. . Recording in progress. Okay. What do we go ahead and call the meeting to order? Welcome everyone to the September 9th, 2024, meeting of the passing of the City Council. Mr. Lyon, will you lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? You want to do roll call, Mayor? I'm sorry, let's do roll in the Pledge of Allegiance? You want to do a roll call, Mayor? I'm sorry, let's do a roll call first. Council Member Hampton. Blessed in honor to be here. Council Member Jones. Here. Council Member Lion. Here. Council Member Moussouda. Here. Council Member Revis. Here. Council Member Williams. Here. Vice Mayor Madison. Here. Here, there's a quorum of the council president. Now, Mr. Lion. Please stand as you're able. Place your right hand over your heart. Ready, begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under the individual liberty and justice for all. Thank you. individual with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. We do have a couple of ceremonial matters starting with the introduction of our new sergeant at arms. Who I'm happy to report his fellow bulldog. Chief. Yeah. Yeah. Come on, Rubin. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. I forgot where I was for a minute. Mr. Mayor, Mr. Vice Mayor, members of the Council. Good evening. It gives you great pleasure today to introduce as is customary our new Sergeant at Arms. We're very proud of the folks throughout our organization to get an opportunity to rotate through and be a part of this room and some of the decisions and things they get to go on. They really learn a lot and so we're glad to introduce our new sergeant at arms. Our new sergeant at arms is Daniel Morris, Sergeant Daniel Morris, who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley and graduated from Pasadena High School. I was just waiting for anybody. You were good. All right. Notice how the must things stay quiet. I was just trying to see if you guys were going to say anything. He began his career in law enforcement in 2008 when he was hired by the Pasadena Police Department as a police officer. In 2019, Daniel was promoted to police corporal. In 2023, he was promoted to the position of police sergeant. He's worked in a variety of assignments to include patrol, event planning, field training officer, field training coordinator, and is currently assigned as patrol field supervisor, one of the most important positions in the police department. Sergeant Morris is married and has two adult children. His wife, Aaron, is a special education teacher, and his son, Dylan, is a police officer following in footsteps. While his other son, Riley, is a financial analyst. In his free time, Sergeant Morris enjoys traveling and spending time with his family, and we want to definitely welcome him to be our new Sergeant in Arms. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. An announcement in presentation from the Latino Heritage Month Committee. I ask Pam Cantero and Latino Heritage Committee Coaches, Vania de la Cuba and Lisa Barrios to step forward. Sorry, this is a little too high for me. Good evening, Mayor, members of the Council and City staff. I am Pamela Cantero More, Park's Recreation and Community Center, Superintendent. I am thrilled to announce the upcoming Latino Heritage Parade celebrations. We will kick off the celebrations with Fiesta Spadreas, this Friday, September 13th, at Villa Park Community Center at 6 p.m. This event will showcase Latin American culture through live music and traditional dances. Following that, on September 27, join us for a heartwarming movie featuring a million miles away celebrating the power of perseverance and dreams. On October 5th, don't miss the 26th annual Latino Heritage Parade and Festival, a vibrant celebration of our community diversity and spirit. Additionally, we invite you to paint in our Sprex Cascas on October 12th, and Bandulce and Konsha making workshop on October 19th, offering a creative culinary Latino experience. We invite everyone to honor the other Los Martos on the member first with traditional altars, stands, and arts and craft at Villa Park Community Center. Every year, in addition to the celebrations, I have the honor to work with community to plan the actual Latino Heritage Parade and Festival. This year here with me is Vania de la Cuba and let the Enlisa various Isagira to talk a little bit more about the planning. Buenas noches alcalde y consejo municipal. Esta noche vania de la Cuba y yo Lisa Various y seguiré nos unimos a ustedes como co-presidentas del desfile festival de Festival of the Erencia Latin America in 2024. It's a pleasure to be here tonight to invite you all to the community. I'll say a little bit more than I did. I'm going to be able to take the Saturday 5th of October. the the the the the the the the the the is an opportunity to reflect on who we are, where we come and celebrate where we are. The route of the desfile will begin in the primary school of Madison, along with the robles and concludes in the training camp, where the festival will end. The mariscans of the desfile of this year include the educator of the primary school of Madison, Martin Dorado, and the astronaut José Hernández. I I'm going to go to the committee to see if we can see the committee. I'm going to go to the committee to see if we can see the committee. I'm going to go to the committee. I'm going to go to the committee. I'm going to go to the committee. I'm going to go to the committee. I'm going to go to the committee. I'm going to go to the committee. and thank you city council for the support that you provide both to our department and to the committee for the parade and the festival. It's really important for us to celebrate our community our achievements and also to look to the future. And so our parade this year actually does that with the astronaut as our grand marshal and with our fifth grade teacher and Madison Elementary, Mr. Martin Dorado. We are thrilled and we can't wait to have you all participate and join us in the parade. So we'll see all of you right in early 730 on Saturday, October 5th at City Hall. And we'll take you out to the parade route that will start at Madison Elementary and we'll end in front of City Hall. Here's the very front. And our partner, sorry, from the library, Catherine has to get Haney and we really thank the library for all that you're doing as part of our celebration of the United Heart Aid. So thank you, Catherine. Thank you very much. We at the Pasadena Public Library are pleased once again to partner with our fellow City departments in commemorating Latino Heritage Month. With the closure of Central Library, our program offerings have been reduced, but we are still able to celebrate the histories, cultures, and contributions of Americans, whose ancestors came from Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America, with a wide, though limited variety of programming across all of our neighborhood branches, including free book discussions, events, story times, and crafts for all ages. I would like to highlight a few of our upcoming events for you. Inca, the Peruvian En ensemble, presenting the musical heritage of Peru will be held on Wednesday, October 2nd, excuse me, Wednesday, September 25th at 4pm at La Pinteresca Branch Library, Fiesta La Pinteresca, featuring cultural stories, crafts, music, and more will be held on Wednesday, October 2nd, at 4 p.m. at La Pinteresca Branch Library. Day Coloris celebrating Latino diversity through music presented by Gloria and Javier. Our hona will be held on Saturday, October 12th at 3pm at LeManda Park Branch Library. We will conclude with a community of Frenda at Santa Catalina Branch Library from October 21st through November 4th. Due to central library's closure, we regret the cancellation of the popular luchal libros bilingual reading program that was traditionally launched each year during Latino Heritage Month to support student reading achievement all through the school year. Sadly, we cannot replicate the program at our much smaller branch libraries. We look forward to resuming this program and its positive impact on student success when central library reopens. The Pasadena Public Library is committed to being an inclusive space for our community, encouraging lifelong learning and free access to resources and enriching programs and services. We hope that you will be able to attend one or more of our upcoming celebrations ours as well as Parks and Rec commemorating Latino Heritage Month. Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. And next we'll move on to public comment for matters not on the agenda. If you hear your name, please work your way to the front of the room. And I'd also like to announce by the way that item two on our agenda is being held over. And so that matter will not be heard. Mr. Clerk. Thank you, Mayor. Samford, Crasner, Cynthia Kennedy, and then online we have Greg Apidaca. So we have two minutes for public comment. Go ahead. Two minutes each. Yes. Okay. Hi, my name is Sandy Crasner. I'm here with Pasadena 100. I'm going to raise some concerns about the optimized strategic plan that the PWP is going through right now. We will talk about this at municipal services committee, but I wanted to briefly talk to the council about this also. We want to make sure that the plan is outlining a plan, particularly for rooftop and community solar, and also a plan for battery storage to make it optimal use of the excess solar that we will be producing. This produces a lot of power that we will clearly need and also allow people not quite so wealthy to participate in the advantages of rooftop solar. We're also concerned about the plan's emphasis on hydrogen. Two of the portfolios they've identified out of sex have to do with installing hydrogen. How is the hydrogen being produced? If it's not green, it's as bad as natural gas. It's not saving anything in greenhouse gas emissions. Where is it coming from? Is it being trucked in? Is there a pipeline being built? All of those issues. Is the hydrogen being used to store renewable energy, which we would hope so. If so, it's about half as efficient as battery. So in general, we wonder why are we going down this path? So just wanted to make you familiar with those. And as I said, we will discuss this with the municipal services committee. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Cynthia Kennedy. Miss you very much. Thank you. Cynthia Kennedy. Miss Kennedy, welcome. Yeah. Pasadena. One hundred people. Place stand. The unsheltered people of Pasadena suffer more than anyone from climate change. I can't even imagine what it would be like for them in this heat. And then I think about the people in San Bernardino, whose homes have been destroyed by fires, and I think of their suffering. And then I try to imagine what it would be like to have asthma and fill your lungs be choked off by particulate matter and smoke. These concerns are what led you to the Council wisely to pass the climate emergency resolution last year and you called for 100% carbon-free electric power. However, there is a gap between policy and implementation. Why is it that we have experts managed by PWP who are being paid $1.2 million and they are creating six portfolios, only one of them deals with the city's 100% carbon free goal. We know that we have to have a massive increase in rooftop solar and storage in order to meet our goal. We know this from the IRP. It's important for our energy security. And yet, why is PWP actively considering eliminating the main economic incentive for rooftop solar? And why is it so difficult for Pasadena to get permits for their solar future and why after so much time is it that we don't have a program for community solar. I ask you in the name of all of the people who suffer. In the name of our children who will suffer even more tomorrow in the future, please mind the gap between policy and implementation. Mind the gap. You need to be actively involved. You cannot delegate. We need you to be involved. Make sure that we have climate action for our future before it is too late. Thank you. Greg Apadaca. Applause. Mr. Apadaca. I don't see him in the chambers. Actually, he's supposed to be online and he's not there. Okay. That completes public comment. Okay. It's not on the agenda. Thank you. Next, we will move to consent calendar. We have one public comment speaker on item one. And then there was one letter on item one providing historical information on the property located at 159 North Raymond Street. That's the Armory Center. Do you want to call the public comment? Yes. I mean, Tim, I'd to call the public comment? Yes. I mean, Tim, I'd make a sweet motion, Mayor. Okay. Leslie Eto. Mucito. Good evening, Mayor Gordo, City Manager Mark Hez, and his staff, esteemed members of the City Council, and everyone gathered here tonight. On behalf of the Armory Center for the Arts, our board, staff, and the diverse community we serve, I want to express my immense gratitude. Your unwavering support over the past 35 years has made our work possible, and enriched the lives of countless residents in our great city. Your commitment to the arts allows us to serve more than 18,000 people annually. This number includes PUSD's entire fourth grade population through our flagship program. Children investigate the environment. For over 35 years this program has used the lens of visual arts to nurture new generations of environmental stewards in Pasadena. As fifth graders, these same students tour the Armory's current exhibitions and then make art in our studio connected to the exhibitions themes. Speaking of exhibitions, nearly 600 people braved the heat just yesterday to see our latest exhibition from the ground up, our contribution to the Gettys Regional, what region-wide Pacific Standard Time initiative. The numbers are impressive, but it's personal stories where the armory's real impact comes into focus. Take, for example, a student during the pandemic who cherished his virtual armory art class so much that he would rush to the closest free Wi-Fi best buy when his internet went out to stay connected to his newfound creative community. For this student and many others, the young and young at heart, armory programs combat isolation, spark creativity, foster the community, and ensure art remains an accessible and vital part of pesting culture. We're building upon a foundation laid for 35 years by many people who made the armory what it is today and to purchase and renovate the building honors all of them. Once again thank you Mayor Gordo, City Manager Marquez, staff, council members. We are ongoing support and belief in the power of the arts. Together we will build a more vibrant, inclusive and creative community that promotes dialogue, understanding and connections among all Pasadenares. Thank you. Thank you. That completes public comment on consent calendar. I'd like to congratulate the armory and its supporters and thank them for taking on the stewardship of a beautiful building. But over 30 years now of services in our community, brain services directly to kids in Northwest Pasadena is important and these are cultural art services that kids whose families unfortunately don't have the resources may not otherwise receive. And so congratulations, not just today, but congratulations for the successes of the armory for decades. And thank you on behalf of all residents of Pasadena. Okay, with that, there's a motion. We have questions about item three. Item three. Mr. Hampton. Sorry, maybe I'm. No, you have it right. It is. So Bill Wong came in though I was like hold on maybe I got this wrong I don't You didn't see you the rolls going out Well, they got you doing everything brother. What what if you need to this and check Oh, here he is. Hey, Jens, how's it going? Good. Just a couple questions. So I wasn't here on the 26th. I was at the meeting of the council where there was an amendment to increase your events 25. So is this addition to the 25? This is... No, that hasn't gone into effect yet. So it's... No, you can't. You may be able to speak a little bit more, but I think that's coming back to Council to vote on the change to the ordinance. You don't have the ordinance yet. So the ordinance hasn't changed yet? No, it's been directed to be prepared. So we're going with the old process until the end. Old process is it. And so these are all, these are three soccer matches. Correct. Okay, those are my questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wheaton. Okay, now we have a motion and a second on the consent. We'll do it in a second on the consent. Sorry. Mr. Jones. Okay, thank you. And so it's to approve all consent except for item two which was pulled. Which yes. So are there any objections to the motion? Seeing none. Those matters are approved Next will move to will do the adoption of the ordinance. Thank you Well, so this is second reading of an ordinance which was introduced by councilmember Hampton This is an ordinance of the city of Pasadena mending title to article one chapter 2.05 section 2.05.060 Of the Pasadena Municipal Code to change the regular meeting time for the City Council, this will make it so that the Council meetings regular time will start at 5 p.m. on Mondays. Go ahead and do. Yes, roll call. To adopt the ordinance, Council Member Hampton. Yes. Council Member Jones. Yes. Council Member Lyon. Yes. Council member Jones. Yes. Council member Lyon. Yes. Council member Moussita. Yes. Council member Revis. Yes. Council member Williams. Yes. Vice Mayor Madison. Yes. Mayor Gordo. Yes. That ordinance is adopted unanimously. Mayor, this is Michelle Bonneries. You may want to indicate to the public that the anticipation is that closed sessions will begin at five o'clock and the public sessions will begin at six p.m. Starting next Monday after publication of the ordinance. I think you just made the announcement. Okay, thank you. So our time is shifting from 4.30 to 5. For open for closed session and then we anticipate starting at 6 p.m. for open session. I'd also like to announce that I will be agendizing a discussion on some of the current heat waves that we've been experiencing. I think it's timely to talk about not just the heat waves, but some of the blackouts that we experienced and how they were handled very capable by DWP. And so we didn't expect for that matter to come back probably next Monday in order to allow the council and the public to learn more about what occurred in Pasadena last week and to be prepared in the event it occurs continues to occur I should say because we're still in the middle of the heat wave. So with that we'll turn now to item five. And by the way the municipal services committee meets tomorrow and I'm sure we'll have a lively discussion as well. But I do think it's important for the full council to get a briefing on the issue of heat and power in our city. Okay. So this is item five. This is the receive information and provide guidance relating to the city's efforts to address issues associated with homelessness. The city clerk's office received 30 letters advocating for the city to reject enforcement policies, adopt the quote, good neighbor pledge and or expand housing development and supportive services. One letter expressing safety concerns with homeless campers in the Royal Seiko. And 10 letters advocating for the city to reaffirm, uphold its ordinance against public camping and obstructing rights of way. All the letters were distributed to the council, posted online, are part of the record for tonight's item. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Did you want to pick it off? Yes, thank you, Mayor. I'd like to kick off today's presentation. First, by expressly recognizing and thanking the dozens of city employees who work hard every day to provide services and support to our unhoused neighbors. You will hear from some of them today, but I wanted to make sure all of them are recognized for the important and difficult work they take on each and every day. I also want to thank the hundreds of people who contribute to our homeless effort citywide, including those who work for nonprofit entities who are under contract with you, the city or the county or sometimes some others, many in the private sector who work in this area and the many, many volunteers who've stepped up to help out. There are lots of challenges left to address, but so many in our community have done so much relating to homelessness. And I wanted to start today's or tonight's study session by saying thank you to all of them. In brief, today's presentation will explain to the council and to the public the recent change in the legal landscape that came about on June 28th when the United States Supreme Court decided the grants past case. The City Attorney's Office will discuss that case along with other relevant laws at the federal, the state, the county, and here at the city level in our municipal code. Director of Housing Bill Wong and Jennifer O'Reilly Jones will then lead a discussion that in a similar fashion, we'll explain all of the services currently being provided to address homelessness in Pasadena. Again, addressing all levels of government, including HUD at the federal level, the state and all of its funding programs, the county and its role that it has with respect to the delivery of mental health and substance use issues. Metro, which has, I don't remember, it's five or six, I think it might be six stops here in Pasadena, the continuum of care that we have. We're lucky to have here in Pasadena our own continuum of care that we have, we're lucky to have here in Pasadena, our own continuum of care and the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments which is looking at and working on regional efforts. Finally, I want to note that we will not be providing information on the efforts being undertaken by the other 87 cities in the county as that landscape has been changing from day to day. But you can rest assured that every city is having discussions like this one. And because homelessness is a regional issue, what they choose to do will have an impact on us. Before I turn it over to, I think, Assistant City Manager, Alex Hernandez, I don't see him, but maybe he's, oh, there he is right there right in front of me. I want to highlight there will be at least four key takeaways from today's presentation. One is that most people experiencing homelessness and Pasadena have lived in Pasadena for many years. You'll hear in the presentation 56% of those who are homeless have said they live on average 22 years in Pasadena and a much higher percentage have lived here in L.A. County. They are at the end of the day are unhoused neighbors. Two, there is no silver bullet to addressing the multifaceted and complicated issues relating to homelessness. Three, services to the homeless involve many, many partners at all levels of government, as I mentioned earlier federal, state, county, city, council of governments. It also involves the nonprofit sector, the private sector, and frankly all residents who use transit or city parks, were even shopped in the city. And finally, homelessness is a regional problem and will require a regional approach to best managing care for our unhoused neighbors. So those are the, I think, the four biggest takeaways from the presentation that I wanted to highlight at the commencement of the presentation with that. I'll turn it over to Alex Hernandez, assistant to the city manager. Mr. Hernandez. Good evening, Mayor and Council. As was mentioned, we intended today to be a study session. It isn't just informational, but does seek your guidance relating to the services already provided to the unhoused in Pasadena, both by the city and its government and non-government partners, including any guidance or consensus that might be reached related to the municipal code section 3.24.11188, which prohibits camping and public places. And any other guidance provided related to the city's role, if any, on regional efforts you may want to undertake to address homelessness. We hope you'll bear with us. We have a number of staff representing a number of different departments and divisions of the city Because the nature of this problem is just so huge We're going to start with again a recap of the Supreme Court case Have some staff also cover the executive order that was issued by the governor related to encampments on state property recent actions taken by the Ellie County Board of Supervisors as well as some review by the Attorney and City Prosecutors Office about the current status of actions that are taken by them. We'll also hear about Ellie County Metro, some of that jurisdictional issue that passes through the city and then spend the majority of the time today hearing from staff and the director of housing related to the services and programs we currently have today. And with that, I'll go ahead and turn it over to your first presenter. Your turn, Madam. With the same name, I have a comment on it. So it means that it doesn't. I'm sorry. You're sorry, Ma'am. Hi, good evening. My name is Amanda Cusick. I'm a deputy city attorney here. And I am here to start tonight's presentation by providing the legal backdrop to provide some context for the rest of your conversation. So as the city manager and the assistance of the city manager just mentioned, we're going to start off with talking about the US Supreme Court case grants pass versus Johnson. So as you may have heard, this case has received a lot of attention. It was originally brought in the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, by a group of unhoused individuals who are challenging a series of ordinances that prohibited camping on public property or parking overnight in city parks that had an escalating series of civil citations and culminating in criminal sanctions up to and including prison time. This case went to the 9th Circuit and the 9th Circuit found that enforcement of these ordinances violated the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the 8th amendment. This case was then appealed to the US Supreme Court, which issued their opinion on June 28th of this year. The court decided by a 6-3 vote that enforcing generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property does not violate the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and thus the grants pass ordinances were ruled constitutional. The opinion of the court does not mandate any specific actions to be taken by any municipality in the 9th Circuit. The decision in this case means that municipalities may now regulate the time place manner of sleeping in public up to and including criminal sanctions before it was excluding criminal sanctions. Let me move to the next slide. Next I'm going to start talking about the order from Governor Newsom. So we're now at state level government. Subsequent to the grants past decision, Governor Newsom issued executive order N-1-24 on July 25th of this year in policies to address homeless encampments on state property. The executive order also tasks the California Intra Agency Council on Homelessness to develop guidance and provide technical assistance consistent with the order in order to help local government implement local homelessness programs. Lastly, the order encourages local governments to adopt policies and utilize resources to address homelessness that are in line with his executive order. Moving to the next level of government, we will talk about