Safety, Housing, Education & Homelessness Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the Safety Housing Education and Homelessness Committee of Denver City Council. The Safety Housing Education and Homelessness Committee begins now.

She's not online yet. She might. Okay. Great. Oh, I think we're getting some feedback.

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I won't.

There's one below. Yeah,

we're low, alone. One, two.

I think maybe we're good now. Okay, great. All right. Welcome, everyone, to safety housing education and homelessness committee. Today is Wednesday, May 14. I can't believe it's already May 14. Feels like it's going by so fast. But we are starting a little bit early today because we've got quite a few things added to the agenda. We're gonna start with some introductions before we go into what we have before us today. My name is Serena Gonzalez Gutierrez. I'm one of your council members at large and chair of the committee. And I will start over on my right.

Mixing it up today. Thank you.

Now I'm confused.

Kevin Flynn, Southwest How I'm confused. Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver, District 2.

Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6, also baffled and confused. Good

morning, Stacy Gilmore, District eleven.

Good morning, Darryl Watson, fine District nine.

And we also have Pro Tem Romero Campbell joining us online. Do you want to say hello?

Good morning, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4.

Thank you for joining us online, council pro tem. We are gonna go into our agenda today. We have a follow-up from a couple weeks ago with the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless contract. So we have our friends from Department of Public Health and Environment here to kind of do a quick overview of following up on a lot of the questions that came up in committee. And then this is an action item, so we will need a motion and second after we get through that. And then we have our briefing from all in Mile High. It's our quarterly briefing. So we will take a minute to transition to that after this. So with that said, if you two could introduce yourselves and go ahead and proceed.

Absolutely, Madam Chair, members of the committee. Alex Udall, legislative liaison for the Department of Public Health and Environment.

I've got time. Yeah. Good morning. Tristan Sanders, director for community behavioral health. Glad to be back here again and talking about this contract. So we'll jump in, to what we have. In addition here, we did send out, just for everybody, a reminder, an email at I don't know. I guess it was a week and a half ago at this point that included some additional data and a number of answers to questions that we got in committee last time. We have some additional clarification here that we'll present this morning and happy to take any additional questions that you all have. So as a reminder, the purpose of this contract is really to get services to folks living at All Mile High sites.

CCH has provided these services since the start of All In Mile High. They you know, the the population that we're working with is very complex and has a tremendous amount of needs, and we recognize that. And it's not a situation where you can just put providers there and people will go seek those services. We have to invest significantly in the infrastructure to get people to those services. So one point of clarification in this contract is that this is actually more of a care coordination contract.

It's really about the nurse care coordinators that are gonna be on-site that are able to take intakes, do further assessments, and then triage people to appropriate services. You do not see in the budget a significant amount of the actual service providers because those providers are actually providing billable services and are able to bill the Medicaid. And so we don't have to pay for that necessarily. A lot of the investment is in the infrastructure both on CCH's part but also on the city. And so there's a number of things that we referenced in committee last time that I'll just reiterate here, that we have additional staff on-site from CCH as well as additional staff on-site from the city.

And anybody working with folks at All In Mile High Sites can complete a virtual intake form that will serve as a referral over to CCH that they will follow-up on. We also get those intake forms, which indicate some amount of need of services for those clients, which we're looking at to make sure that that need is being met. That's something that we intend to monitor over time, and we are also in conversations with CCH about getting a data sharing agreement in place so that we can see exactly what services are provided to what clients and is it matching the need for that intake form. Just to talk about a little bit about the health services, I have a slide at the end of this that shows all the services that CCH does provide directly. They do provide a lot of those services on-site.

When they don't, they're referring clients to their other sites where they do a variety of other services. If they are having to refer to other providers because maybe a client wants a service from another provider or it's a specialty service that they don't offer, they're making that referral as well. That can go to Denver Health. That could go to a number of other service providers. So they're coordinating that care appropriately for clients in the moment.

Again, all these services that we're talking about, and you'll see reference to a few of them in the budget, but we're not actually paying for that. I actually have a different budget that shows the the zero amounts that we're paying and then the Medicaid amounts that they're getting billed for, or that they're receiving payment for. So there's behavioral health specialists. There's a variety of other service providers that are providing services on-site, and they are getting Medicaid reimbursement for that. Just to go over the process and what sort of got us here today.

So I believe it was back at the 2023 that Host ran an RFP. They received a number of bids for these services. CCH was selected and awarded the contract to provide these services on-site. They presented the most comprehensive approach to doing this. This is obviously a unique service that we're asking for.

It's across multiple sites. It's with a population that's fairly hard to reach and hard to connect to services and keep in services. CCH, with their other health services that they offer through their other properties, is able to provide a a greater level of continuity of care for these folks than we than we feel like other providers may be able to. They also were able to use exist a lot of existing staff. They need to hire some additional staff in this contract, but a lot of existing staff to be able to deploy to the sites where we were needing these services.

So they were able to quickly spool up services across the whole all in mile high apparatus and not have to, like, take up a long time for hiring. In quarter four of last year, we, along with Host, were talking about how DDPHE could sort of take over the management of these services. We have a bit more capacity internally to receive, like, client level data and do additional additional evaluation and really look at what types of outcomes we're interested in from a health perspective for these folks. And so we began talking to CCH in quarter four of last year. We've been negotiating what these terms could look like, what the infrastructure that was needed to be able support these services would look like, and how we could bring those to bear over the course of about December to February.

We finished that up in February, March and began the legislative process at that time, and that's what leads us to here today. We also have offered and as I mentioned, we were in committee two weeks ago. We've offered briefings. We're happy to talk through any of the particulars of what can be a fairly complicated process of providing services. CCH was able to provide some additional data that we did send out.

The additional data we're interested in getting is really gonna come through executing a data sharing agreement and being able to get a lot of that patient level data so that we can see really what services are being rendered and how that's matching up to the need. And that is really to come. We have a data sharing agreement that we are actively working on and we'll be sharing with CCH as soon as we have a contract in place. Just to be clear, the contract terms are for January 1 through 12/31/2025. As soon as we have a contract in place, we will accept an invoice from CCH to pay them for all services rendered back to January 1.

So there's no gap, if you will, in what they might get paid for. And I'll just make a comment that CCH, somewhat out of the goodness of their hearts, but also because they're able to bill for services, has been able to do this work with a contract still in negotiations. They are receiving billable services. They are getting reimbursed for those services. It's a lot of this infrastructure work that they were able to effectively float until we're able to get this contract in place.

Just to be clear, of what some of the differences are. So under the previous contract with hosts, the requirements were around the number of clients contacted, the number of interactions, and then aggregated demographic data. We'll continue to get that. That'll continue to be reported through HMIS. But we will also, as I mentioned, execute a data sharing agreement to get really more information on the follow through. So where are patients getting care? How are they getting care? How are they staying connected to care? And what do those services actually look like relative to the need that we're seeing in those intake intake forms. So we're excited at the prospect of being able to do that additional work and work with CCH to ensure that the services they're providing matches up really well with the need that we're seeing across sites.

This is a side slide from last time. You can see work that's been performed to date. This is really the high level interactions and and number of clients that have been served. This on the far right, we do have data up through March 7. We can get this type of data anytime we really need it from CCH, but, really, it's that data sharing agreement that we need in place to be able to get the additional outcomes data that we're interested in.

So I'll just leave that there. As I mentioned, there's a number of things around the process and the infrastructure to get people to services that have changed. Just to be clear about what services are actually being provided, so CCH does do care coordination and delivery of these services. They have primary care, behavioral health, MAT substance use treatment, psychiatry, dental services, medication assistance, and pharmacy assistance that they bring on-site in a rotation of services. That rotation of services on-site is something that we're interested in talking to them about, making sure that that's matching up with clients and where those needs are.

For clients that do go through an intake and then get connected with CCH but have, you know, really high acuity needs, that's where we have our Roadster Recovery program team in place, and we do have case managers that are embedded within the All in Mile High sites to be able to serve those clients specifically. So that would be for really complex care if somebody needed to go into inpatient care, if somebody needed to go into detox for a period of time. Like, our case managers are able to coordinate that level of care for those clients. ZCH can do that as well, but we want to do that in partnership. And we have a pretty long history of tracking and care coordination for those folks through our own case management.

So next steps. Obviously, we've talked a lot about what we've done to date. We fully intend to continuously improve upon this process. As soon as we can get data sharing agreement in place and really start to look at how services are being rendered to clients and how that's meeting that need, we will be talking about what the rotation of on-site services look like, what does the referral process look like, and how are people seeing as they're getting to services that they might be referred to, And also, you know, several improvements on the city side of just how are we making sure that those intakes are happening through either city staff or city contracted staff, and how are they, you know, being followed up on. That's something that we can hold ownership for, and we can actually be accountable to you all and the public of how we're delivering those services.

As far as the contract and data sharing, we obviously need this contract in place to be able to pay CCH and in order to keep services on-site through the rest of the year. I know there's been some questions about, you know, did we do a new procurement or can we do a new procurement? We cannot do a new procurement at this point in time for services in 2025. That would take us to the 2025 before we have a vendor identified. This is effectively an amendment and continuation, Though it comes as a new contract because it's with a new agency, it's effectively an amendment and continuation of services on-site to maintain that continuity of services being provided.

Lastly, analysis and evaluation, I mentioned it briefly, but we do have additional capacity within DDPHE to do this work. And we are interested in seeing what that data looks like to then build out what a really effective evaluation plan could look like. And we are more than happy to share that on a regular cadence with counsel, in public meetings, anywhere that we can. I know that we have a lot of dashboards floating around the cities these these these days, but this is probably ripe for one. So we will be looking at what data we can get, through that data sharing agreement, how we wanna build that evaluation plan, and how we can put together a public facing dashboard that's available to everybody regarding these services.

So that's something that we'll look at as soon as we get a contract in place, a data sharing agreement in place, and are able to look at that data. Again, just timeline, you know, today, we're considering this contract. We are hopefully gonna be able to move this forward to be able to pay CCH for services that have been rendered back to January 1 as well as continue services through the end of the year. I put in here a potential to both amend this contract. Potentially, there's a lot of things that live out of contract that we can do that might not require an amendment.

