Alisa Orduna: [unintelligible]… as Kerry said, I really am here to listen to what’s happening here on the ground in Hollywood and give an overview about what the declaration of emergency, how we’re interpreting that, what are then follow-up actions to that to kind of, big picture, and then but it’s important to know what’s going on here to understand how we have to [unintelligible], are we in the right direction? Are there other people we need to consider? Particularly as we move forward to the hundred million. So, just to back up a little bit, um, as Kerry mentioned, my background’s in homelessness policy, so I’m not on the political side. I’ve been working in homeless policy and direct services probably since about 1996, a lot of time in Philadelphia, and then when I moved back to here, [unintelligible] family [unintelligible], had experience [unintelligible] local government, I wanted to be in, now, the policy level. So this is kind of a passion, it’s something I wanted to one day say, I can move on to a different career because we’ve finally ended homelessness. It’s not something I [unintelligible]. I guess my interest was in community development and then just kept running into the intersection of homelessness and how do we build inclusive communities where all, all can have a sense of belonging and not have a [unintelligible]. So with all of that said, on September 22nd, Mayor Garcetti along with City Council made an announcement declaring an emergency. And there was a commitment of a hundred million dollars in resources to finally address homelessness. And, looking at it since that time, what does that really mean? What was the impetus of it? On the council side it was a way to really streamline our planning process, so permitting and zoning issues to both build affordable housing development as well as emergency or what we call crisis housing, to just literally to be able to move people off the street. And so there’s a lot of, um, [unintelligible] see the need, we have this twelve percent increase according to our recent head count and people were just, were looking at what you guys I’m sure are seeing on the street, um, and what do we do and feeling, kind of, their hands were tied, like, what’s going on? How do we just, how do we even begin, where do we begin and how do we reach an end, and that’s what the declaration did. And also, brought attention from the federal level. A couple weeks ago, secretary Castro, the HUD secretary, he was here, actually in San Diego, [unintelligible] stop in LA, but he said what’s going on? What can HUD do? What, you know, what can we do better? What can we do better, you know, not having enough resources, because their fear was, if LA is declaring a state of emergency other cities will start doing that too and what does that mean on a federal level? So it gave us an opportunity to really solidify our partnership with federal and with LA County. When we had the [unintelligible] announcement it was the first time, pretty much in recent history, that you had three city council members, the LA mayor, and the five board of supervisors in the same room together, and particularly discussing the issue of homelessness. And it wasn’t so much just for show, it was really, you know, I think that same week a couple days later supervisor Kuehl, Cruel [sic], and, uh, Ridley-Thomas came out with their announcement of a additional hundred million. So people are, are looking at what are the resources that we have and how we can get to, not to say, here’s our pile and we’re just gonna deal with our population but how do we pool the resources together? And at a policy level, what are the barriers that make that funding more accessible to providers, organizations on the ground. So we’re, um, doing a joint planning process, there’ve been sixteen policy summits, everything from land use to outreach and encampments, some of the best practices, and we’re hoping, the community has been involved then you can [unintelligible] to send out some members, cause they need [unintelligible], particularly from those of you that are private, um, developers and just from the private sector, particularly around land use issues, and, um, how do we incorporate that in the plan? And it’s gonna be that plan that will be revealed in January for public comment and then, incorporating public comment, for final release in February. That will guide the hundred million. Well, where’s it gonna come from? Mayor Garcetti is strong on creating new, uh, resources, looking at the proposed linkage fee as part of the development of a hundred thousand units by 2021, fifteen thousand of those will be affordable units. He’s talked about, um, just, in-house around the [unintelligible], so what how can we generate and how can we capitalize on some of the private development to help subsidize some of the affordable housing. It’s really, [unintelligible], there are really multiple issues of how someone becomes homelessness, or, someone becomes homeless, to how we come out of it so we have an affordable housing crisis [unintelligible] so how we know, uh, with growth and, uh, so, particularly some workers may not have to [unintelligible] drive, have a two hour commute to work. So [unintelligible] the most immediate [unintelligible] of that hundred million, fifteen million we’re hoping to release immediately, we’ve already started funding winter shelter. Ten million will go to, uh, [unintelligible] rapid rehousing, which means that can be a short-term rental subsidy for someone, it can cover moving costs, but there are people that we know lost a job, or had a major health-care crisis, and they just need temporary help to be able to, uh, either connect to mainstream benefits or to go back to work, and they’ll be fine, and then they got into, um, unsubsidized housing.

