist foundations of our current housing system.

Y'all can do better and y'all better. Thank you for your comments. Our next speaker is David Jones,

then Herman Berrihona. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Council members. I appreciate you allowing me to be here.

David Jones, a fresh board member of Midtown Heart. We run the homeless assistance resources team.

We have four shelters that we do take care of 450 homeless people every week. Feed them,

give them showers, give them medical care, give them haircuts. We are a bandaid, but we are giving

access to this population in places that we know where they are and we'll have access to them for

the people that can really give them further help than we do. We've been running since 2019 and

have had a great time. We do it every week at Westminster. We do it at St. John's. We do it at

Trinity Episcopal and at First United Methodist. So all in your Council District, Mr. Plekelbaum,

so we're all there and we would invite all of you, if you'd like to come to one of our shelters,

and come and witness what we do. The Attorney General came and served coffee with 20 of his staff

members at Trinity. It was awesome. And so anyway, thank you very much. We've talked with the county

and the city Sacramento Steps Forward, Street Med, and so we're looking forward to being part of

the solution to the problem. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you for your comments.

I have three more speakers. Herman Barahona, Sherry Dimmerling, and Michael Melton.

I have a picture that I can, can I show the picture here? No. No. Okay.

That's okay. Please proceed. My name is Herman Barahona. I am the founder of the Sacramento

Environmental Justice Coalition. We have projects in five counties here of your Saacot region

learning all kinds of things about affordable housing policies,

homelessness, and environmental justice issues. I understand you have quite a challenge in front

of you, where you've inherited from terrible decisions for the last 30 years. But as you move

forward, if you really want to succeed with this plan, you have to include the people that are

affected by this. If you do not include them and then they refuse to participate in your projects,

then you're going to blame them for not wanting to get help. But in reality, it's because they're

not treated with dignity and respect. They are to be treated in the way you would treat any

constituent. You need to hear their opinions. If you don't, it's going to be very difficult to make

all these millions of dollars that you're going to invest. I want to honor here today on behalf

of the Sacramento Homeless Union, Sean Adams. Sean Adams was a member of camp resolution.

She was evicted from that camp, told that there were services provided by the city,

but as soon as they confiscated her stuff, then they told her that she could not be housed because

she's a liability because of her chronic health respiratory issues. She died in a motel paid

for by her physician. There are four people who have died from camp resolution since that

eviction and there are countless others who are invisible to many people in this society

and we refuse to accept that. We do not tolerate the kind of discarding of human beings in this

city and it's up to you to model that. The city of Roseville has made all the arena requirements

and affordable housing. Their homeless problem is not like the city of Sacramento. There are other

cities and counties who have inclusionary zoning. Thank you for your comments. Your time is complete.

Sherry Dimmerling and Michael Melton. Hello, Mayor, Council. I'm Sherry Dimmerling and right now

I'm speaking in my personal, not my business guidance. I've been a business person for many,

many years. I don't currently own a business in Sacramento though. But I can relate to what some

of these business, some of these business people here have said, they don't want people camping

in front of their places. Nobody wants them in our backyard. I don't want them peeing on my front

steps. But where are they going to go? Where are you going to put them? Every time you sweep these

people, they move into our neighborhoods. They move on to our backyards, on the front steps of our

businesses. There is a cost effective way to deal with this in the short term, by the way. And

as far as camp resolution goes, when you say it didn't work, I never saw you there.

I never saw you there. I saw a lot of people in this room there. I never saw you there. Don't

tell me there was 85 people there. I was there. Don't tell me it didn't work because it could have

worked. It didn't work. And please address the council. Pardon? Please address the council, not the

audience. There were things that went sideways at the end. There is no question. But we know what

they were. We know how to not replicate that. Do you know it cost $500 a month for 55 people there?

All that was paid for was dumpsters and porta potties. Every single thing there. We brought in

volunteers brought in. Water. They had electric from solar. We brought in clothes. We brought in

food. $6,000 a year. And trust me, we had a waiting list there of over 600 people that wanted to be

in a place with no electric and no water. You can't think of a better way to use the money than

safe ground sites. When they work, they work well. And believe me, when you swept those people,

half of them ended up down the street. Thank you for your comments. Your time is complete. Our next

speaker is Michael Melton. And Mike Leigh Ann. That was really good what she just said. Y'all do

need to open up more encampments like that. Okay. The whole starting five of the SHA needs to get

fired. Y'all need to team up with have a task for humanity. And don't charge people $5,000 to

build a house. Let them pay like $1,000 down to build apartments and condos. And for those who got

the $5,000, you feel me? Let them get the houses. It's plenty of land north and south of the I-5.

We don't got to go all the way to Santa Barbara for the 55 and older. We need the young men that are

well able bodied and young women who are well able bodied to get with habitat. I'm about to get

with habitats for humanity. Why we don't got the young able bodied people putting in 500 hours of

work, build up a community where it doesn't cost nothing but the land that we already got that's

USDA or some to the side north of El Grove, El Corn, West El Corn, or Elder Creek where you get

flooring perkins over there or a met a view where you get past, consume this over there, where these

areas of this land is open, where we can get to put our money with some like habitats for humanity

and let the people build. And I bet the people who aren't even homeless would like to even help

build and would put in 500 hours or a thousand hours to clear up these streets to help. It's like

you guys keep on going back to these same routines and these homeless shelters. I see about 10 women

dying in homeless shelters get killed, get kidnapped, get men, get thrown into the river, drowned,

older people, elderly people died up in there, didn't kill. So and drugs being done up in there,

people overdosing up in there, stuff like that. It should be some kind of safe ground. Thank you

guys for helping me get my RV back. But look, I still don't have nowhere to park my RV.

All right. Thank you for your comments. Mike Leanne is our final speaker on this agenda item.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council Members. Thank you for hearing me. I wasn't aware of the rules

and when I had to get my slip in. So thank you for that. I'm with L and D landfill and we're

here in the city of Sacramento. We have a couple of buildings in the Power Inn area and clearly this

is a real problem that I don't think there are any easy answers to. What and clearly some additional

housing would make it, would be very helpful. We had a terrible problem on Fruit Ridge Road in 2024

that took us months to get it cleaned up after a lot of help from DCR and Brian's staff,

Council Member Gaird's office and particularly the police, Deputy Chief Monk, Captain Moore,

Sergeant Thompson, Bevins and Sood were very, very helpful. But part of what we did starting

that was a catalyst in this whole thing was that we changed our efforts in terms of security.

And we are currently spending $8,500 a week on our security efforts and we have reduced the

problem on our site. But it is still, we still have intruders every night trespassing, stealing

from us, et cetera, wreaking havoc with our equipment. We're talking $440,000 a year,

$1,200 a day. And we historically along with being in the garbage business also have a home

building and land development history that we've done in the region. And what worries me the most

is... Thank you for your comments. Your time is complete. May I have no more speakers on this

agenda item? Sir, your time is complete. Please take your seat. Thank you.

May I have no more speakers? Did you have comments? Yeah, thank you for the public comment. And

clearly this is an issue we could hear from hundreds of people. But most importantly, we

wanted to have an opportunity for the Council to weigh in on what city staff has been... Can you

come up here, Mr. Pedro? What we've been working on and kind of where we're at and where we go from

here. So first of all, I wanted to thank you and the City Department of DCR who do the work that

we've asked you to do, which is enforce our city laws, enforcing the encampment rules that we

have adopted. I know past City Council went in great debate and tried to make sure that it was

fair, but also reflected the values of the city. And also working to have more places for people

to go. Because I do agree that we need to enforce a law, but tell people where they can go as well.

And I've been signing a big picture from taking a step back is, you know, about a year ago,

the then Mayor Steinberg announced that the point in time counts had reduced by about 30%. So that's

good news. 30% fewer homeless in the city of Sacramento, but you drive to work every day

and you still see a problem. So since then, since we've got that count in the last year, we've increased

ironically by the same number of beds by 30%. So there's two things that are positive. So we are

going in the right direction, but clearly by what we heard from our speakers today on frankly both

sides of an issue, we're not doing enough. And so I concur we need to focus on how we can regroup

and move forward. So the big picture is you're not asking for us to adopt any plans today. We're not,

there's no vote today, but giving it up to you know what you're doing. And I fully support and

embrace what we are doing today and the direction going forward to frankly be more creative. Because

we don't have more money coming from the federal government. We don't have more money coming from

the state. We don't have you know secret water cash up at the C manager's office to distribute.

Do you have that secret cash? Do not. And so we need to you know be more creative. And I applaud

you for looking at ways how we can revamp what we're doing and serve more people and get better

results because we shouldn't have people, I heard from one of our providers last week, because a

senior has been in a shelter for three years and that's not success. And so we need to have better

outcomes for people like that, but also serve more people. So I embrace what we're doing differently.

I'll talk about some of those elements. I know the council wants to engage as well. Maybe we'll

come back at the end, but just a high level, maybe a few questions that maybe you could help us

address. One is this notion of the the microsites. I fully endorse that I've seen the congregate

where everybody's together. They don't have a place to put their stuff. They don't have a lock.

There's always much dignity. And so like why would you not want the microsites with a door to lock

and lo and behold, it's half the cost. So why would you not do more of that and less of the other

piece? So I fully embrace that. And it looks like that based upon our existing monies, you're

forwarding with three new sites across the city. And you've let us know that there are multiple

more sites across the city. So the issue isn't where the issue is how to pay for them. I think

it's important because a lot of times the criticism on us is you need to open up more places in all

of our districts. And what you're saying is no, we have enough places that are city owned, ready to

go now. But as we get more resources, we will go we will double down on this model, which has proven

to be effective. The Rosewood Road and Stockton Boulevard and the Grove. And so I fully embrace

that. So I do want to maybe if you can dig in a little bit deeper as far as the safe ground sites

and why we're not embracing that as a city as an option for our public sites. I know we had

one safe ground site at Camp Resolution, minor saying the entire city council and city staff

thought that it wasn't a good idea. And the property owner as well, they pulled back.

There was no notion that one individual does have a small kind of safe ground site on his

property right here. I think it's smaller, it's less than 10 or so tents there. So could you maybe

enlighten us on why this model isn't a preferred option for the city of Sacramento?

Sure. Thank you, Mayor. So obviously, everybody's on both sides of this thing.

And you are correct in there is a small safe ground site over here. It's very small and it's

well maintained, well controlled. Camp Resolution, contrary to everybody's belief, I was out there

many times. And if anybody has been out there, you saw what the conditions were out there. And

we don't want to repeat that. It wasn't fair to anybody. I mean, we sat here in chambers and had

Camp Resolution screaming at us. They wanted power. They wanted water. They wanted all the things

that we are offering with these micro sites. And now safe grounds work. I'm not saying that all of

them don't work. I'm saying that Camp Resolution didn't work. And it didn't work for many reasons.

And many of those reasons are when the city is not allowed to get on our own site to provide

services, that's a problem. When individuals from that camp have to secretly call us for fear

of getting kicked out of the camp because they're actually reaching out to us to ask for some services,

that's a problem. And we lost control, total control of that camp. And that, so you have the

tiny little tents, the 10 tents that we have over here that's fine. And then you have Camp Resolution

that simply got out of control and ended up being disaster for us. I think the big difference there,

Mr. Pedro, is that the camp resolution was a city-owned site. That was our property. Whereas the

other safe ground site is on an individual's private property. So people want to do well-managed

things on their property. There's a few examples. We know Safe Harbor Homes up in District 2 and

Robin Moore, she does that on her own. And there are other examples of people doing that. And

we need more of those. But on our land, for a variety of reasons, that wasn't a preferred option.

And I respect that decision that the council made a year ago. So thank you for that.

I do want to address this provocative topic about having some type of a copay of service fee for

individuals. For a lot of people, it's like, that sounds, why would you have somebody go from

the river or a creek to a shelter facility and have them pay? Like, they don't have any money.

But if they're in a shelter or some of our program for a year and they transition somewhere else,

they do pay a copay. And my understanding is the gold standard in society is you should pay no more

than 33% of your income on rent. Housing burden. A lot of people, this generation, pay 50%. And so

I think what you're suggesting is for those people that do have income paying no more than 30%

for some type of program fee, which is what we have a number of our city programs like

St. John's Shelter over in Power and Area and Councilmember Garris District.

So is that a normal thing that some of these housing programs have a fee for individuals with

income? Right. So we have, I look at it as a stepping stone. So we have shelter. Obviously,

emergency shelter, we need to free up more space or build more shelters. Instead of that model, we

build more, for lack of better term, it's interim housing, but permanent housing for people to live

in which frees up space in our shelters. This is obviously not something we're trying to generate

revenue off of. We're trying to prolong with the lack of funding that we have to prolong

the, our ability to extend our services and continue our services. We're not going to get rich

off of this. We're not going to use the money for something other than, than homelessness.

I don't think that it's, it is again, as you said, we're thinking outside the box on this.

It's money that's going to be reinvested into keeping that site operational. And so it's,

it's not like we, the city, are trying to get revenues out of this. Would someone rather keep

all $900 and live in our streets because we have, they have nowhere to go? Or would you pay $300

and have your other 600 and have electricity, water, a shower, a safe place to sleep,

a secured environment to live in? I mean, my unscientific asking of, of our clients that we

tend to, many of them would pay the $300 to live somewhere safe that had full services available.

