001e e e 29th 2024 meeting of the an aror rter commission the purpose of the renters commission is to advise the city council and City administrator in manners affecting renters in the city the Ann Arbor renters commission is made up of voting members who are appointed by the mayor and approved by city council two non-voting city council Liaisons two non-voting members representing different landlord perspectives and a non-voting representative to the University of Michigan Student Legal Services to speak during any of the public comment opportunities you'll be a able to speak through the webinar link or by phone depending on your method of access to this meeting for phone access please call 877 5247 or 78899 and Inter meting ID 941 to be called on to speak Ann Arbor M sorry callers must press star n
002if listening by phone or use the raised hand feature if viewing through the web the web link a2gov .org renters commmission meeting you'll be then called upon by City staff one by one using the last three digits of your phone number or by username if available for those accessing through the web link you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak please state your name at the beginning of your comments City staff will indicate when callers have 30 seconds left of their three minute comment period after 3 minutes they'll be placed on on mute so that we can proceed to the next speaker moving on to roll call commissioner Lowe's commissioner else I'm here in an arbor thank you welcome commissioner dran commissioner Ratcliffe I'm here calling from an Arbor
003Michigan commissioner Chen council members Rina and Harrison will either be late or unable to make it they're at the um event tonight with the delegation from our sister city in Germany commissioner good I'm here in an arbor welcome back uh commissioner pittz I'm here an aror welcome commissioner Lea here from in Arbor welcome and commissioner wood here and in in Arbor welcome and commissioner Larsen here in Ann Arbor welcome um oops just seeing who was in the queue uh okay um moving on is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented so moved thank you is there a second I'll second thank you um the agenda is now open to either be approved as presented or it's open to be amended does anyone um need to amend the agenda okay so then um we'll
004go ahead and vote all those in favor please unmute and say I I I I I all those opposed say nay okay the agenda is approved um and now for the approval of the minutes and we don't have the minutes this meeting so we'll have to do those for the next approve last month's meeting and this month's meeting in the October meeting perfect thank you and can you um check for if there's anyone for public comment Christan please yes absolutely all right um if anybody would like to address the renters commission for up to 3 minutes about any topic um public comment can be made by phone at 877 853 5247 or 888 78899 and entering meeting ID 935 941 or you can join um the zoom meeting by going to a a2gov.org runers commission
005meeting there is anybody um who has called in or joined the meeting would like to address the renters commission you can raise your hand by pressing star n or um using the raise hand feature there are no attendees okay um well on to the next item on to the agenda we don't have any unfinished business so we're going to well we're going to move on to the junk fee item 6A an update on the junk fees ordinance um unfortunately neither of our council members were are here at this moment so when they do come we can ask them for it an update as um attor the City Attorney John Riser also is not here tonight um the only thing that I do know is that they're getting closer and they're talking about splitting the ordinance
006up into two separate ordinances so we can get um some things right away while they finish some of the I guess legal and communic on another part of it um they were thinking hopefully at the next council meeting but um hopefully we'll find out later for sure but there isn't a draft to share yet either um and then if there are there any questions okay then we'll move on to oh sorry Jordan just a quickie I mean will we have a draft of the or like what is the Kristen maybe you can help out with the time like what is the what is our thought about um like getting renters commission input before something is read or you get what I'm saying like what is our proposed timeline for all the things and do we
007need to think about maybe scheduling I guess if we want to go with education or one of our committee meetings in order to discuss it before it's present presented because as we all know we're getting we're getting to Crunch up on leasing timeline um particularly for the students on May leases and so um just to try to make sure that we're Expediting and that it does kind of uplift our work here um and is in line with what are we thinking do you have any thoughts on how we can kind of make sure that we have that opportunity I don't know when um this is not a very clear answer and much like rosanita said I know that it's in in process and that there have been many drafts of it already but reviewed by
008the attorney's office and councel um I will try to confirm a little bit more with Attorney John riser to see um if he has if he can kind of provide like a an idea of of where maybe where the attorney's offices with the ordinance draft um I was hoping to have a copy for you guys today so I I'm not sure if it will be ready by October but um I will keep on trying to get that info for you guys thank you and I also before each meeting make sure to ask the council members are there any updates and um it's just that was the update that I got today is that they were going to split it into um you know having an ordinance do the first reading of one at the next
009council meeting and then do the reading of the rest of the ordinance um so that there was at least something sooner rather than later but unfortunately they didn't have a draft to share with me yet I appreciate that I think that is a good a good move to get something on and I'll be looking forward to hearing what it is thank you you're welcome are there any other questions um just real quick welcome uh to commissioner uh droman uh who's here now so I wanted to make sure that he is counted for attendance thank you um and there's a brief update on um membership for the commission right Kristen yes I wanted to um confirm for you all that there are um three voting vacancies currently one of them is for an attorney um with
010experience advocating for renters or with renter related experience um and one of the vacancies that's non voting is still the um HHS representative and I think I've mentioned before to the whole group and I've chatted with rosanita about it um that I think this the renters commission should either reach out to hhsb to see if there is a member willing to fill that liaison role and if not I think you should amend your bylaws to um change the role to be able to be filled by somebody else so that you can get another person on so I wanted to confirm about the vacancy um and we've reached out to several or we've reached out several times to a couple of folks um and I think that uh we're probably ready to move on to some
011different options after not hearing of promt response okay right we had briefly discussed the Poss the possibility of moving from the non-voting HH ASB member um to the to hopefully another voting member who's a renter um was the hope so um at least on my part um and also uh was it Jeff hasn't been here for a couple of meetings have have you received any communication from him Kristen because I have not I hav't I can check um he typically would email ahead of time to let us know he wasn't going to be there I'm not sure if I saw that this time um but I will check thanks yeah I just want to make sure uh Julia I I I'd like to move that we give one more attempt in reaching out to hhsb
012and um to see if they can have an immediate representative and if they can that uh at the next um meeting we have on the agenda to change the bylaws for that slot um does anyone second that am I allowed to second that I'll second it thank you Barb okay um does anyone have any uh comments or questions it's open for discussion now oh all right then um we'll bring it to a vote all those in favor please unmute and say I I I all those opposed please unmute and say nay okay then it's it's passed and thank you Julia uh we'll give it one last try and if not the next meeting we'll go ahead and vote on changing the bylaw and can I just ask will you do that or will Kristen do
013that who reaches out to them I'll we out okay thank you okay um if there are are there any other questions comments concerns all right then we'll go ahead and move on in the oops um in the agenda to our presentation from o from Joe from OSI on green rental housing hey there thanks for having me out good to see y'all um let me just start uh presentation here cool um yeah good to good to be here with you all um I know I've interacted with some folks here and there um but for those who I have not met uh my name is Joe Lang I'm a senior energy analyst with uh the city of an Arbor's office of sustainability and Innovations uh primarily I work on various initiatives related to building decarbonization um which
014including the one I'm here to talk to you about today uh our green rental housing program for what we're going to kind of go through uh one I just want to go through some of the background of uh you know why we're doing this and um as well as some of the program development to kind of show how we got to where we are uh it's been a bit of a lengthy process bit of a journey uh but we're we're getting there now um it includes there's been a couple rounds for comment and all that uh which were um you know before the renters commission was actually formalized so that's kind of a give a sense of how long we've been looking at this want to make sure everyone's aware of all of that um
015at which point we'll talk about the the policy itself what we're looking at right now and how we're thinking about going about it while talking just briefly about some of the resources that are available and then want to leave plenty of time for questions answers feedback and all of that good stuff because we're still kind of um you know working through some of the finishing touches of it all so um pretty much every presentation I go through I will always mention a20 which I know some of you are probably familiar about just in case anyone isn't um a20 is our community's plan to equitably achieve Caron neutrality by 2030 uh this plan was unanimously adopted by city council back in 2020 uh so in addition to all of the you know various other benefits of
016anything we do um and you know the various reasons we have for this program we do have a um imperative from our you know our community leaders on this is something that we need to do and we need to get done particularly there's a bunch of different strategies in a20 I'm not going to go through all of them but the ones um that specifically are relevant today are strategy 2 which is working to switch our appliances and vehicles from different fossil fuel based sources over to things that are electric which can be renewably powered additionally we have strategy three which is um significantly improving the Energy Efficiency of our buildings um and just to dive slightly deeper within strategy 3 we do have an action within here again that is promoting the green rental housing
