City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, welcome everyone. We're going to go ahead and come to order with a roll call from our assistant city clerk, Callison Ley. The record shall reflect that all members are present. Thank you. And council member Contrus will lead us in the pledge of allegiance. We stand. Ready. Begin. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Okay. And uh our assistant city clerk has some procedural items to cover. I would like to remind everyone that the Vista Municipal Code requires members of the public to observe order and decorum at the meeting and to conduct themselves in a courteous manner. The ordinance was adopted to allow for public input and to facilit facilitate city business without disruption of the meeting. Applause is appropriate for items listed under the presentation portion of the agenda only. Students wishing to receive credit for attending this evening's meeting must stay for a minimum of one hour. However, we ask that you stay for the completion of an item rather than leaving in the middle of a discussion. When you are ready to leave, you may ask one of the staff members in the back of the room to sign your paper.

Thank you. To speak on an item on tonight's agenda, please fill out a speaker slip with the number of the item you would like to speak on. Give it to the clerk secretary staff. Speaker slips are available on the table just outside of the city council chambers. For the members of the public participating via Zoom, you may use the raise your hand feature to indicate you'd like to speak or press star 9 on your phone. We will announce when to raise your hand to indicate you'd like to make a comment on the specific item being discussed. Speakers will have three minutes each to address the council. Any member of the public may address the We're going to now enter the oral communications opportunity. So, any member of the public may address the city council on agency related matters that are not on the agenda by requesting to speak during this section. If you are participating via Zoom, please use the raise your hand feature. Press star 9 if you'd like to speak. The number of speakers heard during this segment will be limited to 10. Any remaining speakers will be heard under the second oral communications item. Okay. Seeing no requests, do none on Zoom. Okay. We'll now close the opportunity for oral communications at tonight's meeting. And we have one discussion item tonight. Our update on the implementation of the strategic plan to address homelessness. If any of the members of the public wish to speak on this item, they may indicate so by using the raise their hand feature by pressing star9 or submitting a request to speak card here at the dis. Speakers will be called upon after the presentations. Please hand your cards in uh or make your request before the end of the presentation. Our housing and homelessness services division manager Jonathan Lung will introduce the item.

Thank you and good evening, mayor, city council. Tonight's workshop provides the city council and members of the public an update on the implementation of the city's strategic plan to address homelessness and affordable housing programs through December 31st, 2025. Also with me tonight is management analyst Johanna Kife, who will also provide a portion of tonight's presentation. Staff invite the city council to receive the presentation in its entirety, saving questions for after the conclusion of the presentation as questions that arise may be answered later in the presentation. I apologize, but the big screen is on the blink for the moment, so we're working on it. We'll get it back up as soon as we can. Okay. Okay. The strategic plan was adopted in March 2020 and identifies three primary goals which are to prevent homelessness by focusing on promoting self-sufficiency and stable housing for residents at risk of homelessness to improve the quality of life of all housed and unhoused residents by mitigating public health and safety impacts and reducing homelessness by providing long-term solutions to connect people with housing and supportive services. These three goals aim to ensure that if residents do experience homelessness, it is a rare, brief, and one-time experience. The strategic plan utilizes seven strategies to pursue these goals with various programs provided by strategic plan providers with updates provided for each of these programs with tonight's presentation. This workshop is meant to provide a highlevel update of these activities with more particular details reserved for an in-depth discussion during standing committee on homelessness meetings. Through December 31st, 2025, the strategic plan has appropriated over $28 million, spending nearly $14 million of those appropriations. The majority of funds appropriated towards strategic plan activities come from the state of California at 65% of total appropriations.

followed by 30% appropriated from locally generated revenues and the remaining 5% from federal sources. Notable grants include $9.6 million from encampment resolution funding rounds one and three and approximately $8 million from the city's year-end fund balances and cannabis revenues. To measure homelessness in Vista, the city relies on two tools. One being the annual point in time count coordinated by the regional task force on homelessness or RTFH as directed by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD. 21 census tracks are assigned to the Vista point in time count deployment site which also includes unincorporated areas between Vista and San Marcos and Bonszel. The 2025 point in time counted 144 unsheltered individuals within the Vista deployment site boundaries which was a 15% decrease from 2024. Vista's sheltered count in 2025 was 121 individuals, which was a 20% increase from 2024. The decrease in Vista's unsheltered count and increase in sheltered count correlates with the city's continued commitment to increasing shelter capacity and utilization of available resources. The graph shown on this slide here tracks the point in time count results in Vista since 2016. It should be noted that there was no point in time count in 2021 due to COVID. Sheltered counts are informed by provider submitted data or if unreported the most recent data in HMIS. Non-HMIS participating transitional housing programs may or may not report each year. The 2025 point in time count was the first year that the Buena Creek Navigation Center or BCNC was operating during a count and the facility lies within Vista's point in time count boundaries. Through an agreement with RTFH, BCNC clients from Ensenus are included with the Ensenita point in time

results. The 2026 point in time count was conducted on January 29th, 2026 with the Vista deployment site hosting 61 volunteers, 49 of which were city staff. Results of the 2026 point in time count are expected to be released later this year in May or June. The second and more recent tool the strategic plan utilizes to measure homelessness is the by-name list maintained by the San Diego rescue mission. Because the by-name list is a more precise tool which contains client level data, public updates are provided with a dashboard developed by the rescue mission and presented to the standing committee on homelessness on a bimonthly basis. The by name list tracks the inflows and outflows to and from unsheltered homelessness in Vista. And on December 31st, 2025, 378 individuals had been engaged with the rescue mission outreach workers within the previous 90 days. The rescue mission also maintains a second by name list tracking the number and needs of Vista residents experiencing chronic homelessness that utilize emergency and other public services at a higher rate and requiring higher levels of care. On December 31st, 2025, 33 Vista residents were included on the chronic homelessness by name list with the most common barriers to solving their homelessness being substance use and lack of income. To help guide its implementation, the strategic plan employs two working groups intended to receive regular and detailed updates on strategic plan activities and provide feedback and recommendations to the city council. On January 23rd, 2024, the city council formed the standing committee on homelessness, which is composed of chair Katie Melendez, vice chair John Franklin, and remaining council members as exeicio members. The standing committee met monthly from its inception through December 31st, 2025, and now meets bimonthly beginning during calendar year 2026.

On June 24th, 2025, the city council approved a seven member homelessness commission to provide community feedback on the strategic plan. The first homelessness commission meeting was held last Thursday, March 26th, and included members swearing into office, new commissioner orientation, an overview of the seven strategies and contracted providers of the strategic plan, an adoption of the commission's rules of procedure. The homelessness commission is scheduled to meet bimonthly, alternating meeting months with the standing committee on homelessness to continue support of the homelessness prevention goal of the strategic plan. On November 12th, 2024, the city council appropriated $200,000 from year-end fund balances to create a new emergency rental assistance program. On June 10th, 2025, the city council approved an agreement with Interfaith Community Services to administer the VHAP, excuse me, the Vista Emergency Housing Assistance Program, category 2 or VHAP C2. The VHAP C2 prevents homelessness for VISTA residents meeting the HUD category 2 definition of homeless, which is when residents would be lost within 14 days of an application for assistance. No subsequent residence has been identified, and the household lacks resources or support networks needed to obtain other housing. Households meeting these criteria may receive up to $5,000 for up to three months of assistance, including a rears. Of the $200,000 contracted with Interfaith for the VHAPC2, 10% or 20% is eligible, excuse me, 20,000 10% or $20,000 is eligible for program delivery costs with the remaining $180,000 available for client assistance. Through December 31st, 2025, the city has paid $77,690 towards the contract with approximately $70,000 paid for direct client assistance. The first VHAP C2 assistance funds were administered in September 2025 with a

total of $15,990, $14,826 in October, $28,869 in November, and $10,267 in December. These funds assisted a total of 18 households for an average assistance per awarded household of $3,886.26. The 18 households included 30 adults, two of which were seniors and one veteran and 35 children. The two highest racial demographics of the 18 awarded heads of households included nine identifying as white and five as black or African-American. 13 awarded households had a total income of 30% AMI or less and the remaining five making between 31 and 50% AMI. The most common reason for the emergency need was an employment related income loss at 12 households followed by two incurring an emergency medical expense, two incurring an emergency vehicle expense, one with another emergency expense, and one change in family dynamic in support of the encampment cleanup strategy of the strategic plan. On August 13, 2024, the city council adopted resolution number 2024-140 following the grants passed decision of the United States Supreme Court directing the city manager and city prosecutor to enforce Vista Municipal Code section 9.20.020B, which dictates that no person shall camp on any public property, public park, or any public street or highway. The resolution does maintain the offering of services and shelter when available during enforcement. Since the adoption of the resolution through December 31st, 2025, 478 encampments were cleared from the public rightways with 246 individuals referred to outreach during those efforts. 72 encampments contained personal property which were stored at the public

works yard for the owner to retrieve within 90 days. 26 arrests were also made during enforcement of the resolution. Since the formation of the community improvement team in 2023, 124 tons of trash and debris have been removed from the public rideways and public properties. Between July 1st and December 31st, 2025, 35 encampments were reported on private properties with 31 of those violations addressed by the property owner within the reporting period. In support of the street outreach strategy, the city council approved an agreement with the San Diego Rescue Mission for citywide outreach services on October 22nd, 2024, which was renewed for another 12 months on October 13th, 2025. The contract ceiling is limited to $500,000. And through December 31st, 2025, the city paid SDRM $262,571 for these services. Separately, on June 10th, 2025, the city council approved an agreement with SDRM for ERF3 funded outreach and housing navigation services with a contract ceiling of 2,781,345 through February 2028. Through December 31st, 2025, the city has paid SDRM $429,57 for these services. Both the citywide and ERF contracts with SDRM integrates to form the Vista homeless outreach team or Vista HOT. Through December 31st, 2025, Vista HOT served 815 unduplicated clients, which included 522 males and 293 females. The most common racial demographics were multi-racial and white and included 62 individuals with disabilities, 40 veterans, and 11 members of the LGBTQ