And so it's, it's not that we're looking to profit off of this. We're looking to any way that we can

possibly extend what we have available. If we run out of money, we run out of services, we run out of,

we're going to start shutting stuff down. And again, this is not to, to, to fund the entire

operation is to start the process. And, and we constantly talk about, well, we're trying to

stabilize people and get them ready to be self-sufficient. Part of that self-sufficiency is

paying rent. If you're going to be on your own, you're going to have to pay rent. This is a step

in that direction. We're not going to grab somebody off the street and say, now you have to pay $300

or you can't be in here. That is not it. That is taking people from our shelters that are past the

emergency crisis state and getting them into the next step because we don't have permanent housing

for them. It doesn't appear to be this out of realm idea that it would open up more space in our

shelter for the people that are in the streets that are in crisis that really need an emergency

shelter. So it doubles our space. We're moving people out of our shelters to allow more people to

come into our shelters. Yeah. Well, again, I fully embraced it. I think it's fair. I think people are

given a choice. Do you want to have housing? And if you want to, yeah, pay a nominal essentially fee

of 30% of your income, roughly $300, I think is a fair proposition. And that's pretty much what

people go to anyway if they get offered some type of subsidized housing or actually pay more.

And then as well as the hotels, I think that's something that we need to do as well, especially

after a year of individuals or so more in our hotel program. Because conversely,

you know, why would you graduate and go to another program when there was a fee,

a third of your income if you could stay for free forever? And so it's just fair for other people

because we want to serve more people, not fewer. And so just simple math that I fully embraced that.

And I don't think it's unfair. And then just lastly, I said something provocative here a couple

weeks ago that it would take 300 years based upon our current math to build enough housing.

And it's spot on. As you said earlier, it's $2 billion and a couple hundred years. And that's just

not the route that I want to take. And, you know, we have great solutions to a subset of the people,

5% of the population. Hey, we have, as I say, a BMW solution. And the other 95% are like,

sorry, I think, you know, common sense ones, we need more simplified. Because I'd like to say

Honda Civic Solutions. Sorry, BMW and Honda. They're both two fine automobiles. But we need to do

more with less. And that's kind of a misnomer sometimes. But just focusing on how we can

maximize every dollar we have. And so these micro units, the idea that we're going to talk about

in a couple weeks with the Home Keep programs is similar to that same approach because the

permanent supportive approach is great. You know, right behind us, the Mercy Projects. The one we

approved a few weeks ago, a few blocks from here. That's going to serve those individuals well.

But it's a drop in the bucket. And so we need to do things differently. So again, I

embrace the direction you're going. I do know that I want to, I heard from Council Member

Maple and Jennings in the past couple years about exploring safe places for people to park. I know

others have mentioned that as well. But those two I heard. And so I'm glad that's on the list as well.

Certainly want to apply for more state resources and campment resources to do more of these

micro sites. And then I really like this idea, this public-private partnership.

We talked about one individual as a safe ground in their backyard here. That's not the best option

in my view, having some tents. I think we should go and ask individuals if they have property,

if they're a church, a business, if they want to take five, 10 tiny homes. I know we talked about

that. I'd like to have a competition, buy 100 or so of these, put a RF, what's that again?

What's the I stand for? Request for information. For interest. And explore finding individuals

like Robin Moore, Safe Harbor up in District 2, who with no money from the government in their own

backyard built five tiny homes. So how do we get others to do that as well? Because again,

we can't do it all on our own. So I think this gives us a path forward to do more. So thank you.

With that, look forward to the council discussion. Councilmember Maple.

Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Brian. I really appreciate the presentation. And

really your thoughtful analysis of an assessment of where we are and where we need to go. I think it's,

I think it says a lot about any government, any entity that you constantly assess where you're at,

whether you're doing something well, whether something's working and pivot and reevaluate.

And I think that sometimes that's really hard for government to do. I call it the inertia of the

status quo. It's really easy to fall into what we've always done and do it because we did it 10

years ago and 20 years ago and 30 years ago. And so I think that this type of thinking is

really, really helpful and is going to help us get closer to where we need to be.

I'm going to give a few comments and then I'll have a couple of questions at the end,

both based on the workshop, but also what I hear from my constituents and from community

organizations every day. I'd like to say first and foremost that whatever strategy we take,

I'm going to be really interested in one that gets us to functional zero. And I know I say this all

the time behind closed doors, but I really think that there's not very many places in our region

where there's a conversation being had of what would it look like? What would it look like if

every single one of those people that shows up on that point in time count, which by the way,

we know is the county, right? It's not entirely within the city limits of Sacramento, but we know

about 70% of people who are on shelter within the city limits. So it's a big chunk. And then

within that, what would it look like if we did women and children? If we got women and children

off the street, so what would it look like if we got all of our seniors off the street and so on?

Because then we can move backwards from goal. And that's just how my brain works. I don't know

of anyone else, but when I have a big hairy problem in front of me, that's where my brain goes first.

And I really want to acknowledge our partners, the Sacramento Steps Forward, who are basically

debates in the room. This is something that has been taken on through the Regional Coronated

Homeless Action Plan, the ARCHEP, great acronym. And there's a lot in that document for those who

haven't had a chance to read it. It's not just strategy based on data and evidence. It's also

protocols that we can use. It's also a gaps analysis and a lot of other things that I think are

pretty useful. And maybe don't, you know, apply directly to everything that we're doing here in

the city, but I certainly think that we should try to align ourselves whenever possible to that plan

because we did contribute to that plan. We did, the county did other jurisdictions within the

county. And so I think there's a lot to be gleaned there. And I know that you and your team do that

all the time, but I just want to say that out loud. And I really want to make sure our strategy is

based on that. I also wanted to say that I really support rethinking sheltering in general.

Congress shelters are really expensive. I think we saw that on your PowerPoint. They are difficult

to manage at times. And just in talking with people who have lived in and been in the shelters,

people don't often want to be in them. And that's not by any fault of any of our amazing

shelter operators. It's really about when you put a bunch of people together in one space that don't

know each other, they come from different walks of life, different paths, different backgrounds,

it can be really challenging, especially if you're a woman, especially if you're someone who has

experienced violence in some way and a lot of other factors. And so I think generally speaking,

you know, I'm of the mind now that I don't really support spending as much of our resources on those

versus thinking outside the box and finding ways that we can shelter and transition people

while they have their own space and their safety because we never know where someone has come from

and what they've been through. And that's always really top of mind for me, especially really

support the micro-site communities related to seniors. I think that it makes a lot of sense.

You know, we know that a lot of our seniors are on fixed incomes. If they're getting

social security, that's not going to change. I thought that was very logical. It makes sense to me.

And frankly, it's saddening, you know, that we have, I think, you know, we should all judge our

societies based on how we treat the least among us, especially our seniors and the people who,

you know, have contributed to our society for so long and then find themselves in situations where

they cannot keep a roof over their head or feed themselves. And so I think what we can do to really

focus our energy and provide dignity to folks, that is important. So I really love the micro-site plan.

I do want to say, I don't want to say I share a different opinion, but I really struggle with

this idea of charging people. I think obviously if you look at our shelters and the programs that

we're providing, people are already struggling. Certainly, and I know this isn't the intent,

we wouldn't want to charge someone who's like in a car, get shelter, for example, because

if you're in our shelter system, you likely have no income. Or if you do very, very little,

maybe not even enough to take care of your basic needs. I do understand where you are

coming from or the mayor is coming from as it relates to something like the Motel Shelter Program.

I think some of us were really, I certainly was surprised to hear that there were people that

had been living in there for years. And I do struggle with this idea of equity, where there are

people who are waiting to get into something and then you have people who might be staying in the

Motel Shelter Program for years on end. And that conflicts in my mind. And so there needs to be some

kind of process to keep people moving into the systems and onto better things. Part of the problem,

of course, you've identified in your presentation, we don't have enough housing for people that

they can afford. It's just, it's the elephant in the room. It doesn't exist. There's, there are,

you know, there's wait lists to get into affordable housing as we know it. And so again,

that's why it goes back to these creative ideas around interim housing solutions that maybe don't

fall within that PSH and don't fall over here, but can still be something really dignified

for people to be able to shower and use a toilet and cook food and have climate control and all

those things that we would expect out of a unit, maybe while they are saving money or doing what

they need to get into the next step. So really, really support that. And I'll, you know, I think

whatever we do in terms of a charging people approach needs to be very, very tailored. And so

I'll be keeping an eye on that conversation. Prevention, you know, we talked, we talked about

this, it's also in our homeless, our homeless action plan. But we know that people are falling into

homelessness faster than we can actually like build our way out of it. And so that has to be a part of

the plan. It can't be everything. We need to create spaces for people and free resources to do that,

but just making sure that we're continuing to do that is top of mind for me. I have said this

many, many, many times, and I know many of my colleagues have as well, but I will say it again,

I really, really support safe parking. To me, it's a no brainer. One of the things that I hear the

most from my community members and residents is that they are frustrated because there are

camper vans and cars and all things throughout their neighborhood. And there's all kinds of issues

that come along with that because they maybe don't have access to a bathroom. They don't have access

to the things that they need to be able to be safe and to get connected to resources. And so

that is not sustainable. It is not sustainable to have people parked all throughout our city and

being moved around constantly and not to mention that, you know, part of what happens is we tow

their vehicles at times. And that just may take away the only shelter that they have. And so for

me, it makes a lot of sense to identify locations where people can park their vehicles. We can say,

hey, come here, park. We'll make sure that there's services that you can get connected to. We can

make sure that you can get on our housing list. We can make sure that you, you know, whatever it may

you may need. And sometimes I'm sure we'll find that there are, you know, families and people who

are working hard at their jobs and maybe they just need a little help. And we might be able to find

our way out of helping people up into situations that are helpful without impacting our, like our

shelter systems that way. And so whatever, you know, I don't have a list of city-owned parking

lots. I do know that there are a lot of potential partnerships that exist. I know myself and some

of my colleagues here sit on the Regional Transit Board. I know that this conversation came up in

the past in 2021 before I was on this council through the homeless siting plan. And there were

some challenges there, but I don't see why we shouldn't try to revisit those conversations.

And I'm happy to support on those because I think where we can partner, we can find a lot of success

as it relates to safe parking. I already said microsites, but I really want to impress that

for all of us and for the community, as it relates to microsites, it means that we need to step up

and be partners. And I want you to know that you can consider me a partner and District 5

a partner in finding places to put microsites. We must open our hearts, open our minds,

and allow these spaces to come in because otherwise we're going to continue to be in this,

in this never, never ending loop. And I know that we all don't want that. And so, you know,

I'm sure I will get some angry phone calls and whatnot, but I'm okay with that. I'm okay if

that even means me losing my seat because I think it's more important that we find spaces

that we, that people can go and that means being bold and being brave. And so welcome us, but also

I think it's important that we talk about geographic distribution of sites, right? It can't, the

one jurisdiction, one neighborhood, one place cannot be where everything goes. We must look at

the entire city. And I think that's really, really important. And I think it'll also be great for

the residents of these communities to interact with people from different neighborhoods all over

the city map. And so that's something that's important to me. And I hope that that's part of our

plan. And I'm almost done. Sorry, I know I'm rambling on, but this is all, this is obviously a really

important issue to me and to the residents of the city. And all of this brings me to what I think

is the most central issue and I'm a broken record, but I'll say it again, our structure is broken.

We have a broken structure and it's not just the city. It's all the cities in the county. We

know that homelessness is not confined by city limits. We know that when we interact with someone

who's on the street over here that they don't maybe necessarily know if they're in the city

limits or if they're in the county or if they're on Union Pacific land or Caltrans or RT or whatever

it may be. All they know is that they need help. And so I just, you know, I think it's one of the

most important things that we could do is to create a joint powers authority around homelessness.

We need to coordinate our resources in our strategy. And we already do it. It works in

all kinds of other areas on transit, on water, on air quality, on libraries, and many more. So why

not homelessness? Something that we know is the most important issue to Sacramento and doesn't

know any jurisdictional boundaries. And so I think if we are able to find a way to do that and

coordinate with our partner jurisdictions, we will find that this will actually allow us to

align our strategies into pool resources and most importantly allow us to be more competitive for

state and federal funds, right? Because the more that we use an economy of scale with the resources

that we have, not just the city doing its own thing or the city of El Gros, but what if we all

work together and then we brought along, you know, our governments, businesses, healthcare,

education, faith institutions, everyone, we can all be a part of the solution. And so that's not

a statement for you as Brian Pedro, but that's a call to my colleagues here on this dais and beyond.

And so one last point that I'll make just because it's become a key issue with the WX shelter is

that we must keep our promises as it relates to the good neighbor policies.

One of the things that we have, you know, promised the neighborhoods that have

shelters or other sites in them is that we will enforce a good neighbor policy that allows

the residents of the shelter to be able to not interact with, let's say, people who are selling

drugs outside the door. Let's say if you're trying to get substance use treatment and stay clean and

you walk outside the door and someone's selling you a vial of heroin for five dollars, it can be

really challenging to get the help that you need, not to mention the other impacts, right? So

frustration from the neighbors, fires, blocked sidewalks and so on. And so I just, I think whatever

we do, we have to keep our promises for these micro sites and all the sites within the city

and that we really keep a buffer around those so that the communities who do welcome in,

as we want everyone to do, that we can say, hey, but we're going to have your back too.

So with all that, I will see the rest of my comments and just thank you for the time.

