No Wrong Door Work Session Briefing

[Jose Velasquez]

Colleagues,

At our work session next Tuesday, we will be receiving a briefing on the No Wrong Door initiative. We are glad to see that staff from various departments as well as program partners from Integral Care and Central Health will be presenting and available for questions.

After receiving the August 3rd memo on the No Wrong Door Initiative, our offices have started to meet with City Departments and program partners to further understand the programmatic, operational, and policy aspects of the initiative. We support the goal of the initiative to better collaborate and coordinate services, support, treatment, and housing to find permanent solutions for our most vulnerable neighbors. We want to ensure that this critical work we are embarking on as a City alongside local and regional agencies and organizations is transparent and successful.

While some of our questions have been answered, many questions still remain and we will daylight those during our briefing. That being said, some of our outstanding questions are aligned with those listed in a letter titled “No Wrong Door Concerns” we recently received from the ACLU, the Texas Civil Rights Project, Disability Rights Texas, and the United Workers of Integral Care among other groups. We ask that City Staff and program partners address these concerns and questions during our briefing on Tuesday. Also, we ask that the City Manager and City Staff provide comments on the feasibility of the proposed safeguards listed in this letter.

We thank all of our City Staff for their diligent work on establishing this new program and bringing in all the many partners to better and more efficiently serve Austinites.

We look forward to our conversation on Tuesday.

CM Velásquez
CM Fuentes
CM Alter
CM Siegel