Assembly Select Committee on Select Committee on Youth Homelessness in San Bernardino County

All right, we're going to start in a couple of minutes here, in a couple of seconds, actually. I want to thank everybody for coming to the Select Committee on Youth Homelessness in San Bernardino County, where we're going to talk a little bit about some of the activities that we're doing at the state level to continue to work and bring resources back here to San Bernardino County and specifically to the Assembly 45th District. I just want to thank everybody for being here.

And I would also like to extend a thank you to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and the government for assisting us in offering their space to hold this important meeting for our community. Today's informational hearing will focus on regional and state resources, service barriers, and discussions on ways that we can work together to find solutions to address youth, homelessness and homelessness in general.

As a former San Bernardino County Supervisor and chairman and I chair the Select Committee on Homeless Youth here in San Bernardino County, many of my legislative priorities aim to uplift and empower those most vulnerable in our communities, such as the unhoused. This year, we were successful in teaming up with San Bernardino City to secure $5 million for Sakumbi Lake, to develop a new 12.5 acre park, community garden, emergency shelter, and permanent supportive housing facilities for homeless individuals.

Earlier this year, I also introduced a series of pieces of legislation, but I want to just point out a few. I introduced AB 42, which is aimed at helping assist programs across the state and constructing temporary sleeping cabins, referred to many times as tiny homes. I also introduced AB 349, which would allow Patton State Hospital to enter into agreements with nonprofits and local governments to provide services to the Inland Empire's mental health component and those on the streets suffering from those areas that comes from serving.

On the County Board of Supervisors, we've seen that tiny homes was something that was always been debated the moment others started to move forward to create. Now the definition in the state is sleeping cabins, that the cost to construct those cabins was outweighed by some of the different regulation in the cities itself. So my Bill is trying to make sure that we find a balance for that so we could get some type of sleeping quarters done.

Also on the County Board of Supervisors, we were successful in getting crisis stabilization units constructed. The last one was on Gilbert Street, one out in the town of Yaka Valley. But what was evident that was missing was long term solutions. 90 day plus solutions for those that need those resources that fit the criteria would be able to get resources moving forward. Local jurisdictions continue to have homelessness as their number one issue. We're bringing forward regional approach as far as using surplus property just for that component.

And there is over on Gilbert Street, currently a facility that deals with mental health and those areas that we need. One of the reasons that we continue to work on trying to find resources 90 day plus is because when law enforcement and firefighters are called out to certain situations, when someone is suffering from an episode, being able to have an infrastructure to where that individual now could get, depending on the severity, could get resources.

Rather than having to go to county jail or to the emergency room that causes backup. We need to start coming together as a community to look at the resources and what we're coming together to bring fullfold. That's what those bills are meant to do. And we are fortunate to have a hearing that consists of service providers. Myself and Assemblymember Rayes is on her way. We are passionate about providing solutions to homelessness.

Today's conversation ideas from the community to be able to increase community driven ideas for state changes to address youth, homelessness, and homelessness in General. Today's hearing consists of three panels. In the first panel, we will discuss the status of homeless youth in San Bernardino County. In the second panel, we will discuss services and resources provided by state and regional governments. The last panel will discuss permanent and supportive transition services.

Before we call our first panel up, it's important to understand when we talk about homelessness that we're not talking about, at least for me, about us versus them. We're all together in this issue. When we talk about homelessness, many times it could be family Members, many times it could be those that are out there just needing resources to know that someone's there with them. But it also could be one of our coworkers that we don't even know the plight they're going through.

So it's time that we embrace as a community and start to bring solutions, because no one knows who we're sitting next to. No one knows the plight they're going through. And it could be that they're homeless or that they need resources. So this is opening up that dialogue, and we're going to have elected leaders speak. The mayor of San Bernardino who declared a state of emergency. We also want to recognize in the forum is Supervisor Jesse Amaderis. We also have Fontana Mayor Aquaneta Warren.

We have representatives from Assembly Member Rodriguez's office and Supervisor Joe Baca's office. If we missed anybody, let me know. But it's time that we start to humanize this issue around us and start to bring some solutions to it. I would now like to open up for Members to be able to start making their way to the first panel.

Our first panel will be Ruben Mendoza with Youth with Lived Experience, Interagency Council on Homelessness and Deputy Mike Jones, san Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Homeless Outreach and Proactive Enforcement Team. We will start with Ruben.

Can you hear me? Okay. Awesome. I first like to start off with a bio, just to give a little bit of context of who I am and why I'm here, so if you can bear with me and I can pull that up for you now. So here's my bio. My name is Ruben Mendoza. I'm a young activist in the Inland Empire that advocates on behalf of unhoused youth and young adult populations.

And I am currently working full time to advance the development of affordable housing within the city of San Bernardino at the Making Hope Happen Foundation. I spent the majority of my time being raised in the city of Rialto, a place that I'm happy to call my home. I attended Rialto High School and graduated with the Class of 2018 simultaneously. I also attended Valley College, where I did dual enrollment courses before attending UC Santa Barbara.

And I mentioned my education because that's when I had my adversities of being housing insecure on three separate occasions. Now I'm happy to give back to my community in the capacity of being a Member of multiple Youth Advisory Councils, housing and home ownership working groups, and participating in COC efforts when I'm able. Thank you.

Oh, you want me to continue?

Yeah

Yeah, sorry, I didn't realize that. So answer the first question?

Yeah. So then, Mike, you want to go ahead and move forward?

Mike Jones. Mike Jones, San Bernardino County Sheriff's HOPE Team. Thank you having us. We're a county wide homeless outreach group through the Sheriff's Department. We're made up of six people right now that conduct outreach throughout the county, connecting people to services, anything from vouchers for IDs to housing throughout San Bernardino County in the unincorporated areas, as well as city areas that are incorporated. We partner with all those cities and county entities, as well as resources throughout the provider network to move individuals beyond homelessness.

I understand that there's been some questions proposed to you to be able to try to answer those. If you could go through those questions and answer them, that would be great. Starting with Ruben.

Okay. So first, I think I'd like to start off with what is the definition of a homeless youth? So I'll be using the McKinney-Vento definition. McKinney-Vento Act defines homeless children and youth as individuals who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence. This definition also includes children and youth who are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason. Children and youth who may be living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or shelters.

Those who have a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings. Living in their cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, bus or train stations, or other settings. Or also children that are migrating who qualify as homeless because they are living in similar circumstances. And the status of homeless youth is what I want to transition into next.

So currently, I sit on the ICH, the Interagency Council on Homelessness, as Youth Representative with lived experience. It's my responsibility to advocate on behalf of youth and young adults that are housing insecure. And I come to the table and I give advice to the body on what needs to happen for this demographic. And where we currently stand with the ICH is, some time ago, maybe half a year ago, we approved the third round of HHAP funding.

HHAP is an acronym for Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention, and the body decided to only do the minimum set aside for youth, which is 10%. And the message that sends to the youth and young adults is that the CoC is only interested in providing the bare minimum financial support in HHAP funding. And we're in the process of right now, of determining the fourth round of HHAP funding, and it's also leaning towards the 10% youth set aside.

And we need to get that number up to at least double, to 20%. If we can invest more into our younger populations, we can prevent them from becoming chronically homeless as adults, and especially because the threshold is only 25, as soon as they are over 25 years old, they're considered a single adult. And then they have to use single adult resources, which are just like how youth resources are, they're at capacity, case workers are at capacity, beds are full.

Their turnaround time for you to get connected to services is very lengthy. I know this because I provided direct services for two and a half years before transitioning into my new role. Part of those services I provided here in the city of San Bernardino as well with the Family Assistance Program. One thing I'd like to touch on as well is we need to have housing come online quicker. How we traditionally build housing takes forever.

We need to get permits approved, and in order for you to break grounds, it's a minimum of $100,000 just to break grounds and start developing housing. We need to look at zoning, we need to look at CEQA and what that entails. The whole process is very lengthy. We also have a shortage of labor. The supplies that is used to build traditional housing is very expensive, like concrete, wood, et cetera.

And the housing that we need to come online quicker are tiny homes, prefabricated modular housing that is 3D printed. If you look at LA County in the city of El Monte, there is an affordable housing development out there that is 3D printed. The agency is LifeArk, LifeArk, and all of these units are 3D printed. They get their own restroom and they share the common spaces like the kitchen and the living room, and they have Illumination Foundation providing onsite case management services.

So it's a PSH site, Permanent supportive housing, and that's what we need. We need more PSH, more permanent supportive housing. We need housing to come online quicker, and we need to think about innovative solutions to housing so that it can come online quicker. Another thing that I want to talk about related to affordable housing is Senate Bill 679. So this just passed recently. Senate Bill 679 would establish the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency.

And the agency's purpose is to increase the supply of affordable housing in LA County by providing significantly enhanced funding and technical assistance at a regional level for renter protections, affordable housing preservation, and new affordable housing production as specified. And we need something like that here in the County of San Bernardino, an agency that is specifically dedicated to the development of affordable housing. This bill is modeled after the San Francisco Bay Regional Housing Finance Act.

And one thing I forgot to mention real quick, SB 679 was put up by the legislator Kamlager in LA County. And so my recommendation is to look at our neighboring counties like LA and see what innovative solutions they are coming up with in housing. I have experience providing direct services in San Gabriel Valley, and I have seen different kinds of housing solutions that San Bernardino County needs to develop as well. And let me go back to the questions.

One final note that I want to leave off on is I want everybody in this room to understand that if you're at the store, at a public space, you're at the park, you could very well run across a youth or young adult that is homeless, but you would never know. Many of them are hiding in the shadows, many of them were embarrassed, just like how I was, to let others know that you were homeless.

And just because you don't see us, doesn't mean that we don't exist. A couple of months ago we had a meeting, the Youth Advisory Board meeting with the Family Assistance Program here in San Bernardino to discuss the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program, and we had almost 70 youth come out to that meeting. And the number of attendees highlights the need to develop more resources and services for the unhoused youth.

And a little bit of context, the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program is funding that comes directly from HUD and we finished applying to it in late June and we should hear back on whether or not we receive the funding end of this year or early next year. And the purpose of the YHDP funding is, in a nutshell, to prevent and end youth homelessness by taking a community oriented approach. And like how the Assembly Member Ramos mentioned earlier, it takes a community to make this happen and we all need to come together and work together as a whole. And I'll transition it over to Mike Jones. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Ruben.

Thank you, Ruben. I echo Ruben's thoughts on their kind of hidden in plain sight when it comes to homeless youth. So breaking down some of the other questions. San Bernardino County's point-in-time count had a significant increase this year with nearly 26% increase overall, about 4200 were total, the total number in which about 3000 were unsheltered. When it comes to the youth, there was eleven unaccompanied children that were identified during the count that were all 16 or 17 years old.

Overall, 5% of the individuals on point-in-time count were in the TAY aged youth, 18 to 24, which is up a percent from last year's overall count for that. In this year's point-in-time count, 5% of those were unsheltered and 8% were sheltered through various programs and probably impact of the funding that's been given to San Bernardino County over the past several years for youth homeless and building those capacities much higher than when you were supervisor here.

So I think that shows some of that kind of turning, and it was almost equal amongst male female to who is out on the streets. I think that shows, also, we know that they're not, during the point-in-time count at 6:00 a.m or wherever they may be. Oftentimes in law enforcement, you talk to people that very rarely run into homeless youth because they just don't tell you that they're homeless, they're on the way to a friend's house or it was something like that, where they're not sharing that. And again, kind of hidden in plain sight. We do have a significant during our outreach, we have a significant decrease of 23% from last year's numbers to this year's numbers of 18 to 24 youth individuals.

I think part of that is we saw a lot of youth during the COVID times they were exiting their households and stuff for various reasons or drug use. So I think some of those relationships could have been built, but a significant number, significant decrease in those numbers comparably. I think overall making those impacts and where we see where the youth starts at a young age and we've seen a huge increase with the cost of living and inflation, which impacts across the country of families that are ending up homeless.

And obviously growing up as a youth that might be homeless, as a younger youth, they may transition away from the parents and just live on the street and things like that. So we've seen significant increases of families that are ending up homeless with their children. And then again, those capacity issues that Ruben had mentioned, and the timelines to things, the allocations that have been given, we do these big box projects and I think echoing, like Ruben said, we need things more immediate.

A lot of those projects have three year wait times before they get through those building processes and open their doors. In the meantime, we're really just pushing the issue down three years with the increases over the next three years before the beds that we needed now open. So I think those are some major things that need to be tackled as well as echoing on the tiny homes, spaces and things like that, where these young families and young adults that might be going to school, college, might have children involved.

But those tiny homes, for a very small cost comparably to the big box project, could transition families or seniors in a much faster way to get them back on their feet through homelessness or their time of homelessness and back into mainstream society to move beyond. I think we've seen obviously, youth homeless as a major part of the state funding.

And like Ruben said, the allocations are set aside to a certain amount, and then from there it's left up to local boards to decide if it's a higher amount or things like that. But also having the programs to be able to put together those programs in larger amounts, and then obviously with the cost of things, it makes it harder for some of these programs to get up and running.

