Housing, Community Development & Public Health Committee - Regular Meeting

I think we've both been around. Yeah.

We got a few things up our sleeve. Right?

I call to order the housing community development and public health policy committee for Thursday, 02/26/2026. Clerk, please call the roll. Jones? Here.

Gaddis? Here. Kramer? Here. Martinez? McPherson? Melden Williams? Here. Vote present.

Well, thank you everyone for attending this important committee meeting. Just to give some background, basically what happened with the funding that was cut regarding mental health services prompted the conversation of how these essential organizations within the city are very important and what will happen to our clientele, those who use these services if they were to cease to exist. So this is to really paint a picture about of course the importance of these organizations and services, but also get to thinking about what can we do in order to really preserve these services based upon what's going on federally as well as statewide. So at this moment I will hand it over to Ms. Julie Embry and also public comment is permitted.

There is a sign up sheet. We will definitely have that towards the end of the presentation. So please sign up if you want to have any public comment. So I will hand it over to Ms. Julie Embrey.

Thank you. Is the PowerPoint programmed into here? I don't have it separate, just to know. Okay, Apologies. I believe you have a copy though.

Yep. We do have a copy and we can provide Legisstar can also provide the copies

So as well for the

as councilwoman Jones had described, part of what we're here to talk about today is an ongoing conversation we've had regarding federal cuts to supportive programming that significantly impacts particularly persons with severe and persistent mental illness within our community. And there are two different models, both a short term and a long term model that are impacted by this change and this isn't a project that's based on theory, part of what's going on is we have a system based forecast grounded in how our homeless response infrastructure currently operates that this totally wipes out if we if we lose these fundings. And so when we look at the scale of current housing interventions, the different funding risks and the legal uncertainty facing a lot of the continuum of cares. What we'll talk about today is to present what a twelve month destabilization timeline might look like, multiple direct and indirect community impacts that Toledo will feel, and part of the discussion will also be the financial consequences associated with those impacts. So, the core principle or piece, you know, really to look at today is that when housing funding disappears, homelessness doesn't and costs do not disappear, they shift and they increase to other sectors.

If you look at the second slide in your packet that council has, you might recognize this from our previous presentation as far as representing the number of folks statewide that will be impacted by these funding and potential cuts. So we just wanted to put that in there as a little bit of a refresher as we move forward to what we're looking at. So let's take a moment to look at the current scale and impact of what we're looking at. This funding currently stabilizes seven fifty households, approximately 1,200 individuals, 30% of these are children. Partnerships with more than 50 landlords and businesses will be directly impacted.

We feel that that number will be much greater on an indirect basis. Over 30 program specific employees will exit the workforce, and there's the potential for a 128 participants who are in the program whose employment desperately is related to their ability to maintain not just housing, but also supportive services which are what help keep them independent and functioning and excelling persons within our community. When we look at the financial impact, we're looking at at least $3,100,000 that is in total jeopardy. This is not a new number to you, but I want to break out a little bit more today what the more significant impact is as we're working through and realizing what some of the details are. More than 2,000,000 in this will be rental revenue to landlords.

So we're going beyond just program participants, but we're looking at workforce, small businesses, and entities, that are serving our community that are going to be significantly impacted by this. This impacts individuals in our community spending money. This impacts recoupable property taxes on and on. There's over 1,000,000 in supportive service staffing that will be lost in the destabilization and the financial impact, that will occur, with this funding. Currently, the National Alliance to End Homelessness has moved forward with litigation, and there are current impacts, that we are looking at now, and we are anxiously awaiting some decisions.

Since the last time we were here, there have been several changes in that legal environment. Congress has made appropriations that provide funding for some of the projects under this, which is really only about 10% of the projects funded by the COC. A majority of the projects that are funded and how the appropriations play out, if congress if HUD can't make their decisions and employ funding within the community by a certain date on a quarterly basis, they have to automatically renew. A majority of the projects renew in Q3 of the calendar year, and so a large majority of the COC funding is still in jeopardy with that timeline. Currently, has asked because of the appropriations that Congress has taken on, the current claim is that the issues that HUD has are now null and void, and therefore the legal injunctions should go away.

If the court concurs with this, then they may revert back to the original fear of this significant funding being lost to our community. The difference at this point is based on timeline, it'll just push it out a little bit. And so we know we're going to lose some of this money, we know we need to safety net many of our vulnerable citizens. Additional impacts that we will see here when we start looking at the number of individuals who are going to start falling out of the safety net, a couple of other key pieces in addition to the numbers I just displayed for you. We also need to look at the continuing aging population, which continues to contribute to the persons seeking services.

And again we're also looking to have displaced families as we start to implement enforcement over our lead issues within the community, which is desperately needed to protect our children and the safety of young families, but it behooves us to plan for the families that will need to relocate, who want to relocate because they don't feel safe, and those who have landlords that won't be responsive to their needs. So there's further impact into this issue. We're hoping that legally we will have a decision again from HUD about what things look like on Monday and so we can follow-up to let you know. At that point that will just give us impacts of what the timeline looks like of when funding will go away. But we can certainly plan definitely for 2027 that a majority of these funds will disappear.

And our contingency planning has begun with those partners, with our board and with the COC board. A little bit more about why this matters locally, the court's decision also is delaying funding. Currently, there's close to a $150,000 that agencies are to date fronting in unreimbursed funds that will escalate by 50 to $75,000 increasingly over the next few months. And if we get into June and July, that funded money starts to get closer to about $500,000 a month that cumulatively different agencies will have to front if HUD is not providing a cash flow. This group has wonderfully provided funding to organizations when there have been cash flows or other hiccups, we're hoping to avert that and we have good planning and frameworks in place.

But knowing that that has been a previous issue, I just want to put that in front of you that that is an additional impact right now is the ability to make sure that that cash flow is going will be difficult. Even with the uncertainty and disruptions, housing programs require stable funding and commitments, and we cannot get commitments or clarity from the government, our local and state politicians that we have been working with and communicating with understand full heartedly what this looks like and have done a lot of advocacy, so thank you. And we thank them, but we have to continue. We need to have a system that is clearer, more defined, and forthright in our community to protect the needs. As we move forward and we look at what the timeline might look like, once we lose funding within the first thirty days, some of the immediate impacts will be that we will have to haul all PSH placements.

Those actually could be backed up and occur before this even starts. We're already starting to see landlords who are getting a little skittish and apprehensive about wanting to work with us, which is very problematic considering our ask of them is to work with us to provide housing to folks that already have a lot of barriers. We're already asking for significant trust, we're already asking for them to kind of go out on a limb for folks that have multiple evictions, criminal histories, etcetera, and when we can't guarantee the funding or the support services which can help enable that person to appropriately live in that unit and respect the unit, it's really starting to erode our current system. So within that first thirty days, we anticipate significant increase in the number of 211 calls, which is also a sorely under resourced resource in our community. We might start to see the beginning of eviction proceedings for households that start to lose their rental assistance, and we anticipate across the community as many landlords that there are working with us, there are many that aren't, and many that are unkind to many of the folks that we serve, even if they are working to us.

