Ending Community Homelessness Organization

0:00 Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the May 12th meeting of the Clark County ECHO, which is the Ending Community Homelessness Organization. I'm Glenn Young. I chair ECHO and serve on the County Council, and we'll go ahead and go around the room with introductions. Jordan. Jordan Bogie, Senior Policy Analyst. I support the County Council and the County Manager's Office. Good morning, everybody. Cessni Phinney-Jones, Council for the Homeless. Sunny Wonder, Council for the Homeless. Ty Stover, City of Vancouver. Jimmy Spinelli, Homeless Response Manager

0:56 for the City of Vancouver. Ed McInerney-Ogle, Mayor for the City of Vancouver. Online. Introduce yourself. Andy, we'll circle back. Katie Favela, you want to introduce yourself? Good morning. Katie Favela, City of Richfield, City Council. Michael Torres. Good morning. Michael Torres, Program Manager at Clark County Community Services. Councilor Fuentes. Good morning. Will Fuentes, County Council. Victoria Ferrer. Victoria Ferrer, City of Battlegrounds.

1:53 Andy Silver. Looks like you're unmuted, Andy. We can hear you. Okay. Good morning. Andy Silver, Vancouver Housing Authority. We also have the County Manager Kathleen Otto and Deputy County Manager April 4th online and that's all. Thank you, Michelle. We'll go ahead and move on to updates and report back on action items and we'll start with the systems analysis update, echo membership and I will just touch on one thing and then I'll let Jordan speak to it is we just have one remaining jurisdiction at this point to make a commitment and we are working on that. So Councilor Perez is not here this morning but she will be along with who is the other individual? I know Councilor Perez was going to talk to

2:52 I think both Councilor Ferrer and Councilor Favela to see if they might be available and I know Councilor Fuentes had also offered to support with talking to jurisdictions so I think we're pinning that down but the center is who we're talking to and their council meeting is on the 27th and so I think the plan is to attend that and debrief with them and we've sent some materials to the mayor as well. Chair, do you want to circle back to the minutes after this part? Oh, yes. Welcome and introductions. We've got approval of minutes under that. My apologies, I missed that. Yes. So approval of minutes for March 10th, 2026 and April 14th, 2026. Is there any thoughts on that or does anybody have a motion? Chair and Mr. McInerney-Ogle, I'll abstain from both sets of minutes.

3:51 Victoria Ferrer, City of Battleground, I'll motion to approve both those meeting minutes. Katie Favela, second. Great, it's been moved and seconded. Councilor Stover, did you have any comments? Okay. All right, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Great, motion passes. Okay, then we'll circle back to updates again and severe weather. Council for the Homeless. Chair, do you mind if I, one last thing on the systems analysis. I think the other thing I just wanted to let folks know is we're going to get started I think even, you know, assuming we can get the folks in La Center up to speed as well, but working on the draft ILA, that will need to go around to all the cities and so I'll just be sending out an email to folks probably in the next week or two asking for volunteers to review the draft and to work

4:49 on that to bring back to the group so if folks are interested in being part of that, keep an eye out for that when we send out the draft ILA. Great, thank you for that. Any other comments on the RFP? Go ahead. Chair, Tye Stover, City of Vancouver. Two things, one is ILA means interlocal agreement and two, Council Member Prezant and I talked about, I'm available to go up to La Center as well. Thank you. Fantastic. Any other comments? And thank you for that. We often forget those acronyms. Okay, Cessney and Sunny. Hello, this is Sunny Wonder, Council for the Homeless. So for those who are unaware, today is going to be close to 90 degrees so severe hot weather season is incoming at us pretty

5:45 fast. We are going to again be digging into that with CRESA specifically as well as public health kind of trying to coordinate around messaging, developing messaging both for our community as well as the unhoused community specifically. What does messaging look like? Sorry, voice is a struggle today. So messaging with public health as well as just coordination and planning when there is a fire that is threatening in particular recognizing threats across our county but specifically focusing in on our unhoused community is really crucial that we're coordinating with CRESA as well as pulling in our severe weather task force on what that strategy looks like as well as our outreach team. So that's the name of the game this month of what we're digging into. In the packet, Jordan did include, thank you

6:43 Jordan, so provided an overview of our winter weather response as well as our severe weather response during the winter season. So two distinct things, we have the winter weather response which is roughly from the end of November through March and that is recognizing that nighttime temperatures and kind of impacted with rain as well can be very impactful so systems increasing shelter response and then severe weather is when we are saying hey there's a higher criteria of need, we're calling a severe weather response that is set by our severe weather task force. We called severe weather during the winter weather period including flooding which was new for us, 36 nights so that was whether it was meeting a freezing temperature criteria or if it was meeting a flooding criteria. Flooding was new which

7:42 I've shared here before but the freezing temperatures is not new and is something that we've kind of operated under previously. Again that standard is set by our task force partners and then Council for the Homeless will based on that criteria call severe weather and then we're coordinating to make sure that we're getting the word out as effectively as possible. So there is an overview again these pieces are including the success of the winter response as well as the severe weather response so those 36 severe weather nights would include partners that opened warming centers, overnight warming centers and in the summer what that would look like would be cooling centers and typically during the day so just to differentiate between the two. I think that those are the primary pieces and just noting we have kind

