Historic Preservation Commission

how you doing well again welcome and good morning my name is Tris my County Manager I'm at least partially meeting this morning I'll I'll go ahead and just turn it right over and is a little bit under the weather as you may be able to tell so I apologize um and he apologizes for uh not being able to give longer remarks but I'm GNA give you the logistics U my name is Kate Fen Haagen I am the Criminal Justice Resource director I'm also um the interim Deputy manager uh I am so glad to see you all on a cold Sunday morning and Saturday morning um which I think is going to warm up a bit um just to let you know please have some coffee and some snacks back there the bathrooms are just out the door here to your left so feel free to come and go from the snack table from the bathrooms um I wanted to um make sure because we always need to acknowledge our electeds who are here um and I want to acknowledge our County Commissioners who are here today we have Jean Hamilton in the back we have we have Marilyn Carter in the back and we have Sally green right here and then we have a Chapel Hill elected Karen segman who is here I don't think have I missed anybody else from our elected Community yes sir I was going to say I I'm representing an office of congresswoman valer fushi oh wonderful welcome thank you for being here on behalf of uh Congressman fi and you said I'm sorry K who's Theo no is on his way he's on his way okay well we will

acknowledge Him later um so thank you we have a very short time for a very large topic low barrier housing and the needs in Orange County so many critical conversations are needed and are happening about housing whether it's emergency shelter whether it's affordable housing whether it's addiction diversion home preservation but this forum is specifically without low barrier housing and that's housing that is um that provides immediate and easy access with a focus on harm reduction and support it's designed to serve people with significant obstacles to accessing housing because they may be re-entering from incarceration they may be re-entering from an institution they may be experiencing homelessness um and they may have significant behavioral health concerns if you are here today it's because you recognize this critical need but we all know it's not the only housing need and I want to make sure we're all on the same page that this is just one of many many critical housing issues in November many of you may have attended the Justice United countywide assembly which highlighted the priority need of re housing and actually recommended that the county uh convene a work uh group our County Manager Travis immediately set about doing that with the strong support of the Commissioners um created and this work group was created to sort of prioritize immediate and longer term low barrier housing needs this work group um begins its meetings in February February 12th to be exact um and I'm going to introduce uh the folks from that group who may be here today um it's also um on some

information in the back um if you pick it up there's also an agenda up there make sure you see there's an agenda up there with the program um as well as the memo that was presented to the Commissioners about the work group and its Mission um and its members but just to introduce those who are here today Blake Rosser is our housing director Danielle Butler who is our partnership to end homelessness uh programs manager I'm not sure where she is there she is barely waiting Ben here who is our local re-entry Council coordinator s Stover who is our planning um and inspections director for the county he's not here this morning Paul slack who is our uh Orange County Office of equity inclusion Chief he's not here this morning myself um Tommy green who we hope is going to be here soon he is the Orange County Community Health worker and supervisor for the program and O who is here who I will introduce in a minute um from Alliance Health Sarah Venus who is the town of Chapel Hills Housing and Community connections director who's not here and Marie vanaman who is caror Housing and Community Services director and Matt eer Hillsboro's assistant Town manager and Community Services director who is here with us so this group will begin meeting in February as I mentioned and they'll be from the Community Partners seeking innovative ideas looking at potential funding collaborations and identifying opportunities and recommendations to bring to the manager and to the Commissioners so for today's kickoff event um of the L group what we are um trying to achieve here is to hear from an amazing group of panelists um who are all working um to address low barrier housing needs here in another neighboring count and to get your input um this is going to also be on Facebook live um it'll be

recorded um so for those who are not able to be here today it will be available for people to uh listen to and there's also a survey online that folks can fill out um if they're not here and if youd rather fill out um the hard copy it's in the back there so please do that but um after we have this uh panel discussion and an opportunity for some questions we will then pivot to these four tables in the back um which each have a topic which is on your program um and I would like for everyone to circulate for about 10 to 15 minutes to each table so that you have an opportunity to be part of the discussion on that topic and to give some input that we will be tracking on the Sur so finally I just want to say that there are so many incredible people working in Orange County to address slow housing needs and so many more who want to be part of the solution and yet the needs are so great in this County of abundance this work needs to be inclusive of all voices especially those who face overwhelming and inequitable barriers every single day this effort will need everyone at the table and a true partnership and collaboration and speaking of collaboration it is my pleasure to now turn it over to an o is the senior vice president for Community Health and wellbeing Health a co-sponsor of this event um partner the last time an and I spoke was at the ribbon cutting of the wonderful house it was a a collaboration between Alliance and Orange County for a bridge housing program um and if you haven't been it's on Homestead Road um you can come and visit schedule to visit there there some lives being transformed there day in and day out it's really a wonderful uh place but it only serves six individuals and it's full so um but if you know an you know her passion for

this work and her ability to get things done um it is a privilege to have her partnership on this and I invite her to come up and say a few words thanks thank you it is a pleasure to be here um and I will tell you that Alliance help with not have been able to do what we have done in Orange County so far if it wasn't for the support of the county and our um County Commissioners uh when we have uh been serving the residents of Orange County who have Behavioral Health uh needs that are um that have Medicaid or are uninsured for 3 years now and when we uh began um engaging with our Community Partners and our our County Partners um we came in saying housing is Healthcare and what can we do in housing what are you all doing in housing where can we help what can we pay for how can Medicaid be a payer of Supportive Services how can we align all of the great work and create some momentum and some Synergy um to serve more people but also serve them um with Supportive Services housing should not be the end goal of a community community living should be the end goal uh for people and so we are delighted that we have gotten as far as actually having this type of event um I will put another plug in to the wonderful house which is the first Bridge housing program with a therapeutic Focus serving um those that have the highest needs in Orange County um it was a labor of love um and I just want to um kind of give a shout out to my partner and all of this Kate um you know we we started thinking about it dreaming about it from day one um these types of programs are opportunistic you can't have them unless you have a location um and so some of that is what we actually want to talk

