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Segment 1

All right, we are ready.
Thank you so much.
Today is Tuesday, July 29th, 2025, and I'm calling to order the special meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Clerk, can you please take the roll? Yes.
Council member Kesarwani? Here.
Taplin? Present.
Bartlett? Is currently absent.
Tregub? Present.
O'Keefe? Here.
Blackabay? Here.
Lunaparra? Here.
Humbert? Present.
And Mary Ishii? Here.
Okay, Quorum is present.
All right, thank you very much.
This is a special meeting, but we're going to move straight on to the consent calendar.
Is there any public comment on consent calendar and or information items only? And if so, please, oh yes, thank you.
If so, please come up to the podium here.
And I think because we, it looks like we only have two folks here, so you'll each have two minutes to speak.
Or you're going to speak together.
I'm going to speak for him.
You're going to speak for him.
Okay.
Sounds good.
My two minutes begins now.
Okay.
Greetings, Mayor and the Council.
My name is Kentrell Killens.
I'm from Live Free.
We are the organization that is holding the contract for the gun violence program intervention program in the city of Berkeley.
We're here on behalf of a grant opportunity that we just acquired, and it has to get your approval for the funds to be released.
This is an additional services to expand our current team.
We currently have two and a half life coaches and outreach workers.
When I say two and a half, we have one certified.
We have two individuals who are 24 hours around the clock.
Todd is one of those individuals who at the moment of a crisis can get called to a scene at three in the morning, six in the morning, five in the afternoon.
So we want to expand that to give us the opportunity to add two more individuals to our additional team.
Definitely much needed work as we're addressing a lot of harm and trauma that individuals are facing.
I know that you all, as a city council, may understand that at this current moment, there has not been a gun violence homicide in the city of Berkeley.
But I want to lift up the fact that there are three individuals, four individuals from the time that we got this contract that are residents of Berkeley that lost their lives in the city of Oakland.
And so through these funds, we've been able to support families in extreme moments of trauma, helping individuals to get connected to other resources throughout the region, as well as do what we can to keep ongoing support.
And so it's imperative that this grant is adopted and allowed to be executed as it's stated.
But it's also important to keep the integrity of the work that's being built here.
I know this started off as a pilot, but we're definitely looking to continue the work that we're doing.
We're also seeking other funds, have a few applications in currently to expand those grant opportunities so that we can be more permanently around as a fixture within the city of Berkeley.
And we're looking forward to continuing this great work right on time.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Did you have a comment on consent calendar? Good afternoon, Council, Mayor, City Manager.
Sounds like a great program.
I guess this is in its second year.
Another million dollars, a million dollars, four hundred and fifty thousand of that.
Doesn't go to these guys.
It goes to two years salary of a police analyst.
Almost half.
Four hundred and fifty thousand dollars for two years.
That's a lot of coin.
Am I missing something? That's a fully loaded part time temporary.
I guess there's no pension.
Can we get a high school graduate, college graduate, grad student for about a buck and a quarter a year? That would be two fifty.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Recording stopped.
I see that.
Well, we're trying to stay connected.
That's that's good.
We have to.
I can do that.
H.T.M.I.
So I'm just going to switch that.
You know, I don't know.
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This is the captioner.
Can you reassign me as the captioner? I'm working on a program here.
I mean, I don't know.
I guess.
I guess.
OK, so when people are coming down here.
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Yeah, it's on.
This is a zoom test.
This is a zoom test for the boardroom.
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Segment 2

I do want to really thank our homeless response team for their dedication to this issue, and the leadership of Peter, but also Okea, and Sala and Josh who's at the table, as well as the partners that work with them throughout the city, and there's a team from Legal to Public Works, the Parks and Recreation, to the Police Department, to Health and Community Services, all work together to try to make this situation less bad than it is.
And in my estimation, the work that happens here in the city of Berkeley is amazing.
The work that the HRC team does with the other departments is something that I applaud and appreciate.
I know how hard that work is, and I think we're very lucky as a city to have this team that puts such an effort in this area.
So with that, we have our team presenter here to provide some more detail on our homeless system, and I'll turn it over to Assistant to the City Manager, Peter Render.
