May 20, 2025, at 1:00 PM
Present:
D. Ferreira, H. McAlister, P. Cuddy, J. Pribil, S. Trosow
Also Present:
S. Stevenson, E. Bennett, Acting Deputy Fire Chief G. Bridge, M. Butlin, C. Cooper, K. Dickins, D. Escobar, M. Feldberg, Fire Chief L. Hamer, A. Hovius, J. Ireland, O. Katolyk, S. Mathers, K. Scherr, E. Skalski, C. Smith, L. Switzer, J. Bunn
Remote Attendance:
E. Peloza, S. Hillier, S. Datars Bere, L. Hancock, E. Hunt
The meeting was called to order at 1:01 PM.
1. Disclosures of Pecuniary Interest
That it BE NOTED that no pecuniary interests were disclosed.
2. Consent
Moved by P. Cuddy
Seconded by H. McAlister
That Items 2.1 to 2.4 BE APPROVED.
Vote:
Yeas: H. McAlister P. Cuddy J. Pribil S. Trosow D. Ferreira
Motion Passed (5 to 0)
2.1 1st Report of the Environmental Stewardship and Action Community Advisory Committee
Moved by P. Cuddy
Seconded by H. McAlister
That the 1st Report of the Environmental Stewardship and Action Community Advisory Committee, from the meeting held on April 24, 2025, BE RECEIVED.
Motion Passed
2.2 1st Report of the Accessibility Community Advisory Committee
Moved by P. Cuddy
Seconded by H. McAlister
That the 1st Report of the Accessibility Community Advisory Committee, from the meeting held on May 8, 2025, BE RECEIVED.
Motion Passed
2.3 Single Source SS-2024-074 Bulk White Field Marking Paint
2025-05-20 SR SS 2024-074 - Bulk White Field Marking Paint
Moved by P. Cuddy
Seconded by H. McAlister
That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Environment and Infrastructure, the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report, dated May 20, 2025, related to Single Source SS-2024-074 Bulk White Field Marking Paint:
a) the proposal from Simplistic Lines, 5358 Line 34, Stratford, Ontario, for the provision of Bulk White Field Marking Paint for the City of London sports fields, at an estimated annual purchase value of $58,000 (HST excluded), for one (1) year period, with four (4) optional renewal years BE ACCEPTED; it being noted that this is a single source contract as per the Procurement of Goods and Services Policy Section 14.4 e), as the required goods and/or services are being supplied by a particular supplier(s) having specialized knowledge, skills, expertise or experience in the provision of the service;
b) subject to approval of a) above, the Civic Administration BE AUTHORIZED to undertake all the administrative acts that are necessary in connection with this contract; and,
c) the approval and authorization provided for in a) and b) above, BE CONDITIONAL upon the Corporation entering into a formal contract or having a Purchase Order, or contract record relating to the subject matter of this approval. (2025-F17)
Motion Passed
2.4 London Fire Department Fire Master Plan Annual Update
2025-05-20 SR Fire Master Plan Action Plan Annual Update
Moved by P. Cuddy
Seconded by H. McAlister
That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Neighbourhood and Community-Wide Services, the staff report dated May 20, 2025 related to the London Fire Department Fire Master Plan Annual Update, BE RECEIVED. (2025-P16)
Motion Passed
3. Scheduled Items
None.
4. Items for Direction
4.1 Whole of Community System Response Overview
2025-05-20 Sub. Overview of Whole of Community Response - Councillor Stevenson
Moved by S. Trosow
Seconded by D. Ferreira
That the communication from Councillor S. Stevenson, dated May 12, 2025, with respect to the Whole of Community System Response Overview, BE RECEIVED and no further action be taken.
Vote:
Yeas: Nays: P. Cuddy H. McAlister S. Trosow J. Pribil D. Ferreira
Motion Passed (3 to 2)
Additional Votes:
Moved by J. Pribil
Seconded by H. McAlister
That pursuant to section 31.6 of the Council Procedure By-law, Councillor J. Pribil BE PERMITTED to speak an additional 1 minute with respect to this matter.
Vote:
Yeas: Nays: H. McAlister S. Trosow P. Cuddy J. Pribil D. Ferreira
Motion Passed (4 to 1)
4.2 (ADDED) Memo - Affordable and Supportive Housing Agreement Templates
2025-05-20 Memo Affordable and Supportive Housing Agreement Templates - Part 1
2025-05-20 Memo Affordable and Supportive Housing Agreement Templates - Part 2
2025-05-20 Memo Affordable and Supportive Housing Agreement Templates - Part 3
Moved by P. Cuddy
Seconded by S. Trosow
That the following actions be taken with respect to the memo, dated May 20, 2025, related to Affordable and Supportive Housing Agreement Templates:
a) the proposed by-law, as appended to the above-noted memo, BE INTRODUCED at Municipal Council to be held on June 3, 2025 to:
i) authorize and approve the template Contribution Agreement, as appended to the above-noted by-law;
ii) authorize the Deputy City Manager, Housing and Community Growth, or their written designate, to approve amendments to the Contribution Agreement with the exception of any amendments that would provide funding for highly supportive housing;
iii) authorize the Mayor and the City Clerk to execute Contribution Agreements approved pursuant to section 1 of the above-noted bylaw, as amended, pursuant to section 2 of the above-noted by-law with affordable housing project owners awarded funding through procurement processes;
iv) authorize the Deputy City Manager, Housing and Community Growth, or their written designate, to approve and execute amending agreements to Contribution Agreements executed pursuant to section 3 of the above-noted by-law; and,
v) authorize the Deputy City Manager, Housing and Community Growth, or their written designate, to approve and execute direct agreements between lenders required for affordable housing projects;
b) the financing for the awards BE APPROVED as set out in the Sources of Financing Report as appended to the above-noted memo; and,
c) the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, or their written designate, BE AUTHORIZED to approve amendments to the Sources of Financing for proponents who may increase the number of affordable units included within their project to a maximum of $45,000 per additional unit, subject to the confirmation of available funding. (2025-S11)
Vote:
Yeas: H. McAlister P. Cuddy J. Pribil S. Trosow D. Ferreira
Motion Passed (5 to 0)
4.3 (ADDED) RFP-2024-227 Approval of the Template Contribution Agreement for Highly Supportive Housing Projects at 248-256 Hill Street and 644-646 Huron Street
Moved by H. McAlister
Seconded by S. Trosow
That, on the recommendation of the Deputy City Manager, Housing and Community Growth the following actions be taken with respect to the staff report, dated May 20, 2025, related to RFP-2024-227 Approval of the Template Contribution Agreement for Highly Supportive Housing Projects at 248-256 Hill Street and 644-646 Huron Street:
a) a grant of $1,485,000, in the form of a forgivable loan, to the Canadian Mental Health Association Thames Valley Addiction & Mental Health Services for the development and operation of 33 highly supportive housing units at 248-256 Hill Street be AUTHORIZED AND APPROVED;
b) a grant of $3,690,000, in the form of a forgivable loan, to the Canadian Mental Health Association Thames Valley Addiction & Mental Health Services for the development and operation of 82 highly supportive housing units at 644-646 Huron Street BE AUTHORIZED AND APPROVED;
c) the proposed by-law, as appended to the above-noted staff report, BE INTRODUCED at Municipal Council on June 3, 2025 to:
i) authorize and approve the template Contribution Agreement, as appended to the above-noted by-law;
ii) authorize the Deputy City Manager, Housing and Community Growth, or their written designate, to approve amendments to the above-noted Contribution Agreement;
iii) authorize the Mayor and the City Clerk to execute Contribution Agreements approved under section 1 of this by-law as amended pursuant to section 2 of this by-law with eh Canadian Mental Health Association Thames Valley Addition & Mental Health Services for highly supportive housing projects at 644-646 Huron Street and 248-256 Hill Street; and,
iv) authorize the Deputy City Manager, Housing and Community Growth, or their written designate, to approve and execute amending agreements to Contribution Agreements executed pursuant to section 3 of this by-law;
d) the financing for the grants to the Canadian Mental Health Association BE APPROVED as set out in the Sources of Financing Report as appended to the above-noted staff report; and,
e) the Deputy City Manager, Finance Supports, or their written designate, BE AUTHORIZED to approve amendments to the Sources of Financing for proponents who may increase the number of highly supportive housing units included within their project to a maximum of $45,000 per additional unit, subject to the confirmation of available funding. (2025-S11)
Vote:
Yeas: H. McAlister P. Cuddy J. Pribil S. Trosow D. Ferreira
Motion Passed (5 to 0)
Additional Votes:
Moved by P. Cuddy
Seconded by S. Trosow
That the delegation request from D. Astolfi, as appended to the added agenda, BE APPROVED to be heard at this meeting.
Vote:
Yeas: H. McAlister P. Cuddy J. Pribil S. Trosow D. Ferreira
Motion Passed (5 to 0)
4.4 (ADDED) 2023-2024 Long-Term Care Home Service Accountability Agreement between The Corporation of the City of London (Dearness Home) and Ontario Health - Declaration of Compliance 2024
2025-05-20 SR Dearness Home Declaration of Compliance 2024 - Part 1
2025-05-20 SR Dearness Home Declaration of Compliance 2024 - Part 2
2025-05-20 SR Dearness Home Declaration of Compliance 2024 - Part 3
It being noted that the staff report, dated May 20, 2025, with respect to the 2023-2024 Long-Term Care Home Service Accountability Agreement between The Corporation of the City of London (Dearness Home) and Ontario Health - Declaration of Compliance 2024, was withdrawn from the agenda by the Civic Administration.
5. Deferred Matters/Additional Business
None.
6. Adjournment
Moved by S. Trosow
Seconded by P. Cuddy
That the meeting BE ADJOURNED.
Motion Passed
The meeting adjourned at 3:02 PM.
Full Transcript
Transcript provided by Lillian Skinner’s London Council Archive. Note: This is an automated speech-to-text transcript and may contain errors. Speaker names are not identified.
View full transcript (2 hours, 23 minutes)
[21:22] Okay everybody. Hello and welcome to the ninth meeting of the community and protective services committee. I will call this meeting to order like to welcome everybody in council chambers and online. Please check the city website for additional meeting details and information. City of London is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lina Peiwok, and Adawandred.
