Committee on Education, July 31, 2024

COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION The Sixth Man Center, PYB 4250 Wissahickon Avenue Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19129 Wednesday, July 31, 2024 11:10 a.m. PRESENT: COUNCILMAN ISAIAH THOMAS, CHAIR COUNCILMAN ANTHONY PHILLIPS, VICE-CHAIR COUNCILWOMAN NINA AHMAD COUNCILWOMAN KENDRA BROOKS COUNCILWOMAN JAMIE GAUTHIER COUNCILWOMAN QUETCY M. LOZADA

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Good morning, everybody. Good morning, everybody. (Good morning.)

You better be glad the Council President isn't here. He wouldn't stand for that type of good morning. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Good morning.

Thank you, Kenny. Before we get started with today's hearing -- actually you know what, good morning, everybody. Welcome to Philadelphia's City Council and the Committee on Education. I now note that the hour has come. Mr. Braveman, will you please call the roll of attendance to make sure that members are present. Members who are present, please indicate your presence by saying aye.

Sure. Chair Thomas.

Present.

Vice-Chair Anthony Phillips.

Present.

Councilmember Gauthier.

Present.

Councilmember Lozada.

Present.

And, Councilmember Ahmad.

Present.

Thank you. A quorum of the Committee is present and this hearing is now called to order. This is the public hearing of the Committee of Education -- I'm sorry. This is a public hearing on the Committee of Education on Resolution No. 240630. Mr. Braveman, will you please read the title of the hearing resolution today.

Yes. We will be hearing Resolution No. 240630, authorizing the Committee on Education to hold hearings investigating the incidence, rate, impacts and outcomes of homeless students in the School District of Philadelphia.

Thank you. Just a couple household things. Number one, clearly the setting of today's hearing is one that's not traditional. So as people come in and go back out, we'll just ask that you try your best not to be in the middle center part. For those who don't know, all public hearings are actually live so this is happening live right now on television. So based on the way we are set up, we'll just ask that you not walk across the front in the midst of leaving in and out. Also, I would like to thank -- first of all, thank all of the members of the Education Committee for being here. They say City Council go on vacation in the summertime. I don't know, Councilmember Ahmad, if that's necessarily the case. But we are here today to discuss an important issue. And again, I want to thank all of the members of the Committee as well as their staff for being here on this day. For those who have been on City Council with me for some time, you know that I've been advocating for an organization called Philadelphia Youth Basketball. We've been fighting for a number of organizations who provide quality Out-of-School Time programming. And at the end of the day, we're super excited to see a vision that was started nearly years ago 7 coming to fruition. 8 The facility that we're in 9 is called the Sixth Man Center, and 10 this space was essentially built and the ribbon-cutting was earlier this year. So we are some of the first group of people to be here in this essential space. I also want to thank all of the City Council President's staff, the Tech team and everybody who got here early to be able to make this hearing happen. My team and I were intentional about doing the hearing here because we want people to see this amazing space. Today's conversation is about youth homelessness, and we will do a deep dive as it relates to this particular issue. But a big part of making sure young people is on the pathway to success is to make sure that they have quality programming not just during school but after school and in the summertime. And PYB is doing that. I do want to take a moment to recognize that Governor Shapiro was actually here yesterday. And I want to give a shout-out to the CEO Kenny Holdsman, can you raise your hand. (Applause.)

As well as co-founder Eric Worley. Eric, can you raise your hand. (Applause.)

Kenny and Eric are the co-founders of PYB. And the City of Philadelphia over the last couple years has put in nearly $1 million to help make this $46 million facility come to fruition. While that million dollars is great, part of why I got y'all out here today, John, is hopefully we can get a few more dollars for PYB. My dream world, the City of Philadelphia will give PYB $1 million a year in operating money to put us in a position to be able to make sure that we have a partnership between PYB and our schools to ensure that young people who go to Philadelphia-based schools can participate in programming here for free. With that being said, I also want to thank my office for making this happen. My office is a youth-based office. And as you walked in, you seen a lot of young people escorting you in. We had 14 interns intern with us this summer, eight high school students and six college students. And this is pretty much the culmination of their work this summer. So I want to thank all of them, especially our clerk Mr. Braveman as well as Sonia, Sarah and Michael for pretty much leading the charge. I also want to thank the members of the Public Defender's Office who are here today joining us in the conversation. (Applause.)

Thank you to (inaudible). And I also want to thank Councilmembers who will be joining us, Councilmember Rue Landau, Councilmember Jim Harrity and I just seen former State Rep. and new Executive Director of Project HOME, Donna Bullock as well too for being part of this. With that being said, I want to open it up to members of the Committee who would like to make any other opening remarks as it relates today's conversation. (No response.)

Hearing none, Mr. Braveman, will you please call -- wait. And while they're entering, Mr. Braveman, will you please call the first panel to testify before us today.

First, we welcome the Director from the Mayor's Office of Education, Dr. Deborah Carrera. (Witnesses approached Witness table.)

Good morning, Doc.

Good morning.

Please state your name for the record and you may begin with your testimony.

Good morning. My name is Dr. Deborah Carrera. I am the Chief Education Officer for the City of Philadelphia and I direct the Mayor's Office of Education for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker. The Mayor's Office of Education is a cabinet-level position reporting to the Chief of Staff. We're responsible for education policy and programs, including K-12 higher education and adult education. We serve as the Mayor's liaison to the School District of Philadelphia, charter schools, colleges and universities and the organizations and institutions that support quality access and affordable education. Our role is to advance the Mayor's vision of a world-class system of education for learners of all ages and socioeconomic status as a foundational element of economic opportunity for all. I want to introduce my Deputy Chief Education Officer Sharon Ward who's with me today as well. On behalf of the Administration, I want to thank you for convening this hearing and drawing attention to a critical education issue. Students experiencing homelessness are among the -- have among the greatest risks to school success. They have higher levels of emotional and behavioral problems, have increased risk of serious health problems, are more likely to experience separation from families and are more likely to experience school mobility and have negative education outcomes. They are more likely to repeat a grade, be expelled or drop out of school and have lower academic performance. Nationally, children experiencing homelessness are nine times more likely to repeat a grade and three times more likely to be placed in special education and four times more likely to drop out of school. Reducing the incidence of homelessness by creating permanent affordable housing is a top long- term priority of the Administration, and there are multiple City resources to identify and provide services to children and families experiencing homelessness. Throughout my seven years as a high school principal before coming to work for the City, I worked with many students experiencing homelessness. Some of our students and their families moved into the city and lived with family members while working towards permanent housing. Other students' families were evicted or lost their homes, forcing them to live in shelters. Lastly, some of my students were kicked out of their homes by their families and couch-surfed in their homes of friends. LGBTQ students and students with involvement in the justice system were particularly at risk of family estrangement. Many of the students I worked with who experienced homelessness struggled with their education because for many of them where they were going to sleep, their next meal, the well-being of their family or siblings was their priority, not Algebra 1, not English 3. We worked hard to earn our students' trust by providing a caring environment, support and connecting them with resources. It is important to note that the statutory responsibility for students experiencing homelessness lies with the state education agencies, in this case the Pennsylvania Department of Education and with local education agencies, including the School District of Philadelphia and charter schools. The McKinney-Vento Homelessness Assistance Act requires that state education agencies ensure that each child of each homeless individual and each homeless youth has equal access to the same free appropriate public education, including a public preschool education as provided to other children and youth. Services must be provided to students up to age 21. Children and youth experiencing homelessness may be living in a family unit or may be unaccompanied youth.

McKinney- Vento requirements include immediate enrollment of homeless children and youth even if they lack the normally required documents; school stability, school districts must prioritize keeping homeless students in their school of origin; support services, schools must provide access to a wide range of educational services; liaison services, each LEA, Local Education Agency must designate a liaison to identify and provide support services to students experiencing homelessness. The School District of Philadelphia will provide details about its program and services during its testimony. The City of Philadelphia has a variety of points of intersection with both families and youth experiencing homelessness. One precondition for student success in school is that their basic needs are met. The City of Philadelphia works with the School District to meet those needs so students can get to school, focus on their studies and just be children. Philadelphia's Continuum of Care led by the Office of Homeless Services has developed a robust set of services to address the needs of youth and young adults experiencing homelessness as well as an opportunity for youth to provide input and informed local practices, policies, procedures and programming. S. 7 million in an award in 2022. Using HUD's guidelines, the program is primarily targeted to youth ages to 24, providing 17 transitional housing, rapid 18 rehousing and supportive housing as well as supportive services ranging from mental health, outpatient services, case management to assistance with transportation and child care. The bulk of the funds, 70 percent, will be used for the rapid rehousing with supports, with percent allocated to supportive housing and 20 percent to transitional housing. The scope of services was developed with homeless youth during the design phase of the YHDP process. The City will also (inaudible) funding from other funding streams from HUD's Continuum of Care program, including emergency housing vouchers, family unification program fostering youth to independence, vouchers to support this initiative. Individuals experiencing or at risk of experiencing homelessness encounter Philadelphia's coordinated entry, an assessment-based housing referral system at one of six access points, sites where youth can meet with staff and receive assistance and accessible available resources. The Continuum of Care has designated access points for youth that offer a friendly nonjudgmental space to seek assistance and receive targeted linkage to resources that are geared towards youth and young adults. These access points are operated by youth-centered provider agencies such as Valley Youth House and Eddie's House with staff who are trained to work with youth and young adults and guide them towards the resources and services they need. The City also partners with a variety of youth-serving agencies with many, including Valley Youth House, Eddie's House, HopePHL and Philly Homes for Youth Coalition offering housing programs with individualized supports for and comprehensive wraparound services. Additionally from 2022 to 2024, OHS received funding from the Philadelphia School District from its federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, ESSER, funds to hire a homeless liaison to assist students experiencing homelessness by providing referrals to public benefits and referrals to enrichment programs, summer jobs and for students with disabilities referrals to transportation services. The City has also partnered with Pennsylvania Education for Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness Program. This work has helped to inform the services provided by a liaison to better meet the unique needs of youth and young adults dealing with low-income, limited English proficiency, disability, racial and ethnic minority and LGBTQ students.

