please rise and join me in the pledge of allegiance very complicated amount of information with respect to what laws are being suspended by the governors proclamation and what opportunities of this provide s the county in various departments we felt that it would be better to have the presentation by the mayor and an open discussion by members and we want to have it free flowing and open so that if there are members in the gallery that the members or the mayor would like to have come up and provide a perspective that we'd like to be able to do that so that everyone before public testimony takes place has a much clearer picture of what what opportunities we have and what restrictions there might be on our actions so without objections members we will hold public testimony following the presentation and open discussion thank you very much and with that mr clinton proceed mr chair proceeding with kind of communications you have before you kind of communication fifteen dash to sixty three from the mer relating to governor david why you gaze october sixteenth two thousand and fifteen emergency proclamation to address homelessness statewide thank you very much  and before we get into the mayor's presentation i just have two little items to mention as we go through this and we're going to we're going to be fairly free flowing on this are not going to restrict discussion too much  but the big suspension of the various state statutes in the governor's proclamation are limited to the extent necessary for the purpose of establishing a temporary transitional shelter and facilitating contracting with private providers of homeless services so that is the narrow scope within which this proclamation has suspended various various laws and will go through that i read i realize that there are impacts on affordable housing and housing impacts the homelessness so world will be fairly fairly relaxed with respect to our normal ways of of guiding discussion but i also want all of you to know that with the waving of another wave in the suspension of portions of chapter ninety two which of the sunshine law it's our read i'll just read it the way it i stated chapter ninety two suspended public agency meetings and records to the extent that any notice requirements or any other provisions of chapter nine hundred two may delay the explain the expeditious action decision or approval of any agency so with respect to that the council will stand ready to act expeditiously on anything that the members come up with  that is provided to us by the administration but in any case we will try to provide the most notice possible to the public so that we're not just simply  going to call a hearing for this afternoon and no one knows about it because that doesn't serve anybody's purpose so with that like to open it up for the mayor's presentation morning thank you very much to white anyone needs a copy of the proclamation we do have those available so we can pass them out if somebody brought them down from the office we also have packets of homeless initiative everybody can take a look at and follow along with because well oh my lord the council members were given the electronic copies of the governor's proclamation of almost as soon as it came  out most of the homeless programs will start off by saying that we want to have a real discussion the purpose of my having a meeting this morning was have a root discussion on the homeless issue altogether governor's proclamation being part of it and being the instigator of having that emergency situation to clear points out the need for us to be really addressing this situation hierarchy of needs which is on the screen over there the very basic needs that people have food water heating warmth place to rest in other words shelter to be able to have someplace secure and feeling safe that's a very core of what everybody needs and this is what we're trying to be able to address in a number of different ways when we started looking at this we actually had our housing and human concerns department to go over some of the the statistics and i'm going to have karen come up and go over some of the some place to to rest security and safety not just for the homeless it's for everybody within our community everybody needs to have these these basic needs met so the and they are basically the point in time carol and that is an account that's done every year at the beginning of the year it's a statewide coordinated effort where teams of trained volunteers are sen out into the field for an entire week to take surveys and count the homeless and if anybody would like detailed information about that it can be glad to share with you but that's basically a summary of it so if you take a look we county as compared to the city kind of one a little in the state of hawaii i'm not going to go over and all of the numbers because you can see them in the slide here but you notice that we had the highest percentage of homeless per capita out point seven percent compared to honolulu sitting kind of point a little which is that point five and the state of hawaii is out point six and the this to the point in time count is really you know people are going out into the fields but we from our service providers we understand that we're not really reaching everybody and it's guesstimated the point time count is actually one third of the actual number of homeless people out there so if you take one our count maybe three thousand versus one thousand one hundred thirty seven are homeless percentage of our population is actually at two percent so housing needs  wait list and applications will be accepted until november eighth we currently have six hundred families without tears that are searching for affordable housing units so once again the rent cost is very high growing at a faster rate than any other county in the state to strickly our population is growing so this is not going to go away this is not a situation that's going to get better by ignoring  older all of you that are living within our communities you're starting to see people sleeping on the sidewalks or starting to see people sleeping at the bus stop so no one calls where i live right across from so they should army we have homeless becomes such an epidemic that they've had to do major cleanup select kakul where literally were set up alongside the roadways continuously for hundreds of people and have to go someplace so we just create another problem someplace else the governor is also been brought into this picture so i'm going to have our cooperation council i'm not quite sure i can explain in full detail the governor's proclamation but i think chair white kind of hit some of the high points of the proclamation and it may be i'm not sure if it would and also what miss reiman presented if you look at the governor's proclamation there are whereas clauses that give the foundation for why the governor felt that it was a compelling circumstance such that it roe  the level of statewide emergency that you're getting of course you know we're talking about something that may or the public here and out there in t v land have no idea what we're talking about i think it's a great idea if that resolution was read so that the pieces understands what the proclamation by the governor was so i asked your permission if that should should have been done but not should it be done now well people have to understand what we're discussing and you're talking about whereas  understandable but when you get into the actual items that are being part of the actual laws that are being suspended if you're like most of us you're not going to know what he's referring to so what might be a good compromise look at explain it now and then we'll put it on our website so anyone who wants to see it in its entirety can read it verbatim if you read it verbatim no i think it would just infuse everybody in the long run eight pages of anything is going to put everybody to sleep ok that's that's ok another we're trying to avoid it yes he's going to give the synopsis of what it is and then the on the website ok i just because i think the public should understand what is going on and it's real difficult when you don't have anything to read and or have been told what to write and we always read resolutions i now will be able to go immediately to the the websites and get a copy for themselves and i would agree that it's it's it's quite long and involved and  i hope that the council will be able to provide us is with not just the reading of the of the resolution or the proclamation but actually an account for each of the the laws that have been suspended what is how does that apply to our potential action what does it allow the county to do and that's really the the question i think all of us are wanting this to get some ultimately what you're going to find is that the governor's proclamation centers around a wall but then it around it centers around a solution on a wall one site to be able to get written get around all these rules so how it applies to ma we it's very minimal the discussion that we're having this morning about trying to be able to work with the homeless and how we want to be able to progress i think is much more significant and there is a there is also the potential of the mayor of my county myself governor's proclamation does not apply from a practical standpoint to anything that we can do ok this is why and i want sort of one have to just kind of explain briefly what it is power as provisions and also a few of the provisions as it relates to the mayor's comments earlier about the scope of the proclamation and much like the presentation you just unsheltered homeless as references to the population of unsheltered homeless children in the county according to the proclamation for unsheltered homeless children throughout the state is four hundred and thirty nine as of the writing of this document the other thing that we should be aware of is that this proclamation was dated this october sixteen twenty fifteen and the proclamation is effective and commenced immediately and will automatically terminate sixty days after its issu there's a time frame within which action should be taken if eighty there's a provision that i want to read of in the as clause that i think may be helpful is on page government agencies officials officers and employees of the state to take action and employ such measures for law enforcement medical health fire fighting traffic control warning signals and it goes down through the laundry list of various responsibilities effectively the governor's proclamation directs state agencies and officials to take action as a relates to the specific purpose and you heard chair white reflect upon that purpose earlier and i'll read it verbatim a tourist sections one twenty seven a thirteen one twenty seven eight twelve  statutes suspend as allowed by law the following statutes and regulations to the extent necessary for the purpose of establishing a temporary transitional shelter and facilitating contracting with private providers of home a services sole of the purposes focused on the creation of the transitional shelter and the facilitating of contracting w providers of homeless services homeless services a very broad topic the proclamation then goes on for three three pages of the listing every possible law i think that the good governor felt could assists the agencies and the state in the creation without having to comply with the timeliness of requirements on the law and i'll just kind of quickly check off some of the big ones that most people in