plus community. A large majority of the individuals engaged by Vista Hut had been experiencing homelessness for more than one year and 450 of the individuals engaged had spent time in Vista for over 5 years while housed or unhoused. This heat map shows where clients were engaged by Vista HOT with notable concentrations around State Route 78, the Vista downtown and Sycamore corridor. The most common service interactions during these engagements were the provision of basic needs such as food and clothing and continued street-based case management, which correlates with a high number of shelter offers not resulting in a referral due to an appropriate shelter bed not being available at the time of offer. Client destinations and locations resulting from engagement are tracked during and after engagement with the most common being 155 clients p placed at the BCNC, 101 at the North County Lighthouse, and 230 remaining in a place not meant for habitation. Notably, 37 clients were permanently housed through December 31st by STRM. In support of the shared housing strategy, the Vista Housing Innovation Pilot Program, or the VHIP, utilized existing market rate units to expand affordable housing options for Vista residents experiencing homelessness. This was accomplished by coordinating leases for individual rooms in a multi-bedroom unit directly between the tenant and landlord or through master leasing. Master leasing is an effective tool to solving homelessness by providing housing opportunities for residents experiencing homelessness that are unable to qualify for their own lease due to barriers such as low credit score, insufficient income, or eviction history. The program utilized an online platform to match potential housemates and clients received continued housing

stability case management after placement. On August 27th, 2024, the city council approved an agreement with nonprofit towns people to administer the VHIP, which was funded by an agreement with RTFH. The contract ceiling was approved at $336,89 with a contract term through December 31st, 2025. The city paid all of the contracted funds for Towns People's Services to administer the VHIP. The Vista shared housing expansion with Towns People was approved on December 9th, 2025 to continue the VHIP's work. Through December 31st, 2025, the VHIP served 94 unduplicated clients in 65 households containing 80 adults and 14 children. Of those served, 60 individuals in 45 households were housed, which contained 52 adults and eight children. 30 adults and 56 children were housed under 11 master leases, including one studio, two one-bedrooms, seven twobedrooms, and one three-bedroom unit. Gross master lease costs across all units paid by towns people directly to landlords total $97,27969 with $56,82520 recovered from tenants making a net master lease cost to the program at $40,454.16. With a $40,000 cost to the program over 88 individual master lease months, the VHIP paid an average of $459.71 per unit per month, substantially lowering the cost of housing for clients housed in these units. 22 adults and two children were housed in 17 units with their own individual lease directly with a landlord. These

units included eight SRO units, two rooms in an owneroccupied home, two studios, one one-bedroom unit, three two-bedroom units, and a sober living unit. These clients were able to qualify for their own lease, which towns people coordinated between the tenant and the landlord. This chart demonstrates the cost of individuals in SRO's and home share arrangements, as well as the individual cost of tenants in shared units, ranging between 75 and $1750 per month. The VHIP paid a total of $70,43922 in rental assistance for these clients. And with 123 individual leased months receiving rental assistance, the VHIP incurred an average cost of $572.68 per unit per month. Other flex funds paid by the VHIP include movein supports to cover security deposits, transportation costs, including moving costs, emergency response including hotel or motel stays as bridge housing, full home furnishing from nonprofit Humble Design, and client incentives to provide basic home furnishing. Total flex funds spent through June 30th, 2025 totaled $40,000, $40,51343. The Alliance for Regional Solutions provides shelter beds in support of the strategic plan as one of the first strategic plan providers in September 2020. On September 26th, 2023, the city council approved a new contract to reimburse the Alliance for Shelter Beds utilized by Vista Clients with a ceiling of $200,000 for the first year. Shelter bed night costs were calculated by dividing the number of beds by the operating budget of each shelter, which resulted in the costs for each shelter bed night at each shelter shown on this slide. On January 23rd, 2025, the agreement was extended through June 30th, 2025, and the contract ceiling was increased by

$130,000 for a total contract ceiling between September 26th, 2023 and June 30th, 2025 of $330,000. During both years, the cost to the Alliance shelters for a Vista clients totaled 1,288,427, of which the city contributed $330,000. A new contract for Alliance shelter bed reimbursement was approved in January of this year. Through December 31st, 2025, the Alliance shelter served 157 unduplicated Vista residents with 16 at Haven House, 44 at La Pasada, 62 at Operation Hope, 7 in the Interfaith Shelter network, and 28 at the Escandido Family Shelter. This included 81 adults, 54 children, and 22 older adults 60 years of age or better. The most common referral sources during this period were SDRM with 31 referrals, 39 from Exodus Recovery, and 52 self or family referrals. 122 clients exited Alliance shelters during the reporting period with the most common lengths of stay between 30 and 59 days and over 120 days. 51 clients exited into permanent housing, 21 back to a place not meant for habitation, 30 to unknown destinations from an unreported exit, and 20 to other programs, including six to recuperative care, four to a substance abuse program, five to transitional housing, and five to a different shelter. The strategic plan also provides an interim housing option through the Vista safe parking program which was first approved by the city council on January 10th, 2023 and operates in the eucalyptus parking lot of the Vista Civic Center. The program is operated by Jewish Family Service of San Diego or

JFS and receives supplemental support from Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps who funds daily nutritious meals to safeguarding clients. The current agreement is funded by the city's encampment resolution funding round three award and through December 31st, 2025, the city has paid JFS 1 million72,453 for safe parking operator services. Through December 31st, 2025, 272 unduplicated clients have been served, including 124 men and 140 women. The most common racial demographics were Hispanic and white and the most common age groups were 35 to 44 and 55 to 64 years old at 52 each. There were 200 disabled individuals enrolled in safe parking during this period with physical and mental health disorder being the two most common. The program also served as 16 veterans. The length of the length of clients vehicle homelessness before entering the BISTA safe parking program shows a biomodal distribution with the majority of clients enrolling in the program quickly after falling into vehicle homelessness or after one year. There were a total of 250 exits from safe parking after an average length of stay of 72 days with 130 positive exits after an average of 75 days in the program. 64 negative exits after averaging 63 days of the program and 56 other exits. 52 positive exits were to permanent housing, three to hospital or other medical facility, 34 reunifying with family or friends, and 41 to another interim or bridge housing program. All 64 negative exits were back to a place not meant for habitation, and there were 56 other exits with clients leaving the program without contact. On September 26th, 2023, the city

council approved two master leases of properties to be used as semi- congregate navigation center. And on January 9th, 2024, the city council approved an agreement with nonprofit RET to operate the Bueno Creek Navigation Center or BCNC. The first year agreement had a contract ceiling of $1,50,180 which was increased to $2,137,9 through year 2. Through December 31st, 2025, the city has paid retread 1,874,08 for BCNC operator services. Through December 31st, 2025, the BCNC served 315 unduplicated individuals, including 190 males and 125 females. The most common racial categories were Hispanic and white, and the largest age group served was 40 to 59 years old. 170 of the clients served had a disability, and 17 veterans were served. Before entering the BCNC, clients experienced the range of lengths in homelessness with three most common being 1 to 3 months, 7 to 12 months, and 2 to 5 years. The majority of referrals to the BCNC were rece were received by SDRM, who had been designated as the exclusive referring referring provider in January 2025, followed by Exodus Recovery Path and various other providers operating in Vista. There were a total of 308 exits by December 31st, 2025 after an average length of stay of 66 days. This included 192 positive exits after an average of 81 days, including 90 exits to rental housing with or without an ongoing subsidy, 49 reunifying with family or friends, 18 to a substance abuse treatment or detox facility, and a few other destinations appropriate for the client's continued journey towards

housing. There were 106 negative exits after an average of 41 days at the BCNC, including 100 exits back to a place not meant for habitation and six exits to a hotel or motel using an emergency shelter voucher. 10 other exits included four to a jail, prison, or other detention facility and four unknown exit exits with clients leaving without contact. The BCNC currently funded to operate through December 31st, 2026. The city council began planning for its successor by appropriating $4.5 million from year-end fund balances to to purchase a permanent navigation center facility. Senator Katherine Brakes Senator Katherine Blakespear secured an additional $1 million for this project and Congressman Mike Leven secured an additional $850,000 bringing the total available funds for a permanent facility to 6.35 million. On June 24th, 2025, the city council approved an agreement with SDRM to provide site consultation services to acquire and develop a permanent facility, which SDRM would operate at its own cost. On September 9th, 2025, the city council discussed 1029 Poinsettia Avenue and 2630 Business Park Drive during close session, followed by another close session meeting on October 14th, 2025. No public action has been taken since that time and staff continue to work with a commercial real estate broker to consider an appropriate site. On October 15th, 2024, the city purchased the 12-bedroom residential care facility to host a transition age youth transitional housing program. And on March 11th, 2025, the city council approved an agreement with Urban Street Angels or USA to operate the Viste House. The city is providing the facility for the program's use and USA secures funding and provides operations

for the program. The operating costs are budgeted for $79,526 during the first year, $833,774 during the second, and $877,817 during the third year, which are expected to be funded through a combination of private and public funds. The Vista House accepted its first clients in August 2025 and through December 31st, 2025 has served 25 clients, including 16 males and seven females, with the most common racial categories being Hispanic and white. Nine clients enrolled had been involved with the justice system and seven were former foster youth. 10 clients were employed at entry to the program with an additional nine clients becoming employed after entry. Seven clients were enrolled in educational and trade programs at the time of entry with an additional three enrolling after entry. It should be noted that these are duplicated counts with some individuals being both employed and enrolled in educational programs either before or during their stay at the Vista House. At program at program implementation, there was some disturbances created by the first cohort of clients and through December 31st, 2025, there were 12 negative exits from the program and two positive exits. And that's because we've only had a limited number. The first cohort, the first complete cohort hasn't finished their nine months. Nine months, right?

Up to nine months. That's right. So the first, we haven't exited the first uh complete cohort yet. Not completely, but there was a substantial exit from a large portion of them.