We anticipate that they are preparing in the background for immediate moves as soon as they can, if anyone is off kilter with their payment schedules. We don't believe that all those landlords will work with us as far as payment plans or provide any adjustments or longer periods of time for payment to be made as we start to figure these pieces out. We really are kind of seeing some signaling that they will seek to move forward with immediate evictions. Our diversion efforts in the community will need to intensify, but this can't compensate for the lack of funds or the lack of units that are in community. One thing that's important to understand about how this funding comes in is how the housing in our community is structured.

A good portion of the housing is scattered site with different landlords, but nine of the projects alone are through neighborhood properties. Neighborhood properties owns their own real estate, and so if they are required through this funding shift to change their programming, to shift to different individuals that they are allowed to serve, all of these individuals could potentially have to vacate the units that they're in to make way for the new participants. So we suddenly have a mass movement of renters within the community, and we don't have the number of units that we need. So I think that's a critical piece that we need to understand when we look at contingency planning, is what that shift might look like. We have further concerns with this given the number of privately owned HUD properties that we know are experiencing difficulties with repairs and are not able to lease up the units that they have, so we have pressure in the community by those citizens that are already seeking alternative arrangements.

So it continues to compound and we're going to need to figure something out there. As we progress down that timeline on a thirty to sixty day, I just want to remind you, Where we're at already is we have five eighty eight beds and shelters that are full. There are approximately 200 households or four sixty five individuals waiting on wait lists to get into shelter. As exits stall, those wait lists will grow. Through your generosity, we've had the luxury of providing warming centers again this winter.

Again, I will thank you. I want to let you know we have served cumulatively an unduplicated number of folks over two fifty people, we generally have anywhere between sixty and ninety folks every night. The important piece to look at in that statistic is these are not people that are on the wait list, these are people that are off our radar. These are people that have been banned or feel they're banned from shelters, so they don't even try. So these are additional people that we have not been looking at and the numbers continue to grow with the group of our in our encampment workforce where we're working with code enforcement, fire, and Toledo police to address the number of folks reported to be living in boarded up units, which continues to increase.

Another alarming piece about the number of folks that are in those warming centers, 36 actively seeking help through the warming center are folks that are well beyond the level of care for a shelter. That means their psychiatric needs far exceed what can be handled by the staff, and or the growing piece again is the medical needs presented by our aging population, folks in wheelchair, folks that have medical needs, they can't toilet, they can't shower, they can't do those things by themselves and shelter staff are not trained, insured, or capable to provide that level of care. There's an additional 50 to 60 that we estimate in looking through rosters beyond the ones that are actively at warming centers that meet that same profile. And so we have approximately about 100 folks through psychiatric and medical needs that can't even be met through the shelter system, which is again further adding to our significant issue.

So as we look at

these growing numbers and they continue to compound and we look at the different sources and the stress on the system, The inevitable is that the homeless, unsheltered individuals are going to start increasing, that's already been noted in several of the downtown corridors. We are trying very hard to work with Association, associated business owners there to educate, provide information, and with the return hope, and they are being wonderful and providing grace trying to obtain not just short term, but long term solutions and there is a care there for the humanity of what needs to be provided to folks. But as that pressure continues and it's starting to impact their businesses or people's perception that they can't access businesses because of the individuals in the area, the trash, and the increasing amount of human waste because there are no public restrooms, it's starting to become a little bit daunting for our public business owners. In addition to these pieces, we'll start to see increases in public calls, we did a very basic run through after a long period of warming shelters just to see what the roles looked like in the local jail, and within less than twenty four hours, there were six to eight individuals from the warming center that were at jail.

And so it's just a small example of what we know, which is when they don't have a place to go, either behaviorally or they know they can get the proverbial three hots and a cot if they get themselves sent to jail. Our local crisis personnel doesn't have the luxury for this to continue to increase, they're not well, they're not staffed well enough, they're amazing people and they do amazing things, but when we look at future planning and resourcing, that is a significant area we need to figure out how can we provide some support and resources as well. We're currently working with Charter, one piece to know is after warming centers with different changes and the operating hours of the library have significantly impacted how our unsheltered folks aren't able to maneuver around the city. Our library is very kind and gracious to our unsheltered population, but with delayed opening, there have been several severely cold mornings where that becomes an issue. So they've all started to kind of congregate at the Tata hub.

We've spent some time down there observing, working in collaboration with Tata leadership, Tata security staff engaging, trying to discuss their solutions, and we're looking for some long term options. But the reality is it really just keeps coming down to there's not a place for our unsheltered folks to go. They need a place that has heat or conversely cooling, and some other basic needs. We'll talk about that a little bit more in just a little bit. The severe weather impacts are something that we need to be aware of and look to as well as we start looking at the services that we need to provide.

The significant shifts in temperature, have also caused an uptick in our folks going to the emergency room because they can't adjust, And I think that that's going to continue. Our cooling efforts are going to have to be as equally responsive as our warming efforts once we get into that system. If we keep moving down our timeline and the funding loss continues beyond ninety days, we'll start to see program reductions and closures. At that point is when we'll start to see the workforce impact and layoff of staff. We'll have loss of trained housing specialists and compliance folks that have trained and have gained significant expertise.

Their ability is or their skills and abilities are often very honed to a particular area, so reemployment might be very difficult and reentry into the workforce might be very difficult for those folks that have been the dedicated consistent employees in this system. When we look at the landlord impact, the loss of that reliable payment stream, again will significantly hit our landlords. We anticipate many of them will cease to be landlords increasing slum and blight, unattended properties, and unrecouped tax, property taxes that we need to keep our our community vibrant. When we look at the system level damage, it also reduces our ability to match to leverage other funds. And so when we're looking at our state funding or other private funding, I know you know all too well the difficulty of matching and how that works, but it's a significant concern for providers and it is also a significant concern at the state level as well with how some of the money tandems and so we will continue to look and work towards what that looks like, but that could just exponentially start reduct the reduction of funds that is available.

So once we get to this point, it's system level damage and we're looking at permanent loss of potential housing stock that goes into disrepair, which this community has strove hard to fight and rally against. We're looking at the increased unsheltered homelessness again amongst persons with severe persistent mental illness. And the stage is no longer longer temporary at this point, it starts to become a structural damage to something that we've worked very hard with your support to change. I think a crowning achievement over the last year has been the merger or acquisition of Family House into Leading Families Home, and there have been many changes by partners. Again, we've lost nearly 3 quarters of $1,000,000 in homeless services in the community this year just by our funded partners with very little change to service, and acquisition is a large change, but the services to our persons on the street has gone largely unchanged.