Unidentified interlocutor 1: Wait, how much money did you [unintelligible]?

Alisa Orduna: Fifteen total. Ten million for rapid rehousing, we have the three million for winter shelter. One million, um, we’re looking at for, and all this will go, we’re hoping that will go to LAHSA. Council still has to decide on that. Our recommendation that a million go to technology, so we have many outreach workers, including the BID workers, and as they find people, right now we’re still doing paper-and-pencil intake and we wanna be able to link the LAHSA database with iPads or iPhones in a secure system and streamlined. So let me, looking at feasibility, how to upgrade the current database as well as what technology will work best. And then another million to create regional-based, and we’re calling them “housing source centers,” so they would include storage facilities, so people can lock in their stuff on a voluntary basis, showers, toilets, and also [unintelligible] case management, the housing placement officers right inside, and so it’s not just a drop-in center but it really is your first link into that permanent housing. So there’s the, the last million will go to look at how we create this, and that’s really gonna be almost [unintelligible], it’ll probably look different in each spot based on [unintelligible].

Unidentified interlocutor 2: And is there [unintelligible]?

Alisa Orduna: Within those categories? Sure, so the rapid rehousing, we want it to be kind of as flexible as possible, cause traditionally what would happen is program guidelines almost made the actual accessing [unintelligible] prohibitive because of all the restrictions. You must be [unintelligible], you might have a substance abuse issue, you must be beaten up, you know. So we wanted to be as flexible as possible for LAHSA. Again, as they kind of feed it out to coordinated entry system…like [unintelligible] these are kind of portals or providers that are working together, um, we wanted to be responsive to those needs, so it will be towards housing people, as far as the priority, and what [unintelligible] may see as that funding’s targeting people [unintelligible] according to how people score on [unintelligible]. As far as technology and the, uh, other centers, right now it’s really working with LAHSA and then who has the outreach [unintelligible] to define what that criteria [unintelligible]. But the priority is, this is short-term funding, this is a chance to help us do more evaluation of what’s going on, coming up with good money after that.

Alisa Orduna: That’s really what it is, it’s like we really have to do something concrete, but we wanna do it smart and we wanna look at [unintelligible]. Um, the other thing I’m trying [unintelligible] just quickly, um…

Fabio Conti: [unintelligible] the hundred million [unintelligible].

Alisa Orduna: So the hundred million was an announcement, and that was just a commitment, so that was just kinda throwing a benchmark out there and saying how are we gonna rise to the occasion? And so right now what’s happening is this collaborative partnership between the city and the county, we’re looking at what are the real needs, and what are the opportunities for funding. Some of it may be looking at, for instance, our community development block grant plan that we already received [unintelligible]. It may be starting to prioritize that in a different way based on current needs. Otherwise the mayor is really committed to finding new sources, and that’s where I think that the private sector and our BIDs and our, uh, business community can weigh in the most, and particularly around development, how do we benefit from this [unintelligible] without stymieing new growth? How do we provide the right balance of incentives for developers, we’re always told our planning process is horrible, it’s all [unintelligible] quite clear on the various permitting, is there a way to streamline that with a benefit of a linkage fee or something to dedicate to an affordable housing trust fund that would also build affordable housing [unintelligible]. So those are the real policy [unintelligible]…

Fabio Conti: Did anybody think, oh a hundred million! That’s [unintelligible]. There’s no hundred million.