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# Mayor's Task Force to End Homelessness - February 12, 2026

> Auto-transcribed civic record · February 12, 2026

- **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6689
- **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6689?view_id=14&redirect=true
- **Date**: 2026-02-12
- **Last revised**: February 13, 2026
- **Length**: 7,010 words

> ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1. 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).

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## Meeting Overview

This meeting of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government included four agenda items, all of which were informational in nature. The session featured subcommittee reports covering four areas: Supportive Services and Prevention Services, Funding and Partnership, Peer Cities and Shelter Models, and Community Engagement. No votes were taken during the meeting, reflecting its informational and deliberative character. One public comment was heard over the course of the proceedings.

## Attendance

The following members were present at the February 12, 2026 meeting:

- T.C. Second
- Charlie
- David
- Zach
- Council Member Sheehan
- Council Member Morton
- Councilman Brown
- Jenny
- Councilperson Ellinger
- Greg

No members were recorded as absent or late.

## Public Comment

One member of the public addressed the meeting during the public comment period. [timestamp: 44:00]

The speaker raised the topic of the waitlist for services, highlighting a notable geographic concentration among those waiting. Specifically, the speaker noted that at least 50% of individuals on the waitlist are from Lexington and Fayette County. No additional details about the speaker's identity or affiliation were provided in the record.

## Supportive Services and Prevention Services Subcommittee Report

[timestamp: 45:39]

The Supportive Services and Prevention Services Subcommittee presented an informational report on its recent activities and upcoming plans.

**Key Speakers:** Charlie and David

**Discussion Highlights:**

- The subcommittee discussed plans to host a **community roundtable** focused on examining agency services, identifying barriers to access, and pinpointing gaps in available services for the community.
- Two primary needs were highlighted as central concerns coming out of subcommittee discussions:
  - **Case management services** — identified as a critical area where additional support and coordination are needed.
  - **Affordable housing** — noted as a significant and ongoing gap affecting the populations served.

**Outcome:**

This item was informational in nature. No formal action or vote was taken. The report served to update the broader body on the subcommittee's direction and focus areas as it moves toward organizing the community roundtable.

## Funding and Partnership Subcommittee Report

[timestamp: 56:04]

The Funding and Partnership Subcommittee provided an update on its ongoing work at the February 12, 2026 meeting. Zach reported on behalf of the subcommittee, noting that members have continued gathering information on both local and federal funding sources related to homelessness prevention and intervention.

The subcommittee's work at this stage remains focused on research and information collection, with the group working toward developing potential recommendations based on its findings. No final recommendations were presented at this meeting.

The item was informational in nature, and no formal action or vote was taken.

## Peer Cities and Shelter Models Subcommittee Report

[timestamp: 57:44]

Council Member Morton presented findings from the Peer Cities and Shelter Models Subcommittee, focusing on the Nashville Rescue Mission as a potential model for consideration in Lexington.

The subcommittee examined the Nashville Rescue Mission's operational structure, noting that it runs on a **$15 million annual budget funded entirely through private sources**. The discussion centered on what aspects of this model might be applicable or transferable to Lexington's context.

The item was informational in nature, with no formal action taken or vote recorded. The subcommittee's report appears to be part of a broader ongoing effort to evaluate how peer cities are addressing shelter needs and whether successful models from other communities could inform Lexington's approach.

## Community Engagement Subcommittee Report

[timestamp: 1:16:19]

The Community Engagement Subcommittee presented an informational report during the February 12, 2026 meeting, outlining plans to conduct listening sessions with various community groups in order to gather input on homelessness solutions.

Key speakers on this item were **Councilperson Ellinger** and **Jenny**, who presented the subcommittee's plans. The report focused on the subcommittee's intent to engage directly with community stakeholders as part of a broader effort to inform the body's approach to addressing homelessness.

The item was discussed as an informational matter, and no formal vote or decision was required. The outcome of the discussion was informational in nature, with the subcommittee's plans noted by the body.