about today um the bridge housing is just the beginning of what we would like to do in Partnership and to find the right location for the right purpose for the right people um is usually the biggest challenge um in making some of this a reality so we look forward to hearing some solutions I also want to thank the panel especially a couple of them who changed their plans on a Saturday to join us really appreciate that Russ and David um for doing that we partner with their programs in Durham which you will hear a little bit more about um but we are happy to be here happy to start these conversations and look forward to reporting back um our continued progress and and just making sure that those um that need a safe and supportive place to live both temporarily and permanently um that we just all come together and figure out what it's going to take thank [Applause] you fol that we have thank you um before I get started I just want to acknowledge the somewhat awkward placement of the lect turn here where it's not quite as mobile as we would like so I prefer to be more to the side on equal footing with the panel not hovering behind them but we work with what we got um I'm going to introduce the panelist real quick and then we'll get started with questions um first we have and I'm going in alphabetical order we have Lindsay blank who is the Cornerstone Bridge housing program manager of w County and LCSW we have David chrisell who is executive director of germs jubile home for the last 13 years and since 2015 the head

pastor of Mount Auburn United Church of Christ uh we have Tiffany Hall the street Outreach cinical coordinator with Orange County she's also a licensed clinical mental health counselor licensed clinical addiction specialist and a National Certified counselor we have Russell Pierce executive director of housing for New Hope provider of Supportive Housing in the Triangle area and we have Kristen poers executive director of the Nevin Farm which provides transitional housing and employment to women leaving incarceration uh we have one panelist who was unable to make it unfortunately who's delayed out of town um that was Tommy green who was Community Health worker and formerly incarcerated transition fit program manager um just to get started I would like to give each of our panelists a chance to describe their program or their work um so getting a short description of what they're doing in this area and to please include specific barriers for the population that you serve um so if you want to start at the end with this is a learning thing for us that's what I realiz farm so a croud Cho high school graduate living in Alman County now um so I've been at this building quite a few times in the past um but I um have the honor of meeting benevolence Farm which is a nonprofit serving formerly incarcerated women and gender expansive people across majority rural North Carolina we are a headquartered in Alamance County which I know is a bit unusual usually headquarters are in like Raleigh or Durham or Charlotte but we work at at Alamance County where our main housing program has been for the last eight or so years we serve people of all conviction types so every felony class every length of incarceration uh also welcoming trans

people from um all over the state of North Carolina with a focus on state prisons and jails and uh we have learned a lot in the last eight years that we'll we'll share more of but we also while physically located now man serve uh people across the Carina by through our housing first fund which provides security deposit Ms to people in rural communities to help lower the barriers um to entry and I think the the high level question of of some of the barriers we see is a I think not um pretty obvious everyone probably here is the number of available places for people to go but also the availability for people of all conviction types including people in recovery people with mental health diagnoses or disabilities and people on a sex offender registry and so um we've we try to open it up to make sure that people of all those experiences uh can come home to a safe place so touch more on that later thank you for having me go ahead lindsy excuse me I'm Lindsay blank I'm the Cornerstone program manager with L County government and Cornerstone encompasses like several different programs but today I'm going to be talking about our Bridge housing program uh which is 20 residential units um and we prioritize those that are chronically homeless um um with disabling conditions and um we are specifically working with people that are high needs whether it's uh chronic medical conditions mental health substance use legal issues um crisis utilization things like that um obviously the people that we serve come with lots of barriers when it comes to housing whether it be untreated mental health or substance use um criminal histories eviction histories um no credit history or bad credit scores um we are a housing first um program and so we work with people providing intensive supports to help them transition into

per housing thank you my name isy and I'm the street Outreach reduction reflection program um we ter so what we do is work with those individuals who are unsheltered in Orange County an unsheltered meaning um staying in places that are unfit for having like in their car out the street abandoned buildings um and what we do is we there are three four of us excuse me myself and three peer Navigators and we go directly into the community and we work with those who are unsheltered helping them linkage to G linkage to Mental Health substanc Services um also helping them find housing that's our ultimate go L barrier of Housing and um also harm reduction it's a partnership between the housing department and the criminal justice resource department so one of our efforts is to also reduce um minor I want say trespass issues or minor um crimes so that people are deflected away from going into the criminal justice system so we come out and we deflect them from law enforcement um we'll come out and meet with them and provide supplies as well our referrals can be self- referrals they can be from businesses they can be from people who are just passed wanting welfare checks on those who are um that they see that they may think are unsheltered one of our main barriers definitely availability of low barrier housing and affordability um affordable housing and I would say also the stigma that people attach with someone who is unsheltered um in three main it's oh [Music] it's I'm Russ Pierce I serve as

executive director of housing um we are a 30 plus year old agency um working in homeless Services we actually began as a transitional shelter uh in response to seeing a lot of folks come into the emergency shelter go to housing and come back pretty rapidly and innovation in the early 90s was transitional shelter um over time um we began Street Outreach which we have been doing for more than 20 years and we take the lead on that for map of the city and the county and Durham um we also were one of the first three agencies to launch rapid re housing in North Carolina continue to be the lead provider of R housing so um for folks that's an outcome of housing first works on housing first principles the goal being if we can skip the shelter and go straight to housing get folks house suround the services that's the key um and for Rapid re housing um that's only about two years so folks you have barriers but not maybe intensive barriers that we would normally see um for permanent support of housing so we also um for more than 20 years have operated U both campus Bas support Housing Programs where we operate a campus um and services and things are brought to the campus to connect with clients um and then also so um the largest permanent Supportive Housing program that actually works with landlords in the community um and in addition to that on behalf of the city and our other partners um we are the main agency doing landlord engagement finding uh new opportunities for housing uh in Europe which you can imagine has been an interesting challenge the last three or four years uh with changing housing U housing costs pretty it's very significant um so for us in terms of of barriers I mean we are of working with folks who have been very longterm in their um in their homelessness um in particularly with permanent Supportive Housing um for us about 60% of folks

