Ann Arbor Renters Commission Meeting 6/15/23

001to have the new people here um so welcome to the June 15th meeting of the Ann Arbor renters commission um the can you hear me I can hear you I just lost the hold on okay okay here we go right yeah Cynthia okay great gotcha um so the the purpose of the renters commission is to advise the city council and the city administrator in matters affecting renters in our city the Ann Arbor renters commission is made up of voting members who are appointed by the mayor and approved by city council we have some new members joining us today uh two non-voting city council Liaisons council member Regina and councilmember Harrison and one non-voting liaison to the uh housing and Human Services Advisory Board I believe that position is still vacant it's from hhsib the human

002the housing and Human Services Advisory Board to us and then there's two non-voting members representing different landlord perspectives um and a non-voting representative from the University of Michigan Student Legal Services Gail Rosen who can't be here tonight so to speak to speak during any of the public comment opportunities you will be able to speak through the webinar link or by phone for phone access please call 877-853-5247 meeting ID 935-8080-19451 that's uh 935-8080-1941 to be called on to speed callers must press star 9 if listening by phone or use the raise hand feature if you're calling through the web link and the web link is a2gov.org forward slash renters commission meeting that's a capital r c m so renters commission meeting and you'll be called upon by City staff and um you will have uh three

003minutes to to make your public comments and you will be reminded when there's 30 seconds left if you're you're coming as well so moving on to roll call that's item number two as we go through the roll call since a lot of us don't know we at least the new members and vice versa uh I think it'd be good if we first of all you have to say where you're calling from say your name and if you could give a brief introduction uh all those you know you can mention if you were just appointed or if you hold one of those positions the specific positions like I mentioned or if you're representing a landlord perspective for example or a tenant perspective so one more time that's where you're calling from introduce yourself and what your

004perspective is here so I'll go down the list um commissioner Chen is not here commissioner Peterson hey folks Lucy calling from Ann Arbor uh Vice chair of this commission and I'm a graduate student at University of Michigan if we're giving quick intros s welcome commissioner Kelly hello I'm here uh calling from Ann Arbor uh just a general commission member uh my background is in public health I'm a public health professional welcome commissioner droppleman hi I'm Bob droppleman I am one of the non-voting landlord Representatives we are I am a small very small uh uh landlord uh uh in terms of units rented um and I also work in it welcome commissioner else who is absent today uh the commissioner Jordan else is the other landlord representative on the commission um oh yeah go ahead Bob

005uh just wanted to also say that I'm calling from Ann Arbor um commissioner Lowe's uh hi Jeff Lowe's uh I am a commission member I'm a high school teacher and I live in Ann Arbor welcome Jeff commissioner Tibbetts hello I'm Jamie I'm calling in from Ann Arbor my background is in social work and I am a current graduate student at the School of Social Work welcome Jamie commissioner Rosen gets Gail Rosen that's the representative from U of M Student Legal Services she can't be here tonight close enough and then commissioner Ratcliffe hi I'm commissioner oh sorry I'm rosinita um and I'm calling in from Ann Arbor um my background is in education and in visit disability Justice and Social Services we're very very happy to have you here uh commissioner Thomas good evening everyone my

006name is Arthur Thomas I'm calling from Ypsilanti I'm currently uh temporarily off work from the city of Ann Arbor's Park and Recreation and thank you for having me thank you for being here I love parks and recs that's that's awesome um commissioner Pitts well you are muted uh we still can't hear you actually there you go okay I'm so sorry uh can you hear me now yes okay all right Perfect all right my name is Kim I'm from Ann Arbor I'm absolutely new uh so just trying to get the fill of things right now um I guess I represent for the residents uh the housing I live in housing and um I do housekeeping done that for a few years um kind of transitioning into gardening now so I'm a big Gardener for um the

007property that I live on okay it's lovely and um do you go by Kim um I like Kimberly Kimberly yeah yeah now I I think we started off we had a conversation in the very beginning of the commission about whether we're going to call each other commissioner so and so or if we can use first names and I think everyone was okay with first names but if you do prefer to be referred to by your title just let me know and uh we'll try our best to do that totally fine um commissioner good hi I'm Colin in from Ann Arbor um I have a background this is my first meeting I have a background in non-profit work and did a handful of years as a tenant advocate welcome okay council member Regina hi everybody uh

008I apologize for being late I was coming from another Community event with council member Harrison um I am council member Dina one of the council Liaisons to uh the to the renters commission Travis is fine um and I represent the third Warden Council which is uh kind of from campus out to Southeast Ann Arbor um and Welcome to our new Commissioners I'm so excited for all of you to join us and and participate in the conversation in the dialogue thanks wonderful councilmember Harrison I I think I saw you in a car so if you're not able to talk right now that's okay we can come back later I can I can no it's okay I I go in the car coming back from an event though is that with with council member Regina so hello

009I'm calling in from Ann Arbor I'll be on camera soon I'll be home shortly um I represent the First Ward and um really really excited to see our new Commissioners on tonight I love the diversity um we're off to a good start here so that's uh that's great and and Welcome to our to our new uh Commissioners thank you for being here thank you it's second all that thank you everyone for being here um my name is Zachariah um I'm currently the chair I'm also um just a tenant in town I live next to the VA hospital and um so I'm obviously you know calling I'm representing a tenant perspective um I work as a research assistant at the local Cancer Center um but obviously I'm quite involved with the ventures issues in the city

010I look forward to working with all of you and um before we begin um I see that yeah we would just go right to the approval of the agenda next but before we begin I just want to say a few things um I think if for the people who are new you can always ask questions I might not necessarily know the answer to it but I will defer to Travis or to Kristen and they will probably know the the answer so it's always okay to ask questions that's not just the new people it's for everybody um it's okay to not know who's voting and who's not at first you know we're all learning here and um um if there's a if ever a situation arises where you feel like you know you you're not sure

011about you feel like a discussion went it was a bit implied or you know you weren't happy with how somebody would talk to you or whatever let's we got to figure these things out so you can always email me about anything with questions if any concerns conflicts whatever you have my email you have my phone number text me call me anything and we'll figure it out so I want to make you all feel as welcome as possible okay thank you I might also just note I I know also Cynthia may have all of the answers as well I know that she talked to several of you uh the new folks as you were thinking about joining so um she is also a wealth of knowledge yes I second that I second that absolutely um so

012we move on to the approval of the agenda now just as a reminder and for those of you who weren't here at our last meeting in may we weren't able to meet a quorum so in order to host these meetings we have to have at least six voting members present um if we don't have that then we can't hold an official meeting um which means we can't make decisions on behalf as as the commission um and another thing to mention before we get started here uh is that these meetings are broadcast on uh CTN so that means that people can access them online or on TV I think it's it's still Public Access TV great so uh you know just be aware that people can see you and there are common they're Spectators on right

013now attendees so um at a last meeting we didn't meet Quorum so we weren't able to hold an official meeting um so when we when we start going to like the approval of minutes which is item number five we will be not approving last meeting because we didn't really have it like for May but the the one before for April so let's get in the first one is approval of the agenda item four um do we have a motion to approve the agenda before us okay okay I saw resonita first so move by rosnita do we have a second seconded okay seconded all right so we have a motion to approve the agenda um before we go on vote on the agenda there are I have a few suggestions for the commission um it's up

014to all of you but I think it would be good if we postponed a couple items here to our next meeting since the our agenda is getting a bit long here uh let's see 7- D and 7-e those are two things here it's liaison to the we would be choosing a liaison to hhsib which is another city board and the second one officer elections it's where we elect the chair and the vice chair I think we should wait one more month so our new members feel more comfortable and they know the commission and if they want to run for those positions they'll be able to do so uh so if anyone is interested in postponing those two things you could make a motion now I'm I'm I think a motion that we delayed that until

015next time okay motioned by Arthur do we have a second for that second by Jamie okay so now we'll vote on taking postponing those things moving those off of our agenda all those in favor say aye all right all those opposed to postponing say nay okay with that the agenda is amended so now we have this amended agenda before us now we vote on whether or not we adopt this as our agenda sorry for all these steps here but it's important I've been assured uh so all those in favor of adopting the amended agenda say I okay all those opposed say nay okay so we have our amended agenda before us it's the same as the one that you received just minus uh seven Dash D and seven Dashie okay next we can move on

016to are there any questions about what just happened there before I move on no no great okay now we can move on to approval of minutes that's um item five this is approval for April's minutes if that's correct yes um so do we have a motion to approve the last official meetings minutes well I have a question about that for those of us who are new should we abstain from voting on the approval of those of those minutes it's a good question I don't think you need to abstain I believe you can vote on that but yeah you can this is sorry this has come up in in other meetings it's always a little a little awkward uh because yeah you haven't but you can always check them for like any clear errors or things

017like that we generally you would be allowed to vote on them often folks who weren't here don't move or second them just because they don't feel comfortable with that but you can't move them yes yes thank you I will motion to approve thank you Jeff do you have a second I'll second by Arthur great all is in favor of approving last minute last meetings minutes say I I all those opposed a name okay with that we approved our last meetings minutes for April now we get to item six which is our first general public comment session Kristen would you like to leave that from public comment comment disowned by calling 877-853-5247 or 888-788-0099 entering meeting ID 935-8080-1941 for anyone who is attending the zoom meeting you can use the raise hand feature um to raise

018your hand and be called on to speak and anyone who has common impressed scar 9 to raise your hand you'll be want to speak you can address the renter's commission for active clean amounts here [Music] I didn't know what that is okay so we can move on to item seven and that's all of our business things we have to discuss the decisions we have to make uh we'll start with 7-a which is a presentation from the Human Rights Commission which is another commission in the city government I recognize Leslie hello very nice to be here and I am here with Linda Winkler and the two of us hi everybody thanks for having us yeah we're here because we see the potential of partnership we do things very similarly we're going to talk a little bit

