Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome back to this weekly meeting of the Community Planning and Housing Committee with Denver City Council. Your Community Planning and Housing Committee starts now.

Thank you for joining us on this cooler August 4th day. It's not 100 degrees out. We have a great meeting in front of us. We have one action item and two briefings. And before we get started, I'll go out around the room and do introductions, and I'll start to my left.

Councilwoman Lewis, Chantel Lewis, District 8. Thank you. Cashman. I need a second take.

Good afternoon. Paula Cashman, South Denver District 6. Jamie Torres, West Denver District 3.

Laura Alvarez, Lucky District 7. Amanda Sawyer, District 5.

Great. Thank you. And I think I forgot to introduce myself. Amanda Sandoval, Northwest Denver District 1. And with that, we have community planning and development on deck. And you can take it away. The floor is yours.

Good afternoon, council members. My name is Will Prince, and I'll be presenting the rezoning case for 3201 North Spear Boulevard, a request from USUA to UMX2X. Today, we'll review the requests, the location and context, the process, and the review criteria. So again, this is a request to rezone from urban single unit A to urban mixed use two stories X. The property itself there in the center of the aerial is about a little over 5,500 square feet. It's commercial triangle corner lot, and it is a two-story building built in the 1950s and qualifies as compliant business structure per Denver zoning code 114.6. Continuing on to the location and context, is located in Council District 1 with Council Member Sandoval, and is in the West Highland Statistical Neighborhood. As for the existing zoning, again, it's USUA, which is the majority of the area, as well as USUB. There is a PUD just south at the corner of 32 and Speer, and there's another UMX2X on the same block of 32nd. As for the existing context regarding land use, again, this is mixed use, but a good chunk of the area is single unit residential. There's a church across the street for public quasi-public, and there's some office commercial retail along the Spear and 32nd Hub. As for the building form and scale, you can see the subject property here on the bottom right corner. And across the street, some of the commercial car wash and office across the street along Speer and then typical single unit example to the north. Continuing on to the process. This received its informational notice in May, Planning Board in June, and there's an error on the Planning Board hearing date, but it was voted unanimously in support. And we are here today at the CPH Committee and it's tentative for its public hearing on September 14th. I always get August and September, the 8 and 9 always get me mixed up. And as of today, we have received two written comments of moderate opposition noting potential future development and one verbal comment in support noting business opportunities during the planning board hearing. And today we received a letter of support from the R&O Honey supporting this rezoning, which you should have hopefully received today. Yes. Getting my area plans mixed up. Continue on to the review criteria. We'll review all three criteria for this property, starting with consistency with adopted plans, the comprehensive plan 2040. This proposed rezoning is consistent and furthers comprehensive plan 2040 and will promote and enable commercial options or infrastructures in place in close proximity to the surrounding neighborhood. Looking at vision one, equitable and affordable and inclusive, this will meet two goals related to goal one, create a city of complete neighborhoods, as well as goal four, ensure every neighborhood is economically strong and dynamic. This will also meet vision four, economically diverse and vibrant, meeting goal three, sustain and grow Denver's local neighborhood businesses. And vision five, environmentally resistant, clean our soils and conserve our land and grow responsibly. Continue on to Blueprint Denver. This is identified as urban, which this context includes small multi-unit residential and mixed use areas, typically in one and two unit residential areas. As for future place type, is identified as local center, which has a mix of dining, entertainment, and shopping, may include some residential and employment areas, and activity levels are lower than other center types with the highest activity during evenings and weekends. The public realm is defined by lower scale buildings with active frontages. And as for future street type, Spear is identified as a mixed-use arterial, and West 32nd a residential collector. And for growth areas, it's identified as all other areas of the city with 10% job growth and 20% housing growth by 2040. In addition to the maps we just reviewed, this also meets additional blueprint policies to meet our climate and equity goals. In particular, land use and built form economics policy six, ensure Denver and its neighborhoods have a vibrant and authentic retail and hospitality marketplace, meeting the full range of experiences and goods demanded by residents and visitors. For the remaining criteria, this will meet public interest as it will provide opportunities for commercial businesses in the neighborhood and also implements our citywide plans. It is also consistent with neighborhood context zone district purpose intent meeting the regulations of UMX2X. And based on the information provided today as well as the staff report, CPD recommends forwarding the application to the full City Council, finding all review criteria have been met. We'll be available for questions and the applicant is available virtually.

Thank you. So far in the queue, we have Councilmember Cashman and Taurus. Councilmember Cashman?

No, I'm just trying to get your attention.

Thank you. It's not a huge lot for MX, so does this have to do with the uses that MX allows that allow whatever is envisioned here to...

Move forward. Yes. The primary goal of this rezoning is to allow more uses since it's a single unit residential. This will allow the building to have more commercial functions and more commercial uses.

Okay. Who's the applicant?

Cody Suderoff with Real Architecture.

Are they?

That's the representative. The property owner is 3201 North Sparrow Boulevard, LLC.

Okay. Who might be on Zoom for us?

Cody.

Cody.

Producer, will you please come up, Cody? Cody? Cody, can you hear us? Cody, if you can hear us, can you please accept the promotion? We have some questions for you on the application. And we have to accept the promotion once you receive it and you become a panelist and then we can hear you and you can speak. Can you try again, producer?

He's accepted.

Great.

Hello, are you able to hear us?

Yeah, we are now.

All right, sorry about that.

No problem. We have a question from Council Member Torres. Hi, Cody.

Hello, how are you?

Good, thank you. Can you give me some insight? Is the building being kept as is or are you planning a rebuild?

The building is being kept as is this is the intent of this application is really just to preserve the existing building and to allow it to be fully used for commercial use.

Okay, got it. Thank you so much. I don't have any other questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions? So with this rezoning, what I like about the zone district here is it's UMX 2X. And 2X, the X behind the 2, is designed to be embedded in residential uses. So you can't have a marijuana shop there. You can't have liquor stores. So it actually amends the use table. So it's more friendly to be embedded in the use table when it's all surrounded. We did another rezoning of the street from here, a dental office, that's UMX2X. So it's a compatible zone district I think was designed for these instances and I appreciate the applicant working with my community, meeting with me very early on and we just got a letter of support today as we all mentioned. All right. Seeing no other comments in the queue, do we have a motion to move 11 forward? So moved. Moved by Councilwoman Sawyer, seconded by Councilmember Cashman. Everyone all good? All right. Thank you. We'll see you at City Council.

Thank you. Thank you.

Next up, we have a briefing from host. on performance-based contracting.

No comment.

Good afternoon, council members. It's nice to see you all. I'm Polly Kyle. I'm the government affairs officer with HOST, and I'll let my other colleagues introduce themselves.

Jeff Kasitsky, deputy director at HOST.

Kelsey Anton. I am the director of shelter systems operations. Sarah Ledgerwood, data analytics supervisor.

All right, so today we are gonna go through the 2026 pilot overview for performance-based contracting. The pilot results from quarter two, quarter two of 2026 versus quarter two of 2025, some lessons learned and next steps that we have, and then we'll have time for questions and discussion after that. And I'll kick it over to Jeff.