017program so again this is in the plan this is a plan adopted by city council again went through a really long period of public engagement public feedback um so again in addition to just everything that we're going to talk about all the other benefits here just noting that this is um you know this local directive we have to kind of be pushing forward on this program um going into then some of the why outside of this is you know what we're told um in uh when we look at our emissions here in an arbor uh using our most recent greenhouse gas emissions inventory we see that just under 70% of our emissions do come from our buildings uh which is a very you know very large amount as you can kind of see there um
018now that includes all buildings that includes you know commercial buildings residential buildings our institutional buildings like at the University uh but when we're talking specifically about our you know our our residential buildings about 55% of their housing stock is in rentals um you know which is you know naturally that's more than half it's a big thing and we don't have anything that's specifically targeting uh emissions that comes from uh comes from these households so um while I'm talking about this from an emission lens in this perspective we do know there's a lot of other benefits that come from doing this work and I'm going to be talking about that through you know tonight as we go and also definitely open to making sure we're um accounting for everything so I'm very open to hearing feedback
019about some of that the big reason of why we're kind of going about this program in you know kind of in this way uh you know different than some of our other programs is really this big thorny issue that I know a lot of you are familiar with in the split incentive um which you know in case anyone is not familiar is just basically who is able to benefit from something is not the person who is able to make the Improvement and so where this particularly comes up in the you know the rental context again we're talking about things like Energy Efficiency electrification renewable energy all these kind of things you know the property owner is the one who is uh primarily able to make those upgrades uh but in a lot of cases not
020all but in a lot of cases they are not the ones who pay the utility bills and so you know these kind of um these upgrades that can be made they can have pretty significant um utility cost savings they don't recoup that investment and so they're not as incentivized to kind of go about and do that um you know if you think again a single family home you know the homeowner might be sitting there and they're saying hey if I get a more you know energy efficient home yeah it's going to cost me money to do something but I'm going to save however much per month that pays itself off in you know four or five years so I'm going to make that investment um but you know a property owner might not do that
021for that reason uh because they don't pay those and then you know on the you know the the flip side the tenant they're living in the unit they can't make these structural changes they're going to have those benefits and then you know they they they just simply can't do that you know but they're still continuing to pay uh whatever their utility bills are and some cases are you know exorbitantly higher than they should be just because these haven't been changed over time but they have no ability to kind of make that change and so that's kind of how we're going or why we're going about this is really trying to address this issue because we've seen you know continuously over time you know rental housing gets upgraded at a much lower rate than our single
022family housing stock because of this issue and uh a couple things to note too just on some of the existing procedures I probably don't need to tell too many of you this but you know we do have an existing rental inspection process it covers a lot of different things predominantly related to health and safety um and it's kind of an all of above you got to do these things to be able to rent out a unit um you know it's about you know every two and a half years it can get extended if they you know pass on the first time there are some weatherization stuff in here that's related to winterization of rental housing and all of these things that already in here are staying these aren't anything that we're replacing we're not getting
023rid of any of it with this rather this is something that's being tacked on in addition to uh with you know again the goal of meeting um you know reducing our greenhouse gas emissions making more comfortable places and saving people um on their utility bills and you know for tenants who are renters so the last kind of thing I want to mention just in terms of how we're looking at all this I just do want to note that you know we are not solely targeting rental units uh we have different ordinances that are out there that are already in effect that look at some of our different um you know building types uh for those who are familiar we have a commercial benchmarking program uh which have been in place since 2021 which basically says
024that any building that's greater than 20,000 square feet has to uh Benchmark or uh sh you know find out what their energy and water data is for the entire year and Report out that data um some rental housing if it's you know if it's a building that's greater than 20,000 foot are under this ordinance and they do have to go through and Report out on that data and basically what this does is it just allows again building owners to know the different energy and water usage in their buildings and that can encourage changes to be more efficient if they see something where you know they might not know how their building is performing if they see it's not performing well they might consider making changes with that um on the single family home front we
025do have what's called our home energy rating disclosure or herd program which is basically anytime a home goes for sale they have to get a uh energy score assessment uh which again basically just says here's how the home is performing and that way if you know the they have to present that to potential buyers so when a buyer goes in they're able to see uh you know how the home is performing and if they choose to make upgrades they can because it shows upgrades that are going to have that kind of cost payback uh over a span of five to 10 years and then lastly what we're talking about tonight is the green rental housing program that's looking at our rental housing units and the reason like you kind of mentioned we have these different
026programs different ordinances because all of these buildings kind of have different structures have different incentiv um different incentives for kind of making these different changes and so that's why we're kind of approaching them in different ways while making sure we're able to cover all of our building stock so for how this came about some folk might have been around for it like I said it's been um been long it's been a long process we've been working on this a while um and like I said the first time we went through public feedback uh you know the renters Commission wasn't yet established so um you know were you we would have been going through it then but um just want to talk about how all that's been for now but we started off with you know
027with most policies most things just seeing what's out there you know making sure we know what's um you know what exists what's worked what hasn't worked so we worked with a couple different um National sustainability and building experts uh to really just go through and look at you know what type of rental policies are out there as it relates to Energy Efficiency see again what those best practices are see um you know what they did how they designed the programs how they implemented the programs how the programs you know have worked in the cases where there's ones already out there and just seeing all those things and seeing how they were able to do it in a way uh that worked for everyone you know making sure they accounted for folks and how they made
028it um to be done in a way that uh was again able to go into effect and was able to be effective we also looked at a couple different cities who have these various policies there's just a list of some of them here um there's more out there but these are just some of the most pertinent relevant ones and again just looking to see what you know what they did what worked for them you know if it's something that worked well we you know try to incorporate that if we can and just as importantly what didn't work you know if they ran into anything where're like this was a failure it had no you know impact everyone was upset about it making sure we accounted for that because we didn't want to do anything that
029we know won't work um but very importantly we're always keeping an eye out for what could work in an arbor and what couldn't um because you know even though some of these cities are very similar to us here in an arbor uh there's plenty of things that might work for their context you know they might say they might have a different um state regulatory structure and they might be able to do more than we could or you know they might have just a different set of circumstances so there's things we might be able to do they might not be able to do so making sure we're always keeping that front of mind because we don't just want to necessarily copy and paste something without considering our our local context and with that just to give
030a sense of some of where we are at uh here in an arbor we have about 31 A5 thousand uh rental units across about 8,500 properties uh and the median year built of these properties is 1964 um and the reason I mentioned that number not just to throw you know numbers at you have a fancy graph or anything but it's really important because there were no Energy Efficiency requirements in Michigan building codes prior to 1977 um so you know naturally some of these buildings might have undergone Renovations might have had upgrades but if they have not it's entirely possible that they were built in a time and are still at a current standard that wouldn't meet our existing standards for Energy Efficiency Comfort um and all of that so it's important to note that and
031that's really where we're looking at you know some of the things that might have been built more recently might be in you know they're might be performing fairly well but we do you know we have some that are um you know not performing as well and that's what we want to make sure we're we're really focusing on so with that all that information what we did is we convened a task force to take in this information and begin to tailor policy towards anr um we had representatives from different tenant advocacy groups landlord advocacy groups our some of our low-income housing providers as well as our building department and a bunch of other folks um this also included folks who were um you know licensed Engineers Architects building developers all that stuff so we can to