019about what we do and how we do it and hopefully you will also see opportunities and when there are when opportunities come we will have a bond already and that's why we're here so let me begin can you uh share I'll share my screen I guess is what I'm doing from beginning can you see it no not yet good because I can't somebody has to say share a screen and I haven't done that and I don't know I don't have an opportunity to do that oh you haven't set as a co-host so you should be able to be able there um right don't it's not a share screen with it okay um I don't see any opportunity to do that let me go back to the zoom aha here it is okay now can you

020see it yes yes thank you wonderful that's just luck okay the Human Rights Commission one of the things that you know what you should know about us is that we have for years does very little work with rentals and housing and all of a sudden from about 2000 2001 we 2021 we have gotten a lot of complaints and we are learning um okay human rights protections are at every level of government as I'm sure you know um for housing at the federal level there is there is the um Fair Housing Act there is and there are and there are hug rules in the state we've got um Elliot Larson civil rights law in the city we have a number of ordinances that have to do with civil rights foreign our Ann Arbor non-discrimination ordinance is

021one of those it's our main ordinance and we're responsible for enforcing that ordinance the ordinance establishes 26 um protected classes starting with age and going all the way to weight and alphabetical order the ones that are highlighted in blue are ones that are special to the Ann Arbor human rights to the city of Ann Arbor age arrest record color disability for example all these that are just white are also protected at the state level by Elliot Larson educational Association ethnicity family responsibilities um government ID cards Etc the ones that are in blue are just available because they're in the Ann Arbor ordinance reinforce all violations of all of these in housing practices in public accommodations Employment Practices and other kinds of practices that have the effect of discrimination of one of the protected classes and

022housing we predict discrimination of that sort on all aspects of the Rental process the renting itself the pub the publishing of uh of available housing rule setting the terms and and policies that people have you know that people have to practice when they're renting terminations or evictions um we do a fair amount not that much so far based on most of those protected classes um there are we get that we we have had them we can talk about what they look like what they you know what happens to them but many times those are cases that can go also because they're protected by state law they could also go to Michigan Department of Civil Rights or um the Bearer fair housing center of Southeast and Mid Michigan and they have more um because they're working

023with state laws they have more opportunities and can deal with bigger issues so but we can refer them and we often do to those groups what we're getting now is our complaints about source of income that's this is a new one and this is probably our biggest um source of complaints around housing source of income source of income has been on the Ann Arbor ordinance for probably since its Inception um maybe even before 1970 1978 but it never had a definition and no one knew what to do with it and it was hard to enforce we started getting complaints about what looked like source of income issues and we inquired and found out that because we didn't have that there wasn't a good definition of it in the ordinance for example and and guidance in

024the ordinance that it was hard to um to enforce so we offered we wrote a uh an amendment to amend the ordinance with a good definition and here is the definition source of income basically it's more complicated than this but basically what it means is any source of income paid directly to an individual derived from any lawful profession or occupation any contract agreement loan or settlement alimony for example child support any benefit or subsidy program including housing assistant Assistance or housing Choice vouchers and of course that's where we're getting the most um complaints about um there was also we knew that that landlords were asked for um for evidence that person who was renting had three times the value of their month of monthly rental assistance since assistance is income and people with vouchers couldn't

025always do that there's a statement in the in the ordinance that says any qualified assistance program shall be treated as income in the amount of three times the value of that monthly rental assistance so that is also covered by the ordinance no person shall fail to account for any tenant or prospective tenant's entire source of income that includes that three times that the voucher amount when using a financial income standard for entering into renewing a tendency um so that is basically source of income it is it is landlord saying if you don't make enough money if you don't have a job that gives you this much income we will not accept you or we will not accept vouchers even when you know when the voucher could in fact be used as source of income for

026your rent we had a second we have a second um ordinance that we also enforce and it is called fair chance access to housing ordinance this came about because we had people coming into the commission explaining that in Ann Arbor it was almost impossible to get housing if you had um a felony on your record even if that felony was years old even if that felony was minor and had nothing to do with housing um we started to look at it because you know you want felt you want people who have been in prison and have served their time to have a second chance we did research we found out that in fact there was no evidence that people who had this kind of background or any any poor um renters than anybody else people

027did not landlords were not um were not liable for renting to a person with a background of a felony and that this was the fair thing to do to say that in fact if you have a felony or the landlords can't ask whether or not you have them it prohibits landlords from using criminal history in the tenant selection so people with criminal records have a fair opportunity to compete for rental housing this is a new ordinance and it it requires that this poster be a company you know request you know advertisements for open rental and it and for any housing provider that's got an office or someplace where people come it should be shown there at all also um so we're doing those things um we know that you'd probably see renters a lot who

028come to you with complaints if the complaints have to do with this kind of thing you probably should send them our way we we we talk to those people we mediate we uh informed the landlords of the law and if we can't do anything we help the we we we find a way to help solve this problem um we can we can mediate we can refer it to the City attorney we can talk to people who have attorneys already um people can use this law to get Fair a fair outcome so that's what we do um so if you find somebody if you have people who come to you and have this kind of a problem please send them to us um we are very committed to fairness and renting and if there are ways

029that we can help you please let us know Linda do you have anything you want to add to this I'm afraid I lost connection there for a little while I didn't hear I yeah I didn't hear everything you said okay um I I do want to clarify one thing and you may have clarified it no that when I exited after I exited um that it's not just uh the fair chance access to housing ordinance applies to anybody with any criminal background history at all so um a landlord cannot um cannot require any background check and if they happen to become aware of any criminal background information they can't use it as a reason to deny somebody um uh as a reason to not rent to somebody um and we have had a fair number of

030complaints under that ordinance which I don't know if Leslie mentioned was just passed in 2021 maybe a year and a half ago so it's relatively new and um yeah there's an education piece that still needs to be happening with with landlords although the city did send to every registered landlord um notice of this new ordinance so they should have it um uh so we have received a number of complaints under that ordinance generally all that's required is for us to call and say hello this is the Human Rights Commission calling um we understand that you are still doing background checks or that uh it's typically that they're doing the background checks um and that do you know that there's a law in Ann Arbor now that says you're not permitted to do that and sometimes

031landlords are surprised by that maybe they didn't read the notice that that the city sent um but we haven't had any instance where uh they say well I'm not gonna I'm not going to comply with that you know we don't know for sure whether with the next tenant that comes along they do the same thing and the Tenant doesn't know to contact us um but that's what we do and so far we haven't had really any pushback on that similarly with source of income because the definition was only recently clarified and expanded on there are still I think quite a few landlords in Ann Arbor who don't know that they are not permitted to say to a potential tenant I'm sorry I don't accept housing vouchers um and In fairness to them um really until

032even just a month or two ago the Ann Arbor Housing Commission that um that kind of oversees a lot of the voucher programs made it sound as though on their website as though opting in was optional they've since corrected that and they have a link to our ordinance and they're now telling um telling landlords that no it's not optional you have to you have to accept vouchers now vouchers don't always cover the rent landlords are free to to charge what they want um and sometimes you know the vouch is just not going to be enough um that that's complicated uh a complicated system that I don't I don't pretend to understand but um we do sometimes call Jennifer um oh help me Leslie sorry hall right at the Housing Commission yeah um for assistance on

033these things when they arise um and yeah so I mean in general I guess we're here just to say you know if you get wind of anybody who feels that they're being discriminated against under any of those categories they should go to our website file a complaint you can just submit it online it's very simple uh there's a section for the non-discrimination ordinance and a separate a separate complaint for the fair chance access to housing ordinance um and if we can help we usually will send them somewhere um to some other resource where hopefully they can get help and similarly we've actually received calls before you guys existed about issues that really are in your purview now and we didn't have anywhere to send them to um and maybe now we can um uh we

034received a a call Reese not that long ago from a mother of the student who was uh renting at one of the new fancy apartment buildings who said that the landlord was um was basically providing a carrot and a stick saying if you don't uh re-up you know a month I was maybe within weeks after she moved in I'm going to raise the rent more for next year as a way to get around the the you know the new rules that are in place um I did tell I think Travis about it just uh hopefully it got to you I'm sure it did um but you know so hopefully we can partner and um because we we get all kinds of housing complaints many of which we really can't help with if they don't fall

035under one of these ordinances so I think that's it do you have any questions um I had a couple of questions the first one about accepting a Housing Voucher so then I just moved back to Ann Arbor during the pandemic so some of this is newer to me for Ann Arbor so does this mean that that if someone has a voucher and they go to someone or an apartment complex that previously didn't rent to Section 8 um holders or tenant-based voucher holders that now that landlord has to sign up to be oh a landlord and go through the inspection process and all that correct correct yes correct um and I should I should add that under our ordinance under both of the ordinances actually people have the option of filing a complaint with us or

036they can bring a private right of action with a lawyer um and there is now pending a lawsuit at least I think it's still pending the the law clinic um at the University of Michigan brought a suit against a um a landlord management company in town that was refusing to accept vouchers so they're choosing to go the you know the the the court route and and I'm sure that's putting all the other landlords on notice we'll see what happens with that case but yes in answer to your question they do have to jump through the Hoops that are required to accept vouchers now which I think does mean a a another inspection and filling out forms um it doesn't though mean that they have to charge a rent that um that is low enough that

