To The Austin CITY COUNCIL Helping the Homeless with Hotels

I have been thinking about and planning how to help the homeless (or even people on the edge of getting back from homelessness) for many years. This has been a dream and vision I believe the Lord gave me years ago. It delights me to see cities starting to fulfill this by purchasing hotel properties to get our homeless off the streets and into housing. I am not sure if any overall strategy has been developed for what to do after that step is done - so I am adding my thoughts here - in hopes that they will be helpful.

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To The Austin City Council Helping the Homeless with Hotels
(& Other City Councils buying hotels for homeless),

We must do more than move our homeless population to housing locations. 

There must be an overall strategy and plan for discerning the status of each person/family and assisting them with their goals to either maintain or improve their economic status and quality of life. I highly discourage just moving people off the street and into these facilities without a strategic plan - at least an overall mission that each resident knows BEFORE they agree to stay in the hotels.

Here are SYSTEMS that need to be addressed:
This is just a quick list. If anyone reads this and is interested in me developing this more in detail, please let me know.

1. HOUSING: short term to long term solutions (ie. Rent is too high, Houses are too expensive, what is available for transitional housing, Section 8 Housing needs revamped with time limits and another system to move people along, Apartments need regulations for lower rent options, land needs purchased for lower income housing zones, etc)
   
   HOUSING FEES: from FREE to FEES - sliding scale as individuals achieve milestones
   
   
2. SUPPORT: Each person needs a CASE MANAGER/ SOCIAL WORKER / MENTOR / LIFE COACH; locating family members
   
   
3. THE CULTURE: There needs to be a safe, positive culture established at each location housing the homeless; a standard of excellence that is implemented and people are held accountable to; perhaps various locations will have different cultures depending on what the individuals have shown they are willing to do?
   
   
4. COMMUNITY SUPPORT & SYSTEMS need integrated (Food Pantries Clothing / Donations /  Church Programs)
   
   
5. JOBS: internal "employees" to make the hotels self-sufficient  - transitioning to external hourly - transitioning to salary positions (when able and desired); residents living their have a transition mapped out that leads them from 100% dependency to eventually 100% independent - but there are levels that make that transition possible as they wean off the dependency; jobs need to be sustainable
   
   
6. MEDICAL HELP: Physical & Mental Health issues need addressed
   
   
7. EDUCATION / SKILL TRAINING - library at each site, technology centers at each site, local trade schools integration, online degrees, on site services the residents can work doing for the other residents - restaurant, hair salon, etc.
   
   
8. TRANSPORTATION - on site as much as possible to start, walking /biking distance when possible, public/shared transportation, personal transportation
   
   
9. HEALTH / NUTRITION - physical and mental health needs addressed for each resident; a health-giving nutrition plan needs to be implemented at each location to break addiction cycles, help with mental processing and physical wellness, community wellness, etc. Residents can work together to share meal plans, groceries, etc.
   
   
10. SPIRITUAL / BELIEF SYSTEMS - critical to the mission, on site Bible teaching, Motivational Speaking, Life Coaching - through media, workbooks, books, group or individual coaching, etc.
    
    
11. LIFE SKILLS - goal setting, financial management, home-skills needed, personal skills needed, interpersonal skills, etc

Staff this project / program needs to have:

• at least 1 Director over each one of these system categories.
• a team of at least 1-3 people working on each one would be necessary for immediate and thorough implementation
• one of the team members, per category, at each site managing that system as their full-time job.
• Public Relations Manager - to help communicate between the project and the citizens protesting etc.

To minimize more out of pocket expense - while empowering the people living on site - perhaps there are people who are educated or skilled enough from within the "homeless" community, that they could take on some of the daily tasks involved in maintaining a system laid out for them. (I also suggest looking in these sectors to offer jobs to employ Social Workers, Teachers, Counselors, Nurses, Retired Homeschool Moms, etc.)

Which leads me to the idea that part of the "culture" at each location needs to be established that there is a give and take when living there. Whether it be through points, tokens, color coding charts, or whatnot... there needs to be a similar currency that models the real world economic system - even if it's on a sliding scale or virtual status at the beginning. (For example: start everyone on a point system that eventually transitions to real money - income and bills, etc. Contact me if you'd like copies of a system I have created that could help with this.)

There needs to be an intake process and maintained resident system. This should not be a free-for-all situation. I recommend something similar to an online Customer Management System I used years ago called SalesNet. It was an amazing program as I could customize what step people were on in my process. Based on that step's result, I could customize the next step they needed to do. It was a great way to automate what my team needed to do each day to keep people moving through the system. All of it could easily be seen on a color coded dashboard.  I highly recommend something like this is used and built out to pre-think how to manage each resident as if they are a customer of this program. (I feel equipped to help with thinking through the system "if and then" scenarios if needed.)

Each resident needs specific goals (like public school IEP's) and the "process" they are on is customized for each resident based on those goals. This allows for individual flexibility as well as consistency in working with each resident; it also provides accountability to the city and tax-payers as to the success of the program (specific to the individuals participating in it). This also provides concrete timeframes for the residents to be able to stay or leave to make room for other people who are in need of the services and willing to work the program as their transitional goal to be back to self-sufficiency.

(This cannot turn into another Section 8 type scenario where the hotels fill up and housing becomes limited for the next wave of crisis and people who are filling the streets.)

Building people up and strengthening their skills and abilities is a must in order for this to be a long term sustainable project and program. For the citizens to back this up and to even participate or fund it, the citizens must see good coming out of this project rather than evidences that confirm their already negative opinions and judgements of people who live on the streets.

We also must accept that not everyone who enters this program may have the ability or desire to ever become 100% independent in our society. These individuals need to be identified and there needs to be a system for handling these situations.  

However, we cannot let the knowledge that we may not be able to help everyone keep us from being able to help someone. 

I am not sure what the City Council has planned for the strategies that will be a part of this massive effort.

• Who will be in charge of the hotel properties moving forward?
• Who will monitor the intake and programs offered to the residents?
• Where will the residents go who do not want to be a part of the program?

I have seen this effort start to be done in Colorado, California, and now Texas. I think it's a great idea with great potential to solve a problem in our society that has been ignored for too long. 

What an awesome thing to know that I no longer have to just give to someone begging for food, I can help them find a local place like this where they could truly get systemic help for fixing whatever has been broken in their life to lead them to living on the streets. But, for that to happen - we must ensure these city owned hotels for homeless become life-giving systems and not just dumping grounds for people without a plan or who do not believe they too have purpose. These hotels would be like the hospital for broken lives being restored.

This is going to take more than one non-profit agency being in charge. It's going to take multiple agencies with accountabilities. It's going to take a master strategy and plan that the coalition of agencies work together to develop. It's going to take the community working together - the city, the businesses, the churches, the community organizations, the people. 

I applaud the cities that are taking action and I encourage them to be sure to not only pay for the facilities but to invest the funds into building the staff and support systems around these facilities to be able to turn these hotels not only into homes but support systems and springboards to a brighter future for so many - including our communities around the hotels. 

 We are blessed to be a blessing. May it be so.

♥Rachelle Suzanne

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