032make sure that you know we're getting all these different perspectives as well as including all the building science in there to make sure again we're doing things that work for all of our you know different groups and doing it in a way that's you know backed by science and is informed um they saw a lot of those presentations that we were talking about by some of these National groups um but then really getting together to really Define all these different challenges these opportunities we have and really focusing on how to address that thorny split incentive to again do this in a way where we can you know improve our Energy Efficiency improve our comfort reduce energy bills um and do it you know in a in a way where it all come kind of comes
033together with that they developed a set of policy elements uh these related to things around the efficiency of our different Appliance Ian es uh the efficiency of the units in general as well as looking at different ways we can improve our weatherization and making sure to um disclose all this information I'll talk a little bit more about these as we go to see kind of how they've developed um but again what we did is we shared out these recommendations uh this included a whole bunch of um you know public meetings we had uh two just broad public meetings we had a public survey uh we went to different commissions like at the time we were at the energy commission um talked to a couple different other stakeholder groups to get as much feedback as we
034could and some of the common things that we got was It was kind of it was a lot really quickly um especially again at the time we were doing this it was still you know in the pandemic and in some of the you know various things we saw where there was difficulties finding contractors finding Supply um so in some cases being told you had to make you know widespread changes in a span of six months was you know borderline impossible just with all of that stuff as well as um some of the things felt inconsistent with what was incentivized uh there were certain items where you know they were weighted equally and something would have a much bigger impact than the other and so it just kind of felt unfair across the board because they
035weren't you know adequately represented for the amount of work it was or for the amount of impact it might have had in a unit um so what we did is we went back hearing that feedback and worked on a way to make it more consistent and more backed by data so that you know if you're scoring on a certain way for improving the efficiency there's a reason for that and there's you know a very specific uh reason why we chose that and why it's incentivized in that way uh we also have a slight phase in uh which has you know a couple different goals that I'll talk about but just allowing for one these kind of changes to be made um but have you know the ability to make U to make those changes in
036an effective manner uh as well as some of the stuff felt a little um convoluted it felt like there were like three different enforcement ways to kind of go through and find all these different things that it felt like it would just kind of some of it would get lost and in that kind of enforcement it would not kind of get into you know not not be enforced essentially and so we wanted to make sure we kind of put everything in one streamlined way to make it um you know one easier to do easier to make these kind of upgrades make the uh receive these benefits but also ensure that they are in fact being made so with that I just want to go through and also like we can do questions at the end
037but if there's any point anyone needs like clarification on any of this go ahead and raise your hand totally fine to to jump in any of it um yeah so to go through where we are now and how we're going about it um like I said we kind of work to bring it all together and the big way is through what we're calling these Energy Efficiency requirements or Energy Efficiency targets for rentals um the way it works is there's two different Pathways and I'll touch on these different Pathways uh but they're designed to give choices and flexibility for compliance and they're also going to be again added into that pre-existing checklist all about you know really trying to equalize some Market expectations for rentals again trying to get everyone kind of on the same board
038when it comes to Energy Efficiency Comfort um and all of that but again do it in a way that's streamlined has flexibility make it as easy to do as or easy to understand as possible and get in a way that we can see as many benefits as possible so like I said there's these two different Pathways and I'll go through each of them um individually but there's uh basically two different ones the one is a checklist pathway and what this is is it's a um checklist that developed by us here at the office of sustainability and Innovations along with some of our collaborators and uh there's basically a collection of different items they have different impacts and they have different points related to that and what would need to be happened for or what would
039need to happen for each unit is they would need to achieve a minimum score on that they can certainly go above and beyond but they would at least need to hit this minimum uh score to be compliant the other option is What's called the uh home energy rating system path way uh this is the home energy rating system is a um National Standard developed by the uh by a couple different National entities uh there's licensed Raiders or certified Raiders who go through and do these uh so it's a very you know very common system and they would need to achieve a minimum score similarly um but in this case it would be going through that outside system instead of our again existing uh our inspectors going out and confirming all of that so the way
040these look in practice uh like I said the one the home energy rating system pathway or it's abbreviated to hers and the hers index um what they would need to do is they would need to hire out a um you know again an energy Raider who would go through they would perform this assessment it can take a couple hours to do um and basically goes through puts in all the different inputs of how the you know the unit performs the different appliances in it and it spits out a score um the way that the structure works is zero is what's considered a zero energy home so it's something that you know you essentially offsets all the energ it uses with renewable energy um and a reference an average home or again building unit is 100
041um so that's the average um and so for this uh for this they would need to achieve each unit would need to achieve at least 110 or lower remembering that lower numbers are more efficient um so that's that again they would need to go out they would get this inspection done they would get their score and then present that score to the inspector to show that yes we are compl with that the next and I'll spend a little bit more time on this one just because this is something that's new it's not that kind of you know National Industry thing that is all out there but is What's called the checklist pathway and again this was developed by us here along with some um you know Energy Efficiency and building science experts and again we
042went through we have a whole bunch of different points for different items and they would simply need to achieve a certain number of points to be compliant on this um walk through how we got to these numbers um I'll caveat this with you don't need to know these different things like they we have these three separate set of points um no one needs to go and get a certain number of points in each of these different categories but rather I'm just kind of showing this to talk about here's why the points are what they are and how we got to those points just demonstrating that you know there's a reason for this we can just pick these numbers out of a hat um but just so just want to show that again this isn't like
043it doesn't show up you don't need to specifically know it but just want to make sure that folks understand where it comes from so um we have a set of points that are dedicated to planning and the reason we have this is because we want to make sure that um units are being upgraded in a way that makes sense we don't want people to be going through and looking at a checklist and seeing well this gets me the most points so I'm just going to do that regardless of how effective that is in the unit in terms of um you know the specific needs of that unit uh so these are two different items one is getting an energy assessment which is basically just going through and again seeing how the unit is doing you
044know how energy efficient is it how um how much energy is it using and then so that way you can get that Baseline and be able to understand what needs to take place um the second part is what's called an energy Improvement plan and it's basically taking that information and making a plan for what is going to happen how it's going to happen who's going to do it and what time it's going to be done um so that way we can be doing upgrades in a sustainable way again instead of just doing like oh I need to make this change I'll go do that right now and go and spend you know either a ton of money tear out a bunch of things cause a bunch of disruption for you know just for the sake
045of getting points but rather doing it in a way that you know make sense for either you know within their you know a business structure but also you know along with you know the tenants who are in the unit you're not kicking anyone out to make changes but you know you could be okay this this unit will have a turnover at this point in time we'll do the more intense upgrades at that time um so that's that category the next is um what we call modeled points and basically what this is is it's intended to really be a Ono one of um how much of an impact it's going to have in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and how many points there are um I'm happy I I'll go into just a little bit
046of detail about how we did this if PHS have more specific questions happy to go through that but the basic premise is we used a tool developed by the national renewable energy lab or enell uh it's called red stock and basically what it does is it models all of the buildings in the country and then you can you know subselect down to your area so we looked at Michigan for this um and then we went and we made all of these different um all these different measures to see what kind of impact they would have and so you know you would see if I do this I reduce energy use by this much and then we compare that to you know how much of our energy how much that emits greenhouse gas emissions to get
