Committee Hearing, November 9, 2004

COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC HEARING COMMITTEE ON HOUSING, NEIGHBORHOOD DEVELOPMENT and THE HOMELESS - - - - Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Wednesday, November 9, 2004 2:25 p.m. - - - - RESOLUTION 040796 - Resolution authorizing the Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development and the Homeless to conduct hearings on the economic impact that homelessness has caused in the city and the possible implementation of a plan to eradicate homelessness in the City of Philadelphia in ten years. PRESENT: COUNCILWOMAN JANNIE BLACKWELL, Chair COUNCILWOMAN DONNA REED MILLER COUNCILWOMAN BLONDELL REYNOLDS BROWN COUNCILMAN JUAN RAMOS COUNCILMAN W. WILSON GOODE, JR. - - - - V A R A L L O Incorporated Litigation Support Services Eleven Penn Center 1835 Market Street, Suite 600 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103 215.561.2220 215.567.2670 I N D E X RESOLUTION 040796 REGINALD MORROW..................... REVEREND BRIAN JENKINS.............. GLORIA GUARD, PEC................... 22 JEROME KILBANE, Covenant House...... 46 VIVIAN LAWRENCE..................... 51 RACHEL FALKOVE, Northwest Interfaith Hospitality Network.............. 63 DONNA LAWS, Northwest Interfaith Hospitality Network.............. 68 ELAINE FOX, PHMC..................... 78 VOLETTE TAYLOR....................... 95 KIYA BECOTE.......................... 98 MARIA BATTLE, Keystone Mercy Health Plan............................. 102 ALICIA CHRISTIAN, Dignity Housing.... 112 TED WEERTZ, Kirkbride................ 124 MELCHER MONK, Kirkbride.............. 133 VICTOR SINANAN....................... 139 PAUL DILORENZO, Bright Spaces........ 145 DAVE GLEASON, Bright Horizons........ 157 LUCY PENNINGTON, Methodist Services.. 169 GLENDA WELLS......................... 169 ALEAH FOREMAN........................ 170 BIA VIEIRA, Lutheran Settlement...... 174 RACHEL NEFF, Lutheran Settlement..... 176 CYNTHIA FIGUEROA, WAA................ 181 NORA LICHTASH, WCRP.................. 189 SUE SIERRA, PACDC.................... 194 LINDA HICKS, ODAAT................... 198 NATE ROBINSON, SELF.................. 205 APRIL SAUNDERS....................... 208 STEVEN REVIS......................... 208 ANTHONY GINDRAW...................... 214 MR. OCERO............................ 215 JIM WORMER........................... 217 ED SPEEDLING, Project H.O.M.E........ 226 MARSHA FOUR, Philadelphia Veterans Multi-Service and Education Ctr.. 236 KATE HOUSTON, Ready Willing and Able CARNELL STANLEY...................... 247 MICHAEL BROOKS....................... 251 DAVID DUNBECK, Horizon House......... 271 3 I N D E X (cont'd) WITNESS ANTHONY REEVES....................... 277 PATRICIAL BALTIMORE.................. 279 DENNIS CULHANE, University of Penn... 286 PHILIP MANGANO, U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.......... 293 MILTON PRATT, US Dept. Of HUD........ 309 DEBBIE JACKSON, ICH.................. 321 MICHAEL HALL, US Census.............. 323 FRANK HOLLAND, US Department of Health and Human Services........ 325 VINCENT KANE, VA..................... 327 PHILIP GOLDSMITH, Managing Director.. 331 DEBORAH RUSSEL, Disabled in Action... 334 4 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796

Good morning. We remind those who are on the Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development and the Homeless that we are ready to begin our hearing. Again, we remind any of my colleagues who are in their offices that we are ready to begin Housing, Neighborhood Development and the Homeless. We realize that this was a resolution that has passed, but we certainly invite you to come down. We are ready to begin our hearings. Since the resolution passed City Council on approximately September 23rd, we will begin our hearings. This is a great day. We welcome all of you who are here. This is a day I'll always remember because this is my late mother's birthday. So we scheduled it on my mom's birthday, and it's a day I will always remember. I love dealing with this issue, and I loved her more than life itself. Now that we've called this meeting into session, we will ask the Clerk to read the title of the resolution as well as the 5 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 resolution itself.

Resolution No. 040796, a resolution authorizing the Committee on Housing, Neighborhood Development and the Homeless to conduct hearings on the economic impact that homelessness has caused in the City and the possible implementation of a plan to eradicate homelessness in the City of Philadelphia in 10 years.

Thank you very much. Councilwoman Miller is here. We thank her for being here. And let me say that this resolution 16 was introduced to deal with homelessness as an issue and to talk about eradicating it within 10 years. The Chair wants to thank Rob Hess, the Deputy Managing Director of Special Needs Housing and the Director of Office of Emergency Shelter and Services who is here. (Applause.)

And we see Letty and Roberta, all of them really put this 6 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 all together, worked very, very hard. We want to thank them for all that they do. And we can give them another hand. (Applause.)

We want to thank Reverend Brian Jenkins who is here with his lovely wife and twins who does all of the outreach, as all of you know, on the Parkway as well as having his own church. (Applause.)

And we want to thank all of you for being here and for your commitment to deal with this issue. These are hard times. We believe that it shouldn't take us 10 years but maybe 5, Mr. Mayor, if you're listening, to certainly deal with this issue and to get rid of it. We had a 10-year plan some time ago. In 1999, we formed West Philadelphia On The Move and started a 10-year program for West and Southwest Philadelphia to have development plans. And some four years later, the Mayor came up with a plan, but we're starting over again. We're starting over again to talk 7 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 about a 10-year plan to eradicate homelessness. We continue to say that we can do that because everybody knows where everybody is. We all know where our colleagues are. We all know where those are who need housing. We know where they are beneath the ground. We know where they are still in the subways, underneath bridges, and even abandoned homes. Everybody knows where they are. So we have the opportunity to reach out to give them the support they need. Councilman Juan Ramos is here. We thank him for being here. We're going to be holding hearings to talk about what's going to be happening also with the gas crisis because we're afraid that we're going to have people with kerosine heaters and people who can't survive the cold weather and that, again, after eradicating death of lack of heat, we will have those problems again. But back to the issue at hand. Let me say that the homeless solution started in 8 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 Philadelphia many, many years ago. When Lucien Blackwell entered politics, he was already dealing with people in need. And he went in the State House in 1972 and came here in 1976 when then Mayor Frank L. Rizzo was in office and called a meeting in the Mayor's office to deal with the issue. Then Commissioner Sosnowski was head of Department of Human Service, and she along with the Mayor, Lucien and many other people, myself included, were there to talk about the issue of homelessness and what it would take to eradicate it. We want to say a special thanks to Lou Sounder, many of you know has been around a long time who works so hard -- (Applause.)

-- and who has helped countless Philadelphians and others to certainly do what he could to help everybody in need. And let me finally say that this time we believe we have the commitment. We believe with all of the stakeholders, with Rob 9 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 Hess, with Gloria Guard who has the oldest shelter in the state that comes out of West Philadelphia, we're pleased for that, with the Archdiocese, with Sister Mary and all the stakeholders that in spite of the outside influences, in spite of the hard economic times we find ourselves in, we truly believe that we can eradicate homelessness in Philadelphia within 10 years. We have invited some people who will be here. Reverend Wells will be here. When he comes, we will let you know that we're working with him. He has two properties. And we talked with Rob Hess just yesterday that we want to work with him to deal with people who are on dialysis. They may have other issues; they may have AIDS, they may be homeless, but we want to help deal with people who are on dialysis, and that's his focus. Some years ago, we went through that where he had a house to deal with people who had TB. And you know, when you have TB and other issues, it was very, very resistant, very, very hard to deal with people with drug 10 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 issues with TB. So we believe that the success of our problem is commitment, and we believe it is in dealing with people who have specific needs; those who have AIDS, those who have drug or alcohol problems, those who are just homeless, those who are seniors, those who are families, men who are taking care of children. We believe that Philadelphia breaks records and receives national attention because we found a way to deal with people no matter where they are and to deal with their issues and the problems they find themselves in. So as many of you know, I consider this closest to my heart in politics. It's what God gave Lucien and me to do. This is the part I love about being an elected official because it gives me the ability to help people in need, it gives me the ability to deal with homelessness and housing, and it's what I love most to do. So we thank you all again. (Applause.)

Now we're 11 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 going to ask Rob Hess if he would stay at the witness table. If our agenda is correct, we're going to start with Reggie Morrow. And let me say that Reggie Morrow is -- he has a day job, but he's also been our Committeeman in the 46th Ward. I'm Ward Leader there, so we're going to give a little credit there. And he's going to certainly start us out. This is Reginald Morrow. He's going to start us out with the Star Spangled Banner. He'll be back later because he's written a special song for us dealing with people in need. Reggie.

Good morning, Honorable Councilwoman and all the honorable, distinguished Councilpeople that are listening. I'd like to sing a song that was written back in 1842 by a young lady named Francis Scott Key, and it's entitled The Star Spangled Banner. (Singing.)

Thank you, Mr. Morrow. Let me likewise note that 12 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown is here. And they are all members of the Housing, Neighborhood Development and Homeless Committee. Reverend Brian Jenkins is due to give us a blessing. We note he is here with his wife and his twins. Again, he's the reason why the Parkway is in order. He's been wonderful. He has a church on Spring Garden Street, and all of you know him because he serves us all. (Applause.)

Good morning. If we can stand for the Star Spangled Banner, we're definitely going to stand up for the Lord. Is that all right? I know this is City Council, but if we're going to make it, if we're going to change the lives of the homeless and those that we reach, we need the Lord on our side. He said in the scripture that the poor will always be among us. And, sure, we have a goal to end homelessness, but the reality is, is that there's always going to be somebody in 13 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 need. It's important that we seek God's help that we'll be able to be that answer that they need in their time of need. Let us look to the Lord. Dear Father in heaven, we just thank you, God, for this opportunity, God, to seek your face. We thank you, Lord, for those that you have put in authority over the City and placed in places of leadership that we might help those in need. We pray for Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell and Robert Hess and all those that are involved in this Committee to help the homeless and the poor. But, Lord, we're seeking your face today because we need your help, we need your direction, and we need your guidance. We pray for help, God, for those that are downtrodden, for those that are in despair and those who are without hope that we might be able to give them the answer that they need that they may have hope. We just pray, God, you would allow us to be the vessels that will allow every valley in their lives to be lifted up and every mountain and 14 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 hill shall be made low and that the rough places in their lives can be made plain that the glory of the Lord might be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. Lord, we pray for the Mayor of this City. We ask you to guide him and help him to realize that all the resources need to be poured out to make sure that the poor of this City are taken of. We thank you, Lord, for your word through your servant Solomon that said, "He that giveth to the poor shall not lack, but he that hides his eyes shall have many a curse." And we pray, God, that this City would pour out its resources to make sure the poor of this City are taken care of, that homelessness should not be a rule but, Lord, but simply an exception, God. And we thank you, God, for ways being made for those that are needy. We pray, God, that feeding programs would expand, that people's needs be met, that housing programs would expand, God, so people can have a place to live. And we thank you, God, for answers being made today, in Jesus' name we 15 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 pray. Amen. (Amen.)

I was asked to bring a singing group today, but my wife is going to come and sing a very relevant song by Yolanda Adams that says, "Save the World, Feed the Hungry People." (Singing.)

Thank you Ms. Jenkins. Thank you very, very much. Now we'll hear from Rob Hess who is a man who is living in this time in this place where we need him. I've been through a lot of directors, and I remember when OESS was called OSHA and I remember Relocation Services. We can go back many, many more years than I'd like to admit we can go back. But certainly, we realize that we couldn't have the vision and the commitment we have were it not for Rob Hess, and we always applaud his leadership, his creativity, and his commitment to get it done no matter what. So again, we thank you. We thank 16 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 you for all you've done to help with this hearing and for your commitment to people in need across our City and certainly our country. Thank you, Mr. Hess. (Applause.)

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, Members of Council. It's a humbling experience to be here with you this morning and a privilege to speak with you about the plight of people in our community who are experiencing homelessness. And I say the plight of our community experiencing homelessness carefully because I don't believe, as I know you don't believe, Madam Chair, that homelessness needs to be a condition in our society. We can do better than that. We have to do better than that. And in this City, I believe we are doing better than that. And we are doing better than that because of the commitment and great leadership of this Mayor, of this Managing Director, and of you. And let us not forget that. People in this room should hear, and I want to say publicly how much I 17 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 appreciate your support. Over the last almost four years, you have been tireless in your support of our issues. I will tell you and tell everyone in this room that I appreciate it so much the times that you have answered the phone at 2 o'clock in the morning, on Sunday morning, on Saturday night, throughout the day and throughout the night at unbelievable times with issues that we presented to you that we needed help on and you've always answered and never said no. And everybody should understand that your commitment is much more than your spoken word. In fact, Councilwoman, your actions speak so loudly that I can't hear your word. (Applause.)

We know that in you we have a Councilwoman who cares more than I would say any other city in this country would be blessed to have that kind of commitment. And so thank you so very much. (Applause.)

Let me also say, everyone else on your panel, all the other 18 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 Councilmembers that are here share your commitment, and I know that firsthand. Councilwoman Brown is once again out raising mittens and scarves for folks before the cold weather gets here. Councilman Ramos has been most recently very involved and interest in the issue of domestic violence which we take so very seriously. Councilwoman Tasco has reached out to us on a number of occasions and we appreciate that so very much.

It's Councilwoman Miller.

We have in this City a commitment to this issue that I think is second to none, and I say that having traveled significantly in the couple of years all across our great nation and meeting with city councils and mayors. We will hear later today from Philip Mangano, the White House lead person on this issue about how Philadelphia kind of stacks up with the rest of the country. And I hope people will listen very carefully to what he has to say, because I think we stack up very 19 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 well. I think we stack up well because of the commitment of Council, the commitment of the Mayor, the commitment of the Managing Director, the commitment of a very mature provider community that really cares about the best interest of people experiencing homelessness in our community. And I also think that we've made as much progress as we have because the entire community has come together. If you look at the makeup of the Mayor's Task Force on Homelessness, for example, that's co-chaired by Sister Mary Scullion who you'll hear from later today and the Managing Director that hopes to stop by as well. What you'll see is a diverse group of businesses, community associations, homeless service providers, and many others that come together with one purpose. The purpose being, to help eliminate the experience of homelessness in our community. So when you say and you challenge us, rightfully so, that we ought to be able to end homeless in 10 years or even 5 years, then 20 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 there is a group that is highly focused on this and other groups in the community focussed on this in a very important way, in a way that distinguishes, I think, from other cities across this country. I would also say to you that the Mayor back in June sent to the Mayor's Task Force on Homelessness a letter. He sent it to co-chairs, Sister Mary Scullion and Phil Goldsmith, and the letter said they challenge the Task Force to develop a plan to end homelessness as we know it in this City over the next 10 years. Now, we all want to do it as quickly as we can, but that's the charge from the Mayor. We are in the process of holding a variety of public meetings, meeting with people experiencing homelessness across this community, meeting with people providing services, meeting with business leaders, meeting with members of the foundation and corporate community to fashion that plan. That plan will go back to the Mayor's Task Force early in the new calendar year and then 21 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 go to the Mayor by early spring. And then that plan, endorsed by the Mayor, will be the plan that's our road map to moving toward an ending of homelessness in our community. So, again, we're very proud of everyone that's here today. But let us not continue in these hearings today without recognizing the day-to-day struggles of poor people in this City who are experiencing homelessness and how hard they are working to move out of homelessness into homes. And you will hear from many of those folks today as well. So I am humbled and proud to be here. I appreciate very much your leadership, your calling of these hearings, all of your Council colleagues that are so supportive, not just on days like today, but every day of the year. We thank you so very much. With that, it's kind of my great honor to be able to introduce our first speaker of the day. I'm looking around to see if we've had any changes. Our first speaker of the day, who appropriately, is Gloria Guard 22 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 from the People's Emergency Center. Now, Gloria will talk to us about a variety of things because she always does, and I always listen carefully, but she will focus most especially on the work that she and others have done to fashion the beginnings of a plan to address family homelessness in this City.