But also, if there are gaps in services that are not being provided or that need a different provider, we do have the ability to, do additional procurements through the end of the year to bring those service providers on-site as needed. We won't know that really in a detailed way until we get the data. And that's why I referenced lastly sort of new contracts and amendments. I would expect that all to come between now and the end of the year, maybe end of the first quarter as we identify, you know, what those needs are and who might be able to fill those gaps. So your action item is council bill twenty five zero five four five to approve a contract with Colorado Coalition for the Homeless for one just over 1,100,000.0, for services provided throughout the course of 2025 to clients at All Inland High Sites.

And we appreciate your time and are happy to take any questions.

Great. Thank you so much. And and thank you for taking the feedback, for following up on on some of the questions that were raised here, and also in, you know, any one on ones and things like that. So thank you for taking that extra step. We're gonna go to the queue. I have councilwoman Sawyer followed by councilman Watson.

Thanks. Thanks, you guys, for this information. I will just say I hate it when a contract is already in place and and and happening, and then it comes through to committee. I understand that this one is a little bit special because the contract is with different agency. But that had we've gotta stop doing that. So just gonna just a statement there. Agreed. Excited to see the additional reporting. I think that this is a real benefit of moving this contract over to DDPHE. I think we can't fill the gaps we don't know we have, or we only hear anecdotally we have.

So really appreciate that additional, step in requiring some more robust reporting to be able to really figure out how best roads to recovery and some of our other programs kind of dovetail. Curious about the cost of the contract in Medicaid. Right? So they are reimbursed and paid for by Medicaid. Have we considered what might happen to these services should Medicaid reimbursement decline significantly?

Goodness. Great question. I think it's something that we're looking at across multiple programs.

Yeah. I mean, is not just a this contract issue. Yeah.

So we don't know what we don't know. I think we'll learn a lot more if I'm reading things right around August, September about what federal Medicaid changes might be. And as it relates to these services, we are paying for the bulk of these services through an award through Caring for Denver. So we got a $2,000,000 award from Caring for Denver for these services. You see the cost of this contract is $1,100,000 There's still $900,000 there.

There's additional budget sort of in the back end that we can use to fill as we need to. So I think we will have to see what that Medicaid change might look like towards the end of the year. And we can be ready with that might trigger an amendment, quite honestly. But we will have to see what that looks like and how long it takes to actually trickle down. Typically, federal changes to Medicaid then trigger changes at the state level. State has to take some sort of action to know really what happens for our own

insurance For you guys. Okay. Appreciate that. So I appreciate that this is a brave new world of totally unknowns, particularly as it comes to Medicaid. And there are other services, ZipStar program, for example, that takes advantage of Medicaid repayment for a significant portion of their funding as well. So fair. I'm glad to hear that there's a grant from Caring for Denver for this. I'm concerned. Is it a one year grant? Is it a two year grant?

The terms of the grant go through the '26, and we have this as a part of our budget negotiations and process within the city as well to continue.

Okay. So that that's my concern, right, is that if these are part of the budget negotiations with the city and there is this unknown about Medicare, which maybe we'll know by the time budget season rolls around or maybe we won't, it's very hard for us to especially in an incredibly tight budget year, to fill a gap in services that might result from changes to Medicare. So for this piece of this contract, I understand that that is the great unknown, and we're going to have to have a conversation about that in the future. And so I think, you know, this is kind of ready to move forward to the full council. But I will just say, I am that the city does not have the money to fill the gap in Medicare and continue this level of services.

We just don't. We can't solve all the needs of everyone as a municipality on our own. We do not have the tax base to do that and provide all the other core services that the city is and should provide to our residents. So let's put a pin in that for now, but I will say we need to come back to that. It's very concerning to me that there is this Medicaid repayment piece of this contract that might disappear in the future.

Yeah. And and a lot of the just so you know, I mean, lot of those don't show up in the actual budgets in the contracts that we are executing. We just know that that's happening on the agency. Yeah. But, again, we don't we don't wanna sit here and have agencies holding holding the bag for

Right.

Changes in Medicaid.

A 100%.

This is true in STAR. This is true in the solution center. This is true across many different contracts that we hold in ADPHG. So it is on my desk every day.

Good times. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Before I go on to the next person in queue, I do wanna welcome councilwoman Alvidrez and council president Sandoval. Thank you for joining us this morning. Next is councilman Watson followed by councilman Flynn.

Thank you, committee chair. And first, I want to start Tristan, Alex, and the team from DDPHE. I want to be clear. I think this contract should be under DDPHE. I think it should have always been under in DDPHE if we're talking about public health and health outcomes.

Even for now clarified care coordinating contract, which was not very clear up until a few weeks ago, that that's what this contract was last year and that's what this new contract is looking for this year. I appreciate the specific feedback your team provided and the data. Data was great. The initial initial response we received was the the the data coordination process had to occur prior to data to come out. I'm glad there were some data derived even though it is specific to touch point data.

It's not about outcomes. So I at least want I wanted to start there and I wanted to make sure, Alex, Tristan, all of the additional time you spent with me on this with my skepticism about this contract. I appreciate it completely, and I respect the place that you're in. I'm fundamentally against this contract on two parts. Councilmember Sawyer elevated two of the questions I had.

And the first step of her question was about Chapter 20 of the DRM DRMC and then the Executive Order eight that outlines kind of the contracting process. We have a strong mayor government. I appreciate that. But contracts come to City Council. Fundamentally, having an existing contract with one department host and moving it to another department without changing the underlying outcomes from the contract and calling it a new contract, I think is a continuation of reducing the role of city council's oversight on contracts.

A very easy step when I met with you in November on this December would have been to amend the contract so that CCH can be paid for their time as the contract concluded in the first post contract was concluding. So CCH can be paid for the first whatever period of time it takes to get their payment done and for that contract to remain intact. A new contract should have been a competitive bid. When we refer to a new contract, I noticed a CD attorney that informed informed you, stated that this is appropriate. I do not support this process.

And I think it for me, fundamentally, this type of contract shifting from one department to another should be coming back to us for a vote on a new contract, not a continuation. So fundamentally, that's one of my fundamental reasons why I do not support this contract. I I don't believe I believe we're giving up parts and parts of our responsibility of holding departments accountable for the contracting process, and I'm not willing to continue voting on that, asking as council member Sawyer said, we're tired of this seeing things and feels like this. This is one where I will not be supportive of if it gets to the floor for that fundamental reason. The underlying reasons, and here comes my questions that I have.

I know that you speak to in the last slides of the impossibility of amendments due to outcomes due to data received and possible outcomes. My question on this contract, why was there not health outcomes identified in this if, as Tristan described, amended contract that's coming out as a new contract? Why did we not with HIPAA protections, with PII protections, why did we not in this contract, because we've been discussing this since December, Why did we not amend to have some health outcomes in this contract instead of stating we approve this and then you put in health outcomes based on research done between now and maybe the third quarter. Explain kind of the growth of that rationale to me.

Yeah. So when we first started talking to CCH, our understanding of the operations was that they basically would have providers on-site. People could come receive those services. It was largely on either CCH or individuals to go get those services. Our big focus in the initial conversations with CCH was how do we get more people to those services?

How do we know that people are getting to the right services? And how do we know that those services are actually meeting the needs of clients? We spent the better part of three months, four months talking about that solely and what the city's role versus CCH's role versus the other contracted providers roles on-site were. Once we know that there's people receiving services through CCH, we want to know what those services are relative to the need. So there was no mechanism to say, this is what the need of clients was.

There was no mechanism to collect that information. There was no mechanism in place to say, you could fill out this information, and this is what you, Councilman Watson, might need in the way of health services. Until we started working with them and building the capacity to be able to do that. In order to put true health outcomes into a contract, we believe we need both an assessment of that need, which we didn't know, and what services are meeting those needs, and then some indication of follow through to see if those needs are not reappearing. Then we can put put into contract language, you know, here are the services that were rendered.

Here's what the outcomes for those clients are, and the actual need for substance use treatment or for behavioral health treatment or whatever is going down. And we can put requirements in the in the contract language once we have that information. We also don't I typically I've never come across a situation where we've been able to get robust data sharing in place unless we have a contract. And so as you know, we were not under contract with CCH starting January 1. And so in the order of operations in our minds was contract in place data sharing because why would somebody give us data if we're not paying for it?

Look at that data, understand the need, and then build in health outcomes as we can. We feel like as though we were in a situation we need to continue these services. We needed services to still be provided. We didn't have the ability to go in and investigate all of that, if you will, to the extent that we could build health outcomes into that initial contract. That is all of the work that we are intending to do.

I appreciate the answer. And Madam Chair, I won't go too much longer. Just had just a quick follow-up. For twelve months, CCH has been providing care coordination under the host contract. You and I began discussions in December about my skepticism and concern.

My question that still is unsettled is knowing that our all in Mile High residents on a Monday monthly basis communicate to us the the gap in health outcomes for them. Why would we after twelve month contract for care coordination with Medicaid reimbursements identifying how care is being provided for referrals that are being done, that data exists. Why would we create a process where that existing contract ends with host? We have access to that data as to referrals and how the specialty care is being provided for Acuity and all of those things. That information is available.

Why would we then start a new contract with the same lack of targets of health outcomes based on information we had for twelve months and say now we still need three more months of reviewing a data process to put any requirements in, and that contract is now gonna be eight months into the year with still no health care outcomes. I'm saying that that to me is not a process that I as an elected official can support. You are the right people to do this, Tristan, DDPHE. My expectation would have been within the year of receiving requests from all in BioHi residents saying they are not receiving the care. They they they they they're not just getting care outcomes.

My idea would be that DDPHE during that first year, knowing that that transition from host was gonna happen, you will begin that work. And this new contract would respond to what was missing from that year, not eight months into a new contract. You identify a process and then say counsel can do amendments in the third quarter. I am very concerned about this process. I do not believe the contracting process that we went through is correct and we should

have

started an contract in January or a new contract with a competitive bid in January with someone who can provide health outcomes from the get go and continue to build data and provide new and more clear outcomes. And so whether this is ready to the floor, it's for folks from the safety committee. I'm just not willing for to continue to erode my contract review responsibility as a city council member and or to have contracts for health outcomes for folks who need health outcomes to say that we're going to continue studying those outcomes in a new contract that's going to end three months after the studying, most likely get it collected in the third quarter, is going to conclude. And we still don't know really what those outcomes are. I'm concerned.

