good afternoon the meeting of the housing human services and transportation committee when i come to order it is one thirty two p m on thursday september three twenty before we begin may i please request that we all turn off or silence our cell phones or other noisemaking devices as well as the conversation that is going on at this time i'd like to introduce our committee i'd say secret fellow chair and we have with us committee vice chair gladys by so good afternoon to or thank you thank you for being here member mike vick to reno from the administration we have with us from the department of housing and human concerns jad sheetal deputy director and our resource personnel from kahala akio law homeless resource centers incorporated is aaron lowenthal chief executive officer and board president mr steve miller with us my most hardworking staff our committee secretary tammy frias and legislative attorney carla kata thank you ladies members we have two items on the agenda today so i will open up with public testimony one waiting to thank you so members we have no one in the gallery nor at our district offices willing and able to  outstanding debt related to the construction of the holly mcconnell way early affordable housing rental project that that been passed and approved by the committee i have  lowenthal to prepare an overview of the organization and its facilities its reserve fund and plans for the use of the savings realized from the settlement of the outstanding debt felt that or feel that this presentation would help to bring members as well as hopefully the public some clarity and a better understanding of how the  organization holly as well or why ali will be operating moving forward for president steve miller is also here to assist question  special expertise in the subject matter being considered by the committee to be are there any have junctions to designating ms lowenthal and mr miller as resource persons pursuant to rule eighteen per her and of the rules of the council no objection thank you and members for your information you should have distributed to you a copy of resolution fifteen dash one zero three that was adopted our mission with ms throw in there all members i'm going to as the executive director to proceed with her presentation you should also have a printed out of her presentation testing testing or am i able to walk with this sure i just i think better on my feet and i can give you more lively presentation if i can move around a little bit so first just forgive my dog appearance this afternoon i got caught in the rain just as i was coming in and let me also just express my gratitude and appreciation i know we just had a huge success and win for the community and for the agency last week and you've also dedicated a lot of time to vetting through these issues so i  started from a very small church and from there based on the needs of the community we've grown and developed into two comprehensive resource centers and two affordable housing properties one of which is h which is thirty affordable units that are located adjacent to our westside resource center we provide one of two emergency shelters on maui and we are the only transitional housing shelter on maui and we also provide the largest single site affordable housing project on the island which is the two hundred unit holly mcconnell property our mission is to break the cycle of homelessness in maui county and i really want to emphasize now county because we work very very closely with with the neighbor islands they often don't have the resources available that we have here on maui so there are often residents coming from both lanai and molokai to access services when they're in need so we carry out this mission in two distinct but equally important ways the first is through our homeless programs so these are programs that are designated for individuals and families experiencing homelessness we have emergency shelter programs this program last for up to six weeks so people are often coming in there and crisis and we're using the six weeks to stabilize them we're our goal is always to have them move into permanent housing after the end of that six weeks but for those who were in during job transitions or medical emergencies or facing different barriers it's not possible to get everything that needs to be done done in six weeks so they then have the opportunity to move into our transitional housing program they remain in the transitional housing program until they are stabilizing can access permanent housing now the very max amount of time that they are able to stay in the transitional housing program is to y now we really want to capitalize on this opportunity we have with all the individuals and families we service by not only providing meals and housing but really addressing individual barriers with the hopes that it lessens  over time so we also provide child care this allows parents to go on interviews or attend jobs and do have you know attend medical appointments a variety of things that they need to do we also provide case management  navigating the social resources stone is difficult and it they need a champion an advocate can help them at every step along the way we then have special programs for chemical dependency about twenty five percent of our population is experiencing some challenges with that with a substance and this is where we're really targeting and providing classes and specialized case management to address those issues and then we have a variety of life skills classes to try to  bolster you know needs so we have financial management classes we have stress management classes we have employment support classes that assist with resume building interview skills and those sorts of things and then we have special programs from from time to time so we have a lot of wonderful community partners that will come in and they will provide the self defense classes and who look classes and all kinds of wonderful cultural programs and then last provide rental assistance so this not only enables those living with us to move out by providing some short term rental assistance this is also a really proactive approach so if a family comes to us and says i'm being evicted or i  being asked to leave my property at the end of the month we say ok we don't want you to have to enter this program why don't we give you some assistance to move you from from one permanent housing unit to another three not having to enter the shelter at all so we have two homeless resource centers that carry out all these programs the first of course is our way luca facility this was our first facility and you can see the composition and make  up of the different units and beds that are available and what i really want to point out is so the area circled in red both on the screen and in your own packets shows that the homeless resource center component of our agency now will get to it a little bit later but but next door to that where