We've given you an appendix that shows an unduplicated count of youth from ages to that have been served through these programs. The Office of Children and Families Department of Human Services also intersect with and provide services to students experiencing homelessness. The DHS Education Support Center works with the School District to prevent disruptions to the students' education when they are placed in DHS care and identifies and removes educational barriers for children in the child welfare system. Additionally, DHS coordinates with the School District in an attempt for youth to remain in their school of origin as to not disrupt their education. The ESC and DHS providers will make referrals for services, rental support and resources to concrete goods in an effort to prevent youth from becoming homeless. Additionally, the DHS social work services managers who work in the District schools collaborate with the School District by helping to enroll youth in school and supporting school stability. Our community school coordinators also work to refer youth in danger of homelessness for services and support to help stabilize families. I want to thank Councilman Thomas and the Committee for elevating this important issue. We look forward to working with you to identifying barriers that impede school success, identify gaps in services that develop a strategy to best support this vulnerable student population. Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony. We appreciate it. Before we move on to questions, I just want to note for the record that Councilmember Mark Squilla from the 1st Councilmanic District has joined us as well as Minority Leader Councilmember Kendra Brooks has joined us as well too, so welcome. Thank you. You guys missed my opening remarks, but I'll be having my camp here, Councilmember Squilla, the week of August 19th. So you can come back then and we can talk about the facility and the amazing space. With that being said, I want to start with some questions. So first question: For all of us, not just for the members of Council, but for all of the advocates and people who really care about this issue, a big part of addressing homelessness for young people in the City of Philadelphia requires a collaborative effort between of course us the City and of course our School District. While we know young people go to all different types of schools in the city of Philadelphia, we know that the School District of Philadelphia houses a lot of homeless young people, whether it's couch-surfing like you talked about or young folks who are visibly homeless. Can you describe the interactions between the Mayor's Office of Education and the School District of Philadelphia and what your vision is moving forward? And I'll go into depth as we go throughout the course of the hearing, but what we know on our side is that we've run out of federal dollars. The ARPA funding is gone on our side so we're constantly thinking about what we need to do to offset that revenue that we essentially won't have anymore. The School District essentially has the same issue. While we know that Harrisburg has given us $232 million in new money for operating costs for the School District of Philadelphia, it still doesn't offset all of the dollars that we were using from the federal level to essentially operate as a District. So with the deficits on the horizon, both as it relates to us as a City and the School District, what is the vision as it relates to your office cooperating with the District and how do we make sure that we're not having a drop in services based on the programs and the people who are doing the work that's effective?

That's a great question. Thank you, Councilman. So we've been in this role since March 1st, for four months, but I'm excited to be in this role because as you've heard, I spent 27 years working with the School District of Philadelphia and three at the state. And so, this is something that is near and dear to me and I'm excited that you are taking on this issue. But the Mayor's Office of Education, one of our primary goals and responsibilities is to align the systems that are in place. And so, we have the convening power to be able to bring the groups to the table that are doing this work. As you heard, the School District of Philadelphia works under law, under McKinney-Vento, so they have a major responsibility in identifying students who are homeless and working with that liaison in each of those schools to provide support. So the District will talk about that. But our office will be working closely with the School District, we will be working closely with my colleague here from the Office of Homeless Services. We will be working also with DHS to better understand what the gaps are, to coordinate and to be able to support the initiatives because there's a lot that's happening, a lot that's going on and people are doing the work, but we want to make sure we bring that to the table. And to your point about the funding as well, to be able to think about what are some ways and some solutions that we can work together to be able to support young people and provide them with the necessary, as you said, the basic needs that's even the start of this work together.

So we've seen some issues as it relates to the Office of Homelessness. We know that the School District of Philadelphia has jumped significantly as it relates to the number of youth that they essentially served, over 10,000 youth in the 2022-2023 school year, and we know that those numbers will essentially increase. How will we be dedicating resources from the Admin's perspective, how will we be dedicating resources to stabilize this problem and to ensure that the numbers are moving in the opposite direction of what they're going in right now?

Yeah, I think our close collaboration is going to be with the Office of Homeless Services. That $8.7 million grant, that goes into effect now. So 70 percent of those dollars, as I stated before, are going into housing. And so, this is a youth- led initiative where young people have been at the table. They talked about the design, they talked about their needs. So that's a bulk of dollars that is going into rapid rehousing, sustainable rehousing treatment. And so, we're going to be working in collaboration with our colleagues at OHS to be able to make sure that those dollars get to the right places and support the work that many people are doing.

So I think our concern is a number of things. Number one, we really think that it's important that it's a coordinated effort essentially with the District. When you talk to a lot of people who are in the education space, one of the things that they'll say is that government operates in silos. So when're talking about having the number of beds and making sure that we're dealing with the homelessness issue as a whole, I think what we want to see is something that's specifically narrowed down and has a coordinated effort that's focused on children. We know that there's a lot going on, Councilmember Lozada. I'm hoping at some point you'll talk about some of the things that's happening in Kensington and some of the homeless issues down there. But when we're talking about youth homelessness, I think that there needs to be a specific maybe task force or effort that's focused on that demographic, because homelessness for young people, as you said in your testimony, looks very different than what homelessness can look like for anybody else. Honestly, a lot of young people who are technically classified as homeless, they don't even see themselves as homeless, right. They're staying with grandmom this week and auntie next week and maybe a friend a week after that. And to them that type of couch-surfing is essentially just a norm. So I think what we're looking for are ways to identify who the young people are as it relates to primarily the School District of Philadelphia, we know they'll be coming up pretty soon, but also having a coordinated effort. I'll open it up to members of City Council for questions that they may have for the Admin, but I think before I close out the last thing I'll ask: Have you identified organizations that you feel like, and we'll ask the School District the exact same question, have we identified organizations and providers that we feel like are specifically experts as it relates to dealing with youth homelessness? And if we have, who are they, how many do we have and how do we envision highlighting and funding those organizations so they can really put a dent in this problem that we know is essentially spiking right now?

Yeah. As I mentioned before, we've been having conversations with some of the current providers, Eddie's House, HopePHL, some of the others we've been engaging them in conversations. But again, we are very open to creating a table where we can convene those partners, learn about best practices, hear what they're doing so that we can be able to, to your point, identify the students, the needs and have, as we were talking about today, this is an early conversation about greater work. And so, this is just the beginning. So I think establishing that table, convening those partners, listening, learning, especially from the young people engaging their voice. That was one of the things even as a high school principal transformed our school, bringing the students to the table, having them talk, having them share their experiences and having them also tell us how to make this work.

So this resolution will be one that I will assure by the end of today's conversation we continue the conversation. So I won't close out this hearing because I think that it's important that we have a Part 2 of this conversation so we could put ourselves in a position where we could specifically identify organizations that we know are doing a phenomenal job servicing young people because when you're talking about youth, the needs will be different, right. They need transportation back and forth to school. We got to think about meals and extra- curricular activities. So that really is our focus on the Council side and we want to make sure that those organizations are getting the resources that they have. Normally, we have little things to ding up so I'm not quite sure if you were in the queue. Chair recognizes Councilmember Gauthier and then after that we'll go to Councilmember Lozada. Councilmember Gauthier.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning.

Good morning, Councilmember.

I have a few questions. One about the chart that you presented. Can you speak to the difference in the numbers pre-FY20? It seems like in total we were serving about 900 young people, but then those numbers jumped astronomically in the years following that and average about 2600 a year. So can you just speak to, number one, the difference in those numbers?

I'm going to have my colleague Mary Beth speak to that.

Okay.

As you come up, please make sure that you start by stating your name for the record before you begin your testimony and for anybody else who's coming to testify today, please always start with your name for the record.

Sure. Good morning, Council. My name is Beth Gonzalez. I'm the Deputy Director of Policy Planning and Performance Management at the Office of Homeless Services. So in regards to your question, this chart breaks down who we served from 2020 to 2024. Each year by age breakdown, through 12, to 17, to and then the total. The difference is in reference to the distinct age count. It's not always equal to the total for each year because some of the youth that we have when we're serving them, we only count them once in the total, but they might change by age in reference to years that they are so it's not going to always equal the sum total.

14 That wasn't the -- the question I'm 15 asking is we have one column that 16 says pre-FY20. It seems like we've 17 served 900 people in this program 18 in total pre-FY20, but then every 19 year following that the numbers 20 jump to like 2600 people. Can you 21 explain -- were the access points 22 not set up at a certain point and 23 we just set them up and we're 24 serving more people because they know about the program? I just want to understand the jump in the numbers. And then can you also speak about -- the most astronomical totals are in to 24. Can you 6 speak about the particular 7 challenges faced by that age group 8 that result in these numbers? 9

Sure. So in 10 reference to pre-'20 and in 11 reference to who OHS served, that 12 was pre-COVID. So obviously when 13 we looked, we had spikes during 14 some of these years. That's why it 15 jumped -- 16

I'm 17 sorry. If you could speak into the 18 mic so that the people can hear you.

Can you hear me?

That's better. Thank you.

So pre-20, obviously this was who we served pre-COVID. So we saw spikes during the COVID years, so that's why you see the uptick in those particular years and those numbers. In reference to what we see, in reference to to 24, I think 7 because of coordinated entry and 8 marketing it and destigmatizing the 9 topic of homelessness, like we said 10 a lot of people don't identify as 11 being homeless, but I think through 12 education and marketing and working 13 with our youth, marketing that out 14 more so more folks are coming to 15 the front door and getting service, 16 plus as we're getting more through 17 our Young Adult Leadership 18 Committee, through the grants we're getting, you know, before in early years pre-COVID, you know, we might talk about what we want to do around homelessness but there was no money. So now we have money coming in, programming ideas coming in, so I think more people are coming to the table and the youth are coming to help design that so we're getting more interest.

Are there particular challenges with that age group in terms of the risk they face with homelessness?

Sure. I think any young adult, you have human trafficking concerns, a lot of folks because of faith-based reasons might get kicked out of their homes. There's a lot of folks who in the LEP population as well. So I think really the key thing is not having that stigma tied to it and being comfortable to go to your McKinney-Vento folks and your teachers to get service, so then working with our network and our systems and all of our nonprofit providers to help people realize that there's help out there and they don't have to do it alone.

And then lastly, can you just explain for our understanding the gap in time between when we got the grant? And I guess it sounds like we're about to start using the grant but we got the grant in '22. I just want to understand --

Yeah. So in the fall of '22 HUD announced the awards. Then it's essentially a planning grant that you have to get first. So they said, we're going to give you this money, each community then has to go back, work with their youth and design, all right, depending on the allocated amount that you receive, how do you want to use that money. So then you had six to eight months to plan that process and get approved. Once that got approved which happened in '23, so now we're now in the process of standing up all those programs in housing.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Just real quick, I'm sorry, Councilmember Lozada. I'm going to go out of order. Chair recognizes Councilmember Phillips. I want to let him give some remarks.

Hi, everyone. Can everyone hear me? Perfect. Just really quickly before I excuse myself, just want a quick point of inquiry. Is there a liaison in the School District of Philadelphia that is there to touch basis with all of the young people who are experiencing homelessness? And are they constantly having that touchpoint with them in the schools? If it's just only a couple, but are there ones that just are solely responsible with visiting and touching even if they don't even contact them on a frequent basis and how those outcomes are coming along?