Thank you very much, Mayor McCarty. I think first I want to thank Brian and for your thoughtful

composition of what's happened over the last, for a long time actually, even before I came on the

council. But I do want you to, if you can, go back to that screen where you had all those different

options early on in the presentation. And I think it just, one of the things I'd like to highlight

just for those, for my colleagues who are either new to the council or, and for those who are just

tuning in is that, you know, and this was on slide 11. And, you know, the, each one of these

items that we, because I remember being here when we voted on the Grove, when we voted on the LGBT

Center, when we voted, you know, to support St. John's program, actually we expanded St. John's

program to have an additional building itself on top of St. John's Square, when we voted on

Roseville Road, even on the Motel program and the Respite Center, and when we voted on the

Congress shelter. At each one of these, the staff, and I want to thank you for this, the staff took

a lot of time to make cost-benefit analysis and think about what decision to make. All to say is

that I appreciate that because we're learning iteratively. We're not, you know, just taking

an action, just to take an action, because all of these, if I remember, there was extensive debate

about, you know, not only the efficacy and the cost and also how best we can increase

our capacity. And I appreciate the fact that you acknowledge that, look, when we compare

the cost for these and the efficacy and what we're hearing from both the, those who are there and

looking for services, that maybe that's not the best approach and to start looking at ramping down

at an appropriate pace. I think that speaks a lot, because what I've noticed a lot both at

state government and even local government is programs get created and they just keep going,

they keep going, whether they are the right outcome or not. So first, I appreciate that and I do want

to, you know, first of all, applaud, you know, all the work that's been out there from, and from our

DCR team who's out there. And for those who have been out there who came here and testified and

said that they, that they think DCR is just out there sweeping people, you know, I could not

disagree more, because the staff that are out there are communicating and trying to do their best

to connect with individuals. And the fact that you started and also multiple times have, when we've

had these conversations mentioned, these are human beings that were trying to find the best

possible path and solution for them, I can appreciate that. So going back to this point here,

I, one of the key things that you've outlined here that I don't think has really been discussed in

any of these was that transitional point. So if the goal is really to increase the number of beds,

I appreciate you coming up with, at least as you mentioned, a recognition of our definitions. What

is an emergency shelter and what is interim housing in the pursuit of permanent supportive housing?

And the, even the permanent supportive housing projects that have been in District 6,

one when I was a community leader, I think Council Member McCarty back then was pushing

that one, which was the Mercy Boulevard. And I think that may have even started well before,

with Dave Jones, or did you start that one? You started that one. And everybody complained about

that was going to destroy the neighborhood. And it opened up almost about the time that I came

on to Council. I never once did I ever hear a problem about that particular site of everywhere.

And so I think the fears of when something has run well, but the problem with that is it took

almost a decade to get that permanent supportive housing up and going. So this recognition of

interim housing and looking at microsites, I support you moving forward with that. And with

strong confidence that I think that this will provide us another tool, another tool to expand

the number of spaces, because as soon as we can get someone from emergency, out of emergency shelter,

and make that space available for another individual that may be sleeping in front of another business,

or on Fruit Ridge Road in front of Mr. Leen's property, which is a very dangerous location,

by the way. I can't imagine being sleeping on that side of the road with heavy-duty trailer

traffic swinging by and there's no sidewalks. So to that point, being able to open up space

at our shelters into interim housing while we continue to build permanent supportive housing,

I think is the right approach. And looking at a faster way to be able to produce it. And

we've opened up Stockton Boulevard site, which is 175 units of tiny homes. That was a big site.

And when we did this, the City-County Partnership, one of the requirements or the agreements was

that if we can find a site large enough, the county would operate it. And they are operating it.

But we were looking for very large sites, you know, seven acres, 10 acres. We found a site that

was on RISA, and then the property owner realized they could make a lot more money making apartment

complexes and pulled out of it. So that goes to the other issue is the access to land. And so I

think what's important here is that, you know, what we're talking about is access to land that the

city can have. And they're not going to be major large acreage lands. There's only so much small

acreage of land that we could do. So I do think that that is an important factor to recognize is that

the micro sites allow us to confront the challenge of finding space. In fact, Mr. Lean, when, and

before, you know, the power and directors predecessor here, they were out there looking at

industrial sites and places where they could. But the other thing we found out is even the vacant

land, we found one piece of land that even St. John's was supportive of helping start a place

there. It would turn out to be an old retired landfill where we couldn't use it. So I think that's

going to be the other, the challenge is figuring out what access to land we have. And that's, and

that's why I agree with councilmember Maple. Early on we tried to do safe parking in District 6,

but it was again the issue of access to land. And what I would like to, I want to acknowledge and

push forward safe parking, much like councilmember Jennings and I tried to put together some safe

parking programs with even our churches, but even our churches, some of them backed off of it when

we tried to do it. So we want to, if there is a willing partner and if there is city land that

is available, one or the other, because I think the P3 component, whether it's a health facility or

church, and we can do safe parking, it would be important. But we also learned from the failures

of a poor safe parking facility. And we don't want to repeat those. So I'd like to make sure that

as the county is moving forward with their safe parking program, I think they're, as you mentioned,

you consider it the Cadillac model. But the things about what, you know, if someone has an RV, where

are they going to dump their sewage, you know, how is access to water and powering hookups. Sometimes

people are in their cars, but so I think those are some of the key things that we do need to,

to, even though you don't want the Cadillac model, because we're looking at costs,

we have to make sure that, that we don't make the mistakes of, of what happens when you don't look

at some of those health and safety issues. And I have a personal, you know, experience with safe

parking, which I think, you know, there is a place for, for that location to go forward to. And again,

all of these pieces are to expand the number of spots available for emergency shelters so that we

can reach more people who are on the street and into that point. The leading to the next part here

is the reason we're having this challenge is because of the lack of resources. So I, I actually think

it's important that we explore the fee for the program fee or this program fee model. And not

for the purpose of those coming off the street or an emergency shelter. I don't think we should

ever charge for emergency shelter. And, and I don't think that that's what I heard today

from your presentation. The hyperbole that I read about that concept coming in here,

you know, that if it was going to be a fee for emergency shelter or entering into emergency

shelter, yeah, it is backwards. But, but once we have someone in a position of stability,

it's not uncommon. And there are programs that have actually been successful in a fee for service

type of a program. In fact, you know, in District six and my own council District six,

St. John's does that. They have their 18 month program that that gives them stability. They have

the counseling and the services that they need. And then through St. John's Square, they, they,

they teach their, their clients and their families, you know, how to begin getting back into the

rental market and understanding the challenges of how, how to be able to manage their finances

as well. So I do think that it's worth exploring. And again, those are all important for us to

analyze how, how we move forward. But we should never charge for emergency shelter. That's,

I think an important thing. And that's not correct me if wrong, but that's not what I,

I heard you say today. That's not your intent. Correct. We will not be charging for emergency

shelter, nor can we by definition, there should be absolutely no barrier to get into emergency

shelter. Fantastic. Thank you. And I appreciate that. Finally, you know, this is, this is helping

a population that's, that is willing and, and wants to come in to our services. That once we've

reached out to them, we've created some trust. And they've said, you know, I want to be able to

participate in this, this emergency shelter program. There are folks out still out in the street,

as you mentioned, that may have developed mental health issues, substance abuse issues,

who can't make that decision. So my only final request here, Mayor, is that either through

our meeting or actually preferably through when the city and the county meet, is that we

look at the, the, the current success or where we are an update on the Cares Court program,

because there are individuals who can't make those decisions and aren't entering into our program.

And many times they're the most visible that the public sees, not the ones that we're entering

into safe parking, into the motel or shelter program or others. And so I think it's important that the

Cares Court program or, and the fact that we are petitioning also on being, and the county's

petitioning also, I think we need to make sure that that's an item of our discussion. On top of

that, I almost, you know, this, maybe I'm speaking out of turn here, but if willing, I think we should

reach out to Judge Larry Brown to maybe even discuss to the bodies about what the courts are looking

for in these petitions so that, that we can maximize our time. So there's those who are willing

and then those who may not have the capacity to participate, because those are the two biggest

challenges with it. So all of, all I will say is thank you again. I think you did a, a, a,

a, I've proposed some very solid concepts that I think we need to continue to explore. And,

and I know we're not voting on this because I know that individual items will come back,

but, but I do think that Mayor, that we need to continue to explore those and see how we can,

for the, the end point should be increasing the capacity to be able to reach more people.

And it can't be just for backfilling finances. It has to be for the focus of increasing more capacity.

Thank you. Vice Mayor Talamantes. Thank you, Mayor. Brian and to your DCR team, thank you so much for,

for your ideas and, and your heartfelt presentation. To me, it's sad that California's economy,

the fourth largest in the world, yet we can't find a solution to address our homeless humanitarian

crisis that is making everybody upset in Sacramento and just in California in general.

And homelessness. I spend about 70% of my time thinking about homelessness. I see it, I feel it,

I hear about it every day of my life. And my staff is constantly like fielding calls about

homelessness, impacting our small businesses, some of our restaurants being lit on fire,

fire on the levee, in front of our schools, in front of our homes. And everyone's extremely

frustrated with the problem. Every day I drive by on Northgate. And there are a few locals who I know,

I know who they are, I say hi to them. I've called 211 for them before. I read a poem from one of

them before. And then there's other individuals on Northgate who I'm scared of. The people outside

of SMART and FINAL that will follow me to my car. And the person knocking on my window for money,

anytime I'm at a traffic light, who my mom told me, scares her too. So there's a level of

homelessness. And every single unhoused person does have a unique story. So thank you so much

for, for understanding that in your presentation. And also just reminding us all that they're also

human beings. And that we need to make sure that we're compassionate, but also pragmatic

in our approach to addressing this crisis. And I feel, you know, like I said, I feel

compassionate, but I also feel frustration. And I feel frustration by us here in government,

and our lack of accountability in all levels of government, lack of ownership about the problem.

And if I had one wish, it would be to lock up all of our elected officials, all our nonprofit

partners, and all executive management from every single level of government, just like the popes

are for their first equestrian, the next new pope, but locking us all up in a room to come up with

the solution that works for all of us. Because that's where we're at. It's enough of like pointing

fingers, we need to have more conversations and really take ownership of the problem that years

and years of policies have turned out to be where we're out today. And it is, and it is our issue.

And every day is our issue. And so for me, that would be my birthday wish, how we can all work

together in the Sacramento and California region to address homelessness. And, you know, one size

doesn't fit all. I believe that there's a lot of levels of homelessness. You have people that need

mental health support. You need people that have substance abuse. You have the ones that are feeling

domestic violence, LGBT youth running away from their parents or foster kids, or the people that

need childcare, the people that need first and last month's rent to make ends meet, the person with

bad credit score that can't get into an apartment or doesn't have reference checks. And I just,

there's a lot of levels of homelessness. And for me, at the city of Sacramento, it's our role to

prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place, because that is the most cost effective

prevention solution for us. And we need to help people get off the streets that just, you know,

a little bit, first and last month's rent. But at the end of the day, we need mental health

facilities for those that who can't care for themselves, who don't know their names, who don't

know that they're walking around naked down 160 into my neighborhood. We need substance abuse

treatment centers for people to stay overnight till they can get clear and go back home to their

families. We need to utilize our care courts, a new tool in our tool bucket, because we have a lot

of constant users of our emergency rooms, and we need the city attorney's office to get back to us

and let us know how that's going and where the roadblocks are at, because it's in a new tool in

the toolbox. And the public is asking us, where are we at on it, how's it going, and what are next

steps in order to help those that most desperately need the help. And so for me, I just want to make

sure that we focus on prevention. We hope focus on helping those that need a little bit. And also

these tiny sites with a minimal fee. I'm supportive of this idea because like Council Member Maple

said, we can't keep doing what others did and just going back and rotating the same ideas.

But we need to enforce the good neighbor policy, because I do have a few shelters in my area,

and we have issues. So enforcing the good neighbor policy is important to me. And I do look forward

to the City Auditor's Report on homelessness and what's working and not working in our shelter

home hotel program. Thank you. Council Member Vang. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Brian, for your

presentation and appreciate the Mayor agendizing this so that we can have a conversation about

homelessness. I think this is definitely the number one issue that is facing our City. And so

I just really appreciate the Mayor agendizing this so we can have this conversation.

So several thoughts that I have. One, and I'll comment a little bit about the

micro community that we have in front of us. So first, I know that this conversation

is about stabilizing what is happening on the streets right now. And I like to just

uplift and encourage us to, while we're talking about stabilizing what's happening on the street,

for us to also not lose sight on exploring how we can continue to move upstream and keep our seniors

and our families inside their home. I know it's going to take a while until we build more housing,

but we also need to ask ourselves in this moment, what are we doing to make sure that we keep our

families inside their homes now? And I share this because, you know, I was just in a community

meeting the other day at a senior complex. And the management of that complex, you know,

has called our office and complained about vehicles outside of the street. And I found out that the

person that was sleeping in the car outside the street is the same person that got evicted.

And so I think it's really important that while we're having this conversation about

stabilizing what's happening on the street, prevention is absolutely critical in terms of

our methodology to address homelessness in the city. I think we all know that when we intervene

before someone becomes homeless, it actually saves us more money, return on investment, right?

And so I just want to really name that and share about, you know, evictions in particular, right?

Because, you know, I had to call SHA, I had to call a few friends about, hey, where can actually find

data on evictions in this county? And there is really no national or local data infrastructure

that really allows us to track how members are being displaced or evicted. And I wanted to name that.

