we have uh some important updates to provide for the last two years my colleagues on the Tulsa city council and I uh have been meeting regularly usually every single week uh as part of our housing homelessness and mental health task force to really uh reestablish and reinvent the way that the city government addresses homelessness housing and mental health in our community uh the reality is for decades in the past uh the city government was largely a pass through for federal dollars that would be allocated to Tulsa we would receive those funds and then we would disperse them to Local agencies and our job pretty much ended with that uh what we have seen in Tulsa over the last several years is that that approach is not enough anymore and I am so grateful that my colleagues on the city C Council uh have agreed to work with my Administration in looking at everything that we do as a city government and identifying how we can be most helpful uh to the local ecosystem that already exists and is working in these three areas uh before I get into more detail though I'd like to introduce uh my colleague the chair of the Tulsa city council jeie Q I would like to thank everyone for being here in attendance today tossa has been working diligently to add homeless in our community you've probably heard about all our most recent Homeless Point of time count and homeless as we know it is not going away and what does that mean to me is that what we can't take our foot that's why we can't take our foot off of the pedal we must continue to work and we continued to make strategy in uh strategic Investments to help tulson in need because the number could have been doubl what it is today first I want to recognize the members that are here and standing up with us today in addition to Mayor GT bham serving the task force is CA councelor Phil Laken Deputy Mayor cash car uh Mark Smith our new wonderful director from Housing Solutions um Zack toy cof uh James Wagner Travis Holz and there are several that aren't with us today Tom uh bolini uh Lori dector counselor Christa Patrick Michael junk and so many so many people that have been our advisors and the city staff that has worked on this so long all of the members of the mayor's Council 3H t Force We Stand working over a year focusing on housing homelessness and mental health needs in our city when we began this work our nation and our community just experienced a world in which a global pandemic had caused changes in how our service providers serve the homeless increase eviction we had in our city increased midal Health crisis and we just have worked so hard as a group and it's not an easy task that we have had to deal with the mission of this task force was to understand the needs of the community inre addressing homeless at the intersection of Housing and mental health to create strategy for the city to best utilize its policies and legislative powers public uh convening and education platforms Financial Resources in order to contribute to a brighter Community situation to do the work we spent countless hours learning from experts and the Tulsa Community we've learned our community strategies always in um we have talked about and learned about Community strategies already in place to address homeless and mental health we've discussed the roots of the homeless problem and when we talk with our city departments and over 500 outside entities including experts organizations hospitals business charitable foundation and service providers to learn what we were doing well and hear what they needed for the City of Tulsa to help them do better we've learned what we have identified the number of houses that we are needed but how do we fill that Gap that our hospitals and First Responders need our help to send the right resources mental health calls and service providers do not have proper resources for high medical need individuals that need these resources that our businesses are incredibly passionate but need our help to reduce the impact of homeless on their operations that our service providers and partners and employees need more resources and Central uh coordination to effectively serve our community and finally there are so many tulson who want to help but don't know who to call or how to help with the situation we've took all this information and discussed what the city as an or organization can do play a role in the most effective way possible before I introduce our next speaker I just want to thank everyone that's here and everyone in our city that has emailed us called us and participated in this program we cannot develop recommendations without you this is a team effort for the City of Tulsa with our mayor doing a great great job leading us we currently cannot achieve our goals we're incredibly grateful for our service providers city employees and charitable organizations who work daily on the homeless crisis here in Tulsa now I would like to turn this over to Mayor GT bam who will discuss the recommendations and more announcements today thank you very much counselor and I I really want to emphasize uh one our gratitude to everybody who served on the task force especially folks uh from outside City Hall who were taking time away from their jobs uh whether that's uh Mr stoof uh Mr bakini Mr junk uh Becky gleo from Housing Solutions uh so many folks served on this uh to help us as a city government better understand where we can be most helpful and as councelor Q mentioned we had over 50 different outside organizations that came to meet with us uh to help us understand how we could uh help them and how we as a city where we can fit in and be most effective um we have all everyone in Tulsa H has seen uh the impact of the growing number uh of homeless tulson in our community and I know that a lot of our fellow tulson are eager for Solutions so are we the challenge that we face as a city is that there is no city in America that has solved homelessness uh if there was we wouldn't have a task force we wouldn't be standing here right now we would have figured out how to rip off what they did and pay for it in Tulsa but the reality is when I go to convenings of Mayors from all around the country uh and even when I talk with Mayors in other countries this is the top thing that comes up every major city in America right now is trying to figure out how to address this issue and one of the challenges is there isn't a one-size fits-all solution uh each Community has unique needs and challenges and so the the task before us here in Tulsa is to identify what can we