The Report of Keene's Ad Hoc Committee on Housing Stability was presented before the City Council's Planning, Licenses, and Development Committee today. This has been a long time coming, and is the product of a lot of hard work by a lot of good people.
Some may recall my role as a City Councilor in the establishment of this Ad Hoc Committee. After yet another expulsion of people camping outside behind a local shopping center, I got together with Councilors Bryan Lake and Catt Workman, and the three of us wrote a letter to the Mayor and City Council with a set of proposed actions that the City could take with respect to the ongoing crisis of housing and homelessness. 
This is the agenda we asked for:
- Establish locations around the city to be designated as appropriate for camping. These locations should be provided with city-funded dumpster and latrine services to minimize the impact of campers on the on the local environment.
- Establish a “safe parking” program, entailing the designation of parking lots where people living in their vehicles would be allowed to park and sleep overnight in relative security.
- Work with our social services partners to provide occupants of camping and parking areas with outreach support and pathways to more stable housing opportunities.
- Review building code and zoning ordinances to make room for lower-cost housing solutions, such as tiny houses, cottage communities, and conversion of existing spaces into accessory dwelling units.
- Work to expedite projects that bring expanded housing capacity into the city, with a balanced focus on both subsidized and market-rate housing.
- Find a long-term solution for the lack of public bathrooms downtown.
There was a rather amazing hearing before a Council committee, with public support from a panoply of voices, including activists, advocates, agency representatives, health professionals, the clergy, public officials, and people experiencing homelessness. I told my own story of being homeless when I was 19. That meeting demonstrated to the Council that there was broad, community consensus on the need to put together a new strategy for Keene, and the matter was eventually referred to an Ad Hoc Committee appointed by the Mayor.
That Committee sat every month from April through December. I was not on the Committee, but I went to all the meetings, and so did a bunch of other people - the Monadnock Interfaith Project held ice cream socials at the UU church to strategize before every meeting. Boy howdy, that's how you organize.
The report that was presented earlier this evening was the culmination of the Committee process, and provides us with a strategy that we can follow that will help our community meet the needs of our most vulnerable. Now that it is being released, it is up to City Staff and the City Council to take up its recommendations individually to make sure that they actually come to fruition.
Do the recommendations that have come out of this Committee give the community everything that Councilors Lake, Workman and I asked for? No, but, but we got a lot of what we wanted and there are some big wins.
This is a long post already, so please find its continuation in Part 2.