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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2012-11-14 Homelessness Steering_AGENDA AD HOC HOMELESSNESS STEERING COMMITTEE November 14,2012,4-6 p.m. at the Ashland Library AGENDA 1. Call to order 2. Approval of minutes from 10/10/12 and 10/22/12 HSC meeting 3. Debrief from Faith Based Outreach meeting 4. Review Next Steps form Faith-Based Community Meeting S. Review of Project Evaluation Spreadsheet and Final Scope of Work 6. Discussion on Member recruitment from School District 7. Winter Shelter update 8. Veteran's Court sub-committee report/update 9. New Chair Election 10.Announcements/Public Comments 11.Adjourn "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring. " Martin Luther King, Jr., civil-rights leader(1929-1968) Draft Minutes October 10, 2012 Ad-Hoc Homelessness Steering Committee Ashland Library 4:00 -6:00 p.m. Attendance Ayars, Parker, Saldana, O'Bryon, Sohl, Rohde, Lewis, Morris (Council liaison) Reid (Staff) Absent Hopkins-Powell Agenda Item#1: Call to Order Parker called the meeting to order at 4:05 p.m. Agenda Item#2: Approval of Minutes Rohde/Ayars moved to approve the minutes as presented. Voice Vote-Motion passed unanimously. Agenda Item#3: Debrief from City Council Meeting 10/2/12 Parker spoke about her impressions of the Quarterly update to Council at their regular meeting on October 2nd. There was some contention about the lack of an update by the HSC regarding the requested research on the feasibility of a Municipal Veteran's Court. Parker relayed that some members of the Council feel that as the chair of the committee, she is responsible for this item being overlooked. Parker asked the Committee if they would like her to resign as chair and would like to elect someone else. Rohde wanted to go on record as saying that the community needs this committee, and that he stands by Parker's leadership and the good work that she has done as chair. O'Bryon stated that she believes that Parker's role as chair is in carrying out the consensus of the larger committee, so if there is fault to be found it is with the entire committee as Parker was only following direction provided by the group. Lewis felt that the committee had dropped the ball on the Veteran's court request. O'Bryon admitted that she missed the Veteran's Court request until the last meeting when the minutes from the study session were discussed and felt that had anyone seen it or remembered prior to that meeting that they would have brought it up. Parker formally resigned as chair of the committee, Rohde as Vice Chair will Chair the next two meetings as the next meeting is the Faith Based Outreach Meeting and Hopkins-Powell will not be present a new chair will not be elected until the following meeting (November 14th). Lewis stated that the HSC needs to be more conscious of what needs to be included in the quarterly reports and suggested that the committee work on compiling information for the report as they go. Agenda Item#4: Review Final Scope of Work from City Administrator: Parker liked the clarity that the newest scope of work provides, Parker also liked how well the scope spells out the evaluation process. The Committee members felt that the new scope provides valuable direction on the project evaluation process. O'Bryon suggested that the HSC should create a matrix from scope to use in project evaluation. Reid will create a matrix and bring it to the November 14th meeting for review. Lewis stated that the HSC needed to recruit more members as there are still vacant seats. Reid will contact the mayor about approving additional members. Page 1 of 3 Agenda Item#5: Faith Community Outreach Planning Parker drafted a letter inviting the members of the Faith community to the regular meeting on October 22nd. O'Bryon has generated an e-mail contact list for most of the Faith Based Organizations on the previously generated list. Reid will send out both e-mail invites and hardcopies on the 1 Ith of October. Sohl suggested sending out e-mail reminders the morning of the event. Lewis felt that the HSC should focus on three main points as stated in the letter; report on new developments, discussion of overnight shelter, and training for shelter volunteers. Parker talked to Ruth Coulthard and Barbie Breneiser, they will come to the meeting to present an overview of the policies and procedures that they use at the Sunday night and emergency overnight shelters. The schedule for the Faith Community outreach meeting will be as follows: • Rohde will do the welcome and introductions • O'Bryon will do background on the last meeting and the resource list • Sohl will do recent developments and ask about any new developments at the various congregations. • Lewis will do a brief history of the HSC • Ruth and Barbie will do a presentation about their shelter program at the Presbyterian church • Parker will talk about next steps: shelter volunteers or spaces, volunteer training, and volunteer coordination. Agenda Item#6: Resource List Update Reid passed out the updated resource list for the HSC to review. No corrections or additions