Got it. Fair housing services play a pivotal role in preventing homelessness by advocating for equitable access to housing, offering assistance and resources to individuals at risk of homelessness, and striving to remove discriminatory obstacles to housing. Moreover, fair housing is instrumental in maintaining housing stability by combating unjust evictions, empowering tenants with knowledge of their rights, and championing policies that safeguard against housing insecurity. By ensuring that all residents have equal access to safe and affordable housing, fair housing organizations contribute to the stability and well-being of communities. During this reporting period, city staff recorded 108 interactions, including calls, emails, and in-person visits to the housing and homeless services division. Of those, 16 were regarding fair housing visits and tenant landlord issues for a total of 32% of contacts related to fair housing concerns. It should be noted that residents may have more than one concern per contact or may be vague during their inquiry to avoid sharing sensitive or vulnerable information. The most frequently reported issues were rent increases, tenant landlord disputes, and eviction notices. The city is committed to affirmatively furthering fair housing. CSA San Diego County is a 501c3 nonprofit organization whose primary mission is the promotion of social justice and public welfare through programs, services, and advocacy against all forms of discrimination, including advocacy for the eradication of housing discrimination to asssure equal housing opportunity for all individuals. The city of Vista has selected CSA San Diego to provide fair housing and tenant landlord mitigation services for fiscal year 2526. For any fair housing concerns, residents are encouraged to contact CSA directly. Since opening in June 2025, multiple

residents of Santa Fe Senior Village reported concerns regarding elevator access, among other residential living issues. Residents reported that these conditions have negatively impacted their health and well-being and requested corrective measures to ensure enforcement of safety policies and improved accessibility throughout the property. Staff have reviewed and addressed all concerns with property management, including reviewing elevator logs, incident reports, and invoices for repairs. No additional complaints have been received since the final elevator repair in December of 2025. Two residents from the Grove had contacted the city regarding high rent limits. Staff confirmed the rent was within the allowable rent limits and offered referrals to appropriate service providers. An additional resident from the Grove was referred to staff by the mayor reporting unfair treatment and discriminatory practices. She was contacted via phone call and provided with resources by phone and email. Additionally, staff requested CSA to reach out to her directly. However, there was no response from the resident to CSA or to staff in any follow-up attempts. Affordable housing serves as a crucial safety net that prevents individuals and families from falling into homelessness. helps break the cycle of poverty and provides them with the foundation they need to thrive. Affordable housing provides rent stability and ensures households can allocate a reasonable portion of their income towards housing costs, reducing the risk of financial instability that can lead to homelessness. In addition, certain developments offer on-site support services such as counseling, job training, and health care, which can help individuals and families address underlying issues and prevent them from slipping into homelessness. The city of Vista supports the creation of affordable housing through a combination of state law provisions, local policies, and homeowner incentives. Together, these tools ensure that both large-scale developments and smaller residential additions contribute to meet the

community's housing needs. One way to encourage development of affordable housing is through the city's ADU fee waiver program. On August 13th, 2019, the city of Vista adopted ordinance number 2019-11 amending chapter 18.31 of the city of Vista municipal code, which provides for city fees to be waved in the development of accessory dwelling units if the owner agrees to record a 10-year covenant on the ADU. These units must be rented either to a caregiver household or to households earning no more than 80% of the area median income. This program has helped expand affordability options within existing neighborhoods while supporting the city's housing production goals. Since the inception of this program in 2019, 19 eligible households have participated and a total of $229,463.68 of local fees have been waved for an average of $12,77 of fees waved per unit. During this reporting period, two ADU fee fee waiver applications have been received and affordable affordability covenants are being drafted. On January 10th, 2023, the city council adopted Ordinance 2023-1 requiring that any development with 20 or more units reserve 9% of the total units as affordable. Of these, at least 4% must be moderate income or below, and 5% must be low income or below. Developers who prefer not to build the units on site may instead pay an inloo fee for the city's inclusionary housing fund with inloo funds restricted for construction of future affordable housing units. This ordinance ensures that as larger housing projects are brought forward, each contributes to the city's overall affordability goals. Many of the city's recent developments are meeting this local requirement while also taking advantage of state density

bonus law, which provides additional incentives such as increased density, setback adjustments, and reduced parking standards when developers include affordable housing above above minimum thresholds. State density bonus law allows developers who commit to reserving a percentage of their units for low-income households increase density development concessions and regulatory waiverss. This has seen a steady pipeline of projects utilizing this law. These projects include 1205 Melrose Way with one very lowincome unit, 1070 South Santa Fe Avenue with eight very lowincome units, 165 Eucalyptus Avenue with 18 very lowincome units, 1,800 Monavista Drive with two very low-income units, and 952 Postal Way with seven lowincome units. Thank you.

This concludes staff's presentation. Staff would like to thank the city council for its continued stewardship of the strategic plan and all the strategic plan providers who make its implementation possible to ensure that when homelessness does occur, it is a rare and brief rare, brief, and one-time experience while ensuring that the city remains dedicated to providing exceptional services to improving Vista's quality of life and to enhancing the uniqueness of the Vista community. Our staff and plan providers are available for any questions. Thank you.

Very good. Thank you for the thorough presentation and thank you to all of our partners uh who help us provide all these services. Um we do have a member of the public Paul Webster. He's one of our members of our new homeless commission like to make a comment and thank you. I see we see a few of our members of our homelessness commission here. Thanks for taking the time to come be with us tonight.

All right. Good evening. Thank you so much uh for that report and uh I had an opportunity to look through today's agenda report and I found a number of uh great information about the city's efforts to implement the strategic plan. I wanted to highlight a couple of things. First, the report indicates unduplicated counts of clients served. It appears that the city has provided services to 1722 people through seven different programs. Regarding the Vista homeless outreach team services, it's reported that the hot team served 815 unduplicated clients through December 2025 and created 9,296 service interactions for an average of 11 interactions per person served. I think that's significant. uh 9,200 almost 9,300 service interactions for 815 people is a lot. Uh it would be good to know how many not who but how many on aggregate of these 815 are in on the city's by name list and how they are impacting the number of interactions. uh by name list uh uh individuals are usually folks that are engaging with public services uh more frequently than others and often are ones that are causing costing uh city and services more money. So it'd be kind of nice to know of the 9,300 interactions how many of those were created by folks on the by name list. It's also good that the report includes the number of clients served. However, it is hard to determine what are the

outcomes of those services. To address this, it might be helpful to bolster and improve the reporting of the evaluation metrics of the strategic plan. If you look at appendix A of the strategic plan, it lists the evaluation metrics for each strategy. These metrics include measures like number of people stably housed, number of people completing financial literacy or job training programs, increases or decreases in the number of chronically homeless. A number of useful metrics included in various places of the are are included in a number of various places in the report, but it would be very helpful if they were reported together as evaluation metrics with each strategies update. In other words, if we have an a a a strategy of preventing homelessness or outreach or something like that, it'd be nice that each section says, "Here's the metrics that are in the strategic plan to evaluate that strategy and what those actual metrics are." That way, each strategy can be evaluated on how it is achieving each metric and the committee Thank you for that those good questions and that good input and that really uh brightly underscores the purpose of the commission the citizens commission on homelessness is to uh ask questions that the council hasn't asked yet and give us uh great questions to go back to staff and ask. So uh why don't we start by posing some of those questions to staff. Um, how many of the 815 people that were served are on the by name list? My understanding is that all of them are.

Is that right?

That's right there. So, there are two different by name list. One is from all the individuals engaging within the previous 90 days of the end of each month and then there's the high utilizer chronic uh chronically homeless by name list. uh I believe it was 300 and until we get the slides up on the by name list meaning those engaged within 90 days of December 31st 2025 was 378 that sounds right yeah question I had about that population so for clarity we have 815 is just the rescue missions population served That's right. Okay. Because we had other counts from other providers, but this is just and and when did that contract begin? About beginning of 24.

October 2024. I should also note the unduplicated cl count counts between each program do not unduplicate between programs. So there could be duplicate clients counted as unduplicated in multiple programs. Yeah. Okay. Um, a question I had, uh, and and ju just to further clarify that if anybody missed it, uh, is we're we're dropping people off of the list after how many months? 90 days without engagement.

90 days. Okay. So, if we're actively engaging with them and uh, we've got a big team now, much bigger than when we started with the rescue mission. How many total do we have uh that are working as the rescue mission uh in their mission here in Vista? About 12 between street outreach, management, program administration. And how many are dedicated just to street outreach? Six. Okay. We have six individuals. And are they all full-time? Yes. Okay. So, we have six individuals. This I think this is really important. We have six individuals whose full-time job it is

to leave the office and to go out into the community, right? and to build relationships. And you're reporting to us tonight that you've had an average of 11 interactions probably with the individuals that are living unsheltered. You've probably my guess is you've had a much higher number of interactions. Uh probably the number uh is reduced to 11 on average because of the great number of people you've only had a few interactions with. Uh but we I know that we continue to go out and try and build rapport uh with individuals living unsheltered to get them to accept services. That's been something that was the from the outset of this plan was the you know the compassionate outreach and uh as was reported uh we've uh we've made I think was it 26 arrests.

That was that was step two. Step number one was compassionate outreach and providing services providing a place for somebody who was ready to accept services. making sure that we had that pathway form. And no, we don't ever have enough shelter beds. We don't ever have enough addiction treatment beds, but we wanted to make sure that we had done our part in Vista to provide that when people were ready to say yes. So that we felt good about and one of the things the rescue mission and Donnie Diaz encouraged us and I know in my heart is the right thing is there has to be adequate enforcement. There has to be a helping hand of compassion, but there also has to be enforcement and accountability because unfortunately some people are not yet at a place where they want to say yes to the help we're offering. Some of them aren't capable yet and they need even more help than just enforcement. Uh but they do need uh some kind of involuntary service from mental health be it through the county or or through another uh provider. So, uh, I had a specific question about the 227 individuals who had been homeless in Vista for a year or less. It would be interesting to know sort of what portion of the 378 and I can see the portion of the of the total number, although I added up uh one year or less, two years or less. I added those numbers up on the back of my envelope here to 615. Uh, so a little little different than the unless I didn't carry the one. Let's see. 4 5 6 7 8. Uh, no, no, it is 815. I'm sorry. Math was never my strong suit. Let's see. Okay, so that adds up correctly. So, I can see the the percentage here. What do we know about the people who have been homeless in Vista for less than one year cuz this is an important question that I I posed to the rescue mission and others. We don't want to attract people to Vista. You know, Patrick Johnson, our former city manager, always said, "If you build it, they will come." And this is a

legitimate problem that we have to reckon with as a council. Uh, if we provide too many services and we're too generous, then we will attract people here. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't offer services. What it does mean is that we're cognizant of that and that we ask the question with an open mind and understanding that people will have different uh perspectives on that. it's fair and our residents are going to ask us uh are we attracting the problem or are we curing the problem and as our point in time count numbers uh change for the better or for the worse we're going to be judged as a council based on whether or not we have progress so what I want to know is are we asking uh why did you come to Vista uh you know what brought you here if you've been here for less than a year are we asking for that information or are we endeavoring uh as an organ organization to understand what these new unsheltered residents have in common.

Yeah, I'll offer a response and I'll I'll allow perhaps a member of San Diego Rescue Miss Commission to offer any additional context if they'd like to. But we do have eligibility criteria to engage with our outreach services. You must have ties to Vista, meaning you lost your housing in Vista. You spend at least 50% of your time in Vista or some other type of Vista. For example, you have children that go to school in Vista, something like that. Without those types of vistas, they wouldn't be eligible for those services here provided by the city and they'd be referred to a different outreach team that's appropriate for their care. But they would still be a part of our uh by name list.

They would not if we do not offer them the services because they're not eligible for them. We would not include them in the byame list. They must be eligible as with ties to Vista to be engaged by the services and included on the byame list. Okay. But we have here 227 who are Yes. One year or less. Yeah, that's right. For one year or less in Vista and this is not time spent as a as a person without shelter, right? This is how long they've been or unhoused. So that is that is still uh basically 25% of the total number. Y

uh so my question is do we ask any question and if not can we begin to ask uh to try and understand what it is that brought you to Vista as uh as somebody that we're serving. Uh Mr. Uh Kenneth Tolbert will provide some context.

