Community Services and Youth Committee - Regular Meeting

Alright, good morning. I would like to welcome you to the Human Relations Commission meeting for August 27th. We're going to call the meeting to order right at 6 o'clock. We'll get started on time today. Can I get the two recordings please?

Pursuant to the City Council Rules of Procedure and Order of Business Resolution, the members of the City Council and the public are reminded that they must preserve order and decorum throughout the meeting. In that regard, members of the City Council and the public are advised that any delay or disruption in the proceedings or a refusal to obey the orders of the City Council or the Presiding Officer constitutes a violation of these rules. the city of riverside is committed to fostering a workplace that provides dignity respect and civility to our employees customers and the public they serve thank you would commissioner martis please lead us in the pledge of allegiance

All right. And then if we can get the roll call, please.

In no particular order, Commissioner Farney? Present. Commissioner Woods-Adeyeye?

Present.

Commissioner Raya? Present. Commissioner Harmoosh? Commissioner Gordon? Present. Commissioner Martis?

Present.

Commissioner Fujimoto?

Present.

Commissioner Galbraith. Present. Commissioner Melendez. Commissioner Lewis.

Present.

Commissioner Goh.

Present.

Commissioner Agramon. Commissioner Olson. We have quorum. Wonderful.

Thank you.

all right moving in do we have any public comment and if we can get the second recording sorry about that pursuant to the city council rules of procedure in order of business resolution the members of all boards and commissions and the public are reminded that they must preserve order and decorum throughout the meeting it public comment is now open for this item call 951-826-8688 and follow the prompts

No colors.

OK, thank you. So we're going to start off with our presentations this morning because we do have quite a few people here to present to us today. We will call the first item item number two, Riverside Police Department update by Chief Gonzalez.

good evening and thank you chair galbraith and commissioners larry gonzalez your police chief and not to disappoint you but i don't have an update but i want to thank the commission and stephanie for allowing me to come in tonight to recognize one of your commissioners i thought no better way than to embarrass her in front of her fellow colleagues but for a very good reason so this is for commissioner sharon lewis If you will indulge me, I know you've heard something about this, but I thought it would be important to give you a little more context and tell you what we want to give her tonight. The Riverside Police Department is proud to partner with the Riverside NAACP Youth Council and bring African American youth with Riverside police officers together for conversation and connection through the Breaking Bread Together series. This partnership creates opportunities with open dialogue, shared experiences, and a greater understanding between youth and law enforcement. A key part of that success, or the key part of the success of Breaking Bread, together has been the leadership and dedication of Sharon Lewis. Through her involvement with Riverside NAACP and Riverside NAACP Youth Council, Sharon has been instrumental in organizing these opportunities and creating meaningful connections between young people and Riverside police officers. Her commitment to collaboration and strengthening relationships has helped bridge the community and our police department. This year's Breaking Bread Together series included conversations with Riverside police officers, shared meals, and interactive experiences that allowed youth and officers to better understand each other's perspectives. The series concluded, I think you guys all know this, with the Unity basketball game at Hunt Park this year, bringing together youth, officers, families, and community partners for an evening of fun, teamwork, and unity. The event was well attended and enjoyed by everybody involved, representing the positive outcomes that occur when a community comes together. Through her leadership, compassion, and dedication to Riverside's youth, Sharron has made a lasting impact. Her efforts continue to encourage dialogue, strengthen partnerships, and contribute to a safer and more unified Riverside. On behalf of the Riverside Police Department, we want to thank you for your outstanding partnership, leadership, and your continued commitment to our community. And it's for these reasons I'm going to give you a chief's commendation from the Riverside Police Department. It doesn't mean to get sworn in with a badge or anything, but we're very proud to have you as a partner. And I can still also, this is just a little excerpt from the chief's commendation. but being here for 33 years at this department the chief for seven i've been involved in all of these it's uh it's it's it's a huge lift really to get that together but to see the results is invaluable and we're very appreciative to have partners like ms lewis in our community that we can continue to work with and moving forward i know we'll have a long-lasting relationship with the naacp youth council and aacp all together so thank you again and congratulations thank you thank you so much Can we get a picture? One, two and three. One, two and three.

Thank you so much, Chief. All right. It's going to be hard to follow. Moving on to item number three, Human Resources Department presentation. HR Director Renee Goldman.