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## Full transcript

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Thank you all very much. One last question. I'm sorry, I'm going to give a bogey here, it's hard to say. No, you're fine. Thank you. I do value this program, I think you are, it sounds like you are serving a lot of people, and that is wonderful for our community, and I, you mentioned your waitlist. You know, our task here is to be serving Fayette County specifically, so do you know how many people are on your waitlist that are local? From Fayette County, I would say at least 50% of that is going to be Lexington and Fayette, you know, I mean, obviously, word spreads here faster than it does other places, and the majority of the people we serve are going to be either from Lexington or right around Lexington. East Kentucky, we get a lot of them. We have gotten people from all over the United States, but it's Kentuckians that need this help. I mean, unfortunately, we're dealing with generational poverty and generational addiction right here in this state, and so the majority of them are coming from right here locally. And then your, this is a residential program, so you have to take individuals, it wouldn't be something that would be able to serve like a family, it has to be. No couples, or no, we're not equipped to do that, no ma'am. Thank you, and again, I appreciate this work, and I think this is something we can look at as we're looking at a mix of things, where we're looking at our population and the people we need to serve. I think this, to me, seems, you know, we talk about low barrier versus high barrier places, and I think some people would be equipped to do this type of program, and we have to look at the ratio that we would allocate to something like this versus the other parts of the population that we're talking about. So thank you. Great. Thank you all very much. Yep. Thank you so much. Alright, we'll dive into subcommittee reports here, and we'll start with supportive services and prevention services. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. First we want to start off by just thanking our subcommittee for the work that they're doing, and Charlie and, can you hear me now? Just want to thank our committee for the hard work that they're doing. We have quite a bit of work that we've done in a short period of time, so we'll get right to it. So we decided that we wanted to host a community roundtable to have some dialogue centered around agency services and resources that they provided, what population they serve, first-hand barriers and obstacles, service gaps, and what is working for them and what is not working for them. So our guests we had for our roundtable was represented from Blue Grass New Beginnings, Community Action, Aubrey Youth, St. James Place, Street Outreach Hope Center, the Davis Workforce Center, McKinney-Fayette County Public Schools, McKinney-Vento, and I've started a parent advisory team for some of my families that have experienced displacement. And so we had a representative there for that. And so we dove right into our discussion. They led our discussion with our panel. And so, and it's listed from page 14 to 21, so you all can find more detailed information. But to summarize it, our Community Action Supportive Housing Program, it was a rapid housing supported 15 families, emergency housing serves 20 to 25 households yearly, with a winter bed expansion of 48. Critical navigation gaps, no dedicated housing navigated assistance, our families are limited to their housing accessibility or resilience to inefficiency to a referral system. So we was looking at how our agencies are doing referrals. And so it was quite an interesting discussion. So with our youth and transitional housing, Aubrey Youth serves, operates 21 shelter beds, 60 to 70% of our homeless youth has disabilities, or lack resources of housing transition. So that means that from the age of 18 to 24, those students are experiencing, our young people are experiencing those. Funding shortfalls impact services. And so we talked about it, and we all know that funding is a big gap in trying to provide services. But it's limited funding for case management, and case management was one of the things that we talked about in depth, was that that was a serious gap of like, you may have case management, you may not have case management, but we realized that case management is one of the things that helps with stability and helps our families with sustainability, is what I'm trying to say. Also they realized, they expressed that there's a high caseload. So an agency may only have one case manager, and so that caseload is, they may have 70 people on their caseload. So how do you manage, try to manage to help your families with, or your individuals with homelessness with that. Systematic barriers, affordable housing shortage. We know that affordable housing, housing in itself across the country is a barrier. Urgent needs for coordination. Centralizing services. We talked about having a central hub where you get one stop, one shop. You could not have to go, well, I got to go on this end of town for this, and then I got to travel on the other end for that service. And so how do we have a hub where people could kind of come to one centralized place and be able to get some support and even case management. One of the things that St. James shared with us was that they had hired a case, a social worker, and that they had had great success with having a social worker, which was something that they had not had. So in having that case manager, they had less evictions. So that was because you have someone that is working directly, having direct impact with their families. So then you can also find more in-depth into our packet with the information. David, is there anything I missed? I'll talk to you. No. I think you captured it all. I think across the agencies, the issue of case management was something that came up over