So certainly in San Bernardino County, with the lack of the philanthropy side compared to some of the larger counties or populated counties. So I think overall that we see kind of a steady number during the count. I think it shows the importance of doing the youth homeless count and maybe something that the state could help with incentives and funding to be able to do that.

Because I think we've learned from the youth and their significant impact into the youth Advisory Board and things that the incentives and things like that, to be able to give youth to be forward with that information because they are shy to share that information or embarrassed. So to be able to give those incentives for youth to go count youth and to get that count, I think we see a more real picture of the homeless youth throughout our county and addressing that in a better way across the state. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Just want to thank you for bringing that important information here to the Select Committee. I also want to recognize School Board Member from Fontana, School Board Adam Perez is also here, as well as San Bernardino City Unified School Board Member Gwen Rodgers. And it is important because we start to see the definition between HUD and McKinney-Vento, how many homeless school students do we have in San Bernardino County? But I'd like to offer the microphone to Assembly Member Reyes for any comments you might have.

Thank you so much. I sincerely appreciate the leadership from Assembly Member Ramos on this issue. He's been very clear since he was a supervisor here and then now in the State Assembly, very clear that this is a subject that he will always be a part of, most especially when it comes to our youth, our homeless youth. And I want to say also that whenever I talk about homelessness or addressing the issue, I am so proud to always be talking about HOPE, talking about our program.

And Mike, you have just been phenomenal in that role. It makes a difference when we're able to work together at all levels. This isn't an issue that is a partisan issue. It isn't a local versus state. Everybody has to get together because this is such an important issue that has to be addressed. Ruben, you've always been a leader in this space, and I appreciate that when we get together, it isn't just about complaining, well, you're not giving us enough money, you're not doing this or you're not doing that.

It's saying, this is what's needed, this is what you've tried, and here's what I'm suggesting. And when you talk about innovative ideas, you come up with them, and you're right. You're talking from lived experiences. So you're able to share with us things that somebody else who has only studied it, they'll tell us, but somebody who has experienced it is able to tell us in a different way. Your voice is extremely important in this space, and I appreciate that. I think that we all agree the issue exists, and it's existed for a long time. And even those projects that should be taking three years by now, they should be coming to fruition if we'd started them three years ago, right.

And we can't keep kicking the can down the road. I'm very glad that the county has taken a great leadership role. Our mayors, I see two of our mayors here. Very important they take that leadership role for their cities and with the county together and with the state. It's those coalitions that the Assembly members talks about that are extremely important. But again, I appreciate when we talk about innovative ideas and they work. We need rapid housing, we need people housed, we need people sheltered. Asking questions about why they're there, what issues they have, that's secondary. We need to have them housed. And I appreciate so much your input and your leadership in this. Thank you. Thank you both.

Thank you so much for that, Reyes. Now, Ruben, you talked a little bit about the McKinney-Vento versus HUD definition of homelessness. Can you elaborate a little bit more on if we do the point-in-time count in HUD, And I know we worked hard to have a separate point-in-time count, direct it straight towards homeless youth, and I'll find out in a minute if that's still going on, but do you believe that because of the two definitions, that the true number of homeless youth here in San Bernardino County is higher than what's being portrayed?

Absolutely. So the HUD definition of homelessness is exclusionary of youth and young adults and their lived experiences of being in motels, doubled or tripled up, living in their car. The HUD definition doesn't recognize that. And in addition to the point-in-time count of 2022, the statistics that were just put out were not accurate.

As a direct service provider in the city of San Bernardino, when I worked with TAY in the past, I would get at least five calls a week for referrals, and that's just one agency. And again, the point-in-time count numbers are not accurate. And to circle back on the point in time count specific to youth, I won't touch on this too much because Eunice Abel will dig deeper. But we do have a youth point-in-time count that we want to start up.

Recently, there was an agency in the high desert that didn't utilize all of their HHAP 2 funding, and they gave it back to the ICH, and it was reallocated to Family Assistance Program. And we are using this funding to initiate a youth point-in-time count early next year, along with the main point-in-time count. And let me pull up the budget. We set aside from the HHAT 2 funding that was reallocated to us.

We put aside $10,000 as incentives, 500 youth point-in-time count backpacks with educational materials, which is around $15 per backpack. And this is to let youth and young adults know that we value their time, and that's something that we need to provide in the future. And any events that youth that are invited to, incentives are important. Many youth were not able to be here because transportation is an issue for them. So that's another suggestion that I have, is if you are going to invite youth and young adults to this table, offering a form of transportation or an incentive like a gas card.

Thank you. Thank you for that. And Deputy Jones, you talked about the 18 to 24 youth population up by 1%. What have we seen in the overall also with the homelessness? Is it also up in San Bernardino County?

Yes, overall was up 26% for our point-in-time count, so nearly 1000 on the point-in-time count. And I think, like Ruben mentioned, the youth just aren't out there during this point-in-time count. It's a HUD definition, it's at 6:00 a.m., so it's geared more towards the homelessness, and obviously we know it's geared more towards the East Coast than the West Coast with a right to shelter, so they're sheltered and could do their count a little easier than in the West Coast where they're out in these communities, riverbeds, things like that.

So getting our volunteers to those locations over the past several years, San Bernardino County has actually used our data to be able to show people where the homeless are to get counted, rather than going just by a map with no information on it. So we are getting a more thorough count. But I think again, when it comes to youth, the folks that are in motels, cars, things like that, where volunteers are more likely not to certainly not go to a motel, but not likely to make contact at vehicles and things like that, that the McKinney-Vento definition includes. So I think that is important.

I think the last point-in-time count with youth homeless, they did run in conjunction with the normal point-in-time count on the same day, but it was in the afternoon and focused in a couple of cities rather than across the county, which also with the challenges of the volunteers. Some of the best way to count youth are with youth, so trying to find those groups and those incentives that are so important, like Ruben mentioned.

Thank you. Peer to peer has always been proven to be beneficial to those that know and can communicate with, particularly the youth that are out there that are homeless or someone they could talk to. We have been hearing, and I'm not sure if it's showing in the data or even if there's statistics, but have been hearing that there's a growing population of those that are on the autism spectrum now being whether homeless youth, homeless in schools, or even homeless in general. It'd be interesting if you have any comments on that or just bringing it to your attention to keep an eye open for that and bring back information to us at a later date.

Yeah, I think we see a regular increase in population with developmental disabilities and mental health disabilities. And I think with growing number of population in America with autism, you're certainly going to see that in the homeless world. I don't know that we've seen, not a direct question that's asked during point-in-time count or during regular outreach where they are on the autism spectrum and things like that, but I definitely think in reference to developmental or mental health disabilities, that there has certainly been an increase across the state point-in-time count as well as locally.

Thank you for that. Any other questions from the dais? Assembly Member?

Deputy Jones, would you tell us how the HOPE team partners with regional nonprofits or other housing service providers to have a greater success rate?

Yeah, so we're coming up on ten years that we've been doing this through the Sheriff's Department under the leadership of Sheriff McMahon and now Sheriff Dicus, which has expanded the program like I had mentioned. And really we couldn't have our success without the collaboration and partnership of our service providers throughout the county. So one of the things that I always tell the homeless folks that we talk to on a daily basis is we don't have anything directly.

So our success is only because of the collaboration and partnerships. So we partner with well over 350 providers throughout the county in reference to homelessness and low income and things like that. Obviously, the ones that supply housing are funded for housing through CoC funds or state funding are a huge part of that. So over the ten years, and I think a star highlight is that we've recently housed our 3000th person, which is all through collaboration of the great providers of our county.

And I think that goes to one of my next questions to give us some examples of proactive measures that HOPE has utilized and also to give us your success metrics that you use to ensure effective results.

So as far as proactiveness, our team is only proactive, so it's in our name, right? Homeless outreach proactive. So we don't respond to calls for service at a patrol level, so it allows us to be proactive to go into where the homeless are. So a lot of times being that we're more rural than some of the urban communities, along the coastal communities and things like that, the homeless populations are in river beds and waterways throughout the county, up in our high desert, spread out on the ruralness. So we go to those people where they are, build that relationship, and as well as with our partners through behavioral health or alcohol drug service programs, the veteran groups take those resources to the people.

So we know that in San Bernardino County, the distance to services is often a challenge. If we had a mental health need, to get to that location, and if you're in that issue of homelessness, how do you get there? So breaking down those barriers in reference to the proactiveness is really how we have been able to be successful is those partnerships and collaboration and bringing those people to the resources to the people.

And then also with collaboration of Behavioral Health with our inroads team, which is a collaboration of multiple departments across the county to help on stabilization of folks that might not be able to get to their medications and things like that, and ARMC and their field medicine under Dr. Pennington is working on having doctors visit out in the field to provide medications on a regular basis. So beyond the nurse and things that are part of our inroads team.

And then as far as performance measures, so we document each of our contacts, each of our follow ups with individuals, and kind of see where we are on individuals as well as our total contacts. So if we use general stats, we're around 20,000 total contacts and about 13,000 individual contacts, so it shows that we contact the same person over and over.

Statistically across the nation, it shows those ongoing contacts is what gets people to get the help, build that rapport, that trust with them, and then keeping that data to see the housing programs that are there. And obviously some of the state funding over the past few years have been a huge part of that with Roomkey funding and Homekey funding. And I think that's a big answer to homelessness is Homekey funding where there's a lot of money that the state has put out there.

And we have a couple of cities, I think they're both represented here, that are putting in for Homekey dollars but could always use more to put in for those Homekey dollars to have solutions in their community. Because what we find also is the homeless that are in the community are from the community. They're not moving across California or across the nation. They have a connection to that community.

So it's really important to have services in the community and where the homeless are because we find a lot of times with the larger communities, they're not going to go from the north end to the west end or things like that. So I think there's a lot of opportunity the state has opened up as well as great collaboration amongst our city and county.

Thank you. And Ruben, if I may ask, what difference is there when we're dealing with homeless youth versus a homeless adult? What do you recommend that we, like best practices that you see?

If you can get more peer to peer models. We also need to have more engagement with youth and young adults as far as letting them know what resources are available to them. And then using a lens of prevention. Instead of investing in SROs, school resource officers, we can invest in therapists, drug and alcohol counselors, because those SROs really perpetuate the school to prison pipeline.

And when youth and young adults are in the system and they come out, they're discriminated against, it's really difficult for them to find employment, housing, et cetera. The peer to peer models, implementing more therapists and AOD counselors in schools, instead of having SROs, having housing come online quicker. And we also need to make youth and young adults aware of their rights and what they can utilize with their rights, because we really do not know what we can access with our rights. And I would suggest those things.

Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Thank you for those questions. Thank you for your participation in bringing this insightful information to us on the Select Committee. Thank you. We're going to transition to the second panel.

Can I leave one more comment?

Yeah.

I really want to challenge both of you and everybody in this room to think about the sustainability once youth and young adults exit their program to lower the recidivism rate. So the California Housing Partnership, they put out their affordable housing needs report for the whole state. And in this county, the average asking rent is $1,900. And you would need to make $32 an hour to afford that rent, which is 2.3 times the state minimum wage. So really challenging you to think about the affordability of housing once youth and young adults age out of their program or no longer need services, because you can't stay in a program forever. You also need your own housing. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Ruben.

That's being proactive in finding solutions, Ruben. Thank you very much.

We're going to be transitioning to our second panel. Second panel is state and regional approaches to address homelessness. We will hear from various state and regional service providers on panel two who will share their perspectives, challenges, and successes in dealing with homeless youth and homeless, and how they are incorporated into the process.

Our panelists include Dr. Timothy Hougen, Deputy Director of San Bernardino County Department of Behavioral Health, Kelli Guillory, a student service counselor from the California Department of Rehabilitation, San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran, and Kim Savage, attorney on behalf of Homes for Life Foundation. Kim's presentation will be joining us virtually. Once we're settled, Dr. Hougen could begin.

Hi, I'm Dr. Timothy Hougen. I'm a psychologist. I'm the Deputy Director with Behavioral Health and here to tell you about our programs and things. So when I looked at this, one of the things I thought of was to sort of present it a little bit differently. I'm sorry, is that too loud?

You're good.

Okay. And so I thought just looking at the process and then fitting in behavioral health within that process. So the question of who is homeless, right, how they became homeless, what happens to people while they're homeless, how do people get out of homelessness? And then what's our role and some of the obstacles that we're facing?

So the who is homeless question, I think one of the nice things about the earlier panel was it really highlighted the fact that we have a very hard time knowing that for children, right? We don't even have groups agreeing on the definition of that, but we have a handful of reports that have come out. One, just two months ago, the University of California, San Francisco, released an extensive study of homelessness in California.

And one of the things that came out of that that I thought was very interesting was that in that massive effort, only 4% of the population was TAY aged, and they did not look at children under the age of 18. And so there were zero children included in that, which makes that a little bit difficult to know what their experiences is or are. 27% of the people who were homeless were parents who had children, not with them, but staying somewhere else.

So that trauma of that makes a lot of sense in terms of that impacting. The other place to go in terms of understanding children is actually Chicago, which is interesting. There's an organization there, Chapin Hall, that's connected with the University of Chicago that did an exhaustive survey and then in depth interviews with homeless youth in five different communities across the country, one of which was San Diego. So not ours, but very similar.