037the person with the voucher can afford to live there um so they can you know charge what they want okay thank you and my second question um goes to the background checks best just a criminal history background check right so you still can do a credit check right correct given what's happened ever since we've had the eviction moratoria right and there's been such an increase in cases in the um was it the tenant courts I just called the eviction Court um for a number of individuals since that money that we did have is starting to run dry and there right and people do get evictions on their records is there anything to protect or help them when trying to attach to new housing in the city you mean because they have that infection right because

038they have been noticed even if everything got paid off it could still be that they have that notice you know you'd have to ask a lawyer about that I'm afraid I don't I don't know of any way that we can help with that what do you think Leslie not yet but we can look into it I don't I don't know yeah um I was just thinking about the future because of yeah no that's a good question right now now it is a good question we'll look if that was it for me thank you thank you thank you those are really good questions and I see um Arthur's hand raised the question is if you were to find that a landlord is intentionally trying to charge more just to avoid the voucher system and what what

039what is in place to correct that with that landlord do you mean with one person he's saying that it's more expensive than it really is right just to avoid having to deal with the voucher because like you just said previously uh a landlord can charge what he wants so if he has let's use a thousand dollars for instance to get in but once he find out that this person has a voucher and he decides okay well now the rent is 1500 to avoid having to accept that person with the vouchers if we can show I think Linda you'll let me know if that's true I think if we can show that that the landlord then rented it the place for the original price it's starting to look like discrimination and we can do something about

040it I mean it's a case it would have to be made is that true Linda if that sounds right to me I mean we haven't encountered it um uh you know I'm not sure we haven't encountered it I just know in my conversations with Jennifer Hall basically you know landlords can charge what they want but they can't charge they can't charge what Leslie's saying they can't charge more because to get rid of somebody and then lower the rent again you know that that would be clearly um uh discrimination on the base as a source of income um uh it's a it's a great question um and I don't know if it's happening it might be but no one has brought it to our attention if you if you get any you know if you hear

041that it is let us know yeah foreign thank you another really good question thanks Arthur and I have some questions I guess to begin I think what you're hitting on there is that like it's it's yeah well I guess one reaction to what you've just said I suppose is that it might be really difficult to determine what the landlord's reason is for offering the price that they're offering so even if they offer more and it could be because they don't want to take someone with a voucher it's almost impossible to prove I would assume so one question I have is how are you aware of any system to try to test for that like any sort of auditing system yeah or do you do that yourselves one of the reasons that that fair housing house

042is so good is that they 'd Shopper kind of kind where they then they have a slew of people who've been trained to act as though they are you know going to do this renting for example and we'll see if everybody is treated the same and for some of these kinds of questions that is the best way to find out if somebody is doing that the other way is to find out again you know again if you for example have gone to a um tried to rent a place and they were told that the place has already been so you know it's just been rented and then you somebody somebody goes the next day and finds out that it's not been rented you you started you start amassing circumstantial evidence which we can confront the

043landlord with the more you know I mean you start coming up with a case and a landlord and uh and the Human Rights Commission or an attorney could use that information to try to get um recompense thank you and that's the fair housing center of Southeast and Mid Michigan right okay gotcha and they also do these activities for local laws as well it sounds like now only when node has the fair housing act and I'm just looking in their little brochure now I think there are um I I'm not sure I'll have to look at the current lawsuit to see whether because they were the ones that sent it to the law clinic and I don't know if they did a little bit of testing themselves on this um or maybe they didn't need to

044because it was so blatant um and the landlord was just saying no I'm you know I'm not going to take vouchers I don't I I should know but I don't know if if the Fair Housing Act um or federal HUD law you know has these source of income kinds of protections yeah I don't know about source of income I feel like they do I think I've read that somewhere in which case I think the fair housing center could do testing but I'm not sure about that but we have no you know we're like you we're a bunch of volunteers zero resources and and we're just not set up to do testing like that um it would be really nice especially when we get like race discrimination claims it's it's so hard to prove when you're

045not without that you really need that and fair housing will absolutely do it in a sort of race discrimination kind of case and we often refer cases to them and they're great okay thank you and I if you haven't been in touch with representative Jason Morgan who's sponsoring legislation in the state level to ban sorts of income discrimination great okay I just want to make sure because I think if you have any insight that I'm sure they'd love to hear from you um and then just last question we'll move on from me anyway um the you mentioned that landlords can't obviously discriminate based on source of income but uh sounds like they can still discriminate based on your overall income is that right so if you don't have enough income uh you know even if

046following the rules that you mentioned with the three times if it's if it's through a voucher for example they can still deny you know he's done that that's my understanding yeah but they have I mean if their rule is that it has to be three times the yeah then they can't because the rule has to apply to everybody equally right right okay so they can still have rules based on the amount of if they say you have to make a million dollars a month and you don't yeah are you asking if like if someone if the rent is you know fifteen hundred dollars and a person has a voucher if if the person has to make forty five hundred dollars or if the person just has to have the 500 because that's because the 30

047is their portion of the rent um if they how much what were you talking about I did a bigger number normally um because before here I was living in DC and to see in DC would give like a really nice poster that was like really easy to understand and so it's like um say the love number um if the rent was say 300 a month right I mean it's a hypothetical extremely hypothetical but rent was 300 a month you have a voucher you and your income level is you know if you have a hundred dollars a month but you have a voucher which covers that other two-thirds then you are you qualify because three times the income is met with that voucher right correct um is that what you were asking or are you asking

048if the rent was like you know eight hundred dollars and all you had including the voucher was three hundred dollars um I guess I was just asking about General requirements for what your income has to be in order to to rent some place so I'm I apologize I got a little lost in the numbers but yeah so I was just wondering you know can they lay down rules based on saying if if uh you don't make a certain amount then you cannot rent here and they'll take into consideration the vouchers and triple that and all that stuff you know I mean yeah anything that that can't that can't be you know pinned as discrimination based on having a voucher you know that's particular to the person with the voucher would probably not be something we

049could touch these are um yeah but it gets congratulated over the vouchers and we do often have to go and ask legal services or ask Jennifer Hall you know what about the situation situation yeah just the reason why I ask is because I think I've run into a few situations where the parents of a student are abroad and aren't able to give the income or aren't able to really deal with the people the paperwork but they still require the student renter provides the income amount in order to rent there and I was wondering if that was actually allowed or not um no it's it's actually not I mean right Leslie puts a definition up I mean if they can get the money from the family is that what you're asking it doesn't have to be

050the students it can come from any Source yeah I think there was an issue with yeah okay yeah so long as it's filed in with my parents okay okay and that's what source of income is it's money is money yeah it specifically says a gift too yeah so okay yeah right yeah so okay that makes sense thank you all right um moving on to Lucy yeah thanks it's really great to have you both here really love the presentations yeah I hope we can keep collaborating I wanted to ask two questions one is you said that um you've received a lot your housing has taken up a lot more of your attention in recent years and I was wondering if you had insights on why that is and then my second question uh with the fair

051housing act it seems like the enforcement is going really well and that Human Rights Commission that's kind of your purview and that there's good systems for that we've had a bit more trouble with enforcing some other tenants right stuff so I was wondering if you could tell us what how why and how you've been effective at that oh I don't know if I don't know how effective but I mean we actually think there should be way more I I will answer your first question and the reason we have more is I think because of the source of income being redefined and um kind of out there in a way that even though it's been in our ordinance for years people weren't aware of it and landlords were were able to uh just say no we

052don't accept hasn't vouchers this is all brand new so there's a learning curve which involves these complaints and then educating the landlords and the same is true for the fair chance access to housing and not being able to do criminal background checks because that too is new so I think that explains why we're getting more um because those are the two categories that we're seeing more of the the other thing I think is two things one is that we we are working with professionals who know more than we do and who we can turn to for help um so that we've got buy-in before it's passed um secondly we have extra buy-in with this poster for example and we've circulated the poster and the idea with people who are returning from prison and their forming

053a a group of support for this kind of thing telling people who are out of prison arming them with the information so that they go to the landlord already prepared for somebody to ask them so that they can say see you don't have to well you can't no you don't can't that's right that's right you can't thank you so much Julia yeah um I think it just really helps you know having the fair housing um Center and it would be great if for General tenants issues there was an equivalent non-profit that could um pick up and address the problems and had a team of um attorneys because in Fair Housing law you can sue for attorney's fees and that's much more difficult in general tenant cases um and Zechariah I don't know if that was

054all clarified for you if there's something I could clarify more I did work on fair housing for a number of years in Chicago much thank you Julie if I have any I may follow up with you on that he doesn't make sure I'm crystal clear on it but I don't want to take up the commission's time so are there any other questions could I have one more thing I did take a look at your your good website I mean for a new commission it's got a it's got a lot of good information on there and I went to the tenant resources page um and you do very nicely talk about how if you feel like you've been discriminated against um contact the Human Rights Commission be great if you could add a separate blurb about

055the fair chance access to housing ordinance uh and with a brief explanation about it you know about landlords not being able to do criminal not being allowed to do criminal background checks and if they do or they're insisting on it or they use any information about your criminal background to deny you a rental then file a complaint and Link our page again so if somebody wants to just add that that would be great thank you Linda I I just made a note here and we'll bring it up at the we have this tenant Education meeting um where we usually talk about how to educate tenants through our website among other ways and I'm sure we'll talk about it there and make sure that's added and thank you Kristen for all your help with with the

056website thank you to everybody who has helped I'm very happy to hear that yeah okay any other questions I just have one go ahead my only question is we we are talking strictly about Ann Arbor right Ann Arbor is the only one that falls up under that umbrella that's right okay okay no no yeah we do we have to turn people away all the time they think they live in Ann Arbor but then but our non-discrimination ordinance and the fair chance access to housing only applies to the city of Ann Arbor yeah yes all right thank you thank you okay anything else all right and what's the best way to get in contact with the two of you the rest of the commission we can provide email address we put it is there a way