and over again. We talked about the high caseload, so if you have 70 people or whatever, you're giving them resources. You're not really doing case management. You're more of a referral source. So we talked about the importance of kind of end-to-end case management, helping them, taking them to appointments, being with them side-by-side during the application processes, during the search for housing, providing that intensive support versus just giving someone resources. And as Charlie said, he doesn't like to hear people say, make a phone call or whatever when we're not really giving them anything, if we're just giving them a number to call. So I think we talked about the importance of that, but also with St. James, what you see is that that need for case management doesn't end when they're housed. They've seen a great benefit to maintaining housing that has come from case management on that end, too. So all the way from Hope Center at the shelter through permanent housing at St. James Place, all of those things would benefit from more intensive case management and just more case management with smaller caseloads. A lot of our homeless population end up, they lack a lot of the resources. We're not going to go to all of these places if we need assistance. We're going to go online and do all of this stuff electronically and make phone calls. If they have someone to be with them and aid them, it can make the process a lot easier. We can also advocate for them. We can connect them with things that they may not know about. So just the importance of case management I think is worth underscoring again and again. I think the follow through up with that and with St. James, one of the things that I also took out of it was relationships. We know that building that relationship with your client, they learn to trust you. And so then they're going to always be there and always ask for your guidance. And the follow through was also another area with that case management that it's not just something that I just give you a piece of paper that's a list of numbers. I might can't read it. I might not have a phone to even make phone calls. So that case management, that human touch, the relationship, that part is so important and it makes such a big impact. So thank you all. Any other questions for this committee? It's an interesting thing when you're talking about relationships. This made me kind of echo a little bit what Christian was saying as well is when you're kind of gearing people up to get a job and things, there then is a community and a partnership piece. And whether that's a case manager from the beginning or it's kind of like when you mentioned DV8, understanding the needs of the folks that you might be hiring. Like just some simple changes by employers or apartment managers might make all the difference in the world if we just kind of can understand the community we're serving. So thank you both for that. And to add to that too from the McKinney-Bentos standpoint for my homeless or displaced families is that when we partnered with Catholic Action Center for our Give the Kids a Home and our Hands Up for Housing, that the case management piece for our families was and the feedback that we got from them was that they had someone there to help them with finding a job or job training, holding them accountable for making sure that they got to their appointments, making sure that they had transportation to and from their jobs or their appointments. They also, many of my families actually expressed that they had to do the budgeting class and that they had never even done a budgeting class. And so that was one tool that has been able to help some of our families with sustainability with their housing. Great, thank you. Anyone else? Good. So our next committee is Funding and Partnership and Zach, you've got the floor. Yeah, thank you. I think our last discussion was a continuation of our discussion before that and just really information gathering, working with Jeff and Charlie to continue to better understand the current local funding and federal funding landscape for homelessness prevention and intervention and understanding the challenges they have with those things and what funding is available and is not available and what those various sources of funding are actually being used for today. So we kind of just continue to gather information and I think we will continue to do that although we're getting a pretty good understanding of what Charlie and Jeff's offices have available. I think for us to move to making any sort of recommendations we have to continue to hear what the will of the other subcommittees and the committee here, the task force here at large is before we start to see how the larger recommendations here may fit into the current funding landscape that we have. So we did have some discussion about the affordable housing program and how it may be, how the city may be able to incentivize permanent supportive housing through those funds. I think we're going to invite Rick McQuadey to a future meeting to continue that discussion with him and maybe bring some recommendations on that specifically. But again, I think we just need to continue to flesh out what other subcommittees and the task force as a whole is moving to do before we can come with any sort of recommendation. Council Member Sheehan or anyone else on this committee want to add anything? Great, thank you. It's hard to know how to fund if you don't know what you're funding, right? Which I guess is the pleasure of this group. Does anybody else have any questions for the funding and partnership committee? Thank you so much. Do you want to do next? Okay, next we're going to talk about peer cities and shelter models. Council Member Morton? Oh, he's asking for time. That's fine. We co-chair, it's good. So we met virtually on February the 4th and we had the National Rescue Mission model tell us about theirs. They have two campuses. They have one that houses men, they have