And what they came back with in terms of who is homeless, is they came back with one out of ten folks who are 18 to 24 are homeless. Half of those are only experiencing the couch surfing quality of that. But one out of 30 youth are homeless. It's a little more than 3%. Now, only 25% of those are experiencing the couch surfing, limited to just couch surfing.

And then, I think in terms of talking about who's out there and who's homeless, we have to talk about the LGBTQ2S population because they're very much overrepresented, right, in terms of the population that's out there. So about 30% of the folks who are out on the streets who are children are LGBTQ2S. Which, by the way, is very hard to assess, so it could be much higher, right? Because that's a very personal thing to share. So this group of who's out there, right.

Well, then how did they get there? What's the pathway to the homelessness? And when you ask them, and again, interesting, because the University of California study focusing on adults, median age was 47, only 4% were under the age of 25. The main reason why people became homeless was because they lost income. They went from a place where they had a roof over their head to a place where they didn't because they lost income. Some of those are coming out of a jail or a prison, 14%.

But everybody else was either staying in a place where their name was on a lease or staying in a place where their name wasn't on a lease. But when you look at youth who are homeless and you try to break down, where did they come from, what happened in this process? One of the things that I thought was––

Almost gloss over the fact that all of them have heavy amounts of conflict going on in the home, that's 100% of the youth are just in conflict at home with their families. And I wonder this study is about ten years old, but just read the five reasons and now I think as we are much more focused on trauma, it's almost comical how they came up with five different reasons.

Right? So the five reasons they have is drug and alcohol utilization by the youth, who also were traumatized as a child prior to that, or psychological problems by the youth, who were also traumatized prior to the problems, or drug and alcohol problems in the family that also included abuse and neglect by the family of the youth so they had that trauma, and their fifth reason is trauma.

So when I read that now, it's a very obvious there's a cause there, right, in terms of if youth are there and recognize from a behavioral health perspective, particularly someone who one of my favorite programs that we operate is our zero to five program, which generally don't have to deal with homelessness. Right. We generally take care of those folks. But what we talk about all the time is we're trying to adjust the trajectory, trying to make sure things go well.

And so even there, working with the zero to five population, you're trying to create solid connections and attachments so that you can weather the storm of adolescence and make that work. So when you look at that, the trauma becomes pretty critical. Chapen hall does another speaks to this as well. Where do these folks, how do they get here? And the youth themselves articulate early problems in families.

100% family conflict again, and they cite things like instability due to being in foster care or the instability resulting in being in foster care. Not that they go to homelessness from foster care, but that they had that exposure. And then about a fourth of them actually were homeless with their parents. So back to the UC San Francisco study, 27% of those adults had children. Right.

So this is a common experience, but there is a mental health and a substance use component here. So 31% of the youth related their own mental health problems as to one of the reasons why they became homeless. 21% related their own substance use as to reasons why they became homeless. Right. So there's an impact that we could possibly have on that from a behavioral health perspective. I feel like I'm probably short on time in terms of experiences while homeless. It's not pleasant. Right.

I think the thing to point out is, again, the Lgbtq. Sorry, more victimized than anyone else. Chapin Hall reports statistics where it's just upsetting exchanging sex for basic needs. Youth were doing it 9% of the time unless they were in this other population. Then it was almost 30% of the time. So three times as likely to have to do that as well as being victims, right. Twice as likely to be victims.

So I think the sort of coming to a close here, I feel like this is sort of a silly statement, but the pathway to stability is always somebody helps, right. So you can't do this on your own, so you need something that happens there. But there are things that I think we can do to address the obstacles to the stability. Right.

And so we have a handful of programs that are dealing with families in massive conflict at home before the children are homeless, and we're trying to do that. We have a ton of programs that we've designed specifically for the TAY populations, but I'll let Andre speak to those. He's much better at that.

I think the thing to recognize, though, you mentioned our CSUs that we have, we also have crisis residential treatment programs that someone who is homeless with a mental health condition can go to unless you're 17, unless you're 16. And we don't have that. And so when you look at the children's system of care that could address the early homelessness of adolescents, we have a hole right now.

And so we have plenty of programs for folks who are in foster care or involved with probation, as long as they don't need a higher level of care. We have hospitals if they need to go into a hospital, but they can't stay there very long. And so there's a gap in the middle there where what we need is a program that would allow youth to be inside a treatment facility that doesn't require them to qualify for the hospitalization, but provides a lot more structure and support.

And I'm going to guess you're familiar with the one that I'm thinking of. So the Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility is a federal program that has not existed in California until I forget when the Bill passed, sir.

Passed that Bill last year.

Last year, that's right. And so this will allow us to provide that level of structure for those pre adult homeless folks who are dealing with mental health issues. San Bernardino was lucky enough to be awarded a Behavioral Health Continuum infrastructure program grant. So we were awarded a $51 million grant a little bit more. And up in Apple Valley, we are going to be building a PRTF on the same campus as we're going to be building a substance use disorder residential program for adolescents.

And our hope is that those two programs will serve as that giant pivot point. Right? I mean, when you're talking about zero to five, you're just trying to adjust the trajectory. But if you've got a 16 year old who's heavily using drugs or having in the throes of a first episode of Psychosis, it is a giant pivot that you need, and you need the help of that structure. So really appreciate that that is coming on board for us. And the support we got from the state for that.

Thank you so much for that. Next, we're going to move to our next panelist. Kelli Guillory.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Kelli Guillory. I am from the California Department of Rehabilitation. I actually cover pretty much a big portion of San Bernardino County, and I am a student services counselor. So I'm really excited to be here. We taking a look at how we're approaching working with youth that are experiencing homelessness or housing insecurities. We look at it from an educational and employment standpoint. What are those resources that they're going to need to help combat homelessness?

And we, as student services counselors, or just our Department in a whole, we work directly with individuals that have disabilities. And those disabilities can be mental health, intellectual, developmental, physical, substance abuse, history, all of that. So it gives us an opportunity to really tap into different areas with individuals that have these varying disabilities. So one of the ways that we have our approach is you had mentioned something earlier about that peer to peer, and we really promote that peer to peer interaction.

We even have created a peer to peer program where we have students working with other students to really help to develop their self esteem, to help develop those needed skills that they're going to need. In the world of work, employment is a pathway to equality in society. So when I'm going out to the schools, I work with the San Bernardino City Schools, yukipa Redlands, all throughout our areas.

I find that a lot of the students don't have an understanding or maybe they have some unrealistic, I guess, goals of when they graduate from high school. So it's very limited in the knowledge that they have of what they can do after high school. And we're finding that a lot of youth are not wanting to go the traditional routes. Parents are a little less lenient, I would say.

And you talk about students being I think you mentioned about the number of students with autism or youth with autism being homeless. And a lot of this is due to because there's a lack of those social skills that are there. There's a lack of training or advocacy or not knowing how to advocate for what they need.

And so we, as the Department of Rehabilitation, have taken on a way of providing five core services that focus on the things that students need just so that they'll be successful as they get ready to transition into adulthood. We talk about job exploration, counseling, where we provide the students an opportunity to look at the different job markets.

I believe the panelists earlier, I believe it was Ruben had talked about, the average rent is $1,900 a month, and you need to make $32 an hour to be able to afford that rent. So we sit down with students and really take a look at, okay, the job market, what type of job is out there that's going to afford you that independence, that's going to afford you a stable living environment. We also take a look at the work based learning opportunities.

So we give students, before they even graduate from high school or college or maybe a trade school, we give them an opportunity to learn about that world of work. They're actually given opportunities to do paid work experiences where they can go into different agencies. I believe with Assembly Member Rayes, we actually have a gentleman that's working in your office that I work directly with, and he's given an opportunity to gain some work experience through Job Corps and through other means.

So we really are taking approach to do that early intervention. And we know the earlier the intervention, like you mentioned about with the younger children into youth, we have an opportunity to really work with them and get them prepared so that we can help to combat homelessness. We can help to put these youth on a track that is going to lead to successful outcomes. A big part of it too, is that self advocacy component.

We know a lot of youth coming out of homeless, coming out of COVID really are dealing with a lot of social anxiety. This is what I'm hearing from when I'm going out to the schools and I'm sitting down, having these conversations with the youth. They're really dealing with a big aspect of social anxiety, a lot of issues of PTSD trauma, and they're kind of afraid to advocate for what they need.

So what we do is we sit down and we teach them about those self advocacy skills that are needed within the community on how to get access to what you need. When you talked about the youth that are on the spectrum, they really struggle, like we said, about that social component. Well, they don't know how to access the resources that are available to them, or they're being denied by agencies, maybe because they test too high on the academic level.

But their cognitive or their, I would say social aspect is really there's a huge deficit there. So we have to look at ways of giving them what they need. And that's what dor does. We come in and we work directly with them. We prompt them, we do mock interviews with them. We provide resources and supports and connect them directly with Tay. I work a lot with the Tay youth and making sure that they have the resources they need for success and learning how to advocate.

We also have the post secondary counseling. This is important starts at 16, having those conversations of what you're going to do after you graduate. So it could be where if you plan to go to college, maybe some youth don't want to go to college. Maybe they have more of a cognitive deficit that may limit them in going to a traditional four year school. So we have to look at other methods, other ways of getting them educated, getting them certified, or getting them employed.

And then we also take look at the work readiness, training, getting them basically ready for the world of work. And that's our approach is really focusing on employment, education, making sure that they have the resources and the supports to be successful in their overall goals, their academic goals, and their vocational goals.

Thank you. Thank you so much for that. Next, we're going to hear from Mayor of San Bernardino city mayor Helen Trent.

Good morning and thank you Assembly Member Ramos for putting this together and it's good to see you too, Assembly Member Reyes it's an honor to be here. I'm the Mayor of the City of San Bernardino and just a little bit about the background of what the city is facing as far as us homelessness. Coming into office seven months ago and recognizing there's a crisis in our city, we declared a state emergency February 1 of just this year to also be mindful that there's a story to be told by the city and that we established a Housing and Homeless Division Department just July of last year.

That's critical because that tells you that we are taking action and I commend my colleagues for moving that direction to take action and having a team dedicated to address the homeless effort. And we are growing that capacity.

We've set aside ARPA funds of over $20 million to build a navigation center that is not just a shelter to provide for our Unhoused, but it is a comprehensive wraparound services and that is moved forward since declaring the emergency. We are putting this in the forefront to the community as we make up 36% of the unhoused in the county of San Bernardino. That is a large number. We also even established a Homeless Outreach Team that launched just June of this year.

And that is a team makeup of eight Members and really going out to our community in city and reaching out to the Unhoused and those who are facing homelessness. We also established through the Police Chief Police Department, a coast team and that's the Community Outreach Support Team and that's a three person team making up a comprised of a fire Department, EMT county behavioral health worker, police officer and support dog.

Again, we are exploring everything because it's not a one size fit all to address the crisis that we're facing. Summary Member Ramos, I'm a strong supporter of your Assembly Bill 349 and testified both in the Assembly Committee and the Senate Committee. And that is thinking outside the box. And so we are very open to make sure that we do everything possible to address this in the forefront and fast tracking the efforts of the navigation center and interim housing.

Because for this city alone, we need to have over 600 shelter beds in order to really take further action to clean up our parks, our neighborhoods, our communities. Because that's, again, a crisis that we keep hearing daily from our community Members, business community Members. And so that is just a picture of what we're going through right now as the city of San Bernardino.

As far as the youth homelessness, I can tell you, being out there in the community, I've already been approached by a mother of three young children, ages five, seven, and eight. And I appreciate Dr. Hogan for mentioning what those traumas mean and that young mother and the three children were facing a family conflict. And immediately we directed her and her three young children to resources. And thank you to Salvation Armory for taking them in and providing the services needed.

It's connecting the services and resources when they don't know. And that is the biggest thing that I'm seeing, too. And I echo with my colleagues up here that it's the information resource that needs to be provided to our community Members. Those who are facing this situation, they're facing another mother and a daughter through my child's preschool living in their car.

And it was just disheartening connected the mother and the young daughter to services through our city to make sure they find housing or temporary to kind of get them off out of their own cars or their car to live in. And it is something that is very relevant that is happening throughout the city. We are 62 Sq mi, so we have a lot of issues that we have to face.

And I agree with Ruben, who mentioned about the point time count, the number is not truly reflective of what's really out there and especially our youth.

And if we could do more to really focus and zero in on how we could identify our youth homelessness through efforts in partnering with our school district or the county partners with our nonprofits, our faith based I think we could really be more impactful as all Members and leaders in our respective roles to really tackle the issues that we're seeing in front of our ayes.

It's very unfortunate, and my heart goes out to those who are facing this situation, and we are here as leaders to really help address the issue.

Thank you. Thank you so much for your presentations and a lot of knowledge and information shared that's drastically needed to be heard, certainly any comments from the Dais Assembly Member Reyes.

Thank you, Assemblymember. We talked about subgroups, and I know you specifically talked about LGBTQ youth. That is clear. I mean, we recognize that the numbers of homeless, they represent a greater number of our homeless suicide rate. I mean, everything that we look at, what specifically can and does the county do for that subgroup?

