Speaker 1: And welcome, Welcome, Welcome. It is time now for our
Speaker 1: community connection right here on K one. The one you
Speaker 1: trust and with me here is Aaron kirk Patrick and
Speaker 1: you are running forward four And we just saw each
Speaker 1: other just what a few minutes ago?
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a couple of hours we sat together at
Speaker 2: the forum over at our vest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. It was an interesting UH event last night.
Speaker 1: A lot of people got to hear a little bit
Speaker 1: from each Canada. But we're gonna hear a lot more
Speaker 1: from you today. One of the big issues in Bartlesville,
Speaker 1: and especially in your ward is UH is the homelessness issue.
Speaker 1: And you a few ideas that you've been working on
Speaker 1: for quite a while. I mean, I remember when you
Speaker 1: first said you were running you had ideas. Can we
Speaker 1: hear a little bit about those?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, I was really moved by the
Speaker 2: listener's question that we got to talk about last night,
Speaker 2: which was essentially, and I won't remember a word for word,
Speaker 2: but the question was basically, my daughter got chased at
Speaker 2: knife point on the pathfinder. What can we do to
Speaker 2: address the homelessness issue? And that's not the only time
Speaker 2: that I've heard that story. Actually, it's the homelessess situation
Speaker 2: has really gotten out of control, and we've got people
Speaker 2: suffering on both ends of this. We have homeless neighbors
Speaker 2: who are suffering and we have the rest of the
Speaker 2: community that's suffering as well.
Speaker 3: So I have a plan that I can't take.
Speaker 2: Credit for all of it, because in fact, the plan
Speaker 2: that I put together came from lots of discussions with
Speaker 2: our nonprofit and helping organizations. On the one hand, it
Speaker 2: also and I've served in the and volunteered in the
Speaker 2: homelessness space for twenty years at this point, talking to
Speaker 2: our police officers and hearing their feedback, talking to homeless
Speaker 2: individuals and formerly homeless individuals who gave.
Speaker 3: Their feedback on this plan.
Speaker 2: And I have a plan that at this point I
Speaker 2: can confidently say, with the endorsement and support of helping
Speaker 2: agencies all over town, this is the plan that we
Speaker 2: need to be pursuing. And I call it the high
Speaker 2: Way out of homelessness or the highway out of here,
Speaker 2: And essentially the highway out of homelessness is what we
Speaker 2: will call it. When we take our helping organizations, we
Speaker 2: unsilo them and we streamline them so that you know
Speaker 2: the way that a highway works where there's lots of
Speaker 2: on ramps, but it all heads in the same direction.
Speaker 2: We want to we want to be able to intersect
Speaker 2: with our homeless neighbors and say, no matter what their
Speaker 2: needs are, we have helping organizations that are already set
Speaker 2: up to help you, but they struggle to interface well together.
Speaker 2: So creating that layer in coordination between those groups will
Speaker 2: allow us to say, if it's a church that meets
Speaker 2: a homeless gentleman, or the police owner sect with a
Speaker 2: homeless lady, or they show up at a gape for help,
Speaker 2: or one of our homeless shelters, we say, hey, what
Speaker 2: is your complex web of needs? But wherever we intersect you,
Speaker 2: we're going to put you on the highway out of
Speaker 2: homelessness so we can get you into stable housing as
Speaker 2: quickly as possible. And by coordinating with these groups, and
Speaker 2: these groups have all talked about with me how they
Speaker 2: can coordinate, then we can help people move into stable housing.
Speaker 2: That is great for people who are experiencing situational homelessness.