Good afternoon. Very excited to be here and to share with you the results of our pilot that we did around performance-based contracting at our non-congregate shelters. I want to acknowledge it was a large number of people who worked on this change in this environment. Sometimes moves slowly and is a little difficult, but this was a very significant change. to our contracting. There's a lot of folks in the audience and I'm sure listening, both host staff and our providers who worked on this. I want to thank all of them for their work. As you know, most city contracts or at least host contracts are on a cost reimbursement basis. in which sometimes it feels like we're paying people to submit receipts. A lot of the review of invoices is really around, you know, making sure that all the expenses are allowable and spend a lot of time focusing on managing of spending and success tends to be measured by budget rather than by outcome. Performance based contracting is more of a pay for performance model. It allows our providers greater flexibility on how they use their funding and it allows host and the city greater accountability and greater focus on results rather than just on receipts. So, just a reminder, as you know, HOST has been doing a lot of work on reforming how we do contracting. This was just one part of that that we presented to you last year or maybe even actually two years ago, I think. This pilot launched in January of 2026. It was for seven shelter contracts with 769 available units, over $50 million in contracts over three years. and we were tracking performance using HMIS, the Homeless Management Information System, and real-time dashboards that were set up by Sarah and her team. We were asking our provider, our shelter providers, to perform on four basic metrics. One is sheltered nights, and that was 45% of their budget. 5% was on rapid resolution or also called diversion, which is making sure when people come into the shelter, the first thing we ask them is, how can we get you back to a safe place? How do we keep you out of the homelessness response system? Whether it's returning to a family member or maybe just needing to meet a roommate or some help with first and last month's rent. 40% is based on case management and 10% is getting people into the HMIS or the coordinated entry housing queue. You may also hear that referred to as one home. The purpose of this pilot was to determine whether or not tying payments to performance was a good idea for HOST, whether it reduced administrative burden on HOST and on our providers and whether or not it produced better outcomes before we expand this model citywide. We'll tell you upfront that this has absolutely been successful. It far exceeded at least my expectations in terms of the results that we shared. And I am going to turn it over to my colleague, Sarah, who will talk you through some of the data that we have around the four metrics that we just presented.

Okay. So the first metric, as Jeff mentioned, and pay for performance was the occupancy rate by shelter. And this is the percent of available rooms that are occupied each night. The target is 90%. And so to evaluate this metric, we looked at Q2 2025 compared to Q2 2026. And you see up here that six of the seven shelters saw improvements. The average combined increased from 84% to 93%, so exceeding the target goal by an increase of nine points. Metric two is the rapid resolution conversation at intake. So we're looking for the percent of households who had a rapid resolution conversation that happened when they entered the shelter. The target for this one was also 90%. And this one we could not measure compared to 2025. When we stood up performance-based contracting, we did a lot of work to implement standardization across data entry. And so this wasn't captured in a standard way in 2025. So moving forward, we will have a better way to measure and compare across years. But for 2026, going back to two, probably. For 2026, we had 97% across all the shelters. 97% of households entering that had a rapid resolution conversation at intake. The majority of shelters were at 100%. And there's been a great benefit in establishing clear standards and consistent tracking. This has been one major win for the data team. Slide three, or slide nine, the metric three is housing focused case management sessions. And the target for this is that 80% of households receive four housing focused case management sessions per month. So the numbers here show how many households received at least four in Q2 of 2025 compared to 2026. And then the percentage is out of the total households served by that shelter in a given month. Almost every shelter exceeded the target. And we saw an engagement increase, which engagement is a household received at least one housing focus case management session in a month, went from 73% to 91%. And then the number of households across all the shelters that saw at least four housing focus case management sessions went from 51% to 83%. So housing focus case management became substantially more consistent in 2026. The last metric is households with an active assessment in the coordinated entry queue. The target for this one was 90%. And the goal is that at least 90% of households in the shelter are active on the coordinated entry queue every month. Active means they completed an assessment within the last year or it has been refreshed in the last year. And looking at the numbers on the table, a household can be counted up to three times if they were active every month. of the quarter. So every shelter improved significantly between 2025 and 2026 and providers more than doubled the number of households actively positioned for housing opportunities through coordinated entry.

Moving on to the next slide. I'm going to give an overview of how the shelter system is performing beyond just the four metrics. And just a reminder from our last conversation, we set these metrics to improve the work that our shelter providers were doing around things that they have control over. They don't have access necessarily to housing exits. And as you know, the housing exits that Host has available to us has decreased significantly between 2025 and 2026 with the loss of housing authority vouchers, as well as the loss of ARPA funding that was covering some of our rapid rehousing. So despite the fact that our providers really did an outstanding job, the housing outcomes that we're seeing are somewhat mixed, although in some ways a really good indicator of the success of this program. First of all, you'll see that we had an 8% increase in the number of people served in our shelters during one quarter. And again, we're only looking at Q2 of 2025 compared to 2026. The number of people who exited the shelter for any reason at all stayed basically the same, about a quarter of the shelter guests in Q2 of 2026 left. The one number that is concerning is that the length of stay in shelters went from 166 days in Q2 of 2025 to 229 days. And we dug a little deeper into that, of course, because that is of concern to us. And what we're seeing, it's not necessarily that there are a group of people who have been in the shelter for a long period of time. Every year that they're there or every month they're there, that number goes up by 30 days. So it's kind of the long-term shelter stayers are sort of pulling that number up more than it is that we have more and more people staying for a longer and longer period of time. I'll talk a little bit about how we're going to work to address that in 2027. And then, of course, the question is always, you know, where the folks go. I hope that this, we've had this discussion. This will be my third time presenting this sort of data to you. Hopefully, we got the right level of information that you all have requested over time. And again, this is comparing Q2 25 to 26. We saw really no change in the percentage of people who exited to permanent or stable housing. It's broken down by provider, but the total is 45% of the guests who exited the shelter went to permanent housing in both years. I consider that a small win in the fact that we had fewer housing resources available to us, but we managed to keep the number relatively steady. I believe that is due to the increase in rapid resolution. So more and more people are finding their way out of housing with one-time assistance because our shelter providers have been that much more intentional around providing that intervention. Everything else has generally stayed the same. Folks who went into temporary housing, either other shelters or institutions like treatments or short-term care, 12 and 13 percent. Folks who exited the shelters unhoused went from 19 to 23, just an increase of 12 people. I think the reason that that is, is because the number of unknowns went down by the same percentage. I think our providers are also getting better at collecting information. So we went from 23% of our guests leaving and us not knowing to where to 17%. And deaths increased by two people or 2%. I think these are also really good indicators here. We saw a 22% reduction in 911 calls to our shelters, a 50% reduction in critical incident reports. and we have no data. And Councilwoman Lewis, I wanna credit you for, I think this was our first meeting about creating a better tool for gathering customer satisfaction information. We've got this up and running, but we have no data. to compare this to. We saw 72% of our clients are on the scale of one to five are picking four or five, which is what counts as satisfied. Three is just kind of meh. We're not counting that as satisfied. So the national standard for this is around 70%. So we're slightly above the average there. I have no data but anecdotally based on the number of complaints that I receive on any given month, this is greatly improved from what it was a year ago but unfortunately nothing to compare it to. And then lastly, this is a spending data. We would expect to see our providers spending 25% of their budgets on any given quarter, you'll see they're spending an average of 32%. That doesn't mean they're going to get paid more at the end of the year. It just means that they are all achieving their goals or actually they're all exceeding their goals and they're all carefully managing their funds. So if they fully spend down by November, you know, they'll have enough money to keep running the shelter in December. And I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Kelsey, about what we think we've learned through this process.