the county park is and down toward the bottom that is highly macan about as are affordable housing project so these are two very distinct entities that we that we organize and run as of this week we have two hundred fifty four residents living our central facility and we have another three hundred twenty seven individuals on the wait list so you can see that not only are we serving a lot of people there is still a lot of need in the community our second resource center is located there liner this is a little bit of a smaller facility and we don't have as many studios and two bedroom units and this facility is currently serving one hundred eighty one residents and we have one hundred fifty one individuals on the waitlist now again i just want to point out that the area circled in red is the homeless resource center component the three buildings that are not included in this photograph are affordable units in so how are we able to carry out these programs are funding comes from a variety of different sources so our primary funder is the state of hawaii and then of course the county of maui also provides support and we also receive grant funding from the u s department of housing and urban development and the u s department of veteran affairs and then in addition to private foundations and and donations so we do our very best to use  every every all the all the funding we get very very effectively we try to make every dollar really count and be as efficient as possible and the way that we're able to do that is partnering with the community so if you will you know on the left hand side you will see all the different community agencies that are the provide services on site and this is important for two reasons one this was the entire intent behind the resource center it was a place where people could access social services without having to take a bus here and get a ride there because people don't have transportation and they already have a lot of different things going on in their life that make it more and more difficult so we try to consolidate and do as much a community health clinic up both facilities that our residents can use and in addition to a whole host of community health initiatives we know that a healthy community is a more productive community so we're constantly inviting different agencies to come and do wellness screenings including the department of health the national kidney foundation dental screenings we've also had chiropractic screenings and of course a any support groups are held at our facilities regularly and then of course we work very very closely with a lot of offsite partners and not the column to the right and these are conversations that we're having daily this isn't a you know once a month once a year type of thing we're on the phone with the agencies daily trying to make sure that the individuals we're working with have a support system in place to address the barriers they're facing so this i'm now going to move to the set you know that how we carry out our mission in a second way is by providing affordable housing so this is distinguished for our homeless programs and that we're serving low income individuals and families at fifty percent or below the area median income so oftentimes we have residents at our resource centers who have made great strides and they're ready to move into permanent housing and they will move into our two affordable housing properties but this is also available to the broader community and with the rents that that hundred unit facility and our west side affordable zz are thirty units so i'm going to start with holly mcconnell so again i just provided the picture to give you a visual to so you can see the distinction between our homeless resource center and  affordable housing project and then i'm going to briefly go through the construction financing because it ties into how we have to operate as an agency to this day so we received home program funding and low income housing tax credit but being one is regulated by hired in the other is regulated by the i r s and it incentivises private capital in return for tax credits so up until a few months ago south america  was a partner in holly mcconnell but that is no longer the case and we also received funding from the state of hawaii and of course the county of maui both monetary and then of course the land that was provided to get th facility built so the so for both the home program and the low income housing tax credit program these were programs that were created to subsidize the creation  because these properties don't have the ability here or elsewhere to to have debt service toward a traditional mortgage it's just not possible because we have to follow maximum allowable rents that are set by h income out and you only so our sole source of revenue for holly mcconnell wiley is rental income i can't stress that enough that we do not rely on the state of hawaii or the county of maui for operational funding annually and i also want to point out that there is a lot of oversight on this property so at both the state level and county level we are required to to have someone come out to our property into physical inspection inspections annually so they're looking at the property and they're also looking at files to make sure that word hearing to the income limits and the right requirements of both the home and low income housing tax credit programs were also required to submit annual reports so we have a constant relationship and discussion with the housing division of the department of housing and human concerns here on maui and at the state level so i messed up my order a little bit here but here i just want to show the gradual rent increases that have been me all over since one thousand nine hundred seven when the property first opened so it's a constant balance for me as i recognize that this property needs to be self sustaining and our only way of being self sustaining is is rental income that is contributed by our residents and yet i also recognize the need to maintain affordability and now we county and i  do my very best to do that so currently where we are is the column in two thousand and fifteen and you can see our four bedroom right now is approximately one thousand dollars and this is really affordable in contrast to the fair market rents that we're seeing on maui county right now and then i'm going to jump back so this county really had the foresight and the awareness that we needed affordable housing for our community members and we made that investment and in return you're getting a tremendous benefit of providing housing for three hundred ninety five adults and three hundred fifty six children and that's really it's a tremendous project tremendous number and i really applaud you for making that investment and i'm privileged to be able to continue to carry out the mission that we collectively knew needed to happen for this county you know again just as our homeless