8:38 of broken it down by the number of sleeps that were provided which is really cool to see there are of course individual number of people that were assisted but the number of nights that folks were staying. So there were a total of 6,094 sleeps that were provided so those are individual nights that were provided and a total of 152 people including 48 children. This was at the St. Andrew Lutheran who shelter supported through share and then the next category is 3,993 sleeps for a total of 54 people that's through St. Paul's Lutheran who church and is all operated by Outsiders Inn and then the SOS satellite overflow shelter

9:31 had a total of 282,846 sleeps or 108 people that stayed during again that winter season and then the severe weather number is the center one there 815 sleeps or 211 people so that severe weather response it will often be a large number of different people that depending on if they're near the area and that different criteria so it does definitely look different. Are there any questions? Anything you want to add? Chair, thank you. Sunny, thank you for the word and McEnerny-Ogle Vancouver. Thank you for this. A couple questions. Would

10:19 these locations be our summer cooling shelters also? So the summer shelters do look different and I can put out a plug for we have a couple of different approaches so we have a lot of actually a fair number of churches that are not included here that actually provide summer sheltering because it is a little bit easier to operationalize you're not doing the overnight stays and instead it's during the daytime or kind of those peak heat hours so it may go to like 8 p.m. for example and is a little easier for a church community to take on so we have a few different churches that respond around the county we are always a plug we are always looking for partners who are interested whether it is thinking of different jurisdictions

11:16 if you have properties or if there are churches that are interested or if you have any leads please let us know. We also do misting stations which are the I don't know if you were able to see any pictures of those but kind of a tent and where folks thinking of if you're not able to go in or not comfortable with taking pets in and stuff like that we do have some locations but you're able to take your pets in we've had some of our safe stay partners that have operated those as well as a few other partners so during the summer it has been interesting it looks very very different and it is because the response and need is different so it would not be these partners though they most definitely do jump in or continue to operate in different ways throughout the summer. And when will we have that list on the website? When will we have the partners on the website? So the way that that works

12:09 is typically partner when we call severe weather so during a severe weather event we're sending out that information so it can change depending on during the winter season there might be things if it is a church that is responding they might have an event that is planned so they're not able to open so they want to have volunteers support at another location so it does change depending on the capacity of those partners. So when we call severe weather our goal as much as possible and recognizing we've seen some pretty big changes and ability to predict whether as early as we would like to but we do try to get it out to the community twenty four hours in advance on social media on our website and out to the severe weather task force to be shared out as well. One of those strategies both with CRRSA and public

13:04 health is also to be able to share the information out as effectively as possible with our in-house community through outreach teams but also through public partnership thinking of businesses and stuff like that so that not everyone is going to check our website or those sorts of things so we're trying to make sure we're getting the word out as quickly as possible. I was at St. Andrew Lutheran only on Friday mornings but thank you for your help with the grandmother that had five grandsons and getting them housed. Was counsel for the homeless at St. Andrew on a regular basis to work with those families on their housing assessments and getting them housed before the end of that winter? Yeah so the St. Andrews with all of the partners most definitely working to make sure that assessments are happening

14:03 that is during the winter months we do invest pretty close that work really closely with them to ensure that their housing plans developed and they actually had some pretty amazing success this year a lot of appreciation to the share team molly ham street in particular who's worked there for a number of years who had a lot of success with getting families into housing. So was it counsel for the homeless and share at St. Andrews this year? St. Andrews is supported through this past year they share has for a number of years been the staffing support counsel for the homeless coordinates to make sure that assessments are done when they have a household that is ready to move in or they're needing support we are working really closely with them. Okay so some of the questions that came up from the families is that they were hoping to have more support and so maybe we need to look at share and

15:02 St. Andrews closer for this next coming winter. Yeah absolutely. Great question good conversation I just had one little thing and I don't know when you you said 35 days were severe weather day they were called for severe weathers is do you have the ability to track that year over year it would be interesting to see if there's a trend with that just kind of a side note and then the other question that I had was and and perhaps Jamie can chime in on this too but we had closures last year of some of the normal facilities that were open are we is everybody that traditionally is going to be open are they all planning to be open in this year? I think I understand so you're saying are the facilities that were

15:59 open this last severe weather going to be open this next severe weather season in the winter time? Yeah yeah I know that we had I can't remember if it was last year or the year before we had one facility that normally was able to we had a couple facilities that the city opened during the winter time but our understanding is that that's not happening that didn't happen this past year and it probably won't happen the next year but you never know with particular facilities if they're going to be available or not we hope that they will be and so I mean we're moving in a direction of making sure that we have enough facilities that can help support the community. Okay and then are we following the number of units number of spaces that are available to make sure that we're you know not trending the wrong way? Doing the best we can I mean of course the numbers are increasing and you never know when a severe weather event is going to happen and how many days that's going

16:58 to happen. Great. And I think Jamie had something to add. Go ahead Jamie. This is Jamie Spinelli from the City of Vancouver. Councilmember Young I think what you're actually referring to is Beautiful Savior being down a couple years prior which is why the city opened up a couple facilities the season before this most recent one so the city did not open up this those same facilities this past winter but Recovery Cafe stepped in to work with Outsiders Inn and partner with Emmanuel Lutheran to be that other that other location for this past winter. It's my understanding that Beautiful Savior is going to be ready to go this next winter is that? Word on the street is. That is a word on the street. I think that that is I know that it's been a long time coming but I believe that it is. I think I think