057for us to yeah um don't see a chat things there's not a chat I'll connect to you okay Christian I saw you just I'm muted I'm happy to send that information out okay great thank you so much for having us yes thank you thank you very much for your presentation it was much appreciated take care bye thank you both bye okay wonderful I really appreciate that presentation um and uh with that I think you know if you have any questions I guess directed to two of them um and Kristen's gonna share that content information so you can move on to 7-b uh zoning housing sustainability presentation and discussion that's a consultant from planning services so Megan I understand is going to present to us hello welcome hello thank you for having me um just want

058to give a little background on the project and who I am and and whatnot and thank you so much for having us here um my name is Megan mass and minakum with Carlisle Wortman Associates we're an urban planning consulting firm that's here in this that's located here in the city um and a lot of our staff live in the city um and we were asked by the city planning staff to work with the Planning Commission to look at zoning downtown and premiums and what they incentivize um a presentation and a report were in your packet but before we dive into that I wanted to give a brief one-on-one on zoning and um also on how premiums work um so if anyone is an expert in zoning I'm going to apologize right now um for the

059next five to ten minutes um I recognize that not everybody is as enthusiastic as about as I am um so just want to have everybody on the same page um so zoning is an ordinance in your City that says what can happen on a piece of land what use inside a building or on the or on there so I rated my kids Lego box so this is say this is a piece of land and then it says where a building can go on it and how big the building can be and then um also once it's on it where the yards can be so how far it would have to be set back from from a from a property line and what Ann Arbor has done since the 1960s has said in our downtown we

060want to incentivize some things so we've always offered extra building blocks if you will so that's the reason I use the Legos and this you're going to hear me say far a lot and that's Florida area ratio and a hundred percent far is like with this where the Lego is completely the building completely covers the lot so this is 100 far but then it doesn't have to be the developer or the Builder they can put these blocks any way they want um as long as it complies with other requirements that the city might have in order to get things that the city can't require the first one was pedestrian amenities so that's 100 far what they've done is they've offered extra building blocks so more far so then you got more far for providing something

061to the city um usually not that much and I'll go into a little bit more about that but does anybody have any questions about what zoning is and how these bonus fars work that are called premiums well great I'm so glad that my children like to use Legos and then Kristen um I I can share my screen yes okay I am good here all right can I get a thumbs up or a nod yes okay great um and then I am going to just click over here so um we're on the cover page right downtown zoning and then um excuse me I just want to make sure I'm in the right place okay and then we'll go down to a team the team we're gonna no that did not go ah there you go so

062do you see team introduction team and project introduction um yeah thank you um so uh just went went over that briefly but we've been working with the Planning Commission um for a number of months now um and then if you're interested in looking at all the materials um there was a link to that page in the report that was given to you and all our reports with a lot of data behind them um are there and I'm going to hit the highlights of what we've done um is um but tonight want to go over current premiums what they are what our research was and what the assumptions are of the planning commission based on that research what their goals are and they asked us to come to you to ask you for your opinions on

063two policy options that they're looking in and of course at the end we would say thank you so current premiums um so those are those building blocks remember this is what they offer building blocks for um is Affordable residential units and this is the D1 or D2 districts only so that's in the downtown districts um and I'll have a map for that in just a bit later there's also um and those are three tiers and the percentage is dependent on the percentage of affordable affordable housing dwelling units provided and that's where people have to um work with um Jennifer at the Housing Commission and then um they get permit they they they work through that system and sometimes it's developer Pro the developer providing those units and sometimes they can pay in lieu um also

064there's Green Building so if anybody is lead is a certification that's been internationally known for over a decade now and you basically a building or a site gets a different score to that's what you can see is 50 100 and 250 percent with silver gold and platinum um these are things that the city can't require due to state law um State the energy code and the building code are set at the state level so these are things that the the city can't require whereas if you go to California or some other states individual cities change their building codes in order to get in order to require some of these things historic preservation also was one where they gave 50 far so 50 of that lot um that pedestrian amenity amenity that's been since 1966 um

065and they have a complicated they have a formula of 10 square feet to with a maximum of 8 000 square feet so we're making everybody do math there's definitions of what an arcade is in our Plaza and also incentivizes public parking and that's in the D1 District only when I see one those are where the tallest buildings are so where it's the most dense um and that can get up to 200 percent when the parking is available to the public I'm not going to necessarily go through all of these these the D1 D2 are the districts that we're talking about tc1 is along traffic corridors C1 and C2 and R4 are near around the downtown um and this shows where they're allowable by right where the they allow bonuses and where there's a maximum height

066um and the message really that we want you to take away from this slide is that in that tc1 you can see and those are outside the downtown along major corridors um those buildings could actually be bigger than buildings that are in downtown and when you look at planning and zoning traditionally that's a very odd situation usually your tallest buildings your densest areas are allowed in the downtown um and so that was something that we what we highlighted for the Planning Commission something that they were thinking about in terms of not only maybe changing what the incentives are but then also do we allow more building blocks by right or in the downtown so we were asked to review a number of things in order to help the Planning Commission have context for these decisions

067number one we went over City plans and policies and those were from 2000 until now we looked at projects in the downtown and when we looked at that we looked at permitted projects that were built sometimes there's a lot of projects that go through and they get that they get approval but they don't get bills or they change in a major way and so when we have you'll see a graph in here pretty soon where it has the number of dwelling units that's the number of dwelling units that were built not that were approved and sometimes those are different we looked at Market data and also best practices in similar communities and we conducted a number of interviews with City staff um some elected officials um also we're interviewing developers non-profit and for-profit right now

068and when we looked at the premiums and how they've matured over the years as I said the first ones were in 1966 and the things in bold those are big changes the things that are in regular fonts so the things that are in regular font um so in like 1998 1988 definition changes these are things that were minor these are things more that clarified things or added a smaller standard these up here are really big changes so in 1966 that's when the premiums were first introduced so the first time you got you have have optional building blocks in um it was added a residential premium because at that point the city recognized they weren't getting a lot of as many residential units as they wanted especially in the downtown they were getting a lot of

069office um in 2009 based on um coming out of some Mass planning that they did for the downtown the city changed those incentives to really then look at these kind of what we're calling a large menu so incentivizing affordable housing Green Building public parking historic preservation so that list that I talked about in the beginning that's when that was introduced and then in 2019 um when there was when and context has been provided by City staff was that at 2019 it seemed like development would never end in the downtown that development was going to come no matter what there was lots of people banging down the door and at that point they said you know we really need affordable housing and so they combined that residential and affordable housing premium together because they recognize that

070over time they weren't getting the affordable housing that they wanted um and Link those two together however what happened um and we can see that as we looked at population changes over time so we took data from esri market analysis so um that's data from a national source and they look at census blocks and so we looked at the census blocks that are in the D1 and D2 and said okay did it change and in 2004 there was a downtown residential task force and they set a goal of a thousand new housing units in the downtown by 2015. and we looked at this we saw that by that has that increase you know you hit that increase we've we've hit that increase and so that task force was achieved they wanted it to be achieved

071by here but it didn't get to it didn't happen until until around here the other thing you'll note is like right here in 2010 when you have that census you could see all of a sudden that line for the next census in 2020 the trajectory of it the slope of it changed and it increased in terms of the rate of residential units that were being built in the downtown so without looking at that you can associate some of that to this probably we need to dig a little bit deeper but there's an indication so then we were asked to look at number of housing units that were built by projects and what whether they use premiums or not and the Planning Commission asked us to look at these policy windows so and a2d2 is the

072um that group in 2009 that's how the city returned referred to it at that point um here from 2009 to 2018 was when they had this had this large menu here in 2000 2017 to 2019 they broke it into two-tier system to make it simpler to understand for developers and in 2019 there was that change for affordable units being required as part of any residential premium I also had the Great Recession in here in 2009 to 2012 and then obviously in recent years we've had the pandemic um affected everybody in a in a way but it also affected the real estate market in a very real way at that time and you could say that it still might might be in recovery um and how what's being built and what's their market for hasn't really

073shook out yet but you can see pretty solidly up until 2014 most of the things being built in the downtown didn't use premiums I mean use premiums so they use the blue and then after you had this two-tier after you had this change to require the require affordable units with residential started to have more projects that were being built so whereas in here we had three projects that were being built with with premiums over here you can see it's one to one one to one two to one in these subsequent years um and the premiums the the premiums deliver a lot obviously especially when they're using residential premiums they deliver a lot more housing units um and so the question was the question from the Planning Commission is is really the premiums developed are they

074delivering what we want Zechariah I see your hand up yeah sorry to interject here but I just want to clarify something on the y-axis there is that the number of units that's the number of units and then each um and then the number above each bar is the number of projects approves that year yes approve that year okay thank you I just I was a little confused thanks no no thanks for clarifying it's hard to and they're just they're just dwelling in it's not affordable housing units correct they're just dwelling units not affordable housing units Jeff I see your hands up um yeah just to kind of back uh piggyback um so in the if you know for if you look at 2013 it says there's 302 units are those 300 units divided amongst the

075two projects yes okay yes yes yes absolutely okay any more questions I'm sorry the the two-tier system can you recap that just one more time because I think I lost that so the two-tier system did was it it said all of these get x amount of premiums all of these get another oh no no no that's not it the two-tier system was that um we have uh we have a gate you have to meet a certain amount of of Green Building standards in order to even get a premium and so they had that and then you and then then that unlocked the long laundry list and you still have that so you so what you still have is there's a gate they have to meet the gate then that unlocks and then they have this

