# Social Services and Public Safety Committee - November 12, 2024 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Committee · November 12, 2024 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6267 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6267?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2024-11-12 - **Body**: Committee - **Last revised**: March 29, 2026 - **Length**: 15,430 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1, with speaker labels folded in from Granicus closed-captioning. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Social Services and Public Safety Committee convened on November 12, 2024, at 1:00 PM with J. Reynolds presiding. The committee received three informational presentations covering key social services initiatives in the community. The meeting focused on annual updates for the Affordable Housing Fund and Juvenile Treatment Court, as well as a progress report on The Hope Center Expansion Project. The committee took one vote during the session and heard no public comments. ## Attendance All committee members were present for the November 12, 2024 meeting. **Present:** • J. Reynolds • W. Baxter • J. Brown • C. Ellinger • T. Fogle • B. Monarrez • D. Gray • F. Brown • D. Sevigny • K. Plomin **Absent:** None **Late:** None The committee achieved full attendance with all ten members participating in the session. ## Votes and Decisions The Committee conducted one vote during the November 12, 2024 meeting. **Approval of October 8, 2024 Committee Summary** [timestamp: 00:30] - The Committee voted to approve the summary from their October 8, 2024 meeting - **Outcome:** Passed by voice vote - No formal motion maker or second was recorded for this procedural vote - No opposition or abstentions were noted during the voice vote This was the only formal vote taken during the meeting, representing standard procedural business to approve previous meeting records. ## Annual Affordable Housing Fund Update [timestamp: 01:00] Rick McQuady presented the annual update on the Affordable Housing Fund to the Committee, providing a comprehensive overview of the program's performance over its 11-year history. The presentation highlighted significant achievements in affordable housing development funding. Over 11 fiscal years, the Affordable Housing Fund has allocated more than $48 million to support affordable housing initiatives throughout the jurisdiction. This investment has directly contributed to the creation and preservation of 3,522 affordable housing units. A key metric emphasized during the presentation was the fund's leverage capacity. The $48 million in local funding has successfully attracted $441 million in outside funding sources, demonstrating the program's effectiveness in maximizing public investment through partnerships with federal, state, and private funding entities. McQuady's presentation served as an informational update to the Committee, providing members with current data on the fund's performance and impact on the community's affordable housing stock. The update covered the fund's allocation history and its role in addressing local housing needs through strategic investments. The presentation was received as an informational item, with no specific action items or decisions required from the Committee at this time. The annual update serves as part of the Committee's ongoing oversight responsibilities for the Affordable Housing Fund program. ## Annual Juvenile Treatment Court Update [timestamp: 59:00] Judge Lindsay Hughes Thurston and Keevy Figgs presented the annual update on the Juvenile Treatment Court program to the Committee. The presentation focused on the program's core mission and operational framework. Judge Thurston and Figgs outlined the court's approach to addressing juvenile cases through specialized treatment interventions rather than traditional punitive measures. Key highlights from the update included: • **Program partnerships**: The speakers detailed collaborative relationships with community organizations and service providers that support the court's treatment-focused approach • **Success metrics**: The program reported 11 graduates, representing juveniles who successfully completed the treatment court requirements • **Mission and methodology**: The presentation covered the court's fundamental principles and how cases are processed through the specialized treatment track The update served as an informational briefing for Committee members, providing insight into how the Juvenile Treatment Court operates as an alternative to conventional juvenile justice proceedings. The speakers emphasized the program's focus on rehabilitation and support services designed to address underlying issues contributing to juvenile involvement in the court system. No specific concerns were raised during the presentation, and no action items or decisions resulted from this agenda item. The update fulfilled the annual reporting requirement and kept Committee members informed about the program's ongoing activities and outcomes in the juvenile justice system. ## The Hope Center Expansion Project Update [timestamp: 75:00] Jeff Crook presented an update on the Hope Center's expansion project during the November 12, 2024 committee meeting. The presentation focused on the construction progress of a new facility designed to provide transitional housing services. The expansion project centers on building a new facility that will house 72 beds total for transitional housing purposes. Of these 72 beds, 24 will be specifically designated for veterans, addressing the specialized housing needs of this population. Crook provided details on the construction timeline and current status of the project, though specific completion dates and budget information were not included in the available meeting data. The presentation appeared to be informational in nature, updating committee members on the progress of this significant expansion to the Hope Center's capacity. The new facility represents a substantial increase in the Hope Center's ability to serve individuals experiencing homelessness in the community, with the dedicated veteran beds addressing a critical need for specialized transitional housing services for former military personnel. This agenda item was presented for informational purposes, with no formal action required from the committee. The update allows committee members and the public to stay informed about the progress of this important community housing project. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approval of October 8, 2024 Committee Summary --- ## Full transcript So So So So So So So Good afternoon everybody I will now call to order the social services and public safety committee meeting of november 12th 2024 Thank you everyone who's here for being here today Our first item is the approval of the october 8th 2024 committee summary Thank you, um, is there any discussion on the motion All those in favor say aye Any opposed that motion passes And our first presentation is about our annual affordable housing fund update and Today we have the pleasure of mr. Mcquadey being here with us and He is going to do a presentation But this item was referred to committee by um councilwoman gray. So i'll pass it to her if she has any opening comments Always thank you chair As we know in lexington affordable housing finding housing that is quote unquote affordable for people Has been very difficult. Um, so I am thankful that Rick mcquadey is here in person Uh, what shocked me, but i'm honored that you're here today to give the residents an update on where we are uh with the affordable housing, especially since uh, the council I know that we allotted is it two percent or point one it's one percent of our um our budget to Affordable housing so i'm thankful that you're here today and I look forward to hearing your update All right, thank you very much it's good to be here thank you and mr Mcquadey just for my colleagues reference. We have a really big stack. Um For this item and part of it is the presentation and the rest is just for your information only of all of the projects That um, the fund has helped. Yes. I'm not going to review every project. We'd be here Longer than anybody wants to be here. Thank you. Okay Okay, uh with that i'll get started, um You know a lot of this stuff i've gone over before so I don't want to Repeat everything but I think some things I need we need to talk about But what I really want to focus on today are some of the updated numbers But also something that I haven't focused on in prior presentations And that is the issue of who we house I think it's very important for this council And for everyone to know these are the people that we're housing in our affordable housing developments And I apologize when I fly on an airplane this happens all the time So much from time to time i'm gonna lose my voice Um, the biggest thing to remember, you know, just going over the purpose of the fund I'm not reading the slide, but the biggest thing to remember is That affordable housing results from reduced debt service the cost to administer the cost to build should all be the same It's just if we can provide resources that reduce the owner's debt service payments then You know in return the owner can charge lower rents and I was just talking to somebody down here I've had to negotiate with a few people. Look your project can still Make it by Reducing rents because as we all know Uh rents are increasing rapidly here in lexington So we are governed by a board. Uh-oh. I lose that slide Maybe just out of order. Maybe i'm out of order. There we go Okay, i'm out of order i'm down here. Uh, those are the incomes we serve Uh, so you can see there's a wide range Of households that we attempt to serve with the resources that we have Um If we are governed by an affordable housing board Uh, we've had a little bit of turnover recently several people's terms expired in october We actually still have one vacancy on the board Uh, we also have an advisory committee This advisory committee is made up of people who are organizations That work with us that apply for the money apply for funds And uh, I didn't want any of them on my board on the board. I didn't think that was fair but uh Still they serve as an advisory role to talk about how we're spending our money what we need to be doing Uh what we should be doing with our dollars and just giving good advice on You know how we should uh administer this these dollars to best serve the citizens of fayette county uh the next few slides i'm going to uh skip over Uh Because i've gone over this before it's just our processes and really it's more for your information How we evaluate developments our compliance objectives, and I really want to go to this slide here Over the last 11 fiscal years and I can't believe it's been 11 fiscal years. I can't believe i've been here for 11 fiscal years um We the city has allocated over 48 million dollars for affordable housing That's over 4.3 million dollars on average per year um So the city has made a significant investment