development if they had the ability to waive these laws would actually be very excited let's take for example chapter one of three f coyer by statutes purchases of health and human services laws or regulations were related to that are suspended and everyone else must comply with in the construction and facilitation of normally any development bad or building these laws have all been suspended in order to facilitate the purpose and that is to create the stablish of a temporary transitional cell shelter and the facilitating of contracting for providers for homeless services so how does that impact the county of maui well obviously the county of maui is part of the state of hawaii and the whereas clauses that established a foundation for the proclamation does why to the to the county of maui in the event of any action is to be taken the thought process that at least i have is that the county as it stands on the governor's proclamation may consider a pairing up with a state agency which can exercise action under the laws that have been suspended by the proclamation he heard mayor earlier referenced the prospect of executing a proclamation by his own hand beef prepared one and we haven't mayors hasn't made a decision yet and it may impact how we move forward essentially what i'll share wit h you is it is very similar to the governor's proclamation except under the same provisions where the governor can suspend state laws the mayor under the same emergent circumstance and suspend county laws as it relates to the purpose of transitional the creation of a establishing of the transitional shelter and facilitating homeless services i'm not certain that  at this point mary wants me to get into the details of that but generally that's the framework within which this presentation is being made think addresses that it's the bottom of page seven and it's written by further declare that a disaster emergency relief period shall commence immediately and shall terminate automatically sixty days after the issuance of this proclamation and his and or or by a separate proclamation whichever occurs first let me finish not started or continued by reason of the provisions of this proclamation shall continue it goes further however any contract entered into under this proclamation for providing homeless services shall be limited to a period not to exceed twelve months now whether or not the proclamation period is and may be extended by the governor in a supplemental proclamation is also something that could happen in the event the expiration occurs within sixty days and there is a need for greater time really falls on the governor to determine whether or not to extend that but in answer to your question and the action taken during that period of time based on the read my read of the proclamation yes it should continue thank you the other questions members at this point so knowing that we have a very bad situation with the homeless then we've been to a number of different community meetings  does or the limitation the governor's proclamation we have a problem in maui and we have to deal with it head on so if you put the governor's proclamation aside coming up with a plan in the program on how we have to be able to approach this we're taking off of the governor's proclamation and some of the things that may or may not be capable of doing being done  national program requires a housing first type of approach and in order to get the federal fund we have to be able to work with housing first type programs now the the challenge comes to us in that there are a number of different components that we have to look at and there's a there's a reality in what we have to be able to deal with in order to build any kind of fixed housing takes time you have to locate a site you have to acquire it you have to be able to construct it you have to be able to figure out what kind of build you're going to be able to put on it you know what is the what are you going to what is going to be composed of how are you going to be able to segregate what kind of uses are you going to have for it so there's a lot of things that goes into creating fixed sites and that's going to take a little bit of time so what we're proposing is to look at this as five separate elements and to try to approach the housing problem that we have here on maui in different ways there's going to be some initiatives that we want to be able to start immediate initiatives that we can do very quickly there are going to be some more time consuming transitional programs that we have to be able to work with then there are going to be some programs that are going to be more long term and we have to be able to work on these sort of simultaneously but separately because you cannot wait one on the other and expect to be able to get to the conclusions that we need to be able to acquire this community to feel secure and they have to feel safe we have to be able to address all of these challenges and right now many people in our community are not feeling safe many people in the homeless community are not feeling safe many people in the homeless community don't have some place where they feel secure where they can get food water and the basic needs and many people that have houses within our community are having real challenges with other people coming on to their private property and doing things that are not acceptable in our society nobody nobody wants to come out in the morning and find somebody used the bathroom on your front steps nobody wants to see somebody pop up book of a building or a tent in the backyard nobody wants to go to work in the morning and find a cardboard boxes piled up people sleeping you know in your doorway so we've got to be able to figure out how we're going to be able to create a safety net for the homeless as well as create a safety net for the community it's a tradeoff we as a community need to be able to feel safe and secure and we also need to take into consideration that the homeless population has all seen needs so hence i wanted to call him sanctuaries because they want to put it in oil anyhow if we do this we must be able to provide for the basic needs to be individuals as pointed out to put it all in matters of need provide food water safety warmth shelter we have to provide safety for the public everyone even the homeless months is here to reasonable health and safety requirements for a community the public must be assured that they are safe and secure they should expect to be able to walk on the sidewalks of public areas without obstructions no one should have to walk on the sidewalks and trip over someone who's sleeping there or fine tents and other paraphernalia the on the side of the pats on the side of our roads the public should be able to use our bus stop without having to deal with of the situations should be able to go to the bus stop and feel safe while you're waiting for the bus not having to deal with somebody sleeping on the on the chairs that are there we should be assured that our private property rights are protected again we shouldn't have to deal with somebody else's obnoxious behavior backyards and creating problems for us as individuals so we're looking at trying to be able to create any media temporary type structure structures putting in solid physical structures while we're working with the to structures temporarily we're going to be trying to create the physical structures because they take longer to do and i'll get into that in the second phase so i don't think that by putting up tent type structures or ignoring more permanent type structures but let's face it if anybody can come up with that reasonable for that location mostly fifty to one hundred persons and we want to be able to have it controlled and all the control element is critical to our social service agencies and we have many social service agencies that have been working with the homeless for a long long time and this is not a new problem they are the ones that are the best equipped to be able to deal with many of the challenges that the homeless have the challenge that we have right now in my county is many of our social service agencies do not have the capacity because they don't have the staffing they don't have the funding to be able to absorb a lot of the new work that would have to be there will be created and we're proposing that as council members would you consider increasing the funding for this area so that we from the county side from government don't have to try and read do a remake something that already exists the agencies that have been dealing with the homeless situation for years have much better personnel they have much better keep abilities then government coming in and trying to redo everything that they're doing but it's going to take funding to be able to get them to hire more personnel to be able to absorb the increasing number of homeless that they have to work with and there is no one size fits all we have homeless that have mental challenges we have homeless that have chemical dependency challenges we have homeless is that are just hard luck with various situations and all must be dealt with and we have different agencies are dealing with the various community members so what we're proposing is to be able to try in work with the homeless community th network that's there in our social service agencies and try and figure out exactly how many personnel we're going to need what kind of funding is going to be need to allow them to be able to expand to handle a lot of the situation that we  if there are gaps if there are gaps when we have to try to fill those gaps but as much as possible we want to try and use as agencies that are there to be able to provide the services that they are more more capable of handling you know we've looked at some of the potential sites and you can see in element one potential sites where we can create two buildings right now that are vacant that need to be repaired so if we can repair them and upgrade them you know the can become more permanent fix the housing they also have an open lot in the vacant lot that we could possibly build  it's going to be expensive we can look at the all swap meet look asian in kowloon we can put up tents there because we have the salvation army pool we can put up we have restroom facilities and we have shower facilities so there could be immediate but we don't want to overwhelm there either so we have to we have to limit the number of tents that we put up in that area and it's a secure area as well but that's a potential if you go down the list you find that there's potential in every one of these areas but the idea is to try and use existing areas where we have programs for the homeless and try to expand on some of those areas and in other areas to make sure that when we do when we do these we are capable of doing temporary and where we we want to be able to expand into long term housing it makes sense and any other suggestions that any of you in the audience or in the community have we're searching for places right now and we haven't done that in a very very thorough search because when the global proclamation came out we started looking at different areas and there's lots of areas that we probably haven't consider that some of you might know more so we welcome that and know that there are places like a log house that might have more property to be able to expand on so that kind of treatment might be more easily dark in those areas but again we need all of us nonprofits to be able to help us to be able to find locations to be able to find