How you doing council? Um so when we come in contact with our initial contact with any of our clients, we pretty much have like a 30 minute intake with them where we kind of vest them into Vista. So, um because we've had situations where outside cities have vanned or bus people in, then we look for all um like a lease. Some of the the people in the year or less they've rented rooms in Vista and um that's what vested them in. Um they came and worked in Vista, slept in their car. So, um, we are trying to make sure that they're solid Vista residents or they've contributed in some type of way. So, whether it's, uh, working in Vista, living in Vista, um, to be honest, we even had somebody who the only proof they had in ties to Vista was a library card. So, we were like, you know, something something that connects them in any type of way.

Okay, that makes sense. Um, yeah, I know that we the county of San Diego specifically has imported people into the city of Vista and I know some of those people in the uh in the county's program have become clients of the rescue mission through the city, right?

Yes, sir. So um in those situations uh just because uh their t their length of stay through the program that initially brought them here um then they kind of got fostered in uh because of their length of stay at at at the location that we know about. So my question is, can we uh ask folks who have been here for less than a year how they came to be here and and and if we hear stories about uh municipalities busting people into our city, at least be aware of that.

Uh yes, sir. Um that's that is kind of how we uh became informed with the whole um Tibido issue where we asked so many of those clients like what happened. It was it got clear for a while, especially after um the um I guess that that gutter place got uh cut down, the trees were approved to be cut.

Um it cleared out a lot of the clients there, but then it was an influx and we found out it was because of that program that was working with the um with the hotel. It was a good six or eight months between the time that we had the encampments cleared out in the drainage channel and then all of a sudden the problem came back in that same region because of the program at the motel. Yes sir. And so um since the program keeps them there for x amount of days then we were like okay well they they have in a way became Vista's issue. So um we we made sure that we made contact and we placed the people um in to the best of our abilities.

So it sounds like you're definitely informally asking people how they came to be in Vista. But what about is it a part of your formal uh intake questionnaire? Yes. Okay. So we're we're formally asking them uh what brought them to Vista if they're new to Vista? Yes, sir. So um yeah. So, not just that situation, but um just across the board, anytime we encounter someone, then uh we pretty much ask them their past, their present, and their plan. And with the story of their past, usually they let us know how what led them to Vista or that they've already been in Vista for x amount of years.

That's good. So, do you think, if not tonight, do you think in the coming weeks that you might be able to provide us some more thoughtful uh summary of uh the reasons that these 227 people who've been here for less than a year sort of if we had to categorize, you know, was transported here by uh any other I for instance, I'd love to know uh they were transported by any organization. That could be a municipality or an employer, uh, or it could be a property owner who wanted to, you know, get them off their property, but they were moved here in an organized fashion by somebody else. Uh, or they came here for to to seek services on their own. Uh, maybe there's two or three or four broad categories that we could um, you know, we could report on. Do you think that'd be a reasonable thing we could do? Um I I think after consulting uh with Jonathan and our team, I'm sure we can come up with something that'll be satisfiable and in at least telling that story. Um because

our best efforts are to tell a story with the data. So instead of just giving you 15, 13, 72, we want to let you know that okay, this person came from here, this person has been here for this long, this person went this to this place. So we do our best to tell a story. So, if we can add that into the story, then we would love to do that. Good. Thank you very much. Okay. Oh, and Council Member O'Donnell had a follow-up question. Uh,

Council Member, I just want to follow up on that. Sorry. So, the mayor just saved me a bunch of time, and while you're up here, I just I want to ask really quick. So, what I'm looking for is uh are they here from the county voucher program? Uh, were they arrested and brought to the county jail? Uh, are they local and grew up in the city of Vista? or are they from a neighboring city and understand that we have the services.

I don't need to know who it is or what, but I want to know those data points because I think it's very imperative because like when I look at this list uh and I'm not counting the blue dots, just the yellow and the pink ones, there's 767 interactions in the Sycamore corridor. And I know that we have worked very hard in that area and we have seen improvements, but the county does utilize the days in for the voucher program. And I and this is a question I'm going to ask the staff later, but I asked a few months ago, what's the accountability look like? And I asked the county what the accountability looks like because once those 30 days expire, I want to know it shouldn't be on Vista alone to deal with that, right? And so I don't I want to know where the funding sources. Are we paying for that? Is it going into San Diego Rescue Mission? I I want to know what's happening at that point. And you might not have the answer to that. And this is like I said, that's going to be for staff. But when I look at that interaction, the Sycamore corridor and I know that our per team, our social workers, our deputies are doing everything they can to try and clean that area up. and yet it seems at times just get worse and worse and then get better and then get worse again. Uh it's a huge concern of mine. So if we can get that information as far as like I said county voucher program whether they were arrested and brought here uh if they're local grew up here or if they came from a neighboring city for whatever reason whether it's they knew that we have the resources or whatever it might be. I think that's really imperative for this council to understand how we're utilizing our resources and then what individuals uh what resources they're getting to go to other agencies if we can't help them here in Vista. So that that's information I'll come back because I don't want to take up um Council Member Blend's time because she is next in the queue. So that's all I'm looking for. Yes, I I I feel like those are good points and um that is what we we've encountered is the um the voucher program that has uh flooded Tibido and then people who are released from from the jail. So, um that that does count for a nice amount of our clients that are have that have been here for less than a year.

Thank you. May I just confirm the the points the deputy mayor just directed which is to collect information on whether or not clients are from the county RH hat program whether or not they were brought to Vista to the detention center whether or not they grew up here locally and whether or not they were in a neighboring city and at what time frame. Yeah. And it can be an anonymous data obviously. Sure. But yeah, I think that would be helpful. Okay. Yeah, that's exactly what I was trying to get at is if there are major categories like being brought to jail and released here would be a major category or being brought here in the county's AR hat program be a major category. That's right.

So if we can try and understand what the major drivers of influx of people uh are that would be I think highly useful and then we can work with our partners uh to try and solve those problems. Council member Melendez.

Yes. Thank you everyone for engaging in this discussion. Um feel free to take a seat. I have some uh larger questions about the strategic plan to address homelessness itself. Um but I just want to say thank you to staff and to um our new commissioners for joining us in this effort. I've been serving on the committee uh to review the strategic plan to address homelessness um for some time and uh my role on the committee has looked like oversight of our programs. We're reviewing our programs pretty in-depth in the committee. um you know that oversight includes ensuring that uh program operations are to our standards and also um you know problem solving. There has even been a recent account um from one of our service providers of not enforcing the requirements of the program. And so uh you know I had to draw a hard line and say that we have to enforce these agreements and um so that's the level of oversight that I get to provide on the committee and now we have the commission and the commission is very valuable to these discussions moving forward uh because you are that citizen oversight and it is so so essential for you to ask critical questions and to challenge us to uh have the best possible strategic plan to address homelessness that we can. Um it took us a long time to install a uh commission. I fought for it for several years and so I'm very pleased um that we were able to install and have our first inaugural meeting um a couple weeks ago. Just very grateful for everyone's participation in that. And then as a council, we uh don't always get to come

together and discuss the strategic plan to address homelessness. It's been a couple of months, right? Um that we've been in these twice a year sessions where we get to review the strategic plan. Um but absolutely there's been a lot of work being done. Um we have uh so many partnerships that we are uh on the ground every day in the field responding to homelessness and we are uh within our city business taking action responding to constituency services every single day in response to homelessness. Um, and we have multiple active programs running, including programs on city-owned property. So, this is a very robust operation for the city of Vista. Our strategic plan to address homelessness has um, you know, definitely changed over the years. Um, but we get to as a public come together and see through this uh, process, right? It's not just one and done. We're continuing to revisit it. And so that's why I'm really glad that we can all be here today as a council and discuss it together. And so, um, you know, I could speak to program specifically, but I want to assure you that I've been doing that and that there's been a lot of review for myself and the mayor on program specifically. And I appreciate, Jonathan, your use of the term stewardship. I think stewardship is a great way to look at our council's role in um managing the strategic plan to address homelessness. And I would like to um you know support our update on the implementation of our strategic plan to address homelessness by first looking at the status of our current strategies.

And so we have the plan itself, right? This is a published document and it's a guiding document for the city of Vista staff to get clear direction on how we want our uh community to respond to homelessness. I really appreciate starting off with the three goals that we have as a council. You know, this is a good time for us to ask, are these still our goals to ensure homelessness is a rare, brief, and one-time experience? I would say yes, I support that to prevent homelessness, to improve quality of life, and to reduce homelessness. I would continue to support those goals. And then I appreciate this framework that staff has provided for us um where we have a number of strategies um starting with working groups, rental assistance, shared housing, encampment cleanup, advocacy, shelter, and street outreach. And so I just want to make sure that what we're working on is continuing to be reflected in the public documents. Um, and that what we're passing over to the committee for future meetings and what we're passing over to our commission now moving forward that our council is really clear on the type of work that we want these additional bodies to be doing and um to ensure yes that there is metrics for our services. Um, I support a lot of the programs, but I think that they need oversight, and so that's exactly what we're here to do. Um, looking at what's available in the document, Jonathan, the strategic plan to address homelessness, is the most recent updated version, the one that's available on our city website at this time.

It is. Yeah. The document itself hasn't been hasn't been modified since its inception. And so the plan is actually modified as we say, it's a living document based on the city council's direction over the past six years. And so I think as the council member mentioned, it's probably a good time for us to reconsider um formalizing in writing some of the change that the city council has dictated into the document.

