Portland council signals support for continuing family shelter, seeks data

[0:32] Mark Dion: I'd like to call this workshop to order. Stand by. She's working on it. Okay. This is a workshop for the City Council on the issue of the family shelter. So we have staff here prepared to give us a presentation so we can make some decisions about potential leases or a new site or some reorganization of the mission. So with that, I'll turn it over to Assistant City Manager Dina Libner. [1:21] Danielle West: Thank you, Mayor. We're approaching the workshop tonight in two different sections. Maggie and Aaron from the Department of Health and Human Services are going to do an initial presentation to help the council through some decision-making and guidance to provide staff with some guidance about if and how they would like the family shelter to operate moving forward. And then, depending on the guidance received from council, I'll lead you in a conversation about the real estate strategy. Maggie. [1:55] Maggie McLaughlin: Hello, everybody. I'm Maggie McLaughlin, Health and Human Services Director. Nice to be here tonight with you, and thank you for having us. As Assistant City Manager Lidner has explained, we're going to briefly give you a background on the family shelter, the history and trends, client overview, and kind of an operational background, and then hope to enter into a discussion around kind of service continuation, and then if we are continuing, a little bit more direction in terms of service priorities. So with that, I'm going to pass it over to Erin Gear, Director of Social Services for the City. [2:34] Aaron: Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councilors. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm just going to go through a couple of quick slides, which give you the history. And so the history with the shelter started in the early 90s, 1993, with the first building. And then we added three additional buildings over the course of the next 15 or so years, all on Chestnut Street, 54, 5, 56, and 58. And then the more congested part of the timeline is mostly to show sort of the ebbs and flows and what we've done creatively since 2018 as we've seen spikes. And so the 2018 we had a warming shelter, and then 2019, the summer of 2019 was the first summer that we opened the expo when we welcomed a number of asylum seekers. And then coming out of 2019 into 2020, we partnered with the YMCA and the Salvation Army to continue that. And then early 2020 started with COVID in emergency hotels and ran hotels for several years in that frame. And then opened the expo again in the summer of 2023, which had followed King Middle School's opening when we reached capacity at 58 Chestnut Street on the first floor. And then bring us to this year, downsize from the four buildings that we had started in 1993 down to three buildings, all still on Chestnut Street. And then just eligibility criteria, anyone experiencing homelessness in Portland with at least one child. Current demographics, household size of three, average length of stay about a hundred and five nights. Some building characteristics, it's apartment-style sheltering where individuals have the ability to cook their own meals, and we have limited group space. Have a curfew of 930. Programming includes life skills, housing navigation, which are requirements through main housing, and then we refer to social services and providers in the community off-site, and I will turn it over to director McLaughlin to talk about community services. [4:58] Maggie McLaughlin: So first we want to enter into a conversation really around, is there a desire to continue providing family shelter services? We've outlined up here just a few of the things to keep in mind on both sides of that equation. Obviously the most kind of forefront is the number of unsheltered families within the city. For those families who are served, it has distinct public health outcomes and long-term stability, but definitely that comes with a higher cost, direct cost for those families. It does minimize school impact. The flip of that, and the argument that has been made before, is that it could attract families from outside the Portland region. We providing the shelter also reduces the need for some of those short-term scale-ups. Right, when we do have capacity, then we're not turning to more expensive emergency short-term solutions. In terms of discontinuing, there would definitely be direct cost savings from that service not being provided. There would be, there's a potential for more unsheltered families. Maybe the absence of a service could potentially encourage regional responsibility or changes in state policy. Those are unknowns, but definitely possibilities. So those are just a few of the things to keep in mind, but really the floor is yours, and we're happy to answer any questions as you think through that. Any [6:26] Kate Sykes: Questions at this juncture, go ahead council sex. Thank you Maggie. So when you we talk about encouraging state policy changes, I'm just curious what the landscape looks like in terms of regional shelter, statewide shelter. Are we the only people doing it? Are there other municipalities that are offering family shelter? What does that look like? To my knowledge [6:48] Maggie McLaughlin: we're the only municipality that directly provides a family shelter, but there are certainly family shelters in other municipalities. The next closest one is Brunswick and Tedford, but there is a shortage of family shelters across the state, a significant gap in services. So for many individuals across the state, they are not able to get the shelter for as a family in the community that they live in. So it's [7:11] Kate Sykes: a kind of a patchwork of non-profits. Is that what's, is that how it's being provided right now? So the state is providing funding for those non-profits or correct, to varying different degrees [7:21] Maggie McLaughlin: and through varying degree channels, but they primarily fund through Main State Housing. Okay. [7:26] Anna Bullett: Thank you. Also just following up on that, is the funding mechanism any different because we're municipally run versus these province, meaning do we have access to the same [7:37] Maggie McLaughlin: funds? In principle we all have access to the same funds. We decide to follow through on certain requirements. So for instance, if somebody did not fulfill requirements of Main Housing funding, they're not going to get Main Housing funding, but maybe they're providing a service still. As a city we also where we can reimburse through GA if the families are eligible for GA also. [8:02] Mark Dion: Phillips, thanks. [8:04] Regina Phillips: Thanks Maggie. Two questions. One is how much is, do you know how much the city pays now? Because Jay is not covering all the costs. So do we have a cost on how much the city's budget helps us with? That's the first question. The second one is how many people do we have at the shelter at this point in time? And so that we can see if it's worth closing. [8:23] Maggie McLaughlin: We have about 32 family or capacity for 32 families at the moment. I think 27 families right now in the shelter. The approved budget has about a 1.4 million net, but we, that doesn't take into account some of the one-off funding that came through since the approved budget came through. So that price tag is actually a little bit lower after we got additional funding from the state. And one other thing that I would just flag as you think about the context writ large, both family shelters and individual shelters are closing across the state. They're, they're facing incredible pressures, and so as an industry, if you could call it that, or a sector, we're seeing widespread closures and a reduction in the availability of services as opposed to a growth in the availability of services. [9:15] Mark Dion: I have a question in terms of 27 families. How many unique individuals? Maybe it's a question for Aaron, if you don't mind, Director. You spoke of 105 nights as a median. What's the top end of that median? I [9:51] Aaron: could, I could get you the exact number. What, well, [9:55] Mark Dion: this is not advanced math. I don't need a precise number, but are we talking over 200 days? No, we're not [10:03] Aaron: talking over 200 days, six months. Yeah, I would guess somewhere in the hundred and [10:07] Mark Dion: fifty, two hundred and sixty day, and their manner of departures, because you found them an apartment somewhere. Yes, I only raised those questions because I was following up on comments made by Councilor Sykes last time we visited this topic area, and I agreed with her in the sense that I don't know if I'm comfortable calling it a shelter. I think it's something else. And I know there are funding considerations, but to the average public, when they hear shelter, they see something that's very limited in terms of residency, almost like an emergency shelter. It's not an emergency. I think we're managing a transitional housing unit for families. I need to be real candid about that, because we can't solve a problem unless we call it out for what it is. So it's, once upon a time I remember people going to the family shelter, they were there for a few days, or engines were made, and they went off, and I think the housing market was much different than, so probably was more successful in that type of thinking, but this is something different. And again, and I'll sit back, we're right back to where we started with the emergency shelters. They don't exist outside of Portland because they don't have to because we do it. You know, I don't see any chance for somebody stricken by the beam of light on the way to Damascus being told they have to change their thinking. So, and the question is how much do our constituencies want to continue to contribute? So I think either one of you can talk about the financial piece in terms of the burden we're placing on individuals so I 'm only saying those things to begin the conversation but I think it's a significant policy issue because either we decide we're gonna wind it down and rely primarily on referrals to whatever properties are available recognizing we can't meet every family's need because others should step up or we determined that it should be an emergency platform, and what does that mean in terms of how long people can stay there before a referral has to be made? So that's how I see it. That's what I thought the discussion would be about tonight. So, Councilor Grant? [12:57] Anna Bullett: I thought it would be helpful if we just level set again on the current term of the lease and how much it is when it when it's up again for Chestnut Street so we are [13:09] Aaron: under a one-year term with the ability to renew for three for two more two additional years and I could get the exact number for you for the lease when is the end of that into that would be June of next year under 27 we just entered into it in this fiscal year when we reduced from four buildings to three. [13:42] Mark Dion: Don't go away, Aaron. I want to ask you a question about the buildings. What's their status in terms of habitability? What shape are they in? I can never say that H word. There you go. Thank you very much, Councilor Grant. I mean, I've always been understood they're on the decline, that 's the most polite thing I could say about the structures. [14:03] Aaron: I think I would concur with that assessment. Okay. anyway so yeah they certainly are in need of repair and one thing we did when we entered into this new lease we were coming up on the end of a six-year term and so we renegotiated a new lease one year at a time with the ability to renew two and so i would i would categorize it as in need of some repair as well and one thing we did in this year's lease the city took on the