Thank you. Good morning. I'm always proud to say that People's Emergency Center started many years ago. They're the oldest shelter in the state. We started when they were at 3311 Chestnut Street in the church when it was like -- and every Friday we had to make sure our folks were straight when it was a weekend operation, and Monday morning we had to find something else to do. We go back longer than I'd like to admit; however, we thank them for being who they are and for their long-term commitment over the years. And we're absolutely proud of the fact they're the oldest shelter and that they've come out of West Philadelphia. Thank you, Gloria. (Applause.) 23 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796

Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilwoman. Thank you, Rob, for not only today but for your leadership in the office of many names, because Jannie and I go back when it was Adult Services.

That's right.

PEC has been around for 30 years and, unfortunately, the problem hasn't gone away. Our founders, Bob Edgar, who is now the General Secretary of the United Church of Christ in New York, and Jim Halem really thought that homelessness was a problem that could be solved in 1972. Unfortunately, we're here today. And I think that given the news this morning about PGW that the problems are going to get worse. I want to also just recognize Lu Blackwell for the work he did.

Thank you.

And we know we've got a friend up in heaven looking out for us. And to say good morning to Blondell Reynolds Brown 24 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 and Councilman Juan Ramos. I am thrilled and delighted that this Committee is organized and it has the kind of leadership we need on it and that you're here today interested in talking about homelessness and housing. I want to quickly tell you about family homelessness. You may be interested to know that since 1980, family homelessness has increased by a factor of 800 percent. This year, 1 child out of 50 in America will not have a home. Families with children represent the fastest growing segment of the homeless population and today make up about 40 percent of the population. I have to, off my testimony, say that regardless of the leadership from Phil Mangano who has a lot of people's respect that I do not believe that the Bush Administration is going to be a help to the City, to the State or to homeless people over the next four years. I think that the situation is going to get worse. I think many of us in this room 25 fought not to have another four years of our 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 current President. We lost that battle, and I'm afraid we're going to have an uphill battle with our folks in DC and that we need to challenge them about what their real plans are, what their real budget amounts are, and what they plan to do on behalf of homeless people, and in particular on behalf of homeless families which have at the federal level been relatively ignored. There's been no studies for homeless families paid for by HUD, there's been no 13 decent counting of homeless children by our national government. Interestingly enough, if you ask the federal government to tell you about homeless children, they will be able to tell you how many boys there are between 0 and 5, how many girls between 6 and 12, and how many boys or girls between 12 and 18. That is all they'll be able to tell you. They won't tell you anything more about those kids because they don't ask, they don't know, and I believe they don't care. They don't know whether these kids are premies or they have normal birth weight, whether they're reading 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 at the right grade level, whether or not they're developmentally delayed, whether or not they're on target, are they in school, aren't they in school, have been inoculated, haven't they been inoculated. We don't know anything about homeless children nationally except that information which is gathered by the private sector through some private research that's been done which, as we know, is never going to equal the kind of research that the government can pay for and has paid for in the homeless arena but just not with families and not with children. Before I tell you a little bit more about homeless families, I need to explain a little bit about the housing market and how that affects homeless families, particularly here in Philadelphia. In the back of my testimony on is a little graphic on the housing markets across the country, some housing markets across the country. And what this does is compare for you what's called a strong housing market with a weak housing market. 27 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. , where all of us know if you live there, you're paying 2, 3 times more than you are here for your rent. Well, this graphic takes what's called the housing wage per hour. And this is calculated on a two-bedroom fair market rent. 15. To afford that very same apartment in San Jose, California, you need to be making twice as much, $35 an hour. So now you say, we all know this, we know the difference between strong markets and weak markets; what does that mean here? Well, what that means here is that when you look at homeless families in San Jose where you need to make $35 an hour to rent an apartment, you will find a lot more families who simply don't have the rent, who simply can't make that $35 an hour.

In fact, I dare say that lots of us in this room would not be able to afford to 28 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 live there. And therefore, homelessness in the strong market cities often times is merely a matter of affordability. Plus, there is also a group of people in those cities who, like homeless families in Philadelphia where there's a very weak housing market and where, in fact, housing is somewhat affordable compared to other cities, what we see here is that families who become homeless have multiple problems. Affordability is not the only problem; it is one of many. And so, therefore, what we need to do when we look at homeless families in Philadelphia is realize that they have a complex array of barriers to independence. It's not just the rent. And consequently, in New York City -- I don't know whether you saw the article in New York about New York City helping about 5,000 homeless families by setting up their own kind of parallel program to Section 8 with their own money. In New York, that makes sense because there's a lot of families up there who just can't make the rent. It's not the case in Philadelphia, and that's an 29 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 important backdrop for all of us to look at. What we know in Philadelphia is that homeless families have a myriad of social and personal problems and they're usually all bundled up. There's rarely a family we've seen at PEC in the last 31 years that only has a rent affordability problem. The challenges that face homeless families are poverty, high rates of illness, high rates of developmental delays among the children, academic problems. We know -- and we will have a copy of the study for you which is really hot off the presses. This is a draft copy. We've completed the first of its kind study on homeless children in Philadelphia. And what we know is that we see a lot of young families with a lot of children who have enormous amounts of problems. We also, by the way, have the good news. We have very good promising practices here in Philadelphia. We need to look at these kids and these families, otherwise, we know predictably the research shows that children who are homeless when they are children will come back 30 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 as adults into the homeless system. So the more work we can do with them today, the better they are going to be in the future. And I realize that we're trying to sign on to a plan that says we're going to end homelessness in years, and God knows if 8 anyone would like to do that, I would like to 9 do that. I've devoted the last 20 years of my 10 life to this issue, and I would love to be able to say we can end homelessness in 10 years. I am afraid that that's not very realistic. We can try our best and it's certainly a goal that we can look at, but in the meanwhile, we need to come to grips with the fact we've got families in shelters 6 months, 12 months, months. And unless God 18 comes down and swoops down and hands us thousands of Section 8's or millions and billions of dollars, we're going to see those families and they're going to be in shelter or in transitional housing for a long time, because I don't see the environment changing, the horizon isn't going to change. So given that backdrop, we've gone 31 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 through and looked at the promising practices in Philadelphia under the leadership of Rob Hess, OESS, DHS, and also the private sector to see what we could suggest, some low-cost, no-cost ways we can change the system tomorrow that would help homeless children. In this document and in my testimony I lifted out the recommendations. We need to look at the physical environment of some of our shelters. Some of them are fabulous; some of them are not a place that you would want a child to stay for 6 months, much less 12 months.

We need to go through each one of those facilities and make it the best place, because for some of these kids who are a matter of months old, saying they're a year, that's over a third of their lives, over half of their lives. We have to make that the most child-friendly place we can. We have to make sure that the shelters can, within their limited budget, serve meals that the kids will eat and the moms will eat. I know that running a 32 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 facility, it's hard. It's not like a restaurant. You only make one meal for dinner. But we need to do as much as we can to help those shelter providers and those cooks prepare foods that is likely to be eaten. Because when we have moms going out to the local stores to get meals and chips for their kids, it's money they really can't afford to spend. That's a waste of the resource and the kids aren't sitting down and getting the right kind of nutrition. We need to help our teens and adolescents. There are many teens who are homeless within their families. Maybe what we need to do is the City needs to consider having a couple of shelters that have all the families with teens and let's bring some programs in for those teens. Let's have some active recreational things that they can enjoy and do. We made a lot of headway on all of these areas, and I don't want to -- I mean, there are some fabulous promising practices; the Bright Spaces Project -- I think you're 33 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 going to hear about that later. After school programs. We need more. We just need more. We can't have a child in a shelter without something there, a program there, to help him or her with his homework, with his developmental steps. We need to strengthen the connections between the education system and the homeless system. When kids transfer school as often as homeless kids transfer school, what we're seeing is that they are likely to end up being left behind by a year just because they've changed schools so frequently. We need to train the staff in shelters. At PEC, like in all the public shelters, we can't afford to pay professional MSWs to be residential staff, so we have a lot of para-professionals in our shelter system. But we need to make sure they have the training in place to identify child abuse, to help the moms so that the kids aren't sleeping in the same bed with them so we can prevent SIDS death. And unfortunately, as much training as we do, I don't think it's enough. 34 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 We need to upgrade our training and get in there even more frequently than we already are in there. And finally on the issue of data, not only does the federal government not collect anything, but so far we're really sort of behind the eight ball in the City as well. And I know that we've got a good information system on the drawing board, in fact, in sort of the lab right now. I think we need places to take advantage of other Philadelphia resources like Philadelphia Safe and Sound. They've got a great report card. Let's have that report card cover homeless children each year. Let's look at that group, lift them out and say, "Are these children in the same place as their cohort group? Are the first graders able to read or know the alphabet? " All those wonderful criteria that Safe and Sound uses, let's apply those to homeless children too so we'll be able to know we're doing the right thing and where we're not. I want to say one more thing -- two 35 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 more things. One is about the moms. Just about every homeless mom is on welfare. The federal government has changed its laws so that now these welfare moms must go to work. There is one and only one program in the entire City of Philadelphia that helps welfare moms who are in shelters get into the workplace, get the right kind of training and get a job. And that program which is tailored only to homeless women is run by People's Emergency Center.

We've run that with HUD McKinney funds over the last few years, and I'm afraid that, among other things, this is the kind of program that's going to be on the chopping block when Phil Mangano says we've got to cut the programs that are called services-only programs. This program serves hundreds of women from public shelters, from private shelters all over the City. If we don't keep that program running or some kind of program like it running, we're going to have homeless women who are on welfare in shelters have their welfare cut off and they'll never be 36 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 able to move anywhere because they will have no income. So we need to act on that before it's too late. We need to talk to the people in Washington and say, let's not cut the services-only programs. Those services are essential. We've made some decisions about sending women on welfare to work. Now we need to support them and we need to realize that women on welfare in shelters have so many more barriers than a woman on welfare in the neighborhood and we need to keep that program going. It has a special child-care component that works really well. Last, I would just like to commend you for this kind of overview and ask you to continue to meet with us, to meet with the public, to pat us on the back, tell us we're doing a good job, to urge us to go forward, to tell us that you know and we know that the job isn't done yet, and to make life better for those families and children especially and all the people who are in the shelter system. Thank you very much. 37 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. )

Thank you very much for all that you continue to do. Even People's Emergency Center has come a long way with the Rowan House, the Imani Programs and so many programs. And that's what makes the difference because we see a need and try to take the next step. We are very concerned. And as you mentioned, we're really focused on this election because we're worried about the ending of the -- many of you know I'm on the PHA Board, the Philadelphia Housing Authority. I'm a Commissioner on that Board and we've been very concerned about the issue of Section 17 8 certificates and the fact that the federal government has gone the other way on us. We need the individual Section 8 certificates now. There's only Project Base left so that units have Section 8, but we're really, really been concerned about individuals losing the opportunity to have Section 8 certificates. And that's one of the reasons why people have to be involved in voting and have to vote for 38 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 people who reflect their interests. So we want to make sure we mention that. Are there any questions for Gloria Guard? Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning. Let me echo Chairlady Blackwell's comments on the enormously wonderful work that People's Emergency Center is doing. I too remember almost years with 14 the start and how you've grown and made a huge 15 difference in the lives of women and children in particular. Let me support and underscore your recommendation regarding including homeless children with the Children's Report Card. It is a document that does a magnificent job and it diagnoses a risk factor facing young people along with a prescription on what we can do as a City to diminish those risk factors. So I will support Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell making sure that that recommendation gets to 39 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 Safe and Sound. I'm sure that it's one that would be embraced. My question to your promising practices, does any of them include the involvement of clergy and the church?

Actually, not specifically, Councilwoman. We do have a number of suggestions about how to use volunteers, not just faith-based volunteers but also corporations. There's a number of best practices in here. One of them is Wachovia Bank had a bookbag drive and supplied every child in Philadelphia with a bookbag and some school supplies. We believe that with the leadership of the City and the Task Force that we can get other corporations, corporations who sit on Phil Goldsmith and Sister Mary Scullion's task force to have volunteer efforts after drives that will make shelters and transitional housing more of a home. Can you just imagine what would happen if every corporation in the City asked its employees for Halloween costumes for 40 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 homeless kids. We wouldn't have homeless kids going out trick-or-treating with a paper bag in their hands. Can you imagine if they were asked to do a school uniform drive? Can you imagine what would happen if every child that was going to graduate from high school, which, by the way, is a very special day for that kid, was given a graduation party by one of our banks or one of our companies here? We have a lot of very, very big-hearted businesses in this town who have not been asked, in my opinion, to step up to the plate as far as they need to step. We need jobs from them. We need their employees to come out here and help us with Philadelphia Reads Program. We have Girl Scouts in some of the shelters. We need more of these programs. There's a lot of untapped resources that are pretty cost-free and could be highly effective. And it's not just the churches, because sometimes I feel like we just turn to our churches and synagogs for everything and we forget the for-profit sector. We've got to ask them to step up to the plate and help out 41 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 even in the smallest way, even with a Valentine party. Let's have these kids have an experience that is much like the experience that they do in our own homes; birthdays, graduations. Let's have report card parties. Let's celebrate these children who are doing well in school despite all the odds. And I do want to mention that we have talked to Safe and Sound, both JoAnn Lawer and, of course, their founder Naomi Post; and they're both very ready to go on this project. So I appreciate your support as well.

Surely. All that you've mentioned regarding the corporations can also apply to other members of the faith-based community because they will respond if asked. And imagine the scenario if every homeless shelter was linked with a faith-based institution and the reach and the magnitude that would come out of that connection as well. So that is one I believe can still benefit from the nurturing and the linkages that are in place in some communities 42 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 and not at all in place in other communities.

I appreciate that.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much. Certainly, we agree with all that has been said and certainly it's been on my mind because we talked to a senior yesterday -- and albeit, as I said, we will introduce legislation calling for hearings on this gas issue. I had a senior citizen who's paralyzed call me yesterday because she's a shut-in and she had no heat. Now, we had somebody check into it last night and we had a vendor go out to her this morning. But albeit we're trying to help this senior and he's going to do it at a reduced rate of $2300. How many times can we do that? So we have to try to do what we can, and we do appreciate any help we can get. We're going to try to help this one senior, but there are seniors all over as well as young people in communities where we need help. And we have to focus on people volunteering services. We 43 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 were hoping that maybe this senior wouldn't need a heater, that they could get her pilot working but, obviously, they couldn't. And we understand there are other housing problems in the property. But we have a person who is paralyzed and who is a shut-in and we're afraid to have them there with no heat. So we're going to try to do our part, as God permits us to, to take care of this senior. But we'll need help for others who will come to us for whom we won't have resources because, obviously, all who need, we can't buy, but we will go as long and as far as we can. Having said that, Mr. Hess, one of the issues that Gloria Guard mentioned was the condition of shelters. And I hope that at some point during the hearing we will hear about Bright Spaces because that's a very exciting program that should be mentioned as we're dealing with shelters.

Madam Chair, we certainly will. We'll be hearing from both the Bright Horizons Foundation and McNeil Pharmaceutical, 44 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 who made a major investment in our City, in just a few minutes. I'd like to take this opportunity, if I may, to introduce a woman who we'll hear from this afternoon who really has done a tremendous job in leading our shelter programs in this City, Director of OESS Letty Hinton. (Applause.)

I will tell you that the shelter system today is in a transformational mode. And it's because of her leadership and the leadership of her staff that we really are moving in a very positive direction. So we appreciate all the good recommendations, the comments that Gloria Guard has given us. We will take a close look at those individually. I can assure you that under Letty's leadership, the shelter system has come a long way very quickly and we're very proud of her and her staff and their efforts.

Thank you very much. And let me say that we personally work with Letty in my office daily. And in 45 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 fact, when there was a fire in North Philadelphia in a PHA senior citizens building, Letty and I rode on the bus together, went to the hotel together and met Rob at Riverview to try to help seniors. So I certainly know. We've known her for many years, but certainly under your leadership with the ability to do creative planning and work with people and in a different kind of manner in a way where we can help people, from recreation centers and Cobbs Creek in our area, Letty's been there on site and we certainly thank her for her commitment to helping people in need. Thank you, Letty. (Applause.)