076long menu that a developer could choose from whether they're a non-profit developer or for-profit developer okay I'm taking from your body language that that is clarified yes thank you okay all right I'm gonna move to the next slide if that's okay um so also one of the things we looked at was what property is really eligible for premiums so I keep on saying the D1 D2 and that's shown everywhere in brown and everywhere in green and just to orient people so um this is South U um and then here's Liberty and then I believe City Hall we go down here on to 5th Street City Halls right here um so the brown and the green are all places that are Zone D1 D2 but the green are the only places within the D1 D2 that

077are eligible for that are eligible for these premiums because in that in the in the 2009 changes they said premiums are only available in places that are not historic districts and then there's no flood plain so you can see that that brown takes a lot of a lot of that area out then also planning staff asked us um to look at when we looked at the permits to say okay anything that's been built in the last 15 years we don't think that that's going to be redeveloped in the next 10 years so let's in some way graphically take those out of the equation so for instance right here on North Main Street there's been two new two new projects um those um those we're going to say aren't going to be redeveloped um so really

078those kind of take those out and the gist of this map is that there's a limited area where the premiums can be used right now then we look through City plans and policies um and on the top here these are all the things that the premiums incentivize affordable housing residential pedestrian activity um greater mix of land uses Energy Efficiency preservation of historic buildings public parking as you go here and down here these are all the plans and policies that have been put into into place by the city we started in 2003 um with the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority Tiff plan so that's what's saying what the DDA is going to do um 2006 and 2009 this is the the ones that came into the a2d2 master plan you have a sustainability framework in 2013

079the Allen Creek urban trail and are we're moving together towards Vision zero so that's in transportation and carbon neutrality and so these work down from from you know as far away to his nearest you can see as we go down we get less check marks so really these incentives while they seem they were doing a good job of delivering what your plans and policies were in the early odds as we move in time to the 2020s they're not delivering on what your stated goals are um and they're not structured too so when we presented all this to the Planning Commission we asked them to come to agreement on assumptions um and I'm not going to read through these I'm going to hit the highlights um but basically we're assuming that that an equilibrium of development

080types is important in that downtown um but also recognizing that developing the downtown is more difficult and can be more expensive than elsewhere in the city a lot of times you're knocking down a building or you're adding to a building and that is inherently more expensive than if it's a vacant site or if the site is only covered 25 whereas in the downtown a lot of times the building is 80 or more of the land covering it um also recognizing that since 2019 there's an affordable housing millage that's been passed but um so with every new building you get new tax dollars that go towards affordable housing but really in talking to folks in the city who are working in affordable housing that that millage is not enough to be the sole source um also

081recognizing when you're looking at premiums there's a number of them that are aren't eligible for premium so you've got a significant number of properties um and when we looked at what the current downtown residential development is delivering it's either high-end low-scale residential buildings um so four stories luxury condos or student housing what the market right now is not delivering is attainable high density housing downtown um and the Planning Commission really wanted to recognize that attainable density in the downtown not only provides places for present and future in Arbor rights but it also influences Regional stability by providing access to housing region-wide and a walkable mixed-use place but also when we talk to developers and when we looked at the data those current premiums are not being utilized for a variety of reasons some of the

082things that have been cited is that they're complicated that they um sometimes um staff and developers or lawyers disagree on What premium is what um and there's not so and also for developers it was hard to have a long a long menu they they very strongly said a shorter menu is better So Jamie I see your hand up yes thank you um on your previous slide I was just curious if um because the what you just said kind of jogged my brain um so if there's not an expiration on these like I see that first one goes to 2033 if there's no expiration are these still like up for grabs or so these are plans that are still guiding the city um okay this master plan land use element the city is going is hired

083a consultant um and they are going to start a master plan process to update that Master Plan um I believe in the fall um so generally from a good planning principle point of view anything that's more than 10 years old um sometimes gets a little questionable um and really that's when the time that the the city should start looking at um whether to update it you know to update that and say whether it's still whether it's still it's still valid or whether it needs to be tweaked or whether it needs to be updated in a more comprehensive way okay thank you uh Travis thanks and just just for everybody on here if you have been paying attention to the city as well um you will not hear us referring to the work that we're doing

084right now as the Master Plan update so we are now referring it to our comprehensive land use uh plan and so if you've heard us talking about that um that is the same thing when when we update it we will be changing the the terminology there thank you for the clarification Travis all right um so then we asked the Planning Commission what are really your goals for the downtown um and these premiums and they said number one to increase housing downtown and that was just the number of units um and they recognize that maybe we can't do all of these but they wanted us to go to stakeholders like you the runners commission um with all of these and get input and including on these policy the two policy options they also wanted to explore

085as a goal increasing sustainability including Energy Efficiency in the downtown um as I mentioned before some of those things we can't require um do the way things are set up in Michigan um also to increase accessibility in the downtown and that meant barrier-free units or universe or units that are built with Universal Design so that anybody of any Mobility can use them um also to increase housing attainability or affordability in the downtown and then when we're looking at that we're really talking about 60 percent of the area median income um or that could be 60 80 100 that you know that's something that that can be further defined at as we go along and that's something if you want to talk about tonight we would really welcome that um and also to increase the diversity

086of housing options um again I feel like the market is just delivering these high-end residential um low density you know three to four stories and then really high density student housing so in terms of variety of buildings looking for something in the middle of those where um it's not you know some of that might relate to the number of bedrooms because student housing is often or just five to six bedrooms um but then also there might be a price point in there and there's a way that there would be a variety of ways to to look at that and measure that so the two policy approaches they wanted us to talk to you about is a small menu um so taking that large menu and decreasing it to either something dealing with housing or something

087dealing with sustainability or maybe just two options that are very very clear or um whether it's a choice to have no premiums and just increase the number of building blocks that you could have in the downtown and would that be an option um what that would do is that would likely increase the number of residential units and bring more money into the Millet more money into the affordable housing fund via the millage so are what we'd like to have is talk to you about what your thoughts are and each approach would it achieve the Planning Commission goals and do you think there's any unintended consequences and with the permission of the group what I would like to do is to stop the share screen unless somebody really needs the visual um and then have everyone

088talk and I'll take notes would that work or does somebody need the visual sorry I okay I see a thumbs up I'm going to take that as agreement um so let me get to the zoom and stop the share all right so what are people's thoughts on that small menu whether it's housing or sustainability and you say housing or sustainability you're saying that it's going to be the items that will move us forward more towards the the goals that the city has for the a20 plan is that right for the a20 plan or for creating more housing units or taxing affordability and under housing does that also is this saying that it's just rentals or does this also include purchase it you know condo options for people who are of middle incomes as well so

089since you were saying you know luxury or student housing or rentals it could include both um it could include include both purchase or rental um and does it also include the um because it's at one of the stated goals was increased accessibility does that also then when you're seeing housing or sustainability also include uh you know saying hey here's a premium when you're putting in the Universal Design aspects yes that could that would be on the table so I think what we want to know from you is what are your thoughts what would be most important from your perspective what do you feel would achieve the planning commission's goals and do you think there would be any unintended consequences and just to clarify where sort of choosing between the small menu option versus the no

090premium option yes okay but you can feel free to suggest something else or wander they really wanted your input I mean I I guess I could just say I think my initial reaction I appreciate the presentation there's a lot of great info in there that I think I will need more time to fully digest but I think just my initial reaction is preferring the small menu option driving more affordable housing development rather than I guess sort of more of the hands-off approach of just letting people develop and then hoping that generates more funds that could be used for affordable housing thank you I prefer the small menu option if there's a way to if there's a way to streamline it for the Developers so that we can get those needed benefits then I think that

091that's really important um there's always going to be some type of unintended consequence whatever whatever you do right like right [Music] um and I know that sometimes it seems it can seem like an Ann Arbor it's you know is it County versus student and so for some it would be like an unattended consequence would be that the students who were forced to live outside of Ann Arbor what been occupied downtown so you'd still have kind of a transient population there um where you'd have a turnover every certain number of years um but on the other side of that I think that if you add units where they can be what you have you know the ability for people who are more middle income to be able to make purchases then it could incentivize it so

092that we don't lose students after they graduate and they become and stay Ann Arbor residents um as well as in the near term attracting more people or a closer term attracting more people to actually be able to buy units in the downtown thank you all right um I see Julia's hand up hi um I generally don't do well with either or um I think that there's plenty plenty plenty plenty of room for Ann Arbor to be denser than it is and I think that uh the slight offering of premiums hasn't been enough to do affordable housing and you couple of times mentioned because there is some State prohibitions um and I'd like to encourage the city to perhaps pass a resolution to encourage Lansing to get rid of the preemptions it has on things like

093inclusionary zoning and that if we had some mandatory requirements sure you want to build these luxury units you have to have a percentage set aside for affordable units instead of just trying to get at the premium way because it hasn't worked all that great um so I I would like to see some change in the zoning laws to allow for increased density and I definitely do want there to be more affordable housing so if a premium is going to suddenly start working great in that procedure I'm all for it okay so more of a a yes and increase the density but also have a premium to offer specifically around housing affordability okay and then Zechariah I see your name your hand out yeah I second um Julia's comments there but I have a question about

094the affordable housing units uh for so what period of time do they have to remain affordable according to the the definition you know can they be affordable for one year and then they no are no longer no no no no it's um I believe it's affordable in perpetuity so um I think there's a formula with housing that I think is 10 years and then if it's rental that it is that for a certain amount of time I think Travis though has a clarification probably on that where I have seen it a couple of times where we've added it into it's been for like a period of 99 years um and which is essentially in most cases the life of the building um and so but yeah generally it's a pretty significant period of time yeah