There's not a question there. I just wanted to be clear as to where I'm at on this. And, as this goes to the floor, I may go into more details as to what outcomes of what amendments I think are necessary for this before this passes. Thank you, madam chair.

Thank you. We have a couple more people in the queue. So I have councilman Flynn followed by councilwoman Parady.

New, sir. Oh,

and yes. Welcoming Councilwoman Parady. Sorry. It's okay. Doubles. Doubles.

Thank you, madam chair.

I wanted to follow-up on an angle that councilwoman Swire was getting at and a little more deeply on what happens to us if Medicaid because it's so volatile. There have been tremendous cuts proposed to it. If CCH is unable to access their usual Medicaid reimbursements, does any of that blow back on us? Does any responsibility fall back on us under this contract? We don't have a contract yet, so I can't tell.

Can I just chime in real quick on that front? Because we do have the all in mile high, and I think there are multiple contracts probably under that umbrella and even others that that question would probably pertain to. But, I mean, you can feel free to answer it. But we also have, I think, Cole coming. So I think it would be helpful for that context for us to know kind of broadly as well, because I agree. That is a big question.

I'll just say two things. First, in this contract, as we noted, we're largely paying for care coordination to get to those services. It's not like filling the gap for Medicaid or anything like that. So if that gap widened, our obligation wouldn't increase. It's that we're still getting people to those services.

And then the second part is really important. I don't know that we will see demonstrable impacts to Medicaid reimbursements until probably the end of the year or even the first quarter of next year as a direct impact to our providers. I say that not fully knowing, but just knowing the federal process and then how it trickles down to the state and then how it impacts providers, I would hope that we're able to prepare and be ready for what any Medicaid changes might be in 2026.

Okay. Does the contract address this in any way?

The contract doesn't address that. It goes through the end of the

year.

Okay. So it'd be in a new contract that that would be addressed.

Alright. A second question and maybe to follow-up on councilman Watson. Could you provide us with a a list of who the other proposals were?

The other proposals? Yeah. I can get that for you. Thank you. Yeah.

Unless you know them right now.

I always sent them. I did not write them down. I will send them. Okay. Thank you. After this.

How many were there?

I think there were around four or five. Great.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'll just send it to all

all folks.

Will do.

Thank you, madam chair.

Thank you. Councilwoman Parity.

I don't know if I have questions or more comments. Is there someone else in queue?

I didn't know if Councilwoman Torres you have some questions.

Let's let.

Pass the book.

One of the things I don't disagree with Councilman Monson's issues. What I do recognize is we have a vendor who's been providing services and is today providing services that we need to pay. Yeah. The other the piece, though, is speaking to a more systems piece, and I don't know if the mayor's office has a perspective on this that we'd wanna hear about in terms of how the contracts are going to be coming through anticipating the end of current contracts. And maybe that's part of all in mile high.

I'm not sure if that's coming up in the next piece, maybe more distinctly. Is this contract because it's not in here different from the one that host had? It's different. Did the city attorneys have to draft a new contract?

Yes. We had to add the DDPHE legal language to contract.

Apart from just changing the post for DDPHE, did the language of the contract change?

There were minor changes to the scope of work, and there were changes to the budget to reflect the care coordination.

It's a new contract is what I think I'm hearing. When I had my briefing, it was relayed to me that it was an amendment to that contract, which it's not. So I think we're all just asking for some honest conversation to be happening as it relates to these contracts. I know the urgency in needing it to come through, but this this doesn't help, I think, that that piece. And this is not this is not a reflection on you. I'm not looking at you and being very mad. Just kidding. So that's that's my primary issue. That RFP, do we often go back to an RFP for those vendors for new or different contracts?

City attorney here. Can we speak to that? I'll say one thing, and then I would love for your comments about this issue. So my understanding is we was an

RFP

can see that, Mike.

There was an RFP done that for services at all in Mile High because the scope that we were executing with CCH didn't change what was already in the procurement, in other words, services at all in Mile High, we were able to use that procurement for a contract. It did have to be a new contract in DDPHE system, has different numbers in the city, has different slightly different legal language, and we were negotiating differences in the budget, etcetera. And so it is filed as a new contract referencing that procurement process for the same thing that we're contracting for.

So from the city attorney's office, what are rules of when does that happen that we can go continue to go back to a single RFP for multiple contracts?

So Oh, can you introduce yourself too?

Yes. This is Mackenzie Brandon for the city attorney's office. For this contract, TDPG came to us and said we're taking over a contract. Should we do a new contract or do an amendment? And we said we advised them that, ultimately it's the same contracts are with the city and not with an agency.

So legally, just do whichever one works best for you. And DDPHE went with the new contract because that was easier with our systems. I'm assuming Jagger, Workday, that kind of thing. This isn't something I've had come up before, so I I can't really speak to how often that happens that we use on r RFP from in a contract that was with a different agency. But that was the advice that happened here was that they could do either one. Legally, it's the same because it's just with the city. And then it is pretty typical for amendments to update the budget and the scope of work.

Thank you. Thank you, madam chair. Alright. Thank you. Councilwoman Parody.

Yeah. I just sort of want to say that I think part of the difficulty we're having here is that this hasn't been DDPHE's contract. And so we were talking to DDPHE. They have been trying to take ownership of this because they are the public health agency. That's the right move. I think we all agree with that. But it's a little hard to sort of we're sort of talking to the wrong people about everything that's happened to date. So I just want to say that out loud because they haven't been the agency running this particular portion of the contract. And I think we are delayed in moving the health care portion of On Mile High over to DDPHE. But let's get it done now.

We need this agency to now have a contract under which they can start to get their arms around this stuff. And so I think we just need to get there. So I'm also not on this committee. But what I think we're seeing is actually the problem that we haven't done this yet. That's all. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. All right. Is there any other members in the queue? Councilwoman?

If I can just jump back in, I will just say, I think this is why you don't declare an emergency and create a bunch of fast contracts without going through them. Right? Like, are cleaning up what happened two years ago. And that's not fair to our residents. And it's not fair to our staff members who have to sit here and answer our questions and feel our disappointment with it. But it also has to be done, Right? We cannot we have to provide these services. We have to support our residents. We have to do what we said we were going to do even if we can't really afford it, and it's real messy on the back end. So I think lesson learned. Let's clean this up and

not do it again. Thanks. Thank you, and thank you again for coming back to present this. And I think you probably have heard it now from everyone around the table. And I know when I had a one on one with you all, we talked about the contracting process in general as well.

And I know that it is also not just on the Citi side. Sometimes it is on the vendor side as well where it is a back and forth, and sometimes there is a waiting period of waiting to hear back from the vendor. Not that that's necessarily an excuse, but I think it does speak to the fact that how soon do we start to initiate this process so that we're not in this place, where we're months behind. But I think it also speaks you know, conversations that we've had in other settings around who is able to access Citi contracts in general and and allowing multiple different providers to be able to have access and knowing that there are some providers who just can't float three, four months of service, you know, with their budgets. So, you know, I'm grateful that the services have been provided thus far.

I I am grateful that there is more clarity around what these services actually are and what the nurse care coordinators what kind of service they are providing. I think it is essential. It is crucial. It has been well overdue. And and and even just having it over this year, it is still well overdue for the all in sites.

Something that I know many people around the table had been asking for from the beginning is what are the services at these sites? And I know we're gonna get into that conversation more broadly coming up here in a minute, But, I do thank you for for, you know, working through this. I know it has been a difficult process. I appreciate councilman Watson for for bringing up, you know, the process issues because it is an issue. But I also agree with my colleagues that we do need to make sure these services are in place.

But as I stated in in our conversations, knowing that this is until the end of this year, so what are we going to do to provide some remedy going forward into the following year. So I think that's something we have the opportunity to think about right now since we are in May and so we have time. And so my ask is that that that is addressed before well before the end of the year so that we know what we're looking at for the following year. The last thing I'll just say is I'm grateful that there is going to be a more general intake process because that will provide us with better data and and be able to look at outcomes across the board and not have it so siloed and and disjointed. So thank you for for initiating that process through DDPHE.

With that said, colleagues that are on the safety committee, I would like to see if there is a motion for this contract. Thank you. Moved by Councilwoman Parity. Is there a second? No. Sawyer. Oh, sorry. I looked at you and I said parody.

Quickly. It's totally fine. You didn't

call me Sandoval.

I know. That always happens. Moved by Councilwoman Sawyer, seconded by Councilwoman Torres. Is there a need for a roll call vote?

No.

Not seeing one. This will move forward to the full council. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank

you, Congress. Thank you for the opportunity to

come and speak

to you about the contract. Plenty of notes here, lots of feedback and input. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Alright. We'll take just a moment as we transition over to have our friends join us for all in. We have Cole Chandler approaching the table. Is there anyone else joining you, Cole? Or he's flying solo?

No, not solo.

Okay.

It's a presentation by committee.

All right.

We've got

a few people. We can move down a little bit. We can add chairs.

Thank you.

Let me get that for you.

Extra room. Alright. Thank you so much for joining us. We will have you will do a round of introductions, then go ahead and proceed with the presentation. I'll be taking a queue for council members who will have questions at the end.

Sounds good. How much time do we have?

So we have until 12:00.

So

we've got quite a bit of time, but we want to make sure there's ample time for questions. So I'd say at the minimum, like thirty to forty five minutes we wanna leave open for questions.

Excellent. Okay. Great. Good morning, everyone. Good to be with you all. I'm Cole Chandler, mayor senior adviser on homelessness and lead the All in Mile High citywide goal. Pass to Tristan. Tristan Sanders, director for community behavioral health at DPHA. Thanks.

Jeff Kacitsky, deputy director for housing stability and homelessness resolution at Host.

Emily Berger, priority populations manager with Denver Economic Development and Opportunity.

Alright. Thanks to the many of you who, we were able to speak with, prior to this presentation. As you know, we provide a quarterly update, on the All In Mile High citywide goal, and so our purpose today is to to share about what we worked on in the first quarter and what the updates and highlights were, and then to tell you a bit about what we have upcoming now that we're, you know, halfway through the second quarter or so. And then also just provide some key updates related to really the core prongs of this effort, which is street engagement, our all in mile high site services. And then as many of you know, we launched some improvements to our dashboard in late April, and so I wanna make sure we have time to speak about those as well.