Some of the further impacts that we need to look to are further disruptions for our children, being able to, having to move about the city, the disruption in their schooling, their education, impacts on their behavioral and emotional stability, and this only increased educational setbacks for a school system that is currently stressed and doesn't need additional pieces to add to some of the stress that they're experiencing. And again, a reminder, we are the number one city in the state of Ohio for the number of children that are unsheltered in the school system. Let's talk about the impact on our adults. We now have folks who have had severe issues and overcome barriers to become house that will start increasing the evictions on their record making it harder for them to obtain future housing. This will reduce future housing eligibility and starts to push up the number of individuals in our home that we in system that are classified as chronically homeless or having persistent and multiple issues of being unsheltered.

The indirect pieces are again our emergency responders, our healthcare providers, schools, businesses, and neighborhoods. I want to be careful how I present this because we don't want in any way shape or form to paint the individuals that we're serving as dangerous or criminal. But I'll tell you as a mama, if I had to feed my child, I'd steal something, if that's what it came down to. And I think we need to be in touch with our close human nature to understand those realities of what some of these families and individuals are experiencing, whether they've been homeless before or not. So the inherent small pieces of petty theft, different pieces loitering, which is a significant piece of what starts to increase when people don't have a place to go, And then when you enter in the significant mental health needs of some of these individuals that starts to escalate quickly and our emergency responders at danger.

So when we continue down this piece and we look at the community level impact, it is definitely not a contained issue. It has significant impacts in significant areas. The costs don't go away, they just shift. I want to again remind you that ongoing programming through this project is about $1,200 a month per participant, that's one emergency room stay or approximately three days in jail, which is pretty much what happens with a loitering conviction for many of our individuals. Housing is a preventative infrastructure and emergency response is reactive and significantly more costly.

So when we look at all of these public systems being impact and the shift, some of the impact won't be as evident right away, some of it will be longer. Again, when you start looking at workforce impact, unrecouped property taxes, the slum and blight that starts to occur in those in those housing facilities. The cascading failures don't stop there, our placement stop, our shelter exits slow or come to a halt, our emergency systems and emergency rooms continue to become backed up. We start to we fear we will start to see the business owners and small landlords choose not to be landlords, and the housing inventory continues to shrink even further. Each failure compounds the next.

The longer the disruption, the more difficult and expensive recovery comes. So some of the broader implications as if those aren't enough, when we look at again, the increased visible homeless population in downtown then starts impact some of the wonderful things that have been going on in several of the development of the corridors, the restaurants, the mud hens, people visiting downtown and bringing commerce. The business disruption of that reduced foot traffic will be significant and again even just to tourism and some of the great we have the new boat that comes and docks here, you know, there's so many great things in our community that are launching that are going to be significantly impacted by these. And you know part of the predictions and several of the communities are looking at something that Toledo is very proud of is an increased bond rating. And so when we start to look at this structural and fiscal degrade and decay, that starts to eat away and could start pushing that bond rating in another direction.

So the the impact is far reaching, and the housing stability is directly tied to our economic vitality and our civic health. And it's not just a social service issue, it's an economic and public safety issue. So what we really wanna do is to make sure that we provided the further details today. I I feel like miss doom and gloom, but that's what it feels like. And we were on a national call yesterday with several advocates with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, and they're tired.

Everyone is tired. So I'm not sure where we gain renewed strength and renewed energy, but the next steps are for us to start talking about what are some of the solutions and what are some of the impacts. Some of those will have to be short term and not provide long term solutions, but there are things that we need to do like addressing the public restrooms need and the trash pickup or ability to gather trash in our communities are some of the very basic pieces that we're going to need to address and meet needs of folks that are on the street. If you think of that, our outreach to provide information is paper, our outreach to provide food is through disposable items, so there's more cups and Styrofoam and other pieces. So in our efforts to provide human care for folks, and we absolutely should, we're also creating other problems that systemically need to take a look at how we can fix or improve.

We need to look at some emergency bridge funding mechanisms and how can different systems come together. We're working with the Mental Health Recovery Services Board. This can't land squarely on their shoulders, but they are definitely at the table in the discussions. And we're working closely with each of the, we'll be meeting over the next month to gauge from our providers, we can see from a high level the cash flow impact that's happening. We are unclear at this point what their reserves are and their ability to sustain those pieces.

So that is the next step of our assessment and stress on the system. And we will also start to hopefully be able to better gauge how many landlords are rescinding or not engaging in future engagements or placing new folks through some of the funding given the threats that are at hand. Housing is the most stable and cost effective intervention, and so if we can stabilize some of these pieces or start figuring out trajectories and opportunities to place people, for instance, with the NPI, if they have to shift their structure design, and we have 750 people to rehouse, we've got to figure out where. And that's going to take some creativity amongst city leaders, county leaders, the mental health, Lucas Metropolitan, housing, many of those entities are present on our board, so there's definitely communication going on right now and robust decisions and information gathering for us to figure out. And I'm curious, I would be curious from your perspective if you have ideas of who we can pull to the table for some of these ideas as far as we come up with solutions.

But I also want to put out there and remind you last time we spoke a little bit about a group of community folks, mostly within the Uptown area, that have wonderfully given of their time to meet with myself, Ann Everett, who's the COC chair, and also Donnie Miller from NHA, so that we can address the local health issues of the waste, the trash, and that group is coming up with several solutions and recommendations for some of the pieces we're doing. I can tell you the direction looking at that information, information and some of the research that's out there. Part of what we need what we could do on a short term basis are start to look at how can we look at a drop in center type opportunity where folks who often can't obtain services in such a restricted environment can connect, have showers. We do have small and limited services for phone charging, showers, laundry, but they are not substantial enough. And so we need to look how to make those more robust and use that as an opportunity to engage with folks and try to find creative ways to connect them to the mental health care that they have a distrust for.

And so we're engaging that conversation with the mental health board as well. Part of it will take leveraging and reworking systems, because we understand there's no bucket of money. You've given us a couple already, we understand. And so we'd like to move forward with some of those solutions, but again we just want to keep you abreast of the continuing changes, the emerging pieces of the significant impact that this starts to have as the ripples kind of go out when we throw that rock in the stream. I guess I would like to know, are there questions or pieces that I can entertain and help, you with today based on what we've provided?