whether they're coming to the the Campus based opportunities or Community Based opportunities 60 to 65% of the time we're going to be working with someone who has a severe and persistent mental health issue and a substance use disorder as I say of wrapped around it for under understandable reasons but that is that is what we most want to see I will say that over the last few years we've seen an intensification where we have hit count on when your hit count is we got P coming up on Monday night's that on Wednesday so at least I think we're going to have four degrees better temperatures um on Monday night but you know what we saw last year from that was significant increases again with people with severe persistent mental health challenges substance use issues um those those are very real and part of what we're starting to see consistently is there's a population that their health is such while they're unsheltered that you have to start trying to address their health issues while they're unsheltered do you get them to the point of having a conversation around hous um and that's a little bit of a shift in the population that we're seeing it's always been there but the percentage of folks are in that place is growing so we're working on a new pilot project with arund from the county to add nurses to the teams that go out and some psychiatric help on an experimental basis to see how that works so so for us often times people those those are the main pieces we're we're working with in terms of getting them ready to be in help thanks Russ I'm Chris B the executive director of and I have a little bit of inferiority complex because if I need something I call r or I call Christen so you're in good hands here at a ju home we provide transitional and Supportive Housing for folks coming out of incarceration in Durham uh we have a transitional home that hous up to six minute of a time where you're getting really high touch

um support for 12 to 18 months with prer Navigators who are doing most of your linkage secure and your case work and also um they're being assisted by some social workers who are who are helping them make sure they can navigate the systems well and figuring out which Partnerships to be utilizing in the community to meet the needs of the person that has come to us we start with an assessment where you kind of T up your goals and then we're going to work on those goals as opposed to tell you what you need we may assist you with some goals if if some are lacking know they ome to you have been lack I would love to leave here with a well planed budget uh but that's something you're going to get we we we view wellness and a holistic Manner and we're going to really try to focus on the eight Dimensions of Wellness and um up in all those ways that we can liar with us one of the barriers we see we we also have some permanent housing we have a duplex that when we first purchased it we imagined it would kind of be next step housing somewhat of what Russ was saying we we've seen individuals who did KN out the park for 12 months enter in kind of the the free market if you will and then really struggle in that space um kind of away from our community and away from our support so we purchased the dups across the street um two two bedroom apartments we thought that would be another place someone could stay for another six 12 18 months um as as they just continue to build themselves out what happened was no one ever moved out of that um it's the first turnover we had was at three years uh because it's high quality affordable housing and you get to be part of a supportive community and so we've scra that an idea of what it was going to be it's it's just permanently affordable housing for for folks with uh with convictions that make it really difficult to find rent units in Durham we we are a low barrier in our transitional housing so what that means

is almost everybody I want to almost everybody uh from 2024 88% of our folks um check the boxes of co-occurring uh Behavioral Health disorder social disuse disorder U along with being below the Federal line and with a serious criminal conviction inste I think our people are great I think that does not the menist shees com through our doors uh they're incredible the strongest most resting folks that I've ever met in my life but it's really hard to move from ju home into sort of the regular world because like everyone else at this table knows the the the private market for housing is just not super motivated to meet barriers where they're at um the market is such that that landlord don't need to deal with that right now so they're choosing not to because in their minds that they're landlords that's what they do they provide for folks who need it and they do that part well but the biggest fear our people find and we find is when someone finishes a transitional program at you with home where do they go next um and two option actually step back not a step forward because of the housing we're able to find so we're excited to look forward and and try to expand our perm housing because we don't care about your conviction we we care about who you are and we know you but anyway we you part our community and that's something we can offer us what we want to do thank you very much all um for the next couple questions I'm going to take sort of a bird's eye overview picture of the topic um which I think will be helpful for folks who haven't necessarily engageed a lot on this topic so I'm going to ask Lindsay to please just explain to the audience what is Bridge housing um what do we mean when we use that term yeah um so we look at Bridge housing as the bridge from homelessness to permanent housing um at

Cornerstone we have 20 units and so we prioritize those that are literally on the street um we want to take people with the highest needs um and we look at different dimensions including um Mental Health Medical Care in your homeless you're not able to treat medical conditions um often times those things get pushed aside uh substance use uh legal issues whether it's being arrested for um crimes related to being Hess or um other barriers that come up for finding housing um also crisis utilization um are you calling 911 a lot frequently are you going to um uh like Crisis uh Mental Health crisis centers things like that um and then also just like are you chronically um which is homeless for one year or more or three more episodes um totally a year um so that's how um that's how our Bridge housing program works I think when you read about Bridge housing in general sometimes they just talk about the bridge the transition time between um getting onto a voucher and what we do for our clients is we don't guarantee a voucher we want to connect somebody with the most appropriate Housing Opportunity for them most of the time that needs a Housing Voucher we do have um money set aside to help with vouchers in permanent housing um but if we determine that somebody won't be successful in that type of environment then we want to make sure that somebody's going to go to the best f for them thank you um and similarly with the general overview I'm going to ask Russ to explain what permanent Supportive Housing is and um just briefly how it differs from bridge housing and even maybe how it differs from Rapid re absolutely so permanent Supportive Housing again grows out of this idea of this approach of housing first let's get folks in housing surround them with Supportive Services um and they'll be more successful I will I will share a few years ago um when we were actually looking at Street Outreach we were looking at folks who went straight from our street Outreach into housing versus