Yes. So through the McKinney-Vento Act, each school including charter schools have a liaison at their school and then all of those liaisons work together in close partnership. Colleen leads that charge in working with the students that are experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness. And then we work very closely as well, meet monthly, talk about ways of how we can improve that partnership as well as any identifying trends that are happening.

Thank you. I just want to learn maybe later about how effective those liaisons are with the young people because that would be really helpful.

Yep.

Thank you, Chairman Thomas.

Thank you, Councilmember Phillips. There's a number of people who want to come on in. It's a few spaces if you want to come on in. If you want to stay right there, you're fine too. But if you want to come on in, you can take a minute to do that now. Chair recognizes Councilmember Lozada.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I guess my question is following up on what Chairman Thomas said about providers and identifying who those providers are, I think that's extremely important to me, and I'm sure to all the members of this Committee because we want to be able to know who do we reach out to if families communicate with our offices that they are experiencing homelessness and have young people who are in our School District system and how we can be supportive to them. Somebody mentioned community coordinators. And so, I guess my question is how do those community coordinators help this particular population and through that support that they're receiving through these community coordinators, how are we measuring whether the work and the resources that they're connecting these young people with, how do we measure whether they're successful, right? We do tend to work in silos sometimes. And so, are we working -- and some of this population can be in the 7th Council District today. As a result of couch-surfing, they may end up in the 1st or in the 9th somewhere. And so, how are community coordinators working together to be able to ensure that this young person consistently is receiving the support that they need and how are we measuring whether those supports keep them in our academic system and on the path to a successful journey, academic journey?

Before you answer that question, I just want to remind everybody when you're speaking, please speak into the mic. It's a lot of different things happening here right now which makes this an amazing space, but we want everybody who cares about this issue to be able to hear the responses as well as the questions of members. So please speak into the mic. There's no 21 such thing as too loud and let's continue the dialogue.

So thank you. The exciting thing is that community schools is under my portfolio. And so, I'm really excited about working with the schools. And they serve as a direct contact with students that are experiencing homelessness. So, number one, they build relationships at the school. They build relationships with the leaders. They build relationships with the counselors. And students come to them and they are seen as trusted partners. So the community school coordinators do a very incredible, holistic approach, providing food to families, providing clothing, providing academic support for those students. But in addition to that, they work closely with the McKinney-Vento liaison at the school to support that young person if they need shelter or support that family if they need housing. And then I think as was mentioned before, they do the follow-up, right. They work with those families. They have a relationship. One of the most important things about McKinney- Vento is that the law requires for students to stay in their school of origin and that helps disrupt the mobility. A little bit harder when you're talking about teenagers because they might be staying at a friend's house tomorrow and another friend's house the next day. But at least for that younger population, the law requires that they do stay. To the measurement piece, the District can talk about that, how they're measuring attendance, how they're measuring academic success. Students also in the District have to complete surveys so they can probably talk about that piece, but the community coordinators are an excellent strategy in providing supports to the entire family around health, food insecurity and I think as we mentioned before, one of the biggest, most important things is that students that are facing homelessness that their basic needs are met, and that is very critical in this conversation.

If you can share with the Committee the list of where have we identified that these students are concentrated, right, where are the schools that maybe as a legislative body we can provide support or we can identify, we can reach out to see how we can better be supportive. When you had the opportunity to meet with some of these students, what are some of the programs or what are some of the needs that they have expressed to you that they need that we are currently not providing?

I'm going to start with this one: They want adults that care, they want adults that care. So it's very critical that we don't just say we care for kids, but we care about kids. And so, they want adults that see them, they want adults that hear them, they want adults that can respond to what they're asking for in realtime.

What are some of the things they're asking for?

So there's a blend of things. So, for example, it could be transportation with school, it could be employment, it could be child care, so our parenting youth and the needs that they have. It could be mental health treatment.

I'm sorry. Quick question.

Sure.

Why would a young person need support with transportation? What would be the situation that will present itself? And I'm putting my coach's hat on. All of the young people who live within -- if you live within a mile of the school and you don't have transportation but if you're homeless you don't have a house, so if you are a young person who's dealing with homelessness, why aren't we giving them a free transpass?

Right. So they could be couch-surfing and they're not near their school of origin so they might be hopping around so they --

So if a young person is in that category, they don't get a free transpass?

No, they would.

So why would they need help with transportation?

But they might have additional services and places they're going, employment, so they might need additional supports. So there might be internships or employment or --

We would want to -- I'm going to pass it back to Councilmember Lozada. But I would want to do a deep dive into that particular issue right there because at the end of the day, the amount of money that we as a City are putting into different initiatives specifically focusing on SEPTA as well as the School District, I can't understand why a homeless youth will have an issue with transportation dealing with anything. So I just want to note for the record between the School District and the Mayor's Office when we come back to have this conversation, we would definitely want more data as to why a homeless youth will have an issue with transportation. I can't comprehend how that would make sense when we give our young people free transpasses. I'm sorry. You can continue answering Councilmember Lozada's question.

Well, I agree with what you've just said and I also think that this Administration has an amazing relationship from what I can see, right, as it relates to labor, right. And so, how do we connect these young people to apprenticeship opportunities, to opportunities that will give them an opportunity to be self- sufficient at some point or another? And so, if we've not done that yet, then I think that part of the plan should be ensuring that we reach out and connect with all of these people who have provided this legislative body as well as the Administration with access to a workforce, right. We need to start thinking more outside of the box and really taking people up on the opportunities that they're offering us and our young people to be able to -- especially this population, right, an opportunity to be self- sufficient and succeed. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I can definitely say on a macro level HUD requires with the dollars that we get as a continuum of care, which is our coordinated response to address homelessness and those particular subpopulations such as older adults, students, it's getting everyone at the table so we don't work in silos. That's the intention of the CoC. So it's making sure we're not only streamlining all of their fiscal and finance resources that are coming in but also the soft pass- offs, so like when we're transitioning from one agency to another. So it's really important that not only Council and the Administration but making sure all of our providers, all the government agencies are really working together in a coordinated effort and kind of rowing in the same direction. So that's the goal of the CoC, and would love to talk to you guys further about that.

Just to follow up on that, the CoC has been meeting for how long?

So it's a requirement since HUD funding, so I don't know the exact year that would be.

I asked that question because this has been an issue for a long time. This is not new to the city of Philadelphia, right. And so, I think that recognizing that it's been happening for a long time and the fact that we're still having the conversation about how important this is, the fact that there's still not enough funding for it or that there are not enough partnerships built, the fact that we still don't have a concrete path towards a successful academic journey for this population to me is frustrating, right. And this is not the first time, right. So I'm not -- I'm frustrated, but I'm not surprised. At what point do we stop having conversations and we really start putting some of these things into practice, right? Dr. Debbie Carrera, you've been in the education world for many years. You've been working with the Office of Homeless Services for many years. There are many people in government that have been a part of this process for a really long time. At what point do we say this is enough talking, right. And I say that and I say that in frustration because I see the damage that we as government have caused in communities like mine. And some of the children who are in these systems are children of those who are living in the 7th Council District on Kensington Avenue. And so, if we don't want to lose the young people like we've lost their parents or the people who were responsible caretakers for them, then we need to take this seriously, right. We don't want to continue to lose young people to the environment that we as government are creating because we never are going to have enough money, right. There's never going to be enough resources, but how do we start to at least say these are solid success stories, these are children that we have saved from the systems that we have not invested in enough. So, Mr. Chair, I'd like to see at some point when do we stop talking so much about the needs that we have as a city and as a community and the needs that we have in the School District of Philadelphia and really start preparing our young people to be tomorrow's leaders successfully. (Applause.)

And I think that that's going to be part of that continued effort. For those who don't know, Councilmember Lozada represents what a lot of people have identified as one of the worst neighborhoods in the entire city, really on the entire East Coast. And I think that her efforts since she's been in office to really highlight the issues and begin to rectify some of them have been phenomenal, but I think the concern is that a lot of the schools in her District are struggling. Some of those things that we've seen last year, teacher being shot, students being shot, all of that is in her District. So we have to rectify this issue, not just for the her District but really for the entire city. Chair recognizes Councilmember Ahmad followed by Councilmember Brooks, and then we'll close out with Councilmember Landau. Now, very quickly I just want to note for the record that after these three members ask questions, I'm going to take the liberty as the Chair of the Committee to change the order. And after the Admin is finished, we're going to actually go to former State Rep. Donna Bullock, and then we'll go to our panel with the School District and a few others. Chair recognizes Councilmember Ahmad.

Thank you, Chair. Can you hear me? (Yes.)

So I echo the frustration of my colleague Councilmember Lozada. Even more broadly, we live in a country that is a first-world country, that is the richest country in the world. And here we are talking about young people being traumatized by lack of housing. While I'm a member of this Committee, I'm also the Chair of the Public Health Committee, and housing is a determinant of health. Educational status is a determinant of health. And those two are linked. And so, this is a deeply serious matter that I hear has been an ongoing issue and we really need to have a roadmap with accountability and deliverables that are measured. I know we can't measure everything, but at least we can try to get as much of a handle as we can on how things have improved or not improved and then pivot if that's not the right way to go. One of the things with government has been we start a process and we stay in it regardless of whether it's actually working or not. I know there's a lot of strings attached to money that comes from the federal government, right. But we need to advocate for flexibility of those dollars in order to pivot. So one of my questions I have is for the HUD grant, for the rehousing and supportive housing for youth to 24. What is the process if the youth is part of a family unit experiencing homelessness? Can the family access similar resources with their child or are they separated if the youth is over 18?

If it's 10 parenting youth, they would be part 11 of it. If they're part of a 12 family, it wouldn't be through that 13 grant. We have other funding and 14 other resources that the family 15 would utilize. 16

So 17 would that be concurrent is why I 18 was asking that question?

Yes.

So when we identify the 18 to 24 who can use the HUD money, there will be concurrent money that will be matched for the family that that youth is coming from to support them as well if they are homeless, if they're still part of the family unit?

But they would probably be a separate household if that was the case. It depends on how they present. So if they come with -- like the whole entire family's together, we figure out what funding source is the best match compared to if it's somebody by themselves to or a 13 parenting youth 18 to 24, yes. 14

Okay. 15 Then I have a question on the data 16 that you presented. When you go 17 from year to year, is it some of 18 the same youth you're counting 19 again? 20

Yes. 21

Okay. 22

Not in the 23 total but, yes, we might service 24 them more than one time or they might go from year over year, yes.

