October 19 Public Safety Committee meeting

[Jimmy Flannigan]

Colleagues,

At next week’s Public Safety Committee meeting we will discuss the ongoing and planned work to address homelessness. This issue touches so many major areas that the Council oversees, primarily in housing and health and human services, but also in public safety. My goal of this meeting is to review the plan and progress of work being done to address homelessness by our hardworking staff and community collaborators, and ideally kick off a process going forward where multiple Council Committees can provide continued focused oversight of their relevant portions of the work.

Homelessness is one of the most important and challenging issues of our time. While it is fundamentally a public health and economic crisis, it also includes a public safety component when these crises hit their peak. There have been great efforts in this Council’s work on this complex issue, from purchasing hotels and additional funding allocated for Permanent Supportive Housing, to historic budget allocations in mental health and social services, to policy changes to better serve those in need. And we know that this isn’t the City’s issue alone to solve, as it takes a huge community collaboration, with County, State and Federal contributions as well to help our neighbors experiencing homelessness find stability.

The virtual Public Safety Committee meeting will be at 2pm on Monday, October 19th. I hope you will consider joining us in this important discussion.