resource cent moving out because there's not a lot of options and other affordable units on maui so this wait list it can take you know years for someone to get into the property so we know there's a growing need to have more affordable housing on maui up to far all right so now that we are in a better financial position thanks to the county and our collective efforts our plans moving forward are to really catch up on a lot of deferred maintenance so there are several rooftops that need to be replaced and it's critical and we need to do it now so that is one thing that we're really hoping to do in the coming year we also have a lot of both kitchen and bathroom appliances that need to be replaced that are the original appliances from one thousand nine hundred seven and things are really showing their age so deferred maintenance is a huge priority for us once we've done not even once in addition to that at the same time we're also replenishing and we're making regular contributions to our reserve fund so that when we do have crises come up when we do have emergency needs we're able to take care of them and we don't need to run to the county or the state to help subsidize those costs and then thirdly we're really planning to establish a long term property maintenance schedule so we want to make sure that we're caring for this property  means you know recognizing the need to do regular maintenance and that is what we will do from this point forward permanent housing for ninety adults and forty three children now the huge benefit that we see due to these these thirty rental units is that it helps subsidize the costs of running our homeless resource centers so our government funding has been gradually decreasing from two thousand and nine and we're able to manage that because we have a source of income that is able to help with the costs of and then briefly i just want to talk about what's happening at the national level so there are three big priorities that are affecting funding streams for homeless providers right now the priorities are to end veteran homelessness and chronic homelessness and support housing first programs so it is saying we're a housing agency we don't want to invest in housing we no longer want to invest in programs and services now there's a practical application problem for maui because we don't have affordable housing units available and there is still a need to provide shelter and other services until we can fully implement a housing first approach so we're to continue to see our our funding decreased at the state and national level and we recognize that we don't want to have to then have the county make up for that which is again why it's so important that we have the use thirty affordable units to rely on that income and then the the last thing i want to touch on is is everyone in in this area and in this field is looking utah right now so this is a very very conservative state who has really grasp onto the housing first approach with which means subsidizing housing for unsheltered individuals and putting them directly in housing and then providing wraparound services now i feel a moral obligation to care for the people of this community but if i set aside the heart and the compassion of this there's also it makes good fiscal sense you save  and this is been documented study by study a lot of money by investing upfront investing in housing and not having to pay for hospital visits and police and other emergency services so i hope you know we're able to navigate the remaining issues we have left and then also look toward the future about how we're going to really advance you know our community in terms of homelessness and that was all i have for your so i would be happy to answer any questions now thank you miss no into all before i open the floor for questions i'd like to recognize mr baez budget director for being here thank you  two thirty seven any questions or regards to the budget you may want to start with those any questions comments i appreciate the presentation and hopefully that gives us more clarity how the organization is truly structured you very much chair and i'd like to think people that are here today to help us look at this again you know this situation that we're in right now of course is very difficult and i think i hear it referred to as a crisis i refer to it where myself because i'm very concerned about the fact that it seems like as i travel to the community i see this problem growing and you see more and more as you drive around people that are camped out under trees or market baskets here and there are all kinds of things that tell me that this is not going to go away and it seems to be getting bigger you know we all know that we have a problem but what i seem to be stuck on and this community seems to be stuck on is how do we solve it and i do think that that's where i think i would like to put our energy is what can we do to somehow get some housing built and i think there's going to be a riot of things we can no longer be thinking about  single family home with the word picket fence we've got to find some kind of quickly done fairly inexpensive places for people to be sheltered and so one of the problems about talking about homelessness is that you're talking about fifteen to twenty other sub issues but what the commonality and my opinion is affordable rental housing so home homeownership is not going to be obtainable for a lot of individuals immediately so we need not affordable but low income rental housing if we really want to make strides on this issue and i'll let jan also i'm sure she has thank you for that question you know it's been it's you're right it's been quite daunting for our community and for the state itself but for molly county in particular as well as the other neighbor islands i'm talking about co i think island is well we don't get the funding that we would like to have and this has all to do with the housing first concept so the housing first is to really serve the chronic homeless and to be able to to be able to house them and then give them the proper wrap around services even though i may say that he doesn't have it i believe that there are agencies and i can cite like family life center for example you know they've been housing people they've been taking care of them and they've been treating the chronic chronically homeless to answer a question about having what are we going to do moving forward and it is getting critical here on maui and moving forward you know i'm happy to report there are some business people there are some people out there that have come forward in helping the situation whether it's helping us with remove all of abandoned cars and but again going back to your question i know that the mayor is quite adamant now in saying that how much this homeless situation has progressed that he is looking  into helping with looking at areas to to have some type of transitional spot so we're looking for areas