ways to just to be able to expand the services and to make sure we don't make in looking at the resources required we are going to be looking at this community of homeless providers we are going to need security twenty four seven we are going to need things like anybody knows of ways to do really quick shelters that are going to be told why stores were very very open to those suggestions as well we're going to need some furniture and fixtures storage units but a lot of the homeless have things that they're dragging around there if we can get storage units for them to put their things in feel safe and secure that might help or we need to be able to be able to administer all of these is probably going to be about a million dollars it's not inexpensive and we're probably going to need about four hundred thousand dollars a year for social service providers to be a and because we're guessing at this we figure about two hundred thousand dollars in an hour to speed it costs and we really mean there on it disappeared because we need to be able to find out from the providers what it is that they're really going to need and what we have to provide for element to well first let me ask are there any questions on the the first piece that we're looking at now members are the questions if we can have the audience ask simple man homeless cannot go mad at everybody challenges i don't have the simple solution what is the solution somebody asked me mister solution is this my question is how many of you woke up this morning look at your ugly self or think in the morning it is a lot of money and when we are dealing with this situation a lot of it has to do with do we do we want to make an investment in breeding our community of homeless and being able to help the homeless to get out of their situation or not if if we're not willing to do that we're just going to see the homeless population growth that's an option just leave it alone and let it grow it will choose to do something with it we are probably not going to get anywhere near to one hundred percent participating but we can put the option there for one hundred percent we can give the alternative for  hundred percent and we can continue working with people there are going to be people that have mental challenges there are going to be people that just don't want to go into these situations but as a society we're also going to be asking for and you'll see this later on they're going to be rules are going to ask all of you to to put on the homeless as well to have behavior that allows the rest of the community to feel safe so the homeless can either go into programs that we have or they can change their behavior and not become threats to community and not threaten the community either way will w but we don't anticipate that this is going to be an easy process and we don't anticipate that it's going to be one hundred percent just going to jump into it and see everything as it is done will be will be very happy when we start this thing we get fifty percent i mean looking realistically at this we've had the situation in virtually every community in the nation has had problems with homes and many of our big cities are having a huge problem with that non profits to be able to help as much as possible reality is that things are going to be difficult to be able to resolve one way or the other there has not been a really successful program on university but we have had with our home with the nonprofit communities we have resolved literally thousands of situations where people could have been homeless have been helped if you look at the success rate of kalar call you look at the success rate family life center and all the nonprofits that have been dealing with this a large percentage of the homeless population have been helped the ones that are out in the street right now a lot of them are new or hard core and the new or hard core would have to deal with  a little bit different situation that we have but also by expanding the capability of the nonprofits to be able to help  putting the program together if you're homeless you can sign up for one of the programs that we have if you think you're qualified to be able to help with managing one of these and you can sign up wherever we have our nonprofits are citing people up spending a lot of money to be able to help a lot of people stay out of the home the situation currently in lot of our nonprofits i believe are doing a good job it's just a question of how can we expand the programs and how we're going to be able to exhort the growing population that we have right now and as we go through this process we would appreciate your coming back and offering your perspective on the various ways in which  mayor looking at the who going through this let's look at element to transitional housing there are locations where we can do transitional housing but again you'll notice that most of these sites all around the areas where we currently have sites and that have space to be able to expand and again i'm going to apologize because i'm fighting a cold so i'm kind of losing my voice and we're we're we're very much open to be able to accept ideas of where we can create more traditional housing and what we can create more space so this is where this is a list of where we started on so at the traditional housing sites any of the ideas we've heard everything from mats and containers to buses to  a lot of different suggestions have come up now we can we can put together and we do have a working group that's working on trying to sort of create the affordable housing programs and  we also have after we work with transitional housing we're going to would have to work with the workforce housing the reality is that right now we have a community that's having a really really difficult time being able to find affordable rentals being able to find affordable housing and these are people that are working in have jobs that are trying to make a living here on m the prices right now are through the roof i mean we're looking at for five hundred thousand dollars to get into an affordable house then for five hundred thousand dollars to has been on affordable ever since it left one hundred fifty so we have to be able to find some way to be able to create more workforce you know we have had a severe shortage of new starts for workforce housing so we have a severe deficit of workforce housing right now and rentals you know even our section eight you heard carol talk earlier about six hundred people with looking for someplace to rent and we're having a huge problem with people even finding places to rent to be able to use those vultures so the shortage of affordable rentals is a severe problem and we're going to have to be able to work on some kind of solutions for the affordable rentals as well so i'd like to ask will spence to come up and what he's going to be explaining is some of the areas that we can work on to create workforce  me come back to order mayor please proceed thank you very much i have with me steve miller from the president cola when we're talking about transitional housing  chairman of the homeless resource centers when it comes to building new shelter the key thing is having land in so where you already have land available it's actually already built on but we could squeeze in another building or two and there is adjacent land but it's not owned by golly archaeal if that could be acquired it's another location where you could expand existing facilities for most shelter where you already have a social services in place the social service side is as mayor said is a really good network of social services they're squeezed from financially because costs go up government funding traditionally keeps going down but that's something that can be solved for the money if the capacity can be increased so that that to me is there is a good place to start thank you mr miller members questions for mr miller as well as the the high not area how many individuals of family use do you suppose we do have a three hundred waiting is and i'm not sure if that three units all together between them between them thank you and one thing i could say is to teach some of the the laws that would be suspended for this purpose if sixty days or so much time to get started on anything to be able to capture that but i think it would help to facilitate something like this as opposed to going after it from sanctuaries things because that could also go on some of your land but are they are they effective by reading reports in other cities that they actually take them down after a while because they haven't been effective but i'm not i'm not sure you're more the expert in that and would like to hear your thoughts on that i value i'm not an expert in i am and i feel the only thing i can see and again from our experience most important thing of being able to help these people get started on turning their lives around is they have to have shelter first and food we provide free food at our shelters and as far as having a roof over your head it could be temporary i mean our starting point is dormitory emergency shelter and then we transition from that to transitional housing and then from transitional housing a permanent housing i've heard it through people discussing the subject all over is that a lot of times there are people who don't want to go to these things because of the rules and i understand the rules you have are you guys equipped to do a city like that or so not a city but this little sanctuary like that where there are relaxed rules as far as just getting people in and a roof over their head i think from what i hear about the for at least the folks in our area is that there's a lot of them that don't want to go to your place even if you had one hundred beds open because of the rules and so that's that's my concern is a on what would what we're trying to do is we're trying to create potential areas where we can help the homeless i do as i stated before not all the homeless are going to want to go ok they're going to be people they're going to resist what we but what we can insist on this we can and all of the follow up later on with some of this in every in every situation would to create rules applicable to that specific situation it's not a one size fits all in some of these these areas that were could censoring the who knew all this the sanctuary we may not have research on alcohol or drugs but that's well we may introduce the clients to the services so that we we can start a process  is the different agencies right now they're doing different things but we're going to have to try and adjust some of these rules to try and make it work you know the idea of putting up tents is not an attractive idea to me i would prefer physical structures you know like buildings and houses but i'm also a realist and i know that i can't put up a building and a house in a month or two months it's going to take time to be able to transition to be able to actually get physical structures built so that's why we're proposing to start off with the sanctuaries and then to create the transition at the same time so that we can actually start getting into physical structures but until we actually have physical structures i could have some place if we're going to such a program that that's really where it is if you're asking the way to like tends not really but if you ask me do we have alternatives i'm open to suggestions on how we would get people off the streets out of the parts that they're living in into an area where we could actually have some kind