requirement to do most all of the maintenance and repair of the buildings. In lieu of doing a long-term lease, we did a one year with the ability to renew. [14:44] Mark Dion: So it's been a benefit to the property owner? Yes. Because is it fair to say that it's not just repair, there's some structural issues with these buildings? [14:56] Aaron: There's certainly issues with the building, yes. Okay. [15:00] Speaker H (unidentified): Can I just jump in on that real quick? [15:03] Mark Dion: By all means, corporation counsel. [15:05] Speaker H (unidentified): Under the lease, the way it's drafted, we avoided very substantial rent increases in exchange for taking on things like replacing carpeting, painting, things like that, used to be the landlord's responsibility. We don't have a legal obligation to make capital improvements, structural repairs, things like that. If we want to make them we can but we don't have an obligation to do that. [15:32] Mark Dion: Understood council but I was just trying to frame this so we recognize as a sense of urgency that we should apply to our thinking about this initiative in one form of these buildings if they were boats are sinking we're delaying the end. [15:49] Speaker H (unidentified): I don't disagree with that I'm trying to make sure it was clear that we're that. [15:52] Mark Dion: Not on the hook. I just want to put that out to the council. So whatever policy direction we decide to adopt, I am very sympathetic to the reality that staff and the families that we host are not in the best environmental context that we would wish for them. So thanks, Aaron. [16:18] April Fournier: Council Bullard. Let me try to collect my thoughts so that I can be productive I think I'm a little perplexed even here it floated that we might consider not having a family shelter in the city of Portland to my knowledge the only other family shelters in the state are Presque Isle and Brunswick Tedford which was mentioned and as you know in my day job I see a lot of families that have passed through the shelter and then I'm lucky enough to see them go on to live really successful lives in our community some of those individuals have become my own staff so I know what a value having the family shelter is like it's a long-term investment in our community even though it can feel like a big one when we look at the yearly budget to me it's like an actual an essential service and I understand that to push the state perhaps to do more or the county to do more some things you have to let things fall apart and let things break something I'm just completely unwilling to do is let the lives of infants be put at risk in the letting something break when we know how like hard the housing market is and that we just don't have enough truly low-income units available for families. So that's where I'm at. I agree that the buildings, we need a new facility, absolutely. I feel very stuck with how we get the city to a new building, and that's why I'm stuck on this idea that whatever happens with the midtown properties should include like a family shelter incorporated into one of the buildings that we then could lease back from the developer for this purpose. That's sort of my dream. But my 25 cents for this evening is that I don't even want to consider not having a family shelter in the city of Portland that we [18:23] Mark Dion: operate. Thank you. Councilor, I just want to respond to that since I brought it up. I asked at earlier workshops, what happens when the shelter's full and another family shows up? And I was informed, and I'll stand corrected if staff advances something other than what I'm saying, is we found a place that they should go. All right. So there is a possibility that they could act as a referral agency. It may not be as effective as having actual housing to put them in. But it's an option that exists out there if we have to consider it. It's amazing what we're willing to say we absolutely have to have and other communities don't. And I'm not saying they don't do anything because families must go to them too, so we have to provide services. And if we choose not to go in that direction, that's fine. But there's a price to going in the other directions. We just have to be aware of it. And I tried to highlight that these buildings,, they shouldn't even, in my mind, I'm not an engineer, so this is one lay person's opinion, they shouldn't even be employed in the way they are. So I think we have some consensus there, but that's why I said that. Director, if you have something to say, go ahead. [19:47] Maggie McLaughlin: I just want to clarify on one point. At the current moment when we do reach capacity, the city itself has very limited opportunities. If somebody may qualify for GA, maybe they then could get enough funding if they found a place to stay that they could pay for it. But typically those are not pathways that are available immediately, not for all the individuals who need them. When we are at capacity and we really rely on basically the goodwill of partners to come together and troubleshoot for a family by family basis. And so it's not a systematic solution that we have available. [20:23] April Fournier: Councilor Woolley? Yeah, and I mean, I just have to add, because of what you all know I do for a living, at any given time, I have families living in tents and campers throughout Cumberland County. So it is real that sometimes there just isn't another option, and that a goodwill solution can't be found, unfortunately. [20:46] Mark Dion: Councilor McNavish? And then I'll come to Councilor Ali. Thank you, Mayor. [20:50] Sarah Michniewicz: I think this is probably for Erin, because you were around for this. When we did sort of put a bit of a cap on the family shelter and folks were, they had to do a self-directed, I think is what it was called at the time, a self-directed housing search. We could, you know, get them set up with vouchers, correct, and then, but they had to seek the housing themselves. So we sort of have had a little bit of an experiment with that. Can you talk a little bit about what that was like, and do you have any data on where people ended it up and what the, you know, housing retention rate was or anything like that, or was this sort of out of our hands since it was, it's kind of a set them up and let them go? I think, I think mostly [21:33] Aaron: out of our hands. What I would say is we did that and tried that a couple of different times, but I think what I kind of go to is like, we didn't see it last winter because the numbers started to be a little bit less and we didn't see asylum seekers arriving as readily or as steady as we had, but like winters prior to that, when we had families in front of the family shelter, and it always reminded me kind of the mayor's question, but one of my favorite counselors, Council Deuce on, always used to say, what are you going to do with family 52 and 3? And it was like her standard question that we, that we would talk about, and that's kind of the timeline why I put that on the timeline, because we have, we have scaled up in different times. I mean, 2019, 2023 is the obvious times, and then the hotels, we even had the first floor 58 Chestnut Street, which we were able to put 36 individuals in, and in mats, and then wanted, once it got above 36, we went to chairs, and some folks, they're in the, they're here will remember in 23, that's how we opened King Middle School, or why we opened King Middle, because the warming center at 58 got so full during the winter. It was like mid-February, and then near the end of February, we opened King Middle until April vacation, essentially to handle the overflow so families weren't outside. So that's kind of how, and I think it becomes more acute during the winter, and then I do think during the summer and warmer months, so we're able to find some other solutions with folks couch surfing and the such, but during the winter seems to be a much tougher task. [23:15] Sarah Michniewicz: And you also, at points, partnered with Salvation Army and used the gymnasium there. [23:21] Aaron: Yes, we used the gymnasium for an overflow, and memory serves, that was 75 capacity. And then what we did was the closure, that had happened even before the opening of the Expo in 2019. But when we closed the Expo in 2019, that fall, we partnered again with Salvation Army, but also the YMCA, to fill the void when the Salvation Army was unavailable for holiday festivities. They had like a block of time they were unavailable in December, and that's what was born of the partnership for the Y. And we used the gymnasium at the Y for overnight shelter there. [24:00] Sarah Michniewicz: And to the point about how long folks stay, I know the single adult and the family shelters are very different, but what is the average length of stay for a single adult? [24:14] Aaron: Last time I checked, it was 63 nights. I haven't checked that for a couple of months, and then 105 as the slide indicated. And yeah, to the mayor's point, when I first started with the city, we were measuring lengths of stay in under three weeks, it was like 18, 19 days, and then when we got to 20, we were disappointed because we had never been there. So yeah, lengths of stay have certainly increased as we've, as housing has become tougher to tougher to find and secure. [24:47] Pious Ali: okay that's all i have for now councilor ellie thank you mayor councillor mckinney anyways, ask one of my questions, which is how long was the duration of average stay? My next question is for those who may be watching us from home and don't know, that is what I'm going to ask the question. If somebody walks into our shelters from anywhere for that matter, are we allowed to send them back to their towns or cities, our neighbors that brought them? If yes, why? If no, why? Who are you directing the question to come? Well, whoever one side, yeah. [25:27] Mark Dion: Aaron, if it all fails, Corporation Council will. [25:34] Aaron: Okay, perfect, thanks. I'll try to do my best. If someone, if someone presents at the city and indicates to us they intend to live and reside in the city, then for the purposes of GA, that's where they're intending to reside. And so if we were to send them back, that would be a discussion and sort of negotiation with the other community, because they're in tip, they've left the other community and are intending to reside here. Occasionally we'll get folks sent to Portland that indicate to us they don't want to reside in Portland, but there were no other resources where they came from. And in some cases, the municipality, the local sheriff, someone helped them get to Portland. And in those cases, we often push back on and try, because our goal is to get folks settled or housed in their community with their natural supports, but I don't think that's the question you're asking. So, no, if someone arrives and says they intend to reside in Portland, then that's what we do. [26:37] Pious Ali: And that is a state law? [Aaron: Well, through GA.] Okay, so that's part of the GA law. Okay, and I remember when I got on the council, once in a while we would receive a bill from other towns and states sending us, it could be a few dollars, it could be a few hundreds, that so and so from Portland came to our city and they stayed up as if they went to a hotel or something, and then they will send the city of Portland that bill. Do we build other towns and states for if they are RESIDENTS, COMMENTS TO YOU? AND THIS IS GENERAL, NOT JUST FROM THE SHELTER. [27:23] Aaron: WE DO NOT. WE DID FOR A PERIOD OF TIME, CORPORATION COUNCIL CAN CHECK ME ON THIS ONE, BUT I THINK IT WAS ROUGHLY 2017, 2018-ISH WHEN CITY MANAGER WEST WAS CORPORATION COUNCIL. WE HAD DONE SOME BILLING, BUT WE HAVEN'T DONE ANY SINCE THEN. THANK YOU. [27:47] Regina Phillips: COUNCILOR PHILLIPS. i