COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Monday, April 20, 2026 10:22 a.m. PRESENT: COUNCIL PRESIDENT KENYATTA JOHNSON COUNCILWOMAN NINA AHMAD COUNCILWOMAN CINDY BASS COUNCILWOMAN KENDRA BROOKS COUNCILMAN MICHAEL DRISCOLL COUNCILWOMAN JAMIE GAUTHIER COUNCILWOMAN KATHERINE GILMORE RICHARDSON COUNCILMAN JIM HARRITY COUNCILMAN CURTIS JONES, JR. COUNCILWOMAN RUE LANDAU COUNCILWOMAN QUETCY M. LOZADA COUNCILMAN NICOLAS O'ROURKE COUNCILMAN ANTHONY PHILLIPS COUNCILMAN MARK SQUILLA COUNCILMAN ISAIAH THOMAS COUNCILMAN JEFFREY YOUNG, JR. BILLS: 260199, 260200, 260201, 260202, 260203, 260204, 260205, 260206, 260208, 260209 RESOLUTION: 260227 - - -
I'm Baptist. I'm good with call and response. And so, today is a beautiful day. This is the public hearing and public meeting of the Committee of the Whole regarding Bill Nos. 260199, 260200, 260201, 260202, 260203, 260204, 260205, 260206, 260208, 260209, Resolution No. 260227. Ms. Loughead, will you please call the roll and take attendance please.
Present. Thank you, Ms. Loughead. A quorum of the committee is present and this hearing is now called to order. Ms. Loughead, will you please read the titles of the bills and resolution.
Bill No. 24 260199, an Ordinance adopting the Operating Budget for Fiscal Year 2027. Bill No. 260200, an Ordinance to adopt a Fiscal Year 2027 Capital Budget. Bill No. 260201, an Ordinance to adopt a Capital Program for the six Fiscal Years, 2027-2032 inclusive. Bill No. 260202, an Ordinance amending Chapter 19-2400 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled "Hotel Room Rental Tax," by providing for an additional excise tax on hotel room rentals, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 260203, an Ordinance amending Subcode "A" (The Philadelphia Administrative Code) of Title 4 of The Philadelphia Code (The Building, Construction and Occupancy Code), by adding and revising Zoning Board of Adjustment fees and provisions regarding hearing scheduling, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 260204, an Ordinance amending Title 3 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled "Air Management Code" to modify the amounts of license and permit fees, under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 2602055, an Ordinance amending Section 19-1806 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled "Authorization of Realty Use and Occupancy Tax," to clarify the imposition of the tax on the use or occupancy of real estate with respect to cell towers, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 260206, an Ordinance amending Chapter 6-600 of The Philadelphia Code ("Asbestos"), by adding and providing provisions related to various fees, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 260208, an Ordinance amending Chapter 19-1800 of The Philadelphia Code, entitled "School Tax Authorization," to a add a new Section 19-1808, entitled "Authorization of Rideshare Use Tax," to authorize the Board of the School District of Philadelphia to levy a tax upon the use by a passenger of a transportation network company for a prearranged ride that originates in Philadelphia; all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 260209, an Ordinance amending Title of The 16 Philadelphia Code, entitled 17 "Finances, Taxes and Collections," 18 to add a new Chapter 19-4800, 19 entitled "Retail Delivery Tax," to establish a tax on orders for the delivery in Philadelphia of retail consumer and other tangible goods, all under certain terms and conditions. Resolution No. 260227, Providing for the approval by the Council of the City of Philadelphia a Revised Five Year Financial Plan for the City of Philadelphia, covering Fiscal Years 2027 through 2031, and incorporating revisions with respect to Fiscal Year 2026, which is to be submitted by the Mayor to the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority pursuant to an Intergovernmental Cooperation Agreement by and between the City and the Authority.
Today we hold the public hearing of the Committee of the Whole to consider the bills read by the Clerk that constitute proposed operating capital spending measures for Fiscal Year 2027, a Capital Program and a Forward-looking Capital Plan for Fiscal Year 2027 through Fiscal Year 2032. This morning we have scheduled testimony from the Managing Director's Office. And this afternoon, we will be hearing from the Office of Homeless Services. Ms. Loughead, will you please call the first panel to testify from the Administration.
The first panel to testify from the Administration is Adam Thiel, Managing Director, who is also joined by Tara Mohr, First Deputy Managing Director; Aparna Palantino, Deputy Managing Director for Capital Projects; Dominic Morales, Deputy Managing Director for Community Safety; Aubrey Powers, Deputy Managing Director for Community Services; Dave Wilson, Deputy Managing Director for General Services; Crystal Yates-Gale, Deputy Managing Director for Health and Human Services; Steven St. Vincent, Deputy Managing Director for Strategic Initiatives; and Mike Carroll, Deputy Managing Director for Transportation and Infrastructure. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Thank you very much. Before we get started, I just want to take a moment to acknowledge Managing Director Adam Thiel and Fire Commissioner Jeffrey Thompson. I want to personally just thank the two of you for your leadership as it relates to the Grays Ferry garage tragedy that took place within the 2nd Councilmanic District. I want to thank all of you, for the two of you specifically for just being so attentive, making sure that myself and my team were informed thoroughly, and most important in comfort in your leadership that you brought to the South Philadelphia community of Grays Ferry. I just want to personally just thank the two of you for being there during such a tragic time. I also want to take a moment to acknowledge Basil Merenda, Commissioner of L&I, thank him for his leadership, as well as Aparna Palantino as well, thank her for her leadership around capital projects, specifically as it relates to Rebuild. I also want to thank Michael Carroll and OTIS as we continue to make sure Vision Zero becomes a reality in addressing all things regarding pedestrian safety, so just thank you for just being responsive to that process as well. And to the Administration team that's here that will be providing testimony, thank all of you for your hard work as it relates to moving the City of Philadelphia forward. And so with that being said, I'm going to ask for Adam Thiel, just please state your name for the record and begin your testimony.
Good morning, Council President Johnson and members of City Council. I am Adam Thiel, Managing Director for the City of Philadelphia. Joining me today are members of the MDO executive team, Tara Mohr, our First Deputy Managing Director, Aparna Palantino, Deputy Managing Director for Capital Projects; Aubrey Powers, Deputy Managing Director for Community Services; Dave Wilson, Deputy Managing Director for General Services; Crystal Yates-Gale, Deputy Managing Director for Health and Human Services; Steven St. Vincent, Deputy Managing Director for Strategic Initiatives; and Mike Carroll, Deputy Managing Director for Transportation and Infrastructure Systems, also joined by our MDO Senior Director for Communications, Sharon Gallagher; and our MDO Chief of Staff, Ryan Clinton, plus many other department and program leaders from across the Managing Director's Office. And with that, Council President, we're happy to take questions from you and City Council.
Thank you very much. I just wanted to start off by, one, can your Office of Domestic Violence Strategies give us an idea regarding where we're at in terms of tracking data, our strategy to address domestic violence here in the city of Philadelphia. I don't know if most people may or may not know but there's a new terminology called femicide, where we've seen, particularly across our nation right now, a significant amount of women being murdered, mostly by their husbands or some level of domestic disputes, boyfriends. We just saw a tragedy in Shreveport, Louisiana where eight children were murdered and then also attempted murder of the mother as well. And so, we've had hearings on this topic, we have recommendations on this topic and we want to continue to make sure we make this a priority here in the City of Philadelphia. So could the Director of the Office of Domestic Violence just give us an update on what our strategies are and how we are working towards on combating this issue?
Good morning. I'm Azucena Ugarte. I am the Director of the Office of Domestic Violence Strategies. The question is, where are we with the strategies?
Thank you. So we are part of the Health and Human Services agencies. What we provide is what we call technical assistance to the different agencies that provide services. Specifically we work -- let me just backtrack a little bit. You mentioned homicides and femicides. What we know about domestic violence also is that one-third to two-thirds of child welfare cases, caseloads include domestic violence. We know from work with the Health Department that 21% of our not pregnancy-associated deaths include intimate partner violence. We also know that domestic violence is the number one cause for homelessness among women and children. We know this. So besides the homicide, which is the horrible, the most extreme impact of domestic violence, we know it affects the health care and the behavioral health care of our children and individuals and families. So the work that we do is what we call secondary prevention. So we're trying to intervene with those agencies that provide those services to try to identify and respond to domestic violence as early as possible. Because if we can identify it early as possible, then we can prevent the horrible homicides that we have seen in the last several months. Some of the work that we've done, professional development trainings for child welfare, for the Office of Homeless Services, for the Department of Behavioral Health. A lot of people don't know this, but in the last eight years, nine years actually, we in collaboration with the Department of Human Services, our child welfare system is the only one in Pennsylvania that has a domestic violence unit. They have domestic violence specialists that support the DHS investigators and the CUA case managers to identify and respond to intimate partner violence. So we try to do that type of intervention. We have worked with the Health Department during the last five years to work with our delivery hospitals in Philadelphia to improve the way they screen for intimate partner violence and respond to that and how they connect the people, the patient survivors with supports, and we work really closely with the domestic violence organizations. In the last three years, we changed the way we pay for the domestic violence hotline. We increased the funding for the domestic violence hotline. And actually in the last year, we went through a whole process in which for the first time the domestic violence hotline upgraded the technologies, the first time since 2005. So those are some of the things that we've been doing.
Give me an idea how are you going about collecting data? And whom will you share that data with?
Some of the data that we use is the one that the city already collects. So we know how many calls we get to the domestic violence hotline, because that's something that the domestic violence agency reports to us, so we get that information. We know how many of the new cases in child welfare -- how many of those cases we explore for intimate partner violence and when intimate partner violence was disclosed. We have the same type of data for the health centers. We get some data also from the police department, mostly about the domestic homicides. So there are different points of data that we get. We collect that data and we started doing fact sheet with all that data is summarized and also has national data and some state data so we can see the comparison of the national, state and the city data. The data fact sheet is in our website, on our web page so you can see it. We shared it with the public --
It's hard to compare because the population varies from city to city. I would say in our conversations in conference and with other state organizations, counties, the last time I checked we are the only city that works around domestic violence with the Health and Human Services. A lot of cities have interventions with the police and about criminal justice system. In the Health and Human Services, we are one of the few that actually have that focus. So I think we're ahead of that. When we're looking at the national level, we actually have been trying to figure out -- there has been a decrease in homicides, but an increase in domestic homicides. That's a national trend. We're still not sure what is happening. We're trying to understand what is happening. We do know we are doing good work and that we could do more work.
I have another question and then I'll wrap up. In terms of your partnerships with other city agencies, because I know you were here during the hearing that I hosted and you came up and spoke, do you meet with the police department, District Attorney's Office in a working group fashion, either once a week, every other week so everyone's talking to one another regarding our strategies and our partnerships to move forward and stay laser-like focused on this issue?
We meet for different reasons, for different purposes. So my office is part of the Domestic Violence Law Enforcement Committee. District Attorney's Office is there. The community-based organizations are there. Representatives from the Sheriff's Office are there. That's every month.
Okay. That's all I wanted to hear. Perfect. Okay. Thank you very much for your leadership on this matter. Can we have Dominic Morales from the Office of Emergency Management? Is he here today?
Council President, Deputy Managing Director Morales, who you know is also our Emergency Management Coordinator, has been working very hard around the clock, also on the collapse. He had a family wedding this weekend and is on his way back. We have other folks who can certainly answer any questions.
I just wanted to give him his flowers. That's all.
Yeah, he definitely was on the case. I have a question around, we're celebrating 2026. We have events taking place all throughout the city. We have a war going on globally where comments were made specifically that they will be targeting certain high- profile events as well as iconic places. And obviously, we're the birthplace of America. We have Independence Mall, Art Museum, a lot of key institutions that could be prime spots for targets as well as high-profile events, which I think is going to be pretty different than the other cities across our country. What are we doing to be proactive to keep our residents safe and comfortable when we decide to go out and participate in the Fourth of July event or to the FIFA World Cup? That's the first part. And then also, how are we making sure that when these events do take place, particularly around FIFA World Cup, a lot of immigrants are going to be coming to our city to even watch these soccer matches. Some are already living here, going to come and watch these soccer matches as well as go to our Fan Fest out of Lemon Hill. How are we just being prepared? Because there were statements made out of Washington, D.C., that these particular type soccer matches will be opportunities for ICE agents to come out and to intimidate and harass individuals. So how are we planning for both public safety and also ICE, if they decide to come to our city, particularly around the FIFA World Cup?
Council President, appreciate the questions. I'll start in the order that you provided with, safety and security. We have been working with obviously our partners in the Office of Special Events, our City Representative Jazelle Jones; Chief Deputy Mayor Vanessa Garrett Harley literally on this for years now, constantly in the same One Philly team fashion that we do everything else, and also working with state and federal partners continually to understand the nature of the threat. And you're right, this was going to be a safety and security challenge. Under the best of circumstances, and right now we're probably not in the best of circumstances, that said, with all of the planning and coordination, and Deputy Managing Director Morales has really been emergency management's role and that is that coordination in making sure those partnerships and we have the battle rhythm to keep doing that continually, I feel like we are well-prepared for whatever comes. I can honestly say and truly would probably say this anyways, but I can say truly with the many things that I've done around the country and being here now for almost 10 years, there is nobody in the country, and I'll knock wood as I say this, there's nobody in the country who does special events as well as the City of Philadelphia. It is just true. We have a lot of practice, as that famous Philadelphian said, it's about practice. We have the relationships, the durable and sustainable relationships. And that really, when you're dealing with crises, preparing for crises, that's what it's all about. Regardless of any political rhetoric, we have those working relationships at the working-partner level with all of the federal and state entities that we need to with our not-for-profit partners, contractors, vendors, all of the folks who are going to come together to ensure that our city is safe and secure for everything that is going to happen during America 250, including the FIFA 2026 matches. Now, these are challenging times, as you said at the outset. Really confident, another thing I would probably say anyways, but it's absolutely true in my experience, our police department is the best in the business with Mayor Parker's leadership and the investment in the police department over the past couple years and City Council support. We really have the best police department in the nation, and they have those working partnerships as well. The work that they're doing in our communities, that's another set of relationships that are so vital for dealing with these events where we may or may not get noticed. These sort of people call them lone wolf events or whatever. So I really feel like we're well- prepared. And that said, we are going to be on a 24/7, 365 footing for the core period of time that we expect all these events to happen. We'll have our emergency operations center staffed around the clock. We'll be working with PPD and they'll be working with all the law enforcement partners to make sure that we're on top of it. And that said, we really do want to encourage folks now because 2026 is now. There are events happening now.
We do want folks to make sure that they are signed up for Ready Philadelphia. You can go to phila.gov and navigate to that, because that is a key way that we're going to transmit information to folks beyond the normal channels and social media. So we really want folks to sign up for Ready Philadelphia, so our residents, businesses and visitors are part of that equation, a key part of that equation for keeping the city safe and secure. Now, talking about visitors and immigrant populations, look, we are and remain a welcoming city so we know and we want folks to feel comfortable from around the country, from around the world, to come to Philadelphia, see the matches, see other events, enjoy their time here, enjoy Fan Fest on Lemon Hill, all the things that are on (inaudible), all the America 250 events, the 250-plus America 250 events, our office of Immigrant Affairs, with our leadership by Charlie Ellison and his team. They've been integrated in the planning for all the 2026 events to make sure that we have welcoming services available, translation services available and if anything should happen, to make sure that we have the supports there that are available to wrap around those visitors. As far as relationships with particular federal agencies, that's something I would have to defer to PPD. I would say they have excellent working relationships with federal and state partners, and our Office of Immigrant Affairs is not just ready, but excited, as we are all excited, about welcoming visitors from everywhere and anywhere to Philadelphia for this incredible year.
So last question. Mr. Mike Carroll, join the podium. State your name for the record.
Mike Carroll, Deputy Managing Director for the Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems.
Thank you, Mike. One, I just want to get an idea on your strategies to make sure we continue moving forward with Vision Zero. I just want to get an update briefly. In terms of protective bike lanes, right, and bike lanes just in general, what percentage of our target goal have we completed thus far to date? Two, I mentioned this before, but I'll go on the record officially requesting it, strategy around daylighting, right, and what it takes for us to implement daylighting across the City of Philadelphia? And if there's a budget requirement to make us help us accomplish that and everything that we can do on our end to use daylighting as a mechanism to prevent pedestrian tragedies?
Thank you, Council President, for those questions. I'll have to get back to you with some specifics in terms of what percentage of the network is being looked at for protected bike infrastructure. I'll just take a minute and talk through in general, we're always trying to upgrade things, as we have an opportunity. The type of protection we look at varies from simply just putting in a painted buffer, which is the minimal but it's easy to get out there, to putting in some vertical elements or some potentially hardened elements that separate the bike lane in some places where we use the parking space itself to separate the bike lane from vehicular traffic. In general, our goal is to achieve the maximum protection over time that we think fits with the conditions on the street. But we sometimes see that when we've done something, which is a little bit more of what we'll call tactical, maybe it's paint, maybe it's some flex posts, but we're not getting the result that we want. We'll go back and we'll change our target. We'll try and identify more robust measures in order to get a little bit further, a little bit higher level of safety and protection for people, so I could come back and we could say, well, we're about 70% where we want to be, just for the sake of argument. And then just based on the data we get in a given year, we may move that target because we understand we need to do more because of what we're seeing on the ground. The measures which involve different assets, like the flex posts, like some form of curbing, we have to maintain those things. And so, it's not just a question of getting that one project out at that one point in time. We need to kind of stand up a maintenance operation to go with that. There's certainly a dialogue we need to have with neighbors. This is something that's evolving over time, but I can't say in our time working on this stuff, working with you, we've made a lot of progress. I'm proud of the progress we've made, but we do know we have a lot more to do, but we will come back with some more specific information that answers your question directly. On the question of daylighting, yeah, this is a strategy we're looking at a lot more. We're trying to focus it around sensitive areas to get started with. So we've done this Neighborhood Safe Zone project in a couple places. That's a great opportunity for us to look around things like schools, rec centers, community centers to identify specific points, working with communities where the daylighting will make a difference. Working with Streets Department, we've expanded that to locations, corridors where we're doing other forms of safety projects. I think we have right now, as you know, in the budget about $5 million to Vision Zero projects. From what I understand, for something around $10,000 we can usually do most intersections, implementing some form of daylighting. We like to consider opportunities. As you know, the Mayor is very much about not just safe but clean and green, and we want to look for a chance to put in something nice that makes the intersection look nice. It could be a planter, it could be some painting on the street. It could be some things that really spruce up the streetscape. So that's something we want to incorporate into the projects. It's not just about safety, but giving folks a sense of community that actually adds a lot to the appeal and makes these conversations with neighborhoods a lot easier.
Has there been any conversation with private institutions or public-private partnerships to help write off the (inaudible) since it's a part of beautifying the city?
That's a huge win for us. When there's a neighborhood association or friends-of type groups that step forward, there's a few challenges that need to be solved for that. We want to make sure that if this is something that's being promoted by that friends group or they're sort of asking us to put it in there, again that there's a way to make sure this stuff stays in nice condition, especially these elements that add an aesthetic appeal. We want to make sure, for example, planters don't turn into trash bins. We want to make sure that the plants are cared for. So recent agreements sometimes is a case-by-case conversation with these entities and figuring out what their capacity is, helping to build that capacity.