the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Earlier this summer, the LA County Board of Supervisors placed measure A on the November 5 county wide ballot. This measure would replace the current measure H sales tax such that the two sales taxes would not overlap. Measure A would replace measure H and it would implement a new half-sent sales tax to fund housing and homeless services in the county to sunset in 2027. Additionally, at their July 30th Board of Supervisors meeting, they affirmed the county's care first approach. Affirmed that county jails will not be used to house those arrested solely based on anti-camping ordinances in the rest of the county. And voted to expand the county's partnerships with cities and other municipalities to encourage a coordinated regional approach. Lastly, I wanted to touch on some miscellaneous legal items to complete the legal backdrop here. The first one is Senate Bill 43, which was approved in October 23, 2023, excuse me, which expands the definition for those who are eligible for conservatorship. Conservatorship is a process that happens at the county level, not the city level. And Los Angeles County has voted to defer implementation of SB 43 until January 1 of 2026. Finally, there are current relevant Pasadena Municipal Code sections that are outlined for you in the gender report. Both SB 43 and the PMC sections will be discussed by my colleagues later in this presentation. And so with that, that concludes my portion and I will turn it over to Chief Assistant City Prosecutor, Wellman. Mr. Wellman, welcome. Good evening, thank you. My name is Tim Wellman. I'm the Chief Assistant City Prosecutor for Pasadena. The prosecution division, well, let's move to the next, I have the clicker here. The prosecution division of well, let's move to the next I have the clicker here. The prosecution division of the City Attorney City Prosecutor's Office reviews reports referred by law enforcement, decides whether to file criminal charges and decides what charges to file. Our office handles misdemeanor cases that have occurred in the city of Pasadena. Some of these cases referred to us by police involve homeless individuals. Only competent defendants can be prosecuted. If a doubt is raised as to a defendant's competency, then criminal proceedings are suspended, and the cases referred to the mental health court in Hollywood. Fewer than 10% of our misdemeanor cases involve incompetent defendants. In competent defendants can be offered mental health diversion by the court, can be referred to other treatment evaluation to see if they're eligible for assisted, outpatient treatment, this is known as AOT, or care court, or can have the case dismissed by court. AOT is rare with only one Pasadena misdemeanor defendant being found eligible over the past year. CARE Court started in December 2023 and involves referral and civil proceeding. In the past year, two Pasadena misdemeanor defendants were referred to care court with one just last week. If a defendant might be considered possibly gravely disabled, then the court can make a referral to the public guardian to determine if that person is, in fact, gravely disabled. And if so, the public guardian can file a petition for an LPS conservatorship with probate court. If the public garden files a petition with for an LPS conservatorship, the criminal case is dismissed even if the probate court does not grant a conservatorship. Patitions for LPS conservatorships are uncommon though not as rare as Care Court orOT, with approximately eight having been filed this year for Pasadena misdemeanor defendants. The proceedings are confidential, so we do not know if conservatorships were granted for any or all of those eight defendants. And as mentioned previously SB 43, which expands the standard for LPS conservatorships was voted to be deferred, implementation in Los Angeles County until January 1st, 2026, which SB 43 allowed for. For competent defendants charged with offenses associated with homelessness, such as being in a park after hours, public urination or defecation, obstructing a sidewalk, all of which are violations of the Pasadena Municipal Code. The prosecution division generally takes a care first approach, which can include drug treatment, mental health treatment, housing and assistance, or other programs with acceptance of services, typically leading to case dismissals. PMC 3.24.110A subsection eight prohibits camping or lodging in any city park or upon certain public grounds. Penal Code section 647 subsection E prohibits lodging in public or private places without permission. Cases involving these charges often associated with homelessness were referred to our office by police over 600 times from 2015 through the end of 2018. In the five and a half years since, our office was referred fewer than 60 such cases. Now with Grant's past decision, we will monitor the number of those types of cases that are being referred by the police to our office. The prosecution division is leading efforts to create a homeless court in the Pasadena Courthouse, which would be another way to pursue housing for unhoused defendants. This will be discussed in more detail later in the presentation by my colleague Ted Smith. With that, I'll pass this over to Bill Wong, our director for the Department of Housing. Thank you. Thank you very much. Before I forget, I do want to mention that we do have three representatives, representatives from three nonprofit, homeless service provider and housing provider organizations here, to be able to answer questions at the end of the presentation. So there are representatives from Union Station, homeless services, friends indeed, and door of hope. Although we're here in Pasadena, of course we all recognize that homelessness is a much broader issue. It's not just a passing issue. As such, all levels of government bring resources to the table and play important roles in addressing the homeless crisis. Pasadena alone cannot solve it. They hire the level of government, they're greater the resources. For example, at the federal level, there are tens of millions allocated to homelessness and affordable housing on an annual basis, tens of millions. At the federal level tens of billions, at the state level hundreds of millions, at the county level tens of millions, and at the city level hundreds of millions, at the county level tens of millions, and at the city level millions. At the federal level, the amounts of funding and resources are great. This enables them to fund things that are very expensive, including permanent housing, which we know is how homelessness is solved. They are able to provide funding on a reliable permanent basis because of the large amount of resources. So at the federal level, for instance, they fund rental housing subsidies, session eight program. This is about a $30 billion per year program. And that includes project-based section eight vouchers, which are critical in the production of permanent supportive housing, which ends homelessness for the most chronic and needy of our homeless population. They provide grants for homeless services through the emergency solutions grant program and the continuing of care grant programs. This is combined about $3 billion per year. And then they also are the largest provider of low income housing tax credit. This is the federal low income housing tax credits they are valued at about $1 billion per year. At the state level there are a variety of funding programs both for the provision of homeless services and for the building acquisition and building of affordable housing. Some of the programs are very innovative. For instance, Project Home Key is identified as a fairly recent innovative affordable housing homeless program. The funding levels, though at the state level, fluctuate quite a bit from year to year. That is because many of the sources are not permanent sources, but are one time funding sources during times of budget surpluses. We know one time funding cannot adequately address long-term problems. At the county level, oops, let's see. Clicker, next here. Ooh, okay. Thank you. Okay. At the county level, the county bears a responsibility for mental health and substance use disorder treatment programs. This is through the Department of Mental Health and the Department of Health Services. As has been mentioned, there is the court of sent sales tax. County Measure H, Pasadena, does as a continuum of care, one of four continuums of care in the county. Pasadena does get a direct allocation of about $3 million per year. And there are other measure H dollars that provide important services for our homeless programs and our residents, unhoused residents here. But it includes they provide the fund the majority of the services in our five permanent support of housing projects. Without steady services, steady funding for services, a high and a deep level of services cannot be provided, which means folks that have high needs can't get the care that they need. So the measure H dollars provide important indirect funding here in Pasadena. LASA, which is the county's continuum of care, does provide services here in Pasadena, even though Pasadena is its own continuum of care. For instance, the interim housing here, operated by Union Station, both for adults at the adult center and families. It's funded by, in part by LASA. Also homeless outreach, some of the homeless outreach teams here are also funded by LASA. And then the county provides development funding through their annual notice of funding availability. Most recently, at about $140 million has been offered. We expect about 8 million of that to come to Pasadena for a particular project. So with that, we can see that all levels of government need to work together, coordinate together in order to properly address homelessness. And with that, I'd also like to mention that Metro has its own law enforcement, its own homeless outreach team, and also runs a safe parking program as well. And I'll turn it over to director Seqez to talk a little bit more about LA County Metro and what they do to address homelessness. Mr. Seqez, welcome. Thank you, H you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Metro A-line stations and a number of bus stops throughout Pasadena, and Metro Crisis intervention staff and homeless outreach partners work to address homelessness, mental illness, and drug abuse on their transit system. There are two outreach teams dedicated to the north section of the Metro A-line, and there's End of Line Outreach and a Lake Avenue Station multi-layered deployment, which is a fixed post from 7.30am to 9.30pm at Lake Avenue Station. Metro rail stations periodically patrolled by a combination of law enforcement personnel, Metro security officers and ambassadors. And law enforcement and security personnel are targeting behavior, not housing status. Their program includes a Transit Mental Health Evaluation team that coordinates with the city, port and hope programs. Metro will create and is creating a new transit community public safety department within the next few years. A critical component of this is the continued collaboration between Metro and the city's port and hope programs. With that, I'll hand it back to housing. Thank you. Hello. My name is Nathan Press. I'm the program coordinator for homeless services with the Pasadena Public Health Department as well as the Pasadena outreach response team. And it's one thing to learn about policies that impact people in our community, but it's a whole different thing to actually understand the people in our community. And I know that when we talk about homelessness, we talk about what we often see, which is someone with all their belongings pushing their cart down the street, sleeping on a bus bench, or they all too common story of substance use. But as a social worker on the board team Street, sleeping on a bus bench or they all too common story of substance use. But as a social worker on the port team for the past five years, I'm going to try to paint you guys a picture of the invisible side of homelessness that you guys might not see. And while these stories that are presented are very real, they still lack some context on your screen. So let me tell you the common story that I see very often, this one for instance, is Jim. Something that you guys don't know is that he went through a devastating divorce and because of his now new single income, he couldn't afford rent and had nowhere else to go. So he moved in with his family and that impossible social situation can only last so long. And trust me, I love my sisters, but I know that we'd be tested too if we lived together. And yeah, so then he moved into his car into the driveway and that was tough and in of itself. And expensive to with parking tickets and everything like that. And cars get towed. So Jim went to the only place where he felt safe in public late. He went to the Allen metro station where he stayed for four years. And jobs, interviews don't go too well when you have weak old dirty clothes. You don't have a phone. You don't have transportation to get to the interview. Your ID and identification gets stolen time and time again. And in the midst of these challenges, Jim turned to meth just to temporarily deal with the challenges that he's facing. And also while I speak about substance use, there's a common notion that believing that drugs lead to poverty and lead to crime, but this narrative is so often false, just to provide a straightforward solution to a complex problem faced by our most vulnerable neighbors that we're talking about. And this is the invisible impact that has led to the visible concerns that we're discussing today. But thankfully for this gentleman Jim, he was able to get in contact with Port through a friend that referred him, and he was able to regain that hope, which he achieved. Because he had the knowledge that there's a chance of success. He not only achieved housing, he achieved reintegrating into the workforce, he was being in now recovery for the past four years and has an active role with his children again. But whether if it's divorce, whether it's the loss and death of someone in his family that makes someone's income go down, or whether it's people like Calvin here who had lost their apartment due to complex health conditions and being unable to work, homelessness is often a multifaceted issue that impacts physical health and mental health alike, making it difficult for individuals to care for themselves. In fact, Calvin couldn't care for himself so much that he became an amputee and even lost his vision. And I don't believe that someone deserves to be punished just because they don't have the ability to care for themselves. But we don't believe someone should suffer and die on the streets due to circumstances they can't control. A local homeless nonprofit, the Department of Mental Health, the hope team passing a housing department combined their efforts to create a solution was able to place Calvin and assisted living where he is regularly provided medical in psychiatric care. Because oftentimes it takes a city and that's what happened here where we all came together to find a solution. And then there's people like Louise, who this is someone that was housed by friends indeed who was a veteran who over 11 years had been in and out of hospitals due to mental health conditions, substance use disorders, and multiple interactions with police that made him have a distrust between agencies and government. But thankfully friends indeed reached out and got connected to the bad weather shelter in 2016. And even though he had not been engaging in homeless services for a long time, he still finally accepted help because of the care of nonprofits like friends indeed in the community. But this is also the housing process is another invisible factor of homelessness that the public doesn't always see because it takes a long time to get housed. The public may not see these, may see these individuals as people sleeping at the bus stop or pushing their carts down the street. But what the teams here in Pasadena see are Louise, they see Calvin, they see Jim, who lost their housing due to one circumstance or another, and are now doing what they can to get back on their feet. Thanks to programs in the community like friends indeed in Port, who are able to connect them to services like, for instance, the VA, and now he's able to, now waiting and awaiting housing through a VA vass voucher and getting the services that he deserves. And now, genuinely from the housing department, he gave you more context to the population that we're talking about, but you haven't heard the last of me. I'll be back. Mr. Riley Jones. Good evening. It's a hard, hard act to follow. So I will, I'm Jenny O'Reilly Jones with the Housing Department, and I oversee our continuum of care for homeless services. First tonight, I am going to give an overview of our unsheltered population. A lot of this information may be familiar to you. We pull it from our homeless count data. And then I will go into an overview of the various types of services that are provided here in Pasadena, both city-funded and non-city-funded. So our 2024 homeless count, which was conducted in January, showed that 58% of our homeless population was unsheltered on the night of the count and 42% were sheltered. The homeless population is overwhelmingly male, almost 3-quarters male, and we find that 29% are age 55 and older. Among the unsheltered homeless population, chronic homelessness, which is a year of homelessness with a disability is much more prevalent than among the sheltered population. As our city manager mentioned, at the beginning of the meeting, more than half of individuals who are unsheltered on our streets called Pasadena home before they lost their housing and lived here for an average of 22 years before losing their housing. Here in Pasadena as in the county and the state and across the nation, racial disparities do exist. And we find that black people are overrepresented among our homeless population. And increasingly, we're seeing an overrepresentation of a Hispanic and Latino people within our homeless population. On the night of the 2024 homeless count, 321 people were unsheltered. Here you can see a little snapshot of where people were found to be sleeping, about a quarter. We're sleeping on street or sidewalks. And this is a quarter of our overall homeless population, not just of the folks on the street. We've seen a slight increase but steady of people living in cars and RVs, and similarly we're seeing a slight increase in people who are sleeping at faith-based sites like churches. So now I will provide you with that overview of the various types of programs we have here. I want to start with street outreach, who of course serve our unsheltered population, and we'll start with the city-funded street outreach programs. So the first is our public health department's Pasadena Outreach Response Team. You'll learn more about port a little bit later in the presentation. The police department has the hope team which pairs three officers with Department of Mental Health clinicians and is also supported by two union stations services liaison's. The city also funds friends indeed and union station for other street outreach programs. Here is a look at the non-city funded street outreach teams. They're largely county funded. And you can see that most of these teams are specialized either in the population that they serve or the services they provide or the location where those services are provided. So we have an outreach team that's specific for youth. As was mentioned, there are outreach workers on the Metro. There are outreach teams specific to providing harm reduction resources. And then finally, there are a number of outreach teams that provide various types of mental health services. So, now looking at interim housing. First we'll take a look at city funded programs. The public health department provides interim housing with motel vouchers or motel-based shelter both year round and seasonally. The year round program is specifically for an encampment resolution program that relocates people who are sleeping on cal transfer properties freeway and bank bans where they're not safe. And then seasonally they do offer weather activated motel vouchers to participants of their programs. There are other programs. The City Funds Union Station to provide year-round shelter or non-weather-dependent shelter at motels as well. We also fund sickle moors, our lead youth provider, to provide motel vouchers to youth ages 18 to 24. Friends indeed operates two different types of seasonal shelter programs are congregate bad weather shelter as well as weather activated motel vouchers which supplement the bad weather shelter. And then friends indeed also is funded for another set of year round motel vouchers. These are non city funded interim housing and transitional housing resources. Friends indeed has a variety of funding sources for other motel vouchers that aren't weather dependent. Union station operates a congregate shelter for single adults and another for families. There are a couple of recovery bridge housing programs here in Pasadena that cater to those who are recovering from substance use disorder. And then Dora Pope and Elizabeth House have transitional housing programs for families. Here's an overview of the permanent housing, different types of permanent housing programs that the city funds. The first is rapid rehousing, which provides time-limited rental subsidies and case management. The second is pardon me. And within rapid rehousing, the participants of these programs, they lease apartments on the private rental market. The second is scattered site permanent supportive housing. So similar to rapid rehousing, program participants lease apartments in the private rental market, the difference is that they receive long-term rental assistance and intensive case management services. Then we have site-based permanent supportive housing. This would include the new HOPE Center as well as Heritage Square South. We also have two permanent supportive housing buildings for families, Marps Place and Euclid Villa, and there's a smaller one as well for youth. And then finally, we have kind of a general category that we call, or HUD actually calls other permanent housing. This includes rental assistance vouchers, kind of flavors of Section 8, that we have prioritized for people experiencing homelessness. So in the past couple of years, we've had emergency housing vouchers as well as our mainstream vouchers. And then finally there are other types of programs and I just wanted to make sure we touched on these so that you could get a more complete picture of the services provided. We do fund friends indeed and or of hope for homelessness prevention programs that provide financial assistance to individuals and families at imminent risk of eviction. Housing navigation is essentially a type of case management where case managers assist individuals to navigate our complex housing system, gather documents that are needed to apply for housing, look for housing and apply for apartments. Unification and friends indeed both have housing navigation programs, as well as sickle moors who serves youth. We have one safe parking program here in the city of Pasadena at Trinity Lutheran Church. It's a small program. And there is a proposed program at All Saints Church, which is not yet in operation, which would be across the street. And All Saints Church, which is not yet in operation, which would be across the street, and All Saints is working on applying for their minor conditional use permit for that project. There are several sites where people experiencing homelessness can take a shower throughout the week. Shower of Hope operates mobile shower trailer at All Saints Church once a week, and then in Northwest Pasadena at Bethel Church for the Public Health Department, they operate the Public Health Department's mobile shower and laundry trailers. And then Foothill Unity Center also has a mobile shower unit that visits their site weekly. And then finally, the Public Health Department has their United Mental Health Promotors program, which focuses on connecting people experiencing homelessness to needed services. It also provides limited assistance, such as food, clothing, and hygiene to program participants. And it also supports the port team with case management activities. And now I will hand it over to Nathan. Again, Nathan, press for more. I have a quick question about this slide if you don't mind. Sure. I noticed in the funding sources, the last one, the United Mental Health, there's a number next to it. Why isn't there a number to what we fund the rest of the organizations? So on this slide, they're not all city funded. This one, it's just a single funding source. So that's the total grant amount. It funds outreach services that I described. It also funds training opportunities for service providers, mental health, first aid as well. Thank you. I mean, I think we should know what the city's funding, all of these organizations, and potentially know what the county is putting in as well. Thank you. Sorry. Welcome back. Did you miss me? Okay. Thank you. I again. I'm Nathan press program coordinator for the Homeless services with the Pasadena Public Health Department, but now I'm talking about the Pasadena Outreach Response Team Also, I'll have up my emotional support firefighter My name is Tony Z with the Pasadena Fire Department Firefighter. Yeah. I kind of miss the slides with pictures, so I'm going to get through these. But these, Port, you might think of it as just one program, and I'll get into what Port does and how it's constructed. But really, it has about six components. What's trying to get ahead of me? I'll get it, but yeah. So, Port has six components to it that have a bunch of different, it really works with the wraparound needs and the components meet and address needs that are unique to the people experiencing homelessness within our city. So we have things like the General Fund, which helps fund our firefighters who are now on 911 dispatch to respond to nonviolent transit related calls. We have the congressional directive spending granted from Congresswoman Judy Chu, which helps us provide soft contact with our individuals in the community, providing like lunches and access to basic needs and shower and laundry that's at the Bethel Church that is a lease from the Public Health Department. We have Prop 47, which is through the state of California, which this specifically addresses our clients who are justice-involved, which have their own very unique set of needs, and we hope to reduce recidicism through that grant. Then, Camman Resolution Fund through the California Department of Housing, which is the one that Jenny had mentioned, helps transition people out of CalTrans Highway encampments to transitional living, to help meet and get better health objectives and outcomes. We have, through the chore grant of LA County, a case manager to assist with medical enrollment and other benefits, as well as the emergency food and shelter program, which helps with emergency housing, meal rental assistance for eligible pork clients. Woof! This is honestly, what this is basically representing is that there's the complex issues often demand a multifaceted approach, which is exactly what pork brings to the field. Because some of the