Well first, thank you just for this information. We felt that it was definitely important to really give light to what is really happening and how this affects Toledo on a scale on top of other issues that are still building up and that we are in the era of uncertainty. So with housing and homelessness being prioritized, it's important to understand just what we're up against at this point. And the information you provided definitely gives us, at least that that that starting point to really start brainstorming of how we as council and also in recruiting other groups to help out with this as well. Before we get to questions, I do want to acknowledge council members Sorontu and McPherson.

I did have a question. As far as data is concerned, mapping, do you I'm I'm interested in the landlords that have these programs. Do you have a map of where they're located throughout the city or is that something that's more confidential? We can make one. Okay.

Would, because I was just thinking, you know, not speaking it to an existence, but in the event that this would happen where landlords would have to evict or just fall out, how would that, on which sides of towns, you know, what would be more inundated with that, just kind of like being proactive at that thinking to cover those areas. So yeah, definitely if you can offer that, I think that will help also in other types of planning and conversations too.

We've established a heat map based on the engagements and information we get through the encampment group and through information we receive from TPD so we can use that same model Perfect. To obtain information from the I feel like that would be an easy ask of our Okay, data

awesome, awesome.

Thank you

so much.

I'm going to get questions from counsel, Council Member Gavis.

Thank you. And thank you for this. I know it's hard and sobering but it's really important that we hear this so that we can strategically help deal with these. Along the same lines about the housing, are we looking at single family homes or apartments? I think when that would be really helpful information for the people that potentially could be losing their home if funding is cut. Do demographically more of them live in apartments? Are we talking single family homes?

A majority are apartments but there are some single family home pieces in there so we can gather that.

And then any information on the landlords, are they local landlords? Is this going to impact our I know it's going to impact our local economy but are they local landlords, small landlords, mid sized companies, larger companies? That that is usually pretty helpful.

It's a mix. Okay. We can definitely try to parse that out a little bit more. I'm actually I was actually pleasantly surprised as we've started to dig in, many of them actually are out of town. But there are certainly out of town landlords that are well known in this community to not be responsive, but I will say that there are some that have been. And so we've wonderfully been trying to shore up those relationships. I think it's a pretty good mix, but we definitely can do evaluation of to the best of our ability with whatever's in the ARRIS system, understanding are they in town, out of town and looking at where payments are going, what that looks like.

And then when I think you mentioned the restrooms and the trash and I've heard a lot about that too. Do you know if there's best practices for strategies around tackling some of that? There absolutely are. Is there anything you could share with us? Studies, files, anything that would be helpful?

Yeah, we can absolutely. There, for instance, there's one project, and actually the research on this was spearheaded by Keep Toledo Lucas County Beautiful. They reached out to neighboring Detroit. There's a company, aptly named Throne, who provides, particularly trailers or locations where folks can use restrooms, they're monitored, they're locked, you obtain passes to be able to use them and they're very regularly cleaned. The overhead is high.

However, it's an effective model that's allowed people to access the services they need, it takes the stress and off of other areas of town, I can tell you one area of town that significantly gets stressed because of the lack of restrooms is the metro parks and their restrooms. Folks have learned that they can use those and typically they'll do so respectfully, we've worked with metro metro park rangers, we've done training and education and information and the metro parks is good about that, but there's an overburden, if you will, particularly with a couple of locations in some of the metro park bathrooms because there lacks another opportunity. And so those are some of the places I think we could anecdotally present, where we might see, some relief, but again, so maybe we look to metro parks as someone who helps to be the solution with this because they're doing a good job of managing it, but maybe we need to find a different way or location. You can pull in tractor trailer type environments that move around in some communities that have larger encampments. I'm not sure that we need to move around, there's two or three areas of town that are that have larger numbered individuals that might access.

But there have been success, our very own Cherry Street Mission during some renovations, had an experience doing that and pulling those in for restrooms. And so those are things you can rent, those are things you can purchase, there are different options that we can present and give some cost projections on as well.

That would be helpful. And then, you had mentioned the encampment heat map. I think that would be really helpful too because as I'm thinking through as a district councilman with my DIP funding, we mentioned phone chargers. I mean, you can't get a job. You can't do anything without your phone. That's really important. So are there strategies where I could use my DIP for tables that have the chargers built in with the solar, you know, like, stuff like that? So I don't know if there's a way we could get that, but that would be really helpful. And then I would love to schedule a meeting with you to talk about Uptown because I'm having a lot of the same troubles in in some of the neighborhoods in my district. And Okay.

I think learning from them would be really helpful for the business owners and other areas. So thank you for presenting this for us. Thank you, Chair.

I think there's any more questions from council members. I understand you had a couple of speakers.

Yeah, if I could, if she's still here, Sergeant Kelly. Kelly Russell, her team has done a phenomenal job of engaging with our encampment group, helping us get information to expand and robustly populate the heat map I was chatting about. I just want to say they're at the table, they get that there need to be different interventions for folks in our community. They are professional, respectful, and an amazing group of people that are working with us. We could use 10 more groups of them I think across the community.

But we asked her if she could just come sort of give you a precursor of information we'd like to from a couple of different lenses in the future, but at least from I think it's important to speak from with the unsheltered folks that we have, the experience that they're having currently, any of the barriers or issues that they have, and anticipated things that might be getting worse.

Hi, thank you for having me today and being a guest here. So I've been in law enforcement twenty five years. I think the last twenty years I don't know what I was doing, to be honest with you. I think I let public dictate exactly what I was supposed to be doing, arresting bad guys, right? Putting them in jail, writing tickets.

But we missed the mark on that. Right? We should be out making friends with our vulnerable group that often are people put into jails for, as Julie stated, mamas that just need food for their babies, right? So I have a nursing background. I'm also a registered nurse, so I understand the mental health process, the substance abuse process, and I built that epiphany of empathy.

I have what I told about. I can't see it, but it's on there. I had the opportunity to work at Northwest Ohio Psychiatric Hospital in 2020 for three years, in addition to being a police officer. And I got to see my people. I call them my people. Chief Trembling will say they're my people. I saw my people get better. Really, there was hope for them. And that was really how I missed the mark for twenty years. I got to see them get better, and that meant a lot. And you ask police officers today, what do you want what do you want done? What would make your job easier? We need help with the people that are unhoused. We need something for them, somewhere for them to go. There's nowhere for them to go.

A lot of times, they'll take money out of their own pocket to buy them a room for the night, because we're out of options. If you don't have housing above you, you're a better flight, you're in survival mode, right? You can't work on your mental health, can't work on your substance abuse. So when Julie asked me to come speak, really, I was in awe because I didn't know all these numbers and statistics that she had. I'm thinking, what am I going to do? First responders are going to be on our shoulders. We're going be out there helping. We sit with my meetings with all my team members back here. They're part of my team. I'm the Crisis Intervention Team Coordinator.