[22:46] We honor and respect the history, languages, and culture of the diverse indigenous people who call this territory home. The City of London is currently home to many First Nations, Métis and Inuit today as representatives of the people of the city of London. We are grateful to have the opportunity to work and live in this territory. The City of London is committed to making every effort to provide alternate formats and communication supports for meetings upon request to make a request specific to this meeting. Please contact CPSC at London.ca or dial 519-661-2489 extension-2425. I’d like to recognize members of the committee in council or in the chambers today to my right, Councillor Hadley McAllister, to my right as well, Councillor Peter Cuddy, other members of the committee, Councillors Jerry Perbal, and Councillors Sam Trusso. Visiting members in council chambers today, I have Councillor Susan Stevenson and online. I have Councillors Elizabeth Palosa and Councillor Steve Hillier. Okay, I’ll look to committee for any disclosures of interest. Okay, that moves us on to the consent items. I have four consents. I have no pull requests, so I’m just going to look to committee for a last call for any of these items to be pulled. None. Okay, looking for a motion to move items 2.1 through 2.4, moved by Councillor Cuddy, seconded by Councillor McAllister. Okay, looking for a speaker’s list, Councillor McAllister. Please go ahead. Thank you, and through the chair, let’s turn to the fire department on the spot, but you have a question for them, so I don’t know if you’ve got a shuffle chair for this. Okay, go ahead, Councillor, I didn’t count that towards your time. Okay, thank you, and through you, I appreciate all the work the fire department does. I did have a very specific question. I’m not sure if it’s kind of alluded to in the report, but I didn’t specifically see it called out, but I do have questions in terms of fire inspections in terms of our encampments. If we could have an update on that for the previous year and moving forward, what does that look like? Thank you, Councillor. I will go to to run a fire department. Please go ahead. Thank you, and through the chair, we continue to work closely with CIR on the encampment committee with regards to encampments and giving any assistance that we can. We’re continually working to update our strategies in the way that we’re we’re working with the encampments and following along as everybody else in the city seems to be. Chief Hamer, please go ahead, Councillor. Thank you, through you. I appreciate that. No, I was just wondering, perhaps, just as this is an opportunity to convey to the public in terms of the process. I’m wondering if the fire department can speak more in terms of is this something frequency-wise that you do regularly? Is this something on the behest of CIR just so if you can lay out in terms of what goes into actually doing the inspection of the encampments, if any information is provided to those residing there, just so they can know how this happens. Councillor, I’ll go to Chief Bridge. Through the chair, we regularly respond to encampment related fires. On a regular basis, we have a reporting process that goes to our internal team to make sure that those are responded to on a timely basis. So those continue to occur across the organization, continue to respond on a timely basis. Chief, Councillor, thank you, through you. I was just wondering more in terms of, you know, I understand the reactive side of this in terms of what the call is received, just more in terms of the proactive inspections that go on to ensure that fire safety is being exercised in the encampments. Thank you, Councillor. Thank you, and through the chair, from a proactive side, we do have inspectors that proactively go out to encampments and walk through, as well as being engaged with CIR whenever they go down as well to do walk-throughs. Thank you, Councillor. Okay, thank you, and through the chair. I appreciate the work the fire department does. Obviously, I just had some concerns in my area, so I just wanted to take this opportunity to, you know, get some more information in terms of the fire department’s role in this, and appreciate, you know, all the work that you guys do, so thank you. Thank you, Councillor. I have. Councillor Perbault, thanks. Please go ahead. Thank you, and through the chair. I do have some questions for police staff. It has through with the 2.4 on the consent, and thank you for all the work your and your team do, because again, if I look at the news, doesn’t matter if it’s printed online or TV news, there are a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of fires we have, so thank you for the entire team, the way it’s approached and addressed. I’m gonna have, I do have a few questions, because I think that I’m very curious about some of the answers, and I believe my colleagues as well, but the follow-up on the encampments. I did receive from individuals who are living there, that in the past, they did receive fire distinguishes, and I don’t know if it’s, if you can confirm that, or if it was done by London fire, or if it was through some other agencies, but if you have any information on this, either from us directly, or from someone else, if you can please confirm that, or let me know update on this. Through the chair, we’ve not provided fire extinguishers and encampments, so if they’ve been given some, it’s been through another agency.
[29:06] Thank you, Councillor. Would there ever be a consideration to do so, or are there actually more negatives than positives? Thank you. Through the chair, we’d have to take that back and look at the pros and cons of providing that to the encampments before we could give a full some answer. Thank you, Councillor. Thank you. I certainly don’t want to pass the motion, but I would love to hear if you can go back to it, and if you can provide an update, that would be great. I do have so, going back to the report that we received, I have few questions, and the first one I’m going to start with, we created a similar number of social media posts, and in the past, last year, it reached much higher, in 23, much higher number than in 24. Can you please explain it to me to reason for it? Thank you, Chief.
[29:58] Through the chair. In 2023, we found when things went viral, the uptick was much faster. In 2024, we didn’t find the same, so we’ve had approximately the same number of social media posts. We’re unsure whether that’s to do with the new social media landscape that we’re dealing with, and people moving to different platforms, or if people just aren’t sharing as much, but definitely the number of people that had eyes on it went down, because people aren’t sharing or retweeting, whatever the wording is on that, but we’re still investigating looking at other platforms, we’re just waiting for corporate direction on some of the new platforms that are coming out. Thank you, Councillor.
[30:41] Okay, thank you for that. The safety education that we provided year-on-year comparison, it’s 30,000 more, which is amazing. That’s great news, but I wanted to ask you, the biggest number is actually in the age group 5 to 14, which moved from roughly 1,000 to 20,000, and if you can explain that to reason for that, thank you, Councillor. Chief Ammer. Through the chair, one of the goals of the Fire Master Plan was to get fire suppression personnel and inspectors involved in some of our public education, so the large increase in that is to do with an amazing team effort from across the department, providing education to school-age children, which would fall in public schools between 5 and about 14, 13 to 14. Thank you, Councillor. Congratulations, and thank you for that, I think that’s a great initiative. Over the last years, we had about 20% residential fires that didn’t have working smoke alarms, 25 public fire safety education priorities, addressing this concern, but hopefully decrease these incidents actually increase the number of working fire detectors. Are there any specific initiatives to help this 20% to decrease to a lower number? Thank you, Councillor. Please go ahead. For the chair, we are looking at many different programs to try and counteract that. It’s frustrating for us to see that stat, as well as everybody else to see the stat, including the Ontario Fire Marshal. So we are looking at our after-the-fire program targets areas that have had a fire, so basically, suppression crews go out and target all around where the fire was to help people understand if there was working smoke alarms, if there wasn’t, what the impact was. We also have a fire alarm program that runs in the spring through the fall, and we’re looking at a new mapping software that allows us to ensure that we hit all areas within the city, within so many years, so it’ll be a cycle to go back to people. And as well, we’re really hoping with that increased number of fire and life safety education in schools that if those children can take those messages home as well, to their families that we might see a better statistic as we move forward. Thank you, Councillor.
[33:22] Thank you. Inter-report staff personnel development 24 new recruits. Those are firefighters or new positions or other, sorry, our other positions. Go ahead. Through the chair, the 24 new recruits are actually new suppression recruits, so they’re going on to the floor as we build our complement for station 15 opening and the retirements that we’ve seen. We’ve also had an additional eight employees start in the department but in other areas. Thank you, Councillor. Thank you for that. Implementation NG911, congratulations. We were again, I think fifth in the report states out of 100, which is fantastic. Any issues with that or everything is in place now? Thank you, Councillor. Through the chair, we’re not seeing any issues. There is a slight learning curve with all new technology in the 911 center, but we’re keeping an eye on that and we’re seeing some amazing things come out of the NG911 technology. Thank you, Councillor.
[34:28] Fantastic. Great to hear that. We are continuing to move forward in the building of the Future Protective Service Training Facility in partnership with London Police Services. Any update that we can receive? Please go ahead. During and technical committees are still meeting and working collaboratively towards the Protective Services Training Facility and I believe there will be an update to Council in upcoming months. Thank you. Go ahead, Councillor. Thank you for that. I have last two questions. Appendix A, last year we did receive the update and it was in percentile of completed. This year we have either completed or on or stating on time within the timeline. So I just wanted to think why there was a change in this reporting. Point one and point two, is this all the 10 year program or are there certain initiatives listed here that are less than 10 years? Thank you. Go ahead. Through the chair, when we started to put together the report for this year and Appendix A, it’s comprised of 22 action items behind that are greater than 100 goals involved in the background. So what we found is that the percentages, if goals have been added through the year, if we went to percentages it might be that last year it was at 75%, but this year could come in at 63%, depending on how many goals were added and it could be confusing. So to align better with the way that we report out on the City of London strategic plan, we changed it to the delayed on track or completed metric just to make it easier to understand. As far as the goals and the 10 years, there are some that may be completed early within the 10 year cycle, but there’s a commitment to continue to monitor those and goals may change behind those. So for instance, NG 9-1-1, although we went live, if phase two becomes available in the next few years, it will be added to that action and there’ll be more goals associated with that. Thank you. Go ahead, Councillor. Thank you for all the answers and thank you and your entire team for everything you do for our community. Thank you, Councillor. I have Councillor Trussell next. Please go ahead.
[36:43] Thank you very much and through the chair, I would like to follow up on two questions that Councillor Pribble asked. First one deals with the training center and I would be very interested in getting a fuller response or a timeline for a fuller response and what the status of the training session is and more particularly, when I look at the 2024 to 2027 multi-year budget, I see that there were large sums put aside for this project over all four years and I’d be interested in when we get the update and I know you can’t maybe do this now and I see that we don’t have finance here, but when we get the update, it would be very helpful to have some specific information about whether the funds that were allocated for 2020 for the first two years of the four-year budget, whether they were allocated or not and I also see that the amount balloons at the end and I guess my ultimate question and this is going to have to go to the budget committee so I’m not going to dwell on it here, but to what to what extent are there potential cost savings in deferring this project if it had if it really hasn’t been started. So I’m not going to develop this issue here but I want to I want to call it to your attention as a matter of concern and as something that should be of concern to the tax levy and also to the budget so I’d appreciate it if those issues could be addressed. I know we’re having a budget committee meeting on Thursday you probably wouldn’t be able to do it by then but I’d be very interested in finding out more information about the status of this very expensive project and you don’t even need to respond to that.
