mayor will lead a meeting of our lgbtq+ alliance from which we will hear from the former hous her work, the result ofn 83-city survey the conference is conducted on how mayors are supporting our lgbtq+ residents. thank you for this conversation. mayor jones, go ahead. >>st importantly, but there is a hannah st. louis water in front of you. st. louis has the best hitting water in the country. we are award-winning. >> tha right? and we want to say thank youtor of the atf. the relationship has been vital. thank you to the dep [indistinct conversation] >>0 i am part of the task force.

>> and now, los angeles mayor karen bass leads a discussion on the need to address homelessness rdability challenges. this was also from the u.s. conference of mayors' annual meeting in kansas city missouri. >> how about we go ahead and start? we are exactly on time. 3:30 but maybe we can close the door as if that is possible. noisy out there. x9

>>lcome everyone to the homelessness task force meeting.you can see the agenda on the screens, if everybody can see the screens? i want to welcome everyone to the task force meeting and those of us that were just in the hog d know whether mayorus in a minute because i don't know whether he would like to recap the resolutions we passed. maybe he could come inminute and do that. why don't we begin with a round of introductions? if you could say your name and your city. n't we begin? >> bridgt, >> mayor phil brock santa , monica, california. >> teedo brown young ellen weber santa fe, new mexico.>> tom new york. rhodes, white plains new york. boise, idaho. lauren mclean. >> we can hear you.

>> angela burnie, redmond washington. >> des moi bloomington, indiana. >> moore oklahoma. maui, hawaii. >> quentin lucas kansas city missouri. >> hillsboro, oregon. >> vancouver, washington. >> dublin, california. >> allentown, pennsylvania. >> michael, york pennsylvania.>>u.s. conference of mayors former mayor of los angeles. >> my former mayor. [laughs] oh mayor of the greatest city got ever created. alifornia. >> mayor of toledo, ohio. >> once again, thank you everyone for attending this

workshop. i wanted to ask mayor wade if f would just briefly. we just came from the workshop on housi significant resolutions. if he could do a recap of that quickly and mp into our agenda. >> thank you mayor bass. , as-- development oncommittee we just had our summer meeting and we adopt our legislative agenda as theence of mayors sent it to congress a. we just passed 14 resolutions, everything from supporting the hud fiscal year 2025 budget to reto advocating for some of the very policies that mayor bass her lobbying trip to washington a couple months ago. washingtongo. i see mayor gloria sitting across from me. he s and they all passed simply because he wasn't there.it

was well received and now to -- they become the official u.s. conference mayor policy on these housing issues. mayor bass: thank you very much for that recap and let me just thank have attended our previous meetings. we had a task force meeting in essential is an we looked to the magnitude of theof the solutions and then we did a fly in d.c. which we will recap in more detail later, but all of us are dealing with this problem and w day talking about how terrible it iutnice to celebrate some victories. you have in front of you one our members who is not with us today, darrell steinberg from sacramento, reporting a significant reduction in homelessness in sacramento. 29% reduction and an increase in sheltered homeless. we often don't have an opportunity to talk

i know that many of you might have gotten the results from your point in time count. we are still waiting for our numbers, we were bracing ourselves all year for an increase in homelessness especially because of the covid resourceshat have expired. so we are waiting to see whether that was goingi know in l.a. in september of last year we had 30,000 angelenos facing eviction. that doesn't mean everyone facing up on the street but clearly that is a threat so we will brace ourselves. i'm hearing there might be some good news but i wanted to lift up the success of sacramento, even if darrell isn't here. it is some goodaround. agenda, i wanted to start by summarizing the fly in that we d.c. and then also talk about some next steps of how we want to

proceed with some suggestions and recommendations that came out of that fly in. i do hopet again next year and i also hope that we can go -- i mentioned we had a task force meeting in los angeles and i would love for us to have a task force year after our january meeting in some other cit forward, the u.s. conference of mayors would go along with that, that we have a task force meeting where we can see the problem, but also lift up solutions as to what is tl city and then follow it up with another d.c. fly in.we want everyone to be role that mayors play. good percentage of congress members that were mayors but sometimes they need to remember that they were mayors. for us, having a big presence, i think is the way we can go. so jumping right into the recap. next slide. see these right? just theanyway -- it is four.

