Coalition to End Homelessness Provider Meeting - Friday, July 31st

3:32PM Jul 31, 2020

Speakers:

Keywords:

program

pierce county

question

rental assistance program

rental assistance

puget sound energy

application

household

county

apply

community

landlord

customer

serve

funding

requirements

rent

assistance

income

tacoma

Alright, I'm going to bring us in with a little bit from the Gay Pride this year, which wasn't so exciting because they didn't really have a prayer, but our last day of Gay Pride Month here in Tacoma so I thought that would be interesting bit to hear from our mayor and from the

rainbow center. So, here we go.

Welcome to tacomas first ever city sponsored Pride Parade. Unfortunately this year it's virtual but I hopefully next year I can't wait to be with you all. As we marched together. Let me tell you why the city of Tacoma partners, every year with the rainbow center to celebrate our LGBTQ community. Well, there are a couple of reasons, but one that's really important is that because they're fabulous members of our community. And plus, let's be honest, nobody knows how to throw a good party like the LGBTQ community and Tacoma Loves a Good Party, and so do I. But seriously, it's an important time for us to come out and celebrate one another. Too often people say Tacoma what makes Tacoma so great and I always answered back, it's the people who live here. And so for all of you who live in our community uplifting and celebrating you is what makes Tacoma so great, you know, several years in a row, advocate magazine and named to coma. One of the best cities in the country for LGBTQ inclusion, and we're delighted to have that that designation, but we're going to continue to work hard to make sure that we keep that designation, and that you all know and understand how incredibly important you are to this community. Enjoy the parade, and I can't wait till next year to be in it with you. Have a great day.

Happy Pride to come. My name is Troy Christensen, I'm the executive director of rainbow center. We've had so many inquiries over the past few months about whether it's comma pride would be canceled this year. The answer to that question is never ever will we cancel pride. It's an important part of our culture arising from the Stonewall riots. And this reminds me, why pride is so important. This year, the Black Lives Matter movement is being highlighted by pride celebrations all across the country. While we've seen a lot of our rights challenged by the federal administration this past year, we've also seen a lot of progress. The Supreme Court recently ruled it's no longer legal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity anywhere in the US and in Washington State. We have the newly formed LGBT Commission and the assurance of our governor, that regardless of what happens at the federal level, trans people will have protections, here in Washington State. Now let me get back on track. I am so excited for tacomas first ever virtual Pride Parade. Thank you to everyone who made this possible. This parade is the formal kickoff of Tacoma pride. This will be followed by businesses throughout Tacoma and Pierce County hosting smaller COVID safe points of pride. So let's get this party started. Happy Pride Tacoma.

Not the most exciting start but the rest of that video is online, and again last day of pride I think there's one more event today, which is at 8pm, a virtual talent show with the LGBTQ, the community, and so that looks like it's going to be fun. So I think I'm gonna drag my children to the old basement TV room, and enjoy that. So, I am going to hand it off to James and one second here, but it's really interesting so I was reading all about tribe, and the origins of it last night and. And a lot of it started in New York around protesting violence against the LGBT community, and it's it's really cool how far our world has come. Our country least certainly our city in 50 years, still lots of fill lots of issues LGBT community works through. However, it's, it's a much safer world, I think because of some serious activism. And that's our business to. We're going to hand off to James to lead us into the meeting, Mr Pogue. Hey, good morning. If this was the olden days and we were all meeting together in the Salvation Army, or somewhere else I would have a lot of jokes and I would think I'm charming, probably more charming than I really am. And I'd ask them existential questions. And then I'll hand the mic around and we spent an hour going through them and Garrett will be asking me to kind of speed it up cuz we have an agenda to get to. So I'm gonna try to do a little of that flavor that I've been missing since COVID it we've been all virtual but I I can't my, I won't go around the room but I will ask you guys to do some self reflection, and maybe some of the day we can share. I do a lot of work with my own team I have about 60 employees over 40 departments for comprehensive life resources. And this has been a really interesting time to really make sure everyone is, is doing okay. And so, I want to ask that question to everyone here maybe just journal for a second I won't go around the room I think Garrett just shot me some dirt is like, don't start an exercise is going to take up my whole agenda. So, I won't do that but if you have a paper and a pen or some place to think just for a couple of seconds. You know, why are we here. And, like, how am I doing with. Why am I here. I don't think we spend at a time just to stop and reflect so I'll stop talking for 1010 seconds and just let you think on on why why we're here, right this moment.

I would love to have gone around the room and ask everyone these questions and get inspired and and hear things, but I asked this question to my shelter staff. I run the youth and young adult shelter Well, I don't do much of the running of it, I have amazing staff that do the running of it, but I help support the work. And we asked this question just this week. And there were some conversations about helping people and and doing the most good and working towards equity and anti racism, and then it came out that like, just this group of people felt that their role in life working at a shelter with youth and young adults, was the frontline battle against all the systems of oppression. And that's how they define what they do I fight systems of oppression and I thought that was a pretty powerful way to look at what they do and how they do their work. And we're going to dive in more with that team on how that materializes or manifests into realized work. But what what I was seeing less these cracks of people feeling better about their work by just calling it what they what their mission is in their hearts. And there's some perspective out there if you look at Facebook or if you look at the things that are happening in the world that that nobody cares or that everybody's against everybody or whatever is happening. And I always tell us that to say that people definitely do care, but they typically respond when they're not cared for. And so we're, we try hard to care for people and help people feel like loved and supported and make sure that they all have their, their mission in life. And so I also want to challenge everyone here to ask some questions about like how are you cared for. There, either that's your self care, or it's it's somebody in your life but what what do you have in your life is caring for you right now that lets you do what we first said that you do, so I'm going to ask you guys again journal 10 seconds I don't want to take up too much time but start asking, Is there stuff in your life, either yourself or your support network this caring for you and and how are you cared for. So again, I'll give I'll do 10 seconds or 15 seconds of silence for that.

I'm hoping everyone's writing a whole long list that's gonna take a lot longer than 10 seconds, and you're starting to feel a little bit of gratitude maybe in terms of looking at your own support network and your own blessings, but I had an opportunity this entire quarantine to be in the office, live I never had to work from home I think one day I did but for the most part, I've been in here. And, and the energy with my staff and energy with the clients that we serve has always been a little bit elevated and even more so recently the uncertainty and the concerns and we hear things about unemployment numbers rising and it looks like it's getting to 20% and maybe it's just me but part of me, goes to this optimistic place of, well that still means that 80% have have things that they, they do daily and get paid for. I'm not trying to sugarcoat it but one way to look at things is that there's always another way to look at them. And I always encourage people to have gratitude and make sure that they know what they have in their life, why they're doing what they do in their life and when they enter a room or enter an environment, are they bringing something forward to that environment, or are they really taking away from that environment. And so, the best I can say one of my staff said I think he probably quoted from a Disney movie or something, it sounds like it but in every moment be an opportunity for us to do the most good, even if that's just a little good, or even if that's just not doing. I guess the Hippocratic Oath says do no harm. So we're going to reframe that to like, what can I do in the moment, the moment interventions and interactions to do the most good, so I'm going to do another 10 seconds is, is there something you can do today. Maybe a little piece of just kindness, you can offer somebody maybe someone that's been on your support network you just described in the second question that maybe you haven't thanked for a while. Or maybe you haven't posted a positive message on Facebook for a while, or whatever the newest social media is that I'm out of the loop on. But is there something you can commit to doing today just a little something even if it's just sending an email to somebody, you haven't said thank you to for a while. Is there something that you can do to can be bring back to the your support network or the people you care about or just doing good in the world. So again, I'll give you 10 more seconds to come up with something you can do today that will bring the most good to your network.

So hopefully everybody thought of something or is thinking of something. And

one of the things that I do, I do a lot of self care training in a time of COVID has been very challenging to tell people to take care of themselves when they feel like the resources that they used to have to take care of themselves have now closed or gone away or altered or changed or the world is just the water is coming on too fast for them to buck the bales out of the boat. And I always reframe self care as trying to find the place where the world makes sense and finding a way to live in that world for as long as you can before you go back to the real world, and hopefully over time, the real world will be the world where everything makes sense. And so just to wrap up this exercise I don't have anything more to really add but my own view of like what we do here and the value of the work that I do is that I often feel overwhelmed and we have an exercise that we do in therapy that when I was a therapist they teach you to zoom in zoom out. When the client that sitting in your, your room is sharing something that's too traumatic. We do a little zoom out like you listen in your present but but you start to ask yourself just kind of internally, you know, in the grand scheme of things this one person in this one room in this one building in this one city in this one county, and it continued to zoom out until you realize that this is such a small little speck in the world or in the universe. And that allows you a moment to not be overwhelmed by what's in front of you, and then the opposite when you're, you're overwhelmed by the things in the world systemic racism and poverty and all that stuff. Well then you zoom into the person who's right in front of you and say well I don't know about all that but I can help this one person who's right in front of me. And so I zoom in and zoom out all the time. And I was telling someone the other day that I feel like my job oftentimes is trying to move mountains with a spoon. But it would be really hard for me to do that, but we have a whole community of people with spoons that have been helped them this whole time. So, for my support network, and just say everyone here, one of the things that I can do to bring the most good is to say thank you to everyone here, a lot of you guys have been on this journey with me for for three years. Some of you will continue to be on it for a long time. Some, some people are pivoting into other other realms of life. But, again, I'm just here to say thank you to all you guys for helping me. Both stay centered and grounded being part of the things that I appreciate about life and helping me move these mountains with all of our little spoons.

Thank you, James. I do miss you running the meeting.