funding here that you see is one time, while others may end in the next fiscal year, but the city continues to research and seek new funding opportunities. And I know most of you already know Port, but what I really love talking about is the team, and this is where my passion comes in. So excuse me if it sounds like I'm yelling at you guys, I just really love what the city's doing. So Port is the Pasadena Outreach Response Team. It is a collaboration and integration at a very high level. It is the Public Health Department that provides a program coordinator and social worker has the Pasadena Fire Department which provides two very, very experienced firefighters and very competitively charming with the program coordinator. And there are 911 dispatch to respond to nonviolent transit and related calls and resolving them with specialized care and effectiveness. We have Union Station Home of Services which provides another social worker and peer outreach navigators and Huntington Health. That provides a nurse that's able to do wound care, health assessments on the field, medical referrals to even prevent 911 calls from even happening in the first place and also potentially decreasing the amount of people going to the R because we are treating them in the field. So Pasadena serves people experiencing homelessness in the city of Pasadena over the age of 18. Now I specifically say in the city of Pasadena, because homelessness is a regional issue. And the problems we experience here in the city of Pasadena are different than those people experiencing homelessness or in campus that you might see downtown or in places like Hollywood. Not only are in campus looking different because we have a no-10 policy, substance use appears to be lower in severity and our homeless count numbers are lower than the city of L.A. So by concentrating our efforts on the unique issues face in Pasadena, this allows the city import as response to be cutting edge and ahead of the curve because it's intentional, it's deliberate and it does have an impact. And the key to effectiveness is our deep engagement within the community, such as for instance, the firefighters who have been in the city for 20 years, oftentimes already servicing the people who are responding to and not only helping grow or poor clients but community members as well, because you can't really say no to that badge. And also we have people with lived experience on the team that has an unparalleled amount of optimism that we're able to help with getting rapport with our clients and understanding with our clients. The team also has that nurse to provide dignity and quality care both in the field and also again in hunting to health in the hospital. And the heart of the team is still social work, building upon a strength based in actionable path forward. Together, the team emphasizes that success in recovery is not just possible, it's probable with the right resources. And the city of Pasadena and Port understands that while people do have severe mental health and substance use needs, we don't just stop at observing or complaining about the problem or even just treating the symptoms. We ask how accessible is the care that they need? We ask if mental health, if their mental health disorder is already causing disorganized thinking, if their phones are already stolen regularly, and if they can't afford transportation to treatment, how can we expect them to succeed? So Pasadena doesn't believe in punishing them for their inability, but Pasadena sets port up to be the ones intervening, assisting, making accessible, and making possible the change that individuals often know they already need, but don't know how to achieve. So, Port connects them to things like primary care, dental care, substance use treatment, psychiatric care, and job training, social services, and we take them there ourselves. We don't expect them to do it just through referral, but we help them through the process. And these prevention efforts reduce the potential of emergency calls in the future, like I mentioned, giving that they are already receiving treatment now, and in preparation, set them up for success in independence when housed. But like the invisible factors, I said, causing homelessness, there is also still that invisible process of becoming housed that is very, very lengthy. And that is why in the in between, we are doing our check-ins, we're doing our follow-ups, we are making sure that their needs are being taken care of, that they're reestablishing the healthy centrality of the human connection and reestablishing that dignity and worth. And we also provide them showers at different locations. But there are still times where people come in from out of town. And that's where we understand that there is the continuity of care that is one of the fastest, way more fast path towards housing. So we help educate the individual, get them back to their city of origin. We talk to their case manager and say, hey, this is where they are, if they're very hard to locate clients often. So that one, they get the services they need, but two, they're not in Pasadena anymore and they're getting the services that they deserve. But again like I said it takes a city and while we're an integrated care team it goes just beyond port two. We work with the court, we work with PCC, we work with friends indeed, we work with DPSS. It is about taking the city and bringing it to the client. It is about making everything accessible. It's about making it a possibility because as Tony Zies about to share, the client's success is the city's success. And I'm excited for you guys to hear about it. And I'm excited to share because I've been with these two individuals from the day we met them to the day they got the keys to their own place. And like you've heard from Nathan and the rest of our colleagues here is that it takes a long time. There are a lot of things that a lot of people don't know that these people need in order to get a key to their home. And we're here to help them with that, not just us alone, but like Nathan said, we're taking union station friends indeed and not only are in internal but our external partners so the first one here 12 years homeless in and out of prison we've worked with a lot of people that have court dates we work very well with the judge the city prosecutor and also the public defenders were able to go in there and if the judge says the city prosecutor, and also the public defenders. We're able to go in there. And if the judge says we need this, I want this person to come back in six months, but during that time, I want this person to go in complete rehab and then get extensive case management from your team. And that's what we do. We make sure they go to rehab, report back with them to court, and the judge loves to see this. They love to see the success of an injured, and so does the city. So he was in and out, got reunited with his family, watched his son graduate last year, and it was just an amazing thing for us to hear from him. He comes to our health department. We do have a dental clinic and a doctor's clinic within the health department, and he still comes there regularly because we introduced him to health care and he goes there every six months to get a check up he is he is older and so when he does come he does knock on our door to just say hi and it's a great feeling for our team and then the individual C below a veteran on our streets in the city of Pasadena he was under the radar because he was somebody that you would pass by or see at Taco Bell having a cup of coffee And you would just think oh he's just having a cup of coffee. You wouldn't think that he was living on the streets He was under the radar, but our connection with the city And the libraries because he was Always at the Hill library and we know Everybody at the libraries because we are connected to them they made the phone call on his behalf because it was during the storm of Hillary. And we put him in a shelter and then next you know we get him connected to veterans. He gets his vache voucher to get housing and then he has keys. Unfortunately, he did pass away last month but he died with dignity. He had a home. He died in his bed and he was happy. And this is what our team does but it's not just us alone like you've heard. It's you all, it's everybody behind us here that are here to help these individuals. And we love doing it, and we're happy to do it for many years to come. And it feels good, I hope, for you all to celebrate in their success too, because it's a large part also because of you. But if you guys tune me out when I was talking about all the grants, there's two things that I want you guys to know from us. And that is, this is Bobby. That is James. There are two people of 556. And I hope in the future I get to introduce you to 554 more. So thank you. Good evening. Mayor Vice Mayor, Councilmembers. My name is Bill Grisoffee. Please, commander, over the homeless outreach and psychiatric evaluation team, also known as Hope. And I'm immediately realizing that I probably should have brought an emotional support person up with me. Clearly, I missed on that. Anyways, the Hope team was launched back in 2002, 22 years ago. It was in response to an increase number of calls for service related to homelessness and we also realized that the homelessness the other issue was the mental illness side of things. These individuals were regularly suffering from mental illness and so that we decided back in 2022 that we needed to have a team specifically designed to assist with that. We initially started with two teams. One police officer assigned with one clinician from Department of Mental Health, and they proactively went out and provided all the homeless individuals with all the available resources that we had, not only here in Pasadena, but we went county wide because we brought the relationship with the Department of Mental Health. Unfortunately, the homeless population grew as did the issues with the mental health. And so we decided that we needed to add another team to try to cover as many days as possible, which we did. We are currently at three teams, one officer and one clinician for each team. The team's goal, primary goal is to provide cooperative and compassionate care resources and resources to individual suffering from either homelessness or mental crisis. Some of the resources that we provided that have been talked about before include shelters, referrals, hygiene aids and mobile shower services. Since the teams are staffed with both a law enforcement officer and a trained mental health clinician, our hope units can respond to incidents involving volatile or violent individuals. And the hope is that they are able to use their crisis intervention techniques to de-escalate the situation so it doesn't get to an situational where we're having to use force. We were very successful in that. We also would go out and meet a lot of these individuals who were homeless and develop a relationship with them so that when it did come to that time when things were volatile, we could hopefully diffuse things very quickly. And then we could also use enforcement action if necessary, because we had the law enforcement officer assigned with the team. Teams collaborate with local agencies, conduct monthly programs. We regularly address the safety and welfare issues associated with homeless encampments that you see throughout the city. Often these encampments encroach on the restricted and private property of individuals. And sometimes we do have to take enforcement action because we don't get the cooperation from those individuals. When we talk about enforcement we have a variety of options available to us. These options include education, warnings, stay-away orders, citations, and depending on the circumstances, we can make arrests if necessary. But it is important to note that our first, the hope's first line of action is to treat these individuals with compassion and care. So with that I'm going to hand it off to I believe Ted Smith from the City Prosecutors Office. Mr. Smith, welcome. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, Council members. So my name is Ted Smith. I'm an Assistant City Prosecutor for the City of Pasadena for you all. And I want this is going to be one more tool, hopefully in your tool shed to fight homelessness. You heard from the police talking about just now about citations, etc. Our criteria is looking for low level crimes, meaning the Pasadena Municipal Code violations, petty theft, trespassing, and drug-related offenses, like drug possession, et cetera. The idea is, having gone out with Port and becoming the unofficial member of the Port team over several times is to do this, is to make it unique. Homeless Court is not in a bit self-unique, but our process would be. The service provider would be in the courtroom when that individual was cited. If that individual accepts going to homeless court, we would divert that person and that person would immediately go into interim housing. Right then and there, before being assessed, before having all their documentation, before that they would go to interim housing. Add interim housing, the assessment, navigation, and any kind of treatment services would be then rendered to them. And it would be rendered at a particular location where the service provider would do it right then and there at that location as well to control the situation. Hopefully they would be able to be successful and they would work their case off over a period of time. The process we looked at would be somewhere between six to nine months. And of course, the long will tell you that six to nine months is not long enough possibly to find additional more permanent housing. So we would work with housing with hoping to keep people in a little bit longer to make sure they could transition from interim housing to more permanent housing. So that's the theory on the whole thing. That's what makes it unique. We would do it from the very courtroom itself and have services at the location where the interim housing is at. And then lastly, I wanted to note that obviously you note the cost is not primarily from the police, it's not from the city attorney's office, the cost would primarily be housing and shelter and services rendered for themselves. And now I'm going to turn it back to the last one. So I hope you all like that idea too as well. I had a question because you mentioned the cost but there's not a slide that says what the number is. No, there is a number. Council member. But also, roughly a voucher, a housing voucher is roughly somewhere between $90 to $100 a day. So if you took an individual hypothetically, took one person in court and he said, yes, I would do this for nine months. You roughly would be looking at $100 a day times 30 times 9. So it's housing is not cheap. I'm not going to say here and tell you that this is a solution that is a cheap solution in quotes. It is an expensive one, but it's one that could be and can be successful. Thank you. I'll ask you some more questions later. That's her. I would just add that when you multiply that and put it all together for, let's say, 30 to 32 defendants, it's probably in a million dollar range and we are seeking other sources for funding as well. That's correct. So I didn't mention that yes but yes. So some other considerations you've seen and heard from a number of staff here representing the city, cross section of departments. We just wanted to bring this to the attention of the public as well as the council in terms of your consideration of information in terms of guidance you might offer tonight. The central library with a close no longer has a care navigator available at that site. Transit and dial write services we do our best to coordinate with the other departments. Whether it's transportation of the bus shelters or to the bad weather shelter. And then in terms of encampments yes we are absolutely required to provide notice as a city should there be property seizure as well as for the property to be reclaimed before any potential disposal. Another consideration is that any potential for excessive fines is unreasonably harsh that just can't be done. They cannot become a form of punishment beyond the scope of the offense. And really just to close, we'll recap in terms of the receipt of the information and providing guidance can be related to the services that we currently provide. Can also include guidance related to the PMC related to the outdoor camping in public places or even receipt of guidance from you as the policy making body on the city's role if any on a regional approach to addressing homelessness. Appreciate your patience. I'll turn it back over to City Manager and Mayor. Thank you. Anything else from the staff before we turn? Why don't we turn to public comment? And we have over 30 cards. And so we're going to allocate in order to be fair and give everyone an opportunity to address the council Allow for a minute and a half minute and ninety seconds minute and a half We're going to call Sean Morris C David Sarri Josh Levine greater Sonia Byrd Holly height and if you hear your name please line up either at the right side of the room or the left side. Or actually down the middle. Good evening. Good evening. Mayor. Councilmember Shaw-Moore, with Union Station, homeless services on the vice president of advocacy and community engagement. I'm also a formerly homeless man. Try to keep this to 90 seconds. What we know is that sweeps don't do or that encampment resolution doesn't do is solve homelessness. There's several studies that show the harm that encampment resolution, encampment destruction does do. If we look at our own report on LAMC 4118, that was a very expensive action that ultimately resulted in only two people getting housed. I think it was $3 million, not including police services. There's lots of studies. I'm going to point to a couple of those. There was the Journal of American Medical Association that showed a 151% increase in overdose mortality as a result of sweeps, 11% reduction in life expectancy, and a 50% increase in hospitalizations. Sweeps damage health while being in connections to care. They destroy items needed for survival. They cause trauma and worse and mental health conditions. They destroy life-saving medication, medical equipment. They sever connections to care. They undermine the trust and service providers and law enforcement, and they compromise personal safety and civic trust. There's a whole bunch of things that, the whole bunch of harm that happens as a result of this. And I just want to point out what I think the port team did a really good job of pointing out is that we're talking about our citizens. We're talking about human beings who are in the middle of a real traumatic life event. And doing this doesn't help if it did we would sign on to it but we oppose that kind of action. Thank you Mr. Morse. David Sarri followed by Josh Levine Grader. Thank you. David Sarri and resident district system also a care coordinator with Union Station. So I just want to iterate exactly what Sean just did, which encampments sweeps, they don't work. 4,118, my thunder has been stolen, but it's a really good point. It's been widely studied. We have a case study of LA City. And putting aside the fact that very few people got housed from the endeavor, the very expensive endeavor, fewer encampments were reduced. In fact, the number of encampments, the number of homeless dwellings and visibility has only increased since we started ramping up enforcement. We, I mean LA City, 4,118 since 2019, 2021, all the way to now. So mixed results all aboard. If you just want to see homelessness visibility go away, it still doesn't work. Number two, just from the service's provider perspective, you got to remember these folks have been through an incredibly tragic event. As a service provider, imagine yourself an outreach worker making contact with somebody who is going through this. You're the first person to look at them in the eyes for months. You are slowly regaining the trust that they have lost in the system over those months. They finally found a cool quiet spot to put their heavy bags down and start planning their future. You do an intake and then you come back and they're ready to go. A bed's ready, you can start services and they're gone. Their stuff is gone. There's no trace of them. And you have to start from ground zero. This is how homelessness perpetuates. It's not how homelessness ends. So thank you very much. Thank you. Josh Grader, followed by Sonia Burns. Good evening. Rabbi Josh Lavin Grader, Executive Director of Friends Indeed. First, I want to thank all our partners and ports and the city, housing department and everyone for their presentations and for the work that we all do together. I did present a little bit, I'm going to share to the council in the public correspondence. So a few things to just understand. One is we don't have a full-time emergency shelter. We run a seasonal shelter and it's a weather activated shelter. So even in the cold weather season, it has strict parameters of when it can be open. So that doesn't exist in our city. So I, and some of my staff is here, which I appreciate, give you some ideas. First, this is not a solution to homelessness, these things I'm going to share. This would be a solution to encampments, which is what this is about, although I agree with my colleagues. So we partner with, wow, already? We partner with many motels in this city. $2 million a year, right now, we could put 70 people into motel rooms tomorrow. The motels are ready to go. We just would need the funding. We don't have an overnight shelter. That would cost a lot more, actually, hour shelter, slightly less for a 12 hour overnight shelter every for every night. But I would encourage you to consider the Motel option and really strongly hope that you will. Again, not a solution to homelessness, a solution potentially to encampments. Thank you. Thank you. Sonia Burnt, followed by Holly Height, followed by Millie, followed by Donna Sider, and then Joanna Mariani. Spurt, welcome. Good evening. I submitted correspondence which you should have in front of you. I prepared the charts using city documents. City staff repeatedly uses the term city funded in the staff report and tonight, which is terribly misleading. In reality, city staff moves federal and state grant money around. The city is failed to provide nearly enough local funding to house the very people. It is now considering throwing into jail. That is morally indefensible. The first pie chart that you have shows that our housing department receives less than 1% of all departmental appropriations from the general fund. The second pie chart shows that only 10.6% of the housing department's entire budget comes from city-generated funds, a scant 5% from the general fund. The bar chart shows that in fiscal year 2021 and 2022, the council approved over $20 million in general fund reserves just to pay the annual debt service on the huge rolls bowl debt. That is over twice the total general fund appropriations. The housing department has received over the last five years. The last page of the handout notes that many times the housing department has received over the last five years. The last page of the handout notes that many times, notes the many times the housing department has told you that they need additional funding to provide affordable housing is critical. Finally, the five year plan of the Pasadena Continuum of Care notes many things that will advocate, it will advocate for, to increase housing for our unhoused residents. Those are the things you should be talking about, not throwing our unhoused people into jail. Thank you. I have a quick question, Ms. Bern. Ms. Bernsonia. Sonia, there's a quick question for you. Oh, it's me, Tyrone. How you doing? Good to see you. What part of the presentation tonight made you assume that the city was going to? Oh, it's me Tyrone. How you doing? Good to see you. What part of the presentation tonight made you assume that the city was going to? I just want to know. All of the slides at the top said city funded. No, no, not the city funding, but I throw people in jail. That's what you would be doing. The very people that port is servicing if they're sleeping out in public property, that's what grants pass is about. You can arrest those people, you can find them, arrest them, throw them into jail and start the whole criminal prosecution. That's what grants pass is about. It gives you the choice of what you want to do. Right, but I think the reason why I ask that question is just for clarification is because the presentation tonight did not, not one department came up and said we should arrest people in the room and jail. And they're asking you for guidance now with Grants Pass. It says in the staff report, it says they haven't been enforcing some of the law, some of the ordinances. But now with they have grants passed, they can start doing that again. That's what this is about. No, no, you clarify the question. Thank you. Holly Height, followed by me. I do want to clarify that it could mislead members of the public into believing that this council is considering arresting people and putting people in jail. And I've not heard one member of the City Council or the staff even suggest that. And so I don't want the public to be misled by such a statement. I want to speak to studies about encampment sweeps. The sweeps do not work. They are a waste of resources and who those who are unhoused, they are abusive, traumatizing and inhuman. Sweeps result in people losing critical documents like medication and their driver's license, social security cards. I want to speak specifically to women who are affected by homelessness. Many women win their displaced from their community experience sexual assault as a result of sweeps. So, I want to really emphasize the idea that sweeps and in-campment sweeps do not work, and I know that this body is not talking about criminalizing homelessness but I want to reiterate over and over again that we do not want our city to adopt any ordinance that criminalizes homelessness. Thank you. Thank you. Millie, followed by Donna Sider, then Joanna Miriani, then Hannah, then Andrew Good. Hello. Good evening. My name is Millie and this is my first time doing this. I'm a little bit nervous. I was born and raised right here in Pasadena. My parents even had their wedding reception downstairs. But yeah, this is my first time doing this because I believe that as a lifetime member of Pasadena I cannot allow the city to turn to police violence and sweeps as a means of addressing homelessness What is ineffective solution To the lack of housing unsurprisingly is housing specifically affordable and dignified housing Not shelters that are run like prisons. That's why I agree with the motel vouchers and things like that. Instead of investing our money and our tax dollars into violent and ridiculous sweeps that don't work, we as a community need to invest resources for everyone. Mutual aid groups like Pasadena for all, which is an organization I've been volunteering with for a couple months now, is already doing what Pasadena as a city should be doing, which is number one to listen to unhoused people and actually meet them where they are at and listen to their needs. So we as their neighbors and community do not allow them to suffer from heat stroke, lack of food