I had an opportunity to listen to the 01/27/2021 Community and Economic Development committee meeting. Download agenda packet here:
The two action items on the agenda were (1) a proposal to pay an organization called ADVOCAP $278,909 of CARES Act grant fund money to “provide street outreach, information and referrals, completed assessments, intakes, short-term case management, and services to people living in unsheltered locations, such as cars, parks, abandoned buildings, and on the streets and that are not already working with a Fox Cities Housing Coalition members for services” and (2) a proposal to pay the Boys and Girls Club $148,007.08 of grant money provided by the WI Department of Administration to, like ADVOCAP, “provide street outreach, information and referrals, completed assessments, intakes, short-term case management, and services to people living in unsheltered locations, such as cars, parks, abandoned buildings, and on the streets and that are not already working with a Fox Cities Housing Coalition members for services.”
In all honesty, it is sometimes very difficult to figure out who is talking. Most of the people are off screen, either on Zoom or elsewhere in the room, and the people who are on screen have masks on, so I apologize in advance for not identifying most of the people.
Joe Mauthe from Pillars briefly spoke and said that Pillars was aware of this proposal and willing and eager to collaborate with this new street outreach case management system and make sure that it is additive and consistent with what Pillars is doing. They think it would be good for the community to have more resources of this kind.
Nobody spoke during the public comment period but one member of the public provided comment via email. In the interest of full disclosure, it was me. I expressed not opposition, per se, but two concerns (1) that the grant money was specifically supposed to go toward “activities that prevent, prepare for, or respond to COVID-19” but, after having read the full agenda packet, it wasn’t clear to me that the people targeted for these services (although undeniably in need of help of some sort) were in their situations because of coronavirus and it seemed like a bit of a stretch to use that money for this specific purpose and (2) the Memorandum of Understanding with ADVOCAP left open the possibility that Appleton’s partnership with them could be extended beyond the 2 years, but, if that was the case, Appleton taxpayers would potentially be on the hook for that future funding and it seemed like more rigorous discussion was warranted before entering into this.
At any rate, more rigorous discussion did take place. Per Director Harkness, everything that they’ve been doing for the last 10 months have been incremental steps to be able to respond to, prepare, and prevent Covid 19. Their perspective is that one of the most hard hit populations in our community have been homeless individuals. There is a broad base of stakeholders (the city of Appleton, Pillars, ADVOCAP, Boys and Girls Club, Salvation Army, Leaven, the Appleton Area School District, the Appleton Police Department, and the Appleton Public Library were all mentioned) to dialogue on a regular basis to determine how they can best support those who are most vulnerable in our population. Appleton has provided Covid grant funding to other organizations, all of which have their little niches. Boys and Girls Club work with under 25 year olds, often those who are aging out of foster care or families within the school district who are homeless; however, they don’t have the ability to place those families in a safe environment in a hotel. Pillars does an awesome job but, per Director Harkness, Appleton can’t only rely on Pillars, and they need to begin to expand that case management and street outreach program to be able to reach others. Collaboration is the key word here and one of the foundations for moving forward with this, and that is why they want to partner with ADVOCAP.
Alderperson Thao wanted to know if ADVOCAP is located in Appleton.
There were a couple different people who answered, some with ADVOCAP and some not. I apologize for not being able to identify them, but, as stated above, it’s hard sometimes to identify the people who are talking off screen at these meetings.
ADVOCAP is a community action agency that services Fond Du Lac, Winnebago, and Green Lake counties. They’ve also provided a number of services in Calumet County. They’ve had an office in the Neenah area for some time. They plan primarily to work from their Neenah office but have been offered the use of office space in the Appleton area by a sister Community Action Program.
CAP services out of Steven’s Point has provided services in our area and ADVOCAP has collaborated with CAP Services. CAP Services will stay in the loop now that ADVOCAP is being brought on, but they don’t provide the particular services to the homeless that ADVOCAP provides which is why Appleton feels ADVOCAP is a better partner.