Speaker 2: These are people who if they can get the help
Speaker 2: that they need, they can move out of homelessness and
Speaker 2: into a more stable living situation. What our police officers
Speaker 2: are dealing with are people who are homeless by choice,
Speaker 2: meaning and this is a fairly small number of people,
Speaker 2: but there are people who are just hey, I'm happy
Speaker 2: living outside of the tent. I'm happy using the services
Speaker 2: that Bartlesville has to offer. And these people, they don't
Speaker 2: start in Bartlesville. Let's see, I met aman yesterday who
Speaker 2: moved here from Wichita. Last week, there were four or
Speaker 2: five guys who all came together from Durant now are
Speaker 2: homeless in Bartlesville. The police were telling me last month
Speaker 2: about a guy who had trained, hopped from la and
Speaker 2: ended up staying in Bartlesville because he discovered all of
Speaker 2: the services that our town has to offer. So when
Speaker 2: you talk to homeless individuals, and I've talked to a
Speaker 2: bunch of them about this plan, almost none of them
Speaker 2: started in Bartlesville. So for those folks, if you want
Speaker 2: to get out of homelessness, we want to help you
Speaker 2: do that. If your desire is to be homeless and
Speaker 2: just to use the services we have, we're not interested
Speaker 2: in helping with that because there is a cost to
Speaker 2: the rest of the community. I talk a lot about
Speaker 2: the externalization of consequences.
Speaker 3: So if I make a choice and it.
Speaker 2: Impacts and then there's a negative consequence that comes from it,
Speaker 2: and I put that negative consequence onto you. I've externalized
Speaker 2: the consequence of my action onto you, right. That have
Speaker 2: the community level too. It's why I'm not allowed to
Speaker 2: take my dumpster and empty it into my neighbor's yard.
Speaker 3: No, we have that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if my dumpster's overflowing, I can't toss it into
Speaker 2: somebody else's yard because I've externalized the consequence of my choices.
Speaker 2: So that's happening at the community level right now. So
Speaker 2: the Highway out of here would essentially make make lowest
Speaker 2: level misdemeanors of a few behaviors that are negatively impacting
Speaker 2: the community. Camping in certain public spaces, specifically like around
Speaker 2: Pathfinder for instance, where there's lots of homeless encampments out
Speaker 2: there right now, yep, aggressive panhandling outside of businesses. And
Speaker 2: then for our business owners, dumpster diving, especially downtown. Our
Speaker 2: business owners have really had an issue with dumpster diving
Speaker 2: and them having to clean up the litter that other
Speaker 2: people have created. If we make these low level misdemeanors,
Speaker 2: then it gives the police officers probable cause to interact
Speaker 2: with folks, and the goal of that is education. Here
Speaker 2: are the resources we have for you. What help do
Speaker 2: you need? How do we get you on the highway
Speaker 2: out of homelessness. But if people are not interested in
Speaker 2: changing their behavior, well, I want to keep living out here,
Speaker 2: I want to keep going through the dumpsters, I want
Speaker 2: to keep panhandling.
Speaker 3: That's where the misdemeanors come into play.
Speaker 2: And the goal of misdemeanors is not to put a
Speaker 2: homeless people in jail or to find homeless people.
Speaker 3: That's absolutely not the goal.
Speaker 2: The goal is community service, so the individuals become contributing
Speaker 2: members of our community. If they don't do that, then
Speaker 2: those misdemeanors are publicly available to our helping organizations so
Speaker 2: that they can say when you show up to a gape,
Speaker 2: for instance, they run your ID before they serve you
Speaker 2: and say, I'm sorry, you've got these misdemeanors because you've
Speaker 2: not been complying with our homelessness laws. We're just going
Speaker 2: to turn off the tap. We can't serve you. At
Speaker 2: that point. We don't have to force people out. An
Speaker 2: individual has a choice to make either join the highway
Speaker 2: out of homelessness, right start taking these services and getting
Speaker 2: the help you need to get out of homelessness, or
Speaker 2: figure out a way to provide for yourself, or move
Speaker 2: to a community that will. So it's all I think
Speaker 2: a lot about individual agency and agent see is simply
Speaker 2: the dignity to make choices and understand the consequences of
Speaker 2: those choices. It's freedom and responsibility. So my goal is
Speaker 2: to treat our homeless neighbors with the same dignity that
Speaker 2: I treat the rest of our community with and to say,
Speaker 2: let us help you make choices that will lead you
Speaker 2: out of homelessness, or we will give you the freedom
Speaker 2: not to make those choices, and we have the choice
Speaker 2: not to help, not to enable, And in doing so,
Speaker 2: our helping organizations have said overwhelmingly, and this is a
Speaker 2: Skelton like it will continue to be fleshed out and improved,
Speaker 2: but they've said overwhelmingly, this is the plan that we need.