d. we had 48 mayup and we met with representativehite house, we went to the white house, we went to a couple federal agencies and we met with members in both houses of congress. these were the meetings we had. le lot of meetings and what we did was we divided districts went to meet with their representatives of the administration, we met with hud with the v.a., they came to us . we did go over to health and human services and met with the secretary. we met with the chief of staff. perez will be here hopefully before we adjourn. then we met with neera tanden, the head of the domestand you may or may not remember in december of 2022 president biden said he wanted to reduce homelessness 25 we lifted up -you can come to cities and accomplish your

goal. if the bidenistration lifted it up to be a major issue, we wanted to make our presence known within the white house and we also met with the director omb so we could press upon the administration to keep the funding going. i think our effortse a difference. the administration seemed to be quite happy, i think tom perez can give u details but if anyone who was on the trip would like in and participate, i think it would be great especially your experiences. >> i've heard other mayors say i think it was one of the most personally rewarding trips to washington. somebody said we walked five miles that day. to havembers of congress, members of the i think to collectively get the feedback that we got.

this challenge, homelessness housing is not singular to anyone of our cities. it is national and there seems to be recognition of the need to recommit in ptnittry to be more effective at combating it and conqueri it. thanks for your leadit was a great experience. thanks so much. mayor bass: wonderful. >> i would second everything to the left of me said because iwas personally rewarding, but it was interesting not every member of the house of representatives, not every senator und we face in the los angeles area. to be able to explain the challenges we have and how most of our cities cannot do it by es, this issue is a national issue and i think we kept reiterating that in every single meeting f mayors, we

also added the need for mental health to stop suicides and stop people from streets. mental health challenges are tremendous, it is a nationalis and i know that i and many othersalked about mental health continuously. i look forward to the progress we've made because i think we were very forceful on veterans vouchers, both types of section eight vouchers and all of those things are absolutely necessary to all of us. mayor bass:thank you so much. >> thank you for your leadership that we were able to have these meetings. the ability cities to share stories, but we were trying to achieve, i hoperation but also through the meetings with congress to help them understand it is a national issue and it is hitting our city and it is important for them to take action to support us in the work that we do. mayor bass: absolutely.

>>ting at your office was the one thateye. it resonated with me. i think many of us as i remember growing up, my friends i walked to school with lived in homes like that at the piece that stuck out in my mind was as we went on the hill, we realized it was not a republican issue or a democrat issue, it was our issue. felt when my colleagues got back and we started sharingctively in d.c. felt the same way. uestion is, how do we move that needle and continue to push and pull on this heavy lift of homelessness? your picture of what homeless looks like, it is in my mind. thank you. >> i think it was a fantastic meeting. sure. i was particularly struck onx7 day one will be met with members of

the administration, that it wasn't just everyone holding hands and singing kumbaya. it was substantive discussion and disagreement and progress which was incredibly helpful. i want to give credit to the staff,or remaining flexible during incredibly fluid meeting times. i was impressed by the way that everyone kind of held it together even as the schedules changed and the availability changed. one thing i have to point out is that everywhere we went in we heard senators congresspeopleadministration say over and over again, we shou mayor bass says. her leaderine. it was said over and over again resonated that we have an opportunity to really drive policy related to addressingng production under mayor bass's leadership. mayor bass: thank you. i appreciate that. >> having late clear asks, i think

was critical and if we do this again next year, i short list clear asks that we are all on the same page with. making sure that we were all on the same page everyone of us could spit out one of the asks. we need, and i know that came from yoou for that. i think that is what made the differ bng trips before. it was a clear and easy to understand asked that we were all on the same page about. >> i also agree with the four asks. that made it easy to articulate. as a war veteran who is married active-duty not just meaningful to my family. the amount of v.a. staff and organizations that reached out to me personally after our trip, wanting to thank mantle, it used to