of safety area controlled area where we can provide some of the services and at the same time provide safety for people in our communities now a lot of it you know is not in my backyard going everybody going to protests i don't want anything in my backyard the trouble is right now there we have a lot of homeless in people's backyard so we they're going to try to put it in a controlled situation or we can ignore it and just leave it the way it goes but i don't think anybody in our communities at least not in the communities like yours  confident of victory knows they want to do something we just move people from the river mom they have to go someplace so they move to other areas but some relatives some are in other areas but creating the safety zones we're hoping to have some place that they can go until we can create more permanent type of facilities and permanent facilities are very very expensive there's no getting around the cost of building i mean in an individual house right now when we're looking at affordable house the four hundred to five hundred thousand dollars i mean that's what's there on the market right now so we're looking at rentals trying to create a physical rental what's the rentals in key here right now running i mean we're looking at considerable sums of money this is not an inexpensive venture we would prefer not to have to deal with this at all but i think putting our head in the sand and pretending the problem doesn't exist is not an option so we will continue continue with the discussion but there are costs that are associated with this and as council members i'm going to be asking you you know what it what are we really going to try and do or is it within our capabilities or we're going to agree to work on this or if you just want to ignore it we have to let the public know that that's not that's the choice that we make and i'm thirty countable none of you want to audience along with kali really are chomping at the beach to find solutions and this is something i've discovered doing and being a part of for the past seven and a half years on the border collie i feel i've realized wanting to find solutions i think some of the things that will happen and will have to happen is many of these facilities must be near the infrastructure needed for mental health and other services that are required by these special people and i call a special people because all of us could be there one day none of us are that far away from homelessness and i believe that this is a time that solutions have to be out of the box we've got to think out of the box we we can no longer spend time trying to decide what needs to be done we have to do something whether it's tense whether it's frozen in facility we just can't keep waiting because they're out there they're sleeping on the sidewalks mr mayor they are streaming behind buildings i have pictures right here of my constituents who have sent me people who are sleeping in their yards behind their businesses urinating defra keeping doing all the things that what else choices do these people have i have many business is complain all the time about their restrooms being inundated by the homeless you go in there i've been walked in i can tell you what it's mcdonnell's some of these other restaurants mouth is then i'm willing to do it and i think this is the time and i thank you much to cheer for calling the special meeting because it's really really important but we have a lot of expertise out there we need to make sure that they are part of this solution we need to have them they have they've been there they've done that whether it's mental health kuku or whatever organization that you go right across the board they're there to assist us now it's time for us to all sit down and not keep talking about it let's find solutions so that's my only take mr chair i thank you i think the members i think the public for being here this is the scourge of our society right now but it also falls back in the area and i think we've got to realize we need to build affordable workforce housing the reason we are where we are we don't have housing for people i'm not only talking the homelessness i'm talking about our regular families you drive around your district mr guzman and you all these big homes with twenty cars fifteen cars in front of we know what's got one existing building this not occupied and we we looked at one time of turning it into a dorm to facilitate you know more capacity didn't have the money to do it i think what it what i would look at is the site planning and whether or not we could build two story buildings like we are already have which would give us more density and more units in the place of the you know either building around new building but we the one of them is as a child care center so one of them is vacant the other one is a child care center which could be redeveloped and that could be relocated ok the other question i have and do you have a sense of how many of the homeless are homeless due to mental health issues i would be afraid to make a nest but i don't i don't know that we have  everything we have chemical dependency issues we have mental health issues but when those people come we have a other social services within maui that we coordinate and cooperate the office space in a way look who is doing pretty good investor business there and in your view do you feel that i guess if you don't know exactly how many have the challenge  but are in a quarter ok thank you i guess the question is whether or not you feel that part of this initiative should be focused  kayla and what do you think is the main reason i'm sure there's a pipe multiple but some of the top reasons why some of the homeless do not see refuge at your existing research center again i'm not an expert in that to tell you that my guess is they're part of part of it is there  it to go from wherever they are again to a dormitory which would be the first place for emergency shelter if they have possessions that they think they don't have a place to take with them or store that might be one  is chemical dependency we accept people with chemical dependency problems and then we basically work with them to to try deal with that show that they can be capable of getting jobs but it's so that's not really a barrier that population of our homelessness into you know things we're talking about here today to address to get them off the streets and getting shelters because we have issues at our church which is only a block down from a res center that defra cation the year a nation that everything there but you know that's where they choose to go and seek shelter in the from so and not a block up the road so that's where i'm trying to of the question to the here and true remember we have a lot of different nonprofit organizations working with various parts of this situation and one of those nonprofits  book the home the potential that's what we've created a list of some potential areas again this is not a complete list of all were we're open to any suggestions on how to be able to expand this and the building sites that we're looking at but a number of units would have to be able to work on expansion of that as well so do not think that this is an end all and it's been a completely research team of making absolute sure that i'm not going to be pinned to the wall and say what you said this is places like the area around it is something we might be able to purchase be able to expand that area as well we might be able to expand the area into campsites i know that there's a proposal for a campsite already in the lin area but you know there's all there's also there's there's a lot of components to this thing that the non profits will be able to help us to be able to avoid pitfalls and when we create these areas because we don't i don't want to have to manage each of these areas from the county they are i would but i would much much prefer the people that are already running a lot of the nonprofit organization be given grants to be able to help manage it because we frankly don't have the expertise for twenty four hour care or to be able to to handle the individuals in any case there are we come through two of the  elements that we need to be able to work with the third element that we have to work with is workforce in the workforce housing right now where we're fighting a real go through your presentation ok and thank you mr mayor thank you mr chairman and council members and i'm very happy to be here this morning to discuss this topic  i think the main idea with transitional housing is that it's transitional it's supposed to be temporary but part of the problem is is we have almost no inventory unless we can increase the inventory that transitional housing will pretty much remain permanent and as has been discussed there's people are homeless for all different kinds of reasons sometimes it is mental sometimes it's substance abuse but a lot of times it's just people down on their luck you know they live paycheck to paycheck when  when the inventory is so tight you know supply and demand to you you know rents get increased because there's so little inventory and and then all of a sudden the people who could afford a one day you know couldn't afford it the next that it becomes very problematic so what the mayor is saying about developing workforce housing we're we're exploring different ways to address this and some of these things we've discussed with council which i'll go through and some of these things we've discussed internally and it will talk about some of those things as well so we are looking at transitional housing sites we could probably go to the next mayor wanted us to pull some of these these mad these are sounding maps showing residential housing as well as business and different types of industrial as the as a council is where we bring up business and industrial because housing is permitted within those districts and we have a lot of underutilized land sometimes vacant land where we could be promoting either transitional housing or we could be promoting you know long term constructing multi family units workforce housing and in general these are located in places where the infrastructure is already available it's not something that you know you have to go pay a whole lot of roads degrading whatever all those things are in place and it goes to the cost of providing that housing so in you know this is  one of the one of the things we discussed in and planning committee when we were discussing of all things what bars we talked quite a bit about we already have multi family going in in a lot of these single family areas and the different shades of yellow represent the single family zoning one of the things we discussed was let's look at these areas and see where these are already occurring and maybe we want to change their community plans to reflect multifamily and then up zone to not full blown apartments but maybe duplex try plex fourplex and allow landowners you know allow what's there to become legal but also have other landowners be able to redevelop their sites to be able to provide more housing and in this way we're here enabling the small landowner and i would say that's true in the industrial areas as well you enable the small landowner and they'll still step up to the plate they're looking for opportunities this is my belief where we can do some additional things and i also give credit to the council member carol who interviews the resolution to let's look at doing ohana zone smaller lots as well and this council supported that