17:52 that's accurate. My question actually is somewhat related to that which was that this past season or and this coming what is has been and is funded through some additional or new dollars from the county the RFP that went out that that kind of gave everybody some dedicated funding because there's not historically been dedicated funding for severe weather or weather response was it included I cannot remember for part of that I think for you all in particular to plan for future for future funding or needs or so that we would have a plan moving forward for funding winter response or weather related response response or or was it just the two years and then that's that's it. So I can say that that is something that we have talked

18:51 about at the severe weather task force meeting. I will let the let Michael respond if he has anything that he would like to add. Per my understanding that is explicitly a two year fund funding at this point so we shouldn't expect that there would be additional funds where those funds came from. You're right this has historically been something that hasn't been funded so relying on faith partners, volunteers, kind of stretching of the homeless response system to be able to respond to emergent need. There is an element of planning involved in it and most definitely kind of speaking to what Cessna said we're continuing to explore every potential option and to acknowledge that with federal funding shifts and cuts that it has narrowed the scope of what we would be eligible to apply for. We did apply

19:49 for a fairly small grant with in partnership with Cressa for example that funding is no longer one that is feasible is not available for communities to apply for. So that's just an example of we recognize a growing need for a severe weather response while also facing really historical cuts to an infrastructure to respond in kind so that is one of the challenges that we're facing and trying to recognize that it isn't sustainable to rely on solely on a volunteer basis response is really important that we have a solid structure to be able to increase and respond and there are fewer avenues for us to access funding but we are nothing if not creative and continuing to explore options to be able to continue to maintain the work and hopefully continue to increase as we see a more emergent need for

20:48 a severe weather response. This is Michael Torres of Clark County Community Services. I'll add there currently is no federal state or local funding that is designated for severe weather events specifically. Community Services has put aside some community services funds and made it available in a severe weather contract for a period of two years as Sunny indicated at this time because there is no funding source that is designated for severe weather. We don't have additional funds to add to that but we are planning to roll those funds over and extend the contracts at least

21:42 until they run out and in that severe weather contract planning is an allowable cost and looking for other resources in planning for severe weather is an allowable cost. Those efforts continue and as we have mentioned here at the ECHO for everyone's awareness, having jurisdictions, having localities identify and set funds aside and resources specifically for severe weather is very helpful. Thank you, Michael. All right. We'll go ahead and move forward. Thank you for that report. Remember recruitment update. Yeah, so I just wanted to give a quick update to folks. We sent out a recruitment last month

22:41 for ECHO for those with lived experience to participate. We did not get very many responses and we did send it out to the folks who had applied the last time as well. I know that had been a question before and so we've extended that deadline out again. I think that's on the screen here and so I just would encourage folks to share that with your networks as well. We've extended that deadline out to June 5th so we'll be looking again this month for folks so if you know anyone or know anyone who knows anyone, feel free to direct them to the press release and to Michelle to send their information in and hopefully we'll have a bucket of folks. Once we have kind of a critical mass, we'll reach out to that subcommittee who had offered to review those applications and then bring those forward to the group.

23:41 So thank you for that. I would say also that anybody that manages any outreach contracts, I think that would be a great way to get that information to folks that are going out into the community and talking to people. I think outreach workers will really be able to identify those that might be a good fit for this so just keep that in mind. Any other thoughts before we move on? Okay. Alright, we'll move on to a report on our previous meeting which is a law enforcement panel debrief and next steps and just again I wanted to say that it was a very productive meeting and I appreciate all those that were involved in the process and the setup. It was a lot of work to get all this put together and I think it was very successful and I know that the county is working on, through social media and other sources, pushing for people to be able to view. It's on CVTV so pushing that link so all of your

24:40 organizations please consider doing so as well. I think the messaging from that meeting is really important for the community to hear. Jordan, go ahead. Thanks, Chair. Yes, and I do believe we've been able to put that up on the county's YouTube channel as well so if that's easier for folks, I know sometimes it's easier to embed a YouTube link than to go directly to CVTV and so if folks want to share the panel, they can certainly do that. Yeah, just wanted to give the group some time to debrief about the panel, have an opportunity for folks to kind of share their thoughts. Council Perez could not be with us today but she put together this kind of quick summary document that you've all got of the law enforcement panel. I would probably direct folks maybe to page five for kind of the broader conversation.

25:35 Those are around recommendations and next steps, some of the things that we heard from the officers and folks in attendance there and those really relate to expanding and sustaining the CARES and co-responder models. There was a lot of talk about that. I know funding is certainly a challenge but one of the big takeaways I think that we heard was that that model is pretty effective and that it's really helping our law enforcement folks connect people to the right kinds of supports for people who might be unhoused and going through crisis and in particular, there's a need for kind of ongoing funding. They've got some funding to kind of spin it up but the ongoing funding is continually a challenge. Talking about creating multidisciplinary working groups at the regional level, one of the things that we heard from the chiefs in particular is that they hadn't all been in the same room

26:32 together and so they enjoyed the opportunity to talk with one another to kind of engage in that dialogue and one of the next steps that they were talking about sounded like was trying to get the right level folks together that are kind of working on these issues more directly to maybe have some standing working groups, maybe a little bit similar to what you all are all doing at the policy level. And so thinking about how we can support that regionally, thinking about a regional contact management information system, you know, I know we have HMIS, the homeless management information system, I don't know if law enforcement, you know, maybe they have their own system as well or can develop something like that or sounded like there was a need to try to develop a searchable shared database. So what does that look like? That was certainly part of the conversation, you know, something that