[38:48] What I would like a response for through the chair is this issue of fire alarms. I’m very concerned about the lack of compliance with this with this very important requirement particularly I mean I represent the New York campus neighborhood and I get a lot of calls and concerns about the property conditions in many of the the best term would be formally single single occupancy single family dwellings that have been converted to either to you know by absentee owners to large groups of people and I noticed through when I when I go through some of these units I’m often appalled at the conditions I see whereas where where different parts of the unit have been locked off from other units which I think creates a very very serious fire hazard and if there’s a smoke alarm in one part of the building it’s not necessarily there in the rest of the building. So my direct question is to what to what extent has the fire department been working with property standards code compliance by law enforcement on this on this very very important issue. Thank you counselor I will go to the chair. So we have a proactive and a reactive side to that so proactive we are working closely with building through the residential unit licensing inspections that we do and then from a reactive side of things we do have a complaint process where complaints come in and we are legislated to investigate those complaints within a period of time to go through because sometimes we do the proactive piece but by the time we get the complaint things have changed very much behind closed doors so then with the complaint process we’re able to go sorry we’re able to go back in and have a look. Thank you counselor. Thank thank thank you for that and I’m glad that you are working with code compliance. I’m not sure what the protocols are to responding to a complaint and I’m not going to go into detail there. Mr. Mathers knows that this is an item that I’ve been concerned about for a long for a long time. When we’re talking about this particular issue though we’re talking about a fire hazard not just for the occupants of that building who maybe they’re only there for eight months. I’m more worried about when you’re not getting complaints because if there’s a fire it’s going to have a it’s going to have a very detrimental effect not just on the residents in that building or maybe it’ll happen over the summer when they’re not even there it’s going to have a devastating effect on on the neighbors who don’t have the ability to go into the unit and see if there’s a proper compliance with this requirement. So I’m I just I just want to signal my grave concern about this issue I’ve signaled it on many occasions to code compliance and I’m signaling it to the fire department and I finally want to make the observation and this is not something that I can deal with today. Okay I’m concerned about the fact that fire and code compliance are in two totally different portfolios and would it make more sense if they both reported to the same deputy city manager for purposes of working together. That is a long-term discussion and this is something I just want to throw out there as long as I’m talking about this but thank you for hearing my concerns. Thank you Councillor. You ran out of time on that last one but there was a last minute question I think you had in there do you do you want me to go to staff for that? Okay I’ll go to okay we’ll take those comments for now and then we’ll we’ll discuss later. Thank you Councillor I have Councillor Cudi next. Go ahead. Thank you Chair and through you and I’d like to pick up on Councillor Troisau’s comments because like Councillor Troisau I’m I have a Fanshawe students in my ward and because Fanshawe has not invested in housing they are living in residences that have been converted you know many of them illegally and and I appreciate your comments that you work with by-law and enforcement and I see my good friend Mr. Kratolik here and welcome back but there’s not enough people in by-law there’s not enough staff in by-law to look after all of these people and in fact I’m out my ward this afternoon after this meeting to deal with a student issue and here we you know Fanshawe has been been down for a month but I’m still dealing with student issues out there and invariably they will continue through the summer and this isn’t a question for you this is just a comment that we have a major major problem not not only in Councillor Troisau’s work but but in my ward as well and it’s one that’s not improving and and I like Councillor Troisau I can’t tell you the number of homes that I’ve been through probably illegally because I as a Councillor not supposed to walk into a home and investigate I’m sure but I do because I’m concerned I’m really concerned for the safety just like Councillor Trois I’m concerned for the safety of the residents and many of them are not safe and they are fire hazards in my opinion I have no no no expertise in fire hazards and safety but I’m really concerned about this and so I hope at some stage we can we can deal with this at a greater level thank you Councillor any other Councillor Stevenson please go ahead thank you and thank you for all that you guys do to support our community I’m going to follow up on the encampment fire question and I had seen in the gazette in the fall of 2024 there was an article that talked about encampments and it said that they’d intentionally changed what the approach was to encampments and that previously firefighters were dispatched to homeless encampments would douse open fires but since implementing the new road map firefighters now provide instruction to those living in encampments on safe practices for using and extinguishing small fires for heating and for cooking and I just wondered knowing that we have our encampment outreach funded until the end of March which is going to go right through the winter I just wondered are there resources or guidelines available for people living in encampments and also for residents in the community so they know what is allowed what isn’t allowed and who and when to call thank you Councillor I will go to miss Smith thanks I’ll start and then I’ll turn it over to the chief so to be really clear and we did clarify after that news article came out that fires are not allowed it’s in our it’s in our by-law we do not allow them when if an individual sees a fire in a park which they do they are to call 911 immediately fire comes out they put out the fire they educate our system every time there’s a fire the captain or the chief or platoon chief reports it into their Ico their software we automatically copy CIR on all encampment fires explain where the location were if there were displaced people in the winter time firefighters carry a small kit with water socks and a hat and they then follow up with CIR and hopes that CIR then comes out follows up and helps with assist those displaced people if possible a lot of times - there is a large amount of debris so that’s why we informed CIR so that the appropriate response can happen the next day both with the individuals so their fires are not allowed I get a copy of every fire notification in encampment and they put out every single father whether it’s heating a cup of coffee some food it’s it’s in our by-law it is very clear it is not allowed and they do not allow fires to happen in public parks or even on private property unless it’s contained in your backyard you must own the property to be allowed to have an open-air burn thank you miss Smith councilor okay thank you I really appreciate that clarity because I did get a lot of questions there and that’s good to know thank you thank you looking to committee members members visiting members for any other comments or questions I see none okay let’s call the question closing the vote the motion carries five to zero okay that is it for consent items that leaves us to schedule items we have none next would be items for direction we have four items on that so for item 4.1 I I will look to committee for any potential motions also do you have a motion is there a motion that should be put on the floor first yeah that’s correct we can’t discuss any items without a motion on the floor is is is there something in I’ll have to I believe councilor Pribble might have the answer for you no is there is there is there before that amendment is there no there’s nothing this is just a letter from councilor Stevenson there is no motion in that letter I haven’t I’ve quickly briefly seen a motion earlier today but but I’m not sure what the final motion would be okay may I ask staff a question not if we don’t have a motion on the floor okay I’ll move that we note and receive the communication and take no further action at this time I’ll second that now may I ask staff a question just give us a second let’s get it up if you refresh your e-scribes it should be there and I can go to councilor trussle and I got councilor Pribble next I would I would just like to ask staff about this we did not have and thank you for reminding me we did not actually have a motion or a recommendation or a staff report on on this and before we debate the mo the merits of the motion that apparently is coming forward I’d like to ask staff if there was a reason why there wasn’t a correspondence when this agenda or is just something going to be coming from your office soon counselor just to clarify the question this was a letter from Councillor Stevenson staff may have some comments but they I know that they wouldn’t be able to fully answer but I will go to staff if they have anything that they would want to add through you chair I know we wouldn’t there’s no corresponding motion nor staff direction to provide correspondence this is a letter received as part of the agenda thank you councilor in which case I’m just going to underline that the motion that I just made I think is appropriate at this point and I would like to see I’d like to see these discussions initiated through a thoughtful staff report not not something that people just put on the floor at the last minute I’ll reserve the rest of my time to speak to the motion if necessary thank you thank you Councillor you want to use point of privilege I got one point of privilege privilege go ahead Councillor yeah there was a comment made that it wasn’t it wasn’t it was done at the last moment this was on the original agenda it wasn’t even on the added so and emotion was circulated and just want to make that point thank you point taken I won’t call any action for that Councillor dribble thank you yes and I would like to make the motion which was circulated earlier today and with four points for his points ABCD so point of order there is a motion on the floor yeah there is a point just a second let me just confer with clerk for its contrary nature okay Councillor just conferred with clerk this that is contrary to the motion on the floor so we would have to disperse of this motion before any potential motions come in the future that I’m still have you on my speakers list so if you have anything you’d like to add you can go ahead there’s really not much to add so we are going to deal with the first one and then if it’s if it doesn’t pass then I do have a motion of a certain points that I would like to proceed with questions to the staff okay I have Councillor McAllister next please go ahead Council thank you and through the chair so I’ll be honest I understand what’s going on right now and I don’t fully agree with it just because even if we disagree with a motion we don’t all sit on every committee I even have something tomorrow that I bring to Peck and I think every Councillor if they come to committee deserves the opportunity to speak to it whether we agree with it or not I think receiving it cuts off an avenue which I personally think is actually unfair I’ll weigh the merits of the previous the motion the alternative motion but I don’t think it’s it’s fair to just shut down discussion this way because we all sit on different committees I think we have to afford each other the opportunity to speak to it whether we agree with it or not thank you Councillor you can speak to the item right now as it is because it is in respect with respect to the letter so there’s no shutting down of conversation or discussion you can take your time you have an extra three minutes and forty seconds to discuss all you want to the specific item so you can you can speak that as well as members of committee and visiting members what else thank you and I appreciate Councillor McAllister saying that I mean I put this on the agenda I said that I would have a motion on the added with the long weekend I was unable to get a hold of Councillors to work this through to bring something forward to try to do the work ahead of time at committee it was circulated prior to this meeting with a with a someone willing to put forward the motion so you can say that you’re willing to engage in the debate but really you’ve got a Councillor that has brought forward a motion I don’t have a voting seat on this committee because I chose not to put myself in a position of being in a committee where I’d been allegations of bullying and harassment had been brought against me by a deputy city manager that’s actively involved in this committee that no it matters that what are you stopping me based on I would like to stick with the letter that was sent to committee so if you could just tighten it up and keep to the focus I will tighten it up but I’m going to put it clearly on the record now that the issues that were addressed in that complaint have not been dealt with and so I am here and I’m expecting no I get to say this that senior management will communicate with the chair and they will hold this meeting in such a way that the conduct is dealt with here in the meeting so I’m saying I’m going to talk about this thing and I’m asking questions of staff but I’m asking you guys to I’m saying that you’re running the meeting staff are able to say when they feel things are uncomfortable and I’m expecting the this committee to be run in a way that things are dealt with okay counselor right now I am operating this committee and running this committee to order you have all the chances that you can to speak to the item of the letter of what the motion pertains to I have already told you to keep your scope of comments to that letter you have gone beyond that scope I let you go beyond that scope but I’m going