Yeah, so lessons learned, feedback that we've received from providers in the field, so the providers who are doing this work, many folks who have been doing it for a long time and have seen kind of this transition to performance-based and a more intent focus on that case management and relationship building in a different capacity. It's given a much stronger vibe for teamwork, and I think that goes from the host team back to providers. There's a lot more creative discussions happening around How can we support this person in a different way? What are we doing here? It's given different levels of accountability, not just from host to provider, but in the provider space themselves. We're hearing feedback from supervisors that it's giving them a lot of accountability for their case managers, that there's finally something defined for a goal for them to reach. And also, how does case management look from our perspective? So that has been really cool to hear their thoughts on that. And then it's also given more time for those services. So instead of I'm running the shelter, I'm spending three hours trying to compile all my receipts and all my documentation to provide invoicing, I now can spend that really deeply focused with my case managers. I can give more training. I can be on the floor more. I can do a lot of different things than I used to be able to do. So it really gives a lot more flexible time back to the programs themselves and creates that depth in programs. And so what that has done is that's changed behavior and culture, and I think that was the big shift we really wanted to see, especially really honing in on the relationship building and holding space for appropriate case management with folks that if we could slow it down on the front end, can we then take that into programs and be less reactionary, be a little bit less crisis-oriented? in crisis when crisis happens, but how can we slow it down and be with our folks and work through housing? And especially as we're talking about less housing resources on the table, trying to get more creative in that. The measurement has improved performance, so we're seeing occupancy stay at appropriate levels, service engagement at really high levels. the coordinate entry participation and folks so that they can connect to any resources that they have. We're seeing all of that increase over that time period so that's been really amazing to see. We already talked about the invoicing but it provides that flexibility and it's giving staff, host staff that time to like focus also on what do we need to do to support our providers in a different space. So providers are really the big thing. It allows them to have more quality services, more quality time in their programs, building out that programming and case management. And it lets hosts kind of focus on what needs to happen next and how can host be that support for the provider. And then the 2027 implementation plan. So we are going to expand the performance-based contracting. We will now have our family non-congregate shelters, all of them, be a part of the performance base. So that's adding the Theodora with VOA, the Crossing with Denver Rescue Mission. And then we will also be doing our three city-owned congregates. So 48th Men's, 48th Women's, and Crossroads Congregate Shelter will all be included in the mix for next year. This will also help us enhance the model, so with more collaboration from current providers, who are those new folks that we're bringing in, kind of going back and forth in our relationship with them. It's also strengthening our provider training, having our implementation of our shelter training program, making sure that they are connected to what they need to be connected to, has been really helpful. It's also expanding those rapid resolution efforts, like Jeff said on the front end, like how are we also seeing this through, and I think how do we also bring rapid resolution and diversion into the conversation at all stages of somebody's shelter stay. I think things happen and situations change all the time with relationship or connection to other permanent connections is really important to see. And that lets us focus more on our long-term shelter stayers so we can have more targeted case management and outreach to those folks.

Thank you. And I'm just going to wrap it up by talking a little bit more specifically about what we're going to do in 2027. We're obviously very pleased with the results of this and are going to expand it, but for host, you know, Good enough is never good enough. We're always going to be trying to do better for our clients and for our community. So we are going to make some changes based on some of the things that we learned. One is the 90% occupancy rate was based on sort of an estimate of how many The whole setup was kind of based on an estimate of how many units are going to be available on any given month at a building. We are going to sort of hone in. We used an 85% of all units are going to be available and online. We're gonna be more specific across each building and just hone in a little bit more to make sure that we're getting as many units as we can online. And that 90% rate will be a little bit harder for some of our providers, but that's kinda what we want. We wanna make sure that there's more units full all the time. Rapid resolution, this is really a process measure. A lot of these are really process measures, right? 90% of the guests receive a rapid resolution at intake. We are really pleased with the results, but we want to see better results, especially in a shrinking housing voucher and rapid rehousing environment. So we are actually going to replace this with a success measure, meaning that 5% of guests served in a given year will receive a rapid resolution, a successful rapid resolution exit. Hopefully it will be more than that. But rather than just encouraging that this happens at intake, which we will still require outside of this, these metrics, we're going to expect to see actual results. Now you all might be thinking like 5%, that's like not very ambitious, Jeff. It actually is quite ambitious. We, the folks who are in our shelter system, who stay in our non-congregate shelter system are, you know, have some of the most experiences with trauma and some of the you know, have had some of the most challenges of any of our neighbors here in Denver. And to be able to exit homelessness without any real support is a big challenge for folks. Average to see at least like two or three percent. Five percent is definitely a push goal, but I actually think our providers are going to do better than that. And of course we can adjust this anytime we think that it's not working. The housing focus case management goal was great with the engagement, but one of our concerns are, how do we know about the quality of the engagement? So we are defining a little bit more what it means for this to be successful. It has to be at least a 15 minute engagement. But the main thing is we're requiring documented case notes that we can look at to see actually what happened. And we will go back and audit to see, was this a quality interaction, or was this just somebody clicking a button? And then we're also gonna add medical and behavioral health referrals, employment referrals, and all rapid resolution, as well as community-wide housing resource events to count as case management. We're broadening a little bit based on the feedback that we got from our clients, our providers, who feel these interventions are key to people being able to get housed, so we have moved on. And with coordinated entry, we're not making any changes at all. And then last slide is for our congregate shelters, it's a little bit different, right? Folks, the number of people who come and go from our congregate shelters is much, much higher. We still expect to see a 90% occupancy rate. We still expect the rapid resolution goal to be the same. But for case management, we are going to hone it in on the number of case managers they have. Our goal, the four encounters per, per household for non-congregate is based on a case management to client ratio of one case manager for every 30 clients. It's a little bit more all over the place for our congregate shelters, so we just expect that each case manager will have 25 encounters a week or 100 encounters a month. So it will be based on the staff resources that they have available to them. And the coordinated entry metric is going to be based on clients who are at those shelters for 45 days or longer, which is about 45% of the guests. So it'll roughly be, you know, we'll expect that 45% of the shelter guests have a coordinated entry assessment as opposed to 90 because a client who's only there for two or three days, it's not realistic to expect that they're going to be able to sit down and do a, you know, at least an hour long assessment. So those are our plans for 2027.

Thank you. That's all, but we have time for questions and discussion and anything else that you would like to talk about with the pilot and next year's plans.

Thank you. First up in the queue, we have Council Member Rampe. That is followed by Councilwoman Tars.

Thank you, Council Chair, Committee Chair. Thank you all for this. This is exciting. I think I've heard and seen some benefits of this, definitely. I understand that we aren't tracking access to housing because we don't have the housing resources available, but I think that's what we would ultimately... you know, like to see and what I think that when I talk to constituents, what they hope is that people are moving through these systems and into housing. How are you working with those to help get more access to housing?

Sure. And just to clarify, I'm sorry if we weren't clear, we are tracking that data. And I think that's one of the previous slides, but... tracking but not using it as performance yes we haven't we're not holding the providers accountable for that because you you know should hold host accountable for that we're the ones who have the access to those resources not the shelter providers I think the two things that we're doing one is by kind of making the rapid resolution more of a outcomes focused goal as opposed to a process goal. We're hoping that will drive more successful rapid and we're also going to be doing a lot of more training. around rapid resolution and building something into our HMIS system that will help support a case manager walk through this process a little bit more easily. So we're really going to put a heavy emphasis on that intervention. Rapid resolution, you know, maximum cost there is $5,000 per family. It could be as little as $100. Rapid rehousing can cost anywhere from $25,000 to $40,000 a household. you know, permanent housing voucher in the average life of a, not the life, the average stay of a client in a voucher or in a PSH is going to cost closer to a quarter of a million dollars. So in these, you know, difficult budget times, we're really going to focus on, you know, the least expensive intervention to try to generate more exits. But we also are going to be focusing on the quality of the housing the case management encounters as I spoke about. But two other things that aren't necessarily relevant to this presentation. One is we are gonna start having a series of housing fairs at our shelters with our Housing Opportunities Division to try to help folks get into vacant affordable units and vacant both that are controlled by hosts but also by Denver Housing Authority and by Community Solutions. So really trying to be more intentional And then also you'll be seeing a series of amendments to our contracts already in advance for clogging up your docket. But we do have some additional funding for more rapid resolution for the second half of the year. So we're really excited about the ability to identify those resources and quickly deploy them towards additional rapid rehousing dollars. So I would expect these numbers are going to go up in Q3 and definitely in Q4.