It was just last week that I spent some time on our streets talking to people that are currently living on our streets, and I came upon two young women who were twins who were living on streets and we wanted so much to move them indoors. So I had a conversation with them and asked there where they would go. Because very often when you 46 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 talk to folks who live on the street, they tend to want to tell you where they won't go. And so we're familiar with basically where they won't go. We wanted to kind of find out where people would go. And in the case of these two young women, they were unanimous in their agreement they would go to Covenant House because of the good work that's done there. So I'd like to invite, with your permission, Madam Chair, Jerry Kilbane to the witness table to talk a little bit about the good work going on there.

Good morning, Madam Chair, esteemed Councilmembers, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jerome Kilbane and I'm the Executive Director of Covenant House Pennsylvania. Covenant House is an international agency who serves homeless and runaway youth. Five years ago we were invited to open a facility here in the City of Philadelphia. Over that period of time, we have given emergency shelter to over 2500 47 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 young people under the age of and through all of our services have served over 7,000. Over the last five years, we've built continuum services which include street outreach where we have workers who go out on the street whose goal is to create a relationship with young people and offer a way off the street. Secondly, we have a crisis center which is located in Germantown where we not only offer emergency shelter on a 24-hour basis to a policy of what we call open intake which means any youth under the age of is 15 admitted, no questions asked the first time, 16 regardless. There, we try to create a plan 17 which addresses their immediate short-term and 18 hopefully long-term needs. We provide 19 educational services, vocational services, 20 legal counseling, psychological and, through 21 partnership with Children's Hospital, full medical care. The third part of our continuum is our Right of Passage Program. And in a minute I'd like to introduce Vivian who is a young 48 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 person who is in our Rights of Passage Program. That is a transitional living program which provides independent living skills to young people. The bulk of the kids that Covenant House serves are under the age of and have 8 no other place to go. Most are throw-aways. 9 They have either aged out of the foster care 10 system or have been abandoned to the streets. 11 Our goal, really, is to create a 12 relationship and offer a way off the street 13 but also provide an environment which 14 emphasizes inherent dignity but also is clean, 15 safe and welcoming. 16 I stand before you from the largest 17 provider in the City of Philadelphia, private 18 provider, for homeless and runaway youth. We 19 receive very little government funding. Over 20 90 percent of our funding is privately raised. 21 However, without continued funding for the many programs and if not more funding we could not continue to serve the kids that we do. We serve a niche. We are able to provide services to kids, but without continued 49 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 government support, we'd be overwhelmed with the amount of service that we have to provide. It reminds me of a story that our former president used to tell about a great saint named St. Vincent DePaul who was credited with really starting the social service system in France in the Middle Ages. In the twilight of his life he had met with the king and queen of France and they asked him, "Vincent, you've been a great man. Some consider you a saint. " And I think that's what we have to think about, because each night I go home and I know there are kids on the street who we cannot serve. We have overflow in our crisis center. I have a small transitional living program with eight beds. We would probably need 50 to meet the need. So I think that what we have to recognize is the fact that we need to do more. However, if services are provided to our young people, I think what 50 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 Covenant House has shown and many programs have shown is that we can make a difference in kids' lives. You know, much of the work that we do is also addressing some of the trauma that many of the kids suffer as a result of a variety social problems. I had a young man in our transitional program speak recently, and he talked about the age of 4 witnessing the murder of his mother. You know, what was talked about is that we're not just faced with homelessness; many of our young people come with a variety of problems.

In the last year, we went from serving 30 percent of the population with mental illness to nearly 60 percent. However -- and I just need to make a correction. We have a mother/child program in our crisis center and we provide job training for them, so that is also happening for the young people. We have found that we can help those young people come to terms with many of their problems, find a job and move on. 51 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 Vivian will talk about our Rights to Passage Program in which we ask our young people to work, to have savings, to learn independent living skills, and to move from there to their own apartments. However, if they cannot afford a just wage to support themselves, much of the work that we do is naught. So it's not just homelessness; it's employment, it's fair housing, it's social services. And if we wrap these services around the young people and the adults in our systems, we can end homelessness. So if you'd permit me, I'd like to introduce Vivian.

Hello. My name is Vivian Lawrence. I'm years old and I've 18 been in Covenant House system for a year now. 19 November will be a year. I came to the crisis 20 center after I had been homeless on and off 21 for about three or four years throughout high school. I graduated in 2002. And after graduation when the winter came and I had been sleeping at the bus station, my lawyer who was trying to help me tried to get me to go to 52 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 another shelter. I didn't want to. I'd been in so many other shelters. And my last shelter was Eliza Shirley which I stayed at one night because I felt more safe and cleaner sleeping at the bus stop than at the shelter. Finally, after some research, he took me to Covenant House of Pennsylvania where my first night I met with -- she's a social worker there and she took me to the shelter, showed me around, brought me to introduce me to the other workers and basically explained to me what the shelter was. Her name is Sister Chris. She asked about my Thanksgiving. I explained to her that I was homeless so I didn't have Thanksgiving. She took me to give me Thanksgiving dinner, explained to me what their Thanksgiving at the shelter was and basically talked to me and gave me a tour of the place and tried to get me to feel comfortable. When she showed me my room and I saw that it was a clean space with no bugs and for the first time, like, a warm bed and sheets 53 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 and everything. I finally decided to stay at the shelter and I slept there for the first night comfortable, I'd say, in four years. After speaking to her, the next morning they helped me to decide what I wanted to do with my life, to not go back to the street, to finally decide as an adult I have to do something to help myself. I explained my situation to them because hard for me to explain myself to someone else again. I had been turned down so many times because my situation was different and weird and so many people did not want to deal the problem I had. I was just homeless and that's the way it was supposed to be because there was no one there to help me. So I explained to her and she decided that as long as Covenant House doors are open, she was going to help me. The program is about three months, you're allowed to stay there three months. She told me right there and then that until she could help me I was never going to be turned away from the shelter. So I decided to buckle down and do what I was supposed to do. 54 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 The next day I met with an education specialist to see what my grade level of reading was. They wanted to get me a GED if I hadn't graduated, which I did. I met with a vocational specialist who wanted to help me build a resume, which I never had before. He wanted to show me that -- I thought I didn't have anything to put on a resume. He wanted to show me that I did. I just need to learn how to write it and reword it. They found out that I was interested in cooking. They had a culinary arts program to train me how to cook. And in January, after I had gone to New York which they paid for to get my stuff together, I enlisted into the first Covenant House Culinary Arts Program, and in March of 2004 became a graduate of the first Covenant House program. Not only did I graduate and learn the skills I needed to work in a restaurant, but I got serve safe certified which means that I'm able to be certified to be in a restaurant and do a job. Like, if you work in a restaurant, someone there has to have a safe certification at all times, and I have that 55 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 which is something I graduated high school and never had. Now I have that. (Applause.)

Thank you. When I finally got certified, I was able to get a job. I had a good resume. I went out. They helped me to learn how to dress, how to speak in public, how to make sure that employers knew that I was interested in work and I wasn't just some kid off the street but I was an adult that was ready to be a productive part of the environment. So I got a job working in a restaurant in New Jersey. They helped me to save money enough so that now I was able to leave Covenant House shelter on Armat Street and go to the Rights of Passage Program. Now, I'm currently in the Rights of Passage Program. You have to be employed for at least 30 hours per week to be in the Rights of Passage Program. And in May 2004, I was accepted and I moved into a house for the first time in 10 years. (Applause.) 56 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796

Covenant House Rights of Passage Program, which is the second step after the shelter, is a community that they've built in this house for us youth that have decided to do something for ourselves. We've decided to step up from the level of sleeping on the streets and staying at the shelter for however long they allow you to stay at the shelter and move into this community and become a part of this community. They helped me understand family, which I had never had before. They also helped me to understand that ROP, it wasn't them leading the way for me; it was me leading the way but they would be there for me to basically catch me if I fall, to push me forward. The staff supported me. They helped to guide me and to show me basically the world isn't like a bummy, crappy place like I thought it was. And I like that. For the first time in my life I had a community of people that were there to help me. I like to think of the ROP Program as the house of change because since I've been 57 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 there -- and we have eight beds so there's always eight people there -- I've learned that when you realize you have a house you come in and you open up and you change and you became this whole different person. You come from a scared child to an adult. We realize that we're getting rewarded too which is very, very important to me because I went through -- I didn't have my family throughout high school. I graduated high school by myself, sleeping on the street. No one came to the graduation. I was alone there. And no one ever said, "Well, okay, you did this." And here, they have congratulated me many times on graduating culinary arts which is also only like a six-month program. They've given me so much. I'm just going through a six-month program that no one ever did going through high school. I'm sorry. (Sobs.)

I'm sorry. I'm now able to work full time, take care of myself, get my own transportation, buy my own clothes, do my own thing; and it's only 58 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 because of the help of these people. Not only am I stepping forward in my life, but I get to see other young adults my age that have been through things that I've been through, more things, less things, and they're all around me every day and they're all doing good for themselves. We're all a productive part of the community. (Applause.)

We just needed that little help, and Covenant House gave that to me. I've been to many, many, many shelters, many programs. I've had so many social workers and lawyers. And this is the first time I've had a job for over a year. I've lived in this house and I can see myself moving into my own place right now, and it feels great. At the shelter also, they help you learn skills like I know now that if I'm ready to get my own apartment I can read my lease. I know how to shop productively for food, not waste any money. I know how to find myself around the City, how to find the help I need 59 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 to get where I need to go, and basically, the other skills you need to survive as an adult in the world. It's not just me. It's many other beautiful, wonderful roommates I have, housemates. And I just want to say that through Covenant House we have an opportunity to grow. I see many people, many kids around me every day throughout covenant house that need this program. They need this shelter. I needed it. I still need it. And I just couldn't imagine what we'd be without it. We have an opportunity to see each other grow and move on. And I just want to say that it feels good to know that I have a future and it's because of them. That's all. Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you very much for your excellent testimony. Councilwoman Miller.

Hi. How are you? Hi, Jerry. Covenant House -- I think one of the things that I'd just like to talk about is 60 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 that it's an excellent facility, an excellent service. And I know when you walked in there, you did not believe that you were in a shelter, did you? It's great. It's a great looking place.

It's not a shelter. I've always told everyone I've met that I walked in there and it wasn't a shelter, it was a house, it was a home, it was a family. They really are your uncles and cousins.

It's wonderful. One of the things that I would ask, though, is that the community instead of rejecting -- we had a struggle in Germantown to get that zoning approved. A large segment of the community did not want the Covenant House facility. We thought it was a good program. We thought it had a good future. We needed that service, and we knew children needed that service. And I want to commend Jerry Kilbane and the staff there at Covenant House and all the volunteers. I mean, Father Rock talks about you all the time. And all the people that are connected with Covenant 61 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 House, I think you are an excellent asset in Germantown. And it's unbelievable that we have to go through the struggles that we have to go through sometimes to get zoning because we have such large opposition. And you know that we had a very large segment of the community that did not want the Covenant House facility there on Armat Street. But I'm glad we hung in there and persevered. You got zoned, you opened, you're running, you're not causing any problems, you're doing a lot of positive work, and this young lady can now cook. So thank you, and thank you for coming in. I just hope that at some point people become more sensitive to the needs to have these types of facility in neighborhoods and instead of rejecting, open arms and embrace it. (Applause.)

And I just want to publicly again, thank you, Councilwoman, for your support and that to say that you can take as much responsibility for Vivian as we can 62 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 because if it wasn't for you, we would not have been there.

Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you very much. We certainly say thank you to Councilwoman Miller as well. Are there any questions from Members of the Committee? (No response.) The Chair also notes that Councilman W. Wilson Goode is here, and we thank him. Thank you very much.

Madam Chair, Members of the Committee, I think we've heard a little something about hope and how when we provide hope, that's truly a hand up. People grasp it. And so we're so proud of the good work going on at Covenant House and around the City. And we have to remember that the reason it's possible is because of the support that we get from the Mayor and from you, and we can't put any of that support at risk. Any of 63 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 that support being at risk would absolutely threaten many of the great programs you're hearing about today that are getting the great results that your hearing about today. Another example will be our next individual to present testimony, Rachel Falkove of Northwest Interfaith Hospitality Network. I will tell you that a year or so ago I had the privilege of joining Rachel and her families in the Mount Airy area. We were at a synagog that night for dinner, but she has pulled together the faith community in a very meaningful way to support families experiencing homelessness in that community. And so we're proud of her work and we look forward to hearing from her. (Applause.)

Good morning. Welcome. Identify yourself for the record and begin your testimony. Thank you very much.

I'm Rachel Falkove, and with me is Donna Laws, our Program Director. I'm the Executive Director of 64 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 Northwest Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network, which is a congregational-based shelter program for homeless families supported by hosting congregations in 6 Northwest Philadelphia along the Germantown 7 Avenue corridor. 8 And where did Councilwoman Miller 9 go? 10 Okay, there you are, because you're 11 right there with us on Germantown Avenue. 12 Our families call us the shelter 13 that's not like a shelter because we're a very 14 small and intimate program that's child and 15 family centered. We only house up to five 16 families at a time and generally shelter and 17 care for about 20 families every year because 18 we provide each family with their own room in 19 the privacy and quiet of congregational 20 buildings. We provide hospitality and 21 companionship using an extensive network of 22 volunteers, very dedicated congregational 23 volunteers, and we're proud to say that we 24 have over a thousand volunteers in our organization focussing their energies on these 65 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 families. We're one of the few shelter programs that can accommodate families of all configurations, including intact couples, families headed by single fathers and single moms with adolescent male children. And while we've run our of tiny little family shelter for 12-plus years, the demand for service has never been any greater. Across the nation we know that family homelessness has increased percent for each 12 of the past three years. And in Philadelphia, 13 families make up approximately 66 percent, is 14 that correct, of the shelter population? 15 Would you say 66 percent? 16

It varies, but it's 17 close. 18

And most of these 19 shelters were not designed to accommodate 20 families. And in the past year, at least 200 families have contacted us for help and placement. Many of these families call us regularly over a period of months to tell us that they are still waiting to be admitted to an appropriate shelter, and many are getting 66 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 the same answer, the family shelters are full especially the ones that offer a range of services and connect people to transitional or permanent housing opportunities. And while we can only take in a limited number of families, we do our best to listen, assist and refer families. And that's what Donna next to me does on a daily basis. Our organization wants to make sure that public support for homeless families and the services that they require continues. And we're very grateful to present the testimony before you today, and we commend the Mayor's Task Force on Homelessness and the process shepherded by the Office of Emergency Shelter and Services to develop a comprehensive 10-year plan to end homelessness. Adequate funding for OESS and the public support for our programs is critical to assure that 2500 men, women, and children have a place to sleep each night. We know that the current resources are not adequate to the task. And given what this Council and Administration have been through during the 67 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 past few budget cycles, I don't have to sit here and tell you this. We all realize that the burden to adequately fund services is very difficult, given the current federal and state housing policies combined with the current financial and economic constraints facing our City. But the alternative to not paying attention to the needs of families creates an enormous problem for the City and an enormous problem for its citizens for generations to come. We need to recognize that today's homeless families and unstable-housed children are likely to be tomorrow's chronically homeless. Federal policy right now is focused primarily on the small population of chronically homeless adults defined fairly narrowly as those with physical and mental disabilities which includes addictions and documented histories of abuse. But in fact, as we've heard today from the people who have come before me, that the charge to municipalities in becoming eligible for funding is to have a 10-year plan in place for 68 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 ending chronic homelessness. But this policy has unintentionally resulted in diminishing funding for programs that serve families and has inadvertently pitted one population of homeless against the other. The federal decision to focus service dollars on the chronic homeless population is based on the argument that the chronic population uses a disproportionate percentage of services. And our Board and constituents believe that today's homeless children are likely to be tomorrow's chronically homeless. We've come to that conclusion because of what we've learned from the people who sat before you today and also gave their testimony. I asked Donna to come and share one story about a family we met last week.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Councilwoman and Councilman. My name is Donna Laws, and I am the Program Director for the Northwest Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network. A family called me, as many times 69 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 they do. But this particular family was a little unique in that like many times I find that I can't get them placement. I wanted to place the family together. However, the father and the mother -- they had two children. I was unable really to place them together because there was no place available at the time. So what I ended up having to do, which really was disheartening was I had to place the father at Ridge and I had to place the mother and the children at People's Emergency Center. Although I was very glad that I was able to do that because this family was living on the streets and they had run out of money -- they were living in a hotel, but they ran out of money and they were living on the streets. Although I was glad because the mother -- I didn't tell you -- is 8 and a half months pregnant and she's never had any prenatal care. So it was really important to connect this family. The only problem was that the family had already been through one system, didn't really particularly work out that well at that system, so they ended up 70 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 having to leave because of fault of their own. So they couldn't go back to OESS for 180 days. I guess the main thing that I want to say about this family and the main reason why I pulled this family is because the mother had chronic homelessness. Her mother had been homeless, her sister was homeless, and now her children are homeless. And I feel like I wasn't able to do enough for the family because I wasn't able to keep them together. And that is very disheartening to me because the families that need each other for support need to be able to stay together. So that was one thing that was very important. And when I was driving them down to the shelter and I had to take the father to one place and the mother and the children to another, it was almost like pulling something apart that was glued because the mother was very upset and it was just really a disheartening situation. So what I'd like to say is that I hope that there would be more family-oriented shelters to help the families and the children 71 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 because the children don't really deserve to live on the street and be in these situations that we find them in. And I run into that quite a bit. But this particular family, although OESS ended up taking the mother and the children back, the father still didn't have a job, the father still didn't have what he needed. So I don't know if we call that a solution because we got them off the street or do we call it a solution when we have a story like the lady that just gave her testimony, which is truly a success story. So that's all I really want to say.