or even worse. Enforcing sweeps and anti-camp ordinance is a waste of our time and money. The solution instead requires collaboration between unhoused and housed neighbors towards stable and dignified housing for all. Thank you so much. Thank you. Donna Cider, Falba, Joanna Mariani, Falba Hanna, then Andrew Good, and Raquel Calderon. Hello, Council. I have spent my life here in Pasadena, and we've sat through your staff, Bill's filibuster in essence to speak tonight. So here we are. This Council has failed to act with the urgency. Our housing crisis requires. The time to solve this crisis is now. We must reject the enforcement policies that indiscriminately target folks living outside and in poverty. We also must adopt a pledge to our surrounding communities that Pasadena will not seek to push our unhoused neighbors into other cities but will instead provide the shelters, the housing, the interim services to them. An advocate and I were walking on Colorado in my district, district two, and seeing along that boulevard many shuttered businesses that are vacant real estate. So we are here to call out this council for proceeding at a snail's pace, spreading misinformation and using other tactics. Tonight we're here to insist on fast tracking vacancy tax, Jessica Reeves, and also transfer taxes on these abandoned businesses that seem to be just left there instead of using them for needed housing. So we need this dedicated funding stream and that's the way to achieve it. Recently, the LA County Board of Supervisors agreed that there's county funding. We have to be fair to everybody. Bill wanted to go on about how much funding everybody has. Well guess what? Cities need to choose sites. Missider, you're kind of inspired. My main point, excuse me. How many of you will raise your hand now at this meeting and volunteer to provide sites like Jessica Revis did with Hope House. Hope House is one small example of what works. And let's do more. Joanna Mariani, Hannah Andrew Good, then Raquel Callarond and Anthony Menusos. Hello, my name is Joanna Mariani. This is my first city council meeting. I've been a resident of District 6 for 7 years. Before that, I lived in District 4 for 3 years. and I became aware of this agenda item through my recent involvement with Pasadena for all. I'm encouraged by the anecdotes of the the current services but it's clearly not enough and I'm here to express my strong opposition to the practice of conducting sweeps to remove temporary shelters and personal belongings of unhoused individuals. These measures are counterproductive. The unhoused people I met through my work with Pasadena for all and living in Pasadena, they're facing so much difficulty securing stable housing and resources. Instead they utilize whatever they have access to. I can only imagine the trauma experience by individuals who struggle daily just to find impermanent shelters such as tents, and carts or bags to hold whatever belongings and food they're able to find. Sweeps and the destruction of personal property further compound the trauma experienced by unhoused individuals, often leaving them without essential belongings, such as clothing, medication, and personal documentation. This only serves to disrupt any efforts to stabilize their situation. Instead of these measures, we need to focus on more compassionate and empathetic policies that address the underlying issues of homelessness. We need to systemically provide support services, affordable and dignified housing, and resources aimed at helping individuals regain stability. I'm aware that this will take time, collaboration, and money. Ms. Mariano, your time to show. But I believe that this investment is well worth it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hannah, then Andrew Good, Raquel Calderon, Anthony Menusos, and then Terry Stein. Hannah's online. She says in person, but so we'll move on to Andrew Good. Mr. Good, welcome. Thanks. I want to address it real quickly. I'm thrilled to hear that there's no intention of pushing people out of encampments or sidewalks. That was the entire point of the Supreme Court case. That if you don't have beds available, you can push people out of town. That was absolutely the point of the Supreme Court case. And this is a housing crisis. The right time to have addressed this housing crisis was 10 years ago. We should have been building permanent supportive housing, working on making as much affordable housing as possible a long time ago. That's how far in the whole we are. The shape of our cities have to change. You can push people off the street all you want. We already have a law that does that. We already have an ordinance that pushes people off of sidewalks. But you won't solve the problem. There's no place else for people to go. They're not just going to fade into the desert. So unless we double down on services and providing housing for people, we're just going to make things worse. Thanks. I just want to clarify Mr. Gerva the distinction was between putting people in jail. That's very different. Not only to respond. I'm not asking for response. I'm clarifying the distinction is there was a statement made that we would be throwing people in jail. That's very different than clearing encampments. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Raquel Calderon, followed by Anthony Manusos, followed by Terry Stein, followed by Marley O. Hi, my name is Raquel. I've lived in work in Pasadena for seven years. I've been a member of District 3 for those seven years. So I'm here to reiterate that sweeps in campment resolution or enforcement is dehumanizing and will not solve our problem and will in fact only create more problems. There's plenty of people here who are even better educated on the issue that can tell you that sweeps cause the loss of vital documents, medication and further put people into the hole that they are already in. And I am urging the City of Pasadena to refrain from taking the action that grants pass does allow, which is to penalize and criminalize poverty. And I am urging you all to take a stand to be revolutionary here in Pasadena and approach this issue of homelessness with compassion and realism and meeting people where they're at. Thank you. Thank you. Anthony Menusos, then Terry Stein, Marleo, Justin Glover, Zoe Lobb, Mr. Menusos. Okay, well, good evening mayor and city council members, city manager. My name is Anthony Menusos and I'm a proud resident of District 1, where we have beautiful, affordable housing projects that are addressing the homelessness crisis and benefiting our community. I want to thank the City Manager, all the staff who gave wonderful reports this evening, and the housing department for its outstanding work and It's planned to find year-round shelter 80% of our unhoused neighbors by 2029 Like many members of our Residents are city however, I would like to see year-round housing for a hundred percent of our unhoused neighbors in the next couple of years and we can do this. We have reduced our homeless count by 50% over the last decade because of the wonderful work we heard about this evening and we can do more. And I think what we have done is set an example for other cities and what we're doing now. We've been successful. Let's not have sweeps. Let's do what we do best, which is take a compassionate approach and solve our homeless crisis through housing and all the other programs we've heard about. Only let's do it better and let's do more effort to make it work. Thank you. Thank you. Terry Stein, followed by Marlio, followed by Justin Glover, Zoe Loeb, and then Mark. Good evening. I'm a lawyer and I've been a community member here for a dozen years. And before I lived here, I lived in San Francisco, I did poverty law, and I sort of like to offer that perspective here today. I also, as a lawyer, want to say that, as the city attorney said, grant pass is something that we're not, just like the DOBS decision overturning Roe versus Wade. Just because you can now criminalize conduct, just because we are now authorized to do certain things, it doesn't mean that we have to be who the Supreme Court gives us the permission to be. So why doesn't this work as a lawyer? In San Francisco, people were cited for the same things, minor infractions, sweeps that destroyed their documents, and they went to traffic court. So like not even misdemeanor court, just traffic court. And you think that that seems fairly benign, but the thing is that if you're unhoused, if you're being swept, you're losing your documents, you're losing the paper that requires you to go to court, you don't go to court of fine issues, or the longer you don't go to court, more fines issue, and then eventually a bench warrant would issue for folks. And then those bench warrants would keep them out of housing. They would keep them out of substance abuse programs. They would keep them out of school or job training programs. Essentially, what happened in San Francisco? They were the architects of a system that further entrenched homelessness. You can't police your way out of homelessness. You can't police your way out of homelessness. You can't sweep your way out of homelessness. One of the people before me said, the best time to do this was 10 years ago. Okay, the second best time to do something then is now. So. Miss Stein. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Stein. Thank you. Marlio, followed by Justin Glover, then Zoe Loeb, Mark Vinzani, then Claudia Funkay. Man, welcome. Hi. I've been a resident of District 1 for the last seven years, I'm Mr. Hampton. I've been a volunteer with Pasadena for all for the last two years, where a mutual aid group, if you're not familiar with what we do, is just go out and do that direct mutual aid. We're volunteer based, we don't have funding, it's all donation based, we bring out whatever we can in the moment to try and help keep people alive, which not enough people are doing, but shout out to Port, y'all should give them more funding. Also, as everybody here has said, sweeps are not going to stop people from being unhoused. Sweeps are not going to end homelessness. If you sweep people away without when they have nowhere to go and you take their things, you're adding more barriers to the layers of barriers they already have trying to get into housing. When we go out every weekend and talk to people this last week with the heat wave we've been bringing frozen water bottles just to try and keep people from dying of heat stroke, right? The people that we're talking to are elders who've been through Medical debt that they're struggling with people who've lost their jobs people who just haven't been able to get into housing And if you sweep their stuff and take their things away take their IDs take their medications take their documents You're adding more barriers. It's not going to make anything better. And so it's as yes compassion, can we need compassion, but also just practicality and logic, sweeps do not end homelessness, they make it worse. Thank you. Thank you. Justin Glover, followed by Zoe Loeb, followed by Mark Fanzani, then Claudia Funkay, then Stuart and welcome. Thank you, Mayor Council. Justin Glover, I am in District 2, and Bungalau have him. Can you speak into the mic? Oh, sorry. Thank you. District 2 with Councillor Williams and Councillor Rivas. And I just wanted to lend my support for fully enforcing our anti-camping ordinances. And I just wanted to share up just a few stories and these are the same stories we hear from all over the town But I wanted to share mine We live about a couple of blocks from the North Lake corridor. We see businesses struggling to stay open We see encampments near vacant buildings and storefronts. I've seen trash fires and chart areas at the sidewalk We've got the CVS parking lot that's often a camping area and often covered in trash And I've even had a homeless gentleman using the restroom in my front yard. And I sympathize, and I'm so proud of the work the city is doing and staff and nonprofits that we heard today. And I'm glad we heard the example from Jim, one of the homeless folks that we heard of. But I think we failed Jim, because we left him at the train station for four years. And he would have been better off in the shelter. So thank you. Thank you, sir. because we left him at the train station for four years, and he would have been better off in the shelter. So thank you. Thank you, sir. Zoe Loeb, followed by Mark Fanzani, then Claudia Funke, then Bert Newton, and then Jill Shook. Waslo Will. Hi, it's Zoe Loeb. I've been a Pasadena renter pedestrian and bus rider and Jason Lyons district for two years now, and have supported Pasadena for all throughout that time. I value a friendly report with several unhoused neighbors and for the past year, have committed time to the weekly AP for a outreach in Old Town. Our unhoused neighbors make me feel safer here in Pasadena because we share a giving commune tolerant to those in need of care and the right to human decency. In contrast, grants pass and new some have moved towards denying safety to all, including to women and senior and house neighbors we should regard as elders. And sweeps only 13% of our neighbors are offered housing. They are more likely to have all of their belonging stolen and trashed. Any consideration to criminalize our neighbors for having basic human needs rather than focusing on increasing the rate of and quality of offerings is horrifying. We look forward to the adoption of our demands for a good neighbor pledge and an expansion of service to maintain our Pasadena community and Pasadena, rather than forest removal and expansion. Thanks. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Mark Vanzani, followed by Claudia Funki. Sure, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. My name is Mark Vanzani. I'm a recent resident of Pasadena just moving here this summer. It's one start by saying I think we really need to have a change of our vision, how we even approach this issue. City Manager, when you introduce tonight's section, you said there's four key takeaways. One of which is that there is no silver bullet to this issue, which is incredible because the only difference between me and our unhoused neighbors is my house keys, right? I think there really is a silver bullet which is providing housing and services for those who need it. Like I said, as someone who works in the frontline of homelessness, I do share these house keys with five roommates. This is part of the the lifestyle we've chosen, but before working here, I worked in Skid Row and I would want to say if sweeps worked then Los Angeles would be the epitome of the cleanest we have no more issues left half the people here wouldn't have a job right if sweeps were effective we wouldn't see this continued issue we have and I just want to say when it comes to policing and violence there is no nonviolent way to sweep an encampment doesn't matter if someone is a trained licensed social worker? There's no kind way, there's no more a way to approach someone who has nothing and to take their last tent, to take their cart, and to retraumatize them. Take their IDs or reciprocations, they need to get housing. So I just want to say, yeah, again, when it comes to violence, we need to think of a new vision or a nonviolent future. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you sir. Thank you Claudia Fungue, followed by Bert Newton and Jill Shoke Thomas Thai and James Codian Good evening. I hope that we can all agree after tonight's presentations and comments that criminalizing Sleeping in public places when people have nowhere else to go is really a non-response to the homelessness problem. It just tries to hide it. A city manager, Marquez, opened this item number five, more than half of those homeless in Pasadena were previously housed here for an average of 22 years. 32 are veterans. Would we really feel good about sweeping them out of our public places, our neighbors, and those who served our country? Beautiful people like we heard about tonight. Is that really the Pasadena way we always hear about? I really certainly hope not. Pasadena has worked hard to make progress in housing people. Let's add more affordable housing through adaptive reuse of vacant properties. Let's build on the port program and find further creative responses and solutions. And let's be compassionate and smart. Pasadena has to step up to be a leader in a regional approach. And just one final remark that may make some of us here very uncomfortable, but any one of us could be homeless. Thank you, ma'am. Bert Newton, followed by Neil Schoek, then Thomas Ty, then James Codian. Yes, good evening, Mayor and City Council. I worked for 15 years in direct service for people with severe mental illness who found themselves on the street. So I understand the 15 years in direct service for people with severe mental illness, who found themselves on the street. So I understand the temptation to use a rest or the threat of a rest to get people to cooperate, but it is a dangerous tool. And I think in this case, a necessary, it's a necessary because staff report says the police can already arrest people for being in certain places and at certain times and obstructing the sidewalk or their public way. And they've been doing so even during the 2018, the era of the 2018 Boise decision. So we don't need to increase arrests. What we do need, of course, is more affordable housing. Our providers were able to get 410 people housed last year. But the homeless count remained the same. Because housing costs have continued to soar, which has resulted in a significant increase of people experiencing homelessness for the first time. The pipeline into homelessness is probably the number one reason that we haven't made more progress. Measure H rent control here in Pasadena has helped prevent more homelessness, but it is not enough. We need to support Prop 33, the repeal of cost of Hawkins, so that more people are protected. And we need a dedicated source of funding to build affordable housing such as a transfer tax, or what comes out of measure A, which replaces measure H in the county. Only with more affordable housing and more tenant protections will we be able to stop the pipeline into homelessness and make for progress. Thank you. Thank you. Jill Schuchfawba, Thomas Tyfawba, James Codian, then Suzanne Lee and James Maddox. Mr. Schuchfawba. Yes, thank you. I sent you a letter and you can read that. It mostly talks about best practices. And I'm so grateful that our city is following those and that has served us well. And so I hope we add to that best practice to never arrest people for things like loitering. I'm very concerned that that has happened in our city. A few years ago, I was hearing a presentation by the police in our city and it seemed almost boast that we had arrested 1800 homeless individuals in the city that year. And I couldn't imagine how that was possible. So I approached him because I knew at that time we had a lot less homeless folks than 1800. He said that he had arrested them numerous times. And I just thought, and then I asked him for what? And a lot of the times it was for loitering. And so we need to make sure we have some clear best practices added to that list of best practices. The other thing is we're in terrible heat and I'm very concerned about our homeless neighbors dealing with heat right now. And as I look at the weather activated homeless bad weather shelter we do not have the top amount of heat that we should be considering for those homeless neighbors before they get a you. I also heard Ted Smith tonight talk about offering interim housing, which is fabulous. I would love to see that. I'm not aware that that exists. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Thomas Ty, followed by James Codian, followed by Suzanne Lee, then James Maddicks, then Sharon Richter. Mr. Ty. I don't believe Mr. Ty is here, so we'll move on to Mr. Cogin. Hi, my name is James Cogin. I'm a small business owner in Old Town Pasadena. I have all the respect and love for the people that work for and with the homelessness people. And I believe that these are beautiful children of God. However, as a small business owner and many other small business owners in Old Town, Pasadena, we are utterly suffering because of the lack of good policy for the loitering that exists on a daily basis in Old Town, Pasadena. Policies that made based on if it's popular or not. It's based on the fact that the small businesses are the backbone of Pasadena itself, and the homeless crisis in Old Town Pasadena in total is a major detriment and compromises the financial and demographic integrity of all small businesses. And I'm telling you, I've called the police and they say that we can't do anything. Like the other gentleman said, there's been a lot of problems. I've had naked people walking in front of my store where there's children. I've had people defecating in the back of my office. I've had people waving scissors and weapons. And there's just nothing that could be done. And we are suffering. I lay awake late awake at night worrying if I can pay my rent because the flow of traffic in Old Town, Pasadena has gone down so much. And I believe without compromising the humanity of these beautiful people, we need a very good solution for the loitering problem in Pasadena. Thank you. Thank you. Suzanne Lee, then James Maddox, then Reverend Sharon Richter, then Matthew Brahove, and then Lixine Lynn McKenzie. Miss Lee, welcome. Hello, I'm Suzanne Lee, and I'm a former park, a safe parker at Trinity Lutheran homeless for a few years Living in my car. I've recently been housed, but I also worked at friends indeed winter shelter and I have experience with what it really feels like to be homeless. I Want to take issue with the United States Supreme Court's definition that a Memon 8 is not applicable because it's not cruel and unjust punishment, and they define punishment as terror, pain, and disgrace. And I felt all of those when I was homeless, to be homeless has those things. And so making a criminal out of a homeless person doesn't provide them with their amendment 8 protection under the law. And also I wanted to put out there if you have considered what San Diego did for 500 homeless people because they also sweep them, is they created a tent town and they have 500 residents there. That's my suggestion anyway. Thank you. Thank you. James Maddox. Fall by Reverend Sharon Richter. Fall by Matthew Brioff, followed by Lexine Lynn McKenzie, and Jose Madera. Mr. Radix, welcome. Ready when you are, sir. Good evening. My name is James Mr. Mayor, Council Members. My name is James Maddox. I am a policy social worker. In the 1800s, there was a black, there were the black codes. A song was written called Worried Man Blues. The refrain it takes, it takes a worried man to sing a worried song. The first verse said on the original, I went across the river and laid down to sleep. When I woke up, I had shackles on my feet. So in the 21st century, it looks like we're going to have the homeless codes instead of the black codes. Implementing the John Roberts Supreme Court, Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass, Catherine Barger, criminalization of being unhoused. The Pasadena Police Department and the Pasadena Fire Department with the hope and port teams established behaviors that included those politicians that I have listed. They've criminalized the unhoused. That includes the politic surrounding and the surrounding cities will be directed their unhoused towards Pasadena. And they'll probably put a sign on those folks saying, if you are so concerned about them, here are some more for you. I'll leave you with this quote from Winston Churchill. I no longer listen to what people say. Rather, I watch what they do. Behavior never lies. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Raddix. Thank you, Reverend Richter, followed by Matthew Bereo of the Lexine Lynn McKenzie and then Jose Madira and then Denise Robb. Reverend, welcome. I'm Pastor Sharon Richter. I'm at Trinity Lutheran Church where the host of the Bad Weather Shelter, and we also operate the only safe parking in the San Gabriel Valley at this time. I think actually that Pasadena is innovative and forward looking. I congratulate you all on taking this all very seriously. But I do have some concerns. Some of them have been raised already with the heat that we're experiencing. I would like to restate what Rabbi Joshua said, which is I think that we do need to have a permanent shelter We restate what Rabbi Joshua said, which is I think that we do need to have a permanent shelter, overnight shelter in this city, which we don't have, because there are people who are gonna suffer not only in the cold weather, but also in the heat. And it takes a long time to get people housed. We've had people in our safe parking program for two years. It takes a long time and there are only one car crash or one towing away from sleeping on the streets. And so I would urge you to find ways to have temporary shelter while they're going through this process because sleeping is necessary for life. And if they do have a car crash or a towing and they're sleeping on the streets, I'm hoping that they're not going to be arrested. And I don't believe Pasadena would do that, but thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Matthew Brio. Hi. Matthew Brio. I'm a scientist and I'm with a Bundett housing LA. Most of the things I wanted to say have already been said. We don't work. Don't arrest people. But I will add one thing that I think is very important because it's a way to address homelessness that doesn't cost any money, which is just allowing people to build more houses. So when you're considering densities and zoning, when you're considering whether you're going to require parking or any of those things, you're addressing this problem because you're increasing the supply of housing. And there is very much a musical chair's situation that we're going on here where it takes along to get people housed because somebody else has to leave that house in order for it to be vacant. If there's not enough housing and I know this is a regional problem but the decision making is local. So we need to make sure that our housing element is such that we are actually building the amount of housing that it's going to take to solve this problem. And I'm under time. Thank you. Lexine Lynn McKenzie, then Jose Madera. Good evening. So I hope that we as a community can really think clearly and specifically about what we're discussing today. For one thing, I have not heard a single person here say that they are in favor of people being homeless, they are in favor of having people on the streets, even the speakers who are in favor of the enforcement, nobody wants people to be homeless. So we're all on board. Let's think about what tools we have to address that. And let's think really clearly and specifically. Specifically we're here discussing the impact of grants pass, which adds specifically the ability to criminalize not based on behavior, not even based on locations specifically because trespassing as we heard from the police earlier is already enforced and also blocking of sidewalks. Specifically, it is just simply the act of sleeping in public and not sleeping outside of the rooms where they're not allowed. We've heard about how this doesn't work. Earlier today, I was at a health care conference where somebody asked what do we do about our clients who are frequently losing their phones? Something that happens all of the time during sweeps. So when we think about what this allows, what this tool proposed allows forcing people out solely on housing status, that's not a solution. That's the guys of a solution creating more problems. We've got lots of solutions and let's add to the ones that work and let's not go down the paths that don't work. Thank you. Thank you. Jose Madera, then I have Hannah, then Denise Rob, and then Victor Suarez. I'm not sure. Ma' Man, did I call you? Underneath Rob. Okay, great. I don't know this. Then Jose, then Denise Rob, and then we'll go to Hannah, who I think is online. Shredder, welcome. Hello everyone. Born and raised here in Pasadena, I'm gonna work at the Pasadena Community Jobs Center, and I hear it tell a story of a worker. As you know many we get invited to many things in Pasadena celebrations and we took workers to a celebration and one of the workers I couldn't make it for different reasons but one of the workers came to me later that we can said you should have been there why didn't you go because there was a lot of elected officials and a lot of heads of departments in Pasadena and I I asked them, or I asked them, say, well, how many houses have you fixed in Pasadena? How many gardens have you planted in Pasadena? How many streets have you cleaned in Pasadena? Most of the people in that room later you haven't touched as many houses as you have. You deserve to be in that room. And he has beautified Pasadena for over 20 years. He deserved to be in that room. He's an unhoused worker. And he's been unhoused for quite some time for many different reasons of we heard today. Again, he has done many things here in Pasadena, but he's being criminalized. And that shouldn't happen. And I applaud the work that's being criminalized and that shouldn't happen and I applaud the work that's being done I think it's great work but I urge the council and I urge a lot of people watching here especially the council to work on changing the hearts and minds of a lot of folks because just because we don't know someone or we don't understand them doesn't mean we should criminalize them and again and a reminder to everyone, we are all roses. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Denise Rob, Dan Hannah. Ms. Rob. Dr. Suarez. Hi. I'm the encarming Condi. Denise Rob, I live in the wonderful Jason Lane District. And I'm representing troop, Unitarian Church today. This was just that Grants Pass was another horrible, horrible Supreme Court decision and a list of horrible decisions along with overturning Roe and Chevron and everything else. You're probably wondering, it sounds like you're wondering why so many people are here asking you not to criminalize homelessness When you're saying that's not what we plan to do, but I was here when grants pass happened and You all were here and a couple of you I'm not gonna Call you out because I don't want to get another argument with anyone But a couple of you expressed pleasure at the grant's past decision. That's why we're here. That's why we're here. And a lot of you were here with me. So you're wonderful. Thank you. I love what you're doing. I love what you guys are doing. Do more of it. Spend more money. Homelessness is not a crime. I'll say that one more time. Homelessness is not a crime. It's a failure of social policy. So let's fix this. Thank you. Thank you. We will now call the people that are participating virtually, Hanna, Cantrell, then Victor Suarez, then Carmen Condi, Carl Salkin, Amara, Jake Pierce, and Allison Henry. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can't. Go ahead. I'll ring a bell with 30 seconds left. Welcome. Welcome, Hanna. My name is Hanna, and I'm a resident of the sixth district. I'm here today to say that encampments and other visible forms of unhoused life in Pasadena and elsewhere make me very uncomfortable. I think it's fair to say they make most of us here uncomfortable and they should. They make us uncomfortable because they serve as a reminder. Every time we pass an encampment or an unhoused individual on the street, we are forced to confront the reality that our most basic daily necessities and comforts are things that we are not only told that we have to earn, but that we are that we actually have the privilege of being able to learn to earn. We are reminded that we are born, that we were born into supportive circumstances and or with able bodies and minds while others weren't. And we are reminded that those who weren't have to live with the consequences of a reality they didn't choose. Of course, it is not unhoused people themselves who are causing our discomfort. The discomfort comes from the reality of a society. We like to tell ourselves is better and fairer than it is. The tense and the tired faces serve as reminders of a bigger issue that shelterless people are not only not responsible for but but really are victims of. Yet we punish them for reminding ourselves of a life many of us narrowly avoided whether we realize it or not. I'm here today to ask that the council recognize houselessness as a symptom and not the true issue. We can waste our time in resources endlessly battling the symptoms but until we address the underlying conditions, these symptoms will persist. I join my fellow members of Pasadena for all in asking that the city of Pasadena reject criminalization of houselessness, including destructive and traumatic sweeps and ports resources into additional shelters, supportive services, and most importantly, permanent affordable housing. Thank you. Victor Suarez, followed by Carmen Condi, then Carl Salkin. Mr. Suarez, welcome. Good evening, council, Mr. Mayor. My name is Victor Suarez. I'm a resident of District 7 and I'm a member of Pasadena for all. I'm calling today to urge the council to reject the criminalization of our houseless neighbors and instead embrace the housing first approach and tackling our current crisis. All of us should have the shared goal of ending homelessness in our city, but siding with an extremist, supreme court, and embracing an approach that criminalizes our unhoused residents is not the way to do it. The crisis we are in is the result of failing to take the bold action needed to address the needs in our communities. But there are concrete steps we can take right now to ensure that we start turning the tide on this crisis. To begin, we should again reject policies that indiscriminately target folks living outside and in poverty, which are both cruel and counterproductive. We should adopt a good neighbor pledge, a pledge to our surrounding communities that Pasadena will not seek to push our unhoused neighbors into other cities. And lastly, we must develop the proper tools and safety nets to address our crisis, including ramping up housing development and supportive services, developing interim housing, creating a dedicated funding source for housing and services for for unhoused neighbors. Hasidina can and homelessness, but sweeps criminalization. These are not the answers and we must embrace approaches that will actually solve the crisis. Thank you. Thank you. Carmen Condi, followed by Carl Salkin and Amara. Hi. My name is Carmen and I'm a resident of District 2 and I'm here to speak against any ordinance that criminalizes and sweeps our on-house neighbors. I've been doing homeless outreach in Pasadena for like two years now and a couple of weeks ago I ran into one of our on-house neighbors that I hadn't seen for a while. He told me that he had been staying at a shelter here of Pasadena, but that they would only let him stay for a few months. He didn't get any help getting a job, finding any other solution, going to another shelter, nothing. He was back on the streets only a few months later. What he does now is that someone outside of Pasadena, someone in San Giroville Valley offered him to sleep in their car at night. So he takes a bus outside of Pasadena every night to sleep in someone's car. So this is what your city has come to. This is your lack of services and the housing. People have pointed out all the data as to why anti-camping laws are wrong and harmful. And if we're so concerned about people depicting in public or yelling in public, housing them is the only way you will get the issues to stop. Anti-camping laws will not prevent that. it will make it worse. So you need to lower the rent, increase wages, build housing, and subsidize that housing. Thank you. Thank you. Next, Carl Selkin, followed by Amara, then Jake Pierce, then Allison Henry. Ms. Selkin, welcome. Thank you so much. I'm speaking as co-chair of the Social Justice Committee of Pasadena, Jewish Temple and Center. And we met on this resolution. This past week has put so many who live without adequate shelter at extreme risk. Pasadena has taken a major leap forward to address the root causes of warming. As an affiliate group of Pasadena 100, we're proud of and grateful for our city's commitment to zero carbon fuel electricity by the end of 2030. However, we must act with urgency to immediately mitigate the suffering and health impacts of the dangerous heating we have already baked into this present. The unhoused and at risk are core to our group's founding. The Social Justice Committee, Acidin and Jewish Temple, and said it was first chair by Rabbi Marvin Gross whose work and advocacy for the homeless was transformative and created a model for other communities. We follow his vision of Pasadena as a just sitting. Pasadena needs visionary thinking and action to address the crisis, not just temporary or emergency measures. The grants pass ruling, opposed by Charles Dickens and George Bernard Shaw, by the way, has the potential to do either grave injustice or to jumpstart the holistic and comprehensive solutions we need. We hope the latter is the course pass it in its uses as seems to be the intent, at least, of the proposed proposal you are addressing today. Passadena needs to identify— Mr. Schultkin, House of the Bell, well, in sync with the stage divisions. We need to accelerate building conversions, as well as the construction of new affordable support of House— Mr. Schalkin. Motel rooms are a limited necessary but insufficient bridge to the desolutions. Mr. Salkin your time has expired. Thank you very much. Thank you. Amara. Hello, good evening, Mayor City Council. City Manager, my name is Amara Anonimu and I serve Pasadena in several areas, but I first want to recognize the council for hosting this conversation and seeking guidance rather than just simply yielding the tools that are available to you. I want to be clear that in no way shape or form, did I ever believe that the street is an adequate alternative for human beings to live with their dignity and their worth. It's a faulty foundation. And so we're here now and there's this tension to manage and for sure I think we have to manage it wisely to move forward and we have to manage it with reason and purpose and compassion. We can't pretend that at times there are economic impacts to loitering and encampments, but we also can pretend there are also it's a place to house people when we use enforcement. This isn't a zero-sum game, and I reject pity one citizen against another. I think that we can actually uphold the dignity of all members of the community and not fight for the most common denominator. We need compassion first. of all members of the community and not fighting the most common denominator. We need compassion first. What the port team is doing is amazing and incredible. That is actually the ticket. We need to double down on the things that work and invest in the things that would actually lead people into housing, adequate shelters that are permanent, educating communities to not block legitimate solutions like safe haven and safe parking and You know involving faith communities to build developments or even 80 use on their properties to invest in the housing capacity that our time is expired Great. Thank you so much for the consideration Thank you Jake Pierce and then Allison Henry Thank you. Thank you. Jake Pierce and then Allison Henry. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome to the count. Can you hear me? Yes. Go ahead. Great. Thank you. Yeah. My name is Jake Pierce, abundant housing LA and abundant housing passadena speaking in support of a housing for strategy for our on house neighbors. I'm going to take a little bit of a detour. A few times in Pasadena despite my immense privilege, I've gotten the tiniest, tiniest window of the experience of spending a night on the streets. And that's when I camp out for the Rose Parade. Amazing experience. I've done it a few times. Yes, only one night, surrounded by friends of loved ones, their reportable toilets, specifically set up for us campers, and warm clothes, I was pretty comfortable, and even still, one of the worst nights of sleep, I've ever gotten in my life every time I've done it. This is no shit on the beautiful parade. Again, done it many times, it's just an example. By the time I wake up, I'm barely in a state to enjoy this amazing event. I'm definitely not in a state to, you know, pack up my social security cards and my birth certificate and my driver's license and job applications and mail and get swept to a different location. And if we care about homelessness, it's been said before the solution is to build housing for people of all income levels, especially affordable housing, to get more housing choice vouchers into people's hands and to get more people into homes. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you. Allison Henry? Miss Henry, thank you. Good evening, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. All Henry. Miss Henry. Hi, good evening. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes. Go ahead. All right. Good evening. Allison Henry, district three resident at large for the past new mental housing ward known to all of you at council. Apologies for the ambient noise. I'm out of town. I just want to thank the council and staff for the consideration and also just the gathering of the report. The only thing I'll add at the end of this kind of long evening and everyone's been listening to wonderful testimonies, data, and statements. I just go back to the question that council member Miseuda posed. Where are people supposed to go? And I guess I just closed it with the existential question. Where are you supposed to go when you're from here? Where are you supposed to go if you don't want to leave here, here being home? That's all I'll leave it with, and thank you, Council, and public for all of your comments and consideration. Thank you. Thank you. That completes public comment on this item. Okay. Before I turn to my colleagues, let me just report out shortly after the grants pass. I meant to do this after the staff presentation. Shortly after the grants pass decision, I did reach out to leadership of the cog and the city manager and I had a meeting with leadership of the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments and the goal was to ask the cog to take up the issue of grants pass and maybe get some agreement between the 31 cities in the San Gabriel Valley on an approach, an approach that recognizes the decision that recognizes the, you know, that we're dealing with human beings, but also recognizes that it's a very complex issue when people are living on the street. The since then, the cog has taken up the issue and will be coordinating a discussion among all 31 cities. And so I have followed it up with a letter encouraging us to do that sooner rather later. And so I'll report back to the council on the regional approach to this issue as it continues to develop at the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments level. And that's our 31 cities. I also included in my letter an invitation to Los Angeles and Burbank and Glendale to be a part of that discussion. And I highlight them because they're not members of the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments. They're members of a different Council of Governments. And so I think it's important to include them because they're immediately adjacent to us. Oh, and Sal Pasadena as well. Okay. With that, I'll turn first to Mr. Line. Thank you, Mayor, in the queue. I have a lot of questions. First of all, thank you for the presentation and for the kind of holistic approach to everyone who presented and to give us a really broad picture of the state of services we're providing to our and house neighbors in Pasadena. It was great. And if I have a criticism at all, it's that somewhere in there I think we managed to hide the ball because not everyone on this panel understands what we're doing here, which is that to be very clear, the grants pass decision is not about clearing encampments. That is the factual posture that that case arose out of, but the question, the only question presented to the Supreme Court is whether municipalities can subject individuals to criminal sanction for sleeping in public. That's the only question. And whether that violates the 8th Amendment of the United States Constitution, which the Ninth Circuit said it did. Even when Boise was in effect, the Ninth Circuit decision we could and did clear encampments. That's why you saw the City of LA throughout COVID clearing in campings. So the only question we're looking at tonight and the only question we've been asked for guidance about is whether we want to now go back to a different kind of enforcement of our anti-sleeping ordinance. So I don't wanna be disingenuous. I don't wanna fall and I don't want, well, you mean anti't I camping ordinance? Well, camping's not defined. And if you look at the ordinance, what it says actually is that you can't camp and you can't obstruct a public way. So suddenly we're a lot broader than camping. But that's part of what I want here. But what I think we didn't get out of the presentation is where we stand legally. So, and I want to thank you for talking about the regional approach. I agree with all five of our supervisors, including supervisor Barger, who have advocated a care first, non-enforcement approach, and have really advocated for a regional approach where we decide together what we're doing, because otherwise what you're gonna see is enforcing anti-sleeping ordinances as a sort of backdoor means of taking unhoused populations and sending them to other cities. And anecdotally, we're already hearing that we're seeing that here in Pasadena from cities to the west. So it is a real risk and a real problem that messes with the whole model of care as we heard from Nate. Thank you for your presentation. So you're looking for guidance about how we enforce the ordinance but I want to I want to understand what our ordinance does. So the first thing is that when we talk about grants pass we talk about encampments which to me brings to mind the idea of organized communities where we see tents like along the 110 or in downtown LA, where we see communities of people. But our ordinance is not written that way. It's written for it can apply to individuals that can apply to group encampments. So do we have any persistent group encampments. So do we have any persistent group encampments within Pasadena's borders? And if so where are those? Who can answer that? Police? I'm going to ask if members of the port can provide information on that question since they are the ones in the field. Okay. Council member, line, do you mind rephrasing or repeating your question? So do we have like tent cities in Pasadena? Do we have communities where we have persistent collections of people in the encampments? Previously, where there were 10 cities is where we applied and achieved then Camden Resolution Fund grant that is partnership of Union Station Oma Services thousand department and port, which is the one where we go to the Cal Transit and Camden and even Councilmember Jones was able to go to one where there is an encampment of 10s that regularly people are at. Now this is in Camden, that are harder to reach, harder to see, which is why they're so persistent, but with transitioning them to this interim housing in the motel-based voucher system, we were able to expedite care. We could decrease the backflow back into the encampments and see them achieve housing of the 24 people we had and they're so far 13 of them have achieved housing. Very few have gone back in the encampments. So where there was, we actively tried to find solutions through our partnerships in different grants. Okay. So we have a mechanism in place for addressing that kind of encampments. Right. So now we're talking about how we're going to enforce as against individuals who are sleeping on the street. And this is where I need either the city attorney or the prosecutor and I think probably Commander Grasafi or the chief together to tell me I want to know what enforcement looks like. So say it's a Monday afternoon there's a woman asleep in an alley off of El Pasadena. She's asleep in the daytime because she's been up all night making sure that she's not sexually assaulted or robbed or otherwise harmed. So she's sleeping in the heat of the day in the shadow of a vanilla off of, say, in Old Pasadena. First of all, is her sleeping in that alley does it violate the ordinance as it's written? I'm going to ask, I think Tim Welman or Ted Smith to step forward, but just sleeping doesn't violate if they're blocking the right of way, if they have stuff, I'll call it stuff, but if they have personal items that are expanding and blocking the public right of way That kind of thing would amount more to but if she's just kind of in the you know on the side laying down So we're not contemplating we wouldn't that wouldn't be a violation of the ordinance I don't believe so but I'm gonna turn it to Tim well So council member if you're referring to 3.24.110A8. As I read it, that would require the conduct or the sleeping, if you will, to be in a park or upon grounds of the Civic Center libraries or other municipal buildings. So in your hypothetical, if it was a non-public place, say somebody's business, that would not violate this. What about a second? It would be another section, a particular section. Good violation. Yeah, that's passing. Penal code section 647E. 647E. And then your question about what enforcement, if any, would take place. That wouldn't be our area. We only get it if there was a citation and it's brought to our office for review. So that would be a question for the police department with who they would cite and then it would be referred to the prosecutor's office if it was cited. Who would you say? And I think it's important to remember how agregist it is. Is the individual cooperative with us? Can we remember? There's different options as far as the enforcement goes. We can warn them. Right. We'll write down the legislation. We just sleep. We would try to wake her up and try to get her to move on. So we would. We would. It's possible because an alleyway is very likely being used access by vehicles. She could be in danger to herself. There's a variety of things that we have to look at when we're addressing these issues. What about on a sidewalk? Depends if she's blocking it. If it's preventing others people from accessing wherever they need to go. So it's possible, yes. And do we have a definition of obstructing the sidewalk? Is it, is it, if people can walk around freely? Is that an obstruction or is that, is that at the officer's discretion? It would generally be based on the facts and that officer's interpretation of if they're space. Cause there is a true definition of a percentage of a sidewalk or a public wide of way that constitutes obstruction. It's one of those you know it when you see it. So even even the camping ordinance it's not necessarily about being asleep. Both of these are more about blocking the public right away. Public right away. Or access. Which we can already enforce, right? We can keep people from blocking the public right away. So then the question, I'm gonna need you again, Commander. Yeah. You don't even, you don't even. So then, what are the, what's the menu of responses that's available to an officer? Again, they can warn them. They can wake them up, warn them. They can get them to move on. They can check to see if what their criminal history is and if they have arrest warrants, oftentimes, these, some of these individuals will have been cited up very often and they fail to appear for court. They may be arrested for the warrants. We can issue citations if there's somebody who, depending if it's private property or public property, there's a variety of options. And arrest, we'll be the last option, right? Depending if it depends on our property. On property, are they a danger to themselves too? Oftentimes, these individuals are a danger to themselves. Right, so what I think we get messy, let me come back to you. I think we get messy and conflate these issues. So we're not talking about individuals who are danger to themselves or to the public at large. I think we have mechanisms in place and we have great mechanisms in place for addressing that circumstance. We're really talking about someone who is sleeping in public or lying down in public with some bags. So that's what I'm talking about right now. And what really, that's the question that's an issue in grants pass. It's not about someone who's a danger to the public. So if we go, if we go, if we go, if we go, if we go, if you're blocking the alleyway, that's a danger, you know, it's not a 51, it's not a mental health issue necessarily. It's a public safety issue of potentially a threat from someone driving by. You mentioned all these. Or potentially not. It depends where in the alley. That's correct. Right, so, okay. But we're not looking for reasons. I'm trying to find out how we're gonna enforce this. So the many places where we see someone lying down. Let's say in the grass at the marketplace, at the corner of California and Lake, where people do sleep in the daytime. Maybe that's an easier circumstance than in alleyway. You would try to wake them and move them along. That would be our first choice. Then if you move them along, do you follow them? No. Where did they go? I don't have the answer to that because I don't know. Because we don't follow them. We don't follow them. They move somewhere else, right? And we do, again, remember we have port and hope. So depending on the circumstances, and that's where the officers have to use some discretion. And if it's someone who's there all the time, depending on the circumstances and that's where the officers have to use some discretion. And if it's someone who's there all the time and they say, okay, Port, Hope, can you do something to help with this and it takes a long time to get in. And for sure we need that. For sure we need people to come and help out particularly with chronic people who are on a particular location regularly who are maybe not quite disturbing the piece but right at the edge. And so we have a response to that. But I'm really the question you're asking us tonight is for guidance about how to enforce our anti-camping ordinance. And I'm trying to understand what the circumstances look like so that we can provide guidance. And so far, all of what we're talking about doing is what we do now. So then the question is, do we want to ramp up, I think, is the question, do we want