Great. And I think what I would like to see, and I know there was an initiative, I don't know if it was last year or the year before, around veteran homelessness, for example, and the resources that are available for that group are different than other groups. And so I would like to see in these metrics, is it certain populations that are leaving to go to homelessness? Is it certain populations that are able to get into housing because of those resources for veterans? I mean, about the family homelessness, are there singles? And I would like to just see the different individuals that are experiencing homelessness. How are they, is there a trend? in those that is different than others, especially amongst the family shelter and families being able to exit homelessness. I think the one thing I also see missing here is just the relationship with the community, the good neighbor agreements, the 311 complaints. I see La Paz did have double the 911 calls this year as last year, but I would say the relationship has been up and down. The relationship with community, it gets better and then it gets worse. that we should be that mediator in between that's helping build that relationship and monitoring the satisfaction also of the neighbors of that relationship. And so I'm curious in the future if that could be something that's measured, like how well is the provider being a good neighbor?

Sure. Let me respond to the first one first. Be happy to get the data on breakdown by, you know, we can do it both by demographics, by age, by characteristic, family, chronic homelessness, vets. I'd like to provide that to you all, not based on shelter exits, but based on the overall system, if that's okay. Like all housing exits out of the system and how are they trending? Because again, they're not necessarily the responsibility of the shelter provider. They're an important part of a client's journey. But I think it would be better to look at system-wide, because we also have folks who are exiting right from the streets into housing and wouldn't want to miss that data. And as far as the relationships with the community, I think we would, I think that's an excellent point. I think we want to think about that a little bit harder and how we would measure that. I do want to point out that in all of our contracts now provider, there is a section on community relations and expectations that are set with our providers. We do, you know, These aren't the only things that we measure our providers when we're monitoring them. It's not only those four metrics. That's just the basis for payment. We are monitoring everything in our program standards and there is a section on that. But we can think about how we might be able to, I don't know, dataize, that's not a word, but how to

come up with a measurable uh metric for that i appreciate that i think um there's it just feels like sometimes there's effort and sometimes there's not depending on how things are going and sometimes the neighbors have simple requests like can they have a smoking area so they're not coming over into my home like front yard and smoking and things of that nature and so I would hope we could also be the partner in that I think just in the experience of the site in my district I don't feel like the neighbors have felt like we have been that partner I feel like it is us versus them. And I would like it to feel more like us all working together and us as a city coming in to really help bridge the gap. And that's my hope for the next year that we have on that contract is how can we continue to make it feel like a community, not like there's this separate community inside of our community.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, committee chair. Thank you. Councilman Torres followed by Councilman Soria.

Thank you so much. You did a great job, I think, summarizing what are we taking away from the improvements. And I'm glad to hear that providers are talking to you about, like, here's what's making a difference or here's what this is freeing up my time to do. I think that's exactly what I was going to ask about. For the active housing assessment, every shelter improved. more than doubled individuals positioned for coordinated entry. Is that where we pull for permanent supportive housing placements?

Yeah, for the most part, not all will go through coordinated entry, but that is the bulk in our community, yes.

Okay. And those that get placed in PSH, how much, you said not all come from coordinated entry, like what is that, how does that break up?

I don't know if I have that answer. I can respond to that.

Okay, great. Yeah, so it's broken down in a couple of different ways. So anything that's funded by the federal government, including the VA, has to go through coordinated entry. If it's locally funded, and if it's state funded, it has to go through coordinated entry. If it's locally funded, 50%. Go through coordinated entry and 50% are determined by our providers. Probably this is a discussion for another day, but it's definitely something we are looking at. I think the system could use a lot of work and we are thinking and working on improving it. One of the good things about making sure 100% of the people are in that system is that it actually shows the demands. When we're only seeing 35% of the clients in the queue for housing, it greatly deflates the, like, oh, it's not that bad. But this has really helped get a much better picture of what the demand is for housing exits.

That's super helpful. I've got a permanent supportive housing location opening up in district 3. They're being really intentional about making the space accessible to and welcoming for American Indians who might be experiencing homelessness. Um, I'll be really interested in how those get filled. Um, so 1 true to their intention, but also that they're coming from, uh, Denver, uh, coordinated entry services. That's super important to me is I. We've got several in district 3, but I don't know how many others are being built throughout the city and we're not keeping up with, I think what we need when it comes to development and would like to see how or if we're playing a role in improving. I think that development, but that's like, um. a release valve for where you're trying to get people positioned up to actually accept permanent housing, but then that housing is actually available. So I hope to know more about that in the future.

I would love to meet with you separately to talk about that specific project and how we can leverage that 50% that's not going through coordinated entry in order to meet a specific demand that the provider and the community has identified.

Okay. Thank you. The only other question that I have is slide 14 references the target budget and where folks are at. They're all a little bit over 25%. So how do you keep them kind of within budget?

Well, they need to keep themselves within budget. We're paying them based on the metrics. So say a provider like spent down the value of the contract in November, then that would be their last payment that they receive. They cannot exceed the total value of the contract. But all of our providers, and we've had a lot of training about this. We had a performance-based contracting conference last December where they're still managing against their own budget. So they need to be watching that to make sure that they're not you know, overspending because the revenue is higher than their expenses were. It's not an invitation to go, you know, but I'm sure all of our providers are, I know that all of our providers are being very responsible around this so that they, you know, don't run into trouble in November or December.

Okay. All right. Okay. I'll look forward to how that shakes out. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up we have Councilman Sawyer by Councilmember Cashmere. Thanks Madam Chair.

Thanks you guys. This is super interesting. Just a couple of data questions. Slide nine. There are two, Stone Creek and Tamarack that I don't understand, right? So, and they do different things. So for Stone Creek, there's actually an uptick in the number, but the percentage is lower in 2026. And then in Tamarack, there's an uptick in the percentage, but the number is lower in 2026. So can you just explain to me what's going on there?

Yeah, I don't have the numbers in front of me like to, and I can verify when I get back. But the denominator for these is based on the number of households who were served in that month, which means that if, you know, four households leave and then four new enter, that's eight. All eight of those are counted in the denominator. And so, um, it will mean that the percents look different because the denominator is different every month. And, um, we, we talked with this a lot with the providers as we were going through it. Part of that is because we have a little bit of a buffer added in, you know, the targets 80%, it's not a hundred percent. And so, um, because a lot of them are eager to get close to a hundred percent. And so it can be impossible to actually hit a hundred percent if someone exits on day one, because they can't get more than one a day.

Right. Got it. Okay. Um, so based on that explanation of what's going on with these numbers, is that like, did you, were you able to glean anything about changing the performance based contracting metrics to, I don't want to say make more sense cause that's not what I mean, but like to, to fit our goals better.