So that is what is on the agenda. As you all will remember from our first quarter briefing, there's really, four key focus areas for this work in 2025. And so the first of those is related to street engagement, which we'll talk about more in the presentation, but really shifting away from an initial focus on large encampments, towards a focus of a really responsive street engagement system where, anytime a call comes in, anytime someone is in need of services, we are able to dispatch the appropriate teams to that individual in real time and help get that, person connected to services. And so that is one of the key focuses of this year, and I'll be able to report a bit on, the progress we've seen on that. The second piece is around, the site services and really, continuing to enhance and bolster those services through some key processes, particularly focusing on evaluating individuals as soon as they're arriving at sites, getting them connected to the appropriate services, and charting pathways for exit and long term stability.

That connects obviously to the enhanced housing, behavioral health, and workforce service delivery that we're seeing at our shelter sites and once people have been placed into rapid rehousing as well. And then finally, a focus on moving investments from short term shelters towards longer term and permanent housing resources, and so we'll provide some updates on those as we go along. Just, you know, top level first quarter highlights. We moved a thousand more than a thousand people into shelter and more than 480 people into housing by the March. And so you can see the breakdowns of those on the screen.

The blue is the all in mile high sites. The yellow is family noncongregate shelter sites, and then the green is those that were placed directly from the streets into housing through our streets to housing or street to lease programs. At our last presentation, there were a number of, key items that we updated you on that we're working on throughout the year. I won't go line by line through this, but, in the presentation, we included an update on where all of those are in their process, what the statuses are on those. And so I guess a couple of, key things that I would highlight.

We obviously completed the closure of the Radisson noncongregate shelter by the March as planned. We are still in process for launching an integrated software to manage our street engagement team deployments of nine one one and three one one calls that's still on target for a summer launch. Looking at launching sometime in June and really excited about that. We have maintained connectivity for 76% of our Roads to Recovery clients, And Aaron is not at the table, but here today to answer questions if you have those. Jeff will talk more about this in our next section of the presentation, but we are in process on several RFPs for long term contracts related to the all in mile high shelter, housing, and street outreach services.

And then one other piece I wanted to make sure we highlighted just based on some questions. We continue to support households that are being placed into rapid rehousing through our housing connector contract. We have 213 households that have been placed in under twelve months of programming on that initiative and happy to answer questions that you may have about that. Two other things just to highlight because we might not talk about them in-depth throughout the presentation. We committed to convening a Quebec corridor task force that would pull together stakeholders in and around the Quebec Corridor to discuss the impacts of the shelter sites in that part of town and really set some goals for short term, medium term, and long term goals for that area.

That launched in April. We have a follow-up meeting with that group next week. We have spent the last six weeks or so gathering surveys from the community and compiling those, and we're continuing to work through that feedback. But we'll have more to report on that, in the coming months as well. And then we are, continuing to prepare for, deploying an RV resolution program that will help us place a 150 people from vehicles or RVs into bridge housing or permanent housing by the end of the year.

Alright. This is kind of our look ahead section. And so looking ahead to procurements and contracts in this quarter that we're now halfway through, we have a number of things that are sort of in the all in mile high hemisphere that are on the screen here. We will have Jeff go in more detail on what he has planned for RFPs in particular. Did want to point out, that, there are some additional Salvation Army contracts that are coming forward.

I believe the first of those will be in the safety committee next week. That's for the Crossroads Shelter. Not necessarily an all in mile high site, but an important site to our system and then other sites that will come forward in the future as well. But with that, Jeff, I'll actually turn it over to you to talk about your plans for RFPs. Good morning. And wanted to first reiterate what Cole said.

We do have quite a few contracts that will be coming forward in in May and June, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. But also want you all to know that we are RFP ing all of the all in mile high services, including, non congregate shelters, micro communities, and housing related services as well as outreach. Starting this summer, the first RFP for shelter will be issued on May 23, and then there'll be two more issued in May and in June. And want to acknowledge, especially based on the conversation that I I heard earlier, we have been struggling to get contracts signed on time. We started way too late in the process in 2024, really waited right up until the budget was almost passed.

And it's been chaotic and not a good process to say the least based on what I heard. I know that this undermines your ability to do your jobs on behalf of the public. It's really unfair to our providers who are many of whom are operating right now without contracts and then creates major barriers to entry to new providers coming in, that has created a much less diverse pool of providers than we would like to see. So we're proposing three steps to help improve this both on all in mile high, but all host contracts. First is we're gonna start negotiating contracts in June, and we will have all contracts to you as soon as the budget is passed and first signature prior to the December.

There may be one or two stragglers, but our goal is to get all of the contracts done on time. To help facilitate that, we are RFP ing in the future a third of our contracts each year, and then we'll be doing three year contracts as opposed to one year contracts. And then when we present them to you, they'll be done in groups by type. So for example, all shelters will come forward at once so that you're able to both understand the big picture in the shelter system, but then also be able to compare cost, outcomes, etcetera, by provider. This will also provide our providers with a lot more consistency in terms of they'll know what to expect as far as when RFPs are coming out.

We won't overwhelm or surprise them or ask them at the last minute to take on work that they weren't aware was coming up. And we'll also not be bringing 100 contracts to you each year. It'll be a third of the contracts by about 40 or 50 each year rather than like 120 or 130. We're also planning to improve our provider selection process. We're putting in scoring that weighs heavily on past performance for those that we have worked with before, putting in requirements to demonstrate the ability to provide culturally appropriate and culturally specific services, especially given the fact that both the Native American and African American communities are highly overrepresented in the homeless population in Denver and nationally.

We're also putting in a lot more clarity on outcomes and expectations and creating program standards for each one of our program types, our major program types that we offer that will be attached to the contracts that provides a lot more specificity than is currently in our contracts around what our expectations are. And then if we can go to the next slide, Cole. Thanks. The other thing that we're doing is piloting with all the non congregate shelter and micro communities with the RFP that's coming out, we're gonna be piloting performance based contracting. I know there's a few already at host and I'm sure throughout the city, but this is at a larger scale.

It'll be a little bit different. We will develop a budget with providers, but then a rate card for negotiated outcomes that we determine. And then we will negotiate a rate. So for example, you'll get $40 per person per night for running a shelter. You'll get paid x amount of dollars for each housing assessment that is complete.

Invoices rather than being based on receipts, and we're getting like 50 page invoices full of receipts that our staff have to review and our providers have spend a lot of time preparing. They will basically run a report off of our HMIS system, and they will invoice based on outcomes. So say I'd have 1,000 shelter bed nights times whatever the rate is, that's the invoice. It should take an hour, not a week, to prepare an invoice. There will still be financial reporting and auditing requirements, and we will do tests, transaction tests, just like an auditor will do to make sure that allowable expenses are are that the only allowable expenses are being covered.

This is gonna allow our staff, our city staff, our program officers to focus on outcomes and not receipts. Like, they spend a big part of each month just going over receipts, and now they're gonna be going over outcomes. Like, why is a are a 100% of your guests at the shelter not having housing assessments like they're supposed to rather than why did you spend $15 on toilet paper instead of 12? And I think that's gonna make a big difference. We will also allow our providers to spend less money on administrative overhead to do invoices and more on quality improvement and outcomes.

And it will also be much easier for smaller providers who maybe don't have the interest or bandwidth to have a giant accounting department that's needed to prepare the invoices the way that we're currently requiring them. And if this works, hopefully, it will we will move all of our contracts in this direction. I also will point out that back in the day, from what I hear, Denver used to actually that's how we used to bill for shelter. It was on a per night per night basis. And a lot of medical services are provided this way as well.

And then lastly on this is that we are working with a social impact fund that is willing to give our providers who want them, and this has nothing to do with the city, it's just an added benefit to this, that they will give loans against performance based contracts. So they will provide for the full amount of the contract, and the provider can draw as much or as little as they want against that loan at a much better rate than they can get at a bank. But this is sort of a movement in the field of social impact investing as they're trying to drive government towards more performance based contracting. They're frankly using their power of their of their purses to be able to provide these loans to help cities that do you know, that don't do large advances on reimbursement based contracts. So that's what's I know this isn't hearing about contracting, but I know this is an important issue for all of you.

And it's certainly relevant and wanted to share some of the work that we're doing at Host to improve this for next year and then ask for your patience as we kind of stumble through the remaining contracts that have not yet been signed, but our work has been done for five months plus at this point.

All right. Thank you, Jeff. Tristan, I don't think you need another final example. This was about the CCH contract, and so you all will see that on the floor when that comes forward. Obviously, happy to answer additional questions about it if you have them. And so wanted to talk about just really our our two key prongs in terms of what this initiative is. Right? It's about how do we engage people on the streets and get them connected to services. And then once, you know, they're connected to services, how do we progress them towards long term stability. As I mentioned, you know, previous conversations and this morning, we've really shifted our focus so that we're not just focused on large encampments.

Right? We're really focused on real time coordination to where people are. And so we've been looking at our entire system from the moment that someone is detected through proactive street outreach or from the moment that a 311 911 call come call comes into our system, how do we get the right teams dispatched to that in as real time as possible. And so we've been really effective at being able to do this. Right now, we have a system where we're tracking all those calls that come in.

We are ensuring that we're getting to those within a business day at this time and that we're working to coordinate the right teams in those directions. I think one of the things that was promising was that the first quarter, we actually saw the most intakes into our system, that we had seen since, 2023. So, obviously, q or sorry, 2023, December 2023, basically, when we moved lots and lots of people in. This was the most intakes we had done in a single quarter since that quarter. And so we really were able to streamline this process, make sure that we're locating people in real time, getting them connected to services in real time as well.

And so have a bit of data and just some of the quotes that we've seen from staff working in the system, but it's been highly effective and highly coordinated thus far. And I think one of the other things that we're seeing is we're seeing a significant decrease in these types of calls that are coming in. So as we've been able to bring more people in, over the last two years, we've seen about a about a 40% decrease in terms of calls for this type of service. And so that has demonstrated its effectiveness. The other piece which I mentioned a bit earlier is related

to

people living in vehicles and RVs. We talked about this when the towing amendment came forward a few weeks back. I think one of the good data points is that we actually have seen the numbers of people living in vehicles and RVs decreasing every year in the point in time count over the last three years. And yet, we know that there is a a need to increase our ability to serve these folks. And so, what we're planning to implement is an effort, that will launch, late summer, early fall, to bring, up to a 150, people living in vehicles or RVs, indoors through an RV resolution effort.