just want to add to the conversation because i ran the family shelter for seven years and so there was a way that we were able to send people back to their town because if you have children it's a family shelter if your children were going to that school in that particular district then you did not want to live in portland you were already set up in that city or in that town that you were living in the other thing is there was a lot of different things right so you just had to do a little bit More investigation. Some people were living with their mothers, you know, with their parents or whatever, in another town. Well, that's where you will live in. You might as well just go back to your mother and father's house. So there are different things, but there are creative ways that you can get to having somebody return. But Erin's right, in the GA rules it says if somebody comes and says I intend to live in Portland, you know, that's a whole different thing. But literally all families and all individuals intend to live in Portland because it's the only shelter. Tedford Shelter isn't that big. I don't know how many people can be at the Tedford Shelter, but it's only, it's very, small. They don't have a lot of families. They only take families from Brunswick. And years ago, they may have already closed. There was a very,, very small shelter in Lewiston. And that one was really hard to get into. They only had a couple of beds there. But that was years ago. And so, again, I think there are ways. And again, I'm sure you who figured that out in the years that I've left. [29:12] Aaron: Yeah, no, that's a great point, Councillor. And we do that for families that have school-age children. That's what we try to do. The families that have younger children, obviously there's no way to sort of investigate and track that back, but yeah, we do that. [29:28] Sarah Michniewicz: Councillor McNavish. Stay up there, Aaron. Maybe. To that point, diversion is the first line of defense, right? I mean, that's the first thing you do is figure out what resources people have and if they have other options and try to help them get back there. And that's true for single adults as well, generally, right? [29:53] Aaron: Yes, we do. And so our diversion for the family shelter falls under the resettlement team. And so they work out of 39 Forest, just like our prevention and diversion. They do intakes and they try to divert in any in any way they can with what Council Phillips was talking about with school age and trying to figure out [30:12] Sarah Michniewicz: where folks may best reside and how often was that is that successful do you have an idea of what percentage of folks you are able to kind of you know [30:22] Aaron: reorient I don't track it well we track like in my mind we track like on a weekly basis and so I in totality we're probably relocating or preventing two or [30:37] Sarah Michniewicz: three families a week recently out of how many who come through the door I [30:44] Aaron: would say four or five families so it's fairly successful yeah okay just [30:52] Sarah Michniewicz: speaks to the you know total need which of course could shift dramatically depending on what happens going forward. But all right, I think that's it. Thank you, Council. Council Grant. [31:11] Anna Bullett: I want to pick up the idea of the kind of city, town of origin. It's taking the current population of the shelter right now. If you had to ballpark, how many towns are people from? That's kind of asked badly, but we're servicing families from how many towns in Maine versus folks coming from outside the country? [31:35] Aaron: I would say right now probably only three or four other towns that I can think off the top of my head. I [31:50] Mark Dion: just want to put something forward. I mean, when I discussed this with staff earlier today, the question before us, just as a framing piece, is they need to know, do we want to continue the family shelter program? If so, then they have to start considering next steps for a new location, which I think is totally appropriate in terms of a building. And I think if we want modifications to the program, which I'd like to explore in terms of length of stay and how we manage the cost of it, I would assume, unless the council as a whole says otherwise, it should be taken up in Health and Human Services for a deeper or die, but the question that they wanted us to answer, and correct me if I'm wrong because you're the staff I'm referring to, they just need to know we're going to leave where we're at, and we have to find a new site, and the council wants to continue the program as is pending any future modifications by committee in the full body. Do I have that correct, is that... Okay. Okay, so with that said, I'll go to Councilor Phil if she had her hand first, then you, Councilor Sykes. Thanks, Mayor. [33:12] Regina Phillips: Yeah, thank you for clarifying that because I was kind of sitting here looking at this slide going, wait a minute, was there any conversation about us closing the shelter? So my comments really have to, I'm going to kind of piggyback on what Councilor Bullett said. I don't think we have, for me, I don't think we have an option not to continue to have the family shelter. shelter. We still have a lot of individuals who are unhoused, and for that we opened up a homeless service centre where we could put over 200 people in there. My concern is now we're looking at possibly closing a family shelter where they have children. And so I agree, I can't imagine a shelter, I can't imagine us, and I'm not saying we would put families out on the street, but I just can't imagine that family coming from out of state, which we have seen many times before, coming from out of state and not having anywhere where to go, and then trying to, for us trying to figure out where they're going to go that night, and working with this church working with this non-profit or whatever. And so that's that's that's one of my things. The other thing is I'm looking at your sliding, I'm sitting here looking at them may encourage regional responsibility. They're not coming to our rescue. We've had conversations with Cumberland County, we've had conversations with Westbrook, we've had conversations with South Portland. They don't want to play with us in the sandbox as far as being in this family shelter business. So I'm not sure if that's actually a viable option for us regarding something regionally. I don't know. Maybe you have had conversations about folks on a possible regional thing. And I also don't believe that the state is going to come to our rescue either. I mean, they may be able to put some funding into something. I don't know. Again, you're the experts and you're the ones who can tell and you're the ones that have access to state folks that can tell you that. So maybe the state can help us a little bit here. But again, I don't put much faith or hope into that either. And my last point is just kind of getting back to what Council Michniewicz said, which is, you know, right now we're in a lull. We don't know what's going to happen in another two months. We have no idea what's going to happen in another two months. We have no idea what's going to happen in another two years. But I do remember us here several months ago or a couple of months ago when there was a surge and we had to put in, I can't remember who it was, but we had to actually amend the budget because we needed more money because there was a surge. And so we don't know when that surge is coming. And so that is my concern. Right now it's 27 families, but we don't know, again, we don't know what's going to happen in two months or two years down the road. So I am all for keeping the family shelter open. I just don't think we have an option for closing it. I do agree that I think we could go back to some of those old school things that we used to do years ago to cut down on the length of stay, and so I would like to have a conversation about that, and also where do we move the family shelter? Thank you. [35:57] Mark Dion: Councillor Sykes. Thank you, Mayor. So [36:03] Kate Sykes: I think what's concerning to me about the conversation that we're having right now is that we've been presented with no data about a transition plan, about how successful the shelter is, about why we're not really running a shelter anymore like we were in 1993. We are running a transitional housing program. What the plan would be to transition out of this if we wanted to, what the cost is, there is not a grid of data in front of us and we're being asked to make this really, monumental decision. This is like a once in a lifetime, decades long sort of decision about the future of a program that we actually have not studied. We don't understand how it works. We don't understand why it's drifted from its original mission. If a nonprofit shelter were asked to suddenly change their mission to become a transitional shelter, they would have a whole theory of the program, they would have a landscape, they'd have grant, you know, plans, they'd be talking to people about why the landscape has shifted, and I feel like really this is diagnostic of the fact that we're not doing our job here the way that we should be. And I think that, you know, I would love, as a socialist, I would love to say that government is the right entity to do this and that we do it better. That's how I feel about this, but we have drifted so far from actually doing this work we're just scrambling to pick up the pieces we're in a terrible building folks are living in you know lead infested places there's you know harm to children that could possibly be happening oh but it's better than they're sleeping outside in the cold I don't buy for a second that this problem is better in the summer I think you just don't see babies in the snow and I think you know it just doesn't it doesn't Show and so I don't think we know what we're talking about here, and I don't think we can make a decision until we have that information. I also, you know, I agree with Counselor Bullet. I can't even imagine that we would be talking this council, this progressive council that is so concerned about the health and wealth of welfare of human beings, would be considering discontinuing the shelter. I also feel that it's not a strict binary that be just because it's not a shelter anymore it's transitional housing we shouldn't do it. I mean, there's like a lot of really interesting ideas floating around here, but we just don't have the grounding in data to be able to figure that out. So I'm just not prepared to have an answer about this until I understand more about the system. And I will say that oftentimes breaking the system does not result in higher orders of government fixing it. We've seen that, 's why we're in the situation we're in with the federal government right now. So I wouldn't assume that just because we're not going to provide shelter that anyone else is gonna step up and try to fix this for us. So I think we need a lot more rigor in what we're trying to do here, okay. [38:58] Mark Dion: Council for now. [39:02] Benjamin Grant: Thank you. I'm inclined to agree with Councillor Sykes and Councillor Bullett. I for me it's not a question whether or not we continue, it's how do we continue. And we have had conversations over the last, well really for I think as long as I've been on council, but really serious conversations once we knew that this lease was coming up for renewal, trying to think about do we look at the space on Cumberland Ave, what is that going to cost to renovate, and maybe move services there. So I think we have at least a little bit of a blueprint and a ballpark figure on what it would cost to outfit a building somewhere in the city to be able to do these operations. So I do think we have a little bit of a roadmap and