rizzo and it's a believer in process with that right now yes or i just want to point out look at key all you guys drive through k look at home many single family lots there are and think of how many single family units you actually see the key almost everything that you see in key is apartments in a multi family so you look at the orange that's what multifamily what's own apartment the yellow is all single family the rest of it is project district or hotel or some other zoning that doesn't  allow residential i was really surprised when i saw this to look at the land these patterns there are some say there are some vacant lots of single family residential lots in key i mean larger pieces like ten acres so if they're generally we're down to the difficult to provide for lots of severe drainage issues or stuff but we can still work with those you can see the  i should also bring up one of the obstacles to providing affordable housing and you know relieving the inventory problem so we don't have to have so much transitional housing commission but also in the court system things are being held up that could go forward right now but we're so in the idea of looking at these maps the planning department can go through and  underutilized parcels and then come up with a plan and come back to the council with that yes we also looked at the town it's it's already pretty crowded but there are underutilized almost vacant parcels and there there's also going to be a a senior housing project proposed and there are so many and that's a longer term of course but  and provide for additional housing infrastructures kind of tight and we would have to look at that but i think we can do something with that quite coolly etc you know we look at those places there are two percent affordable project with habitat for humanity and it's sale through land use commission it's cetera it's but it's it's being bogged down in the courts it's ready to go one hundred two multifamily thirty two single family and fifty one affordable so in there and that's also being holed up in court but that one is ready to go receive coal approvals except for whatever the courts decide it so there's lots of opportunities on the west side of the ok so these are pretty much the smaller landowners and are smaller projects on a larger scale you know we have our mile island plan and the key is to provide you know more inventory we know where housing should go we have you know our entitlement processes is pretty burdensome long term we're going to have to look at that as well as some of our other laws like show me the water and and workforce housing ordinances the thing as if we can it and looking at some of these individual projects if we can find out what's holding those things up specifically and we can deal with those specific issues to make the projects council they'll start building them so anyway this that this is the number of things that we're creating new and amending existing laws which we talked about a little bit i'm not sure i'm not a tax expert but certainly would i think the council could explore different tax incentives for for developers and for small property owners to you when they're providing additional housing and i want to interrupt yes i was talking owners would like to jump into this and really provide something to the medium to large and then really find out what we know some of the things that are hindering housing from being built and again with the idea of not meeting to provide so much transitional housing and and dealing with the emergency that we have right now but being able to provide inventory so there are you know people can find an affordable place so we're looking at the element for which is ordinary or will then go world's gone through some of these but if you look at these are some of the some of the things that we were thinking about we might be able to juggle to allow allow existing units to be able to create more affordable housing within existing units and also to be able to bring more of the existing units into compliance with reality if you drive down my street at night command and you and i've done a number of times one two o'clock in the morning and you start counting cars in front of each house so some of situation in our communities by forcing the price of housing so high we create a situation where people out of desperation have had to find alternate means of being able to find housing so they're doing what we did when we were in college you know get four or five guys squeeze in a room so you can afford to pay for and if so a lot of people are existing law families are existing today th reality as much as we want to become idealistic and say a single family houses should be ideally a family of four a family of five and you can have ten thousand square feet in the entire house and walk for yourselves the reality is that's not what our community is built of today many of our communities are multi family living in single family structures and if we don't change our rules and change our laws to accept the reality of what we've created out of desperation for many of these families we're going to find even more social challenges in the long run and it shouldn't be where we force most of our community to be surviving in so we say what we considered legally substandard situations we should actually be tr see how we can accommodate the real world and being able to change some of these rules that we have to be able to allow more compliance and a more comfortable existence for most people i wish that you know everybody could have a nice big house with everybody having their own bedroom and a nice big yard to play with for the kids to play and stuff but let's look at what we really have in the senate seeing how we can incorporate things so that the average person can have a chance of having a comfortable way of living and some of these rules that we're looking at i think need to be adjusted so that we can create truly affordable and practical living accommodations for more people within our community so this is the th t we're looking at is important in trying to be able to structure around the homeless situation because if we were to go by the letter of the law then we put all these people that are living in these units out in the street are homeless population would probably be bought half of our population if not more and that that's really not something that we want to even think about but we need to be able to do something about it now and i think by adjusting some of these laws and considering some of the obstructions that we put in the way of creating affordable truly affordable units we can get into the community really needs in our job as lawmakers our job as administrators put a community where we're trying to create a quality of life for people who are living here you know that that's really what our objective should be and that's what most of our laws to objectives of most of our laws are supposed to be how do we create the best community in the business be conditions for people within our community we can change some of the things that we have but again when we're when we're looking at this homeless situation many of the people that are in these the housing that we have right now would be homeless if we didn't have if they weren't able to find the situations so we have to look at this on the go or as declared this emergency we have to look to just as what we've created as a society and start really coming back to a commonsense practical approach to be able to find compromises within our communities so that people can exist and coexist with each other there are always going to be differences of opinion the guy that's got a zillion dollars is going to say well we should have i should be able to have a ten thousand square foot house and do whatever i damn well feel like and the guy this struggling to make a living is going to be saying well you know all i want is some place to live my head down and to be able to feel comfortable and we've got to be a find compromises for everybody and it can't be where you know one dominates over the others of the other is uncomfortable we need to be able to also realize that we all who also have to have responsibility even the homeless have to have responsibilities their expectations of quality of life for everyone in our community we have to create anti nuisance laws that are in force of own that were police are willing to enforce so that people do have respect for one another they're not using the bathrooms in somebody else's doorstep they're not sleeping on the sidewalks and getting in the way i've had homeless people drive their shopping carts right out in front of my car on a busy highway expected me to stop for them because they have the right away to go across the street because they're homeless i guess you know and i've come very very close room making them casualties in a hospital because my reaction isn't what it used to be but you're seeing more and more of these kind of blocks this behavior and we have to be able to balance out how we're going to be dealing with the homeless as we're going to be dealing with the public  we do have lawrence i hope i got your name right large he's working with the we in the local area right now and he's one of our homeless specialists in trying to deal with the homeless i'd like to have him come up and try to talk a little bit about some of the challenges that we have with the homeless situation and let's see if we can look at some of these these these rules that we have to be able to to work with where they have trouble with enforcing and trouble with the homeless having problems and the community having problems lar that i would say eighteen way years were in community policing working with the community in dealing with situations and coming up with solutions for everyday situations agencies you deal with the mental illness aspect of the homelessness in any program i heard you mention earlier today housing is one other aspect is going to be enforcement somewhere ultimately the police are going to be involved in this education that's another part it's going to take the community working together to come to some solutions here it's not going to be just one together and ultimately some people are not going to be compliant and it is going to take in force i mean it is going to take the police coming in we have existing laws that work and there are other laws but there are challenges and those are they take a lot longer to put into place these newer laws because you can reach out and do all every step of the way but we do have laws in the books that we can use some of the things they did was work on just the perception perception of what the police actually can do perception of what the community the merchant the things that they can actually do and things if you look at it it was actually surprised to see we have a point seven percent homelessness or seven percent homelessness per capita we have more so that's it i think people need to understand so you know it is going to cost money to where i was sitting back there with the folks from my mental health and i was you know you building these places that are going to require security they're going to require more mental health specialists very dear dealing with them people from drug and alcohol counselling and all these different things it's going t a lot of money it's going to take a huge effort so we need to bring everybody to the table and that's part of what we're doing now is one of my tasks is just to find out what are these