And there is, you know, a national research think tank that I looked up, Eviction Lab,

and found that eviction has actually gone up in Sacramento County, about 6%, right? And so

I just also want to name that because right now so many of our low-income families spend at least

half of their income on housing costs. And one out of four of those families actually spend 70%

of their income on rent, right? And so also understanding eviction, the eviction crisis

is really critical to making sure that we address homelessness. So I just wanted to mention that.

Now in terms of safe parking that you mentioned as one of the solution, great idea. It's not

something that's new. We had this conversation in 21 and 22. And Councilmember Jennings and I

actually held several community meetings and got yelled at, in particular regarding safe parking

at the Franklin Light Rail Station. And we were ready to go actually two years ago with a layout

plan because that property in particular had lighting and infrastructure. But guess what?

There was no political will to do it. Now I think it's great that it's in front of us. I support

this method. I think that's really important because every day we get calls about

vehicles in front of homes. And at the end of the day we don't have a place for them to go. So we

end up actually spending dollars on code enforcement, moving people around without having them having

a safe place to rest, right? And so I support this effort in terms of safe parking and just hope that

we have the political will this time to do it. So that's, I just wanted to name that. Now the

solution, one of the major solution that you have in front of us is the micro community for seniors.

And I've heard over and over that we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But I do

have concerns. And I want to be able to, you know, share those concerns so that if we are to move

forward with this initiative, these are things that we should consider. So the first piece is that

so many of our unhoused residents are struggling, right? This is the reason why they're homeless in

the first place, right? And so for me, just out flat, I'm just going to share that I don't support a

fee. I really believe that our housing policies and practices just must guarantee housing as a human

right, right? Not as a good to be commodified. And that's just where I stand. I also just want to

share that unhoused seniors also have unique and urgent needs that differ from the younger

population. And so if we're going to focus on a micro site for seniors, I think it's also really

important that we take into consideration consideration that aging, you know, like physically,

mentally, emotionally, they are more vulnerable, right? And so the onsite services is really

important for me if we are to move forward with this micro, the micro community for seniors.

Especially because their seniors are vulnerable. And what I've seen, you know,

in research and what I've heard is that really housing options, these types of community can

only be successful if we actually have onsite services that can address their needs. I know

there's conversation around, well, we'll have a property management, property manager there,

perhaps we'll do referrals, get them on a phone call, get them, you know, referral to someone.

But I'm letting you know that, like, if you don't have the onsite services, even in this micro

community, there are going to be unintended consequences to ensure that these seniors are

thriving. And that's really important. We've seen that this is the reason why the cost is so expensive

as well. Because it's not just putting folks in a, you know, in a tiny home. It's really about

those wraparound services, which is the reason why it also costs us because it takes time to

actually do those wraparound services. And so for me, if we are to move forward with these

microsites, it's going to be very important that there's onsite services for these communities.

That's of most importance to me. And I share this because even in our low-income communities,

apartment complexes, that's not overseen by SHRA that don't have direct services.

I've seen families being evicted. I've seen non-support services at those apartment complexes.

And when our families are already so vulnerable, they're going to fall, they're going to,

we're going to miss them. And so if this council so choose to move forward with these micro communities,

which I'm in support of minus the fee, right? And if we can add the onsite services, I would be

supportive of this model. And so I just wanted to name that. And then lastly, I think a question

that I just have for you, Brian, is that thank you for bringing, you know, this strategy to us.

My question to you is that have we actually sat down with our unhoused communities and CBOs to

hear from them what their thoughts are on this plan that you've proposed? So we've done a small

unscientific look at would someone be willing to pay, you know, 30% or $300 to be in one of these.

And a majority of them were yes. You made a couple of good points. So it's voluntary.

More, you can choose to say it one of these sites or not. And the service model, so there's a couple

of things that I'm trying to change a narrative on too. I don't want to look at these as shelters

because there are going to be people living in small communities. And so the need for

security outside to move people away because people are going to be coming in. It's like

there's many of these that the community probably won't even know they're there because the entry

on them is going to be simply a door into a community. So the concerns are going to be there

until we prove otherwise. And the services piece of it is interesting because the services will

be provided. We have so many services available right now. It's amazing how many services we have.

We have substance services. We can call behavioral health anytime you want. We have our

sort rig out there, a street overdose team. We have core centers that have case managers that

can come out. So there's so many services available. The catch to this in that is similar to permanent

supportive housing is the individual, you can't force somebody to take the services. And so they

will all be available anytime that you request services. Are they on site or is it just through

referral? Like will they be on site? They won't be on site. Okay. But again, our PSHs, they're not

all on site services and it takes an individual requesting the service. That's one of the big

things that we see with behavioral health. We have our behavioral health staff in our

motels and our shelters now, which is a great shift from trying to help somebody with behavioral

health in the street when they're trying to survive. But even in our shelters, the individual still has

to want to engage with you and take behavioral health services. And so the concern of service is

not being on site. They are readily available anytime anybody wants. And we will be doing daily

checks. I mean, we will be running the teams through anyway. It's not like we're just, here's

the keys and good luck. There is some stabilization that will continue to be needed. The beauty of

this model is that they're not, they have the ability to have housing navigation there if they

want to go on to something, but if they also want to stay there, stay as long as you want.

So it's that middle ground, like we're trying to, like I said, we're trying to thread the needle on.

Services, cost limitations, and the best model of providing more housing.

Okay. Thanks, Brian. I think the suggestion I just have is as we're, because it sounds like we're

going to perhaps move forward with this model of there's a consensus on this council, is that

as we're thinking about the onsite services or the referral that we really lean on

community partners that have lived in those neighborhoods where these micro communities

are going to be. And I, I'll share an example. For example, like Ms. Jackie Rose, if you were to

propose a project like this, senior, senior shiny home in Tameda View, I'd probably say no.

One is because I don't know who you're going to work with in my community to ensure that

there's trust in my district, right? And so making sure that there is a provider that's

trusted by people in the community is absolutely of utmost importance, right? Or a project like this

is not going to, is not going to, it can happen, but you're, there's a deep mistrust already from

community members in terms of government. And so ensuring that we have trusted messengers

that understands this model that is invested, that's part of the model would be really important.

And I'm just sharing that as an example, if South Sacramento is an option, then it needs to be

guided by community leaders in that area that has love, that has taken care of this community for

so long. And so that would be one of my recommendation to not just some non-profit that has worked in

other cities, but it really needs to be CBOs and community leaders that have an invested interest

that have been taking care of this community for a really long time. So that's the other thing I

would just add. And yeah, I think, I think those are all my comments. I know that this conversation

is really about stabilizing what's, what's happening on the street. And so that's what we have to say

parking and this micro community. But again, I'm just going to say it again that this, the prevention

piece is so important. I think we've heard about study just a few years ago that for every one

person we house, three more enters the system, right? And so we don't move upstream. We're never

going to be able to actually address this issue. Thank you. Thank you so much. Council Member Kaplan.

Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Brian. I appreciate Mayor pulling this together

with our interim city manager so we can have this conversation because it is the number one issue,

I think all of us on the council hear about. And we have some tough choices ahead. But one,

I want to thank you for taking that deep dive and listening because it is where is our money

going? Because the public is asking for that. Billions of dollars, millions of dollars have

actually been spent in Sacramento. I can tell you my community says it's worse. So where has that

money gone? And I have to have those conversations with my community. But also where is, what is our

plan? Where is the compassion in all of this? Because, you know, my community is fairly loud

and they want things addressed. And it's a balance of one, because most disturbing to me

and what you said to us is in you going over the contracts with a fine tooth comb,

the city of Sacramento has been double paying for services. We haven't seen the double and the

positive. So one, I want to say thank you. And two, that really is disheartening for me as a council

member and I know the public when they're like we gave you money and yet you weren't accountable

for the dollars that were going out. And so thank you for one, those that we do hire as

contractors, holding them accountable and making sure they're actually following through and providing

the services that we are paying them to provide, I think, as, you know, the community is looking for

where's the data, where's the accountability and are we seeing a tangible benefit of getting people

off the streets and helping people as well as cleaning our streets? It's a delicate balance.

One of the things I haven't necessarily heard but we've kind of talked about it is when we look

at partnerships between the city and the county and I know we have, you know, the four by two and I

know we're looking at potentially like a September workshop for all of us to come together. But what

are we doing to prioritize our partnerships with other public entities specifically north of the

river when we look at our creeks and our canals and our waterways? Like how can we have greater

collaboration between already 1000, the American River Flight Control Districts, SAFEGA, you know,

and others because I can tell you the Riverway Water Alliance has cleaned up millions of pounds of

trash that we as a city and these other public entities should be responsible for yet they're

doing it. So how are we also expanding our collaboration with them? So we have over the

past couple years with the incident management team going and everything homelessness. We have

probably communicated with just about everybody in the county and trying to collaborate. There is

there's always a limiting factor of resources. We're well aware of what's happening in our waterways

and we're supporting the BESA that we have in the resource we have available. We're in contact,

I mean, Hezekiah is constantly in contact with already 1000 and we support DOU and we,

we've in fact DOU and already 1000 have changed their model to try and get some efficiencies out

of their model and we don't have the bandwidth to keep up essentially. I mean that's really the

the root of it. We just don't have the bandwidth. The water alliance we've heard from Lisa and her

team many times. We're trying to figure out a way, well we have figured out a way, of how we can take

little bites at a time instead of cleaning from here to five miles down in one sweep. We would

have our teams there all day long and then the rest of the city gets no service that day

and it's actually those weeks that we were there because it would take weeks to clear that.

And so what we've been working on with everybody is if you take a little bite out of it and let

us go over there, support you to get that small area clean, then we can come back on another day

and make our rounds with everywhere else that we need to make our rounds. And so

that's the only way we've found to be with the resources available to even try and keep up

is to do smaller, smaller cleanups. Thank you and I hear you on the resources but I also want to go

to what Council Member Maple said. I don't know if creating a JPA is the right thing but I do know

that not often enough are we hearing how we collaborate because in my district one side

might be already 1000, they clean up and the other side is the American River Flood Control

District and then they move over there and then it's a bounce back and forth and in the meantime

our critical water resources are getting horribly polluted and people aren't accepting services

even when you go out there. So it's a balance on how do we do this. I don't know the solution

but I know what we're currently doing is not working. So I would love to see, I get everybody

is at their wet ends but what can we do differently where you have those entities in the same room

together to collaborate because I know I referred to you a couple of those entities, would they be

willing to contract with Friends of Clean and they could bring Friends of Clean on. I mean I'm

hearing we hear from businesses that are paying for more security, people paying out of their pocket

getting people in their homes or in their backyards for extra tents. I think what people are looking

for truly honestly is one we're always better together, two they want to see something different

and we haven't heard how can, what does that different look like for collaborating especially

on our canals and our waterways because I can tell you that's what those of us are seeing

north of the river. It's a place to be but I mean I just went on a tour with DOU and the amount of

increase of what they're paying to clean up our canals and that makes me very concerned. One,

how do we get people out of our canals in somewhere and two, how do we keep our waterways

safe and clean because with the amount of trash going in and how many filters we have if something

gets into that system and breaks it we're Flint, Michigan and that's that's not out of the realm

of possibility. Not to mention we have aging infrastructure and some of our pipes are 100

years old so it's it begs the question we've got to address the now but we also have to look at the

larger and and I do want to see more of an answer of partnerships of these organizations working

together and I know you're trying I'm just saying in in the dream world if we had more funding

but it's not something I think we can ignore. Right and I 100% agree with you we've been having

more and more meetings this seems to be coming you know more and more to the top rising to the

top a little louder and one of the things that that we've talked about that isn't hasn't been tapped

is there are millions of dollars for for clean water and to clean these waterways and you know

it's it's it's not the city's actual waterways they need our help but there's a there's a lot

of money that that is going towards clean water that they could apply for and get some funding

and it's not even you know we've had it in the past where hey we'll we'll pay SACPD to come out

there aren't any bodies it doesn't matter how much you pay them to come out there's just not any bodies

I would I would say to the to the all the water authorities to look to your clean water funding

and either create your own prop 4 I think that's what it was that just passed was the clean water

because there's but that's where it's potentially if there is prop 4 money that's where the city can

help with the regional water authority the waterway alliance all these organizations that's where we

have to have these conversations of coming together because it may take the city of Sacramento

leading on applying for it that then we can partner and address some of these things so I fully agree

with you but these are the conversations I want to see that we're having in with this

so you know I want to thank councilmember vang because you brought up something that we know

when we look at our seniors I had my staff do a little digging and right now rent is going back

up and it's going back up at an average about 4% in the city we had last year we know the pandemic

was much much more we are trying to build as many multifamily units as possible to help stabilize

that but our most vulnerable population and as you said the fastest rising on house population is

our seniors because they are on a fixed income and then it would be ignorant to deny what's

happening on the federal level because we don't know what's going to happen with social security

and we don't know what's going to happen with medicare so I have told you it's easy for me to

say yes to exploring the micro communities 100% but I do want to call out what councilmember vang said