going through the shelter and let me especially since this is recorded I believe in Emergency Shelters and I believe emergency should always be in front of the word shelter um if that's what it is the way I believe in emergency rooms nobody wants to be in the emergency room and they have to to get sent home with theirs or whatever they need or to the right um supportive program so emergency shelter the same way but when we were able to get folks straight from Street Outreach into being unsheltered into housing the rate in which they were taking up opportunities around Primary Care Mental Health Care um substance use uh Supportive Services was in the 60 to 70% range if they went through the shelter it was in the teens and so being able to just get people connected that way is is is really critical so rapid rehousing is for folks I often will say and this is not scientific but if on a scale of 1 to 20 for needs for for me rapid re housing was designed for people in that 78 9 10 range in terms of the level of that they have um they're going to it's it's a bump in the road a couple things have happened um but within two years with with fin support towards rent things and Community connections and a case manager alongside and helping them work toward their goals that they should be able to be fairly stable after that and and I will say I know Graber housing for us folks are in like the 90% range for being able to stay safely housed afterward permanent Supportive Housing is as as was mentioned is for people who are experiencing chronic homelessness um so that's going to mean um having at least a year of um homelessness and that can either be a straight year or I never quite get this right so I'm look for dead motives or three four episodes in three years accumulated did I get it okay yeah um

I'm going to send that into the government when they start looking at ways to make our lives easier maybe not something that technical um and also have a disabling condition um again we're going to see a lot of issues around severe mental health and and substance use and the permanent sometimes people here are permanent think that means like forever and ever for some folks that housing option they go into is going to be their longest option but per is kind of a technical like they should have a year lease that's really what the permanent means H says permanent means a year lease and so they will have their own lease whether it's at a property um like like we own operate or with apartment landlord in commun or another organization and then they'll have access to case management they'll have access to connections to uh community and other support services for the long and what we'll often see um is I would say I think of our campuses in particular about a third of the population coming in will be successful and be able to be bridged eventually to a housing Choice voucher or another kind of Supportive Housing about a third that may be the place that is there long term I know that when we start experiencing rapid ification firm we had a lot of folks who were living on the east side of town that very St house for a long time and our community based Supportive Housing Programs and they just lost their housing the houses were sold people want to live in them so that could be and then about us I mean people are dealing with a lot of challenges this this may not be the successful journey through they may re-enter homelessness um and then come back another time and they're Su successful so it really does and thir thir thir is not exactly scientific but that's kind of my impression what we what we experience folks thank you um for the next question I'd like to get the opinion of both Dave and Tiffany about the role of harm

reduction in low barrier housing you all could share your thoughts on that um well I I'll talk about har reduction at J and then I'll keep more broad why don't you start with sort of a more broad harm reduction what it is what's going on and I'll talk about it in context of um har adduction I think can be deflection or can be deflecting someone from criminal charges that don't need to be into the system um har production can also be giving out supplies that help with um say nar um sa it can be things like that so I think har reduction is basically helping those individuals so that they can steer away from anything that is unnecessary like charges or any other kind of stat so har reduction in the context of housing how we putur sh the nor reduction poition because they've been really great Partners in Walking alongside us with this because we didn't start out as sort of gain pram reduction as an organization and we've really been brought along on that pathway by them so so for J home we we work really hard to lower our barriers to people who need the services we provide so what that has meant is US learning how to be a housing provider that um recognizes that people who use drugs need housing um and and I'll lean I kind ofan in particular with that for harm reduction I think har reduction is all things right housing is harm reduction your seat belt is harm reduction lot lots of things that we do every day is harm reduction but specifically for those those people using drugs um who need housing what that's me for J home is we've had to we've had to become more open and learn more about how to provide

appropriate services and and maintain a safe environment and so that started with lowering our barriers uh when when someone is uh doing an N home and going through their assessments and and processes that includes a drug test um but that drug test is not a defining Factor no matter what that drug test tells us that does not determine your housing you've already made it to housing we're going to give you housing that's going to help inform us on how we're going to support you that may mean that like you may have to go to detx depending on what that test us for a few minutes but we're not going to give your bed away while you're detox either and we're going to we're going to work with you to to make sure you come to this space safely but also where you're at what that's also meant is that we have har ruction material sort of on hand and available question free judment free they're actually in various places in the house so that scaff don't even have to know necessarily we we do an inventory so we know some n is is missing or if condoms are missing but that's not you know we don't immedi start an investigation right we assume that those materials were taken a good conscious for someone to care for themselves or for someone they know and care for what what we know is someone who's dead can't receive Services can't find housing can't be a part of our community and that we're less when our community members are dying uh and so we we've worked hard to learn uh you know first time someone called us and said uh heyone subx do you take people on sub box and this was really early on I said I want and and so we called a doctor and we said hey talk let's do this and he said if you're going to house anybody it's that guy right there because people who have taken the brace step to be uh on medication for o use disorder our

people are really trying to reclaim their lives and take the steps they need to take to move forward and we're dying for people to house these fols uh so now we accept folks who on all methods of and we celebrate this we we are so excited that they've taken these steps and have found their way to J where we can support them and what is a kind of stigmatized Journey a lot of times uh so so those are a few of the things that we do just in our particular Concepts to really encourage people uh to to stay alive some of the other Norm ruction techniques that we also use are writing letters of accommodation for those of um our um residents who or our clients who are trying to get into write letters of recommendation to the landlord saying hey this is something that may have happened in their past but what we're trying to do is explain this is their past this is something that happened like offenses or anything like that or could be due to their mental health or substance use in the past so that we can give them a fair chance so that something else that we do for our cents who are working for thank you both um the next question I'd like to ask Kristen uh what in in your experience are some of the most common supports that are needed for success in low barrier housing um well we so I start as exec director in 2020 prior to that when our founder was creating uh working with formly incarcerated women to to BU what now f is a lot of feedback we need joint housing and employment uh so we want to be able to come out and have earn an income and so that since our Inception has been the the core that we tie housing and employment together with one of our Housing Programs um but people also said I need time um I think some of the thingsam we heard years um there's different lengths of time for different programs we House people up to two years um of the 50 plus folks who've come to our program I think only four have used that fulltime um and we uh most people