be that both parties loved veterans and that both parties would work towards solving veteran homelessness. a lot of veterans don't see themselves as leaders anymore and i think that was incredibly meaningful the iraq and afghanistan veterans of america reaching out to me and they were just thrilled that we are taking this and they had hopes for the next steps and they wanted to go in partnership with us. mayor bass: thank you. and by the way, those asks, we have veterans who are homeless because they accept their benefits. their bene income and then being told you make too much so you can't qualify, we needed that waived. what we heard from hud is they found a way to do most ofobviously there is some follow-up we need toour cities we have people with vouchers that they can't use thewe need project-based vinstead of the voucher following a person, having the voucher be

with the property and then flexibility with lifting the camp and we were also told there are wayst in addition to more vouchers. pushing with the administration, those were the specific asks. what we were trying do was identify policy changes that could happen administratively that would not require if legislation was needed, instead of doing a sentences that could be placed in a must passthe national defense reauthorization act, that must pass every year. the veterans bill may be passes, maybe doesn't but we have to have a national defense bill.we were looking at it from that perspective. i think you skipped a slide. to show the slide on the hill stop we also met with the leadership of both parties

stephen scully's, the majority leader on the republican side and hakeem jeffries, democrat minority leader. meeting with the leadership and understanding that it is very important to meet with members of congress but at the end of the day, it is the leadership that sets the agenda in t you can fast-forward now. so in following up, we talked about some next steps. when we with the secretary he said that in hhs, we could propose pilot projects. everyone has this card here and we talked about at the end of the fly in, having some follow-up zooms with hud and with hhs to really drill down. it is fine to say pot but what does that mean? doa proposal? we wanted to get some very specific technical so

we are going to have a hhs that will be on august 1 and everybody joipate on that. we do have a sign-up sheet that is hopefully circulating around or will be, and you can sign up for either webinar if you are interested. if you would include your email address so we can stay in touch with you, and you can participate, and then we wanted to do a webinar with hud said -- is there a hud representative here with us today? hud told us thecting secretary -- because secretary fudge had stepped down a month before we got there. d us that she believes that we benefits to veterans now not on hundred percent, there still might be some that would beneed to move policy in the treasury department for that

remaining percentage that don't ut we want to know specifically what that means. it ishese things but what does it mean? for the webinars, it is for your participation you also have staff that deal with these issues.an certainly be extended to staff to participate. ly how to implement these changes because all of it. i've had particular concerns as we go into election season, that homelessness can that a lot of us get beat up around, and thatolicy that is attacked as failing. i believe we are g to -- we are in a tough situation through the elect to counter the fact that yes, homelessness is a problem but it is not our fault. it is not because of the mayor's, it is for a variety of s but i think we are going to need to reorient everyone again next year, after the election is settled which is why i think it is going to beimportant to go back to washington d.c. after

everything haset program, because we are going to need to address the situation. following up with these two webinars, the other thing i think we learned is that we need support from the bmmunity. we also need support from labor. there are a lot of business representatives on the business i've been here have approached me saying we want to build. i think members of congress need to hear thatss community, that this is not just a sthis is an economic issue and a bu issue and i'm sure in your cities you deal with what i have to deal with in l.a. which is encampments in front of businesses. really compromising the overall quality of life so the business community wants to participate in the next housing boom having the business community way in -- weigh in his important, and also labor, saying that this is an issue

that is important. we met with gislative leaders, when we met with steve scalise, it was clear it would be beneficial for him on the republican side toear from the business community. on the democratic side, i from the labor community, that this is an issue that all of in. any questions or additions if you think there might be other technicalnce that you would like for us to organize as a task force that would help you do your work in y cities? please just let usyes? >> i hadear in d.c. so we are not doing two trips. they have one of the highest rates of homelessness, a whole equityink it would save us all a trip or get more people there. mayor bass: we will tell mayor bauer week -- mayor bowser we are going to descend upon her. ethic a great idea. we could make it a little longer