All right, our first agenda item is gonna be fun. I think pietrasanta energy's interested in talking about some of their programs to help folks with paying their bills and some other grant work that they put together, and they are interested in coming in I was interested in them being here so without further ado I'm gonna hand it over to Melissa Troy, Melissa.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be able to share some information out for all of you that might be relevant not only to your clients, but also maybe serve your nonprofit, as we have a variety of programs that are available right now. We know that our commitment to community is, is more important than ever. And we've really worked hard from the back end to be able to put together as many opportunities that we can to help serve our customer where they are. And that includes new customers or people that are coming into our service for the first time. So if you could let me share my screen. I'm going to go ahead and be good to

go.

Great.

And anyone can stop me at any point in time if they've got some questions. I also do have a counterpart that's on the call with me who can answer any questions that you guys might have that come up in the chat box. My name is Melissa Troy so I'm actually the outreach coordinator for Pierce County and Auburn. My job is really to serve you, the community as well as be able to bring back the needs of our customer to our programs that we're wanting within Puget Sound energy. So what that would mean was you know if there's a nonprofit that needs assistance, then you would be able to reach out to me to be able to request those funds, or just to maybe get networking opportunities. Additionally, it's being able to tell Puget Sound energy, what the actual needs are of the customer. What is our county looking like what what are the customers saying and how we need to serve them best. So it's a good working relationship that we have within our community at Puget Sound energy. So, we've, we've come to understand definitely that this is a very trying time for everybody and the resources are very spread out. So we're taking some extra measures this time to be able to help out our customer and our nonprofits, because everyone is in a bit more need these days. And in terms of what we're doing for customers. We are continuing to notice connections for non payment at this time as well there's no fees collected on non or late payments. And what we're finding is actually not a lot of people are super late on their payments yet it's actually really relative to what we normally experience and our winter months when don't tend to get a bit higher. But we are really hyper focused on making sure that we're not causing any additional ill stress for any of our customers at this time. And then one thing to note in regards to transitioning people into home for the first time or again, would be that we're not actually asking for deposits for new customers so this is really relevant to the majority of the coalition that you guys serve is that oftentimes that can be a barrier to entry for utilities, is that there's often a deposit is going to be required for it right at this point, as long as we're keeping up there's no disconnections or no fees for late payments. We're also not going to be taking deposits for new customers to come in. We are going to be working with customers on options such as Bill Payment budget or a rainbow arrangements and then choosing a new build date, why this matters to you is that, this allows you to work with your clients and customers to be able to help them plan out how they're best going to be able to be financially successful when they're getting into a home. So for a budget payment plan this would be as easy as making arrangement so that you have an exact bill every single month rather than having what would normally be a utility bill where some months you're going to be paying almost nothing and then some months you're going to be paying quite a bit. So we're actually working out this budget payment plan in order to make sure that you can help be financially stable throughout the entire year, not just when our utilities are lower. And lastly, we're going to be connecting our income qualified customers to a couple of different bill payment arrangement programs, and this includes lychee, which I assume most of you be familiar with and if you're not we can definitely chat about it, as well as pscs own health program, which we'll talk about in the next couple of slides as well, because of COVID we do have a customer assistance program that's dedicated to COVID that will also go over.

So for our COVID-19 pandemic assistance fun we call it k cap. We're always really big on acronyms I'm sure you guys are as well. So we've actually been able to release $11 million to customers impacted by this pandemic. So I believe that this is important to everyone that we know. And it's not just the clients we serve, but it's also our friends and family. Most of us know, if not a handful of people but a lot of people who are experiencing financial despair due to COVID. And this is actually a sign that's developed just for that person, so you can receive up to $1,000 bill credit on your utilities, and this is applied both to our gas and electric service customers. The amount is determined. We look at your bill from the previous year so it's March to August of 2019. If you have a new customer coming in. You're helping somebody get into a home for the first time we're going to take a look at the bills for their previous tenant, to be able to determine what they might be experiencing this bill Credit goes into effect into the account it usually takes about a couple of weeks for the application to go through. And we're going to be ending this program I think at the end of September. There is a likelihood that it will continue but at this point in time we've actually already given out $6 million to our customers. In order to help relieve some of those needs at this time. And that's actually about 10,000 customers have been served with this program. It's really important to note that the eligibility is anywhere from being recently employed to partially unemployed so if you have any of your employees who've had to go down to part time or have been furloughed this also would be an eligibility for them. And the income requirements are actually 250% of ami now which is a pretty huge increase in terms of to low income cap so people who are experiencing financial impacts for the first time, or may have been recently laid off and not has had to deal with this before. This is also going to be an eligible program for them.

Can I interrupt.

Oh, absolutely,

yes, maybe you're gonna cover it but can you maybe briefly talk about the geographic distribution of your customers, I think most of Pierce County has PSC for for gas and. However, I have to come up public utilities for like TriCity is that the case for anyway. Can you describe that a little bit.

Yeah, absolutely. And normally I would include that actually in our slide deck so I apologize for that. So for Pierce County within the coma city limits. We serve gas only outside of the city limits, we're going to be combined service areas so it depends on whether or not your city has its own public utility. And in that case, we're likely going to be your guests, your guests utility for that reason for the majority of Pierce County so unincorporated Pierce County. We also serve like Bonney Lake, she wallet. Parts of DuPont. And then all of Auburn, those places will be a combined service territory both electric and gas, and we vary depending upon the county we serve 10 counties within the Puget Sound energy area we've been the provider of utilities for about 100 years so we've got a good wide gap. But in Tacoma specifically, we are going to be your gas only provider. Does that answer your question Garrett.

Yeah, perfect and I think more detail on lakeith as opposed to less I wouldn't assume what everyone knows about like so.

Perfect. So we'll start off with the health program. So our Pac Health Program is a Puget Sound energy specific program that we've developed. So with this one. It's the lifeline program that you can apply directly to PSC for, and it will be paid out to the customer directly. So it's really helpful for somebody who's paying utilities directly to a landlord but the T, the tenant is listed as the customer. So this is very different than the light heat program which we can talk about in just a second. So it's giving you some Bill Payment Assistance that actually covers a little bit extra from what our life eat program will cover, and it's less restrictive. The reason why I wanted to bring up help specifically with this group is that it's actually much easier to apply for as you don't need to have like legal documentation to prove that you're a citizen in order to apply for this program. So oftentimes that can be a barrier for somebody exiting homelessness is that they may have some barriers about documentation. And in this case, that sort of documentation would not apply. The lychee program. So you'll notice on the right and the chart. We have a couple of different income requirements so kcap helped LIHEAP, and then our weatherization program for the health program that's our standard Puget Sound energy program, the left is going to be that k cap you'll notice the amounts are much higher because of the AMI we've, we've increased the capability for more customers to utilize that program. Life is going to be more restrictive. So this is actually a government regulated program. And I think it's low income Home Energy Assistance Program, if I remember correctly. So this one you'll actually apply through in Pierce County, you're going to go through the Salvation Army and then there's one other organization, which my counterpart can pop into the chat group because I'm not remembering at this moment. But this one you would apply directly through those programs and they would pay Puget Sound energy for you, for your bill. So, with help, they're going to be paying the customer directly. It's to help pay utilities but that check gets written out. They can utilize that however the best way they see fit. Hopefully paying their utility bill with light heat is a program in which still apply they'll get government funding, and that government funding will go directly to Puget Sound energy to pay their utility bill for them. So with the program in which, if you're struggling with your low income or any financial visa you have you actually can apply for both programs. So internally you do the Puget Sound energy one, and then you can also use the government funding through lie heap. With lie heap is, is I believe zero income to low income. And the same would go for help. And I check the chat box really quick. Perfect and also this chart is available on our website underneath our Puget Sound energy website and it's slash bill assistance. So that will be available that you can see you can download it, I can also send everyone this file if you would like to see you've got the information there. And I have Shannon who's in the chatbox being able to answer all those questions, it looks like she just listed. The Pierce County Human Services with the other point of contact for our light heat program. And so this is actually more relevant to you as a nonprofit at Puget Sound energy we have something called the PSE foundation so this is a separate entity that we utilize to be able to gift nonprofits and work within our community in a more financially impactful way that doesn't have all of the requirements for the utility has to meet within the government. So we've actually been able to partner with PSE Foundation which is a separate entity, but it was originally a few years ago I believe it was 2006, or 2010, was gifted $15 million, to be able to start this foundation. And so we've been able to work with them to work with nonprofits in the area, both in the giving aspect and then also for energy efficiency grants. And just to note so some of the partners that we work with every year. This is our 2020 list. So we partner with 24 nonprofits so typically it's going to actually be two organizations per county in Pierce County we work with harbor wild watching gig harbor. And then we also work with rebuilding South sound, which is a organization that helps to work on low income housing requirements.

So with this one. One of the things to note is that we actually pick out those organizations usually in the fall, every year for next year so if you're interested in pursuing this kind of opportunity with Puget Sound energy you can reach out to one of our outreach team, or you can reach out to me and I can get you in touch with the appropriate person for Pierce County, it would be me. And we usually partner and do about a $10,000 donation, that has very few restrictions. The only thing that we asked for in return is that you just kind of engage us online and and allow us to interact with you, events and things of that nature.

So one of the things that we've been able to do this year in 2020 is donate well over $770,000, and this is actually as of about May, and this was kind of in the midst of COVID when we were still trying to move all the pieces in our finances to be able to help out in more impactful ways and then this. We've been really hyper focused on taking care of hospitals community wide rapid response. We've been partnering quite a bit with the local and regional food banks, as well as providing some assistance to the Department of Health to be able to provide safety messages for the community during COVID. So this is just a variety of some different things that we've been able to do, just in the past six months, within the community that also serves our Pierce County.