it's like when they they have the flexibility of being free from probation or Ro and they're allowed to choose communities they return home to finally that's when uh folks start making plans to leave but I think it's it's the support systems are pretty common to what everything has been here but I I think echoing what David said about Community like people want a group of people who understand what they've been through similarly to um some the organizations here we have peer support our staff are predominantly formally and frustrated women who comeone through our program so they can speak directly to a lot of the the challenges that are current folks experience um so I think the other part to echoing what what D said we we don't ever dismiss someone for relapsing um we don't dismiss someone for a failed drug test uh we rarely drug test because often times the probation officers are doing all the drug testing um and but we really the only time we drug test because we're in Employment Program if you think it's someone's not not safe in the the current workplace we we do have a farm so like who's the tractor if you know if you're under uh not feeling good so um we we try to address that we try to get people to um mental health but I I think at the core of what I'm trying to say is that there needs to be a menu of options um David and I talk like every other week because I think part of the supports hous and provider need is also other people to talk to when you're trying to push the boundaries on housing uh and I know we've we've talked about like how can you get people into a variety of of mental health programs a variety of substan counseling a variety of housing options uh we have particularly for women who majority of incarcerated women have experienced abuse physical or sexual of some kind uh in our County the first recommendation from the the first stop mental health and substances providers group therapy and our our folks are not participating

in group therapy for the most part they don't find that helpful they find it re-triggering um and they're also usually with men and that could be very triggering as well so we try to present a menu of options for folks um give people time and address their needs based on how they're identifying them and then sometimes we may say we're identifying this also as a need with you and how we address that together um for the next question I'd actually like all of our panelists to take turns to briefly describe how your program clients are prior prioritized and if if there's a weight list involved how that's managed um and can we start with data this go down sure um yeah this is recorded So we U we are almost always full and our weight list um and so we do have to make some interesting decisions about that we we prioritize me um and and folks in coming out of incarceration so there's this there's this funky thing where people coming out of incarceration don't qualify as the definition of homeless underhood uh which which means they kind of there's a gap in Services they can they can sort of become homeless once they come out pretty quickly but but there's this weird Gap um the last Administration tried to change some of that didn't get it through I think say it's not going to Happ for at least four years and so we prioritize folks who are in incarceration um if if if someone calls us who is you know in a shelter bed or in a community bed that is unsuitable to their needs and someone calls us and they're incarcerated we're going to we're going to prioritize that person's incarcerated uh the next priority on our list is probably a partner so that that could be a incarc facility that could be

the D County jail and there there sort of various programs Dre mental health support some some of the programs that we work closely with have some unique needs and know that J hes a supportive environment uh th those will be our priorities and after that it will be a little bit more of a free-for-all for Community need but we're going to we're going to De prioritize if youcy are in B but one A different B that's that's going to be pretty low priority for us it's not no um there's a wide range of housing options and terms some that are more suitable than others and so we will consider if we know that your beted is probably not meeting your needs but that's going to be our lowest priority so we have been through in Durham I want to say the last 7 years and I've been six I want to say two or three different iterations of how the weight list and prioritization works um and we've learned some things through that uh so first a group of us that worked um around family needs started having a coordinated system so that people didn't have to kind of shop around for help or have to keep repeating a story which is also triggering and traumatizing we keep having to go through that that was eventually picked up um and the city with with dedicated housing funds that that are there for their use um created a full coordinated entry system so we have a place called entry point Durham everybody calls into that line who has needs um it is partially house inside of DSs and partially a nonprofit doing the work um and so what that does is assess folks needs as multiple opportunities in some cases they're able to divert people from the Hess system entirely um in other cases they will get prioritized with the situation we are facing right now there's priorization list for Street Outreach believe it or not um because of lack of of capacity at times um and then

for each of the types of housing um one of the Challen we faced over the last few years we used to use something called The Vi spat um and I can tell you VI means vulnerability index I do not ever remember whatat means Google that off to the side May um but we found and basically was trying to figure out who is most likely to die that's if they are left on the street to put a very very BL that's the vi um Durham switched um nationally became known that there was some significant bias issues inside the way that have been designed so we designed our own system to prioritize folks around you know issues of are their children involved what are the um you know are there um is there Justice involvement are there substance use issues and so it's meant to um prioritize folks based on all those needs the part of the shift that we made if I'm too long on this um but we've learned a lot on this one so that's going be few um early on the sense was that the agencies would pick the people that were sort of things AC cross house foot and there was probably some of that that's true they also were picking people I think this is reforming that fit the capacities of the programs as they existed so people would be a little more likely to be successful because of that we shifted um there was this well there was a shift I'll put it that way um um where everybody coming through this system whether it's repairment Supportive Housing or rapid rehousing was like a 17 1 to 20 scale or like a 16 17 18 in terms of their needs rapid R housing is not designed for that a lot of permanent Supportive Housing honestly it's successful for about 85% folks there's about a 15% population that needs other kinds of Housing and

interventions and so it created a lot of problems the system over over a lot of us we lost a lot of land um and it became a strange situation where show up be like I I don't have a substance use issue I've lost my job or my partner left so I lost my housing and there was like no Avenue and so we really tried to make sure that there are increasingly multiple Avenues and weight lists within that um because if you don't have that I I lik it to going to what's it called Center and the perception was everybody who parked the front by exit got to go first and then what we did was go okay everybody in the back is going to go first but we still had one exit now it's multiple exits based on means and priorities because you were creating chronically homeless people by definition by having them wa too long you're increasing people's life that having mental health challenges by having them way too long by prioritizing just one of folks so we hav that but everyone comes through coordin system and Tiffany you may be about to mention that but this but um Orange County is still using the vi although we we've been in conversation and about changing them um I'll be quick um ours is we don't we do have a prioritization that the simple answer is that you just have to be considered unsheltered meaning that you're staying in a place of fit for habitation um we don't have a weight list because homelessness doesn't really have a time limit or weight for us so we just come out and we meet with everyone um we don't go to your home I mean we don't go to see where you are to see are they really unsheltered are they just saying this or are they stay behind this trash can or we don't do any of that we