I wanted to just say a couple more things. The sad reality is that most of the families that show up at our doors have indeed experienced homelessness and instability as children. So for all these reasons, we really commend our City's commitment to include families in the 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness. Most shelters are very frightening places for families, and they'll do everything 72 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 possible to avoid bringing their children to live in them. And so as a result, they really actually will put themselves at more risk by remaining in abusive relationships, by living in substandard housing, by living with people who they know are not good to be around their children, but they do it because the known hell is better than all of the unknown risks and they prefer to take their chances and drag things on and hope against hope that their chance in PHA or Section 8's lottery will come up. A comprehensive plan to create affordable housing is one component of ending family homelessness. But affordable housing alone cannot do the trick. Some families arrive to our system -- in fact, many of the families arrive to our system needing a range of services, including health care, work readiness, financial literacy, life skills, education and parenting. And so, you know, I'm sitting here in front of you telling you we need funding, we need money, we need more. And next week 73 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 the libraries will be here and they'll want more and the rec centers and everybody's going to want more, and there's only so much of a pot. But people get confused by talking about needing more money as opposed to a discussion of how we can spend whatever we have more effectively and more wisely. So we have a couple of suggestions for you. First, the system for assessing and screening and assigning families to shelter and transitional and subsidized housing programs is inefficient and ineffective, especially given the current shortage of available beds and housing units. We know that OESS is doing the best they can with what they've got. They're trying really hard. But we think that because families are so afraid of the public shelter system that OESS doesn't get to give their great advice to everybody who really needs it, and they have good advice. Separating the assessment and counseling process from the shelter placement process might really be helpful. It needs to 74 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 be considered. I'm not saying that that's a definite answer, but it needs to be studied. Requiring demonstration of competency for subsidized housing, just like the Good Neighbors Program does, that might be a way to make sure that the capable families get placed in permanent housing and the ones who can't are placed in the services that they need. Also, sheltering families with serious problems with families who simply need an affordable place to live serves no one well. That's why people are scrambling to get into our shelter. So mixing adults and their teenage children who just might be down on their luck because of job loss but they might be appropriate home managers with post foster care adolescents with babies and insufficient life skills or even worse with families who might have active addictions and untreated mental illness creates an unmanageable situation in the shelters. And that's why nobody wants to go to them. So in these cases, the staff of the shelters have to cater 75 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 to the populations that really require the most structure. And we're giving more services to people who might not need it. That's inefficiency. Also, I'd like to ask that we not undo what works. We have some excellent models that have come before us today; Covenant House, PEC, and we're going to hear from some others today as well that offer a range of programs and supports that address a variety of needs.

And we need to know that no 13 one-size-fits-all approach in shelter or transitional housing is effective or efficient. We need shelters that offer privacy that families require so that we can accommodate the kinds of families that Donna was telling us about, and especially families whose members include teenage boys and men. Different family configurations require different paths for ending the cycle of homelessness. And a comprehensive approach, including subsidized housing, a variety of transitional housing programs, supportive 76 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 housing programs, they're all needed. We thank you, Councilwoman Blackwell and the Council Committee for the opportunity to participate in today's session, and we look forward to continued involvement in the process of developing the City's 10-year plan to end homelessness. We encourage everyone present to continue working on the larger systemic issues so that every man, woman, and child in our City has a place to call home. We also encourage each one of you to take a little bit of your personal time to become involved up close and personal in volunteer efforts like ours offering encouragement and friendship to our neighbors who are homeless. Thank you. )

Thank you very much. Thank you for your statements and suggestions. Mr. Hess can correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe that we try to focus on those who need DNA, those who have mental health issues. We've done a lot more -- in 77 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 the old days, everybody was kind of put together. Now, if you come at night and you've got to get a bed, that's different. But we do try to specialize within the system to try to get people in places where they need to minimize that condition you mentioned. I believe we focus a lot on that now.

You do it very effectively.

Thank you. Councilwoman Miller.

Thank you. Thank you for coming today to share your information. One thing I do want to say, earlier I believe someone asked a question about the faith-based community and their involvement. And I'd like to thank the congregations that got together and put Interfaith Hospitality Network together. We have pretty progressive churches in the Northwest.

We're lucky.

We're very, very lucky. And, Rachel, you care, you 78 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 understand what's going on. Thank you, Donna, for coming in also. And just thank you for your service. Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you very much. Any other questions? (No response.)

Madam Chair, we are pleased to tell you that we have quite a list of distinguished individuals and groups that are with us today that want to share comments with you and so we're just going to move it along as quickly as we can. With your permission, I'll invite to the witness table Elaine Fox from PHMC to talk about some of the really outstanding work that PHMC is doing with respect to healthcare for people experiencing homelessness in our City and case management and a variety of other programs.

Good afternoon. I'm Elaine Fox from Philadelphia Health Management 79 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 Corporation, and thank you very much for the opportunity to testify before City Council this afternoon.

Thank you.

I am a Vice President at the Philadelphia Health Management Corporation, known as PHMC. PHMC has been involved in issues related to homelessness since 1977 when we wrote the first Study of Homelessness in Philadelphia. Primarily, as Rob stated, we provide healthcare and social services to homeless men, women and children on the street, in shelters, in transitional housing, in Section 8 and in newly constructed low-income housing. In addition, I and my colleagues are the chairs and co-chairs of many committees in the City that deal with the specific needs of homeless families and homeless children. Because I have the advantage of over 20 years of experience working in this area, I think I'm in a unique position to see the changes in both the population of who is homeless as well as the changing approach to addressing these needs. 80 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 It seems as though it was only yesterday that the homeless population was comprised of single men predominately, economically marginalized and often with an overlay of behavioral health issues. Now the population is made up of families comprised primarily of single women and their children in addition to the already-mentioned single male adults. Our strategy and policy as a City and as individual providers also has changed. Rather than create more and more shelter beds with more and more quick fixes, we have moved to a system that has as its end point the creation of more permanent housing to provide permanent housing to homeless families while emphasizing skills that encourage self-sufficiency. The City's 10-year plan gives testimony to the strategy as well as to the many excellent providers who are part of the planning process. I have to say in my work with healthcare for the homeless, I travel and meet with other providers of homeless services 81 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 quite a bit. And compared to other cities, Philadelphia has a well-evolved partnership between the public and the private systems. And as one of the partnership's agencies, we're fortunate to have the opportunity to work with City agencies. Just briefly, in 1978, as a provider community, all of us were simply trying to learn who the homeless were. By the early '80s we are engaged in a seemingly endless pursuit of trying to find enough beds to shelter the many people who were seeking refuge from the street. As the end of the '80s drew near, we clearly recognized that services were needed for each population of the homeless, the single adults, families who were now flooding the system, the mentally ill and substance abusers. By the mid-'90s, we had developed many excellent examples of targeted services and a continuum of care that went from the street to permanent housing. More recently, we moved to create more transitional housing, of which there are many excellent models, and 82 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 made a paradigm shift to aggressively encourage the development of housing, recognizing that without permanent housing as an end point, the cycle of shelter would be repeated. And now in 2004 and going forward, we recognize that housing often is the beginning point, yet it must be combined with targeted services that are an essential component to build the skills necessary to create self-sufficient adults and healthy families. Now we're at a point where Philadelphia is creating a 10-year plan to truly end homelessness, not only for single adults as in many of the other cities but, apparently unique to Philadelphia, for families as well. I really applaud that effort, as do my colleagues, and would like to offer some of our comments and recommendations as we move forward together. The first concern, shelter beds. Shelters have been commented on as long as I've been around, and that's been a long time. 83 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES.

040796 And we see that while shelter is no longer an end point as it was years ago, it is an essential first step for many families, and we urge that these beds not be cut. Although no 6 one wants their loved ones to experience life in the shelter even for a day, it is often the immediate alternative for many families and can offer the opportunity for a family to be stabilized, educated, connected with job training, educational skills, and healthcare. Again, this is not the end point but often is a necessary first step. The second point is services. All of us, public and private providers, advocates and citizens have learned a lot about what makes someone homeless. We also have considerable experience in knowing what works to end homelessness. The formula of housing combined with services is needed now more than ever. Housing plus services is critical if families are to maintain their housing and to achieve skills necessary for self-sufficiency. All of our staff have reported seeing clients with more complicated problems and especially 84 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 mental health issues and more young families, both of which compound the client's ability to accept and utilize services. The third point sounds like jargon but isn't, it's collaborations and partnerships. Collaborations among the various departments of City government and private providers have proven to be the most effective way of assuring that the clients' needs are met and that services are integrated not duplicated but targeted to address complicated areas. PHMC has long been a partner with the City in many endeavors, and we're confident that our services in concert with the City services greatly expand the range of services that can be offered to homeless people. I'll briefly illustrate two of these collaborations: PHMC's Healthcare For the Homeless Program and Help Philadelphia. First is Healthcare For the Homeless. PHMC, since 1985, has administered the Healthcare For the Homeless Program for Philadelphia which is funded largely through 85 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 federal dollars, partly through the City and partly through foundations. Through this program, we provided essential healthcare, case management and social services in many family shelters run by the City. Through Healthcare For the Homeless, PHMC also manages the Mary Howard Health Center which is the City's only primary care health center for homeless people. The center has comprehensive primary care in addition to behavioral health and social work services on site and it's accessible and available to all homeless people regardless of ability to pay. To focus specifically on the healthcare of families, as part of our Healthcare For the Homeless Program, we have healthcare clinics in some of the family shelters. These clinics also provide a full range of healthcare, family planning services, and education to consumers and providers. Of particular importance is Healthcare For the Homeless strong public health focus. As one example of this, PHMC has developed a partnership with the Health 86 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 Department and OESS an immunization program based at the City's intake site that brings each child and parents under entering 5 shelter as up to date as possible on 6 immunizations. I'm proud to say that homeless 7 children are now immunized at the rate of 92 8 percent and receive even more immunizations 9 that are necessary for entry into school than 10 the non-homeless children. In 2003, over 2000 11 children were evaluated for immunizations and 12 1,745 received at least one immunization. I 13 think there were about 3,000 shots given in 14 the year. 15 The additional benefit of this 16 program is that it has essentially ended the 17 shelter closings necessitated by outbreaks of 18 vaccine-preventable illnesses. Often, as you well know, shelters had to be closed to new admissions for six to eight weeks as outbreaks were brought under control.

This program would not be possible without the full cooperation of the City whose vision for the future certainly includes the special needs of children. 87 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 I'd also like to mention our Help Philadelphia Program which is a transitional housing program with enriched services. Again, through OESS and federal funding, PHMC has been a partner in Help Philadelphia, a transitional housing facility for homeless families in West Philadelphia funded in large part by OAS and helped 50 families receive housing or receiving the very services that support them in becoming independent. In other words, families are not in a holding pattern but receive comprehensive healthcare, family planning, employment and educational services to support them in acquiring the skills to be better parents and become much more likely to be employed. Over 200 volunteer organizations have provided additional services at Help. This special relationship between volunteers and Help Philadelphia is shown in our copy of directions which is included at the back my testimony. And while we often see homeless issues as problems, I'd like to point to the 88 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 success of this program with, at last count, 54 graduates who are now successfully raising their families, living in independent housing, going to college in many cases, and working. I just wanted to briefly mention permanent housing which everybody will be commenting on today. I just wanted to mention that while we provide in-home case management service for homeless people moving into Section 8, PHA conventional housing and even newly developed housing constructed by Prime Properties, a private developer, what we've been hearing from developers is that many of them are willing to create permanent housing slots if some of the red tape and barriers presented by government entities, particularly the federally funded projects, can be reduced or eliminated. We encourage all of us to aggressively work toward reducing some of that red tape. Last, I want to mention the special needs of homeless children, which is near and dear to our hearts. While much work has been done to end homelessness, there is much more 89 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 to be done. Recently, PHMC in concert with a number of agencies sponsored the City's first conference on homeless children. The conference was held in late September at the Community College of Philadelphia. The conference highlighted the work that had been done thus far on behalf of homeless families as well as the gaps that exist and must be addressed in order to bridge the gap between homeless and non-homeless children. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, homeless children often fall through the cracks and they suffer from many deficits by virtue of their transience, their parent's ability to effectively provide for them, and the stigma they face as a result of being identified at school and at play as the homeless children. PHMC's conference highlighted four issues that were carried out in workshops. The first is education, highlighting educational issues and problems of homeless children and teens; healthcare, including in addition to physical and developmental needs of homeless children, some 90 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 of the nutritional issues that affect homeless children as well as all of our children; trauma, the effect of trauma and violence on homeless children; and the special problems of teens, a growing population. And it focused on runaways, sexual minority, and aging out of foster care kids. The findings of these workshops will be highlighted in a report to the community that will recommend further actions that we hope can be worked in the continuing 10-year plan process. The needs of children clearly have to be addressed when we talk about ending homelessness.

It occurred to me -- I forgot to acknowledge my two colleagues who are here, Debra McMillan who is our Deputy Director of Social Service Programs and Shirley Robinson who is the Director of Help Philadelphia. They're both here today. We commend, and particularly Rob Hess, for his leadership in the development of services to the homeless and for spearheading Philadelphia's 10-year plan and to end 91 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 homelessness. This is an exciting time that finally brings us all together to build on past efforts and move towards greater success. Much has been done, and with public will, much more can be done. We hope that Council continues to play an important role in supporting the plan and in monitoring its outcomes. Thank you for your time. )

Thank you very much. Where is the Mary Howard Health Center?

It's at Ninth and Sansom Streets. It's right on the corner. The address is 125 South Ninth Street. We have special hours for appointments and we also have walk-in appointments. And any homeless person is welcome there.

That's great. Let me thank you for your continued work over the years. We've interacted with 92 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 one another on many issues over the years. Thank you very much, Ms. Fox.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Reynolds Brown.

Good afternoon. Let me thank you for your testimony. All of the testimony has been extremely compelling for me. I continue to have a laser beam interest in what's happening with kids in our City. And so I'm encouraged to hear that simply because a child is homeless does not mean they should not receive some of the same fundamental basic services that children require, like immunizations. So let me commend you for the great work that's been done with that. I'm sorry I missed that conference at Community. I wasn't aware of it, so I'll look forward to the recommendations that came out of that because that becomes great instructions for us on this side of the table in what we can do to further help the cause. This is a great newsletter. Thank you. 93 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796

And I just wanted to mention one thing about the immunizations. That program wouldn't have started without the full cooperation of the City, because it was actually the need for seeing our nurse that was actually built into the intake process. So that's part of what someone has to do before they can be placed in shelter. And we haven't had a case of Hepatitis A since the late '80s. So the City deserves just as much congratulations on that.