to stop it now if you can stick to the motion you have all the chances to speak you have you only you have three minutes and 25 seconds left so I can go back to you but please keep your comments to the letter and the motion okay so I brought this forward because in the last community and protective services agenda there was a report the Q1 2025 from whole of community response that said that the strategy and accountability table had endorsed three locations for highly supportive housing I immediately sent an email and asked if I could be made aware of what where those locations were and I was told that the organizations were gonna make announcements and we would find out before which we did we received an email 20 minutes before the public announcement so what it brings up is the question of the myself and I don’t believe any other members of Council are aware of who sits on that strategy and accountability table how many people are on it what represent what organizations are represented what the vote was and if there were any concerns expressed during that endorsement process so through you to staff I’d like to know that information if possible or if there is a way of getting that information thank you Councillor I can take that question I will go to Mr. Dickens please go ahead thank you chair and through you there’s not an organizational or governance chart however a list of participating organizations when we brought forward the the hubs plan and the housing implementation plan for sure I have to my memory fails me on whether it’s in the original collective impact model report that Council endorse but we did list all of the participating organizations and both of those reports we could absolutely circulate to Council a list of the organizations or we can post it on our get involved site a list of the organizations that participate I would refrain from listing individuals because individuals change or folks and representatives but yeah all of our plans a council has received an endorsed list all the participating organizations those are consistent with those that are participating at the sat table as well we also have two members of council that participate on the sat table which is the mayor and the budget chair as well as the deputy mayor acts as a backup so there are members of this council that are also participating thank you Mr. Dickens Council seats thank you so the vote for these the endorsement of these three locations was with the unanimous votes were there any concerns expressed as they reviewed those for endorsement thank you counselor Mr. Dickens thank you chair through you unlike council chambers these are not recorded votes this is not looking at getting a majority the model that council endorsed was a collective impact model it was outlined in that report how the consensus building decision-making model would operate so we work through that consensus building model it means that we receive decisions from time to time that we need to make in terms of perhaps revisions on the plan or people who might be stepping into some table co-chair roles or when community partners present projects that they would like to proceed with and they want to bring the community partners along what we do is we have a very robust and sometimes lengthy dialogue with those that are participating to talk about the projects or about the decision or you know we’ve had consensus building on how we recognize and acknowledge those that we’ve lost in our community and read out the names or don’t read out the names of those that have died we don’t record votes on that we try to build consensus so that process and specific to this question the same thing occurred really meaningful deep conversation discussions debate about the projects and as a group the group was able to gain consensus that we were comfortable with these projects moving forward thank you Mr. Dickens council thank you as was sort of brought up when this whole of community system response began all three levels were excluded from the first three strategy sessions and still again is there a reason why a group of sort of unidentified unelected people are able to have this conversation and council is not privy to any of that even through confidential thank you counselor we unanimously endorsed the whole of community response when it first came to council so that would probably be along the lines of the answer that you’re looking for but I will look to staff to see if they have anything to add again 3D chair we would be have as we have in previous plans we’ve listed all of the participating organizations we have had some of those organizations we’ve had some of those people come and present a council we will continue to have some of those co-chairs come and present a council I think we this has been a very transparent process we do have members of this council that are on a strategy and accountability table so I get that this whole of communities not elected but it was never intended to be an elected group of of people and I appreciate that these same questions were asked to the previous city manager and and these were decisions that council endorsed at that time we would look for different direction from council if there were to be changes made but as I already answered we’d be happy to to provide a list of participating organizations thank you Mr. Dickens before I go back to the councilor I got councilor Pribola and councilor Palosa next on the list so I will get to you councilor Stevenson maybe miss interest of the question I’m asking why we couldn’t have the the locations through confidential briefing why we were not told of the locations just that there’s three and just to confirm these are the locations for the Huron and Hill Street those are included there yeah and there’s one more with 90 units that we still don’t know where that is okay before I go to staff I would say those were led by CMHC and LCF and if there’s any changes to zoning or funding requirements from council that would come to us but I am going to go to Mr. Dickens if he has anything to add thank you chair and through you similar to this morning when a notice was provided to council moments before a press release was issued this is a consistent practice that happens across the all of the departments of my colleagues with these properties in particular the city does not own these properties until this point depending on future discussions up until that point we have not invested directly with any city funds the strategy and accountability table is a place where operational work or discussions and strategic discussions occur the proponents of these projects at the lifecycle that they were in brought it to this group as a sort of a checkpoint on proceeding when through conversations with our corporate communications team who work directly with the project proponents with CMHA and in well they were the ones that were able to identify the timing of their rollout so it went from our discussions at our strategy accountability table to notifying council before the release went public which is consistent with other departments at the city we feel thank you mr. Dickens and I would add I had that conversation with you today and prior and this informative information is available to us outside of committee so go ahead counselor you have one minute 38 second thing is I don’t even know what this whole community system response is right now council endorse this and set it up but I don’t look all saying that that we no longer wanted to play a role in this and that that’s what this was about the organizational governance chart I did see one in early 2023 when I attended one of the whole community system response was quite elaborate it had London City Council and London Community Foundation at the top it had all the tables and everything all underneath that was never shared with council I do think that we get to figure out where what does council’s role in this what what are we what are we passing maybe even to the next city council what is this organization what is their terms of reference what what are we asking them to do I had thought they were bringing recommendations back to council I didn’t realize that they were making recommendations I guess on our behalf or or that it was operational and I feel very uncomfortable receiving a report telling me that lots of people know about and endorse things that are happening in our community that matter to neighborhoods and their city counselor is not afforded even a confidential briefing to just let us know what’s out there and so this was my my point of bringing this forward was to say I’d like council to see that organizational chart I’d like us to know what the process is you know just let us know what’s the process for endorsing supportive housing and hubs going forward what’s the communication plan are we gonna know 20 minutes before the public that’s fine who else is gonna know and when and I think that’s fair that way we can say to the community look it’s not us we don’t have a say in the highly supportive housing we’ve delegated that authority so if you have any issues with the locations that are chosen this is you should speak to is there a question there no I have counselor Pribble next please go ahead thank you answer the chair and I do have some questions but I want to make a comment it’s too bad that this the motion didn’t go through because I really didn’t like the way this conversation went and I really think that if we put up the motion first that would be in much more proactive proactive atmosphere and making things actually better the reason why I actually supported I made some changes to these four points to us to have a discussion we did receive the original report which had 60+ pages but of course there’s there are certain things that over the years month certain things change and there are certain things that are forgotten or omitted but this was this was an opportunity for us to have a discussion which things are moving forward and which things that some of us would like to have it for example the current organizational chart and government structure as mentioned we do know some of us do know that there was one in place and I think it would be great beneficial if the counselors would get to see it not just for current but also for future counsel so if the things go if the things don’t go some positive not as well as expected so certain things can be compared to which way which direction we went and potentially what work what didn’t work and based on what and I think this was the value in this motion not being negative or to start the way we started today because I think that’s not the that’s not the reason and that shouldn’t be our goal our goal is to deliver the best possible result results for half a million of Londoners and I’m gonna go and even though the motion is not in front of us I will still ask kind of the questions what’s in front of us kind of now so I can address it but visit the organizational organizational charts and government structure is there one currently in place that could be shared with the counselors so let’s say if there are any future changes so current and future counsel can go back to it and potentially compare things how they worked and where there is a potential room for for improvement thank you counselor so the question is is there an organizational chart in place for the strategy and accountability table so I will go to Mr. Dickens thank you chair and through you sorry we were just trying to pull up previous council report that had the whole of community impact collective impact model outlined I believe it’s from July of 2023 and had to confirm we’re just trying to find it in real time that in that council report depicted I think was May sorry May 2023 it depicted I think what’s being referenced as a governance structure it is the integrated wheel that shows council and other orders of government and people with lived experience at the center of it know that getting head shakes that’s not it so we’ll have to dig out whatever this governance structure is that’s being referenced and and find that but this is there are co-chairs for each implementation table and there’s co-chairs that change of strategy and accountability table as far as future proofing for other councils and there’s I’m not sure what else there is other than our our existing framework and the plans that have been approved by council that we’re trying to fulfill the co-chairs will change out as they typically do as the mayor stated at the last council meeting and as we’ve discussed prior there is a full review going on of the strategy and accountability table and looking what that structure even look needs to look like perhaps changes in membership or change in size but we are we’re going through that work in real time so I wouldn’t be able to hand you a a structure now if it’s going to change next month of the month after we’re in the midst of that work as we indicated at the last council meeting last week thank you mr. Dickens just a follow-up for that one as was said at the last council meeting we’re expecting a mid-review revised structure by June 5th was it through you chair the next strategy and accountability table meeting is June 5th it would it would follow subsequent that okay thanks back to the councilor please go ahead thank you I’ll make a comment on that when organizations make certain decisions and they’re done in the past it could be let’s say issue could be within the visuals with the structure with the policies but I think it’s really great if all three are in front of the councilors either current ones or future ones so they can make accurate evaluation of the things that were done in the past if they were done great everything is working great fantastic amazing but if they are not so there are these three areas that can be addressed structure individuals and policies or the actions arising from these and I that’s where I see the value asking and again to be honest with you maybe it might not be the original one maybe the May one but again because again I don’t think between let’s say if there is one that you have staff has from May between January and May I don’t think there were so many actions arising from these tables so I think that any one of them would be really valuable to see where we were and where we are now so we can do the comparisons and we can really say this is the reasoning why we did what we did