And this is the one I'm most excited about so definitely take some notes here, this is our brand new competitive grant. And this is a very limited time window grant that we're going to be offering. So for any nonprofit, that's interested that meets the qualifications, pse Foundation has just announced a few days ago, that they're going to be two grants that are totaling $400,000 for community based public charity organizations across our service territory, so it doesn't matter if you're an electric customer or gas customer or combined customer This is actually open to all of our charities within our organization that we serve. The funding is specifically designed to help community members have access to shelter, food and other critical peepee supplies. So I think this one is really relevant to this team as a way to be able to help your community in a bigger way have access to shelter and food. Additionally, It's to help you keep your doors open and take care of the needs of not only your employees, your volunteers and also any of your community members that utilize your building or your services. And this can actually be used for things that involve COVID-19 related expenses for your organization. The most important thing is that it's a very short deadline. The first round, and for the application on August 31 and rewarded in October. The second round, which you are automatically eligible to apply for if you just hit one little square on an application that we'll talk about in the next slide. Then you can go into the second round which starts. The deadline is October 1 for the application and the awards are in December. So we're actually hoping that lots of organizations apply for this grant, we were able to kind of throw this money together at the last minute in order to serve the needs of our nonprofits as we were noticing the need have had been increased greatly during this time. So here's a little bit more information. There's some qualifications that you have to go through so we're hoping to give between 1000 and $20,000 per organization per round. And so we've got those two rounds available in this way that we're going to actually be able to approve a significant amount of applications, if we're spreading the loss a little bit. You definitely need to be a public charity as designated by the IRS and if you aren't you can utilize maybe an organization that you are in partnership with thee, you could help write the grant and designate that the dollars would be used for your organization. I've been able to speak to some of the members on this team about how we can kind of move the application to make it work. So you can fulfill those opportunities. It definitely needs to be within a PSE County. So somewhere that we serve and that's within the 10 counties so anywhere with to call them up, or excuse me Pierce Thurston, we serve, pretty much all the way from Bellingham down to, Louis, and then over to can attest, it does need to be programmatic or capital needs. So list out the things that you're going to be doing with this one. We aren't going to be funding individual so you can't necessarily write a story about a specific client that you have focused on but just your general needs of the organization. And if you happen to be regulated under religious or political organization then you'd also need to utilize a different organization to apply for this. We won't cover any individual or specific family or group, and it's not for event sponsorship so if you're trying to have a fundraiser. This is not necessarily that grant opportunity but we do have other ways that we can get you some event sponsorship. You can just email me and request that information. So in order for your grant application to be considered for both rounds, you can actually, I think. Question 20 on the application as a quick online application that shouldn't take more than a, maybe an hour to fill out. There's a box at the very end that just asked us if you'd like to be considered for both rounds so you don't have to reapply twice. The nice part is that you can actually qualify for both rounds so if you receive a grant in the first round, and you've checked that box you actually are eligible to receive a grant in the second round and we are asking that you do that so that you can potentially get funding in both rounds of the opportunity. Does anyone have questions about this one.

All right.

I'm the secondary one that I wanted to share out is one that is going to be a requirement that you are an electric customer with PSE in your building. So in this case, if your facilities are outside of the city of Tacoma, then definitely reach out to me and I can make sure that the your PSP customer for electric, but we're actually providing up to $100,000 per location for a solar project to be able to increase the energy efficiency of your nonprofit. We are hyper focused on that we want that nonprofit to be public housing authorities tribal entities, and we want to make sure that you're serving low income black indigenous and people of color in the community member aspects. So that's a specific ask that we're doing this year. We're actually going to be providing 100% of the design installation permitting and equipment costs for this grid. So, what it will be requirement for you is really that you'll just take care of the insurance on for wherever the, the solar panels are going to go on to for five years and that's our only ask of you. So that hundred thousand dollars is truly like what the cost of the project is going to be. This will actually allow for your organization to be more energy efficient, as well as reduce your outward cost for utility. We just published the grant a few weeks ago, and their grant is going to be required for the application on September 4. This one's a little bit more nuanced so please partner with me reach out, I'll have my email at the end of this presentation so that you can ask some questions I can do a little bit of research for you to find out if you qualify for it. This is an excellent opportunity. If you happen to have low income housing that you have within your organization. We can also put these on to a house. So this doesn't just have to be your actual business building it can be some of your low income housing that you actually have within the community and the surrounding area in Pierce County or beyond because it's serving also our 10 counties within our service area. Alright, so my information is here, so Melissa, Troy at PSC Comm. Two SS one It always seems to be a thing. And I have the ability, just to answer any questions that you might have. Also if you just generally have client concerns or you have somebody that you are struggling to work with to figure out how we're going to take care of the utilities and financial impacts that might come with new service for any of the people that you serve I'm happy to help walk them through, and also provided me more resources that I'm aware of that we can work through together. So I'm a big component of not only the city of Tacoma Pierce County in general and I'm very, very proud to be able to serve Puget Sound energy and do you in this way. And so I'm going to just double check the chat box. Make sure there's not any question. Oh perfect thank you so much Sherry for that uh that lovely little comment. She just had wonderful presentation which I very much enjoy I'm a person who enjoys words of affirmation so I wanted to thank you so much for having me on. This was very short notice. So, I just want to make sure that we get this information out to you so that you guys can meet those deadlines. I'm happy to send over any information that you guys want please feel free to reach out to me or text me, and I can get you all the needs that you might have. So, thank you so much.

Thanks so much, Melissa, very, very interesting free money for shelter and food who doesn't want to sign up for that. And thanks, Jenny Lorton for connecting us in always appreciate it when somebody says hey these people need to come to the coalition, say, Yes, right away. And we made it all happen and we also have Melissa's email in the email that it came out with the agenda, so he didn't snag it there. And wow I like that you guys have like tunnels and windmills and all your background pictures like that's so much more exciting. Yeah, multi Bay shelter housing pictures which is what we have. I did want to remind everyone I didn't know at the beginning that we are switching or trying out, artificial intelligence for our live captioning so in the upper left of your screen, you can see otter AI live notes. And I suspect it won't be quite as good as BBs captioning that was embedded right within our zoom meeting, but maybe it'll work, so I'd love some feedback from folks that find that useful. Yeah, you just click it, it opens up a new window.

And I hope that it works well.

Our next presenter needs no introduction. But I'll give, I'll give Norman's life and introduction anyway. Let Norma know I got his back on this one. Okay. So a little bit of an update for I know it's like it would be completely demeaning if it weren't for the fact that poor normal, normal not, please don't be normal, but I'm Kelly, a interested to hear what's going on at Goodwill sounds like you guys are doing some amazing pivoting to remote workforce development stuff, and also crazily dipping your toe into rent assistance, Kelly.

Yes yes we are i'm gonna i'm going to talk about that last as it seems to take up most of my time recently so goodwill many of you have heard our presentations before COVID, and I think I did one right at the initial onset of the quarantine about our new personal finance course and I'm going to touch on that a little bit. Um, I have some fliers actually that I'm going to share here in a second but to talk a little bit about our new digital Work Opportunity Center. So this is what has been just consuming all of my time the last few months and everybody else left here and workforce development at Goodwill so we have successfully transferred. Everything we do into a digital platform. We are able to do computer classes now through a digital platform we're able we've expanded those and I'm going to talk more about that we're doing financial education now. Oh yes, the same Cynthia I know it's my, it's my office that I'm shadowed on sorry if you're following the chat box it looks like um, it looks like I have a tan that's what it looks like so I'm happy with that. Um, but at any rate, we have we have literally taken all of our classes and made it accessible through cell phone first, and then through any laptop or computer. I'm going to get into how we can help provide new students with that stuff in a little bit. So with that, I'm going to share my screen. I'm going to do my best here anyway.

There you go.

Good.

All right, does it switch screens with me.

Is that how you set it up.

I know, right, um, so I'm just gonna move your guys's faces to the other side here. Okay, so you can see the it fundamentals.

Yep, we're good. Okay,

so this is our latest and greatest program it fundamentals basically took the place of our basic computer skills class. Now we're still integrating our career readiness class into this which covers everything from resume writing. You know job search math basics computer basics financial literacy and a whole bunch more, and we've put it into this it fundamentals program. So basically what this is is their first basic step into it. Now I'm sure I don't have to tell you guys why we chose it because it is such, it's got to be the highest demand job right now right Garrett.

Yes. No.

I'm so this is a six week program. We go through a lot of different certifications through this so that comp Tia IETF plus i don't know what a whole bunch of those names mean but I know that they're really great certifications to have going into this. We've talked a lot about security, setting up your devices, understanding basic programs managing software. Now, this sounds like a lot when I read through this flyer to me too I'm like, I could never in my life do this well we've set this up so it is extremely basic.

Well, we'll get

folks into the computer basics and under understanding basic computer literacy and then adjust with them in this class. The great thing about this is we have instructors consistently so this is taught through a computer, which we can provide, too. We can provide the qualifying students so anybody who's low income qualify we can provide a laptop to them, and we'll buy them the laptop so they'll be able to keep that as they go through this program. And afterwards, too.

So, good stuff though so the instructors

are there virtually with them one on one, we also have several office hours that we're doing as well. Should we took that that's the piece or I'm sorry that's the it fundamentals six weeks so that's not a very long time right so as in the world we're in right now, with it being so difficult to find a job, six weeks is a good way to switch over to the PC technician flyer gear shake your head that you can see that flyer when I switch over.

It is nodding nodding your head. This is shaking your head with me.

All right, for you.