that can be changed into some type of a transitional  transitional housing and and also being prepared to have the wraparound services available so it's it is it's a really hard question  but we all need to get together and to support each other and i really appreciate aaron and i really appreciate all the other agencies family life center you know for all what they're doing and and i really appreciate county amal we for supporting the many many agencies that are involved when we talk about the mali homeless alliance thank you thank you very existed and we were looking at all kinds of solutions and frankly outside of their own family life center not a whole lot has happened and so i'm very grateful for what we have but i think we need to this committee needs to be very involved and very supportive of whatever efforts people try to do so that we can help you know with this issue and we can't sit are talking about it forever when somebody comes up with a viable idea i think we need to support and try to make it happen because i just i'm worried i think eventually this is going to have a long term effect and that long term effect is something we don't want because if we become known and what you know on my facebook or and i'm reading today about the aggressive homelessness that i'm hearing now that's a new term i hadn't heard that before and it's people acting out and people attacking people and school you know talking ugly to them and threatening them and whatever we've got to move fairly quickly so that we don't get to there because people want to say oh i don't want to go tomorrow it's not safe so we don't want that so we have a real issue here and cheer i don't envy your leadership in this area because it's complicated and it requires so many pieces to come together in order to take this away but i think if we for the mirrors just overall vision of you know the services that the county provides for the homeless is not just about the direct services that are being provided by a college or family life  center as we prepare the budget you know the network of services that member mentioned you know that's something that our county depends on for these services to be provided for our community that our community can be a better community can be a better place to live in and even be able possible to live so when he's when we're looking at different things i just police services or the rescue services that are provided by our fire department we're looking at agencies that are also receive grants from our not from you know from our ground nonprofit grants that we provide throughout our network of systems and it's it is really that safety net of all of those aspects that we have to be able to work together to provide those services that we don't have a significant amount of people falling through the cracks and that's really what we try to do it were not successful all the time obviously but  n where you know the funding that is required sometimes is a daunting item because it's in amount that i mean it could be unwieldly at a certain point but it's something that we actually need to really dissect each individual aspect but not not determine the funding level of each individual and say ok well this this is all we're going to provide but as a whole looking at specs of how we're going to be able to serve our community and you know just the you know and it's interesting that you know in one of her slides talks about the agencies and the services that they provide that are provided either on site or with other networks and  community partners that she has there because that's really what it's about and that's really what we're trying to do the best we can you know the mayor believes that a lot of the homeless issues are related to diagnosis mental health issues and not just that they're drug abusers and you know they're there they don't deserve help a lot of them are using drugs because they're there self medicating without those type of services being provided to them and so if if we can work on that aspect of it then we'll have a better community because they're being served for the right treatment and then they can be productive members of our society you know  utah they're providing you know tracking people they're providing them the home and then what you look at once that home is provided and the actual reduction in real cost of that person's can move forward to education to quality of life and things like that so that's really what we're trying to do from and from the mayor's office is an aspect of looking at all the services are being provided through our housing and concerns even aspects relate to that to a certain extent and the more we can partner the more resources that are leverage from the federal government or from the state and that can help as well and we look forward to community partners providing services that are provided mr buzz is talking about is rental assistance and my question is do we have enough mental assistance or do we have a long waiting lines for mental  thank you for that question i brought my notes this time very good so this year the total number the total for affordable rental program is at nine hundred forty six thousand five hundred there are four agencies that receive rental assistance monies and they are cali ok ola family life center women helping women and and it's interesting that last year we did have we did have some monies returned from the rental assistance program and but i think this year going a lot better but i think it's interesting that the four agencies get together every month and they are able to discuss who they've been who which names have come up and so there's no duplications or nobody going to that one agency then going to the next agency and it's a very i think it's a really quite gentle kind of a meeting and everybody helps each other about rental assistance is oh you know i'm kind of familiar with the program and i think it's really important that we not only provide the money for the rent but we provide the ancillary services that go with the case management so that we help them learn budgeting learn how to manage their affairs get a job and you know be a good employee and hopefully we get caught so for me i think rental assistance is really our rental assistance program is incredibly helpful to our residents so many of them would not be able to move out of a shelter setting unless they had that initial help with a rental deposit and security deposit and for our program they are required to meet with the the rental assistance cordon it or monthly to check in and see how they're doing whether they're facing other difficulties and then we also ask that they attend our financial management class so we are doing more than just handing out money we're really it's a comprehensive approach to ensure that this is going to be a one time assistance and set them up for a very successful future thank you madam chair ok thank you mr culture any