resources you have what are the tools we have in our community putting them together getting us all working for a common goal because it is about money or the many and everybody's money is thin so we're adding one more aspect to it so all can be done yeah there's a lot of great people when they read as they came out of retirement to come and help because there's a lot of good people and i saw the great things in the paper that seem pretty unfair saw you know working with good people and i think that's the strength of our community and hopefully with this proposal i mean it's a good opportunity to do things in that if not for the governor's proclamation go for it is a game we have any specific questions on policing things that really questions because there are a lot of great programs out there i mean you can just google i mean there's different places where  mentally ill who is having a crisis out on the street you can be taken directly to the hospital instead of being arrested by the police and held you know there are these different things and i mean potentially we could have them here but they all have to be looked at research i know when it comes to the mentally ill my mentor of course who has done a bang up job and they do know what they're talking about and they do a lot of things in a while who that we don't have here and potentially we could i would like to create a couple of bodies two or three people that will concentrate on but working on this homeless situation i do need somebody that can work on creating housing but we real buildings and i need somebody that can be able to research all of the different deal with all the different nonprofits city figure out exactly what they would need to be able to work with us for the homeless situation and you know this is this is a big project it is going to be it's going to require a lot of work so we are looking for possibly up to three positions for  department of housing and even consider it's to deal directly with the homeless  or the sanctuaries if that's where you choose to go with us today or if you come up with a better suggestions of what we could come up with we're open to that as well but we need to go someplace so i don't believe just sitting around and allowing everything to fester is a wise course so we know that this is not  not be the absolute best solution but this is what we've come up with and again where we're open to suggestions of how to approach this excuse me or we suggested you adopt a if we put that up for sale we might be able to generate enough revenue to build a lot of the facilities we need to build i mean we've already paid for it right now we're just so it's just and so this very difficult for us to deal with so if we actually put it up for sale if you're willing to do that maybe we can use that asset to create another asset for the community that's that should generate i'm going to guess probably around ten million dollars a  day and again status within the department of housing human concerns office an office of homelessness but we can work with the pass an ordinance to provide tax exemption to proper on route to families with ho choices water of section eight to allow access three dollars on small lots and to be able to add insurance damage insurance for the section eight vouchers programs rent to them they did come up with some proposed figures and there are different depending on studio one bedroom two bedroom two bedroom four bedroom the values of these vultures are always how they figure it out is based three years back under  data so it's not really accurate data so they did come up with some proposed figures but we've asked they be increased and we've gotten approval on them but we don't have the new figures with this yet i can share with you what they propose but that's not going to be accurate information so what is it now ok so for instance for a went bad you know this is what they propose so it's going to be higher one thousand four dollars for two bedroom unit it's one thousand two hundred seventy one for it three bedroom it's one thousand eight hundred fifty two and for a four bedroom it's two thousand and thirty four dollars i'd like to also mention that we did a little bit of research for one bedroom units the average rental perma is about fifteen hundred dollars now it depends on the different areas have different when do we get started and that's not a trick question i really do mean when do we get started because the quicker we can move in many areas some we don't but that's not the question at this point when do we get started how quickly are you committed to move on this question and makes us move exponentially also well this is the start we were having this meeting coming off of this meeting we are currently doing research on a lot of tents and they don't have a supply that we can readily tack on to we have to talk to the nonprofits and get them all together try to figure out what is what is the best approach where we have what we have been organizations already working with some of these nonprofit the homeless issues as well as the affordable housing issues so we have different groups so we're already in the process you know if we're going to be able to do  work on the ten areas will come back to you if you guys want if you guys are willing to do this we would be ready to start immediately on a lot of the stuff is not going to be everything at one time is not to be the panacea where we give you the absolute description of everything but for instance the swap meet area in cali we've been talking to a and b and we feel very comfortable that we can get them the lease on that very quickly and we can start doing more intense started up they have a bathroom there they have a shower at the swimming pool of course we have to make arrangements for cleaning it up and we have to do some other  stuff to get it ready but we can start those kind of things very quickly those people that are living right in the area right around that area that would be comfort zone for them the safety area instead of steeping on the road on the can just sleep on the that we're that we're looking at then you've seen some of the location and some of the sites cost factors for a color call or what is it going to cost for us to be really able to refit retrofit some of these buildings design money  construction funding we have to look at the again the nonprofits how much money they're going to need to be able to expand their workforce which organizations are going to do what i hope we can get back to you fairly soon  a lot of the stuff but we're going to be we're going to be continuing on with with it if you agree that this is what you want to do to create the motion on this very quickly but as we pointed out and some of these costs you know each one of these areas that we're looking at i forget what slide it is but it's not inexpensive so we're looking at what was homelessness on maui and not yesterday we started talking about it many many years ago when we had a homeless alliance already put together and we could see this was coming and so there was a whole bunch of us that were involved  some of the names will ring a bell people like stan franco people like bill statement who is worried about the veterans and all of us and we sat together and had many many meetings john to most who was involved and we were trying to come up with at that you're expected to go out and look for work and of course that was an expensive proposal and we're here talking with the same thing which is where do we get the money to do it and where do we put it and so i am really thankful that we have a crisis and i agree with the governor that we do have a crisis because now this is going to make us actually do whatever we have to do and i like some of the proposals some of them i have concerned about but at least we have something before us and what i would like to see is you know we can discuss this until the colors come home for another twenty years but what i would like to see us do is to fasten on a project one project and let's make a project happen what that will do is instill hope in people that yes this can be done we need short term results and we need long term planning and it is going to take a long time it isn't easy like the mayor says you know to go and get entitle ments and permissions and put in the facilities and all that so i'd like us to kind of come together around something so that we can produce something tangible and visible and yes i do agree intense i don't like tents but tents in a nice safe place are a good alternative while we work on longer term solutions it's better than having them sleep in the parks and steve on the sidewalks  and we all see them and there's more all the time it's very distressing so i would like to see something done my concern is you know when i read the proclamation from the governor on page three they talk about the legislature has appropriate from the general revenues of the state monies as it may be necessary for expenditure by or under the direction of the governor for immediate relief and we're talking about county money is the governor going to release any of this money so we can use it to get this done you know we want to work with him but i think that if there is money good we can put our money out and hopefully we can get some money back from him but you know this is going to take a partnership it's going to take this state it's going to take us it's going to agencies it's going to get community everybody has to give a little bit compromised a little bit and let's get something going i tell you it's going to be quick and then we can work on long term solutions and i know that ma we can solve this problem we know how we just have to you know bite the bullet and take some risks and do it so against terror thank you very much for giving us this opportunity and i know that the community waiting to testify probably has a lot to say thank you thank you there was one of the question those going to ask is if do we know what the amount of money is a survey able from a state or are i wouldn't it be the we're going to get nothing from the state  i'm sure is about this because this is one of our thoughts too but i'm fairly comfortable in saying that i believe all the money is spoken for and it's all going to go on a little they're working on clean up situation so i'm not into p t we're going to get anything from the state this is why i'm working on it is in the county of what we're going to do and this is why i prefer from the very beginning of this  the governor declaration is focused on a wall even though it's a state wide declaration it's focused on the solution on a wall not for us that's why we have to come up with our own programs here and i guess we're one of my questions was this come with money and they it was just answered he said then it's like well why are we talking about i mean you know we have the worst per capita problem than they do and yeah i was hoping we had many coming with it but so my other and mayor you brought up the i'm focusing mainly west maui just because i'm most familiar with that area i think that peter martin and lisa darcy proposal up on hope to the road that attaches to the bypass and line out of the pool mana there and so the whole more on a foundation somebody like that heard he has a plan in place and going through the process to do their to virtually any organization this would help us to the thing is that we're always going to have objections in every community i'm trying to put all of the facilities close to existing