I think the main thing is to. Make sure that our providers. Thank you. Sorry about that saying. The main thing is really to try. To make sure that our providers are trained and knowledgeable to work effectively with a population that may be different from yourself and be able to connect and create environments that are safe. I think one of the things that, at least for me, it's sort of a source of pride is that the folks who operate our one stop TAY centers seem to be very skilled at making sure everyone's included.

Right. And so I think that's a lot of it. We need to do more, though, and I think exploring that, I know at least in children's, we have a small group trying to figure out how do we provide more support to the people providing services to this population, and hopefully we'll be able to come up with some good ideas that's definitely needed.

Thank you. I know that in Riverside, I worked with Assembly Member Cervantes and Gabe Maldonado from True Evolution to give to provide $10 million through our budget. We looked for San Bernardino, and I know I'm working with our mayor. The next one's going to be here in San Bernardino. I know I'll be working with Assemblymember Ramos, but they provided a little village where you have housing, it's wraparound services, you have counseling, you have every service that could be provided.

And it was aimed at our LGBTQ youth, specifically. They just recently had the grand opening. It's a great success story. And the next one will be in San Bernardino County. And if the mayor has her way, it'll be San Bernardino City. So that's the next thing we're looking for. So thank you for that. On funding streams, what are the funding streams that the city and the county have, and what can the Legislature do?

Are there other programs that you feel that we should be helping to fund, that you've seen success in in other counties or other cities that you feel need to be on our radar? Very specifically?

Thank you for the funding because that is always needed. I can tell you the navigation center, which is a huge effort, again, is going to provide comprehensive, all around reparound services, continuum of care, workforce development, permanent housing, to transition them to permanent housing. And it's for all population, not just a certain population. So that's going to be a huge effort to undertake. And I know the county has already set aside 3 million for us to help with that effort, but we still need more.

Because as we are building this aggressively and we want to launch this next year so it's not going to be twelve to 18 month effort, it's going to be a seven to eight months effort to make sure this happens. So that is the help that we will want to have our legislators really help us through.

And of course, what you just mentioned about the LGBTQ youth looking at, that would be great to explore, to make sure that population is not just ignored or neglected, that there is help for them too as well. So it's really engaging with our legislators and our partners about where we're at with our plan.

And that is something that I'm constantly in discussion with our supervisor, Joe Baka Jr., in regards to our plan to continue the effort between the county and city, but also with our Assembly Members and our Congressmen. So it is a constant dialogue that needs to happen. But I will keep you posted as far as the needs. Thank you.

Wonderful. If we were to ask who is the person for the county and who is the person for the city? Because oftentimes I will tell you, we had a hearing in one of the subcommittees that I sit on for budget in the state of California, and we had our Secretary of State, Shirley Weber, Dr. Shirley Weber, come and testify. And she's been on the job not very long.

And as she was answering the questions, she said that the first thing that she did was to find out where the buck stops. If she needs something on homelessness, that's not the issue. But on voting in a county or whatever the issue is, she knew one person that she went to and that was the person that was in charge.

So if there is an issue, oftentimes we're told this is the person, and then that person says, well, we need to talk to this person, we need to talk to this person. So for the county and for the city, is there one person that we say, this is the person that we go to when it comes to housing and homelessness. And you say that you just started a new division for housing and homelessness, so you have one person. Then that is?

Cassandra Searcy, Deputy Director Cassandra Searcy with the City of San Bernardino.

Wonderful. And for the county, who is that one person?

That is a great question. I think in many ways. We have so many efforts trying to address homelessness that at this point, it would be the CEO's office. That would probably be the one person. Now, I realize I'm not naming a person, so that's part of the problem. But it's a great question. I'm going to take that back and see how do we streamline that. I know in the Department of Behavioral Health that one person would be Dr. Yoshioka, but right below that, you've got four people at the deputy level, all involved in one part or another regarding our efforts for homelessness.

And it isn't meant to put anybody on the spot. It's just that that was something that I learned from Dr. Weber, and I thought, this is something that is so important. If we have an organization, we need to know who is the one person that is ultimately responsible, that has to receive all of the information and disseminate whatever needs to be disseminated, but receives all of the information and is ultimately responsible to give answers. So there we have the homework. Thank you all. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Thank you. We do have another speaker who's going to be joining us remotely on Zoom, Kim Savage. Is the technology working?

You can see me? Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, excellent. Thank you so much for inviting Homes for Life Foundation to participate in this hearing. I'm an attorney who has represented Homes for Life for Probably 20 years. I have a specialization of assisting nonprofit, affordable and special needs housing developers in getting their projects built. What I mean by getting their projects built is working through land use and zoning impediments and community opposition that often arises with the development of affordable housing.

Homes for Life Foundation is a nonprofit within Los Angeles County, providing service enriched, transitional, and permanent supportive housing for individuals with mental disabilities, many of whom are formerly homeless. They perform the dual role of developer and service provider because they have a wealth of deep professional experience working with youth and adults with mental disabilities.

Since 1986, they have dedicated their work to revolving door syndrome, to eliminating that of individuals in and out of shelters, to develop transitional and permanent supportive housing for former homeless youth and adults. We were invited here today because I believe Homes for Life Foundation is the only nonprofit in the state that has successfully developed and continues to operate housing on one of the five state hospital campuses, Metro.

And we know that Assembly Member Ramos has introduced AB 349, which would allow the state to begin leasing surplus vacant lands on patent for housing. The details of what might develop from that are unknown at this time, but we are extremely excited about that, having been and now being the only provider of housing on the Metro campus. So the presentation today will be a snapshot of both the Tay housing that Homes for Life provides as well as the housing that they provide on the metro campus.

I apologize in advance if I go a little bit over the time limit, but I think that the presentation today will be a nice complement to the other information provided by speakers. So in terms of Tay housing, Homes for Life developed and continues to operate three homes for 18 emancipated youth, ages eight to 21, who have exited the foster care system. The houses are located in Alhambra and San Gabriel. The first two opened in 2004 and the next one year later.

These programs are a collaboration of LA County DMH and LA County CDC. The programs are located in single family homes in Low density residential zones to cultivate a supportive, family like environment that many of the emancipated youth have never experienced. The Tay housing is really a model for reaching out to youth who have exited foster care and are at risk of homelessness.

The homes provide a progression to independent living, and the residents are provided with an extensive array of services and life skills training during their two year residency. A typical Tay day starts with, of course, breakfast, but then completing morning chores as part of the household responsibility for maintaining a home. During the day, they work with a counselor on life skills, which could include money management, job search, job development, interviewing skills, and GED studies.

A portion of the day is spent as any other young adult would spend hanging out with friends, engaging in exercise, socializing, and then the responsibilities are reiterated again in the evening, where the youth have additional chores to maintain their household in the family like environment. And they're also responsible for doing their laundry and other kinds of adult responsibilities on a biweekly and monthly basis. They have meetings and they work on transition plans for exiting to complete independent living.

Outside of the Tay program, there are a lot of success stories, some of which you can read on the website of Homes for Life. But just a few examples are the overall message on these success stories is that the young adults are taking responsibility and keeping commitments, including youth voluntarily agreeing to follow their legally prescribed medications without any kind of prompting from program managers opening savings account with their program stipends in preparation for living independently and needing to buy household items.

Finding jobs and keeping jobs and getting their GEDs. The statistics for Homes for Life Tay programs are quite impressive. Over the past 20 years, 85% of the youth leave having completed their individualized goals, which they have prepared at the outset of joining the Tay house with a case manager, almost 70% get a GED, and there's a 95% decrease in hospitalizations. We view the Tay programs as filling the gap between emancipation from foster care and readiness for independent living.

Without Tay and other programs focused on youth homelessness, young adults too often end up on the streets. They experience chronic physical and mental health problems develop substance abuse disorders and they suffer traumatizing, violence homes for Life Tay housing provides a stable home for up to two years with a full range of supportive services. Young adults leave Tay ready to use their full potential in leading productive and healthy lives.

I'll now switch over to talking about Metropolitan State Hospital, and when I talk about it, I just abbreviate it and refer to it as Metro among Home for Life's many developments, they have been operating for more than 18 years three award winning residential housing programs on the metro campus. Each of the buildings used three renovated vacant historic properties to create this housing. A multitude of government entities were involved in the metro campus developments, including State DMH, LA County, DMH, LA County, CDC, State, HCD, and HUD.

Note that at the time that these homes were being developed, the State Department of Hospitals was under the direction of DMH. It is no longer this way. And of course, in addition to all these governmental entities being interested in this novel approach, the mental health community and housing advocates were extremely excited. Appropriate vacant buildings for Home for Life to lease and renovate were identified.

And thus began what became a ten year process for Homes for Life to secure long term leasehold interests and funding for the free housing programs. You hear the phrase, It took a village, and this is a perfect example of something that really took a village. A team of architects, builders, engineers and legal counsel were involved in weekly meetings for essentially a decade, but it was truly worth it. Homes for life. Cedar street opened in 2005.

It's a state licensed, service enriched transitional residential program for 18 adults with mental disabilities. During two years that the residents live at Cedar Street, they are provided life changing services to address physical and mental health, and they have access to skilled classes as well as continuous case management. The residents have the freedom to come and go from the transitional housing, further building upon independent living skills necessary for transitioning out of the program.

There are two other developments on the campus, and they are not subject to licensure. They are independent apartments. One is Birch Grove Apartments and the other is Elm Street. They opened in 2007. And they offer a different but equally successful model for providing housing opportunities for formerly homeless individuals with mental disabilities. Both properties provide supportive housing with a lot of services available. They have independent apartments and some of them have their own kitchens and bathrooms. And in the other building, there are shared kitchens and bathrooms.

Both buildings have a guard at the main entrance, a visitor's lounge, laundry facilities, they're landscaped and parking is provided. Residents pay 30% of their income, and there are case managers available to assist with all the life skills that I previously mentioned. So, since Homes for Life is frankly extremely excited about AB 349, we wanted to just discuss at the end of my presentation kind of lessons learned from the development at Metro and possibly applicable to development at Patton.

The overarching essential element is buy in or as some have said during the presentations today partnership but buy in from the various state government departments that will in any way touch a housing development on a state hospital campus as well as cities and counties near Patton. Need to be supportive of the program and neighbors and the hospital itself because you have a state hospital operating there and now you are bringing in a new element of development.

Frankly, the project needs a consistent champion or a team of champions within state government who will help move the development and lease up process along, assist in removing bureaucratic and other impediments for the project, and run interference with community and neighborhood opposition. With this continuity and long term commitment, development should take far less than ten years and the doors should be open. The community gains greatly by having people off the streets, young and old, and in permanent or transitional housing.

Legislation in furtherance of housing on state hospital campuses requires a framework that will eliminate barriers to development. In order to attract nonprofit developers, the development process and funding mechanisms must be streamlined and accommodating. Lease up should be a collaborative effort that addresses the needs of the developer and service provider in order to sustain permanent housing for individuals with disabilities and those who are homeless. Thank you and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you so much for making time to join us via Zoom. That concludes our panel. Is there any questions from the Dais?

No, that was very complete. I thank you so much.

Thank you.

I have a few questions. Just following up with a different presenter, us with Dr. Hougen. 30% of the children I just want to make sure that that statistic was right, that 30% of the children that are identified as homeless are within LGBTQ plus population.

Yes, I was just reading.

I will learn how to use a microphone, I promise. Um, yes, 30%.

Thank you. I know with my colleague, we sit on sub one budget, and we hear a lot of the presentations, and we know that there is a high a high area of LGBTQ plus population, as well as a Native American population that continues to suffer at a high rate. Did any of the data from San Francisco or Chicago allude to any of that as far as the Native American population?

So the University of California, the recent one, which massive study, it's amazing to look through, it just came out in June. They indicated that there were two populations overrepresented. One was black at 27% of the population. The other one was indigenous at 12%.

Thank you for that. And then the study you mentioned from Chicago, I believe, said that there was one out of ten youth that are homeless. Is that correct?

One out of ten aged 18 to 24, one out of thirty aged 13 through 17. And in the one out of ten, the 18 through 24, half of those are "couch surfing" is the way the study called it. Right? So they meet the McKinney Vento definition, and then for the younger population, 25% were "couch surfing."

Even at that, it's alarming for us to hear that statistic, and I don't want it to be lost in the presentation of that statistic. One out of ten. One out of ten that we're seeing wherever we're at, again, brings back to home that when we talk about homeless, it's not us versus them. It's all of us. It's our family members. It's our community. And in many times, it could be our coworkers at work. This is a community issue, so I want to make sure those statistics resonate.

I heard that statistic in a side report by somebody else. I didn't believe it. Yeah. Just doesn't sound reasonable. And so I really did look into that. And...did a phenomenal job. I mean, I think the survey that they conducted included something like 22,000 youth. So, I mean, it really was very profound in terms of the research behind this. So I've come to believe one out of ten and one out of 30.

And it was asked what the Legislature can help with. We moved a piece of legislation that got signed into law identifying psychiatric residential treatment centers to gain funding with a change in a definition, and we're proud to see that that is ongoing. The fruition of that Bill is being implemented here in San Bernardino County. So we are working together to ensure that we are addressing these components, but also hearing the peer to peer when we talk about the rehabilitation peer to peer.