some data that would support that. I think what we're challenged with is now for me it's two paths, it's either we retrofit something that we have or we build something new, and either of these things obviously are going to cost a significant amount of money, but I think this is a much Longer-term investment in our community, because I think what we know and what we've seen and we've heard this and the discussions that we had on last week, last Wednesday, hearing feedback from the community about the challenges that we're seeing on the streets, is if we don't address this and think about this as a long-term investment in the future of the families in Portland and not even Portland, I think Cumberland County, then we are going to see the problem of people being on the streets significantly grow worse and our outcomes for schools will get worse, the outcomes for our next generation of children growing up in Maine are going to get worse, and so for me this is a no-brainer. Yes, we have to continue family shelter, and there are two paths, either we fit a different building or we build a new building, but for me that's an investment that we have to make, and so I think what my request would be, and similar to what Councillor Sykes was asking for, is now that we have, you know, at least nine months of data for 2026 for what families are presenting, where they're coming from, how long they're staying, great, so then let's look at if, where are the properties that are available, what's it going to cost to be able to provide those services, because I don't think we're going to see much less than six months to turn a family around from emergency shelter into permanent housing. There is no housing out there yet, it's being built but not fast enough for what we need, and statewide not fast enough for what we need, and so I think it's going to have to be, and I think Counselor Phillips you mentioned this, it's going to have to be also a multi-tiered responsibility. It's not just Portland, it's Cumberland County, it's the surrounding counties, it's the surrounding towns, and the state that are going to have to, you know, continue to collaborate on this together. I know we have a state homeless council, you know, what are those meetings saying about family shelters statewide, and if they're not talking about it, then let's push the envelope and make sure that they're talking about it in those meetings as well, but for me it's a no-brainer, we have to continue this [42:16] Wesley Pelletier: cause of elder yeah I 'm not going to be supporting anything where the top bullet point is more unsheltered families that does not seem like a really prudent thing in any political environment but probably not this one the most. I also, you know, we don't have the, you know, higher direct cost and direct cost savings on both sides. I suspect that indirect or future costs are much higher if we have, if we start putting kids out on the street. That's going to be somebody that is getting into a very unsupported life, whose city has decided that, making sure that they're in a in a supportive environment is too expensive. So I think that if we are looking to save money in the long run, figuring out how to do this is the smarter financial decision. I wish we weren't in this position, but we are. And hopefully we can turn this into a facility that if and when we have this crisis abates, we can use that facility for something else all [43:36] Mark Dion: Right, so much for me to show the range of options, right, because it made so much easier everybody run to the end and say no I don't want to do that, 's fine, but what I hope we would consider tonight is the fact that we have six months to put together an understanding of where they should be housed in the most general sense. And I think if I were the chair of health and human services I've heard significant conversation about data collection to answer what do we expect to accomplish with a family shelter. I don't fault staff because I think the journey from the days of Councilor Phillips managing the family shelter where it was very limited stay, almost like it was more of a brokerage in the sense you gave them safe space, safe harbor, and then the staff worked to get them placed somewhere else. The real estate market was so much different then. So I think you get your job done with a lot less struggle than housing navigators do today. Well, think about it. We have the term housing navigators. Like, that should say it all, right? And I think we got to this transitional housing piece that Councilor Sykes and I have subscribed to as describing at least one set of reality for the shelter is now. I don't think that happened by policy, it happened by practicality, you know. I don't know how you house a family with nine children. I mean that must be like two cups of coffee in the morning to think that through about where and how you're gonna get them placed. So I respect that challenge, but in terms of data to determine how best That should be structured moving forward. I think there's a legitimate question raised by Councilor Sykes and should be taken up by the committee. It doesn't matter who sits in that chair. They do have something they whisper to me all the time. So I think that's one of the questions that we have to answer tonight. Is it a fair use of staff time to very intentionally start looking for a new space? I think that's what they want to hear year. The policy questions, am I seeing yeses going around the table? The policy questions remain for debate for the moment. Hold on a second. [46:19] Danielle West: And so that you have a sense of where we're going, depending on the guidance that we get in response to this question, the next part of this conversation will be more about how you envision the family emergency shelter operating. And the next part of that conversation would be, how do you envision, what location do you envision, and how do you anticipate the development of that location happening? So there are a lot of decisions to be made about the what and the how. At this point, the question is really, should we proceed and have that conversation? [47:05] Mark Dion: Go ahead, Councillor Phillips. [47:07] Regina Phillips: Thank you, Bettina. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I can't answer those questions until I know where. I mean, I don't have any. I think it gets back to Council. I don't know. I mean, have you looked at properties? Have we? I'm sure you have. Stupid question. You're probably thinking. Like, I don't know. I need to have, I think we need to go over what our options are to see how much it costs, what the best location is. I guess, again, I get back to Council Sykes' point. For me I just need a lot more information before I can go further. All I know is I think that at this point in time it is a new building because what I've heard I think from previous conversations is not only is the landlord raising the rent but you also said we're now responsible for all the maintenance. What's gonna happen if we need a new roof on one of those buildings? I don't know. I don't foresee the landlord putting in a new roof. Why would he? So I guess I just need some... [48:02] Mark Dion: Do you want to answer that question? [48:04] Danielle West: Yeah, I think to simplify it, because I do understand it's hard to feel like you're committing yourself to a direction that you can't necessarily reverse out of. But this is all else being equal, just to give us some direction in terms of, all right, let's start exploring. So everything else being equal, and maybe that exploration, similar to looking at the public school central office building, is going to turn up opportunities that the council decides not to pursue, but at this point it's really everything else being equal, do we want to keep providing this program in the city of Portland? How's [48:44] April Fournier: it going? Thanks. I think what I'm hearing is that most of my colleagues do want to keep providing this service in the city of Portland. What I'm also hearing from Councillor Sykes and Councillor Phillips, which I wholeheartedly agree and agree with, is that we need a lot of data before we make such an important long-term, once-in-a-generation kind of potential bonding, you know, investment. And so some, like, data points that come to mind is I'm like, well, which schools do these kids go to? Like, if it's McKinney-Vento or the rules, I don't even know. I don't have that data in my head, right? Because that might inform where it makes the most sense to locate it, right? Like, if one school in Portland is designated as our McKinney-Vento school, then to me, my initial thought is, well, let's try to build a family shelter close by so that this school has the whatever counselor. Yeah, it'd be so helpful for the audience [49:36] Mark Dion: for you to describe that status label you throughout the schools, Aaron, can you [49:43] April Fournier: do it? McKinney-Vento is a classification, it's a federal law, it's federal law for homeless students, and there has to be federal funds that come down through the state that are attached to that particular student, and there's a bunch of rights that student has because they are homeless. And so not only does it open up opportunities for various funding sources, but it also guarantees the civil rights of that family. And I don't, I don't have in my head how that works in the Portland Public Schools, so it would be interesting as part of this bigger conversation to pull that in my mind, along with all kinds of other data. To Councillor Sykes' point, we need a lot of data before we make these big decisions about, like, which neighbourhood do we want to put a $10 million facility in, or do we even need to, et cetera, et cetera. The other thing I just want to say is I'm really curious about best practice from other places. Like, is there, you know, everybody's been blowing up our email right now with Somerville around their Vision Zero successes. Is there the Somerville of homeless services for families somewhere in America that we could learn from? So these are the kinds of things that I hope we would work out in committee. And so I just don't know what the goal is tonight for us to all come to a consensus about, other than that yes, this has got to go to committee. [51:12] Kate Sykes: Councilor Elie. Councilor Sykes. Thank you. So the other thing I just wanna be really clear about is that we have to stop calling this a homeless shelter. This is a transitional housing in order to resettle people here, whether they're from Westbrook or they're from another country, okay? We're bringing people, families, into the city of Portland because our schools enrollment's starting to decline. We need workers, we need people. I mean, this is like a value that the city should set for itself. We wanna welcome people to Portland, right? We wanna bring people into Portland. And that doesn't just mean folks that are buying a second home because they can afford it or you know whatever it 's all classes of people and this is what it's going to take to bring people into Portland because our housing is so expensive here and so I think we really need to think about that and stop calling it emergency shelter yes there may be some instances where families come here because they have lost their homes or they don't have a way to get a home but it may also be that they want to live in Portland and hooray, like let's celebrate that, right? But let's be honest about it. And I know that like the other part of this is that it's fitting into a state subsidized program, a GA program, that has all kinds of parameters around this, and we're kind of using that program but we're kind of you know a little bit around the edges. And so is there another way to fund this? Is the other piece of