When can I expect this overall comprehensive strategy for the city, at least to get started? Not seeing you have to do every intersection across the city of Philadelphia at one time, but you might have your high priority areas where we see tragic deaths, where it needs to be slow-calming measures?
The Mayor asked us in this past year to identify a number of corridors. I think it was like corridors that 6 we're going to look at. The 7 strategy is coming together on 8 that. So there's already some 9 documentation we might be able to 10 provide -- 11
At the earliest 16 convenience. And then last but not 17 least, I know expanding Indigo 18 Bikes is part of your strategy as 19 well. I talked to you briefly 20 about this, but I want to follow up to stay on top of it. Can we engage in some type of rebate program like they have in London, where individuals who do engage in borrowing -- their bike system isn't called Indigo, but they have a bikeshare program where you can get a rebate based upon your usage of the bike. How can we implement something like that here in the City of Philadelphia that will encourage more individuals who want to go biking?
Yeah, very interesting idea. We started doing some business planning around those types of ideas. We're not quite done with that yet, but we'll get back to you with the update on those conversations.
That's all I have. And I want to thank also joining us is the Commissioner of Parks and Recreation, Ms. Sue Slawson. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for your hard work and for being here today. With that being said, the Chair recognizes Councilmember Majority Whip Isaiah Thomas.
Sorry, Council President. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Thank you for allowing me to be here. I want to start with Mike Carroll. You probably knew that already, but I want to start with something Council President started talking about as it relates to Vision Zero. Last year we did see some revenue go to Vision Zero, probably not as much as I know folks wanted. Can you talk 30 seconds about this year's budget Vision Zero? What does it mean for the High Injury Network and also how the speed cameras is impacting some of the things that we're seeing as it relates to fatalities? We had the Police Commissioner here the other day, and the Police Commissioner said that there's still a lot of complaints around hazardous driving despite the cameras. So if you could just give us an update on that, that'd be appreciated.
Yes. So just to start with the budget, I mentioned that the Mayor's budget includes $5 million. I want to be clear, there's additional work that will be done as part of the Streets Department's budget, including the paving budget, that gives us an opportunity to implement many corridors, other traffic-calming measures. We always look for opportunities to leverage federal and state funds. So these funds that go to the Streets Department, the funds that are going to the Office of Transportation are often matched, you know, 80% federal for every 20% of city funds that go in. So there's a lot of work we can do, even with smaller amounts of funding that's directed to us and that's always our approach. To speak to the speed cameras, we're certainly very hopeful that by expanding the number of corridors that we have speed cameras installed on, we will see similar results to what we saw on Roosevelt Boulevard, where in the first year we saw over a 90% reduction in the amount of speed violations on that corridor that translated directly into improvements compared to the rest of the city for traffic deaths and serious injuries. We know that once we took Roosevelt Boulevard off the top of the list, the next that was at the top of the list was Broad Street, especially North Broad Street, where a number of tragedies continue to take place. So we're hopeful, as people get used to kind of moderating their speed, we're going to have a similar improvement in terms of people not getting killed and not getting injured. Eliminating these tragedies, as the Council President spoke to, you know, people have had a lot of reactions to what's going on. We've always tried to make sure that there's an adequate warning period for people so that they can adjust their behavior. The way that the cameras work, if we're setting a 25-mile per hour speed limit, people don't get a ticket until they're driving 36 miles per hour. And it's important to keep these numbers in mind because it's when you get above 36, you get to 40 miles per hour, that's when people end up getting killed.
And that's important, right, because the data says that once a car accident occurs over miles an 7 hour, the likelihood of a fatality 8 increases significantly. 9
And 12 I'm putting this information on the 13 record because we understand it's 14 very unpopular, but these are the 15 type of cultural changes that we 16 need that will essentially save 17 lives. This week starts the school 18 speed cameras, correct? 19
So 21 talk to us 30 seconds, because I'm 22 running out of time, where do we 23 see the school speed cameras going 24 and what type of impact do we anticipate that having? And I think it's also important to note for the record that the cameras are only active when school is actually taking place. You can't get that ticket at 6:00 p.m. on a Friday night, for example. So can you give us 30 seconds on that?
Yeah. I don't think anyone can argue with the idea that the most sensitive populations, these are our kids out there, should not be given the maximum protection, and that includes the speed camera program being active, like you said, during school hours when people are coming and going from school. And our hope is the same, that when we have that protection in place that people behave themselves when they're behind a wheel and they moderate their speed and they control their driving, they're more thoughtful about what they're doing, because again, the whole goal of this is to reduce the tragedies and keep our kids safe. We'll get you a list of the schools that we're looking at, but that's gone active. And so, we're just hoping that as we close out this school year and start the next year, we have fewer stories in the paper.
Yeah. Those stories are always sad. They're always unfortunate, often random, often impact Black and Brown neighborhoods. And so, please once you determine what those schools are, please let us know. We want to make sure that we're advocating, so thank you for your work. As it relates to the Managing Director's Office, we passed legislation coming out of the pandemic called Keep It Local. Keep It Local basically required that a certain percentage of all city contracts go to Philadelphia- based businesses. The data suggests that those numbers are down, not just with Philadelphia- based businesses, but with Black and Brown-based businesses. Can you tell me where we are as it relates to procurement through this department, specifically looking at what percentages of contracts go to Philadelphia businesses and what percentage of city contracts go to Black businesses as well as women- based businesses?
Councilmember, appreciate the question. With the transition now, with our reporting to small and local businesses, we have to get back to you with those specific numbers.
So, Council President, I'll move on and tee up for the second round. But I do want to be clear, if those numbers don't come back, the Managing Director's Office needs to be called back. This is important. We're not just talking about contracts for Philadelphia-based businesses. We're talking about contracts for Black and Brown-based businesses. And we passed the legislation coming out of the pandemic because we told people if we're going to ask folks to invest in Philadelphia, it starts with Philadelphia, investing in Philadelphia. And we've been able to maintain a number where we've seen that number grow every year since Keep It Local has been in existence. This year is the first year that we're seeing those numbers come back. So we really want to see the data as it relates to local contracts, why are the numbers being reduced for Philadelphia- based businesses, Black-based businesses and women-owned-based businesses? What impacted that and what do we need to do to get us back on track to where we need to be? So, Council President, I'm told that this information isn't available today. I don't know why the office would come before us without this information available. I literally ask about this every year. I actually thought it was a softball question. I asked about it every year. And so, I thought it was going to be an explanation as to why the numbers were different. Clearly, it's not. I think the Managing Director's Office should be called back if we can't get an answer today. Thank you, Council President.
Thank you very well. Thank you very much, Member Thiel -- Member Thiel. Would you be able to provide that information in a timeliest fashion? And if not, then we'll be calling you for a second comeback round. Okay?
Council President, we'll do our best for the data we have as soon as possible.
Actually for the record, Member Thomas, would you just like them to come back for a second round period?
We have the afternoon as well too, so I don't want to just jump to that scenario. But again, this is one of the most important issues that we have as it relates to our local economy, right. We're exploring every option that we can to generate revenue for the City of Philadelphia and this is a way that we've been successful generating revenue for the city. So if the information isn't available in the afternoon, absolutely, I think the office should be called back and be able to produce these numbers and allow members to be able to ask questions about why the numbers have been different than the consistency we've seen in the past.
Thank you very much. That's an official request. Thank you very much, sir.
Chair recognizes Gilmore Richardson, then Cindy Bass.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Council President. And thank you so much to the Managing Director's Office and the entire team for the work that you all do. I wanted to start with the thank-yous for the Managing Director's Office. Crystal Yates- Gale, thank you for your work. Thank you for your hard work. To Stephanie Marsh, thank you so much for all the hard work and coordination. Sarah Barnett, who is from ACCT, she's always a phone call away. And Tara Schernecke, also ACCT Senior Director of Operations, we appreciate all the help that you all assist us with for our constituents. And Mike Carroll, thank you so much, Mike. You know I got to put on the record, we need you all to address that parking situation. It has become untenable out there, the parking situation. Whatever we need to do to fix it, we need to fix it because it's untenable at this point. So at any rate, I wanted to start with the Managing Director's Office. I only have a couple questions that I want to put on the record, one that I've asked every department and I'll start with that. But I want to get all of my questions on the record and then wait for a response. Okay. Thank you. So in FY25, how much underspend did MDO have and in which classes? In FY26, what is your anticipated underspend and in which classes? For emergency shelter, there was roughly $4.1 million allocated in MDO's budget toward the shelter bed expansion. For FY26, the total cost of the shelter bed expansion FY26 is $10 million. So please explain why the cost is doubling for FY27. In FY26, MDO carried an additional $3.4 million in emergency housing costs for the Office of Homeless Services. Please explain. And finally, the Wellness Center has $6.7 million budgeted for maintenance costs with Elliot-Lewis, all of the OHS emergency housing maintenance funding with U.S. Facilities is $2.8 million. Please explain why there are additional dollars allocated towards maintenance at one facility when there are dozens of OHS emergency shelters. Thank you.
Councilmember, appreciate the questions. Do you want answers to those now? Do you want to see it back --
Yes, now. I wanted to get them all on the record while I had time. Thank you.
We will start with the questions about the maintenance costs. I think we have our DPP Commissioner here.
And to repeat as they're approaching the witness table, the Wellness Center has $6.7 million budgeted for maintenance costs with Elliot Lewis. All of the OHS emergency housing maintenance funding with U.S. Facilities is $2.8 million. We're trying to figure out why there's so much maintenance costs allocated to one facility versus all of the OHS emergency shelter facilities. COMMISSIONER BRASKY: Council President, Joe Brasky, Department of Public Property Commissioner. Thank you, Councilmember --
Thank you, Joe. Thank you to you and your team. COMMISSIONER BRASKY: No 9 problem. Thank you. I can answer the maintenance costs for the wellness as we maintain Philly Home at Girard and Riverview Wellness. I cannot explain the OHS maintenance costs as we do not provide maintenance here at DPP for OHS. Cheryl from OHS can answer that question for you.
Thank you. So for DPP, you all oversee Wellness and? COMMISSIONER BRASKY: Philly Home at Girard.
Okay. DPP is Wellness and Philly Home at Girard. And I think the question is really the maintenance cost with Elliot Lewis for the Wellness Center is $6.7 million as budgeted. But for all of the OHS emergency housing maintenance funding with the other contract with U.S. Facilities is only $2.8 million, so the difference? COMMISSIONER BRASKY: Okay. I will let OHS -- I don't know as far as what they include in their maintenance cost so I'm not going to answer for them. Thank you.
Cheryl Hill, Executive Director of the Office of Homeless Services. Some of our maintenance is actually supplemented by city employees so that could attribute to the difference. But without knowing the DPP budget, I wouldn't be able to explain all of the differences.
So what you're stating is -- and I hear the bell and I want to honor the clock. But what you're stating is that some of our OHS emergency housing maintenance happens via city employees?
Okay. And so, does that happen at the Wellness Center? I'm just confused because the Wellness Center, and I guess this will be Wellness and Philly Home at Girard has 6.7 million budgeted for maintenance costs. That's under a separate contract. But all of the additional OHS emergency housing maintenance funding is only 2.8 million. That's for everybody. But two facilities has $6.7 million.
Correct. And just to clarify, Philly Home at Girard and Riverview Wellness aren't under OHS, so I wouldn't be able to explain those budgets.
No, I understand that. I hear what y'all -- you know what, all right. I'm not going to do this today. I feel like you all are taking me in a circle. I receive what you're saying and I understand what you're saying. You know I understand what you're saying, but I'm trying to ask for clarification in the contracts. I understand that you can't answer. Maybe everybody can answer it together, which is why I ask because it's under MDO. It's not technically under your budget. I hear what you're saying. I don't want you to think that this is adversarial at all. It's not. It's simply a question. It's under MDO. The Wellness Center has 6.7 million budgeted for maintenance. You all are now saying that that's technically DPP, and it's Wellness and Philly Home at Girard. The OHS has I guess the rest of the contracts. I'm just asking for clarification. That's all.
Councilmember, we really do appreciate your detailed questions and we will come back with a detailed breakout. Part of this is because the security guards are in -- we have security in one contract and not another. Another difference is between the square footage of the buildings, so we can get back with a detailed answer to you across different agencies. Obviously, we are doing all these things in partnership. We have multiple teams, cross-functional teams that are doing this. So that really is a lot of these costs, and a lot of the work is done across the entire team. So we can break those costs out the way you're asking and get them to you timely.
Okay. And if you could, just break them down by facility then. Because the 2.8 million covers a plethora of facilities versus I guess what you're stating, the 6.7 million covers two facilities, correct? And then if you could add in the Class 100 allocation for the individuals who are providing the maintenance? That's just for Question 5. Okay.
I heard the bell and I want to honor the clock, but I'll respectfully request to come back to address the four other questions that I did ask.
Absolutely. Madam Leader, do you have another question you would like to ask?
Thank you, Council President. For MDO, in FY26 you carried an additional 3.4 million in emergency housing costs for OHS, if you could just explain? And then there's roughly 4.1 million allocated in MDO's budget toward the shelter bed expansion FY26. The total cost of the expansion in FY26 is $10 million. Please explain why the cost is doubling for FY27. And then if you could speak to your underspend in FY25 and in which classes? And in FY26, what is your anticipated underspend and in which classes?
Councilmember, we're going to have to get back to you on the FY25 underspend breakout. We need to get back with Finance and break that out for you the way you've requested. FY26, we're still mid-year so we don't know --
I'm not sure we -- I guess I would say if you're asking -- you are asking me right now. I don't know that we'll have any anticipated underspend. We are working across all of these teams to get all of those beds delivered. And you know, because -
This is in general. This is not just about --
These are works in progress. We are working very hard across multiple agencies to deliver and it would be really premature speculation for me to guess what our underspend would be.
Yeah. But we typically would know, because you would know what you've done in your first couple quarters so you would know. And that's why the difference is how much is the underspend in FY25 and what is the anticipated underspend in '26, because we have quarterly data, we have the Quarterly City Manager's Report that we can look to give us the number. So I'm just asking the question on the record so that we have the information. So I'll respectfully request to honor the clock and my colleagues' time, that we have a callback for the Managing Director's Office so that they're able to respond to the questions that I've notated for the record. Thank you, Council President.
Thank you very much. Chair recognizes Councilmember Cindy Bass and Councilmember Harrity.
How's everybody doing? Listen, we recognize the importance of the Managing Director's Office and all of the agencies and departments under it. And I want to say, number one, a big thank you for all of your hard work. I had really two things I wanted to just touch on this morning. One is the coordination of city services, and I think I talked about this earlier in the budget season with the Streets Department around the roles or the role that the Managing Director's Office or different departments, whether it's Streets or whoever, OTIS, around coordinating services that are happening, particularly for, let's say, paving, coordinating paving services. And the example I used is how in my neighborhood, they tore up all the streets, replaced them, look great. That was about two years ago. And then they came back through and ripped everything up this year and put in new piping, which feels like -- well, not just feels like. It is an incredible waste of money. So I just want to make sure that this was a one-off, that this is not something that's happening. But I hear about it more often than I would like. So what role does the MDO's office play in making sure that these kinds of things don't happen?
This is Mike Carroll, Deputy Manager for the Office of Transportation and Infrastructure. So broadly, that is part of my portfolio within the Managing Director's Office. The coordination is run through the Streets Department. So the Streets Department is basically the -- I don't want to mix metaphors, the air traffic controller for the right-of-way. So what's going on when in the right-of-way is managed through a couple different platforms. And one of them we call the Guaranteed Pavement Information System. So anybody who has planned work in the right-of-way needs to register that work in this system we call GPIS. We try and go as far out as we can. And then when we see conflicts between different jobs, the Streets Department directs those entities to work their conflicts out and get in the sequence. A while back we put together what we call pavement moratorium, and it was modeled on what PennDOT does, where we would impose a cost on a utility to come back and dig up a street within a period of time that was too close to the pavement of that street or the restoration of that street by another entity. And the purpose of that was to disincentivize what you're talking about, where one contractor would come in right after another. A lot of the streets where we saw this happen, which were more egregious, were actually PennDOT streets. So a lot of arterial streets are PennDOT streets. We've got some lessons learned, I think. We're about three or four years into this process. There are some parameters, thresholds that need to be had before that kicks in. For certain kinds of work, and in particular for a lot of the work that the Water Department does or PECO is engaged in, their plans change over time. And because there's a sequence that you're trying to hit or there might be some emergencies that took place, which changes their capital program, it just can't be helped that they're going to come in sooner than expected --
Yeah, I get it when it can't be helped. But in this case, I know that it could have been helped. But just making sure that you all are mindful, and I'm sure that you are, of the expenses. That's really my point. I want to move on because I know the bell has rung. I just want to ask one quick question, if I have a quick second, around ACCT. We did our backyard breeding moratorium earlier this year which is great, but we know that ACCT still is quite overrun with intake, with dogs and cats. And I was hoping that we could, you know, tell us where we are. Tell us where we are as a city in terms of providing the care and shelter. We have served about 20,000 pets in the last year. And so, can you help us get an understanding of where ACCT is right now?
We'll ask Sarah Barnett from ACCT to come answer those questions and specifics.
And also my other question is, is the budgetary request matching the need to address this issue?
Hi. My name is Sarah Barnett. I'm the Executive Director of ACCT Philly. And to answer the first question with where we are numbers-wise, I would love to say we're in a great spot, but we're not. We've seen a 17% increase in the animals coming in, in the first quarter, so about 4400 dogs and cats. For some context, since we've been open since 10:00 a.m. this morning, we took in 8 animals, dogs, cats and a 6 foot 9 boa constrictor. And last calendar 10 year, we had an 8% increase in dog 11 intake and that's really huge for 12 us because of both the space needed 13 but also the resources needed to 14 care for those dogs. So our intake 15 last year was about 7430 dogs. And 16 this year, we do expect to surpass 8000 and definitely, definitely go beyond that 20,000 animals that we helped last year.
For the 4400 animals that were taken in this year so far, were they dogs or cats or a mix, primarily, overall?
And I should specify. That's January, February, March to the first quarter. And I would say it's two-thirds cats, one-third dogs with a very small, about 200 or so non-dog and cat animals.
Okay. All right. And is your budgetary request reflective of the financial need that's required to address this issue? Because this is an issue that we can fix. This is not something -- we have some departments that the need is large. The problem is ginormous and fixing it is much longer and much more complicated. I feel like this is something that's really fixable, because it wasn't that long ago that it was fixed. Right before the pandemic, we didn't have this sort of intake, this sort of budgetary requirement. So is this something that we're putting in the budget, a number that's going to fix this?
Councilmember, we've continued to invest in ACCT over the past 311 Philly budget.
129,000, and that's for labor contract cost increases. From a macro perspective, we are definitely continuing to monitor the intake and monitor those numbers and look to the future, whether or not this is something that is going to change or if this is going to remain the new normal.
I don't think we really need to really look into the future because we have the present and we have the past. And when we look at where we are from 2020 or actually, say, 2020 to 2025, we see what the trend is. We see what the numbers are, so we should have a pretty good idea by now of what it takes to fix this problem and get us back to where we were. And I don't think $129,000 increase is going to fix this. I don't think that it's going to come nearly close enough. So I'd really like to see a much more concerted effort and financial planning to fix this matter.