So this is a cumulative number, not necessarily the -- so the subtraction between FY20 and FY21 will give you either new or reduced numbers?

Yes.

So the core number is what we carried over?

Yes.

So since it seems long term like they're year to year, do we have a way of assessing how the programming that all of you are doing and the resources they're receiving, how is that impacting the outcome, say, educational outcomes or their mental health status or their overall health status?

So we have a monitoring unit within OHS that will monitor the programs as well as when we're competing for annual grants. We have a local competition, so we look to make sure is it cost-effective, what's the data quality, is it effective, is it addressing the gaps and needs in our community. In addition, what is distinct about YHDP, we actually have the youth who are designing the continuous quality improvement of those so that's where the pivot comes in. So as we design the programs, there's base services that we want to make sure all of the programs offer. So it's not like if you go to one YHDP and I go to another and this one offers 19 services and one -- we don't want 20 them to already have disparities right away, so there's some baseline services and then unique ones based on each individual program, and the youth have helped design to help monitor that and we're putting all that together and we'll be evaluating that quarterly. So then if we need to do pivots, we'll do so accordingly.

But you've had data for a while now, right. So the youth who have stayed year to year, what is their educational attainment? How are you assessing that and how are they doing?

We just document what their education status is within our system, so we would have to refer to the School District to get those specific details.

So that's when -- you talked about not having silos, right. The way to measure someone's success is going to be something that the School District measures, but somebody has to have all the descriptors for that one individual.

Yeah.

Where does that live?

So that's more integrated data and that's when we all partner together around that, so it could be a particular grant we're looking for or advocacy or --

But where does the data live? In spite of whether you're applying for a grant or not, how do you track the health of someone on all these measures, education, mental health, overall health --

Yeah, that would be our integrated data office.

And so, there is such a thing that I could go now today and look at the youth that are in this unhoused situation and I can see what they're tracked and I can see either improved status or not having made progress? So there's a data -- there's a dashboard already you're telling me?

No, not a dashboard for that specifically. Whatever those data elements are, we could pull those from those respective agencies to create --

So we're still in silos. What we need is a coordinated way to look at one child because we're talking about the one child's life. Right now you're telling me you'll have to pull this and pull that in order to define what is the status of this child who's unhoused. So we need a coordinated way to have descriptors following the child from Year to Year 2 to Year 3, and hopefully exiting out of the system with success, but we don't know that yet. So I would really, Chairman, like to see all the different strands of data that are lying around. And if we are really trying to break silos, the best way to do it is put it all together so we have a complete picture of the individuals who are getting these services and we don't have that yet. And finally, I have a question about our youth aging out of foster systems. That's a very vulnerable time and how well are we following them in terms of their housing, all of the needs, right. They fall in the to group. 17 And I just wanted to know similarly 18 to everybody in the system, the 19 foster youth have a particular 20 issue because there's no village 21 around them, right, and how are we 22 really looking at their success, 23 what is your information on how 24 they do with all the care you've given in that age group?

You're asking about to 24. I mean, I would definitely -- the School District is going to speak on that. I mean, I think by 18, students are 6 graduating, but the expectation 7 under McKinney-Vento is that there 8 aren't silos, that there is a 9 continuum in a pathway for 10 students, especially students with 11 special needs who can stay in the 12 system until 21 years old, so we 13 want to make sure that the School 14 District speaks on that when they 15 come up as to what do they do 16 specifically to support those 17 students. 18

So I'm going to ask that Councilmember Brooks ask her questions and then I have to move on to the next panel because they have a hard stop. But I'm going to ask that if Members still have questions for the Admin that we call you back up after the next panel because clearly Councilmember Ahmad has done a deep dive into some things that we are concerned about and we don't want to eliminate that line of questioning. So I'm going to allow Councilmember Brooks to go. And then after that, we're actually going to call up Professor Zachary Wood who's actually here from Washington and has a long flight as well as former State Rep. Donna Bullock. So after Councilmember Brooks, those will be the two members of the next panel. And then again if we need to, we would like to come back to the Admin Thank you. Councilmember Brooks.

Thank you. Thank you so much. So my questions are similar to Councilmember Ahmad so I'm not going to kind of repeat, but I do have some concerns around coordination of services. When I look at this chart from how the number incrementally increases like drastically, I'm concerned about the wraparound services that we have for young people as old as 12. My sisters are all elementary school teachers and you see the transition as early as 3rd grade. So if we're talking about building networks of success, we need to start as early as elementary school, especially because I'm pretty sure these 14 children that are in the age of 5 to 12, the situation probably doesn't change much and how much wraparound services that we have across the continuum is where my concerns are falling in reference to Councilmember Ahmad's coordination of care for a child even outside the family, because I've had several calls from children or families that were in homeless shelters that are elementary or middle school students calling last minute trying to get summer jobs. So my question goes to this liaison that you mentioned. Is there a liaison per school or is it a liaison per region?

The law requires there to be a liaison per school.

So if a child is identified as homeless in the system, why wouldn't the liaison pick up that they needed a summer job because we leave young people ages 13 and older free to roam the streets because they don't qualify for Pre-K -- I mean, for camp services and they can't stay at the shelter if their parents work? So we have 13-, 12-year-olds roaming the streets. And if they have a liaison at the school, wouldn't it be their responsibility to catch that before the last day for admissions for Out-of-School Time summer programs? And that's where my concern is because if it's one in every school in the city of Philadelphia that should not be the case. There are too many young people roaming around this city obviously and a lot of them are identified in some system, why aren't we catching them? You talked about young people want adults to care for them. What about the people that are assigned and being paid to care for them to make sure that they have adequate services? That's one of my questions. And the community coordinators, those are at community schools; am I correct?

Yes, that's correct.

And I know there are of them. So is it also their responsibility to make sure that children don't fall through the crack? So some schools could have a community coordinator and a liaison?

(Nodded 8 affirmatively). 9

And 10 this is where my concern falls. We 11 should not have 10-, 12-, 13-year- 12 olds roaming the streets of 13 Philadelphia that are not assigned 14 to some kind of programming if 15 we're offering adequate wraparound 16 services and if parents need 17 support. If the School District, 18 the Homeless Services, DHS, 19 whoever's involved with these 20 families are working together, we cannot do this. If we're talking about adults caring for young people, we need qualified adults that we are paying through City and tax dollars to make sure that our young folks aren't roaming idly because evidently there are situations happening at home that may prevent them from getting into those services. I'll just leave those all there. That's a lot of thoughts. I'm sorry.

These are all great thoughts, Councilmember, and they're important because I think part of this conversation, and as I shared I know I've been in the role since March 1st, is to identify the gaps, and what you have identified right now are gaps. And so, when the District speaks, they can speak more about the responsibilities of the liaisons per school which is by law McKinney-Vento and then also those responsibilities to coordinate those services that you're talking about, right, employment in addition to all the other things that we've mentioned before, the community schools component is critically as important as well. And I agree with you, so we have to do a better job in finding out why there's a gap and how do we close that gap by bringing all the partners together and convening them on an ongoing basis to do this work with what Councilwoman said, with some measurable outcomes.

And I just -- I'm sorry. When I think about the gap, I mean when you physically see the gap, the gap is young people getting killed in the street and being missing. And I think that we have to take this seriously, because my concern is like I just mentioned three agencies that should be touching a child that's in the homeless system. It's no reason any of these children should not have something out of -- even if they registered and they didn't go, we have people that didn't even register, they didn't even know the program was available and that is unacceptable when we have, what is it, 200-and-something public schools in the city?

Correct.

263 liaisons assigned to make sure the children are doing something on top of whoever their case manager is, whoever's handling their family's case management, all of these people need to be working together and it's kind of unacceptable for what we see happening in our city right now and we have to be accountable. There's no way that we can just turn a blind eye. And I really would like to dive deeper into these gaps because we're paying -- this is a job. And I bet you their kids are in programs.

So members of the School District, clearly you have some time. Please try your best to be able to answer that specific question because you know it's coming, and we're going to expect some type of tangible data to let us know what's going on. Thank you guys for being patient with us. Mr. Clerk, can you please call the next panel. And then again, Admin, we will want to call you back. Mr. Braveman.

Next we'll hear from former State Rep. and Executive Director of Project HOME Donna Bullock.

As well as?

As well as Zachary Wood, Professor at Seattle University and Vice-president of the Mockingbird Society.

Good morning. As our next panel is transitioning, anybody outside who wants to come on in we have some seats here if you want to come sit down. Anybody who wants to transition somewhere else, this is a great time for that. With that being said, I want to say congratulations to former State Rep. Donna Bullock. It's good to have you here in this capacity. And I also want to say to Professor Wood, thank you for flying all the way across the country. A couple of us here had to do that last week. It's no 16 pretty travel experience, but we appreciate your knowledge and your expertise joining us in our conversation today. Please whoever wants to go first, whoever has the harder -- whoever has to leave sooner we will request that you go first. State your name for the record, begin with your testimony. I'll ask that members of the Committee allow the entire panel to testify before we ask questions. And I would ask everybody in the audience to please try to be as quiet as possible so we can hear all of the testimony as well as the questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Chairman Thomas and to the members of the Council Education Committee. I am honored to be here before you to just share a little bit about my perspective both from a lived experience, my legislative experience and my current role here at Project HOME. Before I graduated from high school, I already had more than 10 addresses. It had became clear to me that on an average my mother and I moved every 18 months. Whether it was to avoid an eviction record or to escape an overdue utility bill, my mother was crafty about making sure we made that move so that we can maintain our housing voucher and other resources. During this time, the one thing that was consistent was my school. For most of that time I remained at my school of origin, my original K through school. I was 8 able to remain in my gifted classes, continue with my extra- curricular activities and also maintain perfect attendance for most of my 12 years of school. I attribute most of this to the support of my local school district in New Jersey but also the support of adults. My housing insecurity during childhood was impacted by both the incarceration of a parent, the mental health issues and needs of my mother and access to limited subsidized housing in our community. I may not have known where I was going to lay my head at night, but I can always count on always being able to return to the same desk, the same classroom, the same school. That provided me the stability I needed to achieve my academic goals. This lived experience informs my work today at Project HOME as well as it had informed my advocacy as a State Representative here in the city of Philadelphia. While in the Pennsylvania House, I worked with advocates, students with lived experiences, school administrators and policy organizations like Schoolhouse Connections, the National Center for the Homeless Education and locally HopePHL to gather data and consider policy gaps that weren't addressed by the McKinney-Vento Act or the state's Education for Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness Program, which we called ECYEH in the Capitol. To this end, I had sponsored or co-sponsored legislation to recognize school professionals working with homeless students and to raise awareness on education of students experiencing homelessness, a day we recognize as Red Shirt Day in November. I also introduced legislation to increase access to vital documents such as birth certificates that are often required for school enrollment but can often be a cost barrier. To allow minors, years 14 of age and older, to be able to 15 apply for school and contract for 16 housing and other services on their own, particularly unaccompanied minors, this would allow them to move through those processes easier without having the burden of having adults sign for them. Legislation to provide financial aid to foster youth attending state colleges and universities, which I'm proud to say we were able to do with the help of Governor Wolf. Also, I worked on legislation to require colleges and universities to provide priority on-campus housing, a student liaison at those universities and other assistance to homeless students so that they may be able to access and complete their higher education goals, an issue that is not addressed by the McKinney-Vento Act, but one we've seen as many of our young people aged into higher education, as well as legislation to prevent school districts from across the Commonwealth from carelessly and heartlessly removing students from their school roles over residency disputes. This is an issue we saw in our surrounding suburban counties where we had many families doubling up, but school districts were accusing them of using other addresses so that they can attend their schools and therefore removing them from their school rolls.