facilities so we don't have a huge outcry from the community because we're creating a new nooses within the community that with the nooses doesn't really exist but i think my personal feeling is that peter martin is doing a good thing in trying to create a community for the homeless and i think it will be a great thing to be able to have them away from where they normally where they are now up in that area but issue here so i know discussing with kail am kind of play land management around the way any resource center i've brought it up to them and they were not interested but perhaps further discussion today might be different so i was talking to mr elmore earlier on our break and the hundred eighty six acres that was per purchased in west maui with that do you think b be able to be utilized in this manner temporary rate this is temporary so some like th areas quarter's along the train tracks or the route structures so that we can have an alternative route in case that say we want to take the buses off of the of the highways and we want to create a separate route for buses or bicycles or for joggers we actually have a quarter once those quarters are gone because that affects sells it all would have a much more difficult time acquiring it so we're we have inquiries in to try and see what it is that we could possibly negotiate for once we have that identified and if you have any suggestions you know who the guy is working on it t finance and or you could come to our office and we can talk about it we were open to suggestions this was just brought to our attention this past week so i have called in to  if we're going to make a move as a county do we want to look at what's available what places if it's if we're not then that opportunity will be gone and it's gone it just popped up thank you mayor that sounds there that have land dead maybe would be willing to do some horse trading with us you know we call that horse trading they're willing to give us a stallion and maybe we can give them a couple of mules vice versa trading or maybe even for tax purposes this is the time to start thinking out of the box we have agencies that if we give them land they could do things for us we could do things if we have plans to marry right but i know the challenge comes up we've got to see close to the infrastructure because lonnie a poco if you did something there be really difficult because there's not a lot of infrastructure and want to have to put it in and then it becomes much more expensive plus the facilities and again i see this in real we all h koku and many other facilities are located in central ma we so once you start getting outside they have to go there versus them coming to visit them so there's some real concerns but again maybe horse trading maybe some swaption land you got land you can sell maybe they want to buy and give us something else i don't know i'm secure but we're at that point where we need to really look at what we can do immediately and move on and that's just way let's really look for something of that nature eg text from tax breaks and i don't care what it might be let us see help you bring it to us and then let us go from there some real quickly if i could just ask for everybody's thoughts here we have a question for mr couch we have about six testifiers signed up i would like if you don't mind i would like to do that by twelve thirty i would like to start it very soon so we can get that done by twelve thirty rather than break for lunch and make everybody who wants to testify come back again later so if i can differ on thirty seconds whatever we can do mr couch think thank you mr chairman i agree with my colleagues it's we've got to start or start now we're look i'm looking forward to whatever you send down to discuss  me oh land by colorado center and center it's in the center of town it's close to all almost every one of the services we have and it's state land you know they have to have the  things but i think we need to get somebody to pick one started in there once we get that started start eating the elephant one bite at a time in get moving on it though but sooner rather than later it was it's where we call for our own sanctuary and i don't you know how i look at density as if we're providing the density it's really without walls law and see how all we can that can be a start up project because there's existing infrastructure if it is to bypass all of the entitlements that's required to be all i think we'd like to look at that also would like for us to in the long term really take a look at how effective the workforce development work force policy has come into play with the builders or this so called developers cause if it's there's nothing in action then maybe we need to address that again because i understand there been a conversation with housing is that true is it just conversation or is there attempts to follow through yes we've heard quite a bit of developers come to our office soon is the corporate housing ordinance was relaxed but what i'm hearing from your plan or your planning department is there's nothing really happening did i hear that right  ok also i'd like to mention that we will be looking at what process will be necessary for us to give the public some notice as items come down from the the administration or if you have your individual items that you would like to put forth we will have to come up with some guidelines with my understanding and we'll look to core council for further clarification my understanding is that we don't have to have any notice but i would think we would want to have a minimum of at least two or three days notice of six if it's not really critical  kind of oh we actually have a document that we prepared in case we wanted to do this but i would only do it if it's going to be able to allow us to get some of these programs through  in a way that would not adversely affect the community in other words if it cuts back on time deadlines or cuts cuts so requirements  then it will be worth doing it it'll be a co operative declaration if i do it you know the governor if you look at the governor's declaration he allows a lot of jum work with the labor laws so there's a lot of this kind of stuff and what i can do is i can do something fairly similar with what molly county regulations are but it's only worth doing if we're going to be able to do something solid in the end there's no sense of just declaring an emergency situation like that on this we're really going to accomplish something and there is no specific time period in which  to declare it i don't have to do it while the governors declaration is there this is an emergency situation that has been identified two weeks we will try to work with it but at the appropriate time if it's necessary i will do it so i'm just letting you know that there are tensions so we will be sending you down a number of different items that we talked about this morning post case and you probably get them within the next few days so if you can process them as much as possible at least have the discussion that we know we staff ok so you're not and i'm assuming that your intent would also include if necessary a request to the governor to extend the sixty day timeframe i've actually talked to the governor i had the opportunity to have dinner with him on saturday night to believe that we said we spent about two hours talking about he's willing to extend his declaration if i make a declaration it will be with the county rules county was that we would be going over all but it would be very careful about how i do that oh so just keep that in for it it's really going to require somebody putting their full time with attention to this area and as much as i would i want to do it i need to have somebody who has the expertise in this area to really concentrate on it to be able to deal with the various agencies that we have to deal with and quite frankly i don't have the full expertise that i would like is something i would work the group that i would be selecting staff individuals who wish to offer testimony in the chamber please sign up at the desk located in the four lobby just outside the chamber door testimony of all the patients is limited to the items listed on today's agenda pursuant to the rules of the car each that's a far may be allowed to testify for up to three minutes when testifying please state your name and the name of any organization you represent home office please identify yourself and introduce your first testif followed by steve miller to say that with this triangle here my discussion this morning is going to move you from the purple and the green up to the yellow when we get into personal needs and relationships some of you know me i've been on my way since one nine hundred eighty nine i worked in the kalo church in key hay from two thousand and six through may two thousand and fifteen in may i decided to practice what i preach and i resign from the church i'm now involved with a private ministry i'm a street minister who takes the ministry takes place in line on front street makai of the library harbor under the banyan tree i spend about ten to fifteen hours a week walking the streets of line a listening talking story with people who spend their days sitting on the benches in the parks there on front street and under the banner entry i found that by listening and interacting with these people on a regular basis that we started to develop a relationship based on trust caring and kindness in the getting to know their names and stories i've actually developed a deeper understanding and appreciation of our community we ask who are the homeless this part of the community falls into two large groups firstly there are those visible people these are the people who interact with others in public places secondly there are those who we consider invisible they live in the woods on the beaches they only come out in public when it's necessary as we consider the definition of homelessness we see what we're talking about in general as per people who have no permanent address however more specifically we have chronically unemployed people who have survived a traumatic accident survived but now are disabled those shortest destructing with mental  and those who are attracted to that community there to suppliers in the consumers the black market now although a lot of these people lack a permanent housing the homeless people still have rights and responsibilities like all the other members of our community regardless of one station in life it's our responsibility for our actions and the consequences which stem from them all people might should have the same standards and should be afforded the same rights now over the last four months five months that i've been in this ministry  four people on my list of new friends have become employed two people reportedly had their possessions seized for by police two people have been beaten for money one has died of an overdose another reportedly performed one thousand two hundred dollars worth of repair work on a stone wall for a nonprofit when the work was complete the person who they had made the agreement said i'm not going to pay you when i go to the person and try to offer them helps on how they can actually go through the process they tell me listen if you don't pay me i'll take care of it we failed to do the right thing we create heaven when these injustices become the root of our our problem by putting into the world by violating a person's rights or violating the law it generates a simmering anger frustration and hatred within that