Good evening. Thank you, honorable chair and commissioners. My name is Renee Goldman. I'm the human resources director and I've brought my leadership team here today to join me in the event you have questions for us. Now we'll get started. So first, this is our administration team, our leadership team, myself and the two deputy directors that I have in HR. I like to call us the dream team. Together we have a really strong sense of collaboration. We have different areas of expertise, which allows for us to provide excellent service and harmony within the work that we do and to collaborate on many things. And together, the three of us and the folks sitting there behind, we lead a really diverse team of HR professionals. And essentially, what we do is we align human capital with the core mission of the city in an effort to advance that core mission, which of course translates to service to our constituency. So our core mission, the HR department is committed to being a professional strategic business partner that values innovation, integrity, confidentiality, and diversity while continuing to provide a variety of resources to past, present, and future employees. So here's a quick look at our organizational chart. So you can see that the way we're divided up within the different paradigms of human resources. So under Deputy Director Mariana Gonzalez, you'll see she oversees benefits, wellness, recruitment and selection, classification and compensation. I have direct oversight of employee and labor relations, talent and organizational development, and then our second deputy, Colleen Torres, is over administration, HR information systems, safety, and workers' compensation. So it's my understanding that you're interested in hearing more about our recruitment efforts, so we've focused on that today for the presentation. So all of our open positions are advertised online via our job boards or our websites that you can see in the icons there below. Some of our specialized positions We advertise in specific associations, maybe industry-specific websites, trade magazines, things like that for engineering, finance, HR, electric, water, et cetera. We also utilize electronic billboards. You may have seen them as you're going down the 91 Freeway there in the Auto Center or on Mission Inn Avenue. We also regularly attend job fairs. Our recruitment and selection team is kind of the face of HR. The rest of our team tends to serve the internal customer. So we make every effort to get out there in the community and attend just about everything that we're invited to. So we try to get to at least 10 or 15 job or career fairs annually. We have educational partnerships with local colleges and universities, including Cal Baptist, Claremont Lincoln University, DeVry University, National University, University of Redlands, American Public University System, and we're currently pending a renewal with UCR. And they also invite us to their individual events. We've gone out to meet the firms at both La Sierra University at UCR at the Business School of Management pretty recently so that's always one of my favorite things to do I love to get out and interface with people and tell them how wonderful the city is how to access our job portal how to set up a profile and they can go in set something up and we'll email them for a year for the position that they're interested in so it's pretty cool So our goal is to be transformational HR through strategic change. As my understanding, you had some questions in regards to what we're doing for DEI and a DEI officer. In 2024, the presidential election and subsequent policy changes put some of our federal grant funding at risk. And at that time, there was a shift away from DEI positions all over universities and both um public and private sectors our dei officer position was actually never full and it was eliminated at our two-year biennial budget and instead what we decided to do was shift that outward facing DEI into an internal city staff facing position someone that would foster engagement a sense of belonging across all city employees and that is an approval of an employee experience officer so again just focusing on city staff the DEI officers intention was to kind of do both focus internally and outward so instead We wanted to focus internally. So that person is here tonight. That's Oswaldo Galdamez. Maybe you can stand up, Oswaldo. Sorry to catch you off guard there. So Oswaldo is our employee experience officer, and he does many things at the city, but essentially we're focusing on building a culture where all employees feel like they belong. Employee engagement across the employee life cycle, basically from onboarding, their entire trajectory with the city through off-boarding, and employee appreciation and recognition. So I wanted to share this quote with you on employee engagement. Employee engagement isn't just about keeping employees happy. It's also about creating a culture where employees feel valued, connected, and inspired to bring their best selves to work every day. So, and I want to go ahead and define employee engagement for you because sometimes it's a term that not everybody is familiar with, but essentially it's how connected an employee feels to the organization and to the organizational mission. And that is how valued and supported they feel and how... It directly correlates to how motivated they are to contribute and to do their best work. So employees that are highly engaged are also employees that stay with the city. They're loyal. They stay longer. So we believe that we can modernize how public sector organization manages its workforce Through this employee experience program so the employee experience officer works to connect the city's Existing investments that we already have an engagement in leadership development Training recognition and culture into one data-driven intentional employee experience officer So I want to share some of these numbers with you and I won't get too much Granular here, but here's some survey data that shows there's little difference in engagement by gender race or ethnicity So this really supports the shift in our strategy from dei to overall workforce and engagement and belonging and how it benefits everybody So let you take a look at those numbers there they're a little small and Sorry, I don't think I'm advancing here. There we go. So you can see here, employees who feel they belong are highly engaged and indicate that they intend to stay at the city longer. So 73% of employees who intend to stay five years or more report they feel that they belong at the city. And 51% of employees who intend to stay five years or more report being fully engaged or Sorry, it's a lot of data. I know it's tough to see. And I always have trouble seeing the screen. I'm so short that I can't actually see it, even though it's right in front of me. So I have to remember to wear my giant heels next time. Sorry, let me back up. page there. So here's some demographics and diversity. The city's workforce diversity trends to the diversity across the Riverside resident population. So this also supports the shift in our strategy from DEI to overall workforce engagement and belonging. And I think as an agency, we do a really good job to ensure that our workforce mirrors that of the census of our community. So we're always working to improve that within our recruitment efforts. And that goes back to that reach I was talking about, advertising and things with different groups and getting out there to different organizations and to students and to interfacing with folks at some of these different job fairs and things. And a little more on employee experience. So one of the things that we did was we implemented Qualtrics as our survey platform, and we've been conducting surveys with our employees. So since June of 2025, and our next survey is slated for June of 2027. In between there, we've been doing follow-up poll surveys so that we can have open, honest, and transparent communications with our staff. We're working on lifecycle surveys. We're getting ready to launch those. which will include exit, onboarding, and stay interviews. So I'm really excited about that because we can be really intentional about the decisions we're making in terms of training, getting feedback from our employees, what do they want from the organization, so that we can improve that even more. The data published and communicated to all the city staff, so that's another key component of surveying, and that's being transparent with the numbers and giving everybody access to it. So we've done this at the department level, city, and we've even drilled down into divisional level through virtual information sessions where we're reviewing all all of the results in person. Oswaldo's conducting those meetings, and he is the dedicated employee to do that. We also have a webpage so employees can look at those numbers. And all the department heads are really engaged, and they're also tracking what they're doing. So we are definitely seeing improvement there. The employees are participating in those individual action sessions to gain input on the key drivers of engagement and, again, what they want to see going forward. So that's the important piece here. We want to hear from our staff. And we have implemented that action tracker that I brought up previously. So we had about 1,400 employees that we also hosted for three on-site lunch events. And we also did 26 site deliveries. So those lunch events were employee appreciation events where mayor, council, department heads came out. We had done it the prior year and we realized we have this whole group of employees that can't come because they're doing shift work. So this year, Oswaldo and team, they did 26 site deliveries so that we were ensuring we included everybody, like libraries, fire stations, the water quality treatment plant. the courtyard, and police stations. So it was nice to ensure that we involved everyone and not just the folks here at City Hall that could walk across the street to the park for an event. So you'll see some of the really great photos there at the bottom of staff delivering meals to those teams in an effort to show our appreciation and that we do indeed value them. So employee development, so you can see we are heavily focused on training. We spent 3,844 training hours delivered. Our supervisor program is called Foundations of Supervision, Cohort 4 launched, and HR Essentials. We also have an Emerging Leaders Academy, which we just launched again last week, actually. So continuing to strengthen our workforce, we have over 20 team development days for departments and divisions across the city, and those are gonna be tailored individually to those departments. We're also using an Enneagram assessment tool as a team-building tool. It helps to broaden communication. How do they build a culture internally and work well together and communicate with one another? And we've also had over 350 one-on-one Enneagram debrief sessions, and Sandy Kramer is conducting those. She's sitting there in the audience where she's actually individually going over folks with their Enneagram scores. It has been a ton of fun. I don't know if you guys are familiar with the Enneagram, but even amongst our own team, someone will say something, and I'm like, oh. That was so one of you, or you're such a three, or you're such an eight. So it's been really eye-opening, and it's really helped us to cultivate an environment where we all have a better understanding of each other and how we can communicate with one another. So in addition, education reimbursement program. So we had 190 education reimbursement process for 110 employees, totaling over $207,000. So that's pretty exciting. Assisting employees with tuition through that tuition reimbursement. We added three new universities for college education partnership programs. So now we have a total of nine. We've really focused on that. One of the things we also did with the education reimbursement is we extended it to different types of programs and not just four-year degrees. We also have a lot of technical skill trade employees that were looking to gain different certifications and things. they need for career advancement. So through the surveys, we listened and we expanded so that it was a program that everyone could utilize. So that is the extent of my presentation today. Thank you for having us. It's been a while since I've been out to HRC, and I'm available and staff if you have any additional questions. Thank you.

Thank you so much for joining us. Commissioner Farney.

That was very comprehensive. Thank you. I had a couple thoughts. Sure. And it's on the fly, so I didn't do deep thinking, but I wear a couple of other hats. One is the Blue Zones Project, Riverside.

We are working with Blue Zones. You are. I am on the Blue Zones worksite committee.

I assumed that you would be one of the leads. I went to the ribbon cutting and the third space with the walkway, the breezeway.

Yes, yes, with the downshift space.

That's awesome. Are you tracking how it's used or how well it's used?

I am delighted to say that it's being used all the time, every day, and we're also trying to expand that and create blue zone spaces at other city facilities. I've created a little downshift space on my own for my staff, and there are other department heads doing the same thing. The police department is working on that, all under wellness. That's one of the things... one of an important pillar for us we didn't talk a lot about that today because it was my understanding you wanted to focus on a recruitment selection and training organizational development but I agree I love blue zones it really is a fabulous project Ricky and team and Aaron they are infectious and they're so great to work with so we are working on bringing Another Blue Zones downshift space to the Corp Yard. We have already certified City Hall and the libraries as Blue Zones.

Yeah, just something else that popped in my head. Some of the interventions are so simple, and correct me if I don't quite have it right, but you even have prompts that show up on people's computer screens to take a break, to stand up. We do, we do. So it speaks to health and wellness. It does, yes. And I think also speaks to the fact that they feel seen. feel valued yes so keep that up thank you I appreciate that thank you and I did have another area about job recruitment The city has a community engagement policy. Yes. One of my other hats is with the Neighbors Better Together. We initiated that like five years ago. It's been a long time actually getting put in place. But what we also see, sometimes we have policies and they kind of get filed away. What I think I'd like to encourage you to bring that to the forefront, especially your new hires, or maybe even your recruitment, that you have a policy for community engagement so that people, when they become a city staff person, they need to have that mindset of how do we talk to the people that this is going to affect? You know, how do we find ways to have input from the community? The social capital that we have in Riverside is strong. Yes. But a lot of times what I hear are people don't know how to access the city or the meetings aren't at the time, you know. You've heard all this, but I think you're in a position to maybe reinforce that community engagement policy from the beginning so that that mindset is there when you recruit and hire on.

Certainly. Thank you. That's fantastic feedback. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate that.

Commissioner Lewis? I love the presentation. I have a few questions, and my question, number one, I noticed that the education partners, it was primarily universities, and I was wondering are you going to expand and make sure we get those community colleges as partners?

So we do some work with community colleges. We are also working on different vocational training programs. We're meeting, coming up to work on something with Fleet. There are some vocational programs that RPU hosts, that the utility hosts that don't run through HR, but I am open to any and all things, really. Sometimes it's just about making connections with folks, but I am definitely not opposed to that, and that's something we can look at. I don't know if there's anything else in the works you could think of, Sandy. Oh, yes. Yeah. So we always have things in the works. For whatever reason, the universities tend to reach out more. And I think it's really just about connections. If you have someone in particular that you think we should connect with, I'm happy to do that.