So after that basic it fundamentals course now they don't necessarily students don't necessarily have to go on to PC technician but they have that option. We're currently enrolling for both of these right now so what PC technician is is this one is an 18 week course, it is very extensive, we really dive into networking IT security troubleshooting. Security components, it's all kinds of things and I don't know about you all but I know throughout like quarantine. I can't tell you enough how much like goodwill has utilized, all of these different all of these different things and we've, we've needed people consistently as I'm sure a lot of your organization's have as well. So, same thing again, all of these classes are free. We're providing the laptop we're providing everything that the student needs to be successful in this, and currently enrolling so we're taking 20 students at a time. Now in this class, an 18 week training program we probably aren't going to overlap so this next class I believe starts on September 14 and it is still enrolling actually we have a few spots left in this class. So, we probably won't overlap the start of this class or the next one will start virtually like 1819 weeks after, after the start of this class. So then our last one I'm going to go into and then I'll let you guys ask any questions is our personal finance course, and I've been here presenting about this one already. Now, I think what's most exciting about this class is that literally anybody can do it through any smartphone so any internet connected device. All they do is text FOMC, I believe it's just FFC register 256512, there it is, it's on the flyer, and they're immediately have the option to do a short form enroll for this personal finance course. This is Goodwill's financial education class done through a smartphone. So it takes about anywhere I was able to get through it in about an hour and a half and onset and read everything I probably should have typically it takes about four hours to get through. Now what's great and I love that we have PSE on the line, too, is that if you're to come a public utilities customer I've talked about this, you go through this personal finance class online on your phone, and you're able to get an $80 credit now that 80 go credit can apply to anybody who's used emergency assistance. So we used to have some pretty strict guidelines as far as income qualifications for that TPU discount with pairing it with financial education. Right now the emergency assistance FPL is very very high so it's over 200%. So basically a lot of folks can do this. We've had 41 people in the last 26 days go through this and get that TPU credit which is a record for us. And I called out PSE because we would certainly love to have the same partnership with other utility companies we've been talking about it for a very very long time. It is very successful not only are we putting people through financial education but we're able to help them with that first utility bill as well. And then, same as I talked about before, so they can go through the personal finance course, you get the $80 discount if they just sit and talk with one of our financial coaches, whether it be on the phone, texting or on the computer, they get an additional $80 off so the majority of those 41 people got $160 off their bill, which was pretty cool. Come back so you guys can see my face there. Um, but big stuff going on at Goodwill I cannot tell you how challenging it has been to get everything up and running in a virtual platform we use in case anybody's wondering we use several platforms to do virtual classes so we're doing canvas. We're using Google classrooms. Of course we use engage by cell which is our texting method but it's it's just taken so much effort and such a learning. Such a learning curve for so many of us who are not super digitally inclined. So that would be great. Does anybody have any questions for me I know I went pretty fast I have another meeting here in just a few minutes so.

Oh, thank you, thank you see see.

I supposed to be paying attention to the. Okay,

about the rent Assistance Program.

Oh that's right thank you for asking.

Rent assistance whoo

that's another one and we just had some new funding announced yesterday which was pretty darn cool. So yes goodwill has decided to take Pierce County up on their. I don't know on the rental assistance deal that we're many of us are working on 11 organizations, I believe, so goodwill is also one of them. I believe we are one of the larger grantees so we received about $275,000 for rental assistance. So we are currently processing, a lot of applications over and over. Yesterday Pierce County launched that that $10 million. We are allowed to request additional funding for that. So we are going for that. We're going to bring on about five staff to help us do that Rental Assistance Program and hope to be able to process applications a little bit faster. It's definitely a new experience for me I've listened to so many of you in here who many of you are my mentors who have talked about rent assistance and such for a very long time well thank you I'm in it. It's, it's, it's a great, it's interesting to learn and I'm really glad that we're able to help so many so the new pot of funding I'm sure Valerie has been out here talking. Is that 50% ami whereas the one that we currently are serving is 80% am I, of course you have to live within Pierce County city limit or Pierce County limits. But we seem to be helping out a ton of people I haven't had hardly anybody come in over income or be disqualified. So certainly you can go on Pierce County wa.gov slash housing help and fill out an application for rental assistance when you do so you can check goodwill and if you have a personal referral, maybe they'll get to talk to yours truly, helping them with their rental assistance processing. because I'm doing that too.

And that's everything.

And I'll make sure that I send these fliers out to everybody I believe I did already I sent out the press release. I'll be on city line on the 12th talking about this too hopefully a little slower and better I know right here that's I know tell Norman make sure it's on. But, um, yeah so I'll be on there talking about that too and hopefully we'll get this out a little more as we all look to the future of online education for the next several months, right.

So thank you everybody. Oh, Kelly What

did you say with the age limits are for those training programs for the it and

yeah it's looking like 18 plus is and I'm not really sure why we went with 18 plus i think that had to do with the folks that we partnered with were 18 plus.

Yeah, cool.

What platforms are other organizations using for their online programs, that's a really interesting question because I haven't heard of a lot of other online programs I know some people are doing some in person stuff, or have some planned.

I think that's the question for the group Maureen.

No, it is a question for the group. I just wonder if there are

platforms that are better that people are finding are better as you know more folks have to move to an online real content based kind of presence.

No, it's been expensive.

It's been very expensive to try to get it all up and running and get the it's it's been expensive.

Well, that's something we should look at just in terms of the cares relief money, sort of a wish list as we get to the end of that pot of money or maybe even the state or some of its going through workforce that kind of thing. Seems to me that's an infrastructure issue that ought to be funded because it's strictly cobit related

wasn't either if he didn't have that money Maureen when you find that out. Thank you.

I mean some of those systems are really substantial like Megan's on with, you know, teacher with the Tacoma school district I mean they have massive infrastructure investment in those tools and a lot of times they're, they're non trivial to learn right they're, they're huge IT investments for an organization and then significant learning curves for for staff to really make them effective tools for their students.

And so then you get these smaller things in there again challenge anyway Megan Are you gonna say,

Well, I can send over any trainings that I find, because we have so many access and professional developments with teachers especially folks have questions about working with Microsoft Teams because that's what our districts using I'd be happy to send what I know. I also pick up a ton of like free tools and stuff that I use in my classroom that I think would be helpful. If you're looking for like discussion platforms, let me know.

Thanks Megan.

All right. One last thing on that. Following up on Megan, If I could, is if people would let Garrett know or put something in the chat about. Should we just have a page about this on we've got a website. And should we just have one place where this kind of information goes so it's easy for people to find, maybe

in a nice note from Sheila, reminding us to go shop at Goodwill where your donations and purchases all support this cool work that is being done by Kelly and her team. All right, we are going to, I don't see any more questions we are going to shift off into the world of rent assistance. Jeff Rogers volunteer to provide us a big update but before we do that, we're going to get a quick update from sean devlin, who is manager director I don't know what you are of the Pierce County Veterans Bureau has given us a quick update on rent assistance from the veteran side and whatever else Shawn wants to talk about john. Thanks guys.

I will be super brief because I think Jeff will cover most of your questions. But I just wanted to give an update on where we're at through the veterans Rental Assistance Program

here a little quiet Sean.

Oh, sorry. Let me see if I.

That's better. Okay, better now.

So I just want to be super brief I think Jeff will give, most of the context you're looking for, for the rental assistance programs.

We are at now you're super quiet again.

No,

I don't know what's going on.

Why don't get why don't you give Jeff a

go and then I'll come back to you.

Cool. Thanks, Mr. Rogers. Welcome.

Good morning. Is it possible I can share my screen.

Yes it is. Go for him. Okay.

Hang on a second.

Do you see it.

Yes. Okay, can you could yep at the maximize and will be beautiful.

Can you hear me okay. Yes. Can you hear me now.

Yes,

sorry, that was a joke, that's in my brain from Verizon advertisements or whatever company, a long time ago. Good morning. It's Friday. Yay. Friday Yay, I'm Jeff Rogers for those who don't know me I work with Pierce County Human Services and I have the privilege of being the supervisor for the homeless team here at Pierce County and I have Valerie knight on the call with me, Valerie is going to pitch it with me on this process this morning, she's going to share our application with all of you. So you're fully informed and aware of what we're doing here at Pierce County to address the needs of households in our community that are facing a crisis of being unable to pay their rent. A lot of moving parts to this work a lot of changes, changes happen every day will inform providers is something yesterday which we did and today things have changed. It's just the world we live in, change is constant. But let me just get started real quickly. We're here to talk about our rental assistance program, we're going to talk about available funding our current providers who are doing this work with us that are great partners in this work, our outreach to some potential providers that the state has identified by as identified as by and for agencies, and how people can apply I know Garrett you asked for some data. We have very little data. Unfortunately, our data sets, it's working on this program has been off for the last couple days and is off today. So we haven't had the opportunity to pull the data but we could come back and show that in the future if you'd like. So then we'll have a question and answer session at the end when we're done with our presentation. We have three different types of rental assistance programs that are outside of the Veterans Program that Shawn who's our Veterans Program Manager operates. We all use the same portal, but I'm just going to talk today about the rental assistance programs that our homeless team are working with, not the Veterans Program, and just so you're aware we also have a mortgage assistance program that is now online that uses the same portal, all applications are coming into one location and then being distributed to the different programs, but I'm just going to focus on three programs that we have and I'll explain why there are three different programs. Several weeks ago we implemented the Pierce County cares Rental Assistance Program. This program has just over $4 million that was allocated by the Pierce County Council to utilize locally in Pierce County, to help with the rent burden issue that many renters have in our community. After we implemented that program we heard from the state of Washington, that they were funneling $100 million across the state to help with this. Rental Assistance relief, their program is called the eviction Rental Assistance Program or what we call a wrap. That's $10 million. And then in that same program they have a separate pot of funding that's separate that is targeted towards youth and young adult eviction rental assistance, which we're calling the yy a rep program so these are the three different programs that we're talking about each have different eligibility criteria, and hopefully you'll understand that criteria as we walk through the programs. So as I said, total cares that we have is 4.250 from Pierce County's allocation. The total e rap funding which is both general pot the state gave us just over 10,900,000, and the 101,107,000 that we got for the youth and young adult program, we have a total of $11,937,000 coming from the state, which combined together is just over $16 million, that the county is attempting to get spent. And my next bullet is the biggest emphasis all funds must be spent by December 30 of this year. That is a federal requirement because if you're not aware cares funding comes from the cares act that is legislation at a federal level. So all these dollars are federal dollars we have a direct allocation to Pierce County, as well as a pass through allocation coming through the state of Washington, a lot of money to spend. But we believe with the number of partners we have a number of partners we're outreaching to to spend these dollars that we should be successful in providing some rent relief to burdened households in our community, our program specific, that is the Pierce County funded project using local dollars. They have households have to be affected by COVID-19, that could be in many ways that could be that they have a rent problem, because they lost a job or