Speaker 2: At the same time that I proposed this plan publicly
Speaker 2: as part of my campaign into the City Council, the
Speaker 2: City Council voted on a homeless on a homeless plan
Speaker 2: as well. Their plan was to spend a month putting
Speaker 2: together a plan for a committee and then to vote
Speaker 2: on that committee, and then to have that committee study
Speaker 2: the homeless this issue for six months, then come back
Speaker 2: to the back to the city council with hopefully a
Speaker 2: recommendation for what to do.
Speaker 3: That's a year.
Speaker 2: So it's meetings about meetings about meetings for six months
Speaker 2: before we do anything, like it's a bureaucrats, bureaucratic solution,
Speaker 2: and it's not a solution at all because for those
Speaker 2: six months, my wife and daughters still can't walk on
Speaker 2: pathfinders safely by themselves.
Speaker 3: Neither can yours. So we've got a crisis.
Speaker 2: We're going to six month spend six months studying the
Speaker 2: crisis when we have professionals in the community with decades
Speaker 2: of experience who are endorsing this plan saying the highway
Speaker 2: out of homelessness is what we need, and they go, well,
Speaker 2: we should probably study it.
Speaker 3: For six more months. To me, that's a pretty inefficient
Speaker 3: way to deal with a crisis. Very good.
Speaker 1: You have another one called like a land rush.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, people are almost said, going what.
Speaker 1: And folks, you need to hear.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the hometown Heroes land Run is on the west
Speaker 2: side of town. Especially, we have an affordable housing crisis.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: In fact, I spoke to a few women at the
Speaker 2: Westside Community Center this last Saturday who said they're knocking
Speaker 2: down the homes in our in our neighborhoods, but not
Speaker 2: building anything else instead of a lot. Yes, and in fact,
Speaker 2: the city owns some of these properties. So my idea
Speaker 2: the way that real estate development works is once investment
Speaker 2: money comes into a community, other investment money will follow it.
Speaker 2: Because once once you start to have economic signals that
Speaker 2: this neighborhood is being is being upgraded or built or improved, Yes, exactly,
Speaker 2: other people see it and go, well, if I invest
Speaker 2: here now, then I've got a larger profit margin down
Speaker 2: the road. So what we want to do is begin
Speaker 2: that investment process so that we will see this cascade
Speaker 2: of positive effects. So the Hometown Heroes Land Run is
Speaker 2: to is to take these lots that the city owns
Speaker 2: because of tax delinquency, and rather than selling them, I
Speaker 2: want to give the away through a raffle or a
Speaker 2: lottery system to our teachers, our firefighters, and our police officers.
Speaker 2: And on the back end, I've been working with lending
Speaker 2: organizations to streamline the financing process and with some of
Speaker 2: our local developers to streamline the building process and asking
Speaker 2: both of these into these both these groups of people, Hey,
Speaker 2: take a little less money on the front end of
Speaker 2: this thing because of the people you're helping. These are
Speaker 2: folks that we want to stay in Bartlesville. And at
Speaker 2: the backside, yes that. So then we take these properties
Speaker 2: ninety days out, we'd put them on the city's website
Speaker 2: to these organizations and say, hey, these are the properties
Speaker 2: we're given away. Would you like to enter the raffle
Speaker 2: for them, and our teachers, police officers, firefighters can go
Speaker 2: and look at them and say yes, I'd like to
Speaker 2: build here. They give them three months to get to
Speaker 2: get funding secured, to get a house plan secured, so
Speaker 2: by the time that they win that property, they're ready
Speaker 2: to break ground, just boom immediately.