one that houses women and children. They have 800 overnight guests nightly and they are the sole emergency shelter of Middle Tennessee. They have between 130 and 138 staff. They have 24-hour, 7-day-a-week services. They have an emergency shelter. They have a life recovery program. They provide mental health as well as regular medical there. They have wraparound services, their shelter is centrally located. Their budget is $15 million a year and it is all privately funded. They do not take any government money at all to run that shelter, which we were amazed at. We knew the financial folks would love that. The presentation that they did, the slideshow that they gave us, I made some copies and have them up here if anybody wants to look at those. Their contact information is in there as well. The only thing I did not bring down is their disciplinary procedures, like if they have an unruly client, how that works. I'm happy to share that with anybody if they want me to email it out to them and we're happy to answer any questions. Any questions here? The volunteers of America from Louisville are the next committee that is presenting on March 4th. In your research, did you find that anything was scalable down to us here in Lexington from what you saw there? I don't know. It's so great there that if we had $15 million to spend every year, it's perfect. Especially when it's private. Correct. When it didn't cost the government a dime. We found some things there that we could do here. The main piece that we liked was the wraparound services on each campus. They have programs there that after you get through their program, they employ you. She even told us that one gentleman left with, he had saved $50,000 and put a down payment down on his own house when he left from there. So it goes back to the whole jobs thing that Stable Recovery was talking about, is employing them and giving them some savings for when they leave. Fantastic. Other questions? They have their own, the people who do their medical and their mental health part there, they all volunteer. So they're not paying any of those folks out of pocket either. And they're like actual medical staff and actual licensed therapists. I just have a comment on that. Raising the money, I was interested in, my experience was, when you have more corporations, and lots of times a bigger bank community involved, then it's easier to raise money. It doesn't have to be a corporation. It's not a little party for us to raise money here. And like, globally, because they have more corporations. So when you see somebody raising $50,000 and $80,000, you're like, why can't we? But I know there are a lot of good fund developers here. It's non-profit. And it's possible. And then also to add to that, I struggle with what Zach says about the fact that there's all these great ways in which young people pull themselves up. But then I struggle with the ones who don't pull themselves up in this effort. And what this particular committee is about, the ones that kind of already exist and always need our help and are in danger, particularly in danger, during this inclement weather. The people that Janine and folks in her chair talked about. I do wonder about that as we're thinking about all of our wonderful programs and services. Does our focus need to be on the ones that discuss work? Government is important. We all have that ability. And I appreciate the fact that Stable Recovery can come in and take some of these people and help them to partake in other programs. So I guess I'm all for that. Just a quick housekeeping reminder from the LexTV folks. If we can just make an effort to use our microphones and make sure that we're close enough that everybody can hear for both the recording and the broadcast. I was surprised by the number per night. Do you all have an idea of what Lexington houses a night? Because we're 200 Salvation Armies, 200 Jenny. I feel like we are... Their point in time count says in 2025 they had 3,270 people. That's a lot less than 800. Where are those other people staying? Locally here we have 925 persons in our 25 point in time count. The majority of those being sheltered either in emergency shelter or transitional housing. We are going to come very, very close to seeing that kind of a number each year on a given night. Obviously, as this recent weather shows us, at times that could be an extra 200 or so persons. We only presently have around 500 year round beds. Then we're relying on a lot of beds that are seasonal or overflow. Your shelter, for example, would report an official year round number of closer to about 150 beds. Even though I know just over the last couple weeks at some points you were sheltering 230 persons. Because there's a significant number of overflow. I think we're not comparable size to Nashville. The fact that we almost have as many shelter beds as they do is a little scary. Because I wonder what their unhoused population is like. We also have to remember they said they were the only emergency shelter in Middle Tennessee. So it's bigger than just Nashville itself. I personally would be very curious how other gaps are met. Because I can't imagine that they are able to serve everyone that's represented in their point in time count. The other thing I'd like to ask. Tyler, did you all find out how they built these? We're talking about a $15 million a year budget. But what was the capital expense? Because I think that's where our guys are getting their gray hairs over there. Trying to figure the capital expense as well as operating. I do not know their capital expense. But we can email Joy back and see what that was. And I can email it to you. It would be just kind of interesting, I think. Because we're not just coming up with the perfect plan. Because we all could do that. My goodness. Bells and whistles and whatever. We've got to come up with capital costs. And also operating costs. So where will that continued operating cost come from? And also where is that operator