047that percentage number um so basically you know through here if it's a modeled point if something has a 10% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is worth 10 points designed to be simple designed to make sense designed to be in a way where it's it's adequately accounting for um how much of an impact there is and then the last category is what we're calling non modeled points and basically what these are for all these different health safety and sustainability actions that you know we don't have a direct way to measure exactly how this is what kind of impact it has but we know it's important and we know there's a benefit to it so we want to make sure we're accounting for that and we want to make sure we're accounting for that in an equal
048measure um so all of these are you know worth the same amount of points if it you know hits on a like multiple things it it might get doubled in terms of the points um like if it does both health and safety and sustainability it would it would get points for both of those um but just some examples of this are you know providing bus passes to tenants um you know we know that you know can help people on their transportation costs we know using public transit can cut down on greenhouse gas emissions um you know we don't know exactly what those numbers are in terms of what kind of benefit you would have because it's G to vary depending on how many people use it how many people there are but we know there's
049a benefit um similarly you know we have a category of you know doing tenant education programs because you know we know that if you live in an inefficient unit what you do in the units not going to have much of a difference um you know it's just an inefficient unit uh but if it is you know it's getting more efficient the choices we make in them can have an impact so we want to make sure that folks are aware of what they can do um on their end to kind of you know cut down on energy usage cut down on energy costs and all of that so I the whole checklist was available in your packet I'm happy to go through specific things but just to you know kind of roughly what this looks like
050here's just a couple screenshots of a couple different items in there uh but you can see you basic you have what the option is how many points that option's worth and then what needs to be done to get those points um there's a bunch of different categories again you don't have to go through and in each category you don't have to get a certain number of points it's just kind of broken up that way for visual Clarity to kind of make it um easier excuse me to go through and then what needs to happen for this is again that kind of phased approach we were talking about um what you know if this goes city council and if it passes from city council um six months after that point during the existing rental inspection um
051every unit would have to get at least 30 points on that checklist um there's 220 points total so there's flexibility there again designed to be you know getting going in a way to make sure that one we're getting people involved and we're getting them thinking and we're getting them you know starting to make changes where we can um but providing enough time for you know if there needs to be more substantial changes that they're able to happen again in a way that's not disruptive to folks um you know from from all different perspectives of that and then three years after this goes into effect it would reach that you know final period of compliance where 80 points total need to be achieved um there's nothing stopping anyone from getting more points from that we're we're
052trying to think of different um incentiv incentivization measures we can do to get folks to go higher than that number uh but that's kind of that bare minimum of where folks need to be at um we anticipate there's you know plenty that are already doing well but we also know there's some who are going to need to do some work to get up to that um and we're looking to help folks out to be able to make those changes uh so we can get to that number to again kind of set that Baseline level of Energy Efficiency uh you know comfort and U you know energy bills and then regardless of how they go about it we want to make sure that people are aware of what it is um we want to make sure
053the scores are publicly available um you know the existing inspections are already publicly available we also know that um you know where it is and where it's available is not very intuitive or how to find that and so we want to make sure we're doing different things uh to you know reach more people so they're aware of what it is and so you know with the goal of being if you're searching for an apartment you need to find a place you're able to kind of find this score and you can know how efficient that apartment is uh which can kind of help make um different decisions based off of that the way this will uh be enforced again it'll be going through the existing rental inspection process um basically the the property owner whoever is
054you know responsible for going through that they will have to submit um the points they earned either through the checklist or the um the the hers pathway um they'll be able to support submit documentation that basically shows yes here's what I did here's how I got there and then the inspector will go through and verify it um if the unit does not achieve that uh the point requirement uh a fine will be issued and that fine will recur each day until uh it's brought into compliance um so that's that's how we're going to be going about making sure that these uh these changes are made before I conclude I just do want to note there's a couple different things we're doing to try to help out with this um we have these resource hubs as
055we call them that are available um there's ones that are available for the landlords or Property Owners to you know figure out how they can make these changes how they can get finances to make these changes um so they can do it in a way that um you know is efficient they can do it in a way that um you know it's they might be changes that need to be made but we want to reduce the impact in terms of you know cost for it so they can you know make sure that everything is you know operating in a way that that works for everyone there um we do also have a renters um a a renter resources Hub which is mostly around different behavioral things that can be done again different things you can
056do in a unit to be more energy efficient um again if you're searching for a different apartment what kind of questions you can ask what kind of things you can look for to make sure you're getting into somewhere that's um you know more efficient um as well as while this program doesn't cover residence Halls because that's um University of Michigan property and above our jurisdiction um we want to make sure there's stuff in there for renters who are able to um you know do things on on their end in their residence hall um because there you know there there there are different changes that can be made there if they're interested in that um as well as just some other stuff that out there that can be helpful with that I talked a lot probably
057more than you wanted me to talk so I'm going to stop for now um but just want to say again thanks for having me um I have all the other different um resources pulled up in different areas so if you want me to open it share a screen and go through any of those I'm I'm happy to do so um but happy to take any questions um and also you know just importantly if you got different feedback on any of this happy to you know hear that and kind of work through to see what we can do to to improve things um I have several questions um the first one is it's a little bit confusing to me because when you talk about the rental unit um do you mean like the multif family housing
058complex or my individual apartment unit yeah individual apartment unit each of them goes through the inspection each of them get their own inspection uh so each unit so each like each person that lives in each you know rental you know unit apartment um each of those would need to go through this process okay and so if it's an apartment complex with 80 units or 300 units does every single unit have to pass the inspection for the building to pass inspection for the green rental housing ordinance or is it that like the majority has to pass the intention is yeah that's a great question the intention is each of them so each of them go through their inspection so each of them would have to go through that um so you know say it's an 80
059unit complex you know we go through and 10 of those units do not pass each of those 10 units would be subject to that fine and would have to go through that process until they're brought in um we are looking at different ways uh with our rental inspectors to see how to um you know do that or how to do those inspections in an efficient way in some cases um like different programs that go through they do something where like you know they inspect seven individual units and if all seven of those units pass they then do you know like um five you know one in five from there on out and as long as that one that they inspect is still okay they keep going on that but if one of them fails they
060go back to inspecting every single one um so try to do that in a slightly more efficient way but as of now it's kind of the each of them gets inspected individually as they go so that's the the process we're going through okay and also you mentioned the hers assessment or the checklist right but the hers is much more in-depth than the checklist but also hers I thought was only for single family homes as opposed to a multif family home or dwelling um so then how does that work like in terms of equality or Equity because it's not equal so the the hers index there is a way to do it for um multif family so there is a way to do it for each unit so that's that's why we chose that pathway for
061it um we it gets a little confusing because we have for our our single family homes we have that um home energy score assessment which is a different one and that home energy score is only single family uh but the hers score too many acronyms it's annoying um yeah exactly it's annoying they did that and that's how it is but yeah so that's why we have those two different ones because the home energy rating score can be used in multif family um and we have seen in some of the other cities that had these two different Pathways pretty much I think it's like 98 99% used the checklist and you know one or two% Ed the um you know the home energy rating score so we anticipate something similar but we want to make sure
062folks have the option if makes sense for them okay and one last question before I open up to everyone else one of the items on there on the checklist was about um basically accepting um you know vou if the complex accepts vouchers of some sort or rental assistance payments but given that we an arbor already has the ordinance um the income discrimination ordinance right and like basically they all have to accept it if someone has one is it for the checklist is it that they actually allow people to come in which means like technically everyone does or is it that you get your two points if you actually have somebody renting that unit using that yeah the the latter we want to make sure that you know they you know they're not just saying they