Now, that seems to be where the success models are at. Do you think that there's enough peer to peer discussion going on, or is there still programs out there that kind of shy away from the peer to peer.

I would say that I believe that people are starting to take more look at the peer to peer format. What we found to be successful over the past few years is because of COVID I go back to COVID and we had to create a virtual peer to peer program. And this program actually gave us an amazing result for individuals that have disabilities and they were able to connect and encourage and talk about their lived experiences, maybe as being a student with a disability.

And with these students, we were able to kind of identify those hidden talents that they had, pull a lot of those things that they never recognized that they had. But it was based on that peer to peer connection. An example of it would be we had a young lady that was in college and has a disability, really struggled with working with the disability service, well, participated in this peer to peer program and now is an assistant Director.

She's like 23, 24 years old at a local university, I can't remember what department, but an assistant director because of this peer to peer program. So we're really pushing within the state and especially in student services, we're pushing for more peer to peer interaction. When you hear from another youth and another youth speaking together, it's more impactful. Me being a parent of youth, they're like, she's a parent, she's coming to me as an adult. So it's not as I would say, not as impactful.

I love the youth, I work with some of them and they know where my heart is. But when you have youth speaking to youth about their experiences and what has worked and what has not, you get more successful outcomes with them. And then you had mentioned something about the Native American community. I actually am a counselor that works directly with a local tribe that are more out, like towards the Needles area, their tri state. And there's very limited resources.

We even as an agency, have to get very creative in how we provide services and supports to those communities. So when those resources are limited because of the ruralness of that community, it definitely presents its own set of challenges. So we as an agency have taken, like we said, have gotten creative. We started with the Caldor payment card that gives them an opportunity to purchase the things that are needed for employment or for education where they're not having to wait for us to process.

So this also not only helps with the indigenous communities, but it also helps with our homeless population. When they need access to maybe clothing for an interview, they need access to transportation. They're able to take that card and utilize that card to purchase the items that they need. Once they, hey Kelli, I need this. This is what I need. They have immediate access to it. Instead of having to wait for approval and all the processing, they're able to have immediate access.

So that's just another way we're trying to get creative to make sure that we're providing resources and supports at a quicker level because we understand there's a need in our community and I believe Assembly Member Reyes had said something about the bureaucracy of a lot of things working for county and city and state. A lot of times there's red tape. So we have to make sure that we're giving or delivering these services at a more prompt level and making sure that we're providing optimal services, that people are going to have successful outcomes.

Thank you. Thank you for that. And thank you for adding in your comments the Native American population, because there's no way you look at these statistics and see one out of ten that somehow Native Americans, LGBTQ plus are not part of that. They're definitely part of that. So the resources need to be equally distributed throughout the state of California and certainly here in San Bernardino County. Mayor Trent, your city declared a state of emergency. And so we've been working side by side with you.

We did move forward on that piece of legislation for psychiatric residential treatment centers to be able to get that funding and change a definition within the state of California, the federal law. We currently are working on utilizing state property to move forward, to start to move the dialogue on where certain things can be built, who can build on those.

We know that within the cities, the cities that are represented, cities that have representatives here, that homelessness is still a number one issue throughout our region, but what hasn't been developed is a regional approach. AB 349 is moving in that direction to develop a regional approach, utilizing state property. We heard from the presenters here from Homes for Life to talk about how that program moved forward and how successful it has been.

And if they're still on the Zoom, I will call on them in a few minutes. But I want to get your take on that, making sure that resources are there. And we did also secure with my colleagues, $5 million for the city of San Bernardino, for the Sakumbi Lake project to start to get some type of housing element moving. So we are working together to try to address this issue.

However, we know that the issue is large where 36% of all those counted in the county as homeless, 36% of those are here in San Bernardino City. Do you have any comments on any of that?

Certainly. And I have to commend your efforts as our Assembly Member for our city and the region to do everything possible to bring in the funding and resources. You have been doing an amazing job that way. And I cannot emphasize the collaboration that's needed. Collaboration? Collaboration. Collaboration or partnership, it has to be regional approach, because not just one city that's facing the issue. It's all cities, but unfortunately, city of San Bernardino make the greatest number of the unhoused in the county of San Bernardino.

One of the things that I appreciate the county is doing is really bringing all the cities together to talk about having those dialogue and having that conversation and really acknowledging the issue that it's not one community, it's all of us.

And how do we really make sure that all of our cities are being held accountable to make sure they're addressing the unhoused in their respective communities and not just punting the issue to a neighboring city because they're developing a navigation center or addressing the issue through AB 349? We just have to come together and address it in regional approach and see what makes most sense that we all are providing our fair share to address the issue.

So it is extremely important and all about the collaboration partnership, and I will continue to have that dialogue with everyone as I cross path discussing this issue.

Thank you so much for that. Is Homes for Life, Kim Savage still on the zoom? No. Just to regurgitate some of the statistics that Homes for Life has been able to do and why Homes for Life presented is because in their area, metro was a state property that they were able to utilize to contract with nonprofits local governments. Same thing that our Bill is doing for Patton State Hospital. The development has not been identified. It's just moving forward to start the discussion on it.

So our Bill simply moves forward to utilize state property, does say for nonprofits local governments, for homeless, mental health services in those areas, as well as senior centers. So one of the statistics that she mentioned was that 95% decrease in future hospitalizations because of the program moving forward, she did talk about it took ten years to get that process moving. So AB 349 is meant to start the discussion moving forward and trying to identify more residential treatment. We started when we talked about crisis stabilization units.

What's lacking in our area is long term, long term facilities, 90 days plus to get somebody back to where they truly need to be. We are moving forward in that direction with hearing what's going on in Apple Valley in San Bernardino County. But there needs to be more because in the presentation, Homes for Life, it has room for 18 adults. So my Bill is not meant to get all the homeless and take care of the problem. It's step by step. It's one life at a time.

And some will say, well, that's slow, we need to do more, but we have to come back and say what has been done up until this point. So we have to get creative. We have to look at solutions. We have to look at regional approaches where we could come together to start to bring some of these issues forward. Our Bill starts to pave that way, but working it's just one component of a larger family type of atmosphere, of how we're all dealing with that.

And my colleague mentioned, who do we go to to ask the question, who's that one person? The questions is us. It's all of us doing our part, right? To know that somebody right there next to us down at one of the grocery stores or even somewhere else walking by us. One in ten, according to statistic. Is homeless within our youth being more open? I mean, you've seen Ruben get up here. That's a prime example of believing in somebody.

Now he's testifying in front of a state select committee hearing in a few minutes, you're going to hear from Eunice coming up here, same stories. It's believing in people. That's what this hearing is about. And again, I can't say enough that when we talk about homeless, we're not just talking about us versus them. We're talking about all of us, family members, community Members, and a lot of times even our workforce that works side by side with us. I want to thank you for your presentation.

We will be moving into panel three. We will begin the portion of the hearing on permanent and supportive transitional services to address homeless youth. Panelists include Dre From TAY, the program manager at the one stop transitional age youth center, Charles Carcy, family development program manager for community action partnership of San Bernardino County, and Stephanie Vida Pazarin, project manager from the family assistance program, and Eunice Abel, chair of the San Bernardino county youth homeless advisory board.

Test one. Very good. Before I get started, I got to put Ruben on blast because all of us adults are bringing up papers and briefcase. He pulled all his talking points up on his cell phone and didn't miss beat. Good job, Ruben. Okay.

I'm Andre Basu. I work for the Department of Behavioral Health. I'm the Transition Age Youth Program manager, and I have a couple of questions that I'm going to present, and I'm going to try to do this real timely because of our group, our Taste Centers, I'll start with our Taste Center. San Bernardino County Taste Center priority population. We're set up to serve transition age youth from the ages of 16 to 25. We have 5, 1 stop transition age youth centers in the county.

Our newest one in Barstow. Yahoo. We're in Yucca, we're in Victorville, we're in Ontario, and we're in San Bernardino with a co located crisis residential center. With that Taste Center, one of the things we do, we want to reach out to all of our youth who are aging out of foster care, juvenile justice, homeless, at risk of homelessness, and suffering some kind of mental health issue or substance abuse issue. That's our priority population.

Also those who are in our mental health system of care that are unserved or inappropriately served. We've been up and running for about 16 years right now, and our very first employees hired for the Taste program were two transition age youth. They hired or they were on the interview panel for all of our initial cohort of staff Members. They, in fact, hired me. Go figure that. So in the whole county, we have approximately 250 youth who attend our one stop Taste Centers every day.

Assembly Member Rayes asked for those metrics and the success metrics, and I took note of that because I always have to have these stats kind of available to share with Dr. Haugen every week. Out of the 250 currently, we have 84 that are working. We have 53 attending community or four year universities.

When we started our Taste Centers, the majority of the youth that would attend our Taste Centers were either homeless, at risk of homelessness, suffering, all the things that I just laid out with our priority population. So our success metric is pretty easy for me because all I have to do is sing their praises, and they do it. And Kelly talked about the peer to peer model. We all serve each other. We all support each other. So that's the good thing about all of our Taste Centers.

When I can say our overall mission is to ensure that they transition safely. They transition appropriately into our community, working, going to school, raising families. I've been there for 16 years, and I always use this term once a Tay, always a Tay, because I always want them to come back and talk to other Tay youth. When we talk about the peer to peer model, whenever I go speak, I just take them with me and tell them what the Taste Center is like.

Tell them what you're doing. Our crisis residential center that's co located with the Tay Center, it's called the Stay Program. Probably half the youth that come to our Taste Center in San Bernardino transition out of that program. And those are youth who were on the street. Those are youth who really are involved in their mental health course. Their mental health success is based on their engagement in the program. I need them to communicate that engagement to others.

One of the questions we have is talk about how we believe we can expand partnerships. I really believe in our county, it's not about expanding partnerships. It's about perfecting the partnerships. I have Members that showed up here for this event who were working collaboratively with housing not only homeless youth, but homeless families. One of the things we talked about, ruben talked about the HHAP. There's two components of the HHAP funding.

There's the component that goes to the COC, which is the continuum of care which the community providers spend. Then there's the component that goes to the counties and all of that. HHAP funding has to be used with the partnership at whole in mind. Like, everybody's got to partner to help reach these families. Well, on the county side, the partnership, the MoU, is between DBH probation and CFS. That has been a life changing fund for all of us that are working with homeless families and youth.

And I always want you two to know this, that it's changing. It's for Department of Behavioral Health. Our funding is based on our consumers who are really qualifying or being diagnoesd with a significant mental illness. Well, our youth, a lot of times, they don't want to have anything to do with the system of care, so they haven't been officially diagnoesd or they're not engaged. This funding allows us to help them that are even at risk of homelessness and for their families.

Up until this point, there's, like, rounds. Round one. Round two. Round three. Round four. We're into our third round right now, and from our partnership on the county side, we've probably approved close to 120 H HAP applications. These H HAP applications aren't only for individuals. They're for entire families. I keep hearing collaboration. I know Mayor Tran talked about collaboration. That's all we're about when we're dealing with homeless youth.

Out of all the school districts in the county, we probably have close to 85 homeless liaisons that are connected to all the school districts. Well, they have an opportunity to request funding for their McKinney vento homeless at risk of homeless youth that were able to Fund help for those families. It's huge. Just two minutes ago, I got a text message from one of our partners in Rialto. Hey, Dre, I got a homeless 18 year old. When can we talk.

So when I talk about perfecting the relationships, it's all of us that work together that we're all kind of like minded. So I don't think we need to expand it. I think we just need to work to perfect it. And so that's kind of the overview of the Tay program and how we continue to work with each other. Assembly Member Ramos, you said it's step by step, one life at a time.

And I think we have to continue to strive in that way, and that's kind of all of us who are in this circle continue to do.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Andre, for that. And we've worked closely on this issue for some time in my former role as County Supervisor, chair of the board worked hard, and we did move forward through the board, making sure that there was buy in from the top down. So thank you for everything you're doing. Next, we're going to hear from Charles Cars, family development Program Manager, community Action Partnership of San Bernardino County.

Good morning again. My name is Charles Karsch. I'm the program manager for program manager for Family Development and Community Action Partnership here in San Bernardino County. And I'm honored to be in front of you all today to talk about the critical issue of youth homelessness in San Bernardino County. But first, I'd like to tell you a little bit more about our organization.

For more than 58 years, Community Action Partnership has worked diligently to become the premier social services agency that eliminates the effects of poverty in San Bernardino County. Our mission is to work with communities by supporting, advocating for, and empowering residents to achieve self reliance and economic stability.

Our agency works to alleviate poverty and to provide services to create pathways to economic success through the following core programs our Family Development Program, with programs such as rental assistance, rapid rehousing, and a mobile fleet of services including mobile community kitchen, mobile offices, mobile showers and Laundries and a Vita program. Our Energy Education Environmental Services program provides home, weatherization and utility assistance through our heap.

And our Food Bank provides hunger relief by providing healthy food free of charge to Low income residents throughout San Bernardino County through a network of 279 partner sites. They also run programs including a campus Cupboard program, mobile food pantry, and diaper bank.