Alderperson Thao expressed a desire that ADVOCAP have a satellite office in Appleton and thought that would be more convenient for the people in Appleton getting services.
The committee did make one minor change to the language of the agreement so that the part that read “The Street Outreach Case Manager position will report to management at ADVOCAP and the City of Appleton,” instead read, “The Street Outreach Case Manager position will report to management at ADVOCAP. ADVOCAP and the City of Appleton management will serve as an advisory board for this project.”
One committee member wanted to know who the Advisory Board would consist of.
[The answer seemed a little vague to me.] As mentioned earlier, collaboration is the key, and they want to bring that into the Advisory Board. They want to make sure that they are including all of the stakeholders in the discussion because they believe things will work best if all of the organizations doing case management and street outreach have the option to talk together.
Someone named Ryan said that they hold meetings on the 4th Tuesday of every month. All of the stakeholders mentioned (which presumably were all the organizations mentioned before–AASD, APD, Pillars, Boys and Girls Club, Salvation Army, Leaven, and the Appleton Public Library) sit down together and take a deep dive on their coordinated entry lists. Each organization gives updates as to trends they are seeing. They talk on a case by case basis regarding anyone who may be falling through the cracks. These meetings have started recently.
Director Harkness said that ADVOCAP will be providing frequent and consistent reports to the management staff within Appleton.
Someone named Monica wanted to return to Alderperson Thao’s concern about ADVOCAP’s physical address not being within Appleton. She stated that Appleton has offered ADVOCAP the use of office space at Appleton City Hall when appropriate. The police department has also offered as have the community partners that are already working in case management and street outreach. The intent is not to have this position sitting in an office in an adjacent community but to be here in the community locally here in Appleton reaching the people who need their services the most.
The chairperson wanted to confirm that the term for this outreach position ends January 31, 2023 and if they wanted to extend it they would have to find new funding.
Director Harkness said that it is absolutely not a given that this position will continue beyond the current fund. She did not know how the city of Appleton would be able to add this position to their table of organization. As with many grant funded positions, the city knows that they are dependent on those grant funds and when the grant runs out the position runs out.
The chairperson wondered if this position could be funded by regular Community Development Block Grant funds in the future.
Director Harkness confirmed it could.
Someone else stated that the city has also received federal Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) dollars which can also go toward street outreach and case management programing, so that would be another potential funding source. They’ve also received continuum of care money directly from the federal government and could look at allocations out of that pot of money as well. They would not be limited to CDBG money.
The chairperson thought the question about future funding of the position was warranted, but she didn’t see how the city could possibly fund such a position. It would have to be funded through grant money of some sort. What they were looking at during that meeting expires in 2 years.
It was also stated in the meeting that all of the people on the committee know how the city has worked to provide for those in need and in greatest need throughout the community. That may not be so obvious to the public unless they go back and look through past agendas. The spectrum of programs they have funded through CDGB have been wide and they’ve been addressing needs as they have come up in the community. They’ve funded bunk beds and a new case management position at Pillars. They’ve also given additional emergency assistance to Leaven and the Salvation Army. So there’s a wide spectrum of programs that they have funded over the last 10 months. The ADVOCAP position is part of a number of services that the city is really trying to ramp up
The committee voted to approve using CARES Act CDGB funds to pay ADVOCAP to provide case management and street outreach to the homeless population not currently receiving services from other organizations.
They then moved on to the proposal to pay the Boys and Girls Club to also provide case management and street outreach.
The funds they are planning to use were not funds the city sought out. The state of WI was given this money and they turned around and allocated it to eligible communities. Appleton didn’t request or pursue these funds.