where we focus one day locally and then the next day, on the hill. we could certainly do that if people are interested. i py to organize it. i'm sure folks who work with meyes?>> i don't know if you have done anything like this or not, but it seems to me, some of the is there hasn't been much change or innovation to adapt to the current environment that we i don't know if you've ever done like a big ideas for him orud -- where we could share ideas with hud. gotten stares.i'm wondering if that is the way attention, but also simulate some -- stimulate somedeas and bring some innovation to an area where new

ideas are clearly lacking. mayor bass: one area that i would like to see because i know we are dealing with this because of the volume of homelessness is so massive ideas around interim housii think for too long we have focused on housing first meaning ing. what that has resulted in, in l.a.'s peoplen the street until housing gets built and there needs to less expensive interim housing we are experimenting with shipping containers, we have several container villages and those peopt came to the site visit in l.a. went and visited a container village but ways that we can rapidly build less expensive interim housing that individualcould stcouple of years while permanent housing is built, i think there is a lot of innovation to do this. mae that would be an idea.

fo u.s. conference of mayors staff, that might be a nice workshop in january if these builders could come and present their innovative around interim housing. >> innovation. along with the priorities, i thought one other priority that was not necessarily said but came up in a lot of meetings was direct funding that we got as cities. it allowed us to be innovative some of us have used the money to do interimsing or whatever you want to call it and it seems to metion is already happening. i walked into one of the meetings. the congresswoman said you are all here to tell me your ideas to solve homelessness and i we are absolutely here to tell you because we do have the answers. it iparticularly in relation to the size of the city you have. i think direct funding to cities

needs to be a top priority as a relates to being able to deal with homelessness. mayor bass: absolutely. >> under the heading of innovation, i think a lot of cities are innovating in shelter spaces and i think one of my frustrations is that for those of us that are trying to help certain populations, and i'm thinking of those folks who come in to parking lots, they are not counted as sheltered homeless, unsheltered and i think any of us who cited these things, theyable effort and political expense, i would like to see us get credit for that being sheltered. unsanctioned encampments many of these folks are being services and going straight into housing. as we innovate and find new ways folks efficiently and effectively, that should accrue to the benefit of those of us in the space. mayor bass: with that in mind, it would be nice if there were some adjustments made into how the point in time count is reported on, because what happens, the consequence of what

you just said is we don't get credit for people -- forgetting people off the street because they are still not considered housed until it is permanent and therneeds to be that adjustment. i don't know if the mayor from clover city is here, but it is onein l.a. county. do safe sleeping. i said that sounds horrible when i heard about thought it would be someone bringing their makeshift tent. actually it called glamp like glamorinthe tent was a 2500 other tent. it was big enough to have a bed and a dresser. that might be a lot of money for atel room. on a wooden platform it was a parking lot where you had all of the were serviced 24 hours with security, hygiene, three meals a day. than people

being in random tents around the city but that is not counted like you said. i think that is an issue to e, maybe an adjustment to how the point in time count is recorded. >> we would absolutely agree we went down and studied exactly what the mayor is talking about up to the pacific northwest. we want to get people out of tents and whether you call them interim housing, bridge housing, cabins, we need little more structure that will hold up under snow and ice and everything else but there should dik you for bringing that forward, let's have that conversation withjust for the point in time count, but for thosejvu> down because we are stuck with a county that will only use funds for brick and mortar, because they see housing those restricted

funds from hud. mayor bass: i don't know about you all but i think over the years there have been so many policies tha that maybe 20 years ago made sense and i'm sure housing first came out of not wanting people to languish inhowever, it is like if you don't brick-and-mortar, then it doesn't count. that's a problem volume of homelessness we are dealing with now. i think that is take a minute to turn it over to to help us decipher how the white house might view all of this. >> i thinklks might have missed the opening remarks from the american institute of art and i think they are advocating te and they are one of the groups that we can go to as we try to come up with innovativehelp us address the challenges that we face. second i would say there is a session on saturday if any of