And so we're currently in the planning process on launching that and have been piloting it here and there with a few individual cases as we're able. Next piece is how we deliver services once people arrive at our sites. And so want to talk about that with you all a bit. And I'll give kind of the first update and then pass over to Tristan and Emily for any behavioral health and employment updates. This is a chart that we've shown you all at this presentation on a regular basis.

And so we've now set up an internal report that produces this. This was pulled just the April. And so what I want to focus on is the 2025 data. We continue to see a very positive trend line in terms of permanent and stable housing outcomes mapped against unsheltered homelessness and returns to unsheltered homelessness. And so we've gotten to a place where we continue to produce a good number of housing outcomes every single quarter, and those unsheltered outcomes continue to level off.

And so that's from 2025, and we'll be excited to share q two results with you, next time we're back. And then Tristan, if you want to talk, more about, the good coordination efforts that DDPHE is leading right now, that'd be great.

Yeah. So through some conversations with hosts and, working with the service providers on-site, we have created this virtual intake form. Just to go into a little bit more detail, we rolled that out to service providers on-site, I believe, about a week ago, a little more, to be done at every intake. So then a service provider, as a client shows up for the first time in an all in mile high site, that is a part of the intake. They are getting that brief assessment done, and that intake into health services is facilitated through that intake form to CCH.

The other place where that's happening and some of this coordination is going to be happening is at the housing central command phase when somebody is actually in all of my sites and getting ready to exit to housing. They are going through a thirty day correct me if I'm wrong thirty day process with Host and other folks where if there are new things that show up or if there are health services that need to be addressed or if somebody is exiting, we can work on that continuity of care outside of once they are housed. We would get a referral from Host to say, we have client x person that needs x services, and we could work with them to facilitate that happening. We have new staff in DDPHE that's starting soon, I think in the next couple of weeks, two care coordinators. One will be dedicated to all in my own high sites for this referral to be able to facilitate that process when somebody is housed with hosts.

So big investment on the infrastructure upfront from city staff and from the service providers on-site, continuing to work with CCH on how we get more people into services through what they are able to provide. And then we will, as I mentioned in the earlier presentation, be happy to come back quarterly or whatever cadence makes sense to present on what those outcomes are to this money. And

then Emily on the workforce side.

Thanks, Cole. So with the rapid rehousing referrals to workforce, we you can see q one data up there and also the April. So we received 80 referrals through the April. About half of those folks we have been working with and had that initial assessment with, and I'll talk about what those challenges are for the rest of them. And then we have nine people who are currently working.

So some of the types of work people are having, we have someone working at a car dealership, delivery driving, retail stores, and some day labor. We also have 11 people currently in training, so or about to start training. So training looks like pre apprenticeship and construction. There's a there's a tree care pre apprenticeship program someone has started, CNA work, so a lot of different options. Challenges continue to be technology and communication, cell phones changing, emails not able to reach.

A big reason for that gap between the the 39 and the 80 is just mental health and physical health needs. Some people have referred, they're not quite ready to work, but we will be here when they are ready to work. For example, someone was in a car accident. And then we have been also having monthly events. So one of those events is our next step employment fair. We've been moving these around the city. The next one is at the Denver Indian Center.

The last

one was at cross purpose. And so these are really an opportunity for all of our priority populations. So we're including new Americans, folks who've been unhoused, 50 and older veterans, folks with disabilities, to come and have jobs that are looking to hire folks even with those barriers. And then we also have resources on-site where people are able to get support applying to those jobs or creating a resume, things like that. And then we have been doing weekly classes at the central library as well. So how to search for a job when you've been involved in the justice system or looking at transferable skills, resumes, interviewing, that kind of thing.

Thank you. And then our final section before we get to your questions is to talk a bit about the dashboard improvements. So provided a bit of a summary here of what we sought to do through the improvements to the dashboard. I think I would say that there were two key shifts, which was that we wanted something that would have a broader system wide view, and we wanted something that would have longer term shelf life. And as part of that, really strong focus on reliable automation and long term integrity.

And so to provide a little bit of color to what those things mean, obviously, we produce the initial dashboard, it was within a specific point in time. We were trying to count to a thousand, trying to demonstrate that people were staying in shelter once they arrived there, then we were trying to count to 2,000. There was a challenge in that the way we first set it up, it just sort of counted people all time. It didn't show, well, what did 23 look like? What did 24 look like?

What did 25 look like? What did twenty twenty eight look like as you, you know, keep going? And so we wanted to have something that would have longer term integrity and show that over time. Also, as we started to get to many numbers of people over time, this required a ton of manual labor on the part of our data teams to consistently update that dashboard. And so we wanted something that had reliable automation that was really smart, did all the deduplication efforts itself.

And then that from that, we could tie down to operational elements Instead of having our data team spend all their time just updating a public dashboard, we want them to help us focus on how do we improve our operation based upon the data that we're seeing. And so, those were some of the changes that we sought to make in regards to the note about the broader system, you can see that the dashboard, doesn't just reflect the blue all in mile high sites. It now ties in our family homelessness sites, which were not previously reflected on the dashboard, and even includes some data on our, congregate shelter exits to housing. And so to just talk a little bit about what you see, in the left hand column, we're counting moves into non congregate shelter since 2023. In the right center column, we're counting moves to housing since 2023 across some different program typologies.

In the bottom right, we're specifically tracking exits from the blue all in mile high sites. I'm pleased to see that we still have about a two to one positive to negative exit rate. And then in the top right corner, this is, you know, really what this effort is about is how do we decrease unsheltered homelessness in our community. We can see that according to the January 2024 data, we had an 11% decrease. We're excited and hopeful about the 2025 data if and when that's released, and we will be able to report on that on the dashboard when that comes forward.

And so that is the end of our presentation and happy to hear the questions that you all have for us.

Great. Thank you so much for that. I do want to just real quick and acknowledge. I know Councilwoman Lewis, I don't think she's here. Don't think I don't know. She might be listening online. I don't know. But I do wanna acknowledge the work, that she has done and how she rate lifted up a lot of these issues and her persistence on outcomes and accountability. I just wanna make sure that there is some, you know, recognition of that fact because I know I heard it. I feel like every time we had a contract come up, she would ask those questions.

And then I know that her office has been pretty instrumental in the creation of the Quebec quarter task force, and so I just wanna make sure that we're acknowledging the work that's being done in the collaboration with council members in these efforts and knowing that she does have majority of these shelters and and sites in her district. And so I just wanted to lift that up before we go forward. With that said, I have right now four council members in the queue. So council members, feel free to let me know if you want to be added. We'll be kicking off with Councilman Watson followed by Councilwoman Torres.

Thank you, Committee Chair. And Cole, Tristan, Jeff and Emily, thank you for this presentation. Provides a lot of clarification. It would have been nice for this presentation to have come first, especially the contracting piece. I want to share one quick thing and then I've got a question for Jeff. I share a lot. I'm from The Virgin Islands. And so I have this warm, nice, calm, we call it liming, is who how we are from from the islands. But I don't always share what my mom says to me is I was actually born in Brooklyn. And sometimes when I'm not warm and happy and shiny, my mom would say butchie.

No one else uses that. Brooklyn is coming out. Your contracting process, Cole, brings my Brooklyn out. And I I I very happy to hear of some of the forecasted changes that Jeff shared. And I'm curious from your perspective, since you lead all the Mile High process, do you have anything else that you want to share as far as the difficulties the contractor process has brought to council members and our oversight? Anything you want to elaborate on Jeff's piece? And then I have a data question specifically for Jeff.

Sure. I think, you know, as we've discussed in numerous conversations and in briefings, I think the staff that works on this from the Citi perspective, the providers feel the pain around the contracting process as well. And in in many cases, we have come to a shared and collaborative conclusion that this process needs to improve. And so the kinds of innovative, changes that Jeff is bringing forward are really welcome additions to to this system that we think is going to transform outcomes, transform, contracts, and transform the way this process works to serve people in our city. And so I'm very excited about that and excited to continue learning from those and and seeing where we continue to implement those across the system in future years.

Thank you, Cole. And and Jeff, thankful and grateful for the collaborations we've had over the several months you've been in your role. I know you're discussing a rating of service provider outcomes provided. I'm curious as to how you're linking that back to there's an existing kind of rating process within HMIS. That process rates the efficacy of service providers input into that system, providing an end to end view of service and support. Can you share kind of how those are speaking to each other, what you're describing as the rating process, the current HMIS rating process, and how that transparency is going to come back to city council for us to review both of those targets and ratings?

So

the HMIS system essentially is capturing all of the data that allows us to see outcomes that are happening, including uses of shelters to types of services that are being provided to housing outcomes. And so I think the system's already, you know, talking to each other, and that's the, you know, that's the single source of truth that we're using. And when we when we pilot this performance based contracting, that's going to be both what the provider is using to produce outcomes to us, but we also obviously have access. We'll be able to double check their their work. And as far as how we go about rating, when we're when we're looking at an RFP, think you're asking about how are we gonna rank providers based on past performance.

Sure. We're still working out what are the things we're gonna be looking at, and it's gonna be really different for each provider type. So for example, it's hard to hold shelter providers accountable for housing folks when they don't have access to housing resources. They're relying on other providers. So we have to kind of look at the system and how the system is working and measure hosts performance, you know, based on that broader view.

But for a shelter provider, I would be looking to see, you know, what we might call like heads and beds. Like, are they and that's important because if a provider has 50% of their units offline, but we're still paying them for, you know, the same every month, that's a that's a problem for us. So we wanna look at occupancy. Are they are are they filling up their units every night? Are they turning their units over quickly?

But then there's some things that we expect our providers to be doing in the shelter to help people prepare, or unhoused neighbors prepare for their journey out of homelessness, including has everybody been assessed for housing? If you have not had a housing assessment in our coordinated entry system, then it's going be very hard for you to exit homelessness if you need our assistance from housing. So other things that we're gonna be adding to our contracts, this doesn't really answer your question, but we really wanna make sure that the services that are being provided are housing focused primarily because our our goal, the only way to solve homelessness is to provide somebody a home. So we need everybody in our system rowing in that same direction. So we're going to be requiring what's called critical time intervention services across our system.