27:31 comes up a lot in these conversations, reducing service silos and improving information sharing. I think that's kind of part of potentially having some of that informational systems but just making sure that we are working together, thinking about the barriers that lead people to not access services. One of the things that came up certainly was pets, you know, not being able to bring your pet into treatment with you or, you know, family members or things like that. Investment in upstream services, you know, how do we help folks before they really get into crisis and then some conversation about policy and funding advocacy, thinking about how are there opportunities for state level funding streams to help support some of that work. And then some clear guidance around the 9/8 crisis response funding to coordinate with 911. And then just the final item is, you know, sustaining momentum from

28:31 the meeting, which I think we're trying to do now here, which is how do we take what we've heard, operationalize it, help that become actionable both in each of your individual communities and then as well as a county in each of our individual jurisdictions within it, how do we work together to continue to improve services and help folks get the assistance that they need when they need it. And so those are just some of the high level takeaways so it would open the conversation for folks about what they heard, what they see as next steps and then maybe have a little bit of a conversation about what the group would like to prioritize in terms of, I know we've had some previous conversations about having future conversations with the jail, with community courts, with hospital system, with CRRSA, with some other entities and so if there is a sense of how you all would like to prioritize that, we can start getting those conversations with those groups as well in future meetings.

29:30 And so I'll stop talking and let folks go from there. I think I saw Vancouver just a very, to me not unimportant, but under the creative multidisciplinary working group, it's great that it's a hard officer but we need what I heard was officers from police forces throughout the county, not just the cities and so I think that's an add to that list of people that need to be in that meeting.

30:23 Oh, and then pet barriers is bigger than just people being able to take pets in. It's also I recently came across somebody who's needing to give up pets right now and we don't have resources for that either. So pets is bigger than just being able to bring them with them someplace. So my question to everybody here would be, we have the RFP in process that's probably going to take some time but I think that all of the information from this meeting can be, you know, a tool that we can give to whoever

31:19 ends up working with us on that but is there anything that was identified during the panel that we as ECHO want to take a role in or feel we should take a role on and it's within our line of duty, if you want to call it that. Chair. Sure, go ahead. Excuse me. Thank you, Will Fuentes, County Council. You know, I think that what Councillor Pérez and through Jordan Bogie encapsulated everything that I think was captured at this forum but I would say, since you are asking, you know, what can we do as a committee and I think that the most important thing, and they brought this up, a lot of the law enforcement

32:19 panelists that were there that day, that it's important to really have an open line of communication with law enforcement, be more communicative, you know, engage with them more often as well as engage with people on the ground, with community members on the ground to ensure that we're really capturing, you know, what the challenges are. So, I think that just, you know, open line communication with law enforcement is going to be essential and figuring out how we can better collaborate with them. Chair. Sure, go ahead. Anne McEnerny-Ogle, Vancouver. Chair, I watched this on CBTV and I know you're working on

33:11 it, moving forward with the study, but that's going to take a while and I think your last H on this, sustaining the momentum is extremely important. I would suggest that ECHO take a look at the opportunity to bring a body together on a more regular basis. Several people pointed out they needed information in a timely manner, reliable times and who comes when where. This ECHO group may be that organization, but every four months or something and along those lines, that group come back to this particular body and have some of these conversations while you're preparing your survey, your study, so that that body can

34:10 actually add to the recommendations that might come out of it. You had a great, interesting group. They may not all send their chiefs the next time, but as this study is going to take time and you don't want to lose that momentum, I would suggest you talk to your group to figure out how to make that happen, but this group is on a routine. It would be nice if you were able to keep it and add to it. I know they have different opportunities to talk about individuals, but the open lines of communication are extremely important and the help of everyone, especially because everyone is setting their budgets, so just something

35:06 to consider. What do you see that looking like in terms of structure? Is that they're going to meet with the entire group each month or form like a subcommittee that's working with them? This is Jamie from the City of Vancouver. The thoughts that I had shared with the city council members from Vancouver were really more about that kind of regularly meeting working group with more of the boots on the ground law enforcement. I know there were a couple who had mentioned that group, including essentially what is like the makeup of our heart team, and the reason that that is effective

36:00 is because it includes enforcement and outreach and other city resources that interact with homelessness. I heard very clearly that this probably comes as no surprise to anyone. In every jurisdiction, there are a smaller number of folks who utilize these systems a great deal, whether it's crisis systems, healthcare systems, law enforcement, and those tend to be repeat utilizers that are baffling, I think, to law enforcement. I don't know what to do with these individuals who've got needs that are not for law enforcement to meet. My high level thought was essentially creating a group of some of those officers from across jurisdictions

36:54 that actually do that interacting and including some outreach, not every single outreach team that can get very hard to manage, but essentially kind of a different version of the by nameless meetings that Council for the Homeless facilitates, including maybe the PA's office, some folks from behavioral health, outreach, law enforcement, like CARES team type folks, to really kind of talk about what folks they are experiencing that they don't know how to help, law enforcement in particular, how they do not know how to help, how to serve somebody in a meaningful way, in hopes that that group could kind of maybe try to problem solve together around some of those high utilizers. It's not a fully formed concept in my mind yet, but that was kind of the thought.