I think the idea of supporting it is another tool in our toolbox for addressing it but it's

how we implement it is to the success of whether these work and I will tell you it there isn't a

checklist we can create such that it'll work with every community from my district to south

sap to district 2 it's going to be slightly different so I can tell you I stand ready

everybody always looks to district 1 and says what are you going to do about it I always tell

everybody I have the least amount of city land available as everybody else but I did find a strip

found a sliver I found a strip so I'm willing to have those conversations and just as much as there

was a piece of land that we did have that was city owned property that I fully dedicated to 100%

affordable housing and we just opened up another affordable housing unit that has 30% EMI units

available so new tomas is doing its part I am leading I will I am okay for the nimbies to yell at

me I'm okay for the community to be angry at me and I will go what to councilmember maple said vote

me out fine for doing the right thing and making sure our seniors and our family and our women are

housed cool I'm I'm going to have but but I need to have conversations with your community you

can't just say yes we're going to have those conversations I'm willing to have people yell at

me and still be okay moving forward with it but it then comes to good neighbor policy having those

conversations with people my job is not to convince them it's going to work but we have to try and set

up the system so that it works in the best way possible on preventive I will go back and agree

with with councilmember vang and this is something I have talked to you a lot about we saw during

the pandemic some of the most successful model especially with what sh array setup was looking

at those who were in the process through the judicial system to be kicked out because they

couldn't pay their rent I'm not say how that was set up was the most appropriate but we do know

and then I'll kind of pivot a little bit when you look at the data that has come out regarding

universal income and what united way has has done and if you go with the small amount of income

that of the individuals that they are supporting and the preventive of keeping people in their

housing that is we got to do more on the front end because there is data to support that that it

helps in the long term but one of the things why united way is so successful and that's how I would

hope we would implement in our micro communities because it's also in our sh array communities

and others when they come in well they're paying rent so I support the fee because if you want

stable housing that's normal when you're looking at these micro communities but one of the things

that they're also getting is services regarding financial literacy health care applying for medic

howler medicate if it still exists services that actually make it so that they understand

because I think some of us in the in the world in the community for granted that people should

automatically know that maybe they don't I can tell you having worked a fair amount with women in

domestic violence situations and having fled it took them so long to lead because one they had no

control over their finances and two there was nowhere for them to go so especially I know to

find success it is teaching them life skills of financial literacy so if we have these micro

communities I don't want to just have it that that they're going to succeed with our seniors

because we believe sometimes with age comes wisdom there's been past traumas how are we setting them

up for success and I think that's where you'll find as we move forward with these micro communities

if we come forward with having that discussion one that'll help them to be more successful

but also I want to take the model of what united way has made it successful for when it's just one

year of guaranteed income and these families are better off and are continuing to stay into housing

even after their guaranteed income is not there anymore that's where I think we have to look to

other models for that success for the micro communities

and then it comes to the budget stuff I will I will go back and say we're going to have not

so easy conversations and we're going to have to have some hard choices but I I am I agree with the

mayor but maybe something slightly different on our hotel motel system of getting people in

I think I would look at six months of getting them in and stability but also are we looking at

financial literacy and other things and having the discussion at six months should they 10% of what

they're bringing in go towards because anyone that's going to move out of our hotel system has

got to understand there is a program fee there is a small micro emergency shelters legally off the

table 100% but you can't have somebody in our motel and hotel system because they are spending

their money somewhere have we taught them anything you know and if you look at go back to after world

war two in Europe and you look at England and social housing and what came up this was this is

normal and this is standard I want to give people skills for success and so that is where

I am so I would I look forward to one our audit and two I know you're looking at this

but data you know and my staff sent a couple of questions your way so you may not have the answers

now but these are things that are on my mind of the residents who are offered and receiving

permanent supportive housing what percentage of those residents are accepting voluntary services

and then part of me goes well if they're in permanent supportive housing why are the services

voluntary because how are they going to learn the skills to help themselves if we don't get them

the help that they're looking for I agree did

yeah I don't I don't think we that's it's such a hard you can follow back up yeah I

mean it's okay yeah it's a hard metric to pull but we'll dig into it and and you'll have to go to

each individual provider and each individual to see who's taking services but we can dig into

for sure and then what options are currently available to nonprofits private entities and

stakeholders who are looking to donate to the city or support in that public private partnership

and addressing the homelessness is there something that is currently in place that they can reach out

to in the city I'm not we need a more formal structure I can tell you that what we have in

place did we have something on yeah yeah there's nothing formal in place I mean that's an area

that's why we look at going out to you know those partnerships more that's we're running as fast as

we can to keep up and to catch up there's a lot of programs that should have been in place that

we don't have yet so I think one of the next things is what are we doing to put in place

a structure for public private and partnerships what does that look like because we can talk about

it but if we don't have a structure in place and somebody is ready to go because if you we all talk

about camp hope but that that is a private you know and it has some public so if we want that here

in Sacramento what is that structure or system look like so I hope that is part of the conversation

that we're looking at

oh what have the outcomes been so far for the street to housing program that we brought up

it's been so as you know that program we started small with small encampments we're in

we have 20 houses now 20 house we're in our third encampment and we're starting to turn up the the

flame the you know the first encampments are trying to get the kinks out of the system and

figure out how we can get moving here and now with this this next encampment is going to as a larger

encampment and we're so far we've gotten everybody but one person

two people that didn't go into housing everybody else we we got into housing that's program is

everybody's learning the challenges of all the many challenges of having six dogs and

um not and not to remembering your social security number and trying to get an ID and

everything that goes along with that so it's been challenging but we're we're moving I want to thank

you I want to thank your team now that's grant funded right and how many more years do we have

our year do we have on that one more year left for that grant funding it was a two year in total so

um as soon as the quicker we can get people housed though the longer we can house them well I want

to thank you um I know we're not solving this overnight but I appreciate your efforts and

expanding and looking at things different and I do support the safe parking um I think uh the partner

in some of the hiccup is Caltrans and Sacartee where former council did a yeoman's job on a lot of

this a lot of the hiccup where other outside entities so I have the political will to ask them

and I think my colleagues before me getting on council that pushed this but I'm my partner in

seeing how we can make that happen thank you thank you Dickinson thank you mayor and thank you

Brian for the the presentation and for the ability to stand there for an interminable length of time

uh I have a couple questions and probably uh to the shock and surprise of all a few comments but

I do at the outset want to uh say I support council member Kaplan's comments about the the waterways

north of the river generally and I certainly as one member of the council would be happy to be

participate facilitate whatever might be useful and bringing together the American flood river flood

control district rd 1000 the safe got the other the other agencies um to coordinate and and hopefully

see some funding from those entities as well toward uh keeping our waterways safe and clean

I have a couple of questions um that I wanted to start with and I was I was curious with respect to

the uh bullet about the motel program which which said we can develop reasonable fees

for our motel program for stabilized guests who have incomes I just um curious what is the if

you know the general income level of the of those in the motel program is it also mostly ssi

yeah so we've been digging into um into that and and um you know the the the fact that we're

looking into all these programs we're not turning them on tomorrow obviously we're going to get with

all the communities before we uh you know stand up micro sites um looking at the motel program in

particular we're it's a little different animal because uh it's families and so there's quite

the variation of families uh variation of families that are in there and and makeup of the families

that are in there um so we're we're again not going to turn on the switch tomorrow for uh fees

and that's the data that we're mining right now is to find out what what that looks like how many

uh have an income what that income is and um you know even with this with the with the fee

structure of any sort um there's options there's uh you know it could be a savings account for

later on when you're ready to move on you either have the funding for your down payment or you have

money in your pocket um it's again we're not we're not uh it's not going to impact us

to take these fees and suddenly we're going to be able to open up another site um but there is

some funding there uh kind of going back to what the councilmember kaplan said it's that that learning

financial uh savvy of um of how to take your money and and learn how to balance it and

so we don't see short long answer to your question we're still pulling the data on what our incomes

look like across the board you you use the term fee here as opposed to rent is are you thinking

about fees for services that would be used by those in the motel program are you thinking about rent

and no i'm saying i'm saying fees because it's um because fees are going back in whether we end

up being a fee that we like i said set up as a savings for you or whether that fee goes back in

the operations of the system um it will go back in the system it won't be rent that will be collecting

on that site okay so you would differentiate that then from the rent you're suggesting be charged to

those in the mic in the micros at the microsites no the microsites would be a fee as well because

again that would go back into operating the site to to try and help offset the um i get where you're

saying where it's going to go but you used rent as a terminology with respect to the to the microsites

but use fee here so i wondered if there's a distinction but in your mind there's not a

to in your concept there's not a distinction between the two correct um i i wonder with respect to

charging potentially some amount um if if the question isn't would a would a rational person

make a choice to pay 300 dollars to be under a roof or not and be out on the street but rather

the question is how many people will be deterred from going under a roof because they have to pay

a fee or rent to do that how many people are going to sacrifice a third or a fourth

of their their available income each month to have a a roof as opposed to have that extra money

to do whatever they choose to do with it notwithstanding they stay out on the street

right so that's why we would look at this um first pilot to look at our seniors that are in

our shelters right now and so if they chose not to pay the money then they would stay at the

shelter and specifically congregate shelter congregate shelter for a senior it would probably

not be the the best place for a senior to be um again it's voluntary um and and but that's not

our objective is it our objective isn't to say you can you can stay on the street with with

its exposure and many different respects that you face or you can come into a roof under a roof

our objective is to get people into housing isn't it well that's where we're double uh

satisfying that because the choice of it is not a choice of being in the street or paying 300

dollars if you're in the street we're going to put you in an emergency shelter if we have room for

the shelter so then by creating a actual place to house from the shelter is going to open a room

in the shelter so from the street it would allow us the the benefit of having you actually have a

place for you in our shelter and so does that not create additional pressure for people to stay in

the shelter as opposed to move into something that hopefully would be more permanent

you know interim housing but more permanent and that's why it's a pilot and and will time will

tell whether uh like I said our unscientific study is that yes they're absolutely willing to pay

and that's why again that's why it's a pilot we'll we'll pilot it if if if the if the charge

of the program fee doesn't work the microsite still pencil out ahead of an emergency shelter

I took note of that actually because I think that that argues against charging fees as a

as opposed to charging them if if we have people who are deterred from moving in because they would

lose a portion of their income we're and we still can operate it at a lower cost than what we're

doing today then why would we charge people well again it goes back to educating them to pay and

and likely they're going to stay at these sites that is going to be their house

and so then we as a city would be paying for houses for everybody for for no fee and then

like I would like somebody to pay my house payment and then I get all of my money to do what I want

with I I know that people are going to scream about that well blah blah blah but it is what it is if

if you have enough money to live on after paying a nominal portion of what you have

we're we're not asking to take all of your money and you're not going to have enough

you're you have internet electricity a place to live in when when I joined the military I was

making $500 a month $487 a month and why I can make $487 a month work is because I can go to

the chow hall and get something to eat and I had a roof over my head and power paid I didn't have

to pay an electric bill I didn't to pay rent and I could still make $500 work and so and and so today

you're extrapolating from that that today someone can make $600 to $900 a month work to to to survive

in a dignified manner for a month I'm extrapolating from that that you could pay 30% of your income

like the rest of us and manage to survive on people in this condition aren't like the rest of us

are they they don't have money for a mortgage payment and to go out to dinner and to go to the

movies that is that is correct so don't we have to examine the fundamental assumption that these

people are in the same position financially that the the rest of us who are lucky to be

financially in in a better position are well I think that what we're talking about is is two

different things here in in trying to trying to compare the two right what what I'm seeing is that

if you have a roof over your head if you're only making a thousand dollars a month nobody's going

on vacation it doesn't matter if you had all your thousand dollars and so if you have 700 instead

of your thousand is that significantly going to impact you if you have a safe place to sleep

and shower and internet and I can tell you my retired neighbors that have plenty of money

go do whatever they want watch tv all day so they're number one we're looking at seniors and

and I'm getting to be a senior myself but what I'm saying is that uh we're already limited

we're already they're already limited on on what their thousand dollars is going to get them

and if we can get a roof over their head for 300 dollars uh I mean it's a they're already limited

on the on the money they have doesn't that make every dollar more valuable when we can house them

and not charge them so if still be ahead of what we're doing today if we house them and not charge

them and they have a thousand dollars or instead of 700 uh I would ask would that make their lifestyle

significantly different by which let's go ask them I I got to guess what the answer would be

well also Roger I I hear you but I don't want to have this back for forever I think too I just

want to I was debating to interject is that I think there's roughly let's say there's 5000 homeless in

the city three to 5000 right say 20 percent of population are seniors those are hundreds of

seniors and we're going to try this out at three sites at 40 right so that's 120 so we're saying

of the hundreds of seniors out there is there anybody that wants to raise up and get housing for

300 bucks I think there'll be multiple people that say yes and we've already talked to them we've

already talked to multiple our staff to shake in their head they're saying yes and so I think it's

worth I think that's the equation we're focusing on is how many people signed up for it and we're

trying this out and we'll go from there I appreciate the intervention

um and I and I'll rest on this subject but as you can tell I have fundamental and profound

questions about about this idea let me just I have a few comments as well and and

you know I I want to note that historically it was the county as it is in most places across

California that had sole responsibility for addressing homelessness and I have to say I vividly

recall one of the early issues I faced as a supervisor was whether or not to open the county's

winter shelter at Alcal Expo early in the in the winter of 1994-95 I give great credit to those

at the city level both staff and elected officials who have taken on homelessness as a

city responsibility because the city didn't have to do that and so the county is always going to be

given the structure of the way funding works and responsibilities work and local government in