into the affordable housing need of the community uh with with the funds so far we've we've uh funded 3,522 units And we brought in An additional 441 million dollars in Outside funding which is for every dollar we invest another nine dollars has come in So as I like to call it, not only is it affordable housing, but it's also economic development So when you combine the 441 million With the 48 million the city's invested. We're almost to You know 500 million dollars a half a billion dollars in affordable housing investment in this community over the last 11 fiscal years Now a few details The only thing i'm going to point out here is we currently have 4.3 million dollars available. I can tell you that most of that money Is You know Applications are in process. They're just not ready to be presented to the board yet I like to wait until they're almost ready to close before I take them to the board because I don't want to be holding on to money there could be a As you can imagine many of these projects encounter delays and uh As part of those delays there may be a project that's ready to go that can move in front of it And that's the way I operate Is I don't want to be sitting on any money um Okay, our average cost excuse me our average investment per unit With general fund the amounts you've allocated from the general fund is ten thousand two hundred and seventy three dollars That's up from prior years, but as you can imagine with increased construction costs increased interest rates We've had to invest more per unit um The one thing though is we underwrite every deal that comes to us so um Once all these properties are placed in service the ones that we funded right now Eventually the the city will receive The city's affordable housing fund will receive eight hundred three thousand dollars annually in loan receipts That's assuming all these projects continue to perform And so far they are so that's that's a big key That covers all of our operating expenses by far And allows give us even more money to invest in other affordable housing developments Uh, let me just say Excuse me 434 000 of that eight hundred and three thousand Comes from the slfrf projects that we funded i'm going to go into that a lot of detail in a minute So Here we go. Uh, the city allocated an slfrf which really came from the arpa funding over 17 million dollars into affordable housing and All those funds are committed And this is how we committed them in amortizing loans and in unforgivable loans and grants Now we allocated twenty four thousand six hundred and seven dollars per unit That's significantly higher than what our average is but we served significantly lower Lower income populations with that money, which I felt like was the purpose of the arpa money And let me just say one more thing that I think this community Should be proud of with those dollars and that is That recently a couple months ago treasury actually increased the income limits On who could be served with this these dollars? When it originally came out you could only serve households that are below 80 percent They increased it to 110 Now, why would they do that because there were municipalities that were having trouble spending the money for the original intended purpose We had no trouble here in fayette county So I think that's something that shows that we did a great job Administering these dollars and getting these dollars out and also I had jennifer on me every day Uh telling me not jennifer reynolds jennifer warnema She was on me all the time about getting this money allocated and spent so that helped too But some of the things that we did every project that we did with slf is for those at 60 and below 363 units are for those at 50 and below 34 units of permanent supportive housing and the last development that we funded that they'll be breaking ground on soon Are 45 fully accessible units for seniors ages 55 and over which this community really needs accessible affordable units So that's going to be a great development So this is more details related to the total of 3522 units that we funded and let me explain the middle category their existing units preserved and restricted for affordable housing It's kind of hard to explain But these are the applications that came to us that were Developments that are already affordable But they didn't have deed restrictions attached to them They had not used city money and what these developments needed was some rehab work so, you know, we funded some of the rehab and in return put in put uh deed restrictions on the property, so It's really not new units if you will or previously affordable housing units preserved It's new units. We brought on to the the deed restriction deed restricted population if you will and So now I want to get to the kind of the crux of what i'm going to say other than the slfrf stuff The average income of the households at initial lease And that's when we look at and that's when we do the the initial Income verifications of the families of the of the families the households that are residing in our units at this time It's twenty four thousand two hundred and twenty one dollars That's the average so you know when When I hear okay Sixty percent of area median income is who we're preserving and everybody think has this misconception that every Person there is somehow between 55 and 60 percent of ami a very mean income. That's not the case at all We're selling 252 units out kearney ridge out georgetown road It's great project has swim pool everything Supposed to be for everybody's for households at 60 and below the average income Of the households moving into those units was just under thirty thousand dollars So I feel very strongly that we are serving the population We're supposed to serve can we do more especially for lower income populations? Absolutely But I just don't want anybody to have the impression that just because it says 60 and below That everybody there is at 60 percent of area mean income. That is not the case Also You can see the vast majority of the Developments that we funded are At or below 60 of area median income 85.7 Of the units serve those levels Now you see 167 for 30 and below And you know, that's just a tough population, but we're trying to do more This is another 40 Of the money that's been allocated to us has gone to what I described as special needs populations or special populations Okay, including 240 units within that category of permanent supportive housing And that that's the breakdown of what we funded The board has a priority has established a priority for permanent supportive housing and housing units for those with special needs And let me let me go back here a minute and permanent supportive housing is defined as Housing with wraparound services or services that are constantly available to the tenant population Some some organizations think it should be 24 hours now, I don't classify that As a requirement, but as long as there are services available to clients and the permanent supportive housing Units that we have funded are doing outstanding As as none of this is going to surprise anybody here Increased interest rates increased cost of property management Acquiring viable and affordable land and escalating construction costs are all issues that we're dealing with right now It's requiring us the affordable housing fund to invest more in these developments to keep them affordable the biggest one the biggest challenge right now is property management The property management firms are having trouble hiring and retaining staff So they're having to pay more Which you know, unfortunately those costs are being passed on to the tenants So, uh, that's a big challenge out there at this point in time and then So when we look at our program goals going forward for the next year Obviously more permanent supportive house Supportive housing units and units for households that are below 30 percent of area median income is critical I'd like to do more home ownership It's tough in this interest rate environment right now the transylvania developments i'm sure everybody's read about There'll be some progress made on that in the next calendar year and then You know ed holmes did the needs analysis. We want to address the issues that he identified Many of which are up there, you know specifically the need to serve lower income populations With that I made it with a minute to spare. Um Sometimes I talk too fast. So I apologize if I did but with that certainly any questions that you all have I'd be happy to answer Thank you very much. You did it in record time Um council member ellinger, thank you chair and um, welcome rick i'm glad you're here in person. Um You might need to take a couple more glasses of water there Sounds like you're the flying here has caught your throat here, but i'm glad you're here. Um, one of my questions was additional home ownership of units trying to build equity and I mean, that's how you build wealth and What percentage of ours are home ownership and and what's the process that goes with that and how long do they? Do you have to be in that? with that process Of the 3500 units we funded 18 are for home ownership. So it's it's a very low number extremely low um You know, it's just difficult for the population. We're sir. We serve to try and qualify and with home prices where they are now It would require In some cases a hundred thousand dollars to 150 thousand dollars of subsidy and you know, that's just in my mind Anyway, not the best use of our resources when we can use those dollars for other purposes and create many more quality units so, um just the amount of subsidy And the fact that many of the households in the population That we're trying to serve just have difficulty applying for a mortgage and qualifying You mentioned the 800 and I think 3000. Is that for the interest that we're going to be receiving? That's interesting in principle, yes, and can you explain that a little and how that will build on itself? Sure. So so we provide when we do these deals we underwrite all every transaction that comes to us and they may you know, everybody wants a grant so they can apply for a forgivable loan grant whatever but we underwrite it to see if You know, they we can make this deal work, but the rents are going to charge and the rents They want to charge then maybe they can pay us back some if they want to serve those at 60 Or 80 of every median income in most cases they can afford to pay us back They want to serve 30 in most cases. They can't afford to do it. So we look at those that Can afford to do it to pay us back some of the money and then those dollars those program loans that we make When those dollars come back in we can recycle those into Additional projects in addition to the funds that the council allocates us each year So that 803 is that going to continue to grow then? You know what? I've set a goal that before I retire i'm gonna make it a million dollars So i'm hoping that's the case. Well, I hope you're not going to retire soon But uh, I know you've you've you've hinted that a few times here with us and you've done a great job Well, thank you. I want to thank I see some representatives from build out here Do we have anybody because if I I always give them credit if it wasn't for them back when they pushed that back in 2010 2011 finally in 2014. We we got the program going Do we have anybody on the um housing board from the build group? Because I see we have a vacancy in you recognizing those names Okay. No, that would be I would make a recommendation that we might look at putting what a representative there because because of them I think We have what we have here and it's been very successful, so I want to thank them Okay, and thank you for all that you've done. You've made this One of our our best programs that we do for the city. So, thank you. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you Thank you council member fogel, thank you. Thank you chair. Um, how is your advisory committee selected? I see a lot of um People who own properties that rent properties on the advisory committee, how are they selected, you know, it was just Individuals that initially came to me that were interested in funding and also interested in serving on the board and they're also in organizations that have created or have Submitted application have expressed an interest in affordable housing and affordable housing issues before And and not only issues but programs and projects that's that's how I did it So there is an application and there's room for community to come and join the advisory board. No, but I mean certainly you know, there's certainly Room for any input into this commit our our board meetings are open We have several members from the public who attend those And they are always available i'm always available after the meeting and during the meeting to ask any questions So I understand that they can come in and attend the meeting. I'm asked i'm actually asking about joining The advisory board if they just want to contact me or polly. Absolutely. Okay. Um, and also can you um Take me back to the deed restrictions. I'm i'm trying to wrap my head around. Sure. Um exactly How does that work does it mean that um and and tie that into home ownership of these 18, um Out of did you say 18 out of 50 or 18 out of 30 18 out of 3522. Okay So with home ownership, we normally put on a deed restriction of a shorter term say five to ten years Because if that homeowner has bettered themselves The house is increased in value I don't feel like we should I don't the punish is a bad word Restrict who they can sell it to after a certain period of time that family's lived up to The obligations because we gave them a great deal of subsidy to get them in those units But that deed restriction says you can only sell this property to someone who income qualifies At or below 80 a very mean income and For rental projects everyone that we do is 15 years. So in other words if that rental property changes hands You know, yes, we can release our mortgage if it's paid if the loan is paid off all those things But that deed restriction stays on that property. You still have to lease to qualified families Okay, so I can buy a house I can pay it off But you tell me who I can sell it to is that what it is that what I just want to break it down for folks for five years You can only sell it to somebody who income qualifies under our program Yes, because and we do that in return for the amount of subsidy that we have provided. Okay now I I'm wrapping my head around it. I have one more question. Sure. Um And I think it has to go with um And and that transylvania project is in the first district. So i'm really really Um, and i've been working with ed homes. And so i'm really interested in that um when you spoke about um folks who own Um, some of these projects that we're opening And they're having trouble with management. Does those homeowners live in lexington or do they even live in the state of kentucky? Oh now every developers, yeah people who own these properties Every I I hesitate to say every not every all but one that I can think of right now Does not reside in the state does not have a home office in the state of kentucky And that was a development that we did With a development company from alabama and they did a tremendous job on. Uh What was the old wilson downing apartments now, it's called saddlebrook um, that's the only That I can think of right now at the top of my head out of state developer that we've dealt with now For developments that weren't funded with tax credits. Every one that we fund is a local Developer or a local owner Yeah, okay Thank you. And the senior I said I had one more but the senior Housing that you're speaking about in your presentation today. What geographical location is that going to be in that's in council members districts That's council member baxter's district. And that is uh right there at the on the site of the old uh, the former lex city church Council member baxter. You got poor people in your district Oh, wow, okay Okay, thank you um Vice chair baxter. Thank you chair. Um, thank you council member fogel for bringing that up. Yes as the uh, the Council member who represents the largest amount of aging population I have a significant amount of people who are on fixed income in the ninth district So I could not be more happy and pleased. Um and want to thank you rick for all of the hard work I know it took several years to get that project approved And uh, so I just wanted to thank you publicly for that because it will be while it's only 45 units It will be a huge huge help in the district. So Circling back to the Area median income that you referred to with the 110 Bump, can you just like go back over that again? And sure so what happened was I mean Some of this is assumptions, but some of this is based on what I know because i've been contacted by other uh municipalities that have had trouble spending their ARPA dollars for affordable housing So a couple months ago treasury Uh said, you know when when the legislation initially came out treasury said you could only house You can only use these dollars to house households whose incomes are at or below 80 percent of area median income So that's what we worked on Or that's what we worked from a couple months and I had already had this money committed A couple months ago treasury increased the limit to 110 percent that you could serve now That tells me Two things That tells me that there were municipalities out there that were having trouble spending the dollars for those at 80 and below Which we were able to do um, and also You know as I thought about it some more Uh, there may have been some municipalities that wanted to do more home ownership And by increasing that income limit to 110 percent you increase the population that would be eligible for Home ownership So I have a feeling that may have had something to do with it as well Because i'm sure they were thinking okay, we can provide a large amount of subsidy To uh make this home affordable, but still difficult to do at 80. It's much easier to do at 110 percent Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. Um So my next question, um Is no dig at you or your team because you guys do an amazing job and we're very very lucky to have you um, but my question is are there initiatives that other communities are Working on that you think would be beneficial here You know, I do I do some research, uh on that and I haven't I found other ideas, but In some cases, I just don't agree with it. I spent a lot of time talking to christy mccravey. Who's my counterpart in louisville And try and we just compare notes as to what we're doing and quite frankly the developers we're dealing with and all those things and um We are very similar to what we're doing louisville and lexington Uh, other than the fact they have a lot more money than us. Uh, but still they have larger population Uh, we we administer these programs in much the same manner And it's it's amazing She and I did a podcast for kentucky housing corporation and when it came to their ARPA dollars they did the same thing we did That they're uh much more per unit because they serve much lower incomes with those dollars So and we didn't even know it at the time So I you know, the one I stay most in touch with is louisville And uh, I can tell you that we're pretty much the same. Okay, good deal, but it's not to say that Hey 11 years, you know, you need to look at new ideas every now and then fresh set houses nothing wrong There's nothing wrong with that. So I think your point is well taken. Okay well, I do appreciate all the hard work that you all do and the amount of good work that you can do with the with the Smallish amount of money that you're giving. No, i'm not here asking for more money. I'm just saying Yeah, no, I feel very good. And this council's been more than gracious when you talk about 48 million dollars over 11 years That's a huge investment in affordable housing. Not a small number. So thank you for all your hard work. I appreciate it Thank you, chair. Thank you councilwoman. Great Thank you chair Um rick mcquadey, thank you as always for your wonderful presentation um In regards to affordable housing and the city of lexington How feasible? um, I know that earlier like a few months ago or maybe a couple of months ago we It was announced that there was some affordable housing that we had cut the ribbon on here um, however, i've heard from developers how expensive it is for Affordable housing quote unquote affordable housing to be built inside the city of lexington um So what is the reality of it? Um Because we have the fund We're giving the fund we're giving the money But how feasible is it that we will have an abundance of affordable housing in the city of lexington i'd say i'd say The biggest thing obviously is you still gotta Okay, it's just not the lexington's affordable housing fund. You've got to look at other resources like tax credits There's a finite amount of tax credits that come to this state Those are critical in the development of affordable housing. You have to have the tax credits um The state affordable housing trust fund is vital, you know, that's a limited amount of money as well The home fund that the city of lexington receives is a limited amount So it's not just that You know, I keep telling everybody what the city gave you 20 million dollars Well, that'd be nice But i'm not sure we can develop more housing because there's other resources that go with it And I don't think you want me putting in a hundred thousand dollars a unit I don't think that's the purpose of this fund. We were here to provide gap financing that last piece of the puzzle That makes housing Affordable and that's that's what I feel that we've done Uh, we shouldn't be here Okay, i'm speaking for myself You know, we shouldn't have to replace uh federal dollars, let's put it that way um so in that respect You know more money sure. I mean it would mean more units But you're not gonna you give me 10 million dollars i'm not gonna be able to double the number of units created There's not