it, if this is our value as a council, if our value is we want to bring working-class families into Portland and we want to make that possible for them to live here, we want people in our schools, then we just have to make it work. But we got to stop talking about it like there's a bunch of people that have you know been pushed off the blotter and we're trying to save them, because it sounds less and less that like that's what the shelter is doing. And so I guess I'm just, it's a plea to be politically honest and honest about our values now. [53:07] Mark Dion: NOW, COUNCILOR ARLEY. THANK YOU. [53:09] Pious Ali: I heard you, Councilor Vule, mentioning that this should go to committee. I don't know what staff's timeline is in us giving them directions. I would love to see it go to your committee, but I also want to make sure that the turn around is fast enough for us to make a final decision. [53:34] Danielle West: So staff, so we haven't heard, I haven't heard five people say, yep, we want to continue family shelter services. And I understand there's confusion about what we call this program right now. We call it emergency family shelter services. The funding we receive is tied to that definition, and that our operation is also tied to that definition and the funding we receive. So it is intended for families that have no other options and are going to be there only as long as it takes to find them other housing. So it's not temporary, or it's not transitional housing. So we could do a couple different things. If there are five people who say, yep, we wanna continue family shelter services and we're willing to see what the next part of this conversation would be, we could do that. If there's interest from a majority of the council to say, we wanna have that conversation or some sort of a conversation in committee instead, we could do that as well. We have our one-year lease is until June 30th of next year and we have the option to extend that, renew it for another two years afterward. Thank you also [54:48] Benjamin Grant: for you actually to your point Dina, my question really was more around like the funding mechanism. So understanding that transitional housing and emergency shelter have very different revenues that come attached to those. And so I don't know, Dina, Maggie, or Aaron, if you could speak to that just as far as what are some of the limitations, and maybe this is for, you know, the committee discussion, but just at a very high level, what are the limitations when it comes to GA, when it comes to main care reimbursement, whether it's emergency shelter or transitional housing? Just [55:24] Maggie McLaughlin: at a very high level, they're very different things altogether. And so transitional housing may get reimbursed. Well, you have the whole development usually, but then how people enter into it is usually through access to a voucher. Vouchers are not widely available. That's also part of the challenge for getting people out into more permanent housing. Whereas emergency housing, if there are no other options and there is room in the shelter, they're coming in that night. So the funding streams are completely different. In our case, most of the funding comes from main-state housing funding, which is tied to emergency shelter. Not most of it comes from ga most of us from the emergency shelter conditions from main state housing under eshop and we i think dean has explained we can discuss more about some of the priorities in next stages of the conversation if we want to but at this stage just not sure if we want to continue to on to that part of the conversation thank you council Michniewicz thank you mayor [56:26] Sarah Michniewicz: Yeah, I have a hard time imagining not providing some type of family shelter. I also have a hard time imagining continuing to, for Portland to continue flying solo and picking up the, I'll say slack for other towns and funding it ourselves. I also can't imagine going forward without first determining what the capacity would be or what the right size is for Portland. And I think we haven't even touched on that. Is it what we've got? Is it more? Is it less? I struggle to think of this as a conduit to bring people in. I think the people that I talk to around the family shelter, they are there for pretty desperate reasons for the most part. So that to me is the very first question. I guess that does go back to data. What are we looking at? How much responsibility do we want to take? How much capacity do we want to have? And that would involve things like knowing more about the diversion rate and that's the question that I need to have answered first before making a decision counselor [57:52] Wesley Pelletier: I think the city should continue family shelter services but given this discussion even the fact that we're not in a workshop or we are in a workshop and we can't take a vote I haven't heard anyone say that we shouldn't continue family shelter services so maybe a better way to do this would be to say can we get four people that don't want to continue family shelter services it sounds like everyone here would like to do so and maybe that depends on more reservations that aren't on the floor but I think you know I have not yet heard anyone say that we should not do this so it sounds like we should probably continue down this path and continue to [58:32] Mark Dion: Get more information for HHS. Just so you know, Councilman told you before you got here, I was trying to describe the range of options, and at one end it would just be a referral service, and the other end would be whatever this looks like after they tinker with it. So that's where the "oh my god, we're not going to do away with family services" came from. [58:59] Regina Phillips: you know go ahead i agree with councillor pelletier i mean i didn't hear anybody say not to go forward to look for another space or to suspend services so unless somebody wants to come forward again i agree with council pelletier we're not we can't vote on it so unless somebody has objections i say we go forward just very similar to what Councillor Pelletier said. [59:26] Speaker H (unidentified): Oration Council. Yeah, I just want to jump in real quick. You can't take a vote tonight, but there is a provision in the council rules that allows for sort of straw polling. So we can, I mean, the language in the rule, it's rule one, says the council may be polled at a workshop to obtain an unofficial sense of the position of the council on an issue being discussed at the workshop. So it's not an official vote, but we can, we can take your temperature. Yeah, so [59:56] April Fournier: it's a vibe check, it's a vibe check. Well, [1:00:02] Mark Dion: I agree with Council Pellet here in the sense that I don't hear any objection or strong remarks to close the program. What I hear, and I'll stand corrected, is significant questions about data that would inform us as to how it should be structured as a service, what's its goal, and how would we measure performance. I never forget, you know me, I never forget the cost of things,. But at the same time, we're sending some acknowledgement that they need to start looking for a space, because I haven't heard any champions around this circle to say we should stay in those particular buildings. [1:00:55] Sarah Michniewicz: Councilor Michniewicz? Yeah, I mean, I think it's clear that we need another facility if we're going to continue any of this. Again, just with how do you send off to look for a new space if you don't even know the capacity that you need or the services or how you want to approach it? So that's, that's [1:01:12] Mark Dion: back to where well i 'm not i think we can't wait till june to figure that out if staff becomes aware of a space i think it's legitimate for them to come back to us and to use an over overused term tonight that could be a transition platform depending on I would assume we would lease it rather than purchase it till we figure out what exactly we want [1:01:38] Danielle West: To do Mayor Maggie's next slide, I think starts to talk about capacity and some operational considerations. And depending on how far we get tonight, we might have some specific locations or general locations for you to think a little bit about. So go ahead. Yeah. [1:01:59] Maggie McLaughlin: Yeah, please. All right, I appreciate the conversation and we're happy to provide more specific answers if there is particular data points. But as a starting point, there these are operational considerations, but they directly affect the square footage of a building that we're look of whatever infrastructure that we are looking at. So assuming that this remains an emergency shelter, there are questions that then impact the size that we're going out to look for and explore. And so those questions are around capacity levels. The higher capacity obviously would have higher cost, you run the risk of over-delivery, empty beds. Smaller capacity runs the risk of lower cost, but then you have unmet need, potentially costs associated with scale ups. The scale of wraparound services, I know in earlier conversations we've talked a lot about wraparound services. So what those are on and if they're on site really affects the square footage and how food service is delivered. Basically do you need a kitchen and a cafeteria on site or not. So we do have years of history from 1993, you know, that it's scaled up each time because we have reached capacity. However, this past year has been a strange year and it's kind of defied history and we've had availability for the first time. Right now we are at the three buildings and we are needing the three buildings. So we estimate looking for a recommendation near where we were with the four buildings, in between where we are right now is three and four. So we've put up a staff recommendation just as a starting point for your conversations, something to think about under a model which is emergency shelter services that puts us at about 35 to 45 families. That would meet the need that we've seen in the past, but also recognizing this is really volatile. We can't predict what will happen, but that's our best guess given the information. We do recommend providing food services onsite, and that's primarily for safety purposes. Right now when everybody does their own cooking, we've had risks with fires and all sorts of challenges like that. Providing food services on site allows us to mitigate those risks, which are very real, while also at the same time ensuring a certain degree of food security. And then when we talk about wraparound, sometimes it can feel like this behemoth of a thing. So putting some numbers on that in terms of square footage, what we mean when we talk about wraparounds, our first priority is just having group meeting space. If you want to meet as a group right now at our shuttle in our shelter, you have to meet next to the laundry machines. There is no space to have collective meetings, otherwise you're in somebody's private personal home, for lack of a better word, having very confidential conversations. So our first priority would just to be to have some group space so that whether it's the city providing the service or a partner coming in and providing the service, they can meet groups together and do trainings or education or other types of services. Our second priority is to have some on-site partner offices anywhere from four to seven partner offices. That allows them to actually be based in the building and on-site, and ideally some communal lounge space. So if somebody is needs a moment outside of the kind of intensity of their own bedroom with their immediate family all around them, that there is some lounge space for them to go into. Right now that doesn't exist right now. And then our third priority would be to ideally provide some playground