With this work, I worked so closely with young people in my district, young people that worked at Monkey & Elephant cafe that works with a lot of our youth aging out of foster care, the Young Adult Leadership Board or Committee at DHS and many others because I knew it was important to make sure that that legislation was informed by those most impacted. I hope to continue that work in my new role at Project HOME. The mission of Project HOME is to empower adults, children and families to break the cycle of homelessness and poverty, to alleviate the underlying causes of poverty and to enable all of us to attain our fullest potential as individuals and as members of the broader society. We strive to create a safe and respectful environment where we support each other in our struggles for self-esteem, recovery and the confidence to move towards self- actualization. Project HOME achieves its mission through a continuum of services comprised of street outreach and a range of supportive housing and comprehensive services. We address the root causes of homelessness through neighborhood-based affordable housing and access to employment opportunities, health care and adult and youth education. We have developed and managed over 1,000 units of supportive housing and provide other services through the Hub of Hope, which is located right under your place of business at City Hall as a drop-in center for individuals to come shower, wash their clothes, receive services or a meal as well as a federally qualified health center and a learning center in North Philadelphia. Since it was founded by Sister Mary Scullion and Joan McConnon in 1989, Project HOME's work has continuously expanded to meet the needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. We evaluate that need based on what we see firsthand through street outreach and the data collection undertaken through point-in-time and quarterly counts of those experiencing homelessness in our city. Children and families experiencing homelessness are often missed in that data collection because the definitions of homelessness are inconsistent and families may not disclose their living situations and lastly, because children and families are less likely to be living in shelters or on the streets. S. Department of Education, more than 65 percent of students experiencing homelessness in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are living doubled-up with relatives and friends. Only percent in hotels or motels and 7 20 percent in shelters or 8 transitional housing, while less 9 than 3 percent are unhoused. But 10 65 percent are, in fact, living 11 doubled-up. These numbers are consistent in Philadelphia even with the different definitions of homelessness in our data. During the 2021-22 school year, Philadelphia reported more than 5,200 children and youth experiencing homelessness. This number includes children under the age of 5 and youth PreK through 12. However, the 2023 point-in-time count reported 825 children under 18 experiencing homelessness on a single night but zero unsheltered. That same night there were 409 young adults ages to experiencing homelessness, 69 of them unsheltered. Our focus at Project HOME is really focusing on those experiencing chronic homelessness, so we often serve mostly adults. However, recognizing the needs for housing for families experiencing homelessness, many with parents who experienced homelessness as a child, Project HOME expanded our housing services for single parents and most recently for young adults who are parenting. By providing resources and support, we can keep these families together thriving and a component of overcoming cycles of poverty. Project HOME currently serves more than 80 children living in our residences and an additional 80 young adults that live in our residences as well. For Project HOME, breaking the cycle of homelessness and poverty also requires us to look beyond housing.

While we believe that housing is the key to ending current homelessness, the key to preventing future homelessness is a quality education for every child and a continuing education for adults. Education for us is the E in Project H-O-M-E. We provide educational opportunities to our residents and our neighbors in the broader community. years ago through our 15 partnerships with local leaders in 16 the 19121 zip code, Project HOME 17 answered the community call for an 18 afterschool program and other 19 opportunities for the neighborhood 20 children. And in 2004, we opened the Hahnemann Learning Center Comcast Technology Labs, a 38,000 square foot, four-floor technology- loaded mega center with the most progressive hardware and software systems for education and learning, making it the largest and most advanced facility of its kind serving low-income populations in Philadelphia. It is quite impressive. I have watched our children and youth have access to all of our summer and afterschool programs, our robotics and coding courses, our music production studio, paid internships and all of this in a safe, caring environment. With access to technology generally found in wealthier school districts, we can close the gaps and opportunity for our children in this neighborhood. All kids deserve access to this kind of state-of-art technology, which is needed to thrive in the new and growing careers. And, Councilwoman Brooks, I heard you about summer internships and how important that is as well. We continue to support our students through mentorship, resources and community support to help them thrive. During the 2023-24 school year, our program served 187 students, including 67 K through 8, 98 high school students and 8 college students. And this past 9 week we celebrated our College 10 Access Program. We had six college 11 graduate students from that 12 particular community. They joined 13 dozens of students who collectively 14 earned 60 post-secondary 15 credentials, including Doctorate, 16 6 Master's degrees, 47 Bachelor's 17 degrees and 6 Associate's degrees. 18 We are incredibly proud of these 19 young people. 20 In the past, we have leased 21 space at the Hahnemann Learning 22 Center and Comcast Technology Labs 23 to other educational partners 24 understanding the need within our 25 community. We had an elementary school that has expanded and moved on to other premises, and we are currently working to partner with an early childhood education provider to maximize the use of that space and to fill the gap for parents in the neighborhood. We also plan to bring a mental health provider, a service requested by many of the families in the community. These partners help us move more fully to address the educational needs and overall well-being of the community. As we continue to expand our services to the children and families of our community and our residences, we rely on the School District and the City's resources to provide quality services for the children and youth we encountered through street outreach in our residences and in our programming at the Hahnemann Learning Center as well as our federally qualified health center. Our staff have working relationships with the District's Office of Education educating children and youth experiencing homelessness as well as OHS. However, we do see gaps in resources and services for our young adults who are aging out of those programs and seeking higher education. The School District's data and coordination are crucial to making sure homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring for these families. Schools are community hubs and often the point of entry for much-needed services for families. Because of the protections of the McKinney-Vento Act, schools can be the consistent for a student that is experiencing homelessness.

Student-centered youth-led and intentional collaborations and data-sharing between schools and community providers like Project HOME can improve identification and ease of access to resources for families experiencing homelessness. The 2023 updated Ed Research for Action brief on educational practices to identify and support students experiencing homelessness cites a 2016 example of such collaboration in New York City. The City's Department of Education and Department of Homeless Services changed their data-sharing agreement so that the Department of Education now receives a daily list of students in shelters instead of on a monthly roster. This information can help school districts ensure a more supportive school climate for those students, removing barriers and providing the tools needed to improve attendance and academic achievement. Meanwhile the Department of Homeless Services in turn receives information about students' attendance, grade advancement and disciplinary incidence. This information is useful to shelter staff in their case management strategies. In 2019, New York went on to announce yet another data- sharing initiative. This one to address the City's truancy rates among homeless youth. Across 13 shelters in the City, data for 14 homeless students is now stored in 15 the digital portal and shared by 16 staff at both the City's education 17 and homeless services departments. 18 The idea is to improve both 19 transportation to schools and 20 facilitate case management for 21 those youth. 22 With similar data-sharing 23 initiatives and collaboration among 24 the School District, the City and 25 its community partners, we can provide both education and housing stability for our children and youth. I believe this is critical and Project HOME is committed to being a partner in this collective effort to end the cycle of homelessness and poverty in our city. Again, I thank the Council Chairman Thomas for this invitation and look forward to working with all of you as a partner.

Thanks so much. Hi, everyone. My name is Zachary Wood and I want to thank the Committee here and Councilman Thomas for convening this. I'm a Professor of Public Affairs and Community Development at Seattle University in Seattle, Washington. I flew here -- I'll just pretend like I flew here directly for this only because that sounds way cooler if I say that. I'm really truly honored to be here for a number of reasons. And I fly home to Seattle in a couple of hours, but I'm mostly honored because Philly is my home. Philly is my home forever. And that means I'm still a Sixers fan even though the Sonics are about to return to the NBA. It's also essential for me to acknowledge here today that I'm a White dude sitting up here at a very important table in a very important conversation. I have not experienced homelessness personally, so I'm not the expert. And I take that very seriously. I've simply been afforded the privilege to be able to work in this field for a long time and study these issues to be able to offer something into what truly is an expertise of many of the young people who I see in this room 23 today. And I'd like to make sure that we lean in on that. I worked on the issue of youth homelessness in Philadelphia for about a decade and then went on to doctorate work, which my colleagues at the time said was the dark side entering academia. I think they were right. Now, I do research on comprehensive community development mostly in urban environments and also the intersections of complex machinations of power. Power is something that we are mostly illiterate in and something that is deeply important into all the decisions and the processes that we're talking about today. I'm also the Vice-president of the Board of the Mockingbird Society in Seattle, which is a dynamic youth-centered advocacy organization that centers youth from the outset in everything we do that's reforming the Washington foster care system and responding to youth homelessness. It is an amazing organization. I'm lucky to be a part of it. I'm also the Chair of the Board for Youth Collaboratory, which is a national organization that is working on youth -- a membership organization for youth- serving organizations across the country doing a lot of national advocacy. This issue, quite literally, youth homelessness has grounded nearly everything that's in my heart and everything that's in my career. This is who I am and why I want to be here today. So first, I want to acknowledge the fact that these numbers of homeless students that we are seeing here today and that have been shared with me from various partners in Philadelphia are unacceptable. I feel the frustration and I see the anger that's happening here today. Councilmember Lozada, I really appreciate the frustration that you are openly sharing on this. I will also say that eight years ago I submitted testimony nearly identical to what I'm talking about today to another hearing on youth homelessness and the experience of this. This is not okay. We are stuck because we are trying to respond to a problem right now that is emergent for us. It is crucial for us, but we are forgetting the connections of the root causes of really what's going on here and we consistently focus on the symptom instead of actually focusing on the causes of this. The numbers are worse now than they were eight years ago when I submitted testimony to this Council -- well, that Council I guess I should say. So why is this? Are these numbers unacceptable because of their enormity or because of what they actually represent for who we are as a city and as a nation? Hopefully both. But framing critical questions like this is what's going to help us shape our goals and the kinds of impacts that we truly want to have on this issue. Second, we're here for identifying solutions. We all care about this immensely.