to ramp up citations or arrests? So what are we looking at for citation? What's the fine? Typically, the fine would be $0.00. What's the point of the citation? Well if there's a citation and the case is referred to our office and if we file it, then it will be to connect to services. Okay. That's typically, again, generally, it's a care first approach. If there is a fine for it, of course, but if someone is unable to pay the fine, the court's not gonna impose a require a fine, could be suspended, it could be stayed, not issued at all. So the court's not gonna require it, but are we asking for it as a city? No. Okay. So we're we're not adding to their economic distress with this process. Perhaps coming to court, right, if you're talking about what economic distress might be included in that, public transportation, walking, whatever, but for the court case itself, we are not expecting there to be any fines. Okay. And is there ever, can you really realistically, chief and commander, can you conceive of a circumstance when for sleeping we would arrest someone? No. Say they keep coming back to the same location. No. So they're there every day and we wake them up and say you got to move along. Not for sleeping. But we have to understand that there's a lot of elements here. There's the public safety component. There's the risk to themselves. But the other part of it is having a lever to get people to services. When we're dealing with the chronic folks who are in places where given all the things that we've heard tonight about weather and about all the other things, we have to have the ability in some cases to have a lever to get them to services. If they won't get themselves to services, I think it is prudent of our personnel, the port team, the hope team. That's what all these apparatus are designed to do is to get them to services. In the most acute cases where people are putting themselves at risk or putting other people out as it were. The blocking of the sidewalk question is an example. I think that we are very from a police department perspective, very aware of what people do not have and what they need. But there are clear, I think there's typically clear evidence of whether someone is blocking the sidewalk and people have to walk into the street to get around them Whether there's your nation and defecation as you've heard in the presentation Those are all public safety issues. Those are all significant public safety issues that we have to take into consideration So when we make a decision we're trying to do it based on a care first approach to get them to services No one in this room that I would guess. You raise your hand if you're if I'm wrong. But no one disagrees that those, if people are having to walk into the street to get around or dealing with defecation and urination in public, those are things we deal with already. Not the question that's presented in grants path and not what we're here to talk about. So those things have to be addressed. Safety issues have to be addressed. Safety issues have to be addressed. There's one example that- Why are you talking about whether people can camp or sleep? There's one example that I will give you that we've had folks on the street blocking businesses right in the front of doors and businesses. And we simply get them up and move them around to the side where they're not blocking a business where they can do their camping or whatever it is they need to do to sleep. We've moved them maybe a grand total of 12 to 15 feet just simply so that we don't have the other elements or components that we have to deal with. The people on the businesses have some rights. There's a whole lot of elements that come to it, but what we're trying to do is empower the officers to make salient decisions in the field that do not go against the public health and do not go against what it is we're trying to do with the care first mission. So all of this is consistent with what we're doing now, correct? All of that's we're doing now. Yes. OK. Do we ever put people on a train? Would we ever? If people wanted to get on the train, we'll put it to the train. I mean, strongly suggesting that we're on a train. Putting people moving them to other places in other cities is not something that we do. That absolutely cannot happen. But conversely, we have a lot of people get off the train and come off the platforms into our jurisdiction. And in those circumstances, we really try to get our port partners, hope partners, and folks working with the Metro and LA County to try to find out what is the best way to get those folks to the right service. So they can get back to the services or local community best right. So when you're not from Pasadena it is important to get back to LA or long beach so that your service. Well otherwise the services here will become a magnet and that is certainly a concern. Right. Thank you chief. I have a couple of questions for Port. And thank you for the presentation, so Nate, or Tony, or both of you, come up. So one of the things that we saw in some of the public comments was the idea that people didn't want to see increased enforcement with most people, but with the people who are highly resistant to services. So I don't know if you have actual data on this, but if not, can you give me your perception? What percentage of our population is resistant to services? So we don't have data on that, but just from our experience on the field, I think you could say the same as that it's very minimal of people that want services one because they already know us we have a smaller city compared to other cities so they know who we are their peers know who we are we have a reputation here in the city so when we see somebody nine times out of ten they want our services they want to go forward with our team it's the ones that come I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. wants to pursue detox over living if they want to pursue services and they may say no on Monday. They may say no on Tuesday. They may say no on Wednesday. But when we ask on Thursday, what happens if they do say yes? So there is a lovely shoe store up on Lake near the good well with a woman who is not receiving services from us, not the Metro, not the hope team, and she was And able to move didn't even meet all the ADLs, but finally one day she said that she was ready and she was a veteran And she was able to accept services to go to the VA hospital despite being very resistance before But that's why we always ask every time if they're ready today I don't want to put you on the spot, but I'm going to put you on the spot. I'm already on the spot. And ask, is it, do you see an advantage in increasing the stick side of our carrot stick approach? I'm looking at my boss. I know. I know you are. Do you see a benefit? I will say that I haven't seen it from our officers, the stick. They do call us. They are familiar with our team. So when we are on, we are the first call. And not only from them, but also from our district liaisons and our community that is here. They will call us. They have our phone numbers. So the stick approach, I haven't seen it. Are there laws that need to be put in place? Certain situations for some individuals and that's why they might be angry, yes. But if the stick approach does exist, there's a quote saying, never miss a good opportunity from a crisis. And we hope to be the good opportunity in a crisis, if that is present. Great. Thank you. You answered that very politically. It's the same. I appreciate it. So, I'm My first one Back to the city manager I Am at a loss. It sounds like what we're doing is working Sounds like we don't have a recommendation for doing anything different I would like to know I know this is a Highly complex issue and highly politicized, but That's why we brought you here for your leadership. Do you have a recommended, do you recommend any changes to our approach? So I want to be clear that this presentation tonight was not meant to be a recommendation to do X to enforce the criminalized to do anything. It was if you look we worked hard on the title which is receive information which I think you got a lot of information and provide guidance relating to the city's efforts to address issues associated with homelessness. So it was meant to be broad to give you the full picture, the context, the challenges, the complexity. And we don't have it's a policy question at the end of the day. We have on the books what's attachment to your report. We have enforcement of that. I think the numbers were, if I recall, something like 600 cases before Boise that were citations from the police department over to the city prosecutor. And since 2018, that number's gone down to 60. So it's clear that because of the legal landscapes, things changed. the city prosecutor and since 2018 that number has gone down to 60. So it's clear that because of the legal landscape things changed. So we were just trying to put out to you, here's where we are today. The legal landscape now has changed again. And I think I said early on we're not going to make a change to how we're doing. Because grants pass doesn't require us to do anything. I think that point was made by Ms. Qsack as well. And I said we're not gonna do anything unless there's a policy change from the council looking at this whole issue and giving us direction, but we will implement the council's direction. So yeah, I think the legal landscape didn't change. I mean, that's part of the point, as much as our policies changed after it looks like from after 2018. Because again, we see in grants pass both are only about the issue of whether you can subject to criminal charges. So I appreciate the presentation. I think we're doing well. We have times when we could use a maybe a more directed response when someone is disturbing the piece. But I don't see any for any change to what we've been doing since 2018. I think the Supreme Court, Mr. Line, and maybe you have a different understanding, looked at the issue of whether municipalities or local governments can enforce that, a whole slew of local. The only question presented was about criminal sanctions. So they, and it was a slate of criminal sanctions that started with a citation with no fine, then a citation with a fine, then a greater fine, then a greater fine, then a rest. Well, and also whether they get enforced things like exclusion from a park when there's a failure to follow orders or follow an instruction. And so I think the point of the court was if we have local laws in place, as long as we're not enforcing those laws based on an individual's status. But we have a rational reason to enforce those laws, including, you know, it's a whole different issue. The constitutional reasoning of the decision is a whole other thing. But I think it's a whole slew of enforcement issues that the court essentially said, I mean, the Spaligas have the right to enforce. So long as you're not doing that on individual status. Yeah, I think that's really not with the case stand. It really is about the criminal, which is why the eighth amendment is so complicated. We are just a point of order that the most junior council members have the floor for a half hour. Now he cares passionately about this. With respect, we don't have a seat in the order system here. We're not in guns. But if every member takes half an hour, we're going to come over. Yeah, yeah. But I just wanted, and maybe it's a question for the city attorney. But my understanding is that the court looked at the whole issue of escalation, everything from civil fines to exclusion from private property, public property and public rights of way are issues that were looked at. I think we read it differently. Okay. Mr. Messuda. Thank you, Mayor. And the city manager, if the purpose was to be very informative, it was. And I want to thank you for that. I want to thank staff and I want to thank all the public comments that were made today. You were all very informative, and I want to thank you for all caring about the unhoused. That's really one of the purposes why we're here today. Director of Housing Bill Wong, when you started your presentation, you talked about the County Board of supervisors place measure A on November 5th, 2024, General Election Bill. Correct? If approved, measure A would replace measure H's quarter-sense sales tax set to sunset in 2027. If measure A passes, millions of dollars may be available directly and indirectly to the city of Pasadena Could flow through the city of Pasadena So here's my question What are the chances of The measure passing in Pasadena in November to help our Pasadena unhoused Community in November to help our Pasadena on House community. Well, I'm not familiar with the polling on it, but I will say that if measure A is passed that we will, it includes basically replacement or continuation of the homeless services dollars that we've been receiving here in Paschina, and it adds a couple million dollars annually for capital development in order to help us to build more housing. So it adds that piece, and that's one of the additional things that we would get through measure A that we don't currently have through measure H. Very important. And lastly, I want to again thank the public for their contributions to this meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Jones. Thanks, Mayor. Thanks, Miguel and Bill and your team for, I think, the very informative presentation. You know, I've been out there touring, you know, different programs and we've toured the Safe Haven program. We've toured Safe Parking in East LA. Friends indeed. Hope housing for students, the program in Al Tadina. And I've even done right alongs with Port and the hope team. And I really think to echo the sentiments of, I guess, the most junior colleague here. I guess. I still say that too. That's the second most. Second most. I think you're the Second mode. Second mode. I think you're the most junior. I've been on here longer than you. All right, anyway. You know, I think we're doing a good job. But I think we're doing a good job. I just think we have to... Everyone's got equal standing in my eyes here. There you go. Thank you, Mayor. We have to increase our efforts. And I think, you know, I heard a public speaker said, let's double our efforts on port. And I've been out there of port and using the ERF funds, we toured and we went and saw an encampment on a CalTrans property. And it just so happens that that person living in the cow trans or living in that encampment was a former classmate of mine from elementary school. And he didn't know about the services that Port offered. And his life changed. I know I checked up with, or I checked in with Nathan. Just I think when was that last week or two weeks ago, I checked up on him. And he's in a motel. He's getting services. And you can just tell. I mean, the transition in his life is going to be tremendous. Obviously, he's unhoused because certain things occurred in his life, but now he's getting the help he needs. And I think that if we increase our efforts on port, I really think we could be successful and maybe it'll truly never solve the issue of unhoused, but we definitely can continue to make a dent in it. And so I guess my questions for the poor team is the resources that you would need from the city council. So do you have access right now to temporary motel vouchers? How much money would you need? That would just be your autonomy to meet the immediate needs of the person to put them in a motel to provide services as well. First of all, I'd love to give you another update on your classmate that he did enroll in mental health services. Oh wow. And today, as requested to go to rehabilitation as well and his been in recovery. Oh wow. And the team was able to go out and schedule an appointment to go into rehabilitation for hopefully three months or longer and go into so we're living. So thank you for your work on the in Camman and outreaching with them. In terms of having the proper resources and things like that, I think would be more appropriate if we have a meeting with my director Manuel Carmona and everything else. We are actively applying for grants that expanded the ERF to go beyond just culture and encampments but that has not yet been awarded and we always keep our eyes out to expand the resources but all of your support is very much appreciated. It would go beyond encampments, I guess, well, the definition of the piece. Yeah, so no, that's great. In the application, it would include, like, say, parks or libraries, as libraries are such a safe space for people who often very rarely get outreached due to them being harder to see inside. And this would help out those members of the community as well. Yeah, because, you know, there are certain spots in the city that, you know, we were experiencing unhoused issues and I think that funding would definitely help there. And, you know, I represent a lot of residents who live in supportive housing. And so, you know, I went in there and talked to them and had coffee and teas with them. And a lot of them have said, let me make sure, where's my note set. A lot of them had said that there's supportive service in these buildings, but it's not a sustainable staff. It's not an adequate amount of folks providing the services. So what could the city do, or what could this council do to help support that effort? Because you know, there's a lot of permanent support of housing in the city, but the support is not at a level that the residents, what their words, that they would want. I like it off her as opinions that I'm not sure if it's appropriate for me. Sure, yeah. And do conflict of interest in a couple of things. But I do hope if there's anyone else that's able to provide it. Yeah, is there anyone else to provide an opinion bill? Yeah, I'll just mention that we do have five permanent support of housing projects here in Pasimony. And then many dozens in scattered site housing, and they all need services, some intensive case management services. And there are cases where it's been hard to maintain sufficient numbers of case workers. This is kind of an industry wide issue with homeless numbers of case workers. This is kind of an industry wide issue with homeless services that since the pandemic, there has been a lot of money flowing into homeless services. And one of the bottlenecks is the inability to find enough staff to implement that. It's challenging. It's really, it's hard work, it's very, very, the people who do it are very mission driven and really committed to this kind of work, but it is not always easy to find and hire and retain enough staff consistently. Right. And how many people have we permanently housed? to find and hire and retain enough staff consistently. Right. And how many people have we permanently housed? I guess last year we may not have that data. Yeah, last year was 410. Maybe I can chime in on that, because I do think it's a relevant number. In 2022 throughout the whole calendar year, we housed permanently housed 310 people. And then in 2023, we housed 310 people and then in 2023 we housed 410 That's a hundred person increase about a 32% increase very proud of Bill and his team and everybody who works on that issue Between the two years if you think about it that's 720 people And as someone mentioned we had a point in time count of 556 that stayed flat And I think was also pointed out that's because the pipeline is so robust. And that's a problem we have. We do have homeless prevention efforts, but the pipeline just keeps coming at us. I do want to mention a hopeful statistic and that is point in time is one day, I don't remember if it's February or March, end of January, and of January. They go out in the count for one day. But the real number, the more important number, is how many people fell into homeless in Pasadena in one year. And that number in 2022 was 1,208. And in 2023 was 1,097. That's a 9% decrease or a decrease of about 111. And I note that sort of difference of number 1, 11, yet we housed another hundred people. We know to solve the problem or to make real meaningful progress, we have to have more permanent support of housing. So Bill and his team are constantly looking, we're constantly, I think the last agenda might have had another potential project on the, you all approved. You all have been incredibly supportive and we're going to keep at it trying to expand permanent supportive housing as best we can and we have had some success. Full of contained permanent supportive housing. That's correct. We're trying to get meaningful and contained meaning units that have their own bathrooms, their own kitchens and then they have you know permanent supportive housing we were talking about supportive services. They require generally I don't know if it's always the case, but as I understand it generally, that's a county obligation. The county of Los Angeles is the one that provides the supported services. We'll continue working with them. If they get that half-cent sales tax on measure A, that will double the number from a quarter-cent to half-cent. They'll have more resources to be able to support more permanent support in housing units and because we're a separate COC one of four in the county we will also get additional money from that half-cent sales tax if it were to pass. Okay, and I'd also just like to mention that you know over the last six months you know we've opened the the Hope Center permanent supportive housing they're including a set aside for veterans and then we opened the Heritage Square South project in your district for chronically homeless seniors. And then we opened the transitional housing project for homeless PCC students, phase one, and then even last Friday, many of us were at the ground breaking for a new 20 unit permanent support of transitional housing project for almost families in District 5 by door of hope. So there's a lot happening. We are pushing as hard as we can to complete projects, both permanent supportive housing and interim housing, which is the transitional housing project and to keep the pipeline full as much as we can. And we are, I think everybody here, all the teams here are constantly looking for appropriate funding sources, available funding sources that work here in Pasadena for our needs. And this is something we're gonna continue to do to press on all fronts. And Council Member Jones, if I can just add, a couple of times we would say we don't have shelters in Pasadena, we do actually have a shelter for adults. We have a shelter for families that run by union station, not by friends indeed. That's in addition to the bad weather shelter, so I just wanted to make sure the public and the council understood that. And then finally, it's a little bit different but it's related very much related. We also have here a requirement when you develop a project 20% of the units have to be affordable and that's on the higher end of what's required. So we're on a good path. We're really doing our level best. It's the pipeline that is really always getting us and not just getting us. I was telling folks I went to visit MacArthur Park the other day and was surprised at what I saw and saw the challenges. There's just tremendous challenge in the area and we're going to keep at it because we know it's not going to get better on its own. We have to keep redoubling our efforts every day. From what I'm told, the shelters are at capacity, right? Oftentimes yes. Yeah, so how many beds would we need and what's the estimated cost or you may not have that well I don't have the estimated cost, but we have currently in our point-time count over 300 unsheltered individuals that in that particular point and then we would just enter into agreements with the motels and then give port the- We have some- we have some motel vouchers. But yeah, our goal with our homeless plan is to get to 80% capacity by in five years. So, but we're not there. Right, right. We don't have the available spaces. Right, we don't have 300 hotel vouchers. But that isn't express goal and we're working on. But what an eye-to-eye-to-expanse-elters. And I would want to make sure that those vouchers didn't add another barrier, right? Like, I don't want it to impede on them getting temporary housing or them getting another bed. No, usually the benefit is that the individual now is in a set location in a secure, safe location and where they can start to these sort of get connected to more services and get connected to permanent housing. And then what is our unhoused population during the day compared to in the evening or overnight? I don't know that there's, I don't know that there's a difference. We count them, if they're unsheltered we keep we count them as unsheltered so I don't think that there's a difference during the point in time they go out late at night and very early in the morning so that that counts both okay because what I mean from what I've been told from some of the folks at you know Robinson Park is that they there was no clinical demand met for them overnight. Like I guess some of the services are not open that they would need and so the hope team would show up and I guess the services that they requested or required wasn't available overnight for them. Well this is a kind of an ongoing issue, an industry-wide issue that a lot of services are available during, they're not available 24-7. Right, right. Yeah. That continues to be the case. So we don't have all services available 24-7. And then I, you know, I just commend the efforts that Port is doing. And have we looked at, you know, there's just a Nathan and Tony Z. But have we looked at adding another FT to them? We have looked at adding another team. There's like anything in the space, there's a lot of complexity with that. I think a biggest part of the complexity is what was just said. Port connects people to services. Right. And so we have the port team. I don't know the exact schedule, but they're trying to work mostly in the daytime, Monday through Friday when services are available and they meet people and connect with services. My understanding is that those services are not available in nights and weekends. And I see Mr. Carmona, who has looked at this issue. Maybe if you'd like, welcome you to give some perspective on that. But we have vetted it. I will note that we are looking for grants all the time. We got a, I believe there's a Congressional Direct It spending grant for port. But actually the timing of it was didn't align and so we had a gap and so we paid for port through the general fund because that's a priority I hear that's a priority from the council and how we expand it I'll let Mr. Carmona describe some of the complexity. Yeah I would just say good evening everyone manual Carmona acting director of Republic Health I would just say that expanding the team is, you know, we encounter the same bottleneck, you know. One of the challenges is placing people into interim housing. Of course, we have access to motel vouchers. But the team works Monday through Friday, primarily business hours. And the real challenge with doing anything after hours over the weekend is that those services that we connect them to are not open. In addition, the focus is on nonviolent issues or when folks are not in crisis. And so when they're in crisis, usually that could happen after hours over the weekend. And the team isn't really designed for that. They're really designed to provide case management, talk to folks when they