A lot of people think CIT means training. No, we work collaboratively with the community outreach group, with PATH, NPI, the mental health board, the hospitals. The gentleman that lived on the East Side, I don't want to mention his name, but he made a house out of the post office. Right? He really hindered the quality of life of a lot of residents over there. We sat on the bench multiple times and talked. He's scary, but why don't you get to know him? He was awesome. And he had pizza and he told me all his history. Guess what?

He's not out there anymore. We were able to get him in housing through his guardianship services board. And then, you know, we had the lady with the cart out by the mall she was another one that we worked collaboratively to get her in housing and she wasn't hindering the quality of life of the people out in West Toledo. So we are making small progresses one at a time because there's not enough of crisis intervention team coordinators like me. We have CIT officers that are running call to call to call.

30% mental health calls have gone up in the last four years. That's a lot for the police to try to figure out what to do and get long term solutions. So I just wanted to share what I do and how I work closely with the homelessness board and how we're trying to think of solutions, too. Thank you for your time.

Thank you so much for your service and this is a heavy subject, most definitely. Councilwoman McPherson.

Thank you, Doctor Jones. Thank you for your report. Yes, I just sat here and told them, wow, this is doom and gloom. This is not good because where's the answers? What's the solutions?

It is way above my pay grade. I mean, I think about the students that try to go to school every day and at the end of the day, they don't know where they're going to sleep at. It's mind blowing. But I am hopeful because of people like you that are continuing to work and ask the question. And we've got to deal with this some kind of way to help those that are out there that need our help.

And so I hope that we can put our heads together piece by piece. And thank you, officer, for saying that. It's one person at a time. We can only do one at a time. You can't do this in groups.

It won't work because everybody is individual. And their needs, even though some of us may look at them like, oh, those five are they're individuals and their needs are totally different. Let me say to my cousin, Reverend Cunningham, out there, thank you, man at Saint Paul United Methodist Church for always opening up your door to the community in the times of emergency weather. I want to thank you for that. And thank you.

We've gotten the postcards where people know where to go. We're passing them out when we have those emergency weathers. And I just hope that those that are listening to this in our community will also come to the table. I really hope that our churches will come to the table, and assist us in this because it is not just city council. It is not just the Lucas County commissioners.

It is not just the homeless board. It is not just mental health. This is an everybody solve, and we've all got to come to the table and figure this thing out. I like the idea of the restrooms. Some people may think that's a small thing, but it's a really big thing when you can go to the restroom.

And I see the overabundance that our bus station is getting because we feed the homeless every third Saturday and the bus terminal is one of the places that we stop. And it is overwhelming, because that's a place where they can go in and stand. And I thank Tarda and those that work there for allowing them to come in and sit and be warm for those times. I thank those at the Greyhound bus station and the train station because they allow them to come in there and sit and be warm for the time being in our libraries. But we've got to do more.

So let's just all kind of put on our thinking caps and let's start having the conversations. It's not going to be easy, but we can do this one person at a time. And the needs are many, but I think we can do this if we put the people first and not us. Thank God. I'm blessed. I have a place to stay, but I think about the young people that have to deal with it on a daily basis. I can't, I can't. Thank you.

Really quickly, just a couple comments. We'll be furthering the idea of the postcards with different resources and we're working with the mental health board and some other folks to how do we differently get materials out for people to understand and know where to go, whether they have a phone, whether they don't. In regards to youth, we are working with coalition on housing and homelessness in Ohio and we'll be doing an exercise here in about a week and a half. They'll be coming up to help us do a youth service asset map process and so that will help us better structure and be able to put in place some of the connections for the youth that are in play. And we have affirmed with some HUD TA that there are supposed to be some additional funds specific to that eighteen to twenty four population and possibly for the homeless, the McKinney Vento definition of homelessness that the schools can use.

So we're gearing up for opportunities and trying to work through some data and pieces to ready ourselves to try to obtain some of those resources. And Tarda again, wonderful, a good example of that conversation. They've asked and we're waiting on some feedback, for us to help coordinate with, several community folks so that their staff can have critical incident training, so that they're better responding and capable to meet the needs of folks that are in front of them. And I think that's something we need to look to expand to business owners and some other folks that might be helpful.

I think that's a good idea. The training exactly. Yeah, and the training is for everybody because we all need to know how to at least respond to when we're dealing with somebody that is having a mental crisis. I was in Cincinnati last week and I read an article or saw it on the news where Cincinnati is opening up one of their schools that they closed for a homeless shelter for students. I sent that to a couple of my colleagues and I also sent it to Superintendent Durant to look at because that's one of their ways that they're dealing with the student population.

We've got to get creative and think out the box. So thank you very much.

Counselor Merranto.

Thank you. I really appreciate your presentation, Julie. And we currently have some real challenges here, and I appreciate the officer comments also because you you're in a very tough job. You have very unpopular job in America today, and it's very tough and always very challenging every time you're at work. So we certainly appreciate all the things you're doing to help out the homeless of Toledo.

I'm just wondering, Councilwoman McPherson brought up schools. You know, we have a lot of churches in Central Toledo that are closed. And some of them have facilities like rooms where you could set up cots. They have bathrooms, maybe locker rooms, showers. And I'm just wondering if we could if you've could communicate with some of these churches, the Diocese of Toledo, for example, and see if what it would take to open them at night so people have a place to sleep.

Even though it's on a cot, at least it would be a safe place. You know, the libraries do a nice job of feeding kids at all of the libraries, which which really helps. But I I thought of these churches, so many are closed, and if we could help you approach maybe them and see what we could do. I know funding is always gonna be a problem, but it's vacant space that's closed up and nobody's using. And at council, councilwoman Gaddis and others are you know, we're trying to find a purpose for these historic churches. And I think maybe this might be something we can explore, you know, with the homeless board. So I just wanted to throw that out.

And I appreciate that creativity and not it's an option. I think one of the things we need to look at are how can we shore up and strengthen the existing system before we expand because the overhead costs of those type facilities really starts to escalate quickly and our existing shelters are struggling to exist.

Mhmm.

So if we start creating new, that's just more competition for funds that are already not there. Okay. This year, for instance, Saint Paul shelter typically runs winter crisis that helped through support of private donations and funding from the city. That is one of the places where services have been cut. It started several weeks late and it will close an extra week early this year.

Typically, goes till March 15, it will close down on March 8. So we're also trying we're currently preparing for what's that impact with the crazy weather that we've had and the ups and downs, what's that going to look like because that's 35 to 45 people that have not been at the warming centers. And so what is that stress and pressure going to look like because we also have a cap of how many people that we figured out a number that makes sense and we can manage at St. Paul's United Methodist Church, but once we hit that number, we have to find alternative solutions. So I appreciate that and I appreciate the desire and understanding that we need to do that, but how can we on a cost effective and return on investment, how can we look at expanding some of the pieces we have in place, I think might be the good first step.