California the county is always going to be an indispensable party to our efforts to address

homelessness but I do think that that there is recognition due for the establishment and

expansion of shelter beds and services and and other efforts by the city to be to be part of

the solution so I do give great great credit than that it's also clear to me and has been clear for

a long long time that unless we and some others have made reference to this unless we have

a very coordinated approach not just with the county but with the other cities in this county

and perhaps even thinking beyond county lines to our surrounding neighbor counties and cities

unless we have a very coordinated approach we are not going to be as effective as we can be with

the resources we've got which are always going to always going to be limited so I am one of those

who is very supportive of trying to expand our coordination I'm pleased to see that we'll have

a joint meeting with the with the board sometime later this year but I think a lot of this work

actually doesn't go on necessarily in a public setting it goes on at the staff level it goes

on at the elected to elected level and that's work that I think each of us on the council

would do well to be a missionary on with our local elected counterparts

I also am a strong believer after the years I've spent that everyone has to be part of the solution

we cannot have a result that places the burden of addressing the issue on certain communities or

areas or neighborhoods while others don't share that obligation and that responsibility

that that is is not an approach which ultimately will bring us together but it will it will divide us

and we can't afford in my judgment to be divided on that we need to we need to move in

in a concert I think from the standpoint of the public the public is interested in knowing some

basics you know you have spent in your slides some some time laying out what what we spend

and that's certainly something that the public is keenly interested in but I also think that the

public's interested in what our what our status is and what our efforts yield meaning we know we

know what the point in time count is we have that we have that number on a periodic basis

but but do we make it clear to the public how many people we help into shelter how many people we

help into transitional housing how many people we move into permanent and permanent supportive

housing do we make it clear what the outcomes are that we get from the money we spend and even if

those numbers are not where we would necessarily hope they they might be we don't I think

generate the kind of understanding we we have to to have from from the public unless unless we are

transparent with with them about what their money is their money is getting spent on and what it's

what is yielding in terms of results so that's not so much a topic of focus today but I would

really encourage us to look at developing some whether it's a dashboard or something of data

that can be available to the to the public so they can see what kind of progress we make which

which leads me to

the point that I think for me underpins addressing homelessness at its foundation others have

have mentioned it so to that extent I apologize for being repetitive but it's about prevention

we're not talking thank you for showing the the chart moving more resources into prevention

but we really haven't talked much about the the mechanics or logistics or the the initiatives to

address prevention and I would think mayor that that would be an important topic to spend some

time on in a in a in a council meeting as well when Emily Halcon tells the board of supervisors

in the fall of 2023 that for every person we're helping off the street 3.2 people are becoming

homeless I think it's apparent that what we're doing is not successful it doesn't mean what

we're doing isn't successful we help people we help hundreds of people every year off the street

but we're chasing our tail and until and unless we start doing more and more effective work in

prevention we're going to continue to spend millions of dollars not having success and

certainly not as the public sees it or measures it so I'm very interested in having a more

fulsome discussion of what are the strategies the approaches and the techniques that we're

proposing we now employ now and propose to employ to take that greater allocation that

greater emphasis on prevention and and make it work I'm interested I see Lisa back there I know

I've talked to you and and yeah yin about what they've tried in LA using AI as a way to assist

and identifying people at risk of homelessness I mean I think we need to be creative and innovative

in in that regard but that's for me where we need to we need to move a lot more of our our time and

and effort frankly with respect to the people that we're helping in our housing it seems to me that

that what we need to be focusing on is helping people stabilize themselves by getting the

documents they need driver's license and social security cards those those kinds of things by

helping them repair their credit history which is you you you may mention of trying to move people

to self-sufficiency you you don't become self-sufficient if you don't have those kinds of basics

that you need to to rent a place to drive from here to there to to not have a criminal record

that prevents you from from finding housing in the in the private market from not being able to

borrow money so those are services I know that that we do provide but that's to me where where I would

place the emphasis on on helping people and that also in terms of our numbers I'm sorry

to come back to this but it did raise the question for me of to what extent you're using HMIS

to indicate the numbers to as a function of numbers and that's not everybody that's not

everybody's in HMIS I'm just curious if you have a sense of the the either number or percentage of

people who we don't have in HMIS so so SSF this has done some great work on the data and as you

look at even when we had our pit count number and HMIS we've done a lot of work of getting people

into HMIS to get a more accurate and that number is coming to where it's it's going to

essentially we'll have a really good idea of what our pits going to look like because it's

I think the last I saw we're a couple that was a couple thousand difference maybe it was a couple

hundred even at this point okay all right and I would have to ask any idea who's outside of HMIS

Lisa do you have any idea of who isn't in HMIS percentage wise

but I would say we are getting a lot better coverage as a result of coordinated access and all the

outreach work that has been happening so and a lot more accurate data than we've ever had because

of that coverage but I I think we're close but we're not there I don't know that I can give you

an exact number but we are trying to continue to see how we can determine how much of that data

that we are sharing now on a monthly basis on our dashboard is due to actual increases in homelessness

versus better data capture and we right now think it's a little bit of both and I appreciate the

effort to reconcile the two but I think again that the data is important and and our credit with

our credibility with the public so having the best numbers we can makes a difference and I think

us having them transparent and available on a monthly basis which also that dashboard does tell

you how many people were housed each month so and then we do have data that is by program as well so

we're trying to get to a point where we can make that more clear to the public to your point thank

you thank you Lisa I just I will say just on the items before us I I do support the the the

the microsite idea I think it can work I think it needs some careful thought and appreciation

of the issues that that essentially scattered sites raise but I but I've been through

scattered site affordable housing in my life and so I've seen it work as a as an overall

programmatic approach so I support that and I do also agree that looking for safe parking

locations is a worthwhile endeavor as as well so let me just finish by saying again I

notwithstanding the questions I appreciate the support excuse me the the presentation

but I will just underscore the need for focus on prevention thanks thank you I'm council member

plucky bomb and then our city manager thank you mayor and thank you for organizing this workshop

thank you to all the staff and speakers who are working to make our city better I know this is a

difficult topic I want to probably need to take a quick break and I'll call you back I want to call

up a couple of the speakers Greta and Sean if you wouldn't mind Greta in your comments you were

talking a little bit about opportunities to improve the 311 system and Sean if you wouldn't mind

I'm interested in your unique perspective on Alcali I mentioned flats but first Greta yes you and the

mayor saw our footage and so you understand full well what the challenges are for businesses in

that area of town I know that it made an impact but the rest of you haven't seen that footage

and I have asked our executive director to send that out to each one of you and I hope that you'll

take the three minutes it takes to look so that you can get a context for what businesses are

dealing with in this area of town because it's substantial and I just talked to my executive

director and said well how long has it been since you know a crew has visited the area on

between 12th and 16th street and as far as he knows it's been since January so today was the

first time we've heard of a crew being out there so it's not like business owners are not calling

they are but their challenge is that you know business owners are one or two people

and or are a manager that's one or two people calling in and so what the challenge is you can't

ask your customers to call 311 and complain can you I mean think about it your customers would

never come back so that is what they are facing and I don't know what the answer is but clearly

calling a 311 system is almost a waste of time for businesses I don't think it works for them

and it and I saw that there is a separate system for businesses to call in 311

but even that there's nowhere where you can say I'm desperate you can't you know it's like there's

no way to paint a picture how difficult it is to manage that and so I don't know what the answer

is I mean Brian's a creative guy maybe he can think of a way but there's has to be a different

metric for businesses because you are dealing with customers they're coming in to visit you

and they ask you for a service and if you can't attract those people to your business and then

keep those people coming back you're going to die and a lot of businesses between 12th and 16th

they have evaporated they've gone away over the years since I've been there.

Mayor if it's appropriate in the future I'd like to ask that we have a workshop on 311

and opportunities for improvement if there's a chance for us to look at that system you know

that is our our primary data portal for any kind of constituent or customer complaints

and we've I think heard tonight and and other times about challenges that folks are having

getting timely feedback from that system.

Yeah we'll add it to the to the City Manager's Lodge. Thank you.

Sean you represent Alkaline Mansion Flats Historic Neighborhood Association

right there you know the the intersection of the rail yards the river district and the rest of

downtown yes you've had a unique bird dog you know sort of see stealing my speech.

As you said you know our neighborhood is directly sandwiched in downtown the rail yards in the

river district and we've been addressing City Council for for decades because of the over

concentration of homeless services in the area. Over the years we've had a front row seat to the

City's homeless policies and strategies to be seen successful programs and some not so successful

but there's one issue that never seemed to be get addressed and that's that it's seem that is

extremely crucial to the City's homeless strategy that is the fact that the regional partners in

the six county region and the 60 plus cities use the City of Sacramento as their homeless policy.

The the last pit count showed that the county had 6600 people experiencing homeless and most of

that number was in the City of Sacramento. My neighbors businesses city staff have all witnessed

other county sheriff officers and other city police officers dropping off homeless people in

the river district and the central city. We've seen people walking around in hospital gowns

dropped off from hospitals. I've heard from representatives of several other cities that

their homeless policy is a bus ticket. West Sacramento has zero homeless shelters for adult

men and it's clear that their policies for them to walk across a bridge and seek services in

Sacramento. West Sacramento is not alone in this strategy. Sacramento needs to publicly acknowledge

that this is an issue that is currently happening and that it must be addressed. Collect supporting

data and information from each of the cities and counties including what services are currently

being offered and what their capacities are and what importantly what services they're not offering.

The City needs to work with the area homeless advocates to plan strategies to lobby these

lobby for these additional services throughout the region. Without regional support every service

offered in the City of Sacramento will be constantly with will constantly overflowing

leaving the appearance that you've done nothing. Every person you house will continually be replaced

by a person that's been replaced by another one. So I mean the point is is that as you as I've heard

earlier every person that you house is 3.1 that is replacing them but they're not all being replaced

in the City of Sacramento. I mean West Sacramento I mean it's just an easy example but there's other

cities that are doing exactly the same thing. Thank you. I would allow Mr. Plochibon to have his comments.

Thank you. Thanks John. Brian if I could get you back up next. I think we've all heard tonight a

strong desire for better regional collaboration opportunities for us to improve the the governance

model around how we're you know providing these services. My question to you is much more straightforward.

Today is there adequate space available sufficient space for all the folks around the streets?

Uh it and I'm talking you know safe ground camping parking congregate shelter beds is there

space today for everyone to get off the streets in the in the region? Wow that's a big question.

We would on City Land alone you're talking about? No. I think if we any available space banged on

every door in the city sure we have enough space. Okay then my my request to the manager and staff is

the earliest availability bring back a work plan for us that what it would look like to open up.

We've heard the mayor talk about you know the um it's not the perfect be the enemy of the good

you know like whatever it would take to get folks into a better condition than sleeping on our sidewalks

even if that's still on a tent still without power still without all the other amenities that we

want to provide because clearly we're not going to hit that 2.3 billion dollar mark anytime soon

but what can we do to start improving the conditions for folks in and wherever we can providing you

know shelter security storage showers and toilets so that folks can start to stabilize in those

locations. I think we all recognize the impacts that that sweeps have on on on the continuity of

lives for people um so you know wherever possible if we can avoid that kind of um destructive harmful

counterproductive work you know I don't think that's the business any of us are trying to be in

with respect to incentives I'm a big fan of incentives if we're asking folks to pay into a

system in exchange for access to shelter space what's in it for them do they in addition to getting

access to the space is there any other inducement or opportunity that that we could provide them

you know if there's a an opportunity for us to to provide them enhanced services or

some other savings program or some sort of opportunity in exchange for that fee or rent

payment back to the city I think that that might be a an idea worth considering I hear

councilmember Dickinson's concern about whether or not that might be sufficient impediment to

you know folks accepting the offer of shelter that that we're giving and you know certainly you

know what none of us are trying to do is throw up additional barriers and you know so so thinking

about you know what are the things that we can do to both you know provide a you know incentive a

carrot on one side and then you know you know it's a little a little nudge a little push where needed

on the other I really appreciate the the the thinking in next steps about access to new sources

of funds I encourage you to look at our gifts to share 501c3 is a vehicle if that doesn't work I know

that the healthcare and faith community partners that we're working with have other non-profit

vehicles that we could partner with and through I asked my colleagues that are on the RT board to

talk to our friends at RT about all of our park and ride sites I believe that those all

should be housing full stop anyway so as we are working to transition those sites to housing

this safe parking safe camping I think opportunity is a is a good one for those sites I've spoken to

RT staff about it directly myself and I think that there's an opportunity to do that and then I

wanted to follow up a little bit about what councilmember Dickinson was saying in terms of

prevention and diversion and the work that LA county is doing anything that we can do to get

to start getting ahead of this and be more proactive I think it's time for us as a community

we've been reacting for a long time and I want to acknowledge up front all of this is not for

lack of trying right this is decades generations of people putting in their best efforts and

and it's difficult so so what I would like to what I would like to see us do is start thinking

about what we can do to get in front of it what LA county is doing in terms of credit monitoring

using their version of a 311 system to do outbound calling and reach out to folks

proactively I know that work is expensive I know I know that there's resource challenges

but I think that we might start to see that some of these things that we're talking about

not only do we have a moral obligation to do them but they're more effective and we can

yield a better outcome at a lower cost through some of the strategies that have been discussed

today so I at the end of this really what I'm doing is to say thank you for all the work that

goes on this is hundreds of hours of work I know just to do this this one workshop and and there's

and there's more work to do clearly but what I think we've witnessed today is a strong desire in

the community to work together collaboratively for a for a common goal I think you know there is a

a willingness in in our citizenry to dig deeper and and raise funds where needed if we can present

a model back that says for a reasonable investment we can yield a reasonable result that will

actually be beneficial to all the parties involved I think that there is a desire to to do that work

and and raise those funds as needed but but we we need to be able to present that that work plan

back to the public it says for an investment in x we're going to do y by daisy simple as that so