Thank you, Councilmember. And Sarah is better to do this than I, but I will repeat that this is another area where we certainly can use help from our residents and adoption and being part of this and then not, you know, if you're going to think about all the options and to be cognizant of this. But we will continue to work with ACCT through the budget process every year and I would expect to continue to invest as we have.
Okay. It doesn't feel like the need is being heard. But I would appreciate, as we continue these conversations, maybe a possible review by the Managing Director's Office and looking back at how can we fix this issue or even come close to it because 129,000 is just not going to get it. Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you very much. Councilmember Jim Harrity, then Councilmembers Brooks, Landau, Ahmad, O'Rourke.
Thank you, Council President. Good morning, everyone. For the sake of time, I'm going to ask my questions I got. I'm only going to do a few of the ones I have for now and see if we get back in the second round or whatever we decide to do. First off, your testimony states that the Chinatown Stitch Project is on track to move forward with private funding. Under this arrangement, who oversees the project and the use of the funds and the selection of contractors and consultants? That's one group of questions. And then the FY27 testimony shows Riverview's FY25 occupancy rate is only 58% with the goal of 75%, but the FY27 target jumps to -- I'm sorry. It was FY26. The FY27 target jumps to 80%. As of mid-September 2025, Riverview had 186 residents, a bit more than half of the 336 beds maximum. What are you doing differently to reach this goal of 80% occupancy? How many have successfully completed the yearlong program without leaving early? How long has the average stay been? Can you tell me about how last year's budget allocation to combat the opioid epidemic was utilized? Do you have data to show the reduction of opioid overdoses and improved community health? How is the city collaborating with local health and community organizations to help support networks for individuals needing help?
Councilmember, we can definitely answer right now about the Stitch.
Okay. So I'll try to be real quick. We do not have construction funding for the Chinatown Stitch. There are ideas about how to raise private funds and there's also some similar ideas about leveraging what we'll call value capture --
Can I get a point of information, if you don't mind. Are we working with our federal partners to --
-- still see if we can get the money back? Maybe having conversations with Senator McCormick, the Brendan Boyles of the world, to see if we can bring that funding back to the table?
That's the top priority. And Representative Boyle in particular, he's on this case. So we look forward to continue to work with him and our Senators to get that money brought back to Philadelphia.
Okay. So we don't have the funding. We're looking for other options?
We have design funding. But to answer your question, when the design is done, and probably in a few years we do start the construction, this is almost certainly going to be procured through a public entity, likely PennDOT, so they'll go through the same process they do -- they tend to bring in contractors through a low bid process, and we've got a lot of contractors you're familiar with who will probably be competing for that work.
Councilmember, we appreciate the list of very detailed questions. We're going to ask Isabel McDevitt to come up and give just a short overview, and then we can get all of those kind of in one place back to you. MS. McDEVITT: Good morning. Isabel McDevitt, Executive Director of Community Wellness and Recovery. Thank you so much for all of those questions. I'm not going to get every single one, but we can follow up as needed. We are currently at 95% capacity at Riverview Wellness Village. We have 234 beds licensed as recovery house level of care and have been at the 95% occupancy since January of 2026. We entered our first resident into Riverview on January 27, 2025, so we now have a small cohort that have reached that year. It took us until July 1 to get to 100 residents. So we've been ramping up. I'm really proud to say that as of now we have about 70% of folks have been with us for 90 days, which is great. (Applause.)
Just a point of information. And some people might be not as informative, but to really get people to stay in the program, right, particularly this population of individuals for 90 days is an extremely challenging feat, so it's an accomplishment. But to accomplish that is something worthy of acknowledging because you're dealing with a population that's dealing with life on life terms, right. And sometimes it could be a revolving door, people relapse, people find ways to go back out. And so, we know you have a job to do in terms of the Administration and we have a job to do, but I do want to get credit where credit is due, particularly in this particular area because it is not an easy area for having a person that wants to stick and stay when it comes to doing this type of work. And it's easy to go back out into the streets if you don't have the proper wraparound support services. This is after you're off the drug. Now, we're just dealing with life on life terms. And life do not stop lifing because you're dealing with substance abuse issues. And so, I just want to acknowledge that. Member Harrity, the floor is yours, sir.
Thank you. And of course, you're absolutely right, because the 90 days, that's -- after they've already completed their program, which could have been another 90 days. So it's actually a big accomplishment, especially for this drug. Thank God I never had the fatal chance. But can you also explain to me, I think we're at 95% already -- MS. McDEVITT: Yes.
Beautiful. Now, what's the expansion look like? MS. McDEVITT: Yeah, great question. So as you know, we sort of phased in with the phases of our renovation. We are going to be opening another 51 beds later this spring and we are in plans for the future expansion of the new building. That is something that my colleague Aparna Palantino can speak more about, if necessary. But that will bring another 300 residential capacity to the campus. And I think it's really important to note that we're working with our partners at OHS, DBHIDS and others to really look at what type of beds we need, but we know we can have that 300 beds as soon as that project is complete.
Thank you. And can you just say the ratio of women to men, are we about even now? Because I know we started out with the men, I believe, and then we phased in the women. MS. McDEVITT: Yeah. So right now we are about 75% men, 25% women. This is all unaccompanied adults, and that really mirrors the population that we see of unaccompanied adults, meaning no 4 children in the street homeless population as well as utilizing treatment services.
Thank you. And for the sake of time, you can get back to me with the rest -- MS. McDEVITT: Absolutely.
Thank you very much, sir. Chair recognizes Councilmember Kendra Brooks, then Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad and Rue Landau.
Thank you, Council President. My questions are for the Managing Director's Office and you could just answer at the end. As folks have heard and celebrated the PA Supreme Court in a case litigated by the ALC held on March 26, 2026, that mandatory life without parole sentencing is cruel and therefore an unconstitutional sentence under the PA constitution. The court, in its opinion, gave the legislator 120 days to act to remedy this. If the legislator fails to act, the most likely course of action is for an estimated 1100 people serving that sentence can receive individualized resentencing. This includes around 500 people from Philadelphia. The MDO serves as the passthrough for the Defenders Association of Philadelphia's funding and also oversees the financial components of the Conflict Council program. So my questions are, can you estimate how much a program of this magnitude will cost? What funds have you set aside and from where to cover these costs? What proportion will go to the Defender and what portion would go to the court-appointed? Do you foresee training funds set aside? And do the attorneys that are currently serving as court-appointed have the necessary training and experience to handle homicide resentencing well?
Councilmember, appreciate those questions. We'll have to circle back to the Defenders Association and other partners in the judicial branch and law enforcement to get you fulsome answers to all of those.
So you haven't started the conversation yet? You just need to -
We are in ongoing conversations. There are other partners who are involved in that and those work streams who are the real subject matter experts. So to answer that entire list, we'll need to get back with them and then get you answers.
All right. Thank you so much. That's it. I'm going to just leave it there. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Minority Leader. Chair recognizes Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad, then Councilmember Rue Landau, then Councilmember O'Rourke. Member Jones, if you hear me, you will have an opportunity to wrap up this first round.
Thank you, Council President. Good morning and thank you for being here and for your testimony. I really have a question about the status of Philadelphia Sexual Assault Resource Center. As you know, this is an essential program with a critical role in our public safety ecosystem. I thank the Council President for starting this hearing talking about domestic violence, talking about -- mostly, this is violence against women. And so, it is very important for me to understand. This essential program plays a critical role in a public safety ecosystem. And I saw from your budget detail on that last year's appropriation was 167,334 and there was no additional appropriation, at least listed. There's a completely empty blank line going down. And I recall the Mayor saying she was going to do $300,000. So I wondered where that's going, how we're looking at this, and most importantly how are we going to handle this PSARC because Drexel University is saying they won't be able to do this anymore as of July so we don't have a lot of time? And this is an essential public safety issue, a public health issue and we really need to pay a lot of attention. So I want to hear from you where that 300,000 that the Mayor said is going, why your entire budget page on has 18 no detail on the proposed 2027 budget. It's all blank. So I don't quite understand where to look for this.
Good morning. My name is Crystal Yates- Gale, Deputy Managing Director of Health and Human Services. Good morning, Councilmember Ahmad. We know, as you know, how important the Philadelphia Sexual Assault Response Center is, and there is a transition from Drexel to TBD, meaning we have an RFP that we're planning to put out to do those services, but those services will be included in the Department of Public Health's budget for Fiscal Year '27 because we do see it as a public health issue. For Fiscal '26, Managing Director's Office covered it, but that full amount of money will be in the Health Department's budget.
I will get back to you with the number. I don't want to quote a number that I'm not positive of. But I'm pretty certain it is the 300,000, but I'll definitely get back to you.
Yes, the RFP is for that. As you are also aware, some of the money that will take care of PSARC comes from the Victims Fund, so some of that money is reimbursable. We don't know what that dollar figure is today, but some of it is reimbursable.
I also want to alert you about the need for SANE nurses. They're specially-trained nurses. So whatever -- I don't know what the RFP is going to look like, but we need to have a dedicated space, we need to have dedicated people, we need to make sure the reimbursement -- that PCCD does not cover all the activities that are needed to serve our clients. So I want you to be very detailed in how that money is coming down. And the fact that we haven't paid attention to it is a travesty, in my opinion, that the City of Philadelphia really has not been engaged in this space and we left it up to a hospital. And we need our hospitals to pay into this as well, because they are required by law to give these services and they have nicely just said, oh, the SANE nurses from Drexel will do it. So I want to know how we are holding them accountable, what they are putting into this pot. We need attention to this matter is really what I'm getting at. So I look forward to getting more details from you as to what this is. Council President, I'll hold my questions for the -- you're going to have a second round, right?
I'll just hold my questions. Thank you so much. Thank you all.
You're welcome. Chair recognizes Councilmember Rue Landau, Nicolas O'Rourke, then Councilmembers Lozada and Phillips.
Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for being here. I'm going to try to get some questions out pretty quickly. The first is about PAIFUP funding. The budget for the PAIFUP program, which is the Pennsylvania Immigrant fund, which is a Class 200-contracted third-party provider of legal immigrant defense services, including Nationality Services Center, subcontracting with the Defenders Association, the budget's $950,000 which is the same amount that was allocated last year. Looking at the past year of expenditures, particularly considering the expected increase in need for legal defense and deportation proceedings given the Trump Administration's commitment to ICE raids, deportations and illegal detainers, was the $950,000 sufficient last year? And what analysis was done to protect the expenditures this year to know whether or not 950,000 is sufficient this year?
Councilmember, appreciate the question. The 900,000 was sufficient. And then going forward, that's something that we are trying to track, along with many other people on a daily basis. So we are constantly watching that. And if it's not sufficient, then we would be back to City Council at some point.
Thank you for that. I also want to ask some questions about language access. Can you speak to the status of each agency's language access plans, which we know are required under the code. Do you know when they were last updated? I'm going to start there and move on. I have more.
Councilmember, I think at that level of detail, it's a lot of agencies. We probably would want to get that back to you. If you want an overall brief, Charlie Ellison from OIA is here. They're the ones who administer the program. He can probably do that. And then we can get you the detailed numbers by agency.
Okay. I should tell you that your OIA website shows that the language access plans were last updated in 2017, so I want to know whether or not what's happened in the past five years have they been updated? Does every agency have a language access coordinator? And do they have the resources they need to implement the agency's language access plan? Also, all of the contracts for the language access providers in total add up to $164,000. Can you speak to the providers like Globo and Language Service Associates, how are they selected and if they provide sufficient services to city departments and the public? And again, this is the same amount that was allocated over the past few years, $164,000. Was there any analysis done to see whether or not this needs to be increased? Is this amount sufficient? I kind of want to go back to what our Majority Leader was asking in the beginning here today. As somebody who oversaw two small city agencies, I actually was shielded to the amount of money that was available and moved along the larger departments. And I am continually surprised in these budget hearings how we fund certain things at the highest possible level we can when we've got emergencies that need to be taken care of now. And curious whether or not the city administration as a whole, the cabinet, the Managing Director's Office, really sit down and say things like, hey, we're having an emergency, as our Majority Leader brought up, we have an emergency in the maintenance of our shelter systems. Let's take some of that money now and fix that problem and then see how we can proceed in the future?
Councilmember, I can assure you that we have those conversations constantly. There are a lot of priorities, a lot of things that need to be done and always seemingly finite and challenge resources, which I think is why you see in this proposed budget, Mayor Parker really putting that on point and tackling some of these major issues and also offering other revenue streams potentially to ensure that we can address more priorities. Because you're right, we hear from everybody about all the things that need to be done. Going back to your questions, relevant to language access, I do have Charlie Ellison here and he can give you a brief overview. You asked a lot of important and detailed questions. And also, the language access program is funded at the department level as well. So that's not just in the MDO roll-up, but I can let Charlie give you -- he's really been, you know, to your point about the website, Charlie is still relatively new to the city, not new to this work, very committed to this work and we have him. One of the reasons we're really happy to have him is he is ensuring that we are getting all of that to the right place with the available resources. And then we'll continue that conversation.
Charlie Ellison. I'm our Executive Director for our Office of Immigrant Affairs. Councilmember, your specific questions about language access plans, we know we have a little bit of work to do there in partnership with every city office and agency across the city. The plans that exist are solid offices, put a lot of time and resources to doing them initially, but we do owe some updates all around. We are looking at -- we have a new staff member come on board at OIA, a language access program manager, who will specifically help our Language Access Director take a look at some of those most outdated plans and the ones most in need of updates. Most of those plans though are not nested within MDO. They're actually other city agencies and departments that we will work in partnership with. With regard to the contracts, we actually have all four of our language access contracts out to bid right now. We're in the final stages of the RFP process so I can't give too many details there, but we did a very thorough evaluation to ensure that Philadelphians are getting the meaningful access to language services that they deserve and that we are by law obligated to provide. And just initially, we had a great application of many different national, international as well as a few local business entity contractors that bid for those contracts. And we did a very thorough and are still ongoing through a very thorough evaluation process to make sure that the final vendors that are selected are the best possible vendors that also provide the highest quality services for the right amount of money.
Excellent. Thank you. Will you provide when you get the vendors a plan for exactly when we're going to update all of this? Will you provide all of that to the Chair?
Thank you very much. Chair recognizes Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke, Quetcy Lozada, Anthony Phillips.
Thank you, Mr. President. Good morning, Director Thiel and to the entirety of your team and staff and all those who are here to present today. Thank you for being with us for another budget hearing. I was proud to hear of Mayor Parker's commitment to the Zero Fare program and SEPTA Key Advantage as well in this year's budget. Very excited to hear about it. I wanted to take a moment to that end to express my gratitude to this Administration for that. Also, to the incredible team that actually runs what we should be reminded is a nationally- acclaimed free transit program. It's a big deal. To the transit riders, to the advocates, I think there might be a few still here in the building, who have organized to secure this particular commitment, we want to thank you. Without you doing that work, I think we would not be here as well. But also to our labor partners at D.C. 33 as well as to our partners at D.C. 47, who've been fighting for SEPTA benefits for municipal workers for some time now. This is a major win and it is worth celebrating and to be reminded that we can do amazing things. I did have a few questions about Zero Fare lift-up. My understanding is that the program is -- and Director Carroll, my apologies, good morning to you as well. My understanding is that the program is funded in FY27 and that the Managing Director's Office will continue to evaluate to determine future funding to that end. Can you tell me about what types of evaluations are planned or happening and what criteria will the MDO be looking at to determine the future funding?
So folks may be aware that we have good partners in the research community. Both Georgetown University and the Urban League are conducting evaluations, and I'm hopeful in a matter of weeks, maybe months, we'll have all the evaluations back. One set of measures looked at the implementation of the program. The fact that we were able to leverage data that the city already had at hand, significantly streamlined the rollout of Zero Fare compared to other benefit programs. So that kind of model is something that we're interested in, not just for transportation benefit, but maybe it gives us an opportunity to figure out how to more easily and efficiently distribute benefits, all different natures. The other part is to look at the outcomes. And I think that probably is more to your question, is to understand what the benefit in terms of people's lives, their ability to get employment, their ability to manage their health outcomes, if there's, you know, appointments that they need to go through, just family household outcomes in general. I think when we have that data, we'll be prepared to look at the comparisons between those benefits for the public at large and the investment that we're putting into it, the investment in terms of staff time that SEPTA has put into it and other partners. And then we'll be in a position where we can advocate for what the right size of this might be in the upcoming budgets. But that information is going to be very important. One of the things that made it a challenge in the meantime in this year was because we didn't have that data. So having all that information is going to be the strongest base for the Administration to figure out --
Very good. And kind of in that same sense, I wanted to ask how does Zero Fare partner with local nonprofit partners and other city departments to provide wraparound services to enrollees? And also, how has the MDO ensured that community members with disabilities can be served by Zero Fare in particular?
So I'll take your first question on. I might have to get back to you on the second question. Generally speaking, the Zero Fare program itself takes kind of a light touch in terms of working with community partners. We've identified those we think can be the most supportive in terms of distributing the fare media cards, but also have access to populations we're interested in serving. So once we put together our database, we were able to work with folks we know are engaged in those communities. I think that information will be refined as we get the evaluations back. These organizations have missions we feel like are well aligned with the goals of serving these demographics. So certainly that's something we take into consideration, but we'll have more thoughts about that. I think when we see the evaluations in terms of serving the ADA community, I think this is something that we can look at. I think some of the data we work with is mostly focused on income demographics, but that's something that we might be able to consider and then talking through with SEPTA a little bit where there might be gaps in the services that they provide that are targeted to the ADA goals. That's something we could learn from as well.
Thank you, Director Carroll. I have other thoughts regarding that, but I look forward to hearing from you.
Yes, sir. Sure will. Chair recognizes Councilmember Quetcy Lozada and Councilmember Phillips. Then we'll go into our second round.
Thank you, Council President. Thank you for being with us this morning. I'd like --
Could you speak into the microphone, Member Lozada, please?
Thank you for being with us this morning. I'd like to recognize and share appreciation for the work that I've been able to do over the last year with Crystal Yates-Gale and her team as well as the folks over at DBHIDS and CBH. Thank you so much for your partnership and the work that we've been able to do together. My questions are related to a meeting that I was able to attend on Friday with the HUD Secretary. HUD is positioned to make some drastic changes that would directly impact Philadelphia and our homeless agenda. According to OHS, more than 6000 people are currently housed through a COC program in over 3000 units. I understand that HUD is proposing to put a 30% cap on permanent housing renewals by moving COC dollars to supportive services projects. It could potentially leave thousands of people homeless, in part because permanent housing individuals aren't eligible for transitional housing because they are not homeless technically, right. My questions are the following: Can OHS provide more details about this, including OHS' contingency plan? Does OHS have data on how many people this will impact? What are some of the recommendations that OHS can provide to those who will be impacted? And where are the people who exit CRC supposed to go if we currently don't have enough beds at PSH and are we prepared for all of this?
Thank you for your question. So for part of that, I would have to defer to Law because there are several lawsuits and injunctions going on. And so, I would like our colleagues from Law to talk about that. However, I will say part of even coming up with a plan means that we have to work with our COC board. So I can't speak just as OHS by ourselves, because as part of the continuum of care we actually have a board --
Excuse me. A point of information from Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson.
