Homeless Task Force meeting

I have a few takeaways from the meeting;

• There needs to be more felon friendly efficiency options for transitional housing. Regular market rate apartments are just too expensive right now for people looking for transitional housing.

• There needs to be officers dedicated to helping the homeless community.

• Religious discrimination needs to end (I wasn’t quite certain how often this actually happens, but needs to be looked at.)

• The most surprising thing I heard was that the different organizations, while somewhat working together, don’t have the infrastructure set up to work together on a more regular basis because their missions are all different. I think they work really hard to work together, but it seems it is all on a volunteer basis and they are NOT mandating they work together.

At the end of the meeting I heard member Michelle Erpenbach ask Chair Merkouris,

“So the work sessions will not be recorded?”

It cut off before he answered her. I have reached out to Rich and told him that the meetings need to live stream, because waiting 2 1/2 days for a meeting to post to YouTube just doesn’t cut it for transparency. I am not sure why this committee or board meeting is any different, in fact, I think this is a very important board, and they really need to approach this with transparency. Nothing gets solved in the dark.

The next meeting is Monday at 7 PM.