were suggested. Agenda Item#7: Winter Shelter No new updates Agenda Item#8: Veteran's Court Lewis provided some information on the Veteran's court in Klamath Falls. He has contacted Troy Ferguson, who works on veteran's issues in Senator Greg Walden's office. Tony is doing some research on it and will get back to Lewis. Parker has put in a call to Paul Skinner at the SORCC in White City. Lewis wondered if this program could be created at the Municipal level and also wondered if, in doing so it would be duplicating a service already offered at the circuit court level. Morris would like to see some data on the number of vets showing up in court in Ashland, Rohde would like representatives from the HSC to talk with the judge to get more information and see if the Judge would even be willing to offer a vets court. O'Bryon would like to check in with the police to see how many vets are getting arrested. The HSC agreed that they need to become more educated about the veterans court model, funding mechanism for such courts, where veteran's courts already exist and the need within the Ashland community. The HSC also agreed that the evaluation matrix provided by the new Scope of Work will be useful in evaluating the feasibility of a Veteran's court in Ashland. Lewis and O'Bryon volunteered to work on this item. Agenda Item#9: Revised Meeting Schedule for Nov. & Dec. The HSC will hold all further meetings in the Library with the exception of the November 26th meeting which will be held in the Siskiyou Room of the Community Development building. The December 24th meeting is cancelled. The HSC will resume their regular meeting schedule in January. Page 2 of 3 Other Reports/Announcements O'Bryon has a new e-mail contact. It is obryon&g.com Reid announced that the Project Community Connect (PCC) Event planning sub-committee convened their first planning meeting on Tuesday. The PCC invites anyone interested in participating in planning and organizing the event this year to come to the next regular meeting. The PCC meetings are held the second Tuesday of every month from 10:30-12:00 at the United Way in Medford, located at 769 Spring Street. The event is tentatively scheduled for May 31 St Adi ourn-6:00 Next meeting: October 22, 2012 4:00-6:00 P.M. Gresham Room of the Ashland Library Respectfully Submitted by Linda Reid, Housing Program Specialist Page 3 of 3 Draft Minutes October 22, 2012 Ad-Hoc Homelessness Steering Committee Ashland Library 4:00 -6:00 p.m. Attendance Parker, Saldana, O'Bryon, Sohl, Rohde, Lewis, Reid (Staff) Absent Hopkins-Powell, Ayars Visitors Father Anthony Hutchinson, Ruth Coulthard, Barbi Breneiser, Corrianne Mathews, P.J. Meier, John Wieczorek 1.) AcFenda Item#1: Call to Order Rohde called the meeting to order at 4:15 p.m. 2.) Open and Welcome Rohde opened the meeting and provided introductions 3.) Brief recap of how the HSC started and its accomplishments Lewis provided a brief history of the HSC, highlighting the committee's accomplishments. Lewis also announced that the re-engineered donation boxes would be re-installed after Halloween. 4.) Presentation on Winter Shelter Ruth Coulthard and Barbi Breneiser gave a presentation on the history of the winter shelter program that they originally organized and continue to organize and run. The first winter shelter started in January of 2007. The shelter originally rotated between the UCC church, the Unitarian Church and the Presbyterian Church. Due to the difficulties of notifying people of the opening of a cold weather shelter due to severe weather conditions and the difficulty of finding volunteers on such short notice; the organizers decided to host a regularly held Sunday night shelter and limited the location to the Presbyterian Church because it had the most functional building for shelter purposes. When an emergency cold weather shelter night is called for and the Presbyterian Church building is not available, shelter organizers will find another space, either with one of the churches (the preferred option) or in a City Parks building. City buildings are used as a last resort because they have additional rules (background checks for volunteers and separation of men and women). The rules make it more difficult to find volunteers. Most of the volunteers come from other church's congregations (not just the Presbyterian congregation). The Unitarian Church has often taken up special collections to assist shelter organizers in purchasing sleeping bags and other shelter resources. Coulthard stated that she has witnessed some of the transient homeless migrating to warmer climes, and feels that now that the weather has turned the City will see many more migrate out of town or return home as they realize that they are not equipped to survive in these weather conditions. The shelter that Coulthard and Breneiser organize is "No Frills". Shelter users are encouraged to bring their own bedding and arrive before nine P.M. when the doors will be locked. There are some blankets for those who have no bedding. Volunteers will heat up food items (not cook) that shelter users bring, or try to provide hot