other issues because they're on a very low fixed income. And we know that food prices have gone up and people can't afford to buy food is a variety of reasons that people can be impacted by COVID. It's not just that you have tested positive with the COVID test and you have COVID. We know that many. Most employers at the beginning shut down. So there's a variety of reasons that people could be affected by COPPA with our program we set our income guidelines if 80% of area, medium, or below. That is a federal standard that area median income, and that is what we considered low income. Anyone that's under 80% of area median and below or 8% there is a 50% threshold which is called very low income, as long as at 30% threshold which is called extremely low income ours. This program for these dollars the 4 million we have is set at 80% very immediate income and the household must have at least in their name, whoever is applying for the assistance from us must have at least in their name with a landlord within the limits of Pierce County. There is no difference between when we say Pierce County. We're talking the whole boundaries of Pierce County, City of Tacoma city of Lakewood cvmp Walla county of Eatonville county Buckley, and all the places in between. We don't separate Pierce County from Tacoma, as we do with many fun sources, this is county wide. Anyone with a lease in their name from a landlord in Pierce County qualifies, they qualify for up to three months of rent. They must be in arrears, which means they must owe their landlord rent. It's past due at some point, It could be they're currently past due in July. It could be their past due in May June and July, it could be past due to months, but they must owe the landlord money. We pay arrears which is owing, and this program allows you to assess the need of the household and pay future rents, the maximum numbers of months of rent that a household could get is up to three months of rent. That could be arrears or future rents, the application process we have an online portal application that we're going to go through here in a future, and you access that application online at the Pierce County website and we'll give you some additional flow of process once you've submitted the application. We'll talk about the process later in our presentation, the eviction Rental Assistance Program, sorry if you see my emails popping up eviction Rental Assistance Program. These are the state II wrapped dollars so over 10 million. Here's where you'll see some differences between the program. Households must be affected by COVID-19, they must earn less than 50% of the very of the area median income. And again, that's the very low, not the low income it's the middle range at 50%, and they must also meet one other state requirement,

Jeff. Can I interrupt for a sec. So when you say 50% of area median income you mean like right now, like they could have been making $100,000 a year, and then they got laid off, and currently they're not making anything.

This is correct. This is based on your last 60 days of income

and would your unemployment checks count towards that or

No. That is the standard unemployment benefit would count, but the additional $600, that's not a standard routine benefit would not count. Thanks so if you earn $1,000 a week on unemployment because that's the standard amount that would qualify. You do not include the additional $600 that expires today, I believe. Yes, that would not be considered, but the initial monies would. Yes.

If somebody got laid off tomorrow. They would have to wait how many days before they'd be eligible,

and then

it's based on their income. The last 60 days so they got laid off today the last day of this month. We're going to evaluate for this eviction Rental Assistance Program, their last 60 days of income, and how much they earned in the last 60 days correct. That's just this E rat program to talk about our program. Our question is it's less, it's, it's more flexible it's not as restrictive our question is, how much are you earning now so we're going to ask people to provide like their most recent pay stub or whatever, and based on their most recent pay stub to determine the monthly income, but the state's requirement with this program is the last 60 days of income that program two programs are a little different. So hopefully if someone doesn't qualify for the state program of 10 million, we have some of our resources that's less money at 4 million that they could potentially pencil in and qualify for. We don't set these requirements for the eviction Rental Assistance Program. These are set by the state. They did take feedback on these program policies and they did change their initial policies because we had the opportunity to look at them. And there are some changes that were made, but not all changes that were recommended across the state were incorporated into these new requirements.

When your question, you clarify how one could be in arrears for future rents I don't quite understand that.

Well, they can be they must be in arrears which means they must owe the landlord money, let's say, August 1 is tomorrow. And they can't pay their rent. And then they come in next week on the fifth of the month, they put an application in, and they didn't pay their rent, they're in arrears because their rent was due on the first of August, so they're behind in rent. Well, what the program can do is assess your need based on your income and say, Yeah, you're behind for August but based on your income I can really tell that you're going to need maybe two more months of assistance. So we're going to agree to pay three months of assistance for you today to pay arrears and future rent. So these costs for three months of rent you don't have to be behind three months. We can pay whatever you're in arrears. As long as it's not more than three months, and future rents up to two more months if you're only behind one month we could pay up to three months of rent combined total maximum. It could be, you could have paid your rent 1000 bucks in July you paid 500 so you're only in arrears 500, so we could pay that other 500 you didn't pay, plus up to two more months of rent and if you needed help that other months of 500. If your rent 3000 we can pay $3,000 of help. That makes sense.

The only question that comes to mind is it possible that somebody hit enter this program say in November that you can prepay on into January of 2020.

No, these dollars must be spent by December 30 which means the last month of rent that we will be able to pay is December, keeping in mind we don't know what this pandemic will be like in a few months, we don't know what the federal funding with any of this will look like. So things are subject to change. Who knows what may be coming from the state or the feds down the road for assistance. I do know I watched the news at night, and I hear that there's some negotiations going on between the two major parties of our country and our Congress about trying to come to a compromise of how to provide employment help for people unemployed and rental help for people that need rental help to help Americans so hopefully some good news comes in, there's more money coming down the road. I wish I made those decisions, but I don't. But hopefully, there may be more coming in this may last longer than currently planned for. And that deadline of December 13 is a federal deadline and all these funds that are being passed through the county and pass through the state are federal funds. So there potentially could be updates or changes down the road. But back to where I was this eligibility. They don't just require that you'd be affected by COVID, and you're in less than 50% of area median income they also require that you potentially have an episode of homelessness in your past, or an eviction history in your past, or do you come from what they call a marginalized community, or do you have someone in your household, it can be adult or child has a disability, there's a couple other factors that they consider, but you must meet one of these other requirements to qualify for the state's irep program, as we've just discussed, up to three months must be in arrears. We this program can pay for the rears you're behind. And as long as you're not behind more than three months we could pay future rents if you're assessed and determined to need that. And again, this program is using the same online portal application which we'll walk through later, and you can access it on the Pierce County website. The easiest way to find that is if you google Pierce County housing help. And on the Google site. The first thing that pops up on my computer is our program. But there is an actual website that will give you later in this presentation, a chance.

Yes, that other requirement. Yeah, past homelessness eviction history in the initial proposal that the state put out that was only an eligibility requirement for the first 20 days of the program is that the case or is it for all times.

When you qualify. If you come into door today needing assistance, you must meet one of those requirements. And when you come in the door we can determine how we're going to assist you with paying arrears or paying anything for future rents, so it's at that moment of qualification.

I was just saying that, that, that, that second weird requirement was only required for like the first 20 days of the program Am I making

I don't know I understand what you're saying I don't, I don't see that in the regulation, but we'll go back and we'll verify that. Okay, thank God, you're talking about it if we're not seeing that people have that requirement we could serve anybody and everybody else and get rid of the crime I know what you're I saw those

20 days. Yeah,

program operation. Yes, we'll verify that for you, but I don't remember seeing that in the, in the new policy. But we will verify it. And the youth and young adult eviction Rental Assistance Program. Here we have just over one.

Well, Doug's nine here Crystal's not here,

Paula.

Paula Anderson.

Thank you for muting your microphone. Thank you. Sorry about that. We have the youth and young adult eviction rental assistance program just over $1.2 million. They have the same requirements with the state. They must be covered affected must earn less than 50% of ami must meet that other state requirement. And they also must be a household with no one in the household over age of 24. When we talk about youth and young adult, we're talking about a single youth or young adult we're talking about a married couple youth and young adult, we can be talking about a couple youth and young adult who have two children and all children under the age of 24, the requirement here is that the adults in the household must be under the age of 24, and it does mean that they could be a household with a child is my understanding, Valerie nine if I'm wrong, please chime in, not hearing Valerie I believe that's the case, you could have children. In this program, it's not just for single youth and young adult when we talk about that youth and young adult population under the age of 24. Again they can get up if you are correct. Thank you. That's what I thought I just wanted to be sure don't want to give misinformation we have a lot of requirements. A lot of brand new programs, along with our other multiple programs we're working on. I have a really great team in case I haven't told you that before. And they're all overworked, but they're all doing amazing work during this pandemic and I value and appreciate all of them, but again this is after three months of rent must be in arrears. We can pay for arrears and future rents for this application process. Other agencies who have a direct relationship with the State Department of Commerce, Office of homeless youth are eligible to apply for these funds. So we brought together all the youth and young adult programs, had a conversation with them and Tacoma Community House, who is a fiscal agent for the reach program has agreed to apply for these funds administer these funds across the county and manage this program in coordination in great collaboration with the amazing youth and young adult partners that serve youth and young adults in our community. So this contract will not come through Pierce County this contract will go directly to the comic Community House for reach to manage were involved in this conversation how to implement that program at the county. But we're grateful that reach has agreed to or to come to Community House has agreed to take the lead in implementing this program.