you will still be here, take the time over the next couple of days think about those strategies with a session on mental health and homelessness with creative approaches to improve outreach and better understand how to unsheltered folks living in our communities. day and over the next few days i think we can continue to weave these conversations and this t the sessions that we will be attending over the next few days. mayor bass: two other areas i think we all have to face. one is we ne to come up with a model to prevent homelessness because all of us have the frustration of housing lots of people numbers -- and then equal numbers if not more fall into homelessness. how do we prevent homelessness and whatmodel of services that are needed? i don't know about your cities but none of things -- one of the things that happens in l.a.s there are no basic standards or metrics or definitions that say this is

what services are. supportive services i have found means different things to different community-based 'm not sure if they are tailored to the populations that we are dealing with. the fact that one of the fastest-growing segments of the un-house population are senior citizens. they are not homeless because they had a drug problem or mental health problem. that's not towouldn't after being homeless for a while but how you would address a or a 17-year-old or a woman fleeing domestic violence, the services should be -- i don't think they are defined and i don't think the federal government can tell me if that is right. on't think there are definitions that are there. everyone wants us to produce outcomes but our systems, i'm just speaking for one city, outcomes. we can't tell you outcomes if the system isn't designed that way and some of the barriers are some of the privacy restrictions

whether it is state privacy laws that don't allow you to really track in thatthere are structural issues that we deal with that the ferht need to make some adjustments with. >> if we can't 4:15 on saturday, is there someone we can provide some of our ideas to? >> it depends on the mayor. mayor schieve he and her staff. i can connect you. >> ok. mayor bass: so before i move the agenda, several things i'm sure i didn't capture everything but the a big idea forum withe new ideas, maybe at the january conference that we have a workshop whe builders can come or aia can come and talk about innovative ideas.the idea of combining

our next d.c. fly in instead of going to he city, and looking at the situation in d.c. those are a few of the things that people raised. i'm sure if i forgot any, please let us know and then if you woulds out. i imagine it please give us your email address and we will stay in touch withilposted on reminding you about the. if there are any that you want representatives of the administration or the house or senate, or some of the & organizations, we are going to have, we are going to business webinar with business leaders, with the chambers, with the business roundtable, so that we can talk about the issue of using and try to get their support in advocating with congress along with us so it is not just us but the bu labor, so we do have two webinar scheduled , two more that you will hear about. we will make sure that you

at this point, i would like to pass it over to jeff. we all know jeff. the executive di council on homelessness. >> you i have not met federal agency called the u.s. interagency council on homelessness and we are part of the biden administration, but we don't sit undernea hud or hhs or the v.a., we work across 19 federa agencies. we are here to support you all. we have senior regional advisors stationed all over the country and one of those is here with who is based in phoenix and covers a middle part of the country jerome johnson is here. some of you may have met him at the fly in. we are here to help you with technical assistance, to help you with s practices around how a homelessness, how to really implement the good things and minimize the bad things. i have learned so much from you all. came into the administration to an a half years ago and i've been in many of yourve been with mayor weber in santa fe and i've been in san

diego and i was sitting with mayor baraka in newark the other day, seeing the extraordinary work they have done. they are bass haseen incredibly generous with me and my team, so thank you for your leadership. basically as you were talking throughout my talking points, i want to cover a lot of the things that have been raised here in the last few minutes. mment on your fly in a few weeks ago, that was incredible he powerful and to me it was acquittal he powerful for collective to influence things. it is one thinfrom one or two mayors about something.win 50 mayors fly in and say the same thing to congress, to the white house, to all the agencies. it was the focus of those four items that i think got people' saying we have a problem and we need more money. of course we all know that, it was saying here are four legislative levers and resource levers that we can pull to help with this and what i want you to

know is that we heard you loud and clear and i think you heard that from the acting secretary. hud is already making moves to address the veteran benefits issue, to consider the flexibilitiendhousing voucher program. yorty have the commitment of the administration on increasing vouchers and you have seen that with our budget over the last few years. we are putting it into the budget and you can see that in the president's budget proposal for fy we have guaranteed vouchers for every extremely low income veteran guaranteed vouchers for every young person aging out of foster care because we know these are two critical groups. it does not solve all ssness but if we can get bipartisan congressional support for those policies,t would essentially finish the work of ending veteran homelessness and preven person from aging out of foster onto the streets, into shelters or sexual exploitation. it would be profound.