food that can be heated up, because that is the best way to warm up cold bodies, homeless populations often don't have access to hot food. Senior Sam's will provide leftover rice and beans and many of the shelter users have food stamps and can bring things like Pizza or Page 1 of 3 other foods which can be shared. A small percentage of homeless people utilize the shelters. On average the shelter nights were utilized by 14 people a night in 2012, though there were two nights where there were over twenty people. Last shelter cycle (November 2011-April 2012) there were six emergency shelter nights where the temperature was 20 degrees or below in addition to the regular Sunday night shelters. Coulthard and Breneiser have a core group of volunteers, generally two to three volunteers staff a shelter. They try to always have at least one male. Volunteers sleep on the floor with the homeless, in an effort not set themselves above the homeless. Father Tony suggested getting together with Coulthard and Breneiser to coordinate volunteer efforts. As part of the discussion Wieczorek announced that the Unitarian church is currently considering hosting a weekly shelter. Scheduling is an issue especially on emergency cold weather shelter nights. Breneiser and Coulthard are considering changing the date of the weekly shelter at the Presbyterian Church as a scheduling conflict with the new custodian has arisen. Breneiser, Coulthard, Wieczorek will get together and talk about options for weekly shelter nights to coordinate between the Unitarian Church and the Presbyterian Church. Shelter volunteers will provide resource referrals for those in need, or for high risk homeless such as families with children or seniors, the volunteers will work to assist them in getting their most immediate needs met. Sometimes that is finding them temporary shelter through a church or individual until a more traditional resource can be accessed. Sometimes that is finding temporary work for them to make some money. For these resources the volunteers traditionally have turned solely to the churches and their congregations. The new Open Table project that is starting up should be a good resource for these types of situations. Coulthard stressed that transitional housing is an important piece that is missing in meeting the needs of these high risk homeless populations. Shelter organizers also felt that the police could take a more active role in directing people to emergency cold weather shelters when they are open, since police officers often have more opportunities to interface with homeless populations than the general population. Reid stated that City staff would be willing to post notices on City buildings when cold weather shelters are activated. Similarly a city-wide e-mail can be sent out to notify all city staff of where and when the shelters will take place. Then emergency responders such as police and fire would be aware. O'Bryon mentioned that now that the HSC has compiled an e-mail contact list of Faith Based Organizations, that they could be included in e-mail notifications about emergency shelters. Father Tony suggested using texting as a way to send out mass alerts about emergency shelters. Lastly, Reid suggested utilizing the new 211 system, not only for the new regular shelter nights that are coming on-line but also for emergency cold weather shelter. Reid does not at this time know the process for updating 211 on resources. At the November Homeless Task Force meeting, which will be held the 20th, there will be a presentation on updating the 211 database when changes occur. 5.) Volunteer Coordination& Training Parker volunteered to coordinate the volunteer and training activities. Parker asked the group if they had any ideas about training. Reid spoke about emergency mental health training for frontline staff and shelter volunteers that the Mental Health Sub-committee of the Jackson County Homeless Task Force is developing. The training will be how on to deal with and diffuse individuals experiencing crisis due to mental health issues in a shelter or office setting. This training will be different than the NAMI mental health training that Fredric Berger has been trained to provide. The training is expected to be ready in February and after an initial trial training session with the Task Force members, the Mental Health sub-committee may open it up Page 2 of 3 to the general population. It was suggested that a shelter volunteer training could be offered to bring people together who might be interested in volunteering at a shelter and create a volunteer list. Guest P.J. Meier volunteered to work with Parker on the shelter training. Reid mentioned the resource and volunteer database that ICCA used to have. She wondered where it was now and it the new non-profit OARA would be willing to take on the update and maintenance of that list and act as volunteer coordinator for the regular and emergency shelters. Wieczorek stated that OARA is already working on updating the old ICCA resource list. Discussion/Next Steps Sohl pulled together a list of next steps. • Identify specifics of what