do here that may be a model for other cities uh that would want to learn from us uh and the best way for us to do that as my colleagues and I recognize was to partner with the experts who already know so much about the needs here in our city uh I think it's really important though that tulson know that we haven't just been sitting around studying this issue and planning uh there is a tremendous amount of work that the city government has taken on just in the last couple of years in this space uh in fact I don't know that most people are aware we already have over 50 different programs that the city of Tulsa has initiated to address homelessness in our community and that's just the city government alone that doesn't mention all of the different nonprofits and charitable organizations and other governmental entities that are working on this issue in our community but here at the City of Tulsa today we have over 50 different initiatives underway to address homelessness housing and mental health in our city uh I don't think a lot of people realize but I hope they will after today that in the last two years the city government has allocated over $125 million to housing homelessness and mental health again this does not include everything that everybody else in town is doing on this this is just what we as a city government have committed to this work I hope that most people after today will realize that we have served over 2600 individuals through our betterway diversion program that the city council and I initiated back in 2017 uh that goes around uh picks Folks up uh and offers them an honest day's work for an honest day's pay and gets them connected with social services that can help get them off of the street and back on their feet again today we have served in fact specifically 20 , 675 individuals through that one program that the city government funds alone last year alone the city government issued over 1,500 permits for new housing uh and we had a record number of Home starts in 2023 this is so important because our task force everybody that we met with when we asked them what is the you know what is needed to reduce the amount of homelessness in our community we always heard a lot of things well we need more housing and then we need this one other thing then the next group would come in and say we need more housing but we need B next group would come in and say we need more housing and we also need c pretty quick it didn't take a group of geniuses to realize that everybody that we were meeting with the common denominator was we need more housing and Tulsa that is one of the reasons we have been so aggressive as a city government making sure that our red tape is cut and that we have incentives in place to uh encourage more affordable housing development and again in 2023 a record number of Home starts here in the City of Tulsa just last week our Tulsa Financial Empowerment Center reached a historic Milestone when they announced that they had helped clients reduce their debt by over a million dollars this is a program that did not exist three years ago that we as a city initiated and brought here to provide consumer and credit counseling for tulson who need it um our community response team which we initiated in 2017 and responds to mental health service calls from 911 responded to nearly a thousand calls just last year alone uh through their work between and this is a collaboration between uh the police department and the Tulsa fire department they LED this community response team and Tulsa fire in just the last year initiated an alternative response team they responded in 2023 to over 2200 mental health related calls in 2023 helping triage 283 clients into services and helping get others on a path to permanent housing do you know that we've served nearly four thousand households since 2021 with emergency rental assistance uh that's one of the key things that we find uh that when people are facing the threat of eviction if we can come in with funds that help with emergency rental assistance keep them in their homes that keeps folks off of the street and it reduces the the tremendous inflow uh into into the work that our homeless service providers have to do if you prevent it's another thing we heard over and over again if you prevent homelessness before it happens it makes it a lot easier to address it for the folks who are out there already do you know that from last year to date we have collected over 342 tons of trash from abandoned encampments and rights of way here in the City of Tulsa 342 tons in just from last year until today and to put that in context that's over one and a half times the weight of the Statue of Liberty that we have collected in trash from homeless encampments here in the City of Tulsa so these are a lot of a lot of data points right there but I think it's really important for folks to understand the breadth of the work that we as a city government have taken on as the council and I have focused on Reinventing the city's approach to addressing housing homelessness and mental health so you know it's it's easy to understand why a lot of folks in Tulsa may not know about these things I just told you the reality is we here focus on this stuff all the time at City Hall but uh for our neighbors they're going about their lives going to work taking care of their families working in Civic organizations around town they may not know about all this and one of the challenges that we identified as a task force is that we need to have a central place where all the work that we're doing as a city is housed and focused so that the communication on this is clear to councelor Q's point when people want to know how they can engage with the city there's one spot one location one organization and so today we're launching and announcing the city's path toome initiative it's an initiative that does three main things first it gives tulson a comprehensive overview of all the programming and policy work that's in place at the city government level to further help our neighbors experiencing homelessness while supporting the tireless work of service providers here in our community number two path to home sets the stage for future recommendations and policy work in this space and there's more coming on that front number three path to home provides greater Clarity on how our fellow tulson can engage in the work that we're doing and get their questions answered around this work if folks want to learn more about what their Tulsa city government is doing to address housing