we are trying to put our money where our mouth is on all of these fronts. i know there is a lot of really ahead around homelessness. e crisis is at epidemic performance -- epidemic proportions. we were able to stave it off with the american rescue act and all the resources that we tried to get into your hands to address the eviction crisis as we heard from treasury earlier. a lo are gone now or coming to an end. we keep trying to get the sour time and we are seeing a lot of creativity on the part of states and localities to fill some of that gap, but there are ahead and i don't want to sugarcoat that. the cost of housing is out of reach for far too many people. wages and income are not keeping up, so we are seeing first time lessnesser americans as the fastest growing group of ness. we have to figure out how to prevent that and a minute.

even with some of these headwinds, we are seeing some real bright spots around the country. we are seeing greatjose and santa clara county on homelessness prevention.eat regional planning work in st. louis and x and the twin cities. in homelessness in a number of communities. i was just in dallas recently and mayor johnson and his team are doing great work to reduce unsheltered homelessness to functionally eliminate veteran homelessne in denver on his effort to get 1000 peopleid i extraordinary and mayor bass, your sustained leadership on this effort, it predates her time as mayor but certainly since day one as mayor you have been hammeritting real success. i thto learn from those bright spots. we also know there are some dangersum any day nowng to release a ruling in the grants pass, oregon versus johnson case and what this could do is make it legal for

communities to make homelessness illegal. to basically give people citations and fines and jail time sibley because they don' place to lay their head at night. i am deeply worried about thii'm sure others are as well. we have spent a lot of time in the administration talking about the ripple effects of if one city can do it, then the next city can do it. people will have n i think you all are speaking really important truths when you talk about the need for interim strategies to get people we can get rid of the encampments that have become entrenched in the last few want you to hold firm on this. criminalizingmñs is not a solution. in fact it is counterproductive it is expensive, ineffective and it creates a revolving door where people have a criminal justice record and they will not be able to get h at all. it makes it harder. even though there is an instinct to be reactive, i get that and i can'tall under every day to just do something.

you, and you already know this or you wouldn't be sit we can't arrest our way out of homelessness. we've got to provide housing and services and compassion for people. stay firm on that. [applause] regardless of what the supreme court says. even you can't do it, it doesn't mean you should. let's because don't succumb to the pressure. stay fy part. let's get to another couple of steps. on the interim strategies, we are seeing a lot of creativity in communities. i've been in state parking sites in san diego canned container structures in los angeles. learn from each other and learn from us. us be a resource to you on what is working and strategies to create a bridge. let's also remember that that is just a bridge. it is a step towards permanent housing, a step towards reconnection with family and friends, sobriety and mental

wellness and community. it is a critical piece that we need to figu it's got to be connected to permanentaround prevention, we are moving very strongly in this direction. we've been convening our 19 federal agencies and this is not just hud v.a. and hhs, th also social security, the department of justice, the department of defense, looking at veteranransitions while they are still active duty to make sure they don't become homeless. be in conversation with you all about that. connected with us, please come find me or tamra or jerome. ke sure you are connected with your signor -- with yoursor. it's make sure your teams are connected you navigate the complexity of federal funding streams will stop we help provide technical assistance. one thing i would like to propose do a webinar on alternatives to criminalizationwe just released a month ago d.c. -- we just released 19 strategies for ad

compassionate and humane way. we would love to go through those with you and talk through best practices and what we are seeing in other communities around the country. what i will leave you with is as always, mayoral leadership really matters. have the resources you need. we keep trying on the budget front. what you say matters. who you bring together matters. getting the business community and the fa community all aligned in a common direction with a shared goal of ending vahomelessness really matters. thank you for everythu thank you for being in conversation with me and our team. we are here to support and here to learn from you. [applause] mayor bass: are short on time, we will go through all three and then open it up. i just want to say a couple of things. thank you very much. i want to drill down in the future on how tonte ability -- flexibility. what does it mean for our staff in terms of implementing?