Yes. Um I would uh advocate that we have more regular updates to the document itself. there is some information in the document that is over eight years old, some from 2018 and and before. Um, so that type of information I'd want to see updated. Another example is that um, for since the beginning of the strategic plan to address homelessness and and all of um, our um, reactions to its implementation, there has been a huge push for encampment uh, resolution and we have an, you know, a great number of grants that we've received for that. Those are not reflected in the current public document. So, I really want to make sure that we are updating our strategic plan that is the published document for our city uh so that we can really capture all of the work that we've been doing and it just gives a really clear overview for our citizens uh oversight commission to review. Um there is an a programmatic item in the you know original strategic plan to address homelessness that I feel like our council needs to talk about and that is the full-time social worker with flex funds. That's a strategy that's been included um in the strategic plan to address homelessness. You know not the you know early on I think that there was push back against that. I've always advocated for more services and for there to be um person right actual personnel that could do um social work and support the needs of the public when they call with um with the crisis that they're experiencing homelessness. And so the way that we've accomplished that, yes, is through our contract, right? Contractors. Um, at

times we've had different contractors. Uh, but we contract with organization to provide boots on the ground and a response to homelessness. It's not always boots on the ground. Sometimes it's problem solving in the office and trying to find those correct referrals. Um, but we do not have, and I just want to make this clear to the public and um, you know, this is an ongoing conversation. We get questions about homelessness all the time. The city of Vista does not have our own staff personnel within the city of Vista that is um able to respond to homelessness um and can be built uh to do that and provide social services. We do not we do not have the um outlet for that. We do not have personnel for that. Um, I think that we should, I've said many, many times that I think that we should have a social worker working in the city of Vista, uh, if not more than one, right? Because there are a number of calls that we receive, and we want to be able to respond to that. The way that we respond to that now is through our contractor, and our contractor has been um, very responsive in our asks for data and very available to support our goals. So, I really do appreciate that. Um but the truth is some of the costs that are associated much of the costs that are associated with this strategic plan to address homelessness is paying contractors and um there's challenges with that. There's just naturally going to be challenges with that. So it's something that we might want to think about. It is one of our strategies to have boots on the ground to have social workers with flex funds that can go out and reach into the community and help them with those services. We can continue to provide those services through contractors, but I always want to put it on the table that, you know, we could provide more services in house. Uh it could be cost-effective. It could

be a area where we have more control over how those services are implemented. Um so that's one programmatic thing I wanted to talk about. And then I'm also concerned about the status of our shelter and agreements. So, Jonathan, I really appreciate you including in the presentation a discussion of our permanent navigation center facility. Uh, this is something that as a committee member I have been very active on. I've participated in the tours. I've spoken to our um contractor about this and uh I really think that there was a um an opportunity here to uh work with a nonprofit partner and find a home for our navigation center. Our current status is that we do not have a plan for when the lease is up at our temporary navigation center because we don't own the building, right? Somebody else owns the building and we're paying rent. And there have been millions of dollars put into a permanent navigation center only for us to not be taking any action on it. And we had an agreement and support from a contractor that was willing to, you know, assist with operating the shelter. And I don't know if it, you know, there was some something went sour or um something wasn't, you know, the facilities, there were just no facilities available. Um, but something happened and I'm really disappointed because I wanted an opportunity to be able to um provide this permanent navigation center to our community and

now we um we had someone who agreed to help us with that and then they've just kind of dropped and have not followed up and I find that to be very undisiplined and you know quite uh damaging to the public and so I would like to as a council decide what are we going to do to respond to this because we need to have a plan and we've learned we cannot depend on anybody. We have to do it ourselves but we need to have a plan for our navigation center. If we have to have an honest conversation about continuing to pay rent, let's do that. Um but if we can come together and um find a permanent facility and and a home for folks, let's please do that. My final thought is about um a strategy that is not included in our strategic plan. So of course we have you know solutions like encampment cleanup. We have solutions like social workers. We have solutions like shelters. And those might be solutions but we haven't uh really cracked the code on all of these things yet. We also have what I believe is a need for transitional housing when tracking the homelessness in Vista. There was a slide previously. There's been lots of fluctuation especially around CO and we're at number six here. There you are. Okay. So, it's great to see in um 2025 that there was more uh sheltering that more folks were being uh

connected to shelter. But if you look at previous years, right, 2016 through 2019, wow, that transitional housing that was, you know, a huge part of where people were sheltering. Um, I understand transitional housing to be different from a navigation center or a different type of housing program. It's a type of uh service that has kind of gone away. We don't really have transitional housing anymore. And I'm not sure why that is. Is it lack of state and federal funding? Is it um, you know, just the cost of the city? But I think transitional housing could be very helpful because we could take those folks that are in this blue category that are unsheltered and we can support them with transitional housing before they get a permanent residence. So would you have any answer as to like why why are we not using transitional housing in our strategy? What's the challenge with that?

Yeah, so it's right around that time as we noticed in this graph. The federal government stopped funding transitional housing programs. They only fund interim housing and permanent housing. With housing first coming online, transitional housing was somewhere in the middle. And so the preference from most public funding sources, including federal COC funds, will fund interim h primarily permanent support of housing. Now, uh, one example I would site is with um the home key program, which um most folks in here will understand that the original home key program was to fund interim housing solutions, creative ones, motel conversions, things like that. and how I suppose evolved into qualifying only for permanent support of housing. I think that's a good illustration of kind of where the funding over this timeline has has moved which is away from transitional to crisis management with emergency shelter and then permanent housing.

So it really is just the lack of available funds, public funds to apply for transitional housing.

Well, I would ask that we maybe add to our legislative advocacy that we should include all types of services, right? not just emergency shelter, not just permanent supportive housing, but transitional housing as well because we're missing out on that resource and that could make an impact here for our numbers. But um thank you for this overview. I would just ask my council, you know, let us know, let the committee know, let the commission know, are we on track with our goals? How do we feel about the strategy? And please, you know, join me in urging staff to let's update our current document so that it's reflective of all the work that we've done. And then I want to hear everybody's thoughts on programs because you're not always with me during our committee meetings to hear your thoughts on programs. Um, and really uh would love to have your feedback on our permanent navigation center site. So I appreciate the time. Deputy Mayor O'Donnell.

So, I just want to go back to what I had said earlier. What What is the county's responsibility once the 30-day voucher expires? Because I feel like the burden is falling on us, and I I I want to quote a Vista issue, and it should not be. And so, I'm just curious, are they funding anything? Are they tracking these individuals? Are they trying to find them other shelter? or is it is a is a responsibility falling upon us to try and get them the resources they need?

There's a couple caveats to that. So, when we initially met with the county about this program, when we saw the disturbances on the um they let us know that it was a program that they used throughout the county because they don't have their own emergency shelter facility. So, they use local shelters for their program for unincorporated residents. Um, other cities have expressed their concerns that the city council here has as well. The voucher program, there has been state legislation that no longer um assigns tenency rights for clients using emergency shelter and so they had the ability to stay beyond 30 days. Some of the clients were staying beyond well beyond the 30 days. The program does also have resources to provide transportation for those clients back to their point of origin, but that doesn't mean it's always elected by the client to to take that transportation back. Sometimes they will exit the program without reporting to their social worker and they'll simply become homeless around the venue that they were housed at, including

is the social worker following up with them throughout those 30 days? They are. Yeah, there's one on site during the day during working hours. So, it's not somebody that's there 247. It is during business hours. I should also note as of about three weeks ago there are no longer any more clients or have clients in Vista. They've all been moved to I was told the facility in Oceanside um as explained at the county to a program or a facility that was more costefficient for them. So is that that's not permanent that that could change at any point in time. It could it could and we receive weekly updates from them that are provided the city council weekly updates so we can continue to track that with you. Yeah, because I I I appreciate there's caveats to it, but one of those caveats can't be people that are wheelchair bound

living on the streets next to the curb by our fire station outside the motel for weeks on end.

Um, and so the frustration you're hearing from me is not directed at you, it's directed at the program. Uh, because I've had a lot of residents reach out to me and I know that we are doing everything we can as a city and we could do more. Obviously, everybody can, but I I feel like Vista is pulling more than its fair share of what's going on. So when I see these things happening, it's not fair to the individuals that are getting the help. It's not fair to the city that's trying to give them the resources or make sure that everybody has the resources they need and get the individuals off the street and get the shelter that they need uh to become housed again. So uh that's that's something I just want to continue to focus on. Um, the answer I did not get is that yes, the county is giving the city money uh to take care of these individuals, which is I've asked, but

well, we should start demanding because it's very, very frustrating. Um, are we still actively looking for a permanent location for the navigation center? We are still in contact with the commercial real estate broker for new properties that are coming online. Different properties that were conducive potentially for that use were brought to the city council in close session previously. Those discussions of course we can't have here but nonetheless suffice it to say that the available properties at the time haven't brought to city council. So far we haven't found one that is appropriate. As new properties becoming available we are hearing from the commercial real estate broker so we can continue to update the city council if there are properties we believe are viable for the project.

Wonderful. Um I want to touch on a couple things that council member Melenda had said because I actually do agree and would support some of those issues. uh one the updated uh things that we're doing and make sure that they're updated online so people can see what we're doing. But uh a staff social worker I don't think is a uh a huge ask. I actually think it'd be beneficial. But before I'd be fully on board with it, I would want to understand how it's beneficial to our city. Is it going to cost us less money from a time perspective from our providers? Is it going to allow us uh to do more as a city to get people the resources they need? Um, and that would be something I'd like to discuss either at our next budgetary meeting or at the year end fund balance meeting. Uh, I think that that would be important. Um, just understand how we would benefit from all of those things. Uh, I I touched on the the list that I would like to see as far as where individuals are coming from. Uh, so right now I don't want to repeat or or go over that again. A transitional housing addition, uh, I would support. I think that it's imperative that that option is available. I don't know what funding mechanism we would use on that or where it would come from. Uh if there's state or federal funding for it or county funding, but I'd like to explore that as well. So, I appreciate Council Member Mendes for bringing that forward. Um and beyond that, uh those are all my questions and statements for right now. But I just want to say thank you to staff, our providers, all the boots on the ground, our deputies for all the work that's going on because I know that it is a monumental task uh to try and curb this issue and it's not something we will solve, but the more people we can get help and off the streets, uh the more success obviously we will have with it. So, just really appreciate the work that's gone into it and all the discussion this council's had even before my time on the council to get us to the point that we're at. By the way, that was uh Timory and Carla were the two ladies that were in the wheelchairs. Timory, we uh the rescue mission and Carla both got help. Uh

Timory was an Air Force veteran and the rescue mission helped her and we got Carla. Carla was a lot more difficult because of severe mental illness. Uh, I actually brought the head of county mental health out to uh, IHOP and we had coffee uh, there and introduced her to Carla and explained how disappointed I was that the county had failed Carla because, you know, Carla thought that her children live nearby, but they're hundreds of miles away and she couldn't understand where they were in space and time to her. Clearly had, you know, place and time understanding issues. uh you know, I'm not a mental health professional, but she had severe mental illness and uh we're failing a lot of people like that. Um but I did just want to point that out. And while I'm thinking about it, and that got me some information, we've rescued 180 people uh from the street through um our navigation center and the retread program uh who have found permanent housing through Retread's work through our contract. So, I just want to point that out. That's a pretty amazing statistic. All those people were street homeless and now, am I getting that right, Annette? 180, right? And they're all in permanent housing now because of our work. That's pretty cool. So, good job, uh, Council Member Contrarus.

Uh, Deputy Mayor O'Donnell, I just What is it that you were looking for counting uh, funding for? Can you just clarify?