questions or comments in your comments was talking about affordable rentals we need more affordable rentals i know the department keeps coming up with two and h is for affordable homes and we keep saying we we need more affordable rentals that this body has been trying to push that what's causing that not to happen i guess because we still get to a when age is for a single family dwellings many units are but that's that's going to be of some help i think one of the biggest challenges that i've seen from a developers perspective is that affordable rentals have a very very long term payback it's an investment that may take forty years to get get your return on your investment so when developers come in they're looking for providing you know projects like what you've seen so far they're in the payback on a for sale units significantly quicker than  affordable rental so i don't know if that's a majority of the problem but i've heard anecdotally from a couple of developers that that's that's one of the major issues is that that's why organizations like  olu that's why those agencies have been pretty much the only ones that have been successful because they're doing it on a nonprofit status and are getting tax credits and having for profit partners like home a kind of had where you know so there is some you know extra money coming in but there's not a need for that paid back and so when you're looking at it from specifically any egg housing that's provided is something that's going to benefit our community because those people are living in probably private rentals right now and so having them be renting these these affordable units provides more affordable housing availability  so i just want to add two notes first is that oftentimes our homeless resource center is serving as senior housing and that's something really heartbreaking for us to see because it's not that they're facing a chemical dependency issue or  that they are you know have mental illness they've no longer have the ability to work and they also don't have the ability to afford private housing so we as a homeless shelter are serving as senior housing in a lot of situations and then the second thing i want to add is that with the right foresight and with the right community partnerships a project like harlem a kind of can be very self sustainable we need you know we were fortunate to have a way and dedicated to us for this project and that was a huge help and we also took on some debt and we are where we are now had had that not happened  this project can make money it can support itself so i think it's a great idea for the future to really consider how similar projects can be set up ok you mentioned holy mcconnell in your presentation and just now i know you have the transitional housing and then they get the stay there two years and if there's room they end up going to potentially home a condo and whatnot is there i thought the intent of that was to also be kind of a transit transit transitional housing until they can move you know how a better job and they're paid more they may electively decide to move on to something else but they are not required to do so and and this is something i really studied when i first came in the success of the low income housing tax credit program and it has been very successful across the country and getting affordable housing built is that it incentivizes people to better themselves so people aren't turning down jobs or doing the bare minimum because they're afraid of losing their housing because they're going going to become over income we encourage people to do that and then of course they may very may well of their own volition decide to move on ok so maybe you know it was intended to be a permanent thing but maybe we can work on something maybe a five year or something like that just so that people have a chance to move out of there because they're like you said you've got a whole bunch of people waiting to move in and right now because we are great organization or whatnot but you take a look at some of those places and it's all people who retired in from the mainland and moved here i know they can't do anything like that but it's one of those things where i wish there was something we could do to at least have somebody have been here for a little while before they can go into a place like that but i know in my neck of the woods a lot of the people there are people who get on the list on the mainland they don't  rooms up and here they come so a little both i know we wanted to deal with the permanent permanency of holly mcconnell which maybe we can make it temporary and then also the other issue and the reason there is a good rule is because there is had funding so for any of these housing units that are what's called the home program which limits the income to fifty percent of medi m area income once they're in there unless they disobey rules or or can be evicted by virtue of the same rules that affect the rest of the real estate law and  why they they can stay as long as they want so i agree with one hundred percent to be great if there was throughput and and they could stay for so long but they would have to have a place to go obviously as part of the problem of with that  but it's gets recognized by her as an issue but that that's the rule so there's really nothing that we can do about it other than building more affordable housing and then if you do i karen said the financing for construction is probably available through public private partnerships similar to what was done with holly mcconnell the key missing element is own land and you really need a quote  free land government land or land that can be leased at a dollar a year or something like that and that's that's largely what i think the county is probably hurting for in terms of developing one of the major issues with hawaii is that somebody can basically land here and immediately qualify for public services there are other states in this kind where you have to be a resident for two months or six months or something before you can qualify for those public service benefits so you know there's there's blogs out there that are telling veterans to move to hawaii because you can soon as you land you can apply and you can get all of these services immediately and that's something that maybe we can work with the state legislature on i don't want to sound unsympathetic you know because there are definitely people that need our help and we are morally obligated to help them but if you know there's this loophole out there that is creating a situation where you know people are moving here specifically because they can get services immediately i'd like to work with the state and try to maybe reduce that and  because you know first of all thank you sandy still was just one of my two discussion points right out of the equation so thank you sandy the other part and this is probably the bigger part of this whole discussion and nobody wants to talk