and evaluated you know the process of endorsements for future holiday supportive housing again this is an area that we addressed or more in detail last week specific ones for specific certain number of properties but again is there a could we have could this be done in the writing specific prob progress sorry specific process how this will be addressed question to the staff sort of chair thank you counselor gonna find rephrasing that question I won’t count it towards your time oh no the current process the current process what we have for the endorsements for future highly supportive housing and again it’s the current one so again if we move to another one so we know what we had before and we can see the flow from the past to the present to the future counselor is looking for the current process for endorsing highly supportive housing or hubs as it is at the moment with the health and homeless and summits and how it comes to council thank you chairing through you I think when it comes to seeking council direction or decision on projects so in the past we’ve issued an RFP and the results of that RFP will come back to council for council direction on awarding those contracts that will still be the case if we issue or go to award from a procurement process as it does in all departments it would come to council for decision that being said if the province of Ontario as they recently did opened up an application process for public entities to apply for a heart hub that does not require council endorsement or direction especially if the city is not the lead applicant so there are things that are going to happen in the community that may not come through city council until a decision or direction or support is required be a funding or zoning which are the applicable processes that are in place now thank you mr. Dickens go ahead thank you for the response and I just maybe I’m gonna speak on behalf of myself not the entire council but I just want to say that it’s not that personally I would be against these initiatives I think they are very positive initiatives but again the process and the information that brings me to the other point you know the communication plan for such projects and initiatives for not just the committee London Community Foundation but also for the council and the public I know mr. Dickens he just mentioned it now but are there other opportunities let’s say that again the council and also the public would be advised I don’t know the right words as soon as possible or earlier than currently in order I believe that the staff has answered this question to the best of their ability with respect to the the very confidential nature nature of some of the things that are in an RFP and other applications and I just I just think we’re just asking the same question here over and over again so I would quest that we I think I think we’re getting to the point where we’re badgering the staff and I just want to avoid that thank you thank you counselor I wouldn’t say we’re badgering the staff but that question has been answered already and just to confirm if it’s not a city led initiative and there’s no zoning changes and there’s no funding requests then any proponent as long as the zoning is is correct for their operations they wouldn’t necessarily need to go through the city so that is what mr. Dickens has just stated so I will take his previous answer to the new question for the council that that is what the answer is I can go back to council pribble you have 11 seconds left I will briefly ask mr. Dickens if there was anything else because again I’m not badgering there’s a totally really again in the interest of half a million of London so again my question is if there was anything else that he can think of right now any other initiative to make this and these this information provided earlier or not I don’t think it’s badgering he did tell me one answer what he had or he fully he answered it but again I have additional question follow up on that I’m no badgering at all thank you councillor I as the chair is ruling you were not badgering staff I will go to mr. Dickens for that last question that was your last question because you have ran out of your time but mr. Dickens please go ahead thank you chair there will be absolutely there’ll be instances where we’re coming to council for direction early on in projects or seeking direction in this instance again with the two properties in question CMHA the Canadian Mental Health Association these are properties that they own they came to the strategy and accountability table looking for a conversation with community partners and looking for that support and endorsement to proceed to the fund for change for some of their funding requests to start to match funds with other orders of government that they had applied for funding to there was no funding ask of that time from the city our the city’s involvement in this conversation we we’re there to help you know advance the priorities of council we don’t make decisions on behalf of council but we are participating members of SAT to help assist in advancing this work and council endorsed a highly supportive housing plan which was to create more units of highly supportive housing in this instance no there is not an ability for me to have brought this project forward to the public in advance or any sooner this was not our project it is CMHA’s project they indicated when they would like to communicate this in collaboration with the London Community Foundation which to this point is the funder it would not be in our power to then it announced that in advance publicly or asked for public input on what CMHA should do with the properties they own at that point unless it was going to the zoning process thank you mr. Dickens I got Councillor Palosa next please go ahead Councillor thank you mr. Chair and I’m just going to take the opportunity to thank staff and our community partners who continue to volunteer their time to help with the whole system community response I would say I’d find some of these comments from the writer the letter disheartening I was appointed by council as was the mayor to serve on this committee on behalf of council I am always available for questions and conversations behind the scenes and have not had a request from any member of council I’m wondering if perhaps the request for this organization chart is not necessarily the org chart per se but just rather the listing of what the tables are the implementation tables that would report into strategy and accountability table with a request of who’s currently their co-chairs as mr.
[1:21:20] Dickens said it’s everything’s under review if we as we transition into the next phases as other hubs are coming online and I know it’s it’s it’s difficult when the information and a decision-making on behalf of Londoners sometimes it’s actually not ours to make these are independent organizations seeking funding through provincial and federal means and if the city is not the issuers of an RFP we’re not going to get the information until as outlined sometimes it’s 20 minutes beforehand that a notice is going public and we get to know it always handy to reach out to those people who are the operators of those sites asking for a tour more information that could be shared with residents in the public but do find it troubling that I’ve heard comments that it’s questioning votes that it’s not public not democratic some of these decisions aren’t ours and are the ones that are ours have been in public reports and we have co-chairs that come to us to committee to present and answer questions so I am available to answer questions should anyone wish to approach me on council behind the scenes and the mayor and I we trade off who’s at the meetings I don’t believe the deputy mayor has been needed at any meeting yet as the mayor and I trying to take it as a priority to make sure that one of us are there thank you thank you councillor and I would say every time I contact councillor Palosa she answers and she gives me all the information she’s very helpful and very receptive to our calls I have myself on the speaker’s list next so I’d like to hand the chair over to councillor McAllister okay recognizing I have the chair just give me one moment to sit at my timer here whenever you already go ahead councillor for thank you councillor so a lot of this stuff that I wanted to point out has been stated but I just wanted to go over the letter and then the motion or the letter I should say in the points that were brought out in the letter so I guess the first part was and I know we spoke about this the current organizational chart or governance structure and there that does exist in some of our past reports with the circles with I guess the people who we serve are right at the center and it kind of builds up from that depending on how that organization of structure works whether it’s like a tree-like figure or not the circles themselves I would assume that we don’t necessarily need a motion from staff to get that revamped and I would also assume that because there is a mid-review for the revised structure coming in June we should wait for that before anything because if we were to pass any type of motion now for the governance chart that would be outdated within a couple of weeks so I just don’t want to have staff do that work and then have it outdated for the vote counts in the current flow that was spoken to as well and it was very clearly articulated by Mr. Dickens where if these are not city-led initiatives and the zoning doesn’t need to change and the funding is there on the third party who’s making this initiative there’s nothing that really can come to council for us to approve it would be akin if I wanted to open up a gym in an area that’s properly zoned and someone doesn’t like that if I don’t need to have a zoning change and I don’t need money from the city to help me open that gym then I can open the gym council would not be able to to stop that unless they were to change the zoning back so and it was also kind of very well articulated that was with the work that we see for those highly supportive housing units that that is a third party bringing in these initiatives funded by the London Community Foundation the strategy and accountability table endorsed it and they endorsed it because this is exactly what council is requesting with our strategic plan and with all the discussions that we made so the council or strategic strategic the county the strategy and accountability table are taking council direction and using that direction to bring forward the type of housing that we need for the communication plan I don’t I didn’t really hear this articulated too much but I would like to maybe go to maybe Mr. Dickens or whoever can answer this about the communication plan with respect to communications coming from a third party or communications coming from the city and I guess the disconnect that you might seem that has kind of been spoken to but just with the third party in the city led initiatives I know that we can’t be communicating someone else’s initiative so if I could just go to staff for I guess an explanation of that go ahead staff. Thank you Mr. Chair so certainly I can I can confirm that we’ve heard very clearly that there seems to be a disconnect between what some areas organizations in the community are doing in the communication coming forward to council what I can say is that we work very closely with our community partners we share and we advocate for sharing in advance as much as possible and we will continue to do that there is as Mr. Dickens said where the information is not ours or the event or the process is not ours we have a very limited capacity to be able to influence the timing of that communication and there are reasons that organizations would have behind their own timing decisions we will continue to advocate for advanced sharing wherever possible recognizing again that our influence may be maybe not exactly where council might want it to be on a particular project but we do do our best to make sure that we are sharing as much as possible in advance and sometimes sometimes that timing just is not exactly what council might hit might like and we have heard that and we’ll take that back in terms of trying to find perhaps some processes that might work to to share information even more proactively where we can again recognizing that as Mr. Dickens said it’s not always possible thank you and to that note we would need the third party proponent to be involved in that communication as well so the third party is unwilling to provide the information we can’t we can’t really provide information at that point so this is why we see kind of the gaps in communication that are being spoken to here is strictly just kind of how things are aligned right now when it comes to councils work and any type of third parties work that are involving in the same space going to the two councils the mayor and council proposal as I already said they are very receptive to any type of inquiries or information that you may need regarding meetings that are going on so I would leverage that to the full extent because they are very receptive as I said and I do think councilor Palosa for helping me on that and I guess the last point that I saw in the letter the potential of making a formal council committee to or a standing committee or council committee or advisor committee or whatever it was so that was spoken to pretty pretty at length here you know that would risk replacing that consensus driven cross-sector model with the political process and that was set up in a way to keep things at arm’s length to avoid delays and avoid partner trust so I would be to the to the note that I would like to keep that the way it is at the moment because there needs to be a level of insulation for these discussions to happen but in the end anything that comes to council for councils support or councils recommendation or council funding or zoning that comes to us and that’s where our places for the debate that’s where our places for the discussion we need to ensure that any type of initiative 30 seconds that come out of that come out with that kind of insular effect that come out with that arms length effect so we can have the full breadth and scope of what the potential is if we are to be putting in more of a deeper of a council control we would risk not being as effective so those would be my