Point of information. Is the City of Philadelphia a party to any of the litigation notated?
Can we receive a response from the Law Department regarding that because if we're not party to this litigation, I don't see the reason why we're unable to discuss it in this hearing. Thank you.
Thank you. But to clarify, the continuum of care -- we are the lead agency for the continuum of care, but we do not make all the decisions by ourselves. We actually have a HUD alignment committee as part of the continuum, which they have to vote on the decisions that we make on how we're going to submit our application and then that has to be approved by a board.
Just a point of information. I do want to go back to Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson's line of questioning. And so, we're officially requesting Managing Director Adam Thiel that the Law Department provides the Chair and members of Council official response as to if we are or aren't a party to the current litigation, just for the record.
Council President, understood. And we'll work with Law to get that.
Chair recognizes -excuse me one second -- Member Katherine Gilmore Richardson.
I apologize. I'd just like to make an inquiry during the hearing, if we are able to receive that response from the Law Department during this hearing, that would be helpful to the questions that Councilmember Lozada is asking because I'm curious as well. Thank you.
Managing Director Thiel, if we can get that response prior before today's hearing is over, that would be great just for the record.
Council President, I feel confident that request has already gone to the Law Department.
Thank you. The Prevention Diversion and Intake Unit, which has proposed a budget of 4.1, is tasked with stopping individuals from entering the shelter system. The data from 2025 shows that 64% of people entering into shelters were experiencing homelessness for the first time. And we talked a little bit about that on Friday at the HUD meeting as well. OHS aims to provide prevention assistance to 1650 household in Fiscal Year '27. Why is the PDI budget only a small percentage of the overall budget compared to the emergency housing spending, given that 64% of people entering the system are experiencing homelessness for the first time?
So part of it is we are looking at the data on who we need to serve. There are also over 5000 people who are currently experiencing homelessness. So we're trying to balance preventing individuals from entering into homelessness with also addressing those who are currently homeless. But one of the things we are looking at is how we use our prevention services and modifying the program to make sure that we are really addressing those who are entering into homelessness and get to them beforehand, rather than just providing additional services. Not to say that people don't need security deposit assistance, but if the goal is to really prevent homelessness, we want to make sure that we are partnering with our other city colleagues and getting data on who is entering homelessness for the first time so we can target that population specifically.
I know from talking to different partners that the way HUD describes or considers homelessness and the way we consider who is homeless and who's couch-surfing, they're all different. In the course of us looking at our programs, have we been able to better streamline that definition so that we're able to provide the services that need it most?
So currently, we use the HUD definition of homeless, which means that either you're in a place that's not meant for human habitation or at risk of homelessness, depending on the category. But as far as we're looking at a different definition, we're trying not to come up with multiple definitions. But as you heard on Friday, HUD is looking at revisiting that definition as well. So we are still trying to make sure that we are targeting individuals who are literally homeless, rather than trying to come up with a varied definition of homelessness. But we also, in some cases, have to defer to HUD since that is where we get a significant part of our funding from to make sure that we are addressing that. However, there are programs like the Wellness voucher, you know, which is a program that we work with, with the Office of Community Wellness, where we are defining a little bit more of a local definition because that is funding that we do have less requirements than we do with the HUD funding on who we can serve.
I had the opportunity to work with many young people when I was working for some of our local Latino nonprofits. And many of them were experiencing homelessness, but it wasn't the HUD definition of homelessness. And so, in order for us to be able to respond to some of those who are experiencing homelessness, just not that definition, we need to be able to prepare to respond in a way that is local, right. And I think we've not been able to do that, but it's something that we absolutely need to look at, because that number of folks who are entering our systems for the first time may have been homeless for a really long time. We've just not been able to respond.
Absolutely. And if I can add to that, we actually do have a youth demonstration grant through HUD, which is targeted for individuals to and we have access points 4 that are really targeted for that 5 demographic, because we know not 6 all of them will come into the OHS 7 Intake Center. So we do partner 8 with agencies that work with 9 younger individuals and young 10 adults so that we can look at how 11 to serve them differently. 12
My 17 last question, we know that there 18 are individuals who actually are 19 homeless but choose to live on the 20 street because of the conditions of 21 some of our shelters. In this 22 budget, I know that you are looking 23 to identify funds to be able to 24 make those necessary repairs. Can you tell me how you are going to select those facilities that will go first? Is the priority going to be women's shelters, men's shelters, family shelters? What is going to be the priority? How are you going to break down and respond to the needs?
I believe you're speaking about the capital funds that are in the budget, and those are primarily -- or not primarily, those are for the city- owned shelters and those are family shelters and a single shelter as well. Last year in our FY25 budget, we allocated $2 million to the noncity-owned shelters so that they could also provide or do some renovations as well. And they gave to us the list of things that they wanted to be able to improve in their shelters and then they were able to do some of that with that funding.
Thank you, Council President. For Managing Director Thiel, I just wanted you to know that I've been focused this budget season on ensuring that the City of Philadelphia is one of the best cities with delivering services consistently and efficiently and what I'm calling responsive government. So I want to line my questions up with that and I feel like this is the time to get it right in this particular Administration. So I want to see if I can get a commitment from you and your office that across departments residents consistently do not know the timing and timelines often for requests, and our office is often an intermediary to help residents speed up or figure out when a service is going to come and how long is it going to take. Can we get a commitment where you can make sure that all of your offices that provide city services, particularly that is a lot more interfacing with the public, that they can provide a service letter agreement explaining what services they request, how long the request should take from start to finish in terms of completion and then also making sure people are aware of who's responsible for a particular request? If we can get one-pagers from Licenses and Inspections, Streets Department, Water Department. Parks & Rec has a couple of things. If we can start beginning to have that so that we can give out to residents, something your team can work on?
Councilmember, really appreciate that focus. It's one we share, absolutely, and we've been doing a lot of work on it. There's a lot more work to do. Certainly with 311 and our investments in that and trying to get everything joined up through city agencies and beyond, that's one of the real challenges with this. And we heard it with the response to a prior question, the fact that we don't -- a lot of these issues that come in, our infrastructure issues are things we don't directly control and we often have the same questions that our residents have of other partners with whom we have great relationships. A lot of these, our infrastructure is not just complicated. It's complex, because it's aging, because it's essentially all connected or at least adjacent. So the short answer is, yes, we are working on the same things, and trying to get that it's going to be a lot more work because we don't control all those work streams. We don't control a lot of the people that we need, a lot of the entities that we need to do this work. We certainly can commit to getting you those one-pagers. We're doing work in all of those areas, all of those agencies to make sure that they are joined up with 311 and your offices and our neighborhood offices so we're not just getting calls in, that we're getting outputs and outcomes out.
Yeah. I'm even talking about a simple request for a stop sign or traffic light. Often times there's no clear understanding to residents what's the time frame to even do a study and how that even works. And it would be nice if we can just be able to say to a resident, if you requested it on this date, the process is going to be two weeks from now, you'd be a study, after the study, there's going to be a process where they're going to go out and, you know, look, you know, begin to line up, when it needs to be lined up, but it just needs to be very clear to them. And then my last question, Council President, just for this round, I also just want to really emphasize I guess the importance of ACCT. We have a lot of residents in the City of Philadelphia who are reporting cats, sometimes dogs, but mostly cats that are stray cats. And I'm getting reports frequently that sometimes ACCT is not able to, for whatever reason, collect these cats and put them into shelter. Is that a policy that could be potentially looked at? But I'm just trying to figure out why can stray cats not be picked up immediately, especially if they're pervasive around a neighborhood and they're causing a nuisance.
Councilman, I'll ask Sarah Barnett to come up again to talk about the cats. And we certainly can do a better job of explaining the process and all of the different things that are involved in getting some of these issues addressed. And that is a great idea and something we'll have everybody get put together. We have some of that behind the scenes. It's a great idea to get that out front so people can see, okay, exactly why is this a complicated process, what happens. So we thank you for that.
Absolutely. Because I would rather not have to call you all about why is this not done. I would rather refer back to a document in saying, hey, if they haven't met the association by that time, I'll call you, because now you're just getting these frantic calls from different Reps, State Reps, Senators, City Councilmembers when you can at least have an orderly process. And right now it's so unorderly and that way -- so thank you for recognizing that. Go ahead, ACCT. I'm sorry.
I didn't even know the Northwest has cats, but that's a different conversation. It's a middle neighborhood.
So I'm the Executive Director of ACCT Philly. My name's Sarah Barnett --
Could you just state your name for the record and please speak into the microphone please?
Sorry. My name is Sarah Barnett. I'm the Executive Director of ACCT Philly. And we do take in about 11,000 cats a year, so there are a lot of cats in Philly. To answer your question, Councilmember Phillips, I know we've talked about this. I understand people would love for there to be a magic solution where we can just go and every stray cat we pick up and take away to the shelter and adopt out. Over the years, what animal welfare organizations discovered was, especially in areas that are underresourced, these are often individuals' owned pets. So not everyone has an indoor cat. Some of them are indoor, outdoor cats and they may be loved, even though they maybe not indoor cats like some people want them to be. So we don't want to take away somebody's pet and just have them disappear. So we will come out and we will address sick cats, injured cats, but we do not pick up healthy cats. And if we get healthy cats in that are brought in as strays, we do spay and neuter them so they don't continue to contribute to overpopulation so that the number of cats eventually does go down, but then we do put them back in the area they were found. Because if you have areas -- for example, I know one of the situations you spoke with us about there were like cats 20 outside that somebody was feeding. So in those scenarios, we want to go and talk to the person who's feeding them about ensuring they're all spayed or neutered. Because if you were to go and just simply pick up all cats and take them away, you'd actually be surprised how quickly, like 40 more cats will fill in because it's like a gap. So by putting back a cat that is spayed or neutered, it's almost like a placeholder that isn't going to contribute longer term to more cats, until that cat eventually passes. But we are, as I mentioned, you know, we offer TNR, Trap New to Return, which is a free service to the community for if there are cats in their area that they want to trap, bring in and get fixed and pick up and take home. So those caretakers have avenues to be able to responsibly feed these cats, because most scenarios where we're getting complaints about cleanliness, issues of smell or things like that, the issue isn't the cats just being there. The issue is the cats are not spayed or neutered, and that's what's causing all those other problems. So that is why we have that as our approach.
Thank you, Council President. I just wanted to quickly say that that's what a lot of residents are noting. If you can clearly write out a service letter agreement that will help people understand even that process would be better. And, number two, wouldn't it be -- I'll say it for the second round, but I just want to suggest even if it's a healthy cat, even if you collected that cat and then residents now know if you have a missing cat that's been around for weeks now at this point, we now have them, come get them. It's better than to be terrorizing a neighborhood. And I'm not sure why that's not the policy because people -- it's just something for us to think about. I do appreciate you working with us. I meant to tell you that. But it's also important for us to really look into this policy in a much better way. Thank you, Council President.
Thank you, Member Dr. Anthony Phillips. We're going to go briefly into the second round until we break for lunch. I have a question for the Office of Homeless Services. I want to start off with an issue that's very near and dear to me. That's with minority participation, M/W/DSBE participation. Contracts were 53% in FY26. But for me, what's mindboggling is that it's down from 70% in FY25 and 77% in FY23. So give me an idea why we're going in the wrong direction when it comes to Black and Brown and women businesses having an opportunity to participate in the million dollars of contracts that's provided through the Office of Homeless Services?
I would have to get back to you on that. I don't have that information in front of me. I would have to be able to look at the contracts that we've had, the RFPs that we've had and then what has been the participation and response from that.
Y'all definitely coming back. We would like to get a full understanding. Because when you talk about -- now we're the second largest, poorest, biggest city in America, right, making some progress, but I'm a firm believer that we will never eliminate the issue of poverty if we aren't building generational wealth. And the only way we build generational wealth is by us being intentional. I know that's the mission of the Mayor. I know it's definitely a mission of mine as it relates to the work that we provide here in the City of Philadelphia. So if you could provide that information to the Chair prior to either the closing of this hearing today or when we actually do the callback. But before we actually decide to vote on the budget, we should all be clear what we're doing in terms of addressing the issue of participation as it relates to the Office of Homeless Services, if that's okay with you.
The other question I have is another issue near and dear to me, what is the current number of medical respite beds available across all OHS-contracted facilities? How our medical respite clients currently triaged referred to in the system? And the winter funding initiative such as 180,000 for the Bethesda Project Trinity Winter Respite or 135,000-plus for (inaudible) Code Blue appears temporary. How do we make that year-round?
Thank you. So for the first question, the medical respite actually isn't funded through OHS. That is primarily funded through hospitals or other medical services. We do have a small portion of the budget in one of the medical respites, but that is not an OHS-funded project right now. However, a lot of our shelters, and I can get you that number this afternoon during our hearing, actually does have medical services there, which is slightly different than a medical respite that has more round-the-clock services. When we added the shelter beds to shelter bed expansion, the winter beds were also included. So to answer your second question, the beds that open during the winter are now going to be long-term beds as well. And during this process, we are also adding medical services onsite at some of those locations. So, for example, Hope 220, which opened during the winter, has onsite medical services provided by Jefferson. We also partner with -- Project HOME is expanding services at Sacred Heart, which we currently have a contract with, and they partner with three major hospital systems to provide medical services there as well. So we are looking at a variety of opportunities like that at the different shelter services. But all of the new shelters that we're bringing onsite also will have onsite behavioral health services that are provided as well. So we're looking to do it a little bit different, but all of them are -- not all of our shelters, but a lot of our shelters have various levels of medical services and we're just looking to see how we can expand that.
What's our role -- I think it's PHMC that provides the respite beds now, right?
What is the role of your office with their office to make sure we're coordinating the level of support for homeless individuals for respite beds?
We have a portion of the contract. We have about a $50,000 contract with PHMC for that program. But again, majority of that funding comes through the hospitals or some other health care services with them.
So if we do fund PHMC to expand respite beds across the City of Philadelphia, what would your role play in that? Nothing at all.
We partner with PHMC on shelter services and other services throughout our shelter system. So it would either potentially be an expansion of the current contract that we have with them or if it was a new program, we would RFP it out to allow for any providers that wanted to be able to provide those services.
Okay. I'll come back to my last question. Chair recognizes Councilmember Jim Harrity, then Councilmembers Rue Landau, O'Rourke and Lozada.
Thank you, Council President. Good morning or good afternoon again. The way 311 operates makes it difficult for our City Council constituent service to follow cases brought to us through to some resolution. Have any updates been made in the FY26 to address this? How will the changes in FY27 impact the current process here? I asked this when we had OIT testifying. The city is launching a new 311 app, but residents who are most likely to need 311 services are often the same residents that are least likely to have smartphone access. What is OIT doing to ensure the new app doesn't widen that gap? And are there investments in FY27 to maintain, improve nondigital 311 access for those residents?
Thank you for that question, Councilmember. And as you stated, 311 -- my name is Aubrey Powers, Deputy Managing Director for Community Services. And as you stated, in collaboration with the Office of Innovation and Technology, we are very excited in reference to the mobile app, which we will be standing up this summer. That app is going to provide some really tremendous functionality for the residents, businesses and visitors here in Philadelphia in terms of being able to make your request, in terms of being able to follow that terminology, just as you just suggested, in terms of where the case is. It's also going to have some other tremendous features in terms of really AI-generated features. When you make a service request, you're going to be able to upload that photo, circle exactly where the issue is so that we're all seeing the same thing. If you ever ask the question are you seeing what I'm seeing, the answer will be yes. We'll be able to see that same request. Something else that 311 is doing, and again this is also in collaboration with the Office of Innovation and Technology, what you're going to see beginning in May of 2026 through January of 2027 is really going to be a sort of system-wide enterprise evaluation, bringing all of our departments together looking at all of those workflows, so we can really get an idea of what the necessary requirements are as we look to really how can we better stand up a customer relations management system or improve basically 311 database. It's a very exciting time, because right now we will have the opportunity for the technology to meet the operational need. Currently, as you know, 311 in calendar year 2025 took over 277 service requests, took over another 260,000 information requests, which is a tremendous amount of work on behalf of that team. So what we're also doing is recently we have done with our staffing around-the-clock 8 activations of the 311 center. For 9 example, we are currently 10 supporting the Grays Ferry 11 collapse, ensuring that our team is 12 necessary for any resident that may 13 have a need, that they can move 14 forward and make that call. 15 So it's not going to be 16 one thing. It's going to be a 17 number of things that we're going 18 to be doing, not only 311, but of 19 course in collaboration with our 20 systems partners and with the city 21 to ensure that our residents are 22 getting the absolute best service 23 possible. 24
Thank you, sir. And just to members, if you want to take advantage of asking questions of everyone other than OHS, I would advise you to take advantage of that now because you will have all afternoon as well after lunch to ask questions of OHS. And so, you can kind of space out your time, if need be. I have to go to Councilmember Jamie Gauthier first because her button wasn't working and she didn't get a chance to participate in the first round. And then have Councilmembers Rue Landau, O'Rourke and Phillips.
Good afternoon, everybody. My first set of questions are for OTIS. I'd like to take a moment to ask about our investments in Vision Zero. Your budget testimony focuses on how this is the first year implementing the Vision Zero 2030 action plan. But I only see 5 million in capital funding allocated in FY27. And I know that a lot of this work is funded through grants as well, but I don't think we'll ever be able to apply proven interventions at scale if this is the type of investment that we're going to make on an annual basis. One way that we can get our communities traffic safety interventions at scale is fast- tracking the implementation of neighborhood slow zones. But when I've asked about this in the past, OTIS has said that you only have staffing capacity to implement one neighborhood slow zone per year. Our communities don't always want us to redesign their streets, but the Neighborhood Slow Zone Program is one that neighborhoods demand by the dozens, and I think that we're choosing to let that energy and interest sit on the shelf if we're only going to carry out one per year. This is the sort of problem that we can solve. And so, why are we letting slow zone demand languish when this is probably the most affordable way to do bulk traffic safety improvements across entire neighborhoods?
Thank you, Councilmember. Mike Carroll, Deputy Managing Director for OTIS. So just to get to the larger question, I think I subscribed to the perspective that you've always got an opportunity to incorporate safety improvements in everything you do. And the approach I would take to scaling up the work of Vision Zero is to really lean into that. So whether it's paving improvements or corridor improvements or streetlighting improvements, there's always a chance to add more to the safety outcomes to get the benefit you're looking for. With respect to the slow zone program, very happy with that program, very proud of the results. It's key though for that program to work the way it's intended to work, to make sure that there's a lot of touchpoints with communities and that's part of the beauty, is that we're not just kind of rushing forward and telling people here's what you're going to do like we're the experts, we know best. We want to have conversations and dialogue with the people who live there and then take some time to process the feedback that we get to really figure out specifically what measures are going to work best there. So, I mean, it's a little bit of a difference between kind of going to the drugstore and seeing the doctor. If we were just kind of just pushing stuff out the door, it would be easier to scale it up. But because we really want to be intentional in the way that we work with communities, we do want to take the care to add that extra level of attention, which makes it a little bit more hard to scale that up.