It sounds, too, like a continuing challenge, and it's very similar to a conversation I had this morning earlier with Shirley Ransom Garner regarding foster children who, for reasons that we understand, do not get access to services like immunizations and such. And my question to her was the linkage, the tie with the Philadelphia School District. And it sounds like that might be a gap here, so maybe that's a challenge that we can talk about in greater detail at another time to see how we can tighten the linkages with the School District 94 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 who are in touch with kids and, I would think, have some level of responsibility in bringing children who are homeless to the attention of those that can change that circumstance. Would you agree?

Yes, I certainly do. And I'd be glad to talk to you at anytime. Thank you very much for your time.

You're welcome. (Applause.)

Madam Chair, we are very fortunate to have a group of folks that Joy Sacco is going to introduce us to from the Woodstock Family Facility next up.

Good morning. Thank you for your patience. Identify yourself for the record and begin. Thank you very much.

I'm Joyce Sacco, the Director of the Blueprint to End Homelessness. As part of the Mayor's Task Force planning process, I, as well as some folks from the Office of Adult Services --

Would you 95 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 talk into the mike? We can't hear you.

Certainly. We went out to many facilities in Philadelphia to talk to consumers and residents of facilities to find out what they felt was important. These women, Kiya Becote and Volette Taylor, are from the RHD Woodstock Family Center in North Philly. They were part of the first focus group and then they participated in the second round of planning meetings in this building in October. Thank you.

Thank you. Please identify yourself and then begin. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Volette Taylor. I'm currently staying at the OESS shelter that's run by RHD Woodstock. At the last meeting, there was a lot of talk about lumping people together. But I want to tell you, everyone's situation is different. For example, I had two deaths within two months of each other; my husband, my mother. I was living in my mother's house. 96 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 And when my mother died, my sister changed the deed so she would be the owner and my sister decided to put me and my two girls out in the cold. So I had to make a decision to enter the shelter system. I was depressed. I cried. I was grieving over the two deaths of my mother and my husband, not to mention that my sister turned her back on me and my children. We became homeless because our network of support fell apart. Since we've been in the shelter, I have seen many women with children in different crises and situations like victims of domestic violence, victims of fire, women without enough education or support to take care of their family, substance abuse, and women who just had too many kids and don't know how to cope with them. The life skill classes that I took at Woodstock, especially the Each One Teach One Program, gave me a chance to vent and learn how to put my needs and the needs of my children first. Because of this situation, it has helped me grow in terms of not letting my 97 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 family take advantage of me. I took time off from work because it was hard for me to take care of the people. I'm a licensed CNA. And going through the situation where my mother and my husband being in intensive care, it was very hard and for me to deal with that at the same time. I think a grievance support of counseling would help get me through a lot of the pain and the loss of my family and also the betrayal of my sister. I believe the support services like GED programs, housekeeping skills, food skills services like Philabundance Program and our parenting classes were very helpful for me. The activities for the children like Girls Night and Boys Night, and they also have rap groups for boys and girls on different nights, gave my children an outlet to help express themselves, to learn positive life skills, and develop their creative side. It let them talk about how they felt while they were in the shelter system, too, and how not only I was grieving, but they were grieving for their grandmother and their father. Where 98 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 I'm at, they gave them the opportunity to talk along with just other peers about how they felt, and it helped them. The most important thing that I think the City could do to fight homelessness is to develop affordable housing or repair all the houses that are rundown around here to make it available for low income families. Everybody's situation is not the same. And to those who believe that low income families do not keep up their living spaces, they can come see my room at the shelter, because it's clean. We have room 15 check every day. And I have two girls who help me clean my room. They are learning how to be clean young women and to rely on each other and be a family. That's all I got to say. Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Kiya Becote. I am also a resident at RHD Woodstock. I started off in the New York City shelter system and moved to Philadelphia 99 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 due to lack of assistance. In my opinion, the Philadelphia shelter system is off to a very good start. I'm offered opportunities here that I wouldn't fathom getting in New York. In addition to help with housing, I can get help learning to save my money and, if need be, parenting, life skills and other such programs which give me the opportunity to grow as an individual and put an end to the cycle of dependency. My observation is that everyone in the shelter system needs help, but the main concern should be focussing on the children. By this, I don't mean simply child care or recreational activities. I mean showing them that there is more to life than just surviving, showing them that there's more to life than a 10-block radius in a lousy neighborhood. If you want it and you feel it's something worthwhile, you have the power to obtain it. Find a way to help these children step out of their neighborhood and experience new things and see new things, meet and network with new people. 100 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 I always thought the Big Brothers and Big Sisters Programs were excellent. The problem is that there are a lot of young girls with children upon children who have never been taught. How do we expect someone who has never learned independent thinking and to take responsibility for themselves and their actions to teach the next generation something they've never learned themselves? The most important thing the City can do to end homelessness, in my opinion, is to go into the schools, community centers, go into the budget and put more money in programs, link up with the not-for-profit sector that wants to help these children, go to whoever it is you need to go to, find whoever it is you need to find to make the children want more. It's called the ghetto, but it doesn't have to be the ghetto. If you change the mindset, then you change the environment. I want the world for my son, Malachi. Help me give it to him. Thank you. (Applause.) 101 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796

Yes, these two testifiers deserve a round of applause because it takes a certain level of courage to come forward, acknowledge your circumstance, but to also say implicitly in your testimony that you recognize that children, above all, are the ultimate victims in this circumstance. We thank you, Bob Hess, and those who just provided testimony for being willing to come and enlighten us even further on this circumstance. Thank you very much for your testimony.

Madam Chair, thank you for your support. We have so many wonderful people here today that want to have an opportunity to address this distinguished body. I am jumping around a little bit to try to be sensitive to the time that folks have available today, and I apologize ahead of time for that. I want to introduce to you a woman who has been really dedicated to assisting us in this City on this issue for a number of 102 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 years as a volunteer. She comes to us from Keystone Mercy Health System. But what she has recognized from the beginning is emergency shelter should be a point of entry into a system, not a point of destination. And so she has dedicated her volunteer efforts to Chairing our McKinney Application Committee which brings in about million federal 10 dollars into our City each year and is 11 focussed on providing services, but most 12 importantly, for providing housing 13 opportunities of a transitional and permanent 14 nature to people that are in our system. And 15 so we so we appreciate her work. It's a 16 privilege for me to introduce to you Maria 17 Battle. 18

Good afternoon 19 and welcome. 20

Thank you, Councilwoman, for being here. I want to give greetings to Honorable Jannie Blackwell and all of the Council. Of course, both of you know me very well and know where I'm from, so I just wanted you to know that, as Bob said, I 103 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 am in partnership with Bob and OESS. I'm the Chairwoman of the McKinney Strategic Planning Committee for the Office of the Adult Services. And I'm appearing here before you today to provide testimony in support of maintaining and improving services for the homeless families and children. We all serve the same vulnerable at-risk population. That's what I serve at Keystone Mercy Health Plan. And many of the people that are in these shelters are on my plan. I believe that improving the quality of life for the most vulnerable members of our City betters all of our lives. One of the ways to protect the most vulnerable members of our community is to become involved and, as Bob said, and become an advocate. So I, therefore, participate on the McKinney Supernova Committee, and that is a passion that I'm bringing to it. It's important and key to strengthening and enhancing the continuum of care of many public and private partners. 104 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 This ensures that progress towards improving the quality of life of the Philadelphia community, and it's our shared goal. The public and private partnerships encompasses a broad spectrum of associates. Such collaboration produces benefits for all concerned. Our local financial institutions provide financing for housing developments and receive tax credits. Homeless individuals and families, therefore, receive affordable housing. A marriage between a local foundation and local high tech company producing a needed learning center and technology labs that guarantees the digital divide is kept to a minimum for that community. And I think we've heard testimony earlier today speaking about our children and what they need. The collaboration of private and public healthcare systems produces an easily accessible continuum of care from preventative to acute treatment for the community members, such as enhancing the intake process consisting of a physical health assessment by 105 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 linking with the existing services such as the Philadelphia Department of Health Centers and private health centers including linking with community behavorial health centers. Although our accomplishments have been impressive, we have much work ahead to complete in order to maintain and prevent homelessness in the future. During the past seven years, we have reduced the chronic homeless population living on the street by 75 percent. From the summer of 1997 to recently, the number has gone from 824 to the most recent low of 147. There are several keys to our success. There's been an influx of new money and support for housing and service, innovative outreach efforts, our new housing first agenda aimed at reducing the incidence of chronic homelessness in Philadelphia, and the successful collaboration of private and public sector. As Bob mentioned earlier, we recently submitted our 2004 HUD McKinney application. We requested $23,244,192 for 46 106 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 projects, including Shelter Plus Care renewals which are funded separately from this competitive part of the application. And this also includes a $2 million bonus which Philadelphia's eligible for because of our size and because we put permanent housing projects in the number one slot. This request included 9 new projects with a funding level of approximately $10 million. The new projects will produce 130 new units, providing housing for a minimum of 260 individuals. It includes a mix of one-third of the units are for chronic homeless individuals, including a safe haven for people. One-third of the 16 units are for families, including large 17 families.

And one-third of the units are for 18 homeless youth, including those who are aged out of foster care. Since 1996 when McKinney funding started, there has been more than 1,000 supportive housing program units created. Effectively utilizing the limited public and private resources requires our best efforts. Strengthening the collaboration and 107 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 implementation of services provided by businesses, foundations, local, state and federal government for the benefit of mutual consumers in Philadelphia community is first and foremost. Let's not forget the strengthening of inter-departmental collaboration, encouraging the cross-pollination of programming services through the effective use of information sharing regarding Philadelphia-funded services for our mutually targeted populations. Department of Health, DHS, behavioral health, PHA are a few of the City agencies servicing this population. It is key to promote the direct dialog between program managers to develop a listing of all providers that are funded and the services they provide. By doing so, managers can then easily identify common strategies for servicing targeted populations. This would demonstrate and strongly support the efficient use of limited resources. Our efforts are one of a few which has successfully leveraged public and private 108 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 funding with such dramatic results. The community needs our energy to continue the process until homelessness is eliminated in the City of Philadelphia. I thank you for allowing me to appear before this distinguished Council, and I ask that you continue to support our efforts with all the resources at your disposal. Together, we can help. Together, we can give them hope. Together, we can give them a home. And I thank you. )

Thank you very much. Any questions?

Define chronic homelessness for me versus homelessness.

I'm sorry. I didn't hear you.

Define chronic homelessness, because you cited that in your testimony.

I'll try to take a shot at that, Councilwoman. And I'll probably get 109 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 it wrong, but my staff will correct me. I think chronic under the federal definition refers to an individual who has been homeless continuously for a minimum of a year or has 4 or more occasions of homelessness over the last years -- and 3. See, I knew I would get it wrong, but thank goodness they're there. So it's kind of the high flyers in our system, if you will. The people that have the longer record of experiencing homelessness.

You stated it is the McKinney project? Is that a revenue stream?

Yes, it's a federal revenue stream.

I see. Under which federal agency?

Under HUD.

Each year as a City we have to compete for those funds nationally. While Maria is here, she is the volunteer Chair of this public/private 110 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 partnership group that sets the priorities for our City. And we're so proud of her work. I also would be remiss if I didn't mention Dainette Mintz from OHCD who's worked so long and hard on this issue. Roberta Sharp from our office. Roberta is over here. Maybe she can stand up. She works on the McKinney Project. And Emily Camp Landis from our office.

And our new person Laura.

And Laura. I also want to take a moment, if I may, Madam Chair, to recognize two other folks that Maria indirectly referred to in her remarks. The first is Marcella Mills. Marcella, stand up. (Applause.)

Marcella runs the unit that runs all of our transitional housing programs in this City, but she also has a unit that hours a day, 7 days a week is running 24 around this City handling emergency relocations as they're needed and just does a 111 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 fabulous job. And I want to also finally introduce you to Dr. Marchella McGuire (ph). (Applause.)

Dr. McGuire has the distinction of being the first and, to the best of my knowledge, the only Director of Chronic Homeless Initiatives in America. We have moved the numbers of people living on our streets down from a high when this Administration took office of around 824 just in Center City to something less than 200 on the streets of Center City today. It's because of the leadership of the Mayor, Council, the support of all the integrated service providers across from non-profits to different government departments working in harmony and led by a focus with a director that's been very important to this effort. And so we're proud of the work that's been done there. We think it's a model. You'll hear more about that later, but I wanted to mention it while Maria was here because she's helped us set priorities within 112 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 our McKinney application that have had this effect.

And I would say that from the mission of the Mayor to the vision of Bob Hess, we've been able to be very successful in moving that forward. And we really hope and continue to make homelessness -- everyone has a home, that's what we really want, especially for the chronic. So please keep us there in your hearts and in your minds and in your pocketbooks. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your testimony. (Applause.)

Madam Chair, with your permission, I'd like to now invite Alicia Christian to the witness table. Alicia, as you know, started in the business of helping people experiencing homelessness when I think she was about age 3, so you'll remember because I think it was probably about the same time you started. (Laughter.)

And has done this work 113 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 for many, many years in our great city and is here to share with us today.

Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. As Rob indicated, I am the Director of Dignity Housing, a non-profit agency that provides affordable project-based Section 8 subsidized housing and social services for homeless families and individuals in Philadelphia. We were established in 1988, and we have helped more than 1500 formerly homeless men, women, and children attain self-sufficiency goals. Many have moved from Dignity to viable employment, home ownership, private market rentals, residency and non-service-enhanced affordable housing and many have attained higher education objectives. I'm pleased to offer testimony in support of the implementation of a concrete plan to end homelessness in Philadelphia within a decade. Dignity is a member of the Public Private Task Force on Homelessness, the 114 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 Blueprint to End Homelessness, the Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations, and the Leadership to End Homelessness. Our agency strongly supports housing and other goals stipulated in the blueprint and the work plan of the Corporation for Supportive Housing. We further support and urge Council action on the call of PACDC for the creation of a $20 million housing trust fund which can be used to leverage $50 million annually from federal, state, and private investors. No doubt today, you have heard a litany of statistics, facts, figures on the scope of homelessness in our City and on the need for a fundamental, permanent solution. At Dignity Housing, each day we see the detrimental impact of the City's failure to heed the call of homeless individuals and service providers and concerned administrators for an end to this problem. Every month, we receive more than 100 calls from beleaguered homeless individuals and service providers seeking transitional or permanent housing 115 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 options. And we can only serve a fraction of that number. In fact, our current rental inventory has been reduced from 160 units in 1994 to 121 units today. We've recently instituted a fairly broad freeze on accepting new tenant applicants through January. We provide long-term transitional housing, two to five years. And we're immensely proud of some of our newer developments; Dignity II, Dignity III, in the Germantown community. And if you're familiar with the area at Wayne and Hansberry, you have seen a number of fairly impressive Dignity newer developments that are having a tremendously positive impact in that two to three-block corridor. However, we are faced with the problem of maintaining our aging inventory. More than 100 of the Dignity Housing homes and apartments scattered throughout the City are owned by the Redevelopment Authority and are aging. They were brought on line around 1988. Our contract Section 8 rents, our subsidized rents, were established in 1988 and 116 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 they were established at below market rate levels. In Cobbs Creek, we managed a four-bedroom unit and received less than $600 per month. On William's Avenue, 8100 Williams Avenue, we manage units that receive Section 8 contract rents fully 200 to $300 per month below prevailing rates. We have, as the map indicates -- and unfortunately I only brought the one laminated map -- we have a City-wide inventory on both sides of the Schuylkill. It is admittedly one of the most difficult kinds of subsidized rental inventories to maintain. Units that were brought on line in 1988 need substantive capital repairs. Our Section 8 rents have been consistently so low, that we've been unable to save, unable to amass resources for capital maintenance and refurbishment. The situation became so desperate in 2003 that we announced the probable closing of Dignity Housing, an agency that had been in existence nearly 16 years. We announced the closing of Dignity Housing at a time when, according to a number of reports, more than 117 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES.