going to come from? I know that's the other thing. So it is interesting. And yes, it's working as a faith-based organization for 27 years. And just as the example, this past two weeks we needed 135,000 and they came. That doesn't mean we could do it every two weeks. Lord, no. But I've got to say, whether we've got the big employers or not, it's the people in this community who can make the difference as long as we've got stable finances. Which goes back to the city, what they're giving. We've got to look at all the partners that feed into making the system work. So that's all I've got to say. But I'd like to know about their capital costs. Yeah, we'll ask her. Councilman Brown. I really don't have a question, and this may not be helpful. But I think Janice brings up a good point. And I was going to ask Commissioner Lanter. We're having a lot of good conversations about a lot of good resources. But the point that she made is we're coming up with a plan and we're going to come up with some good recommendations. But the most vulnerable and the most in need and the most consistent folks we have to deal with need help. So how should we continue to think about all this information that we're digesting and not lose sight of the goal or the prize, so to speak? That's a big question. I said it might not be helpful, but when she said that, I was thinking about all the things we heard at our committee meeting, which was good information, but a lot of that led to sustainability. And it's going to take funding and people, but we have some emergent needs. Yeah, I think Jenny said we could design a Cadillac or bells and whistles, but we all know we don't have the resources for that. There's so many ways you can take a bite at this apple, and there's never a completely wrong or completely right answer to that. For example, on the one extreme, you could just build a shelter. You build a shelter, you put 300 beds in it, and you say it's going to serve XYZ population that you have a gap for and they're not currently being served. The people Jenny put in the hotels, for example. The other extreme is more diversion-oriented. So Hope Center has a finite number of beds. Call it 150. Any new program or new initiative or resource you invest in the people already in those beds that get them out and into housing, that's the equivalent of creating a bed. So a diverted bed is the same as a created bed. So you could go multiple directions. I think the answer, like most things, lies somewhere in the middle. Not all one, not all the other, because it's a very diverse population with a lot of different needs. You raise a good question, and I understand it's probably easy to get overwhelmed by the amount of information and the number of options you have. I would stay focused on who's not getting served now, because we have limited resources, so we need to work on what's that gap and how are we not able to meet it now versus if we're looking at a program, the question we need to make sure we evaluate is are there adequate types of that particular resource in Lexington already or not? If there is, maybe we look at other things. If there's not, maybe that's something we need to invest in. Is that helpful? I don't know. That is. That's helpful to know. James, I'd like to add the fact of exactly what you're saying, Charlie. You know, what are we going to do with our 85-year-olds that are out there living in their cars? They're not going to be able to be helped by workforce. That's a huge piece what these folks brought forth today. So I think we've got to look at the segments. And those of us in the street business know those segments. We know those that are unreachable. We know those that we've had, in our case, we have some people been with us for 27 years and we're their family. But we do have to look at these different segments, whether it be families with children, whether it be people who can achieve. But our disabled and elderly and severely mentally ill are never going to be in the workforce. So how are we going to wrap our arms around that? We've been trying for 27 years. Let's come up with something. You're right, Jenny. And the fact is that the hardest people to deal with are going to be those people where employment isn't the answer. It's not as simple as providing some basic support. There's that other category of people that you can make some headway on pretty quickly, people that don't have those issues. I think the amount of money and time and energy that we are all spending, the majority of those clients are going to be the people who do have those serious mental illness, who have very serious medical issues that can't be, that have a hard time living independently or without considerable support. So I think when we're talking about, it's the extremes that end up being the most problematic. And that's what we've seen this winter. We've seen people with lots of health issues, people who are older, as Jenny said, like the growing number of the 65 and older, 70-year-old population. It's not decreasing. And it's not even just the age. It's the health issues that are coming with being homeless at that age. So we are dealing with the extremities, and I think that is the challenging part because that group is harder to find a solution for, which is why we're all here. I think an interesting piece around that, too, though, is creatively there's got to be a way, like listening to Stable Recovery or talking about families with children, so many times to begin to enter into the process you have to come from shelter, right? It's a really step backwards sometimes for a family with kids to have to come to shelter, leave everything behind because they can't afford the rent that they're in, just say. Or you have somebody who maybe has the ability to do more, be productive and to move forward, and they have other opportunities so that we can create the shelter spaces for those or other kind of community settings, for those that really are going to struggle