I agree with you. This is a program where we dig deep, we do a lot of engagement, but that's the type of work we should be doing, right. And so, why are we limiting ourselves to doing one a year when there's clearly a thirst for this? We get so many applications and have to tell people that we can't move forward on their applications on any given year. I'll also say, and this is me editorializing, I think a lot of the reason why we sometimes get protest on bike lanes, especially parking protected bike lanes, is that Black and Brown communities in particular feel like they've been asking for traffic safety interventions for a long time that haven't been granted by the city. And so, when we come and we want to do the parking protected bike lane, they don't think that's for them. This is a way that we can build trust. This is a way that we can engage folks about what safety looks like in their neighborhoods, and we should be willing to hire the staff to do that more.
I certainly appreciate all your insights, and that's something we'll continue to work with your team and others around the city to figure out how we can do more.
Thank you very much. Chair recognizes Councilmember Rue Landau, then Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke, then Councilmember Phillips.
Thank you. So as you know, I have been advocating for the expansion of student fares, student SEPTA fares. I had a press conference this morning. The SEPTA cards that the students get are only for students who live 1.5 miles from their schools. They're limited on hours and they don't work on weekends or on any days that there is a holiday. Students have to get to work for their jobs after school, they have to get to their internships, they do their community service. All of their extracurricular activities often don't fit within these parameters. Is the Administration open to considering this expansion of hours and times and days, of course in partnership with the School District of Philadelphia and SEPTA?
So I think the Administration is always looking for ways to support families and youth engaged in their activities. And certainly, the Administration has made historic investments in SEPTA. I mean, we're looking at about $1 billion, just shy of $1 billion. We want to make sure that the money that we and the other counties in the state provide for SEPTA is delivered flexibly enough that SEPTA can address a lot of immediate needs, including needs around safety and security that we know that many in Council are concerned about, state of good repair, the general operations. I think what you're asking for is very interesting and it's certainly worth a closer look. A lot of those types of investments already flow from the state through SEPTA and -- I'm sorry, through the district and are provided to SEPTA. So we definitely want to be involved in those conversations to see how we can maximize the benefit for the students like you're saying.
Thank you. I'm going to take that as support. I'm going to take that as a positive, supportive answer. We cannot have our young people prepared for the future if we don't allow them to really just experience all of it. We've got institutions opening their doors to our young people and we got to get them there, get them safely, get them on time and get them home. Thank you. While you're here, I also wanted to ask you about bike racks. Based on a right-to-know request by bicycle advocates revealed that from 2014 to 2024, only 30% of bicycle rack applications were built, with no 21 racks being built in 2024. So here's my questions: How many bike racks and corrals have been built in the last 10 years? How do those numbers compare to the Streets Department's goals for the program? When was the last time that the permitting requirements for racks and corrals were updated for RAC applications that require a 90-day review and site inspection period? What percentage of applications received the site inspection within 90 days? And is there enough funding allocated next year to ensure that there's enough resources to complete the bicycle rack and corral process for the volume of applications you receive?
Councilmember, I feel like I've got a very healthy research agenda for the next little bit, but we'll get back to you with all that information.
Thank you. Chair recognizes Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke, and wrapping us up will be Councilmember Dr. Anthony Phillips.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to ask Deputy Director Palantino, if you can come. I had a question about the African American Museum. Good afternoon to you. I wanted to check in on the status of this project. As I understand it, the city has committed $50 million to relocate and renovate the museum. Can you provide a status update on the project? What are the primary challenges to making the progress on the museum?
Excuse me. Just a point of information. Could you say the name of the museum again please?
Good afternoon. Aparna Palantino, Deputy Managing Director for Capital Program Office. Councilmember O'Rourke, I'll have to get back to you on that. I'm not directly involved in that project, but I can get you that information.
Okay. Yes, I would definitely love that. Thank you very, very much. And this other question was for Director Carroll. I'm sorry. It's probably been asked or in different angles, but I'll still put mine on the record. In the latest Vision Zero Action Plan, the Mayor's office has a goal to place safety improvements on every mile of the Highway Injury Network by 2030. I know that we talked about other components as well, but I don't know if we talked about the holistic piece. I assume that includes bike lanes, but not only just the bike lanes. Are you on track to meet that particular goal of having the improvements on every mile by 2030? And then if not or if you feel like you are but could use some help, what help do you need from this particular body to actually meet those targets?
I think we're off to a good start. I mean, this is a pretty new goal we've got. There's been good conversations between the Streets Department and folks in OTIS and other affected departments. And as you mentioned, these measures can take all different kinds of forms. Sometimes it will be bike lanes. Sometimes it'll be improvements at intersections. Sometimes it will be other traffic-calming measures. And you know, we've got a good toolbox to work with, so matching those tools to individual segments of these corridors is some of the work that we're involved in now. We have to get into design and then we'll be sprinting towards the finish line as we're implementing these things in later years.
Thank you very much. Chair recognizes Councilmember Dr. Anthony Phillips.
Thank you, Council President. Managing Director Thiel, I want to thank you for acknowledging the importance of service letter agreements. I hope that we can come up with a timeline for the execution of those because our residents would like to know when a request comes in, from start to finish when things are going to be completed. Also, Managing Director, part of your role is to plan, coordinate and implement strategic initiatives that involve multiple departments. We noticed recently that the Streets Department and the Water Department are not coordinating their communication as well when it comes to removing of street repaving. There's been no 24 numerous occasions where the Water Department would often come in and do a repair that was a construction. But then the Streets came in and they were also supposed to repave at the same time. There's a mess of communication once you repave the street and then you have to dig it back up. How are you working to ensure that communication is better between Streets and Water? The second question involves, we have a 25,000 to 30,000 backlog of trees in the City of Philadelphia. Are you working with our Commissioner to coordinate, right, Managing Director, a strategy of what we need to get down this number of trees that are hazardous, that need to be pruned or cut? And then also 311, as mentioned it needs coordination between the Office of Innovation and Technology and also 311, and all the other departments need to strategize on how 311 works together. What are you doing to come up with a strategic plan to address those things and make sure these departments are working together, Managing Director? Thank you.
Councilmember, appreciate the questions. And again, we're on the same page with this. You've seen with a lot of the initiatives we've talked about our ability to get all of our departments and MDO and other city departments as well as state and federal partners together and coordinated to execute big projects like Riverview, like ending street homelessness and on and on and on. That said, we know there's more work to be done. Let me add to what Deputy Managing Director Powers said about 311, which continues to be a focus area from a technology standpoint. And I am still -- and I appreciated the mention of the earlier question too. I'm still old school enough that I think face-to-face interactions are important and being able to provide that for residents. So 311 is becoming more and more tightly integrated with our neighborhood community action centers, what Anton Moore is doing, so we make sure that people can have multiple ways to get in. 311 is really a call center. And as we've been working with all city departments, and Mike talked about the way that we get Streets and Water coordinated with the databases and trying to make that interaction work, we're going to have to continue to do that. And it's literally a daily 24/7, 365 activity to coordinate those departments. We have 35 alone just in MDO, departments, programs, offices and activities, plus all the other city and state partners. So we're going to continue to work on, not just from a technology standpoint, but making sure that we have that human front door to everything, and then again implementing your great idea about being able to, if nothing else, hand somebody a piece of paper that says, these are the steps in the process so this is why it's going to take a minute to get back to you and this is when you can't anticipate having resolution. I'm going to let Mike hit the Streets and Water part, and then we have Commissioner Slawson to talk about the trees.
Thank you, Councilmember. So as the Managing Director reiterated, and I had mentioned before, I think at the planning level there are good tools where we're looking at some things that we can do to refine those tools. You know, just reflecting over the last few months there have been some strains between the capacity of the Streets Department and the Water Department to work, especially around emergency situations. So cave-ins always kinds of throw a monkey wrench into things. If there's a water main break, a significant break that needs emergency responses to -- especially as we saw over the latter part of the winter, whether that coincides with when the Streets Department is fully deployed in the snow-fighting operation. We do have good systems in place I think, and I think we have to make the distinction between the coordination that takes place pretty much on a day-by-day basis between the Streets Department and the Water Department on an internal basis. I think one of the points you made earlier, which I think we all agree with, is getting that information in front of people so they know what to expect between the time something is broken and when it's fixed and when it's going to be fixed and when that handoff takes place between the Streets Department and the Water Department. I want to point out one other thing, and this is not always transparent to constituents and I know it's not always transparent to folks in Council, and frankly sometimes it's not always transparent to folks in the Administration, but a good deal of time people will see something like a PWD or Streets Department cone in the street, and naturally you assume that the city is at work there. Unfortunately, a lot of times that's not the city. It's a private contractor. It could be a plumber. The work could be water infrastructure. But we do have to step our inspection regime and our follow-up to make sure that we're holding these private contractors in the street accountable to the schedules and the quality of the work that they do and the good housekeeping that they do, and to make sure that they follow up, to make sure when they are done, the street is restored. So some of the work that we talked about with Councilmember Bass, including these moratoriums and these controls, this is something we probably have to step up our game around and we're working to do that right now.
Thank you. I don't -- the Commissioner is fine. I just want to see if you can provide a set of eyes and support, because I think she recognizes how important it is. But I just think the strategic plan for the trees is just as important. Thank you, Deputy Director Carroll. I do want to mention real quickly, and I just have to mention how important this is, we do have to do a better job at figuring out how to make sure residents understand when they're going to get information, get to get things done completely. And I feel like if you could with your team, really reflect on how do you work with us to make sure residents know when things are going to be completed and also the steps that go into that. So the service letter agreements are a step forward. I'm glad you agree that that's important. I just hope that by the time, some time soon, we can do that across every single department in the City of Philadelphia. And we'll talk more about 311, because that's incredibly important that it begins to look like a dashboard similar to Amazon and DoorDash, and I think that should be an incredible priority for the rest of the year, amongst some other things. So thank you so much, Council President.
Thank you. Anybody else responding to your question, sir?
Okay. Because we are not giving the Commissioner of Parks & Rec a hard time today. We're protecting her at all costs. Any other questions or comments from members of the committee? (No response.)
Hearing none, I want to thank all of you for your time this afternoon. We have Office of Homeless Services. And if members don't have any additional questions to the Office of the Managing Director -- you're required to give us back some additional information. So I'm just going to ask could you just come back to provide that information so we can wrap up, though we're primarily responsible for dealing with the Office of Human Services?
Yes, Council President. I'm not sure we'll be able to have answers to all of those things. Certainly, the brief from Law hopefully --
Let's do it this way: We officially have you on callback at a later date. And so, the information that you were able to provide for today, let's get that information today and then we'll see you in the future before we actually go into budget deliberations officially regarding the information.
Thank you very much. We will be back at 1:45. Council of the Whole will be at ease. (Lunch recess.)
We will resume the Committee of the Whole at this time. I'm going to ask Helen Loughead to please call up the next panel.
The next panel to testify is Cheryl Hill, Executive Director for the Office of Homeless Services, also joined by David Holloman, Chief of Staff for OHS and Crystal Yates-Gale, Deputy Managing Director.
Before I get started, I want to thank you, Cheryl and also David Holloman, for being supportive and working with my team, with our working group on homelessness here in the City of Philadelphia. I want to also acknowledge Candice Player from Project HOME. Thank you for leading the efforts as we work toward ending homelessness here in the city of Philadelphia, making sure all of our agencies aren't working in silos and really making sure whatever we can do to be effective in addressing this issue, we're doing so as we move the City of Philadelphia forward. And so, with that being said just state your name for the record and please begin your testimony.
Thank you. My name is Cheryl Hill, Executive Director of the Office of Homeless Services. Good afternoon, Council President Johnson and members of City Council. I proudly serve as the Executive Director of the Office of Homeless Services. Joining me today are David Holloman, OHS Chief of Staff, Crystal Yates-Gale, Deputy Managing Director, along with the dedicated staff of OHS, both here today and those across the city working every day to serve our most vulnerable residents as we reflect on the past year and look forward to FY27. I want to begin with both gratitude and urgency, gratitude for the progress we have made together and urgency for the work that remains ahead. This year's Point-in-Time Count reminded us of a simple but powerful truth we all count. That theme reflects not only the individuals and the families we serve, but our collective responsibility as a city. And while the work is far from finished, our data shows meaningful progress. According to the 2026 Point-In-Time Count, which we completed in February, our unsheltered population has decreased to 711 individuals. We believe that we can directly attribute this decrease to the expanded access to shelter, such as those made possible through the intergovernmental collaboration proposed in Mayor Cherelle Parker's Executive Order 725, One Philly response to end street homelessness. In FY26, OHS continues to strengthen a system grounded in the belief that homelessness is not just a housing issue, it's a public health issue. We expanded partnerships, enhanced coordination across city and health systems and increase transparency and accountability in how we operate. We improve monitoring across our programs, made targeted investment in both emergency response and long-term housing solutions and deepen our focus on outcomes. That is why our Fiscal Year '27 plan is intentionally aligned with Mayor's One Philly vision and Executive Order 725, which commits the city to ending street homelessness by reaching functional zero, meaning every person sleeping outdoors has a clear, immediate pathway to shelter. To support this goal in FY27, OHS is advancing a comprehensive strategy. First, we plan to maintain success of our expanded shelter capacity. The city committed to adding 1000 shelter beds to our existing 2859 beds. To date, 785 beds have been brought online, with another 175 family shelter beds opening within the coming weeks. In addition to adding shelter beds, we are intensifying our commitment to a service-driven approach. Each new shelter will include onsite behavior health support and some sites will include onsite medical services through partnerships with Temple Health, Jefferson Health or Penn Medicine. We are also able to expand the hours at the Hub of Hope to 8 hours a day. 9 Located in Suburban 10 Station, the Hub of Hope provides 11 meals, showers, laundry and medical 12 services for people experiencing homelessness. This expansion of services also includes an encampment resolution team and the establishment of the One Philly Ambassadors of Hope in Old City, which complements and extends the great work of the Center City District's Ambassadors of Hope. Second, we are continuing to improve quality. We are strengthening physical conditions across our shelter system, enhancing service delivery standards and providing targeted technical assistance to our service providers. Our goal is to ensure that every site operates with dignity, safety and trauma- informed, client-centered approach. And finally, we are strengthening partnerships. This work cannot be done in isolation. We are leveraging collaboration with city departments, service providers, health systems and the Philadelphia Housing Authority to expand access to care, treatment and housing. The progress we have made is real, but so is the work ahead. As you consider this budget, I ask you to not only see the needs of our system, but the momentum we are building.
We are creating a more coordinated, more accountable and more responsive system, one that's aligned with the One Philly vision and grounded in the belief that we all count. Thank you for this opportunity to present testimony on the behalf of Office of Homeless Services Fiscal Year 2027 operating budget. I look forward to your questions.
Thank you very much. Chair recognizes Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Council President. Thank you all so much. I'm going to start with our thank- yous to Cheryl Hill, to David Holloman. Bruce Johnson, thank you. I want to say a special thank-you to Bruce because he's very responsive and always follows up on our cases. Fred Gigliotti, Loretta Epps, who is often working very, very hard with us on our constituent cases, of which we receive so many now. And Yolanda Fitzgerald, social worker with Office of Homeless Services. And these thank-yous come from my staff, who work with your team throughout the year to help our constituents. So I wanted to start there. I wanted to get all my questions on the record, if that was okay, Council President, and then await a response at today's hearing. And so, in 2018 the Office of Homeless Services released your Roadmap to Homes, which is a strategic plan to make homelessness rare, brief and non-reoccurring and implement a Housing First model. Since that report was released, City Council has increased OHS' General Fund allocation for emergency shelter by $24 million and your overall General Fund budget by $38 million. In 2018, federal, state and local dollars for homelessness totaled $85 million. In this year's proposed budget for Fiscal Year '27, the total is now $156.4 million, which is an increase of $71 million. In Fiscal Year 2022 OHS data snapshot, the housing inventory count states that there were 3725 emergency shelter beds available year-round. The 2025 PIT Count Report that was submitted from your Office to HUD stated that there were 3863 emergency shelter beds available, which that would be an increase of 138 beds. The number of safe haven beds has stayed flat at around 250. And so, for the record after City Council increased the investment in emergency shelter by $24 million, how many new beds have been created? My second question is -- and I'm very happy about this. I want to thank Crystal Yates-Gale for this work as well. But I'm glad to see that 97 contracts starting on July 1st of 2025 have been conformed. For the record, how many of these contracts were conformed before August 1st of 2025? How many were conformed in Quarter 1? How many were conformed in Quarter 2? And how many were conformed in Quarter 3? My third question is, in the FY26 Main State ACES Match spreadsheet that you all -- thank you very much for providing the spreadsheet to my office. It states that there was $62.9 million in FY26 General Funds according to the budget document. But there is $70.8 million in General Fund obligations in ACES and according to the FY27 detail, there was $60.4 million budgeted for emergency shelter. And that would be in Class 200 in FY26 and an estimated obligation of $59 million, if you could explain there. And I heard the bell and I will honor the clock, but I wanted to also get these two questions on. Around the 1000-bed expansion, the stated decision behind the 1000-bed expansion is that there were 1178 unsheltered individuals during the January 2025 PIT Count. At that time of the PIT Count, how many beds were offline and how many were available and unfilled? And during the PIT Count, do you ask individuals why they are unsheltered?
Thank you for your questions. And sorry, I didn't get all of them. But for some of the fiscal questions, I think it might be better to give them to you in writing, unless you want to repeat some of them. I got some of them, but not all of them.
Sure. I'll just start with this one. I'll repeat it, if that's okay with you, Council President?
Thank you. In 2018, OHS released your Roadmap to Homes, a strategic plan to make homelessness rare, brief and non-reoccurring and implement a Housing First model. Since that report was released, City Council has increased the Office of Homeless Services General Fund allocation for emergency shelter by $24 million and your overall General Fund budget by $38 million. In 2018, the federal, state and local dollars for homelessness totaled $85 million. Fiscal Year '27 proposed total is $156.4 million, which is an increase of $71 million. In Fiscal Year '22 OHS data snapshot, the housing inventory count states that there were 3725 emergency shelter beds available year-round. The 2025 PIT Count that you all submitted to HUD stated that there were 3863 emergency shelter beds available, which would be an increase of 138 beds. The number of safe haven beds has stayed flat at around 250. So for the record, after City Council increased the investment in emergency shelter by $24 million, how many new beds have been created?
Thank you. And so, from '22 to '27 I would have to get you in writing what the exact increase was. But to explain our data that we report to HUD, not all of that is OHS or city-funded shelters. It includes privately- funded shelters as well. In addition, the safe havens are not funded by OHS. They are currently under DBHIDS as a program. But if you're asking specifically about the OHS-funded shelters, we'll be able to get you that in writing.
Sure. And I think what will be important to that is what I'm seeking to showcase, based on the data that we have received from your office, and since 2018 if you include the federal, state and local dollars for homelessness, there's been an increase of $71 million. However, the numbers have not changed greatly. So I guess the question is, with the increase of the 71 million what did that get us relative to our overall picture around homelessness?
Thank you. So part of the increase also was just increase in cost of services. So for example, all of our shelter providers have to abide by the city's minimum wage as well. So every time that increased, we would give an increase when we could give an increase to the providers. In addition to that, there are just other additional services that are in there that aren't necessarily shelter beds. So for example, in our emergency housing division, the Hub of Hope, as an example, is funded through that. Grace Cafe, I believe, is also one of the programs that is funded through that program as well. It also includes transitional housing in there as well. So there are a variety of different services that are in our budget. In addition, our prevention, diversion and intake, which is a program that we have designed so that people do not enter homelessness, is part of the OHS budget. And then we have permanent housing that is also included that wouldn't be part of that shelter count.