040796 6,000 individuals experienced homelessness in the City of Philadelphia at some point during the year and more than 120,000 experienced affordable housing crises. We are grateful to Members of City Council who came to our aid who are familiar with the mission and the achievements of dignity housing. And the heart of the agency's achievements lie in the accomplishments of our tenants. Dignity housing has produced more than 122 homeowners, more than 73 graduates of associate and bachelor degree programs. )

D. and two masters. D, medical doctor. We believe that given the resources 118 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 and the mentoring and given the commitment, clients can indeed -- a number of clients can become colleagues. We bear witness to that. Former Dignity tenants work for sister agencies including the People Emergency Center and formerly the Philadelphia Health Management Corporation. A former Dignity tenant is now an IRS supervisor, supervising a staff more than 30. She entered Dignity Housing in 1990, left the program in 1995, received our scholarships, is a homeowner now and a parent herself of a foster child of a drug addicted homeless mother. Dignity can work and does work well. We've learned a range of things as a result of difficulties experienced in 2003, and really now more than ever support the mandates in a number of plans that have been discussed previously. Section 8 rents and vouchers should be set at levels more consistent with fair market rates. In some instances, given the age and location of the rental housing stock, additional subsidies are required. Pre-development planning funds and 119 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 start-up operational planning grants may be required as they pursue management of affordable housing units. Consolidated development of affordable housing units in specific neighborhoods on contiguous blocks is preferable, so long as the numbers served are not too large to support diversity and cohesiveness in a neighborhood. As noted earlier, Dignity's developments in a three-block corridor in Germantown, Wayne, Hansberry, Pulaski Avenue has succeeded in reducing neighborhood blight by more than 30 percent in that corridor and it has spurred additional housing investment by others. There must be a significant expansion of the number of rental subsidies. There are a number of families now ready to move beyond Dignity. They are not yet ready to become homeowners. They need additional subsidies and permanent -- I mean, they need options to continue pursuit of their goals in permanent, affordable housing. They need Section 8 subsidies or vouchers which are now 120 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 not readily available. In preparing this testimony, I reviewed the work plan that resulted from the two meetings of the Mayor's Task Force on Homelessness. But I also perused more dated materials produced over the past two decades. In the mid-'80s homeless activists called for an end to homelessness. We called for a maximum effort to limit a family's stay in emergency shelter to 90 days with intense assessment and case management and guaranteed movement thereafter to transitional housing or permanent housing. In 1998, the Blueprint to End Homelessness called for the development of an additional 500 units per year. In '84 we called for the creation of 10,000 units. In 1990, Jack Kemp, then head of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development under the elder President Bush visited the Dignity Housing Program, commended us on exemplary efforts and promised to commit a percentage of all foreclosed HUD housing stock to housing the homeless. That promise was never kept. Most recently, President Bush, 121 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 the junior, has committed to an effort to end homelessness. And I have no more faith that that promise will be kept without concerted political advocacy, no more faith that that promise will be kept than the promise of the elder Bush Administration. This City Council, along with concerned service providers and private sector officials, must work to ensure that the 10-year plan to end homelessness does not become yet another study on the shelf gathering dust. I reviewed 42 of them prior to the testimony today, all admirable, all with goals well worth achieving and within our means. There simply has to be the collective will.

Thank you very much. We thank you for your excellent testimony. Obviously, your reputation precedes you. We were happy to fight for your agency and its survival and continuance. We agree with you. This is the second plan that I'm living through. The first one didn't end; we didn't take a whole 122 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 years. And we agree it has to be real and that all of us are committed to making it happen. It is unfortunate that we're having this issue at the federal level even in terms of Section 8 certificates. And I don't know how we get out of that. I know we're all struggling. Hopefully, we'll get some break, but that's a real problem. And as you know, it's already happened. They've already cut the individual Section 8 certificates, and that's a real, real problem. So we have to continue to battle --

And explore creative means of developing internal subsidies. It may be necessary to mix market rate units leased to private renters to generate subsidies for homeless and other low income families.

I think we're doing that as well. And even PHA is 50 percent home ownership even in the Lucien E. Blackwell Homes is 788 homes in Mill Creek as well as many other places. So I agree, we 123 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 have to continue to be creative. And I believe locally we are trying to do that. Even with OESS, and Rob Hess can speak for himself, renting private places for people in need. So I think we're doing a great job here. If we get a little help from on high from those Feds, I think we'd be okay.

I think one of the things we should probably put on the record, it is true that the President's federal budget request has a gap in the Section 8 budget of $1.8 billion dollars.

1.8?

Billion dollars has been cut out of the President's proposed Section 8 budget. That may be a question we may want to ask Mr. Mangano about when he arrives later this afternoon. Certainly, that's an issue that we're all very concerned about.

Thank you again very, very much. Any questions? (No response.)

Thank you. 124 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 (Applause.)

Madam Chair, with your permission, I'll invite Ted Weertz from Kirkbride who is the Executive Director of Traveler's Aid to the witness table to join us. I will tell you that about two years ago, we had a crisis situation with respect to families. And literally within hours of a phone call to Ted Weertz, we were able to move into Kirkbride largely because of his organization and your leadership which allowed us to do that so very quickly, and we appreciate that. Ted.

Thank you. We certainly concur that he does a great job there. In fact, I talked to Tom Flemming yesterday, and this minute I forgot why. I think I was supposed to do something, Ted. So it reminds me, I'd better think and follow-up. But thank you for your leadership there. And at every meeting and gathering and groundbreaking you're always there and you do 125 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 a fine job. We thank you.

Thank you very much, Councilwoman Blackwell. We try to be responsive. We try to be responsive to OESS. They said minutes; we will do that in 10 7 minutes. 8 We did two years ago bring in within 9 a matter of about eight hours, 80 persons who 10 were parts of homeless families and we did that because we were out there looking for shelter and it's very difficult to find shelter and we have to plan, I think, more ahead. And I'll get to that in a minute. Traveler's Aid has been considered sometimes the best kept secret in the City and in the nation, and many people don't understand what it is about. It's actually the oldest non-sectarian social service agency in the country. We started in 1851 in St. Louis, and that was where the 49ers were gathering -- not the 49ers of San Francisco, but the 49ers of 1849 -- tens of thousands of them in tents and covered wagons to go to California. And typhoid fever came through 126 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 and many became very, very sick, and the Mayor of St. Louis gave them $500,000, which you can imagine in 1851 how much money that was, to start the first Traveler's Aid to help travelers, which means immigrants which means people who are homeless. We started in 1901 mostly to serve families, mostly mothers with children and young women who were coming to the shores usually directly from boat, sometimes by train, who did not have any means, who did not have any home and, of course, with very little communication available at that time. We found them housing. We found them employment. And we set them up so that they could live permanently in the country. And that's really what we've been doing since 1901 mostly with people from out of town and either they're stranded in the City and need to move on to someplace or else they're coming to the City and need help. Many of them are families, and we provide that kind of assistance. Now, some 103 years later, we've done about a half million of those families and individuals. So 127 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 we've been very adept at helping people who are in the midst of a homeless crisis. What we found right around 1991-92, it became apparent that the homelessness that had started about years later was not going 7 away, and we decided that rather than be 8 working simply with the poor, stranded 9 travelers in Philadelphia, we were going to 10 focus on now the indigenous homeless and, again, back on to the families. And we particularly decided that a group that was really not being well-served was the large homeless families. Now, the statistics vary from year to year, but every year perhaps 2,000 families come into the system. About 150 of them have five or more children. If you add it up, that's where most of the children are in the entire system, in the large families. And when you have a large family, it's not just a small family but a lot more. It's an entirely different situation that you're in. And if the City needs a 10-year plan to eliminate homelessness, each family with five or more 128 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 children needs a 10-year plan because it's not going to be for years that most of the 4 children are grown and have left the family 5 and are now independent. So we've found that 6 niche. And one other niche that we worked in 7 is homeless persons with physical 8 disabilities, and that's what we've been 9 working on largely. 10 Now, the homelessness for families is rising, and it's rising because of the cost of rent and the cost of utilities has been skyrocketing and the amount of income of families has remained relatively flat. In Philadelphia, we've seen rises of maybe 4 or 5 percent. In other cities, especially where there are high rents, it's been rising much more sharply. And just in meeting two weeks ago with colleagues from Boston, they put 500 families every day in motels in the Boston area. New York City is very much the same kind of situation.

And I'm afraid Philadelphia is going to become that situation too unless we plan with more housing and certainly with housing trust with every effort 129 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 that we can because once the housing starts increasing more sharply, the numbers of families and especially the numbers of large families is going to increase, and it's going to increase very rapidly. And that's what we are trying to avoid. We've started with five units of transitional housing in West Philadelphia in 1993. It's now 33 units of housing owned and/or leased by us, mostly with grants from HUD. We have two large grants from HUD. Recently, we've also gotten vouchers, 14 project-based vouchers, Section 8 vouchers 15 from PHA. Certainly, it has been very good 16 for OESS to be able to provide us with 17 matching money, but largely the money has been 18 coming from federal sources and we need those 19 sources badly. 20 We work with the families out of the 21 shelter into transitional housing. We try to 22 get them into permanent housing and then follow them, especially if they go into public housing, for years to come to make sure that their success lasts. And we think that's the 130 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 only thing we can do, again, with large families. Permanent housing, we started our own permanent housing system in which what we do is when they go into transitional housing, we leave them there. Unless they want to move out, we leave them there, they get their own Section 8s, they get their own incomes, and we just go out and get another transitional unit because usually two to three times the family's moved before the shelter and then another move into the shelter, a move out of the shelter into transition another move. It's really not fair to the children, and that's what we have set the whole thing up for is the children. Our families average four to each family. We take families of every kind, of every age, of every composition. So we have small families but we also have families with three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and in another month, eleven children. We've asked that mother not to have anymore children but we haven't succeeded at that point, and that family needs help and 131 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 will need help for a considerable period of time. We've also just gotten a HUD grant to do physically disabled individuals who 6 are homeless, and that is also a special need 7 of finding those kinds of units and making 8 sure that they're there for them. 9 We have also developed temporary 10 housing for people who are trying to move straight from the streets into permanent housing. We have four units of that because it takes a little while to get through all the paperwork so we bring them immediately into some housing until all the paperwork is done and two months later they can go away. We also have community voice mail which is a way in which everybody who is homeless can sign up and get messages on their own phone number from wherever, from a landlord, from family members so that even if they're out in the streets, they can have telephone messages wherever they are. The big thing that happened two years ago is that we did start a shelter, and 132 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 we started it at Kirkbride. Kirkbride, of course, is West Philadelphia. We brought in 70 people in October. Then later in October we brought in another 70. In January we brought in another 70. And then again in September and again in August we increased it, and now we are the largest shelter in the City. It is some 300 people. We think, in fact, it is a nice sprawling location and we think it is a model of what you should have which is a campus for a shelter, not a building with a lot of streets around it because what the kids need is a secure setting. They need a place where they can feel safe. They need a place where they can roam around.

They need someplace within a neighborhood, not someplace surrounded by City streets and a lot of traffic. And that's what we have tried to build there. The size, we don't think has been that much of a problem because it is a large campus, acres, with 23 numerous other agencies in them. 24 What we had asked for you to do is 25 the airport the other day, and that has been 133 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 very helpful. We want to get back in the airport because we also help just the general public who have trouble in transportation centers. That's what you probably think of when you think of Traveler's Aid. " And they'll tell you what gate it is. But there are also every day a couple people who have lost their wallet, who have lost all communications, who are victims of domestic violence, and you help those people as well and they are homeless as well. We have a program dedicated to the youth. I try to provide structure and planning. Melcher Monk who is the head of the student enrichment program provides inspiration. And Victor Sinanan provides all meaning and purpose of it. And I give it to them.

Thank you.

We find that as the families --

Introduce 134 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 yourself again.

My name is Melcher Monk.

Spell that for us.

M-E-L-C-H-E-R. The last name is Monk, M-O-N-K.

Thank you.

We find that as families begin to move towards self-reliance from the emergency shelter to the transitional housing, their children require, at best, individualized attention; minimally, small group attention. And we have such a program that looks at that problem. Research at the national level shows that children who have experienced homelessness lack greatly behind their peers in social and educational development. 2 million children who are currently homeless in the United States and approximately one-fifth of those school-aged youth are not enrolled in school at all. The reasons for this gap includes a lack of regular, safe transportation from the shelters or from 135 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 transitional housing or facilities, difficulties in school enrollment and registration due to both the transient nature of homelessness and/or lack of current academic and medical records, and a family's daily demands of coping with food, shelter, family violence or health problems which may push children's educational needs aside. For example, this year the start of the school year, we dealt with a young man who, prior to becoming homeless, had a superior academic record. He attended a specialized school for academics here in Philadelphia for his ninth grade year. And his family fell to the issue of homelessness. And because of his inability to get to school every day, be it that he didn't have tokens or a trans pass and the transient nature of being shifted from house to house before they actually had nowhere to go, he failed. And when they came to the shelter and it was time for us to intervene, get him back to school, he lost that opportunity for that school. These are the kinds of issues that we face. 136 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 He is now currently enrolled in another school and is performing academically, soundly academically. However, that opportunity was taken from him because of the issues of homelessness. For those homeless children who are enrolled in school, the outcomes are alarming. percent of all school-aged homeless 10 children are forced to repeat a grade because 11 of frequent absences. 14 percent must repeat 12 because they move to a new school. Within a 13 school year, an average of 40 percent of the 14 homeless children attend two different schools 15 with an incredible 28 percent attending three 16 or more schools. Homeless children in the 17 United States have 4 times the average 18 childhood rate of delayed development, twice 19 as many are diagnosed with learning 20 disabilities as their non-homeless 21 counterparts. Three times as many children have emotional and behavioral problems with an average suspension rate twice that of other students. Influencing these indicators are emotional stresses caused by family 137 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 instability, violence, poor nutrition and sleep and the stigmatization of severe poverty in comparison to children's peers. I don't want to read a lot of statistics and figures. I want to give you an idea of what it is that we are doing and seek to continue doing through our student enrichment program. Traveler's Aid of Philadelphia has developed a structure year-round student development program beginning -- it began in August of 2000 to promote the academic and emotional recovery of children and youth in homeless families. The student enrichment program provides after-school and summer camp programs every day. Even when schools are on holidays, we take the kids in and we continue to provide programming for that entire day, and during vacation breaks to the school-aged children of the program, the Traveler's Aid Family Shelter and to low-income community residents. The program is a joint venture of Traveler's Aid Philadelphia, the Lombard Central Presbyterian Church and the Mayor's Office of Health and 138 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 Fitness.

The program is conducted in the local elementary school, the church facilities and the grounds at 4201 Powelton Avenue in West Philadelphia and the Kirkbride Center. Traveler's Aid Philadelphia hires school teachers, nutritionists and youth developers to instruct the children academically, to train them in modern health and fitness habits and to expose them to a wide range of life-enrichment experiences. The program draws hundreds of volunteers from the City, for example, the Wharton School of Business students; the region, the Shipley School students; and the nation, for example, the church groups from Harrisburg, Michigan, and New York. The program serves approximately 100 to 120 students each week. It receives major funding from the 21st Century Grant, the City's Children Investment Strategy, HUD, and numerous foundations, charities and corporate and individual donors. Our desire. We seek to have the continued means to provide academic, physical, social programming for children and youth that 139 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 is fun, provides accountability, is credible and serves to empower all of our participants and to provide sustainable support for all of those who come through our program. We have a student who has come through our program. He is a graduate, a high school graduate that we kept with us and we keep him now -- he's going to tell you about himself. His name is Victor Sinanan.

Good afternoon. My name Victor Sinanan.

Would you spell your last name, Victor?

S-I-N-A-N-A-N, Sinanan.

Thank you.