Currently,

we have 11 agencies, you can see the list here I'm not going to read all of them to you all these agencies are currently contracted with Pierce County to provide rental assistance here in Pierce County. We've asked all of them, if they can do more, we're hopefully getting a response, we asked them to respond by the end of today, in an effort to determine how we allocate the $10 million. We're not going to because we're in this pandemic go through a lengthy process to put these dollars out the way we typically would through a County's procurement requirements, those requirements have been suspended because of the pandemic. So we put out a initial request, these agencies applied, we're going to just try to give them more funding as when we allocate the 10 million, but we also have something really exciting that we're implementing that we're really excited about. There is what's been identified as a buy in for agency, and I always get this mixed up but a buy in for agency is an agency that according to the state. His own directed managed by and for the marginalized communities here in Pierce County, the state put together a list of agencies that they identified as buying for agencies which are agencies that serve the underserved or marginalized communities that's their word I don't know if I like that word but I'm just gonna stick to their word because that's how they define it. So you'll see we've outreach to Central Latina can say whoa counseling multicultural Child and Family Hope Center which actually they're already on our list they get money from us which is great, and several other agencies on our list. Our sister's house currently gets money, I don't think it was for rental assistance. So we're going to reach out to these about 10 or 1110 agencies and see if they're interested in helping us reach these communities that sometimes people consider hard to reach. So we're getting information back from them and early next week we'll be making decisions on how we're going to distribute this money, so that we're getting this money fully spread out across agencies that can serve, and help people with their rent problems. This is something that's brand new and we're really excited about it. What we do know is that currently we have over 1300 applications that's a number that was given to me like two days ago. And what I'll say is that we do know that before July 24 we haven't we had an average of like 100 applications per day after July 24, the last few days of the month. With like down to 40 applications per day. What we do know is that we expect an increase in applications. Due to the potential changes and unemployment at a federal level and the amount of unemployment that people may receive, as well as due to increased advertisement. We're doing quite a few things as far as advertisement, we have radio ads that are going on there are TV ads that are going on. And we'll talk later about other things that we're doing with advertisement, to get the word out about this program so anything you could do to promote this program. We're willing to give you materials to help you do that. One thing I will say is that we're required to have these applications and for the four most common languages besides English that are spoken in Pierce County and helped me here Valerie, but if my memory serves me right, we're having these applications translated into Russian, Spanish, Korean, and I don't know if it's Camaro or Tagalog for the fourth one Valerie Do you remember we had conversationally this tagalong Tagalog blog, yes Tagalog, I thought that I just want to make sure. So those four languages we have contracted with an organization to create this work in those four languages. To date, we've only been asked for this application in a different language twice in Spanish. So, in the 1300 applications that have only been asked for in a different language twice and that was in the Spanish language, we've had conversations about this and what what what's kind of been shared in the conversation is that many people who would request the application in different language, have children in their home to speak English and sometimes helps with outreach to many programs let them know we have this opportunity and Valerie will show you an application that approach an agency could apply on behalf of a person as long as they have all their information and help them complete the application, which is also I think helped when it comes to people who may need the application in a different language but we're making them available, and four languages besides English, our outreach plan, kind of touched on this, we're using social media we are getting responses on the county's social media accounts, asking questions wanting information. Valerie has been very busy responding to those social media posts.

Some of these posts, even go directly to our executives office in his offices sending us these posts and things asking questions so we are fielding questions and responding to them in that fashion. We are emailing landlords that we're aware of we're in the process of creating an email that's going out to over 1000 landlords in the city of Lakewood because they have a very good email list. So if you know of email lists like that we're willing to send out to whoever to get the word out, we've done TV TV, radio fliers reached out to food banks churches and school districts and schools to try to get this word out. If you think of other ways we could outreach to the community. We'd be welcome to hear your feedback and work to try to implement it. We have a social. Well I don't know if she's a so we have a media specialist on our team doesn't work full time for homeless, but she's been spending a lot of time working with us so we do have access to an expert with Communications and Media, that's working with us to get our word spread. How do you apply the official website is called Pierce County wide dot govt slash housing help. That'll take you directly to it, or you can do a lot of times I don't like to just go find a website you can in this world today Google something and it brings it right to you. If you Google Pierce County housing help. The first thing that pops up is that County's website will take you right to the site where you can see applications for rental assistance the applications for mortgage the information about veterans, all the county's programs are all in one location on that housing help website. What this person that would be applying would do is answer the questions that are there, they have the opportunity to upload documents for an example is a pay stub or a lease agreement or if they have a notice and how much they owe, it's not required. If they have them, that just expedites their application moving faster because we need documentation. But if they don't, they can still hit submit and that application goes into processing world, and gets processed and we're going to talk about how that gets processed here in a minute. Currently, if you need help, we have contracted with Sharon care house to be our call line, people, we have a number for that people can call Sharon care house, and they can assist you. Keep in mind, there's a lot of people in need, there's a lot of people calling, and sometimes they're overwhelmed with people calling. So people need to be patient. Because we get calls like I submitted an application yesterday or I submitted an application two days ago or three days ago. Well, 1300 applications, that's a lot of applications that people have to process it takes time to process them. So, we're not saying we'll get back with you in 72 hours anymore. I believe on an earlier slide or a future slide in this presentation we talked about like within 15 days just because of the demand. I will share that we've coordinated and Shawn dinner line our veterans program manager who's also on this call, has done a great job of taking the lead on this coordination of creating what we're calling a call center this call center will be managed at the Pierce County Emergency Operations Center. As you're all aware we have staff, Shawn now has left the temporary whenever they call that quarantine or isolation site. Care Center the temporary Care Center where he managed that for a while for the county. He's now, I believe working out of the EEOC him and Moses McCart Hoover over that temporary Care Center, they've kind of shifted their responsibilities and Sean's kind of overseeing that piece of the work. Our hope is to have that call center open soon, where there'll be an opportunity for people to call for people to leave messages will be getting back with people as quickly as possible to help people understand what we're doing and that call center hopefully we'll be able to potentially help people fill out applications as well. And maybe Shawn might want to talk about that when he shares from his side of the house application process, it's automatically sent to an agency through computer whiz that we have on our team that you'll see on the application that the person applying can choose an agency if they're already working with an agency for whatever other reason or they have a relationship with an agency they could choose that agency. Or they could just say, submit and not choose an agency that randomly we'll go to an agency. As I said earlier, we'll reach out, we're currently saying 15 days to get documentation verify information, other documentation we need is if you don't have a pay stub self certification. All this process is to not sit and wait three weeks for you to get a piece of paper but people can self certify self, verify, which makes it a lot easier if you can't find something I believe the only thing we can't self certify is a lease. You can self certify your household information. Your other things, you know your income and things but we have to have a lease there must be a lease and we have to have landlord information because that that

payment is made to the landlord you see directly all checks are sent directly to the landlord that we verified the landlord's ownership of the property that is the process. At this time, I'm going to ask if Valerie can share her screen, Valerie is just going to walk you through the application so you can kind of see what's in the application. Can you do that Mallory.

Absolutely. Jeff just so I remember

how do I not share my screen

button in the up in the center of where you're sharing that says stop sharing.

Ah, wait the top sub share okay found it. Thank you.

Perfect. And it says host disabled. So, Garrett I need your permission to share.

I didn't know two people from the county we're gonna be sharing

care, I just, I'm doing a lot of talking nowadays and I just thought I'm going to share some spotlight today with Valerie, because she's the one doing most of his work anyway.

All right, you should be good to go.

Yeah me open. Make sure I've got the right one.

and somebody was asking if we could turn our video on while we're talking a lot of us have the speaker shown next to the presentation and it makes it easier to feel engaged, perfect Valerie.

I'm a little GM a little camera shy since my accident so I'm doing better.

Being honest. I am too transparent we learned that. Alright, so let me go to the share screen. For some reason it's not showing me the one I want to share.

That's interesting.

So Garrett I need to share the application that's online any ideas.

I literally have everything else closed.

I mean you can share your screen or you can share the application that it's in, so just find the screen that it's in and share that. Okay,

while I'm doing this Jeff there was two questions that we can go ahead and address one is if someone receives a few sees two months of real assistance from our cares dollars, can they then get funding from the state iraq dollars,

what I'll say is that we

could pay up to three months.

And they could combine between programs. All we care is that both programs are up to three months so they could get money from the Pierce County's cares Rental Assistance Program, as well as the state irep program. Three months what people qualify for. I think it's while you're still looking at real quickly and you can put it up if there are other communities that have rental assistance program we're aware that Lakewood starting one university places starting one. I think that ordering is potentially starting one Shawn knows more about that I think city Tacoma currently has one that's up and running. So there are other programs depending on where you live in Pierce County that people could qualify. We're not coordinated in so closely that you only get three months from all programs that's not where we're at. Currently, but if you lived in Lakewood and you got help from us you potentially could call liquid directly they may ask you to get help from us. I don't know what they're doing. We haven't coordinated that closely. But there are other programs in certain jurisdictions that people, potentially would qualify for.

And that was another question and then the last question while cognito takes a little bit of time to open is, is the call center going to be 24 hours, was the last question.

I don't believe the call center is going to be 24 hours I'm going to defer that to Sean who's the one coordinating network, but I do believe there will be capacity to leave messages and that people will be called back but I'll say we can save that question for Shawn when he speaks after we're done.