37:53 Sesame, Council for the Homeless. Jamie and Jordan, I'm going to say this. When we did our brainstorming session, I think one of the things that came out of that was having like subcommittees from ECHO. And so maybe this can be connected to a subcommittee that we create that can also link up outreach, law enforcement, ECHO members as a subcommittee, and they can meet regularly and then come and, you know, report out or, you know, give us more information about what their needs are. Victoria Ferrer here. I do like what Cessna just mentioned about maybe doing a subcommittee. Sorry, I should have waited for you, Chair, to agree that I can speak. Go ahead.

38:47 Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I do agree with the idea of what Cessna just said about maybe forming a subcommittee because what I would like to see ECHO do, and I know we're very specific on what we do, and I don't want us to get lost into all of these other areas, but also don't want to lose that traction that we were able to gain from last month's meeting. I was very hopeful and very thankful to be able to attend that meeting. I know I bring it back to my municipality, and I asked everybody to watch the video so they could see what we got to see, and it was very informative, and I would love for us to just kind of piggyback on what the mayor said and others in the room is maybe just help facilitate

39:43 maybe with these meetings to help solve the, you know, the repetitive -- I hate saying that word. That sounds very ugly -- people who are needing these wraparound resources that are, you know, experiencing homelessness, maybe get an AIRS team in the room, the HART team in the room, because it's one thing for us to go to the meetings and bring it back to our group here today, but then they're the ones who are on the boots on the ground. They're the ones who are seeing these issues. They're the ones who need responses quicker than, you know, what the mayor said. It's like this -- what we're trying to achieve is it's going to be very timely, and so how do we not lose momentum and still provide, you know, these tools to help our different groups, whether it be police, like I said,

40:42 the HART team, CARES team, because I would really -- to be honest, I see the -- how do I put this? I see ECHO as, you know, we're focusing on homeless, but I really have a hard time not looking at wraparound services for mental health and trying to help these people. It's great that we want to provide a place for them to live and get them off the streets, but that's not enough. So how do we look at what we're doing and achieve a long-term goal, which is to see people process out and get the care that they actually need so they can get out of their -- the homelessness that they're experiencing. >> Thank you. Go ahead, Katie. >> Thank you so much. So as -- I do agree with having an ongoing meeting, but as I'm

41:39 sitting here listening to this conversation, it sounds like the need really matches up with a meeting that is already held in Clark County that I'm wondering if we could reach out and see if we can merge with them, which is the Clark County Crisis Collaborative. The crisis collaborative is very much the same work. It's developing that communication strategy with key community partners to understand, like, the crisis and opportunities for upstream interventions and some of the same people that we would be asking to attend this meeting also attend the crisis collaborative, such as managed care, law enforcement, hospital, behavioral health providers, individuals with lived experience, housing and homelessness providers, the regional crisis line, CRES is there, the school districts, EMS is there. So I wonder if this would be an opportunity for us to kind of blend into something that's

42:38 already happening and make that a more robust meeting instead of creating something that would almost seem a little duplicative. This is Jamie from the City of Vancouver. Katie, I appreciate that. I have historically attended that meeting. I haven't been in a while. There used to be two similar meetings, I think. I think maybe we're talking about two different but related things here. I think it's a good idea for those systems to get together and talk about system change, system needs, et cetera. And I think what I heard from the panel last month was really less system stuff and more individual stuff. Like, we should always be working on improving collaboration,

43:35 coordination across systems and just improving our systems in general. And at the same time, we've got individuals with immediate emergent needs that need to be addressed in the best way possible. And it seemed to me like that's what a lot of the officers or the chiefs that were here last month were expressing a desire to kind of roundtable with colleagues who do similar work and can support their efforts so that they're not having to utilize enforcement as the only tool. Does that make sense, Katie? Oh, yeah. Big time. And I agree with you. I just, in the sake of time and making sure that there's nothing duplicated, that this could also be something that we could look at if we don't want to do a whole subcommittee looking to see if there is a partnership. And maybe that is not the best avenue to do,

44:32 but making sure that everybody is aware that those meetings are already happening. And sometimes it's nice to speak to people who are already doing this so that if we were to decide to have a subcommittee, we very much have a good understanding of what our lane is and how to set that up and not do something that's already being done in the community. Yeah. I can't, this is Jamie again. I don't know if a full subcommittee other than maybe just a couple of us who actually are more connected to direct service just kind of commits to reporting back on outcomes from maybe that work. That to me makes sense because I also don't, I cannot envision, no offense, but having electeds in a room where we're talking about people's private information, confidential information, that's something that has to be worked out even with the law enforcement

45:29 component prior to having those discussions. There's a reason it's difficult to put these kinds of groups together because of that information sharing, particularly related to, you know, healthcare, behavioral health, things like that. Absolutely. Yeah. But I did use, I don't know if you ever went to that meeting when Bunk previously attended and at that meeting there was a need for that kind of case conferencing. And so Tyler and I used to have to kind of just hang back after the meeting ended for Bunk and me and Tyler to case conference very specific people. And so I think, I mean, it's essentially like a larger, more intentional version of that that seems to be needed. Yeah. Thank you. Uh, Ty Stover of Vancouver. Uh, I just, I want to really echo that information sharing

46:24 portion of it. Um, so still in my mind is, um, when Mr. Abbey was killed, that, um, that I came to the understanding and I brought it to this group and, or whatever integration of this group, there is this divide between HMIS and police records. Um, and we need, so we need, we need the people in the room that can, you know, the people who have access to HMIS have to be in the room with people who have access to police records. And it would be great if somebody had access to the, uh, and could, um, somehow provide the medical