Yeah, I mean, metric three has led to like hours and hours of discussion to try to figure this out. Where we landed was essentially focusing on the quality of the engagement rather than changing the metric and checking notes and providing more training and setting expectations rather than trying to mess with the numbers that seem to be where the demand is. I think the important thing for us is the 73%. I mean, honestly, it's the engagement number up top is that, you know, and I will tell you that in 2024, that 73% was probably closer to 60%. So, you know, we are seeing almost every client engaging in services in our shelters and that's really the important thing here. and then, you know, trying to improve the quality of those engagements as sort of the 2027. But if you have any ideas, we really could not come up with, and part of the challenge is, and as Councilwoman, Alvidrez, you know, mentioned we really would love it if it was like how many people you help exit, but we just haven't found a fair way to make that so given the kind of volatile nature of the housing resources.

That's not really the nature of the system. Yeah. Okay. Slide 13. I'm curious what conversations you've had or plans you have in place to improve the shelters that are receiving lower numbers of satisfaction? Because I wouldn't get on a plane that has a 66% success rate for landing. What is the plan moving forward?

Thank you for that question. We're really excited to have this data. It's a new thing for us. The system that we use actually provides clients, not only are they able to say how satisfied they are, there's also a lot of narrative information in there and there's an AI product that will glean from that so we can start to see trends. It also will flag complaints as like a priority complaint. What we are doing is, well, first of all, the providers are all expected to be in their contracts, are expected to be at 70% or higher. If they're not, we will issue a finding during our monitoring visit with expected changes in whatever we think is driving the complaints. But we also are going to start track. We have a lot of channels through which we receive feedback. Through this system, through emails, through your offices, through HRCP complaints, through DPHE complaints. We are setting up a system to track all of those, including complaints that are coming out of the customer satisfaction system. And then our program officers will be expected to come up with a resolution for every complaint that comes through. Or say that, you know, no, this you know, this didn't happen based on my investigation. So we are trying to get better at, I think our program officers do a pretty good job, but we want to be a lot more intentional about using this data, including the complaints that come through the Pulse for Good system, the customer satisfaction system to expect, you know, hey, the food on Thursday was horrible. It was barely edible. Like we will go in and find out like why that happened and talk to chef or talk to the vendor and make sure they're aware. And the providers are also receiving the same information we're receiving. and we're hoping that they're gonna be more proactive moving forward and not waiting for us to call them out, but they're gonna try to solve it themselves.

Okay, I really appreciate that, and I think, you know, We all have customer satisfaction, right? You always have to take customer satisfaction with a grain of salt because there are people with axes to grind or who feel like they have been treated unfairly or whatever and they will give a really bad review. So in terms of the metrics piece, like it's really hard. It's really subjective, I guess. But I'm just kind of curious of, you know, what the plan was.

Once we have a year or so of data, we also will be able to compare providers against shelters against each other and also look at trends over time. Like why did you go from a 80% satisfaction rate to a 55% satisfaction rate?

That'll be a lot more helpful, I think. Okay, really appreciate that. Just last question in the discussion about moving on to different contractors or different types of sheltering, right? We have buckets of sheltering, we have family sheltering, we have congregate sheltering, we have non-congregate sheltering. I understand the desire to move to performance-based contracting with all of our different kinds of shelter providers because of the success that we see through this pilot program. And I think that that's really great, but that's not like the nature of the system is such that there's a reason they're in different buckets, right? Because family sheltering is very, very different from congregate sheltering, which is very, very different from non-congregate sheltering. Are you sure that with only one pilot project and less than a year under our belt, it is the right decision to move forward with performance-based contracting for other buckets of types of sheltering at this time?

Yes, and we are not, there's a bunch of, shelters that we're not moving in that direction in. We are very confident in what we selected makes sense. There are different types of programs where it just either doesn't make sense or we haven't figured it out yet or maybe we want to look at a fee-for-service model, but we're not planning to move 100% of our contracts to a performance-based model. I'd like to see more than half of our contracts of all types, whether it's shelter or housing, move in this direction, but we're not jumping in, like, you know, into the deep end. This next move is fairly iterative. We're, you know, adding, I think, five or six more contracts. Yeah, we have, like, 120 contracts at host. A lot now.

I think that's great. I think, you know, this has clearly been successful and that is fantastic. There's clearly improvement that needs to be made or clarification that needs to be made based on the, because it was a pilot program, so that's totally realistic. But I just, I want to make sure that we get it tight and get it right before we start expanding it to, because you guys do have a ton of contracts. So before you expand it to everybody. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, Kyle. Council, Council Member Cashman, followed by President Romero-Campbell.

Thank you, Committee Chair. My question was answered.

Okay, thank you.

President Romero-Campbell. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for this presentation. I just want to start with, I thank you for adding the Tamarack as part of the dashboard. It's nice to be able to see, and I know during this pilot, what will be Good moving forward is to be able to have the consistency of being able to see the same data year after year or quarter after quarter. So just the consistency of it for us to be able, well for me, let me say me, to be able to track it over time I think is, I like the format. I do have a question about slide 13. Slide 13 is super popular. And you really touched on a few things, Councilmember Sawyer and also Councilmember Alvidrez. One of the things that I wanted to just, The data that's collected, and I know that you have more information behind, not on this page, but the 911 calls, I think it has, my office is directly across from the Tamarack Shelter, and I know that the calls that are received are not all conflict calls. They're calls because of a lack of consistent healthcare. And we're also dealing with a lot of children under the age of 18. And so I know I just would be interested in getting more, you know, qualitative data behind what the 911 calls are, as well as what the incidents are or what constitutes an incident. For me, that would be really helpful as I'm thinking about how, I think it was mentioned earlier, the relationship with what's happening inside the shelter, but also what's happening outside of the shelter. And then my question around the satisfaction, again, do you have additional data that tells us like, What the dissatisfaction is around or what the satisfaction, you know, what are people really liking? If this is aggregate, maybe they really like the food, but they don't like, you know, the play area or whatever. So much data.

Yes. So much. It's a really great system that we're using. So. Like, if you have more specific questions, I'd be happy to, you know, share. I mean, I could share a report just about the Tamarack with you if you'd like to see that.

Yeah, that would be great if we can connect offline specifically about the Tamarack. And then there was one other—hold on, I've got to look at my questions. Okay, so satisfaction goal, also interested, do you have a goal for what Of what you're looking for for satisfaction, like, 70% is the minimum expectation. Is that just a national standard or is that what is across?

It's just, it's just based on what's seen nationally. Um, it's not, it's not a science. Um, and I also will be honest. I got. didn't think we were going to get to above 70% this time around. I was very pleasantly surprised and some of our providers are doing a really amazing job around this. But, yeah, I think we'll refine it over time as we start to see, you know, more trends. I don't think we would ever go lower than 70%, but, you know, maybe we'll be able to push it up.

Okay. And then just digging down a little bit deeper on slide 11, the length of stay and specifically around like the Tamarack shelter, it looks as though we're closer to 10 months. Can you talk a little bit more about that of what you're seeing or? Oh, yeah.

I mean, specifically, for some reason, we all seem to know the slide numbers and I don't have them written down. Yeah, so look at the Tamarack is like a really significant jump. I think part of that is due to, you know, some of the families at the Tamarack, you know, just don't have the same access to employment opportunities or other housing opportunities. And, but we are, and I think I failed to, actually, I completely failed to mention this. that one of the things that we're doing with some of the new housing resources that we have is we are pulling a list of all shelter stayers who have been in the system at any shelter, not just these, 200 days or longer. And we are going to do targeted outreach to those clients and try to get them connected to housing because Clearly they need additional assistance. We need to get creative and figure things out with them. But our expectation is no more than 180 days. So if you think about when you get close to twice that, that's like an entire, that's one, and I'm not at all blaming the families when I say this, but it's, you know, one family is kind of taking two slots in what should be two slots in a year period of time. So host needs to do a better job of supporting them and our shelter providers and finding some solutions. So that's going to be a big part of our effort the second half of 2026.