and or indoor play space. So those are all operational considerations, but they directly affect what we're looking for in terms of building size and capacity. So put those out there as a starting point, and we can talk about them as we. [1:05:51] Danielle West: This is probably ringing a bell because at the start of this year or late last year, we were having this exact same conversation. And these are some of the priorities that we heard from this council at the time. So again, whatever comes out of this conversation, you're not married to it. This is just some kind of a draft of what staff recommend it could look like if we move forward from this point in time. But if there's anything out here that you think is important to change dramatically, that would be helpful to know right now, or any other information you think [1:06:33] April Fournier: Should be top of mind, Council Bullet. Thanks, and thanks for laying this out. So logistically, I do think that this is exactly, I've spent a fair amount of time in the family shelter just for some context over the course of 10 years, and I so all of these make perfect logistical sense based on what I know about, you know, how things operate there. My where I pause is that in my day job I also consult for six different residential facilities that serve up to 12 adults at a time, and like this is the model But these buildings are already pretty big, and we only have 12 bedrooms in them. And so where I look at this and I see capacity for 35 families, this is a big facility that's big. And so I just immediately I'm like, I don't even know what any building that is this size is going to be a gut reno. Like, I already, like, get ahead of, what does Ben always say? Over my skis, even though I don't ski. So I'm trying not to do that, and I'm trying to back up. But I just know that for this to happen in one building, it's going to be a very big building, which is why you're in three right now, right? [1:07:50] Mark Dion: Councilor Bullard, I think that's a good point. I was going to raise the idea. 35 to 45 families means absolutely nothing to me. Right, how many, how many human beings can it hold? And then it's the challenge of staff to say, well, in this case for as a family that's five, whatever. But and I bring it up because Council Bullet makes a good point. When we decided the council that made the decisions around the homeless services center, I mean, let's think about it, that's only 254 beds. That isn't 35 families, you know. And what was needed there in order to have an effective space for all the participants and the gas. And I think it cost us, what, $12 million in round terms? So 35 to 45 families, I don't get it. [1:08:48] Danielle West: I think Maggie has done some of the math about square footage in case that helps. [1:08:52] Maggie McLaughlin: Yeah, I appreciate that, Mayor, because it's often, I'll be talking individuals or families and why is it different in various times. Part of the challenge is when we're thinking about square footage for a family shelter, you're protecting a space for the individual family. So even if we have communal assets like cafeterias even or apartments, they're still in that individual space together. So whether there's four family, four members in that family or three, they're going to be occupying that space Now they may occupy two family spaces if it's a family of nine or something like that. So it's easier to think about capacity in terms of how many families you serve. And then you know, for a reference, when you know, you know, when we had four buildings, we were roughly at 143 individuals, give or take, and that number would fluctuate up or down depending on the density of the families. But in terms of what we could offer, you could more confidently say we can serve this many families as opposed to confidently saying we can serve this many individuals because family sizes vary. But the protected spaces for the family, does that clarify kind of why sometimes we end up with family conversations instead of [1:09:57] Mark Dion: individuals? It does, but I'm just saying if I were in a neighborhood setting trying to explain what 35 families means, it gets a little bit, it sounds like I'm speculating, yeah, whereas I didn't have to do that for the HSC. We said, look, 254 beds, that's what it is, end of story. Then we could [1:10:18] Maggie McLaughlin: talk about the other issues. The exact number might depend, will depend on the building and code and all of that, but you could think of this on the upper range, maybe 150-ish, give or take, down to maybe 130-ish, give or take, on either side. When we were looking at this, we're, you know, 22,000 square feet, 20,000 square feet, somewhere around there is roughly what we're looking at. It can be lower, it can be higher, depending on layout. Councilor Grant. [1:10:49] Anna Bullett: This part of the conversation just highlights a couple of notes that I've made. I will not bring back the scheme metaphor, but I do like metaphors, so I'm going to bring back another one. I think the notion that we're going to replace four buildings with one building seems unrealistic to me, just based on the cost. So let's not eat the whole elephant in one bite. Let's eat the elephant one bite at a time, right? So I'm just putting this on the table as something that considers you look around not just for a space but maybe you can do it like one building at a time. So you look for a series of smaller places that might be more available, might be in better shape, might be something that we could reasonably renovate, that's already in residential use instead of a warehouse box, which is basically central office. Is there a way to maybe, if we have upwards of three years at Chestnut Street, is there a way to pick this off like one year at a time where there's a smaller building in year one another smaller bill in a year or two, something like that, so that we can roll this over several years, make that more financially justifiable, and maybe come up with a, you know, a decent result. Maybe not everything is all compact. Maybe you lose a little bit of the efficiency, but it may actually be realistically something that we could accomplish. So I just put on the table for you to look around, because what we did before was ask you to find a, you know, what does one place look like, and how much does that cost? and I'm still a little bit scarred by the financial discussion around renovating central office and I don't want to just do all this well I'd end up in the same place so another way to do it would be piecemeal over several years one like kind of a smaller building at a time so put that on the table for you to [1:12:29] Mark Dion: consider Thank You councillor McNavis thank [1:12:34] Sarah Michniewicz: you so the food service is actually that in terms of square footage that does kind of make a difference because right now we've got units that have kitchens in them And obviously that would be either a central kitchen or would it be food delivery? Because back when the HSC was being developed, the director at the time, I just remember him saying, I had no idea that would be the most expensive part of this building. And so a kitchen, like an industrial commercial kitchen, whatever you would have to have, would be potentially a big piece of the cost and a significant piece of the footprint. print so I'm wondering what is the vision for that if you know and what have we learned from the HSC and having meal delivery and kind of you know being beholden to whoever can deliver the capacity of food that we need yeah could you talk about that a little bit that would make a difference in the size of [1:13:29] Maggie McLaughlin: the building and the layout and a lot of things think about with food essentially the commercial kitchen in and of itself usually is significantly expensive so the model that is kind of the middle of the road which addresses the safety issue but reduces some of the expenses of the kitchen is the HSC model where the food's not prepared on site but it is delivered on site and that there's a space for people to eat it. It can be, you know, it's not full commercial kitchen, but the food can be warmed and things like that. So you could go full commercial kitchen if you wanted, but the cheaper kind of option that we were envisioning was something closer to what you see at the HSC, where it's just delivered on-site. The warming, kitchen kind of thing. Okay. [1:14:18] Sarah Michniewicz: And in terms of layout, the other issue with the HSC is it had to be single level, clear sight lines. So there's very specific requirements in the conditional use standards for that particular building. So in with a family shelter, is that the same, like it's not, it doesn't, wouldn't necessarily be the same size footprint if it were multi-story as opposed to [1:14:45] Danielle West: being a single story setup. I believe the code amendment that was recently passed addressed this. So there was a code amendment, and I believe in land use, that's right, Michael, chapter 14, where that no longer holds true for family shelters, because there's a recognition that those family units need a greater degree of privacy than individuals in the HSC, for example. [1:15:08] Sarah Michniewicz: Yeah, so point being, when I think of the size of the HSC and the word behemoth, part of that is just the absolute sprawl of it because it had to be, the way it has to be. And that also changes where you may or may not be able to site a family shelter. [1:15:27] Mark Dion: Council Bullard. Did you have your hand up, Council Sykes? All right, Council Bullard. [1:15:34] April Fournier: The other things that I want to make sure that we'll, as we work through this in committee, is to acknowledge that there are some pretty unique shelter-ish organizations in town that serve specific populations and do it really well. Macaulay comes to mind. Francis Ward House comes to mind. So there are some really successful programs that are alleviating the burden on, from us already, who are serving specific subsets of families in our community, and I would just ask staff to also, like, look to those, not the models necessarily, but, you know, Melissa Skeenan and Northern Light, like, wealth of knowledge, right, so there is definitely, like, leaders in our community who have asked themselves a lot of these same questions, and I would just make sure that we're not losing sight of them in this. conversation as we move forward and seeing what they can be to us. If we do have to lower our capacity, maybe there's more capacity there, and it would help our diversion efforts. Again, not to get ahead of ourselves, but just to say that, like, we're not, we don't need to invent this from total scratch. Council sites, thank you. So we've heard some [1:16:44] Kate Sykes: metaphors, and I just want to bring out another one, because it feels like we're standing on the bank of a river, and there's these drowning people, and we're trying to figure out how to build a better save them from drowning thing, but really we ought to walk up river and find out why they're drowning in the first place, right? So we just reminding people that we're going to be talking about social housing in the next workshop, and that, you know, the idea of taking this piecemeal is maybe good, because we might actually solve some problems if we build the housing that we need. So let's not throw all of our efforts into building the better life ring to save people from drowning, and like save some of that capacity for what we actually need to do, which is to build affordable family-sized housing for people in Portland. Anyone [1:17:30] Mark Dion: else? Go ahead, Dina. Oh, you're good. Okay, that's why I said Dina. No, I don't know, sometimes my eyes