Thank you. If you could just address the second question, and I'll come back on the next round, around the 97 contracts that have been conformed, starting on July 1st of 2025. For the record, how many of those contracts were conformed before August 1st of 2025? And if you could break that down by quarter. So for Quarter 1, Quarter 2 and Quarter 3?
If I don't have that information in here, and we have a lot of information, I will give that to you in writing. So I believe I would have to get it to you in writing. What I do have is the average by quarter on the days that it took for us to do a contract, but we've been running a cumulative total, so I'll be able to get that to you in writing.
Thank you. I'll come back on the second round. Thank you, Council President.
You're welcome. Chair recognizes Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad, then Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke.
Thank you so much, Council President. Good afternoon. Thank you all and thank you so much for the work you do in this difficult space. We appreciate it. But we're trying to get maximum efficiency to serve those most in need. And this is where these questions come from. This is a very global question about addressing homelessness as a whole, right. I see those numbers unsheltered households, meaning this is actual families. What does unsheltered households mean?
It's actually unsheltered individuals. It says households, but that count is the unsheltered individuals.
Individuals, which means we have gone down to 711 people?
Okay. What is our total population approximately if it's not -- on average in the city of Philadelphia right now?
Everybody who's unhoused, what is our number now? I heard 3000-something, right, from Kathy, from my colleague. But what is the total number of unhoused people in the City of Philadelphia today? And I know it has to be approximate.
Unsheltered means those who haven't taken shelter or received anything but are unhoused totally, yes.
We have not completed the Point-In-Time Count data for 2026, but our unsheltered number, and apologies, I am -- it's approximately 4000, but I can get you the exact number.
Yeah. So this is 4000 people who don't have permanent housing. They might be in shelters, they might be on the street, but that's how many approximately --
And so, my question is, I heard a lot of numbers about how much is being invested in this space and it still seems to not be enough. And my question is, with all these different agencies in sort of intersecting DBHIDS, DHS, you and other housing solutions, how have we not come up with one plan that starts with somebody who's unhoused to getting them into permanent housing as a wraparound service model that follows a person from the time they are unhoused. So you can group people -- either they have some kind of immediate situation that puts them into being unhoused like a medical emergency, but they have no other issues, per se, then you have people who have mental health disorders and then you have mental health and substance abuse. You can probably do categories of who are our unhoused folks. If you stream them and say, what do we need for each of these kinds of type of people to get them into permanent housing, what are the resources, can we not in the City of Philadelphia, the amount of money we're spending, personally have navigators for these people to navigate them out to personal permanent housing? I just want to know globally why are we so head-up on saying more 1000 beds here, more 1000 beds there instead of saying, how do we end this, how do we take someone who's unhoused. Nobody wants to be unhoused. How do we work through this to get them into permanent housing and permanently off our rolls so we can address what else is coming down the pike. I just want a global sort of principle behind the work you do.
Thank you. And I think part of the issue is there's not a one-size-fit-all answer. It really does depend on the needs of the person, which is why we are looking at a variety of strategies based on what models would work for an individual person, because what works for you may not work for me. But one of the things we are currently undertaking is we're looking at updating our strategic plan. We are working with a consultant right now when we brought in service providers who brought in people with lived experience to try to get a better understanding of what the needs are. We are also trying to track the data a lot better. So actually we just transitioned to a new homeless management information system so that we can track what is happening with people, what's working, what's not working so that we can get people housed. There's a variety of different housing models or philosophies on what is the best way to do it, but what we've found is just looking at and being able to really try to keep people, whether it's in shelter or in housing for those first 6 months is really critical. So 7 that's why a lot of our programs 8 are about trying to have intensive 9 services that follow the person or 10 at least it has a warm handoff to 11 the next step so that they can stay 12 stable and get housed. 13
So 14 the issue is tracking all the way 15 to make sure they're permanently 16 off your rolls, right, of having to 17 give these services. And that 18 brings me to the Riverview that we heard, having all these beds, having 18 months to live there. That's what we need then, it sounds like, for some people, right. You said a mixed model, mixed set of models. So I would love to see our Department of Homeless Services come up with, say, Philadelphia population is five categories and we have a streamlined effort for five categories with intersection with all these services we have in the City of Philadelphia, which is spending a lot of dollars. We should have a target date by which we can say we can end this. We really should. We should say, if it's jobs, let's figure that out. If it's mental health, we have resources. If it's mental health and substance use disorder, we can figure that out. We have all the separate tools. We have all these departments. We have been spending millions of dollars every year. It seems to prop up a system. I don't know who benefits from it, but not the people who are being served. They're not benefiting from it. So somewhere we have to have much more efficiency about stating the problem and finding solutions and then tracking it after you've initiated. For example, we had somebody who was a human trafficking survivor. We got our call in the evening and there was no one path I could find to say, where should I send her. We call this one and that one and this one and that one. It was unbelievable, that after spending all this money for one night for somebody who was in the hospital getting released, we could not find her a solution, after spending all this money. So we have practical knowledge of how this doesn't work. I have personally taken a pregnant homeless teenager to Cherry Street and I've seen how that has worked. It did not work. We're not able to keep her.
We actually agree with you. And that's why, if you notice, the executive order is about ending street homelessness, not about addressing it. Our current strategic plan and the partners, when they asked us what we want to do, we said we want a strategic plan that ends homelessness. So we do agree with you and that's what we're currently working on.
So we're hoping to have the strategic plan completed by the end of this fiscal year with the plan to start implementing next fiscal year.
And so, all this money that we're going to be allocating now is going to be refashioned in terms of meeting that goal, because then we have a reallocation because that strategic plan is not in place now as you're asking for the money?
It's too early for me to say what the next phase would be. I would have to see what the final outcome is of the strategic plan. Currently, the consultants are meeting with service providers. And like I said, they're meeting with people with lived experience to really talk about what are the needs of Philadelphia because there are certain needs. But it's not a monolith. There's not a one-size- fit-all. And so, we do need the input of what has been working and what's not working. We're currently changing our housing assessment system because that did not work. We just switched software systems because we recognized the way that that compartmentalized the data so that providers couldn't share data about individuals that we were serving. That didn't work. So we are looking at changing systems and changing processes. We are offering technical assistance to providers to also be able to support them in going into this new model, but some of that will be based off of what we find at that time.
I hear you. I know you're trying your best. Believe me, I know you do. But this has been going on far too long. We need to stop it and say, all of what we've been doing has not worked. We need to try something different. And will you make mistakes? Yes. We have to give you room to make some mistakes to do that, but we cannot keep doing that. I appreciate everything you do, but we have to really take the bull by the horns and say, in a first-world country like this, in the sixth largest city in the country we have 4000 people. That is unacceptable by anybody's measures. And I'm not faulting you, per se. But I'm saying you, meaning all of you in this space, DBHIDS, DHS. Everybody needs to come together to come with one solution that you can all participate in and understand the nuances and change, you know, they're not all one-size-fits-all. We get that. We can create a system that accommodates for that. We are in the 21st century. We're sending people to look at the other side of the moon. We can do that. So I need a commitment from all of you to say, our dollars are going to be spent in a way that have results. If they don't, pivot, fix it. But we can't have the same ol', same ol' going on. So this is just my frustration, Council President. And not with you. I just want to be very clear, you do the hard work, but we need to help you make sure that we have a system that is a functional zero for homelessness, for all kinds of homelessness. Thank you, Council President.
Chair recognizes Councilmembers Quetcy Lozada, Nicolas O'Rourke, Jamie Gauthier and then Councilmember Jim Harrity.
Thank you, Council President. Thank you for being with us this morning. I have some, I guess, basic questions about things that are happening in the 7th specifically. I know that just Friday I was doing all things unsheltered, right, attended a few meetings, but took advantage and kind of hung out in the district to see how folks were moving along. I just looked at your poster board here and your unsheltered numbers say 1178. But when you talk to others, PPD, for instance, their numbers show that we are under 400 for the unsheltered population, and we've had this conversation about how different people count and the problems that it causes. Can you tell me if you all have had conversations about how do you better streamline your count and what you're doing about it?
Good afternoon. David Holloman, Chief of Staff for the Office of Homeless Services, and good afternoon to everyone in City Council. Yes, we continue to have meetings with the Law Department about how they do counts. One thing that we do know is that police do a weekly count, and that's almost like a census count. And so, what we have been trying to do is align those counts with our service day teams, our encampment resolution team and homeless outreach teams. The City of Philadelphia, by the federal government, is required to do a count once a year. However, the City of Philadelphia does quarterly counts, which is partnered with the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disabilities. We meet weekly with different service dividers, of course with Deputy Police Commissioner Pete Rosario. And as of this year here, one of the things that's going to improve that count and that relationship is that we're opening up having intake staff at the Wellness Resource Center in Kensington. That would allow us, along with mobile intake workers, to do a better consensus count together so we have a better accurate number. For things that we have been doing over the number of years, we know that the counts are seasonal, especially in Kensington. When the month of April through June, we start to see more people start to pop up, doesn't mean that they're Philadelphia homeless. It's just that more people tend to come out. I think having mobile intake workers, having intake staff at the Wellness Resource Center will help us better collaborate how we get a better, more reasonable count in those particular districts, especially the 7th District.
And if I can add to that, the other part of our count that is different is when we do the Point-In-Time Count, it's several 100 volunteers going out all at the same time. So it is a count that happens all at the exact same time. And I know that PPD and some of the other parties that do counts may be slightly more observational with a lot less resources. So to your point, it's a different methodology.
We need to do a better job at counting. You guys count seasonal. They count weekly or quarterly, however it is. You count if someone is stationed somewhere. They count if people are moving. We have to stop the smoke and mirrors, right, especially when we're having conversations with community residents. We need to be honest about what's the number and where are they going and where are we counting, right, so that we can better respond to the situation. I think the reason why we're kind of going around in circles is because none of us are having -- we're not speaking the same language, right. And if we're going to be serious about responding to the opioid crisis where the epicenter is in the 7th Council District, right, if we're going to be honest about responding and resolving that, we have to get on the same page. I'm now in year 3 of this conversation. This conversation has been going on for years. At what point do we give 11 those community residents a break? 12 We are in a better place. I have 13 to be honest about that, right. We 14 are in a better place, but we 15 should be further along because we 16 said that we are all rowing in the 17 same direction, but we have to be 18 honest with the count. It starts 19 with the count. If we don't know 20 who's out there, then we're never going to be able to fully respond to what their needs are. In addition to that, one of the other things that I found very frustrating on Friday was that I traveled through multiple SEPTA stations. Every single SEPTA station was blocked. The entryway was blocked. The elevator was blocked. The staircases were blocked, with just people everywhere. Not one outreach worker, not one manager, not one police officer, not one SEPTA police officer, no one was out there. It was almost like it's okay for everybody to be there. In the meantime, there are mothers trying to go up and down them steps, getting off, trying to get on trains. There are business people that are trying to operate, right. We talk about a commercial corridor that had a 40% vacancy rate for years and they blame the public safety and the health issue that we have out there, right. We can't continue to talk about economic opportunities for all if we are not doing our due diligence to create an economic opportunity for those people that live and work and play in that Kensington community. What are we doing different?
We appreciate that question, but I would have to defer questions about outreach to DBHIDS --
My first part of that question is where are the outreach workers? Where are they? I was there between 4:00 and 5:45. I was in the same area. I did not see not one person. The only reason I saw a police officer come as I was pulling off is because I called the Deputy Commissioner and said, I expect for this train station to be cleared immediately. I shouldn't have to do that, right. Where are the outreach workers that we talk about, where are the peer specialists that we talk about that are out here talking to these people about moving into shelters, receiving services? Where are they?
Understood. Now, outreach is actually under the Department of Behavior Health and Intellectual Disabilities, so I would have to defer to them to the question about where outreach workers were at that time.
And then my second question, what are we doing differently to be able to connect people to services? What are we doing other than the Thursday or the Wednesday sweeps that we're getting folks into the Wellness Center and into Wellness Court?
So one of the things that we are doing that Dave alluded to is we're going to open an intake office at the Kensington Wellness Support Center, not just once a week but every day. So it'll be Monday through Friday. Similar to our other programs, our goal is to have staff stationed there so that if anyone wants to come in for services, that they can. Also, when we do have our site connection or service cleanup days and connection, that staff is actually out talking to individuals, trying to get them connected to services too. And we publish where we're doing those every week. We put it on our website as well as our social media on where the staff will be going.
I'll wait for DBH to come up to talk about the average workers, but I also have asked us to look at having outreach workers and providers be available between that 11:00 and 6:00 a.m., right, because we have heard from those who are suffering that that is when they would most likely accept services. Have we considered that?
I'll defer to the Commissioner of DBHIDS. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: Good afternoon, Council President, members of the Council. I'm so glad I came back to support Cheryl. Councilmember, so our homeless outreach teams are now stationed at the SEPTA stations, but that's something we can think about. SEPTA had a team that used to -- we collaborated with, and since they did away with that team, we now rely on them to call us if we need to have someone there. But based on what you've said, that's definitely something we have to look into. With regards to overnight, we did get some funding, thank you very much, last year so we're looking to have a team overnight as well. I'm not sure if that answered -- I think I answered the first part of your question. But the second part, if you could repeat that.
I think what we talked about last year was making sure that there were outreach workers consistently, right, responding to the needs that are out there. We talked about having them available during that most vulnerable time. We've talked about partnering with SEPTA and other stakeholders that get funding to do some of this outreach. We talked about changing how we were conducting business in that particular footprint. I'm trying to figure out how have we changed that. Because what I'm hearing you say is, yes, I hear you but, no, we haven't done it. I heard you last year but, no, we haven't done it. And that's frustrating to me, right. Because when you look at my neighborhood, we've had some improvement. People are, of course, at Riverview, right. So we know that there are some folks who have left the footprint. We're looking at 1178. Police said 520 the last time they counted last week. We're just moving people around. And so, when my community says you're not responding to the problem, you're scattering them out more and you're pushing them further into other parts of the neighborhood, I can't fight them and say that's not accurate, right. Because right now you're confirming that what they're saying is actually true. And what you're also telling me is that people who are suffering from addiction are telling us we will respond and accept services -- we are more likely to respond and accept services during my most vulnerable time period. And we as a city are saying we don't want to provide you services at that time. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: That is absolutely not what we're doing. We are responding to the needs of the city. We are in the places where we see the greatest need. And so, if the greatest need is in Kensington, that's where you see a lot of our homeless outreach teams. But they go everywhere, they're all over the city. And you're right, we had less contacts in Kensington, but higher placement into services, because we also gatekeep and entry into Riverview Wellness as well as the Philly Home at Girard. But what I'm saying is, if people are moving in other places, then that's where we're going to be. We don't have people stationed just waiting at the SEPTA stations, was what I said, because SEPTA had a team that we worked with. Without that, then we have to think about whether we need to have people stationed there because that is where the need is now.
I can tell you SEPTA doesn't have anything. That's another conversation that we need to have. SEPTA doesn't do absolutely anything. When you have people who are shooting up on trains, defecating on trains, having sex on trains, running around naked on trains, SEPTA ain't doing nothing. That's another conversation for another day. I still didn't get what we're doing different. I think we have a lot of work to do in order for us to respond to the homeless situation that we have going on in the Kensington community. COMMISSIONER SOLANKE: Agree.
Thank you. Nicolas O'Rourke, Jamie Gauthier, then Jim Harrity.
Just a quick word. I think Dr. Stephen Ray used to be the President of the Chicago Theological said some years ago, Every moral system is first predicated on a vision of what the world should look like. That is to say, have a vision of where you're trying to go and work toward until you realize that vision. And so, I want to affirm that the underlying principle that I think Dr. Ahmad mentioned around your desire to end street homelessness. I just want to commend you on having that clear in your mind and in your efforts. I think that is where you find good moral grounding in our policymaking. And so, I just want to affirm then thank you for making that the goal, not just skirting around the edges and trying to fix here or there, but to try to end this thing, because I believe that we can do it. I want to thank you all for the work that you do every day towards that vision and some of the ways that you support some of our most vulnerable neighbors. My team has been working closely with OHS, especially to prevent houselessness for constituents who've been contacting my office for help, that partnership has diverted several folks away from the shelter system and into longer-term solutions. And I'm really grateful for our ability to work together to meet those needs. Now, I know so many of our neighbors are not as lucky. They may currently be in the shelter system or may be living on the streets or in encampments, being told that their only or best option is the shelter system. So I'd also like to ask a few questions regarding the shelter conditions, as others have asked. I've heard from many constituents, including some of the residents of Camp Chloe, who I visited a couple weeks ago, all the reasons that they don't want to go into OHS shelters to include dangerous conditions, harassment and other safety concerns. I've heard shelter conditions include mold, lack of heat or air-conditioning, not enough bathrooms, undercooked food, bed bugs, and that sort of scratches the surface of what is mentioned. The FY27 budget includes 1 million for capital improvements in shelters, with over 8 million promised over five years. What is the plan for facility updates? Do you have an assessment on how many shelters need repairs and how extensive those repairs actually are?
Thank you. So for the question about the shelter quality. It's the difference between the city-owned, the city-leased and then the provider-owned or the provider- leased. So the capital budget that you speak to is about the city- owned shelters, and that capital needs assessment happens with the capital department. So I would have to defer to them on questions on the needs assessment they did to determine what was needed for this year. But from what I understand for the budget, they're actually going to do $5 million worth of capital improvements. Part of that is money from prior years that they're going to be able to spend on renovations this year. As far as what is needed in the shelter, some of that came from the providers, like last year when we were able to provide that one-time funding, we asked the providers to tell us what they needed as far as renovations in the program. So that's one part. The other part is that our team actually goes out and does inspections on a regular basis as well. We have the site inspection, which is actually a physical review of the site, where they'll go through, they'll take pictures and they'll cite the things that they're identifying are needed in the building as well as some quality as far as the operational standards. And then, based on that the shelter providers will give us their corrective action plan. If there are physical things that need to be done, they'll give us the plan for that. In some cases, some of those providers have told us that they have a plan within the next to 18 months because they have a bigger renovation plan. So we'll take that into consideration when we get some of that information.
Chair recognizes Majority 8 Leader Katherine Gilmore 9 Richardson. 10
Thank you. Thank you 12 very much. Point of information. And thank you very much, Councilmember O'Rourke, for that line of questioning. My question is, how did you choose the facilities for the upgrades? And did specific providers sort of notate this? Do they have an overall needs assessment? Meaning, how did you all choose --
So all of the sites are scheduled for site visits, but some of them, it may just depend on where we are in the schedule because they all are scheduled to be inspected throughout the fiscal year. Some of them we may delay. For example, if we switch providers, we give that provider the opportunity to bring it up to speed. For example, there's one provider that we switched late last fall so we're giving them an opportunity to bring the program up to the standard that they believe they can bring it up to before we then go cite them for the needs and inspect them and have them pass or fail based off of the conditions of the building.
Okay. I'll come back on the second round to continue that, but I just wanted to notate that based on Councilmember O'Rourke's question.
Thank you, Madam Leader. Mr. Chair, can I continue on?