47:17 perspective. That gets even more tricky. But, um, but if we're going to be able to solve these individual, the, the, the challenge that some of our individuals have, we need to be able to cross those information divides somehow and whatever, and for this group to support the formation of whatever group that can make that information, um, sharing happen, I think is, is important. Go ahead, Mira. Anne McNerney-Ogle, Vancouver, and perhaps Ty, the, if the chair created a subcommittee with a couple short responsibilities, one could be the study of C, the building of that

48:13 information system, because I can imagine the number of public records requests that we get on everything. I don't know if HMIS is open to public records requests, but I don't, I wouldn't want this document, this spreadsheet, whatever database that is being created here to be open to public records requests. So that would need a legal chat. So maybe this subcommittee could take a look at a searchable shared database, what that would mean, short little task, get it done and bring it back for the next conversation and then use it from there to move on with next pieces. This is Jamie. There are RCWs that protect the personal information from people who are

49:13 connecting with services, receiving benefits to the state, people, you know, indigent defense kind of things. So I don't think that, I think that we would be safe there. Yeah. It just needs to be built out. The process, the whole structure needs to be built out in a way that, um, the appropriate kinds of information can be shared and the appropriate information kept private. Any other thoughts on that? Well, I, I feel the same way. I feel like, uh, at this point, if we could find folks that were willing to, we could create a subcommittee and yes, its

50:10 purpose initially is very short term to kind of go through some of these issues and bring back a, or at least one, but hopefully maybe multiple recommendations to the body that we could look at. And perhaps that subcommittee or we form a different one continues on with some work or basically we can evaluate as a group what we would like to participate in and what we feel like is within our realm of authority and responsibility. And then we can work with legal to evaluate some of those things as well. Does that sound reasonable to everyone here? All right. Do we need to have a motion to create a subcommittee at

51:04 this point? I don't know what our rules procedure are here. The chair. Okay. All right. So who, who would like to serve on that committee? I'd be interested. This is Katie. Great. Okay. Thank you for your prayer. And I would also be interested. Okay. Jamie. Yep. Jamie. You don't both need to be on it. Anyone else? This is sunny council from the homeless. I can join. Great. Okay. And I probably won't officially join the committee, but I may join in when I can. All right. So we will exchange emails after the meeting and see if we can

52:00 get those meetings scheduled up between all of you. Thank you for volunteering for that. And I look forward to some upcoming recommendations to the body of the group. Is there anything else that we would like to discuss that relative to the panel that we held? All right. I'll add sesame from council for the homeless. I heard that there is a need to educate community on what the law enforcement can and cannot do. And I'm not for sure if where that vehicle is that we can do that. Um, but I, I mean, multiple people from the panel talked about,

52:56 you know, that, you know, the community often wants them to solve or fix or remove someone who's experiencing homelessness and that's just not what they can do. So I don't know if it's an echo, um, thing for us to figure out ways to educate community, but it sounded like they were desperately needing someone to educate community on what they can and cannot do. So any thoughts on how that can be accomplished? I would ask, first of all, if anybody is aware of any mechanism or way, I know periodically on Facebook, I'll see things from VPD, for example. I don't know if I've ever seen it

53:54 on that particular subject, but their Facebook page does come up in my feed periodically. Um, so I mean, I'm certain that they could, maybe it's at this point, you know, all of us here are elected officials from our various jurisdictions. Perhaps we could go back to our, our staff or, um, and in our case in the County, we would need to communicate with the sheriff of course. But is that a jurisdiction specific goal or is that something that we feel that echo should take in a formal role in? Ty Stover of Vancouver. So, um, this, um, this is a marking campaign. Um, it would be

54:46 great to start with an interview format on CVTV, uh, law enforcement with a, a, um, moderator kind of talking through a few of these general things. And then, then it, that being, um, turned into a social media clips that can be shared out. The question is who has money to do any of that? Um, obviously we, we own CVTV, so that part of it's easy, but the processing, um, and creating the social media campaign is the, is the challenge here. But, um, it,

55:42 and it needs to be, and then it needs to be promoted on social media. It has to be a paid campaign on social media, so it's showing up on people's feeds continually. Ty, do we know if our other police departments have Facebook or social media? Of course Vancouver does, but do we know if Battleground Camas, Washougal, Ridgefield, how do they get their information out? We can look that up. But you had, um, Battleground Camas, Ridgefield, Vancouver, you had the Clark County Sheriff, you had Clark Cowlitz Fire and Rescue. I liked the idea of sitting down, having a, an interview, short conversation, taking the talking points

56:40 from those and simply doing headshots 30 seconds from each of the chiefs. Um, they can have time to prepare. They can be in uniform. We can loop it all together, put it in one and send it out on all of ours. And I would hope that the different cities have some social media of some sort. So the county and the city own CVTV. All we need to do is get the first person to help us do the interview, write it, short clips. Um, and again that shares with the momentum that they've already started. They already came, they're already on CVTV. It might be that there's enough clips, there are enough clips in that last, um, video. But if someone wanted to expand on that, all you need is that first person, um, who could

57:40 lead it off. Paul Harris from our staff does a wonderful job of putting them together and getting it to chair. I'm willing to take on something here. Um, that was going to be my question. Yeah, I'm willing to take on something here, um, and, uh, maybe Jamie and I can brainstorm. Sure I can, I can help with that. Okay. Okay. I don't think we need to form a subcommittee for this, but perhaps if you could report back to us next month, that would be great.