need help and then connect them the services. In terms of expanding, I have heard the question. We really appreciate the kind of words that everybody has shared. We know that the port team is actually doing, and we're incredibly proud at the Health Department of the work that they're doing. But we know that there's a lot of needs here. And so one of the things that we really need to do is assess what's working well and where the best investment of any kind of city funding would do the most good. And certainly, Port, we can look at expanding, but we know that there's also bottlenecks. So we have to figure out how we can expand across the board, not just in one particular area of our approach. Right. And part of the expansion, I know Port has a part time nurse. Have we looked at bringing on a full-time nurse? Well, we're fortunate. It's a partnership with Huntington Hospital. So the nurse, Nurse Patty, she's a lovingly called. It's actually coming from Huntington Health. And so that's an in-kind support from our local hospital and not funded through the city. But that's part-time, right? Three days a week. Three days a week. Three days a week. So is there, I guess, could we, I don't create another partnership with them to have another nurse two days a week or another three days a week? I think what we're seeing is a model is working. So I definitely think the Huntington Hospital will be open to that conversation or maybe other regional partners like other hospitals. So we can look into it. Cool. Thank you. Thank you for all your work. Thank you, Mego. One thing that I'd like to add just to remind that City Council did allocate, I believe it was four years ago, funding to add union station case managers to the hope team to enable the hope team to be able to provide longer term involvement with the individuals and the families that they meet. So that has been an ongoing additional commitment that City Council made I think within the last four years. Thank you, Mayor. I'm sorry, Ms. Rebus. Thank you, Mayor. Like I start by thanking staff. It's clear from everything we've heard tonight and the work product that we've seen that staff's dedication and care is their day and day out. And so I want to thank every staff member who spoke today and everyone who we don't see who's doing this work day and day out. And so I want to thank every staff member spoke today and everyone we don't see who's doing this work day and day out. The other thing that's self-evident is staff's expertise on this very complex multifaceted issue. But it was a public commenter who came here and jangled their keys and made a very important point that as complex and multifaceted an issue as homeless as is, at the end of the day it's about homes and we fight homelessness with homes. That kind of masks what a complex issue it is, but it's a whole pipeline as the city manager is discussing. We have to make sure we have enough housing to begin with. We have to make sure we have enough affordable housing to make sure we are rehousing folks who are falling into housing. We need to make sure that folks who are dealing with other issues, mental health in particular have those access to the services so that they can get housed and stay housed. And then reaching our most chronically unhoused folks is kind of the hardest problem to attack that we need to work on as well. So again, I appreciate staff's expertise on these issues and I appreciate the fact that we are not going to solve all those issues tonight. It's already getting late. We're coming up on 9 o'clock. And so I don't want to rehash too much of what Councillor Laihan has already touched on. I want to thank you for your line of questioning. I had many of the same questions and concerns. And thank you for just initially just highlighting what we are doing here tonight. What is the question that has been presented to us? Because as it is teed up in the staff report and I think you also saw their response from the public tonight. The fact that this was described as a discussion about what do we do about our camping ordinance in light of grants pass, which is in grants pass that case is all about criminal sanctions and arrests being permissible now. And so this again we were asked what are we going to do now. And so this again we were asked what are we going to do now. So to hear at some point earlier the mayors say thankfully and I am grateful to say that arrests are not on the table or that's not something that we're interested in discussing. I think it's helpful that it would have been helpful that that was part of the framing of the discussion from the outset. I think we could have had a much more focused and narrow discussion instead of inflaming a lot of our fears about going a direction that I don't think a majority of residents in our city want to go in. But we're here and we're having this discussion now. And so I don't wanna retread too many of council member lines questions, but I did wanna ask our police department a bit about our ordinance that prohibits folks from being in the parks from 10 p.m. to I believe it's 6 a.m. 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. yes if Commander Krasoffee could come up again for some more questioning so this is an ordinance that is currently in our books and we do enforce that correct. That is correct, yes. And could you just walk me through very similar to what you did with Council Member Lion, what enforcement looks like for that ordinance? Because it seems like it's getting at our anti, it's getting at the same issue that our anti-camping ordinance does would if we enforced it, but in a slightly different way. So what is the current status quo with this ordinance and how it's enforced? So generally what happens in these cases is we will once the 10 o'clock hour hits, we will have some of our park safety specialists or officers who are available, time permitting go and do, announce been saying that parks now closed, you need to vacate those types of things and then we'll let it give them a little time to get out of the park and then we'll later then go toward and incite them. A lot of times call service don't allow for us to to go and actually do the enforcement side. That's what I was going to ask is I get residents who often call in particular Villa Park where we've had been having this issue recently. They'll make calls in my sense is that in your priority of calls at any time a day it's probably pretty low priority. Right, and we have, I don't know how many parks we have, I think it's in the 40s, I think is the number. So oftentimes though, if a particular park we're in complaints about a particular park, we will do what we programs there, we will go and start either late at night or early in the morning and do the enforcement. And my understanding, I think you mentioned this before, not just right now, but that we usually lead with our hope team, making contact. Hope team or park safety. And I left that one key step. We will often times go week or a couple days up to a week in advance and give warnings to people and say hey, this is a violation being the park after 10 o'clock. You must be okay, you can't stay here. And we'll give those warnings, provide resources if necessary, and then we will do the program a couple days later Got it and so when you do make a citation what what happens then in this situation the case gets filed with The prosecutor's office and then they take it to the court system Okay, and then it's actually the same process that was we heard before yes, I'm there on out. Okay. Thank you for that. I appreciate that Bill you had mentioned earlier that we had some of our homeless services providers available for questions. I'd love to ask them just very briefly about what a change in enforcement would mean for their work. I think hope spoke a little bit about that a few moments ago, but if I think friends indeed, homeless services, a hoeing station and a door of hope, yes, I'd love to hear briefly from them if they're able to share what that would, how that would impact their work. Thank you. Yeah, I will personally start about how some of the enforcement would affect work even as it pertains to permanent housing. Even with the implementation of enforcement and the rise of sweeps, these are communities, writing Camdener communities, I think, that's something that we've been trying to get across. And so word does get around. Immediately right off the bat, you are going to start seeing some institutional distrust, you are going to start seeing some institutional distrust you're going to start seeing Certainly folks who are even formerly homeless like now they're in permanent supportive solutions You know sewing that distrust becoming shut-ins not wanting to leave You know the behavior that comes with homelessness in the trauma that comes to homelessness It you know it can itself can in and of itself be visible, right? The behavior that comes with homelessness and trauma, that comes with homelessness, can it in and of itself be visible? There is a lot of fears, although it may not always be warranted, that implementation or coordinating enforcement, pro-enforcement policies, enforcement policies would leave a lot of discretion of to officers to sort of make calls, right? And I think that's like kind of been addressed to. And those like calls, those like judgments that, you know, even the most secratic and brilliant officer in the world can sometimes mess up because it's an incredibly complicated issue, you know, that so's once again distrust. And that can often end up penalizing or citing somebody who is in a permanent support of housing situation, but still leaves the unit. So that's what instance where certainly would affect work in the permanent housing space. And in addition, the pipeline has been talked about, right? And so maintaining contact with folks who have lost a phone and now they have to go out and even though they're housed, they don't have transit. So they have to go out and make tracks to a place that they don't necessarily know how it works because I wasn't or a care coordinator wasn't there to explain that to them. And so they're in this sort of adventure out into public. They haven't been housed for very long, even though they are. And so that, again, enforcement policies could leave them up once again to penalization know, penalization or threatening or just, you know, the presence of a badge. Again, no matter like how beautifully an officer handles that, ambiguity in enforcement policies like that could lead to mistakes and could lead to recidivism into homelessness. Yeah. Thank you for that. I don't know that I can offer a whole lot more, but I would just say, echo that last part that David was talking about. Anytime someone gets just to involve that can be a traumatic experience and they're not gonna run into, everybody they run into is not going to be understanding or kind or nice and you know all of this is extremely destabilizing and I know that people I heard that the citation these would be zero citations mostly but I think at some point people are unable to show up to a court appearance and then they have a failure to appear, which brings that to a different level than just a citation. I've seen people get caught up in that system over and over again, and that's a really traumatic thing. It's a destabilizing proposition just to be moved. And as David was saying to, we work under these very highly relational models that we've learned help people move forward in ways that we didn't for decades. And I think that trust and that relationship that we've built with folks is so key to people not only moving forward, but to landing softly and in a way that allows them to begin to thrive. Thank you. Hi, I'm here on behalf of Dorv Hope and I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to speak with all of you tonight and to acknowledge the wonderful partnership that the city of Pasadena has been able to walk alongside us into our service partners because we are not the first step when somebody is facing homelessness. We are transitional shelters so we're often where somebody will go after they've already gone through emergency shelters and our emergency care that have been set up by the city and also our partners. So I don't want to rehash everything that's already been said, but just the trauma aspect of the families that we serve, think about the impact of the children as well. These families are living in their cars or on the streets, and when they're approached by service members, they have their kids with them oftentimes, and the impact that that can lead and sowing the seeds of distrust into community members, that's gonna affect their childhood, that's gonna follow them into school and the way that their education is shaped and the way that they turn to the city in times of need, instead of seeing them as a resource. They're worried that it might be a punitive action because they might not understand, you know, okay, a citation is still punitive even if it doesn't have actual monetary repercussions. The idea of going to court, it's scary. It can be an unknown process to people who have never done it before and it's adding to along with subarriers They've already faced to be in that sector. So I just say compound of trauma. Thank you So my team is here and I don't want to come up and talk so I'm gonna Represent but we are we are having folks who are being cited with monetary citations and we'll do our housing navigation and outreach team are helping people are dealing with that and I don't want to reiterate what my colleagues said around the trauma and everything but it takes time and you know the courts It's not a quick process. So they're going to spend half a day, whole day sitting with their client trying to deal with this when they could be out dealing with something more productive in terms of getting services or getting documents or working towards housing. Which is why I'll just reiterate if we can have more people in emergency motels, which I know that we have been trying to do. It's why I said that earlier, that that will reduce people on the streets. It's not a solution to homelessness, but it is a solution to getting people, so our staff can work with them on a daily basis without them having the fear of getting a citation or having to move their stuff or getting involved with law enforcement or things that are going to do all the things that you just heard, it provides some stability. And so that's why I raised that. For me, it goes back to what the two of you are saying, that if we had had that, at the beginning of the conversation, that we're not here to, you know, we all want more housing, and we know the pipeline, we have a whole prevention program as well, but if we're talking about encampments, since having people have some more immediate, transitional shelter, that's what, from our perspective, that is what the funding could help with and prevent what you're talking about. Thank you, Rabbi Grader, and thank you everyone who just spoke. It is helpful to hear directly from our homeless services providers. Their day-to-day lived experience in our city right now, because it bears out what study show. And it's ironic that the day, I believe it's the day that Governor Newsom is issued as executive order, the Rand Corporation came out with a study just setting out. Well, you all just said that sweeps don't work. They just come back if anything they're counterproductive. And I think it was Mr. Morrissey who said, if they worked, let's do them. Let's just start doing them and we'd get everyone in housing and it'd be great, but they don't. And so that's why everyone came out tonight and why that's why there's been so much concern about the city going down that sort of path. I guess just to sum up where I am leaning towards and where I think makes a lot of sense and it was set out by staff early in the presentation was what the county has already modeled for us. I think the county has been very good on this issue, including our own supervisor, supervisor Barger. She issued a statement back on July 30th that that's what I think is a really great model for us, which emphasized working with our regional partners, states that we should avoid shuffling people around, which is counterproductive, states that we should avoid shuffling people around, which is counterproductive, states that simply calling in law enforcement to issue citations ineffective, rejected widespread enforcement, but left open the possibility of unenaro basis where necessary to address specific public safety and public health issues, you know, that there's there may be a need to do that on occasion. But really it's all about leading with care, leading with our regional partners, making sure that we're not just pushing problems around, which is a giant waste of time and it's just counterproductive to everyone. So that's where I am. And I want to thank Council on Massuda for asking about the county measure A. I think we should take up whether we should endorse that as a city for this November ballot. So I don't know if that's something that would go through legislative policy or could come directly to the city council but that's something that for sure we're relying on a lot of county money to continue to come to the city. And so we should take that up and really look that through whether we want to endorse that for this November ballot. And council member Revis, if I can just add on measure A, we were checking and it was a ballot measure put on by the voters by signature. And the reason that's relevant is that would mean that it needs 50% plus one in order to pass as opposed to 67. So I think the question was asked earlier to Mr. Wong, will it pass? We don't know that because we know but but we know that it has a you know Higher probability of passing because it's a majority vote 50% plus one as opposed to being two thirds That's helpful to know and does the fact that it made it on the ballot in that way change whether or not we can take a stance on it or Makes no difference. I think don't think that makes a difference, but it doesn't make a difference. All right. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you. Ms. Williams followed by Mr. Madison. Thank you, and thank you to everybody who came out to speak and the staff to really kind of show us what our programs are. I think that we are different from other cities, and that's gonna be kind of show us what our programs are. I think that we are different from other cities and that's going to be kind of my approach as I try to figure out what I think we're here to do tonight. We have a very nebulous agenda item which I don't think is helpful. And it kind of, you know, riled us up at riled the public up and I think we should be more intentional about what we plan to talk about and just make that clear to the council as well as the public. But just I'd wittle it down to two questions and one is I don't know if the port and hope teams know this but how many other cities have a port or hope team. One other city in in L.A. County and where? In LA County? Yeah. Okay. So one other city we basically invented that. The other city was Montobello for anybody, was listening. Yeah. And I think they just started it, I think this year. Two years ago. If you're going to talk, if you could come to the microphone so that the public at home could hear us, you as well. That would be great. Yeah, but the city of Montagueau duplicated our program about two years ago on Helicopel Mosque was with the public health department and went over there to replicate that with their fire department. Okay, and so, okay, so we are one, there are two of the 88 cities in LA County that have port and hope so that makes us very very Port and yes several different agencies are several of them cities have adopted some form of of a whole program Okay, we were we were one of the original ones, but there are there are several other involved now I mean that's 22 years ago. Okay, and so when When someone does relieve it, receive a citation, I think I saw it in one of the slides, that a case worker accompanies them to court, that was sort of one of the services that you guys talked about. Yes. And this is honestly an honor when we get to go to court, not only do we have good relations with the city prosecutors and defendants, but we also go to the city of Alhambra and several times the cases have been dismissed, whether it's because the services that they're enrolled in or the progress that they have made. Yes. Okay. I think you're the only person in this room who likes going to court. Okay. Okay. Okay. So then that's my first part. We are different from other cities. So when we talk about enforcement, we have a very different process. So secondly, I want to go back to the 600 cases and this will probably be a Tim Wellman question. So before prior to Boise, we had 600 cases that were referred to the prosecutor and those are results of citations. Is that correct? So from 2015, I didn't, the numbers that were run, we're not run before then, through the end of 2018, for those two different ordinance, well the ordinance to 3.24 and the penal code 647. So we kind of combined them because they overlap. They're similar. There were over 600 cases that were referred to the city prosecutor's office during that time frame. In the five and a half years since, it's like there were less than 60. Okay. So for the 600, they were results of citations. Is that correct? They could have been brought over as a citation. Okay. They could have been brought over sometimes if there's a mistake or incomplete citation that's referred to us as what's known as a letter case, or you'd send a letter sometimes if there's no address that might be referred to our office as a warrant case. But in some of those, some form of those. Now if somebody is, is cited for something but there's something else that they have say a warrant that's above a certain amount then they could have been brought in custody but in looking at those cases didn't do any analysis of how many of those were sites, letters, warrants or custody cases. Okay. So and the result of those 600 cases did they go to care services? What was the process for those cases. So almost all of those would have been before my time. So it would really just be speculation as to what happened on those cases. But we still had care first. Did we still have that as a program back then or as a priority? I wouldn't say it was a program, but that's kind of how it operated because generally the judges also wouldn't, you know, people would not go to jail for something like this. Okay. Okay, so then understanding the process, which I think Councilmember Lyon did a really good job of trying to get into this more, is if someone is camping or violating any of those other parts of the PMC, there are a couple of choices. You can warn them, you can arrest them if there's other things going on, warrant, et cetera, but you can also give them a citation. And that citation would then go to the city prosecutors' office where hopefully someone from Port would accompany them to court with a care-first approach or to homeless court. Is that... So there's a few different things. So the first part about what the police will do, I'll leave that to the police. And to whether Port accompanies, I'm not sure of all of these cases that have been cited or come to court, have port involvement. But the ones that come to our office, we would review it and then our discretion decide if we were going to file, and then if we port client then port would be able to Potential and we already know that they look forward to coming and they and they love going to court Okay, so my understanding of What we are here talking about and I and I'm gonna use a quote from our police chief because To me it seems if we had 600 citations before we have 60 now it seems like the question is do we go back to the 600 and ensure that they go through a care first process with this new homeless court in order to and I'll use a great quote from the chief as leverage to get people into services. So if this is an option that we have to get more people into services, I think that's what we're talking about tonight. And I don't see how anybody, if that does not result in someone's arrest or going to jail, I don't see how we could not support more people being referred to court when it's appropriate if we have a new homeless court. So that's my understanding of what we are discussing here tonight. If that's how Pasadena does grants pass, then I think that that is a process that's unique to us because we have our services and our teams and that is something that I would be supportive of getting more people into services. If I may, Councilmember, the one piece to what she said is we don't yet, as I understand, it have homeless court. We've been working on it. Correct. It's in process, but you know, the end's, you know, one of those ideas and we think has a lot of merit, we'll continue to pursue it, but we'd like to get the homeless court up and running. That's correct. That's correct. That's, to me, kind of part of the, in order for us to do this, we would need homeless court. And I think that would be, that's probably one of your goals for next year. So, the managers are in review time. So, I think that's that to me would be instead of just arresting people and clearing encampments. I mean, I think we should be putting more people into services because we have such a we have a very strong safety net here and I think just strengthening that and giving us yet another tool for leverage is a good thing and we can do that in a very humane way and it sounds like we have been doing a lot of that in a human way so I would be supportive of that. Thank you. Mr. Radisson. Thank you very much Mayor and I too appreciate all the hard work that went into this. And let me just say, I think we're doing top of class in Pasadena. I mean, our health department, most cities don't even have a health department. Our director of housing, I'm going to embarrass him, I say it regularly. Nures, I can tell, he's the finest in the country, director of housing. And of course, he's part of a team. I don't mean by singling any Mr. Carmon or Bill out. I know the teams are all integral to that. And still, the numbers stay the same. And I think the staff, I don't know if it was Mr. Hernandez or Mr. Press said that the homeless problem here is different from that elsewhere. And to some extent, there are going to be differences, but the root causes are largely the same. I'm quite sure of that. And if anything, we have, there are features in our community that may make it even more challenging to reduce the number. And I really applaud you, Mr. Wong, for wanting to be at 80% of capacity, you know, in the future. Because I don't think we should just accept that we're going to always have this problem. We need to try to get to the root cause. The light rail, I think, is a contributor to this. And to some extent, the fact that we do offer a lot of services. I may think that's really the key. Would you agree, Mr. Wong, that the reason our number didn't go down even though we housed 400 persons is that other persons either became Unhoused or came here. You certainly more people fell into homelessness. Yes so And I think we are We do now have an opportunity to do something different to and and I apologize, Mr. Lina, if I was sure with you, but I respectfully