Great. So can you see my screen where it says mercy Rental Assistance Program.

Yes, we're good. Yes.

Great. Okay, perfect. So, when you go to our website you there is going to be three buttons you can select from which rental assistance which is this program mortgage assistance which Jeff talked about briefly and then the veterans is its own button so it's a rental and mortgage assistance to the Veterans Program so when you go into the housing help website on the rail assistance application. This is what pops up. We're gonna have to change a little bit of this as of Monday because the 50% ami so we're going to work with Ahmed on that and get this all situated. It's going to go based on eligibility it's going to actually give your household size broken down. I received a lot of questions yesterday about how do I count my household so for example if you have a client who is renting a room. They can be a household of one they do not include everyone they're renting that room from. So that's been a big question I've received several times so just so you're aware, and then single person and group of people so lots of just kind of narrative on what to do and what you're looking for. Okay, so we're going to go through the applicant contact information because I want to be able to find it and delete it today I'm going to be Mickey Mouse. I'm actually going to put my to find an address out here on the keys and then flow, because that also is easy for her to locate. All right, and then a phone number, so I'm going to put my work number because everybody already knows that one. You can do an alternate number, and then an email is very important because you're going to get a confirmation date client is going to get a confirmation that they applied for this assistant so definitely want to encourage folks to have a phone number, they can do an alternate phone number they can do family and friend just don't wait or be able to reach them. You can also click here yes or no. Is there an alternate contact you would like to add to this application case you want to put somebody else in the household. And then your preferred method of communication. I love everything through email. That's just me. So that's how that goes. Now eligibility. Have you or a family member of your current household ever served in the US military. And the reason we asked this is because it will automatically bump this application to the veteran side, we really wanted to collaborate and make sure that resources were being shared fairly, and so the best way to do that is to ensure that veterans are being served in the Veterans Program which have a better speciality, and serving those folks and then we were able to serve the greater population. And then my current monthly household income. This isn't accurate I'm just going to put a number and is $1,000 so it has to be under that FMI FMR. Sorry, ami has to be under that ami. Okay, so that automatically calculates your annual income, which is pretty cool. Now many people.

Yeah. Can we just real quickly, if you notice here, if you're on unemployment, it says please do not count the 600 per week you may be receiving just levels where that's not, we're letting people no that's not part of the income that people should be counting. And the other thing I want to say real quick. You don't have to have an email, an email is encouraged. But if you don't have an email and you have a phone number we will reach out to you by phone, that email was not a required field, but phone number is. If people don't have email.

Yeah. Great. Thanks, Jeff, I appreciate that yeah I have never seen that 600 before so that was good. How many people are in a household. I have six keep putting number six. Do you live within Pierce County. Yes. Once you see yes then you see how everything else popped open. This is one of the tricky areas where people are then getting this message because they're not clicking that yes button. So yes, it opens up all of these new fields prime the primary applicant so my birthday is the day before Valentine's Day. And so I'll put that in there, number of adult adults in the household over the age of 18 is technically three, the number of children in the household under 18 is also three. So this allows us to figure out your ami and to calculate plus clicks and then some information. Now we're going to get into the demographics so the state dollars have a really big specialty on serving as they put marginalized communities. But we had actually already been collecting this information because we know COVID-19 is actually directly impacting those most marginalized communities even greater than projected so do you identify as Hispanic or Latin x, no they claim they can click prefer not to say if they so choose Select all the races that you identify as you can select as many as you want. I am white so I'm going to select white and does anyone in your household identify as Hispanic or Latin x, so if anyone other than yourself. So, your kids, your significant other, we know that households are very blended. So we wanted to make sure that is just clearly identified and then select all the races of other members in your household. So, you know, do as we said blended household so we want to make sure everyone's identity is is notated on here so these are not required, they're just, you know, though anything with a star is required so these last two questions that households aren't the providers will be collecting that information so okay so household income information has your household lost income since March 12. Yes. That opens up different information. See how cool that is so common did such a great job. You can upload information here I don't have anything to upload but it's gonna let me continue because sometimes when we're living in a traumatic situation we don't have all of our documentation already right and that's not a problem. So, they can skip that and just go keep going down the question, check mark the box for each source of income you currently receive, so if any or all of them they can mark, any of that, or this way or do not currently reserve income to that's my earned income. Has anyone in your household applied for unemployment insurance. No. All right, so here we get into our rental assistance for which month, do you need rental assistance we know we can go back to April we know we can go for three months so I'm just going to say, I haven't been able to pay my rent April May June. May how much is your monthly rental agreement. I'm going to say $2,000, because you know, it's a big household. How much does your currently owe and pass your rent I'm going to say I owe 6000, all of this is automatically uploaded to the Excel spreadsheet so it's automatically sent to the provider upon when they get the application. I'm going to actually put the Jeff Rogers is my landlord and his phone number for work, because his is the only one I actually remember, and his email. So Jeff will get an email, sorry, Jeff, and a one more email for me and.

So, I'm in this cool thing says, Would you like. Would you like to inform your landlord you've applied for this assistance if they click Yes, it will automatically email the landlord as well, which is pretty cool and starting that conversation and letting your landlord No Hey, I'm doing what I can to get you paid. Most of my day yesterday was actually talking to a landlord, which was pretty cool. And a lot of emails I'm getting right now our landlord saying I got a lot of tenants who are past due. What How can I get them, applied and so I send them the link and we kind of talk through the process. I'm going to click No but if you click Yes. Nothing changes so just so you all see that you can also do a copy of your lease or rental agreement up here, upload it. You can also drag it over which is awesome. If you don't have available. You can either email it or they can text it to the providers, a lot of our landlords are emailing them indirectly when they're requested for the W nine. So, all of that is easy peasy. And then you realize, yes I authorized a release of information, because we have to contact the client, we have to contact us but the provider, one of the 11 plus providers will contact the client they'll also contact the landlord. We won't contact the landlord and the providers won't contact the landlord until we spoken to the client. So we aren't just going to call your landlord and start asking for W nine we want to kind of learn more about you and what your situation is before we start having that conversation. So currently, these are the list of providers who have available funds so as you'll see a couple people have come off just because they had smaller grants. So as of Monday, they'll all, more than likely all be put back on if they're interested in participating with the 10 million. So if you're currently working with someone at Greenland's Association, they can actually click and you will get this referral. You'll also see here where it shows they're located in this was just something people have asked for as well as specified languages that that agency can provide. In case someone needs translation. So we tried to come up with as many things as we could possibly think of. If you select say kW a or if your client selects kW a, but for some reason they can't serve you or processes taking too long or they run out of funds which they won't they're one of our larger grantees than we would we internally would refer you to a different agency. But I'm going to click no preference because I'm worried they're gonna, I'm actually not going to admit I'm worried someone's gonna get my application and I'm going to confuse people. So then your terms and conditions, you know, you understand that this is not a guarantee for eligibility we have to do a little bit of a Word document the applicants missing documentation will collect those from the provider, and then a signature, which is just that cool. I can actually you know, write it down. So, if you are submitting for them. If you and other agency is submitting for them or a landlord, which we're now seeing as submitting on behalf, you can actually just write that in right here, you know, goodwill submitting on behalf or however that works So, and then you click Submit. And it goes automatically to as Jeff said the data gurus behind the scenes, it automatically goes application goes into our inbox. It also automatically goes to the provider that was selected or whoever's in queue to be served next to that, I mean it's as easy as I think we've been able to make a rental assistance application.

And that's it. That's the whole thing.

We do have several questions in the group chat. Valerie answered some of them in the group chat I don't know if you want to restate them.

Great question about the Trello tribe being a bi, and for agents agency. I don't know about that we could do some research on that, but I do know that tribes received cares Act funding directly as well just like local counties tribes are considered jurisdictions. And so, tribes receive funding like a state receives money for programs in a county or a city receives money for programs so I don't know what the tribe is doing with their cares Act funding, that'd be a great question to inquire about if they're offering any types of programs. So, we'll take a note on that I can get back with you on that.

Yeah, we actually were reached out by someone from the tribes, that's actually on this call they're gonna send me an email so that we can determine if they can be eligible to receive some real assistance directly so Chanel wrote me directly in a private message and asked said we're going to do some email exchanging figure out who's where, and then we'll send out a summary, to the group.

Yet marine we don't have a video. Unfortunately, we'll take that into consideration. Thank you for that comment, we will check the spelling in the application thank you for that comment, you do, I guess the way we answer this question about citizenship. These are federal funds. And as we know, federal funds come with requirements and there's executive orders that can be put into place and things. But what we do know all federal funds that we're receiving from the federal government that we've been managing for years. If Pierce County were to operate a program, and be the operator of the program that persons who are not US citizens will not qualify because we're a governmental entity. But once we pass our dollars to a nonprofit organization. There's no requirement for that nonprofit to document citizenship. So because nonprofit organizations are the ones that are giving out these dollars. We do not ask that question in this application we don't need to know. So please do not if you're on this call and you're a provider Do not ask that question. We don't need to know. We're just here to help people who have a unit in Pierce County that they leave in their name, with rental assistance. So that's the best way to answer that question without getting into all the legalities of it. Ukrainian okay Hang on. The someone says something about Ukrainian, oh I'm sorry this is privately I knew it using zoom chat. Okay, I got to thank you Marie and I love you, Maria, you're amazing you do amazing work. The next thing is Valerie says 15 days you responded to someone asked about 15 days we had within 72 hours, but the volume of applications has overwhelmed these providers that they don't have enough time in the day to to do the work and respond to all the calls and do all the follow up. So we're asking is that people be patient, we may get to a less amount of response time, we hope to get to a less amount of response time when we bring on more providers, you saw the list of 10 providers that we're hoping to actually double from 11 to like 21, if they all accept this opportunity. But yeah, our goal is to make the time less, but the good news is people can't be evicted today and landlords cannot charge fees late fees or anything because of this. So, we're working on that.