Thank you, City Manager.
I was connected to the webinar momentarily and then it dropped, so I'm not able to share slides.
If you think it's okay to maybe just save us another second and see if I can be next, we'll figure out a path forward.
Thank you.
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Okay.
I want to sincerely apologize for the delay there.
I think we have.
So thank you.
Thank you.
And I'm happy to be here to assess the work.
I'm going to go ahead and get started.
I'm going to go ahead and get started.
And I'm going to go ahead and introduce myself.
I'm going to introduce myself.
I'm going to introduce myself.
Our housing specialist from the services department.
Before we get started, which is that while our presentation today.
Is more of a discussion report.
That was submitted to you is more expansive.
As we wanted to take this opportunity to respond to a number of pieces of the referral.
From city council's main 20th, 2025.
We're thrilled to the city manager on homelessness.
And this includes an overview of our system performance with needs and gaps.
A geographic equity map of homeless services.
And a number of other things.
So, thank you for your time today.
Our presentation is not going to go into all of these areas.
So we'd be more than happy to answer any questions we have about any of that.
And with that, I will turn things over to Josh and the summary.
Sure.
Good afternoon.
Today's presentation.
We're going to focus on how Berkeley is inviting homelessness.
We're going to look at the impact of the pandemic and the infrastructure needed to respond.
As you all know.
Complex.
And shaped by broader forces, such as regional trends.
Racial and economic inequalities.
And under resource safety.
But through coordination and compassion.
Today's presentation will walk through what we've accomplished.
Where we're seeing impact.
And what's at risk.
So, what's the problem? Berkeley, like every city in the region, continues to face a deeply struggling reality.
Many of our neighbors live out of the woods, without shelter, safety, or stability.
And while we're making progress, the scale of the challenge remains staggering.
That said, we're seeing real shifts in the right direction.
In the most recent point in time, more people were sheltered in the woods than any previous year.
At the same time, we saw the least number of people standing on the streets.
And we know that we can tap our local investments into low barrier, non-committed, interim housing.
But the challenge remains larger than us.
Across the region, for every person who has a home in the woods, nearly three others fall into it for the first time.
And it's those who will continue to see people living on our streets.
And we know who's the most impacted.
Close to 60% of Berkeley's home population identified as black.
Despite black residents making up just 8% of the city overall.
We're also seeing rising rates of residents with acute disabilities.
And these residents often wait the longest for supportive housing, because of such limited accessible housing.
Serving these populations and maintaining the progress we've made requires a coordinated response across multiple systems to sustain local funding.
Otherwise, we risk undoing our funding gains.
The path forward requires a sustained regional response, but also local action.
As mentioned, Berkeley is facing a difficult cliff for several homeless resources.
On any of the programs responsible for raising gains, particularly around shelter and interim housing, are reliant on member state and federal funds.
If we don't identify new sources of support, Berkeley faces a very real risk of a rising force of many of the people currently sheltered at risk of returning to the streets.
If we don't seek additional funding, we're likely to be left behind.
The work ahead will require hard choices, but also creative solutions and contained investments in programs that have proven successful.
And yet, amidst all of these challenges, we've made remarkable progress.
Since 2019, Berkeley has seen a 45% drop in unsheltered homelessness.
That's not just the statistics, it's hundreds of people living on the streets.
We've seen significant investments and partnerships across departments and community providers.
If assigned funding is best in housing services that address the needs of our primarily homeless residents, and remove the barriers that cause their fine status, people will take those opportunities.
When we offer traditional shelters, we see an indefinite rate of around 40%.
When we offer low barrier, non-funded shelters, we see that indefinite rate jumping 80%.
We've seen significant progress in the area of housing.
We've seen significant progress in the area of priority housing.
We've seen significant progress in the area of community services.
We've seen significant progress in the area of community services.
Having a minor health crisis is without the same support.
Next slide.
Now, let's talk about our coordination efforts.
In 2021, the city council voted to adopt a three-pronged coordination strategy to create working class housing.
Next slide.
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On screen, please the links for the homes project is being displayed on the screen on screen.
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