095if not in perpetually thank you good to know yeah and yeah thank you for clarifying that and I think one potential downside to having uh let's see no premiums and just including the AFR right area four ratio okay uh would be that you might get if you were affordable housing units in the downtown area but then the affordable units because of the money that would bring in for the millage would then be built kind of further away so you might have a sort of a segregated effect based on income over time I'm not sure if that would happen but that is a concern I have and I think that I know a lot of planners want to see mixed income areas um which I think would be ideal and then um and if you I

096guess this is really under both situations we're not guaranteed to have our sustainability goals met but I think that if to choose between the two of those the shorter menu May have provide at least some benefit in terms of meeting our sustainability goals well I'm not sure if just doing AFR wheel to the same extent well I'm actually not certain about that so scratch that okay all right um I'm gonna take the hands in the order I see them so Travis Jeff and then Lucy it's it I I just Zechariah is it okay that I'm calling people's names because you're the chair I really shouldn't okay thanks no take him as you as you uh have a time all right so Travis yeah thank you um I will be really brief because because it's too

097much from this conversation but to in response to Julia um I did want to acknowledge that the city the uh uh ending State preemption of inclusionary zoning uh or exclusionary zoning is in our legislative policy agenda um we are actually not only asking for the repeal of the prevention of preemption we're asking the state to incentivize uh allowing duplexes triplexes and quadplexes by right um so that it's not just something we can do but that other cities are incentivized as well and we also went a step further that and part of our agenda as well is uh asking the state to mandate that affordable housing planning be part of every city it's a statement mandated comprehensive plan again because we don't want to just look at a solution for Ann Arbor but we want to

098look for we know that this housing crisis extends beyond our borders as well um but those are priorities for us at the state level um so I just wanted to to inform that as well I know that um that conversation is existing outside of the this is very much focused on within our current parameters but I just wanted to make sure that that was out there thank you Jeff uh yes thank you um my question is about um you know we've talked a lot about affordability um correct me if I'm wrong but the definition for affordable is based on the local median income right yes okay um is there any discussion about I'm you know I have to look up the number I haven't looked it up but I assume for Ann Arbor it's relatively

099high for Ann Arbor residents yeah um uh some sort of methodology that would incentivize um going you know somehow lower than that to become truly affordable for folks especially in in terms of increasing diversity in the neighborhoods okay um yeah when we talked to the um when we talk to the non-profit housing developers um they talked a lot about how um it's difficult to build housing on the lowest end for affordability so that zero to 25 percent um Ami um but also when you're building those one of the reasons that it's difficult is that um there's a lot of services usually that's involved and then also there's management of the building and that's something that for-profit developers are not good at um and so there's kind of a I think once you decide what the

100priorities are it's easier than to say okay this is where we're going to Target um so um I guess my question back to you Jeff is that do you feel it's a what do you think feel in terms of affordability and there's a range of affordability what do you feel is most important to Target or incentivize with these premiums um for me you know I I think about um you know folks that are working in our downtown areas you know um uh gig incomes things like that that are both um you know they're sporadic sometimes uh you know predominantly tip and you know wage earners things like that um that you know might not be making that Ami and then you know we want them to be on time with them to live in the

101places where they work things like that you know we've got these bike paths everywhere but you know the people that would use the bike paths to get to work actually live in a place where they can use the bike path to get to work that kind of thing and then I'm going to throw it to Christian Kristen did you have something that was clarifying out on this no I just had my hand raised I saw Arthur raises hand a couple of times because he was raising us okay Arthur all right Arthur you were after Lucy I will not forget you all right um anything else Jeff no thank you oh you're welcome thank you uh Lucy yeah thanks for the presentation I want to Echo Julia's comments and I think Jeff's comments about the income

102is really important though probably either of these plans uh don't address that issue so that's you something that we should talk about that's the commission if the the median income is getting higher and higher and that's not a very good metric for creating affordable housing I in terms of the options the the small menu seems like definitely the better one to me I have serious concerns about the second one but with that said it's not clear to me that the small menu is is um really sufficient for meeting our affordable housing goals I'm to be honest it's I don't understand the technicalities of it so it's hard for me to to Really weigh in but I think is let me ask a question actually so that I can understand if you you can buy yourself

103out of the afford building affordable housing units right like that's the in lieu of and is that included in the small menu still um that could be on the table for small menu um what we've heard from developers is that they would prefer to the 100 in lieu right now that's it's not an option underneath the premiums um but if somebody did a PUD which is a different zoning animal um and also keep in mind this is one of many of your tools um for meeting your affordable housing goals um this tool is not suited to be the only one um anything in zoning is a bit of a like blunt force Hammer um and sometimes you need a more uh fine-grained tool um so that aside um what we've heard from developers is if

104this was changed and an affordable housing requirement was there they would be more likely to take it if it was 100 in loo um but um there are some Optics to that in terms of being able to you know buy quote unquote buy yourself out of it um and that the city might not want to offer that and or also there's some things with um there's been some questions about whether that is a hundred percent legal 100 in lieu being an only option for a premium whether that um noses up to that um impact fees which are not allowed under Michigan in Michigan um so okay I guess I guess I would say like if the small menu can account to me it's a problem that the developers can do the 100 buyout so if

105there's a way to inhibit that with the small menu that that seems like a problem that we should also be trying to solve to build more affordable housing thank you all right and Arthur I promise that you were next or Lucy are you done anything else yeah thanks for answering my question really appreciate it thank you Arthur okay I I am so glad that she was so eloquently able to say that she didn't really understand it all because I feel the same way however uh the way Julia addressed it and the things that she said the comments the way that she uh approached it I totally agree with that my only thing is trying to understand the affordability because the Kmart a Walmart greeter and the Walmart manager those are two different affordability incomes right

106so you know it's it's it's just kind of difficult to try to figure out what level of income is Affordable to who and to which development that was my question okay um and um this question of affordability and what it is always comes up whenever um whenever the city or other municipalities I'm working I've worked with have this conversation and really what helps is to have numbers so if that and the average median income moves and so when I said 30 Ami if the average unit we're just going to use even numbers if the average median income is a hundred thousand dollars then 30 Ami means that it's 30 it's thirty thousand dollars a year is that and then you can use those ranges to Target who that housing is for um and that can

107be over set period of time as Travis said it's usually what the when the policy you're trying to do it for the lifetime of the building okay all right clarify Arthur somewhat okay yeah it's a difficult thing and it and it and it moves and then also I think it helps if you can put a you know a just like you said a Walmart greeter or a Walmart clerk those are things that people understand that we all understand and we can put a face to what it to the housing that we're creating affordability yes and at this point I think that the Planning Commission hasn't gotten to that point they're they're choosing whether they do the small menu or nothing at all and then if they choose to do something with housing then then that's

108when they start looking at where those are and also that this might change over time in five years or four years if it's not working you can change your zoning and update it can I get you to put yourself in my shoes for one second sure yeah you know more about both of the plans that we're discussing than anybody else on this panel if you had to make a decision if you had to vote on this which way would you go um I would probably do what Julia asked um which is a yes and that you increase the base far and then decide on one thing that's most important to you and then incentivize that yeah you you kind of you kind of you kind of backpedal on that because you what would your decision

109be what would my decision be personally right there we go okay um well I'm not a city resident so I live inside of Township for full disclosure um personally with the things that I know is that um I would do I I would I would uncap the far to increase it and then have just one incentive for housing affordability and then I would work with the experts in your city to see which group needs it the most and would have the most impact with that I thank you I hate I hate putting you on the spot like that but that was the only way I could try to get the clarification that I did it thank you no problem I appreciate you Arthur thanks all right okay so um the hands up that I see

110I've heard from you before and I just want to make sure that from Robert Kimberly um Cynthia and John that do you have anything to share before we go around again Robert one thing I would say is that uh developers have a lot less choices uh have very few choices in this matter um I I've talked to some and the financing uh is is usually uh quite specific in controlling so I think that that is an issue that uh you know I I I know that there's even the non-profit developers who really want to do things frequently cannot because they can't get financing so um we should I mean and I don't and I think that you're you're well aware of this but I I would hope that we would not um you know get

111ourselves in a bind where financing is is less available or more expensive or something that's going to uh kind of act in opposition to to these these uh these objectives which you know I very much agree with them I just don't know if the financing uh supports it or how we How We Do policies that that uh sort of incentivize the financing excellent point that is very true that it's not just the developers themselves who are making choices it's their financiers um and they have certain parameters that they're looking for and they've gotten more and more conservative um over the past decade in terms of what they'll Finance all right so I see Rosita and then Travis um I don't live downtown and so I don't know the answer to this one but currently or

112during that time or I guess also during that time period when we saw when you showed us on the graph the exponential growth there of the buildings how many of the people who are living in those buildings are families like people who have kids um is it mainly people who are single or a childless couple like yeah I don't have good data on that um what I do know is just for clarification I've been part of these conversations with the city um in 2013 and 2017 when I work for a different firm um and in those cases I when we looked at what had been built the majority of things that had been built were student housing with the incentives um so that was the majority of housing it was four to five bedrooms um

113that during that big during that Spike after 2009. so the most of those buildings were not um were not being occupied by families and then anecdotally from staff is that the buildings that are being built 2019 to now that are not using premiums are usually for um couples or um they're but they're luxury units so um there's not a lot of family housing being built and that in talking to the non-profit developers sometimes it was when the frustrations was that families aren't necessarily looking to live in the downtown they might want to live adjacent to the downtown or in neighborhoods where there's more places where there's yards and parks and that are much more accessible right but as we do rezoning it for more density we're going to be losing some of that excess Green