Thank you, sir. Kind of more specifically to the question around the assessments and the details that you're getting from that, even in the inspections, how much funding is required based off of what you know? Do you know how much funding is required to make all the needed repairs that you know about? How will you decide which shelters actually get repaired first? And will the facilities plan be made public or shared with members of the body, assuming that you will put something together that's comprehensive based off of those assessments?
So the city- owned shelter assessments are completed by the capital team or our facilities team. And what we can do is get you in writing when that assessment happened and what was the findings from that assessment.
Fabulous. Let me press on. In addition to the physical conditions that I listed, at the surface level I've heard from constituents that they face harassment from staff, lack of sanitation supplies to include soap, inadequate food in both quantity and quality -- there was a sign, somebody had a sign. There was a sign back here earlier. They had a whole list of other stuff that probably could have listed -- yeah, that's the one, where it says shelter conditions. Take a screenshot of that. The question I have is, what type of oversight does OHS provide for shelter conditions and workers in particular? Let me get these other ones on and maybe there'll be another round I can come back. The other question I was going to ask was, despite these conditions, the Administration is proposing an investment of $22 million annually to expand emergency shelter capacity and achieve the city's goal of ending street homelessness. And the question there is kind of even affirming what Dr. Ahmad lifted up earlier. Why prioritize investments in new emergency shelter beds over investments in permanent housing? And this is something that has been raised in the conversations that we had, which I do think, if the goal is to end street homelessness, and that is the goal and I affirm that that's a righteous goal, it should affect how we think the trajectory should be getting there, and I think even shifting our thinking from kind of patching to moving towards how can we make it permanent and --
I just want to ask a point of information real quick though, and I'm just trying to understand the response and I'm also looking at the line of questioning. Because I look at two tracks as well, right. So you got an executive order for 1000 new beds, right. And there's a proposal to fund that, correct. And some folks say that an additional 1000 beds of shelter, that's temporary. And we just did $1 billion in housing, right. How much out of that billion dollars of housing is going toward permanent housing under the H.O.M.E. plan? Because on one end, we're saying the expansion of shelters, right, and some folks are just saying it's temporary, but also there's still a need, because everybody's just not jumping up tomorrow and can do permanent housing, to be quite frank with you, at least in my mind, in my experience actually working on the issue. But on the long-term side, how much is the dedication of the billion dollar H.O.M.E. Initiative is going to work permanent housing for those who may want to transition from a shelter to wraparound services to becoming a first-time homebuyer? If you don't have a job, to be quite frank with you, and you're coming out of the shelter, you're not going straight into permanent housing, because permanent housing requires either rent to be paid or mortgage, correct?
Correct. And I would say for questions about the H.O.M.E. plan, how much of that is earmarked I would have to defer to Angela Brooks about that. The amount that's in the H.O.M.E. plan for OHS, that's --
Let's back up. I would think that there would be a coordinated approach with the H.O.M.E. plan and your office, because if we're investing a billion dollars in housing, some aspect has to be tied into addressing homelessness, which will allow us to create the permanent housing based upon the billion that we borrow in partnership with your office. Wouldn't that be the best approach? I'm just asking.
No, I appreciate that. But to the point that you made earlier, and I want to make sure that I'm also getting Councilmember O'Rourke's questions, the shelter versus housing, to your point, right now to bring on 1000 shelter beds, we were able to do that in roughly six months, between the time that we first started talking about it to identifying -- in a few weeks we planned to have all of them open. I cannot find 1000 permanent housing units in six months. And so, the goal was to get individuals off of the street, and that is the first goal, but then also to make sure that individuals are ready -- what happens in our shelter system, what we're trying to make sure that all of our shelters are able to do is to be able to provide case management and support, to be able to get documentation that individuals need. If they are unable to get Social Security or whatever the subsidy may be, that they can get that service and support there as well.
I'm going to defer and go back to Member O'Rourke. But I think there's a disconnect, right. And I work in partnership with the Administration. But in terms of doing the work that we need to do around this particular issue, and I have a homelessness working group. I think if you're talking about us borrowing a billion dollars for 30,000 units of housing and you can't speak to a level of how many of that housing is dedicated to address the issue of homelessness, because you said I have a defer back to the Angela/Jesse's team, I think that's a disconnect. I think y'all would be at the table -
And we are, and there's a portion of -- there's about $8 million currently in the H.O.M.E. bond that is earmarked --
She just came up and said, support-wise there's 8 million to support homelessness in the current budget. Okay.
Yes, but part of that was also about homeless prevention. There was a conversation about how do we slow down individuals coming in. So the original plan for some of that was also homeless prevention. With things going on, you know, as the Councilmember earlier talked about, as we come up with a strategic plan, do we refocus, some of that is what we have considered with that. We also work with the Philadelphia Housing Authority to look at different housing opportunities, because it's not just enough to come up with a unit for someone to rent if they can't afford it. So working with the Housing Authority, we've been able to identify units that they will then help subsidize for the individuals we serve.
So I'm going to relinquish the time back to Member Nicolas O'Rourke. I just think -- and I'm understanding what my members are saying. They're saying, we're talking about permanent housing forever, right, at least the thought process would be, here's the billion that we borrow, right, to address the issue of housing, 30,000 units of rehabbing housing or housing here in the City of Philadelphia, and then also we're strategizing with PHA, right. And we know because you said getting 1000 units will be, as you said, I don't want to use the word difficult, but 1000 units immediately, you said, well, we probably can't do that, right. And I believe if there's a will, there's a way, because there's also an agenda that we once must accomplish for our Mayor to get 30,000 units in less than four years now. I think it's five years. So that 1000 units, I think for instance, we have the schools, and some of those properties are going to come online to possibly use for permanent housing for our seniors, right, or those who might be in need. That might be 300, 400 units right there, just thinking outside the box, going to what Member Dr. Ahmad and what Member Nicolas O'Rourke are saying in terms of a permanent housing strategy. But I want to take a moment of personal privilege. We have Councilmember Allison Stroud and Ryan Mecham from Sandy City, Utah, and they're also joined by Monica M. Zoltanski, Mayor of Sandy City, Utah. Welcome to City Council. (Applause.)
They are being guided by our Member, Councilmember Curtis Jones, Chair of Public Safety. We thank you for touring them throughout our illustrious body, Member Jones. Thank you very much. The Chair relinquishes his time back to Member Nicolas O'Rourke.
Thank you, Mr. President. Welcome to our colleagues from Utah. I also was struck by the point you made around not being able to find 1000 in six months. It's just impractical. My mind merely suggests that maybe that's a capacity issue. I mean, do you have enough staffing to do such a thing? But that's the sort of thing that I think we may need to remedy --
I mean, as a point of information. Two of the schools that we're probably going to possibly turn over --
Let me finish. Could possibly give you 1000 within the first year. We're going to help you out. We're going to be supportive to the Administration and put our own proposals on the table and see if we can accomplish getting those 1000 actual permanent units. Member O'Rourke as well as Member Dr. Ahmad, as a sign of good faith and partnerships with the Administration, I think that would be a worthy goal I think we can accomplish if we're all working together. Member O'Rourke.
I'm grateful for this collaboration and all of our thinking around how we can alleviate this issue because this really is a moral question. Let me get into the little bit I have left. On alternative solutions -- thank you for addressing all of my questions that were related to shelter conditions. We'll continue to work on that. Shelters are not the only aspect of your work, right. One of my roles as an At-Large member is to bear witness and to lift up the voices of our constituency. As previously mentioned, I met with some of the residents of Camp Chloe a few weeks ago and was moved by the community that they've created. Despite harsh conditions, they really have cultivated a community in this space, and they're at risk of losing that community, and have the following demands. And I want to lift those up because it's my job to do so: Establish safe sleep sites where people can legally camp, implement a property receipt system, prioritize permanent supportive housing over shelter- first approach, as we just got done talking about, and establish an oversight board for OHS, including people with lived experience. I'm going to say these two and get off the record. The question I have on this one is, would you be willing to work with the residents and organizers towards these goals and commit to them before the approval of this budget? And they have been very clear about what they wanted. There has been some rationale that has been explained to me about why a shelter-first system approach does not work. In fact, there was a gentleman in the camp who explained in detail to me that the reason why he's back out was because the shelter system has put him in a situation by stuff being stolen, pushing him out, whatever the case may be, that he can't get back in anyway, so going back into the shelter system will be retraumatizing for him. So I want to ask that question. The other thing I want to get on is studies have shown time and again that permanent supportive housing is more effective than emergency shelters in keeping folks off the streets, as we've talked about. Philadelphia already faces a shortage of permanent housing units and now, we are confronting the possibility of significant federal funding cuts in light of this conversation. And I just want us to say it. How does an investment in emergency shelter align with the city's long-term goal to end, not merely manage, homelessness? So those are my two questions. Would you be willing to work with those residents and organizers towards those goals, commit to them before the budget? And also just speak to how this particular investment emergency shelter actually aligns with the goal of ending homelessness. And that'll be it for me for now.
Thank you. I want to make sure that I get all of your questions. So first, for the committee of lived experience, we have had a committee in the past and we plan to bring that back in the future. We're starting with our young adult lived experience committee and then we'll plan to expand in the future. As far as the shelter expansion project, it is not a shelter-only process. So even as we're talking and collaborating with the different providers and different agencies in the city, it is not a shelter only. We are also talking about the off-ramp to be able to provide housing services, recognizing some of the complications that everybody is aware of with the housing and some of the funding that we have for that. But I just want to make it clear that we are still looking at housing. We have other units that are permanently supported, that are either federally funded or general funds as well and we will continue to support those. But we are looking at different models, including whether or not we should bring SROs, which are smaller units that maybe are more affordable into the mix. We are looking at different strategies with, like I mentioned, PHA to see if they can help subsidize some of them, but some of the units that they already have subsidized with us are also at risk right now.
I just want to clarify. I was raising the point around shelter first as an example, that one of the residents within this community that has been so they're feeling pushed out, and there hasn't been a remedy with being pushed out for what's going to happen with them and some of them have been kind of cycled in and out. And I was saying that they didn't necessarily want to go into -- at least one gentleman didn't want to go into the shelter system. It would be a return back to a situation that was traumatizing and why he was kind of out on the street in the first place. So given that, they had these particular demands that were leaning towards a more permanent solution and the request was to get on record whether or not you would be willing to help meet those particular asks, which were again to establish safe sleep sites where people can legally camp, to implement a property receipt system because of the loss of property when these sweeps happen. Prioritize a permanent supportive housing over shelter-first approach and establish an oversight board, what you said you already have done. So those three --
Understand. And I can't speak to all of the demands that were mentioned. But I will say both our teams and the DBHIDS teams are going out trying to engage individuals who are willing to have that conversation, whether it's about shelter or other services. Our mobile assessors can go out and do housing assessments out at sites, and we will continue to offer that service.
I do want to add also to the encampments, right, as you address the issue of mental health and behavioral health, because I've dealt with it in my district and I do understand, you know, people are homeless. But even when they offer support and they decline their support and they keep coming back to certain areas, particularly where there's children, right, like we got to figure out a way how we address that issue. And I dealt with it at a couple different rec centers in my district, right, where it becomes, just to be quite frank with you, an issue because you do have children, and people are just setting up shop. And I get it. I want to be supportive. So there is a mental health component, right. But it's also a matter of public safety because you're dealing with children. And I don't want to be in here at a hearing in the future where anything may happen and we weren't proactive just to make sure, even though we're addressing the issue of encampments, right, to also with public safety, at least what I'm dealing with in my district in terms of certain recreation centers in certain parks and playgrounds where people just set up, and you got little kids who are subject to whatever these individuals decide to do. And so, just figuring out how we can be proactive when we see an encampment come up and then engaging the individuals to try to get them some help and some support, just for the sake of keeping the children, and even the city workers, because some folks may get a little aggressive when you say you have to move on. And so, it's something I'm speaking from experience, not just theory, but actually seeing and getting the calls. However, we can take a look at that in the context of supporting individuals, but also public safety as well for the individuals who are living or utilizing the space, particularly in this case I'm talking about public space around playgrounds, recreation centers and parks where individuals are setting up. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, then Councilmember Jim Harrity. And then we can also go back to in the second round Councilmember Rue Landau and Dr. Ahmad.
Thank you, Council President. Good afternoon, Director Hill, Dave, Deputy Managing Director Yates-Gale. Thank you for everything that you do on a daily basis. And I want to agree with my colleague that I think it's really important that you all are setting out this broad vision of ending homelessness. I think it's that kind of commitment that will move us in the right direction. My questions are also about permanent supportive housing. What is the actual quantifiable need and demand for permanent supportive housing units in our city currently? Because if permanent supportive housing is the way to keep someone off the street for the long-term, then I feel like really analyzing and understanding this deeply should be our ultimate goal. I imagine that this is a really high number for a variety of reasons. We know that there are many people who do not even go to the shelter even when they need it, as we discussed a little while before. We know there are hundreds of people who are prequalified for a permanent supportive housing slot, but who are stuck at various steps in the intake system, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians who are living cost-burdened. So how does OHS calculate how many units of permanently supportive housing our city genuinely needs? And how much money do we need to achieve that goal?
Thank you. So around spring of 2025, we did an analysis and we determined that we needed approximately 3000 permanent supportive housing units to really have an impact to ending homelessness in Philadelphia. And part of that was taking into consideration the turnover that we have on our current inventory. But not only that, to the Councilmember's point earlier, how do we slow down the rate of people entering into homelessness in the first place. So that number only works if we can slow down that rate in homelessness.
I see. And what is that dollar amount attached to those 3000 units, ballpark?
I can get to do that. Some of that would be dependent on the size of the family. So on average, the rent for an SRO, I believe we had it around $1000 to $1,200 for a single room occupancy. So it only goes up from there, depending on the size of the family. And then as we talked about earlier, there isn't a one-size-fits-all to the number of services that may be needed. So if we are doing more of a housing first model where we get the person in there and get them intensive services once they are in permanent housing, that is significant more of a cost than somebody who may be housing ready who doesn't need as many services or support when they get into permanent housing.
I understand. How much of the FY27 budget is allocated towards this need and how much do we typically spend on permanent supportive housing?
I believe our current number is -- well, we have two different budgets that we have that should explain. So the General Fund for FY27 is 39 million that we have allocated. But there's also some funding that doesn't come to us. That's the HUD Continuum of Care funding that is also additional funding that comes to the City of Philadelphia. Even if it doesn't come through OHS, it goes directly to the service providers.
Got it. And I know we touched on the $8.8 million allocation that is going to you all through H.O.M.E. But I apologize if I missed it, are you -- I know that this is mostly going to homelessness prevention in year 1 of the H.O.M.E. budget. But can that money also be spent on expanding access to permanent supportive housing? And can you provide the spending breakdown for those H.O.M.E. funds?
We can't provide it today, but we can get it to you in writing. And the only reason I hesitated on that is because we are -- through unfortunate scheduling conflicts, we just wanted to confirm that with the H.O.M.E. department. But once we get that, we can get that to you in writing.
Okay. Thank you. And lastly, your budget testimony says that we received 37.5 million from HUD in the last two years to fund permanently supportive housing. We know, as Minority Whip O'Rourke brought up, that that is likely to be cut by 70% starting in FY27 because of policy changes from the Trump Administration. Can you provide in detail how much money will be reallocated from which funding sources in FY27 in order to make sure that we don't lose any permanent supportive housing slots because of these changes At HUD?
Good afternoon, Councilmember. Crystal Yates-Gale, Deputy Managing Director of Health and Human Services. What OHS is working on and planning on is a bunch of what- if scenarios. So it's difficult to say exactly how much money will be allocated differently, but they aren't ignoring the fact that there is significant uncertainty around the COC NOFO and they're making plans, and they're following it closely and will make plans accordingly.
Okay. Thank you for that. We know that it takes a big chunk of money to go towards this housing and we know that this is the most proven effective way to keep people out of homelessness. So I can appreciate that you all are creating these scenarios. Thank you also for the conversation on Friday. I think as Council though, we need more than that assurance. We want to see in realtime how we're planning for this because it would be disastrous for the city. And so, we need to understand what those scenarios are. We need to ensure that we're reallocating as necessary and that we're asking for help, whether that's the state or philanthropy or other sources. And so, I would ask that we can have that conversation along with you all.
We agree. And I will just add based on the conversation on Friday at the HUD briefing, what was communicated to us was HUD's intention to deprioritize permanent supportive housing and then go back to what they call a third, a third, a third model. And what that does is shift money from permanent supportive housing to other housing types. And so, what OHS is going to do, and they can follow up in writing when we have more information, is take some housing that's funded by General Funds, that would be now qualified for the COC funds and move them over to shift those funds in that manner, but we can provide a more definitive answer in writing.
Thank you. And thank you for all of your work. I realize that this is a tough time and we want to be in this with you. Thank you so much.
Councilmember Jim Harrity, then Councilmember LANDAU, Councilmember Dr. Nina Ahmad.
Thank you, Council President. Thank you for your service. We've been going around -- the Council President and our Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson have been doing tours of some of the service provider locations that we all have been going on and seeing some stuff that is worrisome, to say the least. But on a different subject, the city's ID program, can you explain how the city ID program accommodates our at-risk population, for example, individuals experiencing homelessness who may not have a permanent address but may need a city ID to access social services? Talking to some of the residents when we're out and about and talking to some of the service providers, one of the big obstacles that was told to me was the ID. Getting them ID is a very important step in the process. How are we trying to help with that? I know that the state IDs are through the state. Is there any programs where the state waives the fees because the fees are what -- they don't have it to begin with and then they want to charge them a fee to get their ID to get their life in order. Same thing with Social Security and birth certificate. There's a fee on all of these. And when there are minimal fees for somebody who's already struggling, it can be a lot to handle. So can you please just give us a little breakdown on how that's going to work with the city ID and how that could be helpful and that kind of thing? And the other was the 2% hotel increase proposed for funding homeless services and wraparound services. Can you describe how this funding will be allocated? When you say 1000 beds, the hotel tax rate is now 15.5 and we are raising it to 17.5%. Can you list all the taxes that hotels are already paying? And I understand for time for that one if you want to get back to me, I'm cool with that. But I would like to hear about the ID and what we're trying to do to help with that issue.
Thank you for that question. I think we'd break this down in three parts. So I will tackle the ID portion of this. As you stated before, the state do not waive any fees as it relates to state IDs. There are organizations such as Broad Street Love, the Hub of Hope and BenePhilly that does support individuals with getting ID. And unfortunately, ID challenges have been extremely difficult over the last couple years because you need ID to get ID. There are still organizations that put up a portion of funds to help individual support in getting IDs. With the city ID, if they're working with different organizations, there are organizations that will work with the City of Philadelphia to get them the city ID in order to start that process, in order to get a state ID. We're looking at some of the challenges right now that is ahead for us as it relates to the Real ID as it pertains to try to get into housing and other benefit sources. And so, that's one of the things that we're evaluating with the different organizations in terms of what are the needs that are there. But again, there isn't a particular pot of money. Some philanthropy organizations have stepped up to the plate and provide that full funding for the state ID, but we're looking at every avenue to see where is the gap and how can we partner with organizations to make sure that people are experiencing homelessness and then in housing right now to make sure that they get access to Real ID, because that's where some of the things that are moving to the near future is, people needing to get Real ID.