It's this evidence based best practice around social work. I won't get into it, but making sure are our shelter providers providing what's called pre CTI services, getting people ready emotionally, but also document ready so that they can move into housing. So we'll go back and look at all of those things. And I it was asked earlier about how do we know what services are being provided at the All In Mile High sites. Well, we now have what we piloted and we'll now have a regular monthly report that we can share with you all that shows each shelter, how many of the clients had a service encounter, and then what kinds of service encounters, did they have.

That's gonna rank very highly in our like, in in addition to really the two things we can ask our shelter. Three things we can ask our shelter providers. Are the customers happy with what they're receiving? Are they filling up their beds? And are they providing the services that they're contracted to provide? Those will be the three main things we look at on a shelter contract. It's different for housing and different for outreach, obviously. I hope that answered your that long answer.

That's certainly brought in, and I appreciate that. I would just add without you having to respond on Housing Connector, I would love to see how that is being applied and then any of the rapid rehousing through Housing Connector, how those outcomes can be rated as well. But I look forward to seeing that process. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much, Councilman. Next, we have Councilwoman Torres followed by Councilwoman Sawyer. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks, everybody, for all of the work that you're doing. I want to ask about closure of a shelter, overnight shelter in Lakewood. My borders on Lakewood, the closure of Recovery Works. Even though temporary, is that having any impact on what you're seeing in Denver? I know it just closed maybe three weeks ago or so. And if not, if you can circle back to me about that.

What I can report on is that we aren't seeing an impact of that in terms of encampment or homelessness related reports in that area on the Denver side of the border. So there has been no uptick in terms of the number of reports that are coming in around people camping around that border. I don't know in terms of people showing up in our congregate sheltering system. We'd probably have to get back to you on that piece.

That's fine if you need to.

Yeah. I can get I can have a report pulled from NBHI that will show what happened to those folks and see if they've shown up anywhere in Denver. That should be relatively easy to get that.

Okay. Thank you. Encampment and street engagement, 40% decrease in calls. It's also been winter. So I'm wondering what proactively is being done to prepare for summer. And clearly, was a huge increase in emergency overnight sheltering. So may have been kind of a decrease in calls for large encampments. But I also feel like we're facing a slightly different like, scenario.

So two points of clarification and good point. The points of clarification are that number is all like, 23, 24, 25 all time, so not just looking at winter. And it's also not just related to encampments, but all homelessness related reports. So just wanted to provide those points of clarification. In terms of the way we're planning to be able to address that over the summer, we have really been bolstering that system so that we're able to get to those calls in real time.

Right now, the number of calls that are coming in a day is in the 30 calls per range. That's a very manageable number. We do see year over year an uptick over the summertime. And so, the Salesforce software in particular is going to help us, streamline that, get it right into people's queues right away, and then also provide an end once that ticket is closed out so that we aren't sending multiple people out to the same spot. Yeah. So that will streamline that process and make us more effective. But I do I don't know, Jeff, if there's anything you wanna add just about folks we saw in cold weather shelter and how we're thinking about that across our system. Yeah.

I mean, I think it's a it's a good point. We had, in some cases, like, 2,000 close to 2,000 people winter in shelter program. And I think we're we haven't seen a major uptick yet, but we're just gonna have to stay on top of it with our outreach team and monitoring three one one complaints and see if there's going to be an increased demand for shelter. And we'll have to address that if we see there is a need. The other thing that we really are trying to focus more attention on are what's often called diversion.

In Denver, we call it rapid resolution, which is really having our outreach workers retrain to focus on the question that you ask is, where's the last place that you were housed and how can we get you back to that place, Whether it's around the corner, at your mom's house, and maybe mom had to ask you to leave because you couldn't afford to feed you, and can we solve that with some, you know, up a year's worth of grocery, you know, gift cards for, you know, where you came here from, you know, some city in Iowa and can we get you back there and really focusing on diversion because we clearly don't have enough of anything. So diversion is gonna need to be a, you know, an increased focus. So far, I think we're pretty pleased with that we're not seeing or feeling overwhelmed. We were a little bit worried about the closure of the Radisson, and we lost over 200 beds. But so far, aren't seeing it impact the adult system yet.

Okay. Street outreach services, is there more vendors than Jumper Dream Center?

Oh, yes. Yes.

How many are there?

So there are a number of agencies that are coordinated on that, Right? So HOST is obviously one of those. DDPHE is one of those agencies. The safety department through the street enforcement team is one of those agencies, and DPD HOT as well as Park Rangers and as well as DOTI on on cleanup efforts. I guess I mean external vendors. Oh, external vendors. So Host has contracts with Collier Coalition for the Homeless on the Denver Street Outreach Collaborative and then Denver Dream Center on the street ambassador services.

Okay. So I because we just approved the extension of the Denver Dream Center contract, that cost went up from $50,000 a month to $77,000 a month. Was there a reason why?

Jeff, do you have the details on that?

Yeah. That one was so the actual cost is $63,000 a month. That contract kind of bounced from multiple places over to host. And I'm just as confused as everybody else is on it, but we have gotten it under control with Denver Dream Center. And there was just it carried across fiscal years. So I think there was some confusion in terms of you know, there was three different contract amendments that happened. But the cost is $63,000 a month, and that's what we will be moving forward with.

Okay. So same objectives in terms of numbers. Yep. I'm not in District 9 or 10. Lama Lincoln Park is District 3, heavily impacted by the work that was done to manage downtown's encampments. We got a lot of that push factor, and Denver Dream Center can't come to my district. And so I want to understand if the new RFP will include where the need is as opposed to just a downtown focus.

Yeah. We're definitely yeah. Go ahead, Jeff.

Sorry. Yes. The answer is yes. With the RFP is gonna be a lot more prescriptive than it's been in the past so that providers understand. We are gonna be asking them specifically where to go, and we'll probably break them divide this city up into regions and not have overlapping providers just kind of going where they need to go.

And then they'll be responsible for the three eleven calls that are coming through in those areas. And Denver Dream Center, Urban Peak, St. Francis, Colorado Coalition for the Homelessness are all welcome to apply. And I'm sure we'll be applying again. But I think the end result's going to be considerably different from what it's been in the past, past, which is why we're reissuing the RFP just a year after we issued it.

Happy to have a conversation about what my district has looked like in terms of needing or requesting street outreach. So let me know. And then I'll I'll just end with a comment. Medicaid isn't the only federal cut that's gonna affect this work. HUD, if it reduces funding, our housing authorities, affordable housing providers, and adds potentially a two year limit to people who are in stable housing, that is going to push massive numbers of people who have stable housing to nothing. And that just I get chills thinking about that. So thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Councilwoman. Next is Councilwoman Sawyer followed by Councilwoman Alvidrez.

Thank you. Thanks, you guys. This is really great information, and I wanna say thank you about the contracting. I really appreciate everything you have said about it. I do think you inherited a giant pile of rocks and a teaspoon. So I appreciate you slowly, slowly sifting through all of that to get it to a better place. So I really, really appreciate that. Question for you about the so this is slide four and slide I don't know what slide this is. The last one before the appendix. So really great to be able to see sorry.

I'm gonna back up so you can see me while I'm talking to you. Really great to be able to see all of the data in one place for all of the different programs that we have. But it is like, if you Google search for it, it's in it's under it is called the all in mile high dashboard.

Mhmm.

So what is all in mile high? Is all in mile high the house a thousand? Is all in mile high everything we're doing to house people in Denver? Like, what is all in mile high?

At this point? Thank you for the question. Yeah. All in Mile High is the citywide goal that's focused on effectively over time ending street homelessness in Denver. Right? And so we have a citywide goal structure. There's six citywide goals. Each of those are multiagency in nature and led by mayor's office staff. So we have a housing goal that's like that. We have a safety goal, a vibrancy goal, etcetera. All Mile High is the homelessness goal, And the goal for this year is to bring 2,000 people in off the streets and 2,000 people connected to permanent housing. But really, effort long term on that is to end street homelessness in Denver. And so All in Mile High is the citywide goal framework for establishing that.

Okay. I really appreciate that clarity because it sort of informs my next question, which is I'm looking at slide four. I'm looking at slide whatever the last slide is. Yeah. 40. And right. And 21.

Okay.

And and I'm looking at the fact that the, like, the family shelter has been moved in, right, traditionally when we, in July '23 into even 2024, very clearly were told by everyone that the family shelter was separate. It was not part of All In Mile High. So if we have changed the definition of All In Mile High, that's great. And I think it is useful information for the public to be able to see all in one place. But I think some communication on the change in definition of what all in mile high is then is necessary because either it is that we've changed the definition of

or it is that we

are adding information to pad our numbers. Sure. Right? So and I'm certain that's not what we're doing.

Yeah.

It's what it looks like if we don't communicate better that we have changed the definition of what all all in Malhei is.

Thank you for that comment as well. Are we able to see what's on the screen right

now? Can't. Can you pull up slide 21, please?

There it is.

There it is. Yeah. So

I think part of the reality of the way we've talked about all in mile high in the past is that it's been a bit microscopic. Right? And I think many of you recognize that intuitively understood that from the beginning. This is not, you know, the blue on your screen, those seven or eight sites that we brought forward are not the entirety of our homelessness response system. We're making major investments in that system, and we're trying to take a broader system wide view and you utilize that entire system.

And so this is what that reflects. We're also still trying to be very transparent and show you those things we've been talking to you about all the way since 2023. We're still showing you all that data in the same way that we were, and we're also showing you the other pieces, right, family sheltering being one of those. I think it was always a bit confusing because the Tamarac family shelter came forward as a part of that initial effort, but then it was the data wasn't included in the dashboard. And so I think there was confusion both internally and externally about, well, what is that and how does it fit in?

And so the approach we took was we're gonna show the sites in the way we have historically, but we're also going to show additional information. And it intends to represent our broader system, which we are using every day through our street engagement efforts. We're not just sending people to the blue sites. We're sending people to every type of site that we have in our system and other sites as well. We're sending people to the solution center. We're sending people to detox. We're sending people to family unification and all those sorts of things. And so this is intended to better and more fully represent our broader homelessness response system.

