2021/09/29 Council Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

• September 29, 2021 recommendations to council for consideration very soon within the next four weeks. Housing So for tonight, I'll start with housing, and in particular, how we're addressing homelessness and the investments we're planning for next year. We have some excellent programs and partnerships in place, but as I think we've all seen,the pandemic has exacerbated the issues on our streets and the need we have for shelter and supportive services. To help bridge that need and aid our response, my budget funds a new homelessness response coordinator. This will be a full-time position which will work as part of our Community Development team to develop and coordinate strategies to alleviate chronic homelessness. We're also adding funds to expand our staff capacity to respond to and address • encampments. This will bolster our ability to connect unsheltered residents with services through our Community Outreach and Enforcement Team and partners. It will also support a stand-alone encampment clean up team in our streets department to ensure ongoing safety and sanitation for our businesses and neighborhoods. The budget also includes funds to support planning, site preparation and implementation of the council-approved additional 40 Pallet shelters. We are still evaluating potential sites and hope to be able to make these shelters available as early as possible in 2022. In our work to address homelessness our partnerships are of utmost importance. We will direct as much of our limited resources as possible to this work, but it is absolutely necessary that we work closely with Snohomish County, as well as neighboring jurisdictions, nonprofits, faith-based communities and others, to ensure that together we provide care and support to those in need, while increasing overall community health and safety. • 4