And my next question has to do with internships. Yes. Yes. I think that's really important. And so I wanted to bring that up. And then I wanted to also, the presentation is solid as a rock. I think that I would like to have that presentation in some of the community organizations that I'm involved with so that community members would know what our city offered. I really was impressed with the part where as the employees could go back and take classes, they could expand themselves. I think that's so important. I'm glad to see that. So my question is,

are you available to do presentations i am i am i'm pretty active in the community and i'm happy to go out and and present i can give you one of my cards and you can reach out to me no problem and then you had a question about interns we actually have a really robust intern program we have a fellowship grant we have tons of interns everywhere i think i have four or five myself and there are certain other pipeline trade programs like the city attorney has something specific again the utility so we do have a really robust fellowship program

Well, I'm interested in having you do a presentation for the youth and college kids that I work with. Oh, I would love to. Yeah, because that would be opportunities for them. Because I didn't know that you guys had an internship program. We do. That's wonderful. And last but not least, what about those community members that need a second chance in life, you know, in terms of getting a job? Sometimes it's so hard because they don't have the skills yet or the resume yet. Is it any type of program in the mix that is going to help those, many of the, sometimes I run across with my non-profit women that would, they were raising their kids and they really don't have skills, but now the kids, they're empty necks and they're looking for ways of employment. Some of them are divorcees now and that kind of thing. So I wanted to ask that question.

Certainly. So a couple of things. External workforce development isn't under HR, because for the most part, I'm an internal-facing department. But the Community and Economic Development Department, and that might be a good presentation. I see Stephanie writing that down, that you can have. There are several workforce development programs that are out there that probably will suit the needs that you're talking about. And we also have a lot of... Different things that we're looking into doing we had talked about at one time doing part-time daytime office help type work That would kind of fit that that you were talking about to a tee like a parent that hasn't worked in some time And is looking to re-enter into the workforce But so we have we have looked at that. It's I would say that's more of a budgetary issue in terms of what our openings are and what we can and can't hire for and But again, we don't really do the external workforce development, but I am definitely all ears for any, we're always looking for other opportunities and how we can serve the community. With the students, our goal, right, we are fortunate in that we have all of these universities in our backyard. And we're surrounded by universities. So how do we get those students to, first of all, learn about employment with government? You can have a wonderful career with the government. I'm a 20-year government employee, and I have had a really exciting career. And I'm always excited to talk about that with young folks. I think it's why I like to personally go to the job fairs and work them. so that I can talk to... I'm also the parent of young adults that are kind of adulting for the first time on their own, and it's how I ended up in the public space. My dad was a long-time public employee. So it is something that I'm definitely interested in exploring. But how do we get those students? How do we make them employable, keep them here? We also look at our job specs, and we want to make sure that they're equitable. We go in and How do we put... What's the term I'm looking for? Miriana, help me out. I'm having a... Substitutions, yes. Substitutions of experience for education or vice versa so that we make sure those positions are accessible to all. So that's something we look at with each hiring authority when they're getting ready to hire. How do we... make it accessible and we have found that a lot of our internal employees benefit from that too maybe they started out right away and they they didn't start out going to college and they've been here a long time and they're a fantastic employee how do we get that person promoted because that experience accounts for something thank you so much you're welcome commissioner what thank you again for coming before us on your presentation

Just a couple of things that kind of sparked my interest. You're an employer experience officer? Yes. Oswaldo. Yes. So how often does he engage with members directly? Is there direct access to Oswaldo, or how does that work?

There is. We send Oswaldo all over the place. I think he's more popular than I am at this point. Everybody knows Oswaldo. And when I'm in meetings, come on up, and I talk about, we call him OG because his last name starts with a G. So whenever I'm at meetings, everyone will say, oh, OG was out. He was so wonderful. So I'll let you talk about that a little.

Thank you.

hi good evening everyone so yes I have this privilege of the position that I get to interact with folks all throughout the city I get to break to build great relationships across the board and I really make a big thing about putting a face to what we're doing right so when we talk about engagement I say I want to hear about you know what your experiences are we're doing a survey but guess what like we really want to make sure we Take the insights from that. So help me understand what are the things that are getting in your way. What do you, you know, when folks say they're a little bit hesitant about sharing feedback. So I'm very, you know, big on the communication piece and I'm not afraid to, you know, to ask questions to go back at different times. I mean, I've accommodated my schedule to meet everyone where they're at. So when we were doing our employee engagement survey, some folks said, well, my shift starts at 5 o'clock, at 5 in the morning. I'll be there. My shift starts, I'm getting off at 6 o'clock. I'll be there. Whatever we need to make sure that they have someone that's live and not just an email, they know and they know that we mean business when it comes to our commitments to them.

So the internal employees have direct access to you, or is there some protocol they have to go through?

They can just call me. They can reach us, email teams, my direct line.

The reason I'm asking, too, is because I heard in the beginning of the presentation that DEI was eliminated, and I'm looking at the demographics and diversity of the workforce. And it's kind of startling to me that a heavy amount of those areas of employees is in the single digits. So that is startling. That stands out to me. As a former county employee for over 30 years, I did not work in a workforce that this was so... I just am shocked at the numbers in this city alone, especially with the growth of this city that I've lived in for over 50 years. I'm really surprised and kind of shocked. So I think my question then in all that I said is, Do you feel that all employees feel comfortable coming to you if they have a concern with their experience, their engagement, perhaps with their management or anyone? You feel all have equal access to you?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Thank you.

If I may add, one of the reasons Oswaldo was chosen for this role is because he is very gifted at making people feel comfortable. He was working in our employee relations division, which is all about labor management, complaint resolution, things like that. And that is where I discovered that gift that he has. I used to call him the employee whisperer because he is fantastic about getting the information that we need. He cares. He's empathetic to the people. I think it's what makes him really great in the role. And we have found that the department leadership, they've really embraced that and that Oswaldo is truly there to help and they allow him the access to the folks as well.

And he seems very charming. I'm just concerned with the diversity, you know, aspect for all, for equal access for all.

One of the things, too, is the numbers along the side are county numbers. If you see, that's Riverside County population, and Riverside County is pretty huge. So maybe the next time I come, I will compare it closer to city census because I think that's where you'll see the difference.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Oswaldo.

Thank you.

We got another question. Commissioner Gordon.

Hi. Hi. First of all, great presentation. Thank you. I'm a research data girl, so I liked all your information, and I really enjoyed hearing about the intentionality behind some of the things, the strategies that you're doing, and I look forward to hearing about the lifecycle surveys that you're implementing. I did have two questions. Sure. One is, I do love the Enneagram. I'm a three. Very strong. But I'm curious if you've looked at any more evidence-based tools for development.

Yes, I want to see if Sandy can come help me with that one. She is our training and organizational development manager. And then you said you had another question?

Yeah. I was just curious, and I know it's kind of putting you on the spot, but you came here to give us a presentation, and so I'm curious if you have an idea of how this commission can best serve you and the population that you serve.

Let me put some thought to that. Absolutely.

We use a number of tools. to do a variety of things. This one just happens to work really well with teams because it helps them learn something about people that they might not know about. If you could see the room, people have these aha moments about, oh gosh, that's why this person is this way, or that's why they communicate that way. So I tend to use that with teams, but we also use a lot of other assessments, 360s. I mean, we have a ton of different tools. I'm sort of certified in everything. So yeah, we have a lot of different tools we use, but we just happen to have used that one this year for some team building.

Great, great. Recommendation, I know it's a big haul, but Strength Finders, fantastic tool. Yeah, we do have that one.

Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

And then if you don't have an answer for the other question now, it's fine.