enough land. There's not enough other resources around um, and quite frankly The developer base. I don't want a developer having four or five projects in the pipeline because otherwise they never get done And uh, the quality of the work is not as strong um There was something else you said though that brought something up. Um Oh rents The state of rents It's hard When I first started this in 2014 A one I could I could finance a project with one bedroom at about 550 Now I pray for 850 um You know even tax credit rents because as incomes go up The rents go up, but as we all know incomes don't go up for everybody. Nope and So, you know the eligible rents go up and with the cost of administering these rental units Uh, it's tough not to you know Tough to make these deals work With what you would call extremely affordable rents Without excuse me Without rental assistance and You know the housing authority administers the rental assistance all those all those vouchers are out there Many of them Use are housed in our developments, which is great. It tells me wherever they were living Um was substandard or looking for some a better place to live Or possibly some of them still hadn't found a unit and they're able to with what we have So, um, I mean tax credit eligible rents Um, which are more strict than what we allow take your time A two-bedroom house Rent plus utilities is in excess of a thousand dollars Now that includes utilities But you know i'm trying to keep it under a thousand as much as I can and You know, you don't you don't you know, you can't imagine the number of um Non-credit developers That talk to polly and I And say I can get twelve hundred dollars for this two-bedroom unit Sure, you can but you can't get our money if you want it Now, I don't say it that way, but you know what I mean Uh, we try and work to keep these units as affordable as we can now. Let me say this, too We recently funded two deals two transactions where the The new owners wanted to acquire a couple of fourplexes There was a there was a household in each one of those two each one of those fourplexes that had lived there for 15 years on fixed income And they were still paying four hundred and fifty dollars a month We worked it out with the new owners That they could keep those rents at 450 for those families so they could stay there not every owner You are a great man. Thank you Um, not every owner Is somebody who's you know, just wants to raise rents because they can There are those out there working with us to make sure that those of lower incomes can stay in their units So I don't I don't want to ever give that impression that Every owner is out there trying to increase rents when they come to us because that's not the case Thank you, i'll come back my time's up Thank you Council member pullman. Thank you chair. And thank you rick for all your hard work of the past 10 years. I mean Where we are where we were and where we are today. It's uh, your leadership's been very appreciated. Thank you Um, you referenced this when you're in your talk and that had to do with the 55 plus Um need and of course, it's escalating. Um, it that will be a big big segment of our population. I have recently I think it's two different developments have come into the 12th district um hamburg and also not leasetown, um Kearney I believe they're current. Yeah And so and I think there might even be a third one. I can't remember but I guess my my question to you is Can you speak a little bit more about how from a strategic standpoint we might be able to deal with that and what that gap? That gap a profile that gap is going to look like i'm moving forward You know, that's that's a really good question. I don't have all the data to answer that but I will talk I do have this data Every time we do a development for those 55 and over It leases up like that within six months 95 of the units are leased and So there obviously is significant demand for quality affordable housing for seniors. Absolutely there is and every market study I review Continues to show that demand now What we've lacked until we finally got these 45 are accessible units We need more fully accessible units so those seniors can age in place and that's what we're doing out at wellington So obviously you're dealing with it and strategic approaches moving forward in that. Yes Yeah, I mean that's something we're going to continue to look at because I guarantee you those 45 units will lease up quickly And we need more we need more accessible units and I know the both look the locations that i'm thinking of Transportation has been an issue because it will be out in the 12th because we're more way out there And I how are you dealing with that working close with lextran because I know they've got a master plan I got a call from and I can't remember the gentleman's name at lextran And he wanted to be on the advisory committee and I thought that was a great idea We need somebody like that so that they know and they're aware of what's going on And they're aware of the need and can help us address those issues because we As a board part of our criteria is project design which include amenities such as public transportation We want to make sure that public transportation is available there for the residents So it's a critical aspect of it. Absolutely. Kearney was a problem Yeah, it was like a half mile they had to walk for a mile to get to and also Out at hamburg. They've got across a men of war. Yeah, um I don't want to get into it in a public meeting. But yeah, you're right. You're right that Never mind, but you're absolutely right. That wasn't intended to be that way Yeah, that's all so important for them to get to services and needs such as grocery stores. I know you're aware of all that Yes, okay. Great. Thanks. Thank you Thank you chair, thank you councilwoman gray Thank you chair reynolds, um, so my second question, um is regarding um The grants, um You mentioned that like that louisville, of course, their population is basically double ours They have more money, but also they do apply for the federal grants. They're really On top of that. So how diligent are we? Applying for the grants because they're out there really, um charlie can probably answer that question better than I can but Yeah The pro housing grant we're in the process of applying for that that and uh That that application is actually in And we should hear something in the spring And my colleague to my right your left is letting me know that we gave back a grant is this true grant funding No, not that i'm aware of. Okay. Okay. I hope not. Okay. We need all the money that we can we'll take Um, and if I come across any grants, I will definitely which I do come across grants because this is what I do in My free time looking for money for lexington residents So i'll let uh commissioner lantern know of any grants that I learn about on this convention that i'm heading out to shortly so Thank you. That's it Thank you council member ellinger, thank you chair i'm going to kind of talk outside the box here. Um I think the last presentation we had from ed home ed homes was 22 000 affordable housing unions that were So the 3500 is is a great start, but we still have a long way to go what's the best way to to fill that gap and I and one of the Issues that's been raised to us is inclusionary zoning What is your take on that and and how how could that affect what what we do going forward? That might be a policy decision that we have to make but what have you seen? I know we in the state of kentucky. We can't do rent control But we can we've really never had any litigation that says you can't do inclusionary zoning And maybe that's a little outside your purview. But I but I think it's something we might have to be dealing with Let me say this and you're right. I don't know a lot about and and everything goes on in that but I'll work with the department of planning quite a bit And they have all been very supportive of what we're trying to do trying to increase the number of affordable housing units um Quite frankly, I mean they they go out of their way to try and make sure that if you know, as long as it's reasonable that uh, they support it and they have yet to not support one of the developments that's come our way and they've also I know they've made some changes like the um, The parking regulations have been waived Things like that that will help with the creation And and the ability to do more more affordable housing units. So they've been a strong partner in this effort No question about that. I guess going forward. Would you have any suggestions on how we could even improve? What we're doing now, you know, i'm just not that familiar with those type of issues um I didn't know if you with you with other colleagues or yeah, you know That's something that's something I will research though If there's other things the community can be doing hey, I know what I want to say I now know remember what I want to say the 22 000 units And I don't think it's here but my impression of that was that that was total number units not just affordable So that was a total number. Yeah total So it's not just for those at 80 and below is to make it affordable for the entire population, right? And I and I understand that maybe I missed said that but it's of that we're going to a percentage of that It's going to be affordable housing units that we've got to close that gap. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know Even if you gave me 100 million dollars tomorrow It's still not going to happen overnight It's something that we got to continue to work on to continue to address as we move forward and I think you mentioned that our our job or yours you see as your responsibility is Is that gap funding at the end to get the projects because otherwise we're what are we at about 14 000? I think that we we put in each right now. We're averaging 10 Just two years ago. It was eight. It's going to be 14 before long. Absolutely But if we if we put that much then we end up I think you said up to 100 000 per unit and that's kind of not what our i'm not you know, I don't want to speak for anybody other than my but Just my when when I took this job as being over the affordable housing fund My goal was to fund as many affordable units as we possibly could and be that gap financer not the primary financing mechanism for all these developments and I still feel strongly that way. That's the way other affordable housing funds throughout the country I do operate and I think it's critical that we continue to leverage other dollars And you know bring the banks in banks are looking for cra anyway You know banks have been great partners for us That's why I have so many bankers on my board so they can get exposure to affordable housing and see that Hey, these are pretty good deals. This is maybe something that we should invest in so There's a lot of benefits not only into how we can spread our money further But also how to bring other partners into the affordable housing endeavor because it's going to take more than just a city effort