Just a final thought and I don't expect you to have an answer because I think this is a this is a big nut to crack but Specifically for family sheltering and thinking about what those performance based outcomes are the relationship for Again, if you have children under the age of 18, are they enrolled in school? Is there some consistency for their for their schooling and their connection back to, and I know it's a tough one, we've talked about it, but I think that those are kind of data points that need to be connected when we think about how young people, how children are having some consistency within a very inconsistent or a very turbulent time trying to settle and be able to continue that learning that happens.

Thank you for that feedback. And in fact, our family providers have requested that we add a fifth metric related to the services that they provide to families. I cannot promise we'll be able to do that in the beginning of 2027, but that's some good food for thought. We'd have to partner with the school districts and have a data sharing agreement with them in order to do that. But that would be an excellent metric to to include, but we are in discussion with our family providers on what the fifth metric would be like.

Especially when you say length of stay, 10 months, that's a school year. And when you're six and you're seven and you're 10, that's a full academic year. So just wanted to highlight that. Thank you, and I look forward and willing to partner with you in any way that I can around that.

Thank you very much. Yeah, we should probably talk about the data sharing agreement with DPS. I also just want to add that the best practices around performance-based contracting is no more than five metrics, so we will probably eventually add a fifth metric. across all the providers we're just not sure what that's going to be yet and are still kind of letting this play out to see what what's the right um we had a lot of discussion about that and decided to leave it at four this year so far thank you thank you madam chair thank you councilman lewis thank you

I actually have a few questions. The first one, I'll start on slide 11, where you all talk about exits to shelter. I wonder if there is, if you all have had any discussion about inpatient care, respite care, like are people exiting in those potentially and where does that show up?

That shows up under temporary. So the... It's on slide 12 from the exits.

Shelter by destination.

Yeah. So that shows up under temporary. These are either folks who exit to another shelter because it's just not working out for them where they are. Most of these are going to be exits to other institutions like respite care, et cetera.

Thank you. I really appreciate that. And then I wanted to ask about the length of stay because for me, seeing the 167 to 190 to 200 to 239 actually tells me a different story, which is the results of warehousing people and not giving them the resources that they actually need. And that's a conversation I think we've been having for quite some time, whether that be employment opportunities and resources of that nature. And I think that has been missing comprehensively from this conversation about like, how do we give folks the resources that they need in order for them to be able to thrive and not simply having the performance metric or the metric of success be that you've taken them from the streets into one of our shelters. But like, what do we do after that?

Yeah, I mean, I think those are, I think we've made a couple of adjustments to try to address that next year. Again, the folks who are in, especially our non, I'm interested to see what happens in our congregate shelter because the folks who are in our non-congregate shelter tend to be folks with, you know, really high barriers to success. And that is, you know, partly why we also added like additional touch points with the clients around employment services and referrals to behavioral health. I think those services are happening at the shelters and the discussions, the fact that our, I mean, I also want to say this is pretty new. It's only been going on for six months and relationships need to get built with case managers. I do expect to see better outcomes in the second half of the year, not just because we'll have more housing resources, but because you know, we're going from like 70% of our clients having a relationship with the case manager to almost 100% of our clients. And I think that hopefully will make a difference. But we're still learning and there's, you know, there's more to figure out. But we're so far, you know, really happy with the increased engagement and, you know, but time will tell if it's going to produce better outcomes.

Yeah, there might be some consideration around that being one of the five in terms of success. The second question I had for you all is on slide 13, the 911 calls versus incident report. Tell me the difference between the two of those.

You know, 911 calls and we don't get the data, but I can ask for it. I just get data with the numbers, not broken out. This is, I get a monthly report that just shows for every address where there's a shelter, these and all of our shelters, how many 911 calls are coming in compared to the last year. You know, those are going to be somebody picking up the phone to make that call. Incident reports to use a property management saying are fire, flood, or blood. You know, if there's a major event at the shelter that we need to know about, you know, significant act of violence, fire in the building. Our most common is unfortunately sprinkler heads breaking and flooding a stack of units. But that's what those are.

Thank you so much. And then still on this same slide, the guest satisfaction, it was my understanding that we were collecting that, that we had contracts in place and maybe this is a question for Cole because he's here, that we were collecting that data and we had been collecting that resident feedback data for some time.

Hey there, Cole Chandler, Executive Director of the Department of Housing and Stability. Jeff and his team worked to implement that through the kiosks and the data he shared is accurate. So this is the first year that we have that to officially report on.

When did you all implement that? Because my understanding is that it was in 2024.

I'll defer to Jeff and the team on that. No, we didn't start until January 1st, 2026. Very new. It's very new, yep.

That's disappointing. I'll have to have a conversation with you, Cole, offline. Okay. Thank you. The next question that I had for you all is actually on this, let's see, in the lessons learned. I just have some concerns regarding the, like, coming for success, the referral to, like, behavioral and medical, because that's where we were Previously, like, the conversation around the performance based contracting came directly from my advocacy and my concern and how the contracts were structured where you just had, like, within the contract referral to employment referral to payroll or medical health. And you can just do 100% across the board. And so I worry about us kind of going backwards in that direction where that's not. You can say you referred 100% of the time to a specific job, but that doesn't mean that that person either got the job or retained in the role. And so how are you all thinking about that in terms of that being included moving forward?

It's definitely something we have spoken a lot about. And there's a number of ways to do this. Some of the conversation has been around successful referral to X, Y, or Z service. Another has been increase in income. We are tracking now increase in income. Part of the problem is our providers, it's not a required field, and we can't make it a required field, but starting in 2027, it is our expectation that during an intake and at an exit that that information is collected. We can't click the button on the HMIS system that will make it a required field, but we are going to be really clear with our providers. So we're only getting data, I don't remember Sarah, but I'd say maybe 10% of the clients I have income data on. And then, so hopefully I'll have better data for you in a year or so on that. But we're still talking to our providers about it, still thinking about what makes sense. I'm partial, but it's just my one person's opinion is around like a successful referral. Like I made a referral to behavioral health and then that client comes back and says, hey, I now have a primary provider for my mental health needs. That's a successful referral. Trying to figure out how to track that is what is some of the challenge. But I think we're going to evolve in that direction as we continue to get better at doing this.

I appreciate that. And I know that's not easy. I just want to make sure that we're like setting both our case managers as well as hosts and the folks that they're serving up for success. And then my final question is on the page eight. And it says that you all had a 97% adoption rate. Who didn't adopt?

Yeah, I mean I think that the goal is that this happens within, I mean actually it's not the goal, it is the goal, it's that part of the metric has to happen within the first week of somebody moving in. I see really one of our providers has not hit that numbers, one of our smaller providers with fewer case managers. I think part of the problem with the smaller providers, if you only have one or two case managers on staff and they're both out sick the day somebody does their intake, maybe that's not gonna happen.

So it's not a refusal, it's just that they haven't met the mark yet.

I think that's right. And then the other one that's not at almost 100% is Stone Creek. That is because we transferred a lot of the clients from Comfort Inn to Stone Creek as we closed Comfort Inn and it was pretty chaotic. I have to say this, the whole closure and the changing of providers. Thank you so much for the presentation.