could be included in a training. o It was suggested that representatives from the churches already participating in shelter activities form a delegation to conduct outreach to the other congregations. Ruth suggested that the UCC church be included in the delegation along with the Presbyterian Church, the Unitarian Church, and Trinity Episcopal. o Lewis suggested that the delegations go to different services around town and ask to make an announcement about the need for shelter volunteers and resources and have a sign-up sheet for those who are interested. • Joint Press release (potential title: Culture of Caring) about the regular winter shelter nights available through the various churches, a call for volunteers and resources and to announce the training for shelter volunteers. Father Tony offered to draft a press release and work with Coulthard, Breneiser, Wieczorek, and Parker on the details and final draft. • It was proposed that there might be an opportunity to facilitate interfaith movement throughout the community if a community discussion about the shelter issue could be on the agenda at the annual interfaith thanksgiving service held at the Methodist Church organized by Aura DeRocha and Russ???? • What are the resources for training? o Mental Health piece-Contact Fred Berger and Lisa Bailey o Volunteer Coordinator-Parker o General Host routine and duties-Coulthard and Breneiser o Other-P.J. Meier Rohde suggested that the guests return for the next regular HSC meeting which will be held on November 14th from 4:00-6:00 at the Ashland Library to get the plan together, finalize the press release, and organize a training schedule. Other Reports/Announcements Father Tony announced that Trinity Episcopal Church will be hosting a weekly shelter on Wednesday night starting the Wednesday before thanksgiving and ending in April. Lewis and O'Bryon have a meeting scheduled with the person at the VA who was instrumental in setting up the veteran's court in Klamath Falls to learn more about it. Lewis suggested an item for next meeting agenda, member recruitment from the school district. Adjourn-6:00 Next meeting: November 14, 2012 4:00-6:00 P.M. Guanjuanto Room,Ashland Library Respectfully Submitted by Linda Reid, Housing Program Specialist Page 3 of 3 rA- 4-j_ O � O N c O E •� N O � � V cn � O c U .0 C� Ul cn 0 0 o U s c LM 0 a z N cc O � � +� o N ca cn o x W Zo 0 .MEN% M Q z O ° 0 � � o E •m V ct CO ( O L. ,� •� by U >. V'f U' U •� Q +�-+ a U U O •� cn ca 0 4-0 O ct fu c: E Qj <C: 0 Ln !Z F: a) >- -0 >.=3 E 0 u C3 -0 � E O N U p � O c � U v, � > o 0 0 � 1 o °� O QL o a U c_n cn Q Q — Ei C) cn +_+ _ C�►0 aJ a a � � Ln LL U p ) O p CL C O = O O O n � ++ N O a ON O O -W Cld LI) Q N N .� O N — � .> � Q p Q) Qu o cn cn cn p U O v N N 0 4' U 0 0 0� s v 0� O .— -E -EV) 0 HSC Scope of Work 10/2/12 The ad hoc Homelessness Steering Committee is charged with assisting the City Council by developing and/or evaluating strategies, tactics and specific projects to assist those who are homeless (or at risk of becoming homeless)by virtue of economic displacement, mental illness or other factors beyond their control, to obtain or stay in permanent housing. Proposals may be brought to the Steering Committee by: • A City Council request to the Steering Committee to examine a proposal. • An organization or individual bringing forward to the Steering Committee an unsolicited proposal. • The Steering Committee developing a proposal on its own initiative. This charge is subject to the following conditions: 1.A11 proposals shall be thoroughly vetted for fiscal viability and the potential to effectively address the charge above, including clear outcomes and benchmarks, as well as the benefits and potential drawbacks to the community. 2.The evaluation of all proposals shall include a projection of start-up costs, likely funding issues and the expected City contribution in terms of staff resources or money, as well as a determination as to whether City involvement is appropriate (and to what degree). 3.All proposals shall include a description of how and by whom a service is to be delivered. Proposals may suggest but should not assume a commitment of City staff time. 4.No strategy, tactic or project involving City resources shall be implemented without the express approval of the City Council. S.It shall be the responsibility of the Steering Committee's City Council liaison to request that a proposal meeting these conditions be placed on a Council study session agenda for consideration by the full Council. In addition to the above, the Committee shall be mindful of the following: • Recognize that the needs of transients who are not seeking permanent housing must necessarily be secondary to the needs of economically displaced persons who are. • Respect all perspectives on any issue under consideration by the Committee. • Report to the Council, either in person or in writing, every three months or sooner if needed. • Present its evaluations in an objective - i.e. pros and cons - format and allow the Council to draw its own conclusions about the proposal's suitability for Council support.