58:32 Thank you for being willing to do that. Thank you for the idea and bringing that up. I know if we were to go through and watch that video right now, we would have hours worth of conversations, but it's been a month now already and a lot of those things escape our, our thought processes. But I think we got two good action items out of this that we can work on. Any other good ideas before we move on? Okay. All right. Thank you for that. All right. We will go ahead now and move forward. We'll turn the time over to Jamie to give us the homeless situation report and bridge shelter update for the city of Vancouver. Okay. I actually only prepared like a few minutes worth of stuff because I figured that conversation

59:30 would last a lot longer. Um, I don't know if anyone got the photos that could potentially go up onto the screen. I'll give the bridge shelter update first. That way you can just look at those pictures, um, so that everybody can see where we are with the bridge shelter. It's actually very exciting. Walls are going up. Buildings are being constructed. Um, we're on track to have that opened thus far before the end of this year, which is very exciting. Real quick, Jamie, uh, Michelle, do we have those photos? Do you have those photos? Oh, she's getting them. Okay, great. All right. Thank you. Okay. Um, I guess just as a reminder for anyone who does not know that shelter is going to serve up to 120 people, uh, Do Good is going to be the service provider onsite. We are working to, um, solidify our operational

1:00:24 contract with both them and, uh, Cowlitz because Cowlitz will be providing the opioid treatment, the medication assisted treatment onsite, which is also very exciting because we don't have another shelter in town that does that. People will be able to access their medication and behavior health, uh, services, um, every day onsite. Um, pets will be allowed. It'll be for single adults and couples. There are three individual dorms serving men, women and couples separately. Um, showers and restroom onsite. One of the buildings, which we're kind of right now calling the commons building, we'll have a commercial kitchen, um, some dining space and then some additional office space for Cowlitz. There we go. So actually more of that building in the front is built, is, is erected currently than is in that photo, but that was the best area we could find. Um, this is the backside of the commons building,

1:01:23 I believe. So there'll be kind of a covered eating area. So it's, it's very exciting actually. I hadn't seen it in, uh, the property in like two or three months and then I saw all that and it was like, oh wow, it's no longer just a blank slate. Um, I think that's updates on the bridge shelter largely, but I'm happy to take questions if anybody has any. Um, I also uploaded the situation report for March. Um, I'm, I didn't actually intend on going through every single data point here. Um, but I did one up because, uh, Councilman Young, uh, and Councilman Perez had asked for just kind of some trends. Uh, these, the situation report can be found on the city's website, which the link was, uh, provided to everybody

1:02:17 on the emergency, the homeless emergency declaration page. Um, but we are, you know, as of March, we'd, the Hart team had cleared a little over a hundred tons of solid waste, uh, from encampments or around encampments on public property. Um, our, um, law enforcement, the interactions with law enforcement, so calls for service and the amount of time that, uh, enforcement is spending on, uh, issues related to homelessness have remained pretty steady, um, over the last few months, which is, uh, I know people get very excited about what looks like a decrease in the leveling, but a lot of that has to do with weather. People in colder months, there's just a lot less interaction. So, TBD on whether or not those numbers go back up again. Um, but those are those. And then, uh, I thought it might be more worthwhile

1:03:11 to talk about the actual like 2005, like annual data so that you can, 2025. Is that what I said? I said 2005. Don't listen to me. It's still early. I haven't finished my coffee. So in 2025, um, at the safe stays and safe park across all five sites, we served, uh, 487 total people, um, and 42%, uh, positive exits across all four or across all five. Um, which is pretty significant actually because the shelter, shelter exits in general tend to be fairly low ish kind of nationally, usually somewhere around 20, 25 ish percent positive exits out. Um, so that was, we're excited about those. Um, the HART team removed 352

1:04:11 tons of solid waste. The encampment response coordinator coordinated all of that from public works, 352 tons, which actually was a 15% reduction in the year before. So even though we've, uh, the work has kind of remained this same ish, um, generating less solid waste, which is a good thing. Uh, we did close down to large encampments in 2025. So along the Mill Plain Soundwall, um, and Burntbridge Creek, which is probably part of that reduction in a solid waste removal and, uh, in the HART team count. So we do an unsheltered count in just Vancouver city limits, similar to Council for the Homeless's point in time count that's county wide. We do ours in the summer. Usually ours lasts at least a couple of weeks. We also, um, utilize information from folks who are in jail during the same time period

1:05:06 who we know are experiencing homelessness and would be outside otherwise. Um, so it's, we're trying to get as close as we can to like who is actually experiencing homelessness and would be outdoors or are outdoors, um, in Vancouver. And even with all of that, we had a 6% reduction in unsheltered homelessness in Vancouver from 2024 to 2025. Um, so not a massive change, but a change in the right direction nonetheless. Uh, and then 329 individuals were cited into community court. And those citations are largely done by the city's HART, HART officers. And those citations have actually like, I think they've doubled year over year since community court opened. So a lot of folks engaging, um, in those services through there. Um, what was the other one that was most important? The, I have been actually

1:06:02 most excited about the, having the combination of community court data and information paired with, you know, kind of our, our typical, uh, our typical data collection. Um, and when I was able to kind of look at the two, um, the two kind of sets of data, what we realized is that there were like 44 people, at least 44 people who had been cited in the community court for issues related to camping, um, or very low level stuff while camping, um, who had never connected to any part of our homeless crisis response system. Um, and it, to be cited into community court by one of our officers, our officers, it's, they, they don't, um, they're not citing people who they've met for the first time, um, who have, uh, um, you know, have not, who are connecting to services, who, um, are not having issues with