Many circumstances such as job loss, illness, mortgage costs, increased rent, move in, expenses and deposits, inability to save for money for emergencies, the rising cost of living and family separation put families at risk for homelessness and continues to be a persistent problem in San Bernardino County, made worse by COVID. In response to the first question, the challenge of youth homelessness requires a comprehensive collaboration approach that involves partnerships between various stakeholders, including government agencies, nonprofit organizations, community leaders, and local businesses.

First and foremost, it is imperative that we establish a coordinated and integrated system that connects existing services and resources to effectively address the multifaceted needs of homeless youth. This includes creating a centralized hub where young individuals can access housing, health care, education, and employment support in one place. By streamlining these services, we can reduce duplication of efforts and ensure that homeless youth receive the holistic assistance they need to regain stability. Furthermore, partnerships with educational institutions are vital to addressing youth homelessness.

Collaborating with schools and colleges to identify and support homeless students can help prevent homelessness from becoming a barrier to education. This could involve providing transportation assistance, school supplies, and access to counseling services to ensure that homeless youth can continue their education without disruption. Engaging local businesses and employers is another crucial component of tackling youth homelessness.

By partnering with businesses to create job training programs, internships, and employment opportunities specifically designed for homeless youth, we can empower them to acquire skills, built self confidence, and transition into independent living. In addition, mental health and counseling services must be readily available for homeless youth, as they often face trauma and emotional challenges. Partnering with mental health organizations and professionals can ensure the homeless youth receive the necessary support to address their emotional well being and overcome the barriers that continue to contribute to their homelessness.

Lastly, public and private partnerships play a pivotal role in addressing youth homelessness. By leveraging public funding with private contributions, we can increase the available resources and create innovative solutions to prevent and alleviate homelessness among young individuals. These partnerships could involve incentives for private developers to provide affordable housing units or support for nonprofit organizations that specialize in youth homelessness. In response to the second question, just a few thoughts on engaging youth in developing youth services.

First, education and awareness through workshops, seminars and campaigns that can help youth better understand the issues of homelessness. Provide mentorship from experienced individuals in the field of addressing homelessness to guide and inspire youth involvement. Youth focused programs that allow youth to actively participate in designing youth homeless services partner with schools, colleges, and organizations to involve youth in service development involve youth on policy boards to contribute their ideas and perspectives, and provide incentives to youth to produce innovative solutions to address homelessness.

Ultimately, involving youth requires creating an inclusive and supportive environment that values their ideas and contributions. In conclusion, addressing youth homelessness in San Bernardino County requires a concerted effort from a diverse range of partners. By establishing comprehensive, collaborative and innovative partnerships, we can make significant strides in preventing and ending youth homelessness, ensuring a brighter future for our community's most vulnerable Members. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much for that. Next, we'll hear from Stephanie Vida Pazarin.

Thank you. My name is Stephanie Vida Pasarin, and you may call me Vida. I'm with Family Assistance Program. I'm a program manager there. Am I echoing? Okay, thanks. So like I mentioned, I'm with Family Assistance Program. We're a nonprofit agency that has served San Bernardino County since 1987. Many of the services that we offer are family based and that includes the youth and the Tay population. So I'll just focus on that.

Currently we operate two youth shelters where we provide shelter services and wraparound care to homeless youth ages 18 to 17. We operate three transitional housing units for our Tay youth 18 to 24. And one of those housing units is specifically dedicated to the LGBTQ+ population. As was stated earlier, that's a high need, vulnerable population. And we're actually currently working with Carrie from the county of San Bernardino to open a youth drop in center that specifically targets that LGBTQ population.

So any funding that can be allocated that way is greatly appreciated. Our youth drop in centers and youth housing are one of the only few in the county that are very Low barrier. We currently have an estimated of 350 beds for youth in our county. But as we know, our county is huge, right? And when we're talking about one in ten young people that are homeless, 350 beds is simply not enough.

Also, the majority of these beds are tied to very specific, I don't want to say restrictions, but very specific conditions depending on where the funding source came from. And again, when we're talking about young people, it becomes very difficult at first to identify the kinds of the box they would check that would allow us to be able to quickly place them in these beds. And so we end up in a system where there's backlog for our youth and beds are waiting to be used, right?

And that's frustrating. On a service provider level, on a human level, it's just simply frustrating. Family Assistance Program does have 22 beds that we operate. Our programs are very Low barrier. That term can feel spooky to some people. It may feel like we just let everyone go wild. That is not the case. Young people need structure, right? They need support, they need guidance, which we provide them.

But young people also need the space to make mistakes, to be young and to learn to grow and not to worry that they will lose the shelter over their head and their basic services and needs while doing so. And so that's the opportunity and the space that we provide at all of our services. I lost my space, my place here, okay?

Some of the things that have gone well for us in working in this county is the fact that we are able to focus on youth specific programming both here and up the hill in the high desert. So we're very proud to be able to do that. We have youth advocates that are amazing.

They're not afraid to step outside of the office and be on bus routes throughout the entire day, sit on that bus and be able to identify and really scout those one in ten young people that are homeless. Start building relationships, bring them into our youth drop in centers, and find a way to connect them to either our program or one of our partner programs so that we can get them off the streets.

We have also moved towards the expansion of our youth drop in center in the high desert. So we currently operate a youth drop in center in the high desert, and we will be expanding it one to just bring it up to 2023 standards, right? And we will also be adding 22 beds to that facility. So eight bedrooms within our existing facility and 14 tiny home units that will be specifically dedicated for transitional aged youth.

So the 18 to 24 population, that was actually made possible through a contribution from the San Manl Band of Mission Indians. So we're very thankful for that. And we also applied for homekey funding through the Youth Set Aside in order to complete that because, as was stated earlier by Ruben, it is extremely costly to build, and I actually have more points on that later, but we were able to leverage some of the existing funds.

So fingers crossed that we are successful with receiving that home key from Youth Set aside. State Assembly Ramos some of the challenges that we do see that we have as service providers is, again, there is simply not enough beds. There are not enough youth drop in centers. There are not enough mentors for our young people. There is not enough housing for our young people. And so once our young people are ready to move on from us, they don't have anywhere that they can go.

They don't have the right unit type for them. They don't have the right unit that they can afford. That's unacceptable. I don't have any other words for that. It is extremely hard to build housing. It is extremely hard to build emergency temporary housing. Our youth drop in Tiny Home village was projected to come online within three to six months because it was meant to get our youth off the street, away from couch, ripping out of their cars immediately. Instead, we're going on two years.

It's just unacceptable. That's just a short term solution. Now, when we're talking about long term solutions, if it's taking at least $100,000 just to pay the soft cost in order to break ground and one year's worth of work in order to get units online, we're simply not going to be able to meet this need. And so, again, I don't want to get stuck on the problem. So I'll start going towards solutions, but I don't want us to bypass it too quickly. I am thankful.

I have it in my notes that we are constantly working with legislation with our representatives to address some of these problems, like AB 42, that will help us build some of these tiny home units, some of these cabinets, in a more time efficient and costly manner. So we're excited about that. But when we're talking about these long term solutions, about know the city of riverside, they streamline their adu process and where all plans for ADUs are now pre approved.

And so when we're talking about that cost of $100,000 and that time frame of one year just to get to break ground, you're expeding that significantly. Once you have plans that are pre approved by the Building Department, right, that's an adu that's just one unit, and that's okay, one unit, one person at a time.

But that process itself can be replicated when we're talking about building communities of diverse units that look at studio apartments, that look at 12 bedroom apartments, these smaller units that bring in components where our young people can find employment opportunities and tap into their entrepreneurial spirit and just find a way to use their talents to build our 2050 economy. Right? This is the space for us to do that. And we can use the same process that Riverside did to pre approve these plans.

We can do the same in pre approved community based plans so that we are saving, right? We're creating a cost saving mechanism up front for the nonprofit developers that want to come in and build. Okay, I moved away from my notes. Okay. Lastly, there was a question asked earlier about the HUD definition and the impact that it has on the count. It does have an impact on the count, but more importantly, it has impact on funding.

So one, it has impact on funding that comes down from the federal level, but it also has an impact on what I mentioned earlier, where it becomes difficult to identify. Does that young person fit the box and are we able to put them in the right program? Right. When the reality is that the issues that these young people are facing all intersect. So really you're homeless, you need a bed. I should just be able to put you in a damn bed. Excuse me.

Okay, I think that was the last thing. Oh, one more thing. There's also challenges at our local level. We're currently on hold to certify six beds, and sometimes it's just a certification process from community care. Licensing can take time. So again, I don't want to use the word streamlined because we use it all the time and somehow it's not making things faster, so we can just make things faster throughout our bureaucratic system. That would be great.

And overall, I just want to thank you guys for the opportunity to hear me out, to hear our organization out. I am very proud of the work that we do. I'm very proud of being able to work with you guys and to be able to create opportunities so that we can end homelessness right, and really build our Inland Empire. So thank you.

Thank you so much for that. Stephanie Vita Pasarin, and you also were testified at the state Legislature for AB 42, dealing with the tiny homes and sleeping quarters and giving first hand experience of how regulation I'll say regulation doesn't move forward as far as making sure that beds are available, and we're still fighting that. So I want to thank you for that. Our next speaker is Yanis Abel. She's chair of the San Bernardino county youth homeless advisory board.

Hello. Thank you, guys. First, I want to say thank you. I want to start off by saying thank you to Assembly Member Jean Sermos for all the bills that you are introducing on behalf of the homeless youth. I came into this meeting having a couple of six blind spots that I wanted to identify, and almost four of them has already been identified by some of the panelists. So great work to the Assembly Members team for putting together this great group of people.

But I want to start off with kind of introducing the youth advisory board. Who are the youth advisory board of San Bernardino county? We are made up of youth with lived experience in homelessness, foster care and law involved. And the goal of our organization is to amplify the voices of disenfranchised youth through civic engagement, peer collaboration, mentoring, and community building. And we do this by focusing on three focal points, which is youth advocacy, youth development, political advocacy, and community partnerships.

And before I go into the expanding partnerships that is going to help reduce youth homelessness here in San Bernardino county, I wanted to go through a couple of the blind spots that weren't identified yet during this panel. So we have talked about the LGBT community and how they are underrepresented when it comes to the services that are being allocated to them, being that they represent over 30% of the homeless youth population.

Yet, for example, family assistance, they just kind of opened a new housing which was specifically for lgbtqt youth, and it has about six to seven beds. And you think about that compared to the 30% of them that represent the homeless youth population, and you're like, that doesn't add up, is disproportionate. But another group of people that we're starting to see while on ground here in San Bernardino is homeless youth that have been victims of illegal renting.

What we're starting to see here in San Bernardino is that there are youth ages from 17 to 24 who come out of the foster care system. They come out of maybe they've been in child protective services or whatever way that they get homeless, but they are now working. They have two to three jobs, and they save up, and they get that deposit, and they find an apartment. And when they go to these apartments, they're like, oh, yeah, we're going to give you an apartment.

You need to put down this amount of money for your deposit. And then in a couple of months, they're like, oh, you need to leave the apartment, because the apartment is not up to date on certain city guidelines, or the landlords are not even legally allowed to rent them. That space. So we're starting to see a lot of youth who are suffering from this here in San Bernardino County. And the second blind spot that we identified while on ground is immigration.

So here in San Bernardino, we have about 21% to 27% of foreign born residents living in the region. And we see that asylums and refugees, especially children of immigrants that may have been deported, they're left with the grandma or left with friends, right? And these population of youth end up being homeless, and they're now out on the street. So this is another blind spot that I wanted to identify on behalf of the homeless youth here, San Bernardino County. And.

So we think about expanding partnerships. And the number one thing that we've been hearing all day is Incentivizing Youth Coalitions. And I kind of want to give an insight a little bit to what we're seeing here in San Bernardino County. When we go out to recruit for the Youth Advisory Board and we're like, hey, we have this board where you get to speak your mind, you get to advocate for yourself and other homeless youth. And they're like, oh, what time is it?

It's about six or 07:00 p.m. On this day. And this day they're like, well, I can't because I have two jobs and if I don't go out and I don't go to my job, I'm not going to get enough money and I might end up on the streets again. So we have youth who have experienced homelessness that were trying to recruit their voices. And we are as the Youth Advisory Board, we do have incentives for coming to the meetings, right?

But it's not enough for you to go and quit your job for. And it's what we're seeing here in San Bernardino County. And we had Dre earlier and our ICH Representative Ruben talk about peer to peer. When we look at peer to peer, we see that kids are more likely to be vulnerable with each other when it comes to homelessness because, oh, I went through the same experience as you, you can tell me about it, right?

So what the Youth Advisory Board is suggesting is opening more peer to peer positions for youth here in San Bernardino County in order to engage them. Because you can't ask a youth who's at risk of homelessness to take time out of their job to come and advocate on behalf of this and leave them empty handed. They look at it. And when we go to them trying to recruit them to the Youth Advisory Board, they look at it and they're like, you're being inconsiderate.

Because if I don't go to this job that I'm going to today, I'm going to lose my housing. Because a lot of the Tay programs require you to either be in school or have a job, right? I want you to advocate, I want you to use your voices, but I have nothing to give you. This is what we're seeing here in San Bernardino County.