So, once they go through the 30-day voucher program, a lot of individuals end up on the streets. Um, and I I I don't know relative to the rest of the city, but when I see the high numbers, so like I said, there was 767 interactions. And that's just going off the pink and yellow ones, not the blue ones. And so what what I'm hearing and seeing, and it sounds like is is happening, is that they're getting the voucher program, and then once those 30 days expire, they're not following up with these individuals or uh they're just letting them go out onto the streets, which is not beneficial. then it comes on to the city's responsibility to get them the resources and provide them uh the help that they need to get off the streets. So, it's it's basically just exacerbating the problem that we're all trying to solve here in Vista.

Right. Yeah. I I think that um at minimum we should write a stern letter to the county and to our supervisor Jim Desmond for uh this type of negligence and that we do need more funding. So, I appreciate you bringing that up. Um, I I wanted to touch upon another part of the county. Um, if you could flip to the heat map again. So, I I mean, it's just unacceptable the 2,000 plus interactions that we're seeing between uh State Highway uh 78 and the county, right? That's that's where that's located. Is that correct?

Uh the 200 it says 2.4K. Oh yes. Sorry. No, that's the Hienda BPO. So that's near the detention center. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So um we we have a huge issue here in that um this is an anomaly compared to all the other hotspots in the city of Vista. And we have a situation where the county is looking to make more beds at the county jail. I think that this body should be vehemently opposed to expanding the county jail because that 2.4 with I I could I could guarantee you that that's going to increase. So, I would like to bring to a different agenda um and a different council a a resolution against expanding the county facility. Um and with that, uh city manager, um I know that we also have not received all the funding that we have provided as far as labor from Vista Fire and Rescue that go to the emergency service calls at the county jail facility. Where are we on that? because last time it was still just a voice um kind of like a vocal handshake agreement that we were going to get paid. Uh but I I don't see that that has materialized and maybe I'm wrong.

I Yeah, I the last I spoke to the chief, he was negotiating with the county on that, but I don't believe they've settled that yet. I'll

Yeah. And that was just for one year. We're we're seeing what in excess of $200,000 of free labor that the city of Vista is providing to the county jail every single year. And we could not even get a commitment to fulfill that loss of money for one year. And this has been happening for a long time. What I would like to do is to have a separate discussion where we just focus on this item of getting our money back from the county jail because it is inc. We're probably at a million dollars now easily. So, I I'm I'm really frustrated. I'm extremely frustrated that the city of Vista is doing so much and this body has really taken upon itself to do extra work. And I'm really thankful for chair Melendez and vice chair uh Mayor Franklin for their work on the standing committee. I'm thankful for all the council colleagues now and before that we've been able to really push a strategic plan to address homelessness that has a lot of different categories to it. And yet we don't see that the county is doing their fair share and instead we are in the whole because we are providing labor to free labor to the county. And we're talking also about a sheriff's budget that's over a billion dollars. So this is unacceptable for us to continue to shell out money and not get services in return and at least not be made whole. So I definitely want to have a a full council discussion on this uh coming to a council meeting soon. Okay. Oh, and in that um I would like to have an itemized uh total of how much we are owed to date from the last we can go back 10 years if we need to.

Um I I'm looking at the town's people um housing um and I just have a question. So there's a delta between those who were served versus housed in for the 34 unduplicated um individuals that are not part of uh the folks that were housed. Can you explain do we know what happened to those folks?

Yeah. Um so in stabilization as they call it is when we engage with clients who are interested in shared housing there's not always a match and some are waiting for a match. So, there's a lot of different variables, but there are some um again waiting for a match. Some are unable to be served, different reasons. Perhaps Miss Stacy Drew would like to add some context. Yeah, that would be great. Thank you so much. Just want to hear a little bit more because is this are we haven't allocated any more funding. We have we renewed it um at the end of December. Okay. Okay. And that's for just this year or it's well it's for the the initial agreement is for 12 months. If there's money remaining, we will renew it. Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah, I think Jonathan explained it fairly well. Um a portion of those 30 individuals are still working with our housing navigation team. Um so they just carried over into the new year. Um a portion of them may have been on our on the coordinated entry list and may have gotten matches elsewhere. Um, a number of them may have just self-resolved their homelessness. So, it could be a number of different things. Okay. Yeah. And maybe that could just be we could have a little bit more detail um when it gets reported out just to kind of see what some of those categories might be. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. It looks like this program is going fairly well. I know it's newer.

Um, but I I would I would definitely uh like to see what an even stronger partnership um what kind of results we could generate from that. So, uh it's just an an incredible amount when I'm looking at the Vista safe parking. Um, so it's 272 unduplicated clients served and 200 of those are reporting a disability. That's right.

That's an extraordinary number. And I need to highlight something because yes, we are doing a lot of hard work here in Vista. I think that we're doing more than any other city uh probably in the San Diego region to address homelessness. we have really good um outcomes for the most part by using this myriad of different tools, right? So, we we've provided a lot of different tools. We've provided funding. We've been able to get grant funding. Um but, you know, we will continue. This is something that's not I I've been saying this since I started on council in 2018. We're going to continue to see folks go into homelessness at a higher rate. And it's not a surprise. It's because for a long time folks have been suffering and it's not just because of this new affordability crisis with these ridiculous wars that we're fighting right now. Um it's it's been happening for a long time and so we're going to continue to see folks that are already squeezed at the margins not be able to survive and not be able to keep their shelter. So when I see that 200 out of the 272 in our safe parking um have uh some form of disability, that's really shocking to me and I want to know how we can better address that population since we're seeing such a large percentage um not just even in in the Vista safe parking but in also other categories that you showed. So, I think that's going to take a little bit more of a nuanced discussion. Uh, but I I really want to dive into that and also see, you know, I mean, at the safe parking, that's that's like the last thing that you have is your vehicle, right? And so, um, and a vehicle is expensive to maintain

and to properly have registered and and, you know, keep it operating. Um, having to pay insurance on it, all of that stuff. So, I I want to be able to dive a little bit deeper into how we can provide or maybe just understanding the problem a little bit more from this subcategory of folks that are experiencing homelessness that are uh claiming a disability. Um because I I think there needs to be a little bit more um that we can provide uh for that population. And maybe that's working, you know, with uh other agencies too that provide transportation and connecting folks to PACE. You know, I I don't know what it is, but I I think that this council needs to have a discussion on that. I am really disappointed um when it comes to our permanent navigation center and that we haven't been able to have any action on that. Also, we have to be able to have the right type of facility. Uh but you know I would I would hope that um we could continue to have a partnership and the promise that was given to the city uh that you know we would have a partner in trying to find a navigation uh center. Um I want to look at the Vist house. Um do we have are we noticing a lot of calls for service because I mean that's a huge amount. This is I think one of I want it to be the most successful program, but when I'm looking at the data, I'm seeing that it's not very successful when we only have two positive exits and we have 12 negative exits. So, can can you provide some information like is is the negativity here that we're seeing is that within the house? Um is it you know also something that the neighbors are

complaining about? Is there more calls for service? And I understand that there's been a change. Yes, I am the change. I'm now the program manager. This is uh my specialty. I have a doctor in this. So, it does take a minute for Miss Amanda Cohen, by the way. Oh, sorry. Yes. Thank you, Amanda. Um, so it does take a minute. Yeah. Speak directly into the microphone for us.

Sorry. Um, it does take a minute to like rebound from a program that was struggling. So, the negative that you see is an HMIS definition. So if you broaden that definition, we've had family reunification. We had somebody who actively chose to live like on the land off the grid. That's not considered a positive because they didn't have permanent supportive housing. But to that person, it is a positive because that's what they wanted. So that's why the numbers are a little bit confusing. I see. So So you just said something I think that's really important. So even family reunification is a negative on here under the HMs. It's

okay. So I think maybe we have to because we need to be able to digest this data and by looking at it I'm not thinking that family reunification is a negative thing. Yeah.

Right. So I understand that we have certain definitions, but it would be good to provide just a little bit more information about the negative exits because I think if I think all of us if we were to be looking at this um negative exit, you know, chart here and then we have, you know, uh a breakdown of those negative exits and you know, seven of them are family reunification. It's like, well, maybe, you know, we're doing government a little differently here in Vista, but like that to me is a positive exit, right? And so, I just think I appreciate that you are bringing a change. Um, but I think there's some things that

unless some of these processes and and systems get changed, we don't get to see that come through. And so I I want to build that narrative a little bit better because I was really really wanting a lot of good information about the Vistate House and I saw the 12 negative exits. It kind of freaked me out. Well, I think there was eight before I even started. So, and I've been here since October. So, it has drastically changed. It's just a slow change. Sure.

Um, but it is we are going there. We have a lot more positive exits have happened now. We have a lot more people in trade school. I mean, this unfortunately is from December 31st. So like it was a very small gap that I took over and now we have much more large data. So you will see that it is increasing. It is improving. It's just the numbers that we had to pull unfortunately did not show the progress that we're at right now. Okay. I appreciate you illuminating that some of these negatives are actually progress. And then you're you're on site. Yes.

Right. Okay. That's fantastic. And you know, I think um for any of the properties that we own, it it might be good to just even have a list of recommendations from whoever servicing um that population that could just be ongoing to the council or maybe it comes to, you know, a separate council meeting where we can review those recommendations or maybe it goes to this is a great thing that maybe could go to the homeless commission,

right? So, but I would like I'm sure there's things that you probably would recommend, right, that you need some more additional services because then as a council we can look at our budget and see, hey, it might be lean times, but it looks like we've been really prudent financially and we might be able to address some of these recommended needs from the different programs where we own the property or have a a master lease. So, thank you so much. It was Amanda, right? Thank you. Appreciate you. I'll add some more context to if I may about the negative exits at Vist House.

As uh the staff presentation shown, I think as the council members may have tried to reference earlier too, there was a and as Miss Cohen mentioned, there were eight negative exits before she came on board. There was a disturbance with some of the first members in the the members in the first cohort causing some disturbances in the neighboring areas. Um so they were exited quickly. There was some changes to the program including installation of cameras. Miss Cohen has come on board and is on site every day. there was always on-site staff and now um over time with such a small sample size right over time with more data we this should prove to be an outlayer.