Fantastic, Cole. And I think it really tells the right like, we're there, right? It tells the right story. So I really appreciate homelessness that. I think I do have a question just about the family shelter because the family could be two, three, four, seven people. Right? So when we're looking at those numbers, is that the number of families or is that the number of

people?

It's the number of people. And that's why you see that number being

It's so much larger. Right.

Yeah. Because we've always counted people. Yeah. And, you know, generally, like, in homelessness services, you count households. But the numbers we've always shown were people, so we kept it consistent and then that there are more people in those households.

Okay. I appreciate that. I would say that there should probably be, like, a little asterisk or something at the bottom letting people know that just to be fully transparent and kind of what that what that looks like.

Good call.

Also, on slide 21, when we're looking at the moves to housing on the right hand side of the screen, what this tells me, especially if I'm looking at at the now that I know that we're talking people when it comes to family shelter, right, is that the the most success we're having in actually moving people into housing is, the street to housing program. So I'm curious whether you all have considered the idea of shifting dollars to focus on our most successful program that actually gets the outcome that we want Yeah. From where we are spending a significant amount of dollars that is successful based on the data we're looking at on the screen?

Yeah. I think that's a good question. I don't know that it's as straightforward, right, as if you shift dollars there, do outcomes flow. Right? Because those outcomes are largely based upon the slot the housing slots that are assigned to those teams.

I think it's, you know, fair to say that a lot of the street outreach work that's happening, teams are connecting to units that are available in our system through properties that providers manage and things like that. And so it's not necessarily the case that if we just surged a bunch of dollars there, it would make those outcomes increase unless it was also directly connected to housing slots and housing placements that were assigned as well. I think, obviously, the reality is, people that, are in our shelters, if we, you know, defunded our shelters, for instance, and, we put all the money there, all those people would be outside. Right? And so we would be trying to connect services when people are exceptionally vulnerable.

I don't think it would be like a one to one trade off. Okay. But I yeah. I don't know if there's anything you wanna add. Yeah.

I think a couple of things. The street to lease program in a lot of communities is successful when you have large encampments cause you essentially go there, set up shop, and are able to, you know, almost like, you know, set up a tent and just be there every day. Now that we thanks to the work that's been done prior to me getting here, we don't really have large incumbents in Denver. We really have moved the street to lease resources into what we call housing central command. So we're actually now calling that the housing accelerator program.

So we don't really have a street to lease initiative, but housing central command. So some of the some of what you see in that green is actually placements that were probably made through housing central command because it was we kind of took that program and and brought it to the on mile high sites.

Can I just ask a follow-up question to that then? Because we have a specific contract with a specific organization that we pay to do street to lease for us. So I guess I need a little clarity around what of those numbers are the results of that contract, and what of those green numbers are the results of creating the CAP program.

Yeah. So

all of them are the result of that contract. It's the same provider. I think we have to

follow-up with you on that.

Okay. Yeah. Let let yeah.

Let us follow-up on that.

Yeah. Because I think I yeah. I need a little bit more clarity on that then. Okay. And then one quick comment. I clicked on the definitions on the bottom. Uh-huh. Appreciate the fact that you have updated those definitions to something that's a little bit more realistic. Thank you. And then last question for you is on slide four. When we are looking at hold on. I'm going back to slide four myself. When we are looking at the no. It's not slide four. It is slide it was this one where we did the crops finally, and I was very excited about that.

I can't find the slide that it is right now. Here we go. 15. So if we look at from essentially the beginning all the way to 2025, we are looking at well over 1,000 people that have returned to the street. And there are lots of reasons why they have returned to the street, and that is fair. Sure. What I'm really excited about is that our blue line is significantly higher, and we finally hit that cross. Right? Great job. But what are we doing for those over a thousand residents that haven't been able to continue on in our sheltering services for many different reasons and are and have now returned to the street?

In many cases, we're continuing to serve them. And you know, if you draw a process map from the moment we encounter someone on the streets to them going to shelter to them going to housing, it's not just a straight through line linear for every single person. Many of these folks are coming into shelter, going back to the streets, coming back to shelter, going to housing. Some of them are going back to the streets, some of them are and so we're continuing to serve folks. And so that's definitively not

So there

could be duplicate numbers there too.

So there there could be so the number that we're showing on the dashboard at the very top is a completely unduplicated number, individual people. Okay. So let's be clear about that. Okay. However, this is about exits.

So this could this be

be someone that returned to unsheltered homelessness. And so I guess I don't want the story to be that, well, 300, 76 people over time have exited to unsheltered homelessness. And so that means those 376 people are just there forever.

Right. That's sort of what I'm I'm curious about. Right.

So those those people still have an opportunity to be reengaged and reengaged with the system. And, many folks find their path to housing over the course of that reengagement process.

Can I just ask one follow-up question to that? Is that all right? So I really appreciate that, Cole. And that's like, thanks for clarifying that for me. I do have a follow-up in that. I know my office has received several emails. I'm certain other council offices have received emails from people who have said, was in your shelter system. I was asked to leave. I am now on the streets. I am not being reengaged. I am told I can't go back into our shelter system. So there is a population of people, albeit small, but I want to be fair, right, for whom our shelter system is no longer an option. And those exits from our shelter system to the street then mean they are out of that system. So what are we doing there?

Yeah. Great question. I also Tristan pointed out, I should clarify that was showing you a running total. So it's not adding quarter by quarter. That was a running total.

So we're talking about 376

people not

377 total people. Yeah. Q two twenty five. Thank you.

Exactly.

Okay. So appreciate that.

And then I think part of your question is related to some of the way this has historically been managed by providers. And so an individual might get kicked out of a particular shelter and told they cannot ever return to that shelter. That is something we're working to address Okay. So that those individuals continue to have opportunities to reengage.

Yeah. I would love, maybe in our next quarterly update, to just get a follow-up on what that looks like because it's not a huge number. But it is a number. Right? And it is something that we've got to address. So if you maybe a little more time to kind of work through that and then come back and and talk to us a little bit more about that. That's good. Thank you.

Thanks. Great. Thank you. I have four members left in the queue. We'll go to councilwoman Alvedrez and then Gilmore. Thank you.

Great information. Appreciate it. Definitely really appreciate the adding of helping people find a job. That's really important. I'm curious, what does the intake system into what does the intake process into the system look like? And are we tracking why people are becoming homeless? I know we often say it's the cost of housing, but actually, is it an eviction? Is it the job loss? Is it the domestic violence? Is it mental health substance use? Like, are we getting down to why people are becoming homeless?

JEFF Yeah. Jeff, do you want to take that one?

JEFF Yeah. That information is tracked on all intakes. And it's also done we also look at it through a survey that happens each year with a point in time count. I can provide you the specifics of why the causes of homelessness are people's last stay. Eviction, if I remember correctly, is like third or fourth on the list. Often. I think number one is maybe a loss of income. Number two is like health related, which could be people getting sort of unofficially evicted due to behavioral health issues, etcetera. But we have the data that can share with your office.

That would be great to look at. And then are we tracking how long people have lived here in Denver? For example, if they're coming from Lakewood or another place because of our services and making sure that we're not neglecting our homeless population that has been in Denver for a while.

We do have that information, although it's voluntary. It's like people can report that on a voluntary basis. It's hard to know, to be honest, like how accurate that information may or may not be. But we are able to look regionally at people moving from place to place through the system. But we don't currently have a requirement, like you can't come into the shelter unless you can prove that you would, you know, Denver you you were staying in Denver prior.

I think that information would just be helpful so we know what where are people coming from and into the system. Are there is there reporting on who moved to shelter? Example, a thousand people moved to shelter and 482 to housing. Are these numbers verified by any audit or case management system or third party?

So all the data is directly from the homelessness management information system. So it is an external system, and, that's that's the data source. So Yes.

One of the things on on there is now we're being able to see Denver specific data. And before when we saw those data specific numbers, it was just like looking at per capita kind of a mathematical equation, not actual people. And so are we looking at, like, Denver's percentage of the point in time count, for example, or are we looking at actual data that shows that these people are in Denver at the time that they are being counted?

I guess I'm not totally sure that I understand the question or how that

So point in time count.

Okay. Point in time.

Let's use that as an example. So the point in time count, we're saying this is how many people are homeless in Denver on this day. Is that looking at the whole point in time count number and just doing a percentage of what Denver's representation of that is? Or is it actually looking at they were physically counted in the city of Denver at the time?

Yeah. They were physically counted in the city of Denver through the homelessness management information system and or through counts of people on the street. So those are actual representations of people from the city and county Of Denver. Jeff and my

Last year when we had the number, it was a percentage.

Oh, no. It wasn't. It's always been. I'm sorry. Just to be clear, the point in time count, which is done by MDHI, not by the city, is always based upon the data that's conducted. It used to be done by a survey. It's now done through HMIS the night of based on the number of people being served in our shelters and the count of people on the street. So it wasn't

But it was a metro

Oh, it is.

Number. And then we calculated the Denver number from that.

That was not that was not the methodology.

That's what I remember from last year. But if that wasn't the case, what is the case going to be this year? And are these numbers a calculation, are they a reality?

These numbers are a reality based upon the number of people that were in shelters in the city and county of Denver in the homelessness management information system on January 24 or something like that, 2025.

And what about the people that are not in shelter?

The number of people that were not in shelter were counted by teams that covered every precinct or something like that and went out and counted the people that were sleeping sleeping outdoors.

So we

know, like, which precincts they were in?

Mhmm.

Okay. Great. That's good to know. So Derek, you had mentioned that the outcomes that we're tracking are three. Can you repeat those again? I didn't get

to The

outcome I'm

sorry. Yeah. That's Okay. My

mistake. Derek's back there.

The outcomes that we're tracking for

For the success.

Oh, like in the RFP? Right. So the three things for shelters that we'll be looking at will be essentially heads and beds. Are you how many people are staying in your shelter each night? The other is going to be as has everybody been assessed for housing that is staying at your site?

And then the other will be, are you well, there's actually two more. One is just how many are you having servicing? Does every every client needs to have a service encounter at least twice a month? So if a client's only getting one or no service encounter a month, the provider won't get won't get paid the same amount. And then the other is, you providing pre CTI services or pre housing services, making sure people have all their documents ready?