Every single person in this room is sitting here because they feel the unacceptability of this and they need to do something about it. That's wonderful, but we have to remain critical about the questions that we're going to ask in relation to this problem and critical about how we frame the true nature of the problem that is at hand. You're going to hear a lot of stark statistics today from a wealth of experts providing testimony both local, national. Those numbers are shocking. They need to be shocking. They're beyond the scope of simply identifying the right kind of program and tinkering at the margins right now of what we're doing and where we're kind of missing the mark. We are beyond just that. Doesn't mean that we don't have to diligently and exhaustively search for solutions to this issue. That's what we're doing here today and it's what we continue to do. Of course we have to. But we can't do it without a critical acknowledgement of the depth and complexity that is at play that is causing this issue to be at our table right now. As much as it feels simpler to tackle this part, youth homelessness where numbers of students experiencing homelessness within our school district, that's not going to be enough to truly resolve this issue. The task force idea that the Chair has raised here is probably an important element to be able to help in what we're doing. But if we simply look at this issue as youth homelessness in a vacuum, we're going to do this at the peril of thousands of families and young people. And shame on us if that's our way with coping with the true complexity of what's at hand right now. Philly's not alone in this struggle either. So I am now hailing from Seattle. Seattle has a brutally problematic homeless problem right now, and that includes young people in the same general statistical numbers as you're seeing here in Philadelphia. In both cities we're relying on very scarce and diminishing dollars to respond to this problem. And of course in the midst of that we see all kinds of really cool innovations that are going on within the community, within school districts to try desperately to respond to this, but the scarce and diminishing dollars are making our issue-based approach very, very silly. So I'm offering here today a critical reframing. I'm offering you a critical perspective to this particular issue and a statement to say, rising student experiences of homelessness in the School District of Philadelphia is not the problem. It's not the problem. Student homelessness is a systemic outcome. It's a symptom. It's a byproduct of much more challenging issues at the root of our society right now. Namely, I'm talking about wealth inequality. If you track all of the data of the wealth inequality that is happening here in Philadelphia and city after city after city across this country, that tracks and correlates perfectly with the experiences of homelessness. What we're talking about here is not an individual problem where one young person is having a specific experience or one family is having a specific experience. It is statistically correlated constantly with the rising, fast-rising wealth inequality in our nation. That wealth inequality is pressurizing a near total privatized housing market, right, making housing access just simply a result of who has more money. So now, city after city after city, and it's gotten exacerbated through COVID, that housing affordability has gone away. That's the root of what we're actually talking about here. Homelessness is a structural and systemic issue full stop. So if our aim here is to eliminate or reduce the number of young people experiencing homelessness, students experiencing homelessness, we have to acknowledge its true causes and its complexity. And I'm not saying that this issue is inevitable as a product of some giant forces outside of Philadelphia.

It's not inevitable and it's certainly not impossible for us to deal with, but acknowledging the interlocking complexity of the variations of forces and issues in our country is the first step to actually identifying and achieving dynamic solutions so that we can see this problem actually resolve. It's going to require a systems approach. It's going to take deep coordination as folks have been talking about and data sharing for sure. It's also going to take time because we're talking about massive issues. No perfect program is going to solve this issue alone. That's hard for us to accept because what we want is to identify what worked at one place and just try to put it on here. That's the simplest way for us to solve a simple problem, except it isn't a simple problem. It's a complex one and our solutions are going to have to match that kind of complexity. Even the best and most creative programs cannot stem the tide of an issue that is largely produced by more powerful systemic forces that go beyond the bounds of Philadelphia. If our goal is simply to identify the 6,000-plus, 6,000-plus students experiencing homelessness and better serve a larger portion of them, we do almost nothing to prevent the next families and the next young people that are going to face that experience tomorrow. We remain in a perpetual state of emergency. Perhaps we get a little bit better at holding that emergency at bay. That, my wonderful friends, that is unacceptable. So what is this truly going to take? So in my line of work, community development, community organizing, we talk about the dual agenda, deeply simple concept deeply complex in action. Effectively, it's a critical systems approach. We have to acknowledge and address our simultaneous dual agenda. The first part of that dual agenda is to address the emergency reality of an insane amount of students experiencing homelessness in the School District right now. This is what we focus on most. Even today in this hearing right now we're focused on the issue, the emergency at hand. But the second part of that dual agenda that often times gets forgotten is to identify and address the root causes of this issue to reduce and eliminate the creation of the homeless experience altogether. We feel we don't have the resources or the knowledge or the time to address the second part of the dual agenda almost every single time we raise this issue, but it's pointless to do one without the other and you can't separate these two agendas to be addressed independently. It's not possible. They are equally essential and they are deeply interlocked. So I offer a couple of value propositions before I close this practically. First, there's no magical solution to this issue alone. Most of the efforts that we're doing are quite noble. We celebrate the good, but we have to critically assess where those gaps are. I hear those questions today, but we have to be bold in our honesty and not punitive. This is not a punitive approach to deciding who's good and who's bad at this. We collectively have failed. We will collectively stand together to find the solutions that we need. The second, those most directly experiencing these realities are often times the most impactful experts. Maximize their access to the discussions and maximize their access to problem identification. I'm hearing bits and pieces of that as well. Let's ramp up that kind of activity. Empower young people through the active listening processes and partnering processes that we have at our disposal there are tools measures for meaningful community engagement. We rarely use them. The organization that I work with in Seattle now Mockingbird Society has a different structure and approach. It was designed in this kind of way, built entirely around youth-led advocacy and leadership development. We place youth at the creative center of the problem-solving space and the co-development of the kinds of solutions that are going to be meaningful.

Youth working in chapters with themselves are the leaders and they're the advocates. We at Mockingbird simply provide the framework for that to be able to happen. The result of this is 70-plus state policy wins reforming foster care and responding to youth homelessness as well as $250 million in revenue generated for the issue, young people at this table and at the forefront knowing and understanding their experiences in advocating. They've also created a totally new comprehensive foster care approach called Mockingbird Family, fantastic stuff. It's barely catching on in the states. The UK has taken that model and made it the entire model throughout the UK because they see the results of what this does. Being able to understand and hear those experiences is what is creating this possibility. Third, trust. Trust is essential. We often times lack it in this work, especially in fields like this. We've been incentivized to squabble and fight each other for resources, very scarce resources, throughout our time. If you want to reach young people for service, empowerment and partnership, you're going to have to lean in on the places where the trust is most robust. That's community organizations, places in communities that are actually trusted by young people. And never discount the importance of these trusted relationships, especially for system-impacted young people which is the majority of who we're talking about right now. Fourth, last, develop the interconnection of communication between interlocking systems of inequality. What does that mean? That means if we are bold enough to recognize inequality as the core root issue here, it means we cannot solve youth homelessness without addressing all of these systemic issues as well, housing access and affordability, race and gender inequity, wage and employment inequity, education inequity, foster care supports, criminal justice reforms, mental health and behavioral health experiences. All of these are interlocking. We cannot solve youth homelessness without also addressing all of these elements as well. This is a tall task and it's absolutely imperative for us to make inroads towards the real kinds of solutions and the reduction of these numbers that we are trying for. We have every bit of creativity, expertise and potential for collaboration to lean into both parts of our dual agenda and not just focus on the first part, but we need structure and incentives to nurture the kind of trust and collaboration that's going to require. The reason why data sharing is difficult is because we've had about 45 years-plus of squabbling over who owns what to what pieces of this and where those dollars are flowing from. That's not okay, but that's the structure we've been given. We need to listen and power those most at the margins and we need to continue to allow trusted relationships to be at the forefront of the direct work as a collaborative. Thank you very much. )

Thank you. Thank you both for your shared experience and your expert opinion. If at any time you feel like you have to go, we completely understand. I will open it up for questions. But before I do, I would like to acknowledge that our School Police Association has joined us today. Can you guys raise -- oh, they left? Aww, man. We got a Black president for the School Police Association, a Black sister, a Black woman is president. That's an amazing thing. We're not going to get into that right now. Chair recognizes Councilmember Gauthier for questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think my questions are for Donna with a little sprinkling of the Mayor's Office perhaps. I've been trying to wrap my mind in the hearing around the scope of the issue in how many people we're serving. But I noticed that there are big differences between what was presented earlier in terms of people accessing the Office of Homeless Services access points and the point-in-time count information that you presented. So in your testimony, you talked about the point-in-time count for 2023 counting 825 young people under and 409 people 18 18 to 24, but in the City's numbers of who we served at the access points, we counted serving 75 young people under 18 at the homeless service access points in 2023 and almost 2500 people 18 to at those same 24 access points. So my questions are -- and I know you don't directly control this, but I wanted to know if you had thoughts around the differences in those numbers. I'd love to hear the same from the Mayor's Office. And if the point-in-time numbers are correct, then we have a very large population of under youth, 9 825, but we only saw 75 of them, 10 what do we have -- that would seem 11 to suggest that we have 12 difficulties serving young people 13 who are homeless through our 14 homeless access points. And I 15 wanted to know why and what the 16 challenges are and how we plan to 17 address that, because I know our 18 HUD grant is focused on older youth?

So I got these numbers from our team. I'm pretty sure they're accurate, but I'm -- right, okay. So the point- in-time is one single night in January, right. So that number may be different from who's actually going in to receive services. And I'm not sure if the City can speak to that as far as who we identify on a single night and who's going to receive services. I'm not sure the number that they're reporting.

Can we have the Mayor's Office back to speak on that?

Yeah. You want me to take it from here?

Oh, yeah, yeah. You can do that.

All right. So the point-in-time --

Sorry. Just say your name one more time for the record.

Beth Gonzalez, Deputy Director of Policy Planning and Performance for OHS, and I'll hold this because this is not working. So the point-in-time is conducted the third week of January --

I'm sorry. It's not no one's fault. But for the purposes of the live broadcast, they need you to go over to the table to answer the questions. We do apologize.

And I might have forgotten the question walking over here. But the '23 count is conducted one night, the third week of January, and we count those who are unhoused and those who are in our shelter system.

Yes. Can you expound upon so our FY23 numbers for OHS show us serving about 75 people 18 and under in FY23. The point-in-time count in '23 suggests that there are a lot more homeless youth than that. Can you please speak to the differences between that count and who we're touching and what -- and if we need to do more and how we're thinking about that?

Yeah. So in reference to who comes to the front door and the access points, that's what that count is. Some other folks don't come to the brick-and- mortar access points. We have mobile assessors who might reach out to them or they may have other resources and different people that they partner with and connect with. So that's why that count would be different in reference to who shows up at the actual physical access points versus who we meet and survey the night of the count. That's why it would be different.