I've got just a minute left one issue. We interest rates were real low They went up and now they're on their way back. Is that has that been a factor for us? It's been a big help the thing is for permanent loans on some of these larger transactions The interest rates came down for a little bit and then went right back up um They're really based more on the 10-year treasury than they are what the fed does now Sometimes the 10-year treasury follows what the fed does but um Now this latest reduction i'm hopeful Right now the best you can do on a perm loan is seven and a quarter before covid you could do three three three and a half So you can see that increases the gap To keep the rents where we want them Thank you, and my time's up and thanks again for all that you do for us. Thank you Thank you And um, I just really want to thank you. Mr Mcquadey for coming and doing this presentation answering our questions and for the work that you do Which is phenomenal and has made such a difference in lexington. And so we're very appreciative of your work, um something that council member ellinger said that I kind of want to springboard off of um I think some of us have seen different models of affordable housing in different cities That that are different than the one that we use do you think there might be a possibility in looking into a way of expanding the way that we Help grow affordable housing, um not to get rid of what we're already doing But but to springboard and do some other things as well certainly in any Articles you read anything that you all have any information, please email to me I promise you I will read it consider it And look at it present it to the board present it to the advisory committee just to make certain that You know, hey we consider all ideas because like I said earlier You know, i'm not stuck in my ways at all We've been doing it pretty much the same way for 11 years But that doesn't mean that new ideas come come out and we should look at different ways of doing things and accomplishing our goals Okay, thank you, I totally agree with you we might be doing that in the near future Thank you very much. And once again, thank you for coming. Okay. Thank you Thank you Our next um item is the annual juvenile treatment court update and This item was also referred to committee by councilwoman gray and today I think we have Judge hughes thurston with us to present and kivy figs. Is that right? Right? Thank you councilwoman gray Thank you chair reynolds um Yes, um, thank you The youth as everyone knows is very near and dear to my heart everything that I personally do In this capacity and even my work outside Of this capacity is about ensuring that our youth Have a better tomorrow than their present and And i'm thankful for the the work that this office does Um, I I often talk about one particular student of mine who I stay in contact with to this day um Chris i'll say his name chris avett smart. He would love for me to say his name So he's like probably watching if he's watching and going like he she said my name Uh, you all have changed his life for the better and And what I see what you all have been able to do for this young man I know that you're doing it for so many others So every single time you you present what you all have done. These are lives So this is generational changes that are taking place because of the work that you all do. So I just want to just begin this off with a huge thank you for the work that you do. Some of our young people that at the time are in the midst of crisis and aren't the easiest to love, but you all find a way to shine them up, make them feel loved, and putting them on a new path. So thank you, and thank you for your presentation today. Thank you, Councilmember Gray and Madam Chair, Madam Vice Chair, and Commissioner, and fellow or members of the Council. Thank you all so much for inviting us. It is always our pleasure to be here and talk about our great work because we could talk about it all day. Because we're very proud of it, and we're very passionate about it, and we're very grateful for you and your continued investment and interest in our program. Before we go any further, I just want to thank Kendra publicly. We've had some technology concerns, and she has been a champ through it all, so thank you, Kendra. I appreciate it very much. As everyone knows, I am Judge Thurston. I serve in the Third Division in Fayette District Court. Judge Murphy sends her love and regards. She is unable to attend today, so we hope we make her proud in our presentation. And this is the one and the only, Keevy Figgs. And I'll turn it over to her briefly to introduce herself. So I am Keevy Figgs. I am the program coordinator. It's me working with the other two wonder women of JTC. This makes year 29 of doing social work. This makes year three of doing, or going into year three of doing JTC. I couldn't have asked to have been at a better place than doing what they keep telling me is the Lord's work. And I enjoy what I do with these youth, so we're going to present to you some information about what we do and how we do it. It's not just a mental health piece that we give to the youth. We give lots of support in all kinds of ways, and we'll show that in our presentation. Emphasis on all kinds of ways. All right, just a reminder of what our mission statement is. We of course want to address public safety and reduce recidivism, but we also want to address the needs and the wellness of our county's kids. And by doing that, we meet them where they are. And that'll make a little bit more sense here at the end of the presentation. We have an integrated approach. As Ms. Keevy has told you, she is the leader of that approach. We have of course court supervision. Judge Murphy and I split the children, so she has a docket of JTC kids and I have a docket of JTC kids. We combination of court supervision, mental health treatment and services, and of course educational and emotional supports as well. All while inspiring accountability and hopefully making long lasting changes in these kiddos' lives. Partnerships make our dream work. As a reminder, we started this process in 2020 and COVID hit us and hit us in the face, but we were not deterred. We continued our work to get this court off the ground. Starting in October of 2021, we entered into an agreement with our administrative office of the courts and they are our fiscal agent. And then we entered into an agreement in November of 2021 with Fayette County Public Schools as our hiring entity for our program coordinator, Ms. Figgs. And of course, present, our granting entity. You all investing in this program and our kids, we couldn't do it without your support. And that's why it's always our pleasure to be in front of you to talk about basically what your investment is producing and what it is producing out in your individual districts. What this looks like. We accept referrals from juvenile court. As you all are probably aware, the Fayette District Courts, each judge has their own juvenile docket and we accept referrals from what we call public regular juvenile court and assessments for juvenile treatment court. We have family court kiddos and we have kiddos from the court designated worker. We have a four phased approach. Kiwi sits down with each participant and their family, whether it be a parent or a guardian and puts forth a plan in paper with various requirements that we expect the child to accomplish in the relevant phase. Kiwi goes through line by line of each requirement and each expectation and then we come to court and do it together with the family. And these are some of the things, of course, they include no new public offenses, random drug testing, mental health services, which is a huge component of our whole goal and purpose and family and educational supports. I'm going to let Kiwi go over this slide and tell you about our current census and then what that census as far as demographics looks like. So as Judge Thurston stated, we get referrals from three different entities and we've had 70 referrals at this time. We've accepted 39 referrals and we have 11 graduates from JTC and of those 11 graduates, we have seven kids that have graduated from high school. We're pretty proud about that. Currently we have two or have 10 youth that we're working with. Two are females, eight are males, we have four African American, excuse me, three white, one Hispanic, and two of mixed race. All the kids are receiving mental health services at this time. We have one high school graduate of this bunch of 10 and just to add on to that, he's 16. We also have youth participating in leadership academy at Woodhill. We meet twice a month with the Woodhill staff and they provide services to our team. It's really just the boys in this group and then they're also participating in DBT and our last group will meet Wednesday. So we work with community partners because we don't have any extra money so when people say that they are willing to support our youth in all kinds of ways, we say yes and then we set that up for the youth to participate and give them some extra services outside of their mental health services that are required and also come into court to see Judge Murphy or Judge Thurston. And of those 10, all of our kids go to an array of schools here in Fayette County. They don't come from one school at all. Of those 10, when we talk about education piece, only two of them are not on grade level at this time so we also work to make sure that their educational needs are being met. And that's about it with those 10. I just want to touch on the 16-year-old who has graduated from high school. He has just currently toured Berea College so that will be a huge deal for us if he goes on to Berea College. Whenever he wants, we want to get him there but we're super proud of that. As I mentioned, mental health is a key component in our approach and these are all of the wonderful agencies that have backed us up from the beginning. As you see, there are many of them who have invested in our kiddos and in our kiddos' mental wellness and we are very happy to have them and again, very blessed and fortunate because as I mentioned, teamwork makes our dream work. And here's just a couple of others of course, Fayette County Public Schools, the City of Lexington of course, the Public Library, One Lexington, the Health Department, BCTC, we've had some kiddos already taking classes over there, college prep classes. And then CHI St. Joseph Health. Kivi, do you want to talk about some of the other activities that our kiddos do? Yes, along with that list that's there, we also work with the SPI Coast, oh it is up there. We have done Lunch and Learn. They have a whole education piece and they're willing to work with our youth and give them job opportunities. A big collaboration we have right now is with EKU. They provide the DBT classes for our kids, our group, but they also work with me on each individual kid to make sure that we are providing all the support that we can for them, which has been so helpful to what we do