just take you out your word and then we'll follow up to make sure that we understand and that you understand the definition of unsheltered um that's our priorization please okay um so we have um our referral sources um we don't our coordinated entry system is a little bit broken in Lake County right now we're working to get it fixed um so in the perfect world we would take referrals through the buy name list of people who were literally homeless and prioritize those um it's not functioning very well right now so we we adapted and changed and we started taking our referrals from Street outle providers and they would send our referral form and then we would um and then we bring them in for A needs assessment and the reason we do A needs assessment is because we know there are plenty of homeless individuals in W County who need housing but they don't all necessarily need Cornerstone right because at Cornerstone we offer these intensive Supportive Services we bring Site Services on site we provide medical care we have groups we're trying to to really help stabilize people before moving into permanent housing so in this needs assessment we're looking at several different domains first of all we want to make sure that people can kind of take care of their ADLs because we don't have people helping with ADLs um on site um we do uh we look at medical issues um have you been in the emergency room have you been admitted in hospitals multiple times are you call in consistently um or do you have medical issues that you haven't addressed because of your homeless status um we look at Mental Health Health whether it's um being off medications not not um currently engaged in mental health care or um pretty symptomatic where it would affect your ability to be successful in housing um substance use um whether it's not- engaged in harm reduction practices um overdose risk things like that um homeless history we prioritize those that are Street Homeless over somebody at a shelter if you can live in if you can function in a shelter then we probably don't need Bridge housing right

um because if you're doing okay there then you probably don't need the independent type style we have our heing program and then also um legal issues have you been arrested in the past um have you been incarcerated in the past year or six months and we want to do a different level of cuity scale and then we take the people with the highest needs that's what we want to do we want to help those that have the highest needs have the highest um impact ability um as far as weight lless our program has actually only been open for about be one year next month so we're still working out this process of how we take um how we manage our weight list we have about 18 people on it now but it's kind of fluid and we're going to keep getting referrals and prioritizing those that are VI needs some of those people that are on the weight list might move on and get into Department housing on their own um that's the goal that's what we hope so that's how we're doing it now for benevol we hav done our numbers for last year but 2023 I think we had to turn down about 40 women for space constraints um we we do have so if we have a space available and we look at our list of applicants um we will assess when they're getting out of prison so we don't they don't decide out so it's not like a graduation program or a certain oning date it's like we got out tomorrow we can up tomorrow um and so the we did put in place have a a guideline for staff to help decide if there are multiple people needing a spot at one time or within the same month or so or we don't project that there are more beds becoming available we really just look at and some who has nowhere else to go um so in their application are they identifying if they're on the sex Defender registry we know they can't go Shel most Emergency Shelters if they have shared family units um they if you're on the sex registry you may have the access also domestic violence shelters you may not be you can't access um Housing

Authority same for drug trafficking or vouchers so we're uh and from what our folks tell us that there's very few to no other housing for people on the sex Fender registry throughout the state and some of that is not the fault of the housing providers it's that our state continues to expand the um the ineligibility of places people can live on the registry so uh I think the recent expansion of that means that I think Durham is like 75% of housing units are inacessible people on the registry and that's not affordable housing units that's just units there's actually a study out of Miami that um there were only in the Miami Gate County because of the way they structure registry majority of people have to live in a parking lot and stay in a parking lot um to live and then uh they can only access 40 houses across the whole Miami J County and that includes Mansions not affordable housing so that's a huge issue that we see um we get call about men a lot too for that reason um but we're also asking the other identity that we consider is trans folks so again a lot of our trans folks are saying there's very few places I can go that align with my um how I'm living and my identity whether or not I was boxed into a men or women's prison um so those are kind of the two identities we know people are really struggling to find housing including and then also even more severe felonies um could go side tangent too about violent felonies and what that means um in a lot of places we won't accept violent felonies and I think that U is a learning opportunity for a lot of us uh so again really if we have a space available we're trying to accept um people who really don't have anywhere else to go don't have family or have and types that them from that and I also say some of our folks also come to us

because they said that they found housing but it required them to have a substance use disorder or certain type of mental health disorder and they didn't fall into that category and so it's um incredibly helpful to have those programs we should have more of them and also a lot of people are like if like one person had a correctional officer suggest that they uh fake a substance use disorder to find housing um because they they didn't have anywhere else to go so um that's those are how we think through the uh weight list and entry very Illuminating thank you um this is going to actually be the last question because I'd like to leave time for some audience questions but I would like to hear if yall could I'm going to open this up to the whole panel so take it um as you would like um but I just want if you could say briefly what do you think are of the biggest challenges for adding low barrier housing to a community like if there are one or two you can you can think of U I actually want to that a little bit and I buy potential solutions to to that I think we go down barrier list for a while but I I'll frame it a way how these five things could address the the barriers really quickly I think the for housing authorities you can expand your eligibility of people you accept um to a degree there are some federal restrictions but we worked in 2019 with the ver Institute and the Burlington housing authority to expand their eligibility criteria and make it less restrictive um you can offer direct financial support to people getting into housing like eventually you pay security deposits the kind of nice thing about that is you also get the landlords who are willing to you know get their W9 you know who they are um and then you can do further Outreach and say like what led you to open with your housing to people um with records how can we you know work with you to continue that or use you know help maybe cultivate you and Advocates to get other landlords to do