Well, just quickly off the cuff, I think probably... Commissioner Lewis and Commissioner, is it, I can't see, is it Farney, talked about that connection. That immediately comes to mind. I have my own HR board and I really pick their brain and we leverage them as much as I can, you know, for different things. I've even gone so far as to advocate And I've said, hey, if you want to come down when I'm going to council for my budget, that would be great. So that's something I've asked of my own board. We also have someone that's really well versed in Qualtrics. I have HR directors that sit on my board. And we have a professor that teaches leadership, so I've definitely picked his brain on many things. So I guess what I'm saying is I'm not above leveraging you all if it's going to be an advantage to our staff, for sure.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you.

all right thank you i don't see any other questions or comments from the board um thank you again so much for coming out renee og all the rest of the staff we really appreciate all that you guys do thank you so much all right we will move forward with item number four on our agenda housing and human services department presentation with hhs director michelle davis thank you for joining us

Thank you, commissioners. Good evening. It's an honor to be in front of you this evening. Just to give you a little overview on the Housing and Human Services, our department is made up of 52 full-time employees. I know Renee had talked about interns. We were actually blessed to get two interns that are working with our department. So I have one intern that's actually working on our social media. So we can beef up telling the story of what we're doing here in the city, as well as being able to give them some of that growth and experience that they're not going to be able to get. So we're very honored to do that. Within our department, we are broken up of the housing authority that oversees our affordable housing projects and programs, which I'll cover later in the presentation. I have a community development block grant team that oversees our CDBG and our HOPWA grants, Housing for Opportunities with AIDS. We also have our outreach services team that oversees our outreach services and our public safety and engagement team. And then our administration team does a heavy lifting for our grants, processing those invoices and making sure those rental assistance payments get out on time because if they don't, we'll get a call. So making sure that our invoices are being paid. We also have a deputy director position that's vacant. We recently got the approval to move forward with getting that position filled, so we're eagerly waiting to start that recruitment. This individual will be focusing on homelessness. As you know, homelessness is the number one priority here in our city, and I need a full-time person that's dedicated to that effort and not distracted with other, I guess, organization concerns and issues. So I'm looking forward to bringing that to fruition. So I'll move along. To the next slide. Our mission statement for our department is to provide multidisciplinary services and support to the city's vulnerable population and residents that foster resilience, self-sufficiency, housing stability, and enhance the quality of life for all. Most common causes of homelessness that we encounter when we are serving our unhoused population, even people that are at risk, they're unable to pay their rent or their mortgage. They have job loss. A large portion that we're seeing on the streets today is addiction and substance use. UNSAFE HOUSING CONDITIONS, SOMETIMES WE GET CALLED BY CODE ENFORCEMENT WHEN A BUILDING HAS BEEN RED TAGGED BECAUSE SOMEBODY'S LIVING IN SOMEBODY'S GARAGE THAT'S ILLEGALLY CONVERTED. SO WE'RE OUT THERE TO ASSIST THOSE RESIDENTS. FAMILY CONFLICT, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, WHICH IS ABUSED BY SPOUSE OR PARTNER, INCARCERATION, AND ILLNESS AND MEDICAL CONDITIONS. THE PUBLIC SAFETY AND ENGAGEMENT TEAM ADDRESSES OUR QUALITY OF LIFE ISSUES ON PUBLIC PROPERTY WHILE OFFERING PROGRAMS AND SERVICES, SO WE TRY TO provide that balance. On each PSET team, we have two police officers, we have one code enforcement officer, we have two outreach workers, and then we have one substance abuse counselor and peer support specialist. And these two individuals are contracted through Riverside University Health Systems Behavioral Health and are a great asset to our team. Just to give you a little overview of our PSET performance outcomes, the numbers in orange are from fiscal year 24-25, and then you can see a comparison to fiscal year 25-26. In fiscal year 25-26, we had actually in, sorry, fiscal year 24-25, we only had four PSET teams in operation. In this last fiscal year, we were able to operate five full-time teams, and then the six PSET team, we were able to get the law enforcement two officers on board. We were also, which I'll talk about a little later, we entered in a contract with Caltrans. So you'll see our numbers have increased because there are more areas in the city we're covering that at one point we were not able to because it was under Riverside County Flood Control and Caltrans. So In the last fiscal year, the number of contacts we made were 7,336. We are working with IT right now to help us look at our data. What is the data telling us? How can we get the unduplicated number? Because a lot of times we have staff that might put spaces, misspell people's names, date of birth. So we actually have to have a human being review all those entries to see where were those unduplicated entries. entries are. We had 241 individuals that accepted services. We had 3,070 co-notices that were issued, 225 citations, 671 arrests. We had 33 vehicles towed and then 736 tons of trash that was removed. We contracted for encampment cleanup here in the city, so with Riverside County Flood Control in February of 2024, we did execute a contract where the county is providing us with 225,000 to clean up any encampments that are occurring over in Riverside County Flood Control. And the largest area that we see the impact is over off of La Sierra in Indiana. There's an area where it's Caltrans, and then they move over to Riverside County Club, and then they move into the city streets. So we're working collaboratively with our state and county partners to address those areas. The State California Department of Transportation, which is Caltrans, we exited a contract in August of 2025 for $400,000, and the cleanup occurs usually after 48 hours of tagging, and that contract does end at the end of this fiscal year. We also worked with our police department on their trespassing authorization process for private property. What we're seeing over, you probably know Magnolia Corridor is where our highest concentration of homeless individuals that we're encountering in the city is our piece that will go out there and try and offer services and folks that are not receptive to services will move on to private property. So we're trying to work with the businesses because we do have a lot of residents that want to frequent those businesses over by the Tyler Mall and Mad Corridor. And so we're trying to work collectively with the police department and our business community as well. in a more compassionate way. We also have our unhoused transportation ordinance that just recently passed by city council. We wanna be made aware of when other agencies are bringing homeless individuals into our city and doing a warm handoff to another agency so that if that individual does end up back on our streets, we can make that warm connection back to the community that they came from. So they are required to provide initial notice. We made it streamlined where it is a online fillable form. Once they send the first request, if the individual is connected, they will send a follow-up email that that individual was connected to those resources. Exemptions from that ordinance are individuals that are booked into the county jail or designated custody alternative facility, treated at a licensed hospital or medical facility. They attend a verified appointment with a government or nonprofit social service provider. They attend a verified hearing at the Riverside County Superior Court. They are dropped off activities that are undertaken by the city, within the city, and operations of governmental provider of public transportation, such as our RTA bus transit here in the city. We also shared with the community on who to call, because a lot of times residents call and they're like, well, who do I contact? You don't call law enforcement just because it's a homeless individual. It needs to be what is the behavior that you're encountering, and so what is the right response for that? So if it is an individual that's going through a mental health crisis, let's call our behavioral health partners through their crisis line, which is 951-686-HELP. If it's a safety concern, but it's not life-threatening, and it's not a mental health crisis, then call the Riverside Police non-emergency line. But if it is life-threatening, call 911. And if it's just a homeless individual that's not having a mental crisis and they just need outreach services, then call our 311, which is also 951-826 for folks that don't live in the city. For our team, they'll get an email, and our team will deploy out to that location to offer resources. Care Court, which is implemented by the state, recently the state had removed, we used to have to get, in order to petition to the care for individuals that were going, that had a psychiatric diagnosis, we had to go and get a clinical therapist to sign the second part of this form. They have now changed it where outreach workers can now fill out this form. The clinical therapist portion form is no longer required. So our teams are now working to submit those forms. It is voluntary. So we will voluntary. We will petition it to the court. The court will hold a hearing. Our staff will have to be present at that court hearing. And then if the individual is still willing, if they're willing to participate in the program, they will locate them and bring them to the courthouse. The behavioral health team will be there. And then if they are accepted into the program and the individual is willing to participate, they will have to provide a care plan that will include addressing their behavioral health, having them set up with a local clinic, helping them get back on their meds, but then also providing the housing resources. And so we're very excited about this. And it allows us to, we'll be tracking the data to see is it working or is it not working and where the shortfall, so that we can report not only to the county, but to the state of where the shortfalls that we're seeing within this program and how we can improve it to make it better for those that are experiencing psychiatric conditions on our streets. Heelan Homeless Service Campus, hopefully you guys all know where the Heelan Homeless Service Campus is. It's over on the east side. It's off Massachusetts and 3rd Street between 3rd and Chicago. We have on the bottom right corner is our Riverside Access Center. It is going through a rehab. We are rehabbing it to increase the office spaces for our outreach workers, but also providing meeting space for our external partners that are coming in. over to the access center and want a space to meet with folks. But then we also want to have a training life skills and employment workshop room in the building, which we did not have before. So this will allow us to partner with Path of Life and the shelter provider and anybody else that's receiving services on the campus to utilize that space. Adjacent to that is the emergency shelter bed that's operated and owned by Path of Life. They have 90 congregate shelter beds there of which we contract with 60 city contracted beds and then eight are for TAE or transitional aged youth. And then just north of that is the Riverside University Health Systems Behavioral Health. We own the building but we contract with them for a dollar a year lease and we just finished the rehab of that building. They're gonna do 33 transitional housing units there for individuals that have a behavioral health condition. And they'll be able to, hopefully, we're hoping they're going to open the facility in October. They're going through the procurement process to bring the operator on board. And then adjacent to that, the left, is that building was recently rehabbed for PSET's office. They were located at the airport. We thought it would be best that our outreach teams were all together on the cul-de-sac. And then just south of that is our bridge housing. We have 23 non-congregate shelter beds, which You know, individuals that might have PTSD, they don't want to be in a dormitory setting in a shelter, and so we've gotten very better results from folks that are not willing to go in a shelter, but when you explain the accommodations there, and you get your own room, and there's a lot of privacy there, we get more folks that are willing to say yes. Our homeless prevention program, we provide up to three months of past due rent for individuals that are at risk of being homelessness. We have, in the last fiscal year, we were able to assist 105 households. We actually try to work with them to get to the root cause. We just don't give them the three months. We want to find out what was the root cause, how did you get behind in your rental assistance payments, and how can we set you up for success so this doesn't happen again. The rental assistance programs, we have, I wanna make sure I can give you guys the stats, because I didn't have them at the time I submitted this presentation. We have a rapid rehousing program where we're able to provide security deposits and rental assistance. It's coupled with case management, and it is funded through the state's Housing Homelessness Assistance Prevention Grant and our Federal Emergency Solutions Grant. We were able to assist 83 households last year, last fiscal year. And through our senior rental assistance program, we were able to assist 88 households. And there are three programs that fall within that umbrella. We have the mobile home park homeowners rental assistance program. The reason why you only see the 50% to 80% area median income is because the park owners have an existing program that help households between 0 to 49. And so we want to help the folks that are a little bit within that higher income bracket. And then the senior rental assistance program, we can help individuals that are seniors that are in the shelter. We can quickly get them placed in housing, coupled with case management. And then the supplemental senior rental assistance program are for seniors that are currently, they're already living in their housing unit, but they just need a little bit of assistance. So we provide up to $600 supplemental rental assistance program. And right now we have a handful of seniors that are on that program that we're looking to transition to another affordable housing project that will be coming online so they don't fall back into homelessness. Our affordable housing units, the existing units we have is 3,547. Our development pipeline, we currently have 336 units. Our permanent supportive housing units, there's 24 units. And then transitional housing units, we have 41. The picture on the bottom left is your Mulberry Gardens. It's right off of Mulberry in the downtown. It consists of 59 senior units and then two, or sorry, 150 family units. That one, the senior units, I'm hoping will come online in January. And then the family units will be coming online in probably mid or later 2027. And then Sunrise at Bogart is over in Ward 7 on the west end of town. And hopefully that will be completed shortly in mid-year 2027. And so we're excited to see those units come online. We're also, I didn't have it in the slide, but on Monday, the Housing and Homeless Committee will be meeting here. My staff will be presenting two motel conversion projects, the Motel 6 off of La Sierra and the Days Inn off of Magnolia to convert for affordable senior housing. So feel free to join in on that meeting and provide some feedback on that project. initiatives that we're currently working on. We have an MOU with Riverside County for coordinated response to homelessness. We had a meeting with the county just last week to talk about, hey, we signed this MOU back in 2022. What accomplishments did we make out of this MOU and what revisions and updates can we make to it to address the things we're experiencing here in the city. So we're looking at ways that we can improve behavioral health responses and different programming needs in the city. So stay tuned for that. We hope to, hopefully in council, we'll be coming back to council with maybe an updated one in October, November. We're also collaborating with other cities in District 1, but not only in District 1, we actually held a homeless forum subcommittee on homelessness where we had about, it was like 15 cities that came out, and that was yesterday. We did an exercise, we shared out our unhoused transportation ordinance with them, kind of explained the process. And then we had done an exercise with everybody to show them what is your by name list, which is in the community queue. Whenever a individual goes to a shelter or an outreach worker engages them, we do a vulnerability index survey that puts them on the community that identifies what their housing intervention needs are. So we were able to share with the cities, these are your numbers. This is unhoused folks that might be in a shelter or living on the streets that need either rapid rehousing or permanent supportive housing. So if we were going to give you money based on this community queue number, we gave a monopoly money, and we asked the staff that were there if you were able to fund these different programs, whether it was recuperative care, shelter, rapid rehousing, or permanent supportive housing. how much would you allocate towards those different resources? And everybody got very excited because usually cities are like, well, we don't have the resources. Well, we're living, let's try to vision, let's vision and see what we can come up with. So everybody got very excited. We're gonna bring everybody back in a couple months. To further, we want to do another exercise where we're bringing the cities, but also the nonprofits. So the nonprofits are working in the space. How can the cities collaborate with those nonprofits? And then identify what grant opportunities are out there that the city has and the county has to bring all these partners together so that we can bring these programs online for the areas within Riverside County to address those needs so they're not bringing folks to the city. And then we have the mayor's initiative to ending youth homelessness. We achieved that goal last year and we are still at it. Any homeless youth that comes into our system of care, we automatically put them in a shelter. We have a rapid rehousing rental assistance voucher ready for them. And then there's a case manager assigned to them. And then same thing with the veterans. We're still at functioning zero. We're also working on a master leasing of rental units. We've identified some new housing units, and we'll be bringing that to council for approval. It will be a shared housing type program where there's 24 bedrooms, but each individual will have their own room. They'll have shared kitchen as well as restrooms. And then we're looking at a shared housing online platform where seniors that own their own home, if they're willing to... rent out a bedroom there'll be a platform where they can enter their information an organization will actually do the screening of the homeowner but then also the individuals that want to rent the room they will assist with that and then staff will assist with the meeting and greeting and seeing if they're a great fit and then identifying what everybody's roles and responsibilities as a tenant but also as a landlord So that wraps up my overview of HHS. We're doing a lot. There's a lot more. This would probably be an hour and a half meeting presentation if we covered everything that we did. But I'm available to answer any questions. And if there's something I didn't cover that you'd love for me to come back, I'm more than willing to do that.