Okay. Yeah, that's great. And and again just when we report the data back just to take a deeper dive on the negative exits to understand if those are truly negative or you know they might

fit our category of positive exit versus negative. Um okay fantastic. So, I look forward to seeing more good news from Viste. Um, fair housing. I know that this is just a a minimum number. I know there's so many folks out there. I get this. I get questions all the time about fair housing. A lot of folks coming up to me um especially our seniors really asking for even rent control um because the 10% uh that can be increased year overyear is a significant amount to those folks. So, uh, I I'm not a fair housing expert and I don't know what it is that we can do, but I also would like to take a deeper dive at fair housing. Um, and I also think that there might maybe there's a tie to um a social worker um with this, but I'm not sure. Um, let's see. Oh, and I I did see um actually I guess I I guess I didn't see it, but and I think this is all public now, but we did purchase

a facility off of Postal Way. Does that fit into this strategy at all? It's not been purchased yet. It is a proposal that we are planning on submitting to HCD for the HomeQ Plus project. That is that is public knowledge that was publicly agendaized, but it the application is still pending. We have not submitted it yet. Okay. And that would be part of this strategic plan. Yeah. Yeah. There's enough overlap there. It's so with these updates as directed by city council world now also including housing updates. Okay. If it's very comfortably within housing. Fantastic. Yeah. I mean I hopefully it materializes. Yeah. Absolutely. Um we'll provide updates to the city council as we have them.

Fantastic. Okay. Um, I want to go to back to the social worker that council member Melendez brought up that um, Deputy Mayor O'Donnell said that he would be open to. You know, I I am really wanting to look at a social worker that's inhouse as well. Um, I think one of the ways that we could potentially even have a fruitful discussion and counsel is, you know, what would the scope of work be um, for the social worker? and you know looking at some of the other issues that we have um within our strategic plan to address homelessness, fair housing being one of them. I don't know if there's a connection there or not, but it would be interesting to kind of build out a scope of work that the council is comfortable with. Um and then potentially see what that cost would be like, right? So, um I I for one ending at um business hours when you know 5:00 p.m. is just not enough. I It's not enough for a lot of different things when we're talking about folks that are unhoused. Uh, I I think it's even more critical to have some kind of staff available that can meet people's needs after 5:00 pm. I'm 100% still in favor of a permanent navigation center, so I still want to uh find that. And I am uh very open and wanting to discuss transitional housing um to see what it is that we could do uh to you know add this um to our toolkit here uh to Deputy Mayor O'Donn's um request for county funding and more oversight

with this 30-day voucher. I think that's just critical and I've already said my piece on that, but uh it's it's not a thoughtful way to try to help folks and it could cause a lot of harm. And what we're trying to do here is to reduce harm and ensure that we get as many positive exits out of homelessness uh as we can. So, it's it is very upsetting. Um, outside of that, I I just really I'm very very thankful to all of our providers uh for working collectively. Um, we have a lot of different strategies that we've put together. We continue to test them and get these results back. Thank you staff for working so hard. Um, it's a lot of different programs and grants to manage. Uh, and I know it's not easy. So, thank you very much. Uh, that's pretty much all I have at this point. Um, but looking forward to some more positive results in the future.

Council member Fox. Thank you. Um, I want to repeat the the gratitude to all the the service providers that are here. I know that you guys work really hard to make Vist a better place and and I really appreciate that from the bottom of my heart. Um, quick questions. Um, I'm I'll try to try to keep it going. Um, do all of our providers collaborate on our by name list? So, if someone comes into Exodus or somewhere else but never touches um, rescue mission, do they ever get that data? So, we have weekly case conferencing now that San Diego Rescue leads. All of our service providers are invited and do attend them.

Okay. Do they pass off that data of like the the the residents so we can build our by name list off of that or is that a not necessarily. So the by name list is only tracking unsheltered clients and San Diego Rescue Mission is our only unsheltered outreach team. Okay. So the clients other service providers we would be engaging with are probably already in other shelters immittly at risk of homelessness but not yet experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Um do we keep any information on people that do not have ties to Vist? I heard they do not go on our by name list, but do we have any data on the those individuals? I don't believe we do, but we can start to collect that.

It'd be nice to just have the data, even if it's people we can't really provide service to under most of our rules. I mean, if it's just be nice for us to know, you know, what that that breakdown is,

you know, if they end up staying here for a year, then end up on the list, you know, how all of those types of things, like that would be really good information as well. So, um, if we could track that even just, you know, at a basic level, that would be very helpful to me. Um a question on the on just the way that the data was presented on that we had uh rescue mission had 9,296 interactions with 378 on the by name list which is like 24 interactions per person on this list is that number so so some of that was there was things like oh I had that up on my thing but there was some things like we provided basic needs phone assistance could that all be part of a single interaction So, did they actually meet 24 separate times or is that how many services that were provided?

The latter. Okay, that helps a lot because I was, you know, that that may influence the number of how many interactions it takes before we get someone help into, you know, or you know, off the streets on average. So, that's right. Okay. Um,

Miss Day answered that. Great. Um, I would agree on a lot of the the transitional housing um thing. So, so thank you to Council Member Mendes for bringing that up. That was I think that's pretty much the thing I think I've been hounding on since the beginning was I keep seeing kind of long lengths of stay and you know 72 days at Safe Parking, 66 days at Buying Creek Navigation Center. Uh for Alliance there wasn't an average length of stay but 31% were over 120 days and um have the other 60% over 60 days. So probably would have been somewhere in that same kind of range. Um, and the only one that I really had data from was Buick Navigation Center said only about 13 out of the 30 308 went to a a transitional housing program, which to me screams they don't there's not enough of that. That's that's a a you know a a a missing link in the in the chain, a you know, a bottleneck in the funnel. So, um I know that that is something that we have a hard time getting outside funding for. And so I would completely agree with any kind of lobbying that we can do, any kinds of things to try to fix that or if we can find any creative ways internally on on moving things around and and having some availability for that, that would be awesome. So um when it comes to a navigation center um I know we are looking for un for available properties as they pop up. Is there any opportunity to look for unavailable properties and go after them potentially? Like are there any any sites that we've been thinking of like hey that would make a really good spot and like kind of look for underutilized properties that maybe aren't on the market. It's perhaps something we can talk to our commercial real estate broker on

because I know that that's you know some people don't just they they they keep their properties you know unoccupied unbuilt on or empty buildings for years and that you know so I see some potential there and social worker I mean I'd be happy to learn about cost benefit scope you know as a contractor versus staff you know I mean I usually usually see that contract is cheaper than internal but it is I you know, but how much and what the cost benefit would be would be good to learn about. Um and then the last question I had was is there any way that we can send the county a bill just like we do for police or fire? You know, we just add it to the

I'm just saying like add it to if if it's one invoice, you know, it's just like, you know, keep adding it right on there for outreach services or something like that. I don't know. Some other strongly worded items. Yeah, you're right. It's a strongly worded letter. So, um Okay. Okay, well that was pretty much all my my questions for today. Um, thank you guys for all your hard work. I mean, that was a this is probably one of the thickest packets I've gotten in a while, so that probably took a little, you know, took a little effort and you guys do this multiple times for us. So, um, appreciate all the hard work and that's it for me.

That's a good question about sending a bill to the county. When Council Member Conturus was speaking, I was thinking exactly the same thing. I agree with your point. We should receive full reimbursement for all of the emergency medical services. So we we are required by law to provide and we can't uh we can't say no to providing them. But you make a good point. We don't have to be uh active and cooperating participants in uh although actually uh since the county owns that land at this point uh we're no longer the controlling land use authority over the county's land there at the courthouse. Isn't that right? That's correct. So, we wouldn't have the ability to dictate terms for a new building permit.

Not on the county's courthouse property. No. So, that is a problem. But, uh I I was I wrote this down. I said, "Have we invoiced the county?" Uh we invoice if if you're a resident of district three or two uh and you call the ambulance, you get a bill. Are we building the jail the county? That's something we're going to have to bring back for discussion. I know the chief has been working with the county on that, but he wasn't able to answer just now. So, I'll bring it back for the council to discuss and we'll give you a rundown of where we're at.

Yeah, I think we should bill them. And if the only thing we can do is embarrass them that they don't pay their bills, um I mean, any other resident of Vista receives a bill. So, uh I think it's I'm not providing you any direction here. I think it's already the uh ordinance and policy of the city that a bill should be produced. Uh and I think since they're in the care and custody of the county, uh you know, I I don't know what the legal concept is there, but I would say that they're responsible for providing the medical care and therefore responsible for paying the bill. So, I think that we should be invoicing them and then I think we should take them to court and sue them uh for them to pay their bill. build the exact same amount that we bill everybody else. Uh, absolutely. Um, we really did talk a lot about all the compassionate assistance programs and again, thank you to all of our great partners that are involved in providing compassionate assistance. Uh, we didn't see our San Diego County Sheriff's Deputies cops team here. Uh, and I and they were really a critical part of this conversation and they should have been here tonight. Uh, so I'm a little I'm disappointed at whoever decided not to uh have the cops team here. uh they we should have had the sergeant or the captain uh to talk about what's going because and this is a really important point and something uh that in the middle of our conversation about expanding or providing a new um navigation center and as much as I want to do that um I will say the current location and program are I think are working very well. Uh but as a financial decision, renting when we know we're

going to be long-term occupants does not make sense. So we clearly should seek a property that we have ownership of. Uh although of course we want a property that's not going to um you know and I just I go back I'm this is a really tough situation because I have not had and I would ask you members of the council uh if you've had complaints from neighboring residents. I had about three complaints about the navigation center. All of them were before it opened. Uh, I have had no complaints except for Marvin who always says somebody uh stole something is sends me a picture from his cameras and says, "Is this one of your uh residents?" And Pete always looks and goes, "No, that's not one of ours." So, we've had pretty good track record there of not having residents complain. And I got to say, as far as the Vista House, I didn't have any complaints since the first round, which were pretty bad. And I'm glad we've cured the problem. and I hope we don't have those reoccur. Um, so far the city, the council and our service providers have kept our promise to be good neighbors and that's of paramount importance and we never want to create a circumstance where we make the problem worse than it already is. Uh, you know, our our first uh concept here should be like the doctor's greed. What is the the first uh thing the doctors say is do no harm, right? Uh I think do no harm has to be the the first thing that we say if there's any possibility we're going to make a problem worse, we shouldn't be doing it. Uh but you know what we're not seeing still is a significant enough focus on enforcement and we haven't seen the funding of Prop 36 and I appreciate the deputy mayor bringing that item to demand funding for

Prop 36. Uh we need to see more and again I wish the cops deputies were here. We need to see more uh of our narcotics operations. Um and I want to know what happened with these 26 arrests. I know at least a dozen of these arrests are old enough now we should have some information from the district attorney's office. I'm going to follow up with them on those. But uh we need more enforcement. Um, I I do support building modern jail facilities that can meet the needs uh of the sheriff to hold people pending trial and to incarcerate people who have committed crimes who have been adjudicated guilty and who deserve to be incarcerated for a period of time. uh not only to correct their behavior and interrupt the cycle of criminality, but also to rescue them from death and addiction on our streets because, and I don't think our leaders say this often enough, but the criminal justice system is not primarily designed to punish people. It's primarily designed to uh interrupt a cycle of criminality because it is a very small group of people in society who commit the greatest numbers of crimes. Uh, and so for those individuals, we have to interrupt the cycle and we have to try and help them. Um, and I think that's incredibly important. So, I know we have some differences of opinion on that. We can we can talk at length about it, but uh, I do think that's important, but I agree with you that we shouldn't be inviting problems to Vista. I think that's I'm glad to hear it seems like uh almost unanimous if not unanimous point of view of this council that we don't want to be making the problem worse or inviting problems here. Is that our problem uh the regional housing assistance program with the county is that I didn't realize it was only 30 days. Is that only a

30-day voucher? So the longer term it the 30-day limit originally was because if anybody is staying in any location for more than 30 days they will gain tenency rights and they'll have to be evicted. removed. Now, there is state legislation that if you're using motel or hotels as emergency shelter, that does not apply. So, they do have the ability to stay beyond 30 days in the RH hat program. Well, when they were at the motel here, I thought they were staying longer than 30 days. They are. Okay, that's what I thought. I I don't Do you remember what the intended length of stay was? That one that I think you're referring to was nine months is what we were told.