Brian thank you mayor thank you thank you councilmember uh city manager wants to help close us out city

manager thank you very much first mayor I want to thank you for helping us get this on the agenda

and asking the right questions and I really want to thank Brian and the team Tim yeah in

um for your tireless effort and creativity to address what has become a seminal challenge to

many communities across the United States um we had permission to be bold and to try new things we

built this plane in flight um Emily is here she was part of the construction crew and sometimes

you hit it and sometimes you don't and the permission to go back and say this isn't working

and we're going to do something different is really big um there are a lot of questions there

are a lot of concerns and we will only find out by trying what works and what doesn't work and we

may be very very well be back here in six months or a year saying this didn't work or that didn't work

but I want to thank the council for not blinking in this moment and um the will to move forward and

try new things and I think our next visit back will be a work plan on some of the things that we've

heard today in addition to what we're already doing the thing that I remind you is this is a

small but mighty crew we are asking the same people to do a thousand different things uh

and we have to remember it's the people resources and not just the dollar resources that become a

challenge for us so we will um prioritize and move forward and thank you Brian thank you thank you

thank you for I before I close it out do you have something uh my vein I do mayor um I know this

item was review common provide direction so are we vote we're so we're not voting tonight

to move forward with this interim housing micro communities or are we I just wanted clarity on

that no there's no vote but we obviously provided lots of direction to city staff tonight so does

that mean we're moving forward with it I just want to clarity on that so I can articulate that to my

constituents yes so you're saying we are moving forward with the micro communities yes okay okay

okay yeah uh so I just with everybody's concerns we're not turning the switch tomorrow all of this

will be taken in and this is only one piece of the thousand things we're doing and so uh you know

I don't I don't bring the micro communities that it's the fix all it is one component of several

meetings of uh that we will have on on all of this on prevention and we'll bring back and and dig

into prevention we are digging into all of it anyway but this is just one item on this homeless

workshop that we're bringing forward yeah maybe like allow me to help put this into peace

this we spent two hours just us talking and and I thought about having a broader about

governance the county shra steps forward but that would have been 10 hours so you eat elephant one

bite at a time so I thought that we should focus on what we can control in our city budget and this

is what we this is what we did tonight and I know there are some issues as far as implementation

it sounds like the majority wanted you to start this and come back to us and having report out

but I think there are some interests not interesting some legitimate questions yeah I would like to have

these micro sites free to everybody but that means we'd only have 60 versus 120 so there's no free

lunch the math is the math so we can do them for free and charge no copay for people but then we'd

serve fewer people we can have more hotels for people for an unlimited amount of time in the in the

motel program but then we would serve fewer people so I think back to what councilor maple said

about equity too some people are knocking the door let me in I would love to have that and so we need

to balance this out and I think this allows us to do just that there are some clearly some follow-up

things that we kind of touched on today that that I will focus on coming back certainly the county

and city partnership and cooperation is key and I concur with councilor dickinson

that it's not always up here it's behind the scenes and we're doing that we have our first

meeting scheduled I'm communicating with our RT president as far as some of those site locations

and so we will certainly be following up behind the scenes but you know as I mentioned earlier

there has been subtle progress in this front lots of frustration still from community members who

are homeless and who have an impact of homelessness but you know we're not resting we're gonna keep

going and look how to improve upon that so with that this is a receive and file thank you very much

oh question oh sorry excuse me just actually question I hear what you said about direction

to pursue the microsites and I didn't hear any dissent on that issue the whether or not we charge

any fees would you expect that decision to come back to the council but before being instituted or not

that was not was not the the plan of an up or down vote on that yeah um

how about we will we

yeah I I think okay

I don't I don't know if we have consensus one way or that on that right that's right yeah I would

think it would if that component at least would come back yeah I think that this is a policy that's

under the discretion of the city manager to cite these programs and implement them and so you know

we do have some opportunity to come back and have maybe a implementation workshop on this one more

time just on the uh just on the uh microsites yeah so we can do that yes council member may I so I

think it might be a good idea to for you to move forward based on all our direction here of I know

there's like three people that decided hey I think charging is not a good idea a large chunk that

said that it is so maybe create the project and then come back to council and then we'll do an up and

down vote on the tiny homes and maybe the location and incorporate all into one there's a lot of work

to be done before we even get the sites up so we have plenty of time to work through setting the

site up yeah maybe you can come back with um kind of the implementation plan and whether or not that's

the the fee structure some of the other rules and policies you want to put in place the good

neighbor policies which I think council members have talked about that we can have an opportunity

to vote on that plan so we'll do that I think that's a fair compromise as soon as you have to come

back with sites yeah no no sites no sites the the the benefit to the sites on this is that any

piece of land we can scale these right so they don't have to be 40 units yeah if there's a piece of

land that has 20 units and it's in whatever district this is highly problematic I'm sorry Brian but

the city happens to own more land in certain parts of the city than in other parts and so

we need whether it's here or offline we need to be uh have a clear discussion on on yeah well I

I concur with that Roger and I think fairness is paramount and and I will lean heavy on our city

management to make sure we don't undo burden certain areas but this council I'm not going to

second guess spent two years debating this and we didn't get anything built because we focused on

having to have up or down sites votes on sites and if you look at the the the map I think there is

a pretty decent distribution but need to be other places that are not on there so I support the

policy that the prior council focused on those sites so so with that we have our work to continue

and we'll see you soon thank you thank you mayor we now need to move to council comments ideas

questions ab 123 reports

I'm seeing no one queued up I have 20 speakers for public comment matters not on the agenda

sorry city council member I didn't hit my queue fast enough because still processing the presentation

so um thank you so just some quick oh is it the announcement is that what we're doing we're on

council comments yeah great thank you so much um just wanted to announce that this a sat this

sunday may 4th um from 1 to 9 to 1 pm uh is the reopening of our medivh farmers market really

encouraging folks to come out to that um sat ghar tea is offering free rides and as you know uh the

medivh area is uh food insecure and so we worked really hard to launch our medivh farmers markets

are really encouraging folks to come out to that and then I also wanted to share as well council

member bang pause for a second um please clear the council chambers if you are having side

conversations we are moving on with council member comments

okay museum council member my thanks thanks I also wanted to share that we have the second

annual oh baby community baby shower by the rose family creative empowerment center happening at

the panel community center on may 10th from 10 to 2 o'clock and so encouraging folks to come join

us for that and then lastly I just wanted to announce that our heart and hustle scholarship is

now open until may 15th um any students any high school seniors who go to school and district

gate or live in district gate can apply it as a $1,000 uh scholarship and it can be used

towards your college or vocational school expenses and you can apply at www.heartandhustle.org

backslash scholarship 2025 those are my announcement thank you so much council member kaplan

thank you vice mayor um my ab1234 I was at the cal cities leader summit this past week uh took a

lot of sessions about budget uh how to hold our charter staff accountable align our goals and objectives

to our budget uh as well as looking at what would happen with uh certain federal organizations and

funding streams if they were to go away and the effect on states among other items and then I

just want to piggyback uh district one has also a scholarship for graduating seniors if you live

in district one uh the application is on my website uh it is due by may 15th I look forward uh this is

a continuation of what I created as a school board member uh I fully believe in closing the

digital divide and look forward to helping as many graduating seniors who whether they're going on to

community college college vocational school um helping them with technology thank you thank you so

much and madam click public comment yes I have 20 speakers Mary tappel Gordon Lou Ronnie shot and

please do line up in the middle aisle I'm betting we've lost a few people so Mary Gordon Ronnie Shaw

sherry dimmerling laurel holless

hello thank you to the members of the council who stayed uh I'm Mary tappel I live in district two

I'm a long-term user supporter of the Sacramento northern bike trail and I want to again re-emphasize

that the massive amount of a public city city time uh park safety rangers time last year and

Sacramento police department time to clean up the Sacramento river bike the Sacramento northern

bike trail make it safe for the public to use it for its legally allowed purposes like not drug

sales not having loaded weapons that you use for armed robberies not having aggressive dogs in a

tent that you can send out for whatever purpose you want anyway public safety and public health

still need to be defended daily on the Sacramento northern bike trail particularly in the neighborhoods

of dopaso heights and old old Sacramento and and the adjacent neighborhoods and all the way to

where you get to the the American river parkway after after you cross the railroad tracks that's

past the old camp resolution site that was a horrible thing that we all went through they had one

murder each year in 2023 and in 2024 or rather one homicide each year it was an extreme increase of

violence over what that area had seen before and people being moved off arcade creek currently

because of the huge encampments that are so endangering our water resources too many of them

are trying to move right back onto the bike trail too many of them were members of encampments that

were allowed to stay on the bike trail for too many years you know just moving from place to place

along the bike trail so we can't have them just come right on back and waste our many funds city

staff time city management time it was too much that we had put out when we didn't have a big deficit

last year we can't do it with a big deficit we can't do it again we need to protect thank you for

your comments um it's a golden or gordon lou okay and then ronnie hi my name is gordon lou

um president in the ralton neighbors united i'm from district two district two has shouldered

homeless impacts for decades we do we have done more than our fair share we're doing it right now

though north sacramento and district two is a dumping ground for the city's homeless the city

engineered all the homeless to be pushed into our area the impacts this neighborhood and the

surrounding area are a daily problem why bring a project into an area that i was already underserved

and so poor north sacramental has roseville road shelters the grove shelters that housed the homeless

youth 18 to 24 we have ardent acres that shelter women and children we have the former side center

that also is a respite site and an overnight shelter and within a one mile radius of the proposed

location on real in a boulevard there are seven other homeless service sites that helps homeless

people this redlining of the district and the neighborhood the the district and the surrounding

neighborhoods need better projects to uplift the area and bring prosperity and equity and

roger i want to thank you for bringing up the regional we need other the surrounding cities

in the other areas i mean we're the city of sacramento and district two is like a funnel for

homelessness and i really thank you for bringing that up that that's something that really needs

to be discussed with everybody else in the whole area of the county and that's a big thing thank you

thank you for your comments ronnie shaw then sherry dimmerling then lordell hullis

hi thank you guys um it's a pretty long day so um

i want to say that we come from a very you all sitting on the dais come from a very like long

history of years and years of bad policies and it really does impact district two the most

um you know thank you roger for talking about the undue distribution of some of the impacts

but i think it's not really being well received by the rest of the city council you know dais

you guys have a responsibility to undo a lot of the

failed policies that have disproportionately affected north sacramento and homelessness is just

is part of the problem but there's all these other layers of problems when you walk around the

neighborhood go to delp house a boulevard and see all the empty stores go to um you know walk

around the neighborhood and see how it feels not just the homelessness but the crime and the blight

and the lowered expectations i think that this project needs to be uh the small community

the what do you call them micro communities i think they it could be a good thing but i

think it needs to be in communities that can absorb some of the impact so i suggest we look at the

eight districts and see which districts have less impact from the cumulative years of bad policies

and the top the three that are less impacted put the projects there because it'll give a higher

standard for the residents that that go to these uh this project and less impact on the community

so i think this is going to be a long ongoing debate and thank you for your comments your

time is complete our next speaker is sherry and laurel hi i'm sherry dimmerling again but this

time i'm proud to be here with the national council of jewish women the ncjw founded in 1893

is a grassroots organization guided by our jewish values which call on us to improve the lives of

our most vulnerable women children and families so i want to make sure you guys are paying attention

because i'm talking about eviction eviction yeah all right i want to tell you about a program that

we enacted in cleveland ohia while i was there it's called the tenants right to council and it's a

right to legal counsel for every person that's facing eviction legal representation for tenants

is a vital tool to solving homelessness and by the way legal services can't help us they are months

out when you call them for an appointment and 40 of californians lose their cases by not being able

to respond in a timely manner okay according to uc berkeley's uh new urban displacement project

here in our county 18 percent of our renters are in their highest precarity category meaning they're

most likely to face eviction that's 42 000 people so just so you know before any jurisdiction ever

enacted a tenants right to council there were decades of studies that were shown that the

presence of council makes a huge difference in these these cases these eviction cases there was a

study done here in california that found that those were fully represented the tenants that were

fully represented stayed in their units three times as often as those that had little or no

representation so we know the deck is the deck is stacked against our tenants 80 to 90 percent of

landlords come to his court with an attorney and five percent of the renters come this really is a

david versus galore thank you for your comments your time is complete our next speaker is laurel

holless then barbara baron then barbara milgram hello my name is laurel holless and i'm also with

ncjw uh in 2017 new york city became the first city in the nation to establish a right to council

law for tenants facing eviction and since then this model has inspired programs in 18 other

cities and five entire states the results of new york city have been striking thousands of families

and individuals avoid a displacement because they had access to free legal representation

about half of tenants facing eviction who received full legal council were able to stay in their homes

the results were especially notable for very low income renters between 72 and 93 percent

of people receiving full legal council were able to stay in their homes san francisco's rtc program

created in 2019 guarantees all tenants legal representation regardless of income however