Thank you. Commissioner Farney.

Wow. My head's spinning. A lot's going on. It's a huge, huge issue. I know you've been there for a while and been through a lot of iterations. How can someone, well, what is the process where someone needs services but you don't know which of the many variations might fit for them? Is that all laid out on a website with criteria for qualifying and so someone can figure out which direction to go to try to get services?

Well, when it comes to homeless prevention, that's an easy fit because these are individuals that are already housed. So that's an easy fit and that's on the website. If it's an unhoused individual that needs shelter, the first point of contact is the Riverside Access Center. So we want to connect you with an outreach worker. So if you are, you know, say you call in and you're, I'm stranded, I called the 311, I'm on the west end of town, we will send an outreach worker to pick up the individual and bring them back to the Access Center. And that's where we're going to do the individual service needs assessment. We want to identify with you what are your needs. I'm not going to tell you what I think your needs are. I want to hear from you what your needs are. And then based on what we put together, we'll make referrals to the different agencies and then set goals that are achievable. And then also, if you're interested in shelter, we will put you in if we have a bed available at Path of Life or at Mercy House. If there are no beds available, we do have an interim shelter that we use. And then once a bed becomes available, they'll transfer onto that shelter bed.

So that all the criteria for the various programs is not on your website. You actually have to... You have to go first.

The Access Center, yeah, the Access Center information is on there. So that's the first point of contact.

But I meant for all the transitional housing, and then what if they have pets?

Well, the transitional housing program, we don't know yet, because we're working with Behavioral Health that's operating that program. We have a meeting coming up next month to talk about what is the referral process, what is the eligibility criteria, so that we can have that information formalized. And then we'll put that on the website.

Because I'm not challenged with homelessness housing issues but I they come across it and I want to be helpful and you can get lost in the red tape so I'm just trying to figure out how can I direct what's the process so yeah and I don't know through behavioral health it's if it's going to be through their h hope team or is it good through the home connect team once we know how that referral process is going to happen for their transitional housing we'll put it up on the website And did I hear you say something about the quality in and senior?

No, it's Motel 6 and Days Inn on the west end of the city. They're both in Ward 6. So that will help us. We're seeing a lot of seniors that are becoming at risk of homelessness. And so we're trying to see how we can build that support system there as well. And then there's a transformative climate communities grant known as a TCC. that we'll be pursuing, that's to reduce greenhouse gas. So we'll be able to increase transit in Ward 6, but there's some dollars tied to that for affordable housing, and so that will help fund some of that days in. Acquisition. You're welcome.