Yeah. Yeah, that sounds right. Okay. But the the fact remains and and the some of the counties leaders are quite proud of their program, but to be honest with you to have uh and I I went I knocked on the guy's door who is the manager uh at this particular location and uh was not impressed with his managerial prowess. Um and I did not see, you know, our our uh navigation center has an incredible contingent of staffing. I mean, I would do it an injustice. Uh, but they have a full-time security person. They have several full-time managers. Uh, they have a number of full-time case workers. At least four, right, Pete? Three case workers. And And you have a lot of how many coaches? Anyway, it's a big staff of people.

Yeah. So there there's an intensive uh staff to to client ratio is what I'm saying. The county program did not have that intense uh staff to client ratio which allowed a situation uh where the deputy mayor's observation is absolutely right. We had people who were uh in my opinion obviously engaged in selling and using narcotics in the side of the road there for an ex exorbitant length of time. Um, let's see. I had to ask a question of Dr. Cohen. Dr. Cohen, right? Can I I You said something that really bothered me and I just want to make sure I understand it. You said that somebody had exited to live off the land. Did they own the land that they were going to live off of?

No, they want to be a farmer. So, they found land that they could be agricultural. Oh, okay. So they were they were going to be like a sh a tenant sharecropper. Mhm. Yeah. Oh, fantastic. Okay. As long as they had the permission of the landowner to live off of it, I'm on board. They did. They did. They had Thank you very much for that. I was concerned we were going to have a deep difference of opinion. Uh thank you very much. That really bothered me. I had to get that one out of the way. Um, how many total entrance into the uh Viste house have we had now? Because that we have we've had 16. How many 15 clients have been served?

Served or like you're talking about the total amount that we've served? Yeah. How many people have lived there for more than one day? Oh, excuse me. 25, not 15. So, as as the December 1, it was the or December 31st, it was the 25. Okay. Now, I mean, we have a full house, so it's pretty high right now. People we've served. Mhm. Because it's for us it's the up to the nine months. So, if they find I love you guys down there, but council when you go I I can't hear the um because we do up to nine months. A lot of time we do have a faster turnover. If someone finds housing, we don't wait.

So, there are some times where you'll see a very short stay and it's just because they were right there. They were so close. They just needed that. I just want to understand how many are still there and how many have been, you know, so that that 25 number is very important to contextualize the 16 exits that we see and I would encourage you to uh work with Mr. Long uh to maybe color code the the exits and yeah, we'll do that if and the council here we we will decide what's positive and negative. Okay. Uh so I think the council would agree that a family reunification would be positive unless there's disagreement with that. Uh we would give you authorization to move that into the positive category. Okay. If that means they're living at home now

and have found permanent stable housing with family, I think that's great. Yeah. Um but if you want to categorize and give us some more detail on what constitutes negative exits, that would be fantastic. We're glad to have you there and glad that you're finding some better success with the new cohort. I understand that uh Eric and the management team decided to maybe uh not use Vista for some of the more troubled uh young people.

Um I mean I think the hard part is that because of the independence that Vista is for when there is someone with a severe mental illness what we do is JBU is still downtown. I was the manager of that but it got closed. We would put them into a place of a stabilization because that's what that was for. So for now, if there's somebody who has really severe mental illness, we want to make sure they're stable before they come. So we'll work with providers, see where they're at. They're coming in from a crisis house. Where's their stability? Why did they go in? So it's not that with no serious mental illness, you can't come in. It just depends on your stability and where you're at and what the diagnosis is. Good. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Uh and Jonathan, uh did did you say uh how much of our our application there is that that's already public, right?

For Plus, I'm sorry. Yeah. Yes. The resolution to approve an application is public. The document itself is not public yet, right? Okay. How and we're talking about postal way in Casadro. That's right. Yeah. What's the timeline? Where where are we at and when we're going to make application to the state and what stands in the way of us moving forward with that? Currently, the issue is the funding gap that we're still experiencing as was explained to the city council at the time. Um there is a funding gap that our one of our partners has has committed to fund raise. We're still fundraising to meet that. That's Kasaro that has to raise that money. Dignity moves. Oh, dignity. Okay. And how much is that funding gap?

It's about 3 million. Really? Okay. I'm going to have to follow you. I didn't I I remember there was like a 2 million number that we thought we were going to get back. The city contributed 2.2. Yeah. And so the match commitment was a onetoone match from dignity moves but the actual gap is slightly higher and so they are committed to meeting the entire gap. We are talking a different Did that did that kind of catch us by surprise because we thought when we put the 2.2 in that we were there. Yeah. Did their funding fall through? It didn't fall through. It just wasn't quite as secure as we had. They thought they thought that they had a line of financing that they could secure and when they went to secure it, it wasn't so secure.

That's that's the best explanation. Yes. Okay. Is there is there another partner that could be brought in uh to as far as a developer? Well, so Kasa Emparro, not Kasaro, Dignity Moves was was going to develop the I mean it's sort of already developed. Yeah. So the the primary cost will be the acquisition cost. You know there is proposed as we discussed an additional supportive structure that we were proposed to build on site. It's about a million and then some startup operating costs. So as far as we're going to build another building on site

potentially. Yeah. To to provide the supportive services the true care facility that True Care would operate out of. It's a healthcare clinic. Yeah. Uh and is that part of our is that part of our costs out of the $3 million gap? Yes. Okay. Yeah. I uh go ahead, Council Member Contrarus.

Yeah, I just I I mean I think there's a lot of questions and I think that the council needs to be updated on the status of this property and some of the issues because we could probably have a good discussion about that. I don't know if it's close session. I don't know if it's open, but I think it definitely needs to come back to the council because I I don't know if you agree with that, mayor, but it sounds like maybe we're not aware of some of the challenges that have come up, which also doesn't make me super happy. Um, because I really want to see this project go through. So, but I understand there's like a lot of different moving parts. So, that's all I wanted to say, Mayor.

All right. Well, our city attorney says some of the things that we're talking about probably should be removed to close session, so we'll we'll schedule and do that. Um, all right. Well, that's that's all I have. Um, thank you, Gail. Uh, and did did you have another? Okay. No, no, no.

Well, thanks to all of our partners and all of our staff. Uh, we really are doing a lot of work here. I did I want to say this is really important. Uh, we've got this big team including social workers. And you know, when we started this whole thing back in 2018, I when you said eight years ago, I can't believe that's been eight years, but I guess has that been eight years ago? I guess it has. Um, I thought a social worker was somebody that had some particular like uh license or certificate or education, but it turns out that there isn't really there's no specific definition. Uh, there's no particular set of criteria that makes you a bonafide social worker. Um, so in terms of hiring uh somebody on the city staff, you know, we're working with funding sources that unfortunately may or may not be renewed next year when they run out. These uh state encampment resolution fund grants. We're on the third round of it. We expect it to continue, but we don't know. Uh we're going to have a new governor in a year, and uh that new governor may lead the state in a different direction. We don't know. uh so to staff up and I what I would ask is fundamentally what would that internal social worker do that would be different than what our current social work team through the rescue mission is going to do. Uh and I I'm willing to engage in that conversation, but I have deep concerns if we were to grow an internal program costs would be much higher. uh and uh and that that is deeply concerning about our ability to sustain uh as well as our ability to ramp up and ramp down. The last thing that I think is super important is by bringing in uh partners, you know, the rescue mission has I think it's about $10 million a year of external funding through private sources. So, we're actually able to leverage uh when we

work with the the private sector, nonprofit, uh charitable sector, uh as long as they're the ones bringing the the line share of the funding to their programs, and I know we're funding the program that they're doing in Vista. I don't want to diminish that for the the taxpayers and their investment, but uh we're getting the benefit of all those other services that they're privately funding. if we were to try and recreate the wheel on our own, uh, we wouldn't necessarily continue to have that partnership. So, that's a of deep concern in that conversation. Deputy mayor.

Yeah, Mayor, I agree with you. I just want to touch on that point because that that's something I had said before and that is and I think we can all agree like we want to see what the benefit will actually be like the totality of the benefit. Are we going to spend more than it's going to cost if we have already resourced it out? Is it going to is it going to create a lower case load? Is it going to solve more issues with that? So, I to understand exactly what the benefits would be to bring a social worker in house. Uh I think before we'd ever move forward with it, all of that information would need to be brought forward, especially the cost versus what the cost is versus uh or what we have right now with our our uh partners. So, Council Member Melendez,

thank you all for the discussion. um in response to the uh potential inclusion of additional personnel uh for the city of Vista um pretty much all of our services are provided by contractors, right? And so we know that some of those resources that we use to pay for contractors are paying for executive salaries, right? And uh we acknowledge that um the infrastructure within the those organizations allows for them to um have more field operators than the city of Vista could afford with one person's salary. Um but when I hear from our city staff, for example, that um fair housing calls and complaints and um homelessness prevention issues are some of the top customer service calls that we receive. I wonder, do we have the, you know, the right organization to respond to those calls to track that information. I think we're getting better. Uh, but I really want to also work um with the city manager's office and identify what are the staffing and support needs that would benefit our housing division um and help us implement our strategic plan to address homelessness. So, um, you know, I don't necessarily have one particular position in mind. Um, I understand the value of our contractors, but I do see that we might have gaps in our personnel for responding to some of these issues. So, I appreciate the feedback. Happy to continue talking about it, working with our city staff.

Seeing no other requests to speak, we're adjourned. We went 10 minutes over.