95 percent of the clients are extremely low or low income the results have been powerful 92 percent

of tenants receiving full assistance from rtc avoided homelessness and even when tenants did not

retain their homes many achieved favorable settlements such as rent waivers or cash assistance

for relocation this is what a fair system looks like one that protects people and provides solutions

for landlords the county of los angeles voted rtc in 2024 followed by the city of los angeles in 2025

in eviction proceedings in cities without right to council laws 84 percent of landlords have legal

representation while only about five percent of tenants arrive in court with an attorney

new york city la and san francisco's policies increase the stability of renters lives while

also helping landlords avoid the cost of replacing tenants often with simple solutions mediated by

skilled legal aid and it's time for our city to explore this approach of keeping families in their

homes thank you thank you for your comments barbara baran hi my name is barbara baran i'm also with

the national council of jewish women and also talking about homelessness um and a tenants right

to council according to matthew desmond and evicted a Pulitzer prize winning book eviction was the

number one reason families become homeless in milwaukee and nationally uh data confirms this

pattern evictions to place families and unravel lives people lose jobs property children's education

is disrupted and health suffers evictions create permanent barriers to stability blocking families

from finding safe housing again it's a black stain on one's record and really is a spiral

into homelessness one of the best ways to reduce homelessness is to prevent it before it starts

national research has shown that preventing evictions is one of the most effective ways of

reducing new um new homelessness and having a tenants right to council is a proven way to prevent

and reduce evictions in new york city the introduction of a right to council program

led to a 41 decrease in evictions over five years in kansas city before they implemented the right

to council eviction rates was 99 in the first three months of implementation the eviction rate

was less than 20 the list goes on with examples in boulder cleveland kansas city teledo

connecticut and washington state a tenants right to council could stop families from falling

into homelessness because it's math matthew desmond reminds us without stable shelter everything

else falls apart we'd like to see sacramento on the list of cities working to interrupt this cycle

thank you for your comments barbara milgram

hello i'm barbara milgram and i'm also with the national council of jewish women i also

want to talk to you about the right to cancel what i'd like to focus on is why establishing a right

to cancel and sacramento will actually make economic sense i know times are tough and budgets are

constrained but one of the things that really comes up is that it's going to pay for itself

evictions are not just private matters between landlords and tenants they create public costs

by increasing homelessness straining shelters health care systems burdening schools who have to

deal with mobile children social services are increased the legal system is taxed through

long drawn out trials simply put fewer evictions will cost cities less money and the numbers make

it clear and sacramento sheltering one family can cost over 60 000 annually helping a tenant stay

in their home with legal support and cost a fraction of that for every dollar that cities

spend on legal aid they can save three to six dollars down the road for example sylvia they

spent 35 million in a right to council program they saved 45 million dollars and the most recent

report out of detroit found that for one dollar invested in the right to cancel conservative

estimates show they paid off three times that much the benefit was at least three dollars and 52 cents

a tenant's right to cancel is a wise preventative investment that will save sacramento money it's

cheaper to keep people housed than to pay for the fall lab for eviction thank you for your

consideration thank you for your comments gray glueckenbill cherry martinis lambart i don't see

sherry lambart following lambart is jeffrey flanagan michael melton kyle williams shon right

i'm gonna i'm gonna try to get this in in two minutes now first of all i'm very proud of uh

city councilman uh dickerson uh for his inquiry you must inquire when times are tough now i want

to say something that will be very unpopular uh as i look at the rostrum unless my math is off

you don't have a quorum you must have so many people at the rostrum to have a quorum i believe

that applies to even public comments like i said i've been studying this place for a while

also when i look at the city manager's desk or seat there's three city managers in here

somebody should be in that seat at all times because maybe nobody else wants to hear it

but i want to hear the city manager's report it's on the agenda i went to many workshops where it said

if something's on the agenda it should be acknowledged that that is something as a matter

of fact i want to hear the city manager's report i didn't come here just to hear about the homeless

that's one item but when you look at the uh agenda it says city manager's report i want to see a city

manager and i started with harvard chan i want them to come down here just like the other guy did

and just like menti does uh let's see about the city report not just homeless what about the city

budget the city budget is 1.6 billion dollars and i as a native want to see that because i believe

people are intentionally ruining sacramental financially and if you want to see somebody

that cares about sacramental the to the band back cheesecake roger i know you should be proud

and the mayor because you have had our cheesecakes before you became mayor we were featured at the

convention center by the better business bureau you do not get accredited by the better business

bureau unless you meet the criteria and that's what this city needs to meet is a criteria

that you can be judged on thank you for your comments jeffrey flanagan

i don't see jeffrey michael melton following michael is kyle williams shan right teresa mcconnell

all right um i think micro housing in san abarbara is uh i think mary louis from um

santa barbara and uh we need to work on sacramental first you know we are from sacramental we need

to build and work on sacramental first not santa barbara you know no disrespect to santa barbara

you know i know s hra is all over california but we need to deal with our homeless problem first and

we need to deal with our elderly people uh first off you know i got my housing a few months ago and

i still have not got my keys yet but they talk about let's go ahead and build some apartments in

santa barbara somewhere although i got selected and i'm supposed to have my keys already and i've

been waiting and i've been coming here and seeing you guys probably for the last year you know and

it's been going on for years before that before i decided to come and speak up and say you know

hey what's really going on out here but um let me get back to what i was seeing um i also think it

needs to be something uh more for uh the urban community out here for uh musicians for for the

black community more places where uh i mean there's no black ownership maybe we need some

micro loans or something where we could get uh mr gennings and and and mr roberts and you know some

people together where you know the the older brothers or something can can get the blues or

something something going where we could get you get you know get the youth together i know i know i

know some people i want to do a stop the violence thing with the with the stars in the zealots thing

but that's nothing to do with y'all and um i also wanted to say something about i don't understand

why there's no uh reparations out here like i went to jail i got found not guilty and um

i had no bill i got out i paid for a lawyer and i don't got ten thousand dollars to pay for uh

you know thank you for your comments your time is complete our next speaker is kyle williams

trice mcconnell terry fowler

kyle it's having a little fun on the way up here boss i've been here for four hours and 15 minutes

waiting to talk to you wonderful people four of you have left on me including the mayor wow he's

left both times i've been here to speak is there a blanket insecure about this mr dickinson remember

when we spoke how many people up against that project up the thing and then they took it in

through fulsome you were sitting in that right that same spot awesome how many people spoke that

they a hundred it was amazing and you know what we noticed was the developer and his people were

there had we not shown up he would have spoke while he wasn't there his lawyer was there and uh that

development would have happened but we showed up didn't we the camera's over there where is it at

the people showed up got involved and we stopped that development and then they developed it through

fulsome because they hijacked it through that that's a whole another story um i didn't know what i

was going to say i came in here to say something else but this was just amazing to see all the people

and get involved and it's every the the problem is solved if you were here if you get this on film

all the ideas i heard today it solved the problem will they do it okay i meet with the governor's

assistant weekly to try to get him to work with trump right because i speak trump

and i'm not kidding every week try to get them working together maybe i can get the three of us

working together because evidently you're not getting any federal funding this blows my mind

you're not getting federal funding right so there's 50 states probably 10 of them is where

everybody goes right i mean i'm homeless i'm going to take a bus to california i'm not going to take

a bus to minnesota so we're taking an abundance of the burden right everybody's coming to california

but they get you're not getting any federal funding the math doesn't work oh by the way in two seconds

i'm too a donor thank you for your comments teresa mcconnell then terry fowler thank you for your

comments your time is complete thank you i first want to express my much disappointment

in the mayor not being here as well as a few of the other council members um he spoke he said the

same thing 20 of us sit around we listened to every single comment every single speech what by one of

you just to have them disappear before we got our chance it was very disappointing if you could

express that to them that would be great um i really wanted to talk about the proposed project

it's still in planning stage for d2 um it interested me because the way it was presented was it's 100

unit long-term micro community and yet he sat here and said in the workshop that there are max 40 units

the the examples they showed from the santa bar but i know that's just an example

those are no kitchens that he's talked about a a joint a community kitchenette that that is not

going to work that is that right there is a horrible scenario um the ones that we were

shown an early stage i know it was taken off the agenda um for d2 it it's a little one bedroom

the the models were great the area i don't think it's great especially when you look at the the

the write-up about how it's the mental um health another substance abuse that community cannot handle

another development like that in that area it's already hurting enough

roger thank you so much for bringing that up and bringing up the other

areas that it can go into i think the idea is good but it gets me back to that

untrust because here we were talked about 100 unit kitchenettes i mean in the in the thing and

then we hear the workshop where it's 40 units max so different information being presented for the

same type of thing very disappointing it really makes me worried about the

no it's just the there are two just there are two different things if you stay i'll i'll i'll

talk to you so i have five more speakers terry fowler than henry harry hi my name is terry fowler

i'm a homeowner and a resident in district two um i'm not a big proponent of the 100 um

hundred homes and one small area for mental people with mental issues i think there's a lot

of people that have in one small area in an area that already struggles with

dealing with things like that i'm really for the micro um smaller ones that that he discussed 30 to

40 units i think that's a great idea i think that's great spread out through the city um but i think

that more residents of district two should be included in the proposed solutions because district

two does deal with a lot of those things on a regular basis i work as well as live in the area

and um i think the micro units are great i think 100 people with mental issues in one small small

area um put right in the middle of a residential area is not a good idea so thank you thank you for

your comments henry then terry occurs sharon jackson and yana uh good evening members of the

council um i'm gonna adjust my comments here because like some of these other people i'm uh

frustrated that the mayor and several council members have left and so i would ask that you

guys make sure that that frustration uh and that the people were upset about it or may come as

about it or reflected in the minutes and that i would also ask that maybe you guys within yourself

create some kind of rule that says hey you know if a member knows that they're not going to make

the full meeting uh let that be noted on the agenda and perhaps i wouldn't come down tonight

because i was hoping to address my mayor i wanted to address my mayor because i have been working

with some folks over at the city i shouldn't say working with them but talking to folks over at the

sacramental police department and i have made comments at this council meeting several times

about a better way to track crime stats in the city um i believe we should be doing weekly and

monthly crime stats so that we can uh track the serious crime problems and understand the patterns

as they develop for example if you look at sexual assault if we look at those on a weekly basis and

we have narrative information about where they happen and what the suspects look like you could

have all kinds of people weekly monitoring that information and feeding tips to the police so

that that's something important uh the mayor was sitting here and he made a point to

pat himself on the back for calling this meeting and making it come together uh regarding the

homeless he gave himself a big pat on the back i wanted to address my mayor and ask him to use

that same energy to put it into a weekly crime report really focusing on domestic violence and

sexual assault to help those victims thank you thank you for your comments tara curse sharon

jackson vandiana how you guys doing um so i'm from district two i work a lot with the children

and in the homeless community i'm in the homeless community register i'm no vote i also do that for

the kids that i mentor at 18 years old the biggest thing that i've seen in the homeless community

because i'm there every day doing the good work not for any organization but because human kindness

is what we're supposed to do um is drug abuse i can pretty much say a hundred i can't say a hundred

because it can't be a perfect system but 80 of the homeless population is on an opioid crystal

method fed to me they're drug users and drug and and and need the help to be able they won't get

can't keep housing and they would not be able to keep housing unless they get help with their

abuse and their drug problem i i've lived it i've seen it i've been homeless i'm one paycheck away

from homeless myself pretty much so um another thing is there's not enough help from the city

for small businesses people inside our district to be able to feed clothes and pay themselves

there's um of giant budget going to the homeless i work with the kids every day and the homeless

camps are taking over where we used to play as kids and what they had safe things to do i propose

a a business proposition i acquire a party to make i mean some property excuse me to build a

recreational rc track for the kids to play with their toys the city told me 21 000 just for an

application fee to be able to let me myself help my community and give them something to do there's

no help between the city on helping ourselves help the homeless problem if we can get some help

from you guys to help ourselves do it a lot of it can be done and a lot of it can be fixed but

it just needs some teamwork but i do appreciate the council uh taking consideration on the

situation because it is our biggest thing especially in mr biggis in district it seems like half the

community is homeless but um all right thank you thank you for your comments i didn't see terra

charon or yana thank you sir i was i was just going to comment on um downtown uh district four i

am a resident i've been a resident for about 16 years downtown um and it's great i love the a's

i think they're at the bottom of the fourth or the top of the fifth right now but i was on my way

from west sacramino over the bridge they had to get the yolo bus the 42 had to get rerouted so i

ended up having to get off over at fifth and l and on my way across the street i had a bike so

it was on my bike but i was in the crosswalk and a vehicle hit me hit my leg directly like broke the

skin everything like that i felt so lucky until um the passenger who was either a daughter or a niece

of the driver actually got out and started harassing me and i have no idea i mean it would have just

been like oh thank goodness nothing happened okay see you later i feel like it's a cultural thing

you know like you don't think that you have to teach people something that happens like that

like to care about other human beings but this goes towards your um zero injury thing because

i called the police and they were like well are you injured and uh i had to i told them i didn't

think that i was injured i had a little bit of a limp i think it was from being in shock but they

go we don't actually send people out if it's not an injury and i think that they're going along with

your policy they told me that was their policy on the zero i don't know what the vehicle injuries

so um i don't know what can happen i think that of course sending police out to every single event

is going to perhaps encourage hit and runs but culturally we just have to teach people how to

deal with situations that happen in a civil way because the police were totally willing to come

out because the woman was harassing me so it's kind of it seemed like the lesser issue got addressed

thank you for your comments vice mayor i have no more business to come before the council

okay and this meeting is adjourned at 6 27 p.m

so