114Space that we have from outside downtown and so that's something asking because if we're looking towards what the future of the Ann Arbor is going to look like then what happens to people who even if they were living downtown as they were younger and now there aren't those you know single-family homes that you had from before and they want to be able to have a family um are the units being built accessible for that and part of it does go into the affordability like what Arthur was asking what the Walmart clerk um although in this case I would say Target because that's what's down downtown or even you know I I had previously looked at what the salary was for say a first year nurse um at U of at U hospital and put this

115out you know and the salary for that is isn't really that high the same with someone who's teaching in their first couple of years even when you combine the two right and so if you were going to do was it far versus the premium um which one would be which one would attract them could attract a family at that uh salary point okay I hear what you're saying so if I can repeat back the is it the same answer well what I'm hearing from you is that there's a concern about a family or two income family that's making a teacher a nurse and would they be able to find housing in the downtown that would be affordable and attractive to them um in uh at a stage of life where they have a family right

116something where they're going to stay long term so they're not turned into transient and having to move once they start that family okay thank you for that clarification stay long-term okay got it thank you that's an excellent point anything else all right Travis did you have more to share oh no okay okay first need I'm going to assume that you you said um yeah I'm done I just noticed my hand was still always there it's hard on Zoom it's hard on Zoom so all right Travis yeah and I will I will try to be brief I know we've been having this conversation for a long time but we we're having a really good conversation and um we don't often get to have these kind of like open-ended brainstorming sessions so I actually have two questions

117for the group um as somebody who will eventually have to make a decision on this and Megan as the facilitator here feel free to shut me down if you think that they're not helpful to the conversation um so going back to actually Lucy's original uh or one of Lucy's comments um around the concerns of payment in lieu um I guess Lucy maybe this question is for you but maybe more directed to the to the body also is um what is the I guess what what is the primary concern with the payment in lieu what is the the end goal that you're looking for is it more affordable units or because I I see the benefits of both right we we hear from if with a payment in lieu we can often turn that into more

118units but then we're also creating the potential problem of segregating affordable housing from market rate housing if every developer is doing payment in lieu and so as a policy maker I would be interested in hearing from all of you kind of what when we're kind of balancing those priorities potentially more units but they're not mixed in with mixed income or forcing some mixed income is there is there a priority for the body really that's for anyone and Lucy also you I don't mean to put you on the spot if you don't have an answer for that either um and so just something to think about if anybody wants to chime in [Music] yeah Arthur I think it's more so for the diversity because you have older people that the seniors you have younger people that

119you know want to find a way to live and to stay in the Ann Arbor area you know and so you have to try to come up with a way to and I know this is hard to defend them to to please everyone because no one can come up with a plan that's gonna make everybody happy but when you start talking about diversity you know that there's not always the same income levels for everyone you know so you have to try to make the city of Ann Arbor home to everyone that wants to live and be a part of Ann Arbor okay thank you I think this is this is touching on what Julia said earlier about the state level action on inclusionary zoning which would allow the city to just require a certain percentage

120of affordable units I think if we knew that the repeal of the preemption for inclusion of inclusionary zoning was likely or imminent then at least in the short term I as a tenant would feel like okay we just need to maximize the number of affordable units in the short term and eventually we'll have a better solution down the road because I am concerned about the you know the segregation issue but as a long-term solution I think the more we would leave the the pain Loop of of doing affordable um I'm sorry it's pay in lieu of uh building affordable housing units right building and managing the affordable housing units right and to be clear they're not just buying out of it they're paying into the affordable housing fund into the right which would add on

121top of the millage money so i i as a long-term solution I think it's really it's not satisfactory right because um the longer we let that go on the more segregated the city would get in terms of income um and that's not good but it's just short term just because of the the severity of the crisis I feel like I would be supportive of it if uh if we knew that the long term a better long-term solution was coming let's see yeah I don't have as good of a sense of this as I want but my thinking is that I'm not sure if this is true if there's um developers who are already building downtown or wherever and they have a timeline for where they want to build because they're motivated by getting it done

122and renting out those units and those affordable it's kind of um the opposite of what's sacrificing I'm thinking like affordable units will be created more quickly if they don't um if that if the affordable housing units are on the back of the developer because I'm pretty sure that the um all affordable housing units that are done by the non-profit developers this is kind of what Robert was saying it's a lot harder for them to get those projects off the ground and so it ends up taking a long time to build some more affordable housing which is why I feel like it's a it's a problem if developers choose the or if they're consistently and always choosing the option of uh paying in lieu instead of making space for more affordable affordable housing units and it's

123my suspicion that they um that it's the preference of developers to do that because it's easier on them not to have affordable housing units because when I read the reports of here here are all these new building projects and then the teeny tiny number of them that are affordable is a problem it's a problem for diversity and it's a problem for making space downtown for affordable housing and yeah I mean those are the buildings that are being built quickly and we have to make sure that some of that many more of those units are affordable I feel like the in lieu gets in the way of that could be wrong though I'm really this is I'm just spelling out the logic I haven't studied this or anything I'd like to learn more about it because

124I think I'm from Ann Arbor for a long time but I lived in I was living in California and in DC and they're the experiences that it takes a long I mean it's more expensive to build there but it takes quite a few years for the city you know to get enough or the Housing Authority I should say to get enough money in the payment in lieu or the pilot in order to be able to then build that affordable housing complex um I assume it doesn't take quite as long as there but look here because it is the cost per square foot to build just isn't as much however just out of curiosity how long does it take when to fill the coffers enough to be able to to build that next complex for the

125city minus the afford the the millage and and you know the potential bond that you guys are passing that could pass I can give a very brief answer although you know at some point Jennifer Hall might be uh the best person for to answer that um but but ultimately I mean one of the so financing is absolutely uh one of the challenges and we we have projects right now that were actually slated for approval that because of the high cost of construction they're getting delayed um and and because the the cost per square foot was just astronomical um and so we are running into that challenge um one of the one of the benefits of having the dollars in the affordable housing coffers is that you know Jennifer has said to us before that one

126of the things that the Housing Commission can do is take every one dollar that a private developer would step in and probably turn it into three dollars from from matching from private funding sources and also um federal federal and state grants that she can take advantage of that they couldn't take advantage of um and so we can generally kind of much generally as a rule I say that we can kind of triple the the investment in affordable housing with a payment in lieu but it does create some of those other challenges and so um thank you to everyone for the feedback on that and then Megan if you'll bear with me I have one more question for them but I think maybe this is more directed to what you're getting at um but do you

127know what kind of a rough estimate for how long it takes with that it depends on the size of the project uh right so like some of our projects are much smaller than others and so it would take a significantly smaller pool of money um and then also right now because housing caught or because the construction costs are so high it's taking a lot more money than it did a year or two ago but it's still several years though right I don't know yeah and and for any developer whether it's for-profit or non-profit usually from beginning to end it's a five to seven year project so from when they have the idea and have an option in the land to when they've either totally have that housing up and rented or they've totally sold sold

128all the units out of it it's a when do when does when does the city I guess get the or the Housing Authority get that payment then from them in that process is it like when the Project's approved increments along the way okay I believe they get it when they look to when when they're first looking to get building permits so they have to put that in and and so when they're first starting to break ground or things like that and that can be typically I think that's a year after they've gotten their approvals and some their their approvals at Planning Commission City Council so um so if the city wanted to use the the pilot money um to build like a 100 unit complex then roughly like how you know how long does it

129take to build the coffers for that it it it it depends on how much money is coming in from other payments how much money is coming in from the millage and the millage I I I I mean I I don't have the answer and I think that would be a hard thing to figure out with the millage because we've got we don't have good data we just you just went through a pandemic which really affected the rate of building um so um I I and I can see it is is your question it's part of your question dealing with time is it yeah it's just time because as we because even if you take you know the dollar out to make it worth three dollars each time it's still it still takes a long time

130when you have when you have to do it that way correct um it still takes some time you're you're going to see the the affordable housing millage build funds in that affordable housing fund um and then from the moment you got that dollar to the city let's say somebody paid in lieu that it depends the city could already have a project that they're looking to do that they can immediately put those funds into and the but they're probably planning that will probably affect their plans five years down the road in terms of can I look for more property can we can Kim you know can we do this can we do that and some of it also um is it is staff and managing too because you have to manage permits and things like that

131and so the more housing you build the more housing you have to manage as well so does the payment only really make that much of a difference if we have the affordable housing mileage or if we had bonds um to the millage the millage is something the city could borrow against and that in lieu the analogy I would make is if you think of the in-loo payments as bonuses those are funds that you're not expecting or banking on along the way to come into your affordable housing fund um and there's a CO there might be an opportunity cost um in terms of a developer might choose not to build as many units if and their financers might say we are uncomfortable with you building we're uncomfortable with you you know managing 20 of the units

132as affordable so we're going to pull our financing whereas the financer might be more comfortable with a hundred percent in lieu because they can just put that in and that's something that they can put in their calculations and be done with so all right and sorry then this this will be a really quick one um I promise um so and so the other reason that we're doing so this is the second time that I've seen this presentation and Megan thank you because I know one of your partners did energy commission um this is really helpful one of the reasons we're going to all these commissions I believe is because as you saw from that original one of those original slides there were a lot of priorities that we were trying to incentivize with premiums um