Speaker 3: And then as those houses go up. One of the one.
Speaker 2: Key pieces we have a really high, i think an
Speaker 2: unhealthy high density of rentals in the west side of town.
Speaker 2: So these properties will have to be owner occupied for
Speaker 2: the first ten years, which means that whoever is living
Speaker 2: there will be a part of that community. We're not
Speaker 2: building the house just to have more rentals. We're building
Speaker 2: the house to have more community members.
Speaker 1: I have a question, Yes, sir, what if someone has
Speaker 1: to make a life change or a move and what
Speaker 1: happens to that home?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they're still they're allowed to sell a home.
Speaker 2: In fact, you could develop it and sell it immediately,
Speaker 2: but whoever buys it will.
Speaker 3: Still have to be owner occupied for the first decade. Understood.
Speaker 2: Yes, And then part of what I'm trying to do,
Speaker 2: part of what this will also allow us to do
Speaker 2: is because we have an affordable rental problem too. A
Speaker 2: lot of the lots downtown are already zoned multi family residential.
Speaker 2: So my idea with these lots is to let people
Speaker 2: build the home that they want to live in. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, you can build a detached rental
Speaker 2: unit as well. And a lot of these properties can
Speaker 2: be in above garage apartment that can be a free
Speaker 2: standing apartment. But basically you have the owner occupants living
Speaker 2: on the property and then they can have renters living
Speaker 2: on the property with them. By doing that, it allows
Speaker 2: the builders to be able to afford their mortgage a
Speaker 2: little more easily. But also what we'll be building then
Speaker 2: is typically rentals that are going to be sub one
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a month, which is really what we need
Speaker 2: right now in bartles BA badly got lots of single
Speaker 2: moms going, Hey, me and my two kids are looking
Speaker 2: for a two bedroom apartment for less than thousand bucks
Speaker 2: a month. They are extremely hard to find, especially in
Speaker 2: a unit that you'd feel safe with your kids.
Speaker 3: But because it's.
Speaker 2: Owner occupied, you have people who are going to be
Speaker 2: taking really good care of this brand new property. So
Speaker 2: it's going to be a lot safer because the people
Speaker 2: who own the property are living right there as your
Speaker 2: next door neighbor.
Speaker 3: They do the renter.
Speaker 2: So we're dealing with two different issues, or actually it's
Speaker 2: more like five. We get this, we get this property
Speaker 2: off the city you know tax doll We start making
Speaker 2: property taxes off the property, so it benefits the entire community.
Speaker 2: We benefit our hometown heroes by helping them build affordable
Speaker 2: house for themselves. We benefit the community around them, and
Speaker 2: we start building affordable rentals, which also.
Speaker 3: Helps our community. It's just a cat. I love.
Speaker 2: I love ideas that have positive cascading effects, and I
Speaker 2: think we need those kind of ideas at the government level.
Speaker 1: Where can we find out more about you and these ideas.
Speaker 1: I understand you've got a couple of videos that explain
Speaker 1: these in greater detail than what we have time for here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so if you're streaming this on Facebook right now,
Speaker 2: you can go to you can just search Aaron for
Speaker 2: Ward four on Facebook. My Facebook page has tons of
Speaker 2: videos explaining policy ideas. You can also go to my
Speaker 2: website erinforward four dot com, or you can just probably
Speaker 2: google Aaron for Ward four and it'll come up. Facebook
Speaker 2: is the best way to connect with my ideas because
Speaker 2: I'm because of these videos happen, you know, every other.
Speaker 3: Day, I'm putting out lots of content, lots of content.
Speaker 1: That's right, my goodness sakes. And once again early voarding
Speaker 1: starts today and election Day is coming up on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: And Aaron Kirkak, thank you very much for.
Speaker 3: Being here with now. Thank you, Tom, appreciate it already.
Speaker 1: Folks, you have been watching and listening to our commuter