with our youth. We also have, as Judge Thurston talked about, the Berea, the young man who's applied to Berea. We went on a college tour and did that, he and I. So I got to walk the campus of Berea with that young man. So these are just some additional activities that we provide. One also that's not up there is Goodwill. We did the re-entry simulation with our kids and that was amazing. We did it in the courthouse and the kids enjoyed it. Didn't understand it at first, but by the end they were pretty engaged in what happened. So we're thankful for the additional support that we get as well. I think this may not be up there either, that we also are thankful for Urban County Social Services. They also partner with us to make sure that we're able to provide drug screens at no cost for our kids. And also, if we have to add a sanction and it's an electronic monitor, they also provide the support for that as well. Yes, that was sort of a monumental turning point in our program to have the support of DYS for those two reasons. Because the whole point, another one of our whole points, is to keep these kids out of custody. But sometimes we have to address the behavior that's in front of us and having those mechanisms in place has been invaluable. We have also created a non-profit and we are working on our 501c3 status right now. We are a Kentucky non-profit and there is a correction that I need to make. Dr. Pursley is actually the representative from DYS that is on our board with us and we are so happy to have her. And basically the entity is created because, as Keevy said, we don't have any extra funding. So this entity helps us raise money where appropriate and available to help create incentives for our kiddos. Gift cards, Uber cards, whatever we might need. That is something that helps us along the way. Here is the good stuff. Our graduates. If you ever have an opportunity, and we will make sure you know when they are, to come to our graduations, they are just life changing. You know, you think along the way, are we really doing anything for these kids? Are we making it worse? You know, sometimes we've had those hard conversations. Are we making it too much? Is it too much? And then we get to the end, to these moments, and we see these kiddos and their families and the reconnections that they've made to each other in the community. It is truly, truly life changing as far as it goes for us and I think that's why we continue to do this work and why we continue to want to do this work. All right. Another shout out would be to the Department of Public Advocacy. Their lawyers show up for us and show up for our kids and that is so important for those kids to know that they have an independent voice outside if they need it. So without further ado, we have a young man and as I mentioned when I said meet them where they are, he lives in Louisville and he was supposed to be here today and he had transportation problems and he was crushed because he loves this program and he would talk about it all day. He loves this program so much that he wanted Judge Murphy to present him his high school diploma. He didn't want anybody else. He requested her and she suited up and said, oh yes, we will do that and we made it happen and his name is Jaden. We have a video. Perhaps we will be able to supplement later and send you the video because I want you to actually see him because he is so inspiring but I think we will try to play the sound from here and again, we apologize for the technical difficulties but we meet these kids where they are. So he is in Louisville, we are here and we asked him to send a video and he did. Hello, everyone. My name is Jaden Sloan and I am a graduate of JQC. The program really is a great program for teens. A little bit about me before the program was I was a runaway. I had a marijuana addiction. I was around the wrong people. I wasn't listening to my parents at home. I was just not really caring about life all together but what led me getting into the program was me and my father got into an altercation and some stuff got broken and stuff so he called the police and they took me to the MASH house and that's where I stayed for a while during my court process or whatever. Then I decided to run away from the MASH house because I was still not really maturing and I was still really my old self so I ran away from the MASH house and I got sent to jail for seven days which really opened my eyes a lot because I never thought that I would ever go to jail. So then I went back to my last court appearance to see how I was able to get out of jail or not and they told me there was a program that I could go through that really helps you and the only thing at that time because I was still my old self, the only thing I heard was boom, my charges getting expunged off my record. So I was like okay, I'm going to do this because I don't want charges on my record. So then I met with Ms. Keebee, the program coordinator, and I just saw how caring she was for the youth. The first day I met her, she was just this bubbly, open-spirit person and you can just tell she's not just part of the court system. She's actually someone that cares about the community and the children in the community. So I was like okay, I'm going to give the program a chance. So then I met with my judge which was Judge Murphy, awesome lady, great personality, she really cares also. So then I just got within the program, I just started doing stuff, going through therapy which really helped me, doing little classes with some people from the community about like marijuana and how to fix the body and stuff. So then I stopped smoking. I then in January, I want to say last year, I then in January last year graduated the program and as of now I live in Louisville, Kentucky because I just found that Lexington was the place for me because of the people I was hanging around. So I had to change for the better. So then I moved to Louisville and I live in Louisville full-time now. I work at Norton Hospital downtown and I'm on my way to go get my R.N. Without the program, I would not be the person I am today. I want to thank the three wonderful ladies that was in the program. Ms. Keevy, you're awesome. Ms. Thurston, you're awesome. I couldn't meet you that much, but we did have a little luncheon here and there. Judge Murphy, you have really made me as a person change. Ms. Keevy, without you ladies, I don't think I would be who I am today. And that's why I had Judge Murphy give me my diploma. Thank you guys for your time. I apologize, Madam Chair. I know we've gone over our time. You're fine. Thank you so much for sharing that and for being here today and for all the work that you all do. We really appreciate each of you and for starting this. Councilmembers, you can sign in for questions. There we go. Councilmember James Brown. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Judge and Ms. Keevy for your presentation and the work that you're doing with our young people. I know that a few of us got invited to the graduation that you had. I think it might have been, was it last year? It might have been this school year, this year, last school year. And the testimonies and hearing those young people talk about how they appreciate the time invested in them and somebody looking at them more than just a delinquent or a court case or a number was real impactful. And it just shows that you all are doing a lot of good work to give people other options to turn their situation around. So I just wanted to say thank you for all the work that you do. We support the work and the effort. So thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Thank you so much. Do you have any? Sorry, Councilmember Fogle just signed in. Thank you, Chair. Thank you all for the great work that you do. Berea College has a great work study program where they actually get to invest in themselves. There's a free ride all the way through Berea College. I've been working with youth on my other job to get them to Berea College. So I know that he will love it. I call that God's country. Fresh air. It's so beautiful. That's a beautiful part of Kentucky. So I hope he takes advantage of that. We do, too. Yeah, I believe he will. If he just goes up and just takes a tour, he'll fall in love with that campus. So thank you all for the hard work. Thank you, guys. Councilwoman Gray. Thank you, Chair Reynolds. I just want to say thank you. Keevy, Ms. Figgs, I know that you mentioned 29 years. 29 years of changing lives for the better. Well deserved rest if you do decide to retire. No, ma'am. Please note that was Judge Thurston and not Keevy. But yes, I just wanted to wrap it up by just saying thank you for the work that you do. The countless hours, the phone calls even after they graduate that you receive. Which is a testament to what you all are bringing. The fact that even after they graduate, they still are keeping in contact with you. For people who don't work with youth, let me tell you, that lets you know the type of impact you've had on their lives. And the young man that I spoke about, Chris Abbott-Smarton, saying your name again, kid. Young man. I just know what you all did for him. And after speaking, going to your graduation last year to see the young people who have gone through the program. And just to hear their testimony. This is, not only you're changing their lives for the better, but you are saving lives. And you're also, not even their lives, you're saving them from possibly, if they were on the same route, you're protecting others. The work you do is endless. And just thinking about, it's not even just today, you're changing their children's lives, their grandchildren's lives. So, thank you for the work you do. Thank you for being a beacon of hope for our next generation of leaders and showing them a different way for themselves. So thank you, and I'm glad that we have this court. I'm glad that you're there, Judge Thurston. And I'm, KB, you know how I feel about you. I'm glad that you are still here, and hopefully, a little bit longer, maybe. See, everybody wants you to stick around. She keeps threatening, but she's not allowed to retire. Thank you, and I just think it's really neat that some of us have gotten to see where this started and where it is now. And that full progression from the beginning. And so, it's really wonderful to be able to see a dream come to life. And you all have done a fabulous job. I just had one question before we leave. I saw that you had 70 referrals and that you could accept 39 of those. What qualifies someone to be able to participate? So, I'll start at the top and then you can kind of fill in the blanks. We begin with the gains assessment. And so, that is a self-assessment tool that we use to sort of gauge the mental health, the substance use needs of the child. But that is not the only thing that we take into account. We also take into account the kiddo's buy-in. Are they even interested? Is the family interested? Is the family going to be able to help the child make their court appearances? Is there a transportation