133you know one of the things that I'm personally encouraged by right now is that I'm not hearing anyone talk about that you know we should be incentivizing more parking spaces using land for parking spaces um but um one of one of the questions that I think we're trying to get at from going to all these commissions is what are the priorities from all of these different interest groups around the city all of these different um constituencies and I think what I'm hearing pretty loud and clear at this table is that affordability and affordable housing is the top priority um but I know that you know we have we have a number of other prior for the city as well and so you know sustainability is one of those things and so to the extent around

134you know I I think I'm hearing maybe consensus around this group really wants us to to utilize premiums a small menu of premiums to impact affordability foreign and then and then after Julia I'm going to turn it over to Kristen because you guys have gone over two hours I don't know how long you usually go I I would just like to add to that Travis is that I do feel that affordability is easier if definitely and with density you will have a reduced carbon footage no question it's cheaper to heat an apartment than it is a single family house it's cheaper if you can walk to the co-op instead of having to drive there um I will reach out to Jennifer Hall with housing commissions [Music] education needed um last year kind of I think

135kind of in the fall or maybe it was late summer there was a really small um a small group of renters Commissioners attended a presentation and I think it would be helpful to get something like that again especially now that we have um I think since then six or more new members so um I'll reach out to be this one [Music] affordability process for students answered um and then also thank you to Megan this was a fantastic presentation um really answered the group's questions thoroughly um so thanks well thank you for the opportunity and thank you all for spending part of your evening with me I know your time is valuable and I really appreciate um your time and your input thanks for coming you're welcome thank you thank you very much okay so um

136that was a great presentation I know we're going kind of late um let's see moving on to the next point of business which is 7-c the tenant education committee engagement event presentation now I know it's very late one second I apologize um yes so the uh Senate education committee presentation and I was wondering do you all feel that we should go forward with that presentation tonight or should we postponed again it was already postponed once it's running so late I guess I'd be inclined to postpone if the others are on board with that is it time sensitive at all I guess that would be my question answer Jimmy no okay no not time sensitive um I would just say if anyone has a chance to kind of look through the slides and um especially for

137our new Commissioners if you have any interest in like joining us for further conversation I know it's hard when you haven't gotten the full background um but um we would definitely welcome you to attend our education committee meeting and we can give you more information about that too I just put in my time slot Jamie thank you Jamie for organizing that I think that that would be best so um what's the procedure for once we already have adopted agenda uh for amending it you can um move to postpone that I know um motion postpone second and then vote and then obviously say to the foreign [Music] okay do we have a motion to postpone that item motion okay motion by Patrick to postpone to our next meeting um do we have a second by Lucy

138all those in favor of post reporting item 7-c uh to our next meeting which is a July meeting say I all right all those opposed to know okay with that it is postponed and we can move on to our next item which is I believe eight let me check on the agenda really quickly here yeah so 8-8 with reports from Commissioners committees and other and or work groups so um let's see um we can begin with commissioners so are there any Commissioners who would like to offer a report to share with the commission this could be any you know an important event that you were able to attend something that you were made aware of recently that pertains to the business of the commission just raise your hand if you have anything to whoa whoa

139whoa oh Arthur go ahead I didn't see your hand I just put it up I just have a quick question I was no uh speaking with uh the fair housing group and they was telling me about the tester program that they have set up where they sent in uh potential renters to see if they're going to be denied and I told them at the time that I would be interested in doing that now that I'm a member of this committee would that be any type of conflict to be doing uh undercover secret secret undercover duty of trying to find out whether renters are going to actually turn me down or would that be a conflict I don't believe so however I think that you might want to discuss this offline just because of the nature

140of what you might be doing um oh I might have gave myself away um yeah well yeah don't worry about it but let's go ahead yeah I would suggest me to be talking to John Riser offline he's on right now but John is is the attorney for our our commission so he might be able to best answer that around a conflict okay well everybody else had heard it just void I said that okay um yeah thanks for bringing that up Arthur so briefly um I have a few things to share first of all we we do have a few different committees uh under the Rangers commission I unfortunately didn't write out a list here but one of them is tenant education uh one of them discusses enforcement and we're discussing how the city enforces rental

141laws in particular we've been focusing on right to renew and the early leasing ordinance however that could change um and I don't think there's a regular meeting committee outside of that but I could be wrong anyway as we as we plan these meetings we'll keep we'll extend the invitation to all the Commissioners so if you'd like to get involved in any of these side projects going on um that you're more than welcome to and we'd love to have you on top of that as new Commissioners uh there's a I think there's an orientation happening um the information was sent out Thursday is the 29th of June I can't remember yeah anyway that it was either 29th of June great so uh Kristen you emailed that that out to everybody I encourage everyone to attend whether

142you're brand new or not um there's a few other things that I would encourage you all to check out including the bylaws of the commission uh the open meetings act a description the open meetings Act of Michigan um we can send those documents out if those haven't if it hasn't been sent out to everybody there's certain things that we have to do as members of uh this commission we can't be making decisions between behind closed doors um or having discussions with the entire commission without behind closed doors we had to be very open about it had the open meetings act we'll get all that information out to you um and then just a quick report from me I was able to attend the meeting of the Detroit tenants Association um it looks like they are

143pushing to pass a version of right to renew for the city of Detroit because of some issues they've run into um that's exciting and I think there's going to be opportunity to collaborate with them on that as well as this uh issue of right to counsel which would guarantee tenants the the right to to have legal counsel uh in the landlord tenant court so the very interesting things if you're interested in either those let me know and there's plenty of interesting housing events that I'll be sharing with everybody that's all for me though any other reports okay so we can move on to uh eight Dash B report from hhsab liaison we don't have one at the moment that's a liaison from hsib to us um then 8-g report from staff Kristen all reports first

144was um that Zach Ryan mentioned the training coming up in a couple of weeks the clerk's office is putting that on um definitely highly recommend you attend if you're not able to attend it will be recorded though so you'd be able to watch it later um I miss out on the question asking um so I think I think that would be really great to do I'll also send out information on the open meetings act that Zachariah mentioned um another update let's see city council passed on resolution earlier this month that allows boards and commissions that have been deemed electronic only the rental commission is one of those um and you previously weren't permitted to meet in person now um four times um per year and that would just have to be by wallet so you

145have to vote um to schedule an investment meeting after four times so I wanted to make them all aware of that since that's something you've really expressed a lot of interest in in the past um the main update thank you very much Kristen Lucy did I see your hand go up no okay no worries um it's mistaken there so we can move on to item nine which is our second public comment session um Kristen am I leading that oh you know I see Arthur's hand up go ahead Arthur I just have one one uh quick question is there something wrong with Christian's microphone because she's the only one that I have problems hearing it breaks up you you were a little quiet and breaking up there Kristen oh I apologize um what was I a

146group um the gist of my update was that um previously this group could only meet electronically and now you can meet him at four times per year and you would just have to vote um in order to do that so there's some other logistics that we'll have to consider if you want to do a live in-person meeting we'll have to consider um room availability whether or not Smith was available to televised available to this group and it wasn't previously available all right thank you for clarifying uh so item and if you don't understand some a comment that's made because of digital issues or otherwise just yeah they ask exactly like you said Arthur thanks uh so item nine second general public comments Chris somebody like to leave that 788 [Music] -0099 and I'm trying meeting

147ID 935-8080-1941 or um to join the zoom meeting you can go to a2go.org renters commission leading and if you are joining in the renters Commission meeting with the zoom link you can press or you can use the raise hand feature to indicate that you'd like to be called on if you are calling the number and Community identity benign to raise your hand so what let's see we have um if anyone uh watching would like to address the learn transformation go ahead and raise your hand now right now no attendees have indicated okay thank you Chris and I thought we could move on uh to our last item before adjournment which is uh Communications we have four different Communications here before us so we'll start with um that people friendly streets outcomes report um let me

148quickly share my screen here and let me know if if anyone has a hard time accessing these attachments in the future just send me an email and I can explain uh so this is from the the DDA and the city is there any specific like feedback that are looking from us to hear from us um it was just forwarded to me to share with the group um some of the outcome the planning staff shared it okay gotcha are there any comments questions discussion about this okay I think it's fine that we read through this on our own time great yeah for the new folks and maybe those of us that aren't so new where can we find this again so you can oh go ahead oh it's um it's linked on the agenda that gets

149sent out so next to every agenda item there's a blue file number that is um underlined if you click it it will bring you to uh where the city has all of the um links or attachments included under different items on the agenda true yeah it's right here if you click that it'll bring you to a website as Kristen said with all the links okay um let's see let's move on to the next attachment which is um an informational sheet talking about the uh recent Amendment to the housing code to require smoke um sorry to require carbon monoxide detectors in all rental units um so this is something that we had talked to uh council member uh Cornell about um and this was passed by city council so it's been implemented and this contains some

150uh information I think to be shared with landlords um so that they can come up to code uh so are there any comments questions about this okay I think it's a good example for what how to inform people after a law change has occurred the issue is just making sure that the target audience gets them we'll move on to um we had two emails regarding Courthouse Square any questions discussion about these I wanted to ask um if Christian had you been in touch with those people and like are they expecting the renters commission to do anything or was this to inform us of I believe it was too informed I corresponded briefly with the person with information on how to contact Janet um and and a little bit of back and forth to that effect

151um I think I believe that this was the the sender's kind of request for compliance on that third reads the complaint stage yet maybe it has analysis up from last month it's been a long time um since they've requested so um I can check in with John and Janet um thanks appreciate that that would be great thank you Kristen okay so we can move on to our next item item 11 which is German at the end of our meeting so do we have a motion to adjourn motion by Arthur grab a second like my Patrick all right um all those in favor of adjourning say I [Music] was supposed to say okay with that we have adjourned thank you everybody um feel free to contact me anytime and I look forward to working with everybody

152on all these issues thank you