I know we have Urban Alchemy. Can you read your question? Well, it was just going to be that can you get us what the incident is? Exactly. That's all. Thank you.

Yeah, we just gave you a copy of the incident report that explains when it gets filled out.

Thank you. Sure. You could send that to all the committee members. That'd be great. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and the good information. Next up, we have Urban Alchemy. We might have to stay a little bit over because there's only 15 minutes. This is an important presentation. All right, if you'll introduce yourself, the floor is yours.

Good afternoon, everyone. Tyler, practitioner, director of operations, but blessed to have the current role of director of operations here in Denver. I'll hand it over to Carrie.

Carrie Bell, practitioner always, deputy director of operations in Denver.

And Dr. Lena Miller, CEO and co-founder of Urban Health.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys. So we just wanted to give you an overview of what we've been doing since we arrived here in Denver. So we assumed operations of the Aspen, and we had the care team project January 1st, 2026. So just an overview of the first six months. Just to give you a background on us, our philosophy, Urban Alchemy transforms people and places by employing the unique talents of returning citizens to heal communities using methods rooted in love, respect, and science. I'd like to say that Over 90% of our employees were just as impacted or had lived experience, all from Denver. Here at Urban Alchemy, we truly believe that individuals that have lived experience and went through the justice system and or has a superpower, heightened emotional intelligence, which allows us to go into these fields and get these results. I'll go to the next slide. As you can see, these are our contractual obligations. As you can see on the left, we have host. And then you can see our actuals on the right. We exceeded in every single one. Go on to the next slide. Services that we do offer at the Aspen, just something that we noticed when we got there, there wasn't that many services. And so we want to take the holistic approach. We understand that it's not a one size fits all for our guests. And so we're not just going to tell our guests to go out into the community. We're going to bring the services to them because we understand traveling can be a barrier. So as you can see, we have housing navigation, care coordination. You guys can read the rest. Substance use treatment, personalized support for long-term stability. Our community partnerships, our local community partnerships, we can't solve this problem. We understand it takes a community. So we actively go out into the community, team up with local organizations that offer services that we may not have. One of the big things that we do have at Urban Alchemy is that if we don't know, we know. If a guest comes with us and we don't have the services here, we're going to do our best to go out into the community and find their services and bring that service to them. So as you can see, we have quite a bit of organizations that do come to the Aspen. I put and more at the bottom because we're missing some too, and it couldn't fit on the page. So operational changes to the Aspen. So if you guys have been in the Quebec area, I'm hoping that you guys see a visible difference. I know when we assumed operations, there's a lot of our unsheltered loved ones and our guests hanging out in the front. We wanted to change that. When we did our walkthrough, Carrie and myself, We didn't feel a sense of community. And that was something that we wanted to bring in. But then also when it comes to community, obviously when we're talking about love, it comes to a sense of safety. We did hear about the rumors before. And so what we did just operationally is we assigned two practitioners to each floor. There's five floors at the Aspen. We have one on each corner. And then also... I wouldn't say that we restricted the guests, their key access to their rooms, but our practitioners are opening up the door for our guests. And what that does, it creates a sense of community, a sense of safety, and that allows us to identify certain situations before they escalate. I can talk about a little bit of our data that I didn't put right here, is that when we assumed operations, the guests told us, get ready, have your running shoes, because there's one to two overdose incidents that happen every single day. Since we assumed operations, I would like that number to be zero, and we're working towards that, but we have only had seven overdose incidents, all resulting in reversals. The other big thing on having two practitioners on each floor, It allows us to really know our guests. I ask each practitioner to address each guest by their first name. Most beautiful word an individual can hear. And so by addressing the individual by their first name, that opens up the door for conversations. And then when we open up those doors for conversations, we are able to build those trusts. And so let's say we have one of our guests that are not feeling well. and they're walking down the hallways, our guest addresses them by the first name. I'm going to use you, Paul. This is Councilmember Paul. Hey, Paul, are you doing all right? Says yes, no. And then, obviously, our team is trained in de-escalation and then also just watching out for safety risks. So if our practitioners identify Paul not feeling well, hey, Paul, everything's OK? Yes, everything's good. Hey, Paul, is it OK if I come back in 30 minutes just to check on you? And so that's been a beautiful thing on how we're able to keep those numbers down and keep violence down at this place. The other big thing that we did did increase is we got organizations that have mental health clinicians that come in. We have individuals that do have with high acuity. We understand that we could be the last stop, and we're not going to put anyone out, even if they jeopardize the safety of the building. We understand that it comes from something that traumatic happened in their past. We did team up with an organization outside that has 15 of our individuals with high acuity on their caseload. And so we're serving and we're not kicking anyone out. We wanna do our best to make sure that we provide everything that they need. And if you're just asking how we do it, I wish I can give you like some secret answer and we love on people. It's simple, man. Our interpersonal relationships with individuals come from the same background. We use a quote from Dr. Millian and our co-founder, man, people that are closest to the problem are the closest to the solution. So we understand our people and we've been able to receive great results. by just building that authentic relationship, have those conversations where they feel a part of this community. Because a lot of our guests, man, they did not feel a part of this community. And so now I would like all you guys to come for a tour. You guys will feel the sense of community and love. And that's what we want to bring. Obviously, we're not there yet. There's a lot of work. I want all those numbers to show 100%. But I believe we're on the right path. We can always get better, always open for feedback. But we understand it's just not us that's going to solve this problem. It's going to take all of us. So like I said, if you guys want to come in, please send me an email. We'll set up a tour. And I'd love to hear you guys' feedback. If we're talking about just what we do different, man, we love on people. You can talk to our guests. They'll tell you, man. I address them by their first name. And this is me. I give them the dap and the hug, man, because I want them to feel the love. Because I understand once you feel the love, man, then you're open to resources, and you're open to change, and then you're able to go on to long-term stability, which we all want. Oh, sorry. Oh, this one doesn't have the video, so I'm gonna go back. So I wish I could play this video. Yeah, it didn't come up.

If you want to send it around, I'll share it.

I can send it right now. Okay. No, it's a beautiful story, man. Jordan Jenkins, man, he was there before. He was there around for three months, three months before we assumed operations. Obviously, we all have our setbacks, but he took in what we were offering, and now he's thriving. I think he's the director of case management at Momentum. But it just came from just building a relationship every single day. Encouraging him not forcing encourage James. Hey, we see something great in you. And then he took he took it upon himself. Obviously, big shout out to our care coordination to I'm sorry. I'm sending it to you right now. Where do I send it to?

Yes, I can email my first name. Amanda dot sound of all at Denver gov dot org. sorry about that okay and then i'll share it with everyone and then just time check we have tell three we'll have to stay a little bit over but we're going to shorten time okay there it goes i want to make sure i got it correct amanda dot sendable at denver gov dot org denver gov yep okay cool send it right now you guys gonna be amazed they already have it

And they're not afraid to use it. I'm going to email you now.

