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“Today we issue a challenge to ourselves, our peers, and our community. We can create temporary and long-term housing that is human-centric. We can reduce the capacity of large scale shelters to provide a greater degree of more qualitative and individualized service, while simultaneously exploring creative mechanisms to site and fund new facilities within our community. We must ensure that the hard lessons we learn today are not learned in vain, so that our neighbors living on the street, in our shelters, and those fortunate enough to be placed in hotels, have access to the same level of safety and security going forward that much of the rest of us take for granted. Simply put, we can and we must do better.”

“The City would commit up to $23 million over five years for operational subsidies as part of the required local match, delivered to Episcopal Community Services.”

“We express our deep condolences to the loved ones of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, David McAtee, and Tony McDade. We mourn with their families and friends, and the loved ones of countless others who have been killed by the police. We condemn the violence perpetrated against communities of color at the hands of the state, and recognize that this violence is not always as overt as a police officer’s knee on a man’s neck. The underfunding of public education in Black communities is itself violence. A lack of job opportunities, substandard housing conditions, inadequate access to medical care, and bias within the justice system are all forms of institutional violence.” Read the full statement .