because of age. And I don't know that an older person needs to be in a community congregate shelter, but something different. But I've always found to a degree that people have had to go almost a step back to get into the system. And I love the conversation Jeff and I have had around diversion. Can we do something differently to not have you leave everything behind, come in with a garbage bag of clothes and start all over? That's hard. Shelter living is hard. So anyways, I love that conversation, Jeff. I was just going to add something that we've discussed in the supportive services and prevention subcommittee. And it also aligns with the three main types of homelessness that we kind of talk about within our system. We're going to have those people that are really experiencing homelessness that is more situational, a relationship that broke down, a job loss, a medical emergency. We're going to have those people who are more episodically homelessness. It's something that they're more than once going to experience housing instability in their life. And oftentimes those are tied to more systemic factors. Oftentimes that's persons who are on a more fixed income, families with children. And then we're going to have the people who are the really difficult to serve, those that we know realistically are not likely to quickly transition to employment and self-sufficiency, are more chronically homeless individuals. And so I think any kind of mix of solutions that we put forward really needs to consider all three of those categories. You don't want a family to have to lose everything and start over and take a step backward. For them, but also for us as providers and supports to them, it's a very poor use of resources for us to not intervene and pay a few dollars towards rent when we're going to actually in the long run spend far more as a community to place them in shelter and to provide them with other costly emergency services. So that diversion component has to be there. At the same time, we've got to figure out those people that Jenny is going to have to put in a hotel in the winter because there's no possibility of them being able to maintain self-sufficiency on their own. We've got to consider all three of those categories or types of homelessness in developing these solutions. We look at the cost associated with, it costs $1,000 to pay your month of rent. We don't have a lot of data that would show us the cost of living in a shelter for that amount of time. I think we know that the shelter cost is expensive, being not even just like the cost of the shelter, but like the economic cost of having this person live in the shelter, not being in the workforce, dealing with all of the other factors that come along with it, the health issues that get tied to chronic homelessness. I think there is a significant cost that we never really quantify. To be honest, I have no idea how to do that. I don't want to take that on. We have to find a way to keep people out of the system to the extent that we can. But our system is so focused on chronic homelessness and addressing people that are chronic, we barely have the resources to get to those other people. If everyone's okay, I'm going to thank you so much for that. I think that's sort of the meat of all this conversation. But I don't want to leave the community engagement folks without any time to talk. Councilperson Ellinger and Jenny, if you would like to talk about your committee with community engagement. Thank you. We met on January 8th at 930 by Zoom. And the main focus was we discussed the following proposed questions for the listening groups. We came up with basically six general questions that would help start the conversation. Do you feel that additional shelter and services are needed for those experiencing homelessness in our community? Do you have concerns about the needed expansion? Do you have ideas for solutions to the issues of homelessness in our community? Any thoughts you would like to share? When the task force offers its findings, will you be willing to share your thoughts on those via another meeting or email? And then the last one, if it was put in your backyard, what would you like it to look at? Aesthetically, safety, and we're trying to draft that one. We're still working from the birthday girl's going to give us some feedback on that one. So we decided we're going to try to have our meetings about an hour and we have our first one that's actually going to be tomorrow and we invite all of you all to come tomorrow. It's going to be the Street Voice Council. It's at noon tomorrow at the Lyric Theater. And then our next one, Todd Johnson is setting up with the business leaders and that's going to be the week of February 23rd. We have the faith community that's going to be in March, at the beginning of March. I've got one with the neighborhood and the providers at the end of March. And then we have one in April with public safety. So we're trying to have kind of the basic questions that we can start the conversation and then go from there. And Jenny, if you'd like to, and then we also, here's going to be at the end of this is our subcommittees when we'll be meeting on that just to be prepared for the next one. And each one, we're going to have a moderator that's going to be leading that discussion. And Jenny and Greg will be leading that discussion tomorrow. Yeah, and I think it's important to you all understand this is our listening session. We're not, you know, we want to hear what they have to say. We want them to know that we're going to take back what they're interested in to this full task force so that you're getting that input. And then at the end, before we, you know, we're not saying we've got the conclusions here, you know, but when the task force does have its conclusions, we want to take it back to these folks before it's actually finalized. So we're not going to give them info. We're simply listening. And like Chuck said, these are the questions, but like