063will do it but they are doing in effect um to make sure that yeah we're trying to be as you know making sure that they're not excluding anyone for whatever reason um and similarly making sure we have some of those eviction Provisions in there I know like there are of course various things out there that do protect people but we know in practice that doesn't always um come to light so we want to make sure that we're rewarding people for who do go through that process and are accounting for it if there's different ways to make that better to totally open hearing it I was trying to list a bunch of different things that we could get in there but if there's other um better ways to phrase that or making sure we're including more
064Provisions definitely open to including things in there or taking things out that aren't applicable or anything like that yeah I think something has to go with the phrasing of that because it was it was a little confusing because someone be like well of course we accept them it's just nobody's asked you know right yeah definitely so yeah if there's if there's better like I said I I'll definitely be looking into these things too but if folks have you know um ideas or ways to kind of share that happy to happy to make those improvements and once it does pass um is there a way to get kind of a summary or something that can go into the tenant the was it rights and responsibilities handbooks for tenants because those get are supposed to get handed
065out to every um renter within the city so that would ALS what it's handed out as a phys a physical copy or PDF so that way it gets the word out definitely yeah um we yeah we want to make sure we're doing everything we can to make as many people aware of this as possible uh so yeah we definitely be looking to do things like that so one to make sure obviously the tenants are aware of it but you know just as importantly um to make sure that you know landlords property owners are seeing that regularly and knowing they need to be doing that as well so that's a great suggestion thank you um does anyone else have a question or comment Barb oh you're on mute bu first of all thank you Joe for
066that presentation and all the work that you've done this was like a lot of work but I've been going over I shouldn't say I should I shouldn't have said but there's no but about it I'm going over this checklist and there's a couple of things um that concern me um globally uh I don't see I don't see an emphasis anywhere on air conditioning there's a mention of um let me see if I can get to the right the right part where it's mentioned here it says something about um oh space cooling is provided um there doesn't seem to for me there's not enough emphasis in this plan plan on the fact that we're moving into more and more um consequences of global warming so we are you know we're needing more and more air conditioning
067air conditioning is is as important as heating is for me at this point in time and so and I'm dealing with a space cooling thing so I've got one um air conditioning unit that's in window that's at the opposite end of the apartment from where we spend most of our time so it's not energy efficient for me to crank that air conditioner up so that it then I use three or four fans to move that cool air into the living room so I'm wondering because at some point you've said in here that um backup systems that should be provided uh through alternative energy sources ources so what's the you know what's the plan for that I know that the city has I forget what it's called SEC there's a plan in place that the city
068is working on to come up with um a solar a solar backup how how how far along is that and is that something we can rely on when DTE just you know fails us on numerous occasions yeah thank for bringing those up um I'll start with the the air conditioning thing and then I'll jump to the uh the sustainable energy utility as a as an option as well okay um so first the thing on not yeah you you do have in here I'll um I can share and go through some of the checklist just for sake of seeing things hope this isn't too small um it probably is but um so yeah the the point you're talking about is up here somewhere um it's under the an arbor rental housing checklist under planning I'm in
069it it's the pages are jumping on me sorry um yeah so there is the two points that's for purely having space Cooling and that's for those things that you mentioned of being like at bare minimum we know it's getting hotter and we know space um you know space cooling or again air conditioning that this is just the technical term that um is there but yeah air conditioning is becoming more and more essential we know that you know we're seeing more um you know more frequent you know high heat days it's happening more and more and it's you know it's becoming not a luxury it's something that we need we see that all throughout with a lot of the heat waves that have happened um that are increasingly there so that's why this is worth at
070least just the two points in here is for having that bare minimum that should be something that folks have and there should be points for that as for the efficiency side of it um this is annoying what they are called um but all these over here that are heat pumps heat pumps both Heat and cool um so they are not just something that provides heat but they're also something that provides air conditioning and they do it in a more efficient way than even your traditional air conditioners um the way that they work uh it's the same technology that's in a fridge uh it goes through it pulls heat out of there dispenses heat outside um and that's what helps cool down the unit and because of the way it works is it's simply just moving
071heat um rather than having to you know generate things and push things through all of that they're about two to three times more efficient than a you know standard uh you know central air system and a lot more efficient than a window unit and so that's why they get a lot more points in the checklist for these different things um and so that's kind of how we're going about it it's like I said I I'm not the one who named the technology but they are called heat pumps but they both heat and cool um so that's that's where that air conditioning stuff shows up because it's it's twofold in that one they're a lot more efficient than a standard air conditioning unit in two because they both heat and cool um that's why it's incentivized
072as opposed to a traditional air conditioning unit because if you get a traditional air conditioning unit you're predominantly going to have something like a gas furnace or you know a boiler that still relies on fossil fuel so we want to make sure we're doing things that are transitioning our our heating supply off of um you know off of those fossil fuels so that's how it kind of shows up you know we are accounting for it we want to make sure we're getting and again a you know a heat pump is so much more efficient than a standard air conditioning so we really want to you know get folks moving in that direction where we can um before I jump to the sustainable energy utility just want to check if if that helps or if there's
073any anything I can touch on on that before I jump to that I just want to ask a question about that because the last time I knew anything about that was back in the early 80s and that involved like digging up your backyard and putting hosing through the you know a large backyard to make that work so I'm assuming that that's no longer required yeah it's moved forward a lot and there's two different types there's there's geothermal which is that which is basically you know putting things in there it interacts with the ground and supplies heat in that way and it's a super efficient thing um naturally it can be a lot of disruption and especially if you're you know lit you know already in somewhere especially if you're in like a large existing building
074it's kind of hard to adapt to it uh but we also have what's called air source heat pumps and we have very importantly what's called cold climate air source heat pumps uh which means they're specifically adapted and rated for cold climates like in Michigan they can still provide heat to you know it's like5 -20 they're still providing heat pretty reliably and they have different backup heating there that is a little you know less efficient but that only kicks on if it gets to those you know very low temperatures which you know they do happen but it's a small fraction of the time they're actually running so they're able to still provide it they have a bunch of different options they're even coming out with newer um you know kind of you know window options they're
075nothing like you know the again you know the different window units we have right now for AC that but they're able to kind of do that as well so there's a bunch of different options out there for those so and is this a like not outrageously expensive um option for landlords yeah they're out there at the moment they are you know they're kind of a little more expensive some cases they can be a bit more expensive upfront but what's important to note about them is one they they last pretty long and two they're both a heating and cooling so it's essentially you're getting an air conditioning unit and Fess at the same time uh so it kind of you know in some cases though it still is more costly so there is there is that
076okay thank you I'm gonna look into that thank you yeah definitely and then yeah just to touch on the sustainable energy utility I will note there's um one there's only so much I can say because I need to be entirely fact-based about it and the reason for that is this is actually coming up on the ballot in November uh whether people want to support this and have it um you know as something in our community um naturally with that because that's in my office I cannot do anything to Advocate or sway people in one way or the other so purely I can only stick to the facts on that but yes the goal of that is to have an option that is able to provide Clean safe healthy energy in our community um with the
077goal of getting again more resources like renewable energy and battery storage out in places thata you know either traditionally cannot afford these types of energy or um that traditionally can't access it for whatever reason um so I know that we can't necessarily share links here but if you you know are able to look up on our our web page um Ann Arbor sustainable energy utility there's a lot of great information on there we have a frequently asked questions link um there's also um there's been two public webinars in the the past few months there's one from July from August um and I you know I can I can get I think I've sent some of these links to Kristen and I can get them to you as well um but would highly encourage people to