Commissioner, go.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Ms. Davis, for your presentation. Quick question. Your PSET performance outcomes. So I know you highlighted that maybe the number of contacts, there might be some duplication and some scrubbing of the data to do there. But even if it were neutral year over year, the number of accepted services are down pretty significantly. Any sense to why that is, particularly given the broadened services that you're offering?

We are changing the teams up a little bit where we're going to be sending out outreach now ahead of our law enforcement and code partners so that outreach can go out and see if there's a different response and engagements if we see those numbers going up. So we're going to try that and see if that works. But as you know, on what we're encountering over off the MAD corridor, we're seeing a lot of substance abuse. And it is really hard to get somebody into treatment if they are not willing to accept it. And there's no programming where you can force people into treatment. It is all voluntary. I can give you an example of an individual that has open wounds on his arms. Our team will take him to the hospital. We'll call the crisis team. But then they treat him and they release him and he's back down the streets. And then they found him the next day and he's got a needle in his arm. And we can't really do anything. And so we now are meeting with the Western Crisis Behavioral Health Team, where we're now going to be bringing our top 20 individuals that we really need their help with, like this individual, of how can we get this individual into the street? Because otherwise, they're going to deteriorate, and we don't want to find them dead on the streets. So how can we, in a humane way, get them into the programming that they need? So stay tuned for that. I'm hoping that will turn that around. thank you thanks for the work you're doing thank you and my team does an amazing job our pset team i mean they get up every day go out in the field and they get the nose but they still get up every morning because that one win or that one person does accept services that keeps them going commissioner lewis thank you for the work that you're doing

I have a question concerning the rental assistance program. So should a person call 311 or is it an exact line that they should call if they're in a crisis concerning rent?

So if it's homeless prevention, you can email homelessprevention at riversideca.gov.

But see, some of these people don't have access to do the emails and stuff like that. It's not a phone number they can call.

They can call 311. They can call 311. Anybody can call 311 and say, hey, I need rental assistance, and they'll transfer to our team.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, so 311 is probably the best agency to call because they'll track it too. So we'll see that data. And if we start seeing, hey, we're seeing an increase of calls for homeless prevention, what are we seeing? What's happening? What are the root causes? Maybe we need to do some more education. in these different fields because we're seeing that increase and how can we help resolve it at the root cause versus, you know, continuing to address the issues.

Well, thank you for that answer. My next question has to do with how are you getting this out to community activists, churches, so that they can support the work that you're doing? Because it's sad that weather has been so hot and seeing people out in the streets is just breaking my heart. So what can we do to work together to make transformational change?

So I forgot to mention we did a faith summit this last fiscal year, which we're going to be working with planning to do a follow-up one. We actually gave them an overview presentation of all our programs and gave them a guidebook to take back to share with their Congress or their Congression. But we also want to partner with churches because they're providing a lot of the programming. So for instance, you have the church downtown across the street from the Cheech that does every Wednesday. So we're trying to network and work more with organizations that are already doing things, the churches. And we're always finding out that churches are now doing something new. And so we want to hear about that. So trying to get more involved. I know the downtown has a group that they meet once a month. So we try to make those meetings when we can. We are going out to the business partnership groups as well as neighborhood groups to give an update on what we're doing and who to call for assistance.

That's good to know that you're open to that and want to do that. And my last question has to do Looking at the resources, 40 beds in this large city, what are you going to do to get more resources, more beds, more housing, affordable housing happening? so that we could adequately help our residents.

So we're trying to see what other building materials might be able to, I don't know if you've heard of boxables. We went and toured those in Vegas. Boxable? It's a boxable home. It folds in a box. It gets shipped to you and you unfold it. When they come on site, it takes three to five days for them to completely unbox it, hook it up to all your electrical, your plumbing. Once they get it stood up, I mean, you can quickly house folks. But we went out and toured it and... It was disappointing what we saw. I was hoping to see a better product. So we're trying to see if there's something comparable to that where we can quickly stand up housing and not have to wait. Because usually the affordable housing projects, they'll take three to five years because they have to apply for tax credits and find all the subsidy gaps. And so we're trying to find ways. We're also talking to CityNet. They had a product that they were going to put in Hemet. and the NIMBY came out and the product is sitting there to ready to be installed, but nobody has, the project didn't go through. So she's looking for somebody else in another community that's willing to take those module units and build them. So we're looking at different avenues of what options might be out there. And like the motel conversions, are there existing buildings that we can reconvert and use for housing?

Well, that's good because we needed, I know that some young people, they told me they had to go They were in a lottery to get the housing, the one that was on Mission Boulevard with the Civil Rights Institute. It was a lottery. The need was so great, and they only had so many apartments.

Yeah, the Mission Heritage. Yes, yeah.

So hearing that... And, you know, young people, they're very vulnerable because they're in school, many of them, and that's, you know, some of them just come from a humble background and now they're 18 and their parents can't support or help them anymore. So we really got to think how we could get more resources.

And if we can get the commission support when we have affordable housing projects that are being brought forward, we'd love your support for those projects as well. what kind of support do you need from us um i don't know maybe a letter or if you guys want to call in or show up at the housing and homeless committee meetings um we are working so this coming up monday um we'll be presenting on the two motel conversions for affordable housing for the motel six and the days in um matthew taylor from planning will be he'll be there to present on the pro housing designation so we have our pro housing designation which gives us extra points when developers want to build affordable housing in the city so they get extra points on an application We have our designation ends in January of 2027, so we have to reapply. He is bringing forth the criteria. He's kind of pre-scored the application to say, hey, this is how I think we're going to score. There's a couple of programs we might have to take a look at if we want to get our designation again. Are you willing to take on some of these different activities. And so that will be discussed. But the following month, I believe, in October, we'll be going back and starting. We're going to update our homeless action plan. So every month, we're going to take a goal on and present that to the committee on ways that we may want to modify it, change it to increase the development of affordable housing, behavioral health resources. So we'd love for the commission's input when we're bringing that forward as well.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

And then I would ask, I guess, anytime you have those affordable housing projects, I don't know if they can be forwarded to our staff to be shared with us so that we are at least aware of them. Absolutely. And then either have you out to or send it over. We can look at them.

Yeah, I'd love to do that. Thank you. Thank you.

I put myself up because I do have a question. So I work off of Hole and Tyler off this county circle, and I notice like every Thursday morning, right, the PSET team is there, a whole bunch of different partners are out there. Does that happen throughout the city where they just know the hot spots throughout the week, and so the teams are trying to work in those different areas that they see frequent activity? Yeah.

Yeah, so we have the call centers, all the calls that come in. Our teams get dispatched for those requests that come in. But then we also have a heat map. So based on that heat map for all the calls that are generated, they will go to those locations. And so, as you know, we're kind of split between urban and wildland. So they also go to the river bottom. They also go to Sycamore Canyon. But mostly it's downtown and Magnolia Corridor is kind of our hot spots right now. We also did last, two weeks ago, we did a saturation day event. You know where Anchos is? There's a church behind there. Great pastor opened his parking lot to us, and we did a saturation day where we brought all the social service agencies there. Our team outreach with no PSET, just outreach went out, saturated the streets over on that side of town, brought them back, and we saw people with no shoes, And so we're like, we don't have shoes, so now we're going to go buy those throwaway flip-flops. And there's certain things you don't think about when you're standing at those events. So it was a great time to bring in behavioral health and then be able to try and capture folks. But at the end of the day, the success is only on individuals' willingness to participate in the programming. But we did have animal control there. It was able to offer food for pets as well. So we hope to do those a little bit more frequently.

Thank you. I think maybe that's what I saw today. I see the team pretty consistently out there, but it was a lot of vans out there today with all sorts of different services, showers, all sorts of kinds of stuff. And I thought that was really cool to see just that volume of presence in the community, especially like I know in that area where they need that level of support consistently.