homelessness and mental health through the path toome initiative they can visit city of tulsa.org paath toome as you may remember uh during my state of the city last year I announced nine recommendations uh coming out of our 3H task force and we've been working diligently with with service providers here in our community to meet uh those goals and the expectations that we as a community have to address these issues today with my colleagues from the task force standing with me I want to announce a total of 33 actions and four overarching goals to further our work the four goals uh from our recommendations that we will be focusing on as a city are one housing production and preservation and there are 12 different actions that follow that fall under that uh and in general what we're focusing on here is increasing housing choices and affordability across all income levels as counselor Q mentioned we now have the data thanks to our nonprofit Partners who conducted a study in the last year that show us what the need is for housing production and we as a city government are very much focused on doing our part in partnership with the private sector to help address those uh as an example there's the Tulsa housing strategy that we uh will be announcing here in the next couple of weeks uh that was developed as kind of the followup to that study that was just done the second overarching goal that we have is Outreach and early intervention we want to provide immediate programming and assistance for those who are experiencing homelessness in our Community uh we are focused right now on getting a low barrier shelter open the first one we have have had in Tulsa uh and I'm very grateful uh to City Lights one of the leading service providers in our community who has agreed to operate that low barrier shelter with uh the goal that we have of getting open and running by the end of the year our third overarching goal is to leverage and align funding uh we want to adequately fund and prioritize resources that are needed to help address Community needs the reality is we have access to a lot of federal funds that are out there that come in through Community Development block grant funds through the American Rescue plan act and through our own City budget but we also know there are a lot of other organizations around town that can access funding we also thanks to the voters just approved the largest allocation for housing funding in the history of the City of Tulsa through the passage of improve our Tulsa last August we want to make sure that every dime of what I just talked about is allocated to address these issues maximizing the value of that dime in partnership with other organizations and our fourth overarching goal is community standards and resources we want to enhance Community standards and coordination between City departments and service providers it's very important and I I discussed right here at this very table yesterday morning with every single department head at the city of t Tulsa there is no department at the City of Tulsa that doesn't play a part in the work that we're talking about today everybody has a part to play in this in one way or another and it's important that all of that work is coordinated I know that's the expectation the council and I have for our team here at the city and we're going to make sure that's what happens we have covered a lot today uh but I'm hopeful that what we discussed will Garner more clarity for our fellow tulson uh I don't want to steal counselor acces Thunder but I do want to again thank everyone who's had a help in guiding this work um the the hours that have been put in by so many people on this I think reflect the tremendous level of commitment that we have as a community to being a national leader and addressing these challenges um most importantly I want to thank the citizens of Tulsa for your continued support of this work uh everything that we're doing in talking about today it only happens because you have sent a message loud and clear that you want these issues addressed you've voted overwhelmingly for the funding that we need to address in particular on the housing side uh with a record level support uh and improve our Tulsa last year uh you are electing people uh in the mayor's office in the city council who take these issues seriously and work together collaboratively to address them uh and so I want to thank you for your continued focus on this and in helping our fellow tulson in need get off the street and get the help that they need again covered a lot everything that I just told you about you can also find in even more greater detail at cityoftulsa.org paath toome uh and we're not done like we're announcing we're conveying all of this work today because I think it's so important that tulson understand how much is underway right now but the council and I are continuing to look all around the country at Best Practices and what else we can be doing to make Tulsa the best at addressing these issues uh again I really want to thank all of you for your attention today uh we can open it up for questions here if you want Michelle we have MERS Department start we can answer a couple questions from here and then if you want to visit with any of these folks they all would be happy I'm sure to talk about this yes sir um one of the uh first pieces of the goals in the packet is U zoning um zoning questions um there's been some discussion with residents say for example in Highland Park when they were planning on having uh town homes that they got some push back from residents is there a thought or a plan on how to address res who want homelessness solved but are not necessarily too keen on having higher density housing maybe in their neighborhood absolutely and that I think is one of the most uh the things that came up again and again in our conversations is I think and I I I know this from my time on the council and I think my Count Council colleagues can attest to this a lot of the time uh investors who want to build and neighbors get unnecessarily pitted against one another and the reality is we need to do a better job as a city government of doing our leg work on the front end to collaboratively with neighborhood Leaders with City counselors and with developers to identify those areas of greatest opportunity for denser housing development and multif family housing rather than asking developers to just go out there and throw darts in the dark and hope that it works out uh one of our goals that our task force has is to develop that overall uh city-wide