The address is a real -- because they don't have an address. But one of the ways that the veterans attack that, because they couldn't get a lot of the veterans to come in, but they still need to get their medicine and stuff like that. At the multi-service center, they have little mailboxes, P.O. Boxes, so at least they get mail. And maybe that would be a way there would be a central location where they could register to get a little box so that way their papers could come there. And then once, you know, when they can check it, you know.
Yeah. VMC, they do an absolutely phenomenal job for veterans. Broad Street Love, who's up the street, they do mail and address for individuals who are experiencing homelessness too. So those are great resources.
That's what I'm saying. Maybe we need to come up with a central location for us for the homeless outreach to have little boxes in different areas where they can actually get mail. Anything they're going to do to try to end homelessness, even if it has to do with addiction, there's going to be stuff that's going to be coming or stuff that they need or they're waiting on, right.
Yes. And there are a few service providers that do allow boxes at their location so that individuals can get mail there. I would also add that we have a site called Pat Mission, wherein our landlord gateway team actually does a great job of engaging landlords to be able to identify the services and support that they're willing to waive. So whether it's an ID, criminal history or something like that, our landlord gateway team works with those landlords so that they'd be willing to work with our individuals who may be missing some of that.
Yeah. Maybe we too can throw up some money towards something like that, some kind of fund. I'm not sure how we would do that. But the bottom line is the fee's minimal. The number of homeless and the fee, I think the city, we, could handle that, you know what I'm saying. I don't think that in the scheme of things it would be a ton of money in the 6.8 billion, 7.4 billion budget. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Chair recognizes Councilmember Rue Landau, Councilmember Dr. Ahmad and Majority Leader Gilmore Richardson.
Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you for meeting us last week and answering our questions. I want to tell you that I am personally excited about so much of your goals and transformation, super excited about your new database. I think that that's going to be incredibly helpful. And one of the things I appreciate the most is when we bring issues to you of things that we say, hey, you might have been doing this for many years, have you thought about changing it, that's not a bad idea, we will consider that and you're right and let's think about that. So I appreciate that. I hope these were not already asked and answered, but I wanted to try to get some specifics here. I'm going to ask the first question on average what's the annual cost per participant to provide permanent supportive housing, including housing subsidy and supported services?
On average -- I would have to get you the average number because it also varies depending on their income, but we can get you that. For permanent supportive housing, to include services?
And how do those costs of permanent supportive housing compared to the alternatives, which are emergency shelter, psychiatric hospitalization, emergency department utilization or incarceration for individuals with serious mental health conditions?
So I can speak to the shelter costs. The shelter costs right now is about $65 a day. That's to include some of the services that are provided at the site, but the medical support I wouldn't be able to speak to how much those cost.
What are the other barriers to -- what are the services that you need more in this housing? I know that Council President talks a lot about -- the most recent homelessness roundtable talked about medical care, making sure that we, one, can release people from hospitals into shelters with that care. And what are the services that we need to get into the shelters? And do you know approximately how much it costs to do that?
So right now with our shelter bed expansion project, we are actually trying to add some of those services, so behavioral health support, medical support, the food is provided there and case managers are on site there as well. That is different than permanent supportive housing. You won't have all of those services typically onsite, which is why the cost of shelter is somewhat higher than the permanent supportive housing. But we are trying to also look and see how we can expand those services to more of our shelter systems right now. While we're adding them to the new beds, we're also looking at the opportunities and see how we can add some services and do more partnerships, like the one that we have at Hope 220 where Jefferson is providing that and Jefferson is paying for those services. So we're trying to definitely do it all hands on deck.
Have you reached out to Temple and Penn and the other medical providers for that? It helps them as well, right?
Yes. We have a housing and health care committee as well that has individuals from those institutions on there, and then we're planning a meeting with the health care providers working with Pew to be able to have that conversation about what is needed onsite.
That's great. Last question, you said that HUD is going back to the model of a third and a third with funding. Is it the same dollar amount, just allocated in different ways?
Well, we don't know because they didn't show us the dollar amounts. They just spoke in generalities. And when they spoke, they spoke in -- what we've been doing is just increasing money over time. We see that we need more money in transitional housing. We need more money in emergency shelter. So we're going to default back to what we did in 2007. Because what was explained to us is that's what they believe works. So they didn't give us $1 amount. They just said that they would allocate those dollars, whatever they are in those third, third, and third buckets.
We approved $800 million for the H.O.M.E. Initiative, and I have a feeling I can speak for the colleagues here to say that we absolutely expect that permanent supportive housing will continue to be funded in whatever way. We have plenty of money out there and we just need to make sure it happens. It works. It's the program that has the most bang for its buck. We have thousands of Philadelphians who will be harmed without it. And so, the first chunk of the money has been allocated, but there's more and we got the money there and we can do it.
Point of information. Here's what I would like to do, and I would like to do a follow-up and we'll have to do the whole public thing with the Office of Homeless Services, Jesse Lawrence, Angela Brooks. We can all get in the room 2 and see if we allotted $1 billion for housing, the Mayor wants to do 30,000 units of houses that's rehabilitated and permanent housing. And we've given $8 million toward addressing the issue of homelessness. What's the strategy and how can we work together on the permanent housing side? And I also think Kelvin Jeremiah should also be a part of this conversation as well, just so we know that there's a long-term -- and I'm not saying it's not but I'm sure it is one. But I mean, I have to be upfront. The question was how does your Office of Homeless Services tie into the H.O.M.E. Initiative. And the initial response was, well, I had to defer that to Angela Brooks. I'm just being real. I would think that because we have to aggressively get this done within the next -- the Mayor only got another term, so her goal is to get this done prior to her term being over with. There will be aggressive conversations with a sense of urgency. And you would know, separate and deferring, just being real. And the same thing, I like how you talked about PHA, because then we would know the totality of what that permanent housing number is. And there's a target to go after for us to accomplish that goal. And so, I would like to work in partnership with the Administration and have a roundtable discussion around that conversation. The Chair recognizes Majority Leader Katherine Gilmore Richardson.
It's okay, Council President. Am I next in the queue?
I have Dr. Nina Ahmad and then it's you. But you can give your point of information.
Real quick can I just finish with just one last sentence?
Thank you. I won't even ask you. I will repeat that I asked if you would commit to having quarterly meetings with the Housing Committee, and you agreed to do that and we appreciate that very much.
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes -- is there a point of information, majority Katherine Gilmore Richardson?
Council President, you actually teed up the question I was going to ask about the H.O.M.E. bill because I was able to secure an amendment in that for $8.8 million that was passed, and this was to prioritize DHS-impacted families and children at risk for housing insecurity. So I wanted to know how you will see that money. I asked the Mayor this directly. And she said, Angela Brooks. But I think the actual work will be done by you. So just like the Council President said, we need to really understand how those dollars are going to flow, how quickly they will flow, how will we know they flowed and see the impact. We need some data collection from this entire process. That's one, just to reiterate what you said. The second thing is that the University of Pennsylvania's Field Center for Child, Policy Practice and Research found that 20% of homeless youth in three major cities, including Philadelphia, are victims of human trafficking. So I wanted to know what sort of awareness you have and how is that built into the work you do, and what are we doing from your perspective in prevention?
Thank you. So for the first part, some of the funding from the H.O.M.E. bond that's for the families, we partner with PHA to -- they renovate larger units because sometimes it is a struggle to house families that are larger and then they help subsidize some of those units. And so, our plan was to continue some of that program as well with the H.O.M.E. bond. And then we were also originally planning to look at some homeless prevention. As Deputy Managing Director mentioned, some of our contingency plans on what we're going to do with the federal dollars include whether or not we need to shift the priority of that $8.8 million. So that's why when you even asked what is our plan, that is one of our plans, will we have to shift the priority for that funding. Now, as far as the homeless youth question, we do have separate access points that are for homeless youth or young people experiencing homelessness. And as mentioned by one of our providers, part of that reason is because we identified that they were not coming to our intake centers. So we have sites that are targeted for individuals who are younger, who may want to come in. We meet on a regular basis with a variety of different providers, including OPS to be able to look at some of their programs. And I believe currently one of their contracts is through us and then they're going to transition to taking that contract on themselves as well. But we are engaged with different providers to be able to provide some support, maybe not enough. And we certainly welcome looking at different opportunities.
The reason I asked specifically about human trafficking, the response and the way we engage with young people or anybody who has been trafficked is very different than someone else. So that's why I was asking, what do you have in place to work with that particular impacted person which is different than everybody else? So it takes a very different approach. And because they're still very much the prey of those who were trafficking them. So there's a security issue. There's all kinds of things. It's a very different phenomena. That's why I wanted to know if there was an actual specific effort within OHS to address that?
Yes. And we do partner with different agencies that deal with human trafficking. And one of our COC grantees, South Asian Army, one of their awards through the COC is targeted to that specific population.
So it's contracted out and that's how -- the reason I asked this, going back to the question, when we had that person who was trafficked, we were not able to find immediately placement for them. That's why I'm asking this. So there needs to be some clarity here, because Salvation Army was not responsive in how they would place that person. So we'll follow up about this because this is very specific. We actually have people and they were not served. By all this money we're putting out and contracts with all these people, I don't know what kind of feedback you have in assessing how these contracts are working, how efficient they are, what are they producing, we need oversight on our tax dollars that are going out to these different providers who say they do all this.
If you're okay with it, Councilmember, we can have a member of our team follow up with your staff so we can find out specifically what happened and figure out how to address it.
Thank you, Councilmember Ahmad. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember O'Rourke.
Thank you, Madam Leader. What policy considerations are driving the Administration's proposal to use a hotel tax to fund additional homelessness services? What are the anticipated advantages of this particular approach compared to alternative funding mechanisms?
For that question, I would have to defer to our colleagues from Budget or Finance.
Who are not here. Understood. Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Landau.
Yes, I had one more question. Has OHS assessed the potential impact of the impending Medicaid cuts on services delivered to its contracted providers? And is the Administration developing a contingency plan or different budget in response?
Thank you, Councilmember. I'll take that question because, as everything else, we want to look at it with a One Philly approach and comprehensive approach. So in OHS, along with our partners in CEO, but specifically DBHIDS, OHS, PDPH, we have put out an RFP. We selected a provider, which they will be notified very soon, with deep Medicaid experience here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to help us look at this problem with four lenses; one, enrollment and re-enrollment to make sure that when people are having to re-enroll twice a year, that they don't fall off the rolls. Another bucket is finance. How will this financially impact us and every department and agency? The third is technology. How will we use technology to get people to do their requirements the easiest way they can? And then community engagement. How will we get the word out so we expect to start this engagement I hope by May 1st so that we're prepared by January 1st to make sure that we have the fewest cuts that we can possibly have here in Pennsylvania to Medicaid.
Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Landau, and thank you, Councilmember O'Rourke. I will end this round by getting my questions on the record. I wanted to defer to my colleagues to go ahead of me. So on Friday, we thank you very much for the briefing. You all briefed the Council offices on the Shelter Monitoring program created in FY25. Of the providers listed in the document, only nine providers failed in any of the three categories. As you know, my office is in regular contact with individuals currently living in shelter, and the experiences shared do not align with the scores. And so, I will just put on the record, as Councilman O'Rourke did, some of the complaints that we typically receive, pests and environmental concerns, bed bugs, mice, roaches, water bugs, mold, mildew, spoiled and/or out of date food, bedding, mattresses, pack-and-plays, lack of hand washing, supplies and equipment, no toilet paper, restroom challenges, dining room 21 challenges, community room 22 challenges, food service lines, unequipped staff relative to case management, security, residential aids, housekeeping and food service and incidents with staff that may be rude or disrespectful or exhibit retaliatory behavior, of which I personally experienced and you all know what I'm referring to. For the record, how many inperson visits were conducted at each site? And of those inperson visits, how many were scheduled versus unannounced? How many participants at each site are interviewed as a part of the monitoring process? And are these interviews conducted confidentially? I know OHS recently issued an RFP for food services. This was prompted by, I'm sure, participant complaints about quality. My office has been hearing complaints about the quality of food at these locations for at least three years. So if you could talk to us about why it took so long to identify a new provider and/or go through this process? And then one last question I wanted to get on the record and the remainder I will submit for a written response, but I do appreciate the $2.3 million in investment in shelter maintenance undertaken thus far and also the capital investment in the six-year plan as well as including the city- owned shelters in the GESA project, which we did support via the Finance Committee. However, we know that the needs are significant and we saw that on some of our recent unannounced tours of the shelters. So when is the last time OHS assessed every city-owned or funded shelter building? What is the overall dollar amount to fully fund the maintenance or renovation needs? How were needs identified for the 2.3 million in FY25 awards? How many providers are serviced under the $2.8 million U.S. Facilities contract? How many facilities are maintained by the expanded janitorial staff? And of the shelter sites with upcoming renovations plan, how much is the city contributing to each project? How will rents be impacted to the city-leased sites? And how much have rents increased at city-leased sites that have failed for building conditions?
Thank you. Just trying to make sure I captured all of your questions. The food quality question is something that the Office of Homeless Services have been tackling for quite some time. So that's why it was important to get out a new RFP to be able to get a new food provider, and that would be at not all of the sites, but the sites that the city does provide food services at. And so, with that we have that RFP -- I believe it's still open --
Some of the providers provide their own food. And so, when we do get complaints or a situation or primarily complaints, whether it's food quality, our team does unannounced visits in addition to the announced visits. And we will be able to get you in writing how many visits our team went through this year. In the documentation that you're speaking of that we distributed on Friday, these are inperson visits that they go to, and it's not always at the same time. So sometimes they're only there for the physical inspections. Other times they're going there talking to the staff about case management. The surveys that you saw on Friday are our staff talking to the participants that are at the location. They will identify a few participants. And every visit that they do that is a planned visit to be able to talk to them. And at least from us, it is anonymous. It doesn't have who -- they do an aggregate count so that we just know what people wanted to give us on that.
And some of them are in direct response to a complaint that we may receive. About a month ago, the Deputy Managing Director and I chose several sites and just went unannounced that day. No one knew that we were coming. The directors go out there unannounced and then some of the shelter staff also, our analysts go out unannounced as well. According to our team, between January and March there were unannounced visits that 15 happened at the sites. 16
Okay. And the other questions relative to quality?
So part of that is what we monitor. And when we do those, in addition to what we did last year, there are then recommendations about which contracts we are going to keep, which ones we are going to terminate or at least decide to RFP out. In some cases, we didn't terminate the contract. We just elected to issue a new RFP for those providers. We allow them to do a corrective action plan to tell us how they are going to bring it up to speed. In some cases, they are doing major renovations. So some of the projects we know is going to take longer. One of the sites house a couple of different programs. There are a lot of physical conditions that we know need to be addressed in that building, but we also know that they are planning a much larger renovation project, so we want to make sure that they're handling any health and safety issues that are identified right now, knowing that they are doing a bigger renovation next year.
Sure. If you can speak to -- you've mentioned the complaint line. How many hours of the day is the complaint line staffed? Because we've heard instances that individuals call the complaint line and they never receive a direct response outside of a voicemail. So is it staffed by a human being? And how many hours of the day does that take place?
There are staff -- so the complaint line may be a voicemail that individuals are leaving, but there are staff checking that on a regular basis, they're documenting. We track all the complaints that come in. Even if they're not an OHS-funded shelter, you know, we track those as well. And then is assigned to an analyst to investigate. And in some cases, we are also passing some of that information on to the Ombudsperson as well.
See, the challenge with that though, we had a constituent case, and Bruce helped us with this case. You know which family I'm referring to, the young lady with the cell phone issue and the baby dropped the phone or the iPad in the water so she could only call at certain times, which is why it was difficult for us or really my Constituent Service Director to connect her with OHS because it was a situation where we had to kind of wait for her to call. And she had a number of children. It was just like a multi-faceted case. So there's no human being answering the phone. Meaning, sometimes we can't get in touch with these individuals after their initial outreach. So is there a plan to have someone staffing this complaint line who can actually be a direct point of contact or a point of initial contact, like a 311 as an example?
We can look into that. We can definitely see the need. And I know how important it is to be heard when I have a situation that needs to be addressed. So we can certainly look into that.
Right. And I say that because is it a situation where if a participant could not be reached, you all could deem the case complete, although service action did not take place?
I would have to look into that, but that should not be the case. We should still look into each situation individually. Whether we are able to speak to the person on the phone or not, we should be looking into that to be able to address whatever the complaint is.
Okay. And last, I want to put this on the record. Relative to the health and safety discharges, how many were issued in FY25 and how many thus far in FY26? And of that number, how many were appealed? And what is the average length of time between the discharge and the appeal because that's another challenge we found in some of the cases? I review personally every constituent case that comes through my office. That's why some of your team members may notice that I'm copied on almost every single email. Because even if I'm unable to get to them during a hearing, at night or first thing in the morning, between 3:00 a.m. and 5:00, I check every single constituent case that comes through my office. And so, we found that a number of the families that have contacted us that have had an interaction with the Homeless Services system, they are stating that the health and safety discharge becomes a barrier for them to access, even if it's transitional housing but trying to get to permanent housing. So can you just talk about the health and safety discharges? What's the number at this point this year? And then also for the last fiscal year and how many of those were appealed? And what's the average length of time between the discharge and the appeal?
I would have to get you that information in a follow-up to get you the information on the actual number of discharges and appeals.
Right. And then what the average length of time is between the discharge, like the whole appeal process basically?
And if I can add to that. Even during that process, no one is denied a bed. They can go to an afterhours location and have a bed for the night even while they're waiting for the appeal or even after a discharge, they can go to an afterhours location. The discharge is typically for the bed that they were assigned in at that particular location.
And that's good to know. I know we've helped several constituents who have been down that road and sort of that process in trying to work with your team to identify other shelter opportunities while the appeal process is going through the process. And so, I wanted to put that on the record. I'll submit the balance of my questions for written response. But I do think that's important as well, particularly because of the personal experience I had at the one shelter we visited. I don't know how the participants would be able to sort of have a fair shake at the process, particularly if it were related to an alleged conflict potentially with a team member, especially the way I was spoken to. And the individual did not know that I was a member of Council. You all know what case I'm referring to. I called you on the spot in the parking lot. I don't know that -- I mean, you know, we deal with a lot. But I don't know that I've ever been spoken to that way by an individual who's supposed to be caring for our most vulnerable populations. And that's why I went unannounced and the individual did not know who I was. And the way I was treated, if they talk to me that way, I can only imagine how those individuals who are coming through that door are being treated every single day. So I appreciate you all following up on that particular case on the spot and we've done the work there, but I think that's important as it relates to the health and safety discharges as well and that appeal process and individuals' opportunity to have a fair shake at that process. So thank you --
We want to thank you also for your support on our afterhours, particularly at Stanton.
Oh, very much so and very appreciative of their work. There being no 18 additional questions for these witnesses, we thank you all very much for coming in today. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Lozada for a motion that the public hearing and meeting on the bills and resolutions before the committee today stand in recess until Tuesday, April 21, 2026 at 10:00 a.m. in Room 400, City Hall.
It has been moved and properly seconded that the public hearing and meeting on the bills and resolutions before the committee stand in recess until Tuesday, April 21st at 10:00 a.m. in Room 400, City Hall. All those in favor of the motion will signify by stating aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it and the motion carries. Thank you very much. (Committee of the Whole concluded at 4:18 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. ________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL