friends the planning policy Commissioner
this is a special meeting the Human
Services Commission the purpose is joint
meeting between us the Human Services
Commission the planning policy
Commission words the purpose
specifically is to discussed a healthy
community strategy project but I'd like
to do please just go around do a quick
intro maybe name your Commission and one
select one sentence no longer factoid
about your connection to discipline
and/or your commission it could be
anything and then I'll turn it over to
staff and we can get on with the meeting
for those here for public comment if you
notice in the agenda that's scheduled
for towards the end of the meeting and
we very much would welcome that if
that's something you'd choose to give
and you will be sure to save time for
that I so again my name is Derek
Franklin factoid is I've got a couple
kids in the district and spent a lot of
my time parenting and fit on the
Commission for three to four years I'm
not quite sure sure I'm Susan Leonelli
on the Human Services Commission I've
been on the Commission for about a year
and a half and I've lived in Issaquah
Highlands for 13 years and for the very
first time I just started riding the bus
every day to a job in downtown Seattle
so that's been interesting for me hi I'm
David Fujimoto I'm the director of the
Office of Sustainability here at the
city and also staff person
mónica to the Human Services Commission
you all here to with us tonight
hi I'm professor I'm a junior here at
Asko high school that's what Youth
Advisory Board hi my name is Joe Lee
Kwan hard I'm on the Human Services
Commission this is my first year so I
believe maybe five months or so I've
lived in Issaquah with my husband and
year-old daughter for five years now
hello my name is Monica nagrel'a and I'm
the Human Services Coordinator with the
city here and I'm also staff for the
Human Services Commission and I've been
here with the city for almost a year
I'm Sonia hi also the Human Services
Commission similar to Jolie been a
commissioner only for about six months
lived in this graph for 13 years
I'm probably the chair of the Planning
Policy Commission I've been on the
Commission for Oh God 12 years so listen
to all of you newbies so I I've just
been part of the city for a long time in
different organizations in different
different ways all right art that's on
the planet policy commission for about a
year and a half my wife and two boys for
about ten years now
I'm Loretta Jenkins services commission
in Issaquah and been around Issaquah for
30 years
[Music]
I'm Randi Harrison I'm been on the
Planning Policy Commission for about 18
years
my name is Jason voice
for a little less than a year and a half
and I believe I've been in Issaquah for
13 years and before that I used to come
out to the woods with my friends my name
is aina haina demon I'm bidding you
sucka for almost 18 years in the
commission for two kids in college
well thank everybody and agenda is
pretty clear tonight moving on to agenda
my tutu which is the bulk of the meeting
I'll just turn it over to staff at David
Fujimoto to welcome our guests and move
on with each other very good thank you
Derrick as I said before thank you all
for joining us here tonight it's really
helpful for us to have a joint meeting
of the Commission's to talk about the
healthy community strategy and we're at
a a checkpoint in the project some of
you go a little bit more background
about this project but this started as a
City Council goal to take a look at the
health and well-being in our community
and identify ways that we can help to
improve health and health equity in the
community some of the past work has been
looking at some of the data side of that
and this year we also recognized that
there was some related work in the
Housing Strategy the Housing Strategy
talks about affordable housing and
services that complement housing stock
in our community and ways to bolster
that and the other pieces is that the
city's also been taking an increasing
look at our seniors services both with
our Senior Center as well as others
needs for seniors in the community some
of those are housing related so we're
service related
we've taken those bodies of work and
integrated them all under the several of
the healthy communities strategy so as
many different kind of populations and
programs and elements that are connected
here so it's a really kind of that's an
opportunity to take a holistic look for
a variety of populations so your
perspectives are really helpful even
though they're different background
different things that these two
conditions have been looking at over the
years so we've been working with Bourke
consulting who's been helping us with
some of the data side of the equation
and is helping us to kind of move into
the strategy and so why didn't introduce
Erika Rhett is the project manager who's
been helping us on that side the
equation she's gonna spend a little bit
of time I can't even give us a
background getting us up to speed and
then we'll also have a time later on
today we'll break up into some groups
that will get some feedback from you
specifically just for some of you that
aren't used to being filmed because we
knew this was going to be such an
important melding of the minds
we're actually I'm hoping being taped
right now so that those of us that
aren't here we're not those of us that
aren't here those that aren't here
tonight will be able to watch what all
the fascinating discussions that we had
and I'd also warn you the whole room is
a microphone so I know sometimes you
you'll only watch what you say when you
actually have a microphone right in
front of you but the whole room is the
microphone so I just wanted to warn you
about that because sometimes it's really
funny what gets picked up so I just
wanted to thank you for that
I just didn't watch I wanted to pull
this closure hi I'm Erica Rhett from
Burke consulting and and we're going to
talk today about the healthy community
strategy so for this part of the meeting
I'm going to give a presentation that
gives you some background information
then we're gonna have a discussion then
we'll just quickly go over the next
steps so a community needs assessment is
about building a healthy community and
in 2016 the city began the journey
towards building a healthy and more
equitable community for its residents
and what it wanted to do was try and
define what a healthy community is and
what kind of a place what kind of a city
would you would have where all of the
systems work together to ensure that
residents have a really great life and
so it goes beyond the individual
decisions that we associate with health
such as eating right or exercise or
getting enough rest it actually goes
into what we call social determinants of
health and these are the social the
environmental and community factors that
influence whether people live their best
lives and if you can see here are some
of the things that in fact that
influence health in a community so
there's things like complete
neighborhoods whether or not healthy
food is available if there's affordable
quality housing fair justice system
public transit Universal Design there's
many many factors that go into whether
or not people live their healthiest and
best lives so the city conducted a
community needs assessment and during
this assessment they talked with lots of
different people
and found that there were four areas in
Issaquah that were keeping the community
from being as healthy as it could be so
the purpose of the healthy community
strategy is to take take up the cause
where that were left off and to identify
strategies that the city can pursue to
make a positive difference in health and
equity and it's it basically has this
underlying commitment and this believes
that all the members of the community
are important to the success of the
community and that meeting meeting the
needs of the community is a shared
responsibility between the members of
the community so to begin working with
strategy we verified the top four the
top four issues in the community needs
assessment and we did this by talking
with stakeholders which included some
nonprofits community organizations and
the like that are serving Issaquah
residents we also did a variety of
engagements with members of the
community particularly some that we
thought the other information that we
had gathered particularly pointed to
that those are people in the community
we should talk to we're people that
hadn't been talked to previously so in
the community needs assessment one of
the top items that was
that was mentioned as a need with stable
housing
so people across its across income
spectrum have hard time finding housing
that they can afford it's particularly
difficult for people who have low or
fixed incomes but it's a challenge for
people people of a variety of incomes
and it's also a challenge for people who
have special needs due to age or
disability and what we find is that the
lack of stability in housing has all
kinds of health consequences because
people start to make trade-offs when
you're spending more money than you can
afford on your housing then you don't
have as much money to invest in health
care child care you don't have as much
money to support transportation and
other needs of life so this type of
thing goes across many incomes the other
thing we found is that there is a number
of behavioral health issues these types
of behavioral health issues affect both
youth and adults in the community and
with with these issues what we see is
some higher levels of anxiety depression
and stress for Issaquah higher higher
incidences of substance abuse and also
we found from talking with people that
there's a number of cultural stigmas
around seeking health both cultural
stigmas that are part of just the common
culture of the city and also be for
people who are a multicultural back
the third thing that was identified in
the community needs assessment has to do
with disparities related to race and
ethnicity sexes so these are disparities
are essentially where people have
inequitable outcomes and it's
attributable to it's attributable to a
factor that they typically don't have a
lot of control of such as race or sex so
so this information was gathered mostly
from looking at Census Bureau records
state office of Superintendent of Public
Instruction and a citizen survey of
Issaquah and what they found is that
depending on your race and ethnicity you
may be more likely to have a lower
median income a higher poverty and
status and unemployment rate lower high
school graduation rates lower
educational attainment and a less
perception that you live in a safe and
welcoming neighborhood women were less
likely to have a lower median household
income higher poverty and higher
unemployment and low income households
in the community are more likely to have
lower high school graduation rates lower
enrollments in post-secondary education
and have have a lower perception of the
availability of affordable housing
and then the fourth thing that came out
of the community needs assessment work
from 2016 was an understanding that one
of the that barriers themselves were one
of the main areas that prevented the
community from being its healthiest self
we know that those barriers can often be
related and go hand in hand with some of
the disparities that we just talked
about but if you think about it if
you're trying to access services and
resources in the community and you don't
speak English or you have a hard time
getting around on the transportation
system or you don't have a car those are
the types of things they'll prevent you
from getting services that you need we
also found that it's the availability
and location of providers some services
just are not offered in Issaquah or if
they are that the available appointment
slots are so few that people have to go
outside the community for help there's
also a number of insurance limitations
particularly for people who have public
insurance and some there are a number of
resources that people just aren't aware
of or don't know how to access them and
there can also be some legal barriers so
these four things the barriers the
disparities affordable housing and
behavioral health in 2016 those were the
top four items that were preventing
Issaquah from being its healthiest
community but what we found when we went
out to the community to verify these
needs is that there were additional
community needs that were that we
thought merit that would merit inclusion
and
the community strategy why are the needs
of older adults so older adults have
particular needs for socialization for
mental and physical health care and for
a number of other supports we heard over
and over again talking to people that a
big gap in the community needs
assessment is that it didn't address the
needs of older adults to age in place in
the community so we went we went back
and just at our scope of work to include
that the Senior Center also had some
money to do a needs assessment for
senior for older adults and so we're
working in conjunction with the Senior
Center on that piece of the work as well
the other thing is that came up over and
over and over again was that people
experiencing homelessness in Issaquah
are are a very very high community in
our discussions we found that oftentimes
various aspects of homelessness are
quite invisible in the community and
also that while there's some needs for
immediate and urgent assistance there's
not as many supports for helping people
to transition into permanent housing or
to provide to provide some more
long-term supports for people
experiencing homelessness so
so that's basically in a nutshell I just
went over very quickly where we are in
terms of community needs in the in the
memo that we sent to Joint Commission's
I I went through in detailed all the
different parts of our scope of work
we've we're getting to the end of that
first part of the scope of work where we
are identifying needs and removed we're
transitioning into the part where we're
trying to define what is s across role
in looking at those needs so in terms of
looking in terms of looking at those
needs we thought it would be useful to
dive just a little bit deeper into the
information that we've collected so far
and one of the things that's really
clear to us as we started working on
these needs and talking to the community
is that all of the needs all of those
six needs are very interconnected so for
example housing affordability is very
stressful to many people in the
community but that affordability can be
amplified by various disparities so we
know that from the disparities
information there are some people who
have a harder time finding affordable
housing based on who have a harder time
finding housing that they can afford
based on their sex or their race for
example
but not being able to find housing that
you can for a Ford can really increase
stress which feeds into issues related
to behavioral health such as anxiety
depression and substance abuse and when
people are burdened with the cost of
housing they have fewer resources they
make those types of trade-offs that we
that I mentioned before and once they
start to make trade-offs so you have an
you're you're living in a house but you
can't quite afford childcare you don't
have quite as much money for healthcare
then some of those barriers about being
able to find quality after-school care
or being able to connect to a doctor
that's that's right in the community
become much bigger issues and so instead
of trying to tackle these issues one by
one by one because they're all
interrelated we thought that we would
look at some of these issues with by
using the human life cycle so one
disclaimer here is that a lot of the
underlying issues that we are talking
about here are major societal issues so
things like gender or racial
discrimination those are things that are
beyond the reach of a single
jurisdiction right and a single
community strategy there's also regional
issues that have to do with housing
affordability and transportation these
are things where the city is already
working and I'm sure the Planning Policy
Commission knows a lot about some of
these things but the city is already
working a lot with housing strategies
and all kinds of things to coordinate
with the region in order to in order to
try and make a difference
portability so the goal of a healthy
community strategy is not to repeat this
work that's being done regionally or to
tackle some of this work that is just
not possible for one community to tackle
but what we think is that what we can do
is look at ways that Issaquah can
specifically address some issues in the
community over the next three to five
year period and so we also think that
using the life cycle will help us to
target those things where we can move
the needle in the next three to five
years the other thing is is that one way
of thinking about needs is that all
people have needs for the aspects of a
healthy community throughout their
entire lifetime children need a secure
home and access to quality education so
they can build their foundation for
future success youth needs support for
healthy physical social and emotional
development as they start to transition
into adulthood adults need supports like
housing transportation and social
support systems to help them remain
resilient as all those life issues come
up and then older adults need all of
these things plus inclusion and
engagement to maintain connections and
well-being so people rely on their
community throughout their lifetime and
it's inheriting a lot of what we take
for granted usually unless something
isn't working right so when the
transportation system breaks down then
we really realize like oh it's not
working here and there's some people in
the community who have access to more
resources and named
have more access to those resources
because of wealth or social networks or
what kind of insurance they have or
things like that but a healthy community
is one that's going to support and build
safety nets for all people so that at
every stage of life there's a safety net
for people who don't have quite as
strong of a network in those things so
let's talk about a profile in we're
going to talk about four areas lifecycle
stages and the first one is children and
youth so the information that I have
here is not all of the information that
we have we have lots and lots of
information if you took a look at the
healthy community strategy there's lots
of statistical and demographic
information in there on all types of
things I specifically went through and
chose what I thought was the key
information for us to think about
tonight
so we'll start with children in youth so
about a quarter of its across population
is under 18 and we know from research
that children who are living in areas
with higher rates of unaffordable
housing are much more likely to suffer
from poor health increase behavioral
problems and lower school performance
some of those things come as a result of
some of those trade-offs that parents
are making to be able to afford the
housing
we know that a little less than a third
of the families in Issaquah school
district speak a language other than
English at home and we also know that
graduation rates for African American
and Latin F students are about 10 to 15
percent lower than for students overall
when it comes to some behavioral health
concerns we heard very clearly from
youth that they feel a lot of stress in
their day-to-day lives
it comes from pressure from achievement
bullying racial discrimination and
homophobia were things that youth
reported to us we know from the healthy
youth survey that about 40% of Issaquah
seniors and put high school seniors that
doesn't necessarily mean they all go to
Issaquah high school but just because
we'll talk about older adults later and
I didn't want to confuse high school
seniors from older adults seniors but
nearly 40% of 12th graders in Issaquah
engage in current alcohol use so the
question I believe is having having used
alcohol within the last 30 days of when
the surveys taken the surveys done every
two years by this the state in in all
the high schools in the state so also on
this survey more than 25% of Issaquah
12th graders have seriously considered
suicide at some time in their young life
we also know that there's very few
mental health services available to
youth in the community and that youth
felt that there was some stigma related
to accessing services in this school
because not only do they have a pressure
that they may feel comes from their
families but they also have a peer
pressure to to maintain this idea that
everything's going along fine and and I
don't have any problems right so to show
up at the counselor's office or to be
seen going in and out
can sometimes have a stigma for you so a
few things that we know about people in
adulthood
so in general when we look at ISA qua
compared with rates of disease for
preventable disease in King County
health indicators show that Issaquah
about average or maybe a little
healthier an average in every measure
except for heart disease and the heart
disease is actually double the King
County rate which I thought was
interesting cancer and stroke and other
things were just about average but heart
disease is about double about 6 percent
of residents have no health insurance at
all and about 5% report that they have
unmet health needs that they can't they
can't afford to get treatment or care
for we know that behavioral health care
again is particularly difficult to find
in the community and almost impossible
if you have public insurance also
there's no treatment resources for
substance abuse in the community
so we had lots and lots of instances
where people reported that they needed
to leave the community to find providers
that either accepted their insurance or
were affordable and so and then I'm
going to jump down to the bottom one
decentralize services where people have
to leave the community and maybe go to
Bellevue or Seattle or other places are
very difficult to access especially if
you're taking public transportation we
also know that for parents there are
very few childcare or before
after-school programs available and more
than that if you are a family that can
get some assistance with childcare there
are no programs that take your there's
no programs that take a state assistance
coupon to help pay for childcare in his
o'clock there's one exception there are
a few spots available in the Bright
Horizons at the YWCA family village but
they're only available to families that
are in the family village if they have
childcare subsidy the other thing that
we heard in a couple of in a couple of
ways in a couple of from a couple of
sources is that where there are before
and after-school programs if they're
first-come first-serve program and so
those are very difficult for people who
you have to get on a waiting list if
you're not first in line and first-come
first-serve programs actually tend to
benefit people who understand how to use
bureaucracy and apply for resources and
get in line for things and also if you
have an urgent situation where you need
childcare you can't find it in the
community because those have long
waiting lists so culturally 20% of the
households speak a language other than
English at home this is a little bit of
a different statistic than the 30% of
people of families in the school
district and that's because not all of
the households in Issaquah have somebody
in the school district right but on a on
a whole one in five of the homes in your
community is not speaking English inside
of there we already saw that people of
color tend to feel that their
neighborhood neighborhoods are less safe
and we heard in many ways that it's very
difficult to find health and service
providers that are culturally
appropriate and speak that speak
different languages and meet the
community's cultural needs but it's not
just for people who come from cultures
that are far away we also heard that for
example African Americans
particularly african-american women had
a hard time finding providers in the
community that they could identify with
in terms of in terms of meeting their
cultural needs so we also heard loud
loud and clear that immigrants tend to
be experiencing higher levels of stress
and some behavioral health issues that
is that they attribute to some of the
unknown implications of the national
political climate now that comes from
the original community needs assessment
which was in 2016 and so we you know
there was that was after a big election
so we did hear some more about that but
particularly came through during that
year and also there's very few
opportunities for learning English in
the community so the opportunities that
exist don't always have the supports
that someone who's learning English
needs which may be some child care
support or the ability to get there
without transportation if you don't
speak English you can't get a driver's
license so you're reliant on public
transportation we also heard from some
women who live in the community that if
their husband speaks in English or
speaks English and they do not it's
extremely isolating for them to not be
able to get out and and move through the
community they would love to learn
English but it's very difficult for them
to find
I need their need so in terms of
households the median household income
is over $100,000 but the median in that
the income needed to afford the median
Homan in in Issaquah is a hundred ninety
six thousand dollars so this this helps
to underline the need that there's a lot
of cost Bergin have households in
Issaquah and it isn't necessarily people
who are below the median income who are
having issues with housing affordability
so about a third about a third 32% of
all households are spending 30% or more
of their income which is the test for
being cost burdened in the community and
14% are spending more than 50% of their
income on on their on their mortgage and
rent the other thing is is that from a
housing perspective 30% of that the the
households in your community are just
one person households but there's only
thirteen percent of the housing stock
that is studio or one-bedroom apartments
now not every person who's a one-bedroom
who is a one-person household wants to
live in a one-bedroom apartment but many
people who are a one-person household
especially if they are facing some
issues with housing affordability would
love to live in a unit that was smaller
and more affordable for them and so
there's a big mismatch between
demand in the supply of those smaller
units in community
the cost of living is a significant
stress for almost all adults and
lower-income households feel stigmatized
we heard in some of our engagement with
lower-income folks that they were
particularly worried for their children
because when something goes wrong in the
community they feel like they're
targeted or they're blamed for small
crimes or things that go wrong and they
feel that their children don't get as
many opportunities because they're
tagged as being from a low-income
household so a lot to think about a lot
that adults are dealing with when we're
talking about people with disabilities
and that there's a wide range of
different abilities in the community
they can be physical abilities which can
include use of a wheelchair or other
physical impairments they can also be
developmental disabilities or mental
health disabilities and so there's very
few apartments in the community that are
accessible for wheelchairs or people who
need help with mobility and for people
who have mental developmental or
cognitive differences
what we found is that mostly those
adults live with parents or family
members for as long as they can but when
they must transition out of family care
there's almost no place in the community
for them to go there's very very few
places for them to go where it's both
affordable and well staffed I actually
talked to a woman at the health fair
where we were doing a pop-up who had a
really heart-wrenching story about her
friend trying to find care for her son
who had mental illness so the other
thing we find from the census is that if
you're a household and that has a person
with a cognitive impairment you're much
likely to have one of several housing
issues and these would be cost burden
housing or houses that don't have full
facilities like plumbing or let's say
plumbing or kitchen facilities things
like that and so for the majority of
those households are they people these
are the number of households that have a
person with a cognitive impairment and
one of those housing issues and this is
this number these numbers are just for
Issaquah so people households with
someone with a cognitive impairment who
are extremely low income are very likely
to have significant issues with their
housing including cost burden but you
can
that some of those issues range across
the income scale so aging adults for
aging adults all of the issues that we
just talked about for facing adulthood
those are all things that are faced by
aging adults but just to keep in mind
that there is a little bit of a
different emphasis and there is a bit of
a nuance when it comes to how these
things affect aging adults
first of all older adults are much more
likely to have either low or fixed
incomes so they cannot keep up with the
cost of living so even if they were had
a fairly prosperous and well-to-do life
until they became older or retired they
still may not be keeping up with the
cost of living and so there may be many
seniors who for the first time are
facing some of the barriers and burdens
that low income people in the community
feel have felt for for a long time
older adults can have less ability to
drive and so they're more reliant on a
strong strong alternate transportation
network they also are more likely to
have any of those types of physical
disabilities they also could have
sensory impairments like hearing or
vision loss that require some
specialized assistance transportation
housing or other services and for older
adults from other cultures we talked a
little bit about how
how some people from other cultures the
language barrier prevents them from
feeling connected with the community it
can be particularly difficult for older
adults who are not proficient in English
so health-wise older adults have about
the same level of health as as other
older adults in King County
but that isn't that great
so there's some for all of King County
but it's a kua included there are some
large gaps in preventive care for
example about a third of older adults
have not received a pneumonia or a flu
vaccine and we we heard from services
serving older adults and aging adults
themselves that sometimes they need some
assistance in managing the continuity of
their care there's a lot of things that
are changing and and having someone who
could help them navigate that would be
very useful also for older adults in
particular for everyone social
connections are very important to health
and well-being and it's one of the most
important things that community offers
us as human beings but for older adults
social connection is absolutely
essential for health and longevity so
where there are language transportation
financial disability or impairment
barriers those can sometimes be life or
death situations for older adults
we also know that the number of older
adults is increasing it increased from
2010 to 2017 by about 27% it's expected
to grow the population is expected to
grow through 2040 about half of the
older adults in this community are
living alone five percent of them are
veterans and we know that they're
experiencing cost burdens if you look at
this chart here at all levels but
particularly those who are living on
those lower fixed low incomes and also
those who are living alone so the living
alone is the lighter color on the bar
chart and they're much more likely to be
cost burdened as you can see and then
our last life cycle section has to do
with homelessness and housing insecurity
and you may ask yourself or you may say
to me Erika homelessness is not a
separate part of life cycle which is
true however the issues related to
homelessness are so specific that we
didn't think that they could easily be
addressed by by looking at them
throughout the life cycle and so we
pulled them out to address them on their
own
when we talk about people experiencing
homelessness we're also talking about
people who are housing insecure those
who are living right on the bubble and
may go in and out of homelessness or may
be very close to homelessness some of
the contributing factors in this
community related to homelessness have
to do with mental health drug dependency
gender identity domestic violence and
housing affordability and in our in
talking with people who are experiencing
homelessness and in talking with people
who are dealing with people experiencing
homelessness a lot of the issues are
very invisible to the broader community
so you may see people who are
experiencing homelessness throughout the
community but the full extent is is
often hidden in places that you don't
see
we know there's over a hundred students
in the school district that are
experiencing homelessness that number
goes up and down a little bit but it's
been over a hundred for a while one of
the interesting things about
homelessness is that outreach of
homeless people is staffed regionally
what that means is that the person who
comes to do outreach only comes through
the community on a rotating basis if the
police or someone else in the city has
someone who wants has comes across a
person experiencing homelessness who
wants some services they have to call
them on the phone
hopefully that person is available and
get somebody out
they're as responsive as they can be but
they're there they serve a wide area one
of the things that we learned about
outreach to people experiencing
homelessness is that it takes lots of
contacts to build up trust for a variety
of reasons and so infrequent contact
makes it really hard to build up the
trust that's needed to help people get
into some programs for help also some of
the service that is available in the
communities such as the food bank those
are really good good services for urgent
needs for either homeless people are
people with housing insecurity but to
try and transition into more stability
where you don't have to rely on urgent
services those those paths of
self-sufficiency are not available in
the community you have to go elsewhere
to see
okay
so that's a quick introduction to what
we have learned about the needs of the
community what we're gonna do now is
have a bit of a discussion and we're
gonna break up into four groups which
someone set up the tables yes Monica I
was gonna suggest since we don't have as
many commissioners present today that we
might be able to just have three groups
okay also allow for representatives from
both Commission's to be at the same
table because we do have some tables
that have just one type of commissioners
but I have two questions before we start
the decision you said that 40% of high
school seniors had reported they used
alcohol over the last I believe with a
month drugs so there are some statistics
for drugs I didn't have those at hand
but I I can pull them my guess is is
that in the healthy so those come from
the needs-assessment those are 2016
numbers we should be able to see the
2018 numbers now and my guess is is that
whatever the rate was in 2016 it didn't
stand out from from the rest of the
communities around it so it didn't make
it into the needs of
but it does measure drug use and and
also trying drugs the second question is
that when it comes to adults seniors
feeling stressed about the ability to
maintain two to age in place inflation
has been at historic lows since 2008 so
is it would it be correct to assume that
in king county in general its real
estate taxes that are the leading cause
of this in terms of rents going up
because the owners have to pay the taxes
or if you own a home and have been in it
for a long time one of the city
councilmen I believe last week noted in
his comments whether it was the budget
discussion that taxes on his home have
gone up 28% and I think he said the last
three or four years so do we know what
the primary cause of for Aging in Place
what the primary cause of angst is if
it's not inflation in general well so I
don't I don't have
we didn't ask people to comment on on
the source of the of the anxiety about
it and the stress we just know that the
housing and the income is not a match
and that makes people stressed there
would need to be an analysis to see like
of the increase in the cost of housing
what percentage of it is taxes are
attributable to other things but even
though inflation affects
cost the cost of living for other things
the price of housing has increased much
higher than the cost of living in
general homelessness in your housing
security there there one target you have
the breakdown on the homeless in terms
of the percentage versus housing
insecurity because housing and security
people that are insecure losing their
housing the drivers of that and
depression anxiety I would have to
imagine a lot of different that was
driving homelessness itself so yes to
some extent so and all and those things
are also considered in that section that
has to do with adulthood but we include
people we include people with the
housing insecure in that section with
homelessness because what we find is
that prevention strategies are often
very helpful in preventing homelessness
from occurring in the first place and
that's targeted toward that housing
insecure population as well but a lot of
the resources that go into prevention
strategies can also be used for people
who are already experiencing
so it's a little bit of a double
coverage and in our breakdown of things
here but if we're looking at the
percentage of people who are housing
insecure definitely the 14 percent of
people who have a 50% cost burden or
higher would be considered housing
insecure - that has the details but
there have been some studies that have
looked at correlations between rising
rents and homelessness and there is a
direct correlation yes the Department of
Commerce has good data on it and I also
found the information on drug use if
just as a summary and I'm just gonna
focus on 12th grade because how to youth
survey has a break in broken down into a
lot of details and so for substance use
for example marijuana use is one of them
however that was actually the the
positive
information because for 12 graders the
use of marijuana went down from about
27% to about 16% of youth however
everything else looks
unfortunately worse vaping seemed to be
in 2018 the worst problem when 62
percent of high school students
reporting news of vaping so kind of like
as a quick summary those are you know
it's a possible district
okay so you would like so I have some
instructions here but we'll modify them
a bit so we're gonna have a small group
discussion to talk about these two
questions each part will be assigned one
of the lifecycle groups and we'll we'll
split into three groups here um each
group should have representatives from
both Commission's and we want you to
spend will probably spend around ten
minutes talking about these talking
about these questions and somebody
Monica or David or Trisha oh I will be
around to help take notes on some of
these big boards here and then what we'd
like you to do is pick a person who will
report back to the larger group some of
your top answers to these questions in
just like a one or two minute summary
and then we'll discuss them as a whole
so the first question is given the
information that we just discussed and
you all have in your packet you can
refer to the slides if you want to look
back at the slides for the life cycle
group so what do you think are the gaps
in health and served services so for
your life cycle group so what are the
things that are preventing them from
living their healthiest lives and where
do you see those gaps and then of the
things that you identify as gasps what
do you think are the
three most important issues and topics
to address
so should we how would you like to do it
Monica
I just realized this we have four life
cycles and that's what we are going to
do four tables exactly do you want to do
four table could be having somebody from
the homeless mess back there children in
youth that sounds fine adulthood and
older adults is everybody okay with that
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conservation why don't we take a second
even if you didn't get to your
three-hour group didn't get to our it's
okay why don't we go through and we'll
go through an order of the light cycle
and people give just a real brief one or
two minute recap of what you talked
about and then we'll spend a couple of
minutes after each briefing and other
people can add some comments as well
so let's start with children and user I
can't remember all right stigma and
resource the match of the resources and
whether a temple location or visibility
might be an issue but then we quickly
kind of went into discussion about the
demand for the resources for that are
available for youth far exceeding the
available supply and so what that causes
is an intervention response a kind of
crisis if you will response where
there's maybe like a big population of
need but only a small resource available
and so that becomes more of a triage
kind of a function and because of that
it may not actually match what their
actual needs are so you might have kind
of lighter forward needs that might not
be that might be addressed but then the
more serious issues might be met with
the lighter response if you will so
there there's causing a disparity there
that goes along with because there's so
much of a focus on intervention that
there's a lack of a focus on prevention
we're really trying to get at the
movement upstream is just like for
issues group also talked about similarly
there's lots of talk about awareness
building and education but it's not
always backed up with the resources to
be able to take
actions and then with the limited
resources that are available they don't
kind of go through this review of what's
one of the best practices and whether or
not they're evidence-based and whether
or not they are able to deliver on what
the objectives are being a little bit
more strategic about that we talked
about some ideas about having volunteer
resources in the schools or potentially
doing some work the BTSA but really
backing those up that kind of awareness
side and backing it up with resources a
need for more support for parents and
families and that when the other
priorities was having more of a youth
voice in the picture and those could
help drive school policies drive City
policies asking students rather than
kind of telling them here's your
information go take care of it on your
own how about the larger group or any
thoughts to add for that list
yeah that's all well it's okay I mean we
can we can move on to the next okay I
just I think your point about triage is
interesting because again if the
resources aren't there and you have a
higher need you're absolutely right
you're going to try and work with what
you have and try to take which ones in a
worse state first and that leaves a lot
of people that you might be able to
prevent unfortunately coming to the
floor now you like the idea like the
prevention and I know that like you know
that's very there's a lot more like
diversity inclusion like in the
workplace and stuff I don't know like
what kind of training we do or programs
we do for like diversity and inclusion
type of awareness word for kids and
youth I mean it's a big thing in the
workplace so it should be a big thing
starting when you're young right so it's
a good part of the anti-bullying
conversation
there is a dimension
okay you're up to adults already we
started out with the first thought was
that one of the big stress points for
adults especially those who are parents
is the inability to have affordable
childcare
it makes them miss work it increases
their stress it puts a lot of stress
onto children and we are one of the few
societies in the world that doesn't
provide childcare for young parents so
we have a long way to go there our
second point we had to do with language
all the things that we're talking about
from the moment that we start talking
about them have to be in languages that
people understand or we have to be
getting information from those
communities that are not speaking
English so the holding which question is
an extremely important one and basically
what if we moved into actually talking
about strategies and it was interesting
that okay Jason brought up what they do
in Israel upon where it's when you come
into the country
everybody is immediately put into an
immersion group and for three months
they're immersed in Hebrew language so
that there's a common language that even
though they may get brochures in their
own language and things like that
there's a common language that issue
and it's much easier to convey your
values and your principles and to make
people aware of the resources that are
available to them all of those things
can happen when there's a way to
communicate and everybody understands
Randee brought up that one of the big
things here is we have a lot of
resources for language we have free ESL
classes we have all kinds of things that
people can do to learn English so that
we would all share a common language but
so many people are not aware they don't
know where those languages are being
taught
they haven't been convinced that they
ought to try to make use of them so
there's a whole lot of work that still
needs to be done to get people to use
the resources that we have and then
thirdly we had quite a nice discussion
about the Seattle freeze now one of our
big stress espressos for adults here are
that we don't our neighbors we can't
rely on our neighbors because we don't
know them we don't spend time with them
we don't get to know them and therefore
we're not in support of one another so
we have all these people feeling
isolated and feeling as if they're gonna
they're strangers in their own community
they really don't know what's going on
that is also
and I think Jason brother you know we
have the highlands we have the people in
Providence point we have downtown
Seattle the old city I mean I guess
about the old city these people are
spread out all over with somewhat
different languages we're not the most
diverse community in the world but we're
pretty diverse and so we don't have that
concerted effort of people working
together to solve our problems and to
solve even the little local problems
because we each live in our own little
eyes we also talked about the fact that
Issaquah lost its medium for getting
people together for communicating to
people by losing the Asafa press and
because we don't have a local paper who
knows what's going on you might find out
but you might not
the whole notion that community needs a
local paper is getting to be foreign to
us we do most of the people that live in
my neighborhood do not get the Seattle
Times and my has been preaching all the
time that if you lose the Seattle Times
you're gonna lose the very heart of this
community you've got to have a local
newspaper to know what's going on in
your community so anyway we did some
discussion of that that the diversity
it's not just the distance from one side
of town to the other it's the fact that
it's hilly and so it live prevents
people from being able to walk around in
town unless you're young and active and
most of the young and active people seem
to look at the screens and they're home
these days instead of walking around but
that's a different subject but the
physical and/or the topographical
realities of Issaquah are also a factor
that keeps us from from communicating
and building the sense of true community
which is what we're all talking about
here one thing we didn't talk about that
that I think I don't know where they're
gonna have an opportunity to layer on
jobs are critical to the community and I
in the last City Council meeting I think
it was brought up that the city has lost
more more stores in the last year than
have opened and that is a problem we
don't talk about it very much that if
people can't get jobs at all levels
whether it's working at McDonald's or
doing a hedge fund but we're gonna be in
trouble when it comes to affordable
housing and things like that so I think
the city ought to do more to examine
that issue and come up with it and
that's that's a plan policy
Randi brought up that we have one wait
means of transportation in the city
that's free the little two hundred bus
that runs around if you don't have a car
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anything else for the adulthood section
we traveled a lot of territory older
adult says that I think we had the
Commission or we had scheduled to 8
o'clock originally and so I wanted to
ask the group is okay if we could spend
another maybe 10 minutes to wrap up the
report out and then talk on that next
steps
you had aging adults and we talked a lot
about housing that's not available we
had really expensive housing here for
her aging adults but we don't really
have moderate cost housing affordable
housing purple Timber Ridge and
Providence are sort of super nice and a
little expensive but we don't have any
that's just for the regular fixed income
so we think that's an issue because they
don't get to have a community setting
they don't get to have all those
services right there there's just not
the opportunity for that it's just so
expensive the choices that we have here
but also on the other side of it there's
a gap in services to just agent place to
age in your house that you can all your
life with your community you know the
meals on wheels the medical services you
know it leads into access to
transportation if you don't have a car
and you're trying to age in place to
have things delivered to you or have a
system where your kids or family can
deliver things to you
transportation was another problem that
we talked about not only does it isolate
a person if they can't get out and get
to the Senior Center get to the doctor
get to wherever they need to get
transportation as one of us the second
issue that we hit and the third issue it
was sort of related to transportation
but it's just access to services some of
them aren't local which gets you to
transportation again some of them they
probably don't even know that there's
services available and so that we
started solving that you know how do you
get the folks at the Senior Center to be
ambassadors to other seniors to get them
to understand that there's all these
things out there that they could tap
into but we would have to find the
seniors that don't know that and are
isolated to help with that but so I
think these are access to services is
sort of a double prong the how do we get
them to know that the services are
available and then if the services
aren't local how do we find a way to get
them close to those services if they're
not easily accessible right here I know
we talked about we jumped right to
solutions as anybody else to add
something for aging adults
I well
Trisha it's just the question I had I
really like to know if people getting
stressed about Aging in Place or what
what what is it that's causing the
stress if you're on a fixed income if
you've done your job and you're on fixed
income is it the tax on your home that
is I just don't know well I don't know
how you address that unless we have not
you but how we address that unless we
have data and that's that's a survey I
mean a survey could be done for that but
to have it be a meaningful service
that's pretty expensive I mean different
communities because I'm you from Texas
in Texas property taxes are capped when
you turn 65 your property taxes do not
go up period and I just realized that
was not a common thing and there's not
that here so it should be you should be
able to probably find some sort of
comparative study of that that policy
and if where it does exist and where it
doesn't exist and how secure
we'll stay in there so I'm sure things
are different place to place but I know
for my own mother-in-law that perfect is
concerned is where health care costs
it's not her taxes I mean those are the
things that are breaking you know that
is hard to balance a budget and that's
when you can't predict what may happen
to you next month you know anxiety I'm
just gonna add also the there's talk
about behavioral health and mental
health think it's important to not
forget about the specific needs for
aging adults and seniors around mental
health around issues of complicated
grief and loss transitions end-of-life
issues I think sometimes get or can be
overlooked when you talk about broader
community needs for mental health
services I'm just kind of adding that in
yep I would like to just make one
comment that kind of underlies all of
this and it was in one of the comments
that you need presentation a healthy
community is the responsibility of
everybody in the community it's not the
City Council's job and it's not our
Commission's job and it's not any one
groups job but I don't see us as a city
ever adverting to the fact that most of
the people that we have in our
communities do not believe they believe
that if they can take care of their own
kids and their own family and they're
doing everything that they possibly can
and they're not obliged to do anything
more and I guess I just think the whole
education system and everything that we
do should have some aspect of helping
people become aware of the necessity for
this community responsibility
because of the screens because I look at
the city website
I get the you know I get it what's
happening look at the city define things
but I am unaware there something on the
city lists all of the free opportunities
for English as a Second Language
citizenship class opportunities to
volunteer not just to take the classes
but to volunteer I think that the one of
the easiest things to do to address many
of the problems we're discussing for
today would be to have a proactive very
easy to access site on the city that
lists free munication could take the
place of what is a court order do or try
to take the place you are notifying
mailing lists
on the city's website there could be one
for any of these so me would just once a
month remembered here's this website
where we have all of these things going
and the new website has a resource page
that will provide some of those push
around but yeah it's not yeah I don't
think that it's like it so on it and
then let's move on Thomas an addendum to
that comment of resources on the website
there's people that don't have computers
that be putting this idea to different
people maybe somebody will run with it
and yeah we need a spot in the city
where information can be posted and you
know people that can only get to there
at midnight or at 3:00 in the morning or
at 2:00 p.m. different hours of the
access to that information and you know
they can grab or they have pieces of
paper where they can write information
they mean without bead oh you're looking
at this information you need to help you
know something that people can have the
resources available whether if they
don't have a computer they don't know
how to use it or they have different
hours than 50% of the population we need
something because we lost a piece of
compressed we need something out there
because we're nimble I need the senior
what's happening
so people experiencing homelessness okay
so we didn't run meeting down the second
is access to services for mental health
and just general health care and the
third one is - yeah it's kind of Lord
has been alluded to already is just
creating more of a culture of awareness
and acknowledgment of homelessness as an
issue that's real in and changing the
vocabulary from advanced problem
they're like the dump the girl in your
daughter's classes middle school goes
home to a car so when we looked at those
three things we haven't really changed
the first one very easily we can't
change the second one very easily except
like maybe encouraging some more of that
infrastructure to come to a swap
we thought there was probably a good
opportunity to to make some inroads to
changing the vocabulary and by making it
more visible putting some nominal
dollars or community effort into
creating some community centers like at
the community center having open showers
once a week or twice a week and
coordinating with high school students
needing to do volunteer hours or
really
anything else any other comments one of
the great programs that Issaquah has is
the citizens Academy that's done by the
police department which I highly
recommend along with the cert class I
mean those are two amazing amazing
classes that that is it was departments
provide for citizens but in the
community Academy the citizens Academy
at the police department one of the
things that they noted that is congruent
with King County Sheriff's Department
and Seattle Police Department
is that it is policy when somebody a
homeless person especially if it's a
drug-related interaction between police
and the person in question they are
required to offer help on the first
contact this is you know I'm taking you
in you're gonna be arrested for someone
so and when they get in there the first
one of the first things they get is
counseling on help that is available
with your situation
whatever whatever that may be
and the officers told us and I have a
neighbor who is actually a Seattle
officer who is working on the navigation
teams in homes camps that the
overwhelming majority of the people that
are taken into custody that our homeless
refused the offers of health and that's
something that I think has to be
acknowledged and addressed on this level
because if you can have if they have all
the programs in the world and you're not
communicating the opportunity to the
individual in question it's there's no
there's no possibility of success so I
don't I don't know how we we got to do a
better job of getting people to use
resources that were available and one of
the things that we learned through that
outreach that I spoke to a little bit is
that one of the things that helps is
having consistent and reliable outreach
because it often takes multiple
connections to build the trust over
someone to accept the help
so something small that's reliably
available is better than a one time
flash is what we were saying and then
Rebecca I didn't mean to cut you off
every contact and building trust and
it's hard even if you love that habit in
unique trips every day whatever and like
that's so bad for you why don't you just
you know it's it's not that easy
it takes time and oh yeah and the other
thing too is identifying the different
types of homelessness there's certain
types of homelessness and are brought
upon by difficult circumstances there's
also a lot that it's done by addiction
I'm sure everyone's probably seen by now
that that documentary Seattle is dying
so again it's also goes to building
trust it also goes to not loosening up
the rule of law to the point where
people can hold three grams of dope and
not get in trouble I mean that basically
cost three grand and that's enough to
kill somebody three times over so
there's this interesting program they
had Rhode Island where someone who has
busted with illegal drugs for class one
felony drugs is not only would they be
in custody for a while but then they're
able to do things like there's a few
different type of drugs where if the
state will be work to be willing it
would allow them to slowly get off the
drugs and once they serve you know a
light sentence but it takes them off the
street because again you're the
tiny-house thing they don't want they
don't want the rules they don't want any
of
and that's part of it I mean I don't
think anybody in this room wants Seattle
coming to Issaquah I mean what's
happening in Seattle is just devastating
I have to drive through that city and
it's not the same city I remember three
years ago so identifying why certain
segments and what that percentage is of
homelessness what is drug-related what
are people that simply like you said the
middle schoolers are sleeping and with
her mom in their car I mean that's very
different than what's going on downtown
so next steps so the information that we
collected today and that we talked about
we're preparing a workshop with counsel
and what we like to do is present
similar information to counsel and we'd
like to get some direction from them
about some areas of focus within each of
these life cycles so we'll take the
conversations they have the benefit of
your discussion as well after the
council takes to look at it we're going
to put a we're going to do four half-day
staff and stakeholder workshops that's
where we take this information in the
direction from Council and we start
working on specific strategies that we
think there will have service providers
nonprofits members of the community
you're all invited to participate in
those workshops as well
so I'm sure you'll get additional
information from Monica or Trish about
that once we've done the staff and
stakeholder workshops we're going to
come back with some strategies that come
out of that and we're going to have
another workshop to help refine those
strategies and build the strategy of the
little strategies right and that's when
it will go to the public for review so a
lots going to happen as we enter this
part of really determining what is its
akua's role what can we do in the next
three to five years to make a difference
in these issues and so we started with
that tonight so thank you very much for
being a part of it and for all your
great conversation
sure but I I'm not sure close the
meeting time so we return
you