078check that out uh to see all the different things that are that are kind of in there okay because yeah it's looking to be an option for um for renters as well and I have one other question regarding that is that something that would work with an arbor for Public Power as well as the DT they all kind of yeah they all kind of go together and like I said they're they're all slightly separate in kind of how it works so this would be a supplemental utility um so basically the way it would work is you'd um you'd subscribe to it um and you would get as much of your you know power and backup power from it as possible if there was any that um could not be provided that remainder would be from
079uh DTE from there uh with the goal of getting as much as possible um from that rather than from there so right yeah little little nuances in there like I said that's kind of yeah some of it's explained in there in a better way than I can do um so but yeah thank you for bringing that up because yeah it's definitely definitely an option in there thank you um we're gonna go Hannah then Robert and um if there's one else then I'm going to come back in and about the AC thing um oh so I guess I'll go was it Hannah Robert and I didn't see whose hand went up first if it was Jordan or Julia you can go Julia that's it's fine go ahead with Julia Center the runnner voices first okay then
080we'll do Julia then Jordan so I guess we're going uh renter landlord renter landlord and um I'll go after you Jordan okay so Hannah yeah I just wanted to clarify who will be doing these inspections is it uh rental Housing Services like as part of the normal routine rental housing inspection yep exactly it's it's still them through the same thing it's just yeah these additional items that they're they're checking on and will it be expected that we may need more inspector since they're doing more now like will that increase the rental housing inspection budget at the moment what we're seeing is it should be all able to fit in um especially we're um trying to get as much of it front loaded as possible we kind of going through it's able to be submitted in
081advance so it's just checking on a couple things um because ideally a lot of that documentation is submitted in advance uh so what we're seeing right now and how we're um you know talking with rental housing is that it shouldn't add any you know undue time in for you know cost with all that um in in what uh would it be like uh if someone like whoever's Inspections just do next they're just going to start with those people or like what's the order of operations for getting through all of the units yeah it would it would follow the existing process uh so everyone got their inspection scheduled and it would that's when it would be verified and checked as during that inspection that's all thank you thank you for those three but you said the
082three months it's a 30 but like if so does that mean that if someone's not due for like two more years then the 80s the was it like the or three years in the 80s in effect because they've had enough time or yeah and so yeah essentially during you know whenever their inspection is whatever time period that falls in that's when it would need to be achieved and part of that was kind of some of that um you know where it could have been complicated for FK you know initially the way we had it was there wasn't that phase in and it felt you know for folks to you know say it was that 80 number and you know they were inspected the day it went into effect where they're like okay so I have
083six months to meet full you know be fully compliant and they have you know two and a half years till they get inspected that's kind of um you know it was hard to kind of make some of that so this way kind of everyone's roughly on the same playing field um for getting to that you know that final compliance number okay I just wanted to clarify I wasn't hopping in there Robert uh go ahead oh that's that's perfectly good uh so are some of these cumulative for example I'm looking at the checklist and I see thermostat is programmable two points thermostat is energy STAR certified smart thermostat two points is that if you're if you do both is that four yes yes and that's yeah that that's the intention too because yeah you know just
084having the programmable thermostat is great it's helpful um but you know like for instance in the unit I'm in I have a programable thermostat but I have to remember to program it or I have to you know it doesn't have instruction so you know I have to look up how to program it versus having one that's you know connect to Wi-Fi that's even more efficient you're able to check it your phone you leave your house you're like oh I forgot to turn my air off uh you can do that from there so they're designed to stack okay um the next question is is there a um sort of a life cycle uh situation here because I can see a I can see a situation where you have a perfectly good brand new water heater that's
085gas powered that you take out and Chuck in the bin and go put in uh a multi thousand uh heat pump water heater and I don't know if your payback period is all that good when you've taken your perfectly good water heater and now you know you basically bought two water heaters and you're using one yeah definitely and that's um yeah part of the reason why one we've got that little longer compliance but also two why there's a bunch of items on there for that because again we want to make sure people are doing this in a way that makes sense again you know we don't want people to be going out and being oh yeah I just got a new water heater but a heat pump water heater gets me this many points let
086me just Chuck this so I can get that 15 points um that's why we kind of want to have you know those different things like an energy Improvement plan and all that so you can kind of be sitting there and being like okay I can meet this goal in some other way um you know say you know 10 15 years down the line I know I'm going to have to replace this I'll replace it then I'll get those points then it'll be fine um so that's kind of how we're going about that because yeah similarly you know while yes naturally we want all these things operating you know in a super great way we also don't want to have waste for the sake of you know getting there for that reason so right the third
087point I would make is I would be careful of perverse incentives because there's some of these things here and I don't know if you've ever lived in a in an electrically heated house but um that seems like a perfectly good thing to do and the costs can be horrendous uh on a cold winter so you know if electricity is the primary type of energy used for space heating boy that can be expensive but pretty cheap to install um versus say a heat pump which um you know we've looked into them and if you're a if you're a single family house uh that's two and a half times the cost of a of of a comparable gas Appliance or you know something like that so maybe more depending on the plumbing you have to rearrange to
088do it so um I mean looking at it seems reasonable but obviously there's going to be quite a lot of cost um and you know that's going to go to that's going to come from somewhere so yeah I appreciate that up and that's um you know one of the things that we're we're trying to work on is kind of this all of the above because that you know that certainly can happen we see that happening um we see that cost is um is you know it becomes reduced when you also are doing some of that Energy Efficiency work with it it allows it to work a lot more efficiently and that that gets it a little bit more a lot more neutral in those cases and so that's why kind of some of them are
089there but again similarly we know that in some units that this might not make the most sense and that's okay um that's why there's again kind of those other options to find different ways that are going to make more sense for the unit and that's again why it's structured there we don't want people just be chasing this item has so many points I'm just doing that we want to make sure it's something that is beneficial for the unit Julia um Hannah asked my main question but I did want to say I I appreciate that it looks like the fine mechanism um is pretty solid there are some tenant Right Stuff where enforcement is basically impossible um so it's good to see you guys thought that out um I was on the original task force and
090I I'm glad this is finally happening but when is it actually happening yeah and that's um that's our goal is to get this to city council as as soon as we can like we said we're you know we made pretty City ific changes we want to make sure that people see that and are okay with it um but our goal is to get to City Council as soon as possible I don't I I don't quite have what their timeline is for it but I'd like to move as as soon as we can and part of that's you know why we're here with the commissions one obviously we want to make sure we're getting your feedback um but two if this is something that you know you're you're all supportive of um you know that's a
091thing that you know can kind of be done to kind of help um be moving that along where we can so um yeah our goal is sooner rather than later because like you said said it's been a while um it was funnily enough my uh my app my interview for this job uh back in 2022 was presenting on this program with the goal of it being put in place within six months when I was hired but here we are um so I feel I feel that on how long it's been so would like very much like to do as soon as we can okay thanks and Jordan um thanks for doing all this work it's definitely a lot of work and a lot of thought that's gone into it I guess I just want to
092um I want to verbalize that for those of us who really work to like have an affordable housing stack that is older and that have kind of a mediumsized business this is really um affecting us super disproportionately so three years if you're telling me three years I have to like update a ton of appliances in a unit like I really just I don't know I'm I hear the urgency to move I am generally very supportive of climate change things and also all of the highrises are going to pass and US smaller owners who still have apartments that are $700 a month in an arbor are not we're going to be forced into big cost so I just want to make sure that that is really heard um I'm someone who really pushes for renters I
093understand how this benefits renters obviously if your electricity costs are lower but someone is going to shoulder that burden and I think we need to make sure that we name that um for landlords like me I don't I think that there's varying landlordy situations um and that there are people that have a couple buildings and it's totally doable um but for us kind of midsize folks with a lot of older stock that's super affordable this this is a big burden and so I just kind of want to name that and make sure that that's um something that's being thought about So when you say something like three years to me like we went through my husband and I went through and like calculated all of our buildings everything's over 30 no problem um we do