barrier? Is that something we need to figure out on the front end? Is there a language barrier? We're very proud to have, we've had two non-English speaking, well three non-English speaking kiddos. Well, the kiddos speak English, let me rephrase that. But their family members don't. So, there are all of these different components that we consider in accepting a kiddo. What am I forgetting? It's also voluntary. So, if kids come to the assessment and they tell me up front, Keevy, I don't want to do this. I say, check. And we move on. There are kids who, for whatever reason, may have gotten involved in something else. Like sometimes they go back to diversion. So, they were referred to us, but because of diversion through the CDW's office, they went back there. We also have kids that are referred that don't meet criteria because of their charges, too. So, those are some of the reasons. Does that answer your question? Yes, it does. And do you have language services for the families that need interpreters? We certainly do. Currently, the only language we've needed so far was Spanish. And we use our court interpreters. We also facilitate communication through the Fayette County Public Schools and use their interpreters. So, language barrier is not a barrier to court involvement. We make it work. Awesome. Thank you so much. Well, thank you both for being here today. We appreciate you. And please send Judge Murphy our love. We will do it. Thank you all so much for your time. Thank you. Next, we have the Hope Center Expansion Project Update. And I think the newer CEO, Jeff Crook, is going to be the one presenting. And this is an item that was referred to committee by Councilwoman Fogle. So, I will let her introduce this item. Thank you, Chair. Colleagues, it is my pleasure to introduce the Hope Center, who is getting ready to unveil the Veterans Housing Slash Shelter. Welcome. We haven't met you yet, but welcome to the fold. And so, it is my pleasure to turn this over to you for an update that we're anxious to hear about. And take it away. Thank you. My name is Jeff Crook. I'm the CEO of the Hope Center. I'm here to report on our new construction that's taking place in front of our emergency shelter. The project is approximately $6.8 million in terms of the new facility. We've had renovations on the emergency shelter of about $500,000. So, you're looking at about a $7.3 million project. Of that project, we got $2 million in ARPA funds from the city, which we're grateful for. We also got $1.5 million in Veterans Capital funds, which we're grateful for. We're raising the rest of those funds. We're still $1.2 million short. In case you have any additional funds you might want to give us. But things are moving along great. We're about 80% complete on the project, and we expect it to be done probably early to mid-February. So, if you look at the picture there, you can see the sort of the outside L shape is the existing shelter. And then the two-story facility right in the middle, that's the new construction. Does anyone have any questions? Council Member Ellinger. Thank you, Chair. Can you tell me how this new facility, how it's going to serve and what kind of changes will this happen now? Yes, this will provide 72 beds for transitional housing. 24 of those are designated to veterans. The remaining units will be just for supportive transitional housing to help transition many of our clients to prepare to move into permanent housing. There's a major gap in terms of what's needed for the clients that we work with at the emergency shelter to get them prepared to move into permanent housing and be stable enough to remain in permanent housing. So, this will give us the opportunity to provide additional services. We have other programs that we use, but this will allow us to provide even more services that will hopefully transition clients more quickly into permanent housing and hopefully increase the likelihood of them remaining housed. Now, we have a winter program that we do separately, I guess, that we did across the street from you last year. Now, we're doing it in the motels. How much more do we need to really take care of the problem? Because I know this is a nice step, but we still have a big gap that we haven't filled yet. Yeah, the winter temporary shelter from last year was a specific project for the unsheltered homeless around town. And that was the solution last year. This year, the solution is a different solution. This is very much a Hope Center thing. Last year was sort of just us trying to assist with that issue. Sure, but we still have a homeless issue that we're not addressing. I think going forward with permanent housing, or permanent like this, I think, would you say 72? 72 transitional housing units. And that's a great addition, but I don't think that still fills the whole needs that we have. I think the entire need is a lot. But I am looking forward to this. And you say in the spring we hope to be having a ribbon cutting on this and be able to move in? Yes, around mid-February. Thank you, and thank you for your service. You're welcome. Thank you. Council Member James Brown. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Council Member Fogle, for putting this item in committee. And thank you, Jeff, for being here today. And congratulations on your new position. Thank you. Were you the interim during the process? I was the interim for 10 months. Okay. What was your position at the Hope Center prior? Prior to that, I was the Chief Operating Officer for a couple years. And prior to that, I was the Chief Financial Officer. Okay, okay. So you're no stranger. For 24 years. I've been there 26 years total. Okay, okay. Well, congratulations again. Thank you. So I actually thought when we funded this project that we were helping to expand the emergency housing. But that's not the case. This is all transitional? Yeah. The ARPA funds were very specific in terms of not being able to expand emergency shelter. It had to be transitional housing or another form of housing other than emergency shelter. This is specific to the ARPA funds that we received. And also necessary to provide an opportunity for us to provide the services that our clients need in transitioning before they move to permanent housing. So does transitional housing, is it also described as permanent supportive housing? Or is that completely different? This is transitional supportive housing. So the clients that are in this housing won't be there permanently. They will be receiving services until they reach a certain level that they're able to move into the community. Into permanent housing. Does this classification have a stay maximum? Can they only stay a maximum of a certain amount of time and it becomes something else? Typical transitional housing has sort of a two-year maximum. But this is not. There's no restrictions based on the funding for this that are time-based. So in theory, someone could stay longer than two years. Although I think it's very likely anybody would stay anywhere near two years. Okay. And then the other thing. So what's the housing type going to be like? Is it going to be dormitory style? Or is it going to be separate rooms, partially private? Or what's it going to look like on the inside? The veterans housing is driven by the veterans funding for that. So each one of the veterans will have their own individual room. And then they have an individual bathroom that they have access to. The remaining units are dorm style rooms where there's sort of a common living space. But then there's two four-bed bedrooms. So it's basically an eight-person pod. Okay. So is the veteran portion of the housing on the upstairs and the regular housing is on the downstairs or the other? The veterans is on the first floor. And it takes up about two-thirds of the first floor. And then the other housing takes up the other third of the first floor and all the second floor. Okay. So the funding that we provided, is it just purely construction and capital? Is there any programming money? Are there additional? Well, I'm sure there's additional services that are provided to the folks staying there. But how is that being paid for? Is that part of your Hope Center operating budget? Or does veteran funds come? It is part of the operating budget. The veterans funds, we do have a per diem for veterans. So the veterans funds, the veterans portion will be paid via our grant and per diem with the veterans. But the remaining portion is part of the Hope Center operations that we'll pay for either through grants or also potentially through billing. So just in terms of how we pay for everything else right now. Okay. Okay. Well, thanks for the information. I appreciate the update and look forward to you cutting the ribbon and getting folks in there. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Councilwoman Gray. Thank you, Chair Reynolds. And thank you for your short presentation. So with this facility right here, do we have anything similar? Because this is typically, this campus right here is typically for males, correct? So do we have anything similar or close to being built for women? Because we also have female veterans who do need assistance as well. That is correct. And when we originally got the veterans grant and per diem grant that we've had for 20 plus years, we got five spots for women veterans. And unfortunately, we've never had the first one. So I'm sure there's a need. But none of them have come to the Hope Center. We have a women's recovery program on Versailles Road. And we thought that we could bring women veterans into that. And we just haven't had any. Any that qualify. There's a certain qualification you've got to meet in order to qualify for that grant. And we just haven't had any. So what are those qualifications that they need to meet? There's qualifications related to how they separate service. Whether it's an honorable discharge or not an honorable discharge. Sometimes there's medical situations involved. But I really don't know the details. I'm sorry. So if you could just relay that information to the council members, that would be great. Also, typically when we find that, at least I have found in my own practice, when you don't have a lot of people coming to you for a service, typically that means the information isn't out there correctly. So what are we doing to better communicate with the target audience or target population? Because there is a need. I've spoken to many. So, I mean, it's not that they're not there. So what are you all doing that is intentional in reaching the community? Yeah. I would say that we're not overly intentional. We have relationships with other collaborative agencies around town, including the local veterans department. And so we've got those referrals coming, but we haven't really advertised or anything of that nature. The vast majority of our veterans that we serve are veterans who have come into the emergency shelter just seeking shelter. So we just provide this program as an avenue for them to get the additional services that they can get in the