the same um there's also a housing company out a Durham of forum houses that I think is innovating ways to use U the accessory dwelling units that ad use to provide backyard housing for they're focusing on people of a certain income but we uh I've also seen in California um a nonprofit uh have this the impact impact Justice um they started a program called the homecoming project which is they model it as the Airbnb for formally incarcerated people so they they work with people in prison people willing to house them it's kind of like how Refugee um communities might get shared or house with people in the community and they they pay those individuals like you would a rent allocation is oh and those people can of to build a relationship and support those individuals long term um and then I think whenever we're talking about expanding community housing the thing here is there needs to be diversity of options to so like for example the farm this summer we're going be breaking ground on the tiny home Community to add seven individual units uh to our 13 Acre Farm and the reason we're doing that is because people said and some people mentioned here that I particularly one of our de who since passed away she has served 27 years in prison and she said I've never lived alone went from my bir family to my chosen family or married family to jail to prison um I've never seen a phone I've never few lines that to go get go online and apply to the job I don't know how to do that uh so she was actually the one that started planting the seed of like what would it look like for me to practice living alone but still have my community and as someone with a severe record she was also like I don't know if I go into the regular Community can I knock on my neighbors or will it be safe for me to even do that to ask how do I turn on this you know U device or something like that so uh we're we're

adding that complementing it to the community housing shared housing model we have at our grand location our housing only model in Burlington which has um the folks are employed in the community that live with us and then the security deposits which is like getting people into a long-term Community but the last thing I'll say um is that we also have this saying a benevolence farm that collateral consequences of a record our lifelong and so is our support and so that might not look the same for every person and it's certainly not as intensive as when people first come home but we've had alumni five six years out reach back to us if they've had run into issues or trouble or just need advice like I've had someone called this just because like their mom passed away and they just wanted someone to talk to um we've had and it ranges from successes but also like he I just lost my job how do I talk to my landlord about I can't pay my rent is there a way to to talk to them about that and negotiate so uh we we try to do that as as an organization as well anyone else like to take that question or should we move on I'll even do the positive I'll that I think that's great one I think there need to be flexible subsidies where possible that are locally funded because sometimes those restrictions um that come uh with HUD money and other things they're understandable but there's folks that are like right off the edge of that line that really need that support and I think the other piece this is kind of a two-parter is um for Supportive Housing construction like the normal amount of subsidy that goes into affordable housing is is not enough for Supportive Housing um it needs to be in the 80 to 100% range um in order to make that pencil there's a reason a lot of agencies don't build Supportive Housing it is because they can't make it work on paper um for the long especially when the services are there and I think

that's where sometimes the whole leadership from elected officials is important um we we in 30 seconds we had the opportunity two years ago to save 48 units of senior affordable housing that were going to lose their protections and ordered a property we already had with 24 units it had land that had never been developed we had never developed a portion of ours they could hold another 45 to 50 County Manager staff city manager staff Commissioners council members got very excited found a way through an interal agreement we got our partners there to come publicly and say we need to save this and they stepped forward with $6 million that no one had plann to spend um did it in six months and we got that property like literally from first conversation to um we had money in hand to buy that without any debt on that building in six months and it opened up a whole new we promise we'd never do that again but the willingness to boldly step in when there was an opportunity um to save that housing converted to Supportive Housing over time and add more units like sometimes there just is that need to be like we got to operate within the bounds but we got to move like this is an opportunity we're going to lose and they really they really really did exra everyone was not on board but everybody found way to get it going thanks a lot for that um I'd like to open up up to questions before I do I wanted to recognize there is another important Community member here who works on low barrier housing right here in Hillsboro and that's Mr Doug Peterson over here with the re-entry house in Hillsboro I don't mean to put you on the spot but I would love if you feel comfortable to say a little bit about your work in re-entry house before we go on to the

questions thank you very much every time I get a chance to be with these people and Tommy and will uh I learned so much and and realized that we're in our fourth year of of re-entry here in gboro and uh we just it feels like we just started everything is a new Step um one of the things that we uh new program that I'll just mention we've had a benefactor who has brought to us the opportunity of what we're calling the entry house plus personal development fund and uh we're able to offer $2,000 uh to people to Justice involved individual men women who are in need of things like work cloth or perhaps they have to pay off uh a an old traffic ticket in order to get a license or housing so if they need to have some money to have a down payment on the house um so we're excited about this program it will start next month and um once again um we have spent a lot of time this last year visiting other re-entry homes including benevolence and and Jubilee and uh we're just so pleased to be a part of that community and learn from them every day thank you thank you yeah so I'd like to open up to the audience for any questions we have time for a few before the next stage of our program yeah I'm going to repeat the question so as long as I can hear this okay good enough my name is lar Reed and I got a question and it that lines up with something that I believe Christ said that has to do with how do you Outreach to uh private homeowners or private uh building owners to let them

know your requirements and needs Andor how to better open the doors to individuals not everybody's after the top dollar for their rental properties is my question and then the other question is that I've heard a lot about sorry two questions the other one is about I heard a lot about durm Orange County uh and Vance not Vance but U Alamance but how far are we willing to go is Advanced County available as well or is that just a whole another jurisdiction to be considered sure so the two questions are one about specifically how we're engaging an Outreach with our landlord Partners um and two is how far out are we talking about our community when it comes to Lil barrier housing will reach as far as advance or is it more um in in this local more local area uh I think on the the landlords I mean so transparently we've also we just struggled with landlord relationships um we have a few but I think the what I've heard from landlords when we're building relationships is not so much people are concerned about the criminal record it's about men's men of the property um so like we had someone who was incarcerated 15 years and uh we had the landlord who was willing to house her but she their struggle was more like this person didn't know when to communicate to the landlord like the toilet flooded because they were afraid I'm going to get kicked out because the toilet it's my fault of toilet flooded or which me may not have been true but they weren't communicating those things to the landlord or then they were calling landlord standards like ants in my kitchen and they left food out and they were like well that's not really what you call landlord for um but and then other cases I've had to call um and escalated a lot of calls to property managers to try to convince them to house someone um over time so it's it's been a I won't say it's beenal and some other folks might have ideas of rental property managers but we are open to working with landlords and even