disagree that I think we do have an opportunity to do something different, and I think the chief could not have been more clear. the discretion that grants pass has given us to have a lever or maybe an entry point to these persons. And this isn't capable of just binary sort of sloganering, you know, it's not whether we're just going to criminalize in jail or we're going to just build more and more houses. Because there is a population that has needs beyond just a roof. There's no question about that. And you know, we had a horrific assault by a homeless person here in the last week or 10 days at the light rail. You know, I got a letter, it was emblematic because it's double-sided. Thank you for that. Mr. Clerk, but on one side it's someone who's very care-focused talking about do more, build more, help more, absolutely. But on the other side of the same piece of paper as a restaurant, tour in Old Pasadena, who says, I'm going out of business because of this. This is a real problem. And I would say that the people that are talking about those, you know, empty storefronts, there shouldn't be homeless shelters there. There should be businesses in those businesses. You know, we have to be able to make the donuts. We have to be able to generate economic activity so that we'll have the resources to continue to do the great work that we do. So, you know, I support Governor Newsom's mandate. I know it's, it goes down hard for some, but hopefully we can use it as a catalyst to really turn our attention, because it's not acceptable to have people living in the street. And what we've sort of like the apocryphal frog and the pot of water, we've just gotten used to it and we just walk around them, or look the other way. But a humanistic modern society with the resources that ours does would not tolerate that. But I was really puzzled by staff statement that we're not comparing ourselves to the other cities because I think we have to have a regional solution here. We can't solve this ourselves. It shouldn't be on the city of Pasadena alone to solve this because we're already, you know, top of class and it's sort of like, you know, pushing sand up a rope. Yeah, one of my four takeaways was it's a regional problem and that requires a regional approach. What I meant to say is we didn't include, there's 87 other cities in LA County and we didn't summarize because- Of course. We already had 33 slides and we didn't wanna make it 110. So I wanna ask Mr. Marquez, a similar question to Mr. Lyon but maybe phrased differently. And I think others have asked this similar question. My question is, in your view, are any of our current policies impacted by grants pass? And those might be policing or prosecution. And it may not be a question that we have an answer to tonight, but I'm very interested in knowing that. Is do we presently have any policies you could even widen the aperture and say practices, procedures that are impacted by the holding of grants pass. You might be tend to think so given the number of citations that went down. Sounds like our conduct did change around Boise and grants pass the night circuit. Yeahways. Yeah, from my perspective, although I would defer to the city attorney, because it is a legal question in many respects, but I think any one of our, you know, we don't have any jurisdiction over the federal government state or county, right? All we have is the municipal code. Those municipal codes, pursuing to the Boise case, which was binding on the 9th Circuit dictated how we would enforce those Those municipal codes and I think with grants pass now. There are more options available I think that we have a culture here. I think we've demonstrated that we are a care first approach And I don't you know unless the council directs otherwise we will continue care first approach. But that also, when any system, even a whole system that revolves around care first, there's always going to be those instances, I think. I don't remember the verbites that Council Member Rivas read from Supervisor Barger, but that sounded right to me. There's going to be those cases where we need to do something to protect someone from themselves or others. Because primary to what we do as a city is keep people safe. And I think grants pass does give us a little more tools. It's not say it's a game changer, it's a sea change, it's just one set of extra set of tools. But I think it's one that I hesitate to say last resort because I think there's instances where we need to, we might need to use the enforcement right away, but generally speaking, we're going to keep a first care approach no matter what and unless again, direct it otherwise. It's my job to enforce your policy. So always look at it from a care first lens, but making sure we keep the public safe and using the tools that are disposal were absolutely necessary. And I think really believe this needs to be a regional approach. I think I've heard that from a whole bunch of you. So I think there's a sensing account's majority to look at this from a regional perspective. And if we do engage in those regional approaches, I think much of that is gonna be, a political exercise more than a staff one, and I'm hoping that perhaps one or two people could be, from the council be appointed to work with us on getting us to that regional approach. So, for me, I think everything you've said plus, what the chief said, that we should utilize the new discretion we have to make this a point of entry, to contact, because it's not just, are you a danger to yourself or others, it's also, are we a clean and safe city? Are we perceived to be a clean and safe city where our restaurant tours and other businesses can generate the commerce that we need to generate to sustain the needs of all of us. I wanted to ask a couple of very specific questions and I'll try to be quick. Permanent supportive housing. So I think that would be an example where we don't just need more homes. There we need homes combined with services. And do we have a sense of how many persons we have now that need permanent supportive housing in our community? Whether or not it's being provided. If we looked at our chronic homeless population, I looked to Jennifer O'Ravie, Jones and I don't have the numbers off hand, but our chronic homeless population, from his part of housing is appropriate for the chronic homeless population. That's just what I was going to say. Yes, so it's the most appropriate for chronic homeless population, which is about, we just dipped below 50% of our homeless population for the first time in six years, so little little less than half so that behalf of 56 yeah, half of 56 and But those are those that are not in permanent supportive housing So the unhoused who need permanent supportive housing and that was on the night of the homeless count I think that's an important distinction It's a snapshot exactly and how many units do we have permanent supportive housing total in the city? 371 site-based units and we have, I have it right here. Another, I think several dozen at least, 171 scattered site. So, 500. So 171 scattered site. So, 570 one scattered and the four projects that you identified. Five projects. Six projects. Six projects. Okay. And so total it's 4800. 488. 488. 488. So, back of the envelope you'd say the 488 and then we still need another 200 and 70 if we're to meet 250 to the map shot We have about a hundred in the pipeline. Of course they need to all get fully funded. So they're Pending there you know if we can get fully funded about a hundred more in the pipeline right now. Okay and I don't I know recently we've talked privately about plans in that arena so I don't want to I don't want to stray over those boundaries but for me we should not be reducing the number of permanent supportive housing units. We should be increasing them. That would be a policy that I would hope the entire council would share. And you mentioned a project that was recently approved. Thought I heard someone say that. The one that just started in District 5. We brought the door of hope. Oh, the home in District 5. But it's a hope. Home in district five. It's not permanent supportive house. That's a transitional housing for folks. We do have about 100 more units in the pipeline right now. So we're trying to get funded. In complex multi. Yes. Okay. The encampment resolution fund, that's a state fund, not a county fund, isn't it, right? Correct. State. State. Okay. And did we use that at that location, Miguel that you and I visited with my field trip one morning down in at the border of South Bastard. Columbia? Yes, sir. Columbia. I don't think so, no, because that's not a not not a cow trans right away. Right, it's the light rail. Incidentally, we had a community meeting in my district at the Del Mar station, which has had a lot of problems from unhoused individuals who are chronic and affecting the residents and the businesses there. And the two deputies from the Sheriff's Department came and they told us they were the only two who covered the light rail from Highland Park to its terminus. And they said pretty much like the second half of their shift, they have to go out to the terminus because they have to be there when they shut down operations for the day or else unhoused persons will just sleep overnight in the car. So the impression we got is we need a lot more resources in terms of that light rail. And the data would bear that out, right? I mean, these assaults and other, we've had homicides under that jurisdiction. Mr. Vice Mayor, if I may just for the Council and for the public. My understanding and someone correct me from wrong, Metro system wide, the city of Los Angeles, LAPD, does the city of Los Angeles stations. CityD, does the city of Los Angeles stations, city of Long Beach does the Long Beach stations, and everywhere else is done by the Sheriff's Department. So the city of Pasadena, we don't do our own law enforcement on the six stations that we have. Metro does understand and is working hard. I've talked to them many times on their security issues. In fact, and there's a chief and I talk about all the time, they're looking at creating their own police force. Separate from contracting out the problem with that, that takes everyone tells me two to three years. It's going to take a long time. But certainly, we'll keep working with Metro because they're dedicated to improving safety on their rail lines and it certainly affects us here in Pasadena as we saw from the case you mentioned. Well, I would ask you to look closely at whether our police department shouldn't with funds from Metro take over the Six Stations in Pasadena. There's such an economy there in terms of having more officers available to respond, being more proactive. The problems that are happening on those trains are not all just on the trains, right? They're in our community too, including some of the individuals that we're speaking about. Have you studied that? I have not studied that, but certainly we could inquire. I think some of the challenges there is, I don't know how many cities they operate in, but they'd have to think about the implications for all the different cities they're in, but maybe they're open to it because we're- Well, we're not just any city. I mean, Long Beach does it. We should be doing it, too. We have six stations. And I mean, how many of these assaults you saw, the note worthy of that woman that was really brutally attacked. And then I think one thing this council could do right now, didn't we have four hope teams at one point in the past? That's my recollection. So I think this council, like tonight, should direct staff to add a fourth hope team again. That's one thing we can do that does pursue a path where we're using grants past, but in a care first basis, to have that entry point or lever that the chief is talking about and actually make a difference. So it's not on the agenda. So we're sitting in turn. You would direct staff to return with something along those lines, abudged an amount, et cetera, et cetera. And approval. I think looking at the port and the hope model and where we can strengthen those models and come back with a recommendation is probably the better approach. Well, I don't know if you need a motion mayor, if that's even appropriate given the agenda issues, but I would personally strongly believe staff should move in that direction. And I did appreciate very much the admonition, if you will, about the boundaries for the council in your report that our job really is to give our direct reports policy guidance. And then those can be implemented through the appropriate departments. But I think those are directions that would signal that we are care first, and I don't think we need to wait for the county to get a homeless court together because we'll all be gone by then. But direct our department in a care first way to use this as an entry point, directing more people to service and assisting the community in terms of the problems that they've told us about and disrupting potentially violent behavior that's not good for anybody. We're happy to look at the addition of a hope team. One thing I would, to my understanding hope team includes accounting mental health provider so we'd have to work with the county to see about their willingness to expand with us but we could certainly take a look if that's the council's direction and the homeless court I know you referenced the county but it would be the city's program the the local court is already on board with that and we've already worked with the supervising judge to come up with dedicated courtrooms and days so our funding etc would be in terms of the services and potential vouchers for people when they leave this is where they're going. But the courts are county basically. They are. However, our proposed homeless court program, a few cities, well, Long Beach and Redondo Beach have different kinds of homeless court programs and the court is on board with that. So all we need to do from our side would be, okay, we're ready to start because we have the funding, we have the service provider, we have the navigator set up and get going with that. What might be beyond the scope of this meeting, I'd love to hear more about that, maybe public safety mayor or whatever committee you decide. But thank you very much. We could even combine it. Anyway, if we were to return with, if the staff were to return with looking at additional hope teams or something like that. Well, Mayor, there was one other thing I apologize. I wanted to mention is just, it's easy to get swept up in this desire, strong desire to do something where it gets hard is actually doing it. We had a motel project before this council and I think that was permanent supportive housing and it died at painful death here because there was a lot of community opposition to it. So it's easy to sort of contemplate on a macro basis harder sometimes to actually cite them. Thank you. Mr. Hampton. Thank you to everybody, service providers. I'm trying to be as brief as possible so that we can get out of here. I'm not going to reiterate, as possible so that we can get out of here. I'm not going to reiterate, try to reiterate some of the points my colleagues have already made. But I am grateful for all the work that everybody's doing towards this. Number one, I think the first discussion we need to talk about is the homeless court, maybe that needs to come to public safety to actually have some actual numbers that come along with that, so that we can try to get that up and running. I did have a question for the police because I do want to understand if there is an encampment in a park. You mentioned that during the presentation that your officers do as individuals for the names you run, make sure that they have warrants or if they don't have warrants, but Megan's list is that also one that is, I mean that's the question's always brought up to me by parents. They just want to say, hey, you know, this individual has issues with, you know, pedophilia or anything, right? Any, would the police department know? And I always say yes, the police department normally rents individuals' names, but I just wanted to have that confirmed. Generally, yes, we would do that. That would come back on the returns that when we ran the name, if they were in violation of those types of issues. And if they're around elementary school or if they're around a playground while kids are playing. If there's, yes, if there's a concern about that, yes, that'll come back. That's fair. I just wanted to make sure that's always a question and always comes up. And so as far as the homeless court, I think it is an actual tool that is very care first based on the presentation, the short presentation we received today. But I do have some questions about it and I think that needs more in-depth conversation maybe at a public safety meeting and then coming back to the full city council. As far as the way we've been doing business, it sounds like my colleagues here it seems like no one is opposed to continue with the path that we've that we've already had I mean based are no camping ordinance I mean is that you vice mayor you saying no I think grants pass gives us an opportunity to have more contact and it sounds like from the number of citations, is one metric that we did change our behavior around this case law. Yeah, I just want to be clear that I just don't want the police just to go out blankedly and asking people for their name and an ID and say that you're sleeping here now. You got to go. I mean, which is fine. They have to go over the block in the right of way. But just to go out willy-nilly to just ask anyone who looks like they could be homeless questions, I think that's not appropriate. So I would be mindful of that. I mean, if there's someone willing, as mentioned in the public comments, someone willing a knife or weapon, what not, then our police officers should do, what they're supposed to do. They shouldn't say, I don't know, you got to move on. They should be making contact and doing whatever they, whatever they need to do to protect the residents, the businesses, as well as the people that are just patronizing any business district. But in residential neighborhoods, you know, that's always the first question is, do we ask those questions of individuals who may be camping out near a playground And in most cases, the police have always responded back, yes. Those are my comments. I think that a homeless court is definitely a tool that could be used. I also want to mention Bill, I've always asked this, how much do we spend grant city, if there's any city dollars because there's always the commentary that there's not any city dollars being put towards it at all as well as you know from our nonprofits how much do we spend in totality on homelessness I know last year the city of Los Angeles according to articles and and also the city right I mean I mean, $1.3 billion. The 46,000 individuals live on the streets and Los Angeles, 46 some, I feel like it's like 46, 500 or something like that. It's a huge population. That's $2,333 per person. The average rent in LA is $1,200. I get the idea of we could just house them. When I'm with that, I mean, I just want to bring some, you know, some, I revenue to the actual numbers we're spending per. I mean, I think what I forget the number what it was per passing if I school district just student, but I don't think the numbers even are even comparison to what we're spending on. So the reason I mention this is because we spend a lot of money and it seems like a lot of money goes towards ideas, plans. We can't, those ideas and plans, they're baked. We know that folks need help. So let's supply them with the help that they need. If it's 2300, I mean, I know that the monies are in different paths. But if there is a way that we could incentivize homeowners to build ADUs and their backyard to put folks in that are already on a list that have gone through whatever our service providers have provided them with, gotten clean, etc. We should put a list in front of them and say, hey, you know what I know that you're about to build a ADU. Here goes the opportunity we have Section 8 voucher for this individual. They were previously homeless. They need help. There are so many community members here that as they came out today, they all want to help. And a lot of them are homeowners. Why not give them the opportunity to help? Those are my comments. I do think that we need more discussion on this at Public safety meeting though. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to clarify, because it's Ms. Rivas, I think, said it and it's been others have repeated it publicly that this is that grants pass was all about arrests. And it was not what grants pass did. And I'll just read from the staff report. This is what I was referring to earlier, Mr. Ryan Page, two of the report. The majority opinion found that the enforcement scheme employed by Grants Pass civil fines lead up to order to temporarily exclusion from a city park escalating to criminal pushmen is not in violation of the 8th amendment. I don't think grants pass. Also grants pass, I don't think provides us any additional discretion. I think what I read into grants pass, well I'll just read the whole thing. The enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public properties does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. And so what grants pass stood for and I'll ask this in the form of a question. Am I correct that what grants passed stood for is that we can enforce generally applicable laws, including camping, anti-camping laws. And what does that include other than putting a tent on the street? Well, it could include building a fire. In fact, our anti-camping ordinance prohibits that. It could include moving furniture. And so what the court held is that we can enforce those without violating the 8th Amendment. And so I think it was a little bit broader, wasn't necessarily about, you know, arrests. And we could enforce those anti-camping provisions. So along as we're not doing it based on an individual status of being homelessness alone. Am I correct about that? Was city attorney? Yes, Mary. And you actually read the holding from the case. So I can't differ from well. You have anything. All of those things were enforceable before. Right. That's right. That's what established was overturning Boise, which was about criminal. Exactly. That's my point is, you know, I don't think Grant's past gives us additional discretion. It just recognizes that we can enforce, as long as we're not doing it by status. No, but Mayor, we couldn not doing it by status. But Mayor, we couldn't before the Supreme Court. Well, before the Supreme Court. Now we have the discretion to determine how we want to enforce anti-camping, which we could not do before the Supreme Court. Well, we could enforce just not with criminal sanctions. Always correct. So I don't know that it gives us additional discretion. I think it recognizes that we can enforce, as we're discussing here, our existing anti-camping ordinance. But I hope we would use our discretion in doing that. Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, I just, like you, I disagree that this is all about housing. You know, homelessness, housing is an important component of addressing this issue. But so many of the people, and we all see it, and our first responder see it, and the service provider see it, So many of the people and importantly, our homeless point in time data informed us that so many of the people who are on the street chronically are struggling with substance disorder and are struggling with mental health issues. And so we've got to take a one regional approach. I talked a little bit about that earlier. We've got to have a comprehensive approach, including increasing mental health services and substance disorder services. And to do that, we've got to partner with the county because they're primarily responsible for providing those services. In fact, in some cases, actually in both cases, they have primary responsibility. Notwithstanding, we have our own health department, mental health, and substance disorder services are carved out in the responsibility of the county of Los Angeles. And so we have to partner with the county. And we're on our way to doing that. And I would say we should double down our effort to do that. And I'd like at some point the city manager to give us an update on discussions with the county to do just that. But to say that it's, we just build more housing or provide tiny homes. That's not the way to address this issue. Just look at the Tiny Homes project in Eagle Rock. Half of those homes last I checked, those tiny homes in Eagle Rock, just as you exit the 134. Half of those are vacant. Because people don't want to be warehouse, they need social interaction, they need the services to remain there. And the state funded, I think, over 1,000 of these tiny homes. And again, you know, they can't fill them because people don't want to just be warehouse. We need permanent support of housing. We've had a number of projects. We need to core and we need more, I agree. We need to coordinate regionally including with the city and county of Los Angeles and the 31 cities in the San Gabriel Valley and we need mental health and substance disorder services to go along with additional housing. And so this is an extremely complicated issue that deals with human beings. But it's also inhumane to let people, particularly those who may not even know they need the help, live on the streets and facilitate their doing so as they sometimes self-medicate. And sometimes die on the streets, whether it's in Pasadena or anywhere in the country that should be unacceptable. And so we should double down to do all that we can in terms of mental health, housing, and substance disorder services to prevent that from happening. Okay, more to come. Any closing remarks, Mr. City Manager, I think we have, you've heard from every member of the council questions or closing remarks before we adjourn this matter for the moment. I do want to thank the council for its support for all the work that we've been doing. Since I've been here, I don't know that there's ever been anything we put forward that the council said no, let's not do that. I think the council has been incredibly supportive. I think it's shown in all of the different slides that we showed all of the pro, we literally have dozens of programs throughout the city. And I want to thank in particular Bill Wong, who really is a visionary and brings forth so many different projects and we keep at it. And it's because of your support and it's also the public. I was very intentional by starting this whole thing by saying thank you not only to my staff, but to the staff of all the nonprofits that work with us to all of you and also to the public. This public has been incredible in working to try to make us. At least, you know, again, when I travel around different cities in Los Angeles County, we are doing a relatively good job. I'm not trying to say we need to stop. In fact, I say let's push even harder on the gas pedal. But it's only because of your support in the sort of the public. So just I'll end it as I started it with a big thank you. Okay, thank you everyone from the public who took the time to participate this evening either in person or virtually or telephonically and thank you to all members of the council and there's a