program. And also, I happen to serve on the commission on veteran affairs with at least two of my other colleagues. One's not here right now. But have you all communicated with the commission about the program for veterans? Because we're currently putting together a website that has resources. And I'm not sure we have any information from the Hope Center. I'm not at least sure that we do. We'd be thrilled to provide as much information. I just want to make sure, because the fact that you said we have five, but you've never had any, who fit the mold or fit the qualifications, for me that's a problem. Because that's like saying that they're not out there. And we know for a fact we do have women out there. So I'm hoping that the Hope Center will be more intentional about reaching out to, because I see all the intentionality in the world reaching out to males. But women are being left behind. So I would like to see the Hope Center actually do more for the women folk. That's all. Thank you. Councilwoman Vogel. Thank you, Chair. First question, I want to piggyback off of what Councilmember Brown was asking so that my colleagues can get a clear understanding. Because I was under the impression also that when we funded this project, that there was going to be a portion that will go to the veterans housing. Another portion would go to the epidemic that we see on the streets for the sheltering. Is that true? That's untrue if you mean in terms of expanding the number of shelter beds. One thing that when our- No, I'm saying transitioning those folks into those beds so that they can have the opportunity for permanent housing. What I don't want you to tell me today is that those beds will go for people who are in the program at the Don Jacobs House that's going through the program, that they would transition over into these beds to open those beds up. Because I do know that those beds are also funded by the Department of Correction. So if that is what the flow is going to be, then we will never attack and help the folks who are on the streets. The Street Voice Council had the 3,000, over 3,000 people that are homeless, and that was just in a portion of Lexington. We hadn't even gotten out to Brandon Crossing yet to count those folks. This was just in the inner city. And so, can you please explain to us and help us understand that portion of it? Yeah, in terms of the funding, the ARPA funds go for not the veterans housing, but they go for the remaining units, which it pays approximately maybe 50-60% of the remaining units. And so, those units are designed to take our homeless clients and transition them so that they will be able to move back into the community more quickly. So those are for transitioning our clients back into permanent housing. So the clients that's in the homeless shelter part are the homeless people who are going through your program? The clients in the shelter. Okay. For the veterans program, will that be set up like the VASH program? I'm sorry? So it will be like the VASH program, the veterans VASH program? Is that where you will receive the veterans from? Come on, David. This is David Shad, our director of programs. I'm just kidding. Yes, we work very closely with the VA. So those clients are going to come from a variety of sources. Some of them have been approved to work with HUD-VASH, but have not yet a security unit or are in early stages of that. They will be eligible for the program. But not all veterans who are eligible for grant per diem are eligible for HUD-VASH. So we also have some who have a general service discharge or have other criteria that they don't meet for HUD-VASH. So those veterans also are in the grant per diem program. So not all of them are through HUD-VASH. Some of them come through other sources, maybe referred by VOA or referred by, you know, just come into the shelter and we identify them as a veteran. So I would say probably half of those end up working with HUD-VASH and the other find housing through other sources. And so will they be paying or will they be allowed to stay there free? They're allowed to stay there free. The VA grant per diem pays for, you can qualify for the VA grant per diem even if you don't qualify for HUD-VASH. They have sort of a lower barrier. So we have, so they all stay there free regardless of how they get into the program. Okay, because I know Jenny Ramsey's model and I know that those beds are paid for and they usually range somewhere like $1,300 to $1,700 per bed per veteran is what they are paid. And so I was wondering if your beds were going to be at $1,300 to $1,700 per person to sleep in the bed at the Hope Center. We receive a daily per diem for those. So it is based on the number of days they stay. And it is not, I'm not sure, I know of those beds and I'm not sure of that funding source. But it is a different funding source but a very similar model in terms of who is eligible to enter. And can I touch on that too about the eligibility of veterans who said not on my watch. They watched America, they served our country. How in the world could they not qualify for a bed? Is my time up? You need to sign back in? Your time is up. Okay, I need 15 minutes. No. James Brown. Thank you Chair and Council Committee. And I apologize if I muddied the water talking about the expansion of the emergency shelter. And Commissioner Hensley or Charlie, if one of y'all want to kind of come up and explain. I do remember the funding, the emergency rescue plan funding not being eligible to expand emergency shelter. And I think where maybe I got twisted up is I think in my mind that this is the next step in housing. So folks could move from the emergency shelter to this resource and move on. So can you explain a little bit about that? I think just to recap from the ARPA FRF funds. There was a rule in the federal regulation that you could not use that money to expand shelter capacity. So that was never the intention of this program. This has always been, sorry guys I messed up your PowerPoint. This has always been a transitional housing program. Because a shelter program would not be a legal use of the ARPA funds. Okay. And you're correct Council Member Brown. The continuum of housing is shelter transitional to permanent. So that's where this fits in. And it has the effect of helping the shelter in that people move out of the shelter into the transitional housing. Because I think what Council Member Fogle is getting at. As long as that takes place, while it's not expanding the shelter, it's freeing up space. For people who sort of graduate up to the transitional. Okay. Well that makes sense. I just wanted to get that clarity out there. So thank you. And I can add to that if you don't mind. It is, it shortens the length of time in the emergency shelter. So effectively all of those, currently all of those veterans are in the emergency shelter. So they will move into that space. But then also the transitional housing clients that are moving into open space for other individuals who are in need of shelter. So it effectively creates a more rapid move through the system. And is designed to make sure that they get through emergency shelter into housing more quickly. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. I was just getting ready to clarify that. So thank you for making that point. Council Member Fogle. Thank you, Chair. Quick question. We know that my colleagues and I consistently get complaints from the cafeteria. What are you doing to expand that area? Because if you're taking on more folks to eat at the cafeteria, do they eat at the cafeteria? Or do they have their own kitchens in this beautiful facility that we're looking at? They have their own kitchens in this beautiful facility. And each of their cubicles or just one kitchen? It's, each pod has its own kitchen. But each, the veterans has a kitchen for all of them. And the photo that we're seeing, that's the way I'm going to look at that beautiful greenery and everything. And when I pass up Loudon Avenue, when I go to the Y, I'm going to see that picture that we're looking at right now. That's going to be absolutely beautiful. In February you are. We're hoping to keep it looking like that. The people that have given money for the project want it to continue to look like that. So it's very important that we try our best to keep it as you saw it. Or to get it as you saw it and keep it as you saw it. Well, thank you for that. And I hope that I have planted a seed in the last two years about how the urgency is for another shelter. Because I know that you all are always at capacity. And in the winter, you're definitely at capacity. So the seed is planted. And now it will be up to my colleagues on the horseshoe to carry that out. Hopefully, Charlie will get another building or something to relieve that overflow right there by the railroad track. That's what makes me nervous all the time, that folks lay by the railroad track. So I think my fine business is, well, I got three whole minutes left. What can I ask you? Thank you for your presentation. Thank you, David, for being here. Thank you all for coming. I think what you heard my colleagues say in several different ways is that we just have a really big need for the unhoused, the homeless right now. Emergency, transition, affordable housing, all of it. And so we appreciate that you're filling a void that we have. And I'm glad that we could clarify. I guess there was some confusion about what the ARPA money could be used for. And so I think that any housing is good housing at this point. So thank you for what you're doing to serve the community. And I think you also heard from some of my colleagues that in the future, it would be awesome to kind of expand the reach for women and maybe families. I'm glad to have the women's program in my district, and it serves a lot of people. And I think it is often at capacity just for serving the general population. So thank you once again for all your work in the community and for coming today. We appreciate you. And Chair, I had three more minutes. Did you say you were short 1.5 million? 1.2 million. 1.2, thank you. Okay, and now we have items referred to committee. If you would look at the last page of your packet and please tell me if there is an item that you need to remove. If you see something that you need to add, you can do that during work session. If there's something you need to change, Council Member Gray. Chair Reynolds, I think I'm going to go ahead. I'm not sure we need an annual update for the juvenile court. I think right now I would like to remove it. Okay, so moved, sorry. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? That motion passes, okay. We will remove that. Anyone else? Okay, this is our last social services and public safety meeting for the year. So, I just wanted to say that it has been an honor to chair the past term, and I have really enjoyed working with all of you. And our next meeting for this committee is going to be January 14th. So, I will see you guys in just a few minutes. Thank you so much. We're adjourned. Thank you.