I'm just one of the many children in this City that has been through the transition of being homeless. My family moved into the shelter in the summer of 2003. Moving into the shelter and being labeled as homeless affected me greatly. I was affected by it socially. I no longer 140 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 wanted to talk to the friends I knew or anybody I came in contact with. I felt as though they would know where I lived, and I didn't want anyone to know that. I used to go out to movies, parties, basketball court, and I no longer did this. The after school program, they had trips going on, going to New York, Bush Gardens, and that attracted me. So I went and started doing that. I had a youth development with Mr. Shawn. He would come to my school and do things my parents couldn't do for me. He would pick me up and drop me off at my school trips, check on my grades, get some of my attendance records and see from my teachers where I needed help from and where I could do better in. The after school program gave me a comfort zone, somewhere I could feel comfortable from 3:00 to 6:00. At the end of the year, I felt so comfortable that I had no 23 problem of picking me up in front of the shelter. They threw me a little party for prom that all the residents came to. Now, 141 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 with the help of them, I'm enrolled in Community College of Philadelphia and I have a job at the after school program. Now I have a chance to give back -- (Applause.)

Now, with the job, I have a chance to give back to the kids, and I'm someone they can relate to since I've been in the same situation as they have. Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you very much. We're so proud of you. And we're always here for you. My office is at the end of the corridor, 408, and certainly I know I speak for Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, any way we can support you, we're happy to do that. Congratulations. Ted, I have one question for you that my staff gave me. Do you still have the community voice mail system?

Yes, we do. We kind of take care of that ourselves, it's on our dime. But we have 1500 people at any time on 142 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 community voice mail and it's part of a 50-City effort.

That's great. How do clients access it?

Really, usually they get it through their case manager. And if their case manager isn't signed up for it, they can just call us up and we'll get it.

Thank you very much. Thank you again.

If you are looking for an internship opportunity, come up to Room 580. We'd love to have you. (Applause.)

Madam Chair, as luck would have it, I looked to my side over here and I'm blessed by seeing Reginald Morrow has rejoined us. We wondered if this might be an appropriate time to allow him to share his second song with us. At the same time we ask Paul DiLorenzo and our good friends from Bright Horizons to move to the witness table. 143 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 (Applause.)

Thank you very much. Again, we applaud Reggie Morrow. His is a family that is filled with talent. He has a wife who writes poetry and daughters who dance, so they're a pretty talented group.

Just before I sing this next song, I just want to give a quick testimony. I'm eternally grateful to the homeless foundations and the City of Philadelphia because I can honestly say I was homeless at one time. And it was back in the '50s or early '60s rather, around 1960 my mother was pregnant with my youngest sister, and she was pretty sick. So she had to go to the hospital and they kept her in the hospital for 12 weeks. Well, Philadelphia agencies, they put me in a wonderful place. Back then it was called the Stenton Child Care Center right off of Stenton Avenue. And some of the greatest times I ever had in my life was at the Stenton Child Care Center. I learned to socialize with other people, people of different gender and race because people were 144 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 there from all over the place. And they took care of us. It was one of my sisters and I. About a year ago, I went back to the Stenton Child Care Center. They changed the name since then. And I had an opportunity to sing this song that I'm about to sing for you guys now. (Singing.) (Applause.)

Madam Chair, there may have been a time for a hearing where this Chamber has had the opportunity to hear greater song than they've heard today, I don't know when that would have been. Between Reverend Jenkins' lovely wife and Reginald, we certainly thank them for joining us and being so inspirational. Speaking of inspirational, we used to have a director in the Office of Children in the City of Philadelphia who reached out to all children. He's no longer with the City, but it's my pleasure to thank him publically and introduce him today. It's Paul DiLorenzo. Now, Paul, unlike some other folks, 145 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 when I reached out to him, embraced the idea of helping homeless children or children experiencing homelessness in our City and brought to us the Bright Horizons Foundation. Wonderful people. They're doing great work. They came in and said they could create a Bright Space in one of our shelters, and we said that is very, very generous and nice, but how about putting one in every one of our shelters in this City? How about helping us to become the first city in America that had Bright Spaces in every family facility in this City? (Applause.)

And with Paul's leadership and Bright Spaces commitment, they reached out to McNeil Pharmaceutical, and you'll hear about this. McNeil stepped up with $100,000, and they're doing just that. They're opening Bright Spaces in every family facility in this shelter, and I'd like to thank them all for that, as I introduce Paul. Thank you, Paul.

Good afternoon. My 146 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 name is Paul DiLorenzo, as Rob said. I am the former Director of Children's Policy for the City of Philadelphia. I served in the first term of Mayor John Street. Now as a consultant to a number of children's programs both locally and nationally, I've had a chance to work with such organizations here as the People's Emergency Center and Lutheran Settlement House, both of whom operate model programs. During my tenure in City government, I had the opportunity to work closely with Rob Hess, as Rob said, and a number of his great staff on the issues related primarily to children living in emergency shelters. It was during this time that I met the wonderful people from Bright Horizons Foundation who had already begun developing Bright Spaces in selected shelters throughout the country. I met with the representatives of the foundation and asked if they would be willing, as Rob said, to make Philadelphia a model for the development of Bright Spaces, taking the program to as many as 10 to 20 147 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 shelters and perhaps every shelter in the City. Rob and I were obviously very excited when they agreed to do so. And I'm happy to report that this is one reason why Philadelphia is now seen as a leader when it comes to innovative services for children who live in shelters. What I'd like to do today is share with you just a few thoughts about our challenges and opportunities as it relates to this population of children and to encourage you to fully support the creative and relatively low-cost enhancements that continue to be made in shelters throughout the City. The Bright Spaces Program is one example of how kids can benefit when city government and the private sector work together. First, as Rob repeatedly would remind me and still will say that the 1,000 youngsters living in shelters every evening are not necessarily homeless children, rather they are children who happen to be living in a 148 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 homeless shelter. This is not just meant to be a turn of a phrase to catch your attention. To me, it indicates that these children all have the same needs as any other children, the need for adequate health care, quality education, consistent parenting and a safe place to live. However, what does make them remarkable is the fact that these children enter the shelters with significant challenges, emotional, educational, and medical, many times the result of the chaos they experience prior to entry to the shelter. It isn't the shelter experience alone that's traumatic, it's the compelling set of circumstances that accompany family homelessness that put these children at a disadvantage. Second, in my current work as a consultant to a couple of shelters in Philadelphia, I see that there is an inconsistency in the type, quality and quantity of services to children across the City's shelters. OESS has done a remarkable job of 149 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 providing resources and incentives for the shelters as they attempted to upgrade their services to children. Still, the City, State, and federal dollars are not enough to ensure a steady level of interventions. The shelters are also dependent upon private dollars for their efforts to develop creative approaches for children. Some shelters have done a remarkably good job for children and creating a family-friendly atmosphere. Others barely meet the standards as developed by OESS and its partners. This inconsistency, in my mind, is one of the most significant problems facing the shelters. The irony is that in our City, not all shelters are created equal even though all children who live in them are. Thus, a priority for this coming year should be to support the expansion of the promising approaches that exist and to ensure that all shelters have an equitable level of support for children's programs.

I would call your attention to the impressive outreach going on in selective 150 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 shelters with programs such as Effective Black Parenting and the innovative outreach by the Girl Scouts. These do not cost a great deal, but they can make a difference in the life of a child. Third, the desire to identify a single cause or solution to family homelessness is short-sighted and misleading. The lack of affordable and permanent housing is undoubtedly a cause in the solution for most families. However, children who are in the City shelters this very day are there because of domestic violence, poverty, the lack of employment opportunities and a decreasing safety net. I mention these factors because this issue continues to split the well-intended providers of services to families in shelters. The causes of and the solutions to homelessness are reflective of the deep-rooted problems facing families and the system itself. Unfortunately, the disagreement among ourselves and the adult professionals on these issues has a direct impact on the children in 151 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 shelters. These children are best served when OESS and its private partners develop strategies that address the short and long-term solutions related to homelessness. But that will take more resources, not just redirected ones. Fourth, I would recommend that City Council fully support the effort by OESS to build a system of services for children and their families who are living in shelters. This is where the Bright Spaces Project is instructive and could be an excellent model for how we expand the good work that's already been done. Allow me to point out a few lessons of the Bright Horizons Bright Spaces work. Bright Spaces has been a wonderful public/private collaboration, combining the City's limited dollars with the resources of a private foundation and a local corporation. The recognition early on was that no one entity could provide this necessary support needed to take this program to scale. But 152 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 even more importantly, we were successful in the development of Bright Spaces because we were joined by so many other partners inside and outside City government. When asked to take on very specific tasks, these partners provided staff, volunteers and other resources such as books and toys for children. OESS sent the message that they needed a variety of local resources in order to leverage the private dollars from a national foundation and a major corporation. The partners responded. There's no reason to think that they would not respond again if the message remains consistent and everyone resist the temptation to assume the spotlight. Having a neutral party as the facilitator for the process helps to maintain the momentum. Bright Spaces has offered a straightforward and very practical approach based on one important assumption. In our planning work, we agreed that the Bright Space should be more than simply a child care space. We recognize that it could also be a spot for parenting support groups, arts and recreation 153 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 spaces, homework assistance, and even a place for early intervention assessment could take place. Our assumption was that if you want to sustain the unique and effective projects for children and their families, you need to have broad support for comprehensive approaches which respect the many challenges facing children. Next, Bright Spaces has done an excellent job of telling its story, a story which can appeal to everyone who cares about kids living in less-than-desirable circumstances who would otherwise have pretty poor outcomes. This has been successful because it has had some unusual champions in the form of corporation executives, foundation managers, and community volunteers. Would we have been as successful if people identified this effort with Rob Hess or just me or some other human service professional? Perhaps.

But there's been something uniquely compelling about these non-traditional folks spreading the word. OESS and the providers of service to 154 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 homeless children could stand to have a few more champions as it attempts to expand the set of services. Councilwoman Blackwell has been such a champion, but we could use more help. The next step is to identify one or two other high profile individuals who are willing to speak up on behalf of families and shelters. Preferably, these champions would be from outside the world of human services to explain what we're trying do in plain English. Other cities that are a part of this initiative have embraced it oftentimes with the Mayor or business leader as one of the key spokespersons. One of the final lessons is this: Bright Spaces was never conceived as a pilot program. From the outset, we anticipated that we would take this program to scale so that as many children as possible would benefit from what we believed would be the best practice. We've committed ourselves to an approach that can be replicated across the City in a variety of settings with respect to the unique set of partners that made it possible. 155 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 As OESS and other providers of services to families in shelter consider it enhancement of services and support, I would caution that we avoid the temptation and the development of pilot programs. We should not force ourselves into deciding which kids should get a service that's unique and desirable and which ones should not. We should fund all of this work as if these were our own children. My final point is a simple one. Philadelphia is undoubtedly a leader in the nation when it comes to services to families in shelter. The Bright Spaces project is only one example of many strategies that have been applied in the City over the last several years. Efforts to provide social service support, employment training and a unique set of mental health and substance abuse services have been impressive. However, much remains to be done on behalf of children living in shelter. The good news is this: We know what we need to do. We know that this is a finite number of children. What we need to do, we 156 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 know. And we need, finally, to marshal the deep set of experiences among the professionals who serve these families. Entering a shelter can provide a family with stability and support that they might have been lacking for some time. On the other hand, the wrong shelter experience can be a harbinger of damaging outcomes for children as it relates to their educational, medical and emotional well-being. I recently co-authored a report on children living in Philadelphia's shelters. It confirmed for me that the shelters are the intersection point for every problem and the possibility a youngster might face in our City. We know it works and we have the capacity to carry the work forward. We need your full support to make it happen. Now I'm happy to introduce my friend Dave Gleason from the Bright Horizons Foundation. I know you are all somewhat familiar with the work that the foundation's doing here in Philadelphia. The same excellent work is going on around the country. 157 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 There are now 60 of these Bright Spaces spread out nationally. The success of the Bright Spaces initiative is in large part the result of Dave's effort. We've been fortunate to have Dave as a friend of Philadelphia.

Thank you, Paul. I am Dave Gleason, President of the Bright Horizons Foundation for Children. We are a corporate-sponsored foundation sponsored by a public company called Bright Horizons Family Solutions. And Bright Horizons specializes in managing high-quality, on-site child development programs for companies throughout the country. We have about 500 clients where we manage centers on site for their employees and their employees' children. Having worked in Bright Horizons for many years before I retired to start the corporate foundation, our success was because we had a formula that combined the financial resources of the sponsoring company, companies like Johnson & Johnson, PNC Bank, every major company you've heard of in the United States, their financial resources with the talent and 158 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 expertise of the people we hired and trained to provide high-quality services for the children of the companies' employees, children fortunate enough to be born into families who were fortunate enough to work for these companies. As we moved forward with our foundation, we said, well, can we take this same formula and try to provide help for children most in need in the country, children who were not lucky enough to be born into those families. So we came up with a model that's evolved into Bright Spaces where we ask our sponsor, the clients who sponsor centers for their own children to donate money to the Bright Horizons Foundation for Children. Along with our own employees, we have 2500 teachers who give a little bit, a dollar a week to the foundation and we take the financial resources of our clients, the talent and energy and commitment of our teachers, and we go look for children in need. And here in Philadelphia, we've found children in your system of homeless shelters. 159 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 So we're doing Bright Spaces around the country. The thing that's most interesting here in Philadelphia was our relationship with the City because it brings a third partner into the formula that really enables us to do a lot more. And the first time I came here to meet Paul and Rob, I have to admit after 32 years in early childhood education, many of them working with cities, that really I was coming to see my mother who lives in West Chester because I didn't think any City would really get this idea. And we spent an hour together and went and visited one of our centers, and I walked away saying, "We got the ingredients here. These guys get it. Their staffs get it. " So we really have. And we have a video that we're going to leave that talks about Bright Spaces around the country. We use this video to go after our other clients who have not yet contributed money to this effort. So we show it at client conferences that we run and to new perspective 160 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 clients who are attempting to set up an on-site center for their own employees. We say "Part of that package is giving back to the community. " So when we came here that first day, I was challenged by these two gentlemen to not do 1 but to do 20. " And Dave said, "You know, I grew up in Philadelphia and I now am the CEO of this company headquartered in Boston. And I am so sick and tired of Patriots fans because I still wear my Eagles hat. " Then I went out to McNeal Consumer and Specialty Pharmaceutical Company that's headquartered in Fort Washington, a suburb of Philadelphia, and met with their CEO, Bill 161 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 McComb and said, "Bill, let's think big here. " And he thought of his advertising budget for Baby Tylenol, one of their products, and this surrounding area, so he was able to contribute the money. So I've talked to Dave and Bill in the last week. They both send their regards. They're both very committed to this. Dave is still committed to release time for our employees to work on the projects, and Bill is still writing the checks. So we're going to continue.

We're working on the 10th Bright Space and we're just going to keep going here. But I would like to up the ante for a challenge back. Every time I come to Philadelphia to one of the Bright Space ribbon cuttings -- and thank you, Madam Chair, for coming to many of them.

Thank you for giving me that opportunity.

I'm delighted by the event. It's the Christmas the children may 162 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 never have experienced in their life. It's a great thing for the kids. I walk away saying to myself, this is great, but it's not enough. It's not enough to really change the life trajectory for these children. They need more. They need more services. And so my challenge would be to see -- and the Bright Horizon Foundation for Children will be glad to work on this with you, is if we company put together a model program here in Philadelphia that actually brought early childhood education services to the preschoolers in the shelters in the City. And here are the ingredients. We have a head-start program; we get federal dollars. See if we can do some of that. In Harrisburg they're talking about a pre-K initiative. We focussed on low income children; we got some potential there. We got leadership in the City here. We have a client, PNC Bank, that's headquartered in Pittsburgh but has many offices here in Philadelphia that just put together a hundred million dollar fund to focus on early childhood education throughout 163 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 the state. We have a Philadelphia-based foundation, the Pew Foundation, which is the leading foundation in the philanthropic world of early childhood education nationally. We have the ingredients to put together a program that would focus a laser beam on these preschool children to get them ready for school. So I think we can do a national model. And let me share with you why it would be a great investment. I'm on the Board of Directors of the High Scope Educational Research Foundation which is located in Michigan. High Scope has done the landmark research of the effectiveness of early childhood education for improving the chances of success in life for children. It was started 40 years ago by a man named Dave Weichert (ph), a great American who passed away a year ago. Forty years ago he got a job as a school psychologist in a middle school in Ishpeming, Michigan, primarily a low-income African-American community. And he was stunned by the lack of achievement, by the 164 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 drop-out rate, by the behavior he saw going on in this middle school. So he rallied people to see what company we do to improve this school. And by the end of his working with teachers, the answer was, you got to go help the elementary school because when they come here they're not ready. So he went to the elementary school, and the fourth grade teachers said, you got to go talk to the third grade teachers. And the third grade teachers said, talk to the second grade teachers. " So he started a preschool program called the Perry Preschool Project, and he took 125 children with the same economic background, social characteristics pool; and half of them had a high-quality early childhood experience in their third and fourth years, and the others didn't. And then he followed them for 40 years. And next week, we're going to be announcing in Washington the 165 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 results of our study of these children who are now 40-year-old adults. We refer to this as the toothpaste study: These kids brushed their teeth for two years, these kids didn't; now let's look at the teeth, the teeth will tell the story. So these children now 40 years old did better in school throughout. They did better in academics, in language, in literacy achievement tests, more of them graduated from high school than the control group. Of the girls, 84 percent of the girls who experienced the early education graduated from high school versus 32 percent of the girls who did not have the experience. As they grew up, they had success in school, they learned life skills, they had self-confidence, they learned how to solve problems, they did better in life. Now they're 40. 76 percent of them have full time jobs. More of them own their own homes.