Did I miss any questions Valerie, I don't think so. You within the zoom chat. Great.

Yes.

Okay. So, one last question, Jeff. Yes. and I'm just fair warning, I'm gonna keep pushing on timing. Because Commerce has real clear staff up. So this organization should not be trying to do more with less, but just in terms of the money itself. What's the last date that one of the or nonprofit organizations, has to turn everything in to the county for reimbursement.

Well, our contracts state that you have 30 days after the last month you've done activity so technically in our comp in our contract which we'll have to verify with these dollars, you have till the end of January to submit your final invoice. Well, we'll, we'll verify you're just

not hearing on other calls,

my understanding is you have to have spent the money. But then I don't know that that means invoice for the money you as an agency have to have spent it, but every federal program I work with most of them give you 90 days to close out your program because Treasury. Well, I understand and I said we're going to clarify it. I'm just giving you standard what we currently do currently it's 90 days for every pro guy

I understand that, but this is not the usual stuff this is trash,

I understand, but if they allow you to spend it through December, you have to have time to prepare your invoice and submit it to get paid to them.

My understanding.

Yeah, we'll get you. We'll get you an answer. Thank you. We've been told we have till December 30 to spend them. But spending is different than invoicing invoicing comes after the spend. Exactly. So we'll confirm that.

And then, have you figured, I'm sorry. Have you figured out like how many applications per day, you the organization's need. Well, the database needs to show to get the money out within this period of time. We don't what what I do know, and this is before the three month opportunity that the average ask was around 1500 dollars per household.

But we expect that to potentially quadruple double or quadruple if we're going to really help people with this program. So, if you just look at that amount of money. $10,000 can go rather quickly. When we start helping people for three months so I don't think we're going to have a problem with the number of providers we're looking to bring on board to this program, just been the dollars. I hope we spend them rather quickly and I hope there's more money coming from the federal government to support this program moving, moving longer duration. I don't think we're gonna have a problem spending it by October, let alone, December, good bring on the, if we bring on the providers we're bringing on

Good, good.

Yeah, they can they staff up, you know, to really do the work like you say,

yeah,

yeah,

and Maureen just so you're aware when we emailed all of the current providers as well as all vying for agencies, we encourage them to strongly staff up including folks who cut the checks. Look at your admin percentages staff up staff up staff up, because we and we don't know we, the county's purpose is not to burn all of these agencies out where come January, we're all looking at the winter months and we're all just burnt. And so we want that was put into the email too strongly strongly strongly staff up. And so some of our proposals have clearly showed that. Excellent.

Thank you. All right, we are running long

and, are you told to pick up on as we wanted Garrett I would be paying attention time I'm so

sorry. It's not a blame thing I'm just I'm bringing this back in, giving us a little bit of a place here. I wanted to hear a little bit from Sean Denver live. Everyone knows how to get both of Valerie and Jeff and I hate super appreciate all the details in this presentation I wouldn't have changed a thing. And I very much, walking through it makes some of that just more real for me, it helps me to understand when I'm talking to somebody that will be applying what what their steps are going to be to go through the process so that that's super valuable. And if you just want to keep that part of the video maybe we can, we can edit that bad boy out of this presentation Valerie, so, and great idea, put it up there. I'd love to hear from Sean. Sean.

Garrett Can you hear me now.

Yes, perfect.

Okay, awesome sorry for the technical difficulties earlier and slowing down the process, I will try to be super brief. For those of you don't know I run our veterans programs we run, we run veterans rental assistance programs and other assistance programs for decades. And some interesting statistics so we got a boost in our applicants and our funding through the cares act. And we since we already have the infrastructure we stood up in June I wrote ran our July 2020 numbers versus our July, 2019 numbers, we saw a 615% increase in assistance given in July 20 20% July, 2019, so just so you all know the assistance is getting out there and we are meeting the needs of the community, the volume, even with the volume as high as it is, we seem to be, it seems to be working we're able to handle this capacity and folks are getting served our average turnaround time while we tell people is going to be up to 15 days until they hear back from us from our application, we're averaging actually about five days so it's shorter than what we're saying. We just want to tell you bad news because every week. We don't know how many applicants are going to come in some weeks we're seeing hundred some weeks we're seeing 10s it really fluctuates first weeks of the month, are really heavy for us because that's when rent is due, so you know those weeks if you apply that week. It may be a longer wait time, we're not sure. So in response to that the county has stood up a call center, it's going to start up on Monday, and the, we're going to send out a message to a bunch of different providers and everything explaining the number and what the call center is there for the call center is there to answer any questions that may arrive within that 15 day window. And again, it may not be a full 15 day window. But they're they're there to be and be a resource to the community. During that time, so someone isn't just shouting into a void they actually have somebody they can communicate with, and the call center is not going to be able to do any case management, they're not going to be able to tell you really about your eligibility besides what they already know, as far as the requirements to apply. But they're going to be there to say yes we can see your application was received, we can tell you that we believe you, you applied on this date. There was a heavy amount of applications on that date maybe the wait time is longer and basically answered the frequently asked questions. And the other thing that the call center is going to be able to do is help you apply. So if you have questions around the application. They're going to be able to answer those. So what counts as income to do with his city of Tacoma residents are they eligible so they're going to be able to answer those questions. And for those who don't have access or something just for those who don't have access to a computer, they're going to be able to have these call center folks, apply for them on the line so they'll be able to answer you know, walk them through each question, and go line by line and submit an application for them. So that's going to be a great asset and we were really adamant about being able to scan data that goes live on Monday, one of the questions that was asked Is it 24 seven. It's not going to be 24 seven we in the county are facing the same staffing problems that everybody's facing right now to meet this volume. So we were limited on how many people we could pull to operate the call center I'm going to actually be there on site helping operate it for first couple weeks until we get more people. And so it's going to be the A to 430 time slot, but it has an interactive voicemail, so that way clients can leave a voicemail after hours and they'll get back to them first thing the next business day. So if you can't get through to someone, they're going to be really on top of it to get back to you and the this a call center is a part of our Emergency Operations Center for the county, they're already up and running, they're answering questions for the contact tracing and the testing. So they're professionals they do this for a living, they know what they're doing these call takers are on

vehicle theft has gone up 94%.

Sorry. Okay, muted. So we had some, some issues there so we're hopeful that they can actually get, get a lot of people through that process and help answer any any basic questions that are tying up our case managers and slowing down the process so the hope is that the the call center actually cuts down on the case managers time and reduces that 15 day window, because for instance my team are getting a lot of interruptions, where they get called and asked frequently asked questions like what counts as income and those types of things as far as the application goes, which is, which is tough for us when we're socially distant and can't meet with people in person to do all that if you're clogging up and tying up our phone lines then it makes things a lot harder for us. So I that's basically it for the call center we are also working on staffing up more people, and we're gonna be rolling out more outreach and communication strategies throughout this process to try to get the word out. One of the things I think that we were, we're working on right now a big project of ours is, is working with the local municipalities and cities, you know, Jeff mentioned ordering University play some or all these places that are have received a little bit of care sending we're helping them kind of shape what their programs, look like rather than trying to read duplicate efforts so if a community is trying to get $400 of rental assistance well the county has no cap so maybe it's better for us to do that and you dedicate those resources to other things like utility assistance and those types of things. So, we're working with those municipalities and again we're kind of building the ship as it sails so every day this, this looks a little bit differently. So, yeah, that's about it. Garrett, if there's any questions I'm here to help.

Awesome, thanks so much Shawn.

I was going to do a super quick update on the work to

keep civil rights investigators in the city of Tacoma, and mostly Megan capes his expertise, was offered. Thank you, Megan, and she helped us kind of put a strategy together. And so we'll probably have an ask and a letter writing campaign that I'd love some help with in the next two weeks, so keep your eyes open to the coalition listserv for that. And if you'd like to join in or help out. Give me or Megan a holler. And let's go ahead and swing right over to marine for an FEC update advocacy update period, that's the word.

I sent out something on the rental assistance last night I hope people got it, or yesterday sometime just really quickly. Jeff mentioned earlier, we don't know what the feds are gonna do in terms of extending unemployment benefits and if so, at what level the federal benefits, and we don't know what they're gonna do about any kind of housing, a except the only good news early this morning was that the White House had both of those things in a positive light, but it, this has to get through the Senate at all has to happen fast, and it could all fail on procedure. So my understanding is that there is a bill they could hang this on the fuck up.

I'm sorry.

I don't think that was meant

for you. I thought that I didn't know, when we're going to be zoomed again.

Anyway,

if there, watch the news. So all I can say.

Resume on the saggy teeth of yours.

Yeah, so we're getting bombed again.

Yeah.

Well, I'll send you all an email.

Let's all leave there's not really anything else we can do right.

I can prevent them from unmuting themselves and quick Try

not to try. Okay.

I think locally, it's a matter of thinking about

what what do we need to do to make things happen very quickly. What is the county is asking for help with outreach on the rental assistance programs.

Gone leaving guys I'm sorry with what I'm seeing popping up here I'm gone,

Garret you want to just close this out maybe

these videos that I'm seeing pop up or obnoxious goodbye.

Sorry. Yeah, so I blocked the meeting and you can unmute yourself so I don't know how many more people I need to pull out

there in the chat now. Gareth. It's better to just leave.

Yeah. All right, well let's call it a day crew, and we'll meet up again next week. Sorry, everybody. Have a good day.