drift, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Dina. [1:17:48] Danielle West: I'm hearing that there's some interest in thinking about potentially smaller scattered family shelters, and a lot of interest in exploring the how this happens, and there's there being a lot of flexibility when it comes to the family capacity, but it sounds like this as a rough baseline to continue the conversation isn't totally objectionable. [1:18:16] Mark Dion: Is that right? I think that's correct. Okay, I mean, Council Grant's proposition about breaking it up. Then we could probably entertain 20 to 25 families. I just want to throw something out to staff. It's a wild-eyed suggestion, but has there been any discussion with the Portland Housing Authority as they go through their remodeling? Am I cheating? Did I see your notes? [1:18:41] April Fournier: I wrote a little note to come up with. [1:18:42] Mark Dion: Anyways, they're engaged in some pretty significant construction and remodeling of their existing housing stock. Is there a possibility of reserving some of those spaces for the express purpose of family housing? [1:19:07] Danielle West: I think the short answer is that staff prefer a partnership model in the long run, and that could involve a conversation with PHA or someone else. Yeah. [1:19:19] Maggie McLaughlin: PHA on a weekly basis, they're a very close partner of ours, and we are placing our folks into their housing as soon as possible. There's a lot of back end lining up for which family gets to move into which housing, depending on all sorts of things associated with vouchers and wait lists and how those are allocated and prioritized, which is outside of the city's control largely. But for everything that's in our control in relation to getting our folks into those housings, we have a great operational relationship with them. [1:19:51] Mark Dion: I know that Director Bruns is a good person to work with, Leah's a good person, but I was envisioning more like they actually would reserve space. Even we wouldn't get it unless it was some manner of an emergency that a family had to be placed. We could open up one of those apartments and place them there. [1:20:10] Maggie McLaughlin: We'll continue the conversation and see where it leads us. [1:20:13] Mark Dion: Okay, I'll trust you'll do that. Thank you. Councilor Sykes? [1:20:16] Kate Sykes: I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but that is actually one of the things that the Social Housing Task Force has brought up is that not just partnering with them as an organization that we could send referrals to, but the city as an institution could actually build the family shelter right in one of the PHA buildings that they're building. [1:20:32] Danielle West: Councillor Sykes, it's like you've seen the next slideshow already. We're on the same page. [1:20:39] April Fournier: Maybe on the Midtown properties? [1:20:41] Mark Dion: Well, go ahead. Councillor Bullard, did you want to say something before that slide begins? All right. Go ahead with the slide, then. [1:20:50] Danielle West: All right, I'm about to share the next part of this conversation when it comes to real estate. Maggie, I'm requesting from someone that I can share my presentation. I think I'm... There we go. So this part of the conversation is about how the council would prefer to approach the real estate and location component of a future family shelter? There are two questions that we're hoping to receive guidance on. One is just the council's preferred criteria for a new location, so we're kind of separating location away from building. What kind of property do we want to be located on and what are the criteria that we want to inform that decision? And so, to inform the location selection, we started to think about this in terms of the feedback we've received from the council in the past when it comes to what you believe families need when they're at an emergency shelter, and also what the program needs to be successful and to successfully serve shelter guests. So we thought about this in terms of needs and operational requirements. Safe and reliable shelter, obviously safe, safety is a big part of it, reliability, financial sustainability is an important component, adequate space kind of goes without saying, access to food we believe is important to this council from what we've discussed in the past, access to transportation, and appropriate zoning. So it's very basic, but does limit to some extent the locations we would look to in the city. Preferences, and this would be a helpful place to get some feedback from this council, are supportive services on site. That's not essential to a functional emergency shelter, but I believe it's a very nice to have from what we've heard from you in the past, as well as access to recreation, whether that's park space or playground so these are some of the criteria or some of the needs that we think would inform the criteria where we to go look for property and locations so if there's anything you have any thoughts or feedback on these this would be very helpful [1:23:48] Kate Sykes: Council grant, strike that, council Sykes. Thank you. So I think I, you know, I've thought a lot about this idea of supportive services, and to my mind we're, we're dealing with a very small pot of money and very small footprint of land that we have under our control as a city. And I am not in support of creating space for a nonprofit to come out and have an ancillary office in a place where it's only a few miles away from wherever their main space is. So certainly a communal area where nonprofits can come in and deliver those services, but I don't think that we should take up valuable housing space to create kind of offices if we don't absolutely have to. If that service exists somewhere in Portland or nearby, I don't think it's useful to, I mean, I just don't think we have the luxury in terms of the cost of that. [1:24:45] April Fournier: Council Bullard. Thanks, I tend to agree to an extent. Look at the WIC program, it's way easier if they come to my office. We hate away games. We want them at our office. It's just a lot easier. That being said, our own staff in the city of Portland offer services, presumably like, where do the public health nurses go when they go visit, do their home visiting, into the apartments? Yeah, so there's like, I think that there's probably a right amount, and perhaps it doesn't need to be as extensive as the HSC, where we're building a dental suite that's occupied by perhaps an outside entity, but I would just say that there's plenty of our own departments, housing navigators, I don't want to speak for you, so, but I assume there's a lot of our own staff that are providing services and are doing it in very cobbled together fashion, would be, would be what I would assume. All right, so that's what I would say is like, I don't think we need to build a dental suite, but I do think we need some offices, especially for our own staff, to be able to have much more appropriate meeting space with their, with their patients and their clients. I also believe the access to recreation for this population is absolutely critical, because let me tell you, with kids, if you don't build it, they will make it up, and they'll just kick the soccer ball anyway. If you came to visit the Expo in 2019, Aaron and I can attest that it was, it was just one big indoor soccer situation. So I do think that recreation is absolutely critical. Council [1:26:22] Mark Dion: Phyllis, did you still want to speak? No, all right, guess not. Council McNevish, I thought your hand went up behind Council Bullets head. That's fine. [1:26:32] Sarah Michniewicz: Thank you, Mayor. Okay, fair enough, fair enough. Council McNevish, thank you. So to that point, that the on-site offices for partners was a big priority for the homeless services center, that was one of the visions for it, for to actually be wraparound services, because the city doesn't provide everything, and I believe in the first couple of years it was a little spotty, but it's kind of filled in a bit now, or how, to me that's instructive for this exercise, you know, how has that worked out, has it been more beneficial? You know, one of the complaints we hear is, oh, people, you know, that they need to, when they need to, you know, travel around to various areas. So, you know, the convenience of, you know, having people in their own office, their home office, certainly makes sense, particularly for staff. And that was one of the issues about the idea of having scattered shelters, was that just, you know, getting people to the facilities would be more challenging. Managing, but how important is it for families to be able to get all of their services on site and to create efficiencies for the city? Great [1:27:58] Aaron: question, Councillor. I think what we've seen at the HSC is that as we've gone on since opening in 23, we've seen greater service delivery on site. And the example I'll give is we have an individual staff member from DHHS on site at the HSC twice a week, and they can literally provide any service that an individual could get otherwise by going to the jet port and going through there. And so those are the sort of services that I envision when I see supportive services. And I'm not suggesting an office for every provider. We have a couple of offices, and we rotate through. Spurwink has a staff that comes on site, Common Space has a staff, DHHS is there Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8 to 4 30 and those are the types of services that I think we would hope to deliver just because it's it's a resource that helps folks get another step towards the permanent housing that were ultimately our ultimate goal. [1:28:59] Sarah Michniewicz: Yeah I remember very distinctly having some conversations with folks with the development of the HSC and they were like just almost most in tears of gratitude at actually having space because there was none the Oxford Street shelter so yeah it's as much about the what the families need as how it is for staff and partners to deliver those services effectively so yeah I have no problem with on-site offices [1:29:33] Benjamin Grant: Council for now thank you I think just to the to the first question really about the criteria for location I think Counselor Bullet made a really good point in that this really needs to be a conversation I think that's in partnership with Portland schools to find out for school-aged children where are we seeing the highest concentration of students that are most likely going to be accessing these services or being transitioning out into neighborhoods to be able to go to those schools I think Also, you know, our partners at Northern Light or Maine Health also know from their family clinics where these families are coming in, the types of services and supports that they need, to figure out where that best location is going to be, obviously whatever else is available too. So I definitely don't want perfect to be the enemy of good and making sure that we're trying to balance the different means while also recognizing, you know, it's a crisis, so we need, there's a certain speed that we have to move at as well and not waiting for the perfect space because it doesn't exist, but trying to figure out where can we kind of tick off the most boxes and be able to deliver the services. So I think that would be my first. Councilor Phillips. I have a really far, [1:30:51] Regina Phillips: I can't do whatever Councilor Grant does, I can't the far. Metaphors? I can't do metaphors. All right, that's fair enough. I just can't. I mean, somebody can write them down. [1:30:59] Mark Dion: Yeah, I know what you're saying, Regina, no problem. [1:31:01] Regina Phillips: Go ahead. This is a really crazy question, really crazy, so have we had any conversations about actually