They make more money by 6 or $7,000 than the children that did not brush their teeth or did not have that early childhood experience, and they are being much 166 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 more successful in life. When we do an economic analysis of the money spent on the Perry Preschool Project, for every dollar spent, the public sector saved $17. So investing in a program for preschool children in the shelters to get them ready for school is, in my mind, the single best investment you company make to try to end homelessness over time in Philadelphia. Thank you.

Councilwoman. The gentleman has convinced us to take a closer look at this, and we're certainly willing to do that.

Well, we certainly want to say thank you. We are so impressed. And the children and the parents and everywhere we go, everybody's just so pleased with the Bright Spaces Program. We thank you for all you've done and continue to do in our City. And we're just grateful for all the youngsters who benefit and whose lives we try to save from this. We're just grateful and we say thank you very 167 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 much.

I would be remiss not to offer my huge thank you in a box with the Liberty Bell on top for making a difference in the children in the homeless shelters. And we want to take on that challenge, don't we, Paul? I saw you writing with regard to the Perry Study and the challenge that you offer. So trust that we'll do the follow-up with Paul and Bob Hess on seeing how we can get our City to access what you just spoke about. Do you have a document that speaks to that study and some of the results?

We'll be releasing it on the 18th of November, and I'll submit it formally to you as my testimony.

Thank you very, very much. Currently, our City has how many Bright Spaces?

We've opened nine. We have 20 funded, so we're --

On our way. 168 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796

Yes.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. We were intending to go through, but we have to be mindful of the stenographer and the gentleman who runs the microphone. We'll take a minute break and then we'll be right 10 back. (Brief recess.)

I think we're ready to resume our hearing. Mr. Hess.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll be very brief and succinct and just turn you over to our Monument Village host for introductions. I was very excited we were able to build some permanent housing. You have had the pleasure of being at this site, I know. And we get an opportunity briefly to hear from a couple residents. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I want you to know I brag about this 169 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 all the time. We're so very impressed about how far we've come and the direction that we're going in in our City. Thank you.

Madam Chairman, this is Glenda Wells --

Introduce yourself first.

I'm Lucy Pennington, the Director of Residential Services for Methodist Services of Philadelphia. Recently we've had the opportunity to open a permanent housing initiative for single females and their families. We're very excited, and these are two of our residents, probably in residence about a month. So this is Glenda Wells and Aleah Foreman.

Thank you. Welcome. Thank you for your patience.

How ya'll doing? My name is Glenda Wells. I'm a resident in Monument Village. Thanks to Monument Village, I get to spend our Thanksgiving and Christmas with my children, which I didn't get to do 170 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 last year. I started off through the shelter system. It's a wonderful program. It got a lot to offer my children and also my baby that's on the way. And that's I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Councilwoman.

Good afternoon.

My name is Aleah Foreman. I have been in the shelter for a while now, and I just moved to Monument Village. I had loss my husband, and that was the cause of me going into a shelter. With two children, it was hard for me to be one dependent parent without any help. It was hard for me to go into the shelter thinking about how my children would feel going to school, thinking about how other people would look at me. But once I went into the shelter, they brought me in with open arms. That was St. Barnabas. St. Barnabas introduced me to this lovely young lady here. 171 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 I went to about maybe three meetings getting my hopes up high, thinking that I would get a home, making sure I kept myself clean without being on any type of drugs. And the shelter helped me with that. It helped me get into my goals and know what I wanted. It showed me how to appreciate my kids and the life that I had. Monument Village, when I first came to Monument Village, it was such a surprise. They've given us furniture. They've given us beds to sleep on after we have lost everything in our life in that quick minute of time. Losing everything was so hard. They made sure that my children was able to have a wonderful Halloween party. They gave us food for those who didn't have at the time. And they also gave us clothing if we needed any donations. And I am so thankful and grateful for it. I am feeling so blessed. I have now started going to school to get my nursing license back to be able to give to others like the blessings was given to me. And thank you for your time. 172 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796

Thank you very much. And we will say Monument Village is just fabulous. You know, what is so wonderful is that it is permanent housing and so it looks like permanent housing; it's just beautiful, fully furnished, everything brand-new, brand-new house, brand-new furniture, brand-new everything. It gives you a chance to have a brand-new life. So we wish you well, congratulate you, God bless you. And thank OESS for this level of commitment. Thank you. (Applause.)

Thank you, Madam Chair. We look forward to the day when we have Monument Villages opening all across our great City.

And as everyone knows, that's 61 apartments there, 61. That is phenomenal what we're doing in housing. (Applause.)

Thank you. At this time, 173 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 I'd like to invite Bia Vieira from Lutheran Settlement and Cynthia Figueroa from Women Against Abuse to the witness table. And while they're en route, let me say that we are privileged to work with folks like Cynthia and Bia. Lutheran Settlement House, as you may recall, Councilwoman, had the church collapse next to it. It was only by the grace of God that no one was injured or killed that night. But Bia and her staff were just phenomenal in helping those folks, over a hundred women and children, move out of that facility into other facilities and continue their support. Both Bia and Cynthia are really the two champions in the domestic violence fight here in Philadelphia and doing tremendous work, and we're honored to work with both of them. They've now arrived. Cynthia will take my spot and we'll start with Bia and her colleague.

Thank you very much. I pass that every single day. So I watch it. Now they've got the fence all the 174 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 way up and the crane out there to try to remove some of the bricks. So I'm reminded of it every single morning. I pass it every day, and certainly concur with what Mr. Hess has said. We're grateful we were there then. We just saw the program. We were there registering people to vote before voter registration ended, and we're very, very sorry about the tragedy and hopeful that life will be better for all of those women and children who resided there. Thank you. (Applause.)

My name is Bia Vieira. I'm the Executive Director of Lutheran Settlement House in eastern North Philadelphia. I just wanted to talk a little bit about our philosophy and our mission and why we're here. We were founded in 1902 to serve vulnerable children, adults and families and senior citizens living in Philadelphia regardless of race or creed. Since our inception, our internal and external circumstances have changed in both small and 175 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 dramatic ways, including the collapse of the shelter very recently. Despite these changes, our mission, the core of our mission remains, to empower individuals, families and communities to achieve and maintain self-sufficiency. Our accomplishments are grounded in our belief that all families and individuals deserve education and economic opportunities and have the right to live safely and with dignity. In partnership with the public and private sectors, our communities and clients, we do make a difference in the lives of those most vulnerable members of Philadelphia. Our mission of empowerment is just as relevant today as it was in 1902. I will not go over what we have experienced since August 3rd at 10:30 when the shelter did collapse. I just would like to share, as many of you know that we had a hundred people with us that night. Of that hundred, 63 were kids, including 8 newborns. And as Rob Hess has mentioned, that really was extremely lucky that no one got hurt. 176 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 I also would like to take this time to thank and really express our deepest thanks to the Office of the Managing Director, to yourself, to Rob Hess, to Letisha Hinton, to Kevin Brissoe and Kevin Schaeffer for all the work they have done. As you can imagine, with a hundred people homeless for a second time, it's really been a tremendous joint effort, and I do want to thank the City for all that you have done. It's been very impressive to see the teamwork between Lutheran Settlement House and OESS. All staff from all areas pulled together to do everything from setting up the cots to feeding babies to organizing food and clothing distribution. It's been a proud time to work with the City of Philadelphia. I want to talk a little bit -- and actually, I'm going to ask Rachel Neff to talk a little bit about our new initiative that we are working with the Office of the Managing Director and Rob Hess.

Good afternoon. My name is Rachel Neff, and I am the Program and 177 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 Policy Analyst at Lutheran Settlement House. As the Program Analyst, I ensure that the programs that LHS implements are properly developed and meet the needs of our clients. In October of 2004, Lutheran Settlement House entered into an agreement with the Office of Emergency Shelter Services to provide supportive services to clients who had successfully navigated the shelter system and were ready to move into housing. An agreement was made between OESS, Prime Property Realty, and LSH to embark on the prime initiative project. The outcome for LSH is that we will provide services for up to 30 families, housed in Prime Property Realty, as they transition into permanent housing. The clients whom LSH serves have spent the past several months in the shelter system and were selected by OESS to become part of their program due to their previous successes in the shelter system. Each family currently pays a subsidized rent payment to Prime Property Realty every month to remain in these properties. While in shelters, these 178 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 families have opened savings accounts and saved money, gained employment or entered in job training classes, engaged in educational opportunities, and have proven themselves to be capable of transitioning into permanent housing. In order for this program description to be devised, best practices from Housing First Programs were gathered to provide supportive information on how organizations implement similar programs throughout the country. C. in moving homeless clients from shelters into permanent housing in a short amount of time. A common element of the Housing First approach is to identify a family's immediate needs and provide intensive case management services to them during their transitional time period. Best practices from this program indicate that the aim of case management home-based services is to link participants 179 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 with mainstream social services, ensure that kids are enrolled and attending school, provide crisis management assistance, and help participants work towards case management goals developed at the outset of program participation. LSH has adapted these ideas from the well-known Housing First Case Management System and have incorporated them into our own model. One unique aspect of our program, as Bia has mentioned, is that we work with all homeless families, a distinctive group of homeless individuals who need to receive intensive services. Forming a collaborative relationship with the family is overwhelmingly important, as it will empower our clients to recognize that they are the most important piece of the case management relationship. Empowerment is at the core of our case management structure. Our families need a number of services that range from housing counseling to overcoming poor credit histories to finding parenting programs or receiving domestic 180 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 violence services. We realize that partnerships with other mainstream social service organizations are vital, dependent upon each individual family's needs. We ensure that our clients receive effective supports and connections to community resources. In closing, there are three significant partners that will make this prime initiative program successful for us: Prime Property will continue to provide the necessary housing units for our families. LSH will continue to provide quality case management and supportive services to move families towards the goal of independence and self-sufficiency. Finally, OESS will continue to properly manage the shelter program and protect the resources in the City of Philadelphia. Working together, these partners can adequately care for the homeless families in the City and move families into more permanent housing. Thank you. 181 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796

Part of what we wanted to talk about is that each family's story is unique. However, we do know there is a thread with all of the families that we see. Part of what we want to talk about is that we are part of a large network, including the City of Philadelphia and Women Against Abuse, People's Emergency Center and Project Home. We impact the lives of many, many people in Philadelphia. Part of what we want to say is that there is not one answer to end homelessness, but many answers. We need each other to be able to do this. So I will make that my segue into Cynthia Figueroa and Women Against Abuse just to say that extreme poverty and domestic violence are one of the two threads that we see together in our family shelter and Women Against Abuse.

My name is Cynthia Figueroa and I'm the Executive Director of Women Against Abuse, which is the largest domestic violence program in the State of Pennsylvania and currently the only specific domestic violence shelter in Philadelphia. 182 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 I want to begin by thanking City Council and addressing the efforts specifically about economic impact of homelessness in Philadelphia and recognizing the support and need to support homeless services and the key initiatives. I'm here to testify in support of protecting the budget needed to operate services, particularly looking at the funding to the Office of Emergency Shelter Services provides shelter services to over 2500 individuals in Philadelphia and relocations to families. This is an immediate need and critical need that actually the domestic violence community uses more than I think people are aware of. I'd also like to highlight the correlation between domestic violence and homelessness, demonstrating again that there are limited resources available to battered women in Philadelphia. Battered women who live in poverty are often forced to choose between an abusive relationship and homelessness. In a study of 77 homeless 183 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 parents, the majority of whom were mothers in cities, percent of the mothers said that 4 they left their last residence because of 5 domestic violence. S. Conference of 7 Mayors identified that domestic violence is a 8 primary cause of homelessness. Through a 9 study of the entire country, though, shows 10 that approximately one-half of all women and 11 children experiencing homelessness are fleeing 12 domestic violence. 13 Locally, the statistics for domestic 14 violence are overwhelming. In a nine-month 15 period of January 2003 through September 2003 16 in a press release issued by the Mayor, there 17 were 82,427 911 calls that had to do with 18 domestic violence. There were over 10,000 19 crimes that were coded domestic in nature. 20 And there are more than 47,000 reports where 21 the police returned to the same residence at 22 least two times. In addition, there were 15,000 protection from abuse orders filed in Philadelphia in 2003. We know that we're only reaching the 184 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 tip of this iceberg. As the fifth largest City in the nation, we have actually the most limited resources. WAA runs the only domestic violence shelter with a capacity to serve only 47 individuals. , and Lutheran Settlement House to provide shelter to battered women. To give you an example of other cities, Chicago has 1 domestic violence shelter bed for every 13,744 residents. New York has approximately 1 shelter bed for every 5,330 residents. However, Philadelphia has approximately 1 domestic violence bed for every 23,076 residents. WAA's emergency shelter, again, as I said earlier, can hold only 47 women and children. Our transitional housing program consists of only 12 units. WAA receives approximately 15 shelter-related requests per day. On several occasions, we have to refer our families who are in crisis to other organizations, including OESS and domestic violence shelters in other counties. 185 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 OESS shelters often are not appropriate or suitable placement for a victim fleeing a violent relationship due to safety and the additional support needed for women and children. At this time, as Bia did, I'd like to recognize the efforts of OESS, particularly Robert Hess and his staff in the Adult Services Office. Their need and their support to the domestic violence community and bringing the issue of resources to the forefront are commendable and I thank them as being partners in the City. There's an initiative that we're currently working on that was supported by the Mayor and also City Council in previous City Council testimony that we'll be doubling the shelter beds in Philadelphia for domestic violence.

This initiative, we hope, will occur in this fiscal year and would provide at least a hundred beds for domestic violence services for women and children. This is a crucial and necessary expansion for our City, and this is the type of service that must 186 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 continue to be maintained and supported. In addition, WAA has been fortunate to receive support from PEC through their jobs program. The jobs program is one of many, as Bia mentioned earlier, in a multifaceted approach to working with the homeless community. Programs such as the job program and other job readiness programs need to be protected because shelter alone is not the answer. We have to be working towards self-sufficiency through education, safety, and job placement. The linkages between these types of service is crucial because the safety of women and their families and the needs of that family need to be the primary issue. If she is not safe and the family is not safe, you cannot work towards self-sufficiency. I want to share with you an example of a family in which -- and she's not here today because she would like to protect her identity. She's a recent client of ours. She came to us through our emergency shelter and stayed with us 45 days and moved into our transitional housing. She then started 187 11/09/04 - HOUSING - RES. 040796 volunteering in the area and actually got an internship with Rosita Youngblood. She's actually now on her staff earning a salary of over $30,000. They helped her in actually expunging some of her parking violations because she had to get a City vehicle, and she's working full time. She's now volunteering for our services. This a family in which a traditional homeless shelter would not have been an appropriate place for her because of the safety placement for her because of the safety needs. To support and end homelessness is complex and must be multifaceted. WAA is committed to ending domestic violence and preventing battered women from becoming homeless. Please support and protect the homeless services that we have in our City today. Thank you. )