Chair Stevens questions Sebastian on street outreach operations

Sebastian, I just had a question.

I know Horizon, you guys do outreach.

Is that connected to your drop-in center, or is that part of the outreach team that does the borough-wide stuff?

So we operate the only DY City-funded outreach contract.

So we are the ones who have the two teams that go out into the boroughs.

Oh, so you do both.

So you do the– how many people are in the boroughs?

Seemed great.

This is good stuff.

So typically around two to four.

Two to four in each team?

Each team.

And it's mobile.

So we have vehicles.

Great.

Do you have a boat?

We don't have a boat.

Okay, so.

But we have two vehicles, and at the beginning of the week, we'll send out a list of all the areas that will be for the week.

And we also utilize feedback directly from young folks around where we should be for our outreach.

So there's, you know, there's.

And so what does the shift look like?

I'm sorry, I have so many questions.

Sorry, guys.

So an outreach shift is from 7 p.m.

To about 3 a.m.

And so first thing that we do when we get on, the first thing that the team does when they get on shift is review our phones to see if we've gotten any phone calls, follow up with any phone calls that we've gotten, and then dispatch to the area.

We'll bag up, like,

safer sex supplies, so like condoms.

We have like those RHY pamphlets that we give out.

We also have pop-top food items as well as like, you know, quick snacks that folks can grab.

We also provide...

Needle exchange stuff, so Narcan and things like that.

So they're, like, fully equipped out there.

And so, like, how do you break up with the boroughs?

Because, like, right, because it's like you have, you know, they're in Brooklyn, they're in Queens.

Like, how do you break it up, and what does the schedule look like?

I'm sorry.

I'm also going to call you a flaunt.

It's more questions, but I'm asking because we were just highlighting this.

And so it's great that you're here.

It's laid out in the outreach schedule that we issue.

So we'll send that to DYCD.

DYCD also sends that out to just the general providers.

And we also put it on our IG page just to kind of.

What would it look like if you had more people to be able to do this?

It would be great.

Oh, how many people would you think that you guys would need to be more adequate and really do this at full capacity?

A lot more than what we have right now.

I think so.

I mean, do you think even thinking about a start, it would make sense to have at least an outry team for each borough?

I think so.

I think that, I think it's, it's, we're kind of stretching our team really thin.

And so what we'll do is we'll tackle like a few, like a borough or two a day between the teams.

So like the Northern and the Southern team.

But if we had a lot more folks, we could cover a lot more area.

The team does its best because, you know, aside from doing like general.

Like overnight outreach, they also table as well throughout the week.

Yeah.

I got to see this RFP because the what?

They're doing tabling.

I mean, this is program choice.

Like we also do like tabling.

I know because that's the work that you do.

All right.

I will definitely be following up because I have so many questions and a lot of.

ideas.