comments for now I know the vice chair said I’m probably out of time so I’ll end it there and I can take the chair back thank you vice chair for you right on time I’ve been at 34 seconds go ahead thank you okay looking to counselor Pribble you have zero time okay what do you got it actually because I do have one important question and I would like to ask for additional one minute one question that I would like to ask stuff any seconder seconded by Councillor McAllister okay and let’s put that to the vote what’s up so you can vote now posting the vote the motion carries four to one hey counselor you have one minute please go ahead thank you answer the chair to the staff important information for be the projected vision future outlook for the whole of community system response and I believe that there are certain things in works but can you please confirm that and if that it will be the case what is the timeline on these changes thank you counselor I believe timeline might be difficult to answer right now because it is in discussion but I will go to staff when they’re ready thank you and through you chair I can’t I can’t speak to the future vision or mission or anything like that at this point but we the work that is happening is happening as quickly as possible we expect it to wrap up over the summer and come back in September early fall key mr. Dickens counselor go ahead thank you very much no more questions thank you counselor okay some of you have some time left so I’m just going to canvas committee if you want to use that time on slur McAllister you have a bit of time left you have four minutes and 18 seconds go ahead thank you to the chair to use my time wisely so I’m still the mind that I think you know you should weigh the merits of each motion recognize it came late but I think we’ve all been in positions where sometimes things come up but to have the discussion at committee I think is the appropriate place I will say another thing that I find comes up a lot in these conversations I can sympathize with the counselor in terms of these topics I spend a great deal of my time with these issues more so than some of my colleagues so I understand that I can understand the frustration of sometimes not having information or having hunted down so I do get that I personally was willing to entertain the motion because there were elements that I do think weren’t discussion I was particularly interested in A and D I do think having that organizational chart governance structure updated regularly not necessarily what the names has been indicated because that does change depending on organization representative but I also do think D really deserves consideration and that we really do need to I think you know as we get closer to the next election in 2026 I think it’s important that we we leave this council term with an understanding of what the vision or the outlook looks like with the Hall of Community Response yes there’s been work done today but I do think having that handed off with a kind of fulsome review of what’s been done to date and where we see things going in the future I think is actually important I would say with B and C I think we did as Councilor Perbal said we had the discussion last week I think I’ll have a different mind when it comes to the highly supportive housing I view it more along the lines of almost health care and I think there are a lot of issues that don’t necessarily need the political way in but I do think especially with the organizations that are involved I’ve had a lot of discussions within well and CMHA in the past and I know what they can do and I know what they are doing and the projects they’re bringing forward how much effort they put into them but I can again understand where Councilors when things come up in their wards wanting to have that information so you know I’m understanding of where this comes from I think we should as I said weigh the motions as they come forward and I don’t necessarily agree with just brushing it aside not taking any action I think it’s just a procedural thing that I don’t necessarily agree with I understand where my colleagues are coming from but I do think as motions come forward from a colleagues who are not necessarily on every committee that we should weigh them separately and so I’ll leave it there I know we’ve had a lengthy discussion on this but I won’t support the receive but take no action just because I think we should have dealt with this motion separately thank you councillor looking for any other members visiting members it’s called the question posing the vote the motion carries to two okay mom the next item that is item 4.2 for the staff memo affordable supportive housing agreement templates and that item has the staff recommendation from the previous committee meeting so that would be the motion that would be with the updated verdict wording so I would look for a mover moved by councillor cutting seconded by councillor Truso okay looking for a speaker’s list there’s a committee visiting visiting members oh councillor trussle please go ahead to the chair with this being an appropriate time to hear from the representative who has requested delegation status who is in the audience that I believe is the next item 4.3 they are related but that specific delegation is for the next item thank you hey last call members visiting members counselor thank you my question is the ones that came to us this time came through an RFP process and I see that that appears to be in the contribution agreement so we’ll all affordable housing projects like this go through the RFP process and the highly supportive contribution agreements will not thank you councillor mr. Felbert thank you and through you mr. chair so these are when we we started working and implementing the road map this was the the tool that we were using at the time so we issued the RFPQ in late 2023 we had our second year of the RFPQ last fall as well and we’ll have our third year coming in this fall where we pre-qualify organizations that are interested in building affordable and supportive housing in within London so what you have here is the award of those RFPs in the contribution agreement for those RFPs that we issued last summer so there are there are four affordable housing projects now the two highly supportive housing projects which are identified in item 4.3 we also have a CIP under which that allows us to incubate and work with different proponents in the community and let them come to us with their ideas with their projects with the the housing that they want to build and we can work with them iteratively through the process before we ultimately determine if they are eligible for road map funding or highly supportive housing the other projects that we also have are the ones that we might be making shovel ready so that would be an example would be the Fairmont school where we’re going out and we’ll be developing a subdivision we also have the Duluth school which we are currently we’re actually servicing right now and that was the West L project that we brought forward in the past those will continue any of our shovel ready projects will continue to come through RFP and we will be bringing those reports back to council for consideration and award thank you mr. Felberg thank you and through the chair so but but the bulk of these that come through this with this affordable contribution agreement will not come before council again is that correct mr. Felberg through you mr.
[1:39:50] Chair any project that is led or started by an independent organization a third-party organization that comes through our CIP we currently have delegated authority to enter into those agreements it’s the most efficient way for us to do that and work iteratively with those proponents and those those property owners thank you thank you and through the chair can you just give me a brief outline of what that RFP was for that these five came back as approved thank you mr. Felberg through you mr. Chair so there were we had two RFPs we had 2024227 it’s outlined in the report from April 28th and that addresses the proponents with their own projects that they wanted to bring forward and then we had I believe it was two twenty four twenty twenty four two two five which was the office to residential project so that was our friends would sift in and homes unlimited who are converting 195 Dufferin so those two projects are identified in that April 28th report I might have the the exact numbers off but that’s generally it and those six projects are all identified in there thank you mr. Felberg those impressive calling me RFP numbers thank you and through the chair I just wanted to confirm also that these RFPs were done under strong mayor powers and the details were not included any staff report to counsel thank you and through you mr. Chair the RFPs went out under our procurement policy and were delivered appropriately under the rules that we we were required to follow the strong mayor awards came I believe in November for one or two of the projects and then the balance came in January in that strong mayor award the all the all the the award was doing was committing to the project so that the proponents could then take action and be able to demonstrate commitment from the city which allows them to go work more effectively with CMHC which is their primary financer and then in that both of those strong mayor awards did identify that we would be bringing back contribution agreements for the final endorsement and approval by council which is what you have before you today thank you counselor thank you and I wasn’t implying anything untoward it just that in the report that came to council it said that it was approved by council in January and when I wasn’t able to find it the response was that it was a strong mayor by law which didn’t have a staff report so I did find it in the details once I was given that information I guess my my confusion around this one with the affordable housing is prior to the decision made by council we were gonna have these affordable contribution agreements used for these two highly supportive contribution projects so I I’m just wondering as we go to approve this and I know it says that now they can’t be amended to be converted like to be highly supportive housing I’m just wondering why that was brought that way in the first place why did it come as an affordable housing contribution agreement amended to highly supportive rather than come directly through the ones previously approved thank you counselor I will go to mr. Felbert through you mr. Chair it really is a case of timing so the there was a commitment through this strategy and accountability table to consider these to to allow the agency to approach the fund for change for funding but that announcement for or the commitment from the fund for change didn’t actually occur until I believe it was last week or the week before which was after community and protective services so it was a case of us trying to be as efficient as possible in order to allow these projects to move forward the the CMHA project ultimately will come forward as that highly supportive housing project and through the amendment what it allows us to do is apply the rules or the the parameters and that level of service expected in that highly supportive housing plan allows us to attach it to the to the contribution agreement with CMHA and allows us to have a higher level of oversight on the project so ensuring that we have those 24/7 supports on site ensuring that there are tenancy supports to help the individuals in the property as well but most important and the thing for me that is most important is the community engagement component of the highly supportive housing plan it requires that the proponents actively build relationships within the community and the surrounding neighbors it also looks for regular communication with the neighbors to ensure that they are aware of what’s going on with the property they they have a closer connection to what the the project is going through and that there could also be shared spaces where residences and neighbors could participate and be part of the community and support that property if we didn’t have that attached to the properties we would be relying on things like municipal compliance with property standards or potentially some of our apartment blitzes that we do to go and ensure that there’s a level of quality within the buildings or potentially police actions so this actually by providing that capital funding attaching that highly supportive housing plan to the contribution agreement it puts the city with it gives us a little bit more say and how that building can be operated for the 25 years that we’re committed to thank you mr. Felberg counselor thank you and through you another question regarding the need to take names from our wait list so given the issues that we had at 122 baseline it was affordable housing coming off of our wait list and seeing that these projects are going to be going through without coming to council they’re going to be using the wait list can you just tell us again why how we what was learned and what has changed such that we will not have the issues that we were having within 122 baseline thank you counselor mr. Cooper thank you and through you mr.
[1:46:29] chair the the work we do with our non-profit providers housing providers and agencies like CMHA and our community first and foremost build on the trust and the work that we do at SAD and other committees and other meetings that we have with organizations so from there we can determine what the community and that building is to be to be to look like with what the agency is looking to offer and so in many cases eligibility around the tendency selection is where we start to understand what kind of population the agency is looking to support and serve at that at that space from there we take a blush of our wait list to see how many folks we have that might meet that initial eligible application and then work with the agency to provide various names so that they can complete the tendency selection process thank you counselor thank you so that is there any assurance that all it will all be low acuity names that are coming off this wait list for affordable housing and that it won’t be some with same mid-acuity where we’ve got agencies offering to do supports that this is going to be low acuity and supportive will be something different you mr.