1:06:58 a lot of solid waste or, um, you know, maybe criminal activity at, at their camp. Typically people being cited are those who, um, we have tried to engage, tried to get into services, tried to, um, transition into shelter, tried to offer housing, um, and, uh, and there's still, there's still kind of in a space of not, uh, not prioritizing that kind of forward movement, I suppose, getting off of the streets. Um, so I thought it was interesting that there were that number of people who had just never connected to any part of our system at all. Um, not all that surprising given is largely in Burntbridge Creek, but, uh, interesting on the list. And I think that's probably, that's probably all the main updates. Oh,

1:07:55 Mobile Health, Mobile Health and, uh, um, I already mentioned them, Mobile OTP. Um, but Columbia River's Mobile Health team is back up and running. They had, uh, like a year of not being operable just due to some organizational things, but they are back up and running. Uh, they are, uh, providing services in the Fourth Plain Corridor, at encampments, um, at the safe stays. Uh, I know they're still doing some hiring for some of their positions, but they do have enough filled that they can be, um, operating. They support community court a great deal. And, uh, in addition to the mobile health services that they provide, um, they also are providing some training, very specific to, um, working with folks who are unhoused and some of the, some of the more complex challenges. Um, because it has been, I think, system wide and probably community, like statewide, it's been challenging,

1:08:50 uh, staffing up, um, some of these programs or, uh, or services to meet the more complex challenges that exist, uh, in the homeless community these days. And so it seems like if we can't hire enough people, then maybe we can also build the skill of those we have, you know, as we're trying to increase capacity. Um, so they have been providing training and will continue to provide training for all of our safe stay and safe park staff, the park team, um, and, and, uh, and some others in the area if they need it. So that's been, that's been very, um, very cool to see. And I think that's it. Thank you for that. Jamie, I just had one question for you. I think when you mentioned that two camps were closed, can you elaborate a little bit on the process of how that went and what happened to the folks that were in those camps? Sure. So when we are looking

1:09:47 at decommissioning encampments, those larger encampments typically, um, we only do that when conditions at an encampment really reached like a threshold level where, um, public health, safety, sanitation just cannot be managed, um, with our typical kind of resources. Um, for example, if you remember back in 2022, we actually closed the encampment over off of Czech Love and, and Mill Plain. Um, and one of the reasons that that just could not remain there was because we can, we could not bring sanitation services to that, that location. We cannot bring porta potties. We couldn't get a dumpster there because the property was completely landlocked. So there was no way to service anything that we put there. Um, so things similar to that, we also look at crime calls for service, vulnerability of the folks who are, who are living in the encampments, um, fires, how close they are

1:10:46 to a high traffic corridor. So that's, that's part of what, what occurred with the Mill Plain Soundwall. Um, particularly with just like the number of pets, people and pets that we had right near the roadway. Um, so what we do, this is a months long, many months long process where we create, uh, essentially a by name list for that encampment. So we open that list up for an amount of time. My team creates a list of everybody who's living in that space. Uh, we look at what their needs are, how they connected to the, to, um, coordinated entry, do housing assessments. Um, and then we, at the safe stays, we kind of pause entry from everyone, everywhere else into those sites. And, uh, all of those, all of our site entries come from the encampment that we're working to decommission. Not everyone goes into, into shelter, to be very clear. Some people don't. Uh, I think at both sites it's

1:11:44 been about 50%. 50% of the people on the list, on each list, have gone into shelter. Um, but we pick a date and we, you know, by this date we have offered, we have at least offered everyone on that list a shelter space. And then we clean, then we close, then we close it. We clean it that day. Everyone's given warning. Everyone knows well in advance of when the camp's going to be closed, um, so that they've got time to pack up their things, find somewhere else to go, accept a shelter space. That's pretty much it. So everybody is offered a, a space and a shelter. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions for Jamie? Okay. Thank you. Appreciate you giving that update. Sure. Okay. Um, takeaways,

1:12:39 recommendations, next steps in closing. So far we have a new subcommittee that's gonna, so we need to send email, starting emails. Jordan, are you able to facilitate that? Uh, yes. I've, I've got the, the list of folks, uh, who want to participate in that subcommittee and I'll, uh, send out an email to everyone, uh, asking about schedules for calendaring. Great. And then we have Councilor Stover that's taken on the marketing campaign, so he'll report back to us on that. Any other takeaways? Am I missing anything? Um, uh, Chair, uh, just to go back and close out, um, last March, so the last time we had a regular meeting.

1:13:39 Um, so what, what's the final outcome on funding for this, for the, the study? Um, so is every, it's down to just listener? Yes. Every jurisdiction at this point has agreed. Okay. Um, great. And then we're working on that. Um, so, and then where are we at with renewing the interlocal agreement for HB 2060 document recording fees? Michael? Yes, thank you. Uh, we, uh, that draft should be getting circulated in the month of June. Uh, we have been delayed on

1:14:35 that. Thank you. Great. Any other last thoughts or anything good for the good of the order? Sounds like there isn't, so we'll give everybody a few extra minutes back into their day. Appreciate all your work and all the comments and, and, uh, all the efforts that we make to try to make this horrible situation a little bit better. So we'll see y'all next month. Thank you.