tomorrow with our first one with the folks from the Street Boys Council, we're not asking them what they think about having one in their neighborhood because they don't have a neighborhood. But if a homeless shelter were to open, what measures or guidelines would you want in place to ensure you feel safe and comfortable? So we're going to get their input to give to the different groups. But we'll see. It'll be interesting. And then at the end, we'll have a wrap-up one to invite the general public, and then we'll bring back, as Jenny said, back to the full committee what their responses were. So as she said, this is a listening opportunity to get feedback so we can bring it back to the full committee. Great. Thank you. Any questions for community engagement? Recognizing one. I have a quick question for that committee. Councilman Religer, what is your plan? To collect the information and share it all together at the end or to distribute kind of after each one? And the only reason I ask is it may be helpful for some of the committees to start as quickly as we can receiving some of that feedback so that they can... Just like after we have every meeting, we'll be taking notes, and we'll have a summary and send that out, and then we'll take that at the end and kind of do a wrap-up one. But yes, after every one, we'll have a summary of what happened in that meeting. And we'll make sure all of the task force members have that so that you can use it for your conversations with committees and such? Yes, sir. And the other thing is, that's our meeting every month. So we'll be giving that, you know... But we are doing the summaries. And we're going to have, like, tomorrow, we're hoping to have it on the cloud or whatever. I don't know. It's going to be recorded, but it'll be in a method that we can send to you all and you can watch after the fact. All right. Any other questions? All right. Seeing none, we are nearing... We're at the end of our agenda. Just to recap real quick, heard a lot of great information this afternoon. Just some notes that I recognize is 83% have completed you all's program, is still employed, I believe, as you mentioned. Fantastic. Also heard the need for central services, wraparound, wraparound services, case management, some of the themes. I heard $15 million of private money. I did hear that loud and clear. Wraparound services, to me, means community. The one thing I want to make sure that... Co-chair Fleet and myself want to make sure that we all understand and we stay focused on the fact that homelessness has a lot of different faces. A lot of different faces. It can be the individual that has had life issues along the way from drugs or growing up in a household with limited resources and it became homelessness. It could be a single woman raising a child on her own, working two jobs, could still be a homeless person. Just trying to make it, right? So as a committee, the challenge is us just to remember that we're here to give a holistic, comprehensive plan to our mayor, to our city, that works the needle for all those folks that fit into that 900, whatever percentage they may be in, whether that's they're right there and they just need some guidance. It could be they simply never put a budget together and they're spending too much money. It could be that simple, right? So I heard shelter a whole lot today, which is extremely important because of the trauma we just went through with the weather. A lot of people across this country went through that same trauma and we're coming out of it, I believe, as a better community because we'll learn from that. But again, let's keep our minds open to the possibilities of what we really can stand up and it's going to be for everybody and not just a segment of who we deem to be homeless. So with that, one last thing, we want to give T.C. a moment to stand up some information she's going to share with us as an announcement. We are scheduled to do our poverty assimilation on March the 4th from 2 to 4. Mike's not on, I'm sorry. We are scheduled to do our poverty assimilation on March the 4th from 2 to 4. It will be held at the Consolidated Andrews Center. Fayette County Public Schools has an off-site there. So we will be doing that and it's called Which Way to Go? So it's rethinking the reality of poverty in our community. And so I do have, there is a registration for you to please register. We have as many as 60 spots so if you have anyone in your organization that would like to participate, I have some information there that you can pick up, they can go on. But we're trying to ask everyone to please try to go ahead and register by the 20th, February the 20th, so that we're able to organize it. I have participated in this experience at least three or four times. It is so worth it because you don't understand how our families and how individuals actually have to navigate experiencing poverty, which poverty and homelessness goes along hand in hand. So I'm hoping to see as many of you all there. There is one hour that you will actually assimilate and then there is an hour of debriefing. And the debriefing part is just really very fruitful. So it's worth your time of participating. So thank you. All right. Yes, we will send you the... We'll go ahead and have Tiffany send out the information for the registration. You can also grab the QR code or the link to sign up. And I think it's even open, so once we kind of know by the 20th how many people have signed up. There's a few staff people that I would like to go that's not part of this, and I think some of the school board is participating perhaps. So there might be room for some additional folks. My director said our department doesn't have an option. They have to go. We'll give you options to do that. All right, well, you all, thank you so much. I think, do I need a motion to adjourn? Thank you, TC. Thank you all so much. Thank you so much, Stable Recovery, for being our guests today. All right, have a good night. Good night. ¶¶