Commissioner Gordon. Hi, um, shout out to Dr. Lee Johnson, the pastor at life church. Yes. Um, great guy. Um, I was curious about the unhoused transportation ordinance. I know there's been a lot of community discussion about it and opinions. And so thank you for the exception exception list. Um, just for my own understanding, could you give me an example of like, what does it look like for someone to transport another person into the city?

that would constitute this? Oh, so say I'm an outreach worker for city of Hemet. And I called Pathlife, and Pathlife says, yeah, I have a county bed for you. I have one available. Okay, I'm going to go fill out the form. I submit it to the city. And then they go drop the individual off. Pathlife takes them in. They'll go back and fill out the second form saying, hey, they accepted them into services. We're also, it's going to help us identify, too, who's already working in this space. We've had folks that have popped up that we didn't know, like a way to recuperative care pop up in a motel. And we're wondering why on that corridor do we see people in wheelchairs and walkers? What's going on? And they're exiting into the streets. And we found out that was happening. And so we had conversations with the medical care providers and plans that are funding the operations that, hey, we want to be good neighbors. We need to make sure that they're part of the continuum of care. So if you don't know the continuum of care through Riverside County, It's made up of government agencies and social service providers, and we all network. So if I'm doing only one specific activity, for instance, shelter, I want to know who the nonprofits are that do the housing so that I can do that warm handoff and connection for those individuals. If I'm just doing recuperative care and I don't know the agencies and the infrastructure of all the resources, I'm only going to help that person. with their medical piece at that point, and then they may exit out on the streets. So we want to make sure that people that are operating in our city are connected with all the other agencies and are working together.

Thank you so much.

Absolutely.

Commissioner Farney.

Again, compliments for trying to tackle this. It's huge. It is, and there aren't any easy answers. But to me, you know, it's getting to the root of the problem, and to me that's prevention. So are you able, I mean, I heard that a couple times in your presentation, but do you really, are you able to designate staff towards prevention? And can you just kind of give me a summation of what you do?

So we have two homeless prevention staff, and so what they do is that they, when you fill out an application, you have to put what caused you to get behind in your rent. Once we know that, we then work with the individual to identify what that is. So say it was a loss of employment. We start working with them on making referrals to Riverside County Workforce Development to get employment. There's temp agencies that might be able to give them temporary employment, so we make those referrals. If it's budgeting, we bring another staff person in to work with them on how to budget accordingly. If it's medical, we'll make, so depending on what it is, we try and find what that resource is that we can pull and help it. Because we don't have all those resources, but there's agencies out there that can help. I can give you an example of, we had a senior recently that had showed up at the Janet Goskey Senior Center. She sold her home, walked in there with a large check. and didn't know where to go, and she was wandering. They called my homeless prevention staff, and they're like, well, wait, wait, wait, can you take her to a side room so nobody takes advantage of her? They were able to get a staff person to take her to the bank to deposit her check, but she was going to lose her house because she sold her home. She got a portion of her check, which I was kind of confused of, how did you not get, at close of escrow, you get the full check? They withheld a large amount and said, when you leave the home and vacate it, then you get the remaining amount. And I thought that was odd. So we strongly encouraged the staff at the park center to get copies of the sales contract to make sure that that senior was not being taken advantage of, but worked with the team to make sure that she wouldn't be exited out on the streets. So there's always a different situation. There's no same situation that we encounter a lot of times. It's something unique and different, but we try and problem solve with our partners.

Do you have anything, I'm thinking like with CASA, which works with foster children. They have a training, like an ongoing many-week training program for how do you budget, how do you do a job interview, those kinds of things. Do you have any of that, or do you tap into anything in the community for people

So life skills, we're actually looking to do an RFP here shortly for that. And that will be plugged in with the case management because we've noticed that it might be better to not have the case managers do the life skills, that it's better to have somebody, a third party, come in and do that training for folks when they first move in or even folks that are in our homeless prevention program. So we're looking to bring that on as well if they're contracted.

You have funding?

Yes, we have our housing, homeless assistance and prevention dollars. So we just got round six, which is 10 million. And then the governor announced we're getting the next round seven. But that may be the last round. And so if that does happen, a lot of cities and counties throughout the state are going to struggle.

Commissioner Woods.

Thank you for your presentation. My issue, not my issue, but my area I was thinking of while I was listening to you, I, in a group, we walk regularly in one of the city parks here, and we see the same people there, homeless, living there routinely. Do you have a set staff that out throughout the city parks and maybe the retail shopping center parking lots looking for those that seem to be there regularly because we see the same people in in this park that we walk in routinely like we walk there three to five days a week and they're there every day some have you know They don't seem to ever leave. Can you let me know which park? Because we have the park area.

We're specialists through PANS, through RPD, and they patrol the parks. And they usually will call our teams when they see folks that are in the parks. And Duco. And Duco. Yeah. I know that one gentleman.

Okay. We tried. And then there was a gentleman in a white vehicle, and we noticed him for months with a dog. Okay. But he's in a white vehicle? This person, well, you seem to know the one gentleman I'm talking about, and he has all his bags every day. But then there's another person, and they're in this white vehicle at the far end past the tennis center.

Oh, the tennis courts?

Yeah, at the far end back there. Okay, I can send an email. But we see people. We were just approached. Our group was just approached by a young lady homeless, and we gave her what we knew. Some of us work in different areas in the city, so we gave them Path of Life. We gave them all that we knew. I live near the one you were speaking of on 3rd, and so we gave them all of that information. So this is good information to have, and I took note based on the criteria because we've been approached by some that, maybe seem to be having a mental health crisis. So I took note.

I'm like, okay, does this person seem to be having this?

I should call this number. So I took note. I put it in my phone.

So when we're walking, but we see some that are there and they have been there.

And I know that you said you have your hotspots, but I was just wondering if you had a team that goes out to local parks.

Yeah. Usually the parks, the pans group. They have about 20 of them. They'll go out in the parks and they'll report and call us and let us know if we need to send an outreach team to that location or if it's an encampment and we have to send the PSET team out. So depending on what the need is. But I'll definitely send an outreach team from the access center there. If you call 311 and you're like, hey, I waited and nobody's come out and you've got somebody literally there that wants help, You can call 826-2200, and that's the Access Center. And we have folks there that can pick up the phone, and they will quickly deploy somebody out there.

Because we had one approach us, and he had some dirty, I don't know, Mickey Mouse shoes or some cartoon character on his feet. He wanted shoes. So the person I was with called her husband. He appeared to be his size and brought him some shoes up to the park. But then we were accosted by someone cursing at us and calling us names. We called the 311 number, and they immediately sent the police. So we've seen a few things, but there's several there routinely, so I was just wondering.

Yeah, and we'll definitely send the outreach out there tomorrow. Thank you.

You're welcome. Commissioner Rapp.

Hello. Just like everybody else says, thank you for this presentation. It was very thorough. And I'm sorry if I missed it, but kind of what I'm hearing is the accepted services, and I know you mentioned one of the big barriers, I guess, is drug addiction. Do you keep data on other barriers? So, like, for example, you know, having pets, a lot of people I know won't, can't accept housing because they have a pet, they don't want to leave the pet, and the housing doesn't allow them to take their pets.

So when we are placing folks in housing, we do a screening. They have a form that they have to fill out. They have to identify if they have their pets. Are their pets certified? Do they have evictions? We want to know their whole history so that when we're reaching out to landlords, we know what their landlord criteria is because we don't want to set them up for failure where they're going out and they're looking at units and come to find out they're not eligible for that unit. So we'll keep helping. We haven't had any issues. It's the issues when somebody gets their voucher the day of move-in, they go, oh, I have two animals. And you're like, that was never part of the conversation. And so those things do happen. And sometimes you got two pit bulls and you got a landlord that's like, I can't, I've got insurance issues. And so that comes into play. Luckily for her, she had a friend that could take one of them. And then she had a family member that took the other one. So she was willing to make it work. But Those are really rare. A lot of times we don't have issues with landlords are willing to take their pets. It's the quantity. It's when they have like three, four, or five, it becomes difficult.

What other reasons are people not accepting services?

A lot of it, a council member gave an example today of when he went out and spoke to somebody that was on the streets. Police know her parents. They're in the community. But because of her drug addiction, she won't get off the streets they told her your parents are at home and because she was arrested and she was released and they encountered her and they said your parents are home they're willing to take you home but you have to go through a treatment program and she was like no i like my drugs too much and so she's out on the streets and so that's what we're battling is you know once they're so deep into that substance use how do we get how do we get them to the other side so we have substance abuse treatment counselors that are with our teams that continually try and engage them and try and get them into treatment and then my other question was when somebody does call 3-1-1 about how long does it take the team to get out It depends. So it depends on when 311 sends the email. So it could be I've seen stuff come in within 15 to 20 minutes. I've seen stuff where I'm like, wow, I put that request in and it didn't come through because I get CC'd on them until the end of the day. So I usually, with my own internal team, I will call the 826-2200 number or I will text one of our supervisors and go, hey, I need you to deploy somebody at this location.