Let me know if you receive it. Yeah, apologies on that. But I can't talk enough about Jordan. I'm his biggest fan. Obviously, he moved out. I did want him to come back to work with us just because he's a true success. And so big shout out to him. And this is and this is why we do it. I seen Jordan within in myself. And so I took it upon myself to always talk to him every single day. And so, yeah, it's pretty touching. But now we can kind of go off to the second project, man. We have our care team. I'm going to state what Bayron is called it. We're going to say C2ARE at team. So it's our community and compassionate ambassadors doing respectful engagements. You guys may have seen them out there in the public. So this is our community ambassador program. The proactive outreach areas that we are currently in, we're in the Quebec Corridor, East Colfax, West Colfax, South Broadway, and priority engagement zones. We have a team of four. No, a team of two. No, a team of two to three. Two teams, Monday through Friday, and one team on Saturday and Sunday. They go out into the community and build those relationships before we have to call 911. So our main thing is that we're on the relationship side, not the enforcement side. As you can see, we go out there for our unsheltered loved ones, we assist with them, but then we also assist with cleaning up the area too and building relationships with business owners and community members so that we all understand that it's a whole collective effort. As you can see, I have just a couple numbers up here. We have the unique households served And that's a 912. And just the cleaning activities, these are just each task. So you can see it's a pretty high number, around 4,884. Did you receive the thing? Oh, perfect. I was hoping that we can play it up here, but do not have any questions. Thank you guys so much for everything that you guys have done and allowing us just to be in this space. Like I said, man, Jordan Jameson, it's just one story. I can give you guys quite a bit, but love being a part of it. Love being what Denver is. is going for and the direction that they're moving. Yeah, if you guys have any questions, I don't know if you guys had anything you guys wanted to state, Dr. Miller or Carrie Bell.

I'd rather make just space for any questions you may have.

Any questions from council members?

I'll just say thank you. I've heard great things from the outreach that you've done on South Broadway all the way to some of my constituents who have toured your facility. It's been very impressive and I know we even struggled to vote yes on this contract and there was a lot of concern, but you have all been amazing. So thank you for putting us, hanging with us through that point and doing the amazing work. I've heard the way you treat the people that you serve has set you apart. And I've heard that a lot from people that have been in your facilities to residents that have witnessed the way you treat people on South Broadway. So thank you for that.

Thank you Madam Chair. Thanks you guys so much and I second everything that Councilwoman Alvarez just said. I do have one quick question. In the slide deck that we were just provided with the kind of metrics, I'm looking at the Aspen now and you guys have met every single metric. So congratulations, blown away every single metric. So congratulations on that and great job. There is one Um, set of numbers that I'm a little bit concerned about, and that's on slide 12, in case you want to go back and look at it at some point in the future, it's exits from shelters to by destination. And, um, so your exits to housing for 2026. Um, or 22, which is 34% in your exits to unhoused or 30, which is 46%. Um, and I would love to see that flipped and I'm sure you would too. So I'm just curious kind of what plan you have in place, right? Because right now, um, more of your residents are leaving to go back to being unhoused than are going into housing. So. What is the plan that you're looking at to fix that metric?

Great question. Of course, we would like those numbers to be switched.

These numbers are small, right? We're talking about like, you know, 22 people versus 30 people. So I want to be very clear about that. But still, there's a trend there that I'd like to know more about.

So our number one thing is safety for our guests, safety for our practitioners, safety for the building. We look at it that way. we may not be the right fit for everyone. Obviously, we need to go back and look at those things, look at what caused our guests to be exited. And that's something that we can take on upon ourselves to get better at. But we do understand that we're not the right fit for everyone. And so when we do exit individuals, that's the last resort. We do make sure that they are provided resources, a ride to another shelter or anything. We do everything that we possibly can. We even reach out and just say, do you have a family member? Anything. And sometimes they just don't. But we're going to work on that. We're going to go back and look at it as a team and we'll get better at that.

I really appreciate that. And this is not to in any way, shape, or form suggest that you guys are not succeeding because you are. But just that's, I think, a little bit of a concerning trend. And if there's some focus that you guys can put on that, that would be really, really great. But I certainly also understand your response that maybe you're not the right fit for everybody. And that's totally fair, too. So thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you all so much for the presentation. I appreciate the work that you all have been doing and I mean I've visited a number of times and it's certainly much better than what in terms of the culture and the environment was previously with the previous provider and you can feel that energetically and so really appreciate that. I just had one question regarding the provided services. You put housing, social, medical, mental health and other and I was just curious as to what the other things that you all are providing um which i know much of it is above and beyond your contract um can you give me more detail on other what slide i'm sorry oh there's no numbers yeah it's the second to last slide second to last that one

Oh, other this is just that's just not being able to be captured within the housing social medical. Yeah, it's going to be like providing meals. So we go out our team goes out. There were our main things to build those relationships. So, like, the national average for individuals just to accept. Resources are just the open to that talk is around 21 touch points. So the best way to do it is, hey, we're going to go out there. We're going to give you a meal. How are you doing? Sit down. Never standing above eye contact. And so we track all those numbers.

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I actually was having some conversations with them. case managers and they talked about the number of touch points that they have to have with individuals before they even have any inkling as if they want to come inside. And so I wanted to be able to capture that because oftentimes those aren't captured in the contracts, right? Like, but that's where the work is and being able to like serve the person. So I just wanted y'all to be able to teach y'all someone a bit about what y'all were doing that's not captured within these numbers. Appreciate that. No doubt.

One question I have, what's the average length of stay?

It's on the other presentation. It was 229.

I was wondering for this one, yeah. I'll find it for you. We have it.

So it's 229 with the active guests. So the number that we are tracking is when we assumed operations.

That's what I was wondering.

So right now we're around 137.

What changed from when you assumed operations to prior?

What changed from when we assume operation of prior and probably it's more, but, you know, Tyler's there and Carrie is there, but, you know, people getting becoming more stabilized. So, as, as the community becomes safer inside, as they get more services or paperwork, you know, and they move from kind of fighter flight or. fight or flight thinking to more, you know, executive functioning. They can start preparing, getting their things in order to be able to move to a stable, but.

And then one last question I have. How do you reunite with families?

How do we?

Yeah, so do you prepare the family to when you reunite with them? Because I've had an instance where the family wasn't prepared who was with you, this person, individual, and they got money and showed up at a house. I really wish that the family would have been notified that this individual was coming to their home because she's not in a stable environment and she has a Section 8 voucher and she's not allowed to have people there. And so it was really I'll just say, let me use that word, and it did not go well.

Yeah, we talked to the person receiving it, and we talked to them a couple times before we even entertained that part. But we're just happy to have that conversation and that just opened those doors, even if it's a harsh note. It allows that, because a majority of our guests, they have severed ties with family members and friends. And so just having them provide a number that we can give that talk, even though if it may end bad, we're happy for that. But we won't send no one unless we get that yes. Yeah, because then if we send someone, let's say we send someone to another city, we're just adding to the problem, and they're not prepared. We want to make sure that our guest is going to survive and not regress.

Yeah, because I'll say the one lived experience I have was the family member was not called by your program and the person ended up on their door and it just did not go well at all. So I was, I'm hoping that that would not be the, like there's outliers out there, but I would hope that families are prepared so that they can say yes or no if they want that individual back in their life because it caused a major disruption. You're saying they came from us?

Yeah, they did. And it was one of our care coordinators sent them back to the family member without... We can look at that.

We don't know anything about that, so I can look into that. Thank you for raising that.

We never called you all because we had to deal with it on our own. But it was one of my family members. It happened to me. It happened to my family. So I know exactly what happened. And it was just, I wish that would not have happened that way. I wish that phone calls would have been made and we could have been prepared because we would have said no.

Absolutely. Because that says that there's a hole somewhere and we need to understand what that is, especially if they're not aware of it. So, yeah.

Yeah, okay, thank you all. Seeing no other further questions, I think, do we have any consent agenda items? I don't think so. No, we have one consent agenda item. So seeing no other further action, thank you all for the presentation and we're adjourned.

education.