i know i'm going to com fire over how much money is being spent on the crazy. but i also think it is important to raise up how much it costs when people are on the street. we have a line item in our city budget, hundreds of millions of dollars spent on cleanup. you are going to pay one way or another. ifcriminalization, and i think all of us do this in our do with mental health now? oumental health institution is our county jail and it costs a tremendous amount of money. now as we start going in that direction with the un-housed population, it is not working out in mental health and it let me move on to tom, the director of intergovernmental affairs. ][applause -- [applause] >> mayor, i am simply in

i took the liberty of snapping a photo and i am sending it to mymy wife has worked for 27 years at a p legal clinic for the homeless. she has been fighting the good is a family business. you have singularly given voice to this issue at a scope and scale that i nevero. and i want to say thankapplause] the convening that we had at the whit house, that you organized roughly 50 mayors and their teams was really impactful. ed the mayor, i haven't had any -- the first thing you do when you visit the mayorwhat i will tell you on that drive and they would say mayor! you, they respected

you. you knew them. that was truly impactful toe. when i was your laborecfor two years, i was the chair of the interagency council on homelessness. this guy has gained too by the y. -- this guy has game too by the the major thing we need to understand and you do understand it and the mayor just articulate it it is the intersectionality of all of this. we are not housing housing first doeswe need to meet people where they are, and one thing i would urge you to do as someone who lice departments, who had fallen short and a big part of the reason they fell short is we didn't them with the tools to succeed. portland, oregon. one quickwe had seven fatal officer

th crises in 14 months. all of or all but one of whom were black men. what we learn from this is that over the course of the preceding or four years, the number of encounters with people in mental health crises increased precipitously but they hadn't been tracking weren't training people. equally importantly, they didn't have community mental health infrastructure to handle it. ur options were er or jail. sound familiar? and now, they have assertive community engagement teams. i implore you to have conversations with your police departme see what additional so that when someone is in crisis, you are properly equipping the teams that are going to respond. lives that way. i invite y to look carefully at your medicaid program. one way we help buil the community mental health infrastructure program in

oregon and they were way both the portland police department and the state of oregon,through medicaid dollars. looking at those opportunities it is realthe workforce system is another area where there is tremendous opportunity to provide more funding because the bottom line is we need to be investing in every corner of this and our interagencyncil was 19 agencies or something like them have skin in the game or i found that to be really remarkable. we did functionally eliminate veterans homelessness in three cities. i don't know if that is still the case. it was phoenix, sa lake and houston. you know how the got it done? they had everyone working together. doing things like that, it really can be done and the

president is all in to make sure we do this. we uerstand, we need to invest more in housi whether it is 0% of ami or 80% of ami. the reality is we are building more and more than ever but the reality is we have lot of catch-up to do. you will know that we will continue to be a partner. i think this is going to be a lot like the aca where local governments ainnovation. are going to respectfully andl your good ideas. i think we really germinate various seeds, learn what we do well and learn what we thought would do well but didn't work so well and go from forward. i want to make sure that you know we are here to be that

innovator. i know my ctomorrow as well, and she wants to talk aissues and i'm confident she will bring this up. mayor, i appreciate the fact that there is so much attention. it is a counterintuitive politil strategy to run for office on a platform of combating homelessness. because that is who you and that is why awe of what you do and that is why when karen bassqd calls, joe biden answers. he knows you can get thingse and we want to be part of it. lk sidebar with anyone who has other ideas and you have found the federalking with to be insufficiently responsive. i know everyone wants to work on this and sometimes it goes a little slower and if you need a

little bit of help, we are here to do that because this is an all hands on deck. there are so many good ideas that are being implement it, we want to make sure we work hard to share those. mayor thank you very much. let me now introduce emanuel cleaver. member of the u.s. conference of mayors, current member of representatives and ranking member in the financial services committee on the subcommittee housing. >> thank you matta madam mayor. i'm going to be quick and hopefully somewhat helpful. let me say that know housing fairly w and one of the th when we talk about housing for the