094try to make conscientious choices and to get to 80 is like we're probably going to have to throw appliances out before they're done um in our older houses that are just like we try to insulate them as well as we can if we do a renovation um you know if you just did a big renovation this year and replaced all of the appliances and you didn't make the choices I mean we generally try to get energy star but we still do um you know we still do Renovations that and sometimes in these apartments where you're looking for like a small stove that has to fit in the space there isn't an energy star option so I appreciate that you're giving flexibility and I also want to verbalize that we are going to be in a
095real pickle with a couple of our units come three years um cost-wise and so I don't know how much you're hearing that I know that there's not a lot of landlords that are kind of this midsize that really focused on affordable housing that do work with eviction programs that do like support Community um and we're the ones who are going to Bear a bigger burden and so I just I don't I want to verbalize that that is something um so kind of just that's that thought but also um am I hearing you so you're saying they don't think it's going to add too much of a burden because we will like get the checklist have to submit that ahead of time and then they'll just kind of check a couple things to verify am I
096hearing that just kind of process before I ask a clarifying question on that is that yes and I'm also happy to respond to the other part but go ahead with whatever however you want to go through if you want cool make sure and things that like aren't visible right like when we've remodeled something we insulate um but it's covered so I just if you're saying that just like checked off yes we insulated when we did the recent remodel whatever um those kind of things I was just curious as to how like things will be checked that are not I can't give you a receipt for my certain thing um you know or it doesn't have an energy star sticker you can't easily look up and verify that but it sounds like that's kind of all
097covered and the you're hoping folks are honest about things and that makes sense too yeah so I'll start there and then I'll jump to the other part because I'm very much heard and want to make sure that we're addressing all of that too um yeah for the stuff like you know insulation behind the wall you know there's probably gonna be some degree of trust you know we we don't want inspector going in you know knocking a hole in the wall and making sure it's in there that's in no one's best interest um so you know to some degree it's going to be you know do as much as we can to make sure we can verify as much as we can um you know there might be some things that are just a little harder
098to tell um you know I I think the way it's you know currently structured there's there's you know not a way to fully get there but being yeah I've totally done it um and there's no way to check that that's taking place but there are you know some items in there um and I think you know that you know that's okay we're all working towards the same thing um and we want to make sure we're getting there and so you know there's there will be some degree of Trust on some of those items but again there's not um you know you can't get all of the points by just doing that so we're not in a spot where people are just entirely latly like yeah I've totally done it all and they've done nothing kind
099of a deal so um yeah and then as for yeah the overall definitely hear that and want to make sure we're doing as much as we can on that and yeah a couple things like one we're always happy to work with people to find different financing options to make things you know done in a way um because again like our our goal is to get to a spot where we're you know reducing emissions we're getting people in a comfortable place reducing energy bills where we can we don't want to make things hard for people for the sake of being hard we don't want to make you spend a bunch of money just for the sake of spending a bunch of money um so we're very happy to work with folks where we can um like
100I said we have some on that uh that landlord propop owner resource Hub there's a bunch of different stuff on there that could be helpful um again will that cover everything I you know I can't say for sure but we want to make sure we're connecting people to that as best we can um similarly we've uh We've submitted a couple grants recently um that would attempt to help with this as well you know be able to provide funding where we can um you know with grants as with anything is not a guarantee so I'm not going to sit here and say I can guarantee that I'm gonna get you that funding but I'm we're trying as best we can and as we see things come up we're absolutely applying for that exact reason um similarly
101there's a couple different things in there um one less so but there's like it's called like unlisted Innovation measures which it's kind of intentionally left broad because we want to make sure that we have things in there for either you know one things that might not be like easily quantifiable or might change massively depending where are I think um Barb sent in a question also just kind of vocalized too about batteries you know batteries aren't an item in the checklist just because you know it can be so different like say oh I got one battery for a 300 unit building like you shouldn't get the same amount of points as someone who puts a battery for a single family home you know so I want to make sure it's customizable for that but also for
102different things that we just might not think about you know there might be things you're doing in your unit that's like you know sustainable or really beneficial to tenants um and we might just not have known that before and we want to make sure there's an option for getting points for that so we can kind of go through that um there also are some Provisions in there that are you know related to hardships um so you know if there's a pretty significant issue um we we want to have a pathway to make sure that you know we're getting people to where they need to be and we're not doing it in a way that's you know disproportionately affecting people or pricing people out or anything like that so um I would like to have an
103absolutely perfect solution but my my answer is we want to work with you we want to find a way that we can do it in a way that again works for you works for tenants um all while working together towards our our our carbon neutrality goals so I hear you you I want to make sure we're do like I don't want to leave anyone behind totally yeah I think that's helpful I mean we've been trying and like just to give you an example our last boiler failure we would rather not have a boiler they're a huge pain in the butt but they are what they are and you know we priced out Mini Splits it was three times the cost we priced out heat pumps it's you know it's that is a reality for some
104of us that are and for us like you know as far as inspections you know each each unit for us is completely unique it's not like we have floor plans it's not like there's ways to integrate and so I think um I appreciate you hearing that and obviously like we'll probably try to start touching base more to make sure that we are like that we've gotten quotes on all the things that we have thought of um as we make the changes but yeah it's glad to hear that we're we can all try to work together on some of those things because it is just it's we've been trying and we're we're not getting nearly as far as we would hope with our particular um housing stock we have so thanks for listen to that no
105definitely and I do want to say we are we have you know it's so hard to say everything at once uh but we also have like a whole bunch of like other programs too that are working on you know those things as well you know we we know we see how heat pumps are like I get in a lot of places it makes sense a lot of places right now it just doesn't um and so we we have other different programs we're working to try to you know affect the overall market with the goal of you know getting more adoption getting more players in the game you know on the manufacturing side things like that contractor side to help bring down those cost cost over time um I will also say it you know it
106depends on the unit um but we you know the city of an arbor does have rebates for um buildings not all buildings qualify it's largely um you know at this time relate um you know kind of on the single family home side even though there are plenty of rental units that are in that and they do qualify for that and they can access that funding um and then in future years we're looking to be able to do more with that to kind of you know help help where we can naturally I again I wish I could sit here and say I have all the money and let's give everyone all the money that would be great um but yeah we're trying to do as much as we can where we can to be able to
107help more folks with that thank you um Before I Go Again does anyone else have a a question or comment no so I have a couple of things one you said it's going to be with the um inspection services so then does that mean that when I go on stream I'll be able to see all of the paperwork that my landlord submitted or am I just going to see that it passed yeah the goal is to make as much accessible as possible um my goal would be to be there's um I think it's in the the thing there but the attestation form which would be it would show like here's what the score is and here's what's been done to get to that score um that's the goal of what would be in there where
108we're going to through th excuse me some of those different uh ways for how to best display that and again just as importantly how to get that out to more people because while you know you and I know what stream is um you know again when I moved here two and a half years ago um I wouldn't have known what stream was I wouldn't have known to look for that on my you know I'm like I'm just looking for an apartment to rent um so yeah trying to find a ways to make that more accessible to more folk yeah it it's hard especially for people who are coming from out of the country to access exactly information um also with the a going circling back to the AC units um at the state level is
109AC required in a rental um unit because I thought that it was not not to my knowledge so then is that why it's just kind of on the the checklist because you can't make somebody have one that you can incentivize them to have one correct yeah and yeah kind of like we were talking about you know again it's not required in a lot of places like Michigan we've been fortunate we've been able to sit there and be like yeah we don't need AC it's fine it's cool enough but we're increasingly seeing that's no longer the case and since there's not anything requiring it at this time we want to make sure you know again at bare minimum there's points awarded for that because it is an important thing yeah although as someone who grew up