And then if we can bring some things to the table

Okay.

To figure those pieces out, Absolutely.

Are all the shelters doing some kind of fundraising?

Oh, yes.

Okay. Because that's important

to Always.

Always. Okay.

Always.

I just do events and things that not just mailing out solicitations, but I'm thinking about events that they can get. You know, we have so many musical groups in Toledo Mhmm. That if we could get them to donate their services at a fundraiser, maybe do something down at Promenade Park

Yeah.

I think we'd get a lot of people that would show up to support that because it is important. You know, once in a while, we see in the media wonderful stories about people that were homeless and, you know, living in a car, and it's very heartwarming to see that they've had to they've changed their lives. And today they're they have a job, they have a place to stay, and so forth. And I would add that the former director of health for the state of Ohio, doctor Acton, at one time was homeless

Mhmm.

And lived in a car with her family. And today, she's running for governor of Ohio. So there's hope, and we just have to keep learning and thinking outside the box and trying to get people the help they need because it can really make a difference in their lives and for society. Yep. So thank you.

There's currently some discussion. I have a lot of staff that would like to bring Doctor. Acton to town, so.

Great. Thank you, and thank you, Madam Chair.

President Williams?

Thank you. I think that we're here today to figure out the solution, and it's gonna be hard because the federal government actually cut the funding moving. So I think that this council probably will be charged with trying to urge the federal government to help. Their priorities have definitely shifted off in helping people into helping volunteers. So I think that

and I think that's what we're here for, right, Julie? I think so. We need to figure out how we can

urge the federal government letters. To we need to call I mean, our senators, I don't know what they're do because they're freshmen in this, so I don't know how we can get them, but tell them that we will support them if they fight for what's really important. So I ran a dropout recovery school in Central Toledo. When I took it over, I had 47 students with pretty low enrollment, So and 20 of those were definitely calling all cars. But TPD actually has an asset on their team that I don't know if they knew about, who didn't wrestle.

Tina Cavanaugh actually helped me house some of my kids at ArcLow and she was supportive service they had supportive services. She's actually a police officer right now slash social worker. She did some good work, but and by the end of that first school year, I had no homeless I had one and he just didn't want to live in and that's the one reality that some people don't want to live in four walls, so he didn't want to live in four walls. There is a question that I had that was burning that we were looking into years ago was Tent City, and I know we don't have the funding to do that either with the wash stations, with the bathrooms, with that. The problem was where would it be because you always have these people come out, we want to help, but we don't want it in our neighborhood.

So I think that was an issue that we had. So I think once this bag of Cheetos get out of office, we could probably get this funding back if we get someone there. Yes. I do. I I speak the real.

I don't have time to play around. Once we get them out of office and get some going, I would definitely like to have some data to talk about where a tent city could be because let's be clear, you have people that don't wanna live in housing. We don't I know there was a few areas in the in the country that had 10 cities that were actually functional, but I would like to dig in to see how that would work because we will not always be this beat down with funding. We are moving in the right direction to get things moving for people. God doesn't put too much on us that we can't handle And right now, this is a learning experience that we have to take a hold of and learn from what is going on right now and how people are not caring about the poor because God don't come get us if we don't start paying about caring about the poor.

And I don't want to be left not knowing what to do when we bounce back from this, because we will. But I feel like this charge for counsel right now is to urge our federal government to stop playing around with the millionaires and focus on the poor people because that's what we stand for in America is helping those that need help. So I think that that's one thing that we can do is urge the federal government because our budget is trash all the way up and down. The cuts that we have to make are severe and are hurting because of the trajectory of what's going on at the federal government. So I I think that we can we need to start utilizing them people that's sitting in them seats, and we understand you're freshmen, but it's time to get to work.

So, I would like this council to urge our senators and our house of representatives to actually help with the funding to help our homeless population because a lot of them didn't ask to be homeless. So I I think that's where we started. I think we need to really start urging our federal compadres or not compadres to get to work. Thank you.

Thank you. And actually that was going to be my question, what is the charge? And I mean, it is midterm, so that's an opportunity as well. Councilwoman Kranner.

Thank you, chair, and thank you so much for that presentation. I will say President Williams kind of talked about all the things that I was gearing up to talk about, but I also did want to say well, I want to ask. So this is based on cuts from the federal government, obviously, but also from the state government. Am I right about that?

There have been cuts from the state government, but those are really in relation to federal money that's funneled through, because their money from the federal government was cut. It's a secondary impact.

Okay. And then, you also sort of mentioned private donations are down as well? Doctor.

Private donations are down in many sectors. I mean, it's part of just the changing culture. Folks that are aging that are typically the private givers, the younger populations give or contribute in different ways. They're not the folks that will cut a monthly check. And we've seen a small uptick.

We do not fundraise at the board. We need to look at it and we're gonna have to consider it, but we have tried to stay out of that venue in order to allow our part the community partners that are providing the services to benefit from that. And but we have had some folks with cover media coverage, etcetera, who've sent in some funds that we that are directed towards the warming centers and some of the specific services that are occurring. So I think there's an opportunity and part of, what we're trying to also do in the background is we're putting this information is getting some public facing information out that might help bring some folks forward who will contribute.

Okay. And I know one of the things that you talked about was the cuts in the library hours that have, you know, kind of led people to go to the heart TARTA hubs. And I wanna say, you know, that's a direct result of state cuts

Yes.

That have been made, those cuts in hours. So, you know, I think as we think about voting and elections in November, you know, we need to think about those services that are important to us and which legislators are voting to fund those services Yes. And which are voting to make those cuts. And, you know, frankly, I always go back to that $600,000,000 that's going to go to a stadium that's funded by Ohio voters, and there are people that are sleeping on the streets and that, you know, need we need to bring in trailers so that they can have access to restrooms, and so we have to think about what our priorities are here in our state. So thank you very much for all you do, I

truly appreciate it. Thank you. If I may quickly, just to put a piece in your ear we move forward and identify opportunities, part of the opportunity when we talk about tent city, when we talk about some of these solutions, the church options, a huge component of how and where we can find solutions is related to our very restrictive zoning code. And so we have the opportunity with the program to really have some input and to make some impact and change and really think through how we could simplify things for, again, for our citizens, but also the landlords to incentivize and get them to do and be more active in our communities. How can we make it easier on both sides?

As far as development, tiny homes, different options that we could provide that are very successful in other communities, we cannot do here because we often run into zoning issues.

I'm glad that you said that that was actually a future meeting that I wanted to have talking about the zoning code alterations in order to alleviate homelessness in a way. So, look out for that email pretty soon. Councilwoman McPherson.