In the testimony, we described the access points as a main way that we are serving people, unless I misunderstood that. So -- am I misunderstanding that?

Yeah. So the access point, anybody who wants assistance whether it's prevention or needs shelter, we have them go through that coordinated entry process. So the way to do that is through the access points.

Okay. So if we serve 75 homeless young people in '23 through the access point, but the point-in-time count showed that they're over 800 --

They may not necessarily come to the access point. They're homeless, but they may not come to the access point. That's why it's different.

Do we have a sense that we're touching them in another way? Can you speak to that?

In reference to any outreach efforts and working with our youth partners, we get feedback from them and whether we identify hotspots when we're doing the count and figuring out if they're having touchpoints with those particular folks and encourage them to come in or to access services or partnering with the schools as well, any touchpoints as well with that.

I think my question is do we have a good amount of confidence that we are serving those folks? They're not coming to the access points, but they may be going to all these other places, right?

Yeah.

What is our confidence level that those folks are receiving coordinated and sustained services even though they're not coming through the access points?

So we always have to improve coordination, so I can say that out front. But in reference to people that are literally homeless and come to OHS in reference to who we're serving at the access points, confidently I can say, yes, we're assisting those. The other ones who are identifying or maybe don't identify or identify by our McKinney-Vento staff are our youth partners. That's another way of tracking and assisting and encouraging, so we do track that as well in reference to who we're servicing and to identify those gaps. But I wouldn't say we're servicing everybody, obviously, one if they don't identify or because they're stigmatized they don't come forward. So that's part of that important work of marketing and messaging, we're here for you and can support you and give you the services you need.

We identified them enough to count them in the point-in-time count.

If they are unhoused and we see them -- now, when we do the point-in-time which is distinct compared to the HUD definition versus McKinney-Vento, HUD does not count those that are doubled-up as homeless, so that's why it's different. So they have a different definition when it comes to collecting the data. So on a local level we have talked and we did try two years ago just so we know locally what are we seeing to try to count those that are doubled-up and working with the youth around that, and we're revisiting potentially doing that again picking a time where we can have folks they could call in and report out if they're doubled-up so we can see locally what's happening because that's not defined by HUD, but it would help us from an advocacy perspective.

Thank you. And then lastly, I know that the $8-plus million that we got from HUD is primarily focused on youth to 24. This data would 6 suggest that we also have a pretty 7 large problem with young people 8 under 18? 9

Yes. 10

11 What are we thinking about from a 12 resource perspective in order to 13 meet that need? 14

So 15 obviously, the first line of 16 defense obviously is prevention and 17 diversion so we want to divert 18 families from even entering the system, so we're ramping up and trying to get funding dollars on the front door and then on the back end for permanent housing, those that need it or those who have supportive services and they don't need that connection, developing move-on strategies so we can open up those units for those who do need the services and the housing. So there's two things that we're working on. And then with our Service Provider Commission and with our youth coming up with additional funding dollars, we're in the middle of a competition now for additional CRC dollars and constantly creating more affordable units and really ramping up prevention services.

Thank you.

Sure.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Gauthier. Chair recognizes Councilmember Lozada.

Thank -

Professor, I'm sorry. If you can join us back at the table please. I do apologize.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that before -- I have some questions for Dr. Wood, but I think that before I ask him my questions, it's important for us to recognize that as a city we need to figure out how we're counting, who we're counting and when we're counting, right, because one of my biggest frustrations when trying to identify the number of people that are living homeless in the 7th Council District is frustrating because I can't get a solid number from anybody. Everyone counts differently. Everyone considers a homeless person differently. And when we're looking at numbers and we're talking about how HUD counts or what HUD considers a person to be homeless and what we consider a person to be homeless or what they consider themselves, whether they consider themselves as homeless, they are all three different things. And so, at what point do we all come together as legislators on every level of government to figure out let us come up with one definition so we can get a true number and really identify the resources that we need to be able to move people out of this particular population and onto sustainability. I don't understand why we are still having these conversations but it's really frustrating. And I don't think we're going to be able to move the needle anywhere as it relates to a homeless conversation for anybody in this system until we're able to figure out what is the real number, what is the real need, when do we count, how do we count, what is the best time of the year to count because we're going to really see them and find them in the elements, right, not couch-surfing. I don't understand how HUD doesn't consider you homeless if you're on somebody's couch, but you really can only be there two or three days and need to move to another -- that's a homeless person. And so, I just wanted to say that, to put that out there, right. We need to figure out how we count better, how do we identify these folks better. And then, Dr. Wood, you mentioned that eight years ago you were in front of a panel and having this very same conversation. Was it an emergency then?

I'm laughing out of tears because it was of course an emergency then. I'll also just clarify for the record I didn't give testimony in person on that. I submitted testimony after sitting in the hearing for the entire time and realizing that we were not talking about the root causes of that problem. So my testimony came in several days after that. But, yes, it was an emergency at that time. We've been essentially in a crisis of homelessness since way before we knew exactly what homelessness meant, right. So maybe at least since the '80s is what I would say we have. The numbers if you track what's going on, even in the short distances, are rising, right. The numbers of young people, the numbers of adults, they're all rising at this point. Now, we recognize that some of that might be that we're learning how to count better to your point of trying to find different ways of actually measuring and understanding that problem. Sometimes we're getting better at that and sometimes it really is a result of the changes and the forces within the economic structure that's causing more experiences of homelessness overall. Either way we're coming nowhere close to serving the amount of people that are having this experience.

And eight years ago were funding, coordination, time, access and affordability all things that you all talked about in order to address this need?

I will selfishly say that that was all included in my original testimony. As I said, that got sent in a couple days after that hearing. I will say that the conversation in the hearing itself was fairly limited on those issues but certainly raised.

I find it really frustrating that when we're talking about issues in Black and Brown communities in a city that is predominantly Black and Brown, that it's taken us eight years to continue to have the same conversation and the matter has only gotten worse. The leadership in this city has always had Black and Brown representatives. And so, the fact that we are allowing for this to get worse in our community, in a community where the leadership has really looked like the communities that we're serving is a problem, because if we don't do for ourselves there's nobody going to want to do for us, right, nobody's going to want to do for us. So are we going to be here eight years from now having this very same conversation? The conversation of community engagement became a really sexy word, but communities have always been screaming about a need. Communities have always been screaming about the lack of access, the lack of educational accessibility. The Black and Brown communities have always been talking about having a seat at the table and we allow them to come to the table, but eight years we still haven't figured out a way to listen and respond to addressing to the need, right. And so, Mr. Chair as the Chairman of the Education Committee, figuring out a way to hold the School District, the Office of Homeless Services, the Office of Children and Youth, DHS and all of these other City agencies that we should be relying on to help us address this issue is one that I would hope that in our next legislative calendar we can focus in on so that eight years from now we're not sitting here having this conversation, right. We tend to call things a crisis because it allows us to apply for funding, funding that never gets to the neighborhood, right. And so, my expectation is that having someone at Project HOME now that has been a legislator, right, that understands and recognizes how policy and legislation can really impact neighborhoods like ours I would hope that in working with you and having you at the table alongside departments like Office of Homeless Services, that we're able to really move the needle not just for young people but for families, right, because they're never going to be able to connect back to their families if all of them are trying to figure out a bed to be able to lay on for the night, for the week, for the month and for the year. So I would hope that eight years from now Dr. Wood's not back here having a conversation with us trying to figure out how we make this better. And so, I hope that you stay in the conversation from as far as where you are, right, because I think that -- and that you continue to hold us accountable, you continue to put pressure on us so that we can make our city a better place, right, so that we can continue to support young people so that they are better contributing citizens to our to our city.

I will just respond just briefly to say I too hope that in eight years we are not having this exact same conversation. It's completely ridiculous and unacceptable. I will also say that part of this, as I said in my testimony, is not something about the punitive response. We respond to the ways that we do in these issues largely based on the funding streams that we have access to or might have access to and that's leading us to these different silos over time. So it is on us to go and find the communicative ways that we create a space for all of these issues to be talked about jointly, because as I said if we simply tried to respond only to the issue of youth homelessness, we will never stem the tide of truly what's going on here. We are currently plugging gum into a leaking dam and it is a massive dam. So if we don't start to respond to the true root causes and address the kind of wealth inequality in poverty and housing inaccessibility that we are facing and is getting worse in Philadelphia, we will end up here eight years from now having the same conversation.

Thank you, colleague. Chair recognizes Councilmember Nina Ahmad. Before Councilmember Ahmad goes, anybody on the outside who wants to come inside there are plenty of seats. So if you're standing on the outside and you want to come in, feel free to come have a seat. Councilmember Ahmad.

Thank you, Chairman. I thank you for your testimony, particularly sharing your lived experience, Representative Bullock, I have to keep calling you that, and Professor Wood. What I would love from you since we are here -- and this is a public venue, we are being recorded -- I would love to hear from each of you a solution, like how do we move forward? It doesn't have to be comprehensive. It can be something you're finding in your work that needs to be fixed asap. It could be the global issue of understanding what brings us here, the underlying issues. I just want us to walk away from here to say you are a practitioner in this field and you are studying this field, right. So I just want concrete feedback so we can actually work to see how actionable that concrete feedback can be.

Thank you, Councilmember, for that question. I want to focus in on what I think part of your reason from the resolution that I understand for this hearing is around data, you know. It's really important that we have concrete data, real data that we understand what the scope of the problem is, first of all, so that we can come up with the solutions. There are definitely issues around housing and access to housing and connecting families to quality housing while attending school, connecting the two, right. And so, figuring out how we can have both our Office of Housing and Homeless Services and other housing agencies coordinating with the School District to make sure that they're sharing data and following students K through 8, K through 12. I think that's just critical as we look at the focus of today's hearing. That's my takeaway right now.

So coordinate the data into accessible entry point for someone like you who can see it and say this is what we need to do. We heard this, yeah.

We need to be able to follow students and coordinate both their housing situations with what they're dealing with at school, because you'll see that those things are going -- if housing is impacted, it's going to everything.

Yeah. There's a cascade effect, yes. Professor.

