Thread by @shayshinecastle

We've still got one more item: A nod of 5 (informal vote) on safe outdoor spaces

Council is confused (and so am I) about whether it's directing staff to actually DO one, or just to keep exploring the potential.

Friend clears things up: Let's propose a pilot for a 25-person sanctioned encampment, as bare bones as it can be done (but with 24/7 staff and services). To be paid for with $$ not going to the day center that is not happening this year.

We can probably save people from being harmed and possibly even dying, since the shelter is likely to keep being over-capacity, Friend says.

Benjamin: Mobile bathrooms, outdoor/indoor cooking, portable showers — all of this you can buy. We can do this with the $800K we are not using for the day center. Let's model it after Santa Cruz

"We don't need to Boulder-ize this and overthink it."

"Housing solves homelessness," Benjamin says. Sheltering solves camping in our public spaces.

Let's model it after what Santa Cruz is doing (with adjustments for cold weather) Benjamin says. It's having tremendous success.

Winer: How can it possibly cost $800K? If we said look into it and then it cost $1.5M, can I then say no, or am I promised to say yes to this thing?

Brockett: Council always has discretion to say no.

Friend: We asked for scoping in this in Febuary or March. Staff said they were already looking at sites. I would hope it could come back on a pretty tight turnaround.

Yates: If we're using $$ we set aside but didn't use for the day shelter, at some point that would run out. Will we close the encampment when it does?

Friend: "I'm calling it a pilot."

Yates: What's the metric for success? Usually with pilots we have those.

(Not with the encampment cleanups. We started out saying success would be a reduction in encampments. Once that didn't happen, they shifted the metrics to the amount of trash they clean up.)

But anyway, Friend says: Quicker and better outcomes than folks have with unsanctioned camping.

Folkerts, Speer want sanctioned parking to be included.

Speer: I'll support this, but "I feel like it's also a little bit futile." We'll find out it costs a lot of $$, we have a constrained budget. We'll be in the same place.

NRV: "What helps with exits is shelter + services. That's the magic formula." The services may dictate cost.

Nod of more than 5 to move forward, including Winer.
Also Friend, Brockett, Speer, Folkerts, Benjamin

Brockett: I've been interested in moving this forward for a long time.

@threadreaderapp please unroll. Thanks!