[1:47:45] Cooper thank you and through you mr. Chair the acuity piece is really a point in time with an individual so we recognize that life circumstances for an individual can impact how they handle situations in the moment which can then impact their ability to live independently need supports function in society and so we work again with the organization to determine that list the individuals will get us the site tour they’ll see the location the agency will work within our community partners to understand the needs of that individual and the eligibility as I mentioned before will be determined if the agency is looking for low acuity individuals like a number of the programs that and projects we work with then yes the at that moment in time that’s what that individual will be identified at but there is that ongoing work with the agency as part of the tendency selection process to confirm and ensure that that individual meets the eligibility and is able to to live independently in that building thank you I’ll go to mr. Felberg to to add to you and just sorry through you mr. Chair and just to further add to that the St. Vincent DePaul project that we are looking to approve within this the agreement from April 28th they specifically were concerned that they wouldn’t have the ability to identify the community within their building and identify the tenants that they will be providing housing to so it’s absolutely one of those things that we’re gonna work with the community and that and that property owner to ensure that they have the right mix and the right community in order to have a successful building we are as interested in their success we want them to be viable we want them to have a building that can stand up the the test of time and be there for 25 plus years thank you counselor and I have counselor trust on some of us thank you and through you so I understand it’s a point in time but there is an assurance that this affordable housing contribution agreement is low acuity at the point that it that tenants are put into that building regardless of what the agency may want to do that if it’s done through affordable housing we’re talking about low acuity without supportive needs is that correct mr. Felberg thank you and through you mr. Chair again it’s working with the with the proponent the property owner on the community they they want to build it might be that there could be most of the building is low acuity but they may have some high acuity individuals if they feel they can provide the supports in that building it’s something that they get to decide as proponent we’re just providing a capital contribution we are not involved in their operations thank you and through you that just sounds awfully familiar to 122 baseline because we had agencies they’re advocating for tenants who our counselor I have a point of order council your microphone the question of what happened to one baseline I think needs a lot of discussion but I think what’s on the table right now is something very specific and I just think we should stick to it and it is very specific and I think these questions have been answered so I would just say let’s move on thank you counselor I’ve conferred with the clerk you are correct if you just keep it in scope with the motion on the floor thank you well one 22 baseline was affordable housing it was this so that’s what I’m talking about is this is she’s arguing the ruling you just made she can move to overrule it if she wants but let’s not argue what you just ruled on the counselor is correct counselor if you want to challenge the chair no I’ll just continue with my questions okay if you can keep the questions with respect to the motion on the floor okay if we were to have an affordable housing project where agencies were advocating on behalf of mid and high acuity tenants saying that they are able to provide the level of support that they need is that something that is not prevented through this contribution agreement such that we are in the hands of agencies and what they think and then we’re into long tenancy agreements where we can’t get people out of the counselor I will go to mr. Felberg thank you and through you mr.
[1:52:26] chair so depending on the again the community in the mix that they want to provide it might be that we might push the proponent in the direction of providing a more highly supportive housing project that that highly supportive housing plan though that comes from the whole of community and has very specific rules on it if we’re just providing medical supports for individuals or very similar to what cross-cultural learning center is doing which is providing supports for employment language supports they’re also providing supports for seniors and creating space where they can have local community within the building it really depends on the model and the mix that they want to establish in the house so I can’t say for for sure what the agency would be doing but there’s an expectation of service that we would expect from them as well thank you mr. Felberg and just one correction from the chair I said you could challenge the chair but as a visiting member you’re unable to challenge the chair so I was incorrect on that statements just to say that your 48 seconds please go ahead all right so another I will stop your time I’ll give you two seconds back to you okay council trust well I thank you and through the chair I was just going to say something very general and that is I really appreciate what I perceive to be the care and sensitivity that the staff is showing to residents who are going to be living in these buildings because people go through different stages of acuity and we know it’s indisputable that one of the things that helps people is being asked and that’s what we’re trying to do here every one of these projects is about helping some of our residents who have very serious acuity problems lower their level of acuity that’s what we’re doing and I recognize the difficulties that the staff has in sorting through some of these issues but I is just one counselor speaking for myself one up one up one up one up really want to really say I appreciate the sensitivity that’s being shown shown here and I’m in favor of these projects going forward and we’ve made certain delegation decisions and I think that if it’s the will of this council to undeligate some of those delegation decisions that’s something that could come that’s something that could come as a policy motion I would rather do it that way rather than anyway I’ll leave I’ll leave it at that but thank thank you for your work on this thank you counselor I will just kind of look to counsel Stevenson if you’re ready yeah thank you what when we do the RFPQ or the RPQ’s and we vetted all these people is that something that’s taken into consideration when we’re vetting these agencies because they’re going to be running these properties for 25 years and if we find if for example we had a project where we put people in a tenancy profile that wasn’t working out and we weren’t running it as city housing we can potentially have a 25 year safety concern and so I’m wondering are we vetting these pre qualifications that way as well thank you counselor go to staff mr.
[1:56:12] Kelberg thank you and through you mr. Chair absolutely we look for their experience and what their ability to provide a particular form of housing is and that’s one of the questions and one of the things that we identified in our RFPQ and then we dive a little deeper into their operating performance once we get into the the actual RFP itself when we take a look at that and then we continue to work with them in order to ensure that it’s viable over the long term you mr. velberg council you have six seconds can council get a list of those qualified in camp confidential counselor I look to staff mr.
[1:56:50] I through to you through you mr. Chair I check with our procurement office to see but I believe that they should be public because the RFPQ was a public document it was a public procurement thank you you have two seconds left so I guess you could take any more offline okay looking to members of committee visiting members okay let’s call the question closing the vote the motion carries five to zero okay that’s it for 4.2 that leaves us with 4.3 and this is the one where we have a delegation I need a motion to receive the delegation moved by counselor cutting seconded by counselor trusso mr.
[1:57:42] Stolfi you ready okay we have to vote on it first so let’s just vote on that and then before that I’ll just kind of look at you and if you can just state your name or you’re with and then you got five minutes I’ll let you know what I’ll let you know what closing the vote the motion carries five to zero okay you’re ready to go five minutes go ahead all right thank you I’m Dina Stolfi I’m the VP of supportive housing and program development for CMHA Thames Valley I was also the co-chair of the highly supportive housing table I’m here to speak to our projects today in our approach and hope that helps with your deliberations at CMHA Thames Valley we’ve been providing supportive housing for 50 years I’m proud to say we do a good job proof of this is the thousands of people who have attained their recovery goals with our supports that is thousands of people that are not homeless and are doing well supportive housing programs must reflect the diversity of the people we serve adapting our approaches services and environments to honor different demographics live experiences abilities and recovery journeys recognizing that effective support meets people where they are while respecting their unique past stability and wellness we need more supportive housing we need more highly supportive housing we need it now we submitted our proposals for our FP with the city through affordable housing we did that because we are providing affordable housing all supportive housing must be affordable for those we serve we need as much capital upfront as possible to develop 115 units of affordable supportive housing we also need operating dollars to provide skilled and caring staff there’s some confusion about the terms highly supportive housing and supportive housing to clarify highly supportive housing is supportive housing it is a plan endorsed by City Council last year April 2nd that intends to provide a higher intensity of services and a plan that aims to have 24/7 resources available to those I needed this is an important part the extent to which you can provide these services is dependent on the revenue and funding that you receive we hope that funders will give us more funding for staffing however hope is not a plan so when CMHA Thames Valley planned here on in Hill Street we are planning to shift some existing operating resources to these projects when they open we will continue to seek funding resources to ensure we provide more supports to those clients that need the most it should be known too that CMHA Thames Valley is poorly funded by the province which is different than some other agencies that might rely on only municipal funds not everyone that is housing deprived is considered high acuity not everyone that is homeless struggles with addictions for those that do struggle with addictions harm reduction can be a starting point on an individual’s journey to recovery research shows that when people aren’t fighting for daily survival and feel genuinely expect accepted they become more receptive to positive changes making harm reduction not the opposite of recovery but often it’s essential first chapter acuity is fluid and if we are doing what we intend to do when those moving through our system of supports like hubs and supportive housing they will have lower acuity over time in that way highly supportive housing can have mixed acuity which makes for a community that is moving in a positive direction in our community the term highly supportive housing is newer and as I’ve already said supportive housing is not we know that it is the better investment compared to some more costly alternatives which include emergency services hospitalizations and jail for every ten dollars invest in supportive housing you save twenty two dollars elsewhere in your system our community needs solutions and our developments are part of that solution I cannot understand why anyone would get in the way of good when there is so much need out there our community needs us and we need the support of our city and gratefully for the most part we have that support we hope that council supports us too and that part of the plan is dependent on you thank you for listening and I’m open trying to answer any questions you might have about our projects Mr. Stolfi okay for that I would just a second okay I need to look to committee for motion seconded case moved by council McAllister seconded by Councillor Trussell okay and the staff recommendation yeah and that’s what I wanted to clarify thank you okay so I’m looking for a speakers less counselor McAllister go ahead thank you and through the chair I’ll start things off I’m sure some of my colleagues will have comments as well I just want to speak for my own experience I’ve had very good discussions so Mr. Stolfi in the past I’ve always been impressed with CMHA and what they’ve been able to produce in the 50 years as speaker mentioned they’ve got a proven track record in terms of the services that can provide and it is absolutely an area where we need to be investing highly supportive housing you know I have the Thompson location which is often referenced and I mean it’s never easy I’ve indicated this in previous committees council but I think because it is a challenging environment we need organizations like this to take the lead they’ve got the staff the ability to make these things work and I’ve seen that in the past and I’m sure moving forward with these projects they’ll put as much care and attention as they have and all their other projects so I’ll leave my comments there for now I might respond if colleagues have other things but I am supportive of this and I want to see this move forward so thank you can you counselor I have counselor probably please go ahead thank you as for the chair I have a question for Mr.