And we're also asking, in the case of illegal renting, for a funding to be set aside for youth who have been victims of illegal renting. Because in a way, it's not their fault. Their presented paperwork that they assume is legal, their presented documentations that they think is going to secure them housing stability, and then at the end, they're back on the streets again because of this. So that's one of the suggestions that we have as the Youth Advisory Board.

Another thing that we wanted to talk about is the visibility of homeless liaisons in our schools. So from what we're hearing when it comes to k to twelve high schoolers, middle schoolers, they have the homeless liaisons. I want to refer to Brenda Dowdy, who is the project manager at San Bernardino county for homeless youth, and she has two peer associates. And what we hear from them a lot of time is, yes, the youth, they're vulnerable with us.

We get more out of them because we tell them that we've had the same experience as them. However, what we see on the higher levels, which is the colleges, is that youth cannot identify who their homeless liaisons are. We go in there and we're like, oh, you're homeless, you're this, you're this. Okay, do you know who your homelessly is? Honest, they don't.

And the reason we've identified is because on the college level of education, they barely have any peer associates, so they're having to rely on being referred to this person and this person and this person before they're even able to get help. So youth are unaware of the services that are being provided to them at the college level. And of course, the 2023 continuum of care homeless count and survey final report. As my colleague, the ICH, representative Ruben mentioned earlier, it's not accurate. It is not accurate.

I could refer to page 16 of page 15 and 16 of the 2023 continuum of care homeless count and survey final report. And I'm going to read to you the section that they mentioned youth. It says, of the 2959 adults and unaccompanied, children under 18 counted, 1743 or 59% were survayed, and 1216 or 41 were survayed. And on the next page we have of the 2976 unsheltered person counted, 2946 were adults. Eleven were unaccompanied youth under age 18 and 17 were children under 18 in families.

These are the only section in this entire 93 page report where they mentioned any statistics about youth. Which brings me back to the homeless point in time count. The last time that I stood here in front of you, I did tell you that we are making plans to get a homeless point in time count for the youth off the ground. And I am glad to say that we have made progress on that matter.

We were able to secure about 79,000 from the round two of h app funding for this homeless point in time count. And we have a date and we have a location while we're still preparing on consulting and incentivizing the event to make sure that the youth that participated are being compensated. This is something that we have going on right now.

And hopefully by the time that we stand before you again, we have the numbers that we need, because I know that you guys do need numbers in order for you to introduce bills that will help this population. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you to all the panelists for educating us on the issues that are there and frustrations that we're seeing along the way we have any comments from the Dais Assembly Member Rayes.

My goodness, there's so much, and I really do appreciate that you're talking about solutions, you're telling us the things that work. And I think something that our chair talked about is even if it's one person that's one person less, that is homeless.

And when we're talking about our youth, finding them when they are at risk of homelessness or when they are first homeless, one of the statistics that was provided also is that about half of the youth who experienced homelessness over a year faced homelessness for the first are. And I think Ruben talked about this as well. We don't want chronic homelessness. So the best way to work with that is when you are first homeless, to be able to take care of that person, especially our youth.

The navigation center that was talked about earlier, extremely important. And I think I go back to my comment about knowing who is ultimately responsible. So if we have a navigation center, we have a drop in center. We have the taste center where the youth know where to go because they know they're homeless, they know they need help, but if they don't know where to go, we lose them.

And maybe it's more of getting the word out to homeless in General, but our youth specifically, if you are experiencing homelessness, this is where you go. I know that our school districts are doing a phenomenal job of identifying our homeless youth to then work with them that's very specific work that they are doing.

I'm trying to find my notes now, like Stephanie, right when Dre, when you were talking about the specific areas that you were working on aging out, that's something that we hear a lot about our youth, especially our foster youth. And I thought the numbers would be higher for former foster youth falling into homelessness. But aging out is something that is of grave concern. We have not taken care of that transition period. Is there something specific that you would recommend in that regard?

Wow. I think navigating all of our systems to help our youth who are aging out.

Staying in connection with them. I think it's all about relationship. When our youth age out, they're going to call their mentor back or their social worker back or somebody that's impacted their life. But if that person is not in their job and they've left somewhere to another position, they won't be in connection with them. And that's kind of the irony about our system of care, because there's so much movement with our staff on the county level, let alone even in the provider level.

So it's really important. And we have these programs, like, for instance, in the taste centers, we always get calls back from youth that have been there. It's much more challenging for youth who grow up in the system of care under 18. Right, because it's like all of their connections have either moved on or you have those very special people that always stay in touch with them or they always leave them a number or resource where they can get in touch with somebody. But it's a challenge. It really is.

It's the need for family, for that absolute connection. And I want to also say very specifically, I appreciate your comment about looking for perfect, working towards perfect partnerships rather than expanding the partnerships. I will tell you that I often say that when money comes in to the community, I want it to go to the community based organizations that are already having success rather than trying to create a new system to help them to perfect the very work that they are doing by giving them additional funding.

Caps San Bernardino County they've been great partners for the community, providing the money, the resources and the food to our community. We've been to so many events where they are the main partner. And I think that our community, I would like to believe, knows that if they have a need for food, that is one place. Besides our churches and other community based organizations, cap San Bernardino County is always the one organization I think that we can always count on.

Stephanie, you talked about the challenges and you talked about the fact that we don't have enough beds, not enough housing, not enough mentors, not enough drop in centers. Do you think it's just a question of money or what is it that you think would help us to expand that?

I think it's important to plan it out accordingly. Right?

And so I think when any city, any area sets a goal to bring specific development, they focus on it and they can make it happen, right? So we all have General plans which you either love them or hate them. I love them. I think that they are great if we actually plan it out accordingly and then uplift them, right?

So if we identify the need to build neighborhoods that include not just a certain type of housing with a grocery store and a school, but also plan out the fact that in addition to a school, we need a percentage of childcare center a percentage of youth drop in centers, a percentage of to meet the need of the growing population, then that is once it's spelled out and then we can work towards actually making it. And and of course, money helps, right?

So we all have funds, right? All our cities, our counties, we still have monies coming down from HUD, Home, ARP. If we could identify funds to help prioritize the building blocks to get us started, like I said, creating a master plan for affordable housing development that we can then all use, then that is a one time cost that then affordable housing developers can come in and take advantage of, right? So those funds would go a long way.

Thank you. And then finally eunice or Eunice?

It's both. Which do you prefer? Eunice. Eunice. All right, Eunice. I appreciate your comments regarding blind spots, because sometimes it's like when you're driving, you're just looking forward, and there are some things that you're just not even aware of because they're blind spots. And I'd like your comments regarding that. You talked about illegal renting. At first, it was a new term, and we were looking at each other like, illegal what?

So this illegal renting, something that I was unaware of, quite frankly, and how do you see us being able to take care of that? Maybe setting up a Fund. So if you're able to prove that you were a victim of illegal renting, you could then go to an organization and the funding would be available. How do you see it?

Yes. When the youth were discussing, they were thinking, well, I went to maybe Family Assistance Program, and I'm like, hey, this is what happens to me. And family assistance is looking okay. They have grants, and they have places that they pull funding out of, right? They can't give you funding out of funding that's meant for maybe clothes and shoes or hygiene. They can't pull funding out of that because then they have to answer to whoever they got the grant from.

So we were thinking maybe sorry, a grant being put together where organizations can apply for where they basically service homeless youth who have been a victim of illegal renting. This way that organizations don't have to look for other places to pull funds out of, because that's what these youth are running into when they go to ask for services.

Wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. So, Member Rayes, for sharing the dyess with us on these important topics. That is close to both of our hearts. We've worked hard on a lot of these issues together. And Dre. Talk about working in the county. I remember we worked on two, one, one, and we just recently on mental health components. We worked on nine, eight, eight. Do you think that there is a need for a separate type of catch all database for homeless youth and things that they're facing and for resources?

I think it could be helpful. But our biggest issue is how to manage it and who's going to manage it, and is that person managing it or agency? Can they deliver what's needed? For instance, Eunice talking about the illegal renters, I had this experience two days ago. We did an HHAP Fund for a family. We did a month long communication with the landlord. We did the process, had the check cut to the landlord, the community provider, which was a faith based community provider.

This is a part of the partnership. Takes the family to the landlord, and the landlord decides, I don't want to rent it to you. That's all the landlord said. After this, mom with three kids had been couch surfing for two weeks, saved all her money, shows up with we had a $3,500 check ready to give the landlord. She's excited about getting back in this house because she's been homeless for three months, got her kids. The landlord says, I decided I'm not going to rent to you.

When Eunice said that, I'm like, oh, this was not a youth. This was a family. This was a mom with three kids. And now we're stuck, and now we're dealing with the repeated trauma of being on the street. Am I going to lose my kids? And all that kind of thing. So if there was a number and I'm going back to your question that we call is the stewards of that program, will they know who to call and how to respond? You follow me? So they might call us back. Who knows?

Do you think that the networking is not one of the ID problems? It's more of the resources. It's more of the collaboration, because the networking people have each other's cell phones to get it done. It's running into the landlord that says, come, but then all of a sudden changes their mind, and now you've built that hope of that individual that then gets crushed. So where is the need as far as the networking?

On the outset, and I just wrote this down, we just need to perfect our relationships. We need to make time to create spaces where we're continually perfecting and cultivating our relationships with each other. I mean, we all have the answers. Pretty much. It's all like, if I don't know the answer, I know somebody that does. But we have to have that time to get together, to stay together in the quarterly come together kind of works.

But it needs to be more than that, because sometimes we'll get together maybe quarterly, maybe twice a year, and things change. The superintendent, county schools has the homeless liaison meetings that happen quarterly in different regions. Right? We all respect their workload, but it's tremendous. You know how many homeless McKinney ventil youth we have in our county? We've got 25,000. And that's an undercount, and that's 25,000 families. And when you're successful with one, they'll spread the word.

And it's a good thing that they'll spread the word, but we always have to respond back. We're responding back not during eight and five and not Monday through Friday. It's after hours. It's on the weekends. The need and the response needs to be 24, 724 hours a day.

Thank you, Andre. Mr. Kirsh, you talked about the business community and you talked about private and government partnerships coming together. Do we see the willingness of all those partners to come together to start to truly address the homeless youth and homeless in General? Well, I think if we provide more.

Education to the business community about the. Needs in the surrounding areas, that they. Would be more apt to come together with partners.

I know that when I sat on the county Board of Supervisors, and we chaired the Homeless Youth Task Force. We worked, and we did peer to peer, found that those that were going to school were able to get the different grants for tuition and books, but the quality of life dollars was far and in between. And I know that we moved forward to establish a Fund through Children's Fund for that.

That means that out of a $2,500 scholarship, $1,500 goes straight to the individual for the qualities of life with anything tied to it. Right. So for food, for a place to stay, it won't be for the whole, but at least it's building back trust in the individual. Do we think that the business community is ready for that type of approach, or do they still want to see things tied to money that's being donated?

I believe that they might want to see more things tied to money that's.

Donated at this point. Thank you for that. And then Ms.. Pazarin got it. You talked about the regulations, and it truly is. We've been working a long time together and working with trying to get first a home opened up. We went through different three different jurisdictions, and luckily, I was on the county Board of Supervisors. We found a place out in Mentone.

Then we worked together in Victorville to try to get those tiny homes constructed and ran into the burden of cost when fire sprinklers had to be a component in order to get checked off, which then outweighed the cost of the tiny home itself, which leads to Assembly Bill 42, where we're working that through which you so eloquently testified for. That's just one component.

I mean, there still is a lot more areas that if a community truly wants to deal with the homeless, there's ways to get to where construction can get done quicker. Do you think that the willingness I know it was a question that was asked, how do we move these forward?

Do you believe that the will of local leaders that say it's number one issue is that will there to start to look outside the box to create homes, in this case, tiny homes, sleeping cabins for those that are out on the street and to move forward?

I think the will could be strengthened, but it's there, so we're not starting from scratch.

I appreciate that, because when we were up in Victorville tearing that site, we did have leaders from the area there where the wheel is there, but trying to maneuver, just like we're hearing here, maneuvering through certain things. There's also elected leaders that are trying to help, but we have to figure out how to maneuver through and get the right pieces of legislation through. A psychiatric residential treatment center was one that was signed into law.

We have AB 42 now moving through it's on the other house now. We also have a solution with state properties that, again, that Metro has used, but it's only 18 beds. But it is long term. Rather than a twelve day stay, it's 90 days plus to get the treatment that people truly need. I want to thank you for your diligence in working on this issue and passion during your speaking here today.

And you brought up a topic as far as illegal renting that's caught my ear and certainly it's going to be something that I'm going to take back and try to open up some more information on. So those that are praying on our homeless youth, we're going to take a look at that and try to figure out how we could come together and at least maybe let people know that we're now aware of the situation.

When you start to build an individual, and I believe in all in people moving forward, but when you start to talk about getting a family into a house, that adrenaline starts to move. All of a sudden weight and stress is off of you. Then to be told no, it's like at that point, you just want to like, who do you trust at that point, right? And we didn't even talk about what do we see as far as reoccurring homeless, getting somebody in, somebody out, right?