continuing our relationship with the person housed by that landlord um to help troubleshoot things and that's what we do with the the housing first fund as well uh the so I'll leave it those if other folks have ideas the um reach Park so the's Farm has served um women particularly from over 40 40 counties I believe majority rural uh had like one person from dur one person from over person from meberg I think but they're coming from Rockingham County gon county P tank um you know all kind of stretches of the the state and our housing first fund we received funding from um CL the Federal Credit Union to work with people in their banking Network in eastern North Carolina um so it's like haret uh Johnson County I think pit County edcom and so we are working and trying to support folks in rural communities because those are often where the infrastructure for re-entry is lacking on the landlords so we we we did two pilots since Co um with support from Blue crosswood Shield where we got to really experiment quite a bit and some of this is already happening here but um we found that landlord incentive are signing bonuses was critical so right now if a new landlord comes on for any of us in our particular system they get $2,500 for the first unit and a th000 after that because part of it is that it's that kind of care of the property like that's people's biggest concern and so there's kind of times I a bit of a national debate do you have risk mitigation like there's a fund you can access later or cash in hand on the front end and and our experience has been cash in hand on the front end makes it I mean people may still come back and there a lot of damage but for the most part that has helped move a lot um and also the other shift we made um and and

I need this as well as possible we had often take kind of like a social worker approach to talking to housing folks of like this is a just thing you should do this and that like we had ta that market like like we were 100% successful with that so we actually took more of business sales and marketing approach and draw folks in with that background partner with tri Department Association in different ways and just were like this is a business like here's how we can mitigate your risks and and we'll work with you we kind of understood where they were coming from we still take the other approach to certain fs and populations but but but that has has really help is is their business um Quake county has a similar thing with the landlord engagement unit that we offer um funds to help incentivize landlords to work whether they sign just somebody landlord engagement unit is helping the place or voucher they do different levels of incentives and also include like security deposit assistance and damages payments and things like that to help reduce risk and those people on that team are former property managers and people who work in real estate so they know how to talk yes to other property managers yeah and I'll say Orange County also as many here will know has both prongs of the landlord incentive they it's not as robust a bonus it's a 1,000 signing bonus for new landlords but also at the risk mitigation program on the back end that's up to $3,000 in Damages yeah we have time for one more question um I'll Mak Association but my my question is on Chanel how do you approach

our vors who are homeless that is Mak a transition out of regular service back into Civil Life uh any of your clients veterans and how are you assisting them through the hoodback program great thank you and so that question is just about how each of y'all's program assist homeless veterans who are transitioning from military back to civilian life I call back that's what I me yeah they I mean the systems are so robust for veterans um I there's a there's something called bash which is veteran specific per supported housing there's ssvf which is veteran specific rapid rehousing and so I very very the system because there it helps too um but very robust systems available think one of the bigest concentrations is focusing on homeless so I say being the um military bre I tried to with the street Outreach approach I try to try to approach them on a personal level of my experiences with my father being in the military and just listening and talking to him and getting an understanding of what veterans want to hear and what they don't want to hear and what is needed in some sensitive topics and sensitive areas of where to approach not to approach and just knowing what's available for veterans in the area um and just letting them know that we are here for them in general so I would say that's one approach that's my Approach we have lots of resources that we can link them to it's just whether or not um at that time they're open to it or

coming back again and again and speaking with them and sometimes it doesn't mean that you go directly to them being a veteran or talking to them about their veteran or their service history sometimes it's a buyin of getting closer into them talking about that so I would say just talking with them and approaching them as a te first then going into their service so in W County we have a veteran services division as part of our Housing Department um and they're doing amazing work within the community they're doing Outreach stuff we also have a veteran social worker on site at our Men Shelter as well to address specific needs of um homeless male veterans we um have we county has set aside additional funding for housing veterans um sometimes there are veterans who maybe have been dishonor discharged but still providing Services they're not eligible for some of those veteran specific services so we have vouchers set aside for those individuals too and help them find housing and connect them with all the veterans benefits of their so we haven't seen as many veterans we do currently have one veteran but justly discharged so we're not as familiar they can't access a lot of the benefits that one my associate with veterans and um but I think what re-entry the overlap between re-entry and Veteran housing is the trauma informed approach is often similar and overlaps um person for example like loud noises are very triggering uh their PTSD overlaps with a lot of PTS and carer people have so I think it's helpful to use sometimes that as a framework you know even when we're as death thinking about how to support people like a lot of our folks their backs to a door or a window and um don't want us to slam doors like even our front door we have to be mindful to shut quietly when we leave uh so I think there just in terms of trauma and Care is really useful I think to apply lessons learn from both communities cuz often it a lot needed to make sure we're caring for people appropriately thank you all um I want to

sincerely thank our wonderful [Music] panelists it's been extremely Illuminating and a great jumping off point for the next part of the program which Kate will introduce thank thank you all for being him I'm so sorry Tommy wasn't he was actually texting me from Los Angeles that um he hated to not be here to talk about rry has so thank you Doug for stepping up to speak but um Tommy of course has a unique perspective with also having success while in transitions which is a uh which supports the re-entry house um with folks who have Liv experience themselves um and it's a really critical component to the success of of that um house um but anyways the next step is really important I know some of you are going to leave and I did um say I would acknowledge um anyone else that came in I know commissioner py Ascot was here um and Chapel Hill council member noler was is here and then Paul slack who is our uh member of the work group is also here so thank you all for being here um this next part is really important you also have a survey um um you can submit the survey hard copy or online but we have tables where we have very specific questions and you we're going to have a scribe and facilitator at each table I would encourage you to stop by each table to give input on the specific topics and they are table one priority populations to be served two table two critical supports needed for low barrier housing success three three Innovative IDE for programs and providers and four how do we measure success in low barrier

housing so please do come by and and have your thoughts um documented and if you have additional questions we didn't have enough time for questions in this limited time period um please also submit them with your survey and we will bring them to the work group and or send them out to these panelists and others that we know are working in this field to to answer those questions for you directly so thank you all and please uh ad to the tables appreciate you all being here