about it nobody wants to really deal with it but the statement not in my backyard let's be honest we have tried speckles deal well there's other places we've tried to put these kinds of community these kinds of people in need and right away the neighbors like no i don't want this know what this was built there was nothing in this area it was the end of white dr well it dr did not go any further and there wasn't even the little kook i was in the of india to see so that was the end of the world so nobody really cared back then but it's changed now the neighborhood has moved around it and i'm really gaining people as teacher it's from the area surrounding it saying why are these housing why these people in my neighborhood why look who has the prevalent number of homelessness more than any other area right now and they're on the streets we're trying to do things to try to get them off the streets one of the attractions is we have groups like good shepherd church and others that feed them and by feeding them they come to the area seen from in your area with holly called go oh i get it all the time with that one so the challenge is we need to build but we're because every time we try we we get resistance from the people that are in the neighboring right steve i mean we've had this and we've had this discussion many times so want to how do we do that that's number one number two you mentioned the finances and the return it is almost never comes back to be perfectly honest so we can build it we can get the land they are private partners all that would give us land but the moment we put that the neighbors will say not here put it somewhere else there's no way else this is an island we can't ship them out somewhere you're correct mr robots but this is going on for a number of years as far as them coming here because of the real ease of getting benefits i was always even as us really because of the fact that they have triple or and the military are going down there in big numbers that's why they're homelessness has gone exponentially because they can get services atripla but there's no housing so we all know the problems solutions it's going to take a commitment and whether the administration commits or not it's to take all the faith based groups it's going to take all the other community groups and more importantly it's going to take the people call to say we have a problem and we need to all work together instead of so many emails i get from people saying answers because my community right now is him and david and per capita in this community we have more mental health services in my local writers the bus we have given how many homes and other facilities right here and we look down we have a large number so that congregate come here for help and we don't have to help to offer something i've given all the problems i waiting for everyone to say it's time to quit like mr culture and all these other you want to use containers like they're doing harm little there's many answers but you have to get the police and the area the portal yeah thank you ma'am thank you misspeak do you know any more comments or questions to upon something that has been kind of bugging me to a lot of talk you know i know we need to land but we have this organization called the homeless alliance is that what it is called  how can we get them to move a little bit you know in a more positive direction and not saying they're in a negative direction it's just kind of from what i've been seeing it's at a stalemate we'd like to i mean you got all the people that are that are involved in that in the homelessness in one room and you already have a a core group of people  ago when i was actually involved enormous alliance we worked very hard developing plans for a homeless shelter transitional housing we had an architect draw wonderful looking place they were going to be so putting in key for for homelessness i mean it was good it was going to be yes the next scholar land was the issue i mean it was the sole issue  the state would even fund came over here in this if you build it will fund it but land was the issue so you know i feel bad because they're still working on those same issues and there's  other testimony the other day to the planning commission about the one that they're trying to do in my area and i mean this it's heart wrenching testimony because you can see the need and it's this is now thirteen years later and it's this still there but  mike answer would be you know that land land right now is the problem i'm sure more recent communications with the deputy director she may be able to provide some other situation alliance is a vehicle whereby the home program which is the department of human services or the home homeless program but the state has  involved the mali homeless alliance as becoming a chapter within the bridging the gap let me kind of explain so when we have the continuum of care which is sorry the overall umbrella you have the or wahoo group which is pick our partners in care and then because of the funding model we call and big island are not able to do it on their own so we've come all together as neighbor islands and form the bridging the gap or the balance of status some of you may have known it to be so  we homeless alliance now is chartered because of the new hearth act and so this is all through hud that we that's i think the really big picture of what the mommy homeless alliance is about but then you have also the side where all the agencies get together and we are focusing on what's going on out there i think that's where when we when we see what the issues are what where the where all the homeless are congregating or some of the some of the things that are happening here on here in maui as well as learned this is where we do get together and we try to solve many of the problems and i think erin can speak more about the homeless alliance but we it is so it's in it's a time when we all share each other's stories and ask for help then and so it's it's it's a viable organization and we're trying the best we can  college thank you so if we have no further questions or comments or discussion in regards to item eighty seven in regards to the presentation that of the rules of the consul specifically i thought it would be helpful for us to hear what county resources and services are available to assist our immigrant population and invite the public to can tax the county to take advantage of these resources so this sheetal would you please proceed with your presentation you to know that distribution of this presentation is available start her presentation members you also have a hand out for this thank you  good afternoon chair and council members thank you for this opportunity for for me to share about our wonderful grants immigrant services division every so immigrant service division is a division of molly county's department of housing and human concern and our mission is to assist new residents of mali