[2:04:10] Stolfi you mentioned that the services are to the extent depends the extent of services depend on the funding and you do have let’s say you receive the funding for the capital expenditure and then you at the same time you might not be you might not know the exact amount for the services for the operations and let’s say you are hoping as you said we shouldn’t hope but let’s say you’re hoping that this the funding you receive will be high enough for highly supportive housing which would match potentially with the high acuity individuals if the funding doesn’t come through in such amounts that would support highly supportive housing do you revisit the list of the individuals that would be housed there and potentially decrease it from a high acuity to low or medium acuity and if I do not specific questions if you can please add on anything you wish so it would clarify it for me thank you I’ll do my best just a second mr. Stolfi the council did ask a question I know I did tell you that this may come up it’s not in order to ask questions of the delegate however this committee has in the past requested that so before I move forward I just want to look at committee there’s any objections to have mr. Stolfi and answer Council Pribble’s question please answer we just raise your hand okay no objections please go ahead sorry no problem so I think the thing to understand is that high acuity is entirely different than highly supportive and I’ll explain that you can have a project that can serve high acuity you can have a project that’s highly supportive but you can have mixed acuity in that building you can scale up and down as I said acuity is fluid we have funding associated with us that we can serve high acuity we are going to do mixed acuity we find that’s the best approach the higher the density of a building the more likely that you should go with a mixed acuity model when you think about at our one project 82 units and in the highly supportive housing plan which I helped my colleagues write together it’s a one to ten ratio of staff to clients you can imagine if you have 82 units of all folks that are experiencing high acuity how many staff you would actually have have to have on-site and how many resources you would have to have to have those staff so it is a fluid model acute is fluid so our supports our intent is to ensure that we have the ability to serve high acuity and our plan is to have mixed acuity again because not everybody is going to remain at a level of high acuity even if they come in that way we know that from the work that we already do I hope that answers your question thank you council it’s on the date and thank you very much I do have one follow-up though did you have for the experience and if you have not will be your process in the past in in a such environment such building and let’s say that the individuals as we say they move from various levels of acuity if it will be unfortunately from low to the higher and then your service servicing funds wouldn’t be sufficient enough to have a safe environment in that building how will you deal with that we’re always planning for you know we plan for maximum standards but we also plan for minimum standards and the way that we go about that is in all of our planning we would always think about okay what is worst case scenario here and we would always make sure we have enough resources on hand for the changes within the building we’re very adept at providing crisis services we have a 24-hour crisis center incidentally enough that’s right beside your own street the 24-hour crisis center so we have built-in resources so that even what we don’t contain in the the building proper is right next door to us and in the case of your own street and we have we have over 700 staff we have 50-plus programs it’s not just supportive housing that we do we we have a lot of other resources available to us thank you counsel mr stelsey thank you very much for answering both questions and thank you again for your services to our community thank you uh members of committee anybody visiting members council Stevens thank you and through you I do have a couple of questions for mr astolfi um so I voted no to the highly supportive housing plan back in april of 2024 and the reason that I did that was because of the focus on the harm reduction model and the allowing of people to use illegal drugs in their units um now in the same week as we approved that the province came out saying they they were moving in the direction of the Alberta recovery model rather than the vancouver model that london had chosen so i’m just wondering is there any concern about locking yourself into the london highly supportive housing plan that it might limit your access to provincial funding not at all as you know we are the recipients in the lead for the hard hub project which is an abstinence-based project we have abstinence-based programs within our midst right now we have harm reduction programs as well so i’m not concerned about it at all we have a great relationship with our provincial funders and um our intent and as i said in in my uh my time that it was allowed is that harm reduction isn’t in opposition to recovery is simply one chapter of it counselor thank you and and how will you protect those who aren’t uh who are lower acuity and in recovery how do you protect them from the negative influences of the high acuity severe addiction that might be in the building i find protection that’s that’s a difficult uh term for me to wrap my head around these are adults we’re dealing with these are folks that uh of our intelligence and uh want to be in that community it’s all voluntary when people come to us they will choose to be there we will describe what the program is what exists in the building and and they will make choices based on that to be with us or not our supports are are such that we handle these issues every day and all of our housing that we’ve been doing for 50 years and um there are things in play that uh i couldn’t get in to explain the day i have people that are much smarter than me that provide direct service and our managers in our programs that really know what they’re doing their evidence based they base themselves on best practices um so that already exists for us how to manage those situations that you’re speaking of thank you counsel thank you and through you maybe i’m the one that everybody calls with the problems but i i did hear a lot of very disturbing uh concerns expressed regarding the 446 king street building um is there anything you can tell me about maybe lessons learned there or how that’s not going to be at the shrine street before you answer that that is not specifically to the motion at hand so you can feel free to generally answer how you would like or not answer at all i think it’s fair to ask how uh 446 king street plays and it is one of our projects it does illustrate uh something very important to me it illustrates why our plan works 446 king street was something that was failing before we took it over is now thriving we had an open house last week we have nothing but uh accolades and compliments from our neighbors since we took over that project so that is a success story and i’m glad you brought it up counselor thank you it’s no longer highly supportive though is that correct it’s absolutely highly supportive we have 24/7 supports here okay well that is good to hear because what i heard was pretty terrible um and the recognition that it was failing like thank you for turning that around um i don’t know about you subscribe to the same uh rules that council does but that’s very insulting oh well i certainly didn’t mean that just some of the language we use here must be respectful to all members of our community opponents counselors staff i would just say that generally to everybody counselor you have two minutes and 30 seconds okay well not not like i said certainly did not mean that to be insulting you acknowledged it was failing and i just that’s what i had heard as well um the other thing is uh when you talked about the highly supportive housing and you were here talking about it you said that there were occupancy agreements rather than tenancy agreements would that be true here as well yes we’ve decided in course for history we used to have tenancy agreements we now have all occupancy agreements and as we take on new projects they will be occupancy occupancy agreements as well thank you counselor thank you he just remind us again the difference there the yeah an occupancy agreement uh has an exception under the rta for supportive housing in particular where there’s a uh an agreement between the the tenant that they’re going to receive supports and there’s an agreement of the provider that they’re going to provide supports which is entirely different than a regular tenancy a regular tenancy is governed by the uh residential tendencies act and you would go to tribunal to resolve things within supportive housing we’re trying to keep people housed as best we can and we’ll mediate situations with our our tenants so that they can stay out okay thank you i think that does bring a lot of reassurance um to the neighborhood um the other thing is in here there’s talk of um children and i just wondered um i guess i just do worry about women and children in these buildings and so is there anything you can say to that in terms of uh it explicitly says in here that there’s children in custody and overnight uh stays for children so any comments on that yeah to be clear it says there’s a possibility of that each project is unique um it is possible for us to accommodate that we have done that in other projects before uh we certainly want to make sure that families are whole we know that families are support two individuals there are reason for for people to recover so there might be instances of family or children i would say generally though in in our supportive housing projects we don’t have a lot of families and and children in them there are plenty of other service providers that specialize in that thank you counsel thank you and could you just share a little bit about how it would work in terms of community engagement because one of the concerns when it isn’t recovery-based and we’ve got people in addiction is that oftentimes at least what i am told is that they don’t have enough income to survive within their addiction and so they end up having to steal or um you know sell their bodies or sell drugs or do something and so i’m just wondering uh is there anything that you can share with us that again would help reassure the neighborhood that this wouldn’t be um uh have you know very negative consequences and the public safety in the surrounding neighborhood yeah i can offer explanation and reiterate that not everybody in supportive housing struggles with addictions so if uh not everybody in that building is struggling with addictions then that as a whole isn’t isn’t the issue for the neighborhood um i don’t know how to answer the rest of your question um i think we we do a good job to support the individuals that are there we do a good job with community engagement i would say that community engagement is less about community engagement at a plan uh or a purchase of land and more of community engagement when we’re in a neighborhood when we’re about to set up when we’re about to open our doors and it’s that continued engagement that really helps so we’ve had plenty of instances in our history where we’ve improved the neighborhood where people have been fearful before we came in and thankful that we’re there years later thank you counselor counselor looking for any other speakers comments just selfie you are a wealth of knowledge and we really appreciate you coming and speaking today and answering our questions so thank you very much um i’m sure you will hear from us again and thank you for all the work that you do thank you thank you for their opportunity sorry i just had to confer with the clerk to confirm that we did have a motion on the floor um we do so we can continue on if anybody else for committee has any comments or questions visiting members as well counselor you have 57 seconds go ahead thanks this is a question for staff we have the highly supportive housing program effective february 11 2025 that reads very similar to what we have here and so can i just ask again like why this program wasn’t utilized rather than the way it’s coming to us right now thank you counselor mister philbert thank you and through you mr chair so what you have before you is an rfp award what the february 11th report refers to and what that agreement in that program is is a community improvement plan so two very different tools one is very restricted to under our procurement policy the other one allows us to incubate and work with organizations in order to bring forward new projects thank you counselor thank you and are they able to tap into both of these thank you and through you mr chair so if you mean tap in can they re can they respond to an rfp absolutely anybody can respond to an rfp if they meet the qualifications and they’re eligible for an award then we would offer them an award any organization that comes in will submit a series of documents in the series a bunch of information for us to evaluate in order to determine if they’re eligible for our cip and be eligible for funding that forty five thousand dollars per unit that we offer mr philbert counselor you have 36 seconds go ahead thank you and yet that um that same evaluation of the program and operations and everything doesn’t happen for the rfp mr philbert uh through you mr chair not sure what you mean absolutely it’s part of the rfp evaluation yeah counselor and just to be clear if the project was to come through this highly supportive cip program it would not come before council that’s something that’s evaluated and distributed like the other programs we’ve delegated authority there thank you go ahead through you mr chair that is correct you counsel you got 13 seconds go ahead knowing that this is capital money that we’re giving and we don’t oversee the operations if there were to be operational issues and we have a they have a 25-year commitment do we have any recourse as a city to address uh some safety issues that might come up thank you counselor mr belbert uh through you mr chair so uh just a couple of the things and i want to highlight they’re in the report uh for uh attached to item four point three so if the proponent were to say lose its operational funding at some point during that 25 years there is a process embedded within the agreement for them to exit from uh that highly supportive housing this is actually one of those learnings from 122 baseline to make sure that’s very clear very black and white on how we approach that so one of the things that they would provide to us would be a detail operating performer that would identify what how the transition from highly supportive to affordable would go they would also highlight the services that they are no longer providing at the building they would also demonstrate a consideration for an offer to find another service provider that could provide the service so if say for example cmha we’re not able to provide that service but an organization like indwell is available and has capacity to do that some ability to assign that agreement assign that project to them has to be um addressed as well and then they also have to demonstrate to us that they uh have been unsuccessful in finding other operational funding from other levels of government or independent sources thank you mr belbert counselor you’ve exhausted your time i’m going to look to anybody else okay lots of all the questions posing the vote the motion carries five to zero okay that’s item four point three so we have item four point four um i am going to go to staff before we have any potential discussion so i’m going to go to mr dickens for this item thank you chair and through you and and i appreciate the community’s indulgence on this um through further conversation and at the recommendation from legal services we’d actually like to withdraw this report from the added caps agenda item we on may six a um special d h calm daris home community of management uh the meeting was held that is where the alsa that you see before you hear that’s where the alsa compliance uh was approved by d h calm and this report is not required for any further council direction or support thank you mr dickens so there is no motion required for that i guess i’ll just look to committee if anybody objects to withdrawing this item okay it’s been withdrawn to that effect uh i think that leaves us i think that’s it for items for direction it is so next is deferred matters additional business i have none so that leaves us with adjournment so motion to adjourn uh moved by trusso seconded by cuddy or councilor cuddy councilor trusso my apologies hand vote all in favor to adjourn all those opposed Thank you.