And then also you've started talking to them or however the providers want to do it, whether they want to do groups. The transition from being on the streets to shelter to housing is actually quite difficult. Social, you know, relationships get disrupted. It's can be really traumatizing and difficult for folks. So having discussions with people while they're in shelter is shown to have a very big impact on whether they're going to be successful once they get placed into housing. So we're gonna ensure that our shelter providers are are having those kinds of discussions. And again, they will get paid for doing that work as part of the performance based pilot that we're doing.

That third measurement is can you summarize that in, like, a smaller, like

Last one I just said? Yes. Is that Yeah. Providing, I'd say, based services at the shelter.

Okay. Because what I am curious about is just the well-being of that person. Like, how is their well-being? Are they Okay? Do they need medical attention? And I know if they have those two appointments a month, but overall, like, what is their well-being, I think, is a question I would like to see information on. And just one more question about the RV resolution program. Looking at the cost, it's like $1,600 per person. What does that cover? DELL:

Jeff, do want talk about the budget?

So I was going to talk about the well-being metrics, we can probably get you some data on that. I see that as some things our providers are responsible for. Some things are system wide. For somebody to be doing well if they have a behavioral health issue, we're looking to public health to assist with that. We have other providers that are coming in.

So I think that's one of those goals that you know, host needs to be held accountable for in terms of the well-being because clients move through shelters and through the system. You know, and we're trying to build a more, like, client based system rather than just looking at programs, looking at each individual and seeing how they're doing. And shelter providers are being held accountable for things that, frankly, that we're paying for. We're not necessarily paying our shelter providers to provide complex behavioral health services. They can make referrals through service connections, but the outcomes of those referrals really don't fall within their their control.

So we need to do a kind of a better job looking, you know, as host is looking at each client and their their well-being. As far as the RV initiative goes, you know, we're gonna try to help a 150 households that are living in vehicles or a 150 vehicles actually may have multiple households in them to find their way off of the street. There's the cost of actually doing that work and kind of the outreach related expenses to that will be maybe $50,000. The cost of the destruction of a 150 vehicles of people you know, what we estimate about a 100 vehicles, you know, people will turn over to us and we will have them towed and destroyed. That's about $200,000.

And then, you know, for for me, the important thing are the service interventions that occur that frankly are separate. We only have 250,000 specifically set aside for the RV initiative. And then it kinda depends on what the client wants. If they want onward travel assistance, like if their vehicle's broke and they just need to get it fixed and some gas money to get to wherever they were going, we'll do that. If they wanna reunify with a family member, great.

We'll do that. If they wanna drive their vehicle to an all in mile high site and stay in a shelter while we're trying to find housing for them and park their vehicle there as long as it's not being reused as a domicile, we can do that. And then rapid rehousing will be another option for folks. And rapid rehousing costs between 25 and $40,000 per household depending on the size and what their their service need is. But we're kind of that's kinda part of the Housing Central Command's initiative, which is, you know, all these things are connected in different ways. So it's hard to say, like, exactly what the cost will be, but we will be tracking that really carefully starting in we'll begin the work in August.

Great. And I mean, I'm sure some of those people will wanna go to shelter. And you had mentioned not knowing if shelter usage will go up. I think shelter usage will go up. And so one of the things I'm also concerned about is the downtown area plan where people have gone downtown to get services forever doesn't account for any more services for people experiencing homelessness. Have you all informed that plan at all?

We we've obviously been a part of that that process. Host has a representative in that process, and we're, you know, staying in touch on those conversations. But I think, you know, from the very beginning, we have not been focused on expanding services in downtown. We've been focused on trying to expand them across the city. And so that yeah. The intention is not to add the services or add the locations downtown.

That's very disappointing, but I guess that's your goal. Thank you, council. Committee chair.

Thank you. We have I have two more folks in the queue. I have Councilwoman Gilmore followed by Pro Tem Romero Campbell.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In looking at the slide deck and what you had mentioned that most people are homeless due to loss of work. I'm not seeing a strong correlation between once you get someone settled into sheltered homelessness or housing, the real emphasis and connection in getting them reemployed. I hear a lot about behavioral health. I hear a lot about addiction recovery.

I feel like sort of people are making the veiled assumption that anybody who's homeless has substance abuse or mental health illness. That's not always the case. Sometimes folks just lose a job. And so I know time is short, but I would ask for a real follow-up on what you're doing around workforce development to get people employed so that they can secure housing. And I don't see any of this here.

I see a one off of using workforce development training centers throughout the city. I'm sorry, but if somebody comes to the Montbello workforce development training center there without someone walking them through the process, they're never going to get a job. And so I think that's a throwaway that you're doing. I think that you need to put the workforce development training services right in the shelters so that it's right there because we know transportation is an issue. And I don't see any correlation of off ramps for us as a city to either create sustainability of this program or a transition of this program when the government can no longer underwrite it.

Because that is coming down the road. And it's great to talk about the metrics, but I've heard nothing about sustainability planning or transition planning. And so I hope that we get there in the 2026 budget conversation. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Can I just respond to two quick things? One is and I apologize if I misspoke. The number one reason is loss of income, not necessarily loss of employment. Sometimes it's loss of benefits or family members no longer providing for you. And and also just wanna acknowledge that, you know, we do need to do better on the workforce piece, and the mayor recognized that quite a while ago.

So we've got this pilot going with with DITA that has been really successful, and hopefully, we can expand it. And right now, really, what we're focusing on is people who have short term rental subsidies who are at risk of losing their housing if they can't increase their income because that's, you know, an immediate potentially emergent situation with folks as their twelve months is coming up. But hopefully, we'll be able to expand the partnership. And also just wanted to add that we are not sort of just referring people to Emily's team and just walking away. We have housing stabilizer case managers who are working with the clients, and they're making the referral and then working with that client throughout their journey as they're on this temporary rent subsidy program.

So we are working to get better at this.

Yeah. Think the numbers, was about you had about a 10% success rate of getting you brought in 80 and got nine employed. I'd like to dig into those numbers a little

bit more.

Absolutely. I mean, we've just gotten started. So I think next quarter will be a good a good tell and the quarter after that because we literally just got off the ground a couple months ago.

And I'd also if I could just add one thing. On average, it takes people three to five months to get a job. And so as those referrals are coming in, that time starts ticking. And so since we've already start we started in January, that number if that gives a little bit more context to that number. And then there's also 11 people who have chose to go to training from that 40 that we're actively working with too. And so

Maybe I need some follow-up information because, I guess, you're starting the workforce development piece. It sounds like January 2025. We, within the city, have had other contracts with nonprofit providers to help out with workforce development and job securement. And so I'd like the numbers from July 2023 to now, how many people, since you're tracking them, have actually got sustainable employment? That would be really helpful.

Since the beginning of the House 1,000?

Is that

what you're saying?

Because we've had workforce development training programs forever in the city. And so I'd be curious why we weren't utilizing those partners when we're trying to move so many people out of sheltered homelessness.

Thank you,

Councilwoman. All right. At last, I have Council Pro Tem Romero Campbell from via Zoom.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And again, thank you for this presentation. I wanted to ask specifically about family sheltering. There are when I think if I heard correctly, you're tracking outcomes for families. And if you're tracking individuals, I just keep thinking that there is an opportunity to connect with organizations that serving children in multiple capacities.

So whether it's through early childhood, Denver Public Schools, food insecurity organizations, or organizations that address food insecurity. I think that that is an opportunity and maybe something that would really get to the root causes that we're talking about for young people and their trajectory. And so I don't know if you have partnerships that are in place for that. And then I have another question about the family sheltering overall status. And maybe this is a follow-up, but an overall status and the wait list that's out there. I know people had multiple

questions as well.

So the a little bit hard time hearing, but the second question was the status of the family shelter wait list?

Yes. So that and I think that is there any crosswalking of the data that's being collected around families and children with Denver Public Schools with early childhood education? Are we crosswalking any of that data to look at long term outcomes?

Yes. We have a pilot program that we're working on with Denver Public Schools that we can talk about more at the hearing. I believe next week, we'll be having a briefing on family homelessness. Can talk a little bit about that partnership, which again is new but is providing us the ability to work closely with the public schools and share data, although that's focused more on prevention right now than it is on families that are literally homeless. And then you had a question about the the so the family shelter wait list today, I believe, is at about 166 families.

It's been ranging between one hundred twenty and one hundred eighty. Since the beginning of 2025, it's about a 70% increase over what we saw a year ago. And we are making some steps to reduce those numbers and improve both the size of the shelter system. We just added some beds at a grand opening, which is coming up, the Theodora, as well as we're going to be adding some housing programs in addition to the pilot that we're doing as well as making some changes to the connection center. But we can talk more about that at the briefing next week, if that's Okay.

That would be great. Thank you. All right. Well, I'm going to close this out here because we do have to stop at noon. But I want to thank you again. It's helpful to get this information and to see some of the changes that are happening. I know there's always tons of questions because it's you know, we know there's always room for improvement on these kinds of things. I'll just a couple of things just wanting to ping for follow-up. One is around the workforce piece. If you could also tell us how many people are showing up to the classes that are being held at the public Central Public Library because I think we had talked about that being maybe potentially a barrier is like having only one location.

And just to lift up what councilman Gilmore said around, can these things be provided in the sites themselves, these classes, as opposed to having people having to travel. So transportation might be a barrier. And then the second piece is around the eviction piece. Jeff, when you mentioned eviction, I know we talked about this, I think, during budget briefings last time was self eviction versus an actual legal eviction. And if somebody is losing their employment, is losing their income, are they self evicting because they can no longer afford to live there?

And so just wanting to be clear about kind of those delineations and and also just the causes of folks ending up homeless and not only just unsheltered homelessness, but also just unhoused. Right? Like, so not having their own housing, but they might be staying with other people or or staying in cars. Like, just, you know, understanding all of those different pieces. But with that said, I know we need do need to end here and get ready for the next committee.

I wanna thank everyone for participating. We had yeah. How many things on consent today? I missed that part. Five five items on consent. Those will move forward to full council, seeing that no one has called those off. Thank you, everybody. We are adjourned.

So, yeah, we're good.

Six minutes. Right on time. So Okay. Grab a snack.