110here I will say that for decades and decades we've needed AC units very true I feel you as a warm person I feel you I mean heck it wasn't even required in Arizona you know when I was when I was there um and then my last question is um I heard that you also have an ask for us as the renters commission um for some like was it a letter of support or a resolution supporting yeah it's this is entirely up to you um you know I like I said it should go to the commission for instance my perspective I'm I'm the staff leaon for the energy commission and what the energy commission is doing is considering whether they want to support it or not and if they do they would do a resolution of
111support to go to council saying like yep we've looked over this we like this um I'm not going to ask you for anything that's entirely up to you I don't want to influence your decision or anything like that if you like the program you're welcome to do that but of course I'm not going to sit here and say you must do that um I will leave that all up to you for that I'm happy that like as you go if you have more questions you want to talk about more things I'm certainly happy to do so uh with that but I'll I'll leave that up to you with how you know you feel with it um well our next meeting is the you know it's always the third Thursday of each month um so it's
112after the second uh city council meeting of each month um so do you plan to have this up for second reading by the end of October or like sometime in November yeah this hasn't even gone to council yet yeah there's plenty of time okay yeah so yep okay all right um does anyone else have any questions or comments well thank you so much for coming and taking the time to explain and answer all of our questions yeah thank you all as a you know as a renter myself in the in the area I really appreciate all the things y'all are doing and all that so thanks for having me and like I said if there's any questions or anything else I can do um yeah feel free to reach out to um you know Kristen
113get in contact with me or happy to chat with anyone about anything or get your resources for any of it so thank you all right great thank you thank you um let's see and I kind of made a mistake where I forgot um about a disc we were supposed to have a discussion on the uh green fair I think just a short discussion um about that so if it's all right with you guys we'll just go back to that really quick just to touch base um and remind everyone that it's tomorrow from what time is it 5 to 8 is that the right time okay yes y all right thank you Kristen um and we have and what is it Jordan Hannah Michelle and Kim will be there um doing the table for us so
114just want to say thank you again to the four of you for volunteering for that tomorrow um does anyone else have any questions or comments about the green Fair okay um and now that we have one of our city council members and John Riser here we'll also Circle back to the um junk fees ordinance and um you know the question we ask every meeting when do we get to see a a draft John do you know when we'll get to see a draft well um Jen Richards and I have been working on it we have a draft that we have shared with council members harison and Rina we had a meeting with them and I know they are kind of looking it over kind of right now so um I'll defer to them as to
115when they think it's ready to be shared with this body I don't know if council member Harrison wants to kind of weigh in on that I know that you and uh Travis are re reviewing so body I do believe that um we will be um sharing it with the chair um and ALS are plans right on that so that no we we're not sharing it this evening um but that we I believe soon we'll be sharing it with Gail and chair Ral okay and then once it's ready to share with the if it's shared with myself and with Gale um after that will there be permission given at some point to share it with the rest of um the commission like say during a tenant education committee meeting the draft um before it goes to
116council yeah at some point it's just yeah I assume so yes I I'm gonna say yes to that uh it's it's not ready though it's a little this one's a little bit more nuanced okay um does anyone have any questions or comments about the the process I guess um no all right then we'll go ahead and move forward on the schedule um or the agenda and we're now on to the reports and the report from city council so council member Harrison all right let's see um well uh right now um the only thing I can think of to share out is that um at the next council meeting we will be voting on The millage rebate and how we are going to be Distributing um what the split will be like the the split for
117the original millage rebate it was a 40 4020 split 40 went to the anra Housing Commission 40 went to sustainability and 20 went to uh pedestrian safety as it's as it's proposed now um we actually brought it to council at the last meeting but in order to give folks time to um look it over uh we postponed it to the October 7th meeting so that people you know would have time to because ballots are being mailed out uh at the end of September so um we wanted folks to have time to look it over and you know weigh in if they would like to do so um certainly if they're interested in doing that you know there's Public public um comment the next you be the biggest thing right now that I can think of
118to our uh council member Harrison I think you keep breaking up it's either you or it's my connection I'm hearing it too okay that I I don't know what you heard last um I heard any questions maybe turn off the camera and um I don't think it was my internet that was unstable but let's give it a sometimes it's just with any questions I don't know what you all heard it's it's been a long day I've had I was said two events overlapping events tonight and race back to hop on so what I heard was that the um Council was was it had brought up the um the health and safety millage uh for the distribution of the funds within the city of an arbor that it used to be a 20 4040 split where
11920% went to pedestrian safety 40% went to um the an aror Housing Commission and the last 40% went to sustainability um but what you guys are looking at doing now is 20% to um The Pedestrian safety still 40% still to the an Arbor Housing Commission and then instead of 40% going to sustainability that 40% would be going to oh this is also I I read it when it was on the agenda uh 40% would be going to unarmed crisis response that is correct that is that is how the resolution is currently written and it'll come to council October 7th right that you guys poon it so that people could get a chance to read it over think about it and ask questions um either to you council members or at public comment is that right
120correct and ballots are getting mailed out at the end of the month because the millage itself is on the ballot not the split just the millage the millage the public health uh health and safety millage uh is yes it's a county and it's on the ballot yes it is on the ballot and the ballots are being ma mailed out September 26th okay wow that's so quick um y next week yes um and that was everything council member Harrison yeah that I can think of at the moment yes okay um then we'll the report from hhsb which we do not have and uh Jeff isn't here this week so we'll go to reports from the um commissioners um sorry I it's hard for me going back and forth with the screens the I'm using my boyfriend's
121laptop tonight um does do any of the Commissioners have any um announcements or comments okay um the only thing I have to share is again the green fair is tomorrow please go have fun um you know pick up free stuff if there is any um and that next month we have the um people from building rental Inspection Services coming for the next um rent commission meeting and so if you have any question so you start thinking about questions that you want to ask while we have them here as a captive audience um about rental inspections and how that works if you have and enforcement all of that um and as soon as you know it's okay to give you guys the draft on the junk Feast then I most like will call a um tenant
122education committee meeting um so that way we don't have to necessarily worry about a quorum to discuss um the the junk fees and if it's brought up after our regular um meeting then we would go ahead and um discuss also whether or not we want to do a resolution and support of the ordinance as it's written um and hopefully next month also we'll discuss the um green rental housing ordinance and whether or not we want to do a resolution for that as well um is there anything else for next month's meeting that you guys would like to see on the agenda then we if you can think of anything please you know email Kristen and myself um and we'll move on to Christen for the staff liaison report no report I was also going to
123mention about um rental housing I'll send out a um form soon so you can um you can email me the questions or I'll set up the form so you can see what others questions are so you can kind of um have that information when you are putting questions together um and then I'll provide those to rental housing in advance of the meeting okay great and next on the agenda is Communications and the only communication was from um versity property management and there request was to talk with someone about from the renters commission about the early leasing ordinance and improvements that they think can be done they didn't list any improvements um about it so we'll just do an email followup asking um for them to put something in writing I think um so that there's
124something for for us as a commission to discuss as opposed to it just being like me Julia um I I think that's a good idea the way you said to handle it you know that she has reached out a number of times before and asked for a personal hearing um and Zachariah and I did have something set up with her which she canceled last minute and then Zachariah rescheduled and went on his own um I I don't think we can do that for every landlord in town so I I I don't I'm not wild about doing it with her again no and I I didn't know that so thank you but I just figured it was better to have it in writing and to see it so that way you're not relying on my memory
125and that's also how we handle Communications anyway for the commission um Jordan I was gonna say you can always remind her if she wants more of a live interaction she can always come to public comment and we will or will not respond I mean that's always that's always a good option too I think for folks if they feel like they would like some documentation of um you know what they're thinking or um observing about certain things that the commission has had involvement in oh that's right thank you um and let's see that's it for the agenda sorry we ran a little bit past 9 o' and I need somebody to please call motion for an adjournment and someone else to Second it I'll motion for adjournment thank you do we have someone to Second it
126second thank you Julia all those in favor of adjourning please unmute and say I I I all those oppose please unmute and say may all right so September's meeting adjourned and enjoy the rest of your month um and in October be on the lookout for a tenant education committee meeting when to meet uh request