community due to the fact that homelessness is seen as a blight on our community many people dislike homelessness they dislike the homeless people and they want to drive them from site for this reason it seems that to many it's easy to take advantage of the homeless people because they are the most unappreciated in unprotected in the entire community for minutes please remember that any one of us could be homeless given a different set of circumstances and standard that i want to share with you that we should sum up how we treat people the integrity of a community is in demonstrated by the way that they protect the rights of the least among us i want to thank you for listening to me and for taking your action on the governor's proclamation i look forward to being of assistance to you and meeting your objective greg walker excuse me testifying i kind of communication fifteen dash to sixty three he'll be followed by sylvia co good afternoon greg walker chair councilman people thank you for asking me to come here today i had a whole list and i wrote it out very formally but i really think everything's been thoroughly covered today i would like to make one small point though we got a lot of programs here at the county a lot of state programs that were mentioned today i think i'm having personally the most  issues in our daily businesses first of all i'm with coyote village my project is located on a pole in south keep a road we built that project started about six years ago right in the the fun time of the economy we finished it we've been very very proactive in cleaning up homeless camps asking people to move on i have worked with the police department with the two officers in key hay that have sense resigned those positions but i've worked very closely with them and they've handed out their resources car and we've attempted to get those people in to visiting some of these county resources that we have but what i've really noticed especially in the last six months is the extreme aggressiveness while i've been sitting here for the last three hours i just received a text from my wife homeless guy no shirt on you know not not smelling too good walked into my personal office she had to call the police department ok and that that's happened today in the one of the reasons that i decided to come today besides meeting with don couch and carol we had a good meeting on tuesday about the situation was because of the aggressiveness you know i i think it needs to really be divided into two distinct issues one is the economic homelessness and the other is are the people that we've talked about a little bit today that are addicted or you know have some kind of addiction or mental illness and those people are not just moving on they're not being polite i've always treated them with compassion and respect but like i said in the last four to six months you ask them to move on and not trespass on our property and they're actually attacking some of our business owners physically you know and coming out them aggressively and so that that's the number one problem you know for me personally down in the key here that i hope that gets addressed thank you thank you should be followed by quick kill you call being heavily targeted for demolition i'm very sorry the mayor left because he is our commander in chief and not the here the the results are there are more homeless now old sick social security on the story second it's the end of the work trade which agricultural owners to need because they have large parcels and lots of green waste to remove three you're going to have more male and female prostitution because there are now homeless for more people wanting to go to jail because it's safer in jail than on the street five a woman contacted me about a rental three of her four children are in foster care because she is halmos and she is working two jobs and call louis as a waitress my alternative is very much like the sanctuary siding there should be an ordinance called camps as a teen i paid my parents said thousand dollars a month to stay in a tent have a community kitchen and bath and learn about agriculture for a month i went to three different camps i'm sure you've seen the ten by ten portable tiny houses on the internet priced at fifty thousand dollars the this week i've witnessed three tiny home smell he had made thousand dollars each and made even the inspector they were so well made they had to be demolished he was charging two hundred dollars a month to women and elder man one tiny house eight by eight with one two hundred dollars solar panel and one power strip will give enough power for a small refrigerator and a computer which is all anybody needs and the how last month i've become aware three who e's undergoing demolition that means one hundred new homeless in the next sixty days because of the rules of county rules causing more dissolute physical disease more mental illness because they're completely confused on the main line wal mart allows homeless to park there is the high school another empty schools and the worst thing about this section eight vouchers people are on the list for five to ten years and they are expires in ninety days it's impossible to find the section eight house and ninety days next individual testify is michael covert ch testifying on coming communication fifteen desh to sixty three received a phone call today from a social service worker that had a person turned down for what i was doing for a unit because the two inches the stealing the room was six or eight ceiling represent concerned american veterans now which is a new if i went to see nineteen we're starting which is give us some broad spectrum i'd also like to think gladys spice first sang start one project parting gift of giving her one project the most logical project i've heard mentioned in theory that i have heard mention this afternoon there's others that are going to be discussed in the future would be the old emil property of not only that there's a vase and they can piece of property been sitting there for a long time waiting for in some developer to make money or whatever the reason and that used to be a go cart track that's right next to the  get something done there's a campground that's around the country called k always i don't know how many people ever stayed in line but they have small buildings but let's say there are roughly twelve by twelve one hundred forty four square feet which is plenty of room for somebody with a modular structure to commute right away so we can talk about this being temporary housing so the landlord doesn't do the lose the right to develop and all that but something like that should be done and done fairly quickly like the v a problems we have with them the island outer islands obvious get short changed so hate to sit here and hear the mayor say that all this money is only going on to a wall who kind of drives me up a wall we need to be more aggressive in fighting for we need on this island and then there's this project about how all the time there's a lawsuit and stuff getting away and what  can and can't do because people have their own in the in the individual agendas the county needs to be more aggressive in defending these things i'll give you one example the mon thing that's been locked up in court right now the reason these people get away with filing these lawsuits is it put you guys on the defensive so you have to spend your money and they have to spend nothing turn it around put them on the defensive there's quite a few more things i have to say but i really don't want to lose my temper and use words that i may regret  furball temper but i will leave you with this phrase that i hope nobody takes offense but it's time to stop this self masterbation and get something done thank you clerk members i want to thank you for your patience going a little bit over the noontime and coming in to lunch but i want to thank the members of the public for being here this afternoon and this morning  already stated that he's going to be coming forward with a variety of proposals and those proposals will have to go to budget finance if they're financial implications to them they would go to planning in willing to go along with the motion to file this because we have a commitment from the mayor to send something down fairly quickly i do not want this to get put on the shelf as it succeeded there is a crisis and we need to move and i really if we don't file it we're deferring it just to be at the council level anyway and and there's not and this is so broad that it is a really makes sense for us to to refer this item to a specific committee because the solution does cross a number of committees and further discussion of those in favor of the finally in place significant us please signify by saying i those opposed  suggestions on how we can move these items forward through your committees how much notice you need because we do have to consider one when a measure comes to the council that we're going to need to consider how much time you all are going to need to research and get get prepared to hear the items so but be mindful that we have a very short window within which to act on these things and we need to take advantage of the proclamation if there's any way that we possibly can so with that said i'm sorry  corner or the high school and that property if you think it being it was erode to us the county for educational purposes from the state put it back in their court so to speak for this particular issue and say guess what here state which is you folks can you act on this property which is in your hands technically to move forward something now so i i think for now right here project that seems the most ill because you don't need to start myself in deep stuff but since the one nine hundred eighty four when i became that the rector of emil the state has been talking about taking that property back when we right there because they wanted to build a state office building and that's why they took down the old building the school building in the dorm that was there well we are now in two thousand and fifteen and i think that temporarily it might be an attractive solution because that the cation if it's built property i mean property and she will be a property because you know it's going to be right in the middle of towns you get be careful but the amenities are there the services are there the accessibility is there and because the state owns it and the governor you know really wants to push this maybe we can work together and get something done but i think it's a viable idea to look into thank you thank you mr bonner i'll just closing read the last paragraph on page seven of the problem could you turn the microphone more towards you because the thank you the last paragraph on page seven i'll read it verbatim and maybe you can help address both your concerns section one twenty seven the dash twelve be a lawyer by statute that in order to provide emergency relief consistent with this the intent of this proclamation i hereby directed all state agencies and officers to cooperate with and extend their services materials and facilities as may be required to assist in all efforts to address the objectives of this proclamation in addressing the homeless situation so right on point right now the market is very high on one point that's money we the ricky put into whatever we need to do now and we don't have to take a bond or anything of that nature so i would i would hope you guys would be exposed in that effort also  members we will return thank you all very much