buying the buildings that were in, okay, so let me just, let me just say I know it's a crazy idea, I know the buildings are falling apart, right, but if we're looking at building a whole new shelter for 30, 35 to 45 people, right, in the 10 million, what did I say, oh sorry, families, if we're looking in the 10 million dollar range, right? I don't know how much it costs. [1:31:34] Mark Dion: Could we pause for just a minute? [Regina Phillips: Why, sure, Mayor.] Corporation Council, should we talk about real estate acquisition in executive session? [1:31:48] Speaker H (unidentified): We certainly can. There are standards in the statute that essentially state that if public discussion might be detrimental to any bargaining position that we might have, then that would justify going into an executive session. [1:32:10] Mark Dion: Fair enough, and I appreciate that, Counselor. But I think we can flesh out your question in an executive session. We just don't want to tip our hand to the current lease owner about what we might or might not do with the structures. All right, then. Anyone else? Turn to Dina now just for topic two. [1:32:37] Danielle West: Real estate options. This would be the next items for consideration, ownership and then building delivery options. So for ownership, we could, we could use city-owned property and we, and this is similar again to the conversation we had nine-ish months ago. So we could take another look at city-owned property. That's how we got to the conversation about the central office building. We could talk about acquisition, as Councillor Phillips just began, or we could talk about a long-term lease, and we discussed some of these options, I believe, in workshops again nine or twelve months ago, and the difference in cost and the pros and cons. The upfront capital is a huge part of the reason that purchasing wasn't supported by this council and those original conversations. And so this page lays out some of the pros and cons of each of those. For building delivery, the three options are either new construction and adaptive reuse, which is what we explored with the central office building, or public-private development partnership. And that's something similar to the conversation that this council had in discussing the future of the Midtown properties. Do we do something like a land lease and work with a developer, a non-profit developer or a for-profit developer to build something that we could operate within? So this lays out kind of the menu of options for each of these things. Who owns the property? Property, what do we want our relationship with that ownership to be like, and how do we want the building that we operate in to be developed. So this next page builds on everything that we just discussed, and perhaps, does anyone want to go back here and talk about the pros and cons or preferences from your perspective? If not, the next slide will, that would be an appropriate time to do it too. So given everything that we went through, this was the staff kind of digested everything and came up with three recommendations for discussion purposes. The first, when it comes to location needs, would be prioritizing access to food, transit and supportive services. So access could mean proximity to or the efficient delivery on site. We also included favor access. So in this recommendation, it treats recreation as a preference, and that might be something this council would want to change, maybe make that a must-have or a non-negotiable. And we also included compatibility with the surrounding neighborhood. And I think that ties a little bit into the relationship between the school district and local schools and family shelter or shelters. And one thing we wanted to add here is we recognize that zoning makes it very, difficult to think creatively about different locations throughout the city for family shelters. So, the staff recommendation was to not limit the conversation or exploration to areas that are zoned currently for emergency shelter, but to explore beyond that, recognizing that if appropriate, considering a rezoning might be an appropriate path forward. Does anyone want to discuss these one by one or should I just plow through them? Councilor Sykes, go ahead. [1:36:24] Kate Sykes: Can I just say that as the District 5 Councillor, considering industrial spaces for homeless shelters was a big mistake. We're seeing the result of that is the carnage on the road. So, we have to be really careful about looking too far afield in terms of where a family shelter is appropriate. [1:36:53] April Fournier: All right. Councillor Bowen. Yeah. Especially as we discuss, well, first of all, I think proximity to services is the most important and public transit. These are families that don't have a way to get around. They're also families that have a million appointments because they're navigating very complex systems and often also navigating very complex health needs because of various individual histories and so I want to make sure that the wherever it is really easy to get to public transit I do think that recreation is a must for me it's okay if everybody else doesn't agree it's okay if it's near recreation that exists I'm not saying we need to build a new recreation facility and then I'm happy to consider rezoning if that's what it comes down to but just knowing the current zoning I think that where there's lots of like I said access to public transit is going to be the most important also the services when you think about families right like a branch of the library also like something to consider and I mean as someone who knows a lot of renters they'll tell me you don't decide where you live in Portland decides for you. And so saying all of these things is great, but I also think it might come down to where there is something that's appropriate. I want to build new. I like to swing big, but I know that 's not always practical or that there's not always the political will to do that. So I would be thrilled to do a public-private partnership on the Midtown properties. I know what you guys think of my broken record, and get a family shelter built within one of those buildings. That would be, I'm going to manifest, I'm just going to keep saying it until it happens. [1:38:45] Mark Dion: Councillor McNamara, response? [1:38:49] Sarah Michniewicz: Kind of fighting with this one. As a District 1 councillor, I just have to note how much care we're putting into considering compatibility with the surrounding neighbourhood for specific uses, and that if we were to open up a conversation about zoning for emergency shelters I would be happy to have that conversation and to also think about where single adult shelters should be zoned single one single adult [1:39:14] Danielle West: shelters council [1:39:21] Anna Bullett: Grant I'll weigh in on the side of access to transit I don't have a lot of interaction with this population but I am married to someone who has probably as much as anybody in Portland and she would tell you that is a enormous barrier to getting lots of things done so definitely access to transit. When you talk to the schools, one of the things you'll find out is that the family shelter is zoned in the Ocean Ave Elementary District, so I think it's likely that would be a lien to try to keep it in there. I think that could be fairly disruptive to the elementary school ecosystem if you shifted it around. I mean, obviously, discussion with the schools, but that's the way it exists right now. I am less inclined towards brand-new buildings by the city on a city-owned space I think it's more realistic that we'd be in a you know your column three there or some sort of lease situation like we're in now so those are my those are my [1:40:23] Pious Ali: thoughts on your categories here. Councilor Ali. Thank you mayor I wonder if staff does have something in mind in terms of properties that we may rent or spaces that if this council decides to build our own that staff have any idea that they may [1:40:43] Danielle West: suggest to us we have a couple recommendations and those are based on these kind of location ownership building delivery recommendations and if you're interested in discussing those we will need to go and do executive session to discuss at least one of the more specific ones if these if my colleague [1:41:04] Pious Ali: Say yes, I would love to have that discussion. I don't know what I, it is tonight. Oh, I'm at that time, but I would love to tap into that discussion because it will make it much easier. We'll set that for another night. Okay, thank you. [1:41:15] Mark Dion: Because I have another topic, it's wouldn't be a full workshop. I have another topic I could sandwich in with that and get two things done. Anyone else? Go ahead, councilman out there. [1:41:30] Wesley Pelletier: Yeah, I, well, I'll second, I'll third or fourth or fifth the transit observation. It needs to be around stuff and you have to make sure that people don't feel isolated. I'm kind of agnostic on the other points, but if we are looking for smaller, if we're looking to break them up, which it sounds like it might be a good idea, I, it does sound like it makes more sense to do leases rather than building all those facilities ourselves. Yeah. [1:42:04] Mark Dion: I was just discussing it with Dina here on the side. This would likely go to executive session. First of all, I favor a breakup. I'd rather get some done moving towards a greater whole. I think transportation access is absolutely critical. When the HSC first opened, I took some citizen complaints about way too many people were at the bus stop, which I thought was a unique observation. And I said, well, they're there to use the bus. I don't know what they thought was going on there, but they actually did. And some of it was addressed when you put in computers, the laptops over at the HSC so they could access job listings and immigration work that they had to do. So I like that. I think we should lease rather than purchase whenever possible. If we have some locations for that, we can take that up. I don't know. As a parent, I kind of lean. I hope it's walkable for families for recreation purposes because you're expecting them to keep kids locked up all the time, and they need outdoor recreation. I'm not saying I would not take a space that wasn't next door to a park, but I think our director tells us we're just what, 10 minute or 15 minute walk from every park in the city, you know. I think a playground somewhere in the vicinity would be helpful. Any other comments? Hold on, let me, I'm going to call a recess of this workshop so we can go to our conference room and have a quick executive session on our real estate question. All right. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Second. All those in favor? All right. We're going into executive session. Yes. [1:47:09] Anna Bullett: Recording in progress. [1:47:29] Pious Ali: Okay. Yeah. We went into executive session to discuss certain aspects of this workshop that should be discussed in the executive session, or the mayor is on his way. But I'm going to pass it on to Assistant City Manager Dibna to share what we discussed that can be shared publicly. [1:47:52] Danielle West: So staff have some guidance as it relates to next steps. Specifically the sites will focus on our will be city owned and we will prioritize some sort of a partnership with a private entity for the development of those properties and we hope to be able to report back to either this council or perhaps the HHS and Public Safety Committee in the next six to nine months on what that exploration has yielded. [1:48:37] Mark Dion: Chair, I'd seek a motion to adjourn. So moved. Moved by Councillor Phillips, seconded by Councillor Michniewicz. All those in favor of adjournment? It's unanimous. Workshop is closed.