Thank you. I want to make some alterations. That's where I was going. That was going to be my next question. And I saw Jim Moeller out there because that's what I was wondering.

When I was asking the churches about just being a temporary shelter or a temporary housing space, we used the Frederick Douglass Center last year where they could come in and just get warm. And I think it was a twelve hour shift, something like that. It was like eight to eight eight p. M. To eight a.

M. Is it different for different buildings or is it you're shaking your head, come on. This is just a question because we've got to look at some of this and she just said it with our zoning issues and so how do we finagle through this or even can we? Because that was one of the questions that came up when I asked a couple of churches.

Thank So I don't want to misspeak, but there are occupancy requirements that when you get a specific use for a building. A church is different than housing. So, yes, I I would say that temporary use sometimes can happen, but, technically, if you were going to convert a church into a housing facility, there would there would be a significant cost to get that to get that permitted to be able to be a housing facility.

Right. But just for a temporary

I that's the part I don't that would be

the Okay.

So we need

to would be part

of the building Ohio building code Okay. And would would need, like, the building official to really explain that one.

That's cool. I see somebody else walking up. Oh, are you? Come on.

Thank you for allowing me to speak. I just wanted to add to the question that you're asking when it came to Frederick Douglass and such. Really, they fell under fire and we used the term warming center

Right.

As a means to get around some of the codes which say they could not be a shelter. And so at the Frederick Douglass Center or at the church, they can't sleep, they can't have pallets, they can't have beds, they can just essentially be there Okay. To stay warm without having means of action being a true shelter. Now there has been conversations about how we can move and get around that and I think Julie you might have been part of those conversations at one point, Cherry Street Missions and others. And so that's like an ongoing conversation and something we definitely need to pick back up.

Thank you. Thank you. So let's continue that conversation and make those alterations. I'm messing with her word. And thank you, thank you, Jim, also for coming up. I you know, I didn't mean to put you on the spot, but, you know, this when you got smarter people in the room, that's who you call on.

I I yeah. You're very welcome, and, yes. Thank you. I I think the the the biggest cost that you run into when you're converting a church because churches don't necessarily always require sprinkler systems, and then when you have you're turning into a housing facility, it requires a sprinkler system, which is not cheap at all. So that's the biggest challenge for that. But again, I'm not the expert. No. I don't want

We're saying this. We're not

going to hold

you to it.

That's correct. Yep. Thank you. Right.

We won't hold you to it. Yep. Thank you.

And Jim's staff have been at the table along with t Toledo Police at those same conversations and coming up with conversations and they all of his staff email us regularly. So I know he's vested in solutions.

Yes.

And he it's been an asset to be able to have that collaboration. And I think that's part of what counsel can help us with. Where are the other places where we can leverage the relationships to get the right information to figure out how to move forward. Because it seems really easy to just pop open a house and say, Come get warm, but if it was that easy, we would have already done it. So, how do we overcome the barriers and the

Right, and I thank her for saying that because that was the word that we used, warming centers.

Yes.

We were not talking about shelters. We were just doing emergency warming centers. I want that for the record, so don't nobody warming centers, and it was temporary warming centers, and that it was not a shelter. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor. Jones and thank you,

Julie. As

of now, we're opening the floor to public comment. If anybody had signed up to speak, you may do so now. And just state your name.

Good afternoon. My name is Sandra Disteno and I'm the director for two eleven. I just wanted to add a little bit of context to these conversations due to what we see coming into the phone lines at two eleven. If you want to know who's showing up to these warming centers, and we have to be really careful, we've got people in power wheelchairs who come in at 1% battery. We've had been dealing in 2025 with a woman who was an older adult who got leukemia, which caused her to lose her job, which caused her to lose her apartment.

And the med cab was coming to her apartment still, so she was in a tent outside of her apartment so that she was able to continually access her chemotherapy. Last year, while talking to a single mom in one of our shelters, she had teenagers, and I wanted to know more about the barriers to work. And she said she couldn't get childcare assistance because her teenager was a teenager, and so Job and Family Services says that you can latchkey those kids. You can't do that when you're living at a shelter. She said it cost me $55 a day to work, and I only make $40 a day.

I had spoken with a nursing home who was trying to discharge a 65 year old man who was working, had an apartment, had everything going for him, got into an accident last spring, needed long term rehabilitative care while in the nursing home, lost his apartment, his job, and everything because he had gotten into that car accident and was being discharged to homelessness. Who we're seeing showing up at our warming centers are people with developmental disabilities and older adults. People who have had histories of substance use often because of years of severe trauma. The situations are complex. Diversion is getting more difficult because every day, like Julie said, every day that we walk forward without meaningful assistance, anything for us to tell people on how to mitigate these issues makes everything more complicated.

Just this last six to eight months, we saw the November SNAP insecurity issues, job losses coming into January. Now we have additional Medicaid and SNAP work requirements, which are just handing people who are already vulnerable a book full more of issues. They did not need one more issue, and every day we're giving them more and more issues to try and figure out, and they're getting more complicated all of the time. One of the things Councilwoman McPherson talked about was getting creative like Cincinnati, and that is something that we do have to look at. Five years ago, we could tell people, go park at the Meijer parking lot because they're twenty four hours, or Kroger, or go to this place because there were twenty four hour places that you could go and you could at least have some assurance of safety, now there's nothing.

We're constantly talking to people who are homeless with minor children, who are either trying to find someplace safely to look at or to park or who don't even have the safety of a car to be able to keep them safe. So we really need something to tell people when they're calling, when we know that this is a federal funding issue, when we know that ARPA dollars put $40,000,000 of rental assistance into the hands of Toledoans, and we don't have anything like that. We don't have any mainstream assistance for rent rental assistance. Utilities are up. The rental the utility assistance is down.

So when we're talking people are calling in about and what is spiraling them into these situations that are causing their homelessness, it is a lot of the prevention dollars that we've used to have that we sadly don't have anymore. So we're here also to be at the table to listen to any solutions that anyone has and to help provide the data of what we're seeing because we do have a lot of that and people are very much in need. Thank you.

Thank you so much for

that. Next up is Ann. She just left. I guess our last person is pastor. Want to come up?

Good afternoon again. Pastor Leo Cunningham, St. Paul's United Methodist Church. I am also on the board of the Marketplace for All People. For those who do not know what that is, we started a separate five zero one(three) based out of the church 10 ago this August.

That is free clothing, free food, open to anyone in the community regardless of zip code, income status. Every Friday, worship service starts at 09:45. The marketplace opens at ten, goes until 11:45. I've been there for now here in Toledo again for almost three years, and we see increases every week in who comes to the marketplace on a regular basis. Just a few things here, once again sitting and listening.