county to become fully integrated productive members of our community we provide free as free assistant to non immigrant immigrants and non migrant and citizens with a wide range of immigration related matters including family based petitions permanent residency and citizenship if you have any questions you can stop me at any time i wanted to introduce the staff at immigrant services division and this picture was taken last year at the twenty fourteen employee of the year recognition luncheon and this is my immigrant services team and they were the team of the year for our department so we have mayor and we have our former director joy ann reid and if you're watching joe and i really miss you and then we have lydia i'm sorry we have margie santos lydiate us again and nicole care aloha and of course missing from this picture is our office manager jenny  and they're just diligence and perseverance in serving our community is second to none to assist our immigrant residen so here we have our summary of activities and services and the four main areas actually that i will be speaking upon is direct service direct liant assistance education outreach and referrals from the different agencies within our community and as you can see some of the services that we provide are on the right hand side so our direct services as you know we are we have four offices here with the in the county of we we have our way local office which is the one so if you check out our website which is on which is the a w w dot ma we county dot gov and go to our department and click on to our image immigrant services division you'll see a disclaimer that says that he county immigrant services is not staffed by attorneys and meant as a substitute for legal counsel so if your situation is complicated or involves the risk of financial loss credible criminal liability remove all or deportation you should seek the advice of an attorney we are not immigration immigration is our offices provide free free assistance in filling out u s c i s forms and so we provide and review accuracy and completeness and of course again we do not adjudicate cases or provide legal advice and if you can see that i think one of the the things that i i appreciate this division the most is because they take care of the barriers that are involved when it comes to all the forms and documents that are out there and so when it comes to language barrier and especially the knowledge of what these forms are like it gets quite complicated and so the the the gals are just phenomenal in helping each of the clients go through all of the the verbiage and the forums and the applications  so the second one is education so immigrant services division and this is part of the outreach as well for our division we provide naturalization classes to prepare participants for the them to provide a safe learning environment to lawful permanent residents who seek in becoming citizens u s citizens among our staff we have lydia who's in the audience if you have any questions you can ask lydia fluent in spanish but then we do encourage students to bring someone into these classes such as family members who speak their language to serve as their interpreter and there are exceptions to the english requirements however applicants must be eligible you also have before you the naturalisation a workbook that is used in the classes for the participants and i'm wondering if you can pass the  test it's quite it's quite interesting and there's a lot of details in there about american history and then there's also a lot of vocabulary space in the back  out reach so this is the third area of focus that we have with immigrant service evasion and this would be the outreach and in this particular when i say outreach it's kind of twofold because the outreach comes from the consulate so we do have for example in this particular case the philippine consulate outreach so they do an outreach to our community and here again i better give a shout out to department of finance who allows us to use the d m v facility for the outreach and so you the picture on the left is that the d m v and you can see the amount of people that were being that are being served as as well on the right is a photo  well just to let you know this picture was taken just recently in our our our guest outreach with with the philippine consulate and we had approximately a little over two hundred fifty people that we serve that that weekend it's a they come in on saturday all day and then sunday most of the day and i wanted to mention also that we had two from the that came day again to kind of a ready to talk about outreach we have the consulates like the mexican consulate comes to maui they do their outreach but then i just have to add in that like the philippine consul outreach work it happens away before they come and who does all the work it's the staff at immigrant services here on maui because they're the ones who put together all the forms they're the ones who check all the making sure that documents are correct because if no doc if the documents are correct then it just gets thrown out and they have to start all over again so kudos to the staff at immigrant so just to this was a slight that wanted to give you an idea of the philippine consulate or reach on maui that and my bad i was corrected that it wasn't june that they came it was april so in april i guess of this year they were here and they are coming back october third and fourth can i publicly say that now because they'll start coming to our office come on down to our office and so the next outreach is mostly is has to do with renewal of passports and we're really going to scrutinize them prioritize this time because we want to we want to be sure that we do get our residents that need their passports renewed and that they're pretty that it's going to be expiring soon so we're hoping that they'll be a smoother process again we do dual citizenship we also were getting a lot of marriage abroad status information meaning the filipino marrying americans so just as an overview again we did have over two hundred fifty clients over a two day period and this when i say when they talk about biometrics it has to do with their screening of their eyes and their fingerprinting for their passports and again a big shout out to finance department for help having us use their facility at the d m v and i think the main the one of the biggest benefits that we have philippine consulate come to us is the cost savings for families and having not having to go to a wahoo because when you think about the rising cost of airfare a family of four five it's easy to spend about a thousand dollars now to just get to wahoo to be able to go and see the philippine consulate and not to mention possibly the cost of rent a car or  even and then they're shopping so anyway that's the one that's the i think the most heartfelt thing for me when the philippine cancer can help us on maui in the ninety four that