How many times does it take? And I would argue that we have to continue to be there for individuals. I think the panels that we're here today and assembled, we do have to remember that solutions have to be taken a step at a time. And it's not that one solution is going to come and fix everything. Right.

AB 349 is meant to start the discussion forward as far as local governments, nonprofits and jurisdictions within the state of California to negotiate with the Department of General Services for land in the state and facilities to start to bring forward. You heard from those that are running those facilities out in Metro that use state property for that.

Every jurisdiction that we represented as a county supervisor, we represent the 45th Assembly District, and I would venture to say in the district 50 also that it's a number one issue, number one issue in their jurisdictions. But yet what we need to do is come together as a community to validly look at the solutions that are being presented. It's no longer can we turn a blind aye to it. Again, those that are homeless that are out there, it's not us versus them.

They're family Members, they're community Members, and in many times they're our coworkers. So we have to be open to looking through some of these issues. I want to thank all the presenters who presented today and bringing light to these issues. And that term illegal renting has sparked an interest. So we'll be talking a little bit more about that. Thank you for your presentation. We will move forward now to public comment. To those that want to make public comment, we'll keep it short to two minutes.

I'm not sure what Mic is set up. I believe that one there. If there is, please make your way to the mic. State your name and your comment. We're in opposition support.

Hello. Okay, this is Kelly Guillory from the Department of Rehabilitation again, and just listening to some of the information that was given by our last panel you guys had mentioned about where there's $2,500 that is given or $2,000 that is given to youth and then it's like $1,500 is dedicated to basically their basic needs. Well, Department of Rehabilitation has partnered with Tay and a lot of other organizations. We actually serve youth and provide tuition assistance.

We have a lot of resources that are available to the youth in different case types. So even when I met with the Youth Advisory Board last week, the latter part of last week, we had talked about creating positions through paid work experiences to give students an opportunity to earn money to help decrease homelessness and things that they need, being able to get access to food and clothing or whatever.

So basically what it is is just making that comment that those supports are there, but it's just really important that we have that streamlined process. Well, it would be that streamlined process where they can get access to the resources that they need. And one thing that we've done is we've created this program where it's expedited eligibility. Before, it would take about 160 days for youth or anybody to get eligible for our services. Now they can come in and be eligible all within two days for services.

So this has really decreased that gap in service because we know if we're not addressing the issue as quickly as it can be, we lose them. So now what we've done is we've come in and we have been able to take an opportunity to provide services at a quicker pace. And this is really something that I wanted to mention because these resources are here. There's a lot of not just dor, but a lot of other state agencies and public agencies that the resources are available.

But we need to have some type of platform or some type of information board or whatever it may be, even if it's on a billboard in the community or some kind of way that this information is getting out to our youth. We're constantly being told that we're the best kept secret because a lot of parents, a lot of youth, a lot of individuals don't know about the resources and supports that we can provide to people. And it's not an income based program.

We do have those discussions, but these resources are available, but it's just something that needs to be, I think, broadcasted to the masses so that they know they're not out there by themselves. We're here as a state agency to provide that support and resources. So that's the only comment that I wanted to make.

Thank you for that. And if you could share that information with our staff, both of our staffs, we could probably get that out within our social media platforms. Any other public commentary?

I think she's looking up her notes on her cell phone to make her comments. That's right. I want to learn from you, although my team tries to teach me, but.

Go ahead, state your name.

Hello. My name is Keith Benitez. But my name is Keith Benitez. I wanted to tell a short summary of my experiences homelessness from the ages of four to twelve years old. I was in between homes in a crowded two bedroom house with twelve people under one roof. It was fine the majority of the time, but one summer we ended up losing our rent and we ended up on the streets. This was in LA County.

And one of the big things that has impacted me since my homelessness back then was it triggered a lot of trauma that led to years and years of unhealthy relationships with food and many years of eating disorders and treatment. To this day I still struggle with fear that I'm not going to have money for food, that I'm going to starve because a lot of time during the time in those hotels and between houses in our van, I lived off of basically scrambled eggs.

And to this day I can't eat them because it basically makes me sick. And my little brother here has his own public comment on his experience. I remember it more than he does because I was twelve, he was six, and if he wants to come up and say what he experienced, I'll be right here next to him.

Thank you for sharing my name. Can you hear me? My name is Ulissa's Benitez. Kind of same story, my perspective. Well, like they said, I was six. I remember it. We were moving from LA to Hemet, but we didn't have the rent from Hemet, like the renting house from Hemet yet. So we were like bouncing around hotels to hotels for like six months is what I thought.

But they had a lot of smoke and with me, my lungs were underdeveloped when I was born, so I needed a machine called a nebulizer. If you guys don't know. It's kind of like inhaler but stronger to help develop your lungs. But because of the smoke it actually delayed the process of my lungs being developed. So during winters they would suck and I would get sick a lot and basically I would have these bad coughing fits. Right. Well, I didn't know what was going on.

Everybody else did because I was young. I just thought I just kept getting sick a lot. Right. And because of that I still kind of need my machines when it gets cold. But I was scared I was actually going to run out. Of the medicine for the nebulizer since we didn't have a lot of money because a lot of it was going straight to the house. We also didn't have insurance for a few years.

Oh, yeah, that too. Like, no insurance. So we had to pay everything out of pocket. So I was scared I wasn't going to have my medicine one day. You went over two minutes. Yeah.

Okay. That was our story with homelessness and why this is a big impact on us.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Any other public comment?

Good afternoon and thank you again for the Select Committee for having this very important discussion today. Thank you to the panelists. As you see, it takes a village to address these issues and especially the solutions. My name is Marisa Yeager. I'm associate vice President for government community relations with Cal State San Bernardino. We are here today to constantly be part of the conversation. What does that mean?

We are thankful for your colleague AB excuse me, Arumbala, as I'm a Member of Arumba, but recently authored a couple of years ago, AB 1326, which allowed or mandated the counties through the Department of Social Services to have a higher education liaison, I can speak to our relationship with San Bernardino County.

That relationship has been very impactful in dealing with the food and housing insecurity of our students through our Renaissance Scholars program that we offer to assist with the age out foster youth as they continue their education at our university. We're very engaged. So we are here as a partner to continue that wraparound support system that the youth have in the K Twelve system.

And we hope in any dialogue that there is a forward thinking approach for food and housing and secure as students move to either a four year. But more importantly, it also goes back to even the community college route. Current financial aid for community college students does not include housing. So we're trying to accomplish that with a CalFresh conversation and data sharing amongst institutions. But on the housing side, that dialogue is not in existence at this time.

So I just broached that to you in thinking of those ideas and we look forward to the continuing conversation. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Any other public comment?

All right, so I just wanted to build up on one of the last comments I made in the end. So once a youth and young adult is done at their housing program, then they have to find housing on their own. But in the current market right now, housing is not affordable. And so if there's anything I can ask from both of you and any legislators we need nonprofits to get more funding to implement CLTS Community Land Trusts.

We have NPHS Neighborhood Housing Partnership services that does CLTS the Inland Equity Community Land Trust that is out in Adelanto. They are going to build four properties on there and they're going to pull individuals that are on the Section Eight waiting list for the Housing Authority here to move out to Adelanto. And what's really cool about COTS is that the nonprofit will buy the land underneath the structure, and the individual who is going to be living in the structure will pay for the structure.

And so it keeps affordability sustainable and maintained so it's not affected by any market prices. And in addition to that, it would allow the wealth of the community to stay in the community instead of handing thousands of dollars to landlords every single month. And that's all I wanted to say. Thank you.

Thank you, Ruben. Any other public comment? Going once, going twice. Closing remarks. Assembly Member Rayes.

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. And thank you so much for putting together this informational hearing. It's so good to bring Sacramento to our community and have our community's input on such important issues on the Community Land trust. Ruben, I'm glad you brought that up. Just last week, I had the conversation with our community college leadership, and they are looking to also create a Community Land trust to provide housing. And I'm very excited about that possibility.

I wanted to share about AB 20217, my Cal home Bill that was signed into law by the Governor, which provides for additional funding. Habitat for Humanity was my partner in that to provide additional money to build housing. And I'm excited that we started out with 250,000,000. The Governor then took back 100 million, but we fought them as much as we could, and in the end, there was 300 million that was put into that particular pot of money.

And it's for first time homeowners, and it's money that goes to the community and community based organizations. Another is AB. Six, five, three my voucher program. We find that a lot of people have waited years and years to get their Section Eight voucher. When they finally get it, if they don't find the housing within a period of time, they're lost and they're going back to homelessness. And 86 Five Three will provide for a structure.

We're working with our Housing Authority here in San Bernardino and others to make sure that we don't lose those vouchers, that we don't have to send them back to the Feds, that we keep them here. We find other ways providing incentives, that was something that was discussed, providing incentives to landlords, because many landlords are not willing to provide housing under Section Eight.

So providing more incentives, providing additional assistance to the renters with more money for first and last, for security and what have you, providing also to do the upgrades that are necessary so that the housing will pass. The Bill now is in this. It's gone through our House with great support. It is now in the Senate. It's in the appropriations committee. We're waiting for it to come out of there and then onto the floor and over to the governor's office.

I really appreciate so many of the comments that were made. And I think one that is extremely important that the chair made and was repeated a number of times is one person at a time. We'd love to be able to build housing and take care of everybody, but eventually we'll be there. But one person at a time, one person that has helped that person can certainly help the next person. And if it's a family, then you're helping so many more.

Another is that nothing about us without us. If we're talking about youth, the youth have to be involved. The youth have to be on those boards. The youth's voice has to be there. And if it's homeless youth we're talking about, we have to have those lived experiences also for us to really understand what the issue is and then come to the solutions. If we're going to avoid chronic homelessness, we have to get the person when they are first homeless. And it's so important.

We have wonderful programs. We have dedicated people. San Bernardino County is so lucky. We have people that are absolutely dedicated to help those who are homeless get out of homelessness. But if the rest of the community doesn't know about you and how great you are and how you are one of the best kept secrets, then we're failing in some regard. So we need to find other ways to get the message out. Incentives, safe spaces, navigation centers.

And something that Ruben said, just because you don't see us, doesn't mean we don't exist. And it isn't just about the youth. When we're talking about homelessness, another group that is growing by leaps and bounds is our seniors. The number of seniors that are homeless now. And many of them are homeless for the very first time.

And we've got to catch them there too, just like we have to catch our youth the very first time they are homeless to get them back on their feet so that they can then figure out whether it's education, job training, whatever those services are, we already heard they're available. We've got to make sure that we make those connections, innovative solutions, very, very important. And I'll end with this.

I think that maybe one of if we're talking about funding, maybe some of that funding has to go to outreach, to educating. And maybe it is those big billboards to make sure everybody knows. I mean, we dial two, one, one, just like our chair said. We dial two, one one. We know that that's one place we can go. It's not enough. We've got to find more. And maybe it is the billboards. I don't know. Those are pretty expensive.

Maybe we can get an agreement with billboard companies. But I know that it does take a village. And I am so proud to be part of this village. Because when I hear the testimony from those providing the services, those who have lived experiences and those who want to help. I know we're on the right track. And together I know we're going to be able to, I'd like to be able to say we're going to end homelessness. We're certainly going to try to get to that point.

So Eunice, thank you for telling us that we're going to end homelessness. Thank you all so much for being here. And thank you Mr. Chair, for putting this informational hearing together.

Thank you Mr. Member Rayes. And thank you to every panelist that spoke here today, bringing much needed education not only to ourselves, but those that are watching. And it's recorded, so it will be played again. But we also have to remember that the solution lies within the peer to peer discussions. That when it comes from there, that would give us direction on where to go to create the outwork, the networking that's there.

We heard that if we provided transportation, there could be more voices being addressed here today. So let's make sure that that voice isn't being counted out of the equation. And we'll continue to work on pieces of legislation, legislations that deal with tiny homes, deals with psychiatric residential treatment centers, to get long term, long term solutions, not just quick terms. And being able to hear about the counseling, counseling within the schools itself, k through twelve, but also with the homeless advocates.

And you have Cal State University of San Bernardino here that's hearing all these things too, that will show that and testify that there is homeless advocates on campus that will reach out to those that are there. And again, this isn't a lot of times, and even on the county Board of Supervisors, every time we would bring up the topic, homeless, homeless youth, people build these stereotypes.

We have to get rid of the stereotypes because it truly is us as a community now dealing with homeless, that it is our family Members that's close to home. It's our community. And many times it's our coworkers. When you look at that statistics, one out of ten is suffering from homelessness. Now look at the community as a whole. Not everybody that we run into is housed there's. Those that are out there barely trying to make it.

So we'll continue to have these meetings and take away ideas as pieces of legislation and funding for that. But I would encourage that that voice and that need in the community come directly from those that are engaged peer to peer and let that voice be heard like we heard today. I want to thank you all for attending. I want to thank all the panelists for being here. Certainly we're trying to address this issue a step at a time.

We're not going to be able to construct a building that's going to take all the homeless and put them in there. But what we want to do is call attention to the will of local leaders to let's work together to find solutions and let's work together step by step to make sure that we're addressing this as a community and bringing back the humanity equation back into our community. Thank you all for attending. This meeting is adjourned.