Conversation about what the charge is to the council. I would suggest that your charge could be a bothand to both pressure the state and the federal levels and inspire the local constituents and businesses. Same energy, different approach and tactic. And to answer my councilwoman cousin's question about a solution, I don't think that there is going to be a solo solution. Rather, it's going to be multiple solutions.

For example, the numerous partnerships that do exist. So St. Paul's United Methodist Church sits on what we like to call the border of downtown and uptown there at 12th And Madison. The church is celebrating one hundred and ninety years this year. You'll get invites to the party that's happening in the fall.

That's how long we've been the church has been around longer than the city as a congregation. But we're also working with the Uptown Business Association. We're going to those meetings. We're coming to the meetings for the continuum of care. But we have also are now working with most people don't know this, cats out of the bag we're working with Vestula Neighborhood Association for some of the things that were happening there when the Friendly Center went away.

And the Friendly Center is a United Methodist affiliated organization. So we were like, there still needs to be some presence in Vestula. So we hired their program director, Reggie Williams, to come to the marketplace. So we are in conversations with what will it look like to start doing parachute drops of the marketplace back into Vistula. What will it look like to leverage those partnerships that already have been established between Vistula and other areas.

But if you think Uptown Business Association and you think Vistula, you're thinking about two completely different areas. But they're now having, for almost the last seven months, conversations with each other because of the work the church has done and working collaboratively with sitting at those tables. And so that's why we're here. And also I would like to say if anybody wants to come down and work a shift for the warming center, last night we were night 50 two. And it was a short notice.

There was a change in the weather. And we scrambled within two hours to get the building open and to figure out food, because it needs to happen. And we're still the only church in Lucas County doing this. But there are people who are seeing the efforts, we're getting support from lots of places, lots of partnerships. Individuals who have never stepped foot inside of the church have responded to when we said we need to do breakfast, we need to do dinner, and to be thankful for a professor from Owens to manage the food chain system was grateful, was wonderful to see.

But to look on the list and to see the Jewish Alliance Federation do dinner one day, and then the next day food, not bombs, do dinner the next day? If I had told you those two groups would work together, you might not have known it. But to see all these different organizations that have a care for this. But if we don't build these bridges, it's one of the solutions is going to be partnership. It's going to be working together.

And to answer Councilmember's question, we can't have beds and cots inside the churches because there isn't a fire suppression system. So people are there in the warming center. But those are some of the things. And we are, as a denomination of the United Methodists, we are having conversations on the district level and our conference level in other cities where United Methodist churches have worked to turn buildings into housing. So there's a project in Akron that they're working on, there's a project in Columbus that just got started as well.

So those conversations are happening internally with how do we take some of these buildings that are no longer houses of worship and to turn them, what does it take to chop them up and turn them into apartments or those types of things. Great minds think alike. Thank you so much.

Thank you for sharing that. Oh yeah. I mean, it's definitely a lot of conversation, a lot of just heart within situation, this big, big problem and as President Williams had mentioned, you know, it's not lasting forever but we have to be very strategic and smart about how we handle what the resources that we have now and just try to think of how to expand it, but even if it's just a little, we just have to get a little bit creative with our existing resources and really just your presentation brought to light just how everything is connected because when people think of homelessness, it's just that population, but they're not seeing, okay, it's affecting businesses, the landlords aspect, how housing in general because that's adding to the shortage especially if we lose those who are property owners. Everything is really connected and I think that's the biggest takeaway that we need to see from this situation is that everything is connected and everybody is affected. That's the main thing.

It is not an us versus them, everybody can fall within this category at any time, especially right now with this economy happening and actually that brings up just a thought of for those who are at risk of being homeless, you know, what does that even look like and adding to that possible adding to that population because of things getting cut or expenses getting too high, lack of assistance. So that's another thing that feeds into this and we already are basically strained to where we're at right now. So this type of conversation, this type of information is very important. The main reason why we had this today was to bring this forth just to let everybody know this is on our doorstep and what are we gonna do, how can we just make the best of it per se, lack of a better term, but how can we handle this situation and it's really talking about thinking outside that box as some of my colleagues have said with the churches and I was even thinking about the Rite Aid's, if we can do something with them for temporary places because it's not going away. So other than that, if there's are there any other public comments?

Yeah, go ahead, come, come. Please state your name.

Emily Matthews, the program manager for two one one. And I just wanted to say a quick thank you for your support with the warming centers and everything over the last few months. We are a model for all of Northwest Ohio. Toledo has everyone else is looking at us. I just had a presentation down in Allen County today, and afterwards, someone from the city came up and they said, we wanna understand how two one one is working alongside the city, how you're what you're doing, and how it how it helps and how it works.

We know that we need it and we see it and we understand. And when we had the snow down here in Allen County a few weeks ago, we had no idea what to do with warming centers. So we have been able to kind of create this model that other places are also able to model off of, and that's really important for the other areas that we cover. I know our focus is Toledo Lucas County, but we wouldn't have been able to do all of this without your support. And I've been working overnights at the the warming centers, so I've seen firsthand how incredibly impactful it's been.

And as Sandra mentioned, these are people falling through the cracks of the system. These are our folks with disabilities in wheelchairs that we've been able to connect with disability services that they didn't know existed in Lucas County. We have a lot of folks that are in reentry and are being arrested once we don't have the warming centers, and then they're back a few days later, we're able to pair them with reentry services. So this has been able to get folks in front of us that otherwise would not be, and build a level of trust and comfort with us. In the beginning, some of the folks, especially those with mental health issues, it's a little hairy there sometimes, know, sixty, seventy, 80 people in a room.

But the way that we've been able to de escalate and just learn and understand the people right in front of us that we're working with, Obviously, the shelter staff have that regularly, but for more of the community to be able to experience it has been, I think, really important and really eye opening. So if you folks haven't been to the warming centers, we're gonna be open this weekend, I would more than encourage you to come. I've been presenting to Toledo Police Department and fire and soon to be nine zero one recently to help kind of bridge those gaps and help them understand so that we can support them in this whole effort as well. And I think that it's going really well. So I have so much hope, and I'm just very grateful. So thank you all.

Thank you. That's my two eleven peeps United Way all day, all day.

All the work, I love it,

I love it. And that's the difference that we made is displayed here. I think that you know we have our charges, we have our information, know we're understanding that we need to lean on each other for that support, for the resources. So at this point you know we just, it's really time to get down to it and really dig into what we can do with what we have right now. So get the emails going, get the calls going and then you know, we're definitely going to follow-up and keep track and please share information with us and as far as how we can step in, what we can do, what we need to search for, what meetings we need to attend.

That is something that we really rely on the community a lot this sort of thing right now. So other than that, are there any other comments, questions? Alright. Well, I declare this meeting adjourned.