And... My other question is, do we still, does the city still do the housing first or that's not?

We have permanent supportive housing in the city that the county operates that still follow the housing first. We don't own them, the county partnered up with developers. So there are, I wanna say there's over 200 to 300 units in the city that are kind of scattered. So there's like Oasis over in the east side. You have some over by County Farm Road and they're kind of sprinkled throughout the community. And that was one of the conversations we had with the county and the other cities of here's how many PSA units you have countywide and here's the need. And so that way cities could start having the conversations of here's your need. And if you want to see this on a monthly basis, please reach out to the county because they can provide this data to you.

And then I think we were talking about the housing ad hoc committee and some of the questions that we had. I don't know if it's better to ask them here or maybe we could meet with us as the ad hoc and then we could discuss more in depth if that could be a possibility.

We could do that. Yeah.

We'll coordinate that through Stephanie.

Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome.

Sorry, I take a second. All right. Well, I don't see any other comments or questions. Thank you again for coming out and presenting to us.

And you'll be hearing from me. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

All right. With that, we can move forward with our consent calendar. Items number five, six, and seven. Does anyone wish to pull an item from the consent calendar? And if not, do I have a motion to approve as is?

So moved.

Okay, so motion by Commissioner Goh, second by Commissioner Woods to approve. Are we ready for the vote?

Please vote.

We're missing votes. OK, can everyone try to vote again?

I'm going to clear it and run it again. OK, can we try that one more time? I'm going to have to reset the system again, I think, because it was dormant for such a long time. Bear with me.

While it's resetting, do we want to take my verbal or will it just be a minute?

It'll just be a quick minute, yeah. Commissioner Melendez is making it, correct? Yes.

Please vote.

Okay, we have nine votes, one abstention. Motion passes.

All right, with that, we'll move forward with the discussion calendar. Item number eight on the agenda. Do we have any comments from our audience?

No callers.

This item is to determine whether the absence of Commissioner Agramon from the Human Relations Commission meeting on July 23rd should be recorded as excused or unexcused. Do we have any comments or discussion from our commissioners? In hearing none, do we have a motion to excuse or unexcused?

move to view the absence of Commissioner Agramon on July the 23rd as excused.

Do we have a second for that motion? Commissioner Lewis?

I second the motion.

Okay, so motion by Commissioner Goh, second by Commissioner Lewis. Please vote.

We have. 6 yes votes for abstentions motion passes.

Alright, thank you. Moving on to item 9 on our agenda discussion of upcoming events of interest and determine which event members may attend in their official capacity. I love this new name. It makes it a lot easier to read. Do we have any public comment?

No callers.

And then do we have any comments or discussion items from our commissioners? And this would be any event that you are seeking to attend on behalf of the commission or request that the commission attend. Give it like 30 more seconds. all right hearing none we can move forward with item number 10 on our agenda hrc updates on external meetings conferences and committees attended um again as a reminder this is the item where you get to report out on things that you've attended personally um and things that you have coming up so i know commissioner farney i will start with you so i will start with you again

Actually, I've had some health issues this past month, so I haven't been out there as much as I would have liked. So I don't have anything to report. Commissioner Woods?

Tuesday, I attended here at the City Council the Mayor's Proclamation by the City for Dale Roberts Day, honoring Mr. Dale Roberts. So I attended that.

Thank you. Commissioner Raft? Nothing to report. Commissioner Gordon? No updates. Commissioner Martes?

Nothing to report.

Commissioner Fujimoto?

I didn't attend a meeting. It wasn't me, but it concerned me. in an empire, AQMD, for air quality. And I found out, or I should have known, I guess, that there's a big movement against both data centers and warehouses because of their impact on air quality and health.

And that's it. Thank you. I, too, did not attend anything this month, but looking forward to next month. I do plan on attending on September 24th here at Fairmont Park. Recovery happens. It is an event that the County of Riverside Behavioral Health Department puts on that not only celebrates sobriety, but it also is a resource fair for people in the community to come out, not only get services, but also get connected. Commissioner Lewis.

Nothing to report.

Commissioner Goh.

I attended, I guess I'll call it a committee meeting. It's a volunteer committee for Nick's Garden. So Nick's Garden is going to be an aspect of the Northside Agricultural Innovation Center that many of us may be familiar with. So this is a partnership between the city, Blue Zones has gotten involved, Five Keys, which is an agricultural charter school, and a number of other community organizations. So I share that to also kind of put out a call. They are looking for volunteers. So if anyone is interested in volunteering as part of that committee, I'm happy to put you in touch with the coordinators.

Thank you. Commissioner Olson. Thank you. Moving on to item number 11, staff updates.

Thank you chair, I have several updates the first one is according to resolution number 2, 4, 3, 1, 0 directs the city manager's office to provide ongoing reporting on federal immigration enforcement activity the July 2026 update states that the city's 3, 1, 1, system did not receive any community reports related to the federal immigration enforcement activity, however, the riverside police department did receive to note it notifications of ICE slash Border Patrol activity within the city. The city's manager's office will continue to report on such notifications at the city council meetings as well as the Human Relations Commission. The second staff update is related to the HRC requesting an update on its fiscal year 2026-2027 budget. And I'm here to confirm that the allocation under account 1100 is $2,500. These funds are specifically designated to cover the TV staff filming of the team that we have behind closed doors. And that covers the overtime costs associated with the, again, the filming to the production behind the HRC team. For every single month so it does not cover I know there was a couple of questions regarding The production of brochures flyers and any collaterals or swag So all that was eliminated from not only this HR sees this committee's budget, but also across all boards and commissions The third update is we have a very limited uh staff agenda for september we had a very heavy agenda this month and we'll have a very heavy agenda for the month of october so we do not have any staffing for the month of september i will not be available similar how you all go out of town i will be out of town as well so my recommendation is if this commission still wants to hold a meeting we could certainly hold a special meeting um earlier in the month or later in the month i'll leave that up to discussion for all you commissioners to decide um or we can cancel it all together given that there is a lack of agenda lastly as requested an item regarding the formation of ad hoc committees will be presented at the october meeting along with two presentations one for blue zones project. We have a confirmation from Erin Edwards, our former city council member. She'll be presenting along with the speech pathologist that Commissioner Raya produced her name. So she'll be presenting as well. She has also confirmed. And that concludes my update. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. I do have a couple questions. Going back to the budget item, you said $2,500 is allocated to $2,627. Do we know what our allocation was for $2,526?

It was almost double that. Okay.

And then for the September item, if the commission was to make a request today, we would move forward with a motion in order to either cancel that meeting or to consider additional options.

Correct. Yes, we do need some form of motion to occur tonight. Okay.

So thank you for all those updates. With that, is there any comments or questions from commissioners? Commissioner Lewis?

I wanted to make a motion. It would be appropriate to do it at this time.

Can we hold two seconds to see if any other commissioners have comments real quick? Thank you. Sure. Then I'll come back to you. Commissioner Farney.

I'm thinking, and I'm trying to find, but maybe somebody else has that info. Our bylaws say we're supposed to meet so many times a year. And so we need to factor that in. In the past, we've also, over the winter breaks and things, we've dropped a meeting. So I just want to be mindful to be true to the bylaws.

Thank you. Commissioner Fujimoto.

Did we not cancel our November meeting?

I don't believe that we've had a motion to change our holiday schedule yet. Have we?

Not yet. In the past, in my research, this commission has decided to cancel November and December and I believe also January to go dark.

I think if I remember correctly, we did like a special meeting in between all of those. I think it just depends on the year and whether or not State of the City would fall in January, too, has been my remembrance. Any other questions or discussion? Otherwise, seeing none, I'll call Commissioner Lewis for a motion.

I move to cancel the September meeting because of a lack of agenda issues.

Thank you. Do we have a second?

I second.

So motion by Commissioner Lewis, second by Commissioner Martis.

Please vote. We have nine yes votes, one abstention. Motion passes.

all right thank you everybody so with that i will see you in october and our meeting is adjourned at 7 42. oh gavel let me see