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.
Just get something going. Homeless are everywhere. I doubt the city will fund help and the county is overwhelmed. City must stop with pushing private help out of town.
Please elaborate?
Shut down all the shelters and food places and the homeless will magically disappear.