Yeah. Thanks. As a professor, I would sit here for about five hours probably nonstop and not take any breaks, so I appreciate that I have some deadlines here. I jotted a couple notes down as you asked this question because I think there are a lot of actually practical things we can do, and I think you're going to hear from a couple of other testimonies. One that I would say from the outset is the coordination across fields. We're all talking about whether it's a definitional problem or the dollars can kind of go this way but not really this way. That's a coordination issue that we can actually tackle right here, right. So, yes, we'll still be beholden to a lot of the funding streams that are there from the federal level for which we don't define how you can use it really, but it can give us a space by which we're going to have that collective conversation. This is not just an education issue, right, like that's a simplified statement that I'm just making. But it absolutely intersects with all of these other issues that I also raised within my testimony. So a coordination across all the different bodies, both the city level but then at the state level as well gives us a lot of power to be able to help define what these things mean for us, how we will measure them, how we will decide what those programs and impacts are going to be even if we're beholden to some strict or narrow sources of funds. The other bit that I would say, and just to say, yes, I totally agree with Councilmember Lozada that community engagement has been a buzz term since the '60s, right. I mean, I'm not even going to go into the history. You all know the history. The background of this is that we've done community engagement very, very poorly for a very long time. The reality too is that there are tried and true methods for actually doing this that mean actual empowerment and active listening to communities. We tend to not do them. I'll give you about 50 different examples of how the Philadelphia city has not done community engagement well over the last three decades alone. I'm not going to do that today, but certainly give me a call and I'll talk your ear off about all the ways that I talk about it in my Seattle classrooms. Critical community engagement is essential and we can do it well. The last thing I will say is that this is about housing. Homelessness is a housing issue. It is a wealth issue when you have a fully privatized housing market like we do, so we need a dramatic increase in the numbers of affordable housing and access to these things, and they need to be spread out throughout the entire city. I will say just as a point of record here that in Seattle we are moving on this idea through something that we are now -- we're using the terminology from the international space of social housing, which in effect the folks abroad will say, you mean public housing. And I say, no, you have to see public housing in the United States to know why we're calling it social housing. It is effectively pulling land and pulling housing off of the private market to ensure that we as the collective of the city not just those on Council, we have the collective power to determine and maintain affordability because we own it collectively. That is something we have been trending dramatically against for many decades because we love the idea of privatizing housing. It creates wealth but not for the people that we are ultimately talking about today. So I would say that there is a dramatic need to be able to socialize a portion of housing so that we actually maintain the power to determine what affordability can look like. We're trying that in Seattle right now. We passed it as a ballot initiative. It is binding. (Applause.)

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Ahmad. I think that there are no 10 more questions for this panel, so safe travels to you both. Thank you for taking the time to give us your expert opinion. It's very much appreciated. (Applause.)

I'm going to ask that the Admin come back up. I can promise that we're not going to ask you to stay long, Admin. I just want to allow Councilmember Rue Landau to ask her questions and then get maybe one or two members and the Chair to close out with their questions. And then we have -colleagues, we have about two or three more panels. So if we can get through this panel, I want to try to make sure that we give our other speakers adequate time to be able to ask their questions and provide their testimony. So with that being said, Chair recognizes Councilmember Landau.

Chairman Thomas, thank you so much for this opportunity. I actually think my questions might be best placed after the School District testifies so I'm not sure if -- but I do have to leave in about 18 minutes. So I don't know if you 19 want me to put my questions on the 20 record now or if you want me to wait until after the School District testifies.

I think you could put the questions on the record now so the School District can hear those questions and they can prepare answers to those questions as we transition. And after Councilmember Landau puts those questions on the record, we'll close out with Councilmember Brooks for the Admin.

Thank you so much. And I appreciate you having me here. I'm not a member of the Education Committee, but I am Vice-Chair of the Housing Committee. Many of my questions have been asked by my colleagues, but I had a couple of more digging down a little more granularly into how we do the outreach and the work in the schools. I will say for everybody who's here that we as a city of Philadelphia, especially as a brand new Council with a brand new Mayor, we are definitely working on issues of housing and homelessness throughout this City in a very different way. Some of us just came from Oakland where we were talking about social housing. We want to tackle it in ways in which we may not have seen before. So as much as I saw the heads nodding and the clapping, trust me we're on the same page and we understand what the root cause is. We understand it's also about wealth inequality and lack of affordable housing for so many people and we are definitely dealing with that. I really wanted to understand more -- I get that the numbers are all off. Our point-in- time count might not be accurate, who we're counting in the schools might not be accurate. But I'm very curious as to who we are actually calling -- what do we call the liaisons in the schools. Are they really called McKinney-Vento liaisons? I'm not so sure that most young people would know to go talk to somebody called the McKinney-Vento liaisons. How are we doing the work to reach the young people? And while we're in a sports facility, I want to talk about are we doing offense or defense. If we're doing defense, we're waiting for the kids to kind of self-identify and to go reach out to an adult at school who they trust. Maybe that person is the McKinney-Vento person, maybe not, did they get through the process. But if we're doing the offense work, we're actually trying to find these kids. We're even looking for the patterns in their attendance. We are looking for other issues and other ways in which we can identify them and also reaching out to the parents. I also wanted to know how are we describing this, what words are we using. Are we using all of the words we need in ways in which to describe homelessness or not adequate housing in order to have everybody recognize in their own lives what is happening? I represented low-income tenants for many years of my life, and I've got to tell you as many parents who came into my office who were facing eviction, it was clear to me many of the young people, their kids they brought with them had no idea what was going on. They did not know they were facing eviction and that it was a possibility. So maybe using -- I'm very curious about the words that we're using, whether we're playing offense, if not defense. We definitely need to play offense. And the last thing is clearly having a goal, the win. The win is to not have no more homelessness in the schools, right. And I don't want us to do the work gathering this information without the goal of collectively trying to eradicate this and to make sure everybody is adequately housed. Thank you so much.

Thank you, colleague. Chair recognizes Councilmember Brooks.

So I had a little bit of time to kind of think of this a little deeper. So my question still goes back to who -- Councilmember Landau kind of brought this home, who is primarily responsible to make sure that the young people receive the adequate services? If we think about all the touchpoints systemically, if a child is identified as homeless, the families usually report it to the office of the School District. The School District puts on record to make sure this child isn't moved out of their neighborhood school and give them whatever transpass, whatever resources they need. Sometimes the parent does not get the transpass to be able to take their kids back to school, back and forth to school, which I don't understand why that happens. But then the next step is making sure the family has all the Out-of-School Time programs that they may need to be sustained, who handles that? What department in our City government is responsible for making sure that the families have wraparound services to get families out of the situation? Because in order for you to be out of homelessness, you have to work. So we have a working mom with two or three kids, trying to get them back and forth to school. Who is responsible to help her navigate this very complex system, identify schools in her neighbor -- I mean Out-of-School Time programs in her neighborhood, make sure that her young adult is registered for an Out-of-School Time program or a summer job and making sure they're able to get there? If you're already homeless, you're already mentally constrained with trying to get your child out of this horrible situation. Who in our city out of all the services that touch these families, and I'm just naming some of them, who is primarily responsible to make sure that a family is stabilized enough to move out of this system? And I want to focus on the young kids because if we have a system that we're not caring about adults, who is responsible for making sure that these babies have the adequate services to break this cycle of homelessness and poverty and their family? And it's our responsibility so I'm really concerned. Because when I did the numbers, I did from to 17. If 5 every school has a liaison, that's 6 only one or two kids in their 7 school that they're responsible 8 for. If we had did it from 5 to 9 24, that's 35 kids in one school 10 that multiple people are 11 responsible to make sure that 12 they're okay, and it's probably the 13 same family. So I'm still like it's a level of -- it's just unacceptable. These are paid jobs from multiple City agencies to care for young people and people are dropping the ball. And then we pick it up on the other when kids are in jail, when the family is disconnected in DHS or they're dead. We need to find a solution. I just need to know who is responsible. So when I get this phone call in my office, who is the person that's responsible to make sure that a homeless child in a school has wraparound services they need to make -- and if there's no 6 one, do we have a coordinated effort that everyone is talking to support the young people?

Yeah, definitely. I think the school is responsible, right. So the school is that -- like you just explained the school --

Who?

The liaison, who many times is also the school counselor.

See, that's not --

So I'm just going to -- but they are the folks that are -- based on McKinney- Vento, the folks that work -- and the School District can talk more about that, so I don't want to talk about those pieces and the responsibilities and how that works. But when that family is identified for support, that liaison is responsible to work with those services and it should be a bi-directional communication where it's not just I'm going to pass it over to Congreso, Concilio or Turning Point but what's happening, there's a feedback cycle, a feedback loop to that. And I did want to answer the other -- I thought about your other question as well. One of the things that I want to share that our Mayor is doing and it's one of the first things that has been done in a while, the extended day, extended year program. And that initiative is really to help keep our schools open between the hours of 7:30 to 6:00 throughout the school year, winter break. So this year the School District has a two-week winter break, spring break and summer break so that those students that you're talking about, those 12-year-olds have access to programming.

I get that. I get the extended program. I get it. What are we going to do to make sure that the families who are most impacted are into those programs? It's only of them. 12 So how are we going to make sure 13 our families that need it the most 14 know that it exists, know that they 15 have access to receive it. Because 16 to the same point, we're talking 17 about the same kids here. So we 18 have multiple summer school 19 afterschool programs, extended 20 School District programs, but we still have children that are within this homeless population running around the city with nothing to do. So my concern is we can set up the programs. Who is making sure that the family, even if the parent needs their hand held to fill out the application, is making sure that the young people are in the program? Because now we're talking about the School District of Philadelphia. It can't solely fall on a counselor when we're short staffed a counselor and one counselor can have an entire school. So when you said a liaison, I thought you were talking about a separate job. An added job for the counselor is unacceptable because the counselor is also handling all the special ed., all the DHS cases, whatever comes, homelessness, college transition, high school transition, application, so that's unacceptable. That's why when we think about it, it can't solely fall on the School District. The School District is understaffed. And these children that we're talking about are being touched within multiple agencies. It's very few that aren't falling or knocking on another City service door for support and I don't understand why we're dropping the ball. Like I said, this is life or death. If we walk out to Hunting Park here today, you'll see young kids just out here randomly with nothing to do. What are we going to do to solve this situation? And we can't pass the buck as adults. People are getting paid six-figure salaries to solve this problem wherein young people are dying in our neighborhoods every day. We have to tighten up this loop and we can't just pass the buck. I need for the School District, Homeless Services, DHS, every group, every organization that's being paid with City funding to make sure that we find a solution to make sure our young folks have the resources they need to end this cycle.

And I agree with you. I think one of the things that I said early on is that our office, the Mayor's Office of Education can be that convener, can be that coordinator. Even listening to what Professor Wood was saying to bring everyone that you just said that has a touchpoint, DHS has social workers in the schools that has a touchpoint to all of these children to make sure that we're accountable, we know who they are, we know what services they're getting and that we're able to see measurable outcomes and see them move on in academically or the component of housing that's really important as well.