homeless is public housing. in 1965 when lyndon johnson decided to start hud, one of the principal reasons was to provide housing for the poor. house -- i have pictures of houses that my family have lived in. they hang in the wall of my office. two rooms. and no windows. we were homeless. no one here would like to live in that place. just 26 minutes away from a nice hotel in downtown dallas. the point i'm hopefullyaking, the whole point of public to deal with homeless people and poor people. right now we need the mayors to

put pressure on public housing. now, we are $70 billion and away from doing repairs on public housing. i had a hearing in new york. 400,000 units of public housing. we should not have americans living like that. should not have human beings living like that in public housing. one of the good things about being a mayor -- it to be around people i actually like. [i think we are in a situation right now where the thing that

is simple is the part of the answer and it is we've got to deal with making the improvem housing and get rid of the ridiculous one-for-one replacement of policy that exists right now. it makes no sense. it means we can have no neunits unless some unit collapses. for the united states of america, that is dumb. we've got to get rid of or we are just going to stack the problem we have, and terms of repairs,ntually trillions of dollars. i think we need to utilize everything we can. i want to suggest we need to struggle with coming up oription of affordable housing. let me tell you what i did. i i got an earmark for a community to do affordablethe mayor and the

council turned it down. >> they turned it down? >> turned it down, because we don't wan have those affordable housing people over here. and i'm telling you justying, workforce housing, but we've got to come up with something. if term, we are going to get hurt. word, what is that going to do to hurt somebody? just change the words we use. i'm not going to tell you the community. my staff know exactly where it is. the other thing we thought we could do was reinvestment act, the banksy -- bank ers have gotten away with cra.

which i banks making investments inneighborhoods where banks are disappearing and where they are needed. we just went through a whole process trying to get some modernization of the cra and we got some changes. but that is an agency we have to try to impact in our communities. thequired by federal law to doravestment. if they don't docould end up suffering the consequences of not participating in cra. if we try to use it for housing we can start at least addressing the problems, as it relates to getting money not the federal taif we have an understanding of

the home loan bank system, there are 11 regional banks. anyone know what the responsibility of the charter is? housing. housing. an issue of housing. that's why they came into existence. that is there charter -- that is their charter. 't going to go on, i'm through. [laughter] say to you mayors i hope you continue to do this and come to washington again. it is grandfather, reverend al cleaver, was. [indiscernible] he told me o time that

he did an experiment. he probably didn't. [laughter] buthe said he did this experiment. he said he got two buckets of water. and he attached 20 rd he put 10 in he captured 20 rats and he put 10 in each bucket. he said, the first bucket, he ignored. the other bucket, every five minutes or so, he would take th and after a while theythat something somebody, something is taking them out. they then>)ng around off and on for 24 hours.

think it is critically important that we have reason the mayors ought to come together as much as you can and extract hopei'm hearing people talk about you need to come together for hope. i for 3 days, 5 days. in january, i will be with the other majors. i know we are going to hear all kinds of opportunities we can explore from them. thank youdo. i chair the subcommittee on housing. not to getbut you do, too. ible] [laughter] we are going to go back to build back better.trying to get a $2 trillion program funded. we lost by two votes. revolutionized

housing in this country. thank you. is also reverend cleaver -- >> he is also reverent cleaver by the way. our time is up. if there are any final comments, questions, we could take a couple more mi want to make sure that this task force is an action- oriented tk e come up with very specific actions and deliver on them. so when we do thand i hope whatever staff you wa but after the webinar, i would appreciate it if you would let us know if it made a difference, if networks. u's great to hear about -- if it works. because it to hear about changes in policy but if it doesn't work and it's not good enough and we ve to go bac to the drawing board and figure out how we make the po order to get our people housed, and if you any other ideas for areas of policy we take up along the line, i know is i was listening to representativeer he

made me think in one of our future sessions, we bring in the banking industry and those programs that responsible and either have them on zoom in betwee is about delivering to make sure that all americans are housed. thank you very much. [applause] >> i have one quick thing. the strategies to address encampments. >> the strategies to address encampments? >> is not great -- online? the webinar sounds great. that online? >> [indiscernible] >>s. [indistinct chatter] >> this is good. [indistinct chatter]

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