plan that targets specific areas where developers know if I want to invest I I I've got already the neighbors saying that this is a good spot the council has agreed this is a good spot and that gives me then greater assurance that I can invest my money in this process and it's not going to be wasted and we think that is one of the key things we've got to have in place to incentivize greater development when I talk about incentives for development it's not just about tax breaks and stuff like that it's about greater Clarity for those who want to invest enfor well Emory I think you just summarized right there in 30 seconds basically the dilemma and the Nuance that we've been grappling with every step of the way through the task force um the the reality is none of us want to see homelessness nobody wants to see it uh we want everybody in Tulsa to have a home uh that they can go to and be safe uh and have great mental health uh and the challenge for us is that we see an increasing number of our neighbors who don't have those things and so we can't as a city government solve everything by ourselves uh we are dealing with the repercussions of really Decades of decisions that have led to an ever increasing number of homeless tulson or tulson suffering Mental Health crisis uh and we can't solve all of those things on our own but we can play a part in the broader effort to address those we're so fortunate here in Tulsa that we have a lot of expertise uh in the nonprofit space in particular uh around those issues but they what we found was there's more that we can be doing as a city government to help uh um for our fellow tulson who are frustrated by the pace of change I just tell you we're frustrated too uh but all we can't control every factor out there that's causing homelessness but we can control what we as a city government do in response to that and what we can do is to test out every good idea that we come across that we can actually afford see what works and what works we double down on the funding for that and what doesn't we pull back and try something else and so when I say we've got 50 different initiatives you know hopefully 3 years from now we don't have 50 different initiatives hopefully three four years from now we've got 15 initiatives that are proven to deliver great results and we're funding those effectively but right now we have so many different things that we've got to try out and see what works here in Tulsa uh I think that if we were not taking the action that the council and I have taken over the last two years the problem would be EXP exponentially worse in Tulsa you see that in the numbers of folks that have been housed uh over the last couple years you see that in the numbers of people that have been helped through programs like the better way you see that in the dollars that we're allocating to these programs that help people in need uh but I would just say to those folks who are frustrated by the pace we will continue to do everything that we can uh and my I I'm confident that tulson when we pull together and we work hard on something and we bring the Ingenuity of a city together behind an issue we may not get it fixed tomorrow but over time time is always on our side on these things I don't know if my colleagues have anything they want to add on that I just want to thank Travis too sure go ahead for all his hard work and see if he has he has been the man that has came with a lot of answers to us and I just want to give him a special recognition because this is a hard these are hard questions and you've helped us with it so thank you so much Travis Hol our housing policy director who we brought in to solve homelessness intr it's the hardest job in the building any last questions regarding the community standard section as well in terms of the the right of way ordinances how are you going to uh enforce that while not say just for a lack of a better term kicking the hand down the road kicking people out of certain places in the city without then intervening and and actually giving them the support that they need is that going to just to make sure that one point doesn't Clash over the other in this plan well and I think this kind of speaks to Emory's question which I forgot to get to uh because I just got so wound up on it uh but we I in in my experience Tulsa is a remarkably compassionate City but it's also a city with standards uh we do not expect to be a city with tent cities on the sidewalks when we have a beds available in shelters uh and so you have to have standards as a community this is not a city where anything goes uh we will provide the resources and work with agencies to provide the help that people who want help uh need so they can get it but we're also we have a responsibility to our fellow tulson to hold standards for how our city is treated uh and when you have uh whether that's uh camping on rights of way which by the way violates uh all sorts of Americans with Disabilities Act requirements that we spend the citizens of Tulsa spend tens of millions of dollars in every Capital program that we do to to stay in compliance with uh you have we have a responsibility to regulate that and keep those rights of way clear uh when you have as I mentioned one and a half statues of Liberty of trash and debris left in our city that the taxpayers are paying to clean up we have a responsibility to hold people accountable for that and so there has to be that balance of making sure and by the way I I want to give my colleagues on the council a tremendous amount of credit for this because what they recognize is we have to have these standards and hold people accountable if they're breaking our local laws but also if they are experiencing homelessness or a mental health crisis we're going to make sure that they have alternative sentencing and a social a social services docket through our Municipal Court accessible to give them the help that they need and make sure that we're solving the underlying problem uh rather than just putting somebody in jail and so that I think is the other key thing that I hope the citizens of Tulsa realize is that when our men and women in the Tulsa Police Department if it comes to the point where they have to arrest someone or sight someone there are a variety of options for folks who need help through our municiple courts if they want to access it and ultimately that's a a matter of individual choice voice that's all we have for today thanks everyone thank you all very much
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