Their proposed partnership with the Boys and Girls club would also last for 2 years and they would be providing similar services as ADVOCAP will be providing, but it would differ in that Boys and Girls Club will be serving a specific population–individuals 25 years or younger, or a household with at least one child at least either 6 months or 3 years old. The presenter completely blanked on the age requirements for the child and the other person who jumped in also didn’t remember the specifics of the eligibility requirements. They thought the Boys and Girls Club might be offering services to households with a school age child so that that child could continue attending school. The Boys and Girls Club will also work closely with Appleton’s motel voucher program and continue their collaboration with AASD in identifying homeless families and students experiencing homelessness.
The chairperson stated that the Boys and Girls Club is an awesome organization and she mentioned that she’s heard a lot of teachers say that they have students who are just disappearing. She hoped this program would be able to connect with those families.
The committee voted to approve this Memorandum of Understanding also.
There was also an information item regarding the Accessory Dwelling Units resolution. The resolution has been referred to city staff and it will take 6-8 weeks for them to come forward with the code amendments this resolution would entail. It will have to cross over to several departments.
There was also an update on the Housing Affordability Report and the Housing Fee Report. These reports were prepared to comply with state statutes. The initial Housing Affordability and Housing Fee reports were approved by the Common Council back in December of 2019. That was done to comply with legislation at the state level. This most recent report tried to capture a few areas of comparison between 2018 and 2019.
The number of platts and residential building permits approved were pretty similar between the two years. There was a marked drop in dwelling units approved from 173 in 2018 down to 112 in 2019, but 2018 may have been an outlier because one project, the Willows project in River Heath, accounted for 110 of those 2018 units.
Collected fees jumped from $86,000 in 2018 to over $108,000 in 2019. There was a sizeable increase of developers paying fees in lieu of land dedication in 2019. That doesn’t happen every year. When those are recorded, they are collected one time at the beginning of the platt.
Vacant parcels were also pretty steady across the two years. Appleton’s own GIS team did the mapping in 2019 to identify vacancy parcels. They identified a couple with churches that probably shouldn’t have been counted in 2018.
Per state statute, the Council only needed to act on this report the first time it was presented back in 2019. The expectation going forward iis that it will come around once a year as an information item.
[All in all, I was happy with the meeting. Mostly it was a relief to know that there’s very little chance that city property taxes will go to fund ADVOCAP in the future. I’m still dubious that this is the best use of funds. We’re in a situation here where a lot of people have been negatively affected but services aren’t necessarily available to people unless their circumstances are the worst of the worst. We see that same dynamic with the in-person services that AASD was offering when they were fully virtual–25% of high schoolers alone failed at least one class but only a small percentage of students who were struggling actually received in person services, and it’s not clear that the school system is even capable of getting its student body back on track. Likewise, helping outright homeless people is, in some respect, probably easier to coordinate than providing for people who are a little more well off but still struggling. We know how to help the homeless, and there are a lot of organizations out there offering those services. Perhaps not so easy to help, are the people who are the working class, lower-income, sometimes single parent families who are not on the verge of homelessness but, nonetheless, are still really struggling. AASD, as one of the stakeholders mentioned in this meeting, could have offered a huge amount of assistance to these families simply by holding in-person classes for all grades 5 days a week so that these households didn’t have to struggle to find and pay for child care. But AASD opted not to do that, and I haven’t really seen the city of Appleton stepping up to fill that gap either as AASD continues to not offer full 5 day a week in person instruction to all students.
Also, although I’m open to the idea, I’m not fully convinced that the city needs another homelessness program. It’s a worthy issue but we already have organizations and programs focused on this. The mayor was aware of only 2 people being discovered during the recent winter point-in-time count who were living unsheltered and those two individuals were connected to services from already existing community organizations. Will this be the best area to use this $278,000? At this point, the question is moot because on 02/03/2021 the Common Council voted to approve it. So we will get an opportunity to see the value they bring to Appleton over the next 2 years.]
View full meeting details here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=823475&GUID=1FAD1F2A-0403-4FC0-A00D-BFB5B0942C9C&Options=info|&Search=
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