cost savings  as i mentioned when we have interagency involvement that's our fourth biggest biggest involvement with the immigrant service we are  is the regional field officer and darlene could tara who is a community relations officer and they spent three days on maui going from private sector to government to just areas that would involve immigration and they were it was very comprehensive and the list goes on and on they went to eight c and s talked to the employees they went to cali aki orlow because there's a lot of kofa immigrant that is there and so they were able to talk to the cofer people as well as some of the agencies included social security and the welfare office as well so they were so some of their major accomplishments and this is over time we have seen about two hundred residents on maui become citizens and nearly three hundred b k became employment eligible as lawful permanent residents and i think when we also talk about outreach i really want to see and i think we are starting to do more is on the term acculturation so acculturation has to do with really getting involved with community and going out there to be able to develop a relationship whether from like i mentioned here high schools and  looking at some of the clubs that are in the high schools and being able to be able to give out information like on the dhaka which is the deferred action for childhood arrivals  students and also acculturation i am just so proud of the tutoring program and they which are whereby the english language learners are provided with the help they need in reading and in reading and language arts as well as because of the testing as well as with social studies and i believe and m and so immigrant services that's our address and you can reach us in our wild office at two seven zero seven seven nine one and i am open to questions  thank you deputy director members the floor is now open for questions of our ministration regards to the immigrant services division it's provided by our department of housing and human concerns all the answers are correct but they give you a lot of good choices and so i like the way it's all set up and i think sometimes i wish this was taught in our schools today because too many of our schools have lost history and civics as part of their core values and saw those our students know what the future can hold if they don't understand the best but that's a commentary i want to thank you first of all for bringing this to our attention it has served many of our citizens and especially of various ethnicit my question to you is do we have we given you enough funding to continue onslaught of immigrants and we have a lot we have a lot of illegal immigrants who are just too afraid to come out of the woodwork to to come forward to even try to become legal citizens so is there enough oil to reach for those areas so those are two questions i have one that we give enough funding to do your job that you see in front of you and do we have enough outreach to make sure that those who are yeah for lack of a better term because they're afraid to come out when we could assist them at least to get them on the right track do what is your feeling in this respect mad chair yes thank you thank you mr victory you know for that question first first answer for the budget we could use more we could definitely use more i'll always ask for more and the reason for that is because if if you look at the office for example we're in a very very tiny i would say closet you know but because we're just there one day a week but if we had the staffing if we had the staffing and the support and the money that we could we could open the law in our office more often so we just open it every so that would be question number one so yes thank you for that question question number two in regards to how can we better get out there and that would be the our culture ration portion of my presentation and acculturation is something that i think that we are we will need to be more strong in and one of the one of the ways is through some of the interne chip programs that we have one with the university of home of hawaii maui college we do have the coopted learning partnership so they come down but interesting enough our last u h m see in turn was from i believe i believe he was from chuck so he his eyes pretty much opened up to see that immigrant services can provide so much for his community and so he's been even helping us with the philippine consulate and is going out there and really helping his community be able to use our services as well and i think being part of phase which is the faith based community community action team and we are trying to be more i guess active in seeking some of the kofa residents as well because yes you are right they are shy and i've been to many of the church processing were strictly assisting with the filling out of forms and stuff no legal background checks that's not our responsibility they don't believe we called to that extent it's just form filling out and stuff it's s that would be the united states citizenship and immigration so there would still need to do or who yes any interested because you know we don't have borders where you just cross the border and hopefully so what is the level of illegal immigrants because it beef you mean somebody got on plane on board they quit in cross the ocean just walk across so what is the status of this illegal immigrants group i'm thinking may i ask one of my girls sure what i'm thinking that they probably came here on a visa which is a legal document so hardly became illegal as i understand before it could come they had to verify residency and employment so i don't know how we end up with all of this additional services we have to pay for not the  state and we should even be in the situation what the hell is the state doing to control the airports and the harbors always all this things happen and why is insta state doing a job fidget thing and it's a big issue right now on what we're going to do to secure the borders how is a frontline i'm sure going to do more securing also so you know for me  to it makes sense is it going to be mostly our immigrant filipino residence and i understand that but i mean i'd be interested if we dealing with some other groups that may have some specific issues  they be the micronesian marshal you know my thing is i think there's a point for us to get federal assistance for that one at least it was a fridge or directive or for these people that's to go after we bomb the hell out of their land and so you know for certain things i think we can get a system that he was afraid joe decision and you